Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Coming! Coming!” my lord answered. He said a last laughing word to Rachel whom he had detained, and he came away. The party streamed off to where the keepers and dogs stood awaiting them, while Rachel went back to the schoolroom regretting in her heart that she had left it.

  Yet she could hardly say why, for she had gained her point. But she had gained it in such a way that the victory gave her no pleasure. The Captain had been obdurate, but then she suspected that he had been right. And she felt that she had failed him and made but a sorry return for his kindness. Was she to be unfortunate, to be unhappy in all things?

  And one thing was certain — she must now see Lady Ellingham. She went to her bedroom and saw to her hair, which called more imperatively than before for the brush. Then, anxious to put an end to all her doubts, she passed through the swing-door and down the deserted staircase. When she climbed it again the fiat would have gone forth.

  But on the first landing she came plump upon Lady Ann lurking there and moving, it seemed, neither up nor down. They had not met since the fracas, and Rachel had already determined on her course. “Good morning, Lady Ann,” she said formally, and she passed by her.

  But the child thrust out a grudging hand, and seized her skirt. “What are you going to do?” she muttered sullenly, her eyes on the floor.

  “I am going to your mother.”

  “Has George” — the child spoke morosely, her face half hidden by her drooping black mane—” gone to shoot?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you — begged him off?”

  “I did.” Rachel spoke coldly.

  “Then,” Ann said, her eyes still on the floor, “I want to — to beg your pardon.”

  Rachel hesitated. “I am not sure that it is not too late,” she said in measured accents. “I am not sure that I wish to listen to you. But,” she decided, after an austere pause, “you may come to the schoolroom if you are in earnest.”

  Rachel was not sure that the child — so sullen and ungracious was her manner — really meant what she said. However, she turned and retraced her steps, and Ann, after, it seemed, a moment’s hesitation, followed with lagging feet. But the moment that the door closed on them the child dropped on her knees in the middle of the floor. “I beg your pardon — humbly,” she whispered with a dry sob, but without a tear.

  “You wish to be forgiven?”

  “Yes.” The word seemed to be torn from Ann, and Rachel comprehended the effort that the child was making to overcome her stubborn pride. And gladly would she have kissed her and forgiven her without more words. But she remembered the Captain’s “Discipline! Discipline!” and she pressed the matter home.

  “That is your side,” she said dryly. “What I want you to understand, for you are quite old enough, is how gravely you have insulted me. If you had struck a girl of your own age it would have been wrong. But she would have felt only the smart, and might have retaliated. But when you struck me, at my age, and when your mother had entrusted control to me, it was not the blow that hurt me, it was the insult. Do you understand me? Do you understand that in a moment it unfitted me to be your governess, and that unless you are now truly and honestly sorry—”

  “I am,” Ann whispered, “truly and humbly sorry.”

  “And will you try to control your temper in future?”

  “I will — try.”

  “And still I do not know what to do to bring home to you what you did.”

  “You may box my ears,” said Ann, thrusting out her head for the purpose.

  “No!” Rachel said, melting — this singular girl had not shed a tear! “I won’t do that. I will forgive you, for I believe that you have generous feelings, and I know that it has cost you much, very much to say this. Now sit up and we will try to be better friends.”

  “And you will tell Uncle George?” Ann said shyly.

  “Yes, I will tell him that you are forgiven. And now, my dear, we will get to work, and we shall not find work less pleasant because we know that your brother is enjoying himself.”

  Ann stooped suddenly and kissed Rachel’s hand. For her it was a monstrous demonstration and it brought a little comfort to the girl’s heart. Here it seemed was something in which she had not wholly failed.

