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Title: A broken blossom, vol. 2 of 3
Author: Florence Marryat
Release date: August 31, 2025 [eBook #76780]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Samuel Tinsley & Co, 1879
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Emmanuel Ackerman, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BROKEN BLOSSOM, VOL. 2 OF 3 ***
A BROKEN BLOSSOM
=A Novel,=
BY
FLORENCE MARRYAT,
AUTHOR OF “LOVE’S CONFLICT,” ETC., ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
[Illustration: [Logo]]
=London:=
SAMUEL TINSLEY & CO.,
10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND.
1879.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE VENETIAN GLASS 1
II. ARTHUR THRALE 36
III. THE SECRET 64
IV. THE DENOUEMENT 89
V. CURED 116
VI. TWO SERPENTS 136
VII. ALL FOR TESSIE 162
VIII. A REVELATION 194
IX. CHARLIE 223
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
A BROKEN BLOSSOM.
CHAPTER I.
THE VENETIAN GLASS.
The _goûter_ was laid in a long narrow room, which evidently had once
been a banqueting hall. Remnants of exquisitely stained glass still
ornamented its windows, although the ravages made in them by time had
been replaced by ordinary white panes. Tall, straight-backed chairs,
carved in black oak, and furnished with green cushions, the embossed
velvet covering of which was both faded and rent, stood at the table for
our accommodation, whilst from the panelling of the walls looked down
upon us an almost obliterated collection of the Baron’s ancestors.
Although the summer sun was shining through the windows, casting rainbow
lights of ruby and violet and amber over the damask tablecloth, and the
roses and clematis were hanging in clusters about the casement, there
was a weird unearthly feeling about this chamber that made me shudder.
An artist would have fallen into raptures over the old oaken floors and
wainscoting; the leash of wolfhounds that lay stretched out blinking in
the sunshine, and watching their master’s eye as for a revelation; the
fragments of stained glass; the blackened ancestors. But to me, the
aspect of the whole place spelt _Ruin_, and I feared lest our host
should read my feelings in my face.
That did not, however, seem likely. There he sat at the head of the
table, dispensing his simple hospitality as though he had been
entertaining crowned heads at a royal banquet. He made no apology for
the repast he offered us. It was the best he had to give, and he
credited us with too much good taste to wish it better. When he pledged
us in the _vin ordinaire_ of the country, poured into the most delicate
of Venetian wineglasses, the slender stems of which were encircled by a
tiny twist of blue and their bowls dotted with specks of gold, he might
have been a prince drinking to his courtiers in a vintage of fabulous
value. Those glasses alone were a marvel in themselves, and, mere
fragmentary remains as they were of a past glory, told tales of what
that glory must have been.
I thought, as I balanced mine between my finger and thumb, what an
exquisite specimen of workmanship it was, and how I should like to
possess it and keep it in my bedroom for my own delectation, to place
the first violets of spring in, or the first lilies of summer. It looked
so much too fragile and precious to be handled for ordinary purposes.
I was thinking thus, when some one spoke to me—the Baron himself,
perhaps—and I was startled into letting the wineglass slip from my hand.
It struck the table and was shivered into a thousand fragments. I
blushed to scarlet. Had the accident happened in the house of an
ordinary host, I should have thought little of it, but to Monsieur le
Baron, who was so poor! I tried to stammer out an apology, but the words
failed on my lips. Mr. Lovett saw my embarrassment, and laughed heartily
at it. I had already commenced to find out that his notions were beyond
his means, and that he did not sympathise very strongly with any ideas
of economy or restriction.
Tessie and Ange looked as concerned as I did. The Baron alone continued
the conversation as if nothing had occurred. But I could not allow the
matter to rest there.
‘Monsieur!’ I said, ‘I am so _very_ sorry. I was only just thinking how
beautiful this little glass was, and how much too delicate to hold
anything except spring flowers.’
‘Then I am sorry also, mademoiselle! But was that the only one of the
pattern you admire? Cannot we find another that will do as well to hold
your blossoms?’
I remonstrated with this proposal, although he made Denise bring the
remainder of her stock of glasses and spread them out upon the table
before us. There they sparkled in their prismatic hues of blue and red
and gold, and their elegant fragile shapes and twisted stems. But I
refused to do more than look at them. I was too clumsy, I averred, to be
the possessor of such delicate things. One such injury to art, as I had
done that day, was enough for me!
The Baron did not press the point, but, as we had finished luncheon, he
unleashed his hounds, and, calling them to follow us, led the way into
the tangled wilderness he called his garden. As we passed the stables
and coachhouse, I perceived that they were shut up and empty. Their
owner had not even the means sufficient to keep a riding-horse for
himself. As I glanced at his noble bearing and pictured the luxury in
which he had probably been reared, I did feel intense pity for his
lonely and impoverished condition.
‘We must not forget the object for which you honoured the château with a
visit,’ he said as we traversed the grounds, which were of some extent,
‘which was to ascertain if any life remains in the poor old organ; but I
must show you my pet first.’
He pushed aside the trailing branches of the bushes as he spoke, and led
the way up to a large cave, or den, surrounded by a palisade of stout
wood. Inside it, running restlessly up and down, was a splendid wolf of
the Piron breed. We girls rather shrunk back as we came in sight of the
animal.
‘You need not be in the slightest degree alarmed, mesdemoiselles,’ said
our host; ‘for the palings are very strong, and “L’Empereur” is
wonderfully tame!’ And, in proof of his assertion, the Baron walked up
to the palisades and stroked the wolf’s head. ‘_Eh bien, mon ami!_’ he
exclaimed, ‘are you glad to see me again? It is some time since I have
paid you a visit, _mon pauvre Empereur_.’
‘Monsieur, where did you get him?’ asked Ange.
‘I shot his mother in the forest, Mademoiselle Ange, two years ago.
Empereur was then a little cub, of perhaps a month or six weeks old. He
was easily caught, and I brought him home and kept him in the château,
until he took to biting the heels of Denise rather too vigorously as she
went about her work, and I was compelled to have this apartment erected
for him out of doors.’
‘He is a strange pet to keep,’ I observed.
‘So several people have told me; but Empereur and I have sympathies in
common. His estates, like mine, have been confiscated; for, since St.
Pucelle has been a town, the wolves have been driven farther and farther
back into the interior of the forest of Piron. Then he is solitary, and
so am I; and his misfortunes make him savage, as mine have done to me;
and we thirst in common, I think, for the blood of our enemies, and
choose the night-time to moan over our wrongs. Is it not so, Empereur?’
concluded the Baron, with a forced laugh, as he thrust his hand again
between the open palings, and rubbed the head of his favourite.
‘And a wolf is your family crest, is it not, monsieur?’ I said, with a
view to cover the Baron’s last remark, which had made us all feel rather
uncomfortable.
‘True, mademoiselle. It was granted to be borne by my ancestor, Godefroi
de Nesselrode, and his descendants, by one of the first Ducs de Nemours.
The Duc and De Nesselrode were riding, unattended and unarmed, when an
assassin made an attempt upon the life of the former. His first shot,
however, failed; and, before he had time to fire a second time, my
ancestor had leapt from his horse and flown at his throat, never leaving
hold until he had strangled him where he lay. As a wolf will invariably
fly at the throat of a man, if it is possible to do so, his princely
master, the Duc de Nemours, was pleased to command that that animal
should be carried as a crest upon the helmets of the De Nesselrodes from
that time forward.’
‘It was a very brave thing for your ancestor to do,’ said Tessie.
‘He could hardly have done anything else,’ replied the Baron, quietly.
‘But would it be agreeable to you now, mesdemoiselles, to try the organ
we have spoken of?’
‘Yes, yes; let us return to the house,’ interposed Mr. Lovett. ‘It is
too hot to stand about, so early in the afternoon.’
The fact is, the old gentleman had made an excellent luncheon, and began
to miss the nap which he invariably took at that hour of the day. So,
his will being law to all of us, we retraced our footsteps to the
château, and were introduced to what had originally been its private
chapel. But what a desecration appeared to have taken place there!
The altar was disrobed and bare, and what ornaments it had possessed had
vanished. Over it hung a crucifix, covered with a layer of dust an inch
in thickness. On one side was erected a little altar to the Virgin. Her
statue still rested there, on a cloth of what had been white silk, now
brown with dirt and age, with the yellow lace hanging from it in
tattered fragments. A dusty wreath of artificial flowers stood before
it, and a little lamp which still held the rancid remains of oil. A row
of oak benches was on either side the altar; but, beyond what I have
mentioned, and a few votive offerings of little value which hung against
the wall, all traces of this place having been one of prayer had
disappeared. As we entered it, Ange gave vent to an exclamation of
dismay.
‘Oh, monsieur! why do you not have this chapel properly cleaned, and
kept in order——?’ But there the child stopped, remembering his poverty.
‘To what intent, mademoiselle?’ he asked her.
‘Oh, because—because—it _has_ been so beautiful!’ she replied. ‘Papa,
what would we not give to have this chapel carried down into St.
Pucelle, and to use it for our services, instead of the schoolroom? Does
it not seem ten thousand pities that it should be wasted like this?’
Mr. Lovett had already ensconced himself on the corner of one of the
benches, and put two cushions at his back, preparatory to passing into
the land of dreams.
‘A great pity, my little maid,’ he answered, sleepily. ‘But I am not
sure how De Nesselrode would approve of your carrying it off,
nevertheless.’ And then he gave two huge yawns, and closed his eyes.
‘It will all be restored some day,’ I said cheerily, ‘and made more
beautiful, perhaps, than it was before.’
‘Do you think so, mademoiselle?’ inquired the Baron of me.
‘I hope so, monsieur. And what a fine organ! If its tone is only as good
as its appearance, we shall have a treat.’
‘It has not been touched for years,’ he said, as he opened it, ‘until I
told Denise to dust it for you this morning.’
Tessie seated herself at the instrument, and commenced to play some
passages from the ‘Stabat Mater,’ whilst I worked the bellows for her.
The organ had been left to the tender mercies of so many winters, that
its tone left a good deal to be desired. Still, it was a very fine
instrument, and only required a few fires and regular practice to bring
it once more into working order. I was wondering to myself what this
visit would lead to, and if Tessie would receive an invitation to come
up to the château and play the organ, until she had played herself into
the owner’s heart, when I found that the owner had crept round to the
back of the instrument, and was standing beside the bellows and myself.
Ange was busily engaged setting the Virgin’s altar in order, and dusting
the ornaments with her pocket-handkerchief; Mr. Lovett was slumbering
blissfully on the oaken seat, and the notes of the ‘Mater Dolorosa’ were
still pealing out from under Tessie’s skilful fingers.
As far as what we said or did was concerned, the Baron de Nesselrode and
I might have been quite alone, and now was the opportunity, I thought,
to put in a word for the future of my sweet Tessie and the man who stood
beside me.
But it was he who commenced the conversation.
‘Mademoiselle, why do you think that this ruined chapel will some day be
restored?’
‘Because I believe that when you _can_ do it, you _will_.’
‘But will that opportunity ever arise?’
‘That I cannot say, Monsieur; neither have I the right to inquire.
Only—I have been told——’
‘_What?_’
‘That you will not always be as you are now.’
I said the words timidly, but directly they had left my lips they
sounded terribly bold, and I coloured under the conviction that they
were so.
‘Forgive me, monsieur,’ I added; ‘I should not have said that. I feel I
have entrenched on your private affairs.’
‘There is nothing to forgive, mademoiselle. I have ruined myself. The
story is patent to all. It is also true that by a long course of
privation I may regain my former position. But it is not at all likely.’
‘Why not?’
In my interest and surprise I overlooked the fact that this question was
entrenching still more upon his private affairs than the former remark
had been.
‘Because I think I shall return to Paris. I am sick and tired of the
life I lead here, and am ready to sacrifice my future itself in order to
break through the chains that keep me a prisoner in St. Pucelle.’
‘Oh no! monsieur, you must be patient! You must not do that!’
What made me speak to this stranger in so unaccountable a manner?
Some sudden thought of Tessie, and that she would be left to pine in
solitude in St. Pucelle, whilst the Baron was recklessly throwing away
his last chances of respectability and honour in Paris, had put them
into my mind and made me forget myself. I expected that my companion
would be offended at my audacity, but he did not even look surprised.
‘Why should I not do so?’ he answered quietly; ‘I live only for myself.
No one cares what becomes of my future! It is mine to do as I will with;
and this life is too intolerable to be endured for one’s self alone.’
‘You may not always be alone,’ I said, thinking of the fair-haired woman
divided from us only by the organ.
The Baron laughed incredulously.
‘This is a pretty château, is it not, to bring a young lady home to,
mademoiselle, and ask her to live upon roses? They smell sweet enough as
they adorn your bosom, but you would not find them very satisfying as
your daily food.’
At that I laughed also.
‘No, indeed! Still, monsieur——’
‘I wait the commands of mademoiselle——’
‘Even if no one cares what becomes of your future, you have the honour
and glory of the past in your keeping.’
He made no answer to this remark, and when I ventured to look up in his
face I saw that he was biting his lips.
Whether he would have replied to me I know not, but at that moment the
notes of the organ ceased, the bellows gave a great squeak, and Ange
came laughing to ask us if she had not already made a great improvement
in the appearance of the chapel.
‘If Monsieur le Baron will only let me repair the altar-cloth and clean
the ornaments it will make the whole place look different. And the organ
sounds lovely, Tessie! I wish you could have heard it yourself from a
little distance. Has it not been a pleasure to you to touch an organ
again? You have never had an opportunity of playing on one since we were
last in Brussels.’
‘Yes, I have enjoyed it greatly,’ replied Tessie. ‘The notes are a
little stiff from damp and disuse, and I do not think you worked the
bellows very regularly, Hilda; but otherwise we have nothing like this
in St. Pucelle. I only wish I could carry it away in my pocket.’
‘If it is really a pleasure to you to use the instrument, mademoiselle,
I trust you will regard it as your own,’ said the Baron, ‘and play on it
as often as may be convenient to yourself. The key of the chapel is
always left in the hands of Denise, and I will give her orders to see
that it is kept in a fit state for your accommodation.’
‘Oh, that will be delightful!’ cried Ange, who was much more
enthusiastically disposed than her sister; ‘and I may have charge of the
rest of it, may I not, monsieur—and keep the altar dressed with flowers,
as I do for papa on Sundays?’
‘Anything that Mademoiselle Ange chooses to do, she will find me
grateful for,’ replied the Baron. ‘And Mademoiselle Marsh, too, I hope
this is not the last time she will honour the château with her
presence.’
‘Oh! I will come when Tessie does,’ I answered, laughing, ‘to blow the
bellows, though I have not incurred much gratitude for the exertions I
have undergone on her behalf to-day.’
‘Mademoiselle Lovett says nothing herself,’ remarked De Nesselrode.
‘Because it depends so entirely upon papa,’ replied Tessie, blushing;
‘and he has so many engagements in the parish and otherwise, that I do
not know when he may be able to bring us up to the château again.’
And then we all remembered the difficulties that lay in the way of three
young, unmarried ladies making any practical use of an organ that stood
in the residence of an unprotected bachelor.
‘Papa _must_ bring us up; we will _make_ him!’ exclaimed Ange, as she
unceremoniously squatted upon her sleeping father’s knee and kissed him
back to consciousness. ‘Papa! wake up! You’ve been asleep a great deal
too long—and tell us how soon you will bring us to the château again to
play upon this lovely organ.’
‘Eh! eh! what?’ said Mr. Lovett, as he started up and realised where he
was. ‘Why, you little puss! you are enough to frighten a man into a fit.
What is it you want? Is it time to go home?’
‘Pretty nearly, papa, and quite time for you to wake up and make
yourself agreeable. Monsieur le Baron says we may practise on his organ
every day; but you will have to bring us to the château. Will you come
to-morrow again?’
‘No, no, no! How can I come to-morrow? It is Saturday, and I shall have
my sermon to think over and prepare, and a dozen other things to do,’
replied Mr. Lovett, taking the girl’s words seriously. ‘Besides, it is
such a hill to climb! My breath is too short to accomplish it often. If
you want to run about the château as if it belonged to you, you must get
some old woman to chaperon you—Mrs. Carolus, for instance, or Mrs.
Petherton.’
‘Or Miss Markham. I’m sure she is old enough,’ interposed Ange, with a
most unusual degree of acrimony for her.
‘Miss Markham is an unmarried lady, my dear: she would be of no more use
in satisfying the exigencies of etiquette than yourself. However, we
will talk over this scheme later, for it is really time that we were
moving homewards now. Baron, we have to thank you for your excellent
hospitality, and to hope you will soon give us the opportunity to return
it. I shall see you this evening, perhaps, if you have nothing better to
do.’
‘Without fail, monsieur,’ replied the Baron, warmly; and then, when we
girls had reassumed our walking attire, he accompanied us to the
entrance of the château, and bid us farewell, with numerous entreaties
that we would not allow many days to elapse before we came back to play
upon the old organ again.
As we walked home together, Mr. Lovett informed us that the Baron de
Nesselrode reminded him powerfully of the great friend and patron of his
earlier days—the noble poet, of whom, _par excellence_, England has
reason to be proud, Lord Amor.
‘Amor was the most misunderstood and misjudged of all God’s creatures,’
he said warmly. ‘He was afflicted with so mighty a genius and so keen a
sensitiveness, that his mind could scarcely be said to be in a normal
condition; and added to that, he possessed a temperament which left him
open to every sort of temptation. I perceive much of his character
reproduced in Armand de Nesselrode. Without possessing Amor’s genius,
which does not appear once in a century, he has yet a very poetical and
imaginative brain, which in his enforced solitude is likely to produce a
morbid condition of thought. We must induce him to mix amongst us as
much as possible.’
‘It is a pity he has not more love for reading, or else more companions
of his own age,’ I observed. ‘Utter idleness is certain to make a man
fall back upon vice for amusement.’
My trustee glanced at me keenly. Did he imagine I could possibly know
more of the Baron’s habits than he did?
‘There is not much opportunity for the practice of vice in St. Pucelle,
my dear,’ he observed.
‘Is there not, sir? Then St. Pucelle must be a very uncommon sort of
place. But, if all one hears is true, the Baron’s great failing has been
the love of gambling: and that form of vice is feasible wherever a pack
of cards is to be procured.’
I fancied I had made Mr. Lovett quite angry by my insinuation against
his friend.
‘That is a hard judgment, my dear Hilda—harder than I like to hear
proceed from the mouth of so young a woman. You must not think because
poor De Nesselrode may occasionally while away the weary hours of his
exile by a game of cards, that he has therefore necessarily not
abandoned the fatal habit of gambling. There is no harm in a game of
cards. I sometimes indulge in one myself; and I should be glad to hear
you speak a little more charitably of your neighbours, my dear Hilda.’
You are too young to be suspicious. Whatever our friends’ faults may be,
let us remember our own, and preserve a generous silence.’
I felt very small under this clerical rebuke, particularly as the girls
were regarding their father as if he were a Solomon called to judgment,
and proportionately disposed to censure my boldness.
‘I did not intend to be uncharitable,’ I answered humbly; ‘and perhaps
my experience of life has made me suspicious. But, at all events, I may
say that I think it would be safer, under the circumstances, for the
Baron to abandon cards altogether, even as a game.’
‘He is the best judge of his own affairs,’ replied Mr. Lovett, curtly;
and then we started a pleasanter topic, and dropped the one in hand.
At the usual hour in the evening, Armand de Nesselrode came. We heard
his voice in the _salle_, although we did not see him, as the girls said
it was their father’s particular desire that he should not be disturbed
after we had risen from the dinner-table, and left him to the enjoyment
of his wine and cigar and the conversation of any friend who might look
in upon him. But on this evening I felt particularly curious to learn
what was going on in the _salle_. I could distinguish the gentlemen’s
voices as they laughed and talked with one another; but I wanted to see
what they were about. The new-born interest I had conceived in the
Baron’s future prospects had much to do with my curiosity; because I
thought, until I had some proof that he still practised it, I should
never have the audacity to speak to him openly about giving up the
amusement that had been his ruin.
So by-and-by I yawned, and rising, told Tessie and Ange that the day’s
expedition had tired me, and I should go to bed; at which announcement
they laughed, and called me lazy, but raised no objection to the plan;
and I reached my chamber, without either having offered to accompany me.
Madame Marmoret called after me, in her coarse voice, to know if I
intended coming down again that evening; but I would not answer her.
Madame and I were foes, although there had never been an open rupture
between us. I disliked her insolence and familiarity too much to be
civil to her; and she hated me because I took no notice of her rudeness.
It was ten o’clock as I entered my bedroom. The dear old carriage-clock
was ticking away upon the mantelpiece to tell me so. I wrapped myself in
a dark waterproof cloak, and throwing the hood over my head, passed
through the French windows at the end of the corridor that led out into
the garden, from which a door in the wall opened upon the road.
For a few moments I lingered at the flowerbeds, picking a blossom here
and there, for fear the girls might follow me, and suspect the motive of
my absence; but no one came. So, plucking up my courage, I gently opened
the garden-door, and crept noiselessly up the wooden steps that led to
the _salle_. One window, half hidden by clustering tendrils of vine,
abutted on the platform at the head of the steps, and through it the
whole of the _salle_ was visible.
