Chapter I
Beatrice The social function of Woman ... is per sonal, direct, domestic, working rather through sympathy than through action, equally intellectual with that of man, but acting more through the imagination. — Development of Woman, Frederic Harrison. " s I lEN minutes to seven now ! we passed a clock then. People really have no right to dine at such barbarous hours ; but the Silvertons are privileged in your eyes, my dear Beatrice, and whatever they do is right." Lady Dering drew her opera cloak round her and turned to regard her niece through her long handled glasses. " You are looking very well to-night, my dear ; that dress suits you, though I always wish you had more colour. By the way, who is this man Arthur is so anxious for us to meet ? A social B VINDICTA 2 reformer, or a lunatic of some kind, I suppose, since we meet him here."
" Mr. Strange, who beat Cholmondeley at the by-election at Breamden, auntie, — at least I suppose that is the man you mean ; he and Arthur seem to have taken a great fancy to one another." " My clear, I asked who he was, and now here we are in a block, and Mullins always lets him self get stuck for half an hour behind some omnibus or cart. We shall be late ! Well, you can tell me about this Mr. Strange while we wait ; I never even heard of him." Never to have been heard of by Lady Dering was, in her own estimation, the one sin which was unpardonable. She was one of those women to whom it is an impossibility to understand that in everything there is a premier pas. Such women expect the first step to have been taken, and its cost paid, before they are approached, and Lady Dering would as soon have thought of putting the cachet on an aspirant to social distinction as of lending her name to advertise a soap or a toilet powder whose merit was as yet to prove.
Left a widow and childless at the age of forty, she had devoted her whole energies to the task of bring- BEATRICE 3 ing up her twin nephew and niece, Arthur and Beatrice Graham-Hope, and now at sixty she was blissfully unconscious of the fact that she occu pied, with regard to them, very much the position of a hen who has hatched out ducklings. Arthur and Beatrice were certainly not the pro duct of their aunt's system of education, although they had known no other since, at four years old, they were sent home to her from India, orphaned of both parents. Ardent and high-souled, with quick wits, and a thirst for knowledge, the worldly maxims and ambitions of Lady Dering were power less to influence their development, and at eight and-twenty they stood at the opposite pole to her in every thought and principle, although, to their credit be it said, they were still the in mates of her house, the adopted children of a woman who would else have been alone in the world.
The block at the top of Oxford Street had melted away, and the carriage drew up at Dr. Silverton's house in Harley Street five minutes later. The two ladies were warmly received by their hostess, Mrs. Silverton, a lady whom half the London of her own set hated, because she VINDICTA 4 achieved social triumphs just beyond their reach. Many people expressed themselves surprised that she should be the wife of a man like Dr. Silver ton, an enthusiast and idealist of a distinct type, who nevertheless after thirty years of married fife was as much her lover as her husband. The spare, soldierly figure of the doctor was visible through the hangings that draped the doorway to an inner drawing-room, and as Beatrice and her aunt moved on through the room, he saw them and came hastily forward. A man to whom he had been talking advanced at the same time, and Dr. Silverton, after a word of greeting to Lady Dering, turned to Beatrice : "I want you to know my friend Mr. Strange.
Strange, let me present you to Miss Graham-Hope, whose brother I believe you know already. By the bye, where is Arthur?" " Here," answered a tall, dark man entering at that moment, " and I am afraid late ! Good-even ing, Strange. I hope you have paired for to night ; they say we shall go to a division upon the Landlords' Compensation Bill." Jermyn Strange laughed. "I have done all that I ought, and I will not BEATRICE 5 be made to talk shop when I have just been in troduced to your sister, Graham-Hope." " But for that very reason you will. My sister talks shop every bit as much as I do. She hears a good many of the debates, reads all of them, and is generally ' up ' in matters parliamentary." " My brother makes me out rather a terrible person, Mr. Strange ; I am not really as bad as that. Arthur knows it is only since he became a politician that I have cared about debates."
Beatrice smiled into her brother's eyes, which were very like her own, and Arthur gave an answering smile. Strange was looking at her, and did not speak ; and, as Arthur was about to make another playful retort, Dr. Silverton joined them again. " Now, Graham-Hope, this is against rules. You have your sister when you are at home, and I [am not going to let you monopolize her when you are out. Come and talk to Madge, and take her in to dinner, and let Strange have a chance to speak." He put his arm through Graham-Hope's and led him away. Jermyn Strange looked after them in silence VINDICTA for a moment, then said : " Your brother is fortu nate, Miss Graham-Hope. I think it must be easy to speak when one is absolutely certain of the sympathy of even one other person ; at least, to me it would be an enormous help.
