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Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley

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Red Pottage

By

Mary Cholmondeley

AUTHOR OF

"THE DANVERS JEWELS"

"After the Red Pottage comes the exceeding bitter cry"

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

1900




TO

VICTORIA

Good things have not kept aloof,

* * * * *

I have not lack'd thy mild reproof,
Nor golden largesse of thy praise.




RED POTTAGE




CHAPTER I

In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betray'd by what is false within.
--GEORGE MEREDITH.


"I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the bars of
his cage.

"I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but
half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his hansom
took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he had been
dining, towards that other house in Carlton House Terrace, whither his
thoughts had travelled on before him, out-distancing the
_trip-clip-clop, trip-clip-clop_ of the horse.

It was a hot night in June. Hugh had thrown back his overcoat, and the
throng of passers-by in the street could see, if they cared to see, "the
glass of fashion" in the shape of white waistcoat and shirt front,
surmounted by the handsome, irritated face of their owner, leaning back
with his hat tilted over his eyes.

_Trip-clip-clop_ went the horse.

A great deal of thinking may be compressed into a quarter of an hour,
especially if it has been long eluded.

"I will get out," he said again to himself with an impatient movement.
It was beginning to weary him, this commonplace intrigue which had been
so new and alluring a year ago. He did not own it to himself, but he
was tired of it. Perhaps the reason why good resolutions have earned for
themselves such an evil repute as paving-stones is because they are
often the result, not of repentance, but of the restlessness that dogs
an evaporating pleasure. This liaison had been alternately his pride and
his shame for many months. But now it was becoming something more--which
it had been all the time, only he had not noticed it till lately--a
fetter, a clog, something irksome, to be cast off and pushed out of
sight. Decidedly the moment for the good resolution had arrived.

"I will break it off," he said again. "Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever
guessed it."

How could any one have guessed it?

He remembered the day when he had first met her a year ago, and had
looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He remembered other days, and
the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. He had added a
stone here, she a stone there, until suddenly it became--a prison. Had
he been tempter or tempted? He did not know. He did not care. He wanted
only to be out of it. His better feelings and his conscience had been
awakened by the first touch of weariness. His brief infatuation had run
its course. His judgment had been whirled--he told himself it had been
whirled, but it had really only been tweaked--from its centre, had
performed its giddy orbit, and now the check-string had brought it back
to the point from whence it had set out, namely, that she was merely a
pretty woman.

"I will break with her gradually," he said, like the tyro he was, and he
pictured to himself the wretched scenes in which she would abuse him,
reproach him, probably compromise herself, the letters she would write
to him. At any rate, he need not read them. Oh! how tired he was of the
whole thing beforehand. Why had he been such a fool? He looked at the
termination of the liaison as a bad sailor looks at an inevitable sea
passage at the end of a journey. It must be gone through, but the
prospect of undergoing it filled him with disgust.

A brougham passed him swiftly on noiseless wheels, and the woman in it
caught a glimpse of the high-bred, clean-shaved face, half savage, half
sullen, in the hansom.

"Anger, impatience, and remorse," she said to herself, and finished
buttoning her gloves.

"Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever guessed it," repeated Hugh,
fervently, as the hansom came suddenly to a stand-still.

In another moment he was taking Lady Newhaven's hand as she stood at the
entrance of her amber drawing-room beside a grove of pink orchids.

He chatted a moment, greeted Lord Newhaven, and passed on into the
crowded rooms. How could any one have guessed it? No breath of scandal
had ever touched Lady Newhaven. She stood beside her pink orchids, near
her fatigued-looking, gentle-mannered husband, a very pretty woman in
white satin and diamonds. Perhaps her blond hair was a shade darker at
the roots than in its waved coils; perhaps her blue eyes did not look
quite in harmony with their blue-black lashes; but the whole effect had
the delicate, conventional perfection of a cleverly touched-up
chromo-lithograph. Of course, tastes differ. Some people like
chromo-lithographs, others don't. But even those who do are apt to
become estranged. They may inspire love, admiration, but never fidelity.
Most of us have in our time hammered nails into our walls which, though
they now decorously support the engravings and etchings of our maturer
years, were nevertheless originally driven in to uphold the cherished,
the long since discarded chromos of our foolish youth.

