“My sweet old Sue,” cried Grace, “now this is really too good of you. Words can’t say how glad I am to see you.”
They kissed each other like sisters, and then Susan seated herself opposite her friend, and looked at her with a countenance that expressed some strong feeling, affection mingled with sorrow — or was it pity?
She was Grace’s senior by more than ten years. She was good-looking in her strong and rather masculine way — her complexion of a healthy darkness, unsophisticated by pearl-powder, her features rugged, but not ugly, her eyes bright and shrewd, but capable of tenderness, her gown and hat just the right gown and hat for a woman who walked or rode in an omnibus or a hansom.
“Well, Sue, what’s the news?” asked Grace, pouring out her visitor’s tea. “Is it a particularly dull season? Is nobody entertaining?”
“Oh, much as usual, I believe. I can only answer for my own friends and patronesses — mostly Bayswater way — who are as anxious as ever to get a little after-dinner music for nothing. They have to ask me to dinner, though. No nonsense about that!”
“It isn’t the songs only, Sue. They want an agreeable woman who can talk well.”
“Oh, I can chatter about most things; but I don’t pretend to talk. I can keep the ball rolling.”
“Do you know, Sue, you find me in a state of profound mystification. I never was so puzzled in my life. When I was leaving Italy I wired to my people to keep back all my letters. I was ten days on the way home; and instead of the usual accumulation of cards and things I find one letter — yours.”
“People don’t know you are in town,” Sue suggested slowly.
“Oh, but they do; for I sent the announcement to the Times and the Post a fortnight ago. I really meant to be back sooner, but the weather was too lovely. I stopped a couple of days at Bordighera and at St. Raphael, and I was three days in Paris buying frocks. Not a single invitation — not so much as a caller’s card. One would think London was asleep. Isn’t it strange?”
“Yes,” answered Sue, looking at her with an earnest, yet somewhat furtive, scrutiny, “it is — very — strange.”
“Well, dear, don’t let us be solemn about it. No doubt the invitations will come pouring in now I am at home. People have been too busy to notice my name in the papers. There are always new women for the town to run after. Wives of diamond men from Africa or oil men from America. One cannot expect to keep one’s place.
“No,” assented Sue. “Society is disgustingly fickle.”
“But I am not afraid of being forgotten by the people I like — the really nice people, the pretty girls I have cultivated, and who make a goddess of me, the clever women, worldly but largeminded — all the people I like. I am not afraid of African competitors there. They will stick to me,” said Grace, with emphasis.
Her friend could see that she was troubled, though she affected to take the matter easily. There was trouble in both faces, as the friends sat opposite each other, with only the spindlelegged Louis Seize tea-table between them; but the trouble in Susan Rodney’s face was graver than in Lady Perivale’s.
“Tell me about your winter,” said Grace, after a pause, during which tea-cups had been refilled, and dainty cakelets offered and declined.
“Oh, the usual dull mechanic round; plenty of pupils, mostly suburban; and one duchess, five and fifty, who thinks she has discovered a magnificent contralto voice of which she was unaware till quite lately, and desires me to develop it. We bawl the grand duet from Norma till we are both hoarse, and then my duchess makes me stop and lunch with her, and tells me her troubles.”
“What are they?”
“I should have put it in the singular. When she talks of her troubles she means her husband.”
“Sue, you’re trying to be vivacious; but there’s something on your mind. If it’s any bother of your own, do tell me, dear, and let me help you if I can.”
“My tender-hearted Grace! You always wanted to help people. I remember your coming to me with all your little pocket-money that dreadful morning at the Rectory when I had a wire to say my mother was dying, and had to rush back to town. And my dear Gracie thought I should be hard up, and wanted to help me. That’s nearly ten years ago. Well, well! Such things live in one’s memory. And your father, how kind, how courteous he always was to the holiday music-mistress, and what a happy time my summer holidays were in the dear old Rectory!”
“And what a lucky girl I was to get such a teacher and such a dear friend for nothing!”
