Instruments of Darkness (collection)/The Bride Had Consented

told his chauffeur to stop the car at the entrance to the lower garden, and as he mounted the stone steps he looked up at the house with affection—his house—his home—though he had hardly lived there since he bought it.

It was a low wooden house painted white; three long windows with pale-green shutters opened on a terrace. As he stood looking, a procession of waiters came out rolling large round table-tops, like a frieze of Greek warriors bearing shields. The sight annoyed Rawley—most unreasonably, for if you rent your house you rent your tenant the privilege of marrying her daughter from it if she happens to want to. But Rawley, who had been feeling since he saw the place again that it was much too good for any outsider, now found himself exclaiming inwardly: “A wedding! What an outrage!”

He had bought the house ten years ago for his mother, but she had died before they had even moved in. After her death he had gone on his expedition to the Caucasus, and then the war had intervened. He had come home in 1918, and had spent a year in planting and painting—he had laid many of the bricks in the terrace with his own hand and had helped to dig the excavation for the little swimming-pool. But, like a child with a complicated toy, he had found it more amusing to get ready to play than to play; and by the time the house was ready for occupancy he had begun to grow restless and had gone off to Central America. Then, when for the third time he was ready to settle down, a wonderful opportunity for taking over another man's shooting trip in East Africa had tempted him. This time he had decided to rent the house—shooting in East Africa being an expensive luxury.

He had thought himself exaggeratedly courteous in telegraphing his tenant that he was coming down to get out some stuff of his stored in the attic. Many landlords, he thought, would simply have descended upon her without notice; and therefore he had been irritated by her answer, which was: “Please come some other day. My daughter being married to-morrow.”

He couldn't come any other day—because two days later he was sailing. The best he could do for her was to come in the morning and get away by noon. As the wedding was at four o'clock, he couldn't see why he should cause the slightest inconvenience.

It was June, and the garden was looking beautiful. He could hardly believe that it would have improved so much since he had last seen it. The grass paths were like strips of emerald velvet and solid waves of perfume came to him in the high hot sun. Suddenly he found himself wishing he wasn't going to Africa—he would rather be living quietly in his own house—if only these horrible Bruces

Could it be that he was getting old? He couldn't remember how old he was—thirty-one or thirty-two his last birthday? He walked along with a brow slightly contracted trying to calculate from the year of his birth, which he knew was 1892, when he came upon a young man seated on a stone bench within the semi-circle of a cedar hedge.

It was exactly the spot Rawley had been making for himself—cool and secluded. He had meant to sit there and look out at the garden and consider his own nature, but all such ideas were put out of his head by something in the young man's attitude. His elbows were on his knees, his head and his hands were alike hanging down, and he was swaying very slightly from side to side. Rawley, who had seen a good deal of life in many parts of the world, civilized and uncivilized, did not need to be told that this young man was in trouble.

“What's the matter?” he said, for he had found the most direct question the best.

The young man looked up, showing a white face, which he vainly tried to arrange into an expression suitable for meeting a total stranger.

“Nothing,” he answered, but not as if he really wanted to be believed.

“What's the matter?” said Rawley again, in exactly the same stern tone. There it was, he thought; if you rented your house, you might find people in agony in all your favorite corners.

The boy stood up, fumbled in his pocket and produced his cigarette case, and, having taken it out, seemed to forget what he wanted with it. His pale blue eyes—paler in the bright light—fixed themselves slowly on the newcomer. “Aren't you Mr. Rawley?” he said. “I think you were once kind enough to give me a letter to that fellow who was digging in Yucatan.”

Rawley was always being asked for such letters in the interests of men who, having failed in civilized conditions, jump to the conclusion that they will do better in the wilds. “Oh, yes,” he said, groping for the facts. “Aren't you Bill Severidge's nephew? Let me see—you did not go after all—you got engaged—or something.” Then a light broke. “Is this your wedding that I'm interfering with?”

It seemed a harmless question, but was not well received. The young man sank down and covered his face with his hands. “She's just changed her mind,” he said.

“Great heavens,” cried Rawley, “at this hour!” And glancing up at the house he saw that the tables were now being set and waiters with bunches of gilt chairs in their hands were coming out on the terrace.

