He rose too. He had kept up his calm demeanour as long as he could. Now his rage got the better of him.“So you were in the plot!” he cried, “you! I felt it, and yet I could not believe it. You who ought to have been the first to carry out my will and respect my decision.”
“Augustus,” said his wife, very pale, standing up before him, her hand upon the back of a tall chair, her head erect, “this must not go too far. Jane has not one but two parents, and she has always had her mother’s sanction. You are aware of that.”
“Her mother’s sanction!” cried the Duke, with a tremendous laugh of passion. “That is a mighty advantage, truly. Her mother! what has her mother to do with it? Nothing! These are pretty heroics, and do very nicely to say to the ignorant; but you know very well that, save as my agent, you have no more to do with Jane or her marriage—no more——”
“It may be so in law,” said the Duchess, recovering her composure, “but it is certainly not so in nature; nor have I ever considered myself your agent, in respect to my child. I have yielded to you in a hundred ways—and so much the worse for you that I have done so; but, as regards Jane, I have never thought it my duty to yield—and never will; such a suggestion is intolerable,” she said, with a touch of feminine passion. “My right and my authority are the same as yours—neither of them absolute—for she is old enough to judge for herself.”
“Ah, poor girl!” he said, with a knowledge that it was the most irritating thing he could say, and at the same time a coarse sort of pleasure in insulting the women, though they were so near to him; “that is at the bottom of everything. You made her believe it was her lastchance. She was determined anyhow to have a husband.”
The Duchess grew scarlet, but she was sufficiently enlightened by experience to restrain the angry reply that almost forced its way from her lips. She looked at him with a silent indignation not unmingled with pity, then turned her head away. Poor Mrs Brown! Her chops, that had been so good, so hot, stood neglected on the table. Her opportunity was over. It was no fault of hers that she had not distinguished herself. So many another disappointed genius has done its best, and some accident has stepped in and balked its highest effort. Had the Duchess delayed but half an hour, his Grace, after so much French cookery, would have experienced the wholesome pleasure of at least one British chop, and probably in consequence would have promoted Mrs Brown to a post near his person. Butit was not to be. There was no luncheon eaten that day in Grosvenor Square. The discussion was prolonged for some time, and then the Duchess was heard to go hastily up-stairs. She went to her daughter’s room with tears of hot passion in her eyes and an intolerable pang in her heart, and knocking softly, called to Jane with a voice which she could scarcely keep from breaking. “My darling!” she cried, “my sweet, my own girl!” with something heartrending in her accents. All had been still before; but now there was a stir in reply.
“Oh, mother dear, come in, come in! How I have longed for you!” Lady Jane cried; and then there was a little pause of expectation, breathless with a strange suspicion on one side, and such miserable humiliation and anguish on the other, as can scarcely be put into words.
“I cannot come in, my dear love. Oh,my darling, you must be patient. I must go back directly to all those people in the house. You know it would never do——” Here the Duchess, unable to keep up the farce, began all at once to cry and sob piteously outside the door.
Lady Jane, fully roused, hurried to it and turned the handle vainly, and shook the heavy door. “I cannot open it,” she cried wildly. “Mother, mother! what does this mean? Cannot you come in? What can take you away from me when I want you—the people in the house? Oh, mother, I want you, I want you!” she cried as she had never done in her life before. And then there was such a scene as might be put into a comedy and made very ridiculous, and which yet was very heartrending as it happened, and overpowered these two women with a consternation, a sense of helplessness, a bitter perception of the small accountthey were of, which paralysed their very souls—not only that he had the power to do it, but also the heart: he with whom they had lived in the closest ties, whom they had loved and served, for whom they had been ready to do all that he pleased, one for the greater part of her life, the other since ever she had been born. What did it matter, any one would have said, the power such a man had over his wife and his daughter? He would never use it to make them unhappy. But there are capabilities of human misery in families which no one can fathom, which may seem to make it doubtful by moments how far the family relation is so blessed as it is thought to be. The Duke felt that now, for the first time, he had these women under his thumb, so to speak. He had them so bound that they could not resist, could not move, could not even call forhelp from any one without betraying the secrets of the family. He kept possession of his library, and, with the key in his pocket, had a moment of triumph. They had united against him; but now they should feel his power.
Thescenes that followed were at times not only so exciting, but so tranquil, that we shrink from attempting to depict them. If there had been anything wanted to confirm the determination of the Duke to hold to the position he had taken up, it would have been the arrival of the Duchess, and the prodigious step he took in refusing her admittance to her daughter. After that there was nothing too much for him. He had burnt his ships. When Lord and Lady Germaine arrived next morning to bring away the bride, withsome trembling on the part of the lady, but a contemptuous certainty on that of the gentleman, that “the old duffer,” though he had let his temper out, was not such a fool as all that—they were refused admittance peremptorily. After they had parleyed for some time with the man at the door,—a personage whom the Duke, roused into energy by the position in which he found himself, had engaged on the previous day, and who was invulnerable to all assaults and persuasions,—the Duchess herself came to them, extremely pale, and with difficulty preserving her composure. She had remained all night notwithstanding the misery of the circumstances altogether, and though she did not admit it in words, her quick-witted visitors easily perceived that she herself had not been permitted to see her daughter. “You will think it is medieval,” she said with a faintsmile. “The Duke is very determined when he thinks it worth while.”
