“I do, I do!” Mary cried, inexpressibly pained by the other’s vehemence.
“I’ll swear it, if you like! But I hoped that he — your father — would die first and never know! He deserved no better! He deserved nothing of me! And then you’d have stepped into all! Or better still — do you remember the day you travelled to Bristol? It’s not so long ago that you need forget it, Miss Vermuyden! I was in the coach, and I saw you, and I saw the young man who was with you. I knew him, and I told myself that there was a God after all, though I’d often doubted it, or you two would not have been brought together! I saw another way then, but you’d have parted and known nothing, if,” she continued, laughing recklessly, “I had not helped Providence, and sent him with a present to your school! But — why, you’re red enough now, girl! What is it?”
“He knew?” Mary murmured, with an effort. “You told him who I was, Ma’am?”
“He knew no more than a doll!” Lady Sybil answered. “I told him nothing, or he’d have told again! I know his kind. No, I thought to get all for you and thwart Vermuyden, too! I thought to marry his heir to the little schoolmistress — it was an opera touch, my dear, and beyond all the Tremaynes and Vivian Greys in the world! But there, when all promised well, that slut of a maid went to my husband, and trumped my trick!”
“And Mr. — Mr. Vaughan,” Mary stammered, “had no knowledge — who I was?”
“Mr. — Mr. Vaughan!” Lady Sybil repeated, mocking her, “had no knowledge? No! Not a jot, not a tittle! But what?” she went on, in a tone of derision, “Sits the wind there, Miss Meek? You’re not all milk and water, bread and butter and backboard, then, but have a spice of your mother, after all? Mr. — Mr. Vaughan!” again she mimicked her. “Why, if you were fond of the man, didn’t you say so?”
Mary, under the fire of those sharp, hard eyes, could not restrain her tears. But, overcome as she was, she managed in broken words to explain that her father had forbidden it.
“Oh, your father, was it?” Lady Sybil rejoined. “He said ‘No,’ and no it was! And the lord of my heart and the Man of Feeling is dismissed in disgrace! And now we weep in secret and the worm feeds on our damask cheek!” she ran on in a tone of raillery, assumed perhaps to hide a deeper feeling. “I suppose,” she added shrewdly, “Sir Robert would have you think that Vaughan knew who you were, and was practising on you?”
“Yes.”
“And you dismissed him at papa’s command, eh? That was it, was it?”
Mary could only confess the fact with tears, her distress in as strange contrast with the gaiety of her dress as with the strains of the neighbouring band, which told of festivity and pleasure. Perhaps some thought of this nature forced itself upon Lady Sybil’s light and evasive mind: for as she looked, the cynical expression of her eyes gave place to one of feeling and emotion, better fitted to those wasted features as well as to the relation in which the two stood to one another. She looked down the path, as if for the first time she feared an intrusive eye. Then her glance reverted to her daughter’s slender form and drooping head: and again it changed, it grew soft, it grew pitiful. The laurels shut all in, the path was empty. The maternal feeling, long repressed, long denied, long buried under a mountain of pique and resentment, of fancied wrongs and real neglect, broke forth irresistibly. In a step she was at the girl’s side, and snatching her to her bosom in a fierce embrace, was covering her face, her neck, her hair with hungry kisses.
The action was so sudden, so unexpected, that crushed and even hurt by the other’s grasp, and frightened by her vehemence, Mary would have resisted, would have tried to free herself. Then she understood. And a rush of pent-up affection, of love and pity, carried away the barriers of constraint and timidity. She clung to Lady Sybil with tears of joy, murmuring low broken words, calling her “Mother, Mother,” burying her face on her shoulder, pressing herself against her. In a moment her being was stirred to its depths. In all her life no one had caressed her after this fashion, no one had embraced her with passion, no one had kissed her with more than the placid affection which gentleness and goodness earn, and which kind offices kindly performed warrant. Even Sir Robert, even her father, proud as he was of her, much as he loved her, had awakened in her respect and gratitude — mingled with fear — rather than love.
