Blindfold

Front matter

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chapter i

T he future of Kate Huntingdon had been decided for her, as it is for most of us, when she was a small and not altogether beautiful baby, entirely unconscious of everything except the need for food and sleep. There was no family conclave, nor did wise people put their heads together, but things happened in the world into which she had been born. For one thing, her father, Francis Huntingdon, went off to paint the Continent red, and for another, her mother, who had more than enough of life, gave up the struggle quite suddenly, and died in the house of her sister Laura Maxwell.

All the sorrow and distress, the gloom of the funeral and the heavy depression consequent upon Clare Huntingdon having escaped out of her life, made no impression whatever upon her small daughter, nor was she aware of the arrival of her father who, with his usual unpunctuality, made his appearance a week after his wife’s death, wept over her grave in the little churchyard at Clanmore, and went away again, furiously angry because Clare had tied up her money so that he could not touch it with his weak, restless fingers. He felt himself entirely justified in leaving Kate behind with her aunt. As usual, he had been badly treated,” and luck ” was against him. In one stormy interview with his sister-in-law he had stated his case for the last time, and she listened, as she always did, with a fighting light in her eyes.

‘‘ So I am to bring up Kate ? ” she asked.

How can I do anything ? ” He stood by the window looking out over the long fields towards the low range of deep blue mountains. Clare has tied my hands.”

Clare had beautiful hands of her own,” Miss Maxwell remarked reflectively, as she glanced away from Francis. What happened to all her rings ? ”

‘‘ I intended to get them back,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘‘ It wasn’t my fault.”

Is anything ever your fault ? ” she bent and put a square of turf on the fire. I don’t seem to remember that it was.”

They were none of them old, then. Francis was hardly thirty, and Laura a year or two younger. Clare had lived not twenty-six years in a difficult world, but as Laura stirred the soft red ashes in the grate and watched the fiames burn up again she became acutely aware of their youth and, somehow, of their helplessness. Aunt Janey, blind and sharp of tongue, living in her own room in the top of the large house, was one of those people who must always be protected. You couldn’t tell Aunt Janey of disaster. She had an unlimited sense of self-pity, and had, she believed, brought up her two nieces. In actual fact she had let them do what they liked, and then became enraged if things went wrong. Clare, the beauty, had married at twenty. It was a good match, because Francis ought to have been rich, and no one ever dared to tell the old lady how bad it had proved.

Francis had been carried to Ireland on the waves of chance ; Aunt Janey took a fancy to him. He knew how to talk to her. Laura felt that if he could go upstairs and talk to her at that moment, Aunt Janey would believe in him all over again, because she was incapable of learning anything from experience. Now, Clare was dead, though it was dreadfully hard to believe it, and Francis looked sophisticated and horribly smart. She felt angry with the very goodness of his clothes, and the way he looked at the food at meals. You could see that he considered it badly cooked. That was Francis all over. Whatever he did or had done, he demanded and exacted. Having driven Clare to death, and handed over his daughter to his sister-in-law, he expected to be valeted, and thought they ought to keep a car. Then he had made an hysterical scene in the churchyard, and impressed every one with his heart-broken devotion to Clare, so that all the neighbourhood felt sorry for him.

Again she looked at him, wondering why it was that he could always do just what he liked.

‘‘ If I undertake to look after Kate,” she said, ‘‘ it is on the clear understanding that she is left to me, and that you have nothing to say to her.”

He turned and stood facing her. You will be quite independent when Aunt Janey dies,” he said petulantly, and I have nothing to keep myself on. They ” — he nodded vaguely in the direction of England — ‘‘ won’t do anything now.”

“ And you don’t want her ? ”

‘‘ Even if I did ...” He broke off and took out his cigarette-case. ‘‘ I shall go abroad.”

‘‘ And Kate will never see you again.”

