CHAPTER XII.BETRAYAL.
Lady Bell could no more remain quiet under the knowledge she had acquired than she could help to commit the contemplated deed.
She was wildly at a loss how to proceed, but whatever plans crossed her mind, the idea never entered it to interfere by remonstrating with Squire Trevor. She knew by experience how bitterly hard it would be to turn him from any project. She seemed to know, as well, of how little moment she was to him, so that her opinion would not weigh a feather’s weight in the scale with regard to what he should do or leave undone; nay, that any overture on her part to defend Mr. Sundon, would probably only accelerate his fate.
Lady Bell had very hazy notions of the prerogatives and powers of the Sheriff, who was not to arrive till the last moment, and of the Mayor, whose house, among others, she had invaded. There was the clergyman, another authority on the side of order and humanity, but she had already ascertained that he was a canon of the nearest cathedral, and was then in residence.
She was in dreadful uncertainty as to her course of action, but she held one impression which was not uncertain. She had the persuasion rooted in her from the first, that if she lodged information of the intended assault on Mr. Sundon, and so prevented the wicked stratagem and endangered the tories’ success in the election, she dared never return to Squire Trevor. Her own guilty face would bear evidence against her; she would be condemned to flee for her life before the brutal wrath of her husband.
The alternative would not have been so awful if she had possessed the faintest shadow of a city of refuge. But the circumstances were very much the same as when her uncle, Mr. Godwin, had taunted her with her dependence, she had no place to turn to, no friend to espouse her cause or to afford her shelter.
She would never go back to her uncle Godwin and her aunt Die in the lurid light of their wasted fortunes.
She would die rather than have recourse to Mrs. Walsh and Sally, even if that had been to any purpose so far as escaping from the Squire was concerned. On the contrary, they would be certain to hand her over immediately to justice and her husband, with no farther plea for mercy than might be contained in the extorted pledge, that in place of killing her outright and being hung for it, as Earl Ferrars had killed his servant and been hung in the last generation, he should be contented with sentencing her to perpetual imprisonment, with his kinswomen to be her jailers.
However, there was a difference between Lady Bell’s past and present trouble. When Squire Trevor had paid her his detested addresses, and it was not in her power to reject them with contumely, there had only been herself to think of, her single interest to consider, and that had not been enough to dissolve the numbing spell of conventionality.
Now her invention was quickened into the liveliest exercise by the urgent necessity of others besides herself. The Sundons—wife and husband—and not Lady Bell alone, were at stake; and if she aided them, there was no choice of evils left her, no deadly dulness of dutiful respectability as opposed to mad defiance and destitution. In her youthful simplicity she honestly believed that she must flee for her life from the aroused fury of Squire Trevor. If there existed a purpose of sacrificing Mr. Sundon, ten times more would she be sacrificed.
When the thought occurred to her that she might write to warn the Sundons, she rejected it as being a step unworthy of the situation, for she was wound up to a tragic pitch. The letter might miscarry; if it were anonymous it had a great chance of being passed over; if it had the name and style of the writer the danger was as great, while the success was less certain than if the communication were made in a personal interview.
Lady Bell seemed driven to a decisive step, the shortness of the time pricking her on. It was on a Sunday evening that the plot of disabling Mr. Sundon was loosely framed at Mr. Trevor’s lodgings, and the mail from London came in on Tuesday.
On Monday morning Lady Bell took the opportunity of a messenger’s going to Trevor Court to send her maid on the pad behind him, to do an errand for her mistress.
Lady Bell then told the woman of the lodging that her head ached, which was true enough, and that she should not come down to Mr. Trevor’s mid-day dinner. But in place of lying down on her bed, as she was understood to do, she put on her least conspicuous walking dress, which happened, oddly, to be a scarlet cloth riding-habit. But this military costume was largely worn by squires’ and clergymen’s wives and daughters of the period; a dozen ladies, similarly attired, might be looked for doing their shopping and showing themselves in Peasmarsh, under the pressure of the brisk hospitalities of the election weeks.
