CHAPTER XIII.

SIR ROBERT SEEKS ADVICE

Sir Robert was watching the pair curiously: noting the feverish gladness with which the boy clung to Rhoda’s hand, and the tenderness with which she, in return, bent over him.

It cost him a sharp pang to think that this was just the sort of way in which he should have liked his wife to bend over their invalid son. There was a motherly kindness in Rhoda’s every look and touch, as she smoothed the boy’s pillow or smiled at him, that realised completely Sir Robert’s ideal of what a mother ought to be to her child.

Yet it was a stranger in blood who filled this office to the boy, and the visits of Caryl’s mother were hasty affairs, undertaken in the intervals of the serious business of life, motoring, tennis-playing, dancing, travelling.

It was impossible that a bitter thought should not come into his mind at the sight.

Caryl turned his head, with a smile, to his father.

“I thought it would be all right, papa,” said he, “when you came.”

Rhoda could scarcely suppress a sob. She knew something of what was passing in Sir Robert’s mind, for he had often uttered words expressive of his regret that Lady Sarah was not more domestic in her tastes. That that aspiration chiefly concerned the delicate boy it was not difficult to understand.

But now that the matter was settled, that Rhoda had promised to remain at the Mill-house, there was another question to be answered. Why had she been so anxious to go away? What, too, did she mean by these words, uttered half-unconsciously, as it seemed, to the boy: “You don’t know what you’re asking!”

Sir Robert had supposed, naturally enough, when Rhoda told him that afternoon that she wished to leave the house, that it was the unpleasant affair of the lost picture which had caused her so suddenly to make up her mind to leave a house where she had been subjected to such an alarming experience as that of the previous night. To a nervous woman, the night alarm, followed by a mysterious and not yet explained sequel, must have been quite sufficient to make her disinclined to stay in a house where such things had happened.

Now, however, on overhearing these whispered words to Caryl, which implied that she had something still to fear, Sir Robert was moved to strong curiosity.

He looked at her intently, and Rhoda blushed under his scrutiny.

Meanwhile Caryl, delighted to have carried his point, was playing affectionately with her right hand, and pressing it against his cheek.

Sir Robert was anxious to have an opportunity of putting some questions to Rhoda, and, with that idea in his mind, he smiled down at his little son and said:

“And now you’ve persuaded her to stay with you, Caryl, you mustn’t be greedy, and expect to have her all to yourself. You must let mama see a little of her too, and me.”

The boy looked up, smiling.

“I want her the most,” said he. “You’ve got your pictures, papa, and mama’s got Jack.”

The words came quite naturally from the child’s mouth, but they produced a most curious and painful impression upon his two hearers. Sir Robert seemed for the moment stunned by them, as, glancing at Rhoda, he saw upon her face an expression of dismay which was like a sudden illumination to him.

“Yes, we’ve got Jack too, of course,” he said presently, recovering himself although there was a change in his voice, “but he isn’t here always.”

“Nearly always, when mama’s here,” persisted the boy simply. “And you’ve always got your pictures, haven’t you? Anne says you’ve got back the one you thought was stolen.”

Again there was a look upon Rhoda’s face which roused Sir Robert’s keenest attention and interest.

“Yes, I’ve got my picture back,” said he. “Who told you about that?”

“Oh, I heard Anne talking about it to Mrs. Hawkes. That was this morning. And then when Anne came in a little while ago she told me you had got it back, nobody knew how.”

Rhoda turned her head away, feeling that there was a guilty look on her face which Sir Robert’s unusually penetrating gaze seemed to challenge. She did not want to meet his eyes again; ever since those first words of the boy’s about Jack she had been conscious of an excitement, a restlessness in Sir Robert’s demeanour, which were quite unusual with him, and she dreaded the thought of a _tête-à-tête_ with him--which, however, she saw to be inevitable.

“By the bye, Miss Pembury, I should like to hear your account of the return of the picture,” said the baronet in the gentlest of voices, as Rhoda took the opportunity, when father and son were looking at each other, to leave her post by the side of the couch, and to glide hastily towards the door.