‘‘ You’ve got this house,” he said argumentatively ; you were always on the right side of the old lady, and there’s the property, as well as everything of Clare’s. You don’t know what it is to be miserably poor.” He came across the room to the fire-place, and looked up at the portrait of Sir Jasper Maxwell. It was worth money, and Laura was, he felt, damnably solvent. He wanted to borrow from her, and he thought of the massive Georgian silver, and all the credit she could command. Even if the draughty old house was badly run, and the cooking an affront to an educated palate, there was a sense of security in it. No harassing knowledge that you owed a bill for your keep, and that the hotel people were beginning to look very queerly at you. Only it was all so deadly dull. The great woods inside the demesne walls at twilight, the silence and the long monotonous roads leading to a dirty little village where there was nothing to do but get drunk. Even if he could have stayed on, he felt it would not be worth it. Besides, he had never caught the knack of managing Laura. Who had ever managed Laura ? She always did what she wanted to herself, he imagined. Men had wanted to marry her, but she was so insufferably cocksure ... he frowned, no, not exactly that ; there was a challenge about her. Clare had been passive, and submitted tearfully, but Laura carried a weapon — a revolver or a sword, perhaps — anyhow, something dangerous. She was tall and slim, and there were the makings of a thin old woman in her, he thought, with a glimmer of satisfaction. Her hair was too fair, her voice too quiet, and her eyes too intensely blue — an angry blue, not the gentler kind. Francis hated her, but he wanted money, and besides, 10 after all, she was going to relieve him of Kate. To think of living as he preferred to live, with the addition of a small baby and a nurse would be ridiculous ; it couldn’t be done. He looked again round the large room with its high windows, and the green land outside, and lighting his cigarette he smiled.

I admit everything,” he said, with sudden frankness. ‘‘ Don’t be too hard on me, Laura. You are too strong to be really hard. After all, I am not thinking only of myself in this business about Kate. What sort of a bringing-up would a girl have, with such a father ? My friends ” — he raised his level eyebrows — myself — to put money out of the question ; she’d not have a dog’s chance among us. My people have behaved shamefully, but you know they didn’t like the marriage, and poor Clare wouldn’t help towards making peace.”

I don’t altogether blame your people,” Laura said slowly. Of course, they might have brought you up better, but there is no use going over all that.”

“ They are going to do something,” he said, looking down at the fire, in a few weeks ; my mother is helping me.” She listened to the announcement without enthusiasm. Until then, could you tide me over ? The journey here from Paris rather crippled me. I don’t like asking it of you, you’ve been so good.” He thought of the nurse’s bill, the doctor’s bill, the undertaker’s bill, but unless you do, Laura, I shall have to stay rather indefinitely, I’m afraid.”

For a second she almost laughed. Francis knew the value of a really sound argument. The firelight was kind to, his dissipated beauty, and he looked engaging enough.

II

‘‘ I suppose I shall do as you ask,” she said. Once, Clare was wildly in love with you ; only you were different then.” She shook her head sorrowfully. ‘‘ Poor little Kate. I wonder how much of you she has in her, Francis ? ”

‘‘ She will grow up here,” he said, speaking softly, ‘‘ in this wide, clean country, Laurie ; think what a chance that gives her, and she needn’t know anything about me, need she ? Everything depends on the surroundings a girl has.” He blew his nose and knelt down, stretching out his hands to the blaze. ‘‘ It’s the best thing after all. And I may be dead ; I don’t believe I shall live very long. I racket too much, I’m a hopelessly mauvais sujet, and there . . . ” he made a gesture with his hands, that’s the long and short of it.”

She watched him again. He believed himself sincere, and his eyes were wet, a weakness of his which she detested. He would be playing critically with his food at dinner in another hour or two, but just then he was emotional and soft, an actor of the barn-storming type who had no reserve, and could patter his heroics at will. In his own mind Huntingdon was thinking of trains and steamers, crowded streets and long rows of lighted lamps — to be away from the awful silence of Clanmore and its deep nights of darkness when he couldn’t get really enough to drink. Light was what he needed. Light and noise and the knowledge that he was one of a huge army of men whose ideas were the same as his own. If Laura could be got to write a cheque, there need only be one more dinner alone with her.

