Slowly, reluctantly, almost as if under the influence of a mesmerist, Hilda's hand was extended to the packet of letters. She took it up, and looked at it for a few moments, still hesitating.
The letters were folded lengthwise, without their envelopes. Bothwell's bold large hand was easy enough to read, even at a glance. Without untying the packet Hilda could see the nature of those letters. "My dearest love," "My life," "My ever beloved." Such words as those scattered on the folded pages told the character of the correspondence.
She had known from the first, from his own lips, that he had cared for another woman, that he had been in some manner bound to that other woman—his future life so compromised that he must needs win his release from that tie before he could offer himself honourably to his new love. She had known this, and yet the sight of those impassioned phrases in the hand of her betrothed tortured her almost to madness. She flung the packet from her, flung it at her rival's feet, as if it had been some loathsome reptile that had fastened on her hand.
"It is shameful, abominable!" she cried. "Such words as those written to another man's wife! I will read no more—not a line—not a syllable."
"But you shall read, or you shall hear," said Valeria, taking up the packet. "You shall know what kind of vows this man made to me, this man whom you are going to marry."
She drew out a letter haphazard, and thrust it into Hilda's hand—forced her to read by sheer strength of will, watching her with flashing eyes all the while.
Hilda read words of such passionate vehemence that it was difficult to believe that transient feelings could have inspired them—words which told of rapturous delight in a reciprocal love, and fondest hope of future union; words that made light of all things in earth and heaven as weighed against that all-absorbing love. She read of that scheme of the future in which the ultimate marriage of the lovers was counted on as a certainty.
And it was for her sake he had abandoned this old dream—this plan of a life so long cherished. It was for her, an obscure, country-bred girl, who could bring him neither fame nor fortune, that he had surrendered all hope of calling this brilliant high-born woman his wife.
And now the hour had come when he might have claimed her, when, his years of servitude being over, he had but to wait the brief span society demands, before he faced the world with this woman by his side, the sharer of her social status, her ample means. Surely this would have been a happy fate for him, if there were any truth in these words of his, words which seemed to scorch Hilda's brain as she stood, silent, motionless, poring over them.
"You see," said Lady Valeria, after a long silence, "that once at least your lover loved me."
"I thought that once in such things meant for ever," answered Hilda, with a quiet sadness, as of one who speaks of the dead. "Yet the man who wrote this letter has talked and written of his love for me as tenderly, if not as passionately, as he has written here. Yes, I knew that he had cared for some one else, but not like this. I did not think such a love as this could come twice in a lifetime."
"You are wiser than I expected to find you," said Valeria, with languid insolence. "No, child, men do not love like that twice in a lifetime. I had Bothwell Grahame's heart at its best—his constancy, his devotion—and he would have been true to me till the end of his life had it not been for that business of the murder, which made men look askance at him, and your childish pity, which touched his heart when it was sorest. He was caught in the toils of his own affectionate nature. His grateful heart, which always melted at the least kindness, betrayed him. And because he was sympathetic and grateful you thought he loved you; and now you stand between him and his first love. You are the only barrier to a marriage which would make Bothwell Grahame a rich man, and me the happiest of women."
"If you had heard him talk of our future, if you had seen him planning our home, you would hardly doubt that he meant to be happy with me, Lady Valeria," said Hilda.
"My child, I have seen your future home; I have heard what kind of a life Bothwell Grahame is to lead as your husband. He is to be a schoolmaster, cramming dull boys for impossible examinations; grinding mathematics and theoretical engineering all day long and every day, till his brain is weary; going over the same ground again and again like a horse in a mill. He is to be a nobody, a plodding bread-winner, living year after year in a God-forsaken village, far away from the great arena of life; ground down by the fathers and patronised by the mothers of his pupils. He is to cherish no higher ambition than to be able to pay the butcher and the baker, and to get himself a new coat before the old one is threadbare.Thatis the life to which your generous love would condemn him."
"We are not going to be quite such paupers as you imagine, Lady Valeria. I have a small income of my own, which will at least pay the baker; and I do not think Bothwell's rich cousin would see him in want of a coat."
"My dear Miss Heathcote, it is only a question of degree. Granted that Mr. Grahame is sure of his breakfast and dinner, his existence as a private tutor will be none the less a life of exile from all that makes life worth living—from the world of art and letters, from the strife and the glory of politics, from the great world of distinguished men and women. As my husband he would have the ball at his feet. His fortune would be large enough to command an opening in any career he might choose for himself, his connections on my side of the house would be powerful enough to help him, and his talents would undoubtedly bring him to the front. In the House his career would be assured. With his knowledge of India and Indian war tactics, he would inevitably make his mark. There are hardly three men in the House of Commons who have any real knowledge of that vast Eastern world for which English politicians legislate. You see I have dreamed for him, thought for him. All my ambition is for him, and not for myself."
"I am willing to believe that you love him, Lady Valeria," said Hilda, with frigid distinctness, looking her rival full in the face, "since nothing but the blindest love could induce any woman in your position to lower yourself as you have done—first in India as General Harborough's wife, and secondly to-day as General Harborough's widow—when you come to me and ask me to give up my betrothed husband, the man to whom I am to be married next Tuesday; for I suppose that is the gist of all you have said to me."
"I ask nothing from you, Miss Heathcote. I know the narrow view which most girls of your age, brought up as you have been, take of life and its obligations. I do not expect large-minded ideas from a young lady with your surroundings." This was said with infinite scorn of Hilda's rustic rearing. "But I think it well that you should know how much Bothwell Grahame surrenders for the privilege of having you for a wife. Of course it is quite possible that the recompense may be worth the sacrifice. It is for you to judge of that. I wish you good-day."
Hilda bowed and rang the bell, without a word. She did not accompany her visitor to the drawing-room door, but stood in a stony silence looking out at the window in front of her, with fixed eyes.
It was only when the outer door had closed on Lady Valeria that the girl flung herself on the nearest sofa and abandoned herself to her grief.
Alas, this entanglement of the past had been something more than a garland of roses. It had been a chain from which her lover had tried to release himself, but whose iron links yet hung about him.
All the happiness was gone out of her life, all the sweet tranquillity which had been the holiest charm in her love for Bothwell, the deep faith in her beloved, the assurance of his trustworthiness, his unalloyed love for her. How could she ever again believe in that love, after she had heard the history of his passion for another, after she had read of that wild infatuation in his own hand, after she had seen the woman he had thus loved and thus addressed—a woman to win and hold the love of men, a woman whose face had that subtle charm of supreme refinement and distinction which is far above the peach-bloom tints and perfect lines of stereotyped beauty? In Valeria the broken-hearted girl acknowledged a siren before whose fascinations the wisest man might be as a fool. She compared herself with her rival. She walked across the room and stood before the long console-glass, contemplating her own image, half-scornfully, half-sorrowfully. The pale tear-blotted face appeared at its worst, robbed of the freshness that constituted half its beauty. The slight and girlish figure looked insignificant as compared with Valeria's statelier bearing.
The girl turned herself about, and looked at herself at every angle, as if she had been trying on a gown at her milliner's.