Do you call bed and board, lavender-scented linen, cream à discrétion, pony-cart, lawn tennis, luncheon parties, dinner at the Squire’s, a dance at the market town — do you call that nothing? Well, the bargain suited us both, I think, and it was a pleasure to train one of the finest mezzosopranos I know. And now, Gracie,” slowly, hesitatingly even,” what about your winter?”
“Five months of books, music, and idleness. My lotus land was never lovelier, But for a January storm, that tore my roses and spoilt a Bougainvilliers that covers half the house, I should hardly have known it was winter.”
“And were you quite alone all the time? No visitors?”
“Not a mortal! You know I go to my villa to read and think. When I am tired of my own thoughts and other people’s — one does tire occasionally even of Browning, even of Shakespeare — I turn to my piano, and find a higher range of thought in Beethoven. You know I go the pace all through the London season, never shirk a dance, do three cotillons a week, go everywhere, see everything.”
“Yes, I know you have gone the pace, since your three years’ mourning.”
“After Cowes comes the reaction, a month or so in Northumberland, just to show myself to my people, and see that the gardeners are doing their duty; and then when the leaves begin to fall, away to my olive woods and their perpetual grey. For half the year I revel in solitude. If you would spend a winter with me I should be charmed, for you like the life I like, and it would be a solitude à deux. But the common herd are only good in cities. I come back to London to be sociable and amused.”
Miss Rodney rose and put on her mantle.
“Can’t you stop and dine? I’ll send you snugly home in my brougham.”
Home was a villa facing Regent’s Park.
“Alas! dear, it’s impossible! I am due in Cadogan Square at half-past six — Islington and Chelsea ‘bus from Regent-circus.”
“A lesson?”
“Two lessons — sisters, and not an iota of voice between them. But I shall make them sing. Give me a scrap of intelligence, and I can always manage that. Good-bye, Grace. Ask me to dinner some other night, when you are alone.”
“Come to-morrow night, or the night after. I have no engagement, as you know. Let us see a lot of each other before the rush begins.”
“Friday night, then. Good-bye.”
They kissed again. Lady Perivale rang the bell, and then followed her friend towards the drawing-room door; but on her way there Miss Rodney stopped suddenly, and burst into tears.
“Sue, Sue, what is it? I knew you had something on your mind. If it’s a money trouble, dear, make light of it, for it needn’t plague you another minute. I have more money than I know what to do with.”
“No, no, no, dear; it’s not money,” sobbed Sue. “Oh, what a fool I am — what a weakminded, foolish fool!”
A footman opened the door, and looked with vacant countenance at the agitated group. Early initiation in his superiors’ domestic troubles had taught him to compose his features when storms were raging.
“The door, James — presently,” his mistress said, confusedly, watching him leave the room with that incredible slowness with which such persons appear to move when we want to get rid of them.
“Very foolish, if you won’t trust your old friend Gracie!” she said, making Sue sit down, and seating herself beside her, and then in caressing tones, “Now, dear, tell me all your troubles. You know there is no sorrow of yours — no difficulty — no complication — which wo
uld find me unsympathetic. What is it?”
“Oh, Gracie, Gracie, my darling girl, it’s not my trouble. It’s yours.”
“Mine?” with intense surprise.
“Yes, dear. I meant to have kept silence. I thought it was the only course, in such a delicate matter. I meant to leave things alone — and let you find out for yourself.”
“Find out! What?”
“The scandal, Grace — a scandal that touches you.”
“What scandal can touch me? Scandal! Why, I have never done anything in my life that the most malignant gossip in London could turn to my disadvantage.”
Her indignant eyes, her full, strong voice, answered for her truth.
“Oh, Grace, I knew, I knew there couldn’t be anything in it. A wicked lie, a cowardly attack upon a pure-minded woman — a woman of spotless character; the last woman upon this earth to give ground for such a story.”
“Oh, Sue, if you love me, be coherent! What is the story? Who is the slanderer?”
“Heaven knows how it began! My Duchess told me. I spoke of you the other day at our tête-à-tête luncheon. I told her about your lovely voice, your passion for music. She nodded her old wig in a supercilious way. ‘I have heard her sing,’ she said curtly. She waited till the servants left the room, and then asked me if it was possible I had not heard the scandal about Lady Perivale.”
