CHAPTERIII.
Themorning was beautiful, though very warm, and Miss Llewellyn thought she could not spend it better than in taking a long drive. She felt as if she could not stay in the house. Some intuitive dread or fear, she knew not which, possessed her—as if she had an enemy in ambush, and anticipated an assault. When she tried to analyse this feeling, she laid it to the proximity of her relations and the possibility of their hearing more of her domestic life than she wished them to know.
‘But it is all because Ilfracombe is not at home,’ she said to herself. ‘If he were here, he would laugh me out of such a piece of folly. As if they possiblycouldhear. Who could tell them, when they know no one in London. I am a silly fool.’
When she entered the open carriage, and the footman attended her orders, she told him to drive as far into the country as possible.
‘Tell Jenkins to go right away from town, up to Hampstead, or out to Barnes. I want all the fresh air I can get.’
So she was carried swiftly towards Wimbledon, and had soon left the hot bricks and mortar behind her, and was revelling in the sight of green hedges and stretches of common.
‘How fresh and sweet it all seems,’ she thought; ‘but not half so fresh and sweet as round Usk and by dear Panty-cuckoo Farm. How luscious the honeysuckle used to smell, that trailed over the porch by the side door. And how thickly it grew. I used to tear off the blossoms by thousands to suck their petals. And the apple orchard, it was a mass of white and pink flowers in spring, like a bridal bouquet. They must have all fallen by this time, and left the little green apples in their stead. What a thief I was in my early days. I can remember lanky Hugh Owen catching me robbing Mr Potter’s plum tree, and the long-winded lecture he gave me on the rights of meum and tuum. I wonder if the sermons he preaches now are as prosy and as long. If so, I pity his congregation. He was always so terribly in earnest. What would he say if he knew all about me now?’
And here Miss Llewellyn’s thoughts took a rather melancholy turn, and she sat in the carriage with folded arms, hardly noticing the rural scenes through which she was passing, as her memory went back to her girlhood’s days and her girlhood’s companions. She did not notice the time either, until a church clock struck two, and reminded her that she had had no luncheon. She gave the order for home then, but it was nearly three before she reached Grosvenor Square, and the first words the footman, who opened the door to her, said, were to the effect that Mr Portland was waiting for her in the drawing-room. Nell started. She had entirely forgotten the appointment of the day before.
‘In the drawing-room, did you say?’ she ejaculated. ‘I will go to him at once.’
‘Luncheon is on the table, madam,’ added the servant; ‘shall I tell them to take it downstairs till you are ready?’
‘It is not worth while,’ replied Miss Llewellyn, ‘I shall only be a few minutes.’
She walked straight up to the drawing-room as she spoke, throwing the hat she had worn on a side table as she entered.
‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Portland,’ she said as he held out his hand to her, ‘but I have been for a country drive, and quite forgot the time.’
‘That is a very cruel speech, Miss Llewellyn,’ remonstrated her visitor; ‘and when I have been counting the moments till we should meet.’
Jack Portland was always a ‘horsey’ looking man, and it struck Nell that to-day he seemed more horsey than usual. By birth, he was a gentleman; but, like many other gentlemen by birth, he had degraded himself by a life of dissipation, till he had lost nearly all claim to the title. His features, good enough in themselves, were swollen and bloated by indulgence in drink; his manners were forward and repulsive; he had lost all respect for women, and only regarded them as expensive animals who cost, as a rule, much more than they were worth. To Nell he had always been most offensive, not in words, but looks and manners, and she was only decently civil to him for the earl’s sake. Now, as he seemed disposed to approach her side, she got further and further away from him, till she had reached a sofa at the other end of the room. Mr Portland was ‘got-up’ in the flashiest style, but was evidently nervous, though she could not imagine why. His suit was cut in the latest racing fashion, and he wore an enormous ‘buttonhole.’ But his florid face was more flushed than usual, and he kept fidgeting with his watch chain in a curious manner. At last he found his tongue.
‘Were you very much surprised when I asked you for an interview, Miss Llewellyn?’ he commenced.
‘I was, rather. Because I cannot think what you can possibly have to say to me. We have but one subject of interest in common—Ilfracombe—and he is quite well and happy. Else, I might have frightened myself by imagining you had some bad news to tell me concerning him.’
