The old man sat looking at Mary in silence for some moments; not a great space of time, perhaps, as marked by the shadow on the dial behind them, but to Mary that gaze was unpleasantly prolonged. He looked at her as if he could read every pulsation in every fibre of her brain, and knew exactly what it meant.
'Who are you?' he asked, at last.
'My name is Mary Haselden.'
'Haselden,' he repeated musingly, 'I have heard that name before.'
And then he resumed his former attitude, his chin resting on the handle of his crutch-stick, his eyes bent upon the gravel path, their unholy brightness hidden under the penthouse brows.
'Haselden,' he murmured, and repeated the name over and over again, slowly, dreamily, with a troubled tone, like some one trying to work out a difficult problem. 'Haselden—when? where?'
And then with a profound sigh he muttered, 'Harmless, quite harmless. You may trust him anywhere. Memory a blank, a blank, a blank, my lord!'
His head sank lower upon his breast, and again he sighed, the sigh of a spirit in torment, Mary thought. Her vivid imagination was already interested, her quick sympathies were awakened.
She looked at him wonderingly, compassionately. So old, so infirm, and with a mind astray; and yet there were indications in his speech and manner that told of reason struggling against madness, like the light behind storm-clouds. He had tones that spoke of a keen sensitiveness to pain, not the lunatic's imbecile placidity. She observed him intently, trying to make out what manner of man he was.
He did not belong to the peasant class: of that she felt assured. The shrunken, tapering hand had never worked at peasant's work. The profile turned towards her was delicate to effeminacy. The man's clothes were shabby and old-fashioned, but they were a gentleman's garments, the cloth of a finer texture than she had ever seen worn by her brother. The coat, with its velvet collar, was of an old-world fashion. She remembered having seen just such a coat in an engraved portrait of Count d'Orsay, a print nearly fifty years old. No Dalesman born and bred ever wore such a coat; no tailor in the Dales could have made it.
The old man looked up after a long pause, during which Mary felt afraid to move. He looked at her again with inquiring eyes, as if her presence there had only just become known to him.
'Who are you?' he asked again.
'I told you my name just now. I am Mary Haselden.'
'Haselden—that is a name I knew—once. Mary? I think my mother's name was Mary. Yes, yes, I remember that. You have a sweet face, Mary—like my mother's. She had brown eyes, like yours, and auburn hair. You don't recollect her, perhaps?'
'Alas! poor maniac,' thought Mary, 'you have lost all count of time. Fifty years to you in the confusion of your distraught brain, are but as yesterday.'
'No, of course not, of course not,' he muttered; 'how should she recollect my mother, who died while I was a boy? Impossible. That must be half a century ago.'
'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go indoors now.'
He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and grasped Mary's arm.
'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice—I like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you live?'
'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part with James Steadman.'
She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a servant as Steadman.
'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose house?'
'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name—an old title—as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The Maulevriers were always a proud race.'
'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.
She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the harmless lunacy of extreme old age. He had flashes of reason, too. Mary began to feel a friendly interest in him. To youth in its flush of life and vigour there seems something so unspeakably sad and pitiable in feebleness and age—the brief weak remnant of life, the wreck of body and mind, sunning itself in the declining rays of a sun that is so soon to shine upon its grave.
'What, are you not proud?' asked the old man.
'Not at all. I have been taught to consider myself a very insignificant person; and I am going to marry a poor man. It would not become me to be proud.'
'But you ought not to do that,' said the old man. 'You ought not to marry a poor man. Poverty is a bad thing, my dear. You are a pretty girl, and ought to marry a man with a handsome fortune. Poor men have no pleasure in this world—they might just as well be dead. I am poor, as you see. You can tell by this threadbare coat'—he looked down at the sleeve from which the nap was worn in places—'I am as poor as a church mouse.'
'But you have kind friends, I dare say,' Mary said, soothingly. 'You are well taken care of, I am sure.'
'Yes, I am well taken care of—very well taken care of. How long is it, I wonder—how many weeks, or months, or years, since they have taken care of me? It seems a long, long time; but it is all like a dream—a long dream. Once I used to try and wake myself. I used to try and struggle out of that weary dream. But that was ages ago. I am satisfied now—I am quite content now—so long as the weather is warm, and I can sit out here in the sun.'
'It is growing chilly now,' said Mary, 'and I think you ought to go indoors. I know that I must go.'
'Yes, I must go in now—I am getting shivery,' answered the old man, meekly. 'But I want to see you again, Mary—I like your face—and I like your voice. It strikes a chord here,' touching his breast, 'which has long been silent. Let me see you again, child. When can I see you again?'
'Do you sit here every afternoon when it is fine?'
'Yes, every day—all day long sometimes when the sun is warm.'
'Then I will come here to see you.'
'You must keep it a secret, then,' said the old man, with a crafty look. 'If you don't they will shut me up in the house, perhaps. They don't like me to see people, for fear I should talk. I have heard Steadman say so. Yet what should I talk about, heaven help me? Steadman says my memory is quite gone, and that I am childish and harmless—childish and harmless. I have heard him say that. You'll come again, won't you, and you'll keep it a secret?'
Mary deliberated for a few minutes.
'I don't like secrets,' she said, 'there is generally something dishonourable in them. But this would be an innocent secret, wouldn't it? Well, I'll come to see you somehow, poor old man; and if Steadman sees me here I will make everything right with him.'
'He mustn't see you here,' said the old man. 'If he does he will shut me up in my own rooms again, as he did once, years and years ago.'
'But you have not been here long, have you?' Mary asked, wonderingly.
'A hundred years, at least. That's what it seems to me sometimes. And yet there are times when it seems only a dream. Be sure you come again to-morrow.'
'Yes, I promise you to come; good-night.'
'Good-night.'
Mary went back to the stable. The door was still open, but how could she be sure that it would be open to-morrow? There was no other access that she knew of to the quadrangle, except through the old part of the house, and that was at times inaccessible to her.