The diamond sun upon Lady Newhaven's breast quivered a little, a very
little, as Hugh greeted her, and she turned to offer the same small
smile and gloved hand to the next comer, whose name was leaping before
him from one footman to another.

"Mr. Richard Vernon."

Lady Newhaven's wide blue eyes looked vague. Her hand hesitated. This
strongly built, ill-dressed man, with his keen, brown, deeply scarred
face and crooked mouth, was unknown to her.

Lord Newhaven darted forward.

"Dick!" he exclaimed, and Dick shot forth an immense mahogany hand and
shook Lord Newhaven's warmly.

"Well," he said, after Lord Newhaven had introduced him to his wife,
"I'm dashed if I knew who either of you were. But I found your
invitation at my club when I landed yesterday, so I decided to come and
have a look at you. And so it is only you, Cackles, after all"--(Lord
Newhaven's habit of silence had earned for him the sobriquet of
"Cackles")--"I quite thought I was going into--well, ahem!--into
society. I did not know you had got a handle to your name. How did you
find out I was in England?"

"My dear fellow, I didn't," said Lord Newhaven, gently drawing Dick
aside, whose back was serenely blocking a stream of new arrivals. "I
fancy--in fact, I'm simply delighted to see you. How is the wine getting
on? But I suppose there must be other Dick Vernons on my wife's list.
Have you the card with you?"

"Rather," said Dick; "always take the card with me since I was kicked
out of a miner's hop at Broken Hill because I forgot it. 'No gentleman
will be admitted in a paper shirt' was mentioned on it, I remember. A
concertina, and candles in bottles. Ripping while it lasted. I wish you
had been there."

"I wish I had." Lord Newhaven's tired, half-closed eye opened a little.
"But the end seems to have been unfortunate."

"Not at all," said Dick, watching the new arrivals with his head thrown
back. "Fine girl that; I'll take a look at the whole mob of them
directly. They came round next day to say it had been a mistake, but
there were four or five cripples who found that out the night before.
Here is the card."

Lord Newhaven glanced at it attentively, and then laughed.

"It is four years old," he said; "I must have put you on my mother's
list, not knowing you had left London. It is in her writing."

"I'm rather late," said Dick, composedly; "but I am here at last. Now,
Cack--Newhaven, if that's your noble name--as I am here, trot out a few
heiresses, would you? I want to take one or two back with me. I say,
ought I to put my gloves on?"

"No, no. Clutch them in your great fist as you are doing now."

"Thanks. I suppose, old chap, I'm all right? Not had on an evening-coat
for four years."

Dick's trousers were too short for him, and he had tied his white tie
with a waist to it. Lord Newhaven had seen both details before he
recognized him.

"Quite right," he said, hastily. "Now, who is to be the happy woman?"

Dick's hawk eye promenaded over the crowd in the second room, in the
door-way of which he was standing.

"That one," he said; "the tall girl in the green gown talking to the
Bishop."

"You have a wonderful eye for heiresses. You have picked out the
greatest in London. That is Miss Rachel West. You say you want two."

"One at a time, thanks. I shall take her down to supper. I
suppose--er--there is supper at this sort of thing, isn't there?"

"Of a kind. You need not be afraid of the claret; it isn't yours."

"Catch you giving your best at a crush," retorted Dick. "The Bishop's
moving. Hurry up."




CHAPTER II

But as he groped against the wall, two hands upon him fell,
The King behind his shoulder spake: "Dead man, thou dost not well."
--RUDYARD KIPLING.


Hugh had gone through the first room, and, after a quarter of an hour,
found himself in the door-way of the second. He had arrived late, and
the rooms were already thinning.

A woman in a pale-green gown was standing near the open window, her
white profile outlined against the framed darkness, as she listened with
evident amusement to the tall, ill-dressed man beside her.

Hugh's eyes lost the veiled scorn with which it was their wont to look
at society and the indulgent patronage which lurked in them for pretty
women.

Rachel West slowly turned her face towards him without seeing him, and
his heart leaped. She was not beautiful except with the beauty of
health, and a certain dignity of carriage which is the outcome of a head
and hands and body that are at unity with each other, and with a mind
absolutely unconscious of self. She had not the long nose which so
frequently usurps more than its share of the faces of the well-bred, nor
had she, alas! the short upper lip which redeems everything. Her
features were as insignificant as her coloring. People rarely noticed
that Rachel's hair was brown, and that her deep-set eyes were gray. But
upon her grave face the word "Helper" was plainly written--and something
else. What was it?

