The old home which Laurence Alsager had so long slighted, and to which his heart suddenly turned with a strange wild longing, almost powerful enough, he thought, to annihilate the space between it and Redmoor, had seen many generations of Alsagers beneath its peaked and gabled roof. The house stood in a fine park, and occupied a commanding situation on the slope of a well-wooded hill. The features of the scenery were such as are familiar in the midland counties: rich and fertile beauty, with uplands ankle-deep in meadow-grass, tall patriarchal trees, which stood in solemn unending conclave, group by group or singly, with benignant outstretched arms, and wide-spread mantle of green and russet; bright shallow streams, flashing under the sunbeams, and rippling darkly in the shade. All the land about the picturesque and irregular old house was laid out, partly by nature and partly by art, on ornamental principles; and away to the right and left stretched a wide expanse of farm-lands, whose aspect suggested a practical knowledge of the science of husbandry, and a satisfactory return in profit. The house was surrounded by a broad stone-terrace, bounded by a low balustrade, and flanked at each of the corners by a large stone-vase containing flowers, which varied with the season, but were never missing from these statelyjardinières. These vases were tended, in common with the formal flower-garden and the particular pet parterre which she called "her own," by Helen Manningtree, the orphan ward of Sir Peregrine Alsager, whom Laurence remembered as a quiet pretty little girl, who had been frank and free with him in her childhood, timid and reserved when he had last seen her, just before he had been driven abroad by the furies of disappointment and wounded pride, and whom he was now to meet again, a graceful, gracious, well-disciplined, and attractive woman.
Knockholt Park was one of those rare places which present a perfect combination of luxury and comfort to the beholder, and impress the latter element of their constitution upon the resident visitor.Bien, êtreseemed to reign there; and the very peacocks which strutted upon the terrace, and tapped at the dining-room window as soon as Sir Peregrine had taken his accustomed seat at the head of the long table, seemed less restless in their vanity and brighter in their plumage than theirconfrèresof the neighbouring gentlemen's seats. The brute creation had fine times of it at Knockholt Park, except, of course, such of their number as came under the denomination of vermin; and those Sir Peregrine was too good a farmer, to say nothing of his being too enthusiastic a sportsman, to spare. Horses were in good quarters in the stables and the paddocks of Knockholt Park; and well-to-do dogs were to be found everywhere, the kennel and the dining-room included. Sir Peregrine had the liking for animals to be observed in all kindly natures which are solitary without being studious, and which affords to such natures a subtle pleasure, a sympathy which does not jar with their pride, a companionship which does not infringe upon their exclusiveness.
Sir Peregrine Alsager was essentially a solitary man, though he hunted pretty regularly and shot a little; though he fulfilled the duties of county hospitality with resignation, which county perceptions mistook for alacrity; and though he associated as much as most resident country gentlemen with the inmates of his house. These inmates were Helen Manningtree and herci-devantgoverness, Mrs. Chisholm, a ladylike accomplished person, and a distant relative of Sir Peregrine, who had offered her a home with him when the charge of Helen had devolved upon him, almost simultaneously with the death of Mrs. Chisholm's husband,--an overworked young curate, who had fallen a victim to an epidemic disease, in consequence of the prevalence of which in the parish his rector had found it necessary to remove himself and his family to a more salubrious climate, but had not found it necessary to procure any assistance for the curate. They were pleasant inmates, but scarcely interesting,--would hardly have been so to a younger man; and there was a certain reserve in Sir Peregrine's manner, though it never lacked kindness, and was distinguished for its courtesy and consideration, which maintained their relative positions quite unchanged. A young girl would have been an unintelligible creature to Sir Peregrine, even if she had been his own daughter; and he contented himself with taking care that all Helen's personal and intellectual wants were amply supplied, and all her tastes consulted and gratified: he left the reading of the enigma to others, or was content that it should remain unread.
Life at Knockholt Park had rolled on very smoothly on the whole, until the accident which recalled his son to his neglected home had befallen Sir Peregrine; and if the master of the fine old house and the fine old estate had had a good deal of loneliness, some bitterness, not a little wistful haggard remembrance and yearning regret, a sense of discordance where he longed for harmony, with a disheartening conviction that he had not the faculties requisite for setting it right, and would never find them in this world, among his daily experiences, the decent and decorous mantle of pride had hidden these discrepancies in the general order of things from every perception but his own. If the hale old gentleman, on whom every eye looked with respect, and who had filled his place with honour all the days of his life, had unseen companions in those walks shared visibly by his dog alone; if the handsome stately library where he sat o' nights, and read all that a country gentleman is ever expected to read, was haunted now and then by a shadowy presence, by a beckoning hand; if the gentle whisper of a voice, whose music was heard in its full melody among the angels only, came oftener and more often, as "the tender grace of a day that was dead" receded more and more into the past, and stirred the slow pulses of the old man's heart,--he was all the happier, with such solemn happiness as remembrance and anticipation can confer, and no one was the wiser.
If "county society" in those parts had been brighter as a collective body, or if the individuals who composed it had had clearer notions of military life, and the obligations of a lieutenant-colonel, the long absence of Laurence Alsager from his father's house might have been made a subject of ill-natured and wondering comment; but the particular county to which Knockholt and its master belonged was rather remarkable for obtuseness, and there was a certain something about the old baronet which rendered it impossible to say unpleasant things in his presence, and difficult even to say them in his absence; and so Laurence Alsager escaped almost scot-free. Helen Manningtree felt some indignant wonder occasionally at the only son's prolonged absence from his father--indignant, be it observed, on Sir Peregrine's account, not on her own. Helen was very sensible, and as little vain as it was possible for a nice-looking and attractive girl to be, without attaining a painful height of perfection; and so she did not wonder that Laurence Alsager had not been induced by curiosity to see her--of whom Sir Peregrine had doubtless frequently spoken to him--to visit his old home. Her life had been too simple and well regulated to enable her to comprehend an estrangement between father and son arising from diversity of sentiment alone; but it had also been so devoid of strong affections, of vivid emotions, that she was not likely to regard Laurence Alsager's conduct from a particularly elevated point of view. It was wrong, she thought, and odd; but if Laurence had gone to Knockholt at stated periods, and had conformed outwardly to filial conventionalities, Helen would have been the last person in the world to perceive that anything was wanting to the strength and sweetness of the relationship between Sir Peregrine and his only son.
Mrs. Chisholm-a woman who had known love and bereavement, struggle and rest, but who was childless, and in whom, therefore, that subtlest instinct which gives comprehension to the dullest had never been awakened--felt about it all much as Helen did; but she expressed less, and the little she permitted herself to say was cold and vague, Coldness and vagueness characterized Mrs. Chisholm, because sorrow had early chilled her heart, and no one whom she loved had ever addressed himself to the awakening of her intellect. The curate had not had time, poor fellow; he had had too much to do in persuading people to go to church who would not be persuaded; and his Sophy had been so pretty in the brief old time, so cheerful, so notable, so lovable and beloved, that it had never occurred to him that her mind might have been a little larger and a little stronger with advantage. The time was brief, and the curate died in the simple old faith, leaving his pretty Sophy to outlive him, his love, and her prettiness, but never to outlive his memory, or to cease to glory in that unutterably-precious recollection, that her husband had never found fault with her in his life. On the whole, then, Laurence Alsager was gently judged and mildly handled by the worthy people who had the best right to criticise his conduct; and perhaps the knowledge that this was the case added keenness to the pang of self-reproach, which made his self-inflicted punishment, with which he read the brief but terrible news flashed to his conscious heart along the marvellous electric wire.