She found a key—a big old rusty key—in the inside of the door, so she shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket. The door she supposed had been left open by accident; at any rate this key made her mistress of the situation. If any question should arise as to her conduct she could have an explanation with Steadman; but she had pledged her word to the poor mad old man, and she meant to keep her promise, if possible.
As she left the stable she saw Steadman riding towards the gate on his grey cob. She passed him as she went back to the house.
Next day, and the day after that, and for many days, Mary used her key, and went into the quadrangle at sundown to sit for half an hour or so with the strange old man, who seemed to take an intense pleasure in her company. The weather was growing warmer as May wore on towards June, and this evening hour, between six and seven, was deliciously bright and balmy. The seat by the sundial was screened on every side by the clipped yew hedge, dense and tall, surrounding the circular, gravelled space, in the centre of which stood the old granite dial, with its octagonal pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour, Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion could hardly have been seen even from the upper windows of the low, old house.
Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier, and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.
The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his cloistered life—the wars and rumours of wars—and, although the names of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him, and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper reading.
When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories the old man took a vivid interest.
'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'
Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.
'You are like my mother,' he said. 'Yes, you are very like her. And who else is it that you are like? There is some one else, I know. Yes, some one else! I remember! It is a face in a picture—a picture at Maulevrier Castle.'
'What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?' asked Mary, wonderingly.
Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years. Lady Maulevrier had let it during her son's minority to a younger branch of the family, a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce, and was richer than the heads of the house. This occupation of Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in a feudal castle in the marches.
'How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?' repeated Mary.
'I was there once. There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier in Charles the Second's time. The face is yours, my love. I have heard of such hereditary faces. My mother was proud of resembling that portrait.'
'What did your mother know of Maulevrier Castle?'
The old man did not answer. He had lapsed into that dream-like condition into which he often sank, when his brain was not stimulated to attention and coherency by his interest in Mary's narrations.
Mary concluded that this man had once been a servant in the Maulevrier household, perhaps at the place in Herefordshire, and that all his old memories ran in one groove—the house of Maulevrier.
The freedom of her intercourse with him was undisturbed for about three weeks; and at the end of that time she came face to face with James Steadman as she emerged from the circle of greenery.
'You here, Lady Mary?' he exclaimed with an angry look.
'Yes, I have been sitting talking to that poor old man,' Mary answered, cheerily, concluding that Steadman's look of vexation arose from his being detected in the act of harbouring a contraband relation. 'He is a very interesting character. A relation of yours, I suppose?'
'Yes, he is a relation,' replied Steadman. 'He is very old, and his mind has long been gone. Her ladyship is kind enough to allow me to give him a home in her house. He is quite harmless, and he is in nobody's way.'
'Of course not, poor soul. He is only a burden to himself. He talks as if his life had been very weary. Has he been long in that sad state?'
'Yes, a long time.'
Steadman's manner to Lady Mary was curt at the best of times. She had always stood somewhat in awe of him, as a person delegated with authority by her grandmother, a servant who was much more than a servant. But to-day his manner was more abrupt than usual.
'He spoke of Maulevrier Castle just now,' said Mary, determined not to be put down too easily. 'Was he once in service there?'
'He was. Pray how did you find your way into this garden, Lady Mary?'
'I came through the stable. As it is my grandmother's garden I suppose I did not take an unwarrantable liberty in coming,' said Mary, drawing herself up, and ready for battle.
'It is Lady Maulevrier's wish that this garden should be reserved for my use,' answered Steadman. 'Her ladyship knows that my uncle walks here of an afternoon, and that, owing to his age and infirmities, he can go nowhere else; and if only on that account, it is well that the garden should be kept private. Lunatics are rather dangerous company, Lady Mary, and I advise you to give them a wide berth wherever you may meet them.'
'I am not afraid of your uncle,' said Mary, resolutely. 'You said yourself just now that he is quite harmless: and I am really interested in him, poor old creature. He likes me to sit with him a little of an afternoon and to talk to him; and if you have no objection I should like to do so, whenever the weather is fine enough for the poor old man to be out in the garden at this hour.'
'I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly in your interest,' answered Steadman, firmly. 'No one who is not experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any association with them—their consummate craftiness, their capacity for crime. Every madman is harmless up to a certain point—mild, inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit you to run such a risk.'
'I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,' said Mary, with suppressed indignation. 'I shall certainly ask Lady Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject. Perhaps her influence may induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.'
'Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this subject. You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man. I entreat you—'
But Mary was gone. She passed Steadman with her head held high and her eyes sparkling with anger. All that was generous, compassionate, womanly in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother's steward. Of all other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in Steadman's opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.
She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?
It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He had told her that she was like the sunshine to him—better than sunshine—and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any count of the passage of time, of which she was not sure. His mind seemed to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a state to which the outside world seemed only half real—a phase of being in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable monotony of an everlastingnow.
Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her. True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to respect as well as to pity?
For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother. She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times and seasons. She saw him even in her dreams—those happy dreams of the girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future smiles like a vision of Paradise. She heard him calling to her with a piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death. She was so unhappy about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him, not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with Steadman were graphically described.
To her intense discomfiture Hammond replied that he thoroughly approved of Steadman's conduct in the matter. However agreeable Mary's society might be to the lunatic, Mary's life was far too precious to be put within the possibility of peril by any suchtête-à-têtes. If the person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly anticipated. In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman's view of the matter, and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm heart to place her in circumstances of peril.
This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out, she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such strong claims upon everybody's pity.
The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts, and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr. Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be circumvented.
She went all over the stables—into loose boxes, harness and saddle rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered, and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof, the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle round the sundial.
Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man. There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy attitude—the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so appealing to pity. There he sat with eyes poring upon the ground just as she had seen him the first time. And while she had sat with him and talked with him he had seemed to awaken out of that dull despondency, gleams of pleasure had lighted up his wrinkled face—he had grown animated, a sentient living instead of a corpse alive. It was very hard that this little interval of life, these stray gleams of gladness should be denied to the poor old creature, at the behest of James Steadman.