“I suppose,” said Lady Germaine, touched by the aspect of the suffering woman, “that one does not have the blood of Merlin in one’s veins for nothing.”
“Merlin,” said Lord Germaine, who was very slangy, “was the old swell who was seducted by Miss Vivien. I don’t think it would have been hard work to get over him.”
The Duchess stood in the doorway pale, supporting with difficulty any levity on the subject, yet ready to put as brave a face upon it as possible. “Give Reginald my love, and tell him it is impossible this can last for ever,” she said. “I am sorry for him to the bottom of my heart, and sorry for my child, but at present I cannot help even her.”
Lady Germaine stepped within theguarded door to take the Duchess’s hand and kiss her. “And we are so sorry for you, so indignant——”
“Hush!” the Duchess said. “It is my fault; I should have had the courage of my convictions. I should have gone with my child myself; the error was mine.”
Lady Germaine was half disposed to reply, “Oh, if you think we neglected any precaution——” But she had not the heart to be offended.
The pair drove away after a while considerably discomfited. “I did not think the old duffer had so much spirit,” Lord Germaine said with secret admiration. “I say, Nell, if you tried to marry Dolly against my will, I wonder if I should be up to that?”
“If there was any chance of it I should lock you up first,” said his dutiful wife.
“And on the edge of a smash, thegreatest smash that has been since—— Billings will have to be sold up, and all that is in it,” Lord Germaine said thoughtfully.
Lady Germaine showed neither surprise nor pain at this piece of news. “What a chance for Reginald!” she said. “He can buy in all their best things and do up Jane’s rooms at Winton like her old ones at home.” And then she laughed and added, “He wouldn’t have those old things in his house. Taste had not been invented when their Graces were married.”
It was in this mood of partial hilarity that they reached their own door, where poor Winton was waiting. However sympathetic friends may be, the way in which they take our troubles is very different from the way in which we ourselves take them. The Germaines, though they threw themselves so warmly into his affairs, and had given themselves so much trouble, had to change their aspect suddenly, to put up shutters and draw down blinds metaphorically, as they approached the actual sufferer. But into his misery and rage it is unnecessary to enter. He said, as was natural, a great many things that it would have been better not to say, and for some time after he besieged the house. He went in person, he wrote, he communicated by means of his solicitors with the solicitors of the Duke, whose mouths watered over the settlements he had made, which the authorities on his own side thought ridiculous, and professed their eagerness to do their best, but would not flatter him with any hopes of success. “No man in his senses would reject a son-in-law like you, Mr Winton, especially in the circumstances,” the senior partner said; “but the Duke is the Duke, and there is nothing more to be said. We have found him very impracticable, extremely impracticable in his own affairs;things are looking bad for the family altogether. There is Lord Hungerford now has some sense. He made a capital marriage himself—you should get him on your side.”
Winton found no great difficulty in getting Hungerford on his side. That young nobleman was so much excited on the subject, that he even took it upon him to speak to his father and show him how ridiculous it was.
“You can’t make a house in Grosvenor Square like a castle in the Apennines,” Hungerford cried; “for heaven’s sake, sir, don’t make us ridiculous!” Lady Hungerford on her side enjoyed the whole affair immensely. “I never realised before that I had really married into a great house,” she said. “It’s like the ‘Family Herald.’ It’s like the sort of nobility we understand among the lower classes, don’t you know? not your easygoing, like-other-people kind.” And she offered to take lessons of a locksmith so that she might be able to break open Jane’s prison.
To tell the truth, even suggestions of this kind, which were partially comic and wholly theatrical, came to be entertained by Winton before his trial was over. One of his friends seriously advised him to get an Italian servant, used to conspiracies, smuggled into the house, in order to deliver the captive. Another thought that rope-ladders and a midnight descent from the window might be practicable; but a rope-ladder from a second-floor window in Grosvenor Square would not be easy to manage, and a wag intervened and suggested a fire-escape, which turned the whole into ridicule. This was one of the aspects of the case, indeed, which aggravated everything else. The whole situation,being so serious and painful to two or three people, was, to the rest of the world, irresistible from the comic side. People drove through Grosvenor Square on purpose to look up at the second-floor windows: and as the instruments began to tune up, and the feast to be set in order for the first arrivals of society, the importance of the strange event grew greater and greater. A new Home Secretary, and all the consequent changes in the Cabinet, faded into nothing in comparison. “Have you heard that Jane Altamont was half-married to Regy Winton some time in the winter, and that odious old Duke dragged her from the very altar, and has kept her ever since under lock and key?” Very likely it was Lady Germaine who first put the story about, but it was taken up by everybody with all the interest and excitement which such a tale warranted. Furtherdetails were given that were almost incredible; to wit, that the Duchess herself, though living in the same house, was not allowed to see her daughter, and that Lady Jane for two months had only breathed the fresh air through her window, and had never left the suite of rooms in which she was confined; worse than if she had been in jail, everybody said. But not even this was the point which most roused the popular indignation (if we may call the indignation of the drawing-rooms popular). Half-married! that was the terrible thought.