All his antagonism now concentrated on the Bruces—what people! Not only having a wedding in his perfectly good house, but trapping the nephew of a splendid fellow like Billy Severidge, doing him out of a trip to Yucatan and then throwing him over at the last moment. He became instantly a partisan of the young man, whom, just a moment before, he had thought of as a rather weak, feeble creature—but even as a partisan he wished to be fair. “Has anything happened to change her?” he asked.

The boy shook his head. “We've been engaged three months—perfectly happy—at least I've been. No one can understand it—not even her own mother.”

Rawley sat down beside the boy with an air of brisk decision. He was thought by many people to be a hard man, but by a few to be ridiculously kind and soft-hearted. The reason for this divergence of opinion was that he spent no time or energy over all the small acts of civility and charity that most people consider their duty; but every now and then he would decide to save some cause or some individual and would do it thoroughly. He took one of these resolutions now, moved, he would have said, by pity, but actually, more likely, by his irritation with the Bruces.

“Now listen to me,” he said in the tone of a man accustomed to being listened to. “Whenever you lose anything in this world, no matter how valuable, there is always a compensating freedom. The trick is to use that freedom to the utmost. I haven't seen your fiancée, but I am going to offer you something that is a good exchange for any girl. I'm starting for East Africa the day after to-morrow, and I'll take you with me, if you want to go. I'll guarantee you at least one lion.”

The young man stared at him. “You mean give her up?” he said.

“I thought she had given you up. You don't want to nag a woman into marrying you, do you?”

Young Severidge nodded. “I want Sybil on any terms,” he said.

The suspicion that this was not the stuff out of which big game hunters are made flashed through Rawley's mind, but was instantly repressed. “You make a great mistake,” he said. “If you marry a woman against her will, everything that goes wrong is your fault. It's bad enough on a fifty-fifty basis. But if there is any chance that she may change her mind again, nothing would make her do it as quickly as the knowledge that you had something better to do.”

“Better?” said the boy.

“Better, in my opinion,” answered Rawley.

“You think women are like that?”

“I think every one is like that. Even you. You are not keen to go with me”

“Oh, yes, I am,” said Severidge. “It has always been my dream to shoot a lion.” But his tone wasn't really eager.

“but if you heard I was offering the place to some one else, you'd know at once that you wanted it,” said Rawley. “Take my advice and go to Miss Bruce and put it to her once and for all—that you want to marry her if she'll go through with it, but if she won't you want to know, for you have a chance to go to Africa with me.”

“I see,” answered the boy. “Well, I believe I'll do that—only I'd like to think it over a little.”

Rawley stood up. “You haven't much time,” he said. “I shan't be here more than half an hour.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” the boy answered. “Only I'm expecting my uncle at any minute. You wouldn't mind my talking it over with him, would you?”

“Talk it over with any one you like,” Rawley returned. “Only it strikes me there has been too much talk already. A little action would be a relief.”

He turned to go and something in his decisive movement gave the boy a new idea. “Why don't you speak to her?” he said. “I've been waiting for my uncle, but you would do even better. Any girl would listen to a man like you—a man who's done the things you've done.”

Rawley was no more susceptible to flattery than any nice person ought to be, but this hardly seemed credible. “She probably never heard my name,” he answered.

“Oh, yes, she has. I've talked about you to her—she knows all about what you did in the Caucasus. Tell her what you just said about taking me or leaving me. You could make the African trip sound much more wonderful than I could.”

Rawley hesitated. After all it was to his interest to get a definite answer out of the boy—yes or no—before he left. Besides he liked to see things done and done right. “Very well,” he said, “I'll speak to her. I'll get a decision one way or the other—I can promise you that. Don't blame me, though, if it's negative.”

The boy made a hopeless gesture as if he were beyond blaming any one and Rawley went on toward the house.

On the terrace the waiters, chatting to each other in the idioms of southern Europe, hardly moved out of his way to let him pass. He did not go in at the front door, but seeing the long windows of his own library open he stepped inside.

The room had been divested of every piece of furniture. Only the books—his books—ranging from floor to ceiling, greeted him with their familiar backs. He forgot everything else. There was a map—he moved to the shelves and became absorbed.

Presently the door of the room opened and a middle-aged lady entered—Mrs. Bruce, he supposed. He had been told she had once been a beauty, and this lady had a splendid, rather hard profile; but now she was obviously not at her best either physically or spiritually—her face was worn and her hair pushed back too much from her forehead. She looked at him desperately for a second as if he were just one more hideous complication in her life, and then her face brightened.