"What a dowdy I am!" she said to herself. "Just the very pattern for a schoolmaster's wife. I doubt if Lady Valeria is more than an inch taller; and yet she looks a queen. It is the way she carries her head, I suppose, and the way she walks, like a woman accustomed to command. Yes, a man might well be proud of such a wife, and of the position such a wife could give him. Bothwell in Parliament. Bothwell a great authority on Indian affairs. How strange it sounds! But I know how clever he is, how well he can talk upon any subject. It would be a splendid career for him. And for my sake he is to forego all that, and to drudge as a tutor in a Cornish village. Yes, I suppose it would be a dreary life for such a man—though it seemed so full of brightness when we two talked about it last week. For my sake. No, Bothwell," she said to herself resolutely, striking her clenched hand upon the marble table. "No, Bothwell, not for my sake! You shall not surrender fame and fortune for my sake!"
And then, seating herself on the old-fashioned window-seat, with clasped hands lying in her lap, and steadfast eyes brooding on the ground; in an attitude of deepest thought, she retraced the history of Bothwell's courtship. She asked herself if she had verily been, as Lady Valeria had insinuated, herself half the wooer. She remembered how, in the beginning of their acquaintance, she had admired Dora Wyllard's cousin—how his riding, his singing, his conversation had alike seemed perfection. How she had contrasted him, to his wondrous advantage, with the country squires around and about. It was just possible that in her girlish inexperience she had betrayed her admiration, had flattered Bothwell into the idea that he liked her. And then, when the hour of trouble came, it was true that she had made no effort to hide her feelings; she had given Bothwell her sympathy almost unasked; she had, perhaps, lured him into declaring himself as her lover, when the feeling which inspired him was but the impulse of the moment, a transient emotion, born of gratitude.
She could understand how, in his self-contempt, his wounded honour, he had believed that his love for Valeria was a thing of the past, and had been glad to release himself from the ignoble bondage. But now that Valeria was free, his first love, fondly attached to him, valuing her fortune and position only as a means for his advancement, who could doubt that the old love would revive in his breast with all the old fervour; that his heart would go back to his first beloved, as a bird returns to its nest?
And was his whole life to be sacrificed because of this one mistaken impulse? No, the wrong was not yet irreparable. The marriage planned for next Tuesday need never take place.
Hilda began deliberately to scheme out the manner in which she should set her lover free. If the thing was to be done, it must be done bravely and thoroughly—not by halves. There must be no half-hearted action, no wavering, no pretence of surrender offered in the hope that Bothwell would refuse to accept his liberty. No; she must make the sacrifice as full and as effectual as that of Jephthah's daughter. She gave her life to save her father's honour. She (Hilda) could give her happiness, her fair future, the sweet ideal she had dreamed of, the life which to every good woman seems of all lives most perfect, an existence spent in tranquil seclusion with the husband of her choice.
After long brooding, deepest thought interrupted ever and anon by a burst of passionate weeping, tears which would not be restrained, Hilda had made her plan. She would go away, quite away, where Bothwell could not follow her. She would write him a letter which would leave him free to return to his old allegiance, while she herself would disappear, drop quietly out of the circle in which she was known, and remain hidden from all her friends for the next few months, perhaps for a year: at any rate until the joy-bells had rung for Bothwell's marriage with his old love. Alas, those joy-bells! She had imagined them ringing for her own wedding; she had heard their sweet music in her dreams.
Where should she go? What should she do with herself during the time of hiding? That was the question; and it was a difficult one for this inexperienced girl to answer. She had travelled so little, that all the wide world outside her own home was no more familiar to her than a chapter of geography. She knew the names of mountains and rivers, she had made her dream-pictures of beautiful places and scenes in far-away lands; but of railways and steamers, of the mode and manner of journeying from one place to another, of hotels and custom-houses, and the exchange of money, she knew hardly anything.
"I must go very far away, to some place where he would not think of following me, where he could never find me," she said to herself, supposing that it would be a point of honour with Bothwell to follow her, to keep his plighted troth, if it were possible.
She wanted to set him free, to make it easy for him to go back to his old love. She told herself that Lady Valeria had spoken the truth, and that it was not possible for him to have forgotten that old love.
When he had married Valeria, she, Hilda, would be free to come back to her home, to take up the thread of her broken life and follow it on to the dreary end. What joy could she have in her life, having lost him? Only the joy of knowing that she had loved him better than herself, cared more for his happiness than her own—the joy of woman's martyrdom.
After long deliberation, after having thought of a trip to Canada or a voyage to Australia, after having meditated upon various possible and impossible journeys, she decided upon a very commonplace course of proceeding. She had often heard it remarked of a levanting criminal that if he had stayed in London or any populous city, he would in all probability have escaped his pursuers; he would have been lost in the press of humanity, like a bubble in a running stream; whereas the man who goes to America is almost inevitably traced and trapped.
She would not go to London, a city she hated, and where she might at any moment run against her Cornish friends, all of whom paid occasional visits to the metropolis. She would go to Paris, where she would be lost among strangers; where she could live quietly in some obscure quarter, improving herself as a singer and a pianiste, until her time of probation was over, and the announcement of Bothwell's marriage told her that her sacrifice had been consummated. She would so plan her life that her brother could know that she was well and well cared for; but even he should not know the place of her residence, lest he should betray her secret to Bothwell.
This idea of Paris was partly traceable to an old influence. Until a year ago she had taken lessons from a bright little Frenchwoman who had taught her music and singing, and who had helped her incidentally with her French. The lessons had been going on for three years, when Hilda was pronounced to have finished her musical education, or at least to have learnt as much as Mademoiselle Duprez could teach her, and in those three years the little Frenchwoman had been a weekly visitor at The Spaniards, coming all the way from Plymouth to give her lesson, and being driven back to the station by her pupil, after a cheery luncheon, which the little woman thoroughly enjoyed.
Mademoiselle Duprez claimed kindred with the famous French tenor of that name, and had herself been a small celebrity in her way. She had sung at the Opera House in the Rue Lepelletier, in the days when Falcon was Diva, and Halevy's Juive was the success of the hour. Then came a fatal fever, caught at Nice, where she had gone to fulfil an autumnal engagement. Louise Duprez lost the voice which had been her only fortune. Happily, though the voice was gone, the exquisite method learned from Garcia, and ripened at the feet of Rossini, still remained; and by her excellence as a teacher of singing and piano, Mademoiselle Duprez had contrived to make a comfortable living, first in Paris, and afterwards at Plymouth, whither she had come at the suggestion of Edward Heathcote, who had made her acquaintance at the house of one of his Parisian friends, and who had recommended her to try a residence in Devonshire as a cure for her delicate chest, promising at the same time to do all in his power to help her in finding pupils at Plymouth, where he was at that time Town Clerk.
Mademoiselle Duprez had followed Mr. Heathcote's advice, and had not waited long before she found herself fairly established in the Devonshire sea-port. Hilda had been her first pupil, and Hilda she loved almost as a maiden aunt loves the prettiest and most amiable of her nieces. It was Hilda she quoted to all her other pupils. "You should hear a dear young friend of mine, Miss Heathcote of Bodmin, sing that song," she would say; and an eloquent shrug of her shoulders and elevation of her eyebrows would express how wide the difference between Miss Heathcote's perfection and the shortcoming of the performer then in hand.
Hilda was very fond of the lively little Parisienne: loved to hear her talk, and to learn of her; hung upon her words as she expounded the delicacies of her native language. Hilda had petted and made much of the little woman whenever she came to The Spaniards; had never spent a day in Plymouth without paying her old mistress a visit. And now in her sorrow and difficulty it was of Louise Duprez she thought, as the one friend whom she could trust with her secret, and who would be able to help her.