Evening had fallen over stream and meadow, over upland and forest, at Knockholt. It had come with the restless and depressing influence which contrasts so strangely with the calm and peace it brings to the fulness of life and health, into the lofty and spacious chamber where Sir Peregrine lay, prostrate under the victorious hand of paralysis. The mysterious influence of serious illness, the shadow of the wings of the Angel of Death, rested heavily upon the whole of that decorously-ordered house; and the watchers in the chamber of helplessness, it may be of pain,--who can tell? who can interpret the enforced stillness, the inexorable dumbness of that dread disease?--succumbed to its gloom. Mrs. Chisholm and Helen were there, not, indeed, close by the bed, not watching eagerly the motionless form, but gazing alternately at each other and at the doctor, who kept a vigilant watch over the patient. This watch had, if possible, increased in intensity since sunset, at which time Dr. Galton had perceived a change, visible at first to the eye of science alone. The dreadful immobility had certainly relaxed; the rigidity of the features, blended with an indescribable but wofully-perceptible distortion of the habitual expression, had softened; the plum-like blueness of the lips had faded to a hue less startlingly contrasted with that of the shrunken and ashy features.
"He will recover from this attack, I hope--I think," said the doctor in answer to a mute question which he read in Helen's eyes, as he stood upright after a long and close investigation of the patient. "Yes, he will outlive this. I wish Colonel Alsager were here."
"We may expect him very soon," Mrs. Chisholm said; "he would start immediately of course, and we know the telegraph-message would reach him in time for him to catch the up-train."
As she spoke, wheels were heard on the distant carriage-drive. Sir Peregrine's room was on the north side, that farthest from the approach; and immediately afterwards a servant gently opened the door--ah, with what needless caution!--and told Mrs. Chisholm that the Colonel had arrived, and desired to see her. There was more awkwardness than agitation in Mrs. Chisholm's manner as she hurriedly rose to comply with this request, but was interrupted by Dr. Galton, who said:
"No, no, my dear madam,--I had better see him myself; I can make him understand the necessary care and caution better than you can."
Mrs. Chisholm returned to her seat in silent acquiescence; and for the ensuing half-hour she and Helen sat sadly looking at the helpless form upon the bed, and occasionally whispering to one another their several impressions of how Laurence Alsager "would bear it."
What Laurence Alsager had to bear, and how he bore it, was not for any one to see. He held himself aloof even from the gentle scrutiny he had so little reason to dread. In half-an-hour Dr. Galton reentered Sir Peregrine's room, looking very grave, and requested Mrs. Chisholm and Helen to withdraw.
"I am going to let Colonel Alsager see his father," he said; "and I think there should be no one else by. We can never know exactly how much or how little the patient feels, or knows, or is affected in eases like these; but one at a time is an admirable rule."
"He will find us in the long drawing-room when he wishes to see us," said Mrs. Chisholm; and then she and Helen left the room, and went in silence along the wide corridor, and down the broad flat staircase of fine white stone, with its narrow strip of velvet-pile carpeting and its heavy, carved balustrade, terminated by a fierce figure in armour holding a glittering spear, with a mimic banderol blazoned with the device of the Alsagers. The wide stone hall, at the opposite extremity of which the door of the long drawing-room stood open, the heavy velvetportièrewithdrawn, was hung with trophies of the chase and of war. Tiger-skins, buffalo-horns, thedépouillesof the greater and the lesser animals which man so loves to destroy, adorned its walls, diversified by several handsome specimens of Indian arms, and a French helmet, pistol, and sabretache. Four splendid wood-carvings, representing such scenes as Snyders has painted, were conspicuous among the orthodox ornaments of the hall. They were great favourites with Sir Peregrine, who had bought them in one of the old Belgian cities on the one only occasion when he had visited foreign parts--an awful experience, to which he had been wont to allude with mingled pride and repugnance. Helen glanced at them sadly as she crossed the hall; then turned her head carelessly in the direction of the great door, which stood open, and before which a huge black Newfoundland lay at full length upon the marble steps. At the same moment the dog, whose name was Faust, rose, wagged his tail, twitched his ears, and cantered down the steps, and across the terrace in an oblique direction.
"Who is that, Helen?" asked Mrs. Chisholm, as she caught sight of Faust's swift-vanishing form. "Some one is coming whom the dog knows."
"It is only Mr. Farleigh," answered Helen; but her reply must have been made quite at random, for she had not advanced another step in the direction of the door, and could not possibly have seen, from her position in the hall, who was approaching the house at that moment.
Mrs. Chisholm had a natural and spontaneous inclination towards curates. She respected--indeed, she admired all the ranks of the hierarchy and all their members, and she never could be induced to regard them as in any way divided in spirit or opinions. They were all sacred creatures in her eves, from the most sucking of curates to the most soapy of bishops; but the curates had the preëminence in the order of this remarkably unworldly woman's estimation. Her Augustine had been a curate; he might, indeed, have become a bishop in the fulness of time, and supposing the order of merit to have been attended to by the prime ministerin posse; but fate had otherwise decreed, and his apotheosis had occurred at the curate-stage of his career. For this perfectly laudable and appreciable reason Mrs. Chisholm liked the Reverend Cuthbert Farleigh, and would have liked him had he been the silliest, most commonplace, most priggish young parson in existence--had he had weak eyes and a weak mind, Low-Church opinions, and a talent for playing the flute. But the Reverend Cuthbert had none of these things. On the contrary, he was a handsome manly young fellow, who looked as if he possessed an intellect and a conscience, and was in the habit of using both; who had a tall well-built figure, fine expressive dark eyes, and an independent, sensible, cheerful manner, which few people could have resisted. Helen Manningtree had never made any attempt at resisting it. She had known Cuthbert Farleigh for eighteen months, and she had been in love with him just twelve out of the number. She was not aware of the circumstance at first, for she had had no experience of similar feelings; she had had none of the preliminary feints and make-believes which often precede the great passion of such persons as are calculated to feel a great passion, and the tepid sincerity of such as are not. Helen had never experienced a sensation of preference for any one of the limited and not very varied number of young country gentlemen whom she had met since she "came out" (the term had a restricted significance in her case); and when she did experience and avow to herself such a sentiment in the instance of the Reverend Cuthbert Farleigh, she readily accounted for it to herself by impressing on her own memory that, however young he might look and be, he was her spiritual pastor and master--and, of course, that occult influence affected her very deeply--and by making up her mind that he preached beautifully. And Cuthbert? What was the young lady with the brown eyes, and the brown curls, and the fresh healthful complexion; the young lady who was not indeed strictly beautiful, nor, perhaps, exactly pretty, but who was so charming, so graceful, so thoroughly well-bred; such an innate lady in thought, word, and deed, in accent, in gesture, in manner;--what was she to him? He had asked himself that same question many a time; he asked it now, as he came up to the open door--rarely shut at Knockholt Park, save in the rigorous depths of winter--and he came to the conclusion, as he thought of the manifest luxury and elegance in whose enjoyment Helen had been reared, and of the probable fortune which she would possess, that he had better postpone answering it until he should have become a bishop.
Helen, who did not try to analyze her own perturbations, and was wholly unconscious of Cuthbert's, received him with her accustomed gentle sweetness, but with a sedate and mournful gravity adapted to the circumstances. When the ladies had brought their lengthy and minute narrative to a close--a narrative which embraced only the history of twenty-four hours, for Cuthbert was a regular and attentive visitor--he inquired about Colonel Alsager. Had he been informed? had he been sent for? had he come?
"Yes, to all your questions, Mr. Farleigh. Colonel Alsager is now in the house, in Sir Peregrine's room; but as yet we have not seen him."
The sensitive and expressive face of the curate was clouded by a look of pain and regret. He and Colonel Alsager had never met; but the young clergyman knew Sir Peregrine better, perhaps, than any other person knew him, and respected him deeply. He could not regard Laurence's conduct so lightly, he could not acquit him as easily, as others did. He blamed him heavily, as he sat and listened to the women's talk; and with the blame keen compassion mingled; for he knew, with the mysterious insight of a sympathetic nature, all that he must suffer in realizing that regret must be in vain, must be wasted now, must betoo late.