It was as I had thought and feared. Mr. Lovett and the Baron were seated
opposite to each other, with the green-shaded lamp between them, and
their hands full of cards. The table was strewn with counters of various
colours, and two or three little piles of money stood at my trustee’s
elbow. Even as I stood and gazed at them, afraid to breathe lest my
presence should be discovered, I saw the Baron lose again, and add
another coin to the heap on the other side the table, at which Mr.
Lovett laughed, and exclaimed:
‘_A la bonne fortune, mon cher._ Try again! It only requires
perseverance to turn the shadiest luck.’
As I crept back to my bedchamber and prepared myself for rest, I felt
very sick and miserable. I knew the world was full of wickedness and
sorrow, but I never seemed so fully to have realised it as I did that
night; and I wished—oh, so truly!—that I were safe with _her_ wherever
she might be, and had finished the bitter task of learning the lesson of
life. If I missed her at one time more than another, it was at such
moments as these, when I felt confused and stupefied under the shock of
discovering more sin and misery in the world than I had thought it
capable of containing, and had no bosom to fly to for comfort and
reassurance.
I hoped that neither Tessie nor Ange would ask to see me again that
evening. I wanted to go to bed, and lose in sleep, if possible, the
uncomfortable feelings that had taken possession of me. After which, I
was not over-pleased, as may be supposed, to hear Madame Marmoret’s
voice demanding admittance at my door.
‘You cannot come in, Madame, indeed! It is impossible! I am just about
to step into my bed.’
‘_Eh bien!_ It is no concern of mine. Step into your bed, if it pleases
you to do so. But I wish I had not taken the trouble to follow you
upstairs, which I should not have done, except for the entreaties of
Monsieur le Baron. In my day, a young woman was pleased to be taken
notice of, especially if she did not deserve it; but ’tis all the same
to me. I will go downstairs again, and tell Monsieur le Baron that you
refuse me the entrance to your chamber.’
‘Monsieur le Baron!’ I repeated in surprise. ‘What on earth has he to do
with your being here?’
‘Ah, I thought I would arouse your curiosity! We may be extremely modest
and reserved, and not have a civil word to throw at our inferiors; but
the name of a Baron is at all times better than that of a commoner, and
likely to command more attention—is it not so?’
‘Madame Marmoret, if you have a message of any importance for me, please
to deliver it at once, and let me go to rest.’
‘It is no message, then, but a packet, which I have been charged to
deliver into your hands; and if you will not take it, I will just lay it
in your doorway, and the first foot that comes past may smash it to
pieces!’
Aggravated at the woman’s impertinence, and curious to learn what a
packet from the Baron could possibly contain for me, I opened the door,
and received a small parcel carefully enveloped with paper.
‘Is there no message to be taken back again?’ demanded Madame Marmoret,
grinning like a wicked old witch at me.
‘None. I have no idea what the packet can hold.’
‘Ah, you wish me to believe that, mademoiselle, of course! and when I
was paid to deliver it, too! Well, I’ve done my duty, and you can do
yours.’
And, with these words and a harsh laugh, Madame took her way downstairs
again.
I carried the parcel eagerly to the light, and took off its manifold
wrappings, when it disclosed an exquisitely-moulded Venetian vase of the
most costly workmanship, and far superior to anything which we had seen
at the Château des Roses that day. At first I could not believe that it
was intended for me instead of Tessie; but a little card that fell out
of the bowl reassured me. On it, beneath the printed words, ‘Armand de
Nesselrode,’ was written, ‘_Pour les fleurs de Mademoiselle Hilda_.’
I felt very much pleased. As an acquisition alone, the Venetian vase
would have delighted me; because I possessed a cultivated taste, and
took keen interest in all specimens of art, ancient and modern.
It would stand on my mantelshelf, and be ‘a joy for ever,’ with its
fragile loveliness and perfect grace of form.
But far above the value of his little gift, I hailed the evident
goodwill of the giver. He had not taken my frank remarks in bad part. My
vase was a proof that he was not offended with me. What opportunities,
then, might I not hope to gain in the future, to warn him from pursuing
the path which my own eyes had told me he still trod!
Before Madame had delivered my parcel, I was afraid lest the illegal
means by which I had gained my knowledge might for ever prevent my
making use of it. Now I felt no fear about it.
The Baron de Nesselrode had paved the way for me. He could not complain
if I took advantage of his kindness to return it. He had given me a
present, and he should receive one in return. If ever I were on the
brink of offending him by my good advice, I would plead my little vase
as an excuse for trying to return the kindness he had shown me in the
only coin I possessed.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER II.
ARTHUR THRALE.
The sun was streaming down the narrow rocky street of St. Pucelle, in
one long, unbroken line of light. I could hear the shrill voice of
Madame Marmoret screaming to frighten away the pigeons, as they alighted
on the line she had erected in the courtyard to hang her spotless caps
and aprons on; and Tessie disturbed me in the midst of writing a long
letter home—somehow, I found it difficult to get out of the habit of
calling Mrs. Sandiland’s place of residence ‘home’—to ask if I would
take my work and go with her to sit on the brow of the hill that
overlooked the valley of Artois.
‘It is “pig-killing day” in St. Pucelle, Hilda, and you will find it so
much pleasanter to be out of the town than in it.’
‘_Pig-killing day!_’ I repeated. ‘Tessie, what _do_ you mean?’
‘Only that each family here keeps a pig, and they kill them all on the
same day. Also that they have an unpleasant custom of sacrificing the
animals in front of their houses, and the poor things _do_ squeak so.’
I threw all my writing materials to one side in a moment.
‘Mercy on us! When do they begin? Let us get out of this as soon as
possible, Tessie.’
She laughed heartily at my dismay.
‘You need not be in such a terrible hurry, Hilda. I think you may give
yourself a few minutes’ grace. But it really does turn the street into
such a slaughter-house, that everybody makes a point of going as far
from home as possible.’
‘Where is Ange?’
‘She has gone up to see Mère Fromard, whose husband is worse this
morning, and she promised to join us on the hill on her way back.’
‘And your papa?’
‘I left him in the _salle_. He is just going to start by the diligence
for Artois. He has some business to transact at Rille to-day, with his
friend Mr. Felton.’
‘Excuse me for a moment then, Tessie. I want to speak to him before he
goes.’
I flew downstairs as I spoke, and came upon Mr. Lovett in the _salle_,
carefully brushing his clerical hat before putting it on. I had a motive
for my haste. As we postpone visiting the dentist day after day, and
then, in a sudden fit of courage, rush off without deliberation, and
have our tooth extracted before we have had time to repent, so had I
delayed speaking to my trustee on a matter of importance, and knew that
unless I took my dilemma, like a bull, by the horns, I should never be
brave enough to extricate myself from it. This dilemma was the want of
money. I had been in St. Pucelle now for a couple of months, and Mr.
Lovett had never mentioned the subject to me. I had gone there on the
understanding that fifty pounds of my little income was to be annually
refunded me for pocket expenses, and I had arrived there almost
penniless, for the necessary outlay connected with the breaking up of my
home and travelling to Belgium had absorbed nearly all the ready-money
at my disposal. I had thrown out more than one hint, in the presence of
Mr. Lovett, that a few francs would be acceptable to me, but they had
had no effect, and I was now really in need of some trifles for my
toilet.
Moreover, Ange would complete her eighteenth year in a week from that
time, and I greatly desired to make her a little present on the
occasion.
So I felt as desperate as a young woman can do who has no clean tuckers
to put into her dresses, and has just discovered an alarming hole in the
finger of her best pair of kid gloves.
Mr. Lovett looked up as I entered the _salle_, and saluted me with his
bland, beautiful smile.
‘Well, my dear Hilda, have you any commands for me in Rille? I am
compelled to go there to-day, to transact some business with my good
friend Mr. Felton; but I hope you will be able to make yourself very
happy meanwhile, with your own occupations and the dear children’s
society.’
‘Oh yes, Mr. Lovett; we shall be happy enough. We are just going to take
our needlework to the brow of the hill, and stay there till all the pigs
are killed.’
‘A very wise decision,’ he said, laughing softly, as he smoothed round
the nap of his hat.
‘But I wanted to speak to you first,’ I stammered. ‘I should be sorry to
inconvenience you; but—but—I want frilling and such a lot of little
things, Mr. Lovett; and—Mr. Warrington mentioned to me, you know, the
arrangement you made with him about it, and—_could you let me have a
little money, just to go on with?_’
The murder was out at last! I had made as much fuss over it as if I had
been asking a favour, instead of demanding a right; but it was over—the
tooth was out, and I breathed again.
What had Mr. Lovett to say in answer? At first, for the merest moment, I
fancied that a flush of surprise or displeasure passed over his handsome
features; but, if so, it vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving
nothing behind but his own frank, benevolent expression.
‘Certainly, my dear girl, certainly. Why did you not mention it to me
before? I shall be exceedingly annoyed if you delay asking for it one
day after it is due. Let me see! When _was_ it due?’
‘I am not sure. It depends entirely upon how you intend to pay it to me.
I have only been here two months, you know, Mr. Lovett.’
‘Ah! Just so. And I generally give my girls their allowance every
quarter. Still, it makes no difference to me, my dear Hilda; and you can
have your money just exactly when you like. How much do you require?’
‘I will take anything you choose to give me, sir.’
‘Tut, tut, tut!’ he said, as though annoyed by my want of confidence;
‘it must be as _you_ choose, my dear—it must be as you choose. What was
the annual sum fixed on by Mr. Warrington for your private expenses? One
hundred pounds?’
‘Oh no, sir. Fifty!’
‘That’s not enough,’ replied my guardian, decidedly. ‘No young lady can
dress according to her station for fifty pounds a year. We must make it
eighty.’
‘You are too kind to me, Mr. Lovett; but I should be very sorry to think
my living here put you to any expense.’
‘Nonsense, my dear Hilda! I do not pretend to be a rich man; but I must
become poorer than I am before I consent to take one _sou_ more than is
absolutely necessary from the child of my dear old chum, Dick Marsh. So
we will call the pin-money eighty pounds, my dear; and please to say no
more about it. But I must not stay another minute, or I shall miss the
diligence. Good-bye, and God bless you. How like you are to your father,
to be sure! As you stand there, I could almost fancy it was dear old
Dick come back and smiling at me.’
‘How soon shall you be home again, Mr. Lovett?’
‘Not till to-morrow morning, my child; but Tessie knows all about it.
Good-bye, good-bye!’ And, waving his stick at me, the benevolent old
gentleman descended the steps and made his way down the road as quickly
as he could.
I was very glad that he had decided to fix my private allowance at
eighty pounds, for it raised his feelings of justice in my estimation.
To tell truth, since I had been in St. Pucelle, I had more than once
thought that a hundred a year was too much money to pay for my board and
lodging, for my bedroom possessed the barest necessaries, and we—that
is, I and the girls—lived with the greatest frugality. The mystery which
hung about the meals I had not yet fathomed, although I had begun sadly
to suspect the cause of it. On some days the dinners provided continued
to be luxurious in the extreme, though, as I have said before, I refused
to partake of them; on others, we were all alike compelled to dine upon
the most meagre fare. It was evident, therefore, that the means of
provisioning the household were not always forthcoming, though that was
no reason that I should pay for more than I consumed. I did not,
therefore, consider that I laid myself under any special obligation to
my guardian in consenting to his proposal, although I admired him for
making it. Eighty pounds a year—twenty pounds every quarter—would be
ample, not only to provide me with suitable clothing, but to leave a
margin wherewith to indulge myself by making presents to my friends; and
with the remainder of my income, Mr. Lovett would be fully indemnified
for any extra expense I might prove in the household.
I returned to Tessie therefore quite satisfied with the result of my
bravery. At the same time I wished that my guardian had given me a few
francs in hand. But I felt certain he had only postponed it until he
returned from Rille.
Under cover of this assurance, I talked openly to Tessie, as we walked
together up the hill, of the interview that had taken place between her
father and myself, and of the generous offer he had made me.
I was anxious to have her advice as to what would be the most suitable
present I could purchase for Ange on her forthcoming birthday, for, in
common with all her friends, I had learned to love the girl dearly, and
was quite sure that nothing was to be found among the paltry little
shops in St. Pucelle good enough for her acceptance.
‘I should like to give her something _really_ nice, Tessie; something
that she wants very much. Do you know of anything? Never mind the price!
I shall have much more money than I shall want for myself, and my
greatest pleasure is in giving presents to those I care for. If you will
decide what it shall be, I will ask Mrs. Carolus or Miss Markham to get
it in Rille. I know they are going over there next week expressly to
shop; and they will choose it probably quite as well as I should do
myself.’
But Tessie, considering her love for her sister, was singularly
indifferent on the subject. She coloured when I proposed it, as I
thought with pleasure, but she gave me no help whatever.
‘Ange’s wants are so few,’ she said, ‘that I think it would be a pity to
take much trouble about it, Hilda! She will be just as well pleased with
a bunch of flowers from your hand as anything else. I, myself, intend to
give her my new muslin apron, and I know she will say it is twice too
good for her and refuse it half a dozen times before she accepts it.’
‘Now, Tessie! you are provoking,’ I replied. ‘One does not always ask
before making a present if the reception of it is necessary to the
happiness of one’s friend; but surely we can think of some trifle that
Ange would like me to get for her, whether she can do without it or not.
Shall I buy a pair of earrings to match her silver cross?’
‘Oh no, Hilda; pray don’t!’ cried Tessie in a voice of such feminine
alarm that I burst out laughing.
‘Why not? They would look very pretty in her little ears.’
‘They would be far too expensive a present to make her! She would not
like it, and neither would papa. We have never worn ornaments of any
kind; and Ange would not have that silver cross, excepting that it was
given to Madame Marmoret at her own confirmation, and she gave it to
Ange when she was quite a little baby.’
‘And so that old vixen Madame Marmoret may make the child a handsome
present, and I am forbidden to do so,’ I replied, half offended. ‘I
shall not consult you any more, Tessie, but buy her just what I please.’
Tessie looked grave, but she said nothing more, and we walked on for a
few minutes in silence. Then she began again:
‘I am sure Ange would rather have a ribbon that you have already worn
than the finest piece of jewellery that Rille could produce.’
But I clapped my hand over her mouth, and raced her up the hill till she
was out of breath.
‘And now if you dare to open your lips once more on that subject, I will
push you all the way down again,’ I said, laughing, and she was fain to
laugh with me; for I was determined to indulge myself by buying
something both good and handsome, for my pretty Ange.
The conversation, however, simple as it was, seemed to have affected
Tessie in no common degree. She was unusually silent as we sat side by
side, diligently plying our needles, and she sighed more than once as
she looked over the broad valley of Artois. Her mood was infectious. She
made me thoughtful, too, and I began to muse over that grave in Norwood
Cemetery, and the dear, dear face that lay beneath it.
‘Tessie,’ I said suddenly, ‘can you remember your mother?’
‘No, Hilda! She died when I was only a few years old, and Ange an infant
in long-clothes.’
‘You are happy not to be able to remember her. You must miss her so much
the less.’
‘Do you think so? Sometimes I fancy I must miss her more. I have never
had the benefit of her guidance or counsel, you know, Hilda!’
‘That is true; but your father has supplied her place. A man’s advice is
better than that of a woman, however good and clever she may be.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is, in most things; and papa has been the best and
kindest of parents to us. Yet, if mamma had lived, Hilda, she might—I
have always heard she was so fond of him—she might——’
But here the supposition of what her mother might have done was lost, in
consequence of Tessie bursting into a flood of tears.
Her sudden emotion both surprised and shocked me. I had never dreamt
that the death of a mother whom she had lost so early could have dwelt
upon her mind to such a degree as this, neither had I ever seen her give
vent to such violent grief before. Had it been Ange I should not have
been so much astonished, for the ‘little maid’ was romantic and easily
moved to tears; but that Tessie, who had so calm and equable a
disposition, should be so overcome was quite another thing.
I soothed her to the best of my ability, but the storm was as genuine as
it was unaccountable to me, and some minutes elapsed before she was
restored to anything like composure. I was just congratulating myself
that it was over, and thanking Heaven that no one else had witnessed her
weakness, when I perceived, to my annoyance, the gaunt figure of Mrs.
Carolus climbing, by means of a stick, the steep and stony ascent in
front of us.
‘Here is Mrs. Carolus,’ I said hastily. ‘Do dry your eyes, Tessie, or
the whole of St. Pucelle will be informed before to-morrow morning, that
I brought you out here and beat you.’
She laughed hysterically at the idea, and rose to her feet.
‘Let me go back a little way and meet Ange, Hilda! I shall recover
myself in five minutes, if I am left alone; but Mrs. Carolus’s intrusive
curiosity would be sure to set me off again.’
‘Go, by all manner of means,’ I replied, ‘and leave me, like a second
St. George, to face the dragon! Only come back as soon as your eyes have
regained their normal condition, or the saint will be found to have
turned tail as usual, leaving his stockings, darning-thread and needle
behind him.’
This I said because I had suffered many things at the hands of Mrs.
Carolus and Miss Markham during the last two months, and was noted for
running away as soon as I saw them coming. Tessie smiled sadly and
nodded acquiescence as she turned to ascend the hill.
‘Oh, Miss Marsh!’ cried Mrs. Carolus, now within a few yards of me;
‘what an awfully steep hill this is! I really thought at one time that I
could neither go backward nor forward. And the loose stones cut one’s
boots to ribbons. If I hadn’t brought Willie’s stick with me, I should
never have had the courage to mount it. Why has Miss Lovett walked off
just as I arrived?’
‘She has gone back a little way to meet her sister. Why do you attempt
to ascend the hill where there is no path, Mrs. Carolus? Boys and girls
can do it, perhaps, and goats, but not——’
‘Not older people, like you and me,’ said Mrs. Carolus, as she cast
herself jauntily on the sward beside me. ‘Ah! that’s just what I told
Sophy Markham the other day. She will pretend to be so _very_ young, you
know—ridiculous it is in a woman of her age—and came skipping down the
stairs two or three at a time, and the consequence was she sprained her
ankle. I said it served her right, and she was angry with me, of course;
but I am used to that. Mr. Lovett has gone to Rille to-day, I find.’
‘He has—but how did you hear it?’
‘By a very natural means, my dear or perhaps you will say, an unnatural
one. Sophia Markham has gone with him.’
‘_With him!_ In the same diligence, you mean.’
‘Well, she could hardly do other than that, considering there is but
one. No, I do not mean in the same diligence, only: I mean what I said,
she has gone with Mr. Lovett. She had no intention of it till she saw
him on the steps of the hotel, and then she suddenly discovered she had
something to do in Rille that could not possibly be delayed. Dear, dear!
I am quite sick and tired of her devices.’
‘She wanted to get out of St. Pucelle on “pig-killing day,” I suppose,
Mrs. Carolus. Tessie tells me all decent people leave the town to-day if
they can. Do you not hear the far-off squeaks of the poor porkers as we
sit here? It must be horrible to be in the midst of them.’
Mrs. Carolus grew quite testy over my frivolity.
‘Nonsense, Miss Marsh! You must be trying to take advantage of my
credulity. But if you think it delicate or proper that an unmarried lady
should ask for, and accept, the chaperonage of one gentleman in order to
run off and see another, I cannot view it in the same light.’
‘Oh, there is another gentleman in the wind, is there! That is lucky for
Miss Markham, for I really do not think it is of any use trying her
chances with Mr. Lovett.’
‘Of course there is another! That is the indelicate part of it. The
young man I once mentioned to you, Miss Marsh, as having been rather
taken with the pretty Miss Lovett, is staying in Rille just now, and the
way in which that woman goes on with him is disgusting—positively
disgusting. If you saw them together you’d really say she was ready to
jump down his throat. And she is constantly writing to him, too.’
‘Perhaps there is a mutual understanding between them,’ I suggested.
‘Dear me, no! she goes on in the same way with everybody. I am sure, the
scenes that have taken place between her and that young Thrale are a
perfect scandal, and enough to ruin the reputation of any house. I have
blushed scarlet, and so has my Willie, only to hear the things she says
to him.’
‘She has never struck me as being particularly refined or reticent,
either in her manners or conversation.’
‘Oh, my dear! you have not heard half of it! She tells such stories,
sometimes, as would make your hair stand on end. And doubtless a good
deal more has reached Mrs. Thrale’s ears than she chooses to
acknowledge, and that is the reason of her letter to me.’
‘Mrs. Thrale! What, Arthur Thrale’s mother? Has she written to you?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? Why, that’s the real reason Sophy has gone off to
Rille. She is so afraid of the inquiries that may ensue. This morning,
my dear, I received a letter from Mrs. Thrale, whom I’ve never seen in
the course of my life, begging me to look after her son, whom she has
heard is very intimate with my friends and myself, and whom she avers
has lost any amount of money since he has been in St. Pucelle.’
‘_How_ has he lost it?’ I demanded eagerly.
‘Ah, that’s the question! How has it gone? The lad is staying at the
same hotel as we are, at the instigation of Miss Markham, who persuaded
him to follow us here, but, excepting out of doors, Willie and I see
very little of him. However, Sophy and he have been _always_
together—morning, noon and night, uphill and downhill; and I, of course,
have had no right to interfere. But one thing I _know_, and that is,
that young Thrale has given her the most beautiful presents; and
presents, Miss Marsh, are not bought for nothing.’