  But that afternoon she felt the schoolroom with its sad memories to be intolerable, and, restless and miserable, she stole out by the side door and walked far into the forest, telling herself that it would be well to tire herself. If she showed her wisdom in this, however, she did not show it in the choice of the path she followed. Stag’s Brook with its tragical associations was closed to her — even by daylight she shrank from it. But there was another walk which she had more than once taken with the tutor and the children, its object an old stone boundary post, called the March Stone. For this she made, deriving a sombre pleasure from the loneliness and the stark wintry woods, but presently and inevitably succumbing to the memories, both bitter and sweet, that the path revived. Here she had paused and talked with him, there he had plucked for her a flower or displayed a new fern, across this rivulet he had placed stepping-stones for her, seated on that rotten trunk, now bare and ugly but then wreathed in green undergrowth, he had pretended to argue with her, to confute, to pique and again to comfort her!

  She knew that it was unwise to revive these memories, that they weakened her and rendered her more unhappy. But she could not refrain. She plucked a leaf and a belated flower and pressed them in her pocket-book. She would keep them always — always! Surely, though she must show him a proud face, though she must sacrifice to duty and pride in public, she might at least weep and suffer in the privacy of her own heart. It was all that was left to her!

  She came at last to the March Stone, and stood gazing at it with brooding eyes, despondency in every line of her bent head and drooping figure.

  CHAPTER XVI

  A GOLDEN HAZE

  TWO persons had witnessed Rachel’s intervention in young Bodmin’s behalf, and its issue; they had witnessed it from windows as far apart as their stations in life, but with feelings to some extent akin. Of these two one was Lady Ellingham — but of her later. The other was Girardot.

  The tutor was very sore. The rebuff that he had suffered in the drawing-room and the banter in which the Countess had indulged at his expense had wounded his vanity to the quick — and he was a man very vain of his fascination and his conquests. Of his hold over Lady Ellingham’s feelings he had never been confident. She had been, and she still was, though he was no believer in woman’s virtue, something of an enigma to him. But the part that Rachel had played, Rachel, the little girl over whom at least he had deemed his influence secure, this had not only surprised but enraged him. It had had, too, other and natural consequences. It had heightened his fancy for the girl and at the same time had infused into his feeling for her that tinge of cruelty, which is often a part of a certain kind of love. Still the desire to reduce her had been checked for a while by discretion and held in suspense by the reflection that hasty action might affect his chances in a higher quarter. He was still inclined to wait on events in the hope that he might secure his conquest without that conquest proving too costly.

  But what he now saw from the window both quickened his desire and overcame his prudence. He saw her, the little insignificant governess, surrounded by a group of men belonging to the class that if it addressed him at all addressed him with patronage, and he saw her, as he supposed, the centre of their attentions. And while he wondered with angry surprise what this might mean and how she came to be there, the sight added immensely to her value. He suspected, remembering the scene in the drawing-room, that the minx was now flying at higher game, and he feared that the piquancy and the charm that had caught his own fancy might prove as attractive to others. Ay, she was flying at higher game, he was sure; and it was with a view to this that she had eluded and baffled him and joined with my lady in making sport of him! In a twinkling idle liking flamed into passion, and the man burned with the desire to subdu
e the woman — burned with a desire that mingled love with revenge.

  Of success, if he bent himself to conquer, regardless of consequences, he had no doubt. With his handsome face and ingratiating tongue, his cleverness and experience, he was not wont to be defeated. And he was not going to be defeated by this naive little prude upon whom he was sure that he had at one time made his impression! He had seen her colour rise too often at his entrance, her eyes grow tender at his approach, to doubt that. And though she might now have conceived, dear duplicity that she was, higher ambitions, he knew the force of a first impression, he had proved the power of the first man; and he had little doubt that, at some risk to his position in the house, he could renew the spell. For if men were fire, women were tow, and she should learn that lesson.

  So far he had paid his court warily, out of prudence. But now he threw prudence to the winds, and even went so far as to persuade himself that he was more likely to succeed elsewhere if he summoned jealousy to his aid. It might be that that which had moved my lady to make that surprising and embarrassing attack upon him in the drawing-room had been jealousy. He was not only vain enough to think this possible, but sanguine enough to hope that by pursuing the humbler game he might, in the long run, pull down both.

  But for the moment, as he glowered from the window, it was the girl whom he burned to conquer.