The occasion was too solemn to admit of so trivial a feeling as curiosity; but had it not been so, that feminine sentiment would undoubtedly have predominated among the emotions with which Mrs. Chisholm and Helen Manningtree received Colonel Alsager, when, after a lengthened interval, he made his appearance in the long drawing-room. As it was, their mutual greetings were kindly but subdued. The presence of illness and danger in the house superseded all minor considerations, and Colonel Alsager might have been a guest as familiar as he was in reality strange, for all the emotion his presence excited. Mrs. Chisholm introduced Cuthbert Farleigh, and added to the usual formula a few words to the effect that he was a favoured guest with Sir Peregrine, which led Alsager to receive the introduction warmly, and to prosecute the acquaintance with zeal. The curate thawed under the influence of the Colonel's genial manner,--so warm and attractive, with all its solemn impress of regret, fear, and uncertainty. After a little while the women went away again to resume their dreary watch; and Dr. Galton came down to make his report, and to join Alsager at his late and much-needed dinner. A telegraphic message had been sent to London to seek further medical assistance; but the great man, who could do so little, could not reach Knockholt before the morning. In the mean time there was little change in the state of the patient; but Dr. Galton adhered to the hopeful opinion he had formed at sunset. Cuthbert Farleigh went away from the Park, and sat down to the preparation of his Sunday's sermon with a troubled mind. "What a capital good fellow Alsager is," he thought, "with all his faults! What a number of questions he asked abouther!He takes a great interest in her. Well,itwould be a very natural and a very nice thing." It is granted, is it not, on all hands, that the abandonment of proper names and the substitution of pronouns--which, whether personal or impersonal, are at all events demonstrative--is a very suspicious circumstance in certain cases?
Sir Peregrine Alsager did not die, as Laurence had thought, and dreaded that he was to die, with the silence between them unbroken, the estrangement unremoved. Nothing could undo the past, indeed; but the present was given to the father and son; and its preciousness was valued duly by them both. In a few days after Laurence's arrival the paralysis loosened its grasp of his father's faculties; and though he still lay in his bed shrunk, shrivelled, and helpless, he could see, and hear, and speak. Sometimes his words were a little confused, and a slight but distressing lapse of memory caused him to pause and try painfully first to recall the word he wanted, and next to accomplish its utterance; but gradually this difficulty wore away, and the old man spoke freely, though little. He was greatly changed by his illness--was most pathetically patient; and his face, a little distorted by the shock, and never more to wear the healthy hue of his vigorous age, assumed an expression of tranquil waiting. The supremacy of his will was gone with the practical abolition of his authority. He let it slip unnoticed. He cared little for anything now but the presence of his son and the progress of the mornings and the evenings which were making the week-days of his life, and wearing towards the dawn of the eternal Sabbath. He loved to have Helen with him, and would regard her with unwonted interest and tenderness,--keenest when she and Laurence met beside his couch, and talked together, as they came gradually to do, very often at first for his sake, and afterwards, as he hoped, as he never doubted, for their own. Yes, the keen anxiety, the foresight, the intensifying of former mental attributes which characterize some kinds of physical decay in persons of a certain intellectual and moral constitution and calibre, showed themselves strongly in Sir Peregrine Alsager, and centred themselves in his son. He had asked nothing, and had heard little of his wandering and purposeless life; but that little had made the old man--held back now, on the brink of the eternal verity, by no scruples of coldness, of pride, of pique, or of scrupulosity--very anxious that his son should marry, and settle down to live at Knockholt Park at least a fair proportion of the year. With that considerate, but perhaps, after all, beautiful, simplicity which restores to age the faith of youth, and builds her shrines for all the long-shattered idols, Sir Peregrine reasoned of his own life and his own experience, and applied his deductions to his son's far different case. He was, however, too wise to put his wishes into words, or even to make them evident without words, to their objects. But there were two persons in the small group who tenanted Knockholt Park who knew that the dearest wish of Sir Peregrine's heart, that desire which overpassed the present and projected itself into the inscrutable future, when its fruition might perchance never be known to him, was that Laurence Alsager, his son, should marry Helen Manningtree, his ward. The two who had penetrated the inmost feelings of the old man were Cuthbert Farleigh and Mrs. Chisholm.
How sped the days with Colonel Alsager in the old home? Heavily, to say the least of it. He had undergone strong excitement of various kinds; and now reaction had set in, with the unspeakable relief of his father's reprieve from immediate death. During his journey from Redmoor to Knockholt he had been an unresisting prey to bitter and confused regrets; so bitter, they seemed almost like remorse; so unavailing, they touched the confines of despair. The scenes in which he had lately played a part, the problems he had been endeavouring to solve, rushed from his view, and retired to the recesses of his memory,--to come out again, and occupy him more closely, more anxiously than ever, when the cruel grasp of suspense and terror was removed from his heart; when the monotony of the quiet house, and the life regulated by the exigencies of that of an invalid, had fairly settled down upon him; when all the past seemed distant, and all the future had more than the ordinary uncertainty of human existence. There was no estrangement between Laurence and his father now; but the son knew that there was no more similarity than before. Their relative positions had altered, and with the change old things had passed away. The pale and shrunken old man who lay patiently on his couch beside the large window of the library at Knockholt, at which the peacocks had now learned to tap and the dogs to sniff, was not the silent though urbane, the hale andarriérécountry gentleman to whom his Guardsman's life had been an unattractive mystery, and all his ways distasteful. That Guardsman's life, those London ways, the shibboleth of his set, even the distinctive peculiarities of his own individuality, had all been laid aside, almost obliterated, by the dread reality which had drawn so near, and still, as they both knew, was unobtrusively ever nigh at hand. Father and son were much together at certain regulated times; and Laurence was unfailing in his scrupulous observance of all the wishes, his intuitive perception of all the fancies, of the invalid. Still there were many hours of solitude to be got through in every day; and Laurence Alsager held stricter and truer commune with his own heart, while they passed over the dial, than he had ever been used to hold. The quiet of the house; the seclusion of the park in which he walked and rode; the formal beauty of the garden, where he strolled with Helen Manningtree, and listened to her enthusiastic expectations of what its appearance would be when the time of flowers should have fully arrived; the regularity of the household; the few and trivial interruptions from without;--all these things had a strong influence on the sensitive temperament of Laurence Alsager, and gradually isolated him within himself. There was nothing to disturb the retrospective and introspective current of his thoughts; and in those quiet weeks of waiting he learned much of himself, of life, and of truth--knowledge which otherwise might never have come to him. It was not very long before his mind recurred painfully to Redmoor and its mistress, whom he had left in a position of difficulty and danger. He remembered the counsel he had given her, and he wondered whether it might avail. He pondered on all the eventualities which thetriste sagesseof a man of the world taught him to anticipate, and longed for power to avert them or to alter their character. He learned some wholesome lessons in these vain aspirations, and looked deeper into the stream of life than he had ever looked before.
He looked at Lady Mitford's position from every point of view; he weighed and measured her trials, and then he began to speculate upon her temptations. All at once it struck him that he had ceased to fear Lord Dollamore; that that distinguished personage had somehow dropped out of his calculations; that he was occupying himself rather with her sentimental griefs than with the serious danger which he had believed, a little while ago, menaced her reputation and her position. He feared Laura Hammond, and he ardently desired to penetrate the full meaning of Miss Gillespie's warning. He perfectly understood the difficulty of conveying to a mind so innocent as that of Lady Mitford the full force and meaning of the counsel he had given her, the hopelessness of inducing her to arm herself with a woman's legitimate weapon--the strong desire to please,--and getting her to use it against her husband. She did not lack intelligence, but she did not possess tact; and her nature was too refined and straightforward to give her any chance in so unequal a contest as that into which her husband's worthlessness had forced her.