“What scandal? Oh, for pity’s sake come to that, Sue. Never mind your Duchess.”
“Well, I’ll tell you in the most brutal way. It seems that three or four people, whose names I haven’t discovered, declare they met you in Algiers, and in Corsica and Sardinia, travelling with Colonel Rannock — travelling with Colonel Rannock — passing as his wife, under a nom de guerre — Mr. and Mrs. Randall.”
“How utterly disgusting and absurd! But what on earth can have made them imagine such a thing?”
“People say you were seen — seen and recognized — by different people who knew you, in one or the other of those places.”
“Travelling with Colonel Rannock, as his wife! My God! A man I refused three times. Three times,” laughing hysterically. “Why, I have had him on his knees in this room; kneeling, Sue, like a lover in an old comedy; and I only laughed at him.”
“That’s rather a dangerous thing to do, Grace, with some men.”
“Oh, Colonel Rannock is not the kind of man to start a vendetta for a woman’s laughter. He is a laughing philosopher himself, and takes everything lightly.”
“Does he? One never knows what there is behind that lightness. What if Colonel Rannock has set this scandal on foot with a view to proposing a fourth time, and getting himself accepted?”
“How could he make people swear they saw me — me! — at Algiers, when I was in Italy? It is all nonsense Sue; an absurd malentendu; my name substituted for some other woman’s. Now I am in London, the matter will be put straight in an hour. People have only to see me again to be sure I am not that kind of woman. As for Colonel Rannock, he may be dissipated, and a spendthrift; but he is well-born, and he ought to be a gentleman.”
“Who said he was ill-born? Surely, you know that there are good races and bad. Who can tell when the bad blood came in, and the character of the race began to degenerate? Under the Plantagenets, perhaps. Colonel Rannock comes of a bad race — everybody knows that. His grandfather, Lord Kirkmichael, was notorious in the Regency. He left his memories, don’t you know, to be published fifty years after his death — an awful book — that had a succès de scandale six or seven years ago. He was bosom friend of Lord Hertford, and that set.”
“I did not trouble myself about his grandfather.”
“Ah! but you ought! A man’s family history is the man. Lord Kirkmichael’s grandson would be capable of anything infamous.”
“The whole thing is too preposterous for consideration,” Lady Perivale said angrily. I wonder at your taking it tragically.”
And then, recalling that empty salver instead of the usual pile of letters and cards, she cried, distractedly —
“It is shameful — atrocious — that any one upon earth could believe such a thing of me. It makes me hate the human race. Yes, and I shall always hate those horrid wretches I called friends, however they may try to make amends for this insolent neglect.”
There was no question of taking the matter lightly now, for Grace Perivale burst into a passion of sobs, and was quite as tragic as her friend.
“My dearest Grace, pray, pray be calm! Don’t stay in this odious London, where people have no hearts. Why not go to your Northern castle, and live there quietly till the mystery clears itself, as no doubt it will soon?”
“Go?” cried Lady Perivale, starting up out of the drooping attitude in which she had given way to her distress. “Beat a retreat? Why, if Grosvenor Square were a fiery furnace I would stay and face those wretches — those false, false friends — till I made them know the kind of woman l am!”
“Well, dear, perhaps that is best — if you can stand it,” Susan answered, rather sadly.
“But where is Colonel Rannock? Surely he has not been dumb! It is his business to bring the slanderers to book!”
“That’s what I told the Duchess. But Rannock has not been seen in London since the autumn, and is said to be shooting something in the Rockies. And now, I must rush off to my lessons. Good-bye, again, dear. Don’t forget that I am to dine with you on Friday!”
“Shall I invite a party of twenty to meet you — an impromptu party, asked by telegraph, such as I had last year to welcome me home?” Grace asked, bitterly. “Go, dear! Don’t be too sorry for me. I shall weather the storm. I ought to be more amused than distressed by such nonsense.”
Miss Rodney dried her tearful eyes, and composed her agitated features, on her way downstairs. The footman stood ready to open the door, stifling a yawn behind his hand. Miss Rodney gave a quick glance round the hall, taking in all its spaciousness and splendour, the marble group at the foot of the double staircase, the bronze and ormula candelabra, the crimson carpets, softer than forest moss.