After a time, warned by approaching voices, Lady Sybil put her from her; but with a low and exultant laugh. “You are mine, now!” she said, “Mine! Mine! You will come to me when I want you. And I shall want you soon! Very soon!”
Mary laid hold of her again. “Let me come now!” she cried with passion, forgetting all but the mother she had gained, the clinging arms which had cherished her, the kisses that had rained on her. “Let me come to you! You are ill!”
“No, not now! Not now! I will send for you when I want you,” Lady Sybil answered. “I will promise to send for you. And you will come,” she added with the same ring of triumph in her voice. “You will come!” For it was joy to her, even amid the satisfaction of her mother-love, to know that she had tricked her husband; it was joy to her to know that though she had taken all from the child and he had given all, the child was hers — hers, and could never be taken from her! “You will come! For you will not have me long. But,” she whispered, as the voices came nearer, “go now! Go now! And not a word! Not a word, child, as you love me. I will send for you when — when my time comes.”
And with a last look, strangely made up of love and pain and triumph, Lady Sybil moved out of sight among the laurels. And Mary, drying her tears and composing her countenance as well as she could, turned to meet the intruders’ eyes.
Fortunately — for she was far from being herself — the two persons who had wandered that way, did but pause at the end of the Kennel Path, and, murmuring small talk, turn again to retrace their steps. She gained a minute or two, in which to collect her thoughts and smooth her hair; but more than a minute or two she dared not linger lest her continued absence should arouse curiosity. As sedately as she could, she emerged from the shrubbery and made her way — though her breast heaved with a hundred emotions — towards the rustic bridge on which she saw that Lady Lansdowne was standing, keeping Sir Robert in talk.
In talk, indeed, of her. For as she approached he placed the coping-stone on the edifice of her praises which her ladyship had craftily led him to build. “The most docile,” he said, “I assure you, the most docile child you can imagine! A beautiful disposition. She is docility itself!”
“I hope she may always remain so,” Lady Lansdowne answered slily.
“I’ve no doubt she will,” Sir Robert replied with fond assurance, his eye on the Honourable Bob, who was approaching the bridge from the lawns.
Lady Lansdowne followed the look with her eyes and smiled. But she said nothing. She turned to Mary, who was now near at hand, and reading in the girl’s looks plain traces of trouble, and agitation, she contented herself with sending for Lady Louisa, and asking that her carriage might be called. In this way she cloaked under a little bustle the girl’s embarrassment as she came up to them and joined them. Five minutes later Lady Lansdowne was gone.
* * * * *
After that, Mary would have had only too much food for thought, had her mother alone filled her mind; had those kisses which had so stirred her being, those clinging arms, and that face which bore the deep imprint of illness, alone burdened her memory. Years afterwards the beat of the music which played in the gardens that evening, while the party within sat at dinner, haunted her; bringing back, as such things will, the scene and her aching heart, the outward glitter and the inward care, the Honourable Bob’s gallantries and her father’s stately figure as he rose and drank wine with her; ay, and the hip, hip, hurrah which shook the glasses when an old Squire, a privileged person, rose, before she could leave, and toasted her.
Burdened only with the sacred memories of the afternoon, and the anxiety, the pity, the love which they engendered, she had been far from happy, far from free. But in truth, wit
h all her feeling for her mother, Mary bore about with her a keener and more bitter regret. The dull pain which had troubled her of late when thoughts of Arthur Vaughan would beset her was grown to a pang of shame, almost intolerable. She had told herself a hundred times before this that it was her weakness, her fear of her father, her mean compliance that had led her to give him up — rather than any real belief in his baseness. For she had never, she was sure now, believed in that baseness. But now, now when her mother, whose word it never struck her to doubt, had affirmed his innocence, now that she knew, now since a phrase of that mother’s had brought to her mind every incident of the never-to-be-forgotten coach-drive, the May morning, the sunshine and the budding trees, the birth of love — pain gnawed at her heart. She was sick with misery.