And now another truth came steadily up from the abyss into which Alsager was always gazing, and confronted him. That truth was the motive which animated his thoughts and inspired his perceptions; which gave him so clear an insight into Lady Mitford's position, and enabled him to read her heart with more distinctness than she herself could have interpreted it. One day Laurence Alsager knew, and acknowledged to himself, what this motive was, whence came this intuition. He loved Georgie Mitford. Yes; the idle speculation, the indignation of a true gentleman at beholding the innocent wronged and the trusting deceived; the loyal instinct of protection; the contemptuous anger which had led him to detest Laura Hammond and to desire her discomfiture; the tender and true sympathy of a world-worn man with a pure and simple woman, to whom the world and its ways are all unknown and unsuspected; the shrinking from beholding the suffering which experience must inflict,--all these had been evident--they had existed in utter integrity and vitality. Alsager had not deceived himself then, neither did he deceive himself now; and though they still existed, they had receded from their prominence,--they did but supplement another, a more powerful, a more vital reality. He loved her--he never doubted the fact, never questioned it more. He loved with a love as much superior to, as much stronger, holier, truer, and more vital than, any love which he had ever before felt or fancied--as his present self-commune was more candid, searching, and complete than any counsel ever previously held in the secret chambers of his brain and heart. He had settled this point with himself, and was moodily pondering on the possible consequences of the fact, and on the alteration in his own position towards Lady Mitford which it implied, when he received a letter from Georgie. It was not the first,--several notes had passed between them in the easy intimacy of their acquaintance; but it was the first since that acquaintance had strengthened into friendship. And now, for him, friendship too had passed away, and in its place stood love--dangerous, delicious, entrancing, bewildering love. So Georgie's letter had altogether a different value and significance for him now. This was the letter:
"Redmoor, -- March 18--.
"Dear Colonel Alsager,--Sir Charles received your kind note, but has been too busy to write; so he has asked me to do so, and I comply with very great pleasure. I need hardly say how truly glad we were to hear of the improvement in Sir Peregrine's state, and how earnestly we hope he may completely rally. All things are going on here much as usual. Poor Mr. Hammond is very ill,--failing rapidly, I am sure; this week he is suffering fearfully from bronchitis. They talked of going away, but that is of course impossible. I am a good deal with him, and I think he likes me. Lord Dollamore has come back from town, and is staying here,--doing nothing but lounge about and watch everybody. Is there any chance that we shall have the pleasure of seeing you again if we are detained here much longer? I hoped Charley would have taken me to see my father, who has been ailing this cold spring weather; but I fear the long delay here will prevent that,--he will be impatient to get to town as soon as possible. Pray let us hear from you how Sir Peregrine is. Charley is out, but I know I may add his kindest regards to my own.--Yours, dear Colonel Alsager, always sincerely,
"Georgina Mitford.
"P.S. I have not forgotten your advice for a minute, nor ceased to act upon it, and to thank you for it from my heart. But--it is so difficult to write upon this subject--difficult to me to write on any, for, as you know, I am not clever, unfortunately for me. Could you not come?"
Laurence read and re-read this simple letter with unspeakable pain and keen irrepressible delight. She trusted him; she thought of him; she wished for his presence! Could he not come? she asked. No; he could not. But supposing he could--ought he? Well, he was a brave man and a true, and he faced that question also. How he answered it remains to be seen.
The days passed at Knockholt Park, and resembled each other very closely. Laurence saw a good deal of Cuthbert Farleigh, and liked him much. He wondered a little, after the manner of men, at the content yielded by a life so unlike his own, or any that his fancy had ever painted; but if he and the curate did not sympathize, they coalesced. Laurence wrote again to, and heard again from, Lady Mitford.
There was not much in her letter apart from her kind and sympathizing comments upon his; but he gathered a good deal from the tone which unconsciously pervaded it. He learned that she had not succeeded in breaking up the party at Redmoor; that Sir Charles had invited a fresh relay of county guests; that Mr. Hammond's health was very precarious; and that Georgie had not been gratified in her wish to see her father. The letter made him more uneasy, more sad, by its reticence than by its revelations. If he could but have returned to Redmoor!--but it was impossible. If he could have left his father, how was he to have accounted for an uninvited return to Sir Charles Mitford's house? He did not choose, for many reasons, to assume or cultivate such relations with the worthy Baronet as going there in an informal manner would imply.
So March and April slipped away, and Laurence Alsager was still at Knockholt, in close attendance upon his father. One day in the last week of April, Laurence was returning from a solitary ramble in the park, intending to read to his father for a while, if he should find that Sir Peregrine (sensibly feebler, and much inclined to slumber through the brightest hours of sunshine) could bear the exertion of listening. As he emerged from the shade of a thick plantation on the north side of the house and approached the terrace, he observed with alarm that several servants were assembled on the steps, and that two came running towards him, with evident signs of agitation and distress. He advanced quickly to meet them, and exclaimed, "Is anything wrong? Is my father worse?"
"I am sorry to tell you, Sir Laurence--" began the foremost of the two servants. And so Laurence Alsager learned that his father had gone to his rest, and that he had come to his kingdom.
Lady Mitford remained in the library, where Colonel Alsager had bidden her farewell, for a long time after he had departed. She was sorely perplexed in spirit and depressed in mind. She was heartily grieved for Alsager, whom she had learned long ago to distinguish from the crowd of casual acquaintance by whom she had been surrounded as soon as her "brilliant marriage" had introduced her to the London world. Implicit confidence in him had come to reconcile her to the novel feeling of distrust towards others, which had gradually, under the deteriorating influence of her recent experiences, taken possession of her. He represented to her a great exception to a rule whose extent she had not yet thoroughly learned to estimate, and whose existence pained and disgusted her. His conversation with her just before his departure had ratified the tacit bond between them; and as Lady Mitford sat gazing idly from the wide window down the broad carriage-drive by which the riding-party had departed, she dwelt with grateful warmth upon every detail of Alsager's words, every variation of his manner and inflection of his voice.
"At least he is my friend," she thought; "and what a comfort it is to know that! what a support in the state of wretched uncertainty I seem doomed to!" Anon she ceased to think of Colonel Alsager at all, and her fancy strayed, as fancy always does, to scenes and subjects whence pain is to be extracted. If any stranger could have looked into that handsome and luxurious room just then, and seen its tenant, he would have recoiled from the contrast and contradictions of the picture. She sat, as Alsager had left her sitting, on a low brown-morocco couch, facing the deep bay-window; her hands lay idly in her lap, her small head was bent listlessly forward; but the gaze of the lustrous and thoughtful eves was fixed and troubled. The soft tempered light touched her hair, her quiet hands, the graceful outlines of her figure, and the rich folds of her dress with a tender brilliance, but no sunshine from within lighted up the pale brow or brightened the calm sorrowful lips. Time passed on, and still she sat absorbed in her thoughts, until at length the loud chiming of the clocks aroused her. She threw off her preoccupation by an effort, and saying half aloud, "At least they shall not return and find me moping here," she passed out of the library. She paused a moment in the hall, debating with herself whether she would betake herself at once to the piano in her dressing-room, or go and inquire for poor old Mr. Hammond, to whom she had not yet made her customary daily visit. Lady Mitford was in the mood just then to do a kindness; her heart was full of Alsager's kindness to herself, and she sent for Mr. Hammond's man, and bade him tell his master she requested admittance to his room if he felt able to see her.
"I suppose if he had not been," she added mentally, "his wife would have been afraid to have left him to-day."
Lady Mitford had made considerable progress in the science of life since the friend who had left her presence that morning had seen her for the first time at the Parthenium, but she had need to make a great deal more before she could be qualified to comprehend Laura Hammond.
