"The very sheep and silkworms woreThe selfsame clothing long before!"
"The very sheep and silkworms woreThe selfsame clothing long before!"
Well, well, as long as it all added a moment of cheerfulness, of forgetfulness of the bitter past to his patient, what did anything matter? Doctor McKirdy told himself rather ruefully that Madam had always been fond of fine raiment: for his part, he thought Mrs. Rebell looked very well as she was, especially when wearing that long white cloak of hers, but if it pleased Madam to dress her up like a doll, why, of course, they must all give in with a good grace.
Meanwhile, oh! yes, he quite understood that she was not to be shown overmuch to the critical eyes of the village—there was to be no going to church, for instance, till the fine feathers were come which were to transform the gentle modest dove-like creature into a bird of paradise.
To-day, for the first time for many years, Madame Sampiero could have dispensed with the presence of James Berwick at the Priory. Of all men he was the most fastidious in the matter of women's looks. A first impression, so Barbara's godmother reminded herself, counts so much with a man, and what James thought now of Barbara Rebell would be sure to be reported at once at Fletchings.
Fletchings, never long out of Madame Sampiero's thoughts, yet rarely mentioned to those about her—Fletchings the charming, rather small manor-house originally bought by Lord Bosworth in order that he might be close—and yet not too close, in the eyes of a censorious world—to Chancton Priory. This had been some thirty years ago, long before the memorable laterperiod when both of them became entirely indifferent to what that same world might think.
And now James Berwick had come to be the only link between Fletchings and the Priory. It had been Madame Sampiero's will, ruthlessly carried out, that all relationship between herself and Lord Bosworth should cease—that they should no longer meet, even to mourn together their child Julia. She wished to be remembered as she had been, not as she now was, a living corpse, an object of repulsion—so she told herself with grim frankness—to any sanely constituted man.
The mistress of Chancton Priory never allowed herself to regret her decision, but still there were times when James Berwick's prolonged absences saddened her and seemed to make the lamp of her life burn very low. From him alone she chose to learn what her old friend was thinking and doing, and how he regarded those struggles in the political arena of which she was still almost as interested a spectator as he was himself. Through Berwick, she was thus able to follow each phase of the pleasant life Lord Bosworth had made for himself, in this, the evening of his days.
Madame Sampiero, during the long hour just before the dawn, had debated keenly within herself as to whether it would be well for Barbara to go to Fletchings. Certainly, yes, if the so doing would add to her happiness or consolidate her position, but then Arabella Berwick must be won over and propitiated, made to understand that Mrs. Rebell was destined to become a person of importance. What Arabella should be brought to think rested with James Berwick. For the first time for years, Madame Sampiero would have given much to be downstairs, to-night, to see what was going on in the great Blue drawing-room which lay just below her own room.
"So every sweet with sour is tempered still,That maketh it be coveted the more;For easy things that may be got at willMost sorts of men do set but little store."
"So every sweet with sour is tempered still,That maketh it be coveted the more;For easy things that may be got at willMost sorts of men do set but little store."
Spenser.
Berwickwalked up and down the hall waiting for Mrs. Rebell. Not only Mrs. Turke's ambiguous utterances, but his own knowledge of her parents, made him look forward with a certain curiosity to seeing her.
The story of Richard Rebell, the one-time brilliant and popular man about town, who, not long after his marriage to a reigning beauty, had been overwhelmed by the shameful accusation of cheating at cards; the subsequent libel case which had developed into a mid-Victoriancause célèbre; the award of nominal damages; and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rebell's ultimate retreat, for ever, to the Continent—it was all well known to James Berwick.
Still, he would rather have met this Mrs. Rebell anywhere else than at Chancton Priory. Her presence here could not but destroy, for himself, the peculiar charm of the place.
How unpunctual she was! Why was it that women—with the one exception of his sister Arabella—were always either too early or too late?
McGregor's voice broke across the ungallant thought, "Mrs. Rebell, sir, is in the Blue drawing-room. She has been down some time."
The words gave Berwick a disagreeable shock. The Blue drawing-room? Years had gone by since the two charming rooms taking up the whole west side of the Priory had been in familiar use. He remembered very well the last time he had seen them filled with a feminine presence. It had been just after his first term at Oxford, when he still felt something of the schoolboy: Madame Sampiero, beautiful and gracious as she only knew how to be, had received him with great kindness, striving to put him completely at his ease. There had been there also his uncle, Lord Bosworth, and a certain Septimus Daman, an old friend and habitué of the Priory in those later days of Lord Bosworth and Madame Sampiero's intimacy, when no woman ever crossed its stately threshold.
Just before the little party of four, the three men and their hostess, had gone in to dinner, a radiant apparition had danced into the room, little fair-haired Julia, the incarnation of happy childhood. Her mother had placed her, laughing, beside the rather fantastic portrait which was then being painted of the child by an Italian artist, and which now hung in Lord Bosworth's study at Fletchings, bearing silent witness to many past events.
With the memory of this scene singularly vivid, it shocked Berwick that now, even after the lapse of so many years, another woman should be installed as mistress of the room towards which he was bending his steps. So feeling, he hesitated, and waited for a moment, a frown on his face, before turning the handle of the door.
James Berwick cultivated in himself a sense of the unusual and the picturesque; especially was he ever consciously seeking to find these qualities in those women with whom chance brought him into temporarycontact. As he passed through into the Blue drawing-room, he became at once aware that the former ordered beauty of the apartment had been restored, and that the tall white figure standing by the fire harmonised, in some subtle fashion, with the old French furniture covered in the rather bright blue silk which gave its name to the room.