The Duke paid one or two visits before the opening of Parliament. It may be supposed that to none but very great houses indeed would his Grace pay such an honour: and though he was not very quick to observe in general matters, yet his sense of his own importance was so keen that it answered for intelligence, sofar as he himself was concerned. He saw that the ladies regarded him with a sort of alarm, that even the gentlemen after dinner showed a curiosity which was not certainly the awed and respectful interest which he thought it natural he should excite. And it was not long before his hostess, who was, he could not deny, his equal, of his own rank, and of unexceptionable antecedents, made the matter clear to him. “Duke,” she said, “of course you know I wouldn’t for the world meddle in any one’s private affairs. But there is such a strange story going about—— Dear Jane! We had hoped to see her with you as well as Margaret” (Margaret was the Duchess, and a very intimate friend of this other great, great lady); “and now neither of them has come. But it is not possible—don’t think for a moment that I believe it!—that this story can be true.”
“If your Grace will kindly explain what the story is?” Our Duke, liking due respect himself, always gave their titles to other people, according to the golden rule.
“I don’t like even to put it into words; that you stopped her marriage—at the altar itself; that the dear girl is neither married nor single; that—— But I give you pain.”
“The statement is calculated to give me pain; but the facts, as of course your Grace knows very well, are true. I arrived in time to prevent my daughter from making a marriage which I disapproved.”
“Oh, we are all liable to that,” said the great lady, letting her eyes dwell regretfully, yet with maternal pride, upon a daughter who had been so abandoned as to marry a clergyman, but who had produced a baby, for whose sake theparents had forgiven its father. “Who can guard against such a misfortune? But Beatrice, poor thing, is very happy,” she added with a sigh.
The Duke made her a little bow. It said a great deal. It said, if you are so lost to every sense of what is becoming as to take it in that way—but I should never have allowed it! He to utter sentences of this kind, who had made himself the talk of society! “But, Duke,” she said with spirit, taking up Nurse Mordaunt’s argument, “if the altar is not held sacred, what will become of us? They say you stopped her when she was saying the very words——”
“The subject is not a very agreeable one,” said the Duke; “I cannot take it upon me to recollect at what point they were in the service—— but at all events, your Grace may be assured it was not too late.”
“Oh, but it must have been too late,” cried the indignant matron. “I heard he had said ‘I will.’ I heard he had put the ring on her finger. I could not have believed it was true had not you said so. But you cannot let it rest like that. Half-married! it’s wicked, you know,” her Grace cried.
And the other Duke, the gracious host, permitted himself, in a moment of expansion, to say something of the same sort. “I wouldn’t interfere with your affairs for the world,” he said; “but I hope, Billingsgate, you don’t mean to let that sweet girl of yours lie under such a stigma——”
“A stigma! My daughter! There is no stigma,” cried the head of the Altamonts, growing scarlet.
“Well, I don’t want to be a meddler: but the women say so. They are all in a fuss about it; one hears of nothing elsewherever one goes. You will have to give in sooner or later,” said the other Duke.
“Never!” said his Grace of Billingsgate, and he hastened his departure from his friend’s abode. But the next house he went to the same result was produced. There was a putting together of feminine heads, a whispering, a direction of glances towards him, from eyes which once had looked upon him only with awe; and after a little hesitation and beating about the bush, the same outburst of remark. Half-married! The most important lady in the company took him to task very seriously. “What is to become of her? you should think of that. At present she has you to protect her reputation. But suppose anything were to happen to you? We are all mortal; and think of dear Jane with such a scandal against her. People will say it is the man whohas drawn back: they will say all sorts of things; for it is inconceivable that a girl’s father, her own father, should play with her reputation like that.”
“Her reputation!” the Duke cried, almost with a shriek of indignation. “My child’s reputation! Who would dare——”
“Oh, nobody would dare,” said his assailant—“but everybody would understand. People would make sure that there were reasons. Half-married! There is not one of us that doesn’t feel it. Such a thing was never heard of. Oh, you must not think you will escape it by going away. Wherever you go you will hear the same thing. The news has gone everywhere. Didn’t you see it in the ‘Universe’ at full length? Of course nobody could mistake the Duke of B—— G——. Oh, I hope you will think it over seriously, before it is too late.”
