Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Lady Lansdowne, recalling the story, could have laughed with her mind and wept with her heart; scenes so absurd under the leafy shades of Bowood or Lacock jostled the tragedy; and the ludicrous — with the husband an unwilling actor in it — so completely relieved the pathetic! But her bent towards laughter was short. Sir Robert, unable to bear her eyes, had turned away; and she must say something.

  “Think,” she said gently, “how young she was!”

  “I have thought of it a thousand times!” he retorted. “Do you suppose,” turning on her with harshness, “that there is a day on which I do not think of it!”

  “So young!”

  “She had been three years a mother!”

  “For the dead child’s sake, then,” she pleaded with him, “if not for hers.”

  “Lady Lansdowne!” There were both anger and pain in his voice as he halted and stood before her. “Why do you come to me? Why do you trouble me? Why? Is it because you feel yourself — responsible? Because you know, because you feel, that but for you my home had not been left to me desolate? Nor a foolish life been ruined?”

  “God forbid!” she said solemnly. And in her turn she rose in agitation; moved for once out of the gracious ease and self-possession of her life, so that in the contrast there was something unexpected and touching. “God forbid!” she repeated. “But because I feel that I might have done more. Because I feel that a word from me might have checked her, and it was not spoken. True, I was young, and it might have made things worse — I do not know. But when I saw her face at the window yesterday — and she was changed, Sir Robert — I felt that I might have been in her place, and she in mine!” Her voice trembled. “I might have been lonely, childless, growing old; and alone! Or again, if I had done something, if I had spoken as I would have another speak, were the case my girl’s, she might have been as I am! Now,” she added tremulously, “you know why I came. Why I plead for her! In our world we grow hard, very hard; but there are things which touch us still, and her face touched me yesterday — I remembered what she was.” She paused a moment, and then, “After long years,” she continued softly, “it cannot be hard to forgive; and there is still time. She did nothing that need close your door, and what she did is forgotten. Grant that she was foolish, grant that she was wild, indiscreet, what you will — she is alone now, alone and growing old, Sir Robert, and if not for her sake, for the sake of your dead child — —”

  He stopped her by a peremptory gesture, but for the moment he seemed unable to speak. At length, “You touch the wrong chord,” he said hoarsely. “It is for the sake of my dead child I shall never, never forgive her! She knew that I loved it. She knew that it was all to me. It grew worse! Did she tell me? It was in danger; did she warn me? No! But when I heard of her disobedience, of her folly, of things which made her a byword, and I bade her return, or my house should no longer be her home, then, then she flung the news of the child’s death at me, and rejoiced that she had it to fling. Had I gone out then and found her in the midst of her wicked gaiety, God knows what I should have done! I did try to go. But the Hundred Days had begun, I had to return. Had I gone, and learned that in her mad infatuation she had neglected the child, left it to servants, let it fade, I think — I think, Madam, I should have killed her!”

  Lady Lansdowne raised her hands. “Hush! Hush!” she said.

  “I loved the child. Therefore she was glad when it died, glad that she had the power to wound me. Its death was no more to her than a weapon with which to punish me! There was a tone in her letter — I have it still — which betrayed that. And, therefore — therefore, for the child’s sake, I will never forgive her!”

  “I am sorry,” she murmured in a voice which acknowledged defeat. “I am very sorry.”

  He stood for a moment gazing at the blank space above the fireplace; his head sunk, his shoulders brought forward. He looked years older than the man who had walked under the elms. At length he made an effort to speak in his usual tone. “Yes,” he said, “it is a sorry business.”

  “And I,” she said slowly, “can do nothing.”

  “Nothing,” he replied. “Time will cure this, and all things.”

  “You are sure that there is no mistake?” she pleaded. “That you are not judging her harshly?”

  “There is no mistake.”

  Then she saw the hopelessness of argument and held out her hand.

  “Forgive me,” she said simply. “I have given you pain, and for nothing. But the old days were so strong upon me — after I saw her — that I could not but come. Think of me at least as a friend, and forgive me.”

  He bowed low over her hand, but he gave her no assurance. And seeing that he was mastering his agitation, and fearing that if he had leisure to think he might resent her interference, she wasted no time in adieux. She glanced round the well-remembered hall — the hall once smart, now shabby — in which she had seen the flighty girl play many a mad prank. Then she turned sorrowfully to the door, more than suspecting that she would never pass through it again.

  He had rung the bell, and Mapp, the butler, and the two men were in attendance. But he handed her to the carriage himself, and placed her in it with old-fashioned courtesy, and with the same scrupulous observance stood bareheaded until it moved away. None the less, his face by its set expression betrayed the nature of the interview; and the carriage had scarcely swept clear of the grounds and entered the park when Lady Louisa turned to her mother.

  “Was he very angry?” she asked, eager to be instructed in the mysteries of that life which she was entering.

  Lady Lansdowne essayed to snub her. “My dear,” she said, “it is not a fit subject for you.”

  “Still, mother dear, you might tell me. You told me something, and it is not fair to turn yourself into Mrs. Fairchild in a moment. Besides, while you were with him I came on a passage so beautiful, and so pat, it almost made me cry.”