Barbara Rebell was gazing down into the wood fire, one slender hand and arm resting on the rose marble mantel-piece. She looked singularly young and forlorn, and yet, as she turned towards him, he saw that her whole bearing was instinct with a rather desperate dignity. She was not at all what the man advancing towards her had thought to find—above all she now looked curiously unlike the clear-eyed vigorous creature she had appeared when walking by McKirdy's side along the open down.
As James Berwick came into the circle of light thrown by the tall shaded lamps, she turned and directly faced him,—the expression of her face that of a shrinking and proud embarrassment. Then she spoke, the words she uttered bringing to her hearer discomfiture and rather piqued surprise.
"I have been wishing so much to see you, Mr. Boringdon, and also your mother. I think your sister must have written and told you of her kindness to me—though indeed I do not suppose for a moment she can have made you understand how very very good she and Mr. Johnstone both were. I am the bearer of several things from Grace. Also"—her low grave voice faltered—"I wish to ask if you will be so kind as to arrange for the sending back to your brother-in-law of some money he lent me." She held out as she spoke an envelope, "It is fifty pounds, and I do not know how to convey it to him."
Berwick felt keenly annoyed,—there is always something lowering to one's self-esteem in being taken for another person, and especially in receiving in that character anything savouring of a confidential communication.
"You are making a mistake," he said, rather sharply; "my name is Berwick—James Berwick. Oliver Boringdon, Mrs. Johnstone's brother, lives at Chancton Cottage. You will certainly meet him in the course of the next day or two."
Mrs. Rebell looked for a moment extremely disconcerted: a flood of bright colour swept over her face, but Berwick, now considering her closely, saw that, if confused, she was also most certainly relieved. Her manner altered,—she became, in a gentle and rather abstracted way, at ease. The man now standing close to her suddenly felt as if in the presence of a shy and yet confiding creature—one only half tame, ready to spring away at any rough unmannerly approach. He caught himself wondering how it was that she had already made friends with McKirdy, and he told himself that there was about this woman something at once delicately charming and at the same time disarming—he no longer grudged her presence at the Priory.
On their way to the dining-room, during their progress through the hall, Berwick looked down at the fingers resting on his arm. They were childishly small and delicate. She must have, he thought, a singularly pretty foot: yes, there was certainly something of the nymph about her,—his first instinct had not been at fault, after all.
Mrs. Rebell walked to the further side of the large round table, evidently regarding her companion as her guest, and from that moment onwards, James Berwicknever disputed Barbara Rebell's sovereignty of Chancton Priory. Indeed, soon he was glad that she had chosen so to place herself that, whenever he looked up, he saw her small head—the ivory tinted face so curiously framed by short curling dark hair, and the rather widely set apart, heavy-lidded eyes—sharply outlined against the curtainless oriel window, of which the outer side was swept by the branches of a cedar of Lebanon.
Berwick felt himself in an approving mood. His old nurse had been right; Mrs. Rebell would add to, not detract from, the charm of the Priory. Many trifling matters ministered to his fancy. The dining-table was bare of flowers and of ornament: McGregor, it was clear, had lost touch with the outside world. Berwick was glad too that Mrs. Rebell wore no jewels,—not even, to his surprise, a wedding ring. She must be even more out of touch with her contemporaries than McGregor! And yet her dress,—yes, there could be no doubt about it—had an air of magnificence, in spite of its extreme plainness. Now that he came to think of it, her white lace gown, vaporous and mysterious, resembled, quite curiously so, that of a bride.
So, doubtless, sitting there, as they were sitting now, more than one Rebell bride and bridegroom had sat in this old dining-room, at this very round table, in those days when men brought their newly-wedded wives straight home. The last Rebells to have done so must have been Madame Sampiero's grandfather and grandmother, her own and her god-daughter's common ancestors. Berwick wondered swiftly if it was from that bride of a hundred years ago that Barbara had taken her eyes—those singularly desolate eyes which alone in her face implied experience.
He looked across the table with a whimsical, considering look. A stranger passing by outside thatwindow would take them for husband and wife. So do folk judge by mere appearance! The fact that for himself as well as for her marriage was out of the region of practical possibilities made amusing,—gave something of piquancy to this little scene of pseudo-domesticity.
Barbara also looked up and across at him. She saw clearly, for the first time, for the lamps in the Blue drawing-room gave but a quavering light, the tanned and tense-looking face, of which perhaps the most arresting features were the penetrating bright blue eyes. The strong jaw—not a handsome feature, this—was partly concealed by a ragged straw-coloured moustache, many shades lighter than the hair brushed straight across the already seamed forehead. She smiled, a delicate heart-whole smile, softening and brightening, altering incredibly the rather austere lines of her face.
"I'm thinking," she said, "of Mrs. Turke. I was in her sitting-room to-day, and she showed me the many portraits she has there of you; that being so, I certainly ought not to have mistaken you, even for a moment, for Mr. Boringdon!"
But with the mention of the name the smile faded, and a look of oppression came over her face.
"Grace Johnstone," Berwick's sudden utterance of the name was an experiment: he waited: ah! yes, that was it! The painful association was with Mrs. Johnstone, not with Oliver Boringdon or his mother.
"Grace Johnstone," he repeated, "is a very old friend of mine, Mrs. Rebell, and it is always a pleasure to me to have news of her."
Barbara was opening and shutting her ringless left hand with a nervous gesture: she began crumbling the bread by her plate.
"I have not known her very long," she said, "but nothing could have exceeded her kindness to me. Iwas very ill, and Mrs. Johnstone took me into her own house and nursed me well again. It seemed so very strange a coincidence that her mother and brother should be living at Chancton, so near to my godmother." But Berwick realised that the coincidence was not regarded by the speaker as a happy one.
