CHAPTER XLV.
‘They begin with making falsehood appear like truth, and end with making truth appear like falsehood.’
Mrs. Prior knocks gently at the front-gate of the Cottage, not the little green gate so well known to the Barrys; and after a little delay Mrs. Denis’s martial strides can be heard behind it, and her voice pierces the woodwork.
‘Who’s there?’
‘It is I, Mrs. Prior.’ Mrs. Prior’s tones are soft and suave and persuasive. ‘That is you, I think, Mrs. Denis. I recognise your voice as that of an old friend. I have been here before, you know, several times, and I quite remember you. My nephew—your master, Mr. Wyndham, has at last let meknow about his tenant, and I have come’—very softly this—‘to call on her.’
That she is lying horribly and with set purpose is beyond doubt. To herself she excuses herself with the old, sad, detestable fallacy, that her words are true, whatever the spirit of them may be.
Mrs. Denis, astute matron and alert Cerberus as she is (a rather comical combination), is completely taken in. She is the more ready to be deceived, in that she is at her heart, good soul! so unfeignedly glad to think that now, after all this time, her master’s people are coming forward to recognise, and no doubt make much of, the ‘purty darlin’’ under her care. Her care. Never for a moment has she admitted Miss Manning’s right to chaperon Ella, though now on excellent terms with that most excellent lady.
She does not answer Mrs. Prior immediately, but strokes her beard behind the gate, and smiles languidly to herself. Hah! He’s tould ’em! He’s found out for himself that he loves her! The crathure! An’ whynot! Fegs, there isn’t her aqual between this and the Injies! An’, of course, it is a mark of honour designed by him to his young lady, that his aunt should come an’ pay her respects to her.
For all this, she is still cautious, and now opens the gate to Mrs. Prior by only an inch or so at a time. Mrs. Prior, on this, calmly and with the leisurely manner that belongs to her, moves forward a step or two, a step that places her parasol and her arm inside the gateway.
‘You are, I can see, a most faithful guardian,’ says she pleasantly, and with the distinctly approving tones of the superior to the efficient inferior. ‘I shall take care to tell Mr. Wyndham my opinion of you.’ The little sinister meaning in her speech is clouded in smiles. She takes another step forward that brings not only her arm and parasol, but herself, inside the gate; thus mistress of the situation, she smiles again—this time a little differently, but still with the utmost suavity.
‘This young lady?’ asks she. ‘She is in the house, no doubt? If you could let me see her without any formal introduction, it would be so much more friendly, it seems to me.’
Mrs. Denis’s ample bosom swells with joy and pride. Her beard vibrates. ‘Friendly.’ So they are going to be friendly—those people of his! After all, perhaps Miss Ella is a princess in disguise, and they have only just found it out. ‘Well, she looks one—wid her little feet, an’ her little hands, an’ those small features of hers.’
‘No, ma’am,’ says she, addressing Mrs. Prior with a courtesy she seldom uses to anyone. ‘Miss Ella is in the garding; an’ as you say ye’d like to see her all be yerself, if ye’ll go round that corner ye’ll find her aisy, near the hollyhocks. An’ I’ll tell ye this,’ says Mrs. Denis, squaring her arms, and growing sentimental, ‘’tis plazed ye’ll be whin ye do see her.’
‘I feel sure of that,’ says Mrs. Prior. She speaks quite calmly, yet a rage of hatredshakes her. Glad to see this abominable creature, who has interfered with the marriage of her daughter!
‘She’s got the face of an angel, ma’am.’
‘And the heart of one, of course,’ says Mrs. Prior. The sarcasm is thrown away upon Mrs. Denis, who is now bursting with a pæan addressed to her goddess.
‘Ay, ma’am. Fegs, ’tis aisy to see the masther has bin’ tellin’ you about her.’
‘Just a little,’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘He——’
‘He thinks a dale of her,’ says Mrs. Denis, putting her hand to her mouth, and speaking mysteriously. ‘I can see that much, but ’tis little he says. But sure, ye know him. ’Tis mighty quiet he is entirely.’
‘Yes, I think I know him. But this ... young lady——’
‘Wisha! ’tis only keepin’ ye from her I am. An’ ’tis longin’ ye are to see her, ov course.’