He had followed her and was holding the door open for her.

“Are you going to take Rhoda away, papa?” piped out the small voice from the couch near the window.

“Not for very long. I’ll ring the bell for Anne to come back to you for half an hour,” said Sir Robert.

But the boy pouted.

“I don’t want Anne,” said he. “I can wait here by myself till Rhoda comes back. Don’t be long, don’t let papa keep you long,” he cried, waving his thin hand as she went out.

Rhoda smiled back at him, with a trembling lip. She would have given the world to avoid the interview which the baronet was determined to force upon her. There was a gravity in his look quite different from the calm serenity of his everyday expression; she knew that an ugly thought concerning his wife and Jack Rotherfield had been obtruded upon his mind for the first time.

Was it better that he should know the danger? Perhaps so. But in any case it was a terrible thing for the girl that she had unconsciously helped to bring it home to his mind. The boy’s innocent words might perhaps have passed unheeded, but for the point she herself had all unconsciously and unwillingly given them by her startled look.

And then, following that moment of revelation, there had come the speech about the picture, and again she thought that her face might perhaps have revealed some guilty knowledge concerning it.

They went slowly downstairs, Rhoda first, Sir Robert following in silence. It was not until they reached the hall that Sir Robert, taking a hat from the hall table, turned to her and said:

“Shall we take a turn round the garden? I want to speak to you.”

There was no help for it. She bowed her head, and they passed out quickly by the garden-door, for she understood that his intention was to avoid Lady Sarah and possible interruptions, to which they might have been liable if they had gone straight to the study.

He led the way quickly to the water, crossed the rustic bridge, and so reached a beautiful grass path which could not be seen from the house.

Here he slackened his steps, and then he said in a very gentle tone:

“Please don’t look so frightened, my dear Miss Pembury. I am not going to ask any awkward questions, believe me. I may say at once that I know you are shielding some one who was concerned in the disappearance of my picture, but I am not going to press you for any details which you may not feel inclined to give me. But I have had a rude shock within the last half-hour, following on an anxious time in connection with the disappearance of first the snuff-boxes and then the ‘Lady Hamilton.’ And I am obliged to come to you for--for advice, and--for guidance.”

“I’m afraid I’m too stupid to be able to advise any one,” said Rhoda timidly.

He made a gesture of denial.

“No, no. I quite understand the difficulty you are in, and I hope I shall not have to say anything to pain you. It is very hard on such a young woman as you are to find herself in such a position as that you are in. But you will help me if you can, I’m sure.”

“Of course I would help you in any way I could. You won’t press me to betray any secrets, I’m sure.”

He looked at her quickly.

“Tell me,” he said quite sharply, “whether, as far as you can see, I am neglecting any part of my duty to--to any member of my--my family.”

Rhoda drew a long breath, and then suddenly found courage. Turning her blue eyes full upon him, she said, while the colour deepened in her cheeks and her lips quivered:

“Yes, Sir Robert, I think you are.”

Although he had invited her to be candid, this speech evidently took him by surprise. He stared at her apprehensively, and then said with the utmost meekness:

“Will you tell me--to whom?”

“I think,” stammered the girl, her breath coming fast, “that you are neglecting your duty to your wife.”

This was direct indeed. He stopped short, made her stop too, and faced her roundly:

“How?” said he.

Rhoda knew that she must go on now, and she poured out all that was in her heart, without more ado.

“I think,” she said, throwing out her words in little groups, with a strange, staccato stop after every few syllables, “that you ought to be with her more, not to let her go away without you, not to let her choose her own companions and friends. I think you ought to insist upon being her companion, her friend, yourself. Of course I know how hard it would be--that you don’t care for the same things or the same places. But since she won’t bend and give way, and do as she ought, I think you ought to do it all for her. You ought not to yield to her every caprice, to let her indulge every whim. If you go on running down one path while she is running down one that isn’t even parallel with yours, how can it end but in your finding yourselves some day, so far apart that--that you can never come together again?”