  “My dear, don’t say ‘pat,’ say ‘apposite.’”

  “Then apposite, mother,” Lady Louisa answered. “Do you read it. There it is.”

  Lady Lansdowne sniffed, but suffered the book to be put into her hand. Lady Louisa pointed with enthusiasm to a line. “Is it a case like that, mother?” she asked eagerly.

  But never either found another

  To free the hollow heart from paining.

  They stood aloof, the scars remaining,

  Like cliffs which had been rent asunder.

  A dreary sea now flows between,

  But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,

  Shall wholly do away, I ween,

  The marks of that which once hath been.

  The mother handed the book back to the daughter without looking at her. “No,” she said; “I don’t think it is a case like that.”

  But a moment later she wiped her eyes furtively, and then she told her daughter more, it is to be feared, than Mrs. Fairchild would have approved.

  * * * * *

  Sir Robert, when they were gone, went heavily to the library, a panelled room looking to the back, in which it was his custom to sit. For many years he had passed some hours of every day, when he was at home, in that room; and until now it had never occurred to his mind that it was dull or shabby. But it was old Mapp’s habit to lower the blinds for his master’s after-luncheon nap, and they were still down; and the half light which filtered in was like the sheet which rather accentuates than hides the sharp features of the dead. The faded engravings and the calf-bound books which masked the walls, the escritoire, handsome and massive, but stained with ink and strewn with dog’s eared accounts, the leathern-covered chair long worn out of shape by his weight, the table beside it with yesterday’s “Standard,” two or three volumes of the “Anti-Jacobin,” and the “Quarterly,” a month old and dusty — all to his opened eyes wore a changed aspect. They spoke of the slow decay of years, unchecked by a woman’s eye, a woman’s hand. They told of the slow degradation of his lonely life. They indicated a like change in himself.
<
br />   He stood a few moments on the hearth, looking about him with a shocked, pained face. The months and the years had passed irrevocably, while he sat in that chair, poring in a kind of lethargy over those books, working industriously at those accounts. Asked, he had answered that he was growing old, and grown old. But he had never for a moment comprehended, as he comprehended now, that he was old. He had never measured the difference between this and that; between those days troubled by a hundred annoyances, vexations, cares, when in spite of all he had lived, and these days of sullen stagnancy and mere vegetation.

  He found the room, he found the reflection, intolerable. And he went out, took with an unsteady hand his garden hat and returned to that broad walk under the elms beside the pool which was his favourite lounge. Perhaps he fancied that the wonted scene would deaden the pain of memory and restore him to his wonted placidity. But his thoughts had been too violently broken. His hands shook, hid lip trembled with the tearless passion of later life. And when his agitation began to die down and something like calmness supervened, this did but enable him to feel more keenly the pangs, not of remorse, but of regret; of bitter, unavailing regret for all the things of which the woman who had lain on his bosom had robbed his life.

  Stapylton stood in a side valley projected among the low green hills which fringe the vale of the Wiltshire Avon. From where he stood all within sight, the gentle downs above the house, the arable land which fringed them, the rich pastures below — all, mill and smithy and inn, snug farm and thatched cottage, called him lord. Nay, from the south end of the pool, where a wicket gave entrance to the park — whence also a side view of the treble front of the house could be obtained — the spire of Chippinge church was visible, rising from its ridge in the Avon alley; and to the base of that spire all was his, all had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. But not an acre, not a rood, would be his child’s.

  This was no new thought. It was a thought that had saddened him on many and many a summer evening when the shadow of the elms lay far across the sward, and the silence of the stately house, the pale water, the far-stretching farms whispered of the passing of the generations, of the passage of time, of the inevitable end. Where he walked his father had walked; and soon he would go whither his father had gone. And the heir would walk where he walked, listen to the same twilight carollings, hear the first hoot of the distant owl.

  Cedes coemptis saltibus, el domo

  Villaque, flavus quam Tiberis lavit,

  Cedes, et exstructis in altum

  Divitiis potietur heres.

  But no heir of his blood. No son of his. No man of the Vermuyden name. And for that he had to thank her.

  It was this which to-day gave the old thought new poignancy. For that he had to thank her. Truly, in the words wrung from him by the bitterness of his feelings, she had left his house unto him desolate. If even the little girl had lived, the child would have succeeded; and that had been something, that had been much. But the child was dead; and in his heart he laid her death at his wife’s door. And a stranger, or one in essentials a stranger, the descendant by a second marriage of his grandmother, Katherine Beckford, was the heir.

  Presently the young man would succeed and the old chattels would be swept away to cottage or lumber-room. The old horses would be shot, the old dogs would be hanged, the old servants discharged, perhaps the very trees under which he walked and which he loved would be cut down. The house, the stables, the kennels, all but the cellars would be refurnished; and in the bustle and glitter of the new régime, begun in the sunshine, the twilight of his own latter days would be forgotten in a month.

  We die and are forgotten, ’tis Heaven’s decree,

  And thus the lot of others will be the lot of me!

  Sunday by Sunday he had read those lines on the grave of a kinsman, a man whom he had known. He had often repeated them, he could as soon forget them as his prayers. To-day the old memories and the old times, which Lady Lansdowne had made to rise from the dead, gave them a new meaning and a new bitterness.