Georgie found Mr. Hammond pretty well, and tolerably cheerful. The feeble old man liked his gentle and considerate hostess. He had liked her when he was in health; and he liked her still better now that the languor of illness rendered him liable to being fatigued by ordinarily dull or extraordinarily brilliant people. Georgie was neither;--she was only a gentle, refined, humble-minded, pure-hearted lady; and the old man, though of course he did not admire her at all in comparison with his own brilliant and bewitching Laura, and had considered her (under Laura's instructions) rather vapid and commonplace the preceding season, was in a position just then to appreciate these tamely admirable qualities to their fullest extent. She remained with Mr. Hammond until the sound of the horses' hoofs upon the avenue warned her that the cavalcade was returning. She then went hastily down the great staircase, and reached the hall just in time to see Mrs. Hammond lifted from her saddle by Sir Charles with demonstrative gallantry, and to observe that he looked into her face as he placed her upon the ground with an expression which rendered words wholly superfluous. The unborn strength which had been created by Alsager's counsel was too weak to bear this sharp trial. Georgie shrunk as if she had been stung, and, abandoning her brave purpose of giving her guests a cheerful greeting at the door, she took refuge in her own room.
On this day Sir Charles for the first time departed from the custom he had maintained since their marriage, of seeking Georgie on his return home after any absence. It was a significant omission; and as she took her place at the dinner-table, Lady Mitford felt that the few hours which had elapsed since Colonel Alsager had given her that counsel, which every hour became more difficult for her to follow, had made a disastrous difference in her position. She would make a great effort--she would do all that Laurence had advised, but how if Sir Charles estranged himself from her altogether?--and even to her inexperience there was something ominous in any marked departure from his accustomed habits,--what should she do then? He might either persist in a tacit estrangement, which would place her at a hopeless disadvantage, or he might quarrel with her, and end all by an open rupture. Georgie was beginning to understand the man she had married, without as yet ceasing to love him; and it is wonderful what rapid progress the dullest of women will make in such knowledge when they are once set on its right track.
Lord Dollamore took Lady Mitford to dinner, as usual, on that day, and Sir Charles gave his arm to Mrs. Hammond. He had entered the drawing-room only a moment before dinner was announced, and had not exchanged a word with his wife. Among the first topics of conversation was Colonel Alsager's departure, which Sir Charles treated with much indifference, and to whose cause Mrs. Hammond adverted with a pert flippancy, so much at variance with her customary adherence to the rules of good taste that the circumstance attracted Lord Dollamore's attention. He made no remark when she had concluded her lively sallies upon the inconvenience of fathers in general, the inconsiderateness of fathers who had paralytic strokes in particular, and the generic detestability of all old people; but he watched her closely, and when her exclusive attention was once more claimed by Sir Charles, whose undisguised devotion almost reached the point of insult to the remainder of the company, he smiled a satisfied smile, like that of a man who has been somewhat puzzled by an enigma, and who finds the key to it all of a sudden. A little was said about Miss Gillespie, but not much; she was speedily relegated to the category of "creatures" by Mrs. Hammond, and then she was forgotten. The general conversation was perhaps a little flat, as general conversation is apt to be under such inharmonious circumstances; and Lady Mitford's assumed spirits flagged suddenly and desperately. A feeling of weariness, of exhaustion, which quenched pride and put bitterness aside, came over her; a dreary loathing of the scene and its surroundings; a swift passing vision of the dear old home she had left so cheerfully--abandoned so heartlessly, she would now have said--of the dear old father of whom she had thought so little latterly, whose advice would be so precious to her now,--only that she would not tell him for the world; a horrid sense of powerlessness in the hands of a pitiless enemy--all these rushed over her in one cold wave of trouble. Another moment and she would have burst into hysterical tears, when a low firm whisper recalled her to herself.
"Command yourself," it said; "she is looking at you, though you cannot perceive it. Drink some wine, and smile."
It was Lord Dollamore who spoke, and Lady Mitford obeyed him. He did not give her time to feel surprise or anger at his interpretation of her feelings, or his interposition to save her from betraying them; but instantly, with the utmost ease and readiness, he applied himself to the task of enlivening the company, and that so effectually, that he soon gained even the attention of the preoccupied pair at the other end of the table, and turned a dinner-party which had threatened to become a lamentable failure into a success. It was a bold stroke; but he played it with coolness and judgment, and it told admirably. Lady Mitford lifted her candid eyes to his as she left the dining-room, and there was neither anger nor reproach in them; but there was gratitude, and the dawn of confidence.
"Just so," thought Lord Dollamore, as he drew his chair up to the table again; "she's the sort of woman who must trust somebody; and she has found out that her reclaimed Charley is not to be trusted. I'll see if I can't make her trust me."
It suited Laura Hammond's humour to exert her powers of pleasing on this evening, or perhaps even her audacious spirit quailed before the ordeal of the female after-dinner conclave, and she was forced to cover her fear by bravado. At any rate, she appeared in an entirely new character. The insolent indolence, theennuiwhich usually characterized her demeanour when there were no men present, were thrown aside, and she deliberately set herself to carry the women by storm. She talked, she laughed, she admired their dresses, and made suggestions respecting theircoiffures. She offered one a copy of a song unpurchaseable for money and unprocurable for love; she promised another that her maid should perform certain miracles in millinery on her behalf; she sat down at the piano and played and sang brilliantly. Lady Mitford watched her in silent amazement, in growing consternation. The witchery of her beauty was irresistible; the power of an evil purpose lent her the subtlest seductive charm. The dark-grey eyes flashed fire, and glowed with triumph; the wanton mouth trembled with irrepressible fun.
It was an easy and a common thing for Laura Hammond to captivate men, and she really thought nothing about it, unless some deeper purpose, some remoter end, happened, as in the present instance, to be in view; but women, to tell the simple truth, always feared, generally envied, and frequently hated her; she enjoyed her triumph over the "feminine clique," as she disdainfully called them, at Redmoor thoroughly, and with keen cynical appreciation. She played her game steadily all that evening. When the gentlemen came into the drawing-room she almost ignored their presence; she was innocently, ingenuously polite, but she admitted no exclusive attentions; she never relapsed for a moment in her wheedling, but never overdone, civilities to the women. She brought forward the bashful young ladies; she actually played a perfect accompaniment, full of the most enchanting trills and shakes, to a feeble bleat which one of them believed to be a song; and when Sir Charles Mitford, whose ungoverned temper and natural ill-breeding invariably got the better of the conventional restraints which were even yet strange to him, endeavoured to interrupt her proceedings, she stopped him with a stealthy uplifted finger, and a warning glance directed towards his wife. Her victim was persuaded that he fully understood her; he rendered her admirablerusein his feeble way, the warmest tribute of admiration; and he left the room with a vague consciousness that the indifference which had been for some time his only feeling towards his wife was rapidly turning into hatred.
Laura Hammond's own game was not the only one she played that night. Lord Dollamore had watched her quite as closely as Lady Mitford, and to more purpose. He saw that--where sheer recklessness or from some deeper motive,--which he thought he could dimly discern--she was hurrying matters to a crisis, and that he might take advantage of the position which she had created. They were dainty jewelled claws with which he proposed to snatch the fruit he coveted from the fire; but what of that; they were cruel also; and when they had done his work he cared little what became of them. Let them be scorched and burnt; let the sharp talons be torn out from their roots; what cared he? So he watched the feline skill, the deft, supple, graceful dexterity of the woman, with a new interest--personal this time; any he had previously felt had been mere connoisseurship, mere cynical curiosity, in a marked and somewhat rare specimen.