‘No, indeed! But he must have been very extravagant to make his mother
write of him as she has done.’
‘She says he has lost or parted with hundreds of pounds since he has
been in St. Pucelle, and entreats me to reason with him on his folly,
and to persuade him, if possible, to return home to his parents. But I
have no control over the young man’s actions. And how can he have parted
with his money except by spending it on that woman? He knows no one here
but ourselves and Mr. Lovett, and, I think, that elegant-looking foreign
baron who lives up in the forest. Sophia Markham would have tried to get
up a flirtation with _him_ also, if she could have managed to speak
French well enough, but, notwithstanding her boasting, she is a poor
hand at it if she has to say anything out of the common way.’
‘It would have been of little use to her if she had been successful,’ I
said, smiling, ‘for the Baron de Nesselrode is too poor to make presents
to any one.’
‘Her face, when I taxed her with ruining Arthur Thrale, was a perfect
study, and I feel almost sure she has done more than take presents from
him. She ran upstairs and put on her hat at once, and not a minute
afterwards I heard she was going to Rille. To see the other one, of
course, and try what she can do now with him. For it is only an excuse,
saying she wants to buy something, my dear, for we had already planned
to go over in a party to Rille, to-morrow morning.’
‘Do you still intend to go, Mrs. Carolus? and if so, will you execute a
commission for me?’ I asked.
‘Certainly, Miss Marsh! Anything that I can do for you. What is it that
you require?’
‘Next Tuesday will be Ange’s birthday, and I wish to give her a pair of
silver earrings to match the cross she usually wears. I don’t want to
spare any expense, Mrs. Carolus. I should like them to be as good and
pretty as herself.’
But there I stopped, remembering that Mr. Lovett would not be home
before the morning, and doubtful whether I should have mentioned the
earrings to Mrs. Carolus before I had the money to give her to pay for
them.
‘I will buy you, then, the handsomest and strongest that I can procure
in Rille, Miss Marsh.’
‘No, Mrs. Carolus! Please do not. I forgot, when I spoke just now, that
I shall not have my allowance till after Mr. Lovett returns to-morrow.’
‘Oh, indeed! He stays over the night, then. But that is no obstacle,
Miss Marsh. I will purchase the earrings, and you can repay me at any
time.’
‘Thank you so much! You are very kind,’ I answered; but as the Caroluses
were rich people, and I felt certain of paying the money in a day or
two, I did not feel the obligation to be a weighty one. But it entailed
my having to listen for another half-hour, at least, to the scandal Mrs.
Carolus chose to retail me, until, to my infinite relief, I spied Tessie
and Ange coming over the hill to put an end to the conversation.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER III.
THE SECRET.
There was something mysterious about Mr. Lovett’s manner and behaviour
after he returned from that visit to Rille, which I could not account
for. In the first place he was in the very best and highest of spirits,
and the most extravagant dinners appeared upon the table for two days in
consequence, whilst he lavished more than his usual affection and
caresses upon his daughters and myself. Then, there seemed to be
preparations going on for some great event.
A peasant woman was hired to clean all the upper part of the house, and
for forty-eight hours remained on her knees in an attitude of adoration,
scrubbing vigorously at the boards whilst Madame Marmoret stood over her
and shrieked that she was a pig and a fool not to work faster. A spare
chamber that had possessed no furniture of its own except a bedstead,
suddenly became habitable, by reason of articles being secretly
abstracted from our rooms, to repair its deficiencies.
I know that I missed a chair, a side-table and a water-bottle and
tumbler, but no cross-questioning of Madame Marmoret ever elicited the
fact that she had had any hand in their removal.
The next thing that happened was that Tessie and Ange were taken into
their father’s confidence, and were evidently much gratified by what he
told them. Tessie, who was always cheerful but seldom merry, went about
the house singing like a bird, whilst she helped Madame Marmoret to
starch and iron muslin curtains and draperies; and Ange, whose happy
face I had never yet seen clouded, seemed bursting with the weight of
some pleasant secret which she had the greatest difficulty in preventing
her lips from disclosing. A dozen times a day she threw her arms around
me, exclaiming:
‘Oh, Hilda! I _am_ so happy!’
But when I asked her why, her rosy mouth was resolutely closed, and she
said I should know it all soon, and I must be patient and wait. So I was
patient, concluding that Mr. Lovett had received some good news of a
private nature, in which none but his daughters had any right to share.
A remark or two dropped by Tessie, relative to a change and a stroke of
good-fortune, confirmed me in this opinion. I thought that his visit to
Rille might have led to an interview with some clerical grandee, and the
result was, the prospect of leaving St. Pucelle for a living of greater
value.
I could not tell why, but as I dwelt on this idea, it gave me pain. I
had already learned to love the quaint little town and its surroundings,
and the thought of new scenes and faces disquieted me.
Meanwhile, the silver earrings arrived. Mrs. Carolus had executed my
commission with more taste than I had given her credit for, and the
massive Normandy work of which they were composed was the handsomest
thing of its kind I had ever seen. My only trouble was that I had not
yet received the money wherewith to pay for them. Mr. Lovett had been so
exceedingly kind and generous in his offer to me on the occasion of my
speaking of my allowance, that I did not like to worry him on the
subject again so soon, especially as his mind seemed full of more
important matters. Besides, he would be likely to inquire for what I
required the money, and find fault with me for spending too much upon
his little maid.
The only resource left to me, therefore, was to tell the truth to Mrs.
Carolus and ask her for a few days’ grace, which I did by letter, as St.
Pucelle was visited by a succession of showers about that time, and we
were almost kept prisoners to the house.
At last Ange’s birthday—her _jour de fête_ as she called it—arrived, and
the little maid completed her eighteenth year. I was waked early in the
morning by a commotion of voices chattering in the Wallon _patois_
beneath my window, and getting up to see what was the matter, my eyes
encountered a score or two of grinning faces upturned to mine, the
owners of which held large bouquets of flowers in their hands. But the
disappointment visible as soon as I appeared proved it was not me for
whom they had assembled.
‘_Ce n’est pas la petite Ange!_’ they said to one another, shaking their
heads the while. In another minute the casement next to mine was thrown
open, and I knew that Ange’s sweet face was framed in it, by the roar of
delight with which she was received. ‘_Bon jour, ma’m’sel!_’ ‘_Bonheur,
ma’m’sel!_’ ‘_Que le bon Dieu te bénisse, petite Ange!_’ resounded from
every side, whilst the bunches of flowers were held up simultaneously,
till they looked like a forest of blossom.
‘I will be with you directly, dear friends,’ exclaimed Ange, in their
own _patois_; and the next moment I saw her in the very midst of them,
kissing the women, shaking hands with the men, and laughing and crying
by turns, as she attempted to carry in her apron one half the flowers
they had brought her. One old woman went down on her knees in the middle
of the road and kissed the child’s feet.
‘She saved my boy’s life! He would have died if she had not helped to
nurse him with me,’ she said, with the tears running down her yellow,
withered cheeks.
In her hands she held up a common wooden chaplet, black with dirt and
age.
‘See, _petite_ Ange,’ she continued, ‘it is all I have to bring you. It
is not much, but my poor daughter died with it in her hand, praying the
good God to bless all His saints upon earth. And you are one of them;
and this chaplet must surely bring a blessing upon you.’
Amidst the crowd I distinguished Mère Fromard, the woman who had
addressed me by the Calvary during the first week of my sojourn in St.
Pucelle.
‘I would have brought the best offering of them all, ma’m’selle,’ she
said, ‘but you know the reason that prevents me!’
Ange went up to her and touched her forehead with her lips.
‘All will come right in time, Mère Fromard,’ she answered cheerfully.
‘Trust to God! And how is your husband this morning?’
The woman gave some ordinary reply, and moved away in the crowd; but the
look she directed at Ange was a strange mixture of surprise, incredulity
and despair.
‘It is not _her_ fault!’ I heard her mutter, as she fell back to give
place to some one else.
When we descended to the _salle_ for breakfast, we found it transformed
into a perfect bower of sweets. Flowers bloomed upon the mantelpiece,
the buffet and the floor, whilst in the centre of the table was a
magnificent nosegay of every coloured rose, which had come from the
château for Mademoiselle Ange, with the compliments of Monsieur le
Baron. And amidst them all moved the little maid, flushed like the very
heart of a rose herself, with unalloyed happiness beaming in her eyes
and irradiating every feature of her expressive face.
‘Oh, papa!’ she exclaimed, when at last her excitement had somewhat
subsided, and we persuaded her to sit down to her meal. ‘I feel as if
this day was to be the commencement of a new life for me!’
Our little offerings had already been presented and duly thanked for.
Tessie’s new muslin apron adorned her slender waist; at her right hand
lay a book her father had bought for her in Rille, and my silver
earrings flashed and sparkled in her ears.
To say that Ange was pleased with my thought of her is to say too
little. She was a true woman, and delighted in the adornment of her
beauty as she delighted in flowers and birds and children and all the
other gifts of heaven. She had coloured to her very eyes with innocent
pleasure when I first put the ornaments in her hand, and had stood for
ten minutes before the glass, shaking and nodding her graceful little
head, in order to see them sparkle.
Mr. Lovett, too, whose censure for extravagance I had feared, seemed
almost as gratified as the child herself at the manner in which the
dangling silver things became her, and thanked me more than once for
giving her so handsome a present, though he never thought of asking me
how I had been able to pay the sum they had cost. Tessie alone appeared
to be annoyed at my disregarding her advice, and indifferent to her
sister’s joy in her new possessions. Was she jealous, I thought, because
I was in a position to make Ange a more valuable gift than herself?
Surely Tessie, with her sweet good-nature and noble heart, could never
stoop to the indulgence of so mean a feeling as that? Yet she left me
quite unable otherwise to account for her silence and grave looks
whenever the silver earrings were brought beneath her notice.
The post only arrived once a day at St. Pucelle, and whilst we were in
the middle of breakfast, Monsieur le Facteur, as Madame Marmoret
politely designated him, rapped sharply with his knuckles on the
window-shutter and delivered a letter to Ange through the open casement.
It was for Mr. Lovett, and evidently contained agreeable news, for as he
read it he exclaimed: ‘Look here, girls!’ which made Tessie and Ange fly
to peruse its contents over their father’s shoulder, when all three
faces beamed with pleasure and anticipation.
‘On your birthday, too, Ange! This is quite a coincidence,’ said my
guardian presently; ‘and we must have a little fête in consequence. My
dear Hilda, it is time I told you——’
‘No, no, papa!’ cried Ange, clapping her hand before his mouth. ‘Don’t
tell her yet. Let it be a surprise. It will be such a tremendous one!
and you will spoil it all if you say a word beforehand.’
‘Don’t make it too great a surprise, my little maid, or it may have a
serious effect upon poor Hilda.’
‘Oh, papa, how funny you are! As if anything _nice_ could hurt one! And
Tessie and I have agreed that this change is to be a very, _very_ nice
one indeed!’
‘If it is the solution of the mystery that has occupied you all for the
last few days,’ I interposed, ‘you need not be afraid of the
_dénouement_ proving fatal to me, for I have all but guessed it for
myself.’
‘What is it then, Hilda?’ demanded Ange.
‘First, it has something to do with a change in the establishment.’
‘That is right!’
‘And it grew out of your father’s visit to Rille last week.’
‘Right again! I believe Tessie has been telling you.’
‘I have done no such thing!’ retorted her sister, indignantly. ‘Did we
not promise papa to say nothing till it was certain?’
‘I can vouch for my knowledge being the result of my own sharpness
only,’ I said; ‘so you must blame no one else, Ange!’
‘Very well. What more has your sharpness discovered?’
‘That there is a gentleman connected with this change.’
‘She _does_ know it!’ ejaculated Ange, with a very suspicious expression
of countenance. ‘You must have overheard us talking of it, Hilda.’
‘With my ear to the keyhole! No, Ange dear, that is not my usual method
of gaining information. Well, then, for a final guess! This change will
take you away from St. Pucelle.’
‘Take _me_ away, do you mean? or take us _all_ away?’
‘All, of course—bag and baggage—and give you a new home somewhere else.’
‘Oh no; that’s wrong!’ said Ange, shaking her head
determinately—‘_quite_ wrong!’
‘What! Shall you stay in St. Pucelle?’
‘Of course! Where else should we go? What would papa do without his
living?’
‘Oh, then I’m out altogether, and my other guesses go for nothing. The
gentleman and the change that is connected with your father’s visit to
Rille remain unfathomable mysteries to me. I see I have been on a wrong
tack.’
‘I’m _so_ glad!’ cried Ange, clapping her hands. ‘Now, as a punishment
for daring to guess at all, you shall not hear a single word of the
wonderful change until it actually takes place. Do you understand,
Hilda?’
‘Perfectly! and as it is your _jour de fête_, I suppose you are to be
allowed to tyrannise over your betters with impunity. I only hope when
the revelation comes, that it will not be so startling as to prevent my
surviving it.’
Mr. Lovett had been laughing heartily all through this little episode.
He seemed perfectly to enter into his daughters’ delight at teasing me
about their wonderful secret, at which Tessie proved to be as good as
her sister; and I think it would have been difficult to find more
cheerful faces in St. Pucelle than rose from our breakfast-table that
morning.
Naturally I suffered a great deal during the remainder of that day from
the hands of both my young friends. They were running about the house
like busy bees all the morning, helping in the kitchen and the
bedchambers; but whenever they crossed my path, they seized the
opportunity to taunt me with my ignorance concerning their secret.
I am sure, if bright-haired Ange regretted once during those few hours
that she had vowed her lips should remain sealed until the revelation of
the household mystery was close at hand, she must have regretted it
fifty times; but she made up for her self-imposed reticence by
chattering without ceasing to Madame Marmoret in the Wallon dialect.
That amiable individual appeared to accept the impending change with
wonderful tranquillity, although it was certainly putting her to a great
deal of extra trouble. I did, indeed, once overhear her grumbling that
she hoped things might turn out as they expected: that, for her own
part, she had lost hope altogether, and never anticipated any better lot
than to end her days in the poorhouse.
I saw Tessie, on that occasion, leave the work on which she was engaged,
and walking up to the cross-grained old servant, put her arms about her
neck and beg her to be patient.
Why was Tessie always the comforter, I thought, when Madame Marmoret’s
ebullitions of temper had reached their culminating point? Ange, who was
all love and pity for the poor, and whom Madame had reared from an
infant—Ange, I should have imagined would have been the readier of the
two to soothe and console her.
But the little maid, notwithstanding her universal charity abroad, never
seemed to realise that any one within the house could stand in need of
consolation. They lived under the same roof as her father—that father
whom she credited with being the best, most lovable, most honourable,
and most holy creature upon earth: and what could they possibly want
more?
I believe that is really the way in which innocent Ange thought of us
all. I have heard her say that Tessie and she were sure to be married
some day, because if men did not wish to marry them for their own sakes,
they would do so for the glory of being able to call Mr. Lovett by the
name of ‘father.’ And this without a shade of coquetry or
self-consciousness, passing over the unclouded mirror of her lovely
face.
The remainder of the _jour de fête_ passed very quietly; but I could
see, as the afternoon waned, that the portentous secret was growing too
big to be held much longer in the ‘durance vile’ of silence. Even a
visit from the Abbé Morteville (one of the pleasantest and most
intellectual of our acquaintances), with a beautiful little statuette,
which he had had sent all the way from Paris to place on Ange’s
mantelpiece, could not do more than engage her attention for the few
minutes that it endured.
The dinner-table, which was not usually laid in the _salle_ till six
o’clock, was ready that day by five. A snow-white cloth adorned the
board, whilst at the four corners were placed, alternately, bowls of
whipped cream and custard, and dishes of ripe fruit and _gaufres_, made
by Tessie’s own hands. In the centre of the table bloomed the Baron’s
beautiful roses; any one could see it was a _fête_-day, by the unusual
grandeur of the preparations. The girls had not changed their black
serge dresses—indeed, I knew by that time that they had no others to
change; and I often wondered on what they spent the allowance which
their father had told me he paid them quarterly—but they wore white
muslin aprons and kerchiefs; and Ange had a bunch of damask roses
glowing in her bosom. I remember thinking, as I saw her slender figure
darting from room to room that day, that I had never seen her look so
charmingly youthful and pretty before.
At last the discordant voice of the cow-horn, by which the diligence
usually heralded its approach from Artois, was heard winding along the
valley.
‘Papa, papa!’ exclaimed Ange, all excitement, as she rushed about to get
his hat and stick, ‘do you not hear old François’s horn? Run along
quick, or you will be a great deal too late! You know how he always
whips up his poor little mules, as soon as he has turned the corner of
the road, to pretend they have been racing all the way from Artois! And
Madame has everything ready in the kitchen—only waiting to be dished up
on your return. Such dear little ortolans, papa! Monsieur de Nesselrode
sent them down this afternoon for you, with his compliments; and Madame
has the most delicious secret way of dressing them you ever knew! But if
you don’t make haste——’
‘And how am I to make haste, you little puss, if you cling to me after
this fashion? Give me my stick and let me go! I shall be back again
within the next ten minutes.’
‘And _now_ for the secret!’ cried Ange, as she jumped upon my lap, and
clasped her arms round my neck. ‘_Now_, Hilda, you must be told! It is
coming very, very close, and in a few minutes you will know all.’
‘What a portentous expression!’ I said, laughing. ‘It is like the
_dénouement_ of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. I suppose I may conclude
one thing, however, Ange, and that is, that the secret is coming in the
diligence from Artois.’
‘Yes, yes! it is!’
‘And that it wears trousers!’
‘Yes, yes! Hilda, you are very clever. You always guess right.’
‘But _who_ is this mysterious stranger, then? and why have you kept me
in the dark about him so long?’
‘Because we were not quite sure if it would come to pass,’ said Tessie,
in her soft voice; ‘you see, Hilda, when papa went to Rille last week,
he met a gentleman whom we——’
‘Oh, Tessie! do let me tell her!’ pleaded Ange, after which they
continued to interrupt each other, much in this fashion: ‘Yes, he met a
gentleman who wanted to come here for a few months——’
‘To shoot in the forest, you know——’
‘Yes! to shoot or to fish or to do anything he liked, but he couldn’t
get rooms in the hotel——’
‘Well, he could have got rooms, Ange, but they were not so nice as he
desired——’
‘Anyway, papa asked him to come and stay with us—but he wouldn’t hear of
it——’
‘Knowing that we are not rich, you understand, Hilda——’
‘But he said if papa would let him board with us, he would come for
three months certain——’
‘And perhaps longer, as he may stay over the winter——’
‘If he likes the shooting he will: and he is going to pay us such a lot
of money——’
‘Hush, Ange! I don’t think papa would like you to tell that part of it.’
‘Why not? He couldn’t come here without he did pay—and papa would not
have accepted his offer if it had been too much.’
‘Certainly not! still I think it would be fairer to him, as well as
papa, to let that matter rest between themselves.’
‘You are quite right, Tessie,’ I interposed, ‘and I would rather not
hear any more about the financial part of the arrangement.’
‘Of course it is a good thing for us any way, Hilda. You will understand
that; and we hope it will be agreeable, too. That is why we have all
looked so pleased the last few days.’
‘It _must_ be agreeable,’ said Ange, with a heightened colour, ‘because
papa says it will. And we thought he wouldn’t come till next week, until
the letter arrived for papa this morning, and——’
‘Hullo, hullo! Who is that taking my name in vain?’ exclaimed Mr.
Lovett, from the open doorway; and Ange leapt off my lap as if she had
been shot, and we all three rose to our feet to receive the expected
stranger. I saw Tessie move forward first, and heard her utter a few shy
words of welcome, but Ange had to be dragged to the front by her father,
before she could be induced to contribute her share to our hospitable
greeting. Then Mr. Lovett mentioned my name as that of his adopted
daughter, Hilda Marsh, and I left the vine-covered embrasure of the
window in which I had hitherto concealed myself, to encounter—_Cave
Charteris_!
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER IV.
THE DENOUEMENT.
I am quite unable to remember what I said, or did, in the first shock of
meeting him again. His presence in St. Pucelle was so utterly sudden and
unexpected to me, that I should not have felt greater surprise if my
dead mother had stood before me; and I do not think that, for the first
few minutes, I at all believed or realised that I was face to face with
the man who had embittered so large a portion of my life.
I suppose I said something, and held out my hand to him, because he
seized it eagerly, and appeared delighted at the recognition.
‘_Hilda!_ Miss Marsh! Is it possible! Who on earth would ever have
dreamed of meeting you here?’
The astonishment of my friends at his evident knowledge of me, luckily
prevented my having any occasion to answer his remark.
‘My dear Mr. Charteris,’ said Mr. Lovett, ‘you have taken us all aback.
Do you mean to tell me that you have met Hilda before?’
‘Have I _not_ met Hilda before?’ he echoed, in the old joyous tone that
sent a shiver through my heart. ‘Ask her yourself if you don’t believe
me! Why, we were the very best of friends some few years ago, when I was
an idle young fellow, loafing half my time away down at their pretty
little place in Norwood. By the way, Miss Marsh, I hope that your mother
is perfectly well.’
