It is not often in life that a woman is brought to such an emergency without warning, without time for preparation. She did nothing at all at first, and felt capable of nothing but to stare blankly, almost stupidly, at her supplanter. She did not feel capable even of rising from the chair into which she had sunk in the utter blank of consternation. She could only gaze, interrogating not the face before her only, but heaven and earth. Was it true? Could it be true?

The young woman was evidently surprised by this pause. She too looked curiously at her visitor, waited for a minute, and then advancing a step, asked, with a tone in which there was some surprise and a faint shadow of impatience, "Is it anything that I can do?"

"Have you been married long?" This was all the visitor could say.

A pretty blush came over the other's face. "We were married in the end of April," she said. It still seemed quite natural to her that everybody should be interested in this great event. "We went abroad for a month. And we were so lucky as to find this house. You know my husband?"

"I think so – well; his Christian name is – "

"Robert is his Christian name. Oh, I am so glad to meet with any one who has known him!" She drew a chair with a pretty vivacious movement close to that on which her visitor sat. "I feel sure," she said, "you are a relation, and have come to find out about us."

There was something in the young creature's air so guileless, so assured in her innocence, that if there had been any fury in the other's heart, or on her tongue, it must have been arrested then; but there was no fury in her heart. After the first unspeakable shock of surprise there was nothing but a great pang, and that almost more for this young life blighted than for her own. "It is true," she said, "that I am a – connection. Is your mother alive?"

"Mamma?" cried the girl, with a laugh. "Oh yes, and she is here to-day. She does not live with us, you know. She would not. She says married people should be left to themselves, though I always told her Mr Landon was far too sensible to believe in that trash about mothers-in-law. Don't you think it is rubbish? Young men may believe it; but when a gentleman is experienced and knows the world – "

"Perhaps I could see your mother," said the old wife. She felt herself growing a little faint. The day was warm, and she had been travelling all night. Was not that enough to account for it? And this happy babble in her ear made her heart sick, which was more.

"Mamma? Oh yes, certainly she will be very glad to see you. She always wanted to see some of the relations. She said it was not natural; though, to be sure, at his age – Shall I go and tell her you want to see her – her and not me? But you must not take any prejudice against me. Don't, please, if you are his relation: and you look so nice too. I know I should love you if you would let me."

"Let me see your mother. I have no – prejudice." She scarcely knew what she was saying. The room was swimming in her eyes, the green of the closed blinds waving up and down, surrounding her with an uncertain mist of colour, through which she seemed to see a half-reproachful, wondering look. And then the white figure was gone. Mrs Lycett-Landon leant her head upon the back of the chair, and for a minute knew nothing more. Then the greenness became visible again, and gradually everything wavered and circled back into its place.

The little house was very still; there were hurried steps overhead, as if two people were moving about. It was the mother hastily being put in order for a visitor – her cap arranged, a clean collar put on, the young wife dancing about her in great excitement to make all nice. This process of decoration occupied some time, and as it went on the visitor came fully to herself. What should she do? As she recovered full command of herself she shrunk from inflicting such a blow even upon the mother. Should she go away before they came down? – disappear like a dream, take no notice, but leave the strange little drama – what was it, comedy or tragedy? – to work itself out? Why should she interfere, after all? If he liked this best – and all the harm was now done that could be done – the best thing was to go away and take no more notice. She had risen with this intention to slip away, to let herself out, not to interfere, when another sound became audible – the sound of a door opening in the back part of the house. Then a voice called "Rose" – a voice which, in spite of herself, made the visitor's brain swim once more. She had to stop again perforce. And then a step came towards the room in which she was; a heavy step, with a little gouty limp in it – a step she knew so well. It came along the passage, accompanied by a running commentary of half-complaint. "Where are you? I want you." Then the door of the little drawing-room was pushed open. "Why don't you answer me?" He paused there in the doorway, seeing a stranger – with a quick apology – "I beg your pardon." Then suddenly there came from him a cry – a roar like that of a wounded animal – "Eleanor!"