Hilda went to her own room before Fräulein Meyerstein returned from her afternoon walk with the twins. Those well-brought-up infants were ruthlessly sent from their playroom, their rocking-horse, and their doll's house, an hour after their early dinner, and were taken for afternoon drill by the Fräulein. Needless to say that they detested the formal trudge along dusty lanes, and abhorred the beauties of Nature encountered on the way; but their health no doubt profited by this severe regimen.
Hilda shut herself in her own rooms for the rest of the evening; with the usual plea of a headache. But she was up before daybreak next morning, and by six o'clock she had packed a small portmanteau and a Gladstone bag with her own hands, and carried them down surreptitiously to the stable-yard, where she gave them to an underling, with directions to put them in the pony-cart, and take them to Bodmin Road station in time for the eight-o'clock train. She herself intended to walk to the station, as her appearance on foot would be less likely to attract attention than in the pony-cart with the luggage.
So in the dewy morning, alone and unattended, with ashen cheeks and eyelids swollen by long weeping, Hilda Heathcote crept out of her brother's house, and walked across the hills, trusting to the keen breath of the autumn wind to obliterate the traces of a night of anguish before she arrived at the station.
She had written a long letter to Bothwell. This she carried with her, to post in Plymouth; and she had left letters for her brother and for the Fräulein. No one need be made uneasy at her disappearance.
Mdlle. Duprez occupied a first floor in an airy terrace of houses overlooking the Hoe. She was the kind of little woman to whom eating and drinking and fine dress are matters of very small moment, but who could not have endured to live in a shabby house or an ugly neighbourhood. All her surroundings were neat and bright and fair to look upon. She had brought over her furniture from Paris. It was the remnant of that furniture which had adorned her great-grandmother's house at Versailles, before the fiery spirits of thetiers étatmet in the tennis-court, and the Revolution began. There was not much of it left, but that little was of the best period in French cabinet-work, and in the most perfect taste.
Louise Duprez loved this heritage from her ancestors as if the chairs and sofa, cabinet and writing-table, had been living things. She used to sit and contemplate them sometimes, between the lights, in a dreamy mood, and think how much they might have told her about Marie Antoinette and her court, and the old days of the Oeil de Boeuf, if they could but have found a voice. Thebonheur du jour, with its ormolu mounts, looked very human as the firelight shone upon it. The goats' heads seemed to wink and twinkle like human eyes, while the floral mouldings assumed the form of a broad human grin, as who should say, "Ah, I could tell you some fine farces about those ladies, if I could but speak!"
Mademoiselle's rooms were always the pink of neatness; not a book out of line on the shelves above the secrétaire, not a scrap of work or a stray pin-cushion littering the tables; newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, all in their places; while Mademoiselle herself was one of those dainty little women who never have a pin awry in their toilet.
So when Miss Heathcote was ushered into the singing-mistress'ssalonat half-past nine in the morning, her unexpected appearance at such an early hour caused neither confusion nor annoyance.
Mademoiselle had been breakfasting at a table in front of the open window—a temperate meal of coffee and roll, neatly arranged on a tray. Spotless damask and pretty china made the tray a picture, with Mademoiselle's pink cambric gown and bright little face for background.
"My dear child, how early! I am enchanted to see you!" she cried, jumping up and kissing her old pupil on both cheeks. "What a good girl to come to me before my day's work begins! This is one of my full days, from eleven till five. Squall, squall, thump, thump, every kind of outrage upon the genius of harmony must these poor ears of mine suffer; and I must be very polite, all the same; must not lose patience and cry aloud—ah, how I long to do it sometimes!—'My love, you have no more voice than a peacock, no more ear than a four-post bedstead; your accent is diabolical, and you are the very embodiment of idiotcy.' You see one must not be quite frank with one's pupils. But, Hilda, my pet, what is the matter? You have been crying!"
"Not since last night, Mademoiselle," answered Hilda, looking at her friend with hard, dry eyes; "I cried so much last night that I don't think I shall ever shed a tear again. There must be an end, you know, even to tears."
"My sweetest child, what in Heaven's name has happened? Your brother, Mr. Effecotte!"
Louise Duprez gasped as she spoke the name. Edward Heathcote was her benefactor, that one Englishman whom she admired and honoured with all her heart and mind, whom she thought almost equal to the typical Frenchman, the French gentleman of arégimethat is almost forgotten, of a day that is dead.
"My brother is quite well, at least as far as I know," answered Hilda, with sisterly indifference; and then she made Mdlle. Duprez sit down, and knelt at her feet, clasping her hands, and looking up at her earnestly. "My dear, kind friend, I want you to help me in a crisis of my life," she said.
"To help you to run away with Mr. Grahame, I suppose. No, no, Hilda,pas si bête; I am your brother's friend above all things. If Mr. Effecotte disapproves of your marriage, I will do nothing to further it."
"Pray don't be in such a hurry," said Hilda. "Hear my trouble first, and then help me to lighten it, if you can. I think you ought to know that I am not the kind of girl to make a runaway marriage."
"Indeed, I know nothing of the kind about any English girl. Runaway marriages seem as common in this country as runaway knocks at my door."
"Englishwomen run away before marriage, and Frenchwomen after," retorted Hilda.
"I don't think your English matrons such irreproachable creatures," said the Parisienne. "There is your Lady Valeria Harborough, for instance, who had one of the best husbands in Christendom, and yet was always surrounded by a bevy of admirers, and made herself more talked about than any woman in Plymouth."
"Was she really talked about?" asked Hilda eagerly.
"Really, really. I don't mean to say that she was supposed to be actually incorrect in her conduct; but she brought her Indian manners back to England with her, and she had always her court of fools and fops about her. And now the papers are beginning to be impertinent about her—or, at least, this stupid little paper, which models itself on some of the London society papers."
Mdlle. Duprez pointed to a periodical on the table at her side—a sheet of eight pages, printed on pink paper, and calling itself thePlymouth Censor. Hilda snatched it up, and ran her eye rapidly along the paragraphs, till she came to one worded thus:
"Rumours are already afloat in privileged circles as to the probabilities of a second hymen for the beautiful widow of a general officer, lately gone over to the majority. Foremost in the betting stands a certainci-devantcaptain of Engineers, who saved the General's life by a dexterous shot in the jungle, and who has beendu dernier bienwith the General's charming wife ever since. Ours is an age of rehabilitations."
"Lady Valeria was right," murmured Hilda. "People know all about her folly. Her only redemption will be her marriage with Bothwell."
And then she opened her heart to her old friend—told her everything that had passed between herself and Lady Valeria—told her how she had made up her mind to sacrifice her own happiness rather than to let Bothwell's life be spoiled by a mistaken engagement. At first Mdlle. Duprez ridiculed her plan as Quixotic to absurdity, and refused to have anything to do with it. But the girl's indomitable resolution, her intense earnestness of purpose, prevailed at last over the Frenchwoman's scruples. Louise Duprez, at four-and-forty years of age, was as romantic as the simplest schoolgirl. She had spent the last fifteen years of her life almost entirely among girls. She had been the confidante of their love-affairs, their fond dreams of the ideal; she had counselled and lectured them, had sympathised and sorrowed and joyed with them. And now she was quite ready to be impressed by the heroic element in Hilda's intended sacrifice. The happiness of one young life given away to secure the fame and fortune of another and dearer life. It was a romantic scheme which kindled all Louise Duprez's warmest fancies.