“Oh, I'm so glad you've come,” she exclaimed in a tone of genuine pleasure which surprised Rawley, who remembered her warning telegram.

“You're very kind,” he answered formally.

“Oh, it's not kindness, it's pure selfishness,” she returned. “We need you terribly—nobody but you, I believe, can make these two young people see reason. Of course it's all Sybil's fault. She should have known her own mind earlier. Only if Freddie wouldn't cry so much.”

“Does he cry?” said Rawley, thinking that really if he went about crying in the heart of Africa

“Only because he loves her so much,” said Mrs. Bruce. “Oh, I'm entirely on his side. I think she ought to go through with it now, no matter how she feels. I can't face the scandal of turning every one away. Besides, between ourselves, Mr. Severidge, it doesn't make much difference after a year or so whom you marry. Romantic love makes so much trouble. That's the reason we have so many divorces in this country, because we're so romantic. The older civilizations know that jealousy and passion and all those things aren't for domestic consumption. My daughter keeps saying that it's terrible to marry a man you don't love. So it is, but life's terrible. It's probably a little more terrible not to be married at all—I can't make her see that.”

“I think you're wrong,” said Rawley.

“Ah,” said this alarming woman, “wait until you're older. Wait until you're old and sick and lonely and no one wants to come and take care of you.”

He wished she had not said just that. For more than a year now he had been not lonely, but uncomfortably aware that such a thing as loneliness existed. A little shiver ran through him, and he said coldly: “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to make him behave like a man.”

Rawley shook his head. “If he had it in him, he wouldn't wait for me to make him.”

“At least,” said Mrs. Bruce, “you can make him go to her and say she must take him or leave him. That might bring her to her senses. Have you no influence over your own nephew?”

“Worse than that,” said Rawley, “I haven't a nephew. I'm not Bill Severidge. I'm just the landlord.”

“Mercy,” said Mrs. Bruce, “how idiotic!” With which she turned sharply and left the room as if somehow the whole thing had been his fault.

Perhaps she would come back, he thought, and tell him when he might attack the attic. In the meantime he went back to the perusal of the map, made many years ago by a famous explorer—yes, that was the place, he thought, where they left the main highway

Again the door opened. He looked up. A girl, white as a camellia, with a small and now trembling red mouth, had come into the room. She shut the door behind her and now stood leaning against it, staring at him. Then she advanced to him and, as if it were the most natural gesture in the world, she put her arms about his neck, and laying her head against his heart, murmured: “Oh, Uncle Bill, you're going to help me, you're going to be on my side, aren't you?”

Rawley was a brave man, but not one who courted disaster. He was not accustomed, like Cassius, when the crossed blue lightning seemed to open the breast of heaven, to present himself even in the aim and very flash of it. His method was to venture quietly forth, murmuring: “I wonder whether I should be struck if I should happen” Thus when he had gone out on the famous ledge in the Caucasus, it was not at all with the manner of one who was going to conquer the inscription or die—though he did read the inscription—but rather as if he were debating with himself whether or not he would take the next step.

So now, in one of the strangest adventures that had ever come to him, he did not clasp the lovely creature with undue violence; still less did he let her go. He held her firmly with one arm, while with the other hand he patted her hair. It was nice hair to pat—soft to the touch and yet, when it was pressed, possessed of a strong resilience. They stood thus for a full minute—more. In the next room a note was struck on the piano and some one began to tune a violin. The orchestra had arrived rather early.

The sound seemed to rouse the girl somewhat, for she said without raising her head, breathing the words into the top button-hole of his waistcoat: “What did you decide?”

“What did I decide?”

“You and Freddie—i watched you out of the window—talking and talking. I meant to get at you first. I nearly went mad,” she answered.

“You're sure you haven't?” he asked, amusing no one but himself.