Jack Portland looked at her rather curiously as he replied,—
‘Oh, no, the old chap’s all right. How often do you hear from him now? Every day. Is that the ticket?’
‘I hear constantly,’ replied Miss Llewellyn in a dignified tone. ‘I had a letter yesterday. I was in hopes he might have fixed the date of his return, but he says his friends will not be persuaded to let him go, so that he shall be detained in Malta longer than he expected.’
‘Ah! his friends are the Abingers, of course,’ said Mr Portland, sticking his glass in his eye, the better to observe her features.
‘Perhaps. He did not mention them by name,’ she replied, ‘but I daresay you are right. However, he is sure to be home for the pheasant-shooting.’
‘Doubtless,’ replied Mr Portland, ‘unless his friends persuade him to go somewhere else. But what are you going to do with yourself meanwhile, Miss Llewellyn?’
‘I? Oh, I shall remain in town till his return, and then I suppose we shall go to the Highlands as usual. Ilfracombe wants me to go away at once to some watering-place to recruit, but I should be wretched there by myself. I shall wait for him at home. He is sure to come straight to London, because all his things are here.’
She was looking as handsome as paint that day. The long drive had tinged her face with a soft pink, and her lovely hazel eyes were humid with emotion, engendered by her subject. Her rich hair had become somewhat disordered by the open air and the haste with which she had removed her hat, and was ruffled and untidy. But that only added to her charms. What pretty woman ever looked so well with neatly arranged hair, as when it is rumpled and blown about? She was half sitting, half reclining on the sofa, and her fine figure was shewn to the best advantage. Portland’s eyes glistened as he gazed at her. What a handsome hostess she would make—what a presider over the destinies of his bachelor establishment! How proud he would be to introduce her to his sporting and Bohemian friends—the only friends whom he affected, and be able to tell them that this glorious creature was his own! He became so excited by the idea that he dashed into the subject rather suddenly.
‘Miss Llewellyn,’ he said, ‘you are aware, I think, of my position in life. Ilfracombe, dear old chap, has doubtless told you that I make a very neat little income, and that I am perfectly unencumbered.’
This seemingly vague address made her stare.
‘He has never entered into details with me, Mr Portland; but I have heard him say you are very well off—the luckiest fellow he knows he called you.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not quite that,’ said Mr Portland; ‘but still I am in a position to give any reasonable woman everything she can possibly require. My income is pretty regular, and I would engage to make a handsome allowance to any lady who honoured me with her preference. I tell you this because Ilfracombe has often told me that you have an excellent head for business. By George!’ said Mr Portland, again screwing his glass into his unhappy and long-suffering eye, ‘with such beauty as yours, you have no right to know anything about business; still, if you do—there you are, you see!’
‘But what has all this to do with me, Mr Portland,’ remarked Miss Llewellyn with a puzzled air. ‘I am sure any lady you may choose to marry will be a very lucky woman. Ilfracombe has often called you the best fellow he knows. But why should you tell me this? Are you already engaged to be married?’
‘By Jove! no, and not likely to be. Do I look like a marrying man, Miss Llewellyn? But there!—I can’t beat about the bush any longer! You must have seen my admiration—my worship for you! It is onyoumy choice has fallen! Say that I have not been too presumptuous; that you will consent to share my fortune; that you will, in fact, look as kindly on me as you have on my fortunate friend, Ilfracombe?’
At first she did not understand his meaning; she did not realise that this farrago of nonsense had been addressed to herself. It was so entirely unexpected, so utterly unthought of. But when shedidtake in the meaning of his words, when she awoke to the knowledge that Mr Portland, the intimate friend of Lord Ilfracombe, haddaredto offer her his protection, Nell sprung from her position on the sofa, and retreated to the back of it. Her tawny eyes were blazing with fire, her hands were clenched, her breast heaved violently, she could hardly speak. Under the indignation of her burning glances, the man before her seemed to shrivel like a dry leaf before the flame.
‘How dare you?’ she panted. ‘Howdareyou insult me like that? What do you mean? How can I be your friend, or the friend of any man but Ilfracombe? I amhiswife; you know I am; and shall be till I die!’