"Would I were young again, to do such a thing myself for my beloved!" she thought to herself, with a tender sigh for her only lover, who had perished, a burly major of Artillery, on the bloody field of Sedan.
"How shall I ever answer to your brother—my best of friends—if I assist you in rebellion against him?" asked Mdlle. Duprez, after a thoughtful silence.
"I am not rebelling against my brother. I am only leaving my home in order to break an engagement which Edward always disapproved. He gave his consent reluctantly at the last, to please Mrs. Wyllard. He will be very glad to hear that the engagement is cancelled."
"But you have no right to conceal your whereabouts from him."
"The concealment need not last long—only till Bothwell has gone back to his old love; and that I should think will be very soon," with a stifled sob. "There is no use in your being unkind to me. If I do not find a home in France with your aid, I shall find it without you. I have made up my mind to go on to Southampton by the midday train, and to cross to Havre to-night. The steamer leaves Southampton at ten o'clock. There will be plenty of time for me to get there."
"And you are going alone, without even a maid?"
"Absolutely alone."
"You cannot possibly live alone among strangers—it is out of the question," protested Mademoiselle.
"That is why I ask you to give me an introduction to some friends of yours in a quiet part of Paris, who will take me into their family circle, and help me to carry on my musical education at the Conservatoire. The Conservatoire has been the dream of my life. You must know of such people, with your numerous acquaintance among the musical profession—"
"Yes, no doubt I know of such people. But how am I to reconcile the idea of giving you such an introduction with my duty to your brother?" argued Mdlle. Duprez.
"Your duty to my brother—if there is any such thing—is to find me a respectable home in Paris," said Hilda. "I tell you once for all that I have made up my mind to start for Paris to-night—to live there in some quiet quarter for the next year or so. I shall go forth in the strength of my own ignorance and courage, like Miss Bird in her journey across the mountains, if you don't help me. Perhaps I may fall among thieves: and mind, if I do, it will be your fault."
She spoke with extraordinary resolution, with an animated air which seemed hardly compatible with grief. Yet this spurious gaiety of hers was the worst symptom of all, and was very close to hysteria.
Louise Duprez could read the meaning that underlay that false air of good spirits. She saw that the girl was nearly heart-broken, and that this resolution of hers which she had taken up so heroically was perhaps the very best possible issue out of her sorrow: for Louise accepted Hilda's own view of the case, and took it for granted that Bothwell was willing to go back to his old love. With her experience as a woman of the world, having seen how selfishness and self-love are the motive-powers that propel the machine called society, Mdlle. Duprez was ready to believe that General Harborough's death, and Lady Valeria's position as a rich widow, would entirely alter Bothwell's views.
It was very hard for Hilda: but still human nature is human nature, and a young man with his way to carve in the world would hardly regret such an opportunity as a marriage with Lady Valeria Harborough.
Had Hilda allowed matters to take their course, the poor young man would no doubt have gone quietly to his fate; he would have marched heroically up to the altar; he would have settled down with his young wife in the village home he had planned for himself; he would have drudged as a teacher of stupid lads; and he would have repented ever afterwards. What happiness could possibly come to Hilda in a life spent with a disappointed man, who would remember, every day of his toilsome existence, that he had missed fame and fortune for his wife's sake?
"That a man should be fond of teaching for its own sake—ce n'est pas Dieu possible!" exclaimed Mdlle. Duprez, with a shuddering reminiscence of her own sufferings.
So, having reasoned thus, she made up her mind to help Hilda to carry out her act of self-abnegation.
"If I did not believe that you are acting for your own ultimate happiness, I would not aid you in this matter by one jot or one tittle," said the little woman, in her own energetic way; "but, as it is, I am going to put on my bonnet and take you to Paris."
This was said in so quiet a manner that Hilda thought her friend was joking.
"You don't mean to go with me?" she began.
"I don't mean to let your brother's sister travel alone, arrive alone, and a stranger, in such a city as Paris. There is no Rue des Fèves now, with its famous Lapin Blanc, where Eugène Sue's thieves used to keep their rendezvous; but for all that has been done, Paris is Paris—and if you have set your mind upon going there, I must go with you."
"But, dear Mademoiselle, think of the trouble, the fatigue—and your lessons."
"My lessons must stand over till my return. I shall be back next Monday. Don't say another word, Hilda. There's no time to be wasted in talk. You are going to eat your breakfast. I'll wager you left home without so much as a cup of tea."
"There was nobody up," faltered Hilda, who had eaten nothing since Lady Valeria's visit, and who was suffering all the pangs of exhaustion.
"Of course not; and you have been walking and travelling, and are ready to faint at this moment," protested Louise, ringing as she spoke. "You are going to have some nice hot coffee—I have taught them to make coffee in this house, I who speak to you—and an egg, while I write to my pupils to apologise for my sudden disappearance; and precisely at twelve o'clock there will be a fly at the door to take us to the station."
"I have a cheque to cash at the Bank," said Hilda. "Perhaps the maid could get it cashed for me."
"For how much is your cheque?"
"Two hundred and fifty pounds."
"Do you think I would let my poor little slavey trot about Plymouth with two hundred and fifty pounds?" cried Mdlle. "She is as honest as the day; but the magnitude of the sum would turn her brain. She would walk into the harbour unawares. No, if you have such a cheque as that to cash, you must take it to the Bank yourself; and instead of carrying all the cash with you to Paris, you had better draw only fifty, and leave the two hundred on deposit. You can draw more when you want it."
The slavey answered the bell, a neat little handmaiden in pink cotton, who was told to get breakfast for Miss Heathcote, and to order a fly to be at the door at a quarter to twelve.
"That will allow us fifteen minutes for the Bank," said Mademoiselle, opening her desk, and beginning her letters.
Everything was done in a brisk business-like manner. It was only when they were in the train which was to take them by way of Exeter to Salisbury, and then to Southampton, that Hilda had leisure to realise the step which she had taken.
She had written to Bothwell in perfect frankness, had opened her heart to him, telling him that his happiness was dearer to her than her own, that his honour was paramount in her mind over every other consideration. And she told him that honour should constrain him to marry the woman who had been compromised by his love in the past, and who loved him unselfishly and devotedly in the present, holding her own pride as nothing when weighed against her love for him.
"No woman could act as Lady Valeria has acted this day to whom love was not all in all," she wrote, pleading her rival's cause, because she thought it was the cause of right, and Bothwell's cause also. "Think how such a woman must have lowered herself in her own self-respect when she came to me, her inferior in social station, her junior by ten years, to make confession of her love. It was for your sake she stooped so low, Bothwell.
"Do not try—out of a mistaken sense of duty—to follow me, or to dissuade me from a decision which is irrevocable. When you receive this letter I shall have entered upon a new phase of life, in which it would be almost impossible for you to find me—and if you did find me, to what end? My mind is made up. Do not allow your kind heart to be tormented by needless remorse. My heart is not broken, dear Bothwell; I mean to live my life peacefully, contentedly; to cultivate new ideas of happiness, wider horizons. You need never be troubled at the thought that this cancelled engagement of ours has broken my life. Be sure only of one thing—that my dearest hope, wherever I may be, will be for your welfare. To know that your life is happy will be enough to fill my cup of joy."
She had written from the depth of her faithful heart, resigning him willingly, having no sense of ill-usage, no anger even against Lady Valeria: only some touch of contempt for a woman who had been an unworthy wife to a noble husband.