Neither of the two ever forgot the appearance of the other. She saw him with the little passage and its stronger light opening behind him, his large figure relieved against it; the sudden look of consternation, horror, utter amaze in his face. Horror came first; and then everything yielded to the culprit's sense of unspeakable downfall, guilt self-convicted and without excuse. He fell back against the wall; his jaw dropped; his eyes seemed to turn upon themselves in a flicker of mortal dismay. The entire failure of all force and self-defence did not disarm his wife, as might have been supposed, but filled her with a blaze of sudden vehemence, passion which she could not contain. She had said his name as he said hers, in a quiet tone enough; but now stamped her foot and cried out, feeling it intolerable, insupportable. "Well!" she cried, "stand up for it like a man! Say you are sick of me, of your children, of living honestly these fifty years. Say something for yourself. Don't stand there like a whipped child."

But the man had nothing to say. He stood against the wall and looked at her as if he feared a personal assault. Then he said, "She is not to blame. She is as innocent as you are."

"I have seen her," said the injured wife. "Do you think you need to tell me that? But then, what are you?"

He made no reply. And the sight of him in the doorway was unbearable to the woman. If he had stood up for himself, made a fight of any kind, it would have been more tolerable. But the very sight of him was insupportable – something she could not endure. She turned her head away and went quickly past him towards the open door. "I meant to tell her mother." She scarcely knew whether she was speaking or only thinking. "I meant to tell her mother, but I cannot. You must manage it your own way."

Next moment she found herself out in the street, walking along under the shadow of the blank wall. She was conscious of having closed both doors behind her, that of the house and that of the garden. If she could but have closed the door of her own mind, and put it out of sight, and shut it up for ever! She hurried away, walking very quickly round one corner after another, through one street after another, of houses enclosed in walls and railings, withdrawn among flowers and trees. You may walk long through these quiet places without finding what she wanted – a cab to take her out of this strange, still, secluded town of villas. When she found one at last, she told the driver to take her back to the Euston, but first to drive round Hyde Park. He thought she must be mad. But that did not matter much so long as she was able to pay the fare. And then there followed what she had wanted, a long, endless progress through a confusion of streets, first quiet, full of gardens and retired houses; then the long bustling thoroughfares leading back into the noisy world of London; then the quiet streets on the north side of the park, the trees of Kensington Gardens, the old red palace, the endless line of railings and trees on the other side; the bustle of Piccadilly, so unlike the bustle of the other streets. Naturally the hansom could not go within the enclosure of the park, but only by the streets. But she did not care for that. She wanted movement, the air in her face, silence so that she might think.

So that she might think! But a woman can no more think when she wills than she can be happy when she wills. All that she thought was this, going over and over it, and back and back upon it, putting it involuntarily into words and saying them to herself like a sort of dismal refrain. At fifty! After living honestly all these fifty years! Was it possible? was it in the heart of man? At fifty, after all these years! This wonder was so great that she could think of nothing else. And he had been a good man – kind, ready to help; not hard upon any one – fond of his family, liking to have them about him. And now at fifty! after living honestly – She did not think of it as a matter affecting herself, and she could not think of what she was to do, which was the thing she had intended to think of, when she bade the man drive to the other end of the world. When she perceived, as she did dimly in the confusion of her mind, that she was approaching the end of her long round, she would but for very shame have gone over it all again. But by this time she had begun to see that little would be gained by staving it off for another hour, and that sooner or later she must descend from that abstract wandering, which had been more like a wild flight into space than anything else, and meet the realities of her position. Ah heavens! the realities of her position were – first of all, Horace, her boy – her grown-up boy: no longer a child to whom a family misfortune could be slurred over, but a man, able to understand, old enough to know. Her very heart died within her as this suddenly flashed upon her deadened intelligence. Horace and Milly – a young man and a young woman. How was she to tell them what their father had done? At fifty! after all these years!

She was told at the hotel that the young gentleman had gone out – for which she was deeply thankful – but would be back immediately. Oh, if he might but be detained; if something would but happen to keep him away! She came up the great vulgar common stairs which so many people trod, some perhaps with hearts as heavy as hers, few surely with such a problem to resolve. How to tell her boy that his father – oh God! his father, whom he loved and looked up to; his kind father, who never grudged him anything; a man so well known; a good man, of whom everybody spoke well – to tell him that his father – She locked the door of her room instinctively, as if that would keep Horace out, and keep her secret concealed.