Just as in the faces of seamen we trace the onslaught of storm and sun
and brine, and the puckering of the skin round the eyes that comes of
long watching in half-lights, so in some faces, calm and pure as
Rachel's, on which the sun and rain have never beaten, there is an
expression betokening strong resistance from within of the brunt of a
whirlwind from without. The marks of conflict and endurance on a young
face--who shall see them unmoved! The Mother of Jesus must have noticed
a great difference in her Son when she first saw Him again after the
temptation in the wilderness.

Rachel's grave, amused glance fell upon Hugh. Their eyes met, and he
instantly perceived, to his astonishment, that she recognized him. But
she did not bow, and a moment later left the nearly empty rooms with the
man who was talking to her.

Hugh was excited out of recognition of his former half-scornful,
half-_blase_ self. That woman must be his wife. She would save him from
himself, this cynical, restless self, which never remained in one stay.
The half-acknowledged weakness in his nature unconsciously flung itself
upon her strength, a strength which had been tried. She would love him,
and uphold him. There would be no more yielding to circumstances if that
pure, strong soul were close beside him. He would lean upon her, and the
ugly by-paths of these last years would know him no more. Her presence
would leaven his whole life. In the momentary insanity, which was
perhaps, after all, only a prophetic intuition, he had no fears, no
misgivings. He thought that with that face it was not possible that she
could be so wicked as to refuse him.

"She will marry me," he said to himself. "She must."

Lady Newhaven touched him gently on the arm.

"I dared not speak to you before," she said. "Nearly every one has gone.
Will you take me down to supper? I am tired out."

He stared at her, not recognizing her.

"Have I vexed you?" she faltered.

And with a sudden horrible revulsion of feeling he remembered. The poor
chromo had fallen violently from its nail. But the nail remained--ready.
He took her into the supper-room and got her a glass of champagne. She
subsided on to a sofa beside another woman, vaguely suspecting trouble
in the air. He felt thankful that Rachel had already gone. Dick, nearly
the last, was putting on his coat, arranging to meet Lord Newhaven the
following morning at his club. They had been in Australia together, and
were evidently old friends.

Lord Newhaven's listless manner returned as Dick marched out. Hugh had
got one arm in his coat. An instinct of flight possessed him, a vague
horror of the woman in diamonds furtively watching him under her lowered
eyelids through the open door.

"Oh, Scarlett!" said Lord Newhaven, detaining him languidly, "I want
three minutes of your valuable time. Come into my study."

"Another cross-bow for Westhope Abbey?" said Hugh, trying to speak
unconcernedly, as he followed his host to a back room on the ground
floor. Lord Newhaven was collecting arms for the hall of his
country-house.

"No; much simpler than those elaborate machines," said the older man,
turning on the electric light. Hugh went in, and Lord Newhaven closed
the door.

Over the mantel-shelf were hung a few old Japanese inlaid carbines, and
beneath them an array of pistols.

"Useless now," said Lord Newhaven, touching them affectionately. "But,"
he added, with a shade more listlessness than before, "Society has
become accustomed to do without them, and does ill without them, but we
must conform to her." Hugh started slightly, and then remained
motionless. "You observe these two paper lighters, Scarlett? One is an
inch shorter than the other. They have been waiting on the mantel-shelf
for the last month, till I had an opportunity of drawing your attention
to them. I am sure we perfectly understand each other. No name need be
mentioned. All scandal is avoided. I feel confident you will not
hesitate to make me the only reparation one man can make another in the
somewhat hackneyed circumstances in which we find ourselves."

Lord Newhaven took the lighters out of the glass. He glanced suddenly at
Hugh's stunned face and went on:

"I am sorry the idea is not my own. I read it in a magazine. Though
comparatively modern, it promises soon to become as customary as the
much-to-be-regretted pistols for two and coffee for four. I hold the
lighters thus, and you draw. Whoever draws or keeps the short one is
pledged to leave this world within four months, or shall we say five, on
account of the pheasant shooting? Five be it. Is it agreed? Just so!
Will you draw?"