It was plain speaking with a vengeance, and Rhoda would never have ventured upon it in cold blood. But when she was thus unexpectedly challenged by Sir Robert, she felt, honouring, respecting, loving him as she did, that there was nothing for her but to be daring, audacious, wholly, flagrantly honest, and to fling down thus before him her own views, without hesitation, without pause, and then, if necessary, ask for pardon.

But there was no need for that. In Sir Robert’s face, as he listened to her, with head averted, tightly pressed lips, and eyes that seemed at last to open to look out upon the world around him as it was, and not as it ought to have been, there was a look which showed Rhoda that, however painful her words might be to utter and to hear, she had done right in speaking them.

Like a succession of blows her sentences fell upon him, each helping to drive home to him the truth which he, good, kind-hearted, amiable man that he was, had so long been in danger of ignoring.

He knew that there was no word of exaggeration in what she said, he was conscious that she was, on the whole, merciful to him. But her indictment was a severe one nevertheless, and at first he reeled under it.

There was a long pause, during which poor Rhoda, recovering from the impulse of passion which had urged her on, became more and more timid and apologetic, until the light faded out of her eyes and the tears welled up to them.

He, meanwhile, said nothing, but looked away to the hills, with the setting sun behind them, and stood so still that she wondered whether she had stunned him by her onslaught.

A sob escaped her, and then he turned slowly.

“That it should be left to you, a girl, to teach me my duty!” he said most gently. “I’m ashamed of myself, as I ought to be. Pray Heaven I haven’t left it too late. Don’t cry, child, don’t speak until you’ve heard what I think. It’s just this: it’s a thousand pities I didn’t know you as well as I do now half a dozen years ago. True, you were very young then, but I dare say you had ten times more sense, even then, in your head, than I have in mine now. Dry your eyes, child, dry your eyes,” he went on in a brighter and more energetic tone: “You’ve got more to tell me, more help to give. Tell me, what you would advise? If it isn’t too late how shall I begin?”

Her timidity, her hesitation were gone again in a moment. Rhoda was so desperately interested in him and his happiness that, as soon as an opening came for her to help, her instinct came to her aid and once more she said the right thing in the right way.

“Take her away,” said she. “Don’t let her go away by herself, but make her travel with you. When you’re once away from your pictures and curios you will have to depend upon her. And you must teach her to depend upon you.”

The advice was so shrewd, so good, that he looked at her for a few moments in silent admiration before he said:

“It’s excellent advice, but do you think I can take it? Where should we go? I should be lost----”

“Ah!” cried Rhoda, putting up her finger warningly. “You mustn’t be. That will be the hard part of it for you; in fact all the hardship will be yours. But you will have to take it, for she won’t help you.”

He nodded in meek but vague acquiescence.

“And where am I to take her?” he asked submissively.

“Why not to Egypt for the winter?” said Rhoda boldly. “You will find plenty to interest you there.” And already she saw a light of interest in his eyes, “and the very novelty of the thing will be enough to please Lady Sarah.”

He nodded appreciatively.

“It’s a good suggestion certainly. But there will be difficulties.”

“Plenty of them,” admitted Rhoda. “But nothing that you won’t be able to get over, now that you see there is danger in leaving her too much to herself and her own ways.”

“Yes, yes. And Caryl----”

“You can trust him with me, can’t you?”

The look of straightforward gratitude and trust on his face as he exchanged looks with her was balm to her heart.

“And now,” he said, “I can’t thank you. I can only pray that--that your advice has come--in time.”

The look of gravity on his face showed Rhoda, who shivered as she glanced at him, that he appreciated the extent of the danger to which his easy-going temper had brought him and his wife.

Rhoda dared not say any more; she was in terror now lest he should proceed to question her about the picture and its restoration. But the baronet’s whole attention was absorbed by the peril to his wife, and he had forgotten everything else in the one theme.

So Rhoda was able to make her escape to the house, where she was met on the stairs by Minnie, mocking, triumphant, stretching two long, thin arms across to bar her passage.

“I told you you would have to stay, didn’t I?” asked she.

Rhoda felt almost shocked at the girl’s uncanny perspicacity.