At this careless question, which told me so cruelly how little interest
I and my affairs had held for him since our parting, I raised my eyes
and looked in Cave Charteris’s face. Something in their expression, I
suppose, added to my black dress, revealed the truth to him, for though
Tessie interposed with a quick ‘_Hush!_’ it was almost drowned in his
apology.
‘I beg your pardon _so_ much! I am afraid I have made a great mistake,
but it is so long since we met, you see; and I have been out of the
world lately, and the reach of news.’
‘It is no matter,’ I uttered faintly, as I turned to Mr. Lovett. The old
man folded me in his arms as though I had really been his daughter.
‘Hilda and I have had a mutual misfortune lately, Mr. Charteris,’ he
explained. ‘She has lost the best of mothers, and I one whom, though I
had never had the pleasure of meeting, I reckoned amongst the most
valued of my friends. Hilda’s father and myself were sworn chums in the
old college days, and, after his lamented death, there was nothing to
which I looked forward in the future with so much pleasure as the hope
that I might meet and be of service to his widow and child. However,
there is a Power above that disposes such things for us, and that is the
reason that you find Hilda here, living in my house, and second only to
my own daughters in my affection and esteem. Go, my dear!’ he added
kindly to me, ‘and tell Madame that we are ready for our dinner! I will
take Mr. Charteris meanwhile to his room, and when we meet again, I
trust we shall all feel more at ease than we do at present.’
I was so grateful to my guardian for dismissing me at that moment, that
I fled to the presence of Madame Marmoret as if she had been an angel of
light instead of very much the reverse. Her sharp eyes detected my
agitation in a moment.
‘_Eh bien!_’ she exclaimed, as she fixed those piercing black orbs upon
my countenance. ‘And if they _do_ want their dinner, is that any reason
you should be as white as a peeled turnip? Mamselle Ange has been the
colour of a carrot all day, and now you have thought fit to do the other
thing! What does it all mean? Young men were not so scarce with me, when
_I_ was a girl, that they caused such a commotion as all that comes to;
and if this stranger is to set the whole house topsy-turvy, why, the
sooner he goes back to wherever he came from, the better; that’s what
_I_ say!’
‘Oh, hush, Madame! He may hear you.’
‘And what if he should?’ she exclaimed, raising her voice from sheer
obstinacy, until it reached every corner of the house. ‘I say nothing I
am ashamed of; but I don’t judge people before I see them, as you
foolish young creatures do! I take no one on trust. I want to see my
money before I give over my goods; and so I say, let him that pays
quickest be soonest served.’
Mr. Lovett had conducted Mr. Charteris upstairs by a more imposing route
than that which led through the kitchen, although we seldom used it
because it entailed going through the garden. But I was very glad he had
adopted it this evening, since it permitted me to reach my own room
without encountering them again. As I entered it I drew myself up
firmly, and knew that I must be brave, at least for the next few hours.
I dared not stay to think: the opportunity had not yet arrived for the
indulgence of such a luxury.
All I had to do was to brace my nerves to meet Cave Charteris in the
careless forgetful spirit in which he had evidently met me, and to
ignore for the time being that we had ever dreamt of becoming more to
one another than we were that night. I admired the coolness with which
he had stood the shock of meeting me; at that moment I could not believe
that his affected nonchalance was _real_—and I would imitate it to the
best of my ability. So, in a few minutes, I descended to the _salle_
again, looking as much as possible like my usual self! I found the girls
alone there, the gentlemen not having yet returned.
‘What do you think of him?’ asked Tessie eagerly, as I entered. ‘Do you
not find him very handsome and distinguished-looking? He appears a true
Englishman to me, with his fair yellowish hair and those very blue
eyes!’
‘_Bah!_’ exclaimed Madame Marmoret, who had just brought in a dish of
trout and laid it on the table. ‘What is the good of an Englishman over
another man, except that he has more money and is a greater fool, so
that he parts with it easier.’
‘You are not very complimentary, Madame,’ said Ange. ‘You seem to forget
that we are English.’
‘I wish I could, _petite_ Ange! ’tis the worst part about you—except the
want of money.’
‘You are always talking about money, Madame. Monsieur l’Abbé would tell
you, you should not think so much about it. I am sure we have as much as
we require.’
‘That is as it may be!’ grumbled Madame, ‘but other people have not as
much as _they_ require, perhaps—_voyez_? Mère Fromard could tell you a
different story if you were to ask her.’
‘Madame!’ interposed Tessie, in a tone of remonstrance, which sent the
servant muttering out of the _salle_.
‘You are a greedy old pig!’ called out Ange playfully after her, but
Tessie seemed to be afraid of what the pleasantry might lead to, for she
drew the little maid to one side and bade her be silent.
When first we sat down to dinner, Cave Charteris appeared to be so much
overcome by the news he had heard, as to be rendered almost silent.
Every moment or so, I detected him glancing furtively at my mourning
dress and pallid features, and he answered the questions addressed to
him by Mr. Lovett in monosyllables. I suppose he felt sorry that he had
wounded my feelings, and the occasion of his doing so had revived some
remembrance of the many little kindnesses he had received at the hands
of my dear mother when she had imagined she was showing an interest in
the affairs of the man who was to become her son-in-law. However, under
the influence of the good dinner that Madame had prepared for us, and
the good wine which had suddenly made its appearance on the table—heaven
alone knows from where, for these unusual luxuries had a habit of
springing into existence with us as unexpectedly as if they had been
shot up through a trap-door at a stage banquet—Mr. Charteris soon shook
off his temporary embarrassment, and became the most talkative of the
company. Of course he was informed of the importance of the day, and
insisted upon our drinking the little maid’s health with three times
three. Strange to say, I joined in these birthday congratulations almost
as readily as if nothing had occurred to disturb the tranquillity of the
morning. If I were a little paler and more silent than usual, the
Lovetts attributed it to the suddenness with which I had encountered my
mother’s friend, and Mr. Charteris had no notion that I had been
otherwise since I had lost her.
When conversation had been restored amongst us, he addressed the greater
part of his to myself, taking care, however, not to make the slightest
allusion to the old days at Norwood.
‘I should think that seeing me walk in here, Miss Marsh’ (I perceived,
with gratitude, that he had quite dropped his old familiar habit of
calling me ‘Hilda’), ‘must have been almost as great a surprise to you
as meeting you was to me. And it all came about by the most remarkable
coincidence possible. Have you told Miss Marsh where you met me?’ he
added, turning to Mr. Lovett.
‘I have not. I wish now that I had, but my girls there wanted to
astonish her with the appearance of a young man (young men being a
rarity in St. Pucelle), and kept your identity a dead secret until you
stood upon the very threshold.’
‘Ah! just so. Well, Miss Marsh, I had been staying in Paris for the last
three months, and had promised my uncle, Sir John Stephenson, to visit
his son at Rille before I returned home again.’
‘Sir John Stephenson’s son! What, Fred Stephenson?’ I exclaimed, roused
into interest.
‘Yes; do you know them? By Jove! now you mention it, I remember Fred
telling me he had crossed to Antwerp after the summer holidays with a
Miss Marsh, who was going to Artois. And it never struck me for a moment
that it could be you. How strangely things do turn out! Fancy! the very
name itself not arousing my curiosity.’
‘I see nothing strange in it. It is so many years since we met.’
‘It is indeed. Let me see how many—four, five, six?’
‘Five.’
‘Five years ago. By Jove! so it is. I was a nice article at that time, I
dare say; I hope you will find me improved now, Miss Marsh. However, to
return to my story: it was not the first visit I had paid to Rille, for
I was over there last autumn, when I had the pleasure of making the
acquaintance of Mr. Lovett and his daughters.’
‘On the occasion of the Bishop of Otaheite holding a confirmation
there,’ interposed Mr. Lovett, ‘Tessie and Ange were both confirmed.
They had not had an opportunity of being so before, as, when the last
Protestant bishop visited Rille, Ange was too young and Tessie had the
measles. Young Stephenson was confirmed too, if I remember rightly. A
nice-looking lad with fair hair.’
‘Yes, that is he! I am going to ask you by-and-by, Mr. Lovett, if I may
have him over here for a day’s shooting. I promised him a holiday, and
my coming to St. Pucelle sooner than I intended cut him out of it.’
‘Certainly! We shall be delighted to see your cousin, or any friends of
yours, Mr. Charteris.’
‘Thanks, so much! Well, Miss Marsh, where was I?’
‘I am not quite sure,’ I answered slowly.
‘You were going to tell us how it came to pass that you met papa again,’
said Ange, blushing violently at the sound of her own voice.
I saw Cave Charteris’s eyes rest on her admiringly, and the thought of
what Mrs. Carolus had told me just flashed across my mind and made me
turn a little more sick than I was before. Only for a moment, though;
the next I knew that nothing could make any difference to the relations
in which he and I now stood to one another. I am not a woman hard of
belief, but where I have been once deceived, I never trust again. Cave
Charteris’s pleasant voice roused me from my reverie.
‘Ah! just so. Thank you, Miss Lovett, for the reminder. Whatever else I
may forget, you may rest assured I shall never forget the occasion of my
first visit to Rille! Well, there I was stranded last week in one of my
very worst humours—and when you have seen me in one of my very worst
humours, I do not think you will ever wish for the pleasure again. I
have a shocking bad temper, Miss Lovett!’
He said ‘Miss Lovett,’ but he meant Ange; and the little maid laughed
softly to herself in answer. I am quite sure she did not believe him.
‘I had given up my rooms in Paris, and gone to Rille for a few days _en
route_ to my own “diggings.” And there I received a letter to say that
scarlet fever had broken out at home, and I must not think of crossing
till the doctor said it would be safe for me to do so.’
‘Oh dear! how sad!’ exclaimed Tessie, sympathetically.
She was our only spokeswoman.
‘Very sad! isn’t it? But it would be foolish of me to go, especially as
they don’t want me. Well, just as I was swearing at this—I beg your
pardon, ladies, I mean just as I was reviling my ill-luck—in walks your
good father there, to whom I confide my difficulty, telling him, at the
same time, that if I can secure comfortable quarters at St. Pucelle, I
think of taking up my abode there for a short time, in order to have
some forest shooting. Now you can guess all the rest. Mr. Lovett, with
his usual benevolence, offers me the shelter of his roof for as long as
I can behave myself, and his friend the Baron de Nesselrode has kindly
volunteered to be my guide through the Piron. What a number of
accidents, all coming together, conduce to this pleasant meeting! Well,
I suppose it _was_ to be, Miss Marsh, and I, for one, have every reason
to congratulate myself that it has occurred.’
I tried to say that it pleased me also, though the lie left my faltering
tongue but tamely.
‘You have an engagement with De Nesselrode to-morrow morning, I
believe?’ remarked Mr. Lovett.
‘Yes; that is the reason of my sudden appearance here. He wrote me word
that they have got up a boar-hunt in the forest for the day after
to-morrow, and I was anxious to see what sort of a mount I could get in
St. Pucelle. I do not wish to send to Rille or Brussels, unless it is
absolutely necessary. Are there any horses to be hired about here?’
‘None to be hired, but plenty to be bought.’
‘It makes no difference to me; indeed, I would prefer to purchase if I
can get a place to keep the animal in.’
‘We have an excellent stable and cowshed adjoining the house, which are
both at your service, being, unfortunately for us, empty.’
‘That is settled, then; and will suit me far better than the hiring
system. If I remain here, as I hope to do, for a few months, I should
not care to be riding a different animal every day.’
‘And the horse you will purchase here will serve your purpose better
than any town-bred animal. It takes a stout-hearted little beast, I can
assure you, not to turn tail in forest-shooting. But here it seems bred
in their bone. Even our sheep-dogs have wolf-blood in them, and will
attack anything.’
‘I anticipate any amount of pleasure in the forest,’ said Mr. Charteris;
‘and if your friend Monsieur de Nesselrode is half as courteous as his
letters, I am sure we shall get on well together.’
‘He is a thoroughbred gentleman,’ replied my guardian; ‘one of the
_ancienne noblesse_, who are so fast dying out of France. He is
expatriated for the present—the Château des Roses having been one of the
shooting-boxes of the family—but when he comes into his own again, there
will not be a finer courtier throughout the length and breadth of the
land.’
‘So Miss Markham has given me to understand. She has often mentioned the
Baron de Nesselrode to me.’
‘Oh! do you know Sophy Markham? cried Ange, with a childish giggle.
Cave Charteris took her cue at once.
‘Who _doesn’t_ know her?’ he answered, laughing. ‘She is ubiquitous, and
appears to be an institution wherever I go. I have met her at Paris, in
Italy, Switzerland and Germany; at Brussels and Rille, and now I find
her settled in St. Pucelle. I begin to believe I am never to be rid of
Miss Sophy Markham, and if I crossed to Dover to-morrow, I should expect
to see her face hanging over the rails of the landing-stage to welcome
me home.’
They all laughed heartily at that, and Tessie said slyly:
‘Do you not admire her, then?’
‘Come, come, my girl! no scandal,’ interposed Mr. Lovett, quickly.
‘Ah, papa! I forgot you were one of the followers in her train.’
‘I am sure papa is no such thing,’ said Ange, indignantly. ‘_She_
follows papa, you mean!’
‘Here, Charteris! let us get out of this,’ exclaimed her father, rising
from table. ‘You see what you have to expect from putting your character
in the hands of a couple of little scandalmongers like these. If you
will not take any more wine for the present, we will stroll down the
town and speak to Jacques Despard about the horses. I know he has
several nice colts for sale, and if you are anything of a horseman, you
may like the mettle of a young, untrained animal. De Nesselrode will be
up here by-and-by, I have no doubt, when I shall have the pleasure of
making you personally acquainted. Tessie, my dear, should the Baron
arrive before I return, tell him to make himself _chez lui_ till I come.
Now, Charteris.’
And, with a bow that included us all three from the latter, and a nod
from Mr. Lovett, the two gentlemen took their way down the street of St.
Pucelle.
Oh, how I longed to go to bed and bury my bursting brain in the feather
pillows; to find myself quite, _quite_ alone in the friendly darkness,
and with the key in my door turned against all intruders.
My head ached from repressed thought; my heart was sick and trembling; I
felt really ill for want of giving vent to my emotion: yet, so strong
are the influences of custom and society, that I dared not tell the
girls I needed rest. On the contrary, I eagerly denied their assertion
that the sudden appearance of Mr. Charteris had upset me, and disdained
all need of the affectionate sympathy they tendered me in consequence.
‘My dear children,’ I said impatiently, ‘I assure you you are mistaken.
I am not half such a fool as I look. I confess it startled me to see Mr.
Charteris walk into the room, because, for aught I knew to the contrary,
the man might have been dead and buried by this time; but that fact
alone will tell you that we could not have been very intimate friends in
the olden days.’
‘Still, I suppose you know _something_ about him?’ persisted Ange.
‘How do you mean “_something about him_?”’
‘Why, about his family, and so forth.’
‘Indeed, I do not. I never paid a single visit to his family—I believe
they are Northampton people!’
‘Norfolk, I think,’ put in Ange, timidly; ‘at least he said so when we
first saw him at Rille.’
‘Oh, indeed! then I dare say you know a great deal more about him than I
do. The fact is, Tessie,’ I continued, longing to have the explanation
over once and for ever, ‘Mr. Charteris was introduced to us, many years
ago, by an old friend of my dear mother’s. He was hanging about town
then, doing nothing, I fancy—any way, he used often to run down to
Norwood to see us, as you have heard him say, and—and—we were rather
intimate for a few months—that is, until his father sent him to travel
on the Continent, since which I have heard nothing of him until we met
to-day.’
‘You knew none of his sisters or brothers, then—nor his parents?’
‘I knew none of the family but himself. I think he used to speak to me
of his sisters, but I forget how many there were.’
‘He has only one sister now,’ said Ange, again. ‘I wonder if it is she
who has the scarlet fever.’
‘Most likely! Have you heard what profession he is in?’
‘I do not think he has any,’ replied Tessie. ‘He seems to be a man of
independent property! Did you hear him say that it made no difference to
him if he bought a horse or hired one.’
‘Yes; I suppose, then, he must have come into some money. He was not
rich when we knew him. I remember that! He was to have read for the law,
and my dear mother used to say—she said, I remember—I can recall her
saying——’ But no! put it which way I would, that sentence utterly
refused to come to the birth. I had harped, unwittingly, on a string too
nearly connected with my dead hope, and the discovery broke me down.
‘Oh, mother! mother!’ I cried aloud, as I put my head in Tessie’s lap
and sobbed without restraint. Of course they attributed it to the
associations which the presence of their guest had recalled to my mind,
and they were as tender and sympathetic with my distress as though they
had been to blame for it.
‘I am so sorry we kept it a secret from you, dear Hilda,’ they exclaimed
simultaneously; ‘it was such a silly thing to do: but we had not the
slightest conception that you had met him before, and under such happier
circumstances. Do forgive us, Hilda! You will make us so very miserable
if we think we have made you so.’
I assured them solemnly, as I rose and dried my eyes, that the girlish
trick they had played upon me had nothing to do with my present state of
mind. I should have felt the rencontre just as much I said, and truly,
had I been prepared for it weeks beforehand; and I only required a few
hours by myself to subdue the unusual emotion which old memories had
raised in me. My answer had just the effect I desired.
‘Do go to bed, then, dear Hilda,’ urged Tessie, ‘and sleep off the
remembrance of this unhappy evening. I am sure you will like Mr.
Charteris very much when you come to speak to him more freely, and
perhaps, in a few days, you will congratulate yourself that you have met
him again.’
How little I thought, as I dragged myself up to my room, that her
surmise would prove true.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER V.
CURED.
The chief feeling that I experienced when I came to review the events of
that evening, was, that my unexpected encounter with Cave Charteris
seemed to have dragged my mother out of her grave again. Until that
moment I had believed that, little by little, I was learning to bear my
great loss with hope and patience, if not with cheerful resignation. I
had begun to think of my darling as in another and better world than
this—if not actually in heaven, at least amongst the redeemed, willing
to wait the moment of her perfection, and entirely separated from all
earthly pain and trouble.
I had commenced to lose sense of the waking nightmare that had haunted
me for so many weeks after her funeral; of the sight of the dead pinched
face under the shrouding sheet; the waxen hands folded stiffly on her
sunken breast; and over it all those horrid heavy clods of clay, the
rattle of which upon her coffin lid would echo in my heart, I verily
believed, until they fell upon my own. I felt the loss of her counsel,
her companionship, and her love as keenly—perhaps more keenly than when
I had been first deprived of them; but I thought that time had cured me
of the terrible human anguish with which I had laid her in the grave.
But now it was all revived. The sight of Cave Charteris had brought it
back again; brought back the memory of her maternal interest in him, her
confidence in his affection for me, and her self-reproach when we
discovered that his attentions meant nothing, that she had not better
guarded her one ewe lamb from the deceitfulness of the world.
I sat down in my room, and tried to disentangle my thoughts from my
present position and cast them back to that period when Mr. Charteris
had been so intimate with us at Norwood, and to see if my riper judgment
could acquit him of having wantonly played with my affections. But I
remembered it all too plainly, and I could find no excuse for his
behaviour. He had not had the plea of extreme youth to exonerate his
want of thought. He was five-and-twenty, and I nineteen. He must have
known in what light his persistent intimacy would have been accepted by
my mother and myself. Besides, though he had never mentioned the subject
of marriage, he had told me, over and over again, that he loved me, and
hinted in every possible way at the probability of a future spent
together.
It was the old story—he had loved and ridden away; and, for many months
after his defection, I had sincerely believed my grief to be incurable.
I was very young and innocent at that period, and credited my darling
mother with cold-heartedness when she told me that a woman might love
more than once in a lifetime, and better the second time than the first.
I had been reared close to her side, and knew nothing of the wickedness
of the world nor the elasticity of the human heart. I was one of those
girls who believe that it is impossible for a married woman to flirt, or
an engaged woman to break her word, without being branded with public
scorn; and a great deal of my grief for Cave Charteris’s desertion was
due to the humiliating idea that my neighbours had observed his
attentions, and considered me degraded by the loss of them.
This sort of unworldly ignorance did not long continue. I was not
stupid, and as my girlhood merged into womanhood, my eyes became opened
to the depravity of the human race; and I learned to despise Cave
Charteris instead of myself, and to see that he had been utterly
unworthy of the affection and admiration I had lavished upon him.
Yet the romance of my first disappointment continued to haunt and vex
me, long after common sense had bid me rejoice at the escape I had had
from marrying a man who was false as well as fickle.
It may be remembered how difficult a task I found it to tell the history
of my heart to poor dear Charlie Sandilands, when he came to see me at
Norwood, on the day after my mother’s funeral. It was the false
sentiment that still hung about Cave Charteris’s hair and eyes and
voice, that made the task so difficult. I would not have taken the man
back to my affections at that moment, if he had crawled to my feet to
sue for forgiveness, because I knew him to have been utterly heartless
with regard to me—yet I could have cried over a letter from him, or a
lock of his hair, or an old glove that he had worn, simply because they
reminded me of the faith which I had cherished and lost.