But then I am unluckily so sensitive to mental atmosphere that I simply get dried up by the consciousness of adverse criticism ; I shut up like a knife at the first sign of it." " You did not shut up like a knife when you spoke last Tuesday," Beatrice said quickly. Strange coloured. " Were you there ? " he asked. " Yes ; my brother told me the Local Option Bill was to be brought forward, and that you were to speak in support of it, and I — oh, Mr. Strange, you must know how splendidly you spoke — every one is full of it, and Sir Alfred Thomson is so delighted, and so is Dr. Silverton." Beatrice spoke impulsively ; then, as she noticed a sort of stiffness in Strange's manner, she paused, and grew embarrassed. He bowed slightly in ac knowledgment of her compliment to his speech, and, dinner being announced at the moment, offered her his arm.
As they went down the BEATRICE 7 staircase in silence, Beatrice stole a look at her companion, and saw with surprise that he was a younger man than she had before thought him. His hair, though still quite thick, was iron-grey, and a suggestion of weariness in his manner gave the impression of age, but the face and strongly made figure were those of a man of thirty-five or forty. When they were seated at the round table, Strange found that Lady Dering was on his right hand, and he soon felt himself the object of a prolonged stare through her lorgnettes. Turn ing to Beatrice, he found her leaning slightly for ward, with the evident intention of saying some thing to her aunt, and he at once prevented her doing so by speaking. " You must think that I received your kind, encouraging words very rudely just now, I fear ; but, to tell the truth, I cannot feel any enthu siasm now, whatever I may have done at the time.
I am told that my speech caught on, and I am glad if it has been of any good ; but I am afraid I am past enthusiasms." " I do not choose to believe that ; you are tired this evening, and take an unfair view of your VINDICTA own character. Eemember, I heard you 'speak, and I could not be mistaken as to how you feel about things that are for the good of the people." " You are a social reformer, then ? " asked Strange. " Oh, no, I am not ; but my brother is. I care for all that he cares for, but I don't understand these things." " Well, then, Miss Graham-Hope, can you not believe that it is pretty much the same with me ? You disclaim a pure love of humanity as your incentive ; I also disclaim it. You have a woman's motive, love for the individual ; and I — well, mine is a man's motive oftener than he knows, let us call it antagonism to the unalterable.
I never hope to change anything or to improve it ; I merely gird against what is, because it is." " And do you find relief in girding ? " asked Beatrice, smiling slightly. " Am I to understand that you went into Parliament merely to ' gird,' that you spoke as you did on Tuesday just be cause you were so annoyed that men and women are not able to live better lives ? Well, let us leave the subject, as you are so perversely disposed. What have you been doing outside the House?" BEATRICE 9 " Girding again ! Yes, you may laugh ; but I have, and can you wonder? Is it not exactly like the rest of our inconsistencies and mistakes to spend May, the most glorious month in the year, in one long round of work and worry?" " But do we ? Most women would tell you it is, par excellence, the month for pleasure."
" I was not thinking of women at that moment, but of unfortunate M.P.'s, and, I am afraid I must own, of one in particular, who would fain have spent this perfect spring in the depths of the New Forest, and yet has been sucked into the vortex with all the rest." " But you like the vortex, surely," asked the girl ; " you surely feel that " She stopped, and laughed a little nervously. There was some thing about this man that made it difficult to say the things that were so obviously easy with others ; it was impossible not to feel that they made no impression on him, and yet beneath his very real hardness and cynicism her woman's in tuition discerned a simplicity and depth which fascinated her against her will. " Will you finish your sentence ? " he said. " I am curious to know what I must feel."
VINDICTA 10 " I mean," she answered, " surely you must feel that it is in the vortex that men live : to be alone with the beauty of Nature is like the night before a battle, but it is only preparation. I should have thought that men — men, I mean, like my brother and you — would feel that to live was, after all, the only good in life." " But to live any life one must first be born into it, Miss Graham-Hope. I am not in this world of which you speak ; believe me, I am not. Altruism has no charm for me, and if I am ever to find one in it, I must seek it first alone with Nature." "Is Nature so much to you, Mr. Strange?" " She is my Mother and my God," he answered ; and Beatrice was silent. " What clo you drink, Strange ? " asked Dr. Silverton. " Thanks, I have my beverage," answered Strange, filling a glass with water from a bottle at his side.