She drew back far enough to look at him. “You must hear my side, too,” she said. Rawley's thought was that he wouldn't if telling it would necessitate the slightest change of position. However it didn't, for she went on: “I never told Freddie I would marry him—never. I said I would think it over, and he rushed away and told his friends, though I asked him not to, and then it got into the papers, and everybody was so pleased, particularly my mother, who adores Freddie, and whenever I tried to get out of it he always said it was too humiliating to him if I threw him over when it had been announced. Sometimes I would think that I shouldn't mind marrying him so terribly. But as it came nearer I saw it was the most terrible idea in the world. For a week now I have been telling every one that I couldn't do it, and it is as if they were all deaf—no one listens to me; they all go on making arrangements for the wedding as if I had not spoken. I won't do it, Uncle Bill,” she said, and shuddered and hid her face again and added with a wail: “Only what shall I do, what shall I do?”

“What you're doing now seems all right to me,” he replied.

“But it isn't getting me anywhere.”

“Don't be too sure of that,” he said quietly. He did not feel quiet, except in the sense that he wished to remain exactly as he was. Other arms, to be honest, had been clasped about him before now. Other heads, for one reason and another, had rested exactly where hers was now pressed, and yet he kept saying to himself that nothing in the least like this had ever happened to him before—nor to any one else, perhaps, since the world began.

“Listen, my dear child,” he said. “You are opposing words to actions, which is about as effective as opposing a pane of glass to a bullet. Stop talking and act. Go upstairs and get whatever things you need for a day or two and go down and get into my automobile, which is waiting for me at the foot of the garden steps. I will drive you to town—or wherever you want to go—and from there you will telephone your mother. To-morrow, when all the fuss is over, you will come home and make it up with her.”

“It's terrible for my mother,” said the girl.

“You can't get out of holes like this and be lovely to every one.”

“I'm afraid it will ruin Freddie's whole life.”

“Perhaps, but he's agreed to go shooting with me in Africa to-morrow—that is, if you really remain obdurate.”

At this she looked straight up at him, opening her hazel eyes in obvious alarm. “Good heavens,” he said to himself, “when it comes to a show-down, she doesn't want him to go.” It was only a second—a second fraught with horror, and then she said: “Don't tell me you're going away.”

Rather to his own surprise he heard himself saying gently: “Well, I was”

“No, no,” said the girl, “don't. I seem to feel braver when you're near.”

“In that case,” he said thoughtfully, and he took her small chin in his hand, “in that case—” and he stooped and kissed her.

He had intended it—or rather, he had no plan about it, but he had expected when he found he was certainly going to kiss her, that it would be a pleasant, semi-avuncular kiss—a kiss after which you smiled and parted. It turned out, as these things sometimes do, an entirely different sort—a kiss which became your master and endured, a kiss after which you did not smile and after which you certainly did not part.

The person in the next room had stopped tuning the violin, or perhaps they had merely ceased to hear him, although Rawley became acutely aware of the beating of his heart. He felt the girl's whole figure grow limp in his arms as if her knees were less rigid than before. They moved a little apart, his hand still on her shoulder, and looked at each other.

As they stood thus, the door opened and Mrs. Bruce came back. She came in quickly, and it was evident that she had forgotten that her landlord existed, for she seemed startled at seeing him again, even before she saw her daughter. Then she said: “May I ask, Sybil, what are you doing in the arms of a total stranger?”

Sybil smiled an unembarrassed smile, as one so often smiles at the mistakes of the older generation, and withdrawing completely from Rawley's arms, but without undue haste, said: “This is Uncle Bill, at last, mother dear.”

“Nothing of the kind,” replied her mother, “'it's just Mr. What's-his-name—the landlord.”

Sybil looked at him quickly for a denial of this preposterous statement.

“Your mother is right,” he said. “I am just Mr. What's-his-name. Nevertheless I gave you some excellent advice a moment ago, which I hope you will follow.”

She nodded and walked to the door. There she turned and said: “Mother, I will not marry Freddie.” Her mother was evidently so accustomed to this statement that she forgot to say “nonsense” until the door had actually shut behind her daughter, when she said it with great force. Then she turned to Rawley. “You really can't stay here,” she said, as if he had wanted to. “We're using this for the men's coats.”

He suggested as politely as was necessary that he had come, not to dance at the wedding, but to get a gun out of a closet in the garret.