Women and men are very different in this respect. Where a man’s trust
has been betrayed, he becomes hard and bitter, and thrusts from him, as
far as possible, everything likely to bring the loss which he has
sustained to his mind again. A woman may be as disinclined to pardon as
himself—as determined never again to be deceived, but she cannot give
up, all at once, every little tender memory that made her dead life so
much brighter than her living one. She takes the ring off her finger—the
hair from her locket—but she does not throw them away. They are like the
dead to her. They have no more part in her existence, but they are
sacred, and she covers them up with tears and prayers, as we strew rue
and rosemary upon our corpses.
So, long after my own sense of what was good and true had condemned my
weakness in shedding one tear for Cave Charteris, the beauty and
animation and charm of manner which had first enthralled me continued to
exercise their baneful influence over my mind. I had seen that beauty
again to-day and heard that voice, and what did I think of them, looking
and hearing with eyes and ears that had been healed of love’s sickness?
Well! he was very handsome, very handsome indeed; there was no doubt of
that! I remembered having heard it said, in olden days, that he had been
painted by one of the Royal Academicians as ‘Jason,’ and having been
very anxious to see the picture for which he stood.
I could well imagine that he had made an excellent model for ‘Jason.’ He
was tall, but not too tall: men over six feet in height are seldom well
proportioned. His characteristics were strictly Saxon. He had yellowish
hair, cropped close to his head in soldier fashion: china blue eyes—not
large, but very keen and piercing: a ruddy complexion, and finely-shaped
nose and mouth. The worst fault in his appearance was the light colour
of his eyebrows and lashes: and the worst fault in his expression was a
look of animalism, which I seemed never to have noticed until I sat down
in my own chamber and taxed my mental vision to view my old lover by the
light of the new eyes with which I had regarded him that evening.
It was not only because I remembered his behaviour to myself that the
expression of his face had seemed cruel to me, as he chattered so
affably across the dinner-table. Five years’ self-indulgence had
doubtless strengthened the outward signs of his inward character; but
whether he had borne those signs in embryo when we were first
acquainted, I could not then recall. If he had done so, I was probably
too innocent to have interpreted them aright. But there was no mistake
about them now.
I was considered to be an excellent judge of character, and I had
examined Cave Charteris that evening as if he had been a perfect
stranger to me; and read but too plainly, in the formation of his head
and features, that though he might be as beautiful as the Adonis, his
intellect was held in subjugation to his passions, and hatred or revenge
would have the power to turn him from a polished man of the world into a
brute.
As I came to this conclusion, deliberately and without the least rancour
in my mind against him, I called out aloud, ‘_Thank God!_’ for I felt
that I was healed. As the poor diseased and dying creatures whom we read
of in the Holy Scriptures touched the hem of the King’s garment, and
experienced an immediate cure, so, in one moment, the conviction dawned
upon me that what I had been fearing was a mere ‘bogey,’ raised by the
shock of Mr. Charteris’s sudden appearance amongst us; and, save for a
slight feeling of shame that I should have troubled my head about him
for so long, I should be able to meet him on the following morning with
an outstretched hand and a heart full of gratitude for my deliverance.
Tessie had suggested, as I parted with her, that in a few days I might
congratulate myself on having met him again. But a few hours had elapsed
since then, and I was already full of self-congratulations. For, had I
_not_ encountered him, I might have gone on nursing my sickly
sentimental memory of the past, until the grave swallowed me and it
together.
I felt such a sudden transition from the melancholy despondency with
which I had entered my chamber, to a state of freedom and
whole-heartedness, that I could almost have passed to the opposite
extreme, and sung, in the gratitude of my spirit. I was like a person
who has burthened himself for half his life with carrying about a heavy
bundle that nearly weighs him to the ground, but which he considers it
imperative, on account of its value, not to part with; but who,
unexpectedly discovering it is composed of worthless rubbish, casts it
from his shoulders. How light and airy he must feel! How light and airy
_I_ felt when I saw my bundle of rubbish at my feet!
My dearest mother was no longer under the sod then. She had risen again
to paradise, and taken the place my love had assigned her amongst angels
like herself.
I threw myself on my knees beside my bed, and prayed to her more than to
Heaven, begging her to look down and see how earnest and sincere I was
in saying I was cured, and had no regret on earth, excepting that _she_
was not there to rejoice with me.
I was so excited at my discovery, that I could not sleep until I had
seen the girls again, and disimbued their minds of the idea that I was
fretting in my solitude.
I opened my door, and looked down the corridor. The light was streaming
in a thin line of silver beneath theirs. I stepped across, and entered
gently. Tessie was already in bed and half-asleep; but Ange was leaning
in her nightdress on the windowsill, with her pretty bare feet upon the
uncarpeted floor.
‘Ange! Ange!’ I exclaimed, ‘you careless child! you will catch your
death of cold some day, if you are not more prudent.’
‘Is that Hilda?’ asked Tessie, rousing herself at the sound of my voice.
‘Ange, why are you not in bed yet? It must be an hour since we came
upstairs. And as for you, Hilda, I hoped you were fast asleep.’
The little maid coloured up at being detected dreaming in the moonlight,
and jumped lightly into bed; whilst I approached to her sister’s side.
‘No, Tessie dear, I have not been to sleep; but I am all right again
now, and I thought I would like to come and tell you so.’
‘Oh, I am very glad, Hilda! Ange and I have been very unhappy about
you.’
‘I know you were; but it has all passed away. Mr. Charteris’s presence
recalled my dear mother, and the days when she was with us, so
powerfully to my mind, that I felt quite paralysed at seeing him; but
that kind of thing cannot last, you know. I have taken the woman’s
universal remedy—‘a good cry,’ and my brain and heart are cleared by it.
I hope Mr. Charteris did not notice my manner; but he will find it quite
different to-morrow morning.’
‘I don’t think he did,’ replied Tessie; ‘we talked a good deal of you
when papa and he came back again—until the Baron arrived, in fact. Mr.
Charteris does not seem to remember much about the time when he knew you
before; but he thought it quite natural that the sight of him should
bring the remembrance of your mother back to you.’
‘Did he get his horse?’ I asked cheerfully.
‘He has hired one for to-morrow, and Jacques Despard is going to get a
lot of colts up from the valley for him to see and choose from. And only
fancy, Hilda, when Arthur Thrale heard of the boar-hunt to-morrow, he
would insist upon accompanying them! and the Baron says he cannot ride a
bit, and is sure to be thrown. Don’t you think they ought to prevent his
going?’
‘How can they prevent it?’ exclaimed Ange, ‘the Piron is open to
everybody. And Mr. Charteris said it would do Arthur Thrale good to be
thrown, and take some of his “_sheek_” out of him. What is “_sheek_,”
Hilda?’
‘Has Arthur Thrale been here again?’ I said, too vexed to laugh at the
little maid’s pronunciation; for since Mrs. Carolus had told me of his
mother’s letter, I had had reason to suspect that some, at least, of the
lad’s money was lost at our house.
‘Yes, he came in as usual. They have all been as happy as possible,
playing cards together,’ replied Ange, with an air of complete
innocence. ‘I could hardly take my eyes off dear papa’s face this
evening. He did look so perfectly contented, sitting there with his
friends! I think there must be very few people in this world who can
“come down” as gracefully as he has—dear good old father! He, who has
been used to a Court, and the society of the highest nobles and the
greatest geniuses in the land, to be able to amuse himself in that way
with one or two chance acquaintances! But it is all his goodness. He
hardly ever complains. He is more like an angel than a man!’
This was the little maid’s favourite assertion, and usually she expected
no answer to it. But on this occasion the silence of Tessie and myself
seemed to strike her unpleasantly, and she reiterated her words in the
form of a question:
‘Isn’t he more like an angel than a man, Tessie?’
‘Papa is certainly very good and contented,’ replied her sister, but she
sighed as she said it. ‘I have often wondered that he does not more
regret the scenes he has been accustomed to.’
‘My wonder is that he ever left them,’ I remarked. ‘Why he left England
in the first instance to bury himself abroad, and the Court of Prussia,
where I understand he was such a prime favourite, in the second.’
‘Because he is so good!’ cried Ange, determinately.
‘He had his own reasons for doing so, I have no doubt,’ added Tessie,
quietly, ‘but he has never told them to us.’
‘Well, I am surprised to think he can prefer St. Pucelle, and what one
may call the “scratch” congregation he musters here, to the life he has
been accustomed to. Cards and gossip must be sorry exchanges for the
gaiety, intellect, and society that compose a Court circle. Besides, I
hate cards.’ I had made up my mind to say something more about the cards
before long. ‘They appear to me very uninteresting if played for love,
and they are certainly very dangerous when played for money.’
‘Do you think papa would do anything that is dangerous?’ exclaimed Ange,
firing up in a moment.
‘Perhaps not, but what is safe for your father may be dangerous for
others; such a boy as young Thrale, for instance.’
‘Ah! if he went playing with anybody—yes! but that is just a part of
papa’s goodness. He will do what he does not care for himself, to oblige
another person. I am sure Arthur Thrale’s company is a great bore to
him, but he will never tell him so, if he can keep him out of harm.’
‘Oh, I see!’ I replied, and said no more.
Ange took my words for what they seemed to be, but when I bent down to
kiss Tessie’s face, I found it wet with tears.
‘If you think it wrong for young Thrale to come here, tell him of it,’
she whispered, ‘for I cannot.’
I did not answer her in words, but I kissed her a second time and
squeezed her hand in acquiescence, and she understood what I meant. I
did not intend to speak to Mr. Thrale, of whom I knew too little to be
entitled to take any liberty with, but I thought that, if an opportunity
occurred, I should be able to muster up courage to mention the subject
to the Baron.
As I lay down that night, the thought of dear old Charlie Sandilands
came into my head, and I felt so glad to think that I had not known the
state of my heart when he asked me to be his wife. Because, if I had, I
might, in the lonely position in which he found me, have been tempted to
resign all further trouble by accepting his offer. So many women have
been drawn into marriage for want of money, or companionship, or
protection. And I knew now, even better than I did then, that I never
could have been even decently contented as Charlie Sandiland’s wife.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER VI.
TWO SERPENTS.
I do not think that if Tessie and Ange had foreseen that the presence of
Mr. Charteris under their father’s roof was to entail a series of visits
from Miss Sophy Markham, they would have rejoiced so greatly at the
acquisition of their boarder. But she certainly lost no time in paying
the preliminary one. As I descended to breakfast the following morning,
I was surprised to hear her shrill voice from the _salle_, and stopped
midway in my journey to demand of Madame Marmoret in the kitchen if it
were possible that I heard aright.
Madame Marmoret, with her head tied up in a red handkerchief and gold
earrings dangling from her ears, looked like a picturesque and pleased
old gipsy.
‘For certain it is she,’ was her reply, ‘and why not? _Ma foi!_ one
would think, to see your surprise, that eight o’clock was an unheard-of
hour to get out of bed. It may be the custom in England, but for St.
Pucelle, thanks to the Blessed Virgin and the good Abbé, who teaches us
better, we do not waste the precious time here, when it is running on so
fast to carry us to our graves.’
It was very strange to me that Madame Marmoret, who as a rule hated all
the English visitors to St. Pucelle, was never heard to speak ill of
Miss Sophia Markham, who was the most offensive of them all!
Was it possible she could imagine her old master would be so foolish as
to think of taking a second wife from amongst the surplus female
population of Great Britain; he whose habits and associations were so
thoroughly naturalised to the country of his adoption, and who was too
poor even to support his daughters and himself? Well, there were no
limits to be put to the folly of men, young or old, in that respect; but
I trusted from the bottom of my heart, for the girls’ sakes, that it was
not true. The mere supposition, though, made Miss Markham’s voice sound
more screechy and silly than usual, as I continued on my way to the
_salle_. There she sat, in her walking things, a little apart from the
table, evidently waiting till the meal should be concluded, to carry out
the design that brought her there.
Mr. Charteris jumped up from his seat as soon as I appeared, all smiles,
bustle, and animation, and set a chair for me in my own place.
I was so glad it should be so; that the remembrance of anything in our
former intimacy that was likely to make us feel uncomfortable in the
present seemed so completely to have escaped his memory, and left him
free as myself to exchange the courtesies of a new acquaintanceship.
Of course my first duty was to say good-morning to Miss Markham, which
was returned apparently with much fervour. There had never been any open
hostilities between this lady and myself. On the contrary, we were
invariably most polite to one another; nevertheless there existed a
secret feud between us, which, like a smouldering fire, only required
the breath of opportunity to fan into a flame. She knew, although I had
never said so, that I ridiculed her silly conceit, and despised her
falsehood, and she never felt quite easy in consequence when in my
presence.
On the morning in question, I disturbed her in the midst of an animated
conversation with Mr. Charteris, which had set the cherries in her hat
in violent commotion, which had not quite subsided when a shake from my
hand made them begin bobbing again.
‘Miss Marsh the latest of the party!’ she commenced, with an affected
giggle; ‘why, I’m quite astonished! I thought you were the “goody-goody”
one that always set an example for the rest!’
‘I’m not aware that I have ever given the world of St. Pucelle reason to
make such an assertion, Miss Markham,’ I said, as I drew my chair to the
breakfast-table and applied my attention to bread and butter and
radishes.
‘Well! I’m sure Mrs. Carolus thinks so, or she would not be so
constantly seeking for your company. _I’m_ not good enough for her, not
half. She’s so afraid I shall corrupt Willy. He! he! he! She says I have
too many admirers to be a safe companion. Now, Mr. Charteris, _do_ you
think I’ve got too many admirers?’
‘A great many too many, Miss Markham, for the peace of one!’
‘He, he, he! Well, I can’t help it if the men _will_ come after me, can
I? I can’t get a little whip and whip them away! It was always the same
ever since I was a little girl. I don’t know what it is in me, but they
_will_ come!’
‘It is very easy to see what it is that attracts them, Miss Markham,’
said Charteris, with a side-glance at Ange that made the poor child
choke over her _tartine_.
‘Oh!’ cried Miss Sophy, with a conscious look that went first down and
then up, and was accompanied by a titter; ‘you’re too bad, Mr.
Charteris! you really are! but you’re just like the rest of them. That
is what makes Mrs. Carolus so jealous of me! She will tease me to tell
her what gentlemen say to me, and then—when I do—oh, goodness! She does
give it to us—doesn’t she, Tiddywinks?’ to the yapping terrier which she
carried as usual under her arm.
‘You have to pay the penalty of being so fascinating,’ remarked
Charteris, who seemed to be the only one disposed to talk to her.
‘Everybody knows what a terrible list of killed and wounded you leave
behind you wherever you go. Look at poor young Thrale! You’ve “mashed”
him entirely, as the young ladies in America say.’
‘Mr. Charteris! How _can_ you? What dreadful nonsense you are talking!
As if Arthur Thrale could ever be anything to me but a friend!’
‘I should think no one in their senses could dream of imagining
otherwise,’ I interposed, rather too bluntly perhaps. ‘Why, Arthur
Thrale is not more than twenty, is he?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what age he is,’ replied Miss Sophy, rather
crossly—the topic didn’t please her—‘I never ask gentlemen their ages,
and it has nothing whatever to do with the point in question.’
‘When had Love anything to do with Age?’ said Mr. Charteris, still
laughing at her, though she could not see it. ‘Young as poor Thrale is,
you know that you have made him your slave. Why do you suppose he
intends to join the boar-hunt to-day, unless it be to hear his prowess
sounded in your ears?’
‘Don’t you think it would be kinder to persuade him not to go, Mr.
Charteris,’ I observed, ‘since I understand that his prowess is more
likely to land him on the ground than anywhere else? He is an only son,
you know, and if anything were to happen to him, it would doubtless
cause great distress to his family.’
‘Are you acquainted with the Thrales, Hilda?’ asked Mr. Lovett, in
surprise.
‘No, sir, not personally; but Mrs. Carolus has received a letter from
Mr. Thrale’s mother in England, begging her to look after her son as
much as possible whilst he is here, and she repeated the contents of it
to me.’
At these words, two of our little party grew considerably rosier; one
was Miss Sophia Markham, the other my reverend and saintly guardian.
‘It strikes me as a very extraordinary proceeding,’ ejaculated the lady,
‘that Mrs. Carolus should go about St. Pucelle confiding the contents of
her private letters to people who are almost strangers to her.’
‘Most remarkable!’ acquiesced Mr. Lovett; ‘and I should have thought
that had Mrs. Carolus required an adviser on the subject, the pastor of
her church would have been the properest person for her to confide in.’
‘Do you doubt my word, then?’ I asked him quickly.
‘Oh no, my dear Hilda! by no manner of means. If I am disposed to blame
any one, it is Mrs. Carolus. Will you tell us what the rest of the
letter contained?’
‘No, sir; I would rather not. It was told me privately, if not as a
secret; but if you will ask Mrs. Carolus herself, I have no doubt she
will hand the epistle over to you.’
‘Well, I never heard of such a thing before!’ exclaimed Miss Markham,
tossing her head; ‘and it only convinces me of what I have known all
along—that Mrs. Carolus is as mean as she is spiteful. She can repeat
tales against other people, but she would be very much surprised if
other people commenced to tell tales against her. I have held my tongue,
of course, because I have made it a rule through life never to say a
word against another woman’s character, but I could tell stories, if I
chose, that would shut every door in St. Pucelle against Mrs. Carolus
to-morrow, and make the few hairs that poor old fool of a husband of
hers still possesses stand on end with horror!’
‘_I_ never said she had repeated tales against any one,’ I remarked
quietly; ‘but I conclude from your observations that you have read the
letter yourself, Miss Markham.’
She coloured still deeper at this insinuation, but she was not to be
caught by it. She was an old war-horse, and had been in battle too often
to lose her vantage-ground so easily.
‘No, I have not!’ she said as stoutly as if she were speaking the truth.
‘I receive too many letters of my own to have any time to spare for Mrs.
Carolus’s rubbish. But, knowing her as well as I do, I am perfectly
aware that she is not likely to exchange ten minutes’ conversation with
any woman without trying to damage the reputation of another.’
I felt this conclusion to be so true that I had nothing to say in reply,
and, the meal being ended, Mr. Lovett proposed they should walk towards
the Château des Roses, where the meet for the boar-hunt was to take
place.
‘Are you really going to walk up the hill?’ cried Miss Sophy, with
sudden animation, as though the thought had never struck her before.
‘Then I shall walk with you—that is,’ with an arch look at Charteris,
‘if you will consent to be troubled with a stupid thing like me. I love
a brisk walk in the morning. There is nothing like it for health. I
always go on principle; and as for Tiddy boy, he couldn’t eat his dinner
if he hadn’t a run first. Could you, my Sweetikins?’
Sweetikins and Mr. Charteris and Mr. Lovett having simultaneously
declared that there was nothing they would enjoy so much as the company
of the fair Sophia, they all set off together to walk up the hill,
whilst Tessie and Ange looked after them from the window with wistful
eyes. I thought how they would have enjoyed to see the hunting-party
start; how Tessie would have admired her Baron on horseback, and little
Ange would have been pleased with everything; and I asked them why they
had not also proposed to accompany their father.
‘Oh no!’ said Tessie, almost shrinking at the idea. ‘Papa would have
mentioned it if he had wished us to go. Besides, we have so many things
to keep us at home. We are not idle people like Sophy Markham. Didn’t
she go on in a horrid manner with Mr. Charteris, Hilda, shaking her head
at him in that absurd way? I felt so ashamed of her.’
‘He doesn’t like it; that’s one comfort!’ observed Ange, over her
shoulder.
‘No, I should hope he had better taste, or he would hardly be pleasant
company for us,’ I responded heartily.
I had done with him myself, but it would have been a step lower to take
in humiliation, to have watched him in an earnest flirtation with such a
battered heart as that of Miss Sophy Markham.
‘I do not think Mr. Charteris is the sort of man that either of you will
make a _friend_ of; but the acquaintanceship even of one who brought
Miss Markham in his train would not be calculated to render our home
more comfortable.’
The girls both looked startled at my assertion.
‘Not make a friend of, Hilda?’ repeated Tessie; ‘isn’t he _nice_, then?’
‘Very nice, dear, as far I know; but for friendship you want something
more than “_niceness_.” You want sympathy in taste and feeling; and I
fancy Mr. Charteris is too much addicted to field-sports to make a good
companion for women. Arthur Thrale is more fitted for such a capacity.’
‘_Arthur Thrale!_’ ejaculated Ange with glorious contempt, as she
slipped away in answer to a loud demand for her in Madame’s sweet voice.
‘Hilda,’ said Tessie, coming closer to my side, ‘what was it that
Arthur’s mother wrote to Mrs. Carolus about? Was it—of—of—what we were
speaking last night?’
‘Not exactly, Tessie ; but I much fear it has something to do with it.
It concerned a loss of money on the boy’s part.’
‘Oh, what _shall_ we do? what _shall_ we do?’
I had never heard such a tone of despair in Tessie’s quiet voice before,
and when I turned to look at her the tears had gathered in her eyes
again, and her face was drawn with anxiety and pain.