  He saw that he must attack her where they would not be open to interruption, and his pupil’s absence with the shooters left him free. He placed himself on the watch, and soon after two he saw Rachel, in her warm caped cloak, leave the house and walk briskly away, taking a path which entered the forest at the rear of the house. He guessed the place for which she was making, and familiar with the forest, he made for the spot by another path. As he brushed through the dead bracken, and now leapt a narrow rivulet, now plunged through a wet bottom, he had his moments of doubt; not doubt of the maid but doubt of his own wisdom. All about him whispered cold caution; the cheerless breeze, the hollies that bulked darkly against the open leafless trees, the dead aspect of the frozen woods.

  But desire knows few obstacles, and he was not one to be easily turned aside. The ardour within him repelled the outer cold, and when he emerged from the wood and saw the March Stone and read the drooping lines of the figure standing before it, he guessed with a thrill of triumph the trend of the girl’s thoughts, and that he was the subject of them. The possessive instinct flamed up in him, and confident of victory, he considered only how he might best open the attack.

  For he foresaw that at the outset he would have to overcome difficulties — the prejudice which his prudent holding-off and Lady Effingham’s candour had raised in the girl’s mind, no less than the ambitious hopes that she had been led to place elsewhere. He must be both bold and adroit. But given these qualities he was confident that if he did not succeed, all his knowledge of women was at fault.

  The girl stood so deep in thought — and it was easy to see, in sad thought — that he was able to approach her unnoticed.

  When at last the snap of a stick caught her ear and she turned, her surprise was complete. The tell-tale blood flooded her face, and at that sight, Girardot’s heart leapt in triumph. She was his, he was certain of it. Yes, he had set his mark upon her! But it was not his cue at the moment to show what he felt, and it was with a pensive air and leaning on his cane that he stood looking, not at her, but at the crumbling pillar.

  “Change!” he said in a low voice. “Change everywhere, yet this is not changed since we saw it last. It is the same, this stone, whether the sun shines, or the clouds gather. Whether a lord gazes on it or a clown. Or you or I. It does not change.” He sighed.

  His abrupt appearance at a moment when he filled all her thoughts was almost too much for Rachel’s self-control. She had been dreaming of him, and taking farewell of him, her heart filled to the brim with his image. And to find him beside her! To be swept in a second by the flood of hopes, possibilities, alarms, that his presence suggested and must suggest! It was only by a most painful effort that the girl retained her composure, and found words. “It does not feel,” she murmured, hardly knowing what she said.

  “No,” he replied in the same tone, but with point. “It does not feel. Nor grieve nor suffer. Our joys or our sorrows, our hopes or their failure, our happiness or misery are one to it. It does not feel.”

  She felt! Alas, she felt only too strongly. His tone, sad and faintly reproachful, stirred her to the depths. She could not reason or remember. His silence and his withdrawal were forgotten; and it was much if, taken in this unguarded moment of emotion, surprised when all her defences were down, she could hide her trouble or keep back her tears.

  Speech was beyond her, and it was he who continued. “It is cold, heartless, insensible to kindness,” he went on, his tone steeped in gloom. “A stone. But at least it does not distrust, it is proof against slander, it does not veer with the weather, it is the same in favour and out of favour, rain or shine. What it was yesterday when the sun warmed it, it is to-day when the clouds gather.”

  “But it is only a stone,” she said, striving for composure; but she strove in vain, for a traitorous sob broke the words.

  “Only a stone!” he repeated, his voice rising. “You say that — you! Ah, to me it is more, it is much more! It tells me of hopes, of dear hopes born beside it, of plans formed under its shadow, of visions bound up with it, visions of humble contentment, of a home, a home far from this cold magnificence, and to be shared with one — But for you,” after breaking off abruptly, he turned to her, “for you it has no such voice as this? It tells no such tale. It does not speak?”

  Alas, it was not only with his words, moving as they were, that poor Rachel had to contend. The spell of his presence, his nearness, his veiled reproach, all conspired to shake and overpower her resistance. The Countess’s warning and her own waiting, her long suspense, lost their force, were for nothing, were forgotten. She needed only a sign, some certain sign — nay, only a touch, to be taken.