"Mrs. Boringdon," he said slowly, "is quite unlike her daughter. I should think there was very little confidence between them. If you will allow me to be rather impertinent, to take advantage of our relationship—you know my great-grandfather very wisely married your great-grandmother's sister—I should like to give you a piece of advice——"
Barbara looked at him anxiously—the youthfulness which had so disarmed him again became manifest in her face.
"My advice is that you write a note to the Johnstones, and then confide it to my care to send off with the fifty pounds you are returning to them. I will see that they receive it safely." Some instinct—the outcome, perhaps, of many money dealings with pretty women—made him add, with a touch of reserve, "But perhaps Mrs. Johnstone did not know of this loan?"
"Oh! yes, of course she did! Indeed it was she who suggested it. But for that I could not have come home." Barbara was blushing, and Berwick saw tears shining in her eyes. He felt oddly moved. He had often heard of, but he had never seen, the shedding of tears of gratitude.
"Yes," he said hastily, "I felt sure that was the case. But I do not think Mrs. Boringdon need be informed of the fact."
Mrs. Rebell had risen. A sudden fear that she might be going upstairs, that he would not see her again that night, came over Berwick.
"Do go into the drawing-room and write that note to the Johnstones, and I will join you there in a few moments. I am going over to my own quarters to fetch something which will, I think, interest you."
Berwick held open the door, waited till the echo of her footsteps had gone, then quickly lighted a pipe, and walking across the dining-room pushed open one of the sections of the high oriel window. Then he made his way round, almost stealthily, to the stretch of lawn on which opened the French windows of the two drawing-rooms. The curtains were not drawn: McGregor, and his satellite, the village lad who was being transformed into a footman, had certainly grown careless,—and yet it would have been a pity to shut out the moon, and it was not at all cold.
Pacing up and down, Berwick, every few moments, saw, set as in a frame, the whole interior of the Blue drawing-room, forming a background to Barbara Rebell. Indeed, she was quite near the window, sitting—an hour ago the fact would have shocked him—at Madame Sampiero's own writing-table, at that exquisite Louis XV. escritoire which had been discovered by Lord Bosworth in a Provençal château, and given by him, now many a long year ago, to the mistress of Chancton Priory.
Barbara had lighted the two green candles which her unseen watcher could remember as having been there so long that their colour had almost faded. She was bending over the notepaper, her slight supple figure thrown forward in a curiously graceful attitude. Again and again Berwick, walking and smoking outside, stopped and looked critically at the little scene. It is seldom that a man can so look consideringly at a woman, save perhaps at a place of public amusement, or in a church.
At last, slightly ashamed of himself, he turned round for the last time, and plunged into the moonlit darkness lying the other side of the house. In his room was a graceful sketch of Mrs. Richard Rebell, Barbara's lovely mother. He felt certain that the daughter would greatly value it. How surely his instinct had guided him he himself hardly knew. Barbara had loved her mother passionately, and after this evening she never glanced at the early presentment of that same beloved mother without a kind thought for the giver of it.
A curious hour followed: spent by Berwick and Mrs. Rebell one on each side of Madame Sampiero's couch—Barbara listening, quite silently, while Berwick, never seen to more advantage than when exerting himself to please and interest the stricken mistress of Chancton Priory, told news of that absorbing world of high politics which to Madame Sampiero had long been the only one which counted, and in which much of her past life had been spent.
So listening, Barbara felt herself pitifully ignorant. Pedro Rebell, proud as he had been of his British name and ancestry, made no attempt to keep in touch with England. True, certain names, mentioned so familiarly before her, were remembered as having been spoken by her father, but this evening, seeing how much this question—this mysterious question of the Ins and the Outs—meant to Madame Sampiero, Barbara made up her mind, rather light-heartedly considering the magnitude of the task, to lose no time in mastering the political problems of her country.
It must be admitted that Berwick's eager out-pouring—though it included what one of his listeners knew was a masterly forecast of the fate he hoped was about to overwhelm the Government which had already earnedthe nickname of "The Long Parliament"—did not add much to Mrs. Rebell's knowledge of contemporary statecraft. Still, her attention never flagged, and the speaker, noting her absorption, thought he had never had so agreeable an audience, or one which showed more whole-heartedly its sympathy with Her Majesty's Opposition.
The entrance of Doctor McKirdy into the room proved a harsh interruption.
"Be off!" he cried unceremoniously. "Madam won't be having a glint of sleep this night!" and then as Madame Sampiero spoke, her speech sadly involved, "Ay, ay, I've no doubt that all this company and talking has made ye feel more alive, but we don't want you to be feeling dead to-morrow, Madam—eh, what? That wouldn't matter? It would indeed matter, to those who had your death on their consciences!"
But already Berwick and Mrs. Rebell were in the corridor. "I hope I have not tired her?" he said ruefully.
"No—no, indeed! You heard what she said? You made her feel alive—no wonder she looks forward to your coming! Oh! I hope you will be here often."
Berwick looked at her oddly, almost doubtfully, for a moment. "I expect to be here a good deal this winter," he said slowly.
But if he thought that the evening, so well begun, was to be concluded in the Blue drawing-room downstairs, he was disappointed. Barbara turned and made him an old-fashioned curtsey—such an obeisance as French and Italian girls are taught to make to those of rank, and to the aged,—and then in a moment she was gone, up the winding staircase, leaving Berwick strangely subjugated and charmed.
He was turning slowly when there came the sound of shuffling feet. "Madam insists on your coming back just for a moment. Now don't go exciting of her or she'll never live to see you occupying that chair of little ease."
"What chair?" asked Berwick lazily: he was fond of McKirdy with an old fondness dating from his earliest childhood.
"The high seat, the gallows of fifty cubits set apart for the Prime Minister of this great country!"
"I'm afraid Madam will have to wait a long time before she sees me there!"
"Well, man, give her at least the chance of living to see that glorious day!"