‘Don’t cry, Tessie,’ I said, kissing her—‘it is no fault of yours; and
if boys will be foolish, they must pay the penalty. However, I mean
to——’
‘My dear Miss Lovett, I hope I am not interrupting you!’ exclaimed the
voice of Mrs. Carolus, at the open door; ‘if so I will go back at once:
indeed, I told my Willy I should not be absent more than ten minutes,
but I just wanted to ask the question, have you seen Sophy Markham
anywhere this morning?’
I had started forward to receive our visitor, and give Tessie time to
dry her eyes, or the intelligence that she had been crying would have
been communicated to the whole of St. Pucelle before sunset. I felt more
kindly towards Mrs. Carolus also than to Miss Markham, because, although
they were equally ill-natured to the world, the one had been more
friendly to me than the other.
‘Yes! Miss Markham has but just left us,’ I replied. ‘She was here
before breakfast, and went up the hill directly afterwards with——’
‘Not with Mr. Charteris?’ exclaimed Mrs. Carolus, as she clasped her
hands and sunk into a chair.
‘Yes, with Mr. Charteris and Mr. Lovett!’ I replied, unable to help
laughing at the tragic attitude she had assumed.
‘Oh, Miss Marsh, it is too bad! it is too bad of her altogether! I cast
her off from to-day. I refuse to have anything more to do with her! She
is not a respectable person to be associated with, nor to have living in
one’s house.’
‘I think you are rather hard on her, Mrs. Carolus. She is very silly, I
know, but you need have no fear that Mr. Charteris will do more than
laugh at her! Indeed, I am afraid he was laughing at her all
breakfast-time, but she did not seem to see it.’
‘She never sees anything, my dear. She is eaten up with self-conceit,
and if the whole world bowed down before her in mock homage she would
take it for real, and accept it as her due. She fancies she is a giddy
little butterfly, and that gentlemen admire her childish voice and ways,
and are attracted by them. She would no more believe that they ridicule
her afterwards than that they imagine her to be more than
five-and-twenty! It is the _truth_, my dear girls. If I had to die the
next moment, I should say the same thing. She actually had the audacity
to tell me last week that Mr. Charteris had guessed her age at
five-and-twenty. And she is five-and-fifty if she is a day!’
Tessie and I both laughed so immoderately at this, that we encouraged
Mrs. Carolus to proceed with her complaints.
‘When she came and told me that she had seen Mr. Charteris at Rille, and
persuaded him to come to St. Pucelle, I looked her in the face and said
solemnly: “Sophia Markham, can you assure me that if that young man
comes here you will not carry on with him in the disgraceful way you did
last year at Brussels, because, if so,” I said, “tell me at once, and I
will leave the place before shame drives me from it.” For if you could
have seen, my dears, the things that went on between those two, you
would have been as disgusted as I was.’
‘Come, Mrs. Carolus!’ I deprecated, ‘you are taking away Mr. Charteris’s
character now, remember, as well as that of your friend.’
‘Oh! my dear, it wasn’t _his_ fault! Poor fellow, what could he do with
a woman running after him morning, noon, and night, and dodging him
wherever he went? His life was a martyrdom to him. But where Sophia
takes a fancy she has no mercy!’
‘This becomes serious!’ I replied, with mock gravity; ‘what shall we do
to save him?’
‘Nothing will save him,’ said Mrs. Carolus, seriously. ‘Who is to
control a woman of that age? I cannot do it! And fancy her having the
forwardness to attack him the very first morning. She would have come
round last night if she had dared. But, bless my soul! isn’t that Sophy
herself coming down the hill? So it is. The hunting-party must have
started, then; she wouldn’t leave them one moment sooner, you may take
my word for that! Oh! she has caught my eye, I _must_ nod to her. She
has the most suspicious temper in the world, and would be sure to think,
if she saw me here, that I had come up expressly to abuse her. Ah! now
she must come in, of course, and I shall be obliged to walk through the
town with her while she makes herself conspicuous at every step. Well,
Sophy dear, have you enjoyed your walk?’
To hear these two women abuse each other when apart, and to see the
marvellous transformation that took place in their speech, manner, and
expression, as soon as they found themselves together again, was to
witness one of the most curious phases of this world’s deceit.
‘Sophy dear’ bent down and kissed Mrs. Carolus’s cheek before she
answered:
‘Pretty well! I wish you had been with us, Lizzie! Monsieur de
Nesselrode looked so graceful on horseback! and _your_ flame Charteris
has a seat like a centaur. I really think the horse Despard has sent him
would throw any ordinary rider.’
‘_My_ flame! You wretch!’ cried the married lady, with girlish
indignation, as she made a playful poke at Miss Sophy with her parasol.
‘I wonder what my Willy would say, to hear you talk like that. And when
I have just been telling Miss Marsh and Miss Lovett how you ran away
from us before breakfast this morning, in order to see the gentlemen
start!’
‘I didn’t do any such thing,’ responded her friend. ‘You are such lazy
creatures, I should get no breakfast till ten o’clock if I waited for
you. And it was really incumbent on me to be home again somewhat early
this morning, Lizzie; for I must alter that new costume of yours before
you wear it again. It is crooked in the back, and makes your nice
straight figure look quite like that of an old woman.’
‘Thanks, dear! You don’t know what a clever creature this is, Miss
Marsh! She makes all her own dresses and bonnets and mantles; and she
has been so good-natured, since she has been staying with me, in
altering and manufacturing my wardrobe, that I am sure I don’t know what
I shall do when she is gone.’
‘Perhaps I don’t mean to go,’ said Miss Markham, facetiously.
‘You droll creature! Not if some one of your numerous admirers proposes
to carry you off?’
‘Ah, that would be a different thing. But if I married to-day,’
continued Miss Sophy, with the confidence in marriage of eighteen, ‘you
would send back for me to-morrow!’
‘Did you ever hear such impudence!’ cried Mrs. Carolus, appealing to us.
‘She actually imagines I couldn’t do without her! Well, Sophy, in that
case, I suppose I should have to give house-room to _il caro sposo_ as
well.’
‘I rather fancy you would! Do you think I should come without him? I
shall make much too great a pet of my husband for that.’
‘Well, he’ll be a lucky fellow, whoever he is, when the day comes,’
responded Mrs. Carolus.
Tessie and I, listening open-mouthed to this extraordinary example of
feminine friendship, could not but believe that the last sentence at
least was intended for sarcasm. But if so, no inflection of the
speaker’s voice betrayed it. The words left her lips as glibly as though
she were sounding the praises of her dearest friend.
I turned away, sick at this exhibition of deceit, and thinking what
mischief it was _not_ in the power of such women to create, who could
lie with impunity, not only to each other but themselves. I stood there,
silent and thoughtful, until, to my relief, I heard their voices in
chorus, declaring it was time to go.
‘Good-bye, Miss Marsh! Good-bye, Miss Lovett! Come, Sophy dear,’ said
Mrs. Carolus, blithely.
‘All right, Lizzie dear,’ replied the other. ‘Ta-ta, girls! I dare say I
shall see you again before long;’ and so they interlinked arms, and went
down the road together lovingly.
Tessie and I turned and looked into each other’s faces.
‘Is it not sickening?’ I asked her, after a pause.
‘It frightens me,’ she answered; and as I saw her pale face and lips, I
believed that the insight she had experienced to falsehood had really
caused her fear.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER VII.
ALL FOR TESSIE.
It was about this time that my eyes became first opened to the fact that
old Mr. Lovett, notwithstanding his benevolent aspect and many
protestations of affection, was exceedingly selfish with regard to his
daughters. How those girls worked for, waited on, and believed in him!
From the making of his bed and the setting in order of his room, to the
starching and ironing of his muslin bands and the cooking of his
particular dainties, Tessie and Ange did everything for him with their
own hands. And what was better, they did it cheerfully. There was never
any question with them as to _which_ should undertake the duties; they
only vied with one another to perform them first. I never saw two
daughters more devoted to their father in my life: yet there was a
difference in the manner with which they served him.
Ange did it with blind unwavering faith in the privilege she enjoyed. It
was impossible not to read her perfect admiration and pride in the
expression of her face. Her father was the highest creature in the world
to her, and she the most favoured of girls to be able to call him hers.
But with Tessie’s service, willingly though it was rendered, there was
mingled a sort of pitying fondness—more like the protecting love we
accord to a child, proud though we may be of him, than the humility with
which we wait upon our superior. I used to think—and I thought a great
deal in those days, more perhaps than was good for me—that the affection
of Ange for her father resembled what a wife’s should be for her husband
(but so very seldom is); whilst Tessie’s was more like that of a mother.
But without thus analysing their mainsprings, no doubt remained as to
the love and duty they both displayed for him. And he took it all as his
due. I could have forgiven him that, considering the relationship he
bore to them, had he only appeared sometimes to consider them in return.
But his selfishness never permitted him to perceive that they made daily
sacrifices on his account; that they lived on the commonest fare,
pretending they liked it, whilst he enjoyed his flesh or fowl; and sat
up late at night to recopy some faded old sermon, whilst he played cards
with his friends in the _salle à manger_. Were he in the humour for it,
he would keep them running up and down stairs on errands for him all day
long, until they were quite faint with fatigue—especially Ange, who,
notwithstanding her bright, fugitive colour, was, like most English
girls reared on the Continent, anything but strong. And when he had kept
them up long beyond their usual hour for rest, he would suddenly
remember that a surplice, or a shirt, or something equally important,
must be ‘got up’ by the following afternoon, and compel the poor
children to be out of bed again the first thing in the morning, in order
to get the washing and starching and ironing over before the more
important duties of the day began.
Ange had said once that few people could ‘come down’ as gracefully as
her father had. I used to think, on the contrary, that he had never
learned how to ‘come down’ at all, but was like a spoilt child who will
insist upon having all he wants, never mind what others may suffer in
consequence!
His selfishness was especially apparent in the little trouble that he
took to give his daughters any amusement. There were so few excitements
in St. Pucelle; the days slipped away one after another in such a
monotonous round of uneventfulness, that it was cruel to debar these
girls of even one pleasure which they might have legitimately enjoyed.
Yet they might have been two little nuns, for the seclusion in which he
kept them. Except to visit the poor or to walk in the fields, they
scarcely ever left the house, and days sometimes elapsed without their
putting their feet outside of it.
Their visit to the Château des Roses had been a real treat to them. They
had talked of it for hours beforehand and for weeks after; but though
the Baron de Nesselrode had begged Mr. Lovett over and over again to
take us there for another day, he had put it off for his own business,
until the matter had died away. On more than one occasion, during my
residence in St. Pucelle, a little dance was got up by the visitors in
the principal hotel, and the English curé’s pretty daughters were asked
each time to be present.
I had seen Ange’s lovely face flush with anticipation, and Tessie’s
also, though in a less degree, but it had all come to nothing. Mr.
Lovett had hummed and hawed and smiled sweetly on the inviter, and as
good as promised his girls should attend the party, and then dropped the
subject altogether. Once I ventured to ask Tessie why she did not remind
her father of his promise, as he might, perhaps, have forgotten it; but
she shook her head, and said it would be better not. Ange and she had no
dresses fit to appear in, and papa would not like to see them worse clad
than the rest.
‘But a muslin dress, Tessie!’ I urged, ‘costs very little, and nothing
could be more suitable for a dance in St. Pucelle!’
Still Tessie shook her head, and begged me to say no more about it, as
it was impossible.
It was on that occasion, I remember, that I asked her, downright, what
allowance her father gave her sister and herself for dress—and how they
spent it.
‘_Allowance!_’ she repeated, with open eyes. ‘Oh, Hilda! how can you
think dear papa could afford to make us an allowance! You do not nearly
understand how poor we are! Do you know, we should be unable to get on
as well as we do, if it were not for the kindness of papa’s old pupil,
the Prince de Ritzburg. He often sends us a bank-note in his letters,
and when we lived near the Court, and any English nobles or princes were
staying there, papa was invited to the state dinners, and there was
always a bank-note put under his plate. Wasn’t it good of him? But he
owes a great deal to papa, who was almost his only tutor.’
‘But, Tessie!’ I said, more interested in the question of her allowance
than the gratitude of Prince Francius de Ritzburg, ‘if you have no money
who pays for your dresses?’
‘We have only got a decent one apiece,’ she answered, laughing. ‘I think
Madame paid for these; I know she went over to Artois in the spring and
bought them, and grumbled terribly at the price. But they couldn’t have
cost much, Hilda; they are only serge.’
‘I do not think anything you could wear could become you better,
Tessie,’ I said truthfully; ‘still, I do wish your papa would let you go
to this party. Ange _would_ enjoy it so.’
‘Of course she would—the darling! But we cannot afford it. It is quite
impossible! so please say no more about it, Hilda.’
Yet the very same day, at dinner, Mr. Lovett had a dish of _salmi_ of
wild duck stewed in port wine placed before him, and I noticed that
Madame drew the cork of his second bottle of Moselle before we left the
table. It was such things that, little by little, let daylight in upon
my mind, until it was enabled to read his whole character aright.
Monsieur de Nesselrode had been constantly at the house since the day we
spent at the Château des Roses, but no one saw much of him except Mr.
Lovett. He would salute us on entering the room, or passing in the road,
and address a few polite inquiries respecting our health; but the strict
etiquette which is preserved between the unmarried of both sexes,
abroad, was in full force with Ange and Tessie, who never seemed to
speak to a man except in monosyllables.
I confess this extreme decorum rather oppressed me. I was always longing
to have my inferior mind drawn out and elevated by those superior to
itself, and my dear mother had encouraged me in the idea that men were
meant to be friends to women as well as lovers; and that it was not
always necessary that the last state should be worse than the first. I
had been very proud, at one time, to be considered worthy of engaging in
argument with such a clever man as Mr. Warrington, and had felt the
greatest interest in trying to defeat him with his own weapons, which is
not an unusual termination to such intellectual skirmishes. And now, to
see Tessie’s drawn-down lip and Ange’s look of dismay, if I stopped to
say more than ‘_Bon jour, monsieur_,’ when we met Armand de Nesselrode,
was aggravating to me. I wanted very much to speak to him about young
Thrale, for I had an intuition that he would try and befriend the boy,
but it was quite impossible that I should do so before Mr. Lovett or
either of the girls.
I had determined, therefore, that when an opportunity occurred for me to
see the Baron alone, I would set all the absurd rules of foreign
etiquette at defiance, and tell him just what was in my mind. More than
that, I do not mind confessing, at this date, that on several occasions,
when I was able to leave the house by myself, I walked up and down the
hill that led to the château in hopes of seeing him; but fate was
against me, and we never met. It was to be, however, and at last it came
to pass.
One day, about a fortnight after Mr. Charteris had taken up his abode
with us, most of which time he had spent at the château, or in the
forest of Piron, some caprice—want of excitement, probably—took him back
to Rille for a couple of nights.
We had been feasting—that is, I should say, Mr. Lovett had been
feasting—more than usually well since his guest’s arrival, and owing to
that, I suppose, on the very day he left us the old gentleman was
obliged to take to his bed with a bilious attack.
Of course, his girls were in a fine fright. If their father had been
seized with _cholera morbus_ they could scarcely have gone about with
longer faces, and the fact that he could not eat anything seemed to fill
them with greater alarm than anything else. In vain I assured them that
fasting was the best thing possible under the circumstances; in vain did
Madame Marmoret, who was in her very worst temper, thank the Blessed
Virgin, in a voice that might have been heard at the other end of St.
Pucelle, that her master at last knew what it was to have an empty
stomach (though why that circumstance should render her so grateful I
did not at that moment understand). Poor Tessie and Ange continued to
look scared and pale, and could not be persuaded to leave their father’s
bedside even to eat their own meals.
It was a very lonely day for me, for I did not consider the duties of a
ward included making a third attendant in the sick-room; and I could not
help feeling just a little wickedly pleased, with spiteful Madame
Marmoret, that my guardian’s greedy selfishness should not go entirely
unpunished.
‘Mamselle Ange is calling you,’ said Madame, in her curtest voice, as
she thrust her head into the room where I was sitting, and ruminating on
these things.
‘Won’t you do as well?’ I answered, as curtly as herself, for the
woman’s persistent rudeness was beginning to make me angry.
‘You can go and ask her,’ she said, as she slammed the door in my face,
and I felt if this kind of thing went on much longer, I should be hung
for putting arsenic in Madame’s matutinal cup of coffee.
I walked out of the front door and through the garden-gate in the side
wall to the corridor, rather than pass through her domains whilst she
remained in so vile a mood.
‘What is it you want of me, Ange?’ I asked.
‘Only to give a message to Monsieur le Baron, if he should call,’ she
whispered. ‘Papa’s kind regards, and he is too ill to see him to-night.
Do you mind, Hilda dear? I would ask Madame, but she is in such a
dreadful temper. Tessie and I have had to do everything for ourselves.’
‘I don’t mind at all. It is no trouble. But are you not coming down to
tea?’
‘I think we might, one at a time, as papa is asleep.’
I persuaded her to return with me, and, protected by each other’s
presence, we made a raid upon the larder, and procured all that was
necessary for the meal ourselves, whilst Madame called us by every name
she could possibly think of. We were ‘pigs,’ ‘thieves,’ ‘beggars,’
‘paupers,’ ‘vile English,’ everything, in fact, that was bad; but we
laughed in her face, and carried off our bread and butter and coffee to
the _salle_ in triumph.
And then I made pale little Ange refresh herself before returning to the
side of her petulant old parent, when it was her sister’s turn to come
down and be comforted with the assurance that the attack would do her
father all the good in the world, and bring him out again in the course
of a few days with a more brilliant complexion than before.
They stayed with me as short a time as they could, and I did not press
them to remain longer. I had made a great resolution to speak to the
Baron about Arthur Thrale that very night. Such an opportunity as now
presented itself might never occur again, and I was determined not to
lose it.
So, after the girls had left me, I sat in the _salle_ awaiting his
arrival.
About eight o’clock he came. He looked rather startled as he perceived
that, except for myself, the room was empty, but I soon told him the
reason.
‘Mr. Lovett is not well to-day, monsieur, and the girls are nursing
him,’ I said in my faltering French—I could speak the language better
with any one than with the Baron—‘but I have little doubt he will be
downstairs again to-morrow.’
‘In that case, mademoiselle,’ he answered, ‘I suppose I had better take
my leave.’
I can see him now as he uttered those words with a slight tone of regret
in his voice.
I was sitting in the broad windowsill, which was framed in a clustering
wreath of vine and fig leaves, and he was standing leaning against the
wall, and looking down upon me with those unfathomable dark eyes of his,
and his broad-brimmed soft felt _sombrero_ in his hand.
‘Will you not rest yourself for a few minutes before you start again,
monsieur?’ I said politely, waving my hand towards a chair.
‘If I thought—if I believed,’ he stammered—‘that is, if I shall not be
infringing the rules of etiquette, I shall be only too much pleased to
exchange a few words with mademoiselle.’
‘It is according to your own pleasure,’ I answered. ‘In our country, the
rules are not so strict with regard to ladies and gentlemen conversing
together as they are in yours. We have much greater freedom in England
than you have here.’
‘And much happier marriages in consequence,’ he said, as he seated
himself. ‘Yes, I have heard as much, and there is scarcely a Frenchman
who does not deplore the formalities of society that require him to
marry a wife to whose mind he is a stranger.’
‘Yet I suppose none of you are found brave enough to break through so
formidable a barrier as custom,’ I replied, curious to find out, on
Tessie’s account, if my companion were already _fiancé_ or not. ‘You
yourself, monsieur, have doubtless been compelled to follow the example
of those who have gone before you.’
‘Ah! mademoiselle! I fear you are laughing at me. You forget the
terrible reverse which my fortune has experienced. What father would
promise the hand of his child to a beggar? It is true that I was
_fiancé_ to my cousin, Mademoiselle Blanche de Beaupré, before I lost my
money, when our betrothal was at once cancelled.’
‘You do not appear to have felt it much,’ I said, smiling.
‘Can I be expected to do so? I used to see my cousin at intervals in the
presence of her parents. She was very charming—not strictly handsome,
perhaps, but distinguished in appearance and innocent as a child. She
would doubtless have been all I could have desired in the Baronne de
Nesselrode, but I never spoke two words to her alone in my life.’
‘Do you think she would have made you happy, then?’
‘Ah! mademoiselle, happiness is hardly the thing we think of most in
married life. Society requires so much of us, it is impossible for a
husband and wife to be always together; and to feel more than a proper
esteem for one another would soon prove _ennuyante_; more than that, a
source of unhappiness, because it would create a longing for each
other’s company which could not be gratified.’
‘I cannot bear to hear you talk like that, monsieur. Marriage with us is
meant to be the holiest and happiest state possible on earth—the fusing
of two lives into one; and you speak of it as if it were only a matter
of convenience, and a wife were an unpleasant necessity that the less
you saw of the better.’
I spoke petulantly, for I thought if these were his real sentiments,
what chance was there that he would ever cast his eyes in the direction
of my modest, gentle Tessie, who, though not calculated, perhaps, to
shine in the world of society, would make so sweet and true a companion
for a man’s privacy.
‘Pardon,’ he replied, ‘I spoke of marriage as it is amongst us—not as it
should be. But I confess to never having met with these perfect unions.
I regard them as I do heaven, as something that may exist, but which I
am never likely to see.’