It was growing dark inside the room, and that awful sense of another day, empty of the things he 12 valued, having passed by, caught him by the nerves.

For God’s sake, Laurie, let me go away decently,” he said. ‘‘ If I stay, it may only be far worse for us all. Remember there’s something in having an out-and-out blackguard for a brother-in-law. You’d have hated me every bit as much if I’d been a dull bore and you hadn’t anything really against me. You’re such a queer woman.” He caught her elbows and looked into her face. No one has ever made head or tail of you, or I suppose ever will. You’ve loathed me, and I’ve always respected you, because you can be so damned cruel when you choose.”

‘‘ I don’t feel very merciful where you are concerned,” she said, in her slow, considering way. “ Why should I ? And now you are complicating my whole life. It’s strange ” — she spoke more quickly — how you, who are nothing to me except that you married Clare, have complicated things. This last little affair is the climax. I am to pay you to go, and in going you make me responsible for Kate. I’m not the kind of woman who can be sentimental about children, and hasn’t it struck you that I also may like life ? ” He was still holding her elbows and they looked into each other’s eyes, their faces not a hand’s breath from each other. Hasn’t it struck you that when Aunt Janey dies I might like some freedom myself ? ”

What is there to prevent you having it ? ” he asked.

Oh, you are stupid. I always knew you were ; you couldn’t lead the life you do if you were anything else.” Her impatience flamed up and her eyes were stormy. “ I wanted to get away from eternal responsibility. Live without having to think that I would keep some one waiting if I were ten minutes late for dinner; get away from that invisible thread which is so holding, and so strong, and now you, to whom I owe nothing, have tied me permanently. You have given me a daughter, Francis,” she laughed suddenly, “ a daughter who may even be like you.”

“ I didn’t mean to, Laurie,” he said ridiculously, dropping her arms. It has happened that way.”

“ Exactly. It has happened that way. I am twenty-seven, and in eighteen years’ time I shall be forty-five. All those years I shall be at the mercy of Kate.”

“ By Jove, Laura ” — he turned away — I think the boot’s on the other foot, if you ask me. It is she who will sing to your tune. Besides, it doesn’t prevent your marrying, if that is what you mean.”

“ Marry. Tie myself so that I can’t ever get free ? No, not that.” She crossed the room; taking a bunch of keys from a small drawer, she opened a writing-desk. “ I almost envy you, Francis. You can take. There must be something rather subtle and sweet in its way about being able to take.”

“ Pile it on,” he said, but without bitterness. ‘‘ The Lord loveth a cheerful giver.”

She bent her head and wrote. A hundred pounds,” she said, that is all you will ever get. Can you imagine anything more sordid than this interview of ours ? ”

“ Quite easily,” he laughed, if I tried.”

She looked at him, and in the dying light of the evening a sense of something infinitely evil touched her and made her shrink. What he said was perfectly true. He had been lower than she could dream or imagine, and he did not seem to regret it, or regard it as particularly shameful. ^

H

When he took the cheque from her and put it into his pocket he did it almost gracefully. There was a touch of the easiness of long habit about his act, and it was Laurie who felt self-conscious and awkward. What was she paying him forj To get rid of him, perhaps. And even so, he had damaged something by being there at all. He had invaded some protected area of her own soul, a form of trespass it is always difficult to pardon.

“ You take life too hard,” he said, and he would have kissed her if she had not stood up quickly. “ Women, for some reason or other, are always so fussy about money affairs. When my mother antes-up, m square it, Laurie.” He whistled and walked round the room with an inconsequent air of detachment. Of course I see your point. It’s all very well to have all this ” — he indicated the pictures and the furniture, the fire and the black chow lying on the rug before it — but, by George, it must be deadly never to get away from it ; never to be anonymous . . . being so extraordinarily permanent. You aren’t a bit like poor Clare. She had roots like a poplar that ran underground for miles. It was taking her away that ...” He avoided the conclusion and became silent. ‘‘ I’m very grateful to you,” he added, ‘‘ only of course if you hadn’t. I’d be here for some weeks.” A look of quick malice touched his mouth. He knew instinctively when he could jar her nerves.