“Oh, yes, yes, it wasn’t so difficult to predict that,” she said, as she dived under one of Minnie’s arms, and fled upstairs.

It was not until dinner-time that Rhoda met Lady Sarah or Sir Robert again; and she perceived, at the first glance, at Lady Sarah and Jack that they were both on thorns as to what had happened during the afternoon. They looked apprehensively from her to Sir Robert and back again, as if knowing that there was something interesting for them to hear.

Lady Sarah was most caressing and sweet to her husband, who received her advances with his usual gentleness, but not without a certain extra solemnity of manner which prepared her in some measure for what was to come.

It was not until dessert was reached, and the servants had left the room, that Sir Robert, glancing at his wife, and smiling in a manner which was not quite spontaneous, said:

“My dear, I’ve been preparing a little surprise for you, and I should like to know whether you will think it a pleasant one or not. Instead of your going to the Riviera this winter with your aunt and cousins I am going to take you to Egypt with me.”

“With you! You’re going to travel!” gasped Lady Sarah, quite openly dismayed by the prospect.

A cloud appeared on her husband’s brow.

“Yes,” said he. “I’ve never been there myself, and I think I should enjoy it as much as you would. I hope you won’t think my society will spoil the trip for you.”

“Oh, no, of course, I shall be delighted to have you,” said the beauty, in tones so cold and with such a vicious glance at Rhoda and such a frown of dismay at Jack that it was impossible not to understand that the announcement was a terrible shock to her. “And when did you make up your mind to this? Rather sudden, isn’t it?”

“Not too sudden, I hope.”

“Oh, no, of course not. It will be delightful.”

Lady Sarah’s manner was not encouraging. She at once changed the subject and began to talk about other things; and nothing more was said about the proposed trip until the ladies left the room. Then Lady Sarah seized Rhoda almost roughly by the arm, and asked:

“You had heard about this horrible Egypt trip, I suppose, before me?”

“Yes. Sir Robert mentioned it to me this afternoon.”

“Ah! You encouraged him in the wild idea, perhaps?”

“Oh, Lady Sarah, is it a wild idea on his part, to think that he would like to spend the winter with you instead of away from you?”

“Oh, pray don’t expect me to be sentimental. There’s nothing I hate so much. Egypt may be all very well for those who like it, and to play Darby and Joan may be a very nice way of spending one’s time before twenty-five and after fifty-five. But the years between those ages are better filled one’s own way; and I can assure you that, if you are leading Sir Robert to believe that he will find me a pleasant travelling companion, you are making a sad mistake.”

The acerbity of her tones frightened Rhoda, who would fain have believed the breach between husband and wife to be less wide than it really was. She said nothing to this. Lady Sarah looked at her keenly. She did not want to quarrel with Rhoda, who knew too much to be treated anything but well.

“You are a dear creature,” she said suddenly, as Rhoda said nothing to her tirade, “but I really do wish you would confine yourself to being sweet to Caryl, and nice to Sir Robert, and that you wouldn’t try to make silk out of spiders’ webs. That is what your labour is, when you try to make a humdrum domestic animal of an insignificant insect like me.”

She laughed lightly, and said no more about it. But Rhoda saw, as Lady Sarah flitted across to the piano and began to play lively music with her usual disregard of time and liberal allowance of wrong notes, that she meant mischief.

Minnie was a silent spectator of this scene, although perhaps, being curled up in an awkward position in a sofa at the far end of the drawing-room, she did not hear all that the ladies said.

No sooner did the gentlemen come in than Lady Sarah sprang up from the piano with a light in her eyes, and going straight to her husband led him out into the conservatory, and thence through the library into the study, where she stood up in front of him with her hands behind her, and challenged him fiercely.

“Who put this silly Egypt idea into your head, tell me that?” she asked imperiously, looking up with flashing brown eyes into his grave face.

It was still much graver than usual, by the way.

“What does it matter how the idea came to me,” said he gently, “if it be a good one?”

“But it isn’t. It’s a very bad one indeed,” said she hotly. “The absurdity of your giving up your cosy home which you love, to travel about with me! When you know very well I can take care of myself.”