The Duke, more angry than ever, went back to Grosvenor Square. He was determined to face it out. Country houses are proverbially glad of a piece of gossip to give their dull life an interest. He began to go out into society, as much as there was at that early season, and present a bold front to the world. His home was dull enough, with Lady Jane locked into her room and watched, lest by craft or force she should make her escape; her mother obstinately refusing to go out, or accompany him anywhere; his very servants looking at him reproachfully. The butler, who had been with him for about thirty years, and whose knowledge of wine and of the cellars at Billings was inexhaustible, threw up his situation; and so did the housekeeper, who was Jarvis’s wife. “I don’t hold with no such goings-on,” Mrs Jarvis said. And when he dined with the leader of his party (whichwas in opposition) Mrs Coningsby did not wait till the conclusion of the dinner, but cried, “Duke, it cannot be true about Lady Jane!” before he had eaten his soup. This lady treated the subject lightly, which was more odious to him than the other way. “Oh no, it can’t be true,” she said; “we all know that they say you dragged her from church by the hair of her head, and snatched her hand away when the bridegroom was putting on the ring. Mr Coningsby was in a dreadful way about it. He said it would be such a cry at the elections; but I told him, Nonsense! the Duke is far too fine a gentleman, I said.” This was more difficult to answer than the other mode of assault. The Duke became all manner of colours as he listened. “And the elections are so near,” the lady said. “Of course the Government will not care how false it is; theywill placard it on all the walls, with a picture as large as life. They will turn all the clergy against us. Of course, dear Duke, of course, to people who know you so well as I do—you need not tellmethat it is not true.” The Duke sat grim, and heard all this, and did not say a word. There was a flutter in the drawing-room as he came in: everybody looked at him as if he had been a wild beast. “Dragged her out by the hair of her head!” he heard whispered on every side of him, and though Mrs Coningsby still affected not to believe, the bishop’s wife contemplated him with terrible gravity. “Oh, I hope you will talk it over with the bishop,” she said. “He is so anxious about it. Lady Jane was always such a favourite. I do hope you will take the bishop’s advice. After a certain part of the service, I have always understood it was a sin to interfere.” Later in the evening he was mobbed by half-a-dozen ladies—there is no other word for it—mobbed and overwhelmed with one universal cry. Half-married! Poor Lady Jane! Dear Lady Jane! They pressed round him, each with her protestation, a soft, yet urgent babel of voices. The poor Duke escaped at last, not knowing how he got away. It seemed to his Grace that he had escaped out of a mob, and that his coat must be torn and his linen frayed with the conflict. He was astonished beyond all description; but he was likewise appalled by the discovery that even he was not above the reach of public opinion. It affected him against his will. He felt ashamed, uneasy, confused even on the points where he was most sure.
And when he came home, he went tohis wife’s boudoir, where she sat alone, to bid her good-night, which was a form he always observed, though this event had separated them entirely. She was permitted now to see Jane once a-day; but as she would give no promise that she would not help her daughter to leave the house, this was the utmost that he had granted her. She was seated alone, reading, pale and weary. She scarcely raised her eyes when he came in, though she put down her book. The fire was low, and there was no light in the room except the reading-lamp. The Duke could not help feeling the difference from former times. A temptation came upon him to throw himself upon her sympathy, and tell her how he had been persecuted. He would have done so had it been on any other subject, but he remembered in time that on this he had no sympathy to expect fromhis wife. So he stood for a minute or two before the fire, feeling chilled, silenced, an injured man. “No, I have not had a pleasant evening,” he said shortly; “how should my evening be pleasant when every one remarks your absence? I am asked if you are ill; I am asked——”
“Other questions, I imagine, that are still more difficult to answer.”
“And whose fault is it?” he cried, with vehemence. “If you had taken the steps you ought to have taken, and supported my authority, as was your duty, there would have been no such questions to ask.”
The Duchess turned away with some impatience; she made no reply: the question had been often enough discussed in all its bearings. If she had now thrown herself at his feet and begged his pardon and forbearance, whata relief it would have been to him! He would have yielded and saved his position, and recovered the pose of a magnanimous superior. But the Duchess had no intention of the kind. After a while, during which they did not look at each other, she seated gazing into the fire, he standing staring into the vacant air, he took up his candlestick with an air of impatience. “Good night, then,” he said, with in his turn an air of impatience.
“Good night,” she said.