It was one of those terrible hotel rooms, quite comfortable and wholly unsympathetic, in which many of the sorest hours of life are passed, where parents come to part with their children, to receive back their prodigals, to look for the missing, to receive tidings of the worse than dead; where many a reconciliation has to be accomplished, and arrangement made that breaks the heart. Strange and cold and miserable was the unaccustomed place, with no associations or soothing, no rest or softness in it. She walked about it up and down, and then stopped, though the movement gave her a certain relief, lest Horace should come to the door, hear her, and call out in his hearty young voice to be admitted. She had not been able to think before for the recurrence of that dismal chorus, "At fifty!" and now she could not think for thinking that any moment Horace might come to the door. She was more afraid of her boy than of all the world beside: had some one come to tell her that an accident had happened, that he had broken an arm or a leg, it seemed to her that she would have been glad, – anything rather than let him know. And yet he would have to know. The eldest son, a man grown, after his father the head of his family, the one who would have to take care of the children. How would it be possible to keep this from him? And how could it be told? His mother, who had prided herself on her son's spotless youth, and rejoiced in the thought that a wanton word was as impossible from the lips of Horace as from those of Milly, reddened and felt her very heart burn with shame. How could she tell him? She could not tell him. It was impossible; it was beyond her power.

And then she shrank into the corner of her seat and held her breath: for who could this be but Horace, with a foot that scarcely seemed to touch the ground, rushing with an anxious heart to hear news of his father, up the echoing empty stair?

CHAPTER VII.
EXPLANATION

"Mother! are you there? Let me in. Mother! open the door."

"In a moment, Horace; in a moment." It could not be postponed any longer. She rose up slowly and looked at herself in the glass to see if it was written in her face. She had not taken off her bonnet or made any change in her outdoor dress, and she was very pale, almost ghastly, with all the lines deepened and drawn in her face, looking ten years older, she thought. She put her bonnet straight with a woman's instinct, and then slowly, reluctantly, opened the door. He came in eager and impatient, not knowing what to think.

"Did you want to keep me out, mother! Were you vexed not to find me waiting? And how about papa?"

"No, Horace, not at all vexed."

"I went a little farther than I intended. I don't know my way about. But, mother, what of papa?"

"Not very much, my dear," she said, turning away. "It must be nearly time for lunch."

"Yes, it is quite time for lunch; and you had no breakfast. I told them to get it ready as I came up. But you don't answer me. Of course you found him. Is he really ill? What does he mean by it? Why didn't he come with you? Mother dear, is it anything serious? How pale you are! Oh, you needn't turn away; you can't hide anything from me. What is the matter, mamma?"

"It is serious, and yet it isn't serious, Horace. He is not ill, which is the most important thing. Only a little – seedy, as you call it. That's a word, you know, that always exasperates me."

"Is that all?" the youth said, looking at her with incredulous eyes.

She had turned her back upon him, and was standing before the glass, with a pretence of taking off her bonnet. It was easier to speak without looking at him. "No, my dear, that is not all. You will think it very strange what I am going to say. Papa and I have had a quarrel, Horace."

"Mother!"

"You may well be startled, but it is true. Our first quarrel," she said, turning half round with the ghost of a smile. It was the suggestion of the moment, at which she had caught to make up for the impossibility of thinking how she was to do it. "They say, you know, that the longer one puts off a thing of this kind the more badly one has it, don't you know? – measles and other natural complaints. We have been a long time without quarrelling, and now we have done it badly." She turned round with a faint smile; but Horace did not smile. He looked at her very gravely, with an astonishment beyond words.

"I cannot understand," he said, almost severely, "what you can mean."

"Well, perhaps it is a little difficult; but still such things do happen. You must not jump at the conclusion that it is all my fault."