Mary would have felt less angrily upon the subject had she believed in Steadman's supreme carefulness of her own safety; but in this she did not believe. She looked upon the house-steward's prudence as a hypocritical pretence, an affectation of fidelity and wisdom, by which he contrived to gratify the evil tendencies of his own hard and cruel nature. For some reasons of his own, perhaps constrained thereto by necessity, he had given the old man an asylum for his age and infirmity: but while thus giving him shelter he considered him a burden, and from mere perversity of mind refused him all such consolations as were possible to his afflicted state, mewed him up as a prisoner, cut him off from the companionship of his fellow-men.
Two years ago, before Mary emerged from her Tomboyhood, she would have thought very little of letting herself out of the loft window and clambering down the side of the stable, which was well furnished with those projections in the way of gutters, drain-pipes, and century-old ivy, which make such a descent easy. Two years ago Mary's light figure would have swung itself down among the ivy leaves, and she would have gloried in the thought of circumventing James Steadman so easily. But now Mary was a young lady—a young lady engaged to be married, and impressed with the responsibilities of her position, deeply sensible of a new dignity, for the preservation of which she was in a manner answerable to her lover.
'What wouldhethink of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?' she asked herself; 'and after he has approved of Steadman's heartless restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it. Poor old man, "Thou art so near and yet so far," as Lesbia's song says.'
She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft. But although her new ideas upon the subject of 'Anstand'—or good behaviour—prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means, she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now that the impression of the old man's sadness and solitude had been renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.
She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother's room. Lady Maulevrier's couch had been placed in front of the open window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter the smiling valley.
'Heavens! child, what an object you are;' exclaimed her ladyship, as Mary drew near. 'Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is—why your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover. I thought you had learnt to be tidy, since your engagement. What have you been doing with yourself?'
'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a favour—a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every afternoon.'
Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at the sight she saw there.
The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will, she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended her.
For a few moments her lips moved dumbly; and there was something unspeakably awful in those convulsed features, that livid countenance, and those voiceless syllables trembling upon the white dry lips.
At last speech came.
'Girl, you were created to torment me;' she exclaimed.
'Dear grandmother, what harm have I done?' faltered Mary.
'What harm? You are a spy. Your very existence is a torment and a danger. Would to God that you were married. Yes, married to a chimney-sweep, even—and out of my way.'
'If that is your only difficulty,' said Mary, haughtily, 'I dare say Mr. Hammond would be kind enough to marry me to-morrow, and take me out of your ladyship's way.'
Lady Maulevrier's head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment, the labour of Mary and Fräulein, pillows which could not bring peace to the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes, and for a few moments there was silence in the room.
Then Lady Maulevrier raised her eyelids, and looked at her granddaughter imploringly, pathetically.
'Forgive me, Mary,' she said. 'I don't know what I was saying just now; but whatever it was, forgive and forget it. I am a wretched old woman, heart sick, heart sore, worn out by pain and weariness. There are times when I am beside myself; moments when I am not much saner than Steadman's lunatic uncle. This is one of my worst days, and you came bouncing in upon me, and tortured my nerves by your breathless torrent of words. Pray forgive me, if I said anything rude.'
'If,' thought Mary: but she tried to be charitable, and to believe that Lady Maulevrier's attack upon her was a new phase of hysteria, so she murmured meekly, 'There is nothing for me to forgive, grandmother, and I am very sorry I disturbed you.'
She was going to leave the room, thinking that her absence would be a relief to the invalid, when Lady Maulevrier called her back.
'You were asking me something—something about that old man of Steadman's,' she said with a weary air, half indifference, half the lassitude natural to an invalid who sinks under the burden of monotonous days. 'What was it all about? I forget.'
Mary repeated her request, but this time in measured tones.
'My dear, I am sure that Steadman was only properly prudent.' answered Lady Maulevrier, 'and that it would never do for me to interfere in this matter. It stands to reason that he must know his old kinsman's temperament much better than you can, after your half-hour interviews with him in the garden. Pray how long have these garden scenes been going on, by-the-by?' asked her ladyship, with a searching look at Mary's downcast face.
The girl had not altogether recovered from the rude shock of her grandmother's late attack.
'About three weeks,' faltered Mary. 'But it is more than a week now since I was in the garden. It was quite by accident that I first went there. Perhaps I ought to explain.'
And Mary, not being gainsayed, went on to describe that first afternoon when she had seen the old man brooding in the sun. She drew quite a pathetic picture of his joyless solitude, whilst all nature around and about him was looking so glad in the spring sunshine. There was a long silence, a silence of some minutes, when she had done; and Lady Maulevrier lay with lowered eyelids, deep in thought. Mary began to hope that she had touched her grandmother's heart, and that her request would be granted: but she was soon undeceived.
'I am sorry to be obliged to refuse you a favour, Mary, but I must stand by Steadman,' said her ladyship. 'When I gave Steadman permission to shelter his aged kinsman in my house, I made it a condition that the old man should be kept in the strictest care by himself and his wife, and that nobody in this establishment should be troubled by him. This condition has been so scrupulously adhered to that the old man's existence is known to no one in this house except you and me; and you have discovered the fact only by accident. I must beg you to keep this secret to yourself. Steadman has particular reasons for wishing to conceal the fact of his uncle's residence here. The old man is not actually a lunatic. If he were we should be violating the law by keeping him here. He is only imbecile from extreme old age; the body has outlived the mind, that is all. But should any officious functionary come down upon Fellside, this imbecility might be called madness, and the poor old creature whom you regard so compassionately, and whose case you think so pitiable here, would be carried off to a pauper lunatic asylum, which I can assure you would be a much worse imprisonment than Fellside Manor.'
'Yes, indeed, grandmother,' exclaimed Mary, whose vivid imagination conjured up a vision of padded cells, strait-waist-coats, murderously-inclined keepers, chains, handcuffs, and bread and water diet, 'now I understand why the poor old soul has been kept so close—why nobody knows of his existence. I beg Steadman's pardon with all my heart. He is a much better fellow than I thought him.'