But Madame Sampiero had, as it turned out, very little to say, and nothing of an exciting nature.
"Do I think Arabella will like her?" Berwick was rather taken aback and puzzled. He had not thought of his sister and Mrs. Rebell in conjunction, and the idea was not a particularly agreeable one. "Well, yes, why shouldn't she? They are absolutely unlike," a not unkindly smile came over his face. He added, "I am sure my uncle will be charmed with her," then bent forward to catch the faltering utterance, "Yes, I know Richard Rebell was a friend of his—but do I understand that you want Arabella to ask her to Fletchings?" There was a rather long pause—"Yes, yes, Arabella shall certainly call on Mrs. Rebell, and at once."
One fact necessarily dominated Berwick's relations with, and attitude towards, women. That he often forgot this fact, and would remain for long periods of time quite unaware that it lay in wait for him to catch him tripping, was certain. But even so, any little matter, such as a moment of sudden instinctivesympathy with some pretty creature standing on the threshold of life, was apt to bring back the knowledge, to make the Fact the one thing to be remembered.
Again, it was never forgotten—not for a moment—by the human being who had Berwick's interest most at heart, and who had played from his earliest boyhood a preponderant part in his life. Arabella Berwick always remembered that her brother's dead wife, behaving on this unique occasion as a man might have done, and as men have often done, had so left her vast fortune that even the life interest must pass away from him, and that irrevocably, in the event of his making a second marriage.
At the time of his wife's death, James Berwick had been annoyed—keenly so—by the comment this clause in her will had provoked—far more so indeed than by the clause itself. His brief experience of married life had not been such as to make him at all desirous of repeating the experiment; and what he saw of marriage about him did not incline him to envy the lot of the average married man. Accordingly, the condition of bachelorhood attaching to his present wealth pressed very lightly on him. It was, however, always present to Miss Berwick, and when her brother was staying at Fletchings—even more, when she was acting, as she sometimes did, as hostess to his friends—attractive girls were never included in the house party, and the agreeable, unattached widow, who has become a social institution, was rigorously avoided by her.
Unless the attraction is so strong as to cause him to overleap each of the many barriers erected by our rather elaborate civilisation, a man of the world—a man interested supremely in politics, considerably in sport, and in the hundred and one matters which occupy people of wealth and leisure—is generally apt to know,in an intimate social sense, only those women with whom he is brought in contact by his own womenfolk. Berwick went into many worlds to which his sister had no wish to have access, but both before his marriage and since he had become a widower, she had been careful to throw him, as far as lay in her power, with women who could in no way dispute her own position as his trusted counsellor and friend. This was made the more easy because James Berwick in all good faith disliked that feminine type which plays in politics the part of francs-tireurs—he called them by the less agreeable name of "stirabouts." Miss Berwick cultivated on her brother's behalf every type of pretty, amusing, and even clever married woman, but no worldly mother was ever more careful in keeping her daughter out of the way of detrimentals than was Arabella Berwick in avoiding for her brother dangerous proximities of an innocent kind.
Unfortunately Berwick was not always as grateful as he should have been to so kind and far-sighted a sister. He would suddenly take a fancy to the freshest and prettiestdébutante, and for a while, perhaps from June to August, Arabella would tremble. On one occasion she had conveyed some idea of her brother's position to an astute lady who had regarded him as a prospective son-in-law, and when once the mother had thoroughly realised the dreadful truth concerning the tenure of his large income, the young beauty had been spirited away.
Then, again,—and this, it is to be feared, happened more frequently—Berwick would deliberately put himself in the way of some devastating charmer, who, even if technically "safe" from his sister's standpoint, belonged to the type which breeds mischief, and causes those involuntary appearances in the law courts of his country which stand so much in the way of theambitious young statesman. Such ladies, as Miss Berwick well knew, have a disconcerting knack of getting rid of their legal impediment to re-marriage. Berwick had lately had a very narrow escape from such a one. In the sharp discussion between the brother and sister which had followed, he had exclaimed sardonically, "Really, Arabella, what you ought to look out for—I mean for me—is some poor pretty soul with a mad husband safe out of the way. You know lunatics live for ever." And Arabella, though she had smiled reprovingly, had been struck by the carelessly uttered words.
Miss Berwick's attitude to certain disagreeable and sordid facts of human life had been early fixed by herself as one of disdainful aloofness. She did not permit herself to judge those about her, and far preferred not to know of their transgressions. When such knowledge was thrust upon her—as had necessarily been the case with her uncle, Lord Bosworth, and Madame Sampiero—she judged narrowly and hardly the woman, contemptuously and leniently the man.
"Crois-tu donc que l'on peut commander à son cœur?On aime malgré soi, car l'Amour est un hôteQui vient à son caprice, et toujours en vainqueur."
"Crois-tu donc que l'on peut commander à son cœur?On aime malgré soi, car l'Amour est un hôteQui vient à son caprice, et toujours en vainqueur."
E. Augier.
Duringthe ten days which followed that on which Mrs. Boringdon had held a certain conversation with her son, Lucy Kemp gradually became aware of two things. The first, which seemed to blot out and exclude everything else, was that she loved—in the old-fashioned pathetic sense of the abused word—Oliver Boringdon.
Hitherto she had been able to call the deep feeling which knit her to him "friendship," but that kindly hypocrisy would serve no longer: she was now aware what name to call it by. She had known it since the evening she had noticed that his manner had altered, that he had become more reserved, less really at ease. The second thing of which Lucy became aware, during those long dragging empty days, was the fact of her keen unhappiness, and of her determination to conceal it from those about her—especially from the father and mother who, she knew, were so strangely sensitive to all that concerned her.
Major-General and Mrs. Kemp had been settled at Chancton Grange for some years, and the Mutiny hero, the man whose gallant deed had once thrilled England, Mrs. Kemp, and their young daughter, had come to be regarded by the village folk with that kindly contempt which is bred, we are told, by familiarity.