And now the thing was done. Her letter, posted in Plymouth by her own hand, was on its way to Bothwell. Could she doubt, knowing what she knew, that the letter would come upon him as a welcome release, would relieve him from a most embarrassing position? And then she remembered that wretched paragraph in theCensor; and it seemed to her that Bothwell's first duty in life was to set Lady Valeria right before the world. Even if he had ceased to love her, his duty was not the less clear; but who could doubt that the old love still held the first place in his heart?
The journey from Plymouth to Southampton seemed woefully long that bright autumn day. The sun was almost as strong as it had been in August, and the light glared in upon Hilda as she sat in the corner of the carriage, very white and very silent, but perfectly calm and collected. Her eyelids were heavy and swollen after the night of weeping, but her eyes were tearless. Louise Duprez gave a furtive look every now and then, to see if the girl was quietly weeping behind the newspaper which she pretended to read; but there were no tears in the wistful eyes, so full of troubled thought.
Once, when they had the compartment to themselves for a little while, between station and station, Louise put out her hand and clasped Hilda's as it held the newspaper.
"Have you changed your mind?" she asked; "you have had plenty of time for thinking in this creeping omnibus-train. Shall we take another train at Exeter, and go back again?"
"Not for the world," answered Hilda firmly. "Do you suppose I did not deliberate before I made up my mind last night? I was thinking all night long."
Mdlle. Duprez gave a little submissive sigh. In her own philosophic mind she was sure the girl was right; but then Mdlle. Duprez had arrived at an age when the surrender of a lover may be borne; and she was keen-witted enough to know that these things were different for Hilda.
It was only in the afternoon of the next day that they arrived at the Saint-Lazare terminus, whence they drove at once to the Hôtel du Bon Lafontaine, on the left side of the Seine, a house much affected by bishops and abbés, and having a semi-clerical and old-world air altogether different from the smart caravanserais in Anglo-American Paris. Hilda was too unhappy to feel any delight in the grandeur of Boulevards, churches, and palaces, which she passed on her way from the station to the hotel. Her aching eyes saw all things dimly, as in a dream. She had only a vague sense of wide streets, glancing river, stupendous architecture, white in the autumn sun: and then when the carriage had crossed the river there came narrower streets, shabbier houses, an air of busier and more homely life.
Mdlle. Duprez ordered lunch at the hotel, where she was known and welcomed with friendliest greeting by manageress and head-waiter; and Hilda, for the first time in her life, found herself sitting in the public dining-room of a Parisian hotel. Happily at this hour of the day the room was empty; and Hilda and her friend were as much alone at their little table looking into the quaint old Parisian garden as they could have been at The Spaniards.
And now Mdlle. Duprez unfolded her plans. She knew of a family living in the Rue du Bac, an artistic family, the father and sons painters, engravers, caricaturists; one of the daughters literary, another musical and a pupil at the Conservatoire; the mother all that there is of the mostbourgeoise, but a good creature, devoted to her children—a woman to whose care Mdlle. Duprez felt that she could safely confide her young friend.
"It will be a long jaunt from the Rue du Bac to the Conservatoire in the Rue du Faubourg Poissonniére," she said, "but you and Mathilde can go there together, and it will do you good to take long walks. The only danger is that you may run against your brother on the Boulevard."
"I should not think Edward would stay much longer in Paris," said Hilda.
"Perhaps while he is in Paris it would be safer for you to go in the omnibus," suggested Mdlle. Duprez. "Mr. Heathcote is not likely to be riding in omnibuses."
The little woman trotted off to the Rue du Bac, leaving Hilda to amuse herself with a flabby copy ofL'Univers, three days old; or to gaze despondently at the stony quadrangle, with its bust of the good Lafontaine, and its three or four evergreens. Seen by those melancholy eyes of hers, the garden looked like a family vault, with the good Lafontaine for the father of the race.
Mdlle. Duprez came back in less than an hour. She had seen that dear good soul Mdme. Tillet, and had settled everything. Mdme. Tillet would be happy to receive Miss Heathcote, and would be to her as a mother. By putting her two daughters into one room, she could contrive to spare a neat little sleeping apartment for the new inmate. Things were somewhat Bohemian in the house; but what would you expect with a gifted and eccentric family? Everything was scrupulously clean. There triumphed the household genius, Mdme. Tillet, born in an old farmhouse in Brittany, where you might have eaten your dinner off the red brick floor.
Mathilde Tillet, the musical daughter, was prepared to welcome Miss Heathcote as a sister. There was no one in the family besides herself who cared a straw for classical music, from Beethoven to Raff. The brothers all believed in theMadame Angotschool, and had no sympathy for anything loftier. Poor Mathilde had been pining for sympathy; and to have a young companion who would toil at Bach's fugues and preludes, and cram Chopin, Raff, and Brahms, and trudge to the Conservatoire with her, would be delightful.
"They are going to make much of you," said Louise Duprez, "I will answer for that in advance. My only fear is that the three brothers will all fall in love with you, and then there will be storms. They are rather fiery spirits."
"I shall not give them any provocation," said Hilda; and indeed the pale grave face, with the troubled look in the eyes, was not suggestive of coquetry.
"Mdme. Tillet promises to be ready to receive you to-morrow," continued Mdlle. Duprez. "I have agreed for you to pay her her own terms, which I do not think exorbitant, considering that everything in Paris is execrably dear. You are to pay her ten pounds a calendar month, which is to include everything, even to your laundress."
"It sounds very cheap," said Hilda, and she would have said the same if the sum had been twenty pounds, or even forty. She was not in a state of mind in which to consider pounds, shillings, and pence.
Mdlle. Duprez insisted upon taking her to see some of the sights of Paris—Notre Dame, the Louvre—and then they drove to the Conservatoire, and made inquiries as to the conditions under which Miss Heathcote, as a stranger, might be allowed to take lessons from the professors attached to that institution. She was to take singing lessons from Monsieur Somebody of great renown, and music lessons from Madame Somebody of equal renown. She was to have in all four lessons a week, on four different days; and it seemed to Mdlle. Duprez that she would thus be too closely occupied to have leisure for brooding on her grief. The professors of the Parisian Conservatoire are very severe in their teaching, and a good deal of work is required of a pupil. The pianiste must play her portion of Chopin and her tale of Bach without book at the second time of hearing. The vocalist must give proof that she has laboured earnestly at hersolfeggi.
After the business interview at the Conservatoire, where the name of Mdlle. Duprez was a power, the kindly little Frenchwoman ordered the coachman to drive by the Boulevard and the Parc Monceau to the Bois de Boulogne. She steeped her young friend in the glory and beauty of Paris, hoping to prevent the possibility of much thought amidst so new and bright a world. And then she proposed that they should get seats at the Comédie Française, where a new play of Sardou's was being acted.
Hilda roused herself from the lethargy in which she had looked at the splendours of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and the brightness of the Bois, to protest against the idea of the theatre.
"I am not going to pretend to amuse myself when I am miserable," she said. "I mean to forget Bothwell by and by, or to think of him only as a dear friend whose happiness makes me happy; but I cannot pretend to have forgotten him to-day. I won't go to the theatre and make believe to be amused. I should feel as if I were seeking pleasures abroad when there was some one that I loved lying dead at home. But that need not prevent your seeing Sardou's play, dear Mademoiselle. I can stay quietly at the hotel, and read myself to sleep."