'Steadman is a thoroughly good fellow, and as true as steel,' said her ladyship. 'No one can know that so well as the mistress he has served faithfully for nearly half a century. I hope, Mary, you have not been chattering to Fräulein or any one else about your discovery.'
'No, grandmother, I have not said a word to a mortal, but----'
'Oh, there is a "but," is there? I understand. You have not been so reticent in your letters to Mr. Hammond.'
'I tell him all that happens to me. There is very little to write about at Fellside; yet I contrive to send him volumes. I often wonder what poor girls did in the days of Miss Austen's novels, when letters cost a shilling or eighteen pence for postage, and had to be paid for by the recipient. It must have been such a terrible check upon affection.'
'And upon twaddle,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Well you told Mr. Hammond about Steadman's old uncle. What did he say?'
'He thoroughly approved Steadman's conduct in forbidding me to go and see him,' answered Mary. 'I couldn't help thinking it rather unkind of him; but, of course, I feel that he must be right,' concluded Mary, as much as to say that her lover was necessarily infallible.
'I always thought Mr. Hammond a sensible young man, and I am glad to find that his conduct does not belie my good opinion,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'And now, my dear, you had better go and make yourself decent before dinner. I am very weary this afternoon, and even our little talk has exhausted me.'
'Yes, dear grandmother, I am going this instant. But let me ask one question: What is the poor old man's name?'
'His name!' said her ladyship, looking at Mary with a puzzled air, like a person whose thoughts are far away. 'His name—oh, Steadman, I suppose, like his nephew's; but if I ever heard the name I have forgotten it, and I don't know whether the kinship is on the father's or the mother's side. Steadman asked my permission to give shelter to a helpless old relative, and I gave it. That is really all I remember.'
'Only one other question,' pleaded Mary, who was brimful of curiosity upon this particular subject. 'Has he been at Fellside very long?'
'Oh, I really don't know; a year, or two, or three, perhaps. Life in this house is all of a piece. I hardly keep count of time.'
'There is one thing that puzzles me very much,' said Mary, still lingering near her grandmother's couch, the balmy evening air caressing her as she leaned against the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, the sun drawing nearer to the edge of the hills, an orb of yellow flame, soon to change to a gigantic disk of lurid fire. 'I thought from the old man's talk that he, too, must be an old servant in our family. He talked of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier.
'It is quite possible that he may have been in service there, though I do not remember to have heard anything about it,' answered her ladyship, carelessly. 'The Steadmans come from that part of the country, and theirs is a hereditary service. Good-night, Mary, I am utterly weary. Look at that glorious light yonder, that mighty world of fire and flame, without which our little world would be dark and dreary. I often think of that speech of Macbeth's, "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun." There comes a time, Mary, when even the sun is a burden.'
'Only for such a man as Macbeth,' said Mary, 'a man steeped in crime. Who can wonder that he wanted to hide himself from the sun? But, dear grandmother, there ought to be plenty of happiness left for you, even if your recovery is slow to come. You are so clever, you have such resources in your own mind and memory, and you have your grandchildren, who love you dearly,' added Mary, tenderly.
Her nature was so full of pity that an entirely new affection had grown up in her mind for Lady Maulevrier since that terrible evening of the paralytic stroke.
'Yes, and whose love, as exemplified by Lesbia, is shown in a hurried scrap of a letter scrawled once a week—a bone thrown to a hungry dog,' said her ladyship, bitterly.
'Lesbia is so lovely, and she is so surrounded by flatterers and admirers,' murmured Mary, excusingly.
'Oh, my dear, if she had a heart she would not forget me, even in the midst of her flatterers. Good-night again, Mary. Don't try to console me. For some natures consolations and soothing suggestions are like flowers thrown upon a granite tomb. They do just as much and just as little good to the heart that lies under the stone. Good-night.'
Mary stooped to kiss her grandmother's forehead, and found it cold as marble. She murmured a loving good-night, and left the mistress of Fellside in her loneliness.
A footman would come in and light the lamps, and draw the velvet curtains, presently, and shut out the later glories of sunset. And then the butler himself would come and arrange the little dinner table by her ladyship's couch, and would himself preside over the invalid's simple dinner, which would be served exquisitely, with all that is daintiest and most costly in Salviati glass and antique silver. Yet better the dinner of herbs, and love and peace withal, than the choicest fare or the most perfect service.
Before the coming of the servants and the lamps there was a pause of silence and loneliness, an interval during which Lady Maulevrier lay gazing at the declining orb, the lower rim of which now rested on the edge of the hill. It seemed to grow larger and more dazzling as she looked at it.
Suddenly she clasped her left hand across her eyes, and said aloud—
'Oh, what a hateful life! Almost half a century of lies and hypocricies and prevarications and meannesses! For what? For the glory of an empty name; and for a fortune that may slip from my dead hand to become the prey of rogues and adventurers. Who can forecast the future?'
Lady Kirkbank's house in Arlington Street was known to half fashionable London as one of the pleasantest houses in town; and it was known by repute only, to the other half of fashionable London, as a house whose threshold was not to be crossed by persons with any regard for their own dignity and reputation. It was not that Lady Kirkbank had ever actually forfeited her right to be considered an honest woman and a faithful wife. People who talked of the lady and her set with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders and a dubious elevation of the eyebrows were ready, when hard pushed in argument, to admit that they knew of no actual harm in Lady Kirkbank, no overt bad behaviour.
'But—well,' said the punctilious half of society, the Pejinks and Pernickitys, the Picksomes and Unco-Goods, 'Lady Kirkbank is—Lady Kirkbank; and I would not allow my girls to visit her, don't you know.' 'Lady Kirkbank is received, certainly,' said a severe dowager. 'She goes to very good houses. She gets tickets for the Royal enclosure. She is always at private views, and privileged shows of all kinds; and she contrives to squeeze herself in at a State ball or a concert about once in two years; but any one who can consider Lady Kirkbank good style must have a very curious idea of what a lady ought to be.' 'Lady Kirkbank is a warm-hearted, nice creature,' said a diplomatist of high rank, and one of her particular friends, 'but her manners are decidedly—continental!'