Every evidence of this observation, every sign Of this new interest, was carefully and successfully suppressed. When all other yes were turned on Mrs. Hammond, his never rested on her even by accident. She sang; and while the greater part of the company gathered round the piano, and those who could not obtain places near the singer kept profound silence, and listened with eager intensity, Dollamore ostentatiously suppressed a yawn, turned over the upholstery-books which ornamented the useless tables, scrutinized the chimney-decorations, and finally strolled into the adjoining room. Equally artistic was his demeanour towards Lady Mitford. He was delicately deferential and frankly cordial; but neither by word or look did he remind her of the service he had rendered her at dinner. Georgie might have been slow to comprehend genius and appreciate wit, but she recognized delicacy and good taste at a glance: and so it fell out that when she received Lord Dollamore's "goodnight," she thought, as she returned the valediction, "There is one man besides Colonel Alsager over whom she has no power. Lord Dollamore holds her in contempt."
The next morning at breakfast Lord Dollamore announced regretfully that he must leave Redmoor for a few days, but hoped to return by the end of the week. He addressed this announcement to Sir Charles Mitford, who was gazing intently on Mrs. Hammond as she broke the seals of several notes, and tossed them down one after another, half read, with a most reassuring air of indifference. Lady Mitford was not present; breakfast was a free and unceremonious meal at Redmoor, to which everybody came when everybody liked, and nobody was surprised if anybody stayed away. Sir Charles expressed polite regret.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Hammond, "how very sorry Lady Mitford will be! Bereft of her two courtiers, she will be bereaved indeed. First Colonel Alsager, and now Lord Dollamore. She will be quiteau déspoir.
"I wish I could hope to make so deep an impression by my absence, Mrs. Hammond," he answered in the careless tone in which one replies to a silly observation made by a petted child. "Mitford, can you come with me into the library a minute?" And he moved away, taking with him a parcel of letters.--"When you are spiteful, and show it, you grow vulgar, madam," he muttered under his breath--"after the manner of your kind--and a trifle coarse; but Mitford is not the man to see that, or to mind it if he did."
Half an hour later Lord Dollamore had left Redmoor; and as he leant back in the railway carriage which bore him towards town, he quietly reviewed all that had taken place during his visit, and arrived at a conclusion perfectly satisfactory to himself. Then he resolved to think no more of the matter till his return; and dismissed it with the reflection that "Mitford was a regular beast,--low, and all that;" but that she "was a devilish nice woman;--no fool, but not clever enough to bore one, and pretty enough for anything."
Matters continued pretty much in the same state at Redmoor during the week which followed Lord Dollamore's departure. Lady Mitford wrote to Colonel Alsager, and heard from him; but her letter--that which we have seen him receive at Knockholt--said as little as possible of the real state of affairs. The truth made a faint attempt to struggle out in the postscript; but pride, reserve, an instinct of propriety, the numberless obstacles to a woman in such a position as that of Lady Mitford telling it in its entirety to any man rendered the attempt abortive. Could he not come? she had asked him. Could he not come? she asked herself, in the weary days through which she was passing--days of which each one was wearier and more hopeless than its predecessor; for things were becoming desperate now. The other guests had taken their leave, but still the Hammonds remained at Redmoor. Not a woman of the party but had known Laura's hollowness and falsehood well--had known that the powers of fascination she had employed were mere tricks of cunning art; but they were all fascinated for all that. Laura had made the close of the time at Redmoor incomparably pleasant, whereas its opening had been undeniably dull; and there was another reason for their letting Mrs. Hammond down easily. They had remained as long as they could in the same house with her; and how were they to excuse or account for their having done so, if they disclosed their real opinion of her character and conduct? It was a keen privation, no doubt, not to be able to descant upon the "doings" at Redmoor, but they had to bear it; and the only alleviation within their reach was an occasional compassionate mention of Lady Mitford as "hardly up to the mark for her position and fortune, and sadly jealous, poor thing!"
It would have been impossible, in common decency, to have avoided all mention of the departure of the Hammonds; and accordingly Sir Charles Mitford told his wife, as curtly and sullenly as possible, that she might make her preparations for going to town, as he supposed they would be moving off in a few days. Georgie had suffered dreadfully, but the worst was over. The keen agony of outraged love had died out, and the sense of shame, humiliation, terrible apprehension, and uncertainty, was uppermost now. In her distress and perplexity she was quite alone; she had no female friend at all in any real sense of the word. It was not likely Sir Charles Mitford's wife should have any; and the only friend she could rely upon was away, and hopelessly detained. The only friend she could rely on--As she repeated the lamentation over and over again in the solitude of her room, and in the bitterness of her heart, did it ever occur to her that the only friend she could rely on might be a dangerous, though not a treacherous one;--that she was crying peace, peace, where there was no peace?
"When we know what the Hammonds are going to do, I shall write to Dollamore," said Sir Charles. He spoke to Georgie.
She felt an eager longing to see her old home, and to breathe a purer moral atmosphere than that of Redmoor. "I can only suffer and be perplexed here," she thought. "Let me get away, and I can think freely, and make up my mind to some line of action. Out of her sight, I should be easier, even in town; and how much easier at home!--once more in the old place, and among the old people, where I used to be before I knew there were such women as this one in the world." So she thought she would do a courageous thing, and ask Sir Charles to take her home for a little, as soon as the Hammonds should have left Redmoor.
She came to this resolution one morning before she went down to breakfast,--before she had to encounter Mrs. Hammond, who brought a fresh supply of ammunition to the attack on each such occasion; whose beauty was never brighter or more alluring than when she arrayed it in the elaborate simplicity of Parisian morning-dress; who was not sufficiently sensitive to bejournalière, and who might always cherish a well-founded confidence in her own good looks, and the perfect efficiency of her weapons. Not that Georgie was fighting her any longer on the oldterrain; she had retreated from that, and had no other object now than to shield herself from the perpetual sharp fire of Laura's polished impertinence, her epigrammatic sarcasms, her contemptuous pity. Lady Mitford, whose good sense was apt to do its proper office in spite of the tumult of feeling constantly striving to overpower it, wondered sometimes why Laura took so much trouble to wound her. "She has made sure of Sir Charles," the pure simple lady would say to herself, when some sharp arrow had been shot at her, and she felt the smart, not quite so keenly as the archer thought perhaps, but keenly still. "She does not need to turn me into ridicule before him, to expose my defects andgaucheries; she does not need to test his devotion to her by the strength and impenetrability of his indifference to me,--at least not now. She is clever enough to know that wit and humour, sarcasm and finesse, are all thrown away uponhim, if she is showing them off for her own sake." Of a surety Lady Mitford was rapidly learning to estimate Sir Charles aright. "Her beauty and her unscrupulousness have fascinated him, and all the rest is more likely to bore him than otherwise. If she were in love with him she might not understand this; but she is not in love with him--not even after her fashion and his own; and I am sure she does understand it perfectly. What does she throw so much vigilance away for, then?--for she never loses a chance. Why does she waste so much energy onme? Of course, I know she hates me; and if she be as good a hater as such a woman should be, she would not be satisfied with the one grand injury she has done me; hatred might be pacified by so large a sop, but spite would crave for more. Yes, that must be the explanation--she is feeding spite."