Lady Janehad been for two months the solitary inhabitant of those two rooms on the second floor. Yet not altogether solitary—Nurse Mordaunt had been allowed to join her, and had been the faithful companion of her captivity. She was a better companion than a younger maid would have been, for she had been a kind of second mother to Lady Jane, and knew all her life and everything that concerned her, besides being a person of great and varied experience, who had anecdotes and tales to illustrate everyvicissitude of life. Nurse Mordaunt was acquainted even with parallel instances to place beside Lady Jane’s own position. She knew every kind of thing that had ever happened “in families,” by which familiar expression she meant great families like those to which she had been accustomed all her life. Little families without histories she knew nothing of. The profound astonishment which overwhelmed Lady Jane when she found herself a prisoner it would be impossible to describe. She felt once more as she had felt when her father insulted her womanly delicacy and sent the blood of shame tingling to her cheeks, shame not so much for herself as for him. Was it possible that her father, the head of so great a house, the descendant of so many noble ancestors, and again her father, the man to whom she had looked up with undoubting confidence and admiration allher life—that at the end he was no true gentleman at all, but only a sham gentleman, the shadow without any substance, the symbol, with all meaning gone out of it? Do not suppose that Lady Jane put this deliberately into words. Ah, no! the thoughts we put into words do not sting us like those that glance into our souls like an arrow, darting, wounding before we have time to put up any shield or defence to keep them out. Deeper even than her separation at such a moment from her lover, more bitter than her thoughts of his disappointment, of his rage and misery, was this empoisoned thought: her father, a great peer, a noble gentleman—yet thus suddenly showing himself not noble at all, not true, a tyrant, without any understanding even of the creatures whom he could oppress. Lady Jane was sad enough on her own account and on Winton’s, it may well be believed:but of this last wound she felt that she never could be healed. Imagine those traditions of her rank in which she had been brought up, her proud yet so earnest and humble sense of its obligations, the martyrdom which in her youth she had been so ready to accept—all come down to this, that she was a prisoner in her father’s house, locked up like a naughty child,—she who had been trained to be the princess royal, the representative of an ideal race! Ah, if it had but been a revolution, a rebellion, democracy rampant, such an imprisonment as she had once been taught to think likely! but to sink down from the grandeur of that conception to the pettiness and bathos of this! She tried to smile to herself sometimes, in the long days which passed so slowly, at her own ludicrous anticipations, and at the entire futility, after all, of this suffering to which she was being exposed.But she had not a lively sense of humour, and could not laugh at those young dreams, which, after all, were the highest of her life. And somehow the sense that the present troubles could produce no possible result of the kind intended, made her almost more impatient of them than if they had been more dangerous. That her father could think to subdue her by such means, that he could expect to convince her by so miserable an argument, that he could suppose it possible that she would change for this, abandon what she had resolved upon at the expense of all her prejudices and so many of her better feelings, because of being shut up in two rooms for two months, or two years, or any time he might choose to keep her there! If she had not thought her filial duty a sufficient reason, would she be convinced by a lock and key? Lady Jane smiled with high and silentdisdain at so extraordinary a mistake. But it was unworthy, it was lowering to her moral dignity to be exposed to so vexatious and petty an ordeal. At a State prison, with the block at the end, she had been prepared to smile serenely, carrying her high faith and constancy through even the death ordeal. But confinement in her own room was laughable, not heroic; it made her blush that she should be exercised in so miserable a way—in a way so impossible to bring about any result.
Nurse Mordaunt was an excellent companion, but after a while she began to droop and pine. She wanted the fresh air; she wanted to see her grandchildren; she wanted, oh, imperiously beyond description! a talk, a gossip, a little human intercourse with some one of her own kind. Lady Jane was a darling—the sweetest of ladies; but it was a differentthing talking to that angel and chatting familiarly over things in general with Mrs Jarvis. Nurse no more than other mortals could be kept continuously on the higher level. She longed to unbend, to be at her ease, to feel herself, as the French say,chez elle, in which expression there is almost a more intimate well-being than in that of being at home, which we English think so much superior. Her health suffered, which Lady Jane would not allow that hers did; and at last, Nurse Mordaunt made such strenuous representations on the subject to the new servant, whose business it was to watch over the prisoners, that she was allowed to go out. She was allowed to go out and the Duchess to come in, two proceedings altogether contradictory of the spirit of the confinement, and which were, indeed, a confession of failure, though the Duke himself was unaware of it. Thismade a great change to the prisoner, whose cheeks, though still pale, got a little tinge of colour and hope in consequence. It did more for her than merely to bring her her mother’s society, though that was much. It brought her also other news of the outer world—news of Winton more definite than the distant sight of him riding or walking through the Square, which he did constantly. Now, at last, she received the budget of letters, of which her mother’s hands were full. Lady Jane smiled and cried a little at the entreaties her lover addressed to her to be steadfast—not to give him up. “I wonder what they all think,” she said; “is this an argument likely to convince one’s reason, mother, or to persuade one for love’s sake?” She looked round upon her prison—her pretty chamber furnished with every luxury—and laughed a little. “Is itmy head or my heart that is appealed to?” she said. This, perhaps, was too clear-sighted for the angelic point of view from which the world in general expected Lady Jane to view most matters. But, in fact, though she had more poetry in her than her mother, Lady Jane had come into possession of part of her mother’s fortune, so to speak, her sense; and that is a quality which will assert itself. Now the Duchess, in the excitement of standing by helpless while her daughter suffered, had come to regard the matter more melodramatically than Lady Jane did, to suffer her feelings to get the mastery, and to imagine a hundred sinkings of the heart and depressions of the spirit to which the captive must be liable. She recognised the change instinctively, for it was one which had taken place long ago in herself. She, too, had been brought to see the paltriness of many things that looked imposing, the futility ofles grands moyens. Lady Jane’s development had been slow. At twenty-eight she had been less experienced than many a girl of eighteen. But now her eyes were opened. Even her lover, who thought it possible that she might yield under such persuasion, was subject to almost a passing shade of that high but gentle disdain with which she contemplated the vulgar force to which she was subjected; for it was vulgar, alas! though a duke was the originator: and unspeakably weak though it was—what the French callbrutal—everything, in short, that a mode of action destined to affect a sensitive, proud, and clear-seeing soul ought not to be.