About Sir George, society, adverse or friendly, was without strong opinions. His friends, the men who shot over his Scotch moor, and filled the spare rooms in his villa at Cannes, and loaded his drag for Sandown or Epsom, and sponged upon him all the year round, talked of him as 'an inoffensive old party,' 'a cheery soul,' 'a genial old boy,' and in like terms of approval. That half of society which did not visit in Arlington Street, in whose nostrils the semi-aristocratic, semi-artistic, altogether Bohemian little dinners, the suppers after the play, the small hours devoted to Nap or Poker, had an odour as of sulphur, the reek of Tophet—even this half of the great world was fain to admit that Sir George was harmless. He had never had an idea beyond the realms of sport; he had never had a will of his own outside his stable. To shoot pigeons at Hurlington or Monaco, to keep half a dozen leather-platers, and attend every race from the Craven to the Leger, to hunt four days a week, when he was allowed to spend a winter in England, and to saunter and sleep away all the hours which could not be given to sport, comprised Sir George's idea of existence. He had never troubled himself to consider whether there might not possibly be a better way of getting rid of one's life. He was as God had made him, and was perfectly satisfied with himself and the universe; save at such times as when a favourite horse went lame, or his banker wrote to tell him that his account was overdrawn.
Sir George had no children; he had never had a serious care in his life. He never thought, he never read. Lady Kirkbank declared that she had never seen him with a book in his hands since their marriage.
'I don't believe he would know at which end to begin,' she said.
What was the specific charge which the very particular people brought against Lady Kirkbank? Such charges rarelyarespecific. The idea that the lady belonged to the fast and furious section of society, the Bohemia of the upper ten, was an idea in the air. Everybody knew it. No one could quite adequately explain it.
From thirty to fifty Lady Kirkbank had been known as a flirty matron. Wherever she went, a train of men went with her; men young and middle-aged and elderly; handsome youths from the public offices; War, Admiralty, Foreign Office, Somerset House young men; attractive men of mature years, with grey moustachios, military, diplomatic, horsey, what you will, but always agreeable. At home, abroad, Lady Kirkbank was never without her court; but the court was entirely masculine. In those days the fair Georgie did not scruple to say that she hated women, and that girls were her particular abomination. But as the years rolled on Lady Kirkbank began to find it very difficult to muster her little court, to keep her train in attendance upon her. 'The birds were wild,' Sir George said. Her young adorers found their official duties more oppressive than hitherto; her elderly swains had threatenings of gout or rheumatism which prevented their flocking round her as of old at race meeting or polo match. They were loyal enough in keeping their engagements at the dinner table, for Lady Kirkbank's cook was one of the best in London; and the invited guests were rarely missing at the little suppers after opera or play: but Georgia's box was no longer crowded with men who dropped in between the acts to see what she thought of the singer or the piece, and her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia's ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief pauses of Georgie's subdued babble.
At fifty-five, Georgina Kirkbank told herself sadly enough that her day, as a bright particular star, all-sufficient in her own radiance, was gone. She could not live without her masculine circle, men who could bring her all the news, the gossip of the clubs; where everything seemed to become known as quickly as if each club had its own Asmodeus, unroofing all the housetops of the West End for inspection every night. She could not live without her courtiers; and to keep them about her she knew that she must make her house pleasant. It was not enough to give good dinners, elegant little suppers washed down by choicest wines; she must also provide fair faces to smile upon the feast, and bright eyes to sparkle in the subdued light of low shaded lamps, and many candles twinkling under coloured shades.
'I am an old woman now,' Lady Kirkbank said to herself with a sigh, 'and my own attractions won't keep my friends about me.C'est trop connu ça.'
And now the house in Arlington Street in which feminine guests had been as one in ten, opened its doors to the young and the fair. Pretty widows, lively girls, young wives who were not too absurdly devoted to their husbands, actresses of high standing and good looks, these began to be welcomed effusively in Arlington Street. Lady Kirkbank began to hunt for beauties to adorn her rooms, as she had hitherto hunted lions to roar at her parties. She prided herself on being the first to discover this or that new beauty. That lovely girl from Scotland with the large eyes—that sweet young creature from Ireland with the long eyelashes. She was always inventing new divinities. But even this change of plan, this more feminine line of politics failed to reconcile the strict and the stern, the Queen Charlotte-ish elderly ladies, and the impeccable matrons, to Lady Kirkbank and her set. The girls who were launched by Lady Kirkbank never took high rank in society. When they made good marriages it was generally to be observed that they dropped Lady Kirkbank soon afterwards. It was not their fault, these ingrates pleaded piteously; but Edward, or Henry, or Theodore, as the case might be, had a most cruel prejudice against dear Lady Kirkbank, and the young wives were obliged to obey.
Others there were, however, the loyal few, who having won the prize matrimonial in Lady Kirkbank's happy hunting grounds, remained true to their friend ever afterwards, and defended her character against every onslaught.
When Lady Maulevrier told her grandson that she had entrusted Lady Kirkbank with the duty of introducing Lesbia to society, Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. He knew no actual harm in the matter. Lady Kirkbank's was rather a fast set; and had he been allowed to choose it was not to Lady Kirkbank that he would have delegated his grandmother's duty. In Maulevrier's own phrase it was 'not good enough' for Lesbia. But it was not in his power to interfere. He was not told of the plan until everything had been settled. The thing was accomplished; and against accomplished facts Maulevrier was the last to protest.
His friend John Hammond had not been silent. He knew nothing of Lady Kirkbank personally; but he knew the position which she held in London society, and he urged his friend strongly to enlighten Lady Maulevrier as to the kind of circle into which she was about to entrust her young granddaughter, a girl brought up in the Arcadia of England.