"My child, I don't care a straw for Sardou's play, except as a means of making you forget your troubles. We will go and take a quiet cup of tea with Mdme. Tillet, so that you may get reconciled to your new surroundings. That will be much better; and then you must go to bed early and get a good night's rest."
They dined at the hotel, in the odour of sanctity, as it were, for a bishop and a curé were dining at the table next them, and dining uncommonly well with a nice appreciation of theplat du jour, and of some excellent chambertin which appeared towards the close of the entertainment.
"I hope you won't be horrified when you hear that the Tillets live over a shop," said Mdlle. Duprez, as she and Hilda were walking down the Rue de Grenelle on their way to the Rue du Bac. "It is only a quiet little glover's shop, but I thought the idea might shock you."
"I am not at all shocked. I should not be, even, if Mdme. Tillet kept the shop," answered Hilda, smiling her faint sweet smile, which told of a gentle nature and a heart in pain.
They came to the glover's shop presently, a very obscure little shop in a street where there are many big shops; shops of renown, even, like the Petit Saint-Thomas, and the Bon Marché, the Whiteley of Paris. There was a private door beside the glover's. A narrow passage and a dark staircase conducted to the abode of the Tillets, which was on the second floor, and the approach to which echoed with sonorous laughter and manly voices, with an admixture of girlish treble.
"The children are all at home," said Mdlle. Duprez, who had been accustomed to hear Mdme. Tillet talk of her bearded and well-grown brood as "mes enfants."
Hilda found herself presently in the bosom of the family, being embraced by Mdme. Tillet, who was a stout, comfortable-looking matron in a gray cashmere gown and black mittens. The family sitting-room was a spacious apartment, with piano, book-cases, easels, drawing-tables, work-tables, all the means of various kinds of study and art; and it seemed overflowing with human life. Half-buried in an armchair by the hearth reclined the father; the three sons, Adolphe, Victor, and Frédéric, were seated at different tables, each with his particular lamp; and the two daughters sat on each side of a large work-basket, stitching industriously at a new gown which they were making together.
"Welcome, my sweet young friend," said Mdme. Tillet, and then proceeded to introduce her children.
Adolphe, the eldest, was distinguished for his etchings, and rose from his delicate work upon a sheet of copper to receive the new inmate. He was a big bearded fellow, with a mahogany complexion and slouching shoulders, in manners and disposition as simple as a child. Victor was a wood-engraver, who worked for Hachette on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, hard by, and earned more money than any one else in the family. Frédéric was the genius, a caricaturist. He drew for thePetit Journaland theVie Parisienne, and devoted his days and nights to the concoction ofbêtisesfor those papers. Ten years ago the father had been on the high road to fame and fortune as a painter ofgenre; but he had let other runners in the race go by him, somehow; and now the familypot-au-feuwas supplied by the industry of the children, while the father dreamed his day-dreams, and reviled his more successful contemporaries, by the domestic hearth. The sons were great hulking, soft-hearted fellows, who adored their mother, tolerated their father's idleness without a murmur, and had no fault except that of a disposition to fall in love at the very slightest provocation.
Marcelline, the elder daughter, gained her share of the familypâtéeby the exercise of her pen. She wrote for two or three fashion-magazines, and was an authority upon the ways and customs, the houses and gowns, of the great world, under various high-soundingnoms de plume. She signed herself in one paper La Comtesse Boisjoli, in another La Marquise de la Vallière. Needless to add that she had never crossed the thresholds of those great houses which she described so glibly. She obtained her information from shopkeepers, her glimpses of society from the pavement on which rank and beauty alighted for an instant in their passage from the carriage to the hall-door. All the rest was evolved from a lively inner-consciousness.
Mathilde was the more serious sister, devoted to art for art's sake; believing in Bach and the severe school as the highest ideal in life, worshipping the memory of Berlioz, and despising those vanities which occupied the thoughts of her elder sister.
All the family made Hilda welcome. They praised her French, pronounced falteringly in a paroxysm of shyness. The girls took off her hat and jacket, and installed her in a comfortable chair, while Madame bustled about with thebonne, and set out a tea-tray and a feast of sweet cakes such as Frenchwomen love. Nothing could be more fortunate than that dear Mdlle. Duprez and her sweet young friend had dropped in to tea this evening, protested Mdme. Tillet, for they were momentarily expecting a visit from one of the most intellectual men in Paris, Sigismond Trottier. "You must have heard of M. Trottier," said Madame; "his name must be known in London as well as it is in Paris."
Hilda blushingly admitted that she knew very little of London, and that she had never heard of M. Trottier.
"Really! But he must have a world-wide fame. TheTaon, for which he writes, has made a greater sensation than even theLanternein the days of Napoleon III. The last defeat of the Government was ascribed to the influence of theTaon. TheTaonhas done more to undermine the Conservative party than any other paper," said M. Tillet from the depths of his easy-chair. "Yet politics are not Trottier's chief forte. As a politician he is trenchant and effective, but as a writer upon social topics he is really great."
Thebonneopened the door and announced "M. Trottier," and Hilda looked anxiously at the newcomer, finding herself for the first time in her life in the company of a literary genius.
She would have liked to see the literary genius in a cleaner shirt; but she had stories of Chatterton, of Savage, and Johnson and Goldsmith at heart; and it seemed to her only natural that genius should be rather dirty, and clad in a greasy olive-green coat, that genius should have long gray hair, bushy eyebrows, and a cadaverous visage. She sat in her corner silently, and did not expect to be noticed; but M. Tillet presented his friend to her in a special manner, and to her surprise the olive-green genius gave a little start at mention of her name.
"Effecotte!" he exclaimed; "are all the English people, who are not Smith or Brown, called Effecotte? Or is this young lady related to my old friend M. Edouard Effecotte, of Cornouailles?"
"Grand Dieu," exclaimed Mdlle. Duprez, "what a small world it is we live in!"
Hilda looked nervously to the right and to the left, like some wild creature brought to bay, seeking some outlet whereby she could escape. Those keen black eyes scrutinising her from under shaggy gray eyebrows, that cadaverous countenance with its lantern jaws, seemed to her as the face of a grinning fiend. This man, whom she had never seen in her life before, had but to hear her name mentioned, and at once knew all about her. This Paris, which she had thought of as a wilderness where she and her sorrow might hide, was a kind of trap into which she had fallen. Above all things she had wished to avoid any encounter with her brother, whose affection or whose idea of brotherly duty might interfere with her scheme of self-sacrifice.
Sigismond Trottier contemplated her curiously with his cynical smile, amused at her embarrassment, reading whole histories in her changing colour, her look of absolute terror. Something wrong here, he told himself. A pretty girl, fallen among this band of Bohemians in Paris, without the knowledge of her kindred. One of those social mysteries which Sigismond had such a happy knack at unravelling.
"Edward Heathcote is my brother," faltered Hilda, at last, "but he does not know that I am in Paris. I do not wish him to know."
"Consider me dumb for ever upon the subject of your residence here, Mademoiselle," said Sigismond, with a respectful bow. "A lady's wish is a command."