‘I have seen many of them. They are common enough in our country,’ I
answered, thinking of my mother’s love for my dead father, and of dear
Mrs. Sandilands, who had never changed her widow’s cap and gown,
although she had parted with her husband ten years before.
‘So I have heard. In England people marry very early also, and on little
money. That seems almost incredible to me.’
‘Do you think, then, that money is the source of happiness, monsieur?’
‘I have been led to believe that no _woman_ can be happy without it.
When a man loses his fortune, he loses all chance of being loved; and
that is a proof, is it not, that my belief is true?’
‘But I do not admit the truth of your assertion. A woman who is worth
anything, will love a man all the more for his misfortunes. She is born
to share and lighten his trouble. Whilst he is prosperous, he has
friends all over the world. When he is unlucky, he should always be able
to turn with confidence to the true heart that beats for him at home.’
‘Ah! mademoiselle! you are speaking now, not of women, but of angels.’
‘Then there are plenty of people on earth that ought to be in heaven!’
‘We have not such women in this country,’ said the Baron, musingly.
‘There must be good and bad in all countries, monsieur, if you only knew
where to look for them. It is a common saying in ours, “A good daughter
makes a good wife,” and it is very true. To understand a woman’s real
character you must see her at home, with her parents and her brothers
and sisters; and if she is loving and kind to them, she is pretty sure
to be the same to you.’
I said this, intending it, of course, to direct his thoughts towards
Tessie, but he did not seem to take the hint.
‘You must have had an excellent mother, mademoiselle, to teach you like
this,’ was all he said.
‘Ah! she was so good, monsieur! Had you known her, you would never have
thought evil of any woman again for her sake. My father was once very
rich, as you were, and he lost almost all his money too, through an
unlucky speculation. We had to give up our grand house and carriage and
horses, and come down to live in furnished apartments. The loss broke my
father’s heart, but I never once heard my mother complain. She never
left his side until he died, and then she never left mine until she died
herself. She was an angel to both of us; a true womanly angel, such as
you may find in hundreds on this earth, if you have only the sense to
know them when you see them, and the worth to deserve their love when
you have found it.’
‘I am not worthy! I shall never deserve such love!’ he said, in a voice
of pain.
‘Ah! monsieur, forgive me for speaking so boldly, but how much worthier
you might make yourself of it, if you tried. I hope you did not think me
forward for asking you to stay here for a few minutes to-night, but I
have a great wish to intercede with you—not for yourself, but another.’
‘For Monsieur Charteris?’ he exclaimed quickly.
‘_Mr. Charteris!_’ I echoed, somewhat scornfully. ‘_No!_ If he chooses
to do what is unwise, it is no concern of mine! He is quite old enough
to look after himself. The one for whom I desire to ask your
interference is young Arthur Thrale. He is only a boy, monsieur, and his
relations at home are uneasy at the way in which he is going on in St.
Pucelle. Will you try and prevent it? Will you speak to him yourself,
and advise him to leave off coming here in the evening, and especially
to give up playing cards? You know he loses money over them, and it is
his father’s money he is wasting, not his own! Even if it were, I should
ask the same thing of you: to stretch out your hand and save him. I
cannot do it myself, for various reasons, the chief being that I live in
this house. Will you do it for me?’
‘How can I tell the lad to give up that which he knows I practise
myself?’ replied Monsieur de Nesselrode, with a very crestfallen air.
Should I be brave and go on and say all that was in my mind concerning
him? His humble air reassured me. I resolved that I would.
‘Monsieur,’ I commenced again, pleadingly, ‘give it up on your own
account also. It has already caused the misfortune of your life, and the
continuance of it must be putting the day of your deliverance further
and further off.’
‘It is,’ he muttered in a low voice.
‘Oh! monsieur! you have suffered very much! I know you have! Don’t drive
away the bright hope that is in the future for you—the double hope of
being able to move in your own sphere in the position your ancestors
assigned you, and of making a little heaven for yourself at home. Do
give up gambling, for the sake of your friends if not for yourself: for
the sake of those whom you lead into wrong with you, and for the sake of
the future.’
To my intense surprise, the Baron leapt to his feet and seized my hand.
‘I _will_!—I _will_!’ he exclaimed fervently. ‘As there is a God in
heaven, mademoiselle, I swear to you I will never touch a card from this
day again. You are right! you are _quite_ right! Every word you have
uttered sounded on my heart like an inspiration. I have been miserable
for months past. Each day I have gone deeper and deeper into debt, and
put, as you say, the day of my liberty further away from me. It may be
years before I am free, but I will never touch a card again so long as I
live.’
‘Oh! I am so glad! I _am_ so glad!’ I cried, excited beyond measure at
the unexpected success of my undertaking; ‘and you will never regret it,
monsieur! I am sure you will not! And Mr. Thrale, too! You will speak to
him and point out the folly of his losing his money for a mere game, and
give him all the good advice in your power.’
‘Monsieur Lovett will be very much surprised at my determination,’ said
the Baron, suddenly struck with the difficulties that stood in the way
of reformation.
‘Tell him the truth! It is the best and most honourable course to
pursue, and surely he can never so far deny his profession as to blame
you for giving up what your conscience warns you against. And devote
yourself to your hunting and shooting and reading, monsieur, until that
happy time comes when you can go back to Paris and hold your own again.
Perhaps you may marry Mademoiselle de Beaupré after all—who knows?’
‘Never, mademoiselle! Neither she, nor any other Paris belle. Doubtless,
when I am once more in the enjoyment of my fortune, many women—such
women as I spoke of to you—will be ready to spend it for me, but it will
be in vain. You have opened my eyes this evening to the fact that there
are other women in this world—disinterested, whole-hearted and true—and
if I can find such an one willing to share my poverty, I will work day
and night till I place her in the position my wife should hold: if
not—why I will do without a Baronne de Nesselrode at all.’
‘Oh! you will find her, monsieur! never fear, if you will only keep a
sharp look out,’ I answered, laughing.
If he had told me outright that he meant to try his luck with Tessie, I
should hardly have believed more firmly than I did that her sweet face
was in his mind’s eye as he spoke to me. It made me very glad. Her
loving heart and patient endurance deserved so bright a lot that no one
could envy her the best fortune that might occur. And _this_ fortune, I
felt as I looked at Armand de Nesselrode, would be very bright indeed.
The young man had so much good in him, beneath the crust of despondency
and defiance of public opinion which his self-entailed losses and the
desertion of his relatives had caused him to assume, and I was sure that
renewed prosperity and the love of a true heart would bring out the best
points of his character instead of obliterating them.
To some people misfortune acts as a blister instead of a purge: it
irritates instead of humbling them; and when the wheel turns in the
right direction, gratitude makes them good. So I believed it would
be—was already commencing to be—with Armand de Nesselrode; so I
fervently hoped it might be, for Tessie’s sake.
‘Mademoiselle!’ his soft voice broke in upon my reverie, ‘if I am not
presumptuous in hoping you will listen to me, may I at some future day
tell you of the chapter of accidents which led me to this downfall?’
‘I shall be very pleased to hear it, monsieur!’
‘I do not wish you to think me worse than I really am—you, who appear to
believe I have still the capability of rising.’
‘I _do_ believe it!’
‘Then I will try and make your belief a certainty,’ he answered, as he
bent over my hand and raised it, foreign fashion, to his lips, before he
bowed and left me.
I was very much gratified with the success of my boldness. I felt that I
had gained even more than I strove for. Monsieur de Nesselrode would not
only give Arthur Thrale some sterling good advice, but do what was
better still—set him the example of doing right.
For what Mr. Charteris and my guardian might think of the new
arrangement I cared little. They must play by themselves for the future.
It was not likely I should interfere to save either of them.
But the Baron was quite different. The Baron had a great end in view
which he was destroying by this fatal proclivity for gaming, and no
means could have been too strong to adopt in order to rescue him.
Particularly as it was all for Tessie!
As I sat in the evening light after he had left me, thinking of the
interview just concluded, and softly stroking the hand he had raised to
his lips, I kept on repeating, in a tone of the greatest satisfaction to
myself, that I had done it all for Tessie.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER VIII.
A REVELATION.
I had begun to be ashamed to meet Mrs. Carolus. Ange’s silver earrings
had only cost twenty-five francs, but I had not the wherewithal to pay
for them, and I felt mean and shabby every time I saw her, and did not
broach the subject of remuneration.
At last I resolved to make a second appeal to Mr. Lovett about my money.
I did not feel timid this time; I felt angry. It was inconsiderate of
the old man to leave me without funds for so long. It was part of the
same selfishness which made him so unmindful of his daughters’ feelings,
but I was not his daughter, whatever he might call me before strangers,
and I determined to put up with it no longer.
I am afraid I had not the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. I never
have had. I can endure a great deal when it is accompanied by an open
and honest dislike, because we cannot always command our fancies in this
world. But anything like shuffling, meanness, or deceit, has ever
inspired me with the supremest contempt. So when Mr. Lovett, having
recovered his bilious attack, was moving amongst us again. I seized the
first occasion of finding myself alone with him to broach the subject.
‘I think you must have forgotten my allowance, Mr. Lovett. I have been
obliged to contract a debt in consequence, and am anxious to defray it.’
I did not speak very cordially, nor do I suppose I looked so. The things
I had heard and seen lately were beginning to make me feel a species of
dislike for my guardian. And his manner had not been as affectionate to
me the last two days, either. Whether he suspected me of having had any
hand in the Baron’s determination not to play cards again—a
determination which hitherto he had faithfully kept—I do not know, but
more than once I had caught him looking at me in a suspicious manner, as
if he thought me rather a dangerous animal than otherwise; and one or
two observations he had let fall with respect to his dislike to see
young women mix themselves up with affairs that did not concern them,
rather confirmed me in the idea that more had come to his knowledge than
I intended.
But that gave me little concern, and I spoke to him now as boldly as was
my right to do, considering that I only asked for what was my own. He
pretended to have forgotten all about it.
‘Your allowance, my dear! Is it due?’
‘I don’t know, Mr. Lovett; but if not, will you please give me some in
advance, as Mrs. Carolus, was kind enough to procure something for me in
Rille, and I have not been able to repay her yet?’
He looked up at me, over the number of the _Siècle_ he was perusing,
with an air of great concern.
‘I am very sorry to hear that, Hilda. To go in debt is to fall into an
error which I have most carefully guarded my own children against. I
would rather see them run about with bare feet than wear stockings and
shoes for which they were unable to pay.’
‘I dare say, sir, but I could not help it. I wanted something by a
certain time—it was those earrings for Ange’s birthday—and as you had
not remembered to give me any money, and Mrs. Carolus offered to pay for
them till you did, I thought it was no harm to let her do so.’
‘Dear! dear! dear! This sort of reckless expenditure makes me feel very
sad. It is a habit that will grow upon you, Hilda, and you must check it
at once. And for my child’s birthday, too; I should never have approved
of your offering as I seemed to do had I known it was not paid for.’
‘Well, sir, it was not my fault. I would have sent the money at once if
I had had it to send. And, I assure you, you need not alarm yourself
about my getting into debt; my mother and I contrived to live on our
little income without owing a penny to any one. I am not a child, you
must remember, first learning the use of money. I was my mother’s
housekeeper for years, and paid for everything we had. No one knows
better than I do how to economise and make money go to its farthest
extent.’
‘I am very glad to hear it, my dear, for, unless you marry well, you
will have to live a very frugal life,’ he said, and he was actually
returning to the study of his newspaper without another word.
I stood by him for a few minutes in silence, and then I began again:
‘But I _must_ have some money now, if you please, Mr. Lovett. I cannot
put off paying Mrs. Carolus any longer.’
‘Well, I suppose you must; but I do hope this is the last time I shall
ever hear of your having run into debt, Hilda. It is a terrible habit
for a young woman to get into. How much do you owe Mrs. Carolus?’
‘Twenty-five francs for the earrings, but I want a lot of things for my
own use, Mr. Lovett, which I really cannot go any longer without.’
‘_Twenty-five francs!_’ he repeated, as if those words were the only
ones he had heard, ‘that is a ruinous sum, surely, to expend on a
birthday present!’
‘Hardly so, for an ornament. I thought them wonderfully cheap. However,
cheap or dear, they have to be paid for.’
‘Twenty-five francs!’ he ejaculated, for the second time. ‘Why, it would
keep a poor family for a week, and to think it should be wasted on a
mere piece of vanity!’
‘It is better than spending it on champagne or losing it at cards,’ I
answered wickedly.
Mr. Lovett flushed up to his handsome brow with anger. I could see the
rosy colour mantling there, above the top of the _Siècle_, and I thought
for a moment he was about to rebuke me for my impudence. But policy got
the better of his annoyance, I suppose, for he elected to say nothing,
at all events on that subject.
‘You shall have the money this afternoon,’ he observed coldly, after a
pause; ‘I have no change in my pocket at this moment.’
‘I shall have been here three months next week,’ I said, ‘so I suppose
you will call that the quarter, will you not, Mr. Lovett?’
But to this question he vouchsafed no reply.
‘You said something, you know,’ I continued, ‘about making it eighty
pounds a year instead of fifty; but if that would be inconvenient to you
just at present, I am quite willing to take what was first arranged
between us—that is twelve pounds ten—at all events to go on with. You
could make it up to me next quarter if you thought fit.’
‘You shall have the money this afternoon,’ repeated my guardian, in an
offended tone, and leaving me quite uncertain whether he intended to
accept my offer or not.
Finding I could get no further satisfaction I slipped out of the room,
humming an air as I went. I would not let the old man see how vexed I
was, but I remembered that Mr. Warrington had promised to make it a
proviso that my actions were to be subjected to no control, and I
determined that, if matters went on as they were doing now, I would take
advantage of that clause and leave St. Pucelle.
Only for a moment, though—the next I felt that I could never separate
myself from Tessie and Ange—and—and others there for such a trifle as an
old man’s temper. The hours passed away until the afternoon, when I had
agreed to take a walk with Tessie; and as I entered my room to dress, I
spied a small round white packet, which decidedly held money, placed
upon my toilet-table.
‘Hurrah!’ I mentally ejaculated. ‘It is all right, then! Here is my
allowance.’
I quickly unfolded the coins. Inside their wrapper was written in
pencil:
‘MY DEAR HILDA,
‘I enclose you the means by which to defray your debt to Mrs. Carolus,
and I sincerely trust it may be the last you will ever incur,
‘Yours truly,
‘HORACE LOVETT.’
I counted the money that lay upon the table. Twenty-five francs alone.
The exact sum I owed for the earrings, and not a sou over to purchase
any necessaries for myself.
It was too bad! I could have cried with vexation and disappointment. All
the trouble I had taken had been thrown away, and it was evident that if
I wished to get anything more out of the Reverend Horace, the unpleasant
scenes I had passed through would have to be enacted over again. But I
resolved it should not be so; that I would not subject myself to any
further humiliation, but write straight to Mr. Warrington instead, and
inform him of the state of affairs and ask him to settle matters with
Mr. Lovett for me.
My face was still heated with excitement and annoyance, when Tessie
knocked at my door and asked if I were ready to go out. I threw the
coins into a drawer and joined her at once.
I was not in a mood to prove very pleasant company, but anything is
better than staying at home to brood over trouble. The good influences
to which we lay ourselves open, always make it appear less in the fresh
air.
Tessie was an excellent sympathiser. She knew when to talk and when to
be silent, and on the present occasion she let me walk along in converse
with myself only, until shame roused me to be more serviceable and
friendly.
‘Where is Ange, Tessie?’
‘Lying down at home with a headache.’
‘That is very unlike the “little maid,” is it not?’
‘Yes! Not that she exactly confessed to a headache; but she was lazy,
and preferred reading one of the books Mr. Charteris brought from Rille
the other day.’
‘Ah! _c’est autre chose!_ You look as if you had a headache too,
Tessie.’
‘Do I? I have been a little worried, that is all.’
‘Poor child! which of us is without worries? Have we any particular end
in walking this way?’
We were on the road to the Château des Roses.
‘Yes, I want to call at the Fromards’. Guillaume is worse to-day,
and—and papa has sent them a little money.’
‘That is very good of him,’ I remarked sarcastically, wishing that
‘papa’ would be just before he was generous.
We were scarcely prepared, however, for the scene that awaited us in the
cottage of the Fromards. It was a poor place, with plastered walls and a
deep thatched roof that almost extinguished it.
The sides of the house were yellow and green with dirt and decay, and
the smoke of the peat fire was issuing from a hole in the roof, instead
of by its legitimate egress, the dilapidated chimney. In front of the
entrance door ran a gutter of filthy water, and a large heap of manure
and refuse was banked up against the wooden stand which was to be seen
outside each door in St. Pucelle, and on which the slaughtered pigs were
laid out to be halved and quartered.
A few fowls regaling themselves on the dunghill recalled to my mind the
fact that it was here Ange came whenever she wanted fresh eggs for her
father’s breakfast; but I had barely had time to take in the
surroundings of the place, before we were saluted by a loud howl from
the doorway, and the Mère Fromard rushed forward, and, seizing Tessie’s
hands, began explaining in her Wallon _patois_ how her good Guillaume
had gone to his rest but half an hour before, and she was left a lonely
widow, with five poor children to battle for in this hard world alone.
Before we knew what was going to happen to us, we had been dragged into
the presence of the defunct Guillaume, who already lay shrouded and
stretched out on two planks in a corner of the general sitting-room,
whilst his younger children played on the ground beside him, and one or
two fowls, more inquisitive or hungry than the rest, were picking up the
crumbs of potato that had fallen on the brick floor.
As we entered the house and her eye fell upon the corpse, I saw Tessie’s
face turn as white as death itself. Not knowing how far she was
accustomed to such scenes, I wanted to draw her back again; but Madame
Fromard insisted upon her going forward.
‘Why should she not see him?’ she exclaimed; ‘she has watched him dying
for months past; for the want of bread, mamselle, the bread it was his
right to have had, and which would have saved him may be from the grave
this day. And she was not afraid then—neither she nor Monsieur le
Curé—and now that he is silent for ever—that he can no longer speak and
ask for his own—why should she be afraid to look on his face, unless it
be to remember how it has come to be so still and so silent?’
The woman seemed as if she had gone out of her senses, as she pushed us
to the very feet of the corpse and snatched the covering from off its
face.
‘Look at him,’ she said loudly, ‘and remember that he died from want!
Sixty—a hundred francs would have saved him, mamselle; and he was owed
five hundred and fifty, but couldn’t get it. Ah, Guillaume! husband of
my youth! father of my children! thou art gone to the judgment-seat of
God, to arrange a fearful reckoning for them that sent thee there so
long before thy time.’
‘Madame! madame!’ said Tessie, who unaccountably to me had begun to sob
in unison with Mère Fromard. ‘Don’t speak like that—pray don’t! We have
all felt for you so much, and papa sent you this in hopes it might be of
use to poor Guillaume’ (putting something timidly into the woman’s
hand); ‘and he would have done more if he could; you know he would,
madame.’
Mère Fromard unclasped her hand and displayed a five-franc piece, then,
with sudden energy, sent it spinning to the other end of the brick
floor.
‘A five-franc piece!’ she cried scornfully; ‘a five-franc piece, when he
owes him five hundred and fifty. Oh! it is no use to shake your head at
me and cry, mamselle. The time is past for that! I have been very
patient for a long, long time, but I didn’t think it would end like
this. I thought my poor Guillaume would have got up again to see after
that which was his—all his little savings—all the _dot_ I brought him at
our marriage of two hundred francs—lent in an evil moment and never
returned again—whilst he dies for want of proper warmth and
nourishment.’
Madame Fromard had been running on in her usually (to me)
incomprehensible dialect, but I gathered enough of her discourse to-day
to be curious to learn more.
‘_Who_ has been so wicked as to defraud your family like this?’ I asked.
‘No! no! do not say it!’ cried Tessie, vehemently, as she seized Mère
Fromard’s hand and kissed it.
But the woman flung hers away. She seemed to have changed to-day from a
patient sufferer into a demon.
‘I _will_ say it!’ she exclaimed. ‘Are his evil deeds always to be
covered up with excuses and promises and fair words. It is the Curé
Anglais, mamselle,’ she continued, turning to me. ‘It is Monsieur Lovett
who borrowed my poor Guillaume’s savings, two, three, five years ago,
and has been promising, promising, promising ever since to pay us back
again, but never more than a few sous at a time. Who would have doubted
him, mamselle, a man so good-intentioned, so benevolent, so charitable
to the poor! We thought our money was safer than in a bank. We had lent
it to the _Bon Dieu_ to accommodate His servant. It was bound to come
back with blessings upon us, and it has come with _that_’, she said
pathetically, pointing to her dead husband, ‘with a five-franc piece and
a corpse! Bah! there can be no heaven, or such things would not be
allowed.’
‘Is this _possible_?’ I said, in a tone of the greatest amazement.
‘Tessie! she must have gone out of her mind. She cannot know what she is
saying!’
But this insinuation only stimulated Madame Fromard to make her meaning
plainer.