“Then why don't you go and get it?” said his tenant. “I assume that you know your way about the house.” She was really hardly civil, he thought, as he went upstairs. The rails were wreathed in smilax. On the second floor he saw the wedding-presents set out in a room apart, and through the open door of another room he caught sight of a white dress—all tulle and lace—lying on the bed, and two small pointed silver slippers standing side by side on the floor near it. He stopped short with a sort of inner spasm as he saw those slippers, and stood staring at them so long that the detective appeared in the doorway of the other room and looked at him with suave suspicion. Rawley pulled himself together and, opening the door of the garret stairs, went up them.

He unlocked the door of his own cupboard and took the “450” from the shelf. For the first time in his life the sight of a gun-case failed to give him a thrill of anticipation. Could it be, he said to himself, that any man could lose his interest in lions?

There was an old fishing-rod and a case for flies and those old wading-boots. What times he had had in them! He took them out and dropped them on the floor where they fell over with a rubbery sound in opposite directions, revealing the lining of their wide tops. There was a long waterproof coat, too. He might as well take that with him, if he went— He started and raised his head as if listening to words which seemed to have come to him out of the air. If he went! But of course he was going. If he went! What a strange thing!

Again the door at the foot of the stairs opened and a man's step was heard on the stairs—a serious gray head, intelligent eyes and a severe mouth rose in the well of the stairs, the head unmistakably of a bishop—or so Rawley told himself afterward, as if he had known it even before the clerical collar, the cross and the well-cut full-skirted coat dawned on his vision.

“Well, sir,” said the bishop severely, and added, as his severity produced no effect: “Well, Mr. Rawley, you've made a good deal of trouble in this already troubled household.”

Rawley continued unpacking the cupboard as he replied: “Made it? I should say I had allayed it. Why should any one marry some one they don't want to marry?”

“There is such a thing as swearing unto your neighbor and disappointing him not, though it be to your own hindrance,” answered the bishop, but Rawley could see that, though his mouth was still severe, his eyes were roving with interest over the instruments of the chase which the open door of the cupboard revealed. “Your advice, sir, was unwise and unsolicited. You encouraged a momentary hysteria. I have come from Mrs. Bruce to ask you to leave the house at once. I will see you to your automobile.”

“The English can make a gun, can't they?” said Rawley.

“Why,” said the bishop, “I don't know that I ever saw one of those, although at one time—” He put out his hands thoughtfully and took the gun. “In my younger days,” he said, “I was something of a shot. In fact while I was in the theological seminary I decided to become a missionary to India, but later I discovered that my interest was more in shooting in the Himalayas than in saving heathen souls, and I have never touched a gun since.” He sighed and raised the gun to his shoulder. “I don't suppose I could hit a barn door now.”

“Probably you could,” answered Rawley, not manifesting too much interest. “A good eye is always a good eye.”

“It's true,” said the bishop, “that my eye was a fair one at all sports, and I noticed just the other day, at one of these church fairs where they have such contests— But this was not what I came to speak of, Mr. Rawley.”

“This is a rather unusual snapshot of a charging lion,” said Rawley.

The bishop took it, feeling for his glasses. “Bless my soul,” he exclaimed, “what a remarkable picture! What a magnificent animal! And did you snap that yourself?”

“I was more snapped than snapping,” said Rawley. “It is at me that he is looking with that loving eye of his. I had just caught my foot in a bush and fallen flat on my face.”

“Bless my soul!” said the bishop. He insisted on having the story. It was a good one, and took some minutes to tell. Before it was over, another step came unheard on the stairs, and Mrs. Bruce's pale, anxious face appeared in the stair-well at their feet.

“Well, bishop,” she said, “is this your idea of hurrying Mr. Rawley's departure?”

If the bishop had not been the possessor of a strangely sweet smile, he would have looked extremely foolish, but he smiled instead; without, however, melting the heart of Mrs. Bruce, who continued: “While you have been chatting with him up here, she has been trying to get away to his automobile. Fortunately I met her, and I don't think she will try that again.”

“I can't imagine,” said Rawley, who had made a nice little pile of the things he wished to take with him, and now was replacing everything on the shelves, “I can't imagine why you should wish your daughter to marry a man she doesn't want to marry.”

“She does want to,” said Mrs. Bruce. “She loves him—at least she did until just the other day. It's just hysteria—lots of girls go through it before their marriages. She could never live down such a scandal—besides what could I tell people?”

“Nothing more complicated than that she had changed her mind,” answered Rawley.

“I suppose that might be done,” said the bishop.