Horace came up to her with his serious face, and put his arm round her, turning her towards him. "I was not thinking of any fault, mother; but surely I may know more than this? You and he don't quarrel for nothing, and I am not a child. You must tell me. Mother, what is the matter?" he said, with great alarm. For she was overdone in every way, worn out both body and mind, and when she felt her son's arm round her nature gave way. She leant her head upon his young shoulder, and fell into that convulsive sobbing which it is so alarming to bear. It was some time before she could command herself enough to reply —

"Oh, that is true – that is true! not for nothing. But, dear Horry, you can't be the judge, can you, between your father and mother? Oh no! Leave it a little; only leave it. It will perhaps come right of itself."

"Mother, of course I can't be the judge; but still, I'm not a child. May I go, then, and see papa?"

"Oh no," she cried, involuntarily clasping his arm tight – "oh no! not for the world."

The youth grew very grave: he withdrew his arm from her almost unconsciously, and said, "Either it is a great deal more serious than you say, or else – "

"It is very serious, Horace. I don't deceive you," she said. "It may come to that– that we shall never – be together any more. But still I implore you, don't go to your father – oh! not now, my dear. He would not wish it. You must give me your word not to go."

She could not bear the scrutiny of his eyes. She turned and went away from him, putting off her light cloak, pulling open drawers as if in a search for something; but he stood where she had left him, full of perplexity and trouble. A quarrel between his parents was incredible to Horace; and the idea of a rupture, a public scandal, a thing that could be talked about! He stood still, overwhelmed by sudden trouble and distress, though without the slightest guess of the real tragedy. "I can't think what you could quarrel about," he said. "It seems a mere impossibility. Whatever it is, you must make it up, mother, for our sakes."

"My dear, anything that can be done, you may be sure will be done, for your sakes."

"But it is impossible, you know. A quarrel! between you and papa! It is out of the question. Nobody would believe it. I think you must be joking all the time," he said, with an abrupt laugh. But his laugh seemed so strange, even to himself, that he became silent suddenly with a look of confusion and irritation. Never in his life had he met with anything so extraordinary before.

"I am not joking," she said; "but, perhaps, after a while – Come and have your luncheon, Horace. I know you want it. And perhaps after a time – "

"You are worn out too, mother; that is what it is. One feels irritable when one is tired. After you have eaten something and rested yourself, let me go to papa. And we'll have a jolly dinner together and make it all up."

And she had the heroism to say no more, but went down with him, and pretended to eat, and saw him make a hearty meal. While she sat thus smiling at her boy, she could not but wonder to herself what he was doing. Was he smiling too, keeping up a cheerful face for the sake of the unfortunate girl not much older than Horace? God help her whom he had destroyed! She kept imagining that other scene while she enacted her own. Afterwards she persuaded Horace with some difficulty to let everything stand over till next day, telling him that she had great need of rest (which was true enough) and would lie down; and that next evening would be time enough for any further steps. She insisted so upon her need of rest, that he remembered that Dick Fareham had asked him to dine with him at his club, and go to the theatre if he had nothing better to do – a plan which she caught at eagerly.

"But how can I go and leave you alone in a hotel?" he said.

"My dear, I am going to bed," she replied, which was unanswerable. And after many attempts to know more, and many requests to be allowed to go to his father, Horace at last yielded, dressed, and went off to the early dinner which precedes a play. He had brought his dress clothes with him, though there had been so little time for feasting, confident that even a few days in London must bring pleasure of some kind. And already the utterly absurd suggestion that his father and mother could have had a deadly quarrel began to lose its power in his mind. It was impossible. His mother was worn out, and had been irritable; and his father, especially when he had a touch of gout, was, as Horace well knew, irritable also. To-morrow all that would have blown away, and they would both be ashamed of themselves. Thus he consoled himself as he went out; and as the youth never had known what family strife or misfortune meant, and in his heart felt anything of the kind to be impossible, it did not take much to drive that incomprehensible spectre away.