‘_Possible!_’ she screamed, ‘is it possible that Monsieur le Curé owes
money all over St. Pucelle and Rille—that there is not a tradesman who
has not his name down for a larger sum than he will ever pay whilst
living, and that when he dies they will swoop down upon his carcass like
birds of prey, to see which can tear it to pieces first! _Bon Dieu!_
Mamselle is not so foolish as she would make herself to be! She _must_
know that if it were not for the Prince Francius von Ritzburg, Monsieur
le Curé would have been in prison years ago, and that it is only because
of his holy profession he is allowed to walk free about the streets of
St. Pucelle! But the day will come—the day will come when my poor
Guillaume shall be avenged of his death!’
We could do the raving woman no good, and Tessie was crying so bitterly
by this time, that I drew her quickly out of the cottage, and led her to
a secluded part of the encircling country where she could sit down and
weep in privacy. I did not know what to say to her. If this horrid story
were untrue, why did she not deny it—why did she sit there with her face
buried in her hands and cry as if her heart would break? And if it were
_true_, as I too much feared it must be, what comfort could I give her?
For I felt that I would rather have died myself than have heard such
words spoken of _my_ father, and been unable to refute them.
I sat by her side in silence, waiting until she should speak to me. The
first words she said were confirmatory of my fears.
‘Don’t tell Ange of this—pray don’t tell her, Hilda! She knows nothing
of it all. It would break her heart!’
‘It is true then, Tessie?’
She did not answer me except by another convulsive sob.
‘I don’t think it is all his fault,’ she said presently; ‘we have been
so very poor, you see, and debts accumulate so fast, it seems impossible
to gain ground again when once you have lost it. And I know that his
liabilities have weighed heavily upon poor papa’s mind, this one to poor
Guillaume especially. We have always been friendly with them, and had
our eggs of them for that reason, but what could papa do? Five hundred
and fifty francs! it is a positive fortune. We shall never be able to
pay it!’
‘Meanwhile they starve,’ I said bitterly.
‘Oh, Hilda! don’t be hard. You don’t know how terribly I feel it. The
Prince has been very kind to us, and sometimes I have thought I would
beg my way to the Court and tell him all about it, and see if he would
help us to pay off papa’s debts.’
‘It would be of no use, Tessie. When men have once got into the habit of
debt and learned to look upon it with indifference, they are past cure.
He would only start clear, to get into debt again.’
‘I have always pitied him so,’ continued Tessie, in a low voice,
‘because he used to live in such different style, you know, with every
comfort about him, and it must have been such a dreadful trial to come
down to his present life. And I have thought, sometimes, that he had
such a fresh innocent sort of mind, he really did not think how fast
money went, nor what trouble he was laying up for himself and us in the
future. Sometimes I hardly believe he realises it now. He seems so happy
and contented and cheerful under it all.’
I could not say anything to her either in acquiescence or by way of
consolation. I thought of the innocent ingenuous Harold Skimpole in
‘Bleak House,’ who cheated everybody, and was too childlike to
understand what he was doing, and I felt nothing but contempt and
disgust for my reverend guardian. I understood now the farce he had been
playing with regard to my little allowance, and felt sure that unless
some desperate effort were made on my behalf, I should never see any of
it at all.
‘You will not tell Ange?’ reiterated Tessie, pleadingly.
‘No, Tessie! certainly not, since you desire it. But do you think it
possible she does not guess the state of affairs?’
‘Oh, I am _sure_ she does not. It would kill Ange to think papa one whit
less perfect than she does. You don’t know how she loves him, Hilda.
Even Madame Marmoret, who is very spiteful sometimes against poor papa
in my presence, has never mentioned a word about him to Ange, because
she says she is sure she will never smile again if she once knows it.’
‘I suppose your father owes Madame Marmoret money also then,’ I said
bluntly.
I was resolved, now I had ascertained so much, to hear the whole of it.
It was best to see the extent of the danger which I ran.
‘Yes,’ replied Tessie, hesitatingly, ‘and her wages must have fallen a
long way behind also. Poor Madame has had much to try her, and I do not
wonder that sometimes she feels a little sore and angry. Ange is not
always so patient with her as she might be. She does not know the reason
as I do.’
‘Why does Madame dislike me so much, Tessie?’
‘I don’t think she dislikes you personally, but she thought your coming
to live with us would be an extra expense and increase papa’s debts, I
suppose. She knows that the goodness of papa’s heart often overbalances
the greatness of his mind.’
‘But is she not aware, then, that I pay your father a hundred a year for
my board and lodging?’
Tessie looked round at me with a face of astonishment.
‘Hilda! is that so?’ she demanded.
‘Of course it is so! Have you not been told it before?’
‘Never!’
‘And what did you suppose, then? That I was living on your father’s
charity?’
‘Oh, dear Hilda!’ cried the girl, embracing me warmly. ‘We should never
have called it by a name like that! Ange and I thought that as you were
the child of one of papa’s dearest friends, it was the most natural
thing in the world that when you were orphaned you should come to live
with us and be our sister. We never asked if you had money or not. Our
only anxiety was that you should love us.’
‘It is true nevertheless, dear Tessie. My noble income consists of one
hundred and fifty pounds a year, and of that Mr. Lovett agreed with Mr.
Warrington, my solicitor, to allow me fifty pounds for my private
expenses, and to retain the remainder as payment for my board and
lodging in St. Pucelle.’
‘And—and—have you had your allowance, Hilda?’ asked Tessie, anxiously.
‘No, dear, I have not, I am sorry to say. After much persuasion, your
father has given me twenty-five francs to repay Mrs. Carolus for Ange’s
earrings, but for the rest of my pocket-money I expect I may do what is
vulgarly termed _whistle_.’
She flung herself in my arms in a fresh burst of tears.
‘Oh, Hilda! don’t love Ange and me less because of this. We have grown
so fond of you. We feel just as if you were our sister. Don’t turn
against us—it isn’t our fault, dear—we would cut off our right hands to
serve you if we could.’
I assured her again and again that I would never be less her friend and
her sister’s friend than I was at that moment.
‘I love you too, Tessie—rest sure of that, and we will fight this great
trouble out together if we can. I will not turn against you, nor will I
forsake you. My lot has not been so unexpectedly cast here without some
good reason, and I should feel like a coward if I could run away just as
I have heard all, and leave you and Ange to cope with this misery by
yourselves.’
‘But remember, she knows nothing,’ said Tessie, with the same anxious
tone as before.
‘I do remember it,’ I answered, and I thought at the same moment, that
it was a great pity the little maid had been kept in such ignorance. It
was blissful ignorance in the present, but if the awakening came
suddenly, it might be very terrible in the future.
But I felt that by the foregoing conversation I had bound myself to
cleave to the fortunes of these girls until I could do them no further
good. Poor patient Tessie, carrying her heavy burthen of disgrace alone,
and lighthearted, unconscious Ange, dancing along the path of life as
gaily as if it were all flowers and hid no secret mine which might
explode at any moment and devastate her whole young, fresh existence: I
could not tell which of the two I loved the more, nor which I could have
the heart to forsake the sooner.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
CHAPTER IX.
CHARLIE.
My compact with Tessie did not, however, preclude one thing, and that
was the taking advice of my friends on the state of my affairs. With the
state of those of other people I had nothing to do. But I could not
decide whether to write to Mr. Warrington or Mrs. Sandilands. The
solicitor was, of course, the most proper person to consult on the
subject, but it appeared to be such a formidable proceeding to make a
regular complaint to him, and I dreaded its entailing legal inquiries,
and perhaps a complete estrangement between myself and the Lovetts. And,
in that case, what would become of my promise of fidelity to Tessie?
Mrs. Sandilands, on the other hand, although only a woman, had thorough
good sense, and had managed all her own money affairs since her
husband’s death, and might be able to give me some hints by which to
manage my guardian and obviate the necessity of calling in professional
assistance.
So the day after I had taken that walk with Tessie, I sat down to write
to Mrs. Sandilands. It was always a pleasure to me to take up the pen to
address my old friend. Thoughts of the pretty countrified home which we
had shared together, and of the many happy hours we had passed in each
other’s society, used to flow in upon me as I wielded it, and sometimes
I was almost tempted to regret I had been so cold-hearted as to be
unable to claim the title of daughter so warmly offered to me. What a
cheerful, comfortable fireside theirs was. I could imagine no brighter
lot for some poor lonely unloved orphan than to be welcomed to the bosom
of the Sandilands family—for any orphan, that is to say, except Hilda
Marsh. The bright-eyed helpful girls and the boisterous healthy boys,
with their rosy cheeks and young clear voices—I fancied I could see them
at that moment gathered round the dinner-table.
Nellie and Connie and Flo helping their mother to carve, whilst Bell,
the spoilt baby of the family, albeit ten years old, was seated at Mrs.
Sandilands’ elbow, ready to grab at anything that came within her reach;
and the boys’ eyes were glistening at the sight of pudding, and their
mouths, luckily for all those concerned, too full to permit them to make
much noise.
Poor Charlie would not be present at that early meal. He always took his
lunch in town, and relied on his mother looking after his creature
comforts at tea-time.
Poor Charlie! I always thought of his name with that prefix, though I
used to tell myself it was very ridiculous to do so; and that if he had
inherited any of his mother’s practical good sense, he must have seen,
even before I had left Norwood, that the proposal he had made to me was
one that, under any circumstances, I could never have entertained.
It was not his paltry income, nor the small chance he had of increasing
it. If I loved a man, I felt that I could work for him, cooking dinners
or scrubbing floors every day of my life, and be happier so, a great
deal, than unloved and alone. But the one I slaved for must be superior
to me. And poor Charlie was not. There was no conceit in saying so—it
was the veritable fact. He was a dear good old boy, and I felt sure that
some day he would make some woman very happy indeed; but it could never
be myself.
Our natures didn’t coalesce. I was too clear-sighted concerning him for
any chance to remain of my friendship ripening into love. I saw so much
too plainly that his hair was sandy and his moustaches nearly red, and
that he had no idea of argument, and was uncomfortable in society, and
appeared as though he had been unused to it.
Still I wished he had written to me. During the three months I had spent
in St. Pucelle, though Mrs. Sandilands had sent me a letter almost every
week, she had never enclosed more than a message from her son; and I was
curious about him, as all women are about their lovers, and wanted to
find out if he had forgotten me, or was still silly enough to fret
because I would not settle down in the bosom of his family as Mrs.
Sandilands the Second.
What induced me to think about him so much that morning I do not know;
but amongst my psychological studies, I have often observed the curious
manner in which coming events often cast their shadow on the brain.
Anyway, I was still sitting over that sheet of paper, nibbling my pen,
and thinking of Charlie, when some one knocked at my bedroom door.
‘All right!’ I called out, imagining it to be a summons to _goûter_.
‘I’m very glad it’s ready, for I’m as hungry as I can be.’
‘But no,’ replied Ange’s merry voice, in French, ‘you are an hour out of
your reckoning, Hilda: it is only half-past eleven. I come to tell you
that somebody is waiting for you in the _salle_.’
‘Somebody! That means that old bore Miss Markham or her bosom friend
Mrs. Carolus. No, thank you, _petite_ Ange! I am writing a letter, and
cannot be disturbed. Say you could see me nowhere. That will be quite
true.’
‘But supposing it is not Miss Markham or Miss Carolus! Suppose it is a
gentleman, Hilda!’
My thoughts flew at once to Monsieur de Nesselrode, and my cheeks flamed
like fire. That was because, since he had left off spending his evenings
at our house, I had always felt a degree of guilty fear respecting him,
under the idea that Mr. Lovett would some day question him too closely
concerning his defalcation, and draw from him, perhaps against his will,
a relation of the circumstances under which he had come to the
determination to give up cards.
I felt the awkward position that in such a case I should be placed: of
how impossible it would be for me to explain to my trustee that I had
had Tessie’s welfare at heart, more than that of the Baron, in
persuading him to give up play, and that in going against the father’s
wishes, I had been doing my very best for the daughter. Mr. Lovett would
say, and naturally think, that he knew what would secure his child’s
happiness better than myself, and I had no right to interfere. It would
be very difficult to convince him that, beyond the pity which all
right-minded people must feel to see a fellow creature throwing away his
chances of happiness in this world, I had had no motive in advising the
Baron to secure his. So that the name of De Nesselrode was rather a
bugbear to me at that time; and I always felt my best safety lay in
being present, if possible, at his interviews with Mr. Lovett.
So, on hearing Ange’s last piece of intelligence, I threw my
half-finished letter into my blotting-case, and smoothed my hair before
the looking-glass.
‘You need not wait, Ange. I will be down directly!’ I exclaimed.
‘Ah, I thought _that_ would bring you, mademoiselle!’ she called out
with such a merry laugh, as she ran down the corridor, that I stopped
short with the brush in my hand, to consider whether _petite_ Ange had
not been having a little amusement at my expense, and I should find
myself in the arms of Mrs. Carolus after all. However, I resolved to go
and see.
I followed her so quickly, that I caught her up in our little
sitting-room, tying back her hair with a black ribbon.
‘He’s such a _nice_ young man!’ she said demurely; ‘and Tessie is making
such violent love to him already!’
‘Ange, what a goose you are! I know it is only the Baron!’
‘Well, go and see for yourself. If it is the Baron, he has dyed his
hair!’
I opened the door of the _salle_ quietly and looked in. No, it was
decidedly not the Baron. That light-grey tweed suit and stuck-up collar
never belonged to any one but an Englishman.
Ah, I had it now! It was my young friend of the steamboat—Mr.
Charteris’s cousin, Frederick Stephenson. I advanced quickly to bid him
welcome. He turned round, and proved to be—Charlie Sandilands!
Oh, I _was_ so pleased to see him! All the blood in my body, I verily
believe, rushed to my face as I darted forward with both hands
outstretched to grasp his.
‘Charlie!’ I exclaimed eagerly. ‘Oh, Charlie, my dear old boy! wherever
did you spring from?’
‘I thought you would be surprised to see me, Hilda,’ he replied, with
his eyes fixed upon my countenance; ‘but I couldn’t help coming—I
couldn’t, upon my word! I’ve got my annual leave, you see; and I did
want to see you so much, that I put off taking it until I could spend it
in St. Pucelle.’
‘Oh, how good of you, Charlie! And how long will you be here?’
‘Nearly a month, Hilda, unless you are sick of me before that time—in
which case I shall go back to Norwood.’
‘Sick of you? That’s very likely! Why, it’s like old times to see your
face again! What jolly days we will have together! I am so glad you came
before the fine weather was over. Isn’t it a lovely place! And where are
you staying, Charlie?’
In the gladness of my heart at meeting the boy again, I had been holding
his hands all this time; but now, perceiving that Mr. Charteris was
lounging in one of the window-seats, smoking, and regarding my
ebullitions of delight, as I thought, with rather a contemptuous air, I
dropped them as if they had been hot coals, and sat down on a chair
close by.
‘I have put up at the Hôtel d’Etoile,’ said Charlie.
His pronunciation was delicious—something to make one scream by-and-by;
but at that moment he might have stood on his head, and I should have
regarded him gravely, so eager was I for news from my dear old home.
‘That is all right. I am glad you have chosen the Etoile. It is nearer
us than the Cloche. Fancy, I was just writing a letter to your dear
mother, and thinking so much of you, Charlie, and all the others, when
they knocked at my door to tell me you were here! I suppose you have
been introduced to Miss Lovett?’
‘Yes, Mr. Charteris was good enough to do so. I was surprised to see
Charteris here, too, Hilda. It is quite a meeting of the clans! What an
age it seems since he was at Norwood!’
Then I remembered that these two must have met at that period, though
Charlie had been such a mere lad, that Mr. Charteris and I had doubtless
considered that he had neither eyes nor ears. The recollection, however,
of what I had told him of my early disappointment came back so vividly
upon my mind, that I flushed scarlet and hated myself for so flushing,
for fear lest the one man should interpret my change of countenance as
regret for our lost intimacy, and the other accept it as a clue to the
mysterious history I had partly confided to him. But Charlie appeared to
see no connection at all in the two circumstances.
‘Mr. Charteris had quite forgotten me,’ he went on, ‘but I suppose that
is not surprising. Hair upon one’s face makes such a difference.’
(Charlie’s moustaches resembled the down on an apple-tart, and had to be
caught sideways to be seen at all.) ‘But I knew him at once. He is not
the least altered since he was at Norwood. Is he, Hilda?’
‘Men alter less at Mr. Charteris’s age than they do at yours, Charlie.
But tell me about your mother, and your brothers and sisters. I wish you
could have brought your dear mother with you. And how are Nellie and
Connie and Flo and little Bell? It seems years instead of months since I
saw them all.’
‘Oh, they’re flourishing, Hilda, and going on just as usual. Nell’s been
worrying mother ever since you left to send her to a continental school,
but I don’t think she’ll get her way. Mother’s much too timid to let any
one of them out of her sight.’
‘There are no young ladies’ schools in St. Pucelle, or I should try and
persuade Mrs. Sandilands to send Nell here—and I’d look after her! It is
so charming to see any one from the old country when you are exiled in a
foreign land.’
‘One would imagine to hear you talk, Miss Marsh,’ interposed Mr.
Charteris, ‘and to see the rapture with which you welcome your friends
from England, that you had been expatriated for a lifetime, instead of
three months.’
He spoke ‘nastily’ to me, and he meant me to take it so. I could almost
have thought, from the expression of his voice, that he was annoyed at
witnessing the friendly terms on which I was with Charlie Sandilands.
But that would have been too ridiculous, under the circumstances.
However, I could not help giving him a _quid pro quo_.
‘I am not in the habit of forgetting my friends, Mr. Charteris. And if
an absence of three months can make me so glad to meet them again, it is
only a proof that I have found none better to take their places in the
interim.’
He bit his lip and went on smoking, whilst I turned my attention again
to Charlie, and continued my catechism of his home affairs.
It was strange that during the three weeks Cave Charteris and I had
spent under the same roof, not a word nor a hint had been exchanged
between us relating to our former intimacy. That he had entirely
forgotten it I could not believe; neither could he credit me with so
short a memory. On the contrary, his studied avoidance of the subject
convinced me that he remembered only too well, although it was
convenient to attribute his reticence to his fear of hurting my feelings
by reviving thoughts of my lost mother. At the same time he never
appeared quite at his ease when in my presence, and as he reminded me
painfully of a time of weakness and suffering which I had lived to be
very much ashamed of, we had mutually avoided each other as much as
possible. I was surprised, therefore, to see that he condescended to
take any notice of my interest in Charlie Sandilands.
‘Have you had luncheon yet, Charlie?’ I went on, with my back turned to
Mr. Charteris.
‘No, Hilda. They told me at the hotel it was served at one.’
‘Well, go and get it then, and come back to take a walk with me.’
‘I shall be delighted!’
‘Will not Mr. Sandilands stay and take some _goûter_ with us, Hilda?
Papa will be in directly,’ interposed Tessie.
‘_No!_’ I said decidedly. ‘He had better go back to his hotel.’
I had no idea of a friend of mine breaking bread in Mr. Lovett’s house,
whilst I could prevent it. The Sandilands had always been honest to the
core. Let Charlie go and eat bread that had been paid for! I felt sure
his mother would have said the same.
‘Call for me at two o’clock,’ I said in parting. ‘I will take you such a
lovely walk as you have never seen before, right up the hill to the
forest of Piron.’
‘Past the Château des Roses!’ said Tessie, mischievously.
Ah! how she would have altered her tone, had she known _why_ I took any
interest in the Château des Roses or its master!
‘Tessie, how can you!’ I cried, with burning cheeks. ‘Now, I shall take
Mr. Sandilands in exactly the opposite direction, over the trout stream
and through the valley of Artois!’
‘But I saw that as I came in the diligence yesterday,’ said Charlie.
‘Then there are a dozen other walks, all prettier than the one I first
mentioned, for me to introduce you to. But I want to take you right away
from the town to some place where we can talk privately of all that has
happened since we last met.’
‘In three months!’ sneered Cave Charteris.
When I say he ‘sneered,’ I mean that he spoke the words unpleasantly,
and as though he would have liked to laugh, had he dared, at what I
said.
‘And why not?’ I returned. ‘A great deal of consequence may occur in
that time. It is long enough to make or mar a life; why should I not
find sufficient has happened in it to interest my friend for the length
of a walk?’
‘Everything that happens to you is of interest to me, Hilda,’ exclaimed
Charlie, with boyish fervour.
‘I knew that before I spoke! Mr. Charteris must have few friends worthy
the name if he did not know it also!’
‘I am not so fortunate as Miss Marsh,’ replied that gentleman. ‘No one
takes such an interest in me.’
‘Not those at home,’ remarked Ange, pitifully. The little maid had crept
into the _salle_ a few minutes after myself. Charteris turned and looked
searchingly into her blushing face.
‘No, I am afraid not even “those at home,” Miss Lovett. But how can I
expect it? I am not Miss Hilda Marsh.’
‘Even I have been forgotten by those I thought my friends,’ I remarked
quietly.
‘But never by my mother nor me,’ said Charlie, in an eager tone.
‘I know that, Charlie, without your telling me. But now go back to the
hotel and get your _goûter_, and I will be ready for walking on your
return.’
‘How I wish some one would take me for a walk,’ observed Mr. Charteris,
with a professional sigh, as Charlie disappeared. _Petite_ Ange said
nothing, but she sighed also.
END OF VOL. II.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.
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