The General's incisive, dry manner was rather resented by those of his neighbours who had hoped to make of him a local tea-party celebrity, and his constructive interest in local politics won him but tepid praise from the villagers, while the fact that Mrs. Kemp's large-minded charity and goodness of heart was tempered by a good deal of shrewd common-sense, did not make her the more loved by those, both gentle and simple, whom she was unwearying in helping in time of trouble.
The husband and wife were, however, rather grudgingly regarded as a model couple. It had soon been noticed that they actually appeared happier together than apart, and, surprising fact, that in the day-to-day life of walking and driving, ay and even of sitting still indoors, they apparently preferred each other's company to that of any of their neighbours!
Why one man succeeds, and another, apparently superior in every respect, fails in winning the prizes, the pleasant places, and the easy paths of life, is a mystery rather to their acquaintances than to their intimate friends—people who, according to the schoolboy's excellent definition, "know all about you, but like you all the same." Now the peculiarity about General Kemp was that he had neither succeeded nor failed, or rather he had been successful only up to a certain point. He had won his V.C. as a subaltern in the Mutiny, and promotion had naturally followed. But after he had attained to field rank, he saw his career broken off abruptly, and that for no shortcomings of his own, for nothing that he could have helped or altered in any way.
It was a prosaic misfortune enough, being simply the relentless knife of economy, wielded by a new and enthusiastic Secretary at War, which cut off at onesweep General Kemp and various of his contemporaries and comrades in arms. The right honourable gentleman, as he explained to an admiring House of Commons, was able to save the difference between the full pay and the retired pay of these officers—a substantial sum to be sure, but still not so much as was afterwards expended by the right honourable gentleman's successors in bringing the establishment of officers up to its proper strength again.
General Kemp was a deeply disappointed man, but he kept his feelings strictly to himself, and only his wife knew what compulsory retirement had meant to him, and, for the matter of that, to herself, for Mrs. Kemp, very early in life, had put all her eggs in Thomas Kemp's basket.
But in one matter there had been no disappointment. The fact that Lucy's childhood had been spent, though not unhappily, far from her parents, seemed to make her doubly dear to them: and then, to their fond eyes and hearts, their child was everything a girl should be. Unlike the girls of whom Mrs. Kemp sometimes heard so much, she showed no desire to leave her father and mother—no wish even to enjoy the gaieties which fell to the lot of her contemporaries who lived amid livelier scenes than those afforded by a remote Sussex village, and this though she was as fond of dancing and of play as other young creatures of her age.
Until a year ago,—nay, till six months back,—Mrs. Kemp would have disbelieved an angel, had so august a visitant foretold that there would soon arise, and that through no fault of hers or of the girl's, a cloud between her daughter, her darling Lucy, and herself; and yet this thing, this incredible thing, had come to pass.
The worst the mother had feared, and she had sometimes feared it greatly, was that her only daughter,following in this her own example, would marry to India, or, worse still, to some far-away colony. But, even so, Mrs. Kemp would have made the sacrifice, especially if Lucy's lover had in any way recalled the Tom Kemp of thirty years before.
However, as so generally happens, the danger the mother had dreaded passed by harmlessly: Lucy received and rejected the offer of a soldier, the son of one of the General's oldest friends; and her girlish heart had turned to something so utterly different, so entirely unexpected, that neither Mrs. Kemp nor Lucy's father had known how to deal with the situation which had come upon them with a suddenness which had amazed them both.
In spite of her look of unformed youth and gravely young manner, Lucy Kemp was in no sense a child. There are surely many women who at some stage of their life, paraphrasing the famous phrase, might well exclaim, "I think, therefore I am—a woman." But such a test would convict many women of eternal childhood.
Lucy, during the last year, had thought much—too much, perhaps, for her comfort. She had early made up her mind as to what she did not wish to do with her life. In no circumstances would she become the wife of Captain Laxton, but she had found it difficult to convince him of her resolution.
So it was that now, during those dreary days when the flow of constant communication between Oliver Boringdon and the Grange had ceased, as if by a stroke of malignant magic, poor Lucy had had more than time to examine her mind and heart, and to feel a dreadful terror lest what she found there should also be discovered by those about her, and especially by Oliver himself.
Mrs. Kemp was not well—so rare an occurrence as to alter all the usual habits of the Grange. The General wandered disconsolately about the garden, and through the lower rooms, reading, smoking, and gardening, but it always ended in his going up to his wife's room. Lucy, standing apart, was not too busy with her thoughts to realise, more than she had ever done before, the vitality, the compelling bondage, of such an attachment as that between her quiet, rather silent, father and her impulsive affectionate mother. Watching those two with a new, and an almost painful, interest, the girl told herself that, for a year of such happy bondage between herself and Oliver Boringdon, she would willingly give the rest of her life in exchange.
Looking back, especially on the last few months, Lucy was able to recall many moments, nay hours, when Oliver had undoubtedly regarded her as being in a very special sense his friend. Bending over her work, sitting silent by her mother's bedside, Lucy would suddenly remember, with a fluttering of the heart, certain kindly looks, certain frankly uttered confidences—and, remembering these things, she would regain some of the self-respect which sometimes seemed to have slipped away from her in a night. To Lucy Kemp the thought of seeking before being sought was profoundly repugnant, and she was deeply ashamed of the feeling which possessed her, and which alone seemed real in her daily life.