For, oh, how vile, how thankless, how poor and small a thing he must think her! He would have given her all, and she had robbed him of all. And then when she had robbed him and he could give her little she had turned her back on him, abandoned him, believed evil of him, heard him insulted, and joined in the outrage! Over that thought, over that memory, she shed many and many a bitter tear. Romance had come to her in her lowliness, and a noble lover, stooping to her; and she had killed the one and denied the other. And now, now there was nothing she could do, nothing she would dare to do.
For that she had for a moment believed in his baseness — if she had indeed believed — was not the worst. In that she had been the sport of circumstances; appearances had deceived her, and the phase had been brief. But that she had been weak, that she had been swayed, that she had given him up at a word, that she had shown herself wholly unworthy of him — there was the rub. Now, how happy had she been could she have gone back to Miss Sibson’s, and the dull schoolroom and the old stuff dress and the children’s prattle — and heard his step as he came across the forecourt to the door!
XXIII
IN THE HOUSE
In truth Mary’s notion of the opinion which Arthur Vaughan had of her was above, rather than below, the reality. In her most despondent moments she scarcely exaggerated the things he thought of her, the contempt in which he held her, or the resentment which set his blood boiling when he remembered how she had treated him. He had gone to her and laid all that was left to him at her feet; and she, who had already dealt his fortunes so terrible a blow, had paid him for his unselfish offer, for his sacrifice of much that was dear to him, with suspicion, with contumely, with mistrust! Instead of clinging to him, to whom she had that moment plighted her troth, she had deserted him at a word. In place of trusting the man who had woo’d her in her poverty, she had believed the first whisper against him. She had shown herself heartless, faithless, inconstant as the wind — a very woman! And
Away, away — your smile’s a curse
Oh, blot me from the race of men,
Kind pitying Heaven! by death or worse
Before I love such things again!
he might have murmured with a bitterness of which the author of the lines had been incapable. But then, Mr. Moore, though his poetry and his singing brought tears to the eyes of hardened women of fashion, had never lost at a blow a great estate, a high position, and his love.
Certainly Vaughan had, if man ever had, grounds for a quarrel with fate. He had left London heart-whole and happy, the heir to a large fortune. He returned a fortnight later, a member of the Commons House indeed, but heart-sick and soured, beggared of his expectations and tortured by the thought of what might have been — if his love had proved true as she was fair, and constant as she was sweet. Fond dreams of her beauty still tormented him. Visions of the modest home in which he would have found consolation in failure, and smiles in success, rose up before him and derided him. He hated Sir Robert. He hated, or tried to hate, the weakest and the most despicable of women. He saw all things and all men with a jaundiced eye, the sound of his voice and the look of his face were altered. Men who knew him and who passed him in the street, or who saw him eating his chop in solitary churlishness, nudged one another and said that he took his reverses ill; while others, wounded by his curtness or his ill-humour, added that he did not go the right way to make the most of what was left.
For a certainty he was become a man unpleasant to handle. But within, under the thorns, was a very human soul, wounded, sore, and miserable, seeking every way for an outlet from its pains, and finding hope of escape at one point only. Men were right, when they said that he did not go the way to make the most of his chances. For he laid himself out to please no one at this time; it was not in him. But he worked late and early, and with a furious energy to fit himself for a political career; believing that success in that career was all that was left to him, and that by the necessary labour he could best put the past behind him. Love and pleasure, and those sweets of home life of which he had dreamed, were gone from him. But the stern prizes of ambition, the crown of those who live laborious days, might still be his — if the Mirror of Parliament were never out of his hands, and if Mr. Hume himself were not more constant to his favourite pillar under the gallery than he to such chance seat as might fall to him on the same side of the House.