The newrégimehad continued but a short time when Nurse Mordaunt returned one day from her walk with heightened colour and great suppressed excitement.Something, it was evident, was in her mind quite beyond the circle of her usual thoughts; but she talked less, not more, than usual, and left her lady free to read over and over the last letters, and to refresh her heart with all the raptures of her lover’s delight in having again found the means of communicating with her after the misery of six weeks of silence and complete separation. Something he said of a speedy end of all difficulties, which Lady Jane took but little thought of, being far more interested in the reunion with himself, which his letters brought about. A speedy end: no doubt an end would come some time; but at present the prisoner was not so sanguine as those outside. She did not know the gallant stand which the ladies were making, or the social state of siege which had been instituted in respect to the Duke; and she sighed, but smiled, atWinton’s hope. All went on as usual during the long, long evening. It was long, though it was provided with everything calculated to make it bearable—books and the means of writing, writing tohim—which was far more amusing and absorbing than any other kind of composition. Her fire was bright, her room full of luxurious comfort—a piano in it, and materials for a dozen of those amateur works with which time can be cheated out of its length. But she sighed and wearied, as was natural, notwithstanding the happiness of having her lover’s letters, and of having talked with her mother, and of knowing as she did that some time or other this must come to an end. “After all, nurse,” she said with a little laugh, as she prepared for bed, “to be in prison is not desirable. I should like to have a run in the woods at Billings, or even a walk in Rotten Row.”
“Yes, dear,” said nurse, leaning over her, “your ladyship shall do better than that. Oh yes, my sweet, better days are coming. Don’t you let down your dear heart.”
“No; that would not do much good,” Lady Jane said with a sigh: but she did not remark, which was strange, that nurse was full of a secret, and that a delightful secret, exultingly dwelt upon, and ready to burst out at the least encouragement. Or perhaps she did perceive it, but was too tired to draw it forth. And she gave no encouragement to further disclosure, but went to her rest sighing, with a longing to be free, such as since the first days of her imprisonment she had not felt before. And she could not sleep that night. Lady Jane was not of a restless nature. She did not toss about upon her pillows and make it audible that she was sleepless: and she had much to occupy her thoughts, so many things that werepleasant, as well as much that it hurt her to contemplate. She put the hurtful things away and thought of the sweet, and lay there in the darkness of the winter’s night, lighted and calmed by sweet thought. When it was nearly morning, at the darkest and chilliest moment of all, there came a rustling and soft movement, which, however, did not alarm her, since it came from Nurse Mordaunt’s room. Then she perceived dimly, in the faint light from an uncurtained window, a muffled figure, with which indeed she was very familiar, being no other than that of nurse herself in a dressing-gown and nightcap, with a shawl huddled about her throat and shoulders, stealing round the room. What was nurse doing at this mysterious hour? But Lady Jane was not afraid. She was rather glad of the incident in the long monotony of the night. She turned her head noiselesslyupon her pillow to watch. But the surprise of Lady Jane was great at the further operations of her attendant. Nurse arranged carefully and noiselessly a small screen between the door and the bed, then with great precaution struck a light and began with much fumbling and awkwardness to operate upon the door. What was she doing? The light, throwing a glimmer upward from behind the screen, revealed her face full of anxiety, bent forward towards the lock of the door, upon which many scratches and ineffectual jars as of tools badly managed soon became audible. The candle threw a portentous waving shadow, over the further wall and roof, of the old woman’s muffled figure, and betrayed a succession of dabs and misses at the door which Lady Jane for a long time could not understand. What did it mean? The noise increased as nurse grew nervousover her failure. She hurt her fingers, she pursed her mouth, she contracted her brows; it was work that demanded knowledge and delicate handling, but she had neither. When Lady Jane raised herself noiselessly on her arm, and said in her soft voice, “What are you doing, nurse?” the poor woman dropped the tools with a dull thump on the floor, and almost went down after them in her vexation. “Oh, my lady, I can’t! I can’t do it, I’m that stupid!” She wept so that Lady Jane could scarcely console her, or understand her explanation. At last it came out by degrees that the tools had been given her, with many injunctions and instructions, to break open the lock of the door. “By whom?” Lady Jane demanded, with a deep blush and sparkling eyes. Why she should have felt so keen a flash of indignation at her lover for thinking of such an expedient is inscrutable, but atthe moment it seemed to her that she could never forgive Winton for such an expedient. But it was Lady Germaine who was the offender, and Lady Jane was pacified. She bound up nurse’s finger, and sent her off summarily to bed. Then, it must be allowed, she herself looked upon the tools long and anxiously with shining eyes. It seemed to her that it would be fighting her father with his own weapons. It would be as unworthy of her to get her freedom that way, as it was of him to make a prisoner of her. Would it be so? Lady Jane’s heart began to beat, and her brow to throb. Would it be so? The mere idea that she held her freedom in her hand filled her whole being with excitement. She locked them away into a little cabinet which stood near her bed. She was too tremulous, too much excited by the mere possibility, to be able to think at all.
That night had been a very exciting one for the Duke. Again he had been the centre of a demonstration. It did not seem to him that he could turn anywhere without hearing these words, “Half-married,” murmuring about. This time it was at the house of the Lord Chancellor that theémeuteoccurred. A very distinguished lady was the chief guest: not indeed the most distinguished personage in the realm, but yet so near as to draw inspiration from that fountain-head. She said, “We could not believe it,” as Mrs Coningsby had said; but naturally with far more force. “I am afraid you are not of your age, Duke.”