  “Then the past is past?” he continued slowly. “Well, let it be so. We have walked here, we have stood here, we have — or I have — dreamed here. But to you it is all as if we had not! As if those things had never been! It is done with, Rachel?”

  She was quivering from head to foot and in an agony lest her tears should overflow and he should measure the extent of her trouble. Anything was better than this terrible, this betraying silence, and she forced herself to speak. “I do not understand,” she whispered.

  “You do not?” His voice rose at last in something like scorn. “Oh, yes, you do! You do! Or, forgive me, you did! But a word from another has wiped all from your heart?”

  “No!” she cried, tears in her voice. “No! No!” He passed by the remonstrance as if she had not spoken. “At any rate, you knew once what I meant!” he said. “Deny if you can that you knew that I loved you! Loved you with the love that is as sacred to us, Rachel, and more precious since we possess so little, than it is to those beneath whose shadow, cold as this stone, we are fated to live! You knew that I loved you! I dare you to deny it. There is an affinity between us, a tie that without words would have told you as much — if my lips had never spoken. But you have hardened your heart against me. You have preferred to honest affection the smiles of those who smile only to deceive you.”

  “Oh, no, no!” Rachel repeated, the tears running openly down her face. “But I thought that you — I thought that you—” And, quite simply, she held out her hands to him.

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought that you did not mean it,” she sobbed. She swayed towards him.

  “Then you do!” he cried, and let his exultation appear in his tone. “You do love me!” And, triumphing, he took her, warm and unresisting, in his arms. “You do! Oh, Rachel, is it true — is it true, and am I happy?” To himself, “Oh, lucky stone!” he thought — but Rachel could not see his face or his smile. And he was careful, he was heedful not to frighten her. Wit
h another he would have pushed his opportunity, he would have covered her face with kisses. But he was no novice, there would be time for that by and by; and in this moment of her first surrender he held himself in hand. Instead, as she hid her happy face on his breast, he murmured soft words of endearment in her ears, he pressed her gently to him, soothed her with fond touches.

  And Rachel felt and prized his self-restraint, and in this first moment of shy yet blissful surrender found no drawback to her happiness. When at her trembling appeal he at length released her, she saw all things, the leafless forest, the grey sky, the dead herbage, through a tremulous radiant mist, of which he was the centre and creator. He was henceforth to be hers, her man, her pride, her support, the pillar about which her love would wind itself as the summer growth would presently weave itself about the grey pillar beside them. She was wholly happy, if shyly and blushingly happy.

  Not was it until — after more than one tender precious interlude, more than one exchange of ardent assurances — they had turned their backs on the spot now so sacred to her, and had left it some way behind them, that she felt the chill air of reality sweep aside a wisp of the roseate haze.

  “Will you tell Lady Ellingham?” she murmured, then in a voice as tender as the look she raised to him, “Or — must I?”

  She felt the arm that encircled her stiffen, and the movement gave her a hint of discomfort. “Ah!” he said slowly. “That is to be considered. We must go about that warily.”

  “But you do not mean — that we are not to—”

  “To tell her?” he replied confidently. “Of course we must. Of course we must tell her, my darling. But not yet. These things in our class,” with a flash of well-simulated resentment, “are not favoured. I must be prepared with a place before I tell her, for this, you see, may end my engagement. It probably will, indeed.”

  Contrition seized her. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “am I worth it? Are you sure that you—”

  “Love you enough?” he answered, drawing her tenderly to him. “Silly one! I hope that you are worth a great deal more than that — or I don’t know you! But for a little space, my dear, we must be silent. And I am glad of it, yes, I am glad of it,” he repeated, so fervently that she could not but agree. “For love, such love as ours, is a sacred thing, Rachel. I cannot bear that the common wind should blow on it, the common world discuss it! If I could, indeed, if it were possible, I would keep it from all! It should be for ever our secret, our treasure, our possession. I would guard it from every eye, every vulgar ear and tongue!”