“Rich beyond the dreams of avarice — and so unhappy!” she thought, as she hurried off to catch the Chelsea ‘bus.
CHAPTER II.
“How blest he names, in love’s familiar tone,
The kind fair friend by nature marked his own;
And, in the waveless mirror of his mind,
Views the fleet years of pleasure left behind,
Since when her empire o’er his heart began —
Since first he called her his before the holy man.”
IT was not often in the London season that Lady Perivale could taste the pleasures of solitude, a long evening by her own fireside, unbroken by letters, messages, telegrams, sudden inroads of friends breaking in upon her at eleven o’clock, between a dinner and a dance, wanting to know why she had not been at the dinner, and whether she was going to the dance, or dances, of the evening, what accident or caprice had eclipsed their star. But on this night of her return the visitor’s bell sounded no more after Susan Rodney left her. The quiet of her house was so strange a thing that it almost scared her.
“I begin to understand what a leper must feel in his cavern in the wilderness,” she said to herself with a laugh. “The thing is almost tragic, and yet so utterly absurd. It is tragic to discover what society friendships are made of — ropes of sand that fly away with the first wind that blows unkindly.”
She pretended to dine, for the servants might have heard of the scandal, and she did not want them to think her crushed by unmerited slights. They, of course, knew the truth, since she had two witnesses among them to prove an alibi, Johnson the butler, and her devoted maid, Emily Scott.
She did not know that the first footman and the cook had both laughed off Johnson’s indignant statement that his mistress had never left Porto Maurizio.
“You’re not the man to give her away if she had gone off for a bit of a scamper. You and Miss Scott would look the other way when her boxes were bei
ng labelled.”
“And she’d take a courier maid instead of Emily,” said the cook. “After all, it’s only finn der seecle.”
“Why don’t she marry him, and ha’ done with it?” said the footman.
Butler and maid were goaded into a fury by talk of this kind, and it was only the force of esprit de corps, and the fact that James was six foot one, and a first rate plate-cleaner, that prevented Mr. Johnson sacking him on the instant.
“Did you ever know me tell a lie?” he asked indignantly.
“Or me?” sobbed Emily.
“Not on your own account,” said the cook; “but you’d tell a good big one to screen your mistress.”
“And so I might perhaps,” said the girl, “if she wanted screening; but she don’t, and, what’s more, she never will.”
“Well, all I can say is it’s all over London,” said James, “and it’s made it very unpleasant for me at the Feathers, for, of course, I stand up for my lady in public, and swear it’s a pack of lies. But here we’re tiled in, and I’m free to confess I don’t believe in smoke without fire.”
They went on wrangling till bedtime, while Grace sat by the fire in the little drawing-room with her brown poodle lying on the lace flounces of her tea-gown, and tried to read.
She tried book after book, Meredith, Hardy, Browning, Anatole France, taking the volumes at random from a whirligig book-stand, twisting the stand about impatiently to find a book that would calm her agitation, and beguile her thoughts into a new channel. But literature was no use to her to-night.
“I see it is only happy people who can read,” she thought. She opened no more books, and let her mind work as it would. There had been sorrows in her life, deep and lasting sorrow, in the early death of a husband to whom she had been fondly attached, and in the previous loss of a father she had adored. But in spite of these losses, which had darkened her sky for a long time, her life had been happy; she had a happy disposition, the capacity for enjoyment, the love of all that was bright and beautiful in the world, art, music, flowers, scenery, horses, dogs — and even people. She loved travelling, she loved the gaiety of a London season, she loved the quiet of her Italian villa. Her childhood had been spent in a rustic solitude, and all her girlish pleasures had been of the simplest. The only child of a father who had done with the world when he read the burial service over his young wife, and who had lived in almost unbroken retirement in an East Anglian Rectory. He was a student, and could afford a curate to take the burden of parish work, in a sparsely populated parish, where distance, not numbers, had to be considered. He kept good horses, mounted his curate, and drove or rode about among his flock, and was beloved even by the roughest of them.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 984