A swift spasm passed over Hugh's face, and a tiger glint leaped into
Lord Newhaven's eyes, fixed intently upon him.

There was a brief second in which Hugh's mind wavered, as the flame of a
candle wavers in a sudden draught. Lord Newhaven's eyes glittered. He
advanced the lighters an inch nearer.

If he had not advanced them that inch Hugh thought afterwards that he
would have refused to draw.

He backed against the mantel-piece, and then put out his hand suddenly
and drew. It seemed the only way of escape.

The two men measured the lighters on the table under the electric light.

Lord Newhaven laughed.

Hugh stood a moment, and then went out.




CHAPTER III

"Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband?"


When Lady Newhaven slipped out of the supper-room after her husband and
Hugh, and lingered at the door of the study, she did not follow them
with the deliberate intention of eavesdropping, but from a vague impulse
of suspicious anxiety. Yet she crouched in her white satin gown against
the door listening intently.

Neither man moved within, only one spoke. There was no other sound to
deaden her husband's distinct, low voice. The silence that followed his
last words, "Will you draw?" was broken by his laugh, and she had barely
time to throw herself back from the door into a dark recess under the
staircase before Hugh came out. He almost touched her as he passed. He
must have seen her, if he had been capable of seeing anything; but he
went straight on unheeding. And as she stole a few steps to gaze after
him, she saw him cross the hall and go out into the night without his
hat and coat, the amazed servants staring after him.

She drew back to go up-stairs, and met her husband coming slowly out of
the study. He looked steadily at her, as she clung trembling to the
banisters. There was no alteration in his glance, and she suddenly
perceived that what he knew now he had always known. She put her hand to
her head.

"You look tired," he said, in the level voice to which she was
accustomed. "You had better go to bed."

She stumbled swiftly up-stairs, catching at the banisters, and went into
her own room.

Her maid was waiting for her by the dressing-table with its shaded
electric lights. And she remembered that she had given a party, and that
she had on her diamonds.

It would take a long time to unfasten them. She pulled at the diamond
sun on her breast with a shaking hand. Her husband had given it to her
when her eldest son was born. Her maid took the tiara gently out of her
hair, and cut the threads that sewed the diamonds on her breast and
shoulders. Would it never end? The lace of her gown, cautiously
withdrawn through its hundred eyelet-holes, knotted itself.

"Cut it," she said, impatiently. "Cut it."

At last she was in her dressing-gown and alone. She flung herself face
downwards on the sofa. Her attitude had the touch of artificiality which
was natural to her.

The deluge had arrived, and unconsciously she met it, as she would have
made a heroine meet it had she been a novelist, in a white dressing-gown
and pink ribbons in a stereotyped attitude of despair on a divan.

Conscience is supposed to make cowards of us all, but it is a matter of
common experience that the unimaginative are made cowards of only by
being found out.

Had David qualms of conscience when Uriah fell before the besieged city?
Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious parallel of the
prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently he remained serenely
obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art the man" unexpectedly
nailed him to the cross of his sin.

And so it was with Lady Newhaven. She had gone through the twenty-seven
years of her life believing herself to be a religious and virtuous
person. She was so accustomed to the idea that it had become a habit,
and now the whole of her self-respect was in one wrench torn from her.
The events of the last year had not worn it down to its last shred, had
not even worn the nap off. It was dragged from her intact, and the shock
left her faint and shuddering.

The thought that her husband knew, and had thought fit to conceal his
knowledge, had never entered her mind, any more than the probability
that she had been seen by some of the servants kneeling listening at a
keyhole. The mistake which all unobservant people make is to assume that
others are as unobservant as themselves.

By what frightful accident, she asked herself, had this catastrophe come
about? She thought of all the obvious incidents which would have
revealed the secret to herself--the dropped letter, the altered
countenance, the badly arranged lie. No. She was convinced her secret
had been guarded with minute, with scrupulous care. The only thing she
had forgotten in her calculations was her husband's character, if,
indeed, she could be said to have forgotten that which she had never
known.