“Nonsense! Come away, Bishop. This man is upsetting even your judgment,” said Mrs. Bruce, and the bishop followed her reluctantly.

They went down, leaving the door open behind them, so that Rawley could hear the orchestra, now fully prepared for action, practicing in the lower hall.

Another footstep sounded on the stairs, like the pattering of rain on the roof, and Sybil herself appeared.

“I don't know what you'll say to me,” she began, delightfully intimating by this form of words that he had now become the arbiter of her destiny, “but I'm afraid I'm a coward. I can't do it.”

“Oh, yes, you can,” he said.

“Once I turned back because Freddie is sitting there in the garden and wants to go all over it again, and I can't do that; and once mother met me—and oh, dear, I never saw her so upset! She keeps saying it will kill her. Oh, what ought I to do?”

When she came in he had been turning an old waterproof hat about in his hand wondering whether to leave it out or put it away, and now he suddenly placed it on her head and fastened the strap under her chin. Then he looked and laughed. Most people share with cats a dislike of being laughed at. Sybil asked quickly:

“Why are you laughing at me?”

“Because you're so pretty.”

“Is it comic to be pretty?”

“Yes—as pretty as that.” He made her put on the raincoat, and a pair of boots—not the wading-boots, another pair, large but not high, to conceal her small feet.

“Now,” he said, “take this gun-case in one hand, and this bag in the other—it's heavy, can you manage it?” (She picked it up as if it were a feather.) “Walk downstairs and through the garden—not too fast, but not looking to right or left, and get into my car which is waiting at the foot of the garden steps. Tell the chauffeur to drive a hundred feet up the road and stop. I'll be with you in three minutes.”

“What will your chauffeur think?”

“My chauffeur is a man of great experience”

“Oh!” said Sybil as if some one had hurt her.

“acquired in the employ of others.”

“Oh!” said Sybil, as if she had not been hurt after all.

He watched her down the stairs, the raincoat trailing a little on the step behind, and the bag bumping from stair to stair. It could not be said she looked like a chauffeur, but then neither did she look like the slim bride of a few minutes before. Unfortunately the garret had no windows; he could not watch her progress across the garden.

He finished his arrangements, locked the closet door and ran downstairs. In the lower hall Mrs. Bruce was receiving the congratulations of a group of relations, who had evidently arrived a little early—such phrases as “I hear he is such a delightful young man,” and “I'm so glad the dear child is so happy” reached him as he passed.

The bishop detached himself from the circle, and said severely: “I will see you to your car, Mr. Rawley.” Nothing told Rawley whether or not the girl had run the gantlet of all those eyes. Of course if she were not in the car before him, he should be obliged to come back and fight it all out in the open.

He and the bishop moved into the garden, side by side, maintaining a stiff silence. Then the bishop said:

“You are not taking your gun after all?”

“I sent it down by my man,” said Rawley, and glanced quickly at the bishop's face: it was a mask.

As they approached the cedars, Freddie looked up. “Oh, are you going, Mr. Rawley?” he said without enthusiasm.

“I think so,” said Rawley. He couldn't be quite sure.

The boy rose and said with a mixture of aggressiveness and timidity: “You weren't a very successful messenger, Mr. Rawley. I don't think I should advise any one to depend on you to help them out.”

“Miles Standish was never one of my favorite heroes,” answered Rawley.

“I don't know what you mean by that,” said the boy. But Rawley, noticing that the bishop understood him perfectly and was taking alarm, changed the subject rapidly.

“Tell me, Severidge,” he said, “did you notice my chauffeur passing by with my gun?”

“No,” said the boy, “I don't think so—or, yes, I believe some one did go past, but he looked more like a fisherman than a chauffeur.”

“He dresses a trifle oddly, I know,” said Rawley, “but he's very valuable to me—more valuable than any one I ever had.” His manner grew noticeably brisk and gay. “Good-by,” he said.

“And one other thing,” said the boy with a certain swagger, “I don't think that I care to go on your African trip either.”

“Of course not,” said the bishop. “You're going to stay here and be married.”

“In any case, I shouldn't care to go with this gentleman,” said Freddie. “Doubtless he can find some one in my place.”

“Yes,” said Rawley, “I think I can. I think I know just the person,” and waving his hand with unusual gayety, he ran down the garden steps and disappeared.