There had been no love-making on Oliver's part—no, indeed!—but the very phrase has acquired a vulgar significance. The girl thought she knew every way of love, and she shrank from being "made love to." Captain Laxton's eager desire to anticipate her every trifling wish, his awkward and most unprovoked compliments, the haunting of her when she would so muchrather have been alone—ah! no, Oliver could never behave like that, in so absurd, so undignified a manner, to any woman. If Captain Laxton was a typical lover, then Lucy Kemp felt sure that Boringdon was incapable of being, in that sense, in love, and she thought all the better of him for it.
Nay, more,—the belief that Oliver was in this so different from other, more commonplace, men, brought infinite comfort. Lucy, compelled to admit that he had at no time shown any wish to make love to her, brought herself to think it possible that Boringdon was in very truth incapable of that peculiar jealous passionate feeling of which the girl now knew herself to be as much possessed as was Captain Laxton himself—that strange state of feeling so constantly described in those novels which she and her mother read, and of which her soldier lover, when in her company, seemed the living embodiment.
During the past ten days, Lucy had only twice seen Oliver, and this in village life must mean deliberate avoidance. So feeling, pride, and instinctive modesty, had kept her away from the Cottage, and Mrs. Boringdon—this was surely strange—had made no effort to see her. Once, in a by-way of Chancton, Lucy had met Oliver face to face,—he had stopped her, inquired eagerly concerning Mrs. Kemp, and seemed inclined, more than she had done at the moment, to talk in the old way, to linger—then with an odd, almost rude abruptness, he had turned and left her, and tears, of which she had been bitterly, agonisingly ashamed, had rushed into poor Lucy's brown eyes.
Their other meeting—one which was infinitely pleasanter to look back upon—had been at the Grange. Boringdon had come with a note from his mother to Mrs. Kemp; Lucy had taken it from him at the door,and unasked he had followed the girl through the hall out into the old-fashioned garden. There, after a word said by her as to the surprising result of an important by-election,—since she had known him Lucy had become very much of a politician,—Oliver had suddenly taken from his pocket a letter which concerned him nearly, and acting as if on an irresistible impulse, he had begged her to read it.
The letter was from a man who had been one of his principal constituents and supporters during his brief period of Parliamentary glory, and contained private information concerning the probable resignation of the member who had been Boringdon's successful rival at the last election—it of course amounted to an invitation to stand again.
For a moment standing, out there in the garden, Time seemed to have been put back: Oliver and she were talking in the old way—indeed, he was just telling her exactly what he meant to write in answer to this all-important letter, when, to Lucy's discomfiture and deep chagrin, General Kemp had suddenly appeared in the garden porch of the Grange and had put a quick sharp end to the discussion. "Your mother wants you, Lucy—will you please go up to her at once?" and the girl had obeyed without saying good-bye, for she felt sure—or perhaps, had hoped to ensure—that Boringdon would wait till she came down again. But alas! when she ran down, a few minutes later, the young man was gone, and her father answered her involuntary look of deep disappointment with one that made her hang her head and blush! The child in Lucy asked itself pitifully how father could have been so unkind.
General Kemp had indeed been angry—nay, more than angry. The showing of a letter by a man to awoman is an action which to an onlooker has about it something peculiarly significant and intimate. Standing just within the threshold of his house, seeing the two figures standing on the path close to one another, and so absorbed in what they were saying that some moments elapsed before they looked up and became aware of his presence, the father realised, more than he had done before, Lucy's odd relation to the young man. "What the devil"—so General Kemp asked himself with rising anger—"what the devil did Boringdon mean by all that sort of thing?"
"Il faut qu'une porte soît ouverte ou fermée!" The wise French saying which provided de Musset with a title for one of his most poignant tragi-comedies, was probably unknown to General Kemp, but it exactly expressed his feeling. The upright soldier had no liking for half-open doors—for ambiguous sentimental relations.
"I can't think what the man was thinking of—taking a letter out of his pocket, and showing it to her for all the world as if she were his wife! I wish, Mary, you'd say a word to Lucy."
"What word would you have me say, Tom?" Mrs. Kemp raised herself painfully in bed. She still felt in all her bones the violent chill she had caught, and the being compelled to lie aside had made her, what she so seldom was, really depressed. On this unfortunate afternoon she had followed with intuitive knowledge every act of the little drama enacted downstairs: she had heard the General's sharply uttered command; noted Lucy's breathless eager longing to be down again; and then she had heard the front door open and shut; and she had listened, almost as disappointedly as Lucy might have done, to Boringdon's firm stepshurrying up the road past her windows. If only she had not caught this stupid cold, all this might have been prevented! To-morrow she must really persuade the doctor to let her come down again.
"Surely, Mary, you don't need to be told what to say to the child! A mother should always know what to do and what to say in such a case. If we had a son and I thought him behaving badly to some girl, I should be at no loss to tell him what I thought of his conduct,—in fact, I should think it my duty as his father to do so." The General came and stood by his wife's bed. He glowered down at her with frowning, unhappy eyes.
"But that would be so different, Tom! I should be quite willing to speak to Lucy if I thought she were behaving badly—if she were to flirt, for instance, as I have seen horrid girls do! But this, you see, is so different—the poor child is doing nothing wrong: it is we who have been wrong to allow it to come to this."
The General walked up and down the room. Then he suddenly turned and spoke, "Well, I think something ought to be done. Get the matter settled one way or the other. I never heard of such a state of things! Lucy looks very far from well. Such a case never came my way before."
"Oh! Tom, is that quite true?"
"Certainly it is!"—he turned and faced her,—"quite true. Of course I've known men behave badly to women, very badly indeed, who hasn't? and women to men too, for the matter of that. But I've never come across such an odd fellow as Boringdon. Why, he scowled at me just now,—upon my word you might have thought I was the stranger and he her father! but I took the opportunity of being very short with him—very short indeed!" Then, as Mrs. Kemp sighed along involuntary sigh, "No, Mary, in this matter, you must allow me to have my own way. I don't approve of that sort of conduct. It's always so with widows' sons—there are certain things only a man can knock into 'em! I wish I'd had that young fellow in the regiment for a bit. It would have done him a great deal more good than the House of Commons seems to have done. And then again I can't at all see what Lucy sees in him. He's such a dull dog! Now Laxton—I could understand any girl losing her heart to Laxton!" He walked to the window. "There's McKirdy coming in. I'll go down and have a talk with him. Meanwhile, you think over all I've been saying, Mary."