" I am not a believer in Temperance drinks, so called," he added, speaking to Beatrice ; " there is, in my opinion, an immense future be fore the man who will invent one that is neither nauseous nor insipid." BEATRICE 11 Beatrice laughed. "How nice of you to own it ! The people who advocate non-alcoholism are generally rabid enough to enjoy insipidity. But you have one refuge from water ; does not a lemon squash appeal to you to-night ? " " To-night ! No, indeed ; the pips would be sure to be left in it to remind one of the little daily annoyances in any deep draught of joy." " No, no, you shall not be so morbid ; say rather they remind you of how any deep draught of joy makes one swallow the little annoyances un noticed," replied Beatrice. "Let me point a moral, and suggest that it would be well to fish up the little annoyances, and put them right away, before drinking the draught of joy," struck in Arthur Graham-Hope across the table.
" Then one would never drink at all," said Strange. " That seems nonsense to you ? Well, so it ought ; youth and hope are Nature's twins." " Then they must be inseparable," said Arthur. " My sister and I hold peculiar views with regard to twins, Strange ; we always maintain that they are quite different from ordinary brothers and sisters." VINDICTA 12 "Have you any relatives in town?" asked Beatrice. " No, I am quite alone. My mother, with whom I live very quietly in the New Forest, is not able to come to London." " She is an invalid ? " " Yes, she is — an invalid ! Your brother has very kindly asked me to call one Sunday, Miss Graham-Hope ; and has even taken upon himself to promise that you will play to me." " Certainly I will, if you care for it. Sunday and Thursday are our days for seeing our friends ; my aunt is at home on Tuesdays.
Now, I see Mrs. Silverton is gathering up her gloves ; if you are fond of music, you will enjoy Miss Silverton's singing presently ; " and with a glance at her brother she followed the ladies from the dining room. Strange sighed as he chose a cigar from the box his host handed him, closed his eyes for an instant, and then plunged abruptly into a discussion upon the merits of motor cars versus bicycles which was occupying the table.
Chapter II
The Grey House Its way of suffering is the witness a soul bears to itself. — Henri Amie — Henri Amiel. /^\NE of the saddest places upon this earth is a house with a secret shut up in it — a house where a great shame and dread have taken the place of the freedom and natural intercourse of the inmates. Such a place was The Knoll, a grey, sad, stone house, standing in its own grounds in the New Forest, about eight miles from Linden wood. Such a place was Jermyn Strange's home, where for ten years he had lived his life. Houses where there is a secret have about them an indescribable air of forlornness and chill dis comfort, and yet of expectancy. The very furni ture is wanting in those touches of finish that go to make a room home-like — everything seems to have stopped at a certain date and never to VINDICTA 14 have gone on again in the same way since.
The rooms at The Knoll gave this impression to the visitor in an unusual degree, and in the drawing room the note of tragedy and pathos was sounded in one significant circumstance. On the writing table stood a silver frame filled with almanac cards — the date they bore was that of ten years back — they had never been changed by the man who sat alone on rare occasions in the room where a woman had once held sway. In the dining-room the same forlorn stiffness reigned ; the library alone had been made habitable and comfortable by a few modern touches. In this last room a woman was standing one evening a fortnight after the night on which Strange had dined at the Silvertons'. The room was lighted by candles in sconces, and a fire burned brightly in the wide fireplace, for the weather had changed, and it was wet and chilly.
The woman wore the dress of a professional nurse ; she was neither young nor handsome, though redeemed from absolute plainness by a beautifully proportioned figure and hands that a sculptor might have modelled from. She seemed restless, and moved about the room, touching the heavy curtains before the window, moving the large leather armchair nearer the fire, and stirring the coals into a brighter blaze. A fox terrier on the rug watched her sleepily with half an eye, and doubtless moralized on the superior patience of his kind. At length wheels were heard, and the dog sprang up and whined to be let out. Sister Everett went to the door and opened it, and Rip bounded to greet his master. She did not follow, but stood there for a moment, then, half closing the door, turned and went back to the rug.