To the scarlet riding-habit Lady Bell added a hat with a thick veil appended to it, and a neckcloth which, in order to protect the under half of the face, was then in use by ladies as well as by gentlemen.
The girl, possessed by one idea, had, girl-like, a certain exultation in the swift ingenuity and dramatic correctness of her arrangements.
Thus dressed for the occasion, she stole out of the house, and when she was no longer within sight of the windows, she took a note ready written from her pocket, and hired a boy to carry it back to the landlady. In this note Lady Bell Trevor stated that she had gone out to take the air for her bad headache, when she found that she must pay a visit to a friend whom she had discovered in Peasmarsh, and who might detain her till late.
This note she trusted would arrive after her husband was deeply engaged for the afternoon, and would serve to satisfy the landlady and prevent her raising any alarm, should she miss Lady Bell. There was little danger to be feared from Squire Trevor after the afternoon was well spent, for politics were thirsty work.
Lady Bell had achieved the first part of her slender programme without misadventure. She turned her steps to the High Street, in which was the Sundons’ lodgings, and reached them without being recognised.
She entered without much difficulty, and still unrecognised, in the perpetuallevéeheld inside and overflowing to the door. When she inquired of a busy maid-servant if she could speak with Madam Sundon, she was pretty sure of a gracious answer, for Madam Sundon could not afford to dismiss any petitioner unheard during these days.
But the house was so full, and the rooms so much occupied, that Lady Bell was detained for a time in the passage, and then told that she must be taken to wait in Madam Sundon’s bedroom, till madam could spare a moment.
In making her way through the throng, Lady Bell found much the same noisy flushed supporters whom she had left behind. One man was vociferating fierce abuse; but not of Sundon—of Trevor. “The ruffianly old tyrant,” the orator called her husband, and she heard the sentence with a thrill of antagonism which she had never expected to feel.
Just so, no doubt, she had railed at her husband in set phrase, but she seemed first to realise vividly, at this moment, that he was her husband; his credit was her credit, and with him, as a result beyond recall, whatever her personal feelings, she must rise or fall.
Mrs. Sundon’s room was in disorder, like the rest of the house, but it had, as it appeared to Lady Bell’s wide-open eyes, many pleasant tokens. There were strewn about little knick-knacks of a toilet-service, hand mirrors in ivory, silver pouncet boxes, either for a man’s or a woman’s use, which Lady Bell had not cast eyes on since the sale of Lady Lucie Penruddock’s effects.
A gentleman’s set of cobweb lace ruffles and frills—of which it was fine ladies’ work, particularly when it was a work of love, to do the exquisite mending—lay, with the needle and thread hanging from the rent, and the gold thimble in an open workbox.
A gentleman’s miniature, in which the powdered hair was represented in a queue, tied with a blue riband—the last suiting the effeminate fairness of the complexion, was half drawn from its case. Lady Bell saw at a glance that it was a likeness of Mr. Sundon, which had the place of honour on the table.
She had not done glancing at these details, and starting nervously at every movement, when Mrs. Sundon, in the most charming of white morning gowns and close white caps, like a baby’s cap, came into the room. She stopped short in amazement when she saw who was her visitor.
Mrs. Sundon had supposed that it was some humble solicitor of her patronage, some enterprising daughter of a townsman, catching at a straw’s pretence to enable her to boast that she had seen and spoken privately with the wife of the future member.
“Lady Bell Trevor,” exclaimed Mrs. Sundon; “to what have I the honour”—and then her courtesy and her compassionate liking for the young girl came in full force to qualify the stateliness of the address. “Pray be seated, Lady Bell, I am happy to see you—but have you walked through the streets to-day—walked alone? My dear Lady Bell, excuse me, but I think I am a little older than you, and have seen rather more of the world. Squire Trevor must be extraordinary careless of the charge he has undertaken,” said Mrs. Sundon, in an unmistakable accent of frank disapprobation. “I am sure I am a great deal better able to look after myself than you are, but my husband would not suffer me to step across the door-step alone, in an electioneering town.”