Poor Mrs. Kemp! as if she ever thought nowadays, in a serious sense, of anything else! But she was inclined, in her heart of hearts, to share Lucy's view of Boringdon's nature. Perhaps he was one of those men—she had known a few such—who are incapable of violent, determining feeling. If that were so, might not his evident liking for, and trust in, Lucy, develop into something quite sufficiently like love amply to satisfy the girl?
And Boringdon? Boringdon also was far from happy and satisfied during those days which had followed on his talk with his mother. The result of the conversation had been to make him deliberately avoid Lucy Kemp. But at once he had become aware that he missed the girl—missed, above all, the power of turning to her for sympathy, and even to a certain extent for counsel, more than he would have thought possible. He felt suddenly awakened to a danger he would rather not have seen,—why, oh! why, had not his mother left well alone? The state of things which had existed all that summer had exactly suited him. Looking back, Oliver felt sure that Lucy had not misunderstood the measureof affection and liking which he was willing, nay, eager, to bestow on her.
As the days went by, the young man wondered uneasily why his mother had suddenly left off asking the girl to lunch and to tea, as she had done, at one time, almost daily. He knew that Mrs. Boringdon rarely acted without a definite motive. Often her eyes would rest on his moody face with a questioning look. He longed to know why Lucy never came to the Cottage, but he was unwilling to give his mother the satisfaction of hearing him make such an inquiry. Then he reminded himself that, after all, Mrs. Kemp was really ill: the whole village watched with interest the daily visit to the Grange of the Halnakeham doctor. Perhaps Lucy found it difficult to leave home just now.
Even concerning his village worries—those connected with his work as land-agent to the Chancton estate—Boringdon had got into the way of turning to Lucy Kemp for comfort, and so he felt cut off from the only person to whom he could talk freely. Then had come that short meeting in the lane, and something timid, embarrassed in Lucy's manner had suddenly made him afraid, had put him on his guard—but afterwards he had been bitterly ashamed of the way in which he had behaved in leaving her so abruptly.
His heart grew very tender to her, and, had he not known that his mother was watching him, he would almost certainly have "made it up"—have given way—and nature would have done the rest. But Oliver was aware that any sign of weakness on his part would be a triumph for Mrs. Boringdon—a proof that she had known how to shepherd him into a suitable engagement with a well-dowered girl: and so he had held out, knowing secretly that it only rested with him to restore his old relation with Lucy to its former footing.
At last, it had been Mrs. Boringdon who had asked him, in her most innocent and conventional voice, to take a note from her to Mrs. Kemp, and the accident that it had been Lucy who had opened the front door had been enough to shake his resolution, and to break down the barrier which he had put up between himself and her. At the time he had been carrying the letter concerning his old constituency about with him for two days, and the temptation to tell Lucy all about it proved too strong. Hence he had followed her through into the quiet fragrant garden which held for him so many pleasant associations of interesting, intimate talk with both the mother and the daughter.
Then, almost at once, had come the sharp, he told himself resentfully the utterly unwarrantable, interruption—more, there had been no mistaking General Kemp's manner—that of the man who cries "hands off!" from some cherished possession. Boringdon's guilty conscience—it was indeed hard that his conscience should feel guilty, for he was not aware of having done anything of which he should be ashamed—Boringdon's guilty conscience at once suggested the terrible thought that General Kemp doubtless regarded him as a fortune-hunter. When the front door of the Grange had closed on him he felt as if he could never come there again, and as if one of the pleasantest pages of his life had suddenly closed.
He determined to say nothing of the pregnant, even if almost wordless, little scene to his mother, and it was with a nervous dread of questions and cross questions that he entered the drawing-room of the Cottage with words concerning a very different person from Lucy Kemp on his lips. "Don't you think," he asked, "that the time has come when we ought to do something about Mrs. Rebell? She has been here, itseems, at least a week, and several people have already called on her."
Mrs. Boringdon looked at her son with some surprise, and he saw with satisfaction that his little ruse had been successful; the news he brought had made her forget, for the moment, the Grange and Lucy Kemp.
"Several people?" she repeated, "I think, my dear boy, you must be mistaken. No oneevercalls at Chancton Priory. How could anyone—unless you mean Miss Vipen and the Rectory," she smiled slightingly—"have even been made aware of this Mrs. Rebell's arrival?"
"And yet there's no doubt about it," he said irritably, "I had the list from McKirdy, who seemed to take these calls as a personal compliment to himself! Miss Berwick drove over two or three days ago, and so did the Duchess of Appleby and Kendal." He waited a moment, feeling rather ashamed. He had known how to rouse his mother to considerable interest and excitement.
"The Duchess?" she echoed incredulously.—Most country districts in England have a duchess, and this district was no exception to the rule,—"what an extraordinary thing! I should have called on Mrs. Rebell, Grace's friend, before now, but it seemed so strange that she was not in church. It made me fear"—Mrs. Boringdon looked slightly shocked and genuinely grieved—"that she was going to follow the example of all the other people connected with the Priory."
"I don't know why you should say that, mother. It is quite impossible for Madame Sampiero to go to church, even if she wished to do so. As for McKirdy, I suppose he is a Presbyterian, but the Priory servants all go, don't they?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Boringdon, reluctantly, "the servants certainly do go,—that is, the lower servants. Noone has ever seen the housekeeper at church, and, of course the state of things here must grieve Mr. Sampson very much."