Lord Newhaven was in his wife's eyes a very quiet man of few words. That
his few words did not represent the whole of him had never occurred to
her. She had often told her friends that he walked through life with his
eyes shut. He had a trick of half shutting his eyes which confirmed her
in this opinion. When she came across persons who were after a time
discovered to have affections and interests of which they had not
spoken, she described them as "cunning." She had never thought Edward
"cunning" till to-night. How had he, of all men, discovered
this--this--? She, had no words ready to call her conduct by, though
words would not have failed her had she been denouncing the same conduct
in another wife and mother.

Gradually "the whole horror of her situation"--to borrow from her own
vocabulary--forced itself upon her mind like damp through a gay
wall-paper. What did it matter how the discovery had been made! It was
made, and she was ruined. She repeated the words between little gasps
for breath. Ruined! Her reputation lost! Hers--Violet Newhaven's. It was
a sheer impossibility that such a thing could have happened to a woman
like her. It was some vile slander which Edward must see to. He was good
at that sort of thing. But no, Edward would not help her. She had
committed--She flung out her hands, panic-stricken, as if to ward off a
blow. The deed had brought with it no shame, but the word--the word
wounded her like a sword.

Her feeble mind, momentarily stunned, pursued its groping way.

He would divorce her. It would be in the papers. But no. What was that
he had said to Hugh--"No names to be mentioned; all scandal avoided."

She shivered and drew in her breath. It was to be settled some other
way. Her mind became an entire blank. Another way! What way? She
remembered now, and an inarticulate cry broke from her. They had drawn
lots.

_Which had drawn the short lighter?_

Her husband had laughed. But then he laughed at everything. He was never
really serious, always shallow and heartless. He would have laughed if
he had drawn it himself. Perhaps he had. Yes, he certainly had drawn it.
But Hugh? She saw again the white, set face as he passed her. No; it
must be Hugh who had drawn it--Hugh, whom she loved. She wrung her hands
and moaned, half aloud:

"Which? Which?"

There was a slight movement in the next room, the door was opened, and
Lord Newhaven appeared in the door-way. He was still in evening dress.

"Did you call?" he said, quietly. "Are you ill?" He came and stood
beside her.

"No," she said, hoarsely, and she sat up and gazed fixedly at him.
Despair and suspense were in her eyes. There was no change in his, and
she remembered that she had never seen him angry. Perhaps she had not
known when he was angry.

He was turning away, but she stopped him. "Wait," she said, and he
returned, his cold, attentive eye upon her. There was no contempt, no
indignation in his bearing. If those feelings had shaken him, it must
have been some time ago. If they had been met and vanquished in secret,
that also must have been some time ago. He took up an _Imitation of
Christ_, bound in the peculiar shade of lilac which at that moment
prevailed, and turned it in his hand.

"You are overwrought," he said, after a moment's pause, "and I
particularly dislike a scene."

She did not heed him.

"I listened at the door," she said, in a harsh, unnatural voice.

"I am perfectly aware of it."

A sort of horror seemed to have enveloped the familiar room. The very
furniture looked like well-known words arranged suddenly in some new and
dreadful meaning.

"You never loved me," she said.

He did not answer, but he looked gravely at her for a moment, and she
was ashamed.

"Why don't you divorce me if you think me so wicked?"

"For the sake of the children," he said, with a slight change of voice.

Teddy, the eldest, had been born in this room. Did either remember that
gray morning six years ago?

There was a silence that might be felt.

"Who drew the short lighter?" she whispered, before she knew that she
had spoken.

"I am not here to answer questions," he replied. "And I have asked none.
Neither, you will observe, have I blamed you. But I desire that you will
never again allude to this subject, and that you will keep in mind that
I do not intend to discuss it with you."

He laid down the _Imitation_ and moved towards his own room.

With a sudden movement she flung herself upon her knees before him and
caught his arm. The attitude suggested an amateur.

"Which drew the short lighter?" she gasped, her small upturned face
white and convulsed.

"You will know in five months' time," he said. Then he extricated
himself from her trembling clasp and left the room, closing the door
quietly behind him.




CHAPTER IV

For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!
--RUDYARD KIPLING.


When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day was
already far advanced. A hot day had succeeded to a hot night. For a few
seconds he lay like one emerging from the influence of morphia, who
feels his racked body still painlessly afloat on a sea of rest, but is
conscious that it is drifting back to the bitter shores of pain, and who
stirs neither hand nor foot for fear of hastening the touch of the
encircling, aching sands on which he is so soon to be cast in agony once
more.

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