Then he spoke with a sudden change of manner that silenced and alarmed her.

“My dear,” he said, as he held her arm in a grip which made it impossible for her to think of escape, “that is just what I am asking myself: whether you can take care of yourself, such care as my darling wife ought to take.”

“What--do you mean?” panted out the beauty, in sudden terror.

“I mean that it has been borne in upon me, by circumstances to which I need not refer, that I have not been as mindful of your best interests or my own, or our boy’s, as I ought to have been. I have begun to realise that a woman as beautiful and charming as you are, one so much younger, too, than her husband, ought not to be left so much to herself as you have been left. I ask you to forgive me, and to help me to do my duty better for the future.”

He bent down to kiss her, but she resisted him, holding herself stiffly away and flashing indignant glances at him.

“I know who has put these absurd ideas into your head,” she cried angrily. “I know who it is that has come between us, pretending to be so very good, and filling your mind, poisoning it with her wicked suspicions.”

“Suspicions!”

Sir Robert’s tone changed, grew hard, stern, alarming. Lady Sarah looked up at him with sudden shyness.

“What has she said about me?” she asked in a trembling voice.

But he was staring down intently into her face, as if he would read the very soul behind it.

“She has urged me to take more care of you, that’s all,” said he in a strange, wistful tone.

“I knew it was to her interference that I owed this disgraceful piece of impertinence,” she cried shrilly.

“Impertinence! Do you accuse me of that, in suggesting that I wish to travel with you?”

“N--n--o, of course not,” whispered Lady Sarah. “I mean it is impertinent of her to tell you wicked lies about me. It’s malicious, infamous! What has she said?”

Suddenly she stood very erect, looking up with keen inquiry into his face.

He took up the challenge at last.

“She has said nothing. But I see for myself that--you pass too much of your time with Jack!”

He was ashamed of himself as he uttered the words; it was horrible to have to hint at any fault in her. But he was driven into a corner, and had not enough finesse to avoid blurting out the truth.

She burst into a broken, mirthless, angry laugh.

“Oh indeed! I see too much of Jack! I pass too much time with him! And what of Miss Pembury? I don’t complain of your affection for her, or of the way in which she has wormed herself into your confidence, until your first thought is to take advice from her, even in a matter which concerns your wife.”

He stammered, surprised at her swift retort. But she went on, volubly, haughtily.

“If I don’t complain about your fondness for her, or about her insinuating herself into your affections and those of my own child, I really don’t see why you should make horrible insinuations about your own ward.”

He silenced her sternly.

“You forget yourself,” said he in a voice which frightened her by its sudden unexpected assumption of masculine powers and rights. “No one knows better than you do that I am incapable of disloyalty to you, that my only fault towards you has been my weakness in being unable to resist or control you. Never let me hear a word of this trivial pretence of jealousy again. You are not jealous, you could not be. God forgive me for saying it, but I only wish you were!”

The heartfelt emotion which thrilled in these words would have softened a woman less self-willed, less hardened in her own caprices than Lady Sarah. As it was, she was only frightened, not touched to tenderness. It was he who was ashamed of the feelings which threatened to overpower him.

Ashamed of his own weakness, and fearing that he was only irritating instead of softening her, he suddenly let her go, and raising her hand to his lips, pressed one tender kiss upon it and then, turning sharply away, felt in his pocket for the keys of his gallery and went out of the study.

Lady Sarah listened a few moments, until she heard the key turn in the gallery door, and knew that her husband had shut himself in with his treasures for the evening.

Then she quickly dried her own eyes, arranged her slightly disordered hair at a tiny gold-mounted mirror which she wore, with other pretty trifles, on her long neck-chain, and with a sigh, found her way quickly to the drawing-room, where Jack Rotherfield, looking rather anxious and perturbed, was affecting to try to flirt with Minnie.

Lady Sarah beckoned him to her side as soon as she entered the room, and with an angry glance at Rhoda, who was pretending to read a book to hide the emotion from which she was suffering, whispered hurriedly:

“It’s she who has put him up to this. You must get round her!”