‘Hiswife? pooh!’ said Jack Portland, ‘don’t talk rubbish to me like that.’
‘Yes, his wife! How can I bemorehis wife than I am? I love him—he loves me! We are essentiallyonein heart and word and deed. What could a marriage ceremony have done more for us, than our mutual love has done. And thenyou, who know all this, who have known us so many years, you dare to come here and insult me, in my own house, and under the pretence of friendship deal the deadliest insult you could possibly have hurled at my head! Oh, how I wish Ilfracombe had been at home to protect me from your insolence! He would not have let you finish your cowardly sentence! You would not have dared utter it had he been standing by! He would have taken you by the collar and spurned you from the door. I have no words in which to tell you how I despise you; how low and mean a thing you seem to me; how I wish I were a man that I might put you out of this room and this house myself! But rest assured that Lord Ilfracombe shall hear of your baseness, and will punish you as you deserve!’
Jack Portland still kept his glass fixed in his eye and stared insolently at her. He had elevated his brows once or twice as she proceeded with her speech, and shrugged his shoulders, as if she were not worth a second thought of his; and as she mentioned her lover’s name he smiled scornfully and waved his hand.
‘Pray don’t take it in this fashion,’ he said, as she concluded. ‘I am sure Ilfracombe would tell you it was not worth making such a fuss about. As for insulting you, that is the last idea in my mind. I admire you far too much. Most ladies would, I flatter myself, have regarded my offer in a totally different light; indeed, no reasonable person could say that it was an insult, especially from a man of my birth and position.’
‘It becomes an insult,’ she answered hotly, ‘when you address your proposals to the wife of another man, and that man your greatest friend.’
‘Perhaps it would, if shewerehis wife, or ever likely to be so,’ returned Mr Portland, with a sneer.
‘But Iam, Iam,’ cried Nell passionately, stamping her feet, ‘and each fresh word you say is a fresh affront. People with your low conceptions of life cannot understand the strength of the tie between Ilfracombe and myself, because it has not been ratified by the law. You are not honourable enough to see that that very fact renders it still more binding on a man of honour. Ilfracombe would die sooner than part from me, and I would die a thousand deaths sooner than part from him. Our lives are bound up in each other. And even if it were not so, I could never exchange him for you. Now, do you understand, or must I say it all over again?’
Under the sting of what his proposal had suggested to her, she was blazing away at him with twice her natural ferocity. At that moment she hated him with such a deadly hatred for having presumed to remind her of the real position she held, that she could gladly have killed him.
‘Pray say no more!’ exclaimed Mr Portland, as he prepared to leave her, ‘you’ve said more than enough, my pretty tigress, already; but the day may come when you will regret that you treated my offer with so much disdain. Young men’s fancies do not last for ever, my dear, and a good, sound settlement is worth many vows. If Ilfracombe ever tires of you (or rather let me saywhenhe tires of you), you will remember my words. Meanwhile, luckily for me, there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. So good-bye, my handsome fury. Won’t you give me one kiss before we part, just to show there’s no ill feeling? No? Well, I must try to do without it then, for the present at least, and hope for better luck next time. Remember me to old Ilfracombe when next you write. Ta-ta.’
He lingered near her for a moment, as though expecting she would raise her eyes or put out her hand; but Nell did neither, and, after a while, he turned on his heel, and, insolently humming a tune, went on his way.
As soon as Miss Llewellyn heard the hall door close after him, she rushed up to her own room, and, after locking the door, threw herself on the sofa, face downwards, and sobbed and cried in the strength of her wounded feelings and the terrible doubt which Mr Portland’s words had seemed to imply. The servants came knocking at her door, and worrying her to come down to luncheon, which was getting cold, in the dining-room, but she would not stir nor speak to any of them.