‘You are right, my good woman,’ says Mrs. Prior; ‘I really don’t think I was ever so anxious to make the acquaintance of anyone before.... Round that corner, you say?Thank you. I shall certainly tell my nephew what a trustworthy guardian you make.’
She parts with Mrs. Denis with a little gracious bow, and a sudden swift change of countenance that strikes that worthy woman at the time—but unfortunately works out a little late. Stepping quickly in the direction indicated, Mrs. Prior turns the corner and goes along the southern border of the pretty cottage until she reaches a small iron gate that leads to the garden proper.
In here, soft perfumes meet one in the air, and delicate tints delight the eye. The little walks run here and there, the grasses grow, and from the flowering shrubs sweet trills are heard, sounds beautiful, and
‘Not sooner heardThan answered, doubled, trebled more,Voice of an Eden in the bird,Renewing with his pipe of fourThe sob; a troubled Eden, richIn throb of heart.’
‘Not sooner heardThan answered, doubled, trebled more,Voice of an Eden in the bird,Renewing with his pipe of fourThe sob; a troubled Eden, richIn throb of heart.’
‘Not sooner heardThan answered, doubled, trebled more,Voice of an Eden in the bird,Renewing with his pipe of fourThe sob; a troubled Eden, richIn throb of heart.’
‘Not sooner heard
Than answered, doubled, trebled more,
Voice of an Eden in the bird,
Renewing with his pipe of four
The sob; a troubled Eden, rich
In throb of heart.’
The grandeur of the dying autumn strikes through all; for over there, as a background to the still brilliant flowers, are fading yellows,and sad reds, and leaves russet-brown, more lovely now, perhaps, than when a life dwelt in them.
Mrs. Prior moves through all these things untouched by their beauty—on one thought bent. And all at once the subject of her thought lies there before her. The clearest, sweetest thought!
Ella, on one of the many small paths, is standing as if struck by some great surprise. She is looking at Mrs. Prior earnestly, half fearfully, with eager searching in her large dark eyes, as of one trying to work out some problem that had been suggested many years ago.
The sight of the girl, standing there with her hand pressed against her forehead as if to compel thought, drives the anger she is feeling even deeper into Mrs. Prior’s soul. Such an attitude! As if not understanding! The absurd put-on innocence of it is positively—well, disgusting!
And always Ella stands looking at her, as if frightened by the sudden unexpectedvisitor, but presently through her fear and astonishment another look springs into life. Her eyes widen—she does nothing, she says nothing, but anyone looking on would say that the girl all at once had remembered. But something terribly vague had touched her—something startling out of the past that until that moment had lain dead. Oh, surely she knows this lady, has met her somewhere.
As if impelled by this mad fancy, she goes quickly towards Mrs. Prior.
‘I—do I know you?’ asks she, in a low tense way.
‘I think not,’ says Mrs. Prior, in her calmtrainantevoice, that is now insolent to a degree. A faint, most cruel smile plays upon her lips. ‘You, and such as you, are seldom known by—us.’
The girl stands silent. No actual knowledge of her meaning enters into her heart, but what does come home to her in some vague way is that she has been thrust back—put far away—cast out, as it were.
‘I don’t understand,’ says she, a little faintly.
‘Oh, I think you do,’ says Mrs. Prior, with cultivated rudeness. ‘But I have not come here to-day to inform you as to your position in life. I have come rather to explain to you that your—er—relations with my nephew must come to an end—and at once.’
‘Your nephew?’
‘Has Mr. Wyndham not spoken to you of his people, then? Rather better taste than I should have expected from him. But one may judge from it that he is not yet lost to all sense of decency.’
The insolence in her tone stings.
‘You must believe me or not, as you like,’ says the girl, drawing up her slight figure, ‘but I don’t know what you are speaking about. Do you mean that you think it wrong of me to have rented this cottage from Mr. Wyndham?’
Mrs. Prior raises her pince-nez and looks at her.
‘Really, you are very amusing!’ says she.‘Now what do you think it is? Right? Your views should be interesting.’