If the old clergyman who had cried over Georgie Stanfield on her wedding-day, and uttered that futile blessing on the marriage which was so unblessed, could have heard her speak thus to her own heart, how utterly confounded and astonished that good but not "knowledgable" individual would have been! A few months in the great world to have turned Georgie into this woman, who seeks for motives, who reads character, who has all the dreary cunning in interpretation of the human heart which his life-long experience had failed to impart to him, though he had passed half a century in professional proclamation that "the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." But it was not her short experience of the great world in any general sense which had so far forwarded her education in the science of life as to enable her thus to analyze conduct and motives,--she had had a surer, subtler teacher; she had loved, and been betrayed; she had hoped, and been deceived. She had dreamed a young girl's dream, and one by no means so exaggerated and exalted as most young girls indulge in; and the awakening had come, not only with such rudeness and bitterness as seldom accompany the inevitable disillusionment, but with such startling rapidity, that the lasting of her vision had borne no more proportion to the usual duration of "love's young dream," than the forty winks of an after-dinner nap bear to the dimensions of "a good night's rest." Experience had not tapped at the sleeper's door, and lingered softly near the couch, and insinuated a gently-remonstrative remark that really it was time to risk--tenderly letting in the garish light by tempered degrees the while--cheerfully impressing, without hurry or severity, the truth that a work-day world--busy, stirring, dutiful, and real--lay beyond the glorified realms of slumber, and awaited the passing of the foot going forth to the appointed task over the enchanted threshold. The summary process of awakening by which the sleeper has a basinful of cold water flung on his face, and is pulled out of bed by his feet, bears a stricter metaphorical analogy to that by which Lady Mitford had been roused from her delusion; and though she had reeled and staggered under it at first, the shock had effectually done its work. Georgie Mitford was a wiser woman than Georgie Stanfield could ever have been made by any more considerate process.
All Lady Mitford's newly-sprung wisdom, all the acuteness she had gained by being sharpened on the grindstone of suffering, did not enable her to reach a complete comprehension of Mrs. Hammond's motives. She had not the key to the enigma; she knew nothing of Laura's former relations with Colonel Alsager. If she had ever heard the story, or any garbled version of it, at all, it was before she had any distinct knowledge of, or interest in, either of the parties concerned,--when she was confused and harassed with the crowd of new names and unfamiliar faces,--and she had forgotten it. Even that advantage was her enemy's. Mrs. Hammond had been peculiarly bewitching to Sir Charles, and preternaturally impertinent to Lady Mitford, at the breakfast-table, on the morning when Colonel Alsager's first letter had arrived; indeed, she had a little overdone her part, which was not altogether unnatural. Fierce passions, a violent temper, and a cold heart, form a powerful but occasionally troublesome combination, and imperatively demand a cool brain and steady judgment to control and utilize them. Laura Hammond had as cool a brain and as steady a judgment as even a very bad woman could reasonably be expected to possess; but they were not invariably dominant. The cold heart did not always aid them successfully in subduing the violent temper; and when it failed to do so, the combination was apt to be mischievous. On the occasion in question, Mrs. Hammond had been, to begin with, out of sorts, as the best-regulated natures, and the most intent on their purposes in their worst sense, will occasionally be. Sir Charles bored her, and she was on the point of letting him perceive the fact, and thus giving her temper its head, when the cool brain interposed and curbed it in time. She exerted herself then to bewitch and enslave the Baronet, even beyond his usual condition of enchantment and subjugation. Her success was complete; but its enjoyment was mitigated by her perception that it had failed to affect Lady Mitford. The husband whom she had undoubtedly loved, and of whom she had been undeniably jealous, slighted her more openly than ever, and offered to her rival before her face undisguised and passionate homage; and yet Lady Mitford maintained perfect composure; and though she was occasionallydistraite, the expression of her face indicated anything but painful thoughts as the cause of her abstraction. Her serene beauty was particularly impressive, and there was an indefinable added attraction in the calm unconscious grace of her manner. The quick instinct of hate warned her enemy that she was losing ground, and she listened eagerly, while she never interrupted her conversation with Sir Charles, for an indication of the cause. It came quickly. Alsager's letter was mentioned, and Lady Mitford imparted its contents to Captain Bligh, who had dropped in late, and had not heard her communication to Sir Charles. She looked away from Mrs. Hammond while she spoke, and while she and Bligh discussed the letter, Sir Peregrine's state, Laurence's detention at Knockholt, and other topics connected with the subject. It was fortunate that she did not see Laura's face; the sight would have enlightened her probably, but at the cost of infinite perplexity and distress, deepening and darkening a coming sorrow, swooping now very near to her unconscious head. The look, which would have been a revelation, lasted only a moment. It did not deform the beauty of the face, which it lighted up with a lurid glare of baffled passion and raging jealousy; for that beauty owed nothing to expression--its charm, its power were entirely sensuous; but it changed it from the seductive loveliness of a wicked woman to the evil splendour of a remorseless devil. If Lady Mitford had seen it, the light which its lurid fury would have flashed upon her might have been vivid enough to show her that in the rage and torment whence it sprung, she was avenged; but Georgie was not the sort of woman to be comforted by that view of the subject.
Lady Mitford made her request of Sir Charles, and was refused more peremptorily than her letter to Laurence Alsager had implied. The increasing rudeness of Mitford to his wife was characteristic of the man. He had neither courage, tact, nor breeding; and when he went wrong, he did so doggedly, and without making any attempt to mitigate or disguise the ugliness of the aberration. His demeanour to his wife at this juncture exhibited a pleasing combination of viciousness and stupidity. He was maddened by the near inevitability of Laura's departure. The Hammonds must leave Redmoor, and there was no possibility of their going to town. Mr. Hammond's physician had prescribed Devonshire air, and in Devonshire he must be permitted to remain. Sir Charles heartily cursed the poor old gentleman for the ill-health by which he and Laura had so largely profited; but curses could do nothing,--the Hammonds must go. He must be separated from Laura for a time, unless indeed Hammond would be kind enough to die, or she would be devoted enough to elope with him. The latter alternative presented itself to Sir Charles only in the vaguest and remotest manner, and but for a moment. He had become very much of a brute, and he had always been somewhat of a fool; but he had not reached the point of folly at which he could have supposed that Laura Hammond would forfeit the wealth for which she had sold herself, and which in the course of nature must soon fall into her hands, for any inducement of sentiment or passion. He had been brooding over these grievances alone in the library, when Georgie, with whom he had not exchanged a dozen words for as many days, came in, and spoke to him, with a miserable affectation of unconsciousness, about a wish to visit her old home before their return to town for the season. He refused with curt incivility and obstinacy; and it is probable that the ensuing few minutes might have brought about a decided quarrel between the husband and wife, had not Captain Bligh entered the room abruptly, and called out, apparently without noticing Lady Mitford's presence:
"I say, Mitford, you're wanted. Hammond is ever so much worse. Gifford has been round to the stables to get a groom sent off for Dr. Wilkinson.--I beg your pardon, Lady Mitford,--I ought to have mentioned that Mrs. Hammond's maid is looking foryou."
Confusion reigned at Redmoor all that day, which seemed likely, during many hours, to have been the last of Mr. Hammond's life. Sir Charles felt that his morning meditation had had something prophetic in it; here was the other alternative almost within his grasp. At all events, whether he died a little sooner or lingered a little longer, Mr. Hammond must remain at Redmoor. The evil day was postponed. Lady Mitford simply devoted herself to the invalid, and behaved towards Mrs. Hammond with magnanimous kindness and consideration, which might have disarmed even Laura, had her inveterate coquetry and love of intrigue been the only animating motives of her conduct. She might have sacrificed the lesser passions to an impulse of the kind, but the greater--no. So she accepted all the delicate kindness which poor Georgie did her, she accepted therôleof devoted and afflicted wife assigned to her before the household, and she hardened her heart against every appeal of her feebly-speaking conscience. With the following day the aspect of things changed a little. Mr. Hammond rallied; the doctors considered him likely to get over the attack; and Lord Dollamore arrived at Redmoor.
"I didn't hear anything from anybody, Mitford, and so I came on according to previous arrangement," said his lordship, as he greeted his host and looked about for Lady Mitford.