“Pardon me, Mrs. Sundon,” objected Lady Bell shyly, “Mr. Trevor does not know that I am here, or abroad at all.”
“What! you have ventured out without his knowledge?” questioned Mrs. Sundon, still with large-hearted openness, and an integrity equal to her generosity. “But that’s not right, Lady Bell, indeed I must tell you. You are very young, and I am young, too, but I know this much, that it is very hazardous, and treading on unsafe ground, for you to steal a march on your husband, whatever he may be—I mean, however he may provoke you. The younger and more unfriended you are, and the more ill-matched you are—forgive me again—but one sees that written on your face—you ought to be more careful not to give your husband ground of offence, or the bad world—I am frighted it is bad and cruel—cause to talk.”
“At least you ought not to blame me, Mrs. Sundon,” said Lady Bell, turning away her head to hide the tears of mortification running down her cheeks, “for I came to serve you and yours.”
“You came to serve me, poor little angel?” protested Mrs. Sundon, speaking with as indescribable a softness now as she had spoken severely in her youthful righteousness a moment before, and hovering round Lady Bell, attracted by her with the strong, tender attraction which these young women had for each other. “What good deed did you think to do me? I know it was good, for you have an artless, gracious face.”
“It was to bid you to have a care of Mr. Sundon,” Lady Bell hurried to deliver her warning, “and to impress upon him to be mindful, and not venture about the town alone, as you have chid me for doing. Believe me, madam, there is greater risk for a gentleman who has many enemies in the place than for a foolish creature—not an angel—with regard to whom you have spoken truly when you called her unfriended.”
So soon as Mrs. Sundon guessed who was threatened, her whole bearing changed.
Mrs. Sundon was no longer occupied with Lady Bell. An infinitely nearer and dearer interest engrossed the listener; she never rested till she had drawn the particulars from Lady Bell, and then she declared, with paling cheeks and widening eyes, “Gregory Sundon must hear this; it warrants me in interrupting him, however engaged. What might have been the consequences, if this wicked plot had not been discovered in time? I owe you an everlasting debt of gratitude, Lady Bell, and so does he. Wait till I come back.”
But, after Mrs. Sundon had run to the door, she turned round, as if, in the middle of her alarm on her husband’s account, she had found room for another’s strait, and pledged herself solemnly, “You shall be protected, Lady Bell; your noble amends for the inhuman project will not be let rebound on your head,”—and was gone.
The pledge was of no avail; the moment that Lady Bell was alone again, the shame of her position, which had struck her while she was making her way through Squire Sundon’s people, returned to her with greater force than ever. A horror of what she had done seized upon her, and rendered her incapable of any other consideration.
What! remain and encounter her husband’s opponent, in order to denounce her husband to him, perhaps be taken before the Mayor, and compelled to repeat her words publicly, have the officers of justice sent, on her information, against Mr. Trevor and his associates, and be regarded with loathing as a traitor in their camp, as well as pursued by their vengeance to her dying day!
No! she could not bear that. She had said enough to put Mr. Sundon and his wife on their guard; she had meant, in a vague way, to appeal to Mrs. Sundon for advice and assistance—she was so ignorant that she did not know that their bestowal might lead the bestower into a serious difficulty—in making her escape farther from Squire Trevor. But every other trouble was merged in her present recoil from an interview with Mr. Sundon. This imminent danger seemed to involve greater and sorer evils than that of a desperate solitary flight.
With her head in a whirl, at the height of her panic, Lady Bell did not wait a moment after Mrs. Sundon had quitted her. Lady Bell went out as she had come in, through the swarming concourse, undetected.