“There is little that is desirable in the age, madam, that any one should be of it,” his Grace replied with dignity. Here he felt himself on safe ground.
“Ah, but we cannot help belonging to it: and it is for persons of rank to showthat they can lead it, not to be driven back into antiquity. All that is over,” said the gracious lady. The Duke bowed to the ground as may be supposed. “Lady Jane I hope will appear at the Drawing-Roomon her marriage,” his distinguished monitress said as she passed on. The emphasis was unmistakable. And how that silken company enjoyed it! They had all gathered as close as possible, and lent their keenest ear. And there was a whisper ran round that this was indeed the way in which royalty should take its place in society. As for the Duke, he stumbled out of these gilded halls, more confused and discomfited than ever duke was. He did not sleep much more than Lady Jane did all that long and dark night. What was he to do? Must heGive In? These words seemed to be written upon the book of fate. Relinquish his prejudices, his principles, allthe traditions of his race—retrace his steps, own himself in error, undo what he had done? No! no! no! a thousand times no! But then there seemed to come round him again that rush of velvet feet, that sheen of jewelled brows, the look with which the central figure waved her lily hand—— The Duke felt his forehead bedewed with drops of anguish. How could he stand out against that? he, the most loyal of subjects, and one whose example went so far? If he set himself in opposition, who could be expected to obey? He thought of nothing else all night, and it was the first thing which occurred to him when he woke in the morning. What to do? He was tired of it all, all, and tired of other things too, if he could have been brought to confess it. His heart was sore, and his soul fatigued beyond measure. He had not even his wife to lean the weight ofhis cares upon, and everything was going wrong. He could now at last feel the sweep of the current moving towards Niagara. It bore him along, it carried him off his feet. Ruin at hand: he would not allow himself even now to believe in it—but in his heart was aware that it was ruin. And this other matter in the foreground, occupying the thoughts which had so many other claims upon them! The reader will feel with us that the subject is too sacred, otherwise there is enough to fill a volume of the Duke’s self-communings, and perplexed, distressful thoughts. He got up in the morning, still half-dazed, not knowing what to do. But in his heart the Duke was aware he was beaten. There was no more fight in him. He swallowed his breakfast dolefully, and sat down in his vast, cheerless library by himself to settle what he was to do, when—But for this wemust go back a little in the record of the family affairs.
Lady Jane had begun the day with a sense of underlying excitement, which she covered with her usual calm, but which was not her usual calm. She had the means of escape in her power. She said nothing to nurse, who, subdued by her failure, and crushed by her lady’s first flash of indignation, effaced herself as much as possible, and left Lady Jane in the room which looked out upon the Square, which was her dressing-room (nominally) and sitting-room, undisturbed. Lady Jane could not forget that the tools were in that little carved cabinet, which, never in the course of its existence, had held anything of such serious meaning before. She could not keep them out of her mind. To use them might be unworthy of her, a condescension, putting herself on the same level as her tyrant;but after all, to think that the means were in her power! Lady Jane was very well aware that, once outside that door, her captivity was over. It was a thing that could not be repeated. Once upon the staircase, in the passage, and all the world was free to her. When you think of that after two months’ imprisonment, it is hard to keep the excitement out of your pulses. At last it overcame her so much that she got up, half-stealthily, timidly, and went to the door to examine the lock, and see whether, by the light of nature, she could make out what was to be done. It had been closed not long before to permit of the exit of the maid who carried their meals to the prisoners. The tools were in the cabinet, and in all likelihood Lady Jane would be as maladroit with those poor small white hands of hers as nurse had been. She went to the door and examined the lock closely. All atonce something occurred to her which made her heart jump. She took hold of the handle, it turned in her hand. Another moment and she flung it open with a little cry of terror and triumph. Open! and she free, out of her prison. It was but one step, but that step was enough. Her amazement was so great that it turned to something like consternation. She stepped out on to the landing, which was somewhat dark on this February morning: and there she paused. She was a woman born to be a heroine, one of the Quixotic race. She paused a moment, holding her head high, and reflected. This must have been an accident: for once the jailer had made a mistake, had slept upon his post, had turned the key amiss. Was it good enough to take advantage of a mistake, to save herself by the slip of a servant? She hesitated, this spiritual descendantof the great Spanish cavalier, that noblest knight. But then Lady Jane’s sense came in. She was aware that now, at this moment, she was delivered,—that no force in the world could put her again within that door. She gathered the long skirt of her black gown in her hand, and slowly, stately, not like a fugitive, like the princess she was, went down-stairs.
