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Title: How they loved him, Vol. 2 (of 3)
A novel
Author: Florence Marryat
Release date: March 4, 2026 [eBook #78111]
Language: English
Original publication: London: F. V. White & Co, 1882
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78111
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW THEY LOVED HIM, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***
Italic represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_.
Bold represented by equals signs surrounding the =bold text=.
Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS.
HOW THEY LOVED HIM.
_A NOVEL_.
BY
FLORENCE MARRYAT
(MRS FRANCIS LEAN).
_IN THREE VOLUMES_.
VOL. II.
LONDON: F. V. WHITE & CO.,
31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1882.
THE POPULAR NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES.
=THREE FAIR DAUGHTERS=. By LAURENCE BROOKE, Author of ‘The Queen of
Two Worlds,’ etc. 3 vols.
=SWEETHEART AND WIFE=. By LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD. 3 vols.
=MY LADY CLARE=. By Mrs EILOART, Author of ‘How He Won Her,’ etc.
3 vols.
‘“My Lady Clare” is a pleasant, readable novel.’--_John Bull_.
‘The interest is maintained with undeniable force and skill.’--_Daily
Telegraph_.
=A LOVELESS SACRIFICE=. By INA L. CASSILIS,
Author of ‘Guilty without Crime,’ etc. 3 vols.
_John Bull_ says:--‘The story is a pleasant one--healthy in tone,
lofty in teaching, and very sympathetic in manner and style.’
COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
[Illustration: decorative]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
FOR EVER, 1
CHAPTER II.
IN A STRAIT, 28
CHAPTER III.
DESERTED, 72
CHAPTER IV.
OVER, 123
CHAPTER V.
SIR GILBERT CONROY, 164
CHAPTER VI.
SMOOTH WATERS, 217
CHAPTER VII.
A REVELATION, 241
CHAPTER VIII.
THE INDISSOLUBLE LINK, 288
[Illustration: decorative]
[Illustration: decorative]
HOW THEY LOVED HIM.
CHAPTER I.
FOR EVER.
‘It is the same together or apart,
From life’s commencement to its slow decline:
We are entwined; let death come slow or fast,
The tie which bound the first endures the last.’
_Byron_.
To describe the feelings of Fenella Barrington at this period would
be almost impossible. Not because no one has ever felt so deeply as
she did, but because such thoughts are not to be adequately portrayed
in black and white. Arraigned before the judgment of the world, they
would appear foolish, romantic, overstrained, and perhaps culpable;
to each individual heart alone, according to the circumstances under
which they found it, must they answer for the consequences. Fenella’s
heart was in an exceptional condition when the passion of love overtook
and conquered it. In the first place, she was very young; and youth,
like charity, ‘believeth all things and hopeth all things.’ She was
too ignorant of human nature to doubt its truth--too ignorant of life
to distrust its possibilities. And in the second place, she was very
lonely and unhappy. She had no watchful parent to shield her innocence;
she had not even any one to call her to account for her actions. She
was free as the air, unguarded as the birds that flew in it, unloved
as the most friendless waif that was ever forsaken by its natural
protectors.
Disappointed and alone! What girl under such circumstances could be
expected not to answer with the whole strength of her nature to the
call of love? Her heart was so empty of affection--it yearned so for
it--that it would not have been strange had she succumbed to the appeal
of any fellow-creature who desired to show her kindness--least of
all to that of Geoffrey Doyne. For there was a fascination about him
that was far above any physical attractions he may have possessed--a
fascination which every woman felt who crossed his path, and many were
left to rue. His tender eyes, and sensitive mouth, and dreamy poetical
nature made him appear the most sympathetic and warm-hearted of human
creatures; as indeed he was--whilst the humour lasted. But there were
two formidable foes in his breast to war against his better feelings,
and usually to overcome them, and these were a want of moral courage
and a great love of self.
Geoffrey Doyne generally wanted to do right, and, as a rule, he
generally did wrong. His head told him the proper thing to do, but his
heart failed him at the very moment he called upon it for support and
courage. So he was the worst possible guide that could have been found
for a young and susceptible girl who loved him ardently.
Fenella would have proved far the most trustworthy of the two. Her
innocence made her the better fitted to lead the way, had she not loved
him so blindly as to be incapable of believing him to be in the wrong.
The reverend mother had said of her to Eliza Bennett, ‘She possesses
the most dangerous attributes with which a young girl can encounter the
world,--a heart so large and warm and generous, that where it loves it
cannot see a fault, and a strong resolute nature that will act on its
own impulses against all conventionality or advice.’ And the reverend
mother was right. Fenella was that most dangerous combination--a child
in experience, and a woman in feeling. In her eyes Geoffrey Doyne was
simply perfection; and from the day he said he loved her, she yielded
herself up to his control in everything. She looked on him rather as
a god than a man. She could not understand how it was that so perfect
a creature condescended to dwell amongst ordinary mortals. The air
he breathed, the flower he touched, the ground he trod on became
sacred to her from mere contact with him. Hers was not the frivolous,
giggling, open-mouthed admiration of a school-girl; it was the silent,
awe-struck adoration of a woman! She would sit for hours absorbed in
the contemplation of his features. Each movement of his supple figure
was a poem to her, each tone of his voice a melody, each glance from
his eyes a dream of heaven. She hung upon his words as if they had been
inspired; and his touch, however careless, had the power to thrill her
with a pleasure that was next door to pain. A few days of intimate
communion, of mutually-confessed and openly-avowed passion, made
Geoffrey Doyne her ruler--her inspiration--her very life.
And he knew it but too soon. He saw that the girl had become his
slave--morally and physically; that he had but to lift his little
finger to command her obedience; that with a glance of his eye he
could direct her actions or sway her mind. And he loved her for it in
return. Let him have justice done him at this, the fairest portion
of his life. There is no question that _he loved her_! Although he
was not sufficiently heroic, nor high-minded, nor courageous to
rank her purity and child-like trust in him above his own selfish
gratification--although his religion was not potent enough to gain the
mastery over the more natural religion of love--still _he loved her_!
Fenella was the first woman who had ever touched his heart, as he was
the first man who had ever attempted to win hers. Her face was not
more charming, perhaps, than many he had met with before; her talents
(if of a high order) were crude and undeveloped; her love for himself,
though deep and glowing, was no more than he had a right to expect from
the other sex. But she was the first whom he had ever loved; and there
is a magic charm in those words, _the first_. The first kiss, the first
woman, the first child, the first disappointment, the first death! Can
any future joy or sorrow equal these? They are events that stand alone
in our lives: they can never be repeated; once gone, they are gone for
ever! In all the rest of his life, though Geoffrey Doyne might love
a dozen other women, and swear a thousand oaths of fidelity to them,
he would never love _in the same way_ he loved Fenella Barrington.
More, he would never feel the passion of love in his breast, even
though it burned ten times as strongly as it burned for her, without
giving one short, quick sob of remembrance to the girl who gave him
her whole heart, and placed her very life in his hands, upon the sands
of Ines-cedwyn! And if he could forget--if his mortal nature proved
so weak--Heaven is still above us all, watching, noting, jotting
down on tablets of stone each crime we commit against the heart of a
fellow-creature, to hold them up before our eyes to all eternity. The
time will come