It was the first time since her acquaintance with the Earl of Ilfracombe that the untenability of her illegal position had been brought so forcibly before her, and she felt all the more angry because she had no right to feel angry at all. She believed implicitly in her lover. She had accepted his assurances of fidelity as gospel truth, and she was passionately indignant and sorely outraged because Mr Portland had not considered the tie between her and his friend as inviolable as she did. And yet she wasnotLord Ilfracombe’s wife. Beautiful Nell Llewellyn knew this only too well as she lay on the couch, sobbing as if her heart would break. Say what women will in these days of misrule about the charms of liberty, and the horror of being enchained for life, there is a comfortable sense of security in knowing oneself to be honourably united to the man one loves; to have no need of concealment or mis-stating facts; no necessity of avoiding one’s fellow men; no fear of encountering insult from one’s inferiors in birth and morals, because one does not wear a wedding-ring upon one’s finger—that insignia of possession which is so insignificant and yet so powerful. What would poor Nell Llewellyn not have given to have had one upon her finger now?
How terrible is the first dread of the instability of the love on which one has fixed all one’s earthly hopes! Had her lover been within reach, Nell would have rushed to him with the story of her trouble, and received a consolatory reassurance of his affection at once. But she was alone. She could confide in no one, and Mr Portland’s proposal, having made her see in what light men of the world regarded her tie to Lord Ilfracombe, had made her heart question if they could be correct, and he looked on it as they did. Her passionate nature, which was not formed for patience or long-suffering or humility, cried out against the suspense to which it was subjected, and raised such violent emotions in her breast that by the time they were exhausted she was quite ill. When at last she raised herself from her downcast position on the sofa, and tried, with swollen eyes and throbbing brain, to collect her thoughts, she found to her dismay that it was past five o’clock, and she had promised to call for Hetty and her husband at six. Her first thought was to remove the traces of her tears. She could not bear that the servants should see that she had been crying. She would never let them perceive that her position in the house cost her any anxiety or remorse, but bore herself bravely in their presence as their mistress, who had not a thought of ever being otherwise. As soon as she had bathed her eyes and arranged her hair, Miss Llewellyn sat down at a davenport that stood by her sofa and scribbled a note to Hetty, enclosing her the seats for the Alhambra for that evening, and excusing herself from accompanying them on the score of a violent attack of neuralgia. Then she rung the bell for her maid, and desired her to send the letter at once to Oxford Street by hand.
‘One of the grooms can go on horseback,’ she said, ‘or James can take a hansom; but it must be delivered as soon as possible. And then you can bring me a cup of coffee, Susan, for I have such a headache that I can hardly open my eyes.’
‘Lor’! yes, ma’am, you do look bad!’ returned the servant. ‘Your eyes are quite red-like, as if they was inflamed. You must have caught cold last night. I thought you would, staying out so late, and without the carriage.’
‘Well, never mind, go and do as I tell you,’ replied Miss Llewellyn, who felt as if she could not endure her chatter one moment longer.
It was characteristic of this woman that what had occurred had planted far less dread of the insecurity of the position she held in her mind than a deep sense of the insult that had been offered to her love and Lord Ilfracombe’s. She felt it on his account, more than on her own—that anyone should havedaredso to question his honour, and suspect his constancy. Hers was so ardent and generous a temperament, that where she gave, she gave all, and without a question if she should gain or lose by the transaction. She loved the man whom she regarded as her husband with the very deepest feelings she possessed; it is not too much to say that she adored him, for he was so much above her, in rank and birth and station, that she looked up to him as a god—the only god, indeed, that poor Nell had learned to acknowledge. He was her world—her all! That they should ever be separated never entered into her calculations. He had been struck with her unusual beauty, three years before, and taken her from a very lowly position as nursemaid to be his housekeeper—then, by degrees, the rest had followed. All Lord Ilfracombe’s friends knew and admired her, and considered him a deuced lucky fellow to have secured such a goddess to preside over his bachelor establishment. Naturally, the elder ones said it was a pity, and it was to be hoped that Lord Ilfracombe’s eyes would be opened before long to the necessity of marriage and an heir to the fine old estate and title. Especially did his father’s old friend and adviser, Mr Sterndale, lament over the connection, and try by every means in his power to persuade Ilfracombe to dissolve it. But the earl was of a careless and frivolous nature—easily led in some things, and very blind as yet to the necessity of marriage. Besides, he loved Nell—not as she loved him by any manner of means, but in an indolent, indulgent fashion, which granted her all her desires, and gave her as much money as she knew what to do with. But had he been asked if he would marry her, he would have answered decidedly, ‘No.’