'Not for worlds would I undertake such a task,' said Maulevrier. 'Her ladyship never had any opinion of my wisdom, and this Lady Kirkbank is a friend of her own youth. She would cut up rough if I were to say a word against an old friend. Besides what's the odds, if you come to think of it? all society is fast nowadays, or at any rate all society worth living in. And then again, Lesbia is just one of those cool-headed girls who would keep herself head uppermost in a maelstrom. She knows on which side her bread is buttered. Look how easily she chucked you up because she did not think you good enough. She'll make use of this Lady Kirkbank, who is a good soul, I am told, and will make the best match of the season.'
And now the season had begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head apparently uppermost.
'Old Lady K—has nobbled a real beauty, this time,' said one of the Arlington Street set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the park, 'a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm off upon us last year: the South American girl with the big eyes and a complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and unsophisticated carrots. "Those lovely Spanish eyes," said Lady K----, "that Titianesque auburn hair!" But it didn't answer. Both the girls were plain, and they have gone back to their native obscurity spinsters still. But this is a real thorough-bred one—blood, form, pace, all there.'
'Who is she?' drawled his friend.
'Lord Maulevrier's sister, Lady Lesbia Haselden. Has money, too, I believe; rich grandmother; old lady buried alive in Westmoreland; horrid old miser.'
'I shouldn't mind marrying a miser's granddaughter,' said the other. 'So nice to know that some wretched old idiot has scraped and hoarded through a lifetime of deprivation and self-denial, in order that one may spend his money when he is under the sod.'
Lady Lesbia was accepted everywhere, or almost everywhere, as the beauty of the season. There were six or seven other girls who aspired to the same proud position, who were asserted by their own particular friends to have won it; just as there are generally four or five horses which claim to be first favourites; but the betting was all in favour of Lady Lesbia.
Lady Kirkbank told her that she was turning everyone's head, and Lesbia was quite willing to believe her. But was Lesbia's own head quite steady in this whirlpool? That was a question which she did not take the trouble to ask herself.
Her heart was tranquil enough, cold as marble. No shield and safeguard so secure against the fire of new love as an old love hardly cold. Lesbia told herself that her heart was a sepulchre, an urn which held a handful of ashes, the ashes of her passion for John Hammond. It was a fire quite burned out, she thought; but that extinguished flame had left death-like coldness.
This was Lesbia's own diagnosis of her case: but the real truth was that among the herd of men she had met, almost all of them ready to fall down and worship her, there was not one who had caught her fancy. Her nature was shallow enough to be passing fickle; the passion which she had taken for love was little more than a girl's fancy; but the man who had power to awaken that fancy as John Hammond had done had not yet appeared in Lady Kirkbank's circle.
'What a cold-hearted creature you must be,' said Georgie. 'You don't seem to admire any of my favourite men.'
'They are very nice,' Lesbia answered languidly; 'but they are all alike. They say the same things—wear the same clothes—sit in the same attitude. One would think they were all drilled in a body every morning before they go out. Mr. Nightshade, the actor, who came to supper the other night, is the only man I have seen who has a spark of originality.'
'You are right,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'there is an appalling sameness in men: only it is odd you should find it out so soon. I never discovered it till I was an old woman. How I envy Cleopatra her Cæsar and her Antony. No mistaking one of those for the other. Mary Stuart too, what marked varieties of character she had an opportunity of studying in Rizzio and Chastelard, Darnley and Bothwell. Ah, child, that is what it is tolive.'
'Mary is very interesting,' sighed Lesbia; 'but I fear she was not a correct person.'
'My love, what correct person ever is interesting? History draws a misty halo round a sinner of that kind, till one almost believes her a saint. I think Mary Stuart, Froude's Mary, simply perfect.'
Lesbia had begun by blushing at Lady Kirkbank's opinions; but she was now used to the audacity of the lady's sentiments, and the almost infantile candour with which she gave utterance to them. Lady Kirkbank liked to make her friends laugh. It was all she could do now in order to be admired. And there is nothing like audacity for making people laugh nowadays. Lady Kirkbank was a close student of all those delightful books of French memoirs which bring the tittle-tattle of the Regency and the scandals of Louis the Fifteenth's reign so vividly before us: and she had unconsciously founded her manners and her ways of thinking and talking upon that easy-going but elegant age. She did not want to seem better than women who had been so altogether charming. She fortified the frivolity of historical Parisian manners by a dash of the British sporting character. She drove, shot, jumped over five-barred gates, contrived on the verge of seventy to be as active us a young woman; and she flattered herself that the mixture of wit, audacity, sport, and good-nature was full of fascination.
However this might be, it is certain that a good many people liked her, chiefly perhaps because she was good-natured, and a little on account of that admirable cook.
To Lesbia, who had been weary to loathing of her old life amidst the hills and waterfalls of Westmoreland, this new life was one perpetual round of pleasure. She flung herself with all her heart and mind into the amusement of the moment; she knew neither weariness nor satiety. To ride in the park in the morning, to go to a luncheon party, a garden party, to drive in the park for half an hour after the garden party, to rush home and dress for the fourth or fifth time, and then off to a dinner, and from dinner to drum, and from drum to big ball, at which rumour said the Prince and Princess were to be present; and so, from eleven o'clock in the morning till four or five o'clock next morning, the giddy whirl went on; and every hour was so occupied by pleasure engagements that it was difficult to squeeze in an occasional morning for shopping—necessary to go to the shops sometimes, or one would not know how many things one really wants—or for an indispensable interview with the dressmaker. Those mornings at the shops were hardly the least agreeable of Lesbia's hours. To a girl brought up in one perpetualtête-à-têtewith green hill-sides and silvery watercourses, the West End shops were as gardens of Eden, as Aladdin Caves, as anything, everything that is rapturous and intoxicating. Lesbia, the clear-headed, the cold-hearted, fairly lost her senses when she went into one of those exquisite shops, where a confusion of brocades and satins lay about in dazzling masses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of lilies, a cluster of roses, a tortoise-shell fan, an ostrich feather, or a flounce of peerless Point d'Alençon flung carelessly athwart the sheen of a wine-dark velvet or golden-hued satin.
