Part 2 (2/2)

Mrs. Maule had not seen her, and had she done so it may be doubted whether she would have felt any more ashamed or annoyed than she did now.

With a feeling of infinite la.s.situde, of physical as well as mental fatigue, Mrs. Kaye turned her back on the window through which she had seen a sight which was to remain with her for ever.

There were still some minutes to run before there would come into the station the local train in which she could return to her now empty home, and so drearily her mind went back, taking a rapid survey of the whole of her son's short life and hitherto most prosperous career.

Mrs. Kaye came herself of a long line of distinguished soldiers, and even before her child's birth she had been determined that he should follow in the footsteps of her own people, not in those of his mild, kindly father's. From his cradle the lad had been dedicated to the G.o.d of battles, and only the mother herself knew what her intention had cost her in the way of self-denial and of incessant effort.

Inadequate as had been their clerical income, supplemented by pitifully small private means, she and her husband had grudged nothing to Bayworth. Mrs. Kaye was a clever woman, cleverer than most; she had been at some pains to find out the best way in which to put a boy through the modern military mill, and everything had gone with almost fairy-like smoothness from first to last.

From the preparatory school, where she had ascertained that he would have among his mates the sons of the then Minister for War, down to the day when he had won the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, young Kaye had been everything that even his exacting mother had desired. Nay more, he had once or twice said a word--only a word, but still it had amply repaid Mrs. Kaye for all she had gone through--implying that he understood the sacrifices his father and mother had made for his sake.

When he had been specially chosen to take part in a dangerous frontier expedition, it was his father who had appeared miserably anxious, but it was with his mother, softened, carried out of herself, that the whole neighbourhood had eagerly sympathised when there had come the glorious news that Bayworth Kaye had been mentioned in despatches for an act of reckless courage and gallantry, and recommended for the Victoria Cross.

Then had followed the lad's happy home-coming, and quite suddenly, before--so it now seemed to his mother--Bayworth had been back a week, Mrs. Maule had thrown over him the web of her fascinations. Not content with having him constantly about her at Rede Place, she had procured for him invitations to the houses where she stayed, and made him her slave in a sense Mrs. Kaye had not known men could be enslaved.

Mother and son had had one painful discussion in which the mother had been worsted. With terror she had plumbed for a moment the hidden depths of her boy's heart. ”You tell me there has been talk,” he said very quietly. ”If you will give me the name of any man who has talked unbecomingly of Mrs. Maule, I will deal with him----” ”Deal with him, Bayworth? What could you do?” ”I could kill him.” He had uttered the words almost indifferently, and Mrs. Kaye looking into his set face had said no more.

It was well that his father had known and suspected nothing.

The whole matter was to Mrs. Kaye the more amazing and iniquitous because she had hitherto always defended Mrs. Maule when that lady's conduct was discussed, as it constantly was discussed, in the neighbourhood of Rede Place. At Redyford Vicarage such talk had never been tolerated; and with a few stinging words of rebuke Mrs. Kaye had ever put the gossips in their places.

It had suited her far better to have to deal with a brilliant, beautiful, rather reckless woman, who was much away from home, and who always treated her with the courtesy and indifferent good-humour due to an equal, rather than with the type of great lady to whom she knew some of the other clergy's wives were in subjection.

CHAPTER II

”L'opinion dispose de tout. Elle fait la beaute, la justice, et le bonheur qui est le tout du monde.”

To say that the most important events of life often turn on trifling incidents has become a truism, and yet it may be doubted if any of us realise how especially true this is concerning the greatest of human riddles, the riddle of s.e.x.

Had the man of whose presence on the platform of Selford Junction Mrs.

Maule had become aware, turned round and watched the London express before it steamed out of the station, his own immediate future, to say nothing of that secret, inner life of memory which each human being carries as a burden, might have been considerably modified. But at the moment when Mrs. Maule had been engaged in trying her not very happy experiment with Bayworth Kaye, the only other occupant of the platform was staring with a good deal of interest and curiosity at a long row of ill.u.s.trated newspaper pages pinned dado-wise round the top of the bookstall.

The newsagent's clerk, when arranging his wares that morning, had had what he felt to be an unusually bright idea. Picking out what he considered the two most attractive items in the ill.u.s.trated paper with which he was dealing, he had repeated these items alternately with what to most onlookers would have seemed an irritating regularity.

The two pages he had selected for this honour were very different. The one consisted of a set of photographs, nine officers in uniform: _General Hew Lingard and his Staff, just returned home after the victorious Amadawa Expedition_. ”Here,” the bookstall clerk had probably argued unconsciously, and quite wrongly, to himself, ”is a page that will interest gentlemen and boys. Now I must find something that will cause ladies to purchase the paper,” and he had accordingly put next to the page of military portraits one consisting of a single ill.u.s.tration--the reproduction of a beautiful painting of a beautiful woman.

The man staring up at the black and white pages was true to what the clerk took to be the masculine type of newspaper buyer and reader, for he devoted his whole attention to the group of military portraits. He had, however, a special reason for staring up as he was now doing at the rather absurd dado, for it was his own portrait which occupied the place of honour in the centre of the page.

Being the manner of man he was, Hew Lingard felt at once elated and ashamed at seeing himself hung up in this queer pillory of fame. He was moved more than he would have cared to admit, even to himself, at seeing the honour paid to that old photograph taken some seven years before, at a time when he was out of love with life, having been, as he imagined, shelved by a small home appointment.

The portraits of his staff were comparatively new; they had doubtless been supplied in haste by the happy mothers and sisters of the sitters, and his grey eyes, set under deep overhanging brows, rested on them proudly. It was to these eight comrades--so he would have been the first to admit, nay to insist--that he had owed much of the sudden overwhelming success which had now come to him.

At last he resolutely concentrated his attention on the opposite ill.u.s.tration, and coming up a little closer to the stall, he read what was printed underneath:

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