Mrs Lycett-Landon was at length left alone to deal with it by herself. What was she to do? She had a fire lighted in the blank room, though it was the height of summer, for agitation and misery had made her cold, and sat over it trembling, and trying to collect her thoughts. Oh, if it could be but possible to do nothing, to say no word to any one, to forget the episode of this morning altogether! "If I had not known," she said to herself, "it would have done me no harm." This modern Eleanor, who had fallen so innocently into Rosamond's bower, had no thought of vengeance in her heart. She had no wish to kill or injure the unhappy girl who had come between her and her husband. What good would that do? Were Rosamond made an end of in a moment, how would it change the fact? What could ever alter that? The ancients did not take this view of the subject. They took it for granted that when the intruder was removed life went on again in the same lines, and that nothing was irremediable. But to Mrs Lycett-Landon life could never go on again. It had all come to a humiliating close; confusion had taken the place of order, and all that had been, as well as all that was to be, had grown suddenly impossible. Had she not stopped herself with an effort, her troubled mind would have begun again that painful refrain which had filled her mind in the morning, which was perhaps better than the chaos which now reigned there. So far as he was concerned she could still wonder and question, but for herself everything was shattered. She could neither identify what was past nor face what was to come. Everything surged wildly about her, and she found no footing. What was to be done? These words intensify all the miseries of life – they make death more terrible, since it so often means the destruction of all settled life for the living, as well as the end of mortal troubles for the dead – they have to be asked at moments when the answer is impossible. This woman could find no reply as she sat miserable over her fire. She was not suffering the tortures of jealousy, nor driven frantic with the thought that all the tenderness which ever was hers was transferred to another. Perhaps her sober age delivered her from such reflections; they found no place at all in the tumult of her thoughts; the questions involved to her were wholly different: what she was to do; how she was to satisfy her children without shaming their youth and her own mature purity of matronhood which had protected them from any suggestion of such evil? How they were ever to be silenced and contented without overthrowing for ever in their minds their father and the respect they owed him? This was the treble problem which was before her – by degrees the all-absorbing one which banished every other from her thoughts. What could she say to Horace and Milly? How were they to be kept from this shame? Had they been both boys or both girls, it seemed to their mother that the question would have been less terrible; but boy and girl, young man and young woman, how were they ever to be told? How were they to be deceived and not told? Their mother's powers gave way and all her strength in face of this question. How was she to do it? How was she to refrain from doing it? That pretext of a quarrel, how was it to be kept up? and in what other way – in what other way, oh heaven! was she to explain to them that their father and she could meet under the same roof no more? She covered her face with her hands, and wept in the anguish of helplessness and incapacity; then dried her eyes, and tried again to plan what she could do. Oh that she had the wings of a dove, that she might flee away and be at rest! – but whither could she flee? She thought of pretending some sudden loss of money, some failure of fortune, and rushing away with the children to America, to Australia, to the end of the world; but if she did so, what then? Would it become less necessary, more easy to explain? Alas! no; nothing could change that horrible necessity. The best thing of all, she said to herself, if she were equal to it, would be to return home, to live there as long as it was possible, with her heart shut up, holding her peace, saying nothing – as long as it was possible! – until circumstances should force upon her the explanation which would have to be made. Let it be put off for weeks, for months, even for years, it would have to be made at last.

Thus she sat pondering, turning over everything, considering and rejecting a thousand plans; and then, after all, acted upon a sudden impulse, a sudden rising in her of intolerable loneliness and insufficiency. She felt as if her brain were giving way, her mind becoming blank, before this terrible emergency, which must be decided upon at once. Horace was safe for a few hours, separated from all danger, but how to meet his anxious face in the light of another day his mother did not know. She sprang up from her seat, and reached towards the table, on which there were pens and ink, and wrote a telegram quickly, eagerly, without pausing to think. The young ones were in the habit of laughing at old Fareham. She herself had joined in the laugh before now, and allowed that he was methodical and tedious and tiresome. He was all these, and yet he was an old friend, the oldest friend she had, one who had known her father, who had seen her married, who had guided her husband's first steps in the way of business. He was the only person to whom she could say anything. And he was a merciful old man: when troubles arose – when clerks went wrong or debtors failed – Mr Fareham's opinion was always on the side of mercy. This was one of the reasons why they called him an old fogey in the office; always – always he had been merciful. And it was this now which came into her mind. She wrote her telegram hastily, and sent it off at once, lest she should repent, directing it not to the office, where it might be opened by some other hand than his, but to his house. "Come to me directly if you can. I have great need of your advice and help. Tell no one," was what she said. She liked, like all women, to get the full good of the permitted space.