Lady Maulevrier had said Lesbia was to havecarte blanche; so Lesbia bought everything she wanted, or fancied she wanted, or that the shop-people thought she must want, or that Lady Kirkbank happened to admire. The shop-people were so obliging, and so deeply obliged by Lesbia's patronage. She was exactly the kind of customer they liked to serve. She flitted about their showrooms like a beautiful butterfly hovering over a flower-bed—her eye caught by every novelty. She never asked the price of anything; and Lady Kirkbank informed them, in confidence, that she was a great heiress, with a millionaire grandmother who indulged her every whim. Other high born young ladies, shopping upon fixed allowances, and sorely perplexed to make both ends meet, looked with eyes of envy upon this girl.
And then came the visit to the dressmaker. It happened after all that Kate Kearney was not intrusted with Lady Lesbia's frocks. Miss Kearney was the fashion, and could pick and choose her customers; and as she was a young lady of good business aptitudes, she had a liking for ready money, or at least half-yearly settlements; and, finding that Lady Kirkbank was much more willing to give new orders than to pay old accounts, she had respectfully informed her ladyship that a pressure of business would prevent her executing any further demands from Arlington Street, while the necessity of posting her ledger obliged her to request the favour of an immediate cheque.
The little skirmish—per letter—occurred while Lady Kirkbank was at Cannes, and Miss Kearney's conduct was stigmatised as insolent and ungrateful, since had not she, Lady Kirkbank by the mere fact of her patronage, given this young person her chief claim to fashion?
'I shall drop her,' said Georgie, 'and go back to poor old Seraphine, who is worth a cartload of such Irish adventuresses.'
So to Madame Seraphine, of Clanricarde Place, Lady Lesbia was taken as a lamb to the slaughter-house.
Seraphine had made Lady Kirkbank's clothes, off and on for the last thirty years. Seraphine and Georgia had grown old together. Lady Kirkbank was always dropping Seraphine and taking her up again, quarrelling and making friends with her. They wrote each other little notes, in which Lady Kirkbank called the dressmaker hercher ange—herbonne chatte, herchère vielle sotte—and all manner of affectionate names—and in which Seraphine occasionally threatened the lady with the dire engines of the law, if money were not forthcoming before Saturday evening.
Lady Kirkbank within those thirty years had paid Seraphine many thousands; but she had never once got herself out of the dear creature's debt. All her payments were payments on account. A hundred pounds; or fifty—or an occasional cheque for two hundred and fifty, when Sir George had been lucky at Newmarket and Doncaster. But the rolling nucleus of debt went rolling on, growing bigger every year until the payments on account needed to be larger or more numerous than of old to keep Seraphine in good humour.
Seraphine was a woman of genius and versatility and had more than one art at her fingers' ends—those skinny and claw-shaped fingers, the nails whereof were not always clean. She took charge of her customer's figures, and made their corsets, and lectured them if they allowed nature to get the upper hand.
'If Madame's waist gets one quarter of an inch thicker it must be that I renounce to make her gowns,' she would tell a ponderous matron, with cool insolence, and the matron would stand abashed before the little sallow, hooked-nosed, keen eyed Jewess, like a child before a severe mother.
'Oh, Seraphine, do you really think that I am stouter?' the customer would ask feebly, panting in her tightened corset.
'Is it that I think so? Why that jumps to the eyes. Madame had always that little air of Rubens, even in the flower of her youth—but now—it is a Rubens of the Faubourg du Temple.'
And horrified at the idea of her vulgarised charms the meek matron would consent to encase herself in one of Seraphine's severest corsets, called in bitterest mockeryà la santé—at five guineas—in order that the dressmaker might measure her for a forty-guinea gown.
'A plain satin gown, my dear, with an eighteenpenny frilling round the neck and sleeves, and not so much trimming as would go round my little finger. It is positive robbery,' the matron told her friends afterwards, not the less proud of her skin-tight high shouldered sleeves and the peerless flow of her train.
Seraphine was an artist in complexions, and it was she who provided her middle-aged and elderly customers with the lilies and roses of youth. Lady Kirkbank's town complexion was superintended by Seraphine, sometimes even manipulated by those harpy-like claws. The eyebrows of which Lesbia complained were only eyebrowsde province—eyebrowsde voyage. In London Georgie was much more particular; and Seraphine was often in Arlington Street with her little morocco bag of washes and creams, and brushes and sponges, to prepare Lady Kirkbank for some great party, and to instruct Lady Kirkbank's maid. At such times Georgie was all affection for the little dressmaker.
'Ma chatte, you have made me positively adorable,' she would say, peering at her reflection in the ivory hand-mirror, a dazzling image of rouge and bismuth, carmined lips, diamonds, and frizzy yellow hair; 'I verily believe I look under thirty—but do not you think this gown is a thought toodécolletée—un peu trop de peau, hein?'
'Not for you, Lady Kirkbank, with your fine shoulders. Shoulders are of no age—les épaules sont la vraie fontaine de jouvence pour les jolies femmes.'
'You are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine. You ought to be a descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand. Rilboche, give Madame some more chartreuse.'
And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her carriage, fortified by that last glass of green chartreuse.
There were always the finest chartreuse and curaçoa in a liqueur cabinet on Lady Kirkbank's dressing-table. The cabinet formed a companion to the dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics, powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the manufacture of Georgie's complexion. The third bottle in the liqueur case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest replenished. Yet nobody could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate habits. The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.
'One must always be at concert pitch in society, don't you know, my dear,' said Georgie to her young protégée.
Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.
Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses—genuine Queen Anne, be it understood—between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet littlecul de sacin the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers, blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.
Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer; but the staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine Louis Seize.
Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house—a wizened little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black hair—raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.