‘If not this house, I should take another,’ says Ella. She is feeling bewildered and frightened, and has grown very pale.
‘Of course, if you insist on the innocentrôle,’ says Mrs. Prior coldly, shrugging her shoulders, ‘it is useless my wasting my time. If, however, you have any regard for Mr. Wyndham, who, it seems, has been very kind to you’—she glances meaningly round the charming little home and garden—‘if distinctly unkind to himself, it may be of use to let you know that your presence here is very likely to be the cause of his ruin.’
‘His—ruin!’ The unmistakable horror in the girl’s face strikes Mrs. Prior as hopeful, so she proceeds briskly.
‘Social ruin! It will undoubtedly mean his disinheritance by his uncle, Lord Shangarry, and—the rupture of his engagement with the girl he—loves!’
She plants this barb with joy. The tellingof a lie more or less has never troubled her during her life.
‘The girl he loves!’ Ella’s voice as she repeats the words sounds dull and monotonous. She is quite ghastly now, and she has laid her hand on the back of a garden-chair to steady herself.
‘Yes. The girl he has always meant to marry!’ She lays great stress on the last word. That ought to tell. ‘Whom he meant to marry until your—fascinations’—she throws detestable meaning into her speech, base as it is detestable—‘alienated him—for the moment!’
All at once Ella recovers herself.
‘Oh, you are wrong, wrong!’ cries she vehemently. ‘Somebody has been telling you what is not true, what is not the case! Mr. Wyndham does not—does not’—she trembles violently—‘love me. Not me—anyone but me. Oh! who could have said such a thing? Believe me, do believe me’—she comes forward, holding out her hands imploringly—‘when I tell you that I am thelast girl in the world he would fall in love with. If you know this young lady he loves, go back to her, I implore you, and tell her it is all untrue—that he loves her, and her only, and that all she has heard to the contrary is not worth one thought. Oh, madam! If he should be hurt through me!... After all his goodness to me! Oh ... go ... go to her and tell her what I say!’
She stops, and covers her face suddenly with her hands. She is not crying, however. Tears are far from her eyes. But the misery of death has swept over her soul.
Mrs. Prior gives way to a low laugh.
‘Why didn’t you go on the stage?’ she says. ‘You would have made even a better living there. But perhaps you have only just come off it?’
The girl lets her hand drop to her sides, and turns passionately upon her.
‘Why won’t you believe me?’ cries she, with sudden wild vehemence. ‘What have I done that you should disbelieve my word?’Her eyes are bright with grief and the eager desire that is consuming her to make things straight for Wyndham and the girl he loves. Wyndham, who has been so good to her, who has brought her out of such deep waters! To hurt him—to injure him: the very thought is unbearable. She has involuntarily—unknowingly—drawn up hersvelteand slender body to its fullest height, and with a courage that few women could have found under circumstances so poignant, so filled with agonized memory, and with yet another feeling that perhaps is bitterest of all (though hardly known), she looks full at her tormentor.
‘Can’t you see,’ cries she, with a proud humility, ‘how wrong you must be? How could I interfere between Mr. Wyndham and the woman he loves? Who am I? Nothing!’ She throws up her beautiful head with a touch of inalienable pride, and repeats the word distinctly: ‘Nothing!’
‘Less than nothing,’ says Mrs. Prior, who is only moved to increased and unendurablehatred by her beauty and her unconscious hauteur. ‘So far as he regards you!’
Ella draws her breath quickly.
‘If so small in his regard, how then do I prevent his marriage with the girl he loves?’
Alas for the sorrow of her voice! It might have touched the heart of anyone. Mrs. Prior, however, is impervious to such touches.
‘Don’t you think it very absurd, your pretending like this?’ says she contemptuously.
‘Of course, in spite of the absurd innocence you pretend, one can see that you quite understand the situation, and how unpleasantly you are in the way. If he had brought you anywhere but here, it might have been hushed up, but to the very house his poor mother left him—why, it is an open scandal, and an insult to my daughter!’
The girl makes a shocked gesture.
‘It is your daughter, then? But’—quickly—‘now you know he doesn’t love me, and you can tell her—and——’ She is lookingeagerly, with almost passionate hope, at Mrs. Prior.