Lord Dollamore had strictly adhered to his programme. He never burdened his mind with the pursuit of two objects at the same time. He had completely disposed of the business which had called him away, and with which the present narrative has no concern; and he had come back to Redmoor as a kind ofdivertissementbefore the serious business of the season should commence. He entertained no doubt that he could resume his relation with Lady Mitford precisely at the point which it had attained when he left Redmoor. Georgie was not a fickle woman in anything; rather methodical, he had observed, in trifles. The impression he had made was likely to have been aided rather than lessened by the intermediate course of events at Redmoor. On the whole he felt tolerably confident; besides, he did not very much care. Lord Dollamore's was a happy temperament--a fortunate constitution, in fact--always supposing that life on this planet wastout potage, and nothing to follow. He could be pleasantly excited by the ardour of pursuit, and moderately elated by success; but failure had no terrors for him; he never fell into the weakness of caring sufficiently about anything to furnish fate with the gratification of disappointing him, in the heart-sickening or enraging sense of that elastic expression.
The Hammonds and Lord Dollamore were the only people now at Redmoor who could be strictly called guests. Captain Bligh was rather more at home than Sir Charles; and one or two stragglers, who had remained after the general break-up, addicted themselves to the versatile and good-humouredvaurien, and were generally to be found in his company. Accordingly, and as he anticipated, Lord Dollamore found Lady Mitford alone in, the drawing-room when he quitted the delectable society of the gentlemen. Mrs. Hammond had left the dinner-table, proclaiming her intention of at once resuming her place by her husband's side--a declaration by which she secured two purposes: one, the avoidance of atête-à-têtewith Lady Mitford; the other, the prevention of a visit by her hostess to the sickroom, on any supposition that Mr. Hammond might require extra attention. During dinner she had been quiet and subdued; her manner, in short, had been perfectlycomme-il-faut, and she was dressed for her part to perfection. She had kept alive Lady Mitford's gentler feelings towards her; she had forged a fresh chain for Sir Charles, who, like "Joey B.," had great admiration for proceedings which he considered "devilish sly;" and she had afforded Dollamore much amusement of the kind which he peculiarly appreciated--quiet, ill-natured, and philosophical.
It does not much signify whether Laura went to her husband's sickroom at all, or how long she remained there; but there was some significance in the fact, which Lord Dollamore found eminently convenient and agreeable, that Sir Charles sent a footman to tell my lady that he had business to attend to in the library, and requested she would send his coffee thither; and there was a fortunate coincidence in the adjournment of Captain Bligh and his companions to the smoking-room, without any embarrassing drawing-room parade at all.
As Lord Dollamore entered the room, Lady Mitford was bidding goodnight to Mr. Hammond's little daughter, to whom she had been uniformly kind since the mysterious departure of Miss Gillespie. Lord Dollamore had, hardly ever seen the child, whom her stepmother wholly neglected, leaving her to the care of her maid, if the foreign damsel who officiated in that enviable capacity chose to take care of her,--and to chance, if she did not. Laura Hammond hardly knew that Lady Mitford had taken the child under her kindly protection, and had kept her with her during many of the hours of each day which she was not obliged to devote to her social duties; but the child's father knew the fact, and felt grateful to the one woman, after his senile fashion, without daring to express or even to feel any condemnation of the other. As the child left the room, Lord Dollamore looked after her for a moment before he closed the door; then he went up to Lady Mitford's sofa by the fireplace, and said quietly:
"Mrs. Hammond is as admirable as a stepmother as in all the other relations of life, I fancy."
Georgie made no reply, and he did not appear to expect any. Then came Sir Charles's message; and Dollamore watched Lady Mitford closely during its delivery, and until the servant had left the room, carrying a single cup of coffee on a salver.
"Does Mrs. Hammond disdain that celestial beverage?" he asked then, in a voice so full of meaning that Lady Mitford started and blushed crimson. This symptom of anger did not disconcert Lord Dollamore in the least. He had made up his mind to use the first opportunity which should present itself, and it had come. Of course she would start and blush, no matter how he phrased his meaning, but the start was rather graceful, and the blush was decidedly becoming.
"I don't know. I--what do you mean, Lord Dollamore? Mrs. Hammond has gone to her room; you heard what she said?"
"I did; and I don't believe a word of it. 'My poor dear Hammond' will have very little of her society this evening. Lady Mitford," he said, with a sudden change of tone, "how long do you intend to endure this kind of thing? Now I know what you are going to say; "--he put up his hand with a deferential but decided gesture, to prevent her speaking;--"I am quite aware that I have no business to talk to you about Mitford and Mrs. Hammond. I could repeat all that conventional catechism about the whole duty of men and women without a blunder; but it's all nonsense--all hypocrisy, which is worse. I am a man of the world, and you are a woman of the world, or nearly: you will very soon be completely so. Allow me to anticipate the period at which your education will be finished, and to speak to you with perfect frankness."
Georgie looked at him in complete bewilderment. What did this new tone which he had assumed mean?--To insult her? No; she had no reason to think, to fear anything of that kind. Had he not done her at least one substantial service--had he not saved her from ridicule, from affording her enemy a triumph? Had not his manner been always respectful, and, in his indolent way, kind? Even while he spoke of her as "nearly" a woman of the world, she knew that he was thinking of her newness, her ignorance of that very world, and of life. Perhaps she should only expose herself to ridicule on his part now, if she shrank from hearing him. It was certain that things had gone too far--the state of affairs had become too evident--for her to affect indignation or assume prudery, without making herself supremely ridiculous; besides, there was already a tacit confidence between them, which she could neither ignore nor recall. She wished vaguely that Colonel Alsager had been there; then, that some one might come into the room; but she felt, amid her perplexity and perturbation, a strong desire to hear what he had to say to her--to learn what was the view which a man so completely of society, and so capable of interpreting its judgment, took of her position and prospects. Nervously, yet not unreadily, she assented; and Lord Dollamore, standing on the hearth-rug and looking down at her bent head and drooping eyelids, spoke in a low tone:
"You are no match for Mrs. Hammond, Lady Mitford. You would not be, even if you did not labour under the insurmountable disadvantage of being Sir Charles's wife. That must be as evident to yourself--for you are wonderfully sensible and free from vanity--as it is to the lookers-on, who proverbially see most of the game. You have feeling and delicacy, and she is encumbered by no such obstacles to the attainment of any purpose she may set before her. But because you can't fight her on any ground, that's no reason why you should let her make you wretched, and, above all, ridiculous."
"She cannot. I--"
Georgie had looked up with an angry beautiful flush on her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes, which Mrs. Hammond could not have managed by any contrivance to excel. But when she saw the look that was fixed on her, her eyes fell, and she covered her face with her hands. It was not a bold glance; it was quiet, powerful, and pitying--pitying from Dollamore's point of view, not of her grief, but of her "greenness."
"Shecan, and shehas, Lady Mitford; but it will be your own fault, and a very silly fault too, if she has that power much longer. Look the truth in the face; don't be afraid of it. You have lost Mitford's affections, I suppose you will say; and there never was any one so miserable; and so forth. It's quite a mistake. Mitford never had any affections--he had, and has, passions; and they will be won and lost many and many a time, long after you will have ceased even to notice in what direction they may happen to be straying. Because your reign was short, you fancy Mrs. Hammond's will be eternal. Pooh! It will come to a timely end with the beginning of the opera-season; and nothing will remain to her of it but a rent in her reputation--which even that endurable material will hardly bear--and much mortification. Your reign is over, as you believe; and we will grant, for the sake of argument, that you are right. Well, what remains to you after this terrible imaginary bereavement of Mitford's affections? Why, Mitford's fortune, Mitford's rank, and a position which, if you were under his influence, might very possibly come to grief; but which you, free and blameless,--a very pleasant combination, let me tell you, and one that many a woman would gladly purchase at the price of a little sentimental blighting,--will elevate and dignify. If you will only realize your position, Lady Mitford, and act with good sense, you will have as brilliant a destiny before you as any woman not afflicted with a mission could possibly desire."