“ Then I think I bought you cheap,” she said. She was standing with one arm along the mantelpiece.

‘‘ Dirt cheap,” he laughed, with genuine enjoyment.

‘‘ Ar» it is some consolation to realize that you

IS will not come back again. As for that poor child, she will never know the kind of man you are.’'

He stood with his hands in his pockets, rocking a Httle on his long legs. ‘‘ Oh yes, she will,” he said in his charming, cultivated voice. Make no mistake about that, Laurie — in other words, ‘ Know Thyself.’ The first time you and Kate have a bad row, you will tell her. You will explain to her in detail, and I shan’t get off light.”

Laura Maxwell made a sound of impatience. ‘‘ What is the use of talking like this ? ” she asked.

“ It’s no use, but it is amusing.” He stified a yawn.

You never have made the best of me, and it is a pity, because I could interest you.”

“ That is true,” she replied quietly.

“ Again, more’s the pity.” He walked to the door. “ We meet at dinner.”

She sat down by the fire, her fingers locked into the collar of the chow, who looked at her with his bright bear-like face and panted gently. The interview had been a costly one for her, and she suffered from a multitude of emotions. Francis Huntingdon came from a world of which she knew nothing, and of which she could guess very little, but her instinct told her that it was gross and sordid beyond her imagination. Clare had been dragged through it, but then Clare was one of those people who never take impressions ; her very vagueness had been her protection in her marriage. Once or twice during those last days she had wavered on the brink of an outburst, but always in the end she seemed to drift back to the life of her girlhood, forgetting what had happened later. Francis himself never alluded to what he did or how he spent his time, yet h^ carried an atmosphere around him like a cloak, and all the challenge in Laura Maxwell sprang into life at the very sight of him.

He was eternally alone. Nothing held him, there was no invisible thread in his case, and his indifference amounted nearly to power.

Laura considered her brother-in-law with firmlyclosed lips, and saw him, in her mind, floating lightly over the obstacles, traditional and human, which bounded the lives of other men. A cheap waster with an expensive education and good looks, a man who broke his word and lied, and who was prepared to leave his dead wife and his living daughter without a single qualm ; and still, he was free with the freedom of those who are utterly heartless.

Never to be anonymous.” His words came back to her, and she put her hands close over the dog’s thick fur. For miles around Clanmore she knew every one, and every one knew her, and wherever she went it was much the same — and then extraordinarily permanent ” ; she got up and flung her arms out with a gesture of revolt.

Aunt Janey would take years to die. Long illnesses ran in that generation, and they all made old bones,” and now not only age but youth was to claim her. The baby upstairs in the big nursery would be just at the age when she could not be left when Aunt Janey was gathered to her fathers, and buried in the vault in Clanmore churchyard. Kate Huntingdon, daughter of Clare, who, like the Bourbons, never forgot and never learned anything, but who had been a beautiful, useless, hapless creature, and of Francis, who never cared for anyone except himself. He had said that friends complicated life 17 B and never did anything for you,” and, with the power which such as he are able to wield, he had now disentangled himself from the claims of his child. The oysters are eaten and put down in the bill with a vengeance,” she said to herself, and the name of Laura Maxwell footed it, in clear black and white.

She sat down again with her hands folded on her knees, and her boyish figure bent forward. If the girl were to turn out like either of her parents, she would be an endless anxiety, and who could tell ? She could hardly be above all human infirmities or weaknesses in any case, but as things were, the handicap was heavy. And then Laura relaxed her tense attitude and leaned back. There was always one thing upon which no one could ever count : the unexpected in life, the element of surprise, the unknown quantity.