The Duke was in his library thinking what to do, and the Duchess—in her morning-room, with her heart greatly fluttered by that little royal speech, which had been reported to her already—sat with, strange to say, only half a thought of Jane, looking in the face that other dark and gloomy thing,—the ruin that was approaching. She had palpable evidence of it before her, and knew that it was now a matter of weeks, perhaps of days, so that though her heart, like an agitated sea after the storm, was stillheaving with the other emotion, her thoughts for the moment had abandoned Jane. But the Duke’s mind was full of his daughter. He would have toGive In! Look at it how he would, he saw no escape for that. “The women,” as Lord Germaine in his slangy way prophesied, “had made it too hot for him,” and royalty itself—clearly he could not put his head out of his door, or appear in the society of his peers again, till this was done. But how was it to be done? To make his recantation in the eye of day, in the sight even of his household, was more than he could calmly contemplate. It was no longer, What was he to do? but, How was he to do it? that was in his mind. He had got up, unable to keep still, and feeling that some step must be taken at once. When——
We had already got this length on aprevious page. At this memorable crisis, when all the world seemed to his consciousness to be standing still to see what he would do, the door of the library was pushed slowly open from without. The doors in Grosvenor Square did not squeak and mutter like the wizards in the Old Testament, as our doors so often do, but rolled slowly open, majestically, without sound. This was what happened while the Duke stood still, something within him seeming to give way, his heart fluttering as if what he expected was a visitor from the unseen. He stood with his eyes opening wide, his lips apart. Was it a deputation from Mayfair? was it the royal lady herself? was it—— It was something more overwhelming, more miraculous than any of these. It was Lady Jane. The reader is already aware who was coming, but the Duke was not aware. He gasped at her with speechless astonishment, as if she had been indeed a visitor from the unseen.
She was very pale after her long incarceration, and the hollow, alas! very visible on her delicate cheek. She was dressed in a long, soft cashmere gown, black, with an air of having fitted her admirably once, but which now was too loose for her, as could be seen. But though she was thin and pale, she held her head high, and there was a sort of smile in the look with which she regarded her father. Hers was indeed the triumph. She was too high-minded, too proud to fly. She came into the room, and closed the door with a sort of indignant stateliness. “I have come to tell you,” she said, “that by some accident or misadventure my door was found unlocked this morning, and I have left my prison.” She held her head high, and he bowed and crouched before her. But yet, had she but known, her own reliefand ecstasy of freedom was nothing to her father’s. It was as if the load of a whole universe had been taken off his shoulders.
“This is Martin’s fault,” he said; “the fellow shall be dismissed at once. Jane, you will believe me or not as you please, but I had meant to come myself and open the door to you to-day.”
He dropped down into a chair all weak and worn, and held his head in his hands: his nerves now more shattered than her own. It was all he could do to keep himself from bursting like a woman into tears.
“You surely do not imagine that I could doubt what you say? I am glad, very glad, that it was so——” she said, her voice melting. He was her father still, and she was not guiltless towards him. “I wish that I had waited till you came,” she said.
“Yes;” he seized eagerly upon thislittle advantage. “I wish that you had waited till I came: but it was not to be expected. I do not say that it was to be expected.” Then he hoisted himself by his hands pressing upon the table, and looked at her. “Bless me,” he said, “how thin you are, and how pale!—is this—is this my doing? Gracious! shut up so long, poor girl!—I suppose you must hate me, Jane?”
Lady Jane went up to him holding out her hands. “Father, I have sinned against you too. Forgive me!” she cried, too generous not to take upon herself the blame; and so the father and daughter kissed each other, he crying like a child, she like a mother supporting him. Such a moment had never been in the Duke’s long life before.
And we are bound to allow that neither the Duchess, who was his faithful wife, nor Winton, always ready to appreciatethe noble sentiments of Lady Jane, could ever understand the fulness of this reconciliation. It is to be hoped that the reader will comprehend better. They were too resentful and indignant to resume their old relations in a moment as if nothing had happened, which Lady Jane did with perhaps more tenderness than before. But into this question there is no time to enter. When Lady Jane went in softly, as if she had left her mother half an hour before, into the morning-room, the Duchess flung away her papers with a great cry, and rushed upon her daughter, clasping her almost fiercely, looking over her shoulder with all the ferocity of a lioness in defence of her offspring. She would have ordered the carriage at once to take Lady Jane away, or even have gone with her on the spot, on foot or in a cab, to a place of safety: but Lady Jane would not hearof any such proceeding. She calmed her mother, as she had soothed her father, and in an hour’s time Winton was in that little room, which suddenly was turned into Paradise. He had been carrying about with him all this time a special licence ready for use, and as everything can be done at a moment’s notice in town, even in February, Lady Jane Altamont, attended by a small but quite sufficient train, and before a whole crowd of excited witnesses, was married next morning at St George’s, Hanover Square, like everybody else of her degree. Needless to say that there was in the ‘Morning Post’ next morning, as well as in most of the other papers, an account of the ceremony, with a delicate hint of difficulties, unnecessary to enter into, which had gone before. This was read by many who understood, and by a great many more who did not understand; but nowherewith greater excitement than in the rectory-house of St Alban’s, E.C., where Mrs Marston took the fashionable paper, poor lady, because in that wilderness she was so out of the way of everything. She rushed in upon her husband in his study (who had just seen it in the ‘Standard’ with feelings which are indescribable) with the broadsheet in her hand. “Listen to this, William,” she cried solemnly; “didn’t I tell you it was none of our business to meddle! and your fine Duke, whom you were so anxious to be serviceable to, and that never said thank you—— But I told you what you had to expect,” Mrs Marston cried.