After a few minutes Rip returned and sat down by the fire again. He sniffed at Sister Everett's dress as he passed her, and wondered within himself why, if she had found waiting such hard work, she should now remain so calmly there, instead of running out with him to welcome the master of the house. He sighed as he reflected on the inconsistency of women in general, and laying his nose upon his paws con tinued his observation of Sister Everett through one half-open eye. He saw her now do a very odd thing, at least so it appeared to his canine intellect. A door opened and shut in the distance, and steps came clown the passage to the study. VINDICTA In a moment Sister Everett had stooped, picked up one of the velvet slippers that stood on the rug, laid it swiftly against her cheek, and put it back again.
While Rip was wondering what this might mean, the door opened, and Jermyn Strange came into the room. Tired and almost worn as he looked, he was undeniably a striking if not a handsome man. His grey hair was cut close as a soldier's, and he carried his height of six feet two with the ease which military training alone can give, but his lips and strong square jaw were clean shaven. His eyes were dark, and often too sombre in expression for beauty, but they lighted up with kindly greeting as he shook hands with Sister Everett. "What a night!" he said, with a shiver; "as cold as winter, and floods of rain. How are you, Sister?" He stood on the rug, leaning his arm on the mantelshelf, and stirring Rip with his foot as he spoke. "I am quite well, Mr. Strange," she answered. She dreaded his next question as much as he did, knowing what it cost him to ask it each time that he came home after any lengthened absence ; yet she gave no sign of the inward shrinking she felt.
He stooped and touched the dog's smooth head. "And — my mother?" She felt something rise in her throat ; it was so hard to see him thus, to look at his bent head and grey hair, and to think of the creature whom he called " Mother." Before she could answer, a bell rang violently in a room upstairs. Jermyn started upright and stood listening, and Sister Everett, saying, " Don't come, unless I ring again," left the room quickly. There were sounds of scuffling on the stairs, and a hoarse voice called " Jermyn," but Strange did not answer to the call. Dropping heavily into the armchair, he sat staring into the fire, till the sounds died away, and all was quiet. Rip came and put his cold nose on his master's knee, and Strange laid his hand on the dog's head, but other wise he did not stir. In the fire he saw a picture of another home, made beautiful by the presence of Beatrice Graham-Hope; of a room where everything was dainty and refined, filled with the personality of its owner. c VINDICTA Only yesterday he had sat in such a room, and watched such a girl and listened to her, as only a man starved for a woman's love and sick with loneliness could listen, with a stubborn longing to shut out thought, and only feel and enjoy.
After a long time he roused himself, and getting up with a sigh changed his boots for the slippers, lit a pipe, and cut the first pages of a Review he had brought from town. A servant came in with coffee, asked if he would require anything more that night, and on his master's answering " No," made up the fire and left him alone. Strange heard the sound of locking up for the night — the steps of servants as they passed the end of the passage on their way upstairs ; then all was silent. The clock in the room chimed eleven. Strange drank some coffee, and again applied himself to his Review. It was useless ; he could not read. The sense of loneliness oppressed him as never before ; it was unendurable. He went to the door, and, taking a candlestick from a table outside, lighted it, and went up the stairs quietly.
A swinging lamp lighted the landing at the top of the first flight, from which opened four doors. One stood ajar, and Strange noiselessly pushed it open, and looked in. The room was furnished as a morning-room, with a piano and several easy chairs, and by the fire, wliich was very low, Sister Everett sat, with her face turned towards an inner room. She heard him, noiseless as his movements were, and raised a cautioning hand. He beckoned to her, and waited on the landing. When she came to him, he said in a low tone, — " Sister, I have come to ask you if you will give me the pleasure of your company for half an hour or so. I have been rather overworked lately, and the silence and loneliness of this place is more than I can stand to-night, after " He paused, and she answered instantly, though with out looking at him as she spoke.
" I shall be very glad to come, Mr. Strange. I will be with you directly ; " and she slipped quietly away. Roused from his depression by mere thought of human companionship, Strange went down stairs, and made his preparations for his guest. He lighted the spirit lamp under the coffee-pot, fetched more cups and some cake from the pantry, with the quiet dexterity of a man used to do things for himself, drew forward a second arm- VINDICTA 20 chair, and then surveyed his arrangements with satisfaction. Rip, too, was interested, and gazed thoughtfully at the slipper which Sister Everett had laid against her cheek, as if still seeking to solve the mystery of her action. A gentle knock at the door, and the visitor entered. She had taken off her nurse's dress, and wore a loose, black gown with ruffles of some lacey stuff at the throat and wrists.