He shook hands with his old friend the painter. They had been chums for the last twenty years; and it was to his delight in Sigismond Trottier's society, among other causes, that M. Tillet owed his decadence as an artist. It was not that he had loved art less, but he had loved the Boulevard more. He had given up his nights to wit and pleasure; and he had found his working days curiously shortened in consequence. He had been renowned as one of the finest talkers, upon art, famed for his burning eloquence when he praised the great painters of the past, and for his scathing wit when he ridiculed the little painters of the present; for he had even thus early fallen to that stage in the idler's career, when a man's chief consolation is to undervalue contemporaneous merit. He had lived and enjoyed his life in those days, had spent his money faster than he earned it, and had fallen into the ranks of failure, to be supported by the toil of his wife and her children, to be the family log, the family disease. They were all very patient, those children of his. They worked for him and admired him, believed in him almost. They admired the great genius he might have been if he had only worked. They valued him for potentialities of greatness of which he talked sometimes, in his dreamy way; as if those idle aspirings had been actual achievements.
The shabby oldsalon, with its dark-red paper, stained and faded with age, was glorified by some of M. Tillet's pictures, painted before his slothful hand had begun to lose its cunning. There hung the portrait of a beautiful duchess, exquisitely painted—a lovely head, an ideal neck and shoulders, in white satin and brown fur, like an old Venetian picture. The head had been successful, but shoulders, arms, and draperies were still unfinished. The picture had been a commission, an offering from the Duchess to her distinguished father, a Minister of State, on his fête. But the fête had come and gone, and the portrait was not ready. Time had been conceded, and more time, and still the draperies remained unfinished, and still the picture was not fit to leave the painter's studio. Finally the commission had been cancelled. Some lesser genius had painted the Duchess, briskly, punctually, readily, out of hand. These meaner souls can go in harness. And the meaner soul received the seven thousand francs which were to have been paid to M. Tillet, and the painter had his unfinished picture, as a kind of pendant to his incomplete life. Happily, those trustful sons and daughters of his were very proud of that unfinished portrait, and of the four or five sketches forgenrepictures, never painted, which adorned the familysalon. There was not another man in France who could paint like their father, they said, or who had such talent in composition. Meissonier would have been nowhere in the race if Eugène Tillet had but stuck to his easel.
Trottier and Tillet began to talk, and the sons went on with their work in a free-and-easy manner, while Madame and the daughters waited upon their guests. Poor Hilda had been so unnerved by this unexpected encounter with a friend of her brother's that she could only falter the feeblest replies to Marcelline and Mathilde, who tried to make themselves at home with her.
Marcelline, who was rather strong-minded, lost patience at last, and asked Mdlle. Duprez, in an undertone, as she handed a plate ofpetits fours, if her young friend was not just a trifle stupid.
"She is as clever as you and your sister, and that is saying a good deal," replied Louise Duprez, in the same undertone; "but she has just suffered a great heart-blow, and that kind of thing is not calculated to make one particularly lively."
This was enough for Marcelline, who was very tender-hearted. She went back to her seat next Hilda, and took her hand at the first opportunity.
"I hope we are going to be great friends," she murmured, "although you and Mathilde will have more in common. I long to hear you sing. Mdlle. Duprez says you have such a lovely voice. But perhaps you are too tired to sing to-night."
"If you will excuse me," faltered Hilda.
"Of course, we will excuse you. You must be very tired, after travelling all night. And you were dreadfully sea-sick, no doubt?"
"No, I escaped that suffering. I am never sea-sick."
"Good heavens, is that possible? If I go but a little way on the sea, the least little way, I suffer tortures, veritable agonies. And you others, you English, do not seem to suffer at all. You are a kind of sea-dogs, to whom waves and tempest are a natural element."
"I was brought up near the coast," answered Hilda. "I have been out in all weathers."
And then she thought of that wild, rock-bound coast on which she and Bothwell were to have lived, they two, all in all to each other, ineffably happy amidst simplest surroundings. She thought of the boat they were to have had—the cockle-shell rowboat in which they were to have gone dancing over the waves from Tintagel to Boscastle, or by Trebarwith sands, shining golden in the sunlight—in a bright world of life and clamour, the bird-world of gulls and cormorants, a winged populace, rejoicing in sea-foam, and light, and the music of the winds. She thought of the life that was to have been—the fairy fabric of the future, which had seemed so beautiful and so real, and which her ruthless hand had shattered.
Had she done right in so surrendering that fair future? Yes, again and again yes. The level domestic life which would have been so sweet to her as a woman would have been stagnation, a slow decay for an ambitious man. Her simple rustic rearing had prepared her for such a life. The monotony of a village existence was all-sufficient for her narrower views, her more concentrated nature. But Bothwell had seen the world, had lived in the thick of the strife; and it was most unnatural that he should resign all ambition, and live from day to day, working for his daily bread, like a labourer in the fields. He was to do this for her sake, his sole reward her love. It would have been, indeed, a one-sided bargain.
Hilda heard the light, airy talk around her—the talk about art and music and theatres, about the great world and its scandals—as in a dream. It was a world of which she knew nothing; and the conversation around her seemed as if it had been carried on in a kind of verbal hieroglyphics. The French she heard to-night was a new language—made up of catchwords and slang phrases—lines from new plays, words twisted into new meanings—in a word, the language of the Palais Royal Theatre, and theVie Parisienne. Hilda listened and wondered, most of all when Mdlle. Duprez, that most classical and academical of speakers, showed herself perfectly at home in this little language of Bohemian Paris.
Sigismond Trottier was a favourite in the Tillet household. His visits were rare, and he never appeared before nine o'clock in the evening. He came nominally to tea, and the weak infusion of Bohea and the dainty little dishes of sweet cakes were always set forth at his coming; but the refreshment he most cared for was absinthe, and a small bottle of that dangerous liqueur and a carafe of water were always placed on the little table near the host's armchair, and from this bottle M. Trottier supplied himself. That greenish hue of his complexion was the livery of the absinthe-drinker, whose skin gradually assumes the colour of his favourite stimulant.
Trottier was dear to Eugène Tillet as a link with that brilliant past which was now but a memory. He liked to hear the journalist talk of the great men who had failed, and of the little men who had succeeded in art and literature. Strange that all the great men should have gone to the dogs, while all the little men had been pushing forward to the front.
It was like a game at draughts, in which the white men seem to be winning with a rush, when somehow the black men edge in stealthily here and there, in front, behind, at odd corners, until those splendid white fellows are all pushed off the board. To hear Trottier and Tillet talk, it would seem as if the chief characteristic of true genius was an irretrievable bent towards the gutter.
The journalist's visits in the Rue du Bac were never long. He had to leave at half-past ten, in order to write his paragraphs for the next number of theTaon, to be issued early next morning.
Mdlle. Duprez took leave at the same time as M. Trottier, and the journalist offered to escort the two ladies to their hotel, an arrangement which the Frenchwoman had foreseen. The street was very quiet at this hour, and as the pavement was narrow Mdlle. Duprez had an excuse for asking Hilda to walk a few yards in front, while she herself talked confidentially with M. Trottier.
"You no doubt think it is very strange that my young friend should be in Paris without her brother's knowledge," she said tentatively.
"Life is so full of strange events that I have long left off wondering or speculating about anything," he replied easily. "I have no doubt Mees Effecotte is a most charming young person."
"Ah, but I want you to know more about her than that. I want you to understand that she is just as good as she is charming. She is brave, unselfish, noble, capable of self-sacrifice—and there are a good many charming girls who are none of these things. There is nothing underhand in her presence in this city without her brother's knowledge. I, Louise Duprez, give you my word for that, and ask you as a favour to respect her secret."
"I have already pledged myself to do that,chère demoiselle. Indeed, I am not likely to see much more of Mr. Effecotte. He wanted my help in a matter in which I was at first willing to aid him, but in which I afterwards saw peril to a man whom I had known and liked in the past."