Behind life, which appeared so close at hand, so very realistic in its detail, there was the unseen wave, bearing all the actors and the struggles onwards towards something indefinite, but certainly there. She played with the thought fondly, and her eyes softened. It was like taking one’s place at a table and waiting to have the cards dealt. The others — Clare and Francis, were out of the game. For Clare, the dernier coup had been called, and Francis had got up, with his inevitable nonchalance, to be played without a partner. But even as her spirit lightened a little, a fresh shadow fell over her. . . . All those dull years. Was she not tricking herself with pleasant fancies, utterly distant from the actualities of life — a big house, an old lady and a small child, and her own youth fading out while she hardly noticed it ? Clare would have said, ‘‘ Something is sure to hapi8

E en,” but when things had happened they often rought disaster.

She got up with an effort and looked at her reflection in a large mirror hung at the end of the big room. Even though she loved Clanmore her soul ached to be away from it, to find the world for herself, and in so doing to find herself, which she could never do in this warm, well-known land. The door was open and she stood there, and she turned abruptly as the butler announced their one mourning guest for the evening, bidden, it is true, by Laura to avoid a the-d-tete meal with Francis. It was Ernest Mulliner, the land agent, who came forward, florid and stout, modulating his voice carefully, and a little awkward of manner.

“ I hope Pm not too early. Miss Maxwell,” he said, as she greeted him, I know you always dress.” I sat thinking,” she said.

‘‘ Quite natural,” he remarked. Don’t trouble on my account. I hope your a’nt is none the worse.”

She is just the same. Perhaps that is what is the matter with us all, Mr. Mulliner.”

By no means ” — he opened the door for her — “ and please don’t dress only on my account. Miss Maxwell.”

She passed Francis on the staircase. He slid by her, slender and black, his hair scented with some expensive wash. They did not speak and he gave her a queer, familiar look which cheapened her in her own eyes, and she ran to her room and changed in violent haste.

The last sound of the gong had died in trembling silence as she came through the square hall, and for a second she paused outside the drawing-room door.

Mulliner had a large, hearty laugh, and he was laughing at his top note, the kind of laugh he usually did not indulge in when dining at Clanmore House. For a widower, Francis seemed to be anything but depressing company.

When she opened the door and went into the drawing-room a dead silence came over the two men, and Mulliner felt at his tie and flushed a deep purple. Francis, who was standing just behind him, looked paler than usual, and the ghost of a smile lingered at the corner of his mouth.

‘‘ For such a very punctual lady, Laura,” he said, ‘‘ you are not setting me as good an example as you usually do.”

She did not look at him, but took Mulliner’s arm ; they walked through the door to the dining-room.

“ I hope you didn’t trouble to dress on my account,” he said with a wretched return of nervousness. And how is your a’nt. Miss Maxwell ? I hope she is none the worse.”

Francis followed behind them, black and slender, and faintly scented with his expensive and exotic hairwash.

Chapter 2

T he years had taken Laura Maxwell a long way from the time when she had paid Francis Huntingdon to leave Clanmore House. On the whole they had dealt kindly with her, and she was a distinguished and attractive-looking woman. Her hair had lost some of its moonlight quality, and its soft lankness irritated her, and her eyes were not so strong nor so angry a blue as they had been. She realized dimly that while life took, it also gave, and she at least never wasted time with unrealities. Love might have come to her, but she lacked the intense attraction which defies circumstances, and in this respect circumstances had conquered.

Arthur Fanning had cared a great deal, but then Kate, aged five, went down with inflammation of the lungs and had to be taken abroad. Not the sort of ‘‘ a&oad ” Laurie had dreamed of, but to a Swiss hotel full of English people, and Arthur, waylaid on the road of life by Susie Joyce, fell into matrimony during the hunting season, so that Laura chose them each a wedding present, and was very silent for a time. She began to understand that only a ‘‘ suitable ” marriage was likely to offer itself for her acceptance. Frederick Lestrange wanted a wife, and when Geraldine Coombs had refused him, he made a tentative effort towards 21

Laurie, and finally married an American girl who had come to Ireland on a visit to the Glenallertons.