Oliver smiled grimly. "If that is really so, Sampson doesn't know when he's well off. The sight of Mrs. Turke, resplendent in a new gown each Sunday, would certainly distract the congregation from his dull sermon!" But Mrs. Boringdon bent her head gravely, as if refusing to discuss so unsavoury and painful a subject.
"Have you seen her?" she asked with some natural curiosity. She added hastily, "I mean, of course, Mrs. Rebell."
"No," he said, "but I expect to do so in a few minutes. I saw McKirdy in the village just now, and profiting by his absence, I'm going to try and establish some kind of communication between Madame Sampiero and myself. There's a most urgent matter which ought to be settled at once, and McKirdy was so disagreeable the last time we met that I do not wish to bring him into it if I can possibly avoid it."
The Chancton estate, in addition to two villages, comprised many large farms stretching out on the fringe of the downs, and no day went by without the transaction by Boringdon of much complicated and tiresome business. In this, however, there would naturally have been much to interest such a man as himself, especially as he and Berwick had theories about agricultural problems and were eager to try experiments—in fact, Berwick was already doing so very successfully on his Sussex estate.
But for Boringdon, the new work to which he had set his hand had soon been poisoned, owing to the peculiar conditions under which he was compelled todo it. His immediate predecessor had been Doctor McKirdy, whose duties as medical attendant to Madame Sampiero had comprised for a while that of being her vice-regent as regarded estate matters. That arrangement had been anything but a success, hence the appointment, through Lord Bosworth's, or rather through James Berwick's, influence, of Oliver Boringdon. The change had been made the more easy because McKirdy, with an obstinacy worthy of a better cause, had always refused to accept any payment for this extra labour.
At first, the old Scotchman had been glad to give up the work he knew himself to have performed inadequately. Then, as time went on, he began to interfere, and Boringdon discovered, with anger and astonishment, that many matters were being gradually referred, both by the greater and the lesser tenants, directly to Madame Sampiero, or rather to the man who was still regarded, and with reason, as her vice-regent.
The doctor also insisted on being the sole means of communication between his patient and Boringdon. This was after he had found them speaking together,—or rather Boringdon speaking and Madame Sampiero listening,—concerning some public matter quite unconnected with Chancton. From that moment, Alexander McKirdy had set his very considerable wits to work against the younger man. He had informed him with sharp decision that his weekly audiences with his employer must cease: pointing out that almost everything that must be referred to her could be so done through him. Boringdon, for a while, had felt content that this should be so—he had always had a curious fear and repugnance of the still stiff figure, which seemed to be at once so physically dead and so mentally alive.
Then had come the gradual awakening, the realisation of his folly in consenting to an arrangement which destroyed his authority with those with whom he was brought into daily contact. Even the humblest cottager had soon discovered that the doctor, or "Kirdy," as he was unceremoniously styled amongst themselves, was once more the real over-lord of Chancton, and Boringdon found himself reduced to the disagreeablerôleof rent collector, his decisions concerning any important matter being constantly appealed from, and revoked by, the joint authority of Madame Sampiero and Doctor McKirdy.
The situation soon became almost intolerable to the high-spirited and sensitive young man: if it had not been for his mother, and for the fact that the very generous income allotted to him for the little he now did was of the utmost importance to her, he would ere this have resigned the land agency.
His pride prevented any mention of the odious position in which he found himself to Berwick, the more so that in theory he had all the power—it was to him, for instance, that Madame Sampiero's lawyers wrote when anything had to be settled or done. McKirdy also always allowed him to carry on any negotiations with neighbouring landowners. Boringdon had a free hand as regarded the keepers and the shooting—indeed, it was only with regard to the sporting amenities of the estate that he was really in the position of master rather than servant.
To his mother he always made light of his troubles, though he was well aware that he had her ardent sympathy, which took the, to him, disagreeable form of slight discourtesies to Doctor McKirdy—discourtesies which were returned with full interest by the old Scotchman. To Lucy and to Lucy's mother he hadbeen more frank, and all she knew had not contributed to make Lucy feel kindly to Doctor McKirdy, though he was quite unconscious of how he was regarded by her.
To-day, matters had come, so felt Boringdon, to a head. On his way from the Cottage to the Grange, he had stopped for a moment at the estate office, and there had engaged in a sharp discussion with one of the more important Chancton farmers concerning a proposed remittance of rent. The man had brought his Michaelmas rent in notes and gold, the sum considerably short, according to Boringdon, of what should have been paid. The land-agent had refused to accept the money, and the farmer, naturally enough, had declared it to be his intention to make an appeal to Madame Sampiero through Doctor McKirdy.
It had been partly to turn his mind from the odious memory of this conversation that the young man had not been able to resist the temptation of following Lucy through into the garden with which he had so many pleasant memories, and once there, of showing her the letter which seemed to point to an ultimate escape from Chancton, and all that Chancton now represented of annoyance and humiliation.
Leaving the Grange, he had passed Doctor McKirdy, and had made up his mind to try and see Madame Sampiero within the next few hours. If it came to the point, he believed he could conquer, only, however, by calling to his aid the Bosworth faction, but the thought of an appeal to Berwick was still, nay, more than ever, disagreeable. At the same time this was a test case. He was sorry that his mother had not called on Mrs. Rebell, for he was dimly aware that the trifling lack of courtesy would give McKirdy a slight advantage, but during the last few days he had hadother things to think of than his sister's unfortunate protégée, in whom, however, he unwillingly recognised another adherent to the McKirdy faction.
And yet the first meeting of Boringdon and Barbara Rebell fell out in such wise that it led to a curiously sudden intimacy, bred of something between pity and indignation on her side and gratitude on his.