"I wished you to know that Mr. Heathcote's sister is in no way unworthy of her brother's love and protection. She is here to break off an engagement which would in all probability have ended unhappily."
"You need tell me no more. Your young friend is in very good hands. Mdme. Tillet is one of the best women I know; the true heart of motherhood beats under that broad chest of hers. She will take good care of your young friend in this dangerous city of Paris."
They parted at the entrance to the Bon Lafontaine, where Hilda and her friend had two little bedrooms adjoining each other, and where Hilda slept a troubled sleep, wearied by the fatigue of her journey, but haunted by sad thoughts even in the midst of her slumbers.
She transferred herself and her few belongings to the Rue du Bac next morning, and then went with Mdlle. Duprez to the Bon Marché, where she bought all she wanted, including two neat little ready-made gowns, one of gray alpaca, and the other of black cashmere, and a black velvet toque which gave her the true Parisian air.
"It was very wise of you to bring so little luggage. English gowns would have stamped you at once as an Englishwoman, and would have made people stare at you. In those neat little frocks you may pass anywhere unobserved," said Mademoiselle approvingly.
"Except for your fair young face, which is brighter than the typical face of the Boulevard," thought Louise Duprez, who did not care to praise herprotégéetoo much.
She only stayed to see Hilda fairly installed in her new home, and left Paris by an afternoon train which would take her to Havre in time for the evening boat. She would be at Southampton next morning, and at Plymouth in the afternoon. Hilda went to the railway-station with her friend, full of gratitude for her kindness, kissing her with warmest thanks at parting.
"Heaven knows whether I have done right or wrong, child, in helping you," said the Quixotic little woman, with a doubtful sigh. "I have allowed myself to be guided by the instinct of my heart, and a woman's heart is not always a wise counsellor. If that young man of yours does not care for his wealthy widow, a nice mess I have helped you to make of two lives."
"But he does care for her. He loved her devotedly for three years. A man cannot change all at once," argued Hilda; "and she is so elegant, so aristocratic—fascinating, no doubt, when she chooses. Bothwell could not help loving her."
"Then he ought not to have pretended to love you," retorted Louise Duprez severely.
"That was my fault," said Hilda, with a sigh.
The signal for departure sounded, and the friends said good-bye. Mathilde had accompanied Hilda to the station, and had waited discreetly at a little distance during those last confidences. The two girls walked home to the Rue du Bac together, Hilda fearing lest she should run against her brother at any moment.
And now Hilda's new life began in earnest, a life in a strange household, amidst new surroundings. She was to try and find consolation in hard work, in her love of music—to create for herself new interests, if it were possible, while every moment of her life was haunted by thoughts of the lover she had deserted, and the home that was to have been hers.
She took her first lesson at the Conservatoire on the following Monday morning, and the professor who taught her was very encouraging about her voice and talent. He told her she possessed an organ worthy of the highest cultivation, capable of the grandest development. He put aside the little German song which she had taken with her, and gave her a solo of Glück's.
"You were taught by Mdlle. Duprez, I understand," he said. "An admirable woman, quite an admirable manner—one of Garcia's best pupils, and one of the few women capable of profiting to the uttermost by Garcia's teaching. You have been taught in the best school, Mademoiselle, and you have nothing to unlearn. That is saying a great deal. On the other hand, I need not tell you that you have a great deal to learn."
"I am sure of that, sir. I have come to Paris on purpose to profit by your instructions."
"With a view to appearing in opera?"
"O, no," exclaimed Hilda, blushing; "I have no such lofty ambition. I only want to sing a little better than I do—to amuse my brother."
"That is a very limited horizon."
"And for my own pleasure in good music."
"I see. Art for art's sake. There are very few nowadays who care to work for art in the abstract. I shall be very proud of such a pupil."
Hilda's fresh young face—fresh in its youthfulness, despite the settled sadness in the eyes—her blushes and simplicity, had fascinated the gray-headed singing-master. Louise Duprez had hinted at Hilda's story—a broken engagement, a girl's first sorrow. He had been told that his new pupil was an English girl of good family, brought up in a remote province, inexperienced, pure-minded; and he who had for the last forty years been steeped in the vanity, vices, and falsehoods of the great garish city felt his heart drawn towards this gentle girl, with her faint perfume of well-bred rusticity.
"You have a very fine voice, my dear child, and it is a great pity you are not obliged to earn your own living," he said, smiling at her, as he rose from the piano. "I shall expect you to sing me that scena in first-rate style next Wednesday."
To be on the very threshold of Paradise, within the sound of celestial birds and the perfume of celestial flowers, to be on the point of entering the blissful place, with heart full of hope and pride, and to have the gates suddenly slammed in one's face, and to hear the voice of the angel at the gate crying "Ye cannot enter now," would be perhaps to feel as Bothwell Grahame felt after he had read and read again that calmly worded letter in which Hilda Heathcote renounced him and his love.
His senses staggered under the force of the blow. He cursed Valeria Harborough in the rage of his tortured heart. This was her work. This was the work of that serpent who had beguiled him to forfeit good faith and honour in the past, and who wanted to ruin his life in the present. Those ideas of fortune, of a lofty ambition to be realised through Valeria's aid, which Hilda put forth in her letter, hardly entered into his mind; but had Valeria been able to make him Prime Minister, or Viceroy of India, by a motion of her hand, he would have cared for her no more than he cared for her in her present insignificance, as a well-born widow with so many thousands a year.
The infatuation which had once held him was a thing of the past, the glamour was over, the light extinguished. He looked back and wondered that he could have ever been so enslaved, so poor a creature as to worship a thoroughly artificial woman.
His first feeling about Hilda after reading her letter was one of anger. He told himself that this renunciation had another motive than that expressed in the letter. It was not in order to give him back to Lady Valeria that his betrothed revoked her promise. It was in order that she herself might escape from an engagement which for some secret reason had become distasteful to her.
"She draws back at the eleventh hour," he said to himself. "Perhaps even at the last she has begun to doubt me—to believe that I may be after all the miscreant my kindly neighbours thought me, the murderer of a helpless girl. Who knows? That idea was rooted in her brother's mind at the time. It may have transferred itself to her mind when she found herself on the eve of marriage with a suspected man. Women are given to curious fancies and caprices; and she—she whom I thought so brave, so noble, so straight—she too may have her crooked moments, her waverings, and unstableness, like the rest of her sex."
He read the letter again—tried to project his mind into the mind of the writer, to look behind the words, as it were, and by sheer intensity of thinking to get at the hidden meaning between those lines. No, she was not the unstable being he had been inclined to think her in his first agony of wounded feeling. No—a thousand times no. This letter of hers had been written in all simplicity, in all honesty. She gave him up to another, believing that his happiness lay that way. And it was Valeria who had done this thing—Valeria who had come between him and happiness. In his savage anger he felt inclined to rush off to Plymouth, to lie in wait for that old idol of his—that false goddess with feet of basest clay—to insult her before the face of society, to put some public inextinguishable slight upon her.
She was a woman, exempt in her feebleness; and he could do nothing except rage impotently at the thought of her iniquity, gnash his teeth at that inexcusable foolishness of his past life which had made him her slave.
Her slave? No, not her slave; that he would never be. Her victim, perhaps, yes. She might blast his hopes in their fulness; she might ruin his life; but she should never bend his neck to the yoke.