Alas, he had not taken the oaths an hour — with a sore heart, in a ruck of undistinguished new Members — before he saw that success was not so near or so clearly within reach, as hope, with her flattering tale, had argued. The times were propitious, certainly. The debates were close and fiery, and were scanned out of doors with an interest unknown before. The strife between Croker and Macaulay in the Commons, the duel between Brougham and Lyndhurst in the Lords, were followed in the country with as much attention as a battle between Belcher and Tom Cribb; and by the same classes. Everywhere men talked politics, talked of Reform, and of little else. The clubs, the ’Change, the taverns, nay, the drawing-rooms and the schools rang with the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill; with Schedule A, cruel as Herod, and Schedule B, which spared one of twins. Before the window in the Haymarket which weekly displayed H.B.’s Political Caricatures, crowds stood gazing all day long, whatever the weather.
These things were in his favour. He remembered, too, the stress which the Chancellor had laid on the advantage of entering the House in advance of the crowd of new men whom the first Reformed Parliament must contain.
Unfortunately it seemed to him that he was one of just such a mob of new men, as it was. Nearly a fourth of his colleagues were strange to St. Stephen’s; and the greater part of these, owing to the circumstances of the election, were Whigs and sat on his side of the House. To raise his head above the level of a hundred competitors, numbering not a few men of wit and ability, and to do so within the short life of the present Parliament — for he saw no certain prospect of being returned again — was no mean task. Little wonder that he was as regular in his attendance as Mr. Speaker, and grew pale of nights over Woodfall’s Important Debates.
In the pride of his first return he had dreamed of a reputation to be gained by his maiden speech; of burning periods that would astonish all who heard them, of flights of fancy to live forever in the mouths of men, of a marshalling of facts so masterly, and an exposition of figures so clear, as to obscure the fame of Single-speech Hamilton, or of that modern phenomenon, Mr. Sadler. But whatever the effect of the present chamber on the minds of novices, there was that in the old, — mean and dingy as was its wainscotted interior, and cumbered by overhanging galleries — there was a something, were it but the memory that those walls had echoed the diatribes of Chatham and given back the voice of Burke, had heard the laugh of Walpole and the snore of North, which cooled the spirit of a new member; which shook his knees as effectually as if the panelling of the room had vanished at a touch, and revealed the glories of the Gothic Chapel which lay behind it. For behind that panelling and those galleries, the ancient Chapel, with its sumptuous tracery and statues, its frescoed walls and stained glass, still existed; no unfit image of the stately principles which lie behind the dull everyday working of our Constitution.
T
o Arthur Vaughan, a student of the history of the House, this effect of the Chamber upon a new member was a commonplace. But he was a practised speaker in the mimic arena; and he thought that he might rise above this feeling in his own case. He fancied that he understood the Genius Loci; its hatred of affectation, and almost of eloquence, its dislike to be bored, its preference for the easy, the conversational, and the personal. And when he had waited three weeks — so much he gave to prudence — his time came.
He rose in a moderately thin house in the middle of the dinner-hour; and rose as he thought fully prepared. Indeed he started well. He brought out two or three sentences with ease and aplomb; and he fancied the difficulty over, the threshold passed. But then — he knew not why, nor could he overcome the feeling — the silence, kindly meant, in which as a new Member, he was received, had a terrifying effect upon him. A mist rose before his eyes, his voice sounded strange to him — and distant. He dropped the thread of what he was saying, repeated himself, lost his nerve. For some seconds, standing there with all faces turned to him — they seemed numberless seconds to him, though in truth they were few — he could see nothing but the Speaker’s wig, grown to an immense white cauliflower, which swelled and swelled and swelled until it filled the whole House. He stammered, repeated himself again — and was silent. And then, seeing that he was embarrassed, they cheered him — and the mist cleared; and he went on — hurriedly and nervously. But he was aware that he had dropped a link in his argument — which he had not now the coolness to supply. And when he had murmured a few sentences, more or less inept and incoherent, he sat down.
In fact, though he had made no mark, he had also incurred no discredit. But he felt that the eyes of all were on him, that they were gloating over his failure, and comparing what he had done with what he had hoped to do, his achievement with those secret hopes, those cherished aspirations, he felt all the shame of open and disgraceful defeat. His face burned; he sat looking before him, not daring for a while to divert his gaze, or to learn in others’ eyes how great had been his mishap.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 529