‘Tell her! Tell my daughter about you!’ Mrs. Prior’s voice is terrible. ‘How dare you suggest the idea of my speaking to my girl of——’ She checks herself with difficulty, and goes on coldly: ‘No doubt you believe Mr. Wyndham will be to you always as he is now. Women of your class delude themselves like that. But—when he marries—as he will—as he shall—you will learn that a wife is one thing and a mis——’
She breaks off in the middle of her odious word as though shot. A hand has grasped her shoulder.
‘Hould yer tongue, woman, if there’s still a dhrop o’ dacency left in ye! Hould yer tongue, I say!’
The voice is the voice of Mrs. Denis.
‘May I ask who it is you are addressing?’ asks Mrs. Prior, releasing herself easily enough. Putting up her eyeglass, she bends upon Mrs. Denis the glare that she has always found so effectual for the undoing ofher foes. But Mrs. Denis thinks nothing of glares. She is, indeed, at this moment producing one of her own, beneath which Mrs. Prior’s sinks into insignificance.
‘Faith ye may!’ says she, advancing towards the enemy with a regular ‘come on’ sort of air. ‘An’ as ye ask me, I’ll give ye yer answer. Ye’re the aunt of a nevvy that has ivery right to be ashamed o’ ye! Know ye, is it? Arrah!’ Here the unapproachable sarcasm of the Irish peasant breaks forth. ‘Is it that ye’re askin’? Fegs, I do, thin, an’ to me cost, for ’tis too late I am wid me knowledge.’ She pauses here, and planting her hands on her ample hips, surveys Mrs. Prior with deliberate scorn.
‘Oh, ye ould thraitor!’ says she at last.
Tableau!
It is open to question whether Mrs. Prior’s instant anger arises most from the word ‘ould’ or ‘thraitor.’ Probably the ‘ould.’
‘You forget yourself!’ cries she sharply, furiously.
‘Ye’re out there,’ says Mrs. Denis; ‘for’tis I’m remimberin’. “Oh, Mrs. Denis”’—with a wonderful attempt at Mrs. Prior’s air—‘“an’ is that you?”—so swate like. An’, “I’ll be tellin’ me nevvy what a good guardian ye are.” An’, “’Tis me nevvy tould me to come an’ pay me respecks to your young lady.”’ Here Mrs. Denis lifts her powerful fist and shakes it in the air. ‘I wondher to the divil,’ says she, ‘that yer tongue didn’t sthick to yer mouth whin ye said thim words. Yer nevvy indeed! Wait till I see yer nevvy! ’Tis shakin’ in yer shoes ye’ll be thin! Worse than ye made this poor lamb’—with a glance at Ella, who has drawn back and is trembling violently—‘shake to-day.’
‘You shall have reason to remember this—this most insolent behaviour. You shall know——’ begins Mrs. Prior, white with wrath; but Mrs. Denis will have none of her.
‘I know one thing, any way,’ says she, ‘that out ov this ye go, this minnit-second. Ye can tell yer nevvy all about it whin ye git out, an’ the sooner ye’re out, the soonerye can tell him; an’ I wish ye joy of the tellin’! Come now!’—she steps up to Mrs. Prior with a menacing air—‘quick march!’
This grand old soldier—with whom even her husband, good man and true as he had proved himself on many a battlefield, would probably have come off second best at a close tussle—now sidling up to Mrs. Prior with distinct battle in her eyes, that lady deems it best to lay down her arms and sound a retreat.
‘This disreputable conduct only coincides with the whole of this establishment,’ says Mrs. Prior, making a faint effort to sustain her position whilst being literally moved towards the gate by the powerful personality and still more powerful arm of Mrs. Denis. The latter does not touch her, indeed, but she keeps waving that muscular member up and down like a windmill, in a most threatening manner. ‘You understand that I shall report all this to Mr. Wyndham?’
‘Ye’ve said all that before,’ says Mrs. Denis, with great contempt. ‘An’ now I’lltell you something. That report ye spake of, in my humble opinion, will make mighty little noise!’
After that she closes the gate with scant ceremony on Mrs. Prior’s departing heels.