One ornament, and one only, had Seraphine ever been guilty of wearing, and that was an old-fashioned half-hoop ring of Brazilian diamonds, brilliants of the first water. This ring she called her yard measure; and she was in the habit of using it as her Standard of purity, and comparing it with any diamonds which her customers submitted to her inspection. For the clever little dressmaker had a feeling heart for a lady in difficulties, and was in the habit of lending money on good security, and on terms that were almost reasonable as compared with the usurious rates one reads of in the newspapers.
Lesbia's first sensation upon having this accomplished person presented to her was one of shrinking and disgust. There was something sinister in the sallow face, the small shrewd eyes, and long hooked nose, the crooked figure, and claw-shaped hands. But when Madame Seraphine began to talk about gowns, and bade her acolytes—smartly-dressed young women with pleasing countenances—bring forth marvels of brocade and satin, embroideries, stamped velvets, bullion fringes, and ostrich feather flouncings, Lesbia became interested, and forgot the unholy aspect of the high priestess.
Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker discussed Lesbia's charms as calmly as if she had been out of the room.
'What do you think of her figure?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
'One cannot criticise what does not exist,' replied the dressmaker, in French. 'The young lady has no figure. She has evidently been brought up in the country.'
And then with rapid bird-like movements, and with her head on one side, Seraphine measured Lesbia's waist and bust, muttering little argotic expressionssotto voceas she did so.
'Waist three inches too large, shoulders six inches too narrow,' she said decisively, and she dictated some figures to one of the damsels, who wrote them down in an order-book.
'What does that mean?' asked Lesbia, not at all approving of such cavalier treatment.
'Only that Seraphine will make your corsets the right size,' answered Lady Kirkbank.
'What? Three inches too small for my waist, and six too wide for my shoulders?'
'My love, you must have a figure,' replied Lady Kirkbank, conclusively. 'It is not what you are, but what you ought to be that has to be considered.'
So Lesbia, the cool-headed, who was also the weak-minded, consented to have her figure adjusted to the regulation mark of absolute beauty, as understood by Madame Seraphine. It was only when her complexion came under discussion, and Seraphine ventured to suggest that she would be all the better for a little accentuation of her eyebrows and darkening of her lashes, that Lesbia made a stand.
'What would my grandmother think of me if she heard I painted?' she asked, indignantly.
Lady Kirkbank laughed at hernaïveté.
'My dear child, your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,' she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be regulated by an oracle at Grasmere?'
'I am not going to paint my face,' replied Lesbia, firmly.
'Well, perhaps you are right. The eyebrows are a little weak and undecided, Seraphine, as you say, and the lashes would be all the better for your famous cosmetic; but after all there is a charm in what the painters call "sincerity," and any little errors of detail will prove the genuineness of Lady Lesbia's beauty. Onemaybe too artistic.'
And Lady Kirkbank gave a complacent glance at her own image in one of the Marie Antoinette mirrors, pleased with the general effect of arched brows, darkened eyelids, and a daisy bonnet. The fair Georgie generally affected field-flowers and other simplicities, which would have been becoming to a beauty of eighteen.
'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw hat.'
That first visit to Seraphine's den—den as terrible, did one but know it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved with their bones—that first visit was a serious business. Later interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at new fashions, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her youngprotégéefor the coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.
The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at fashion plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders, Lesbia listening and assenting.
Nothing was said about prices; but Lesbia had a vague idea that some of the things would be rather expensive, and she ventured to ask Lady Kirkbank if she were not ordering too many gowns.
'My dear, Lady Maulevrier said you were to havecarte blanche,' replied Georgie, solemnly. 'Your dear grandmother is as rich as Croesus, and she is generosity itself; and how should I ever forgive myself if I allowed you to appear in society in an inadequate style. You have to take a high place, the very highest place, Lesbia; and you must be dressed in accordance with that position.'
Lesbia said no more. After all it was Lady Kirkbank's business and not hers. See had been entrusted to Lady Kirkbank as to a person who thoroughly knew the great world, and she must submit to be governed by the wisdom and experience of her chaperon. If the bills were heavy, that would be Lady Kirkbank's affair; and no doubt dear grandmother was rich enough to afford anything Lesbia wanted. She had been told that she was to take rank among heiresses.
Lady Maulevrier had given her granddaughter some old-fashioned ornaments, topaz, amethysts, turquoise—jewels that had belonged to dead and gone Talmashes and Angersthorpes—to be reset. This entailed a visit to a Bond Street jeweller, and in the dazzling glass-cases on the counter of the Bond Street establishment Lesbia saw a good many things which she felt were real necessities to her new phase of existence, and these, with Lady Kirkbank's approval, she ordered. They were not important matters. Half-a-dozen gold bangles of real oriental workmanship, three or four jewelled arrows, flies and beetles, and caterpillars, to pin on her laces and flowers, a diamond clasp for her pearl necklace, a dear little gold hunter to wear when she rode in the park, a diamond butterfly to light up that old-fashioned amethystparurewhich the jeweller was to reset with an artistic admixture of brilliants.
'I am sure you would not like the effect without diamonds,' said the jeweller. 'Your amethysts are very fine, but they are dark and heavy in tone, and want a good deal of lighting-up, especially for the present fashion of half-lighted rooms. If you will allow me to use my own discretion, and mix in a few brilliants, I shall be able to produce a really artisticparure; otherwise I would not recommend you to touch them. The present setting is clumsy and inelegant; but I really do not know that I could improve upon it, without an admixture of brilliants.'
'Will the diamonds add very much to the expense?' Lesbia inquired, timidly.
'My dear child, you are perfectly safe in leaving the matter in Mr. Cabochon's hands,' interposed Lady Kirkbank, who had particular reasons for wishing to be on good terms with the head of the establishment. 'Your dear grandmother gave you the amethysts to be reset; and of course she would wish it to be done in an artistic manner. Otherwise, as Mr. Cabochon judiciously says, why have the stones reset at all? Better wear them in all their present hideousness.'