Looking back over the years, Laura knew that it takes time to realize that the generation to which one belongs is passing onwards and has no longer the same significance, and Kate, who originally had mattered very little, began to strike out like a swimmer who has found wonderful confidence at last. Without Kate, Laura might have remained young for some years longer ; but contrast has a curious power of destroying lingering illusions.

The vital question was, whether they would enter into competition or not, and yet neither of them guessed that this question had to be decided. During the time when Kate was a small energetic bundle of frill and a sash, Laura had reached her zenith. The child meant a great deal to her, and she protected her with something approaching fierceness from the minor ills and troubles of her little life, for it was then she began to give up her own life claims. She hunted through the winter, but without her old vigour and interest. Somehow or other these things mattered less, and once she had recovered from the rather bitter knowledge that Arthur Fanning did not care enough to follow her to Switzerland and had been so quickly consoled for her absence, she devoted herself more and more to Kate.

As for Kate herself, she found life gorgeously and wonderfully attractive. Clanmore, the big kindly old house with its wide demesne, the woods and the hills, the stables and the garden, were sufficient for her. She believed that this was her world and wanted no other. It was exactly the kind of life which Francis had predicted would be hers if she stayed with her 22 aunt, and his prophecy seemed likely to be fulfilled. She would grow up there, looking like a disordered daffodil, hunt through the winters and drive miles along the wide lonely roads to play tennis with neighbours ten or fifteen miles away. Realize that there was nothing unusual in a wagonette carrying all the members of one family, drawing up before the steps, to make an afternoon call, and that the excitements of existence depended on very small incidents indeed. In the end she might marry a soldier out of the Cavalry Barracks near Cork, or a son of one of the County families, and live happily ever after.

If there was not much to be said for such an arrangement to those who preferred the crowded hour of glorious life ” standard, there was little to argue against it, and the only growing pains Kate suffered from were the natural ones, consequent upon the lengthening of her legs. Already at sixteen she was a vivid patch in the social texture of Clanmore society, and she might have been a butterfly in a summer garden, for all she ever thought of the future, or troubled her head about anything.

Laura Maxwell watched her with a queer, concentrated interest. Kate was not beautiful, but she had some of her mother’s ways, the ways of a beautiful woman, and the soft green-blue eyes of Clare. There the resemblance stopped dead, and her mouth and nose — a straight, neat little nose with a slight tilt to it which was her ojwn amendment — ^were a feminine reproduction of Francis Huntingdon. The soul of Kate was asleep in her healthy body, and the question was, whether it should be awakened ? Laurie, who had an essentially truthful habit of thought, never begged this question. In Clanmore there was no need for souls to awaken into painful life. The days and the years slid on in mellow sequence, and there was no great difference between the theories and ideas of youth and age, for perhaps neither condition demanded theories nor heeded fresh ideas. There were land troubles, and people quarrelled over politics, but so had all their fathers before them, and there was a great deal of gossip, but innovations of any kind were unknown. When the war caught the world, Kate was still too young to feel it very acutely, and with the unstudied philosophy of youth she continued on her way, full of her own gay projects and plans which never went much farther than the day after to-morrow. There was a curiously deep strain of philosophy in Kate which appeared in her early. On the surface she seemed to be eager and full of ardour, but somewhere in the shadowy depths she had a power of self-protective reserve which startled Laura. To punish her as a child had been a problem, for Kate adapted herself immediately, and if her favourite toy was taken from her she made the best of another in its place, with a nonchalance that was slightly disconcerting to central authority. Even while she admitted the wisdom of her small niece, Laura remembered her own young passions and tears, and realized that the difference between them was fundamental. Kate did not suffer from emotional storms, and though she was quite unconscious of it, she always avoided overexpression. Her enthusiasm for life was insatiable, but she handled it with a queer touch of connoisseurship, and whereas Laura at the same age had been a sentimentalist, Kate had certainly some of the sophistication of the reactionary running in her blood.