In her eyes was a light that made her very different from the quiet, self-contained woman Jermyn had grown to regard as an inmate of his home for eight long years. Never till this even ing had he approached her on any but an entirely business footing, and the woman in her had been swift to magnify and augur much from his doing so. She sat in the chair he had put for her, and was glad when Rip jumped upon her lap. She was nervous, not a usual sensation with her, and her hand shook as she drank the coffee he poured out for her. Jermyn crossed the room, and shut the door, which she had left open ; then he drew his chair closer to the fire, and sat down. For a few minutes there was silence, then Sister Everett spoke. " You are not looking well, Mr. Strange." " No, I have been feeling knocked up for a week or more," he answered ; "for one thing it has been fearfully hot, and I have been sticking rather close to work.
My book is taken, though. Fisher and Eliot tell me they will bring it out next Septem ber, so that's all right." " How are you sleeping ? " she asked, her pro fessional eye noting the signs of nervous strain and worry about him. " Why, that's just it," he answered. " I am not sleeping — I simply cannot sleep of late ; that's why I have come here. The quiet is what I have longed for ; and now I am here, it seems actually to hurt me. Just now the silence was like a great sound of many noises all striving for utterance, and actually pricking one's brain. Do you know what I mean? " " Yes, I know it," she answered quietly ; but her thought was that he must be made to sleep, and on that very night. He went on : "Do you mind my talking to you of myself to-night, Sister ? I feel as if it would do me a lot of good to speak ; I am too silent as a rule.
Will you consider me your patient for to-night ? " VINDICTA 22 And Sister Everett answered, as she bent to stroke Rip : " Yes, I will consider you my patient for to-night." " Well, then, my chief symptom is a desire to speak of myself. I am afraid of myself, — worried, depressed, morbid ; and I want to say it out once to a sympathetic human listener, just to get it all out of my own brain. Have you ever heard any rumours of how — why — I mean of how this terrible life began ? " The hands that were stroking Rip trembled ; she was as sensitive for him as he could be for himself. " No," she said very low. "My father died when I was twenty-two, my brother twenty-five, and my sister eighteen. I was in the Army then, for Herbert was heir to this old place, and I lived at home. When my father had been dead three years, Herbert came to see me at Winchester, where the regiment was then stationed.
He told me that he feared that my mother drank more than was good for her. I was, of course, awfully shocked, and, at first, furious with Herbert — she was such a beautiful woman ; ah, you can't believe it now, but she was, and we all adored her. However, I came home, and saw for myself. Then Herbert and I spoke to her, and she promised to give it up, and we kept it from Viola, my sister. That promise she kept for four years, and then a terrible thing happened. My poor brother was thrown in the hunting field and dragged — he was dead when they brought him home. He was my mother's darling, and the shock made her nearly mad. Then she began to drink again, and in another year, when I was thirty, she had become a confirmed drunkard. One day — how it happened exactly I never have known — but there was a lamp — my sister made her angry — they think she tried to take the brandy from her — but — my sister was in evening dress — and was burnt to death."
He covered his eyes with his hand, and was silent. Rip felt hot tears fall on his head, and got down from Sister Everett's lap. Jermyn went on : — "I felt I could not see my mother again. I came home for poor Viola's funeral, and then the regi ment was ordered abroad. I stayed away a year, when one day I saw a paragraph in the Standard ; it was headed, ' Lady of good position drunk and disorderly in the premises of a well-known London firm.' I read it. After that I left the Army, and VINDICTA 24 came home, brought her back here, and you know the rest. I was engaged to be married at the time, but I could not drag any woman to this home, and so I broke it off." " Was there no other way ? " she asked. "None. She had been in two homes where they treat dipsomaniacs, and each time she came out she was worse.
They tried even the ' gold cure,' with out effect. My poor mother! Her father drank himself to death." There was a long silence, then Jermyn spoke again. " I had grown almost used to it all. ■ Somehow I haadly knew I felt it, till a week or two ago ; then I met some people — a man and his sister — and they asked me to visit them. I have been nowhere for years, but they were unlike other people, and I went. I have been four times — and, I don't know why, but ever since I have felt the — the desolation of my lot." The woman opposite to him sat very still, "Ah, yes, I understand," she whispered. Again a long silence. " It is so good of you to have listened to me," at length said Jermyn, almost with a smile. " I feel better already for merely having spoken it ; and to such a kind listener," he added.
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