  VIII

  A SAD MISADVENTURE

  Arthur Vaughan was not a little relieved by the tidings which Isaac White had conveyed to him at Chippenham. The news freed him from a duty which did not appear the less distasteful because it was no longer inevitable. To cast against Sir Robert the vote which he owed to Sir Robert must have exposed him to odium, whatever the matter at stake. But at this election, at which the issue was, aye or no, was the borough to be swept away or not, to vote “aye” was an act from which the least sensitive must have shrunk, and which the most honest must have performed with reluctance. Add the extreme exasperation of public feeling, of which every day and every hour brought to light the most glaring proofs, and he had been fortunate indeed if he had not incurred some general blame as well as the utmost weight of Sir Robert’s displeasure.

  He was spared all this, and he was thankful. Yet, when he rose on the morning after his arrival at Bristol, his heart was not as light as a feather. On the contrary, as he looked from the window of the White Lion into the bustle of Broad Street, he yawned dolefully; admitting that life, and particularly the prospect before him, of an immediate return to London, was dull. Why go back? Why stay here? Why do anything? The Woolsack? Bah! The Cabinet? Pooh! They were but gaudy baits for the shallow and the hard-hearted. Moreover, they were so distant, so unattainable, that pursuit of them seemed the merest moonshine; more especially on this fine April morning, made for nothing but a coach ride through an enchanted country, by the side of the sweetest face, the brightest eyes, the most ravishing figure, the prettiest bonnet that ever tamed the gruffest of coachmen.

  Heigh-ho! If it were all to do over again how happy would he be! How happy had he been, and not known it, the previous morning! It was pitiful to think of him in his ignorance, with that day, that blissful day, before him.

  Well, it was over. And he must return to town. For he would play no foolish tricks. The girl was not in his rank in life, and he could not follow her without injury to her. He was no preacher, and he had lived for years among men whose lives, if not worse than the lives of their descendants, wore no disguise; who, if they did not sin more, sinned more openly. But he had a heart, and to mar an innocent life for his pleasure had shocked him; even if the girl’s modesty and self-respect, disclosed by a hundred small things, had not made the notion of wronging her abhorrent. None the less he took his breakfast in a kind of dream, whispered “Mary!” three times in different tones, and, being suddenly accosted by the waiter, was irritable.

  With all this he was wise enough to know his own weakness, and that the sooner he was out of Bristol the better. He sent to the Bush office to book a place by the midday coach to town; and then only, when he had taken the irrevocable step, he put on his hat to kill the intervening time in Bristol.

  Unfortunately, as he crossed the hall, intending to walk towards Clifton, he heard himself named; and turning, he saw that the speaker was the lady in black, and wearing a veil, whom he had remarked walking up and down beside the coach, while the horses were changing at Marshfield.

  “Mr. Vaughan?” she said.

  He raised his hat, much surprised. “Yes,” he answered. He fancied that she was inspecting him very closely through her veil. “I am Mr. Vaughan.”

  “Pardon me,” she continued — her voice was refined and low— “but they gave me your name at the office. I have something which belongs to the lady who travelled with you yesterday, and I am anxious to restore it.”

  He blushed; nor could he have repressed the blush if his life had hung upon it. “Indeed?” he murmured. His confusion did not permit him to add another word.

  “Doubtless it was left in the coach,” the lady explained, “and was taken to my room with my luggage. Unfortunately I am leaving Bristol at once, within a few minutes, and I cannot myself return it. I shall be much obliged if you will see that she has it safely.”

  She spoke as if the thing were a matter of course. But Vaughan
had now recovered himself. “I would with pleasure,” he said; “but I am myself leaving Bristol at midday, and I really do not know how — how I can do it.”

  “Then perhaps you will arrange the matter,” the lady replied in a tone of displeasure. “I have sent the parcel to your room and I have not time to regain it. I must go at once. There is my maid! Good morning!” And with a distant bow she glided from him, and disappeared through the nearest doorway.

  He stood where she had left him, looking after her in bewilderment. For one thing he was sure that she was a stranger, and yet she had addressed him in the tone of one who had a right to be obeyed. Then how odd it was! What a coincidence! He had made up his mind to end the matter, to go and walk the Hot Wells like a good boy; and this happened and tempted him!

  Yes, tempted him.

  He would —— But he could not tell what he would do until he had seen if the parcel were really in his room. The parcel! The mere thought that it was hers sent a foolish thrill through him. He would go and see, and then ——

  But he was interrupted. There were people standing or sitting round the hall, a low-ceiled, dark wainscoted room, with sheaves of way-bills hung against the square pillars, and theatre notices flanking the bar window. As he turned to seek his rooms a hand gripped his arm and twitched him round, and he met the grinning face of a man in his old regiment, Bob Flixton, commonly called the Honourable Bob.

  “So I’ve caught you, my lad,” said he. “This is mighty fine. Veiled ladies, eh? Oh, fie! fie!”

  Vaughan, innocent as he was, was a little put out. But he answered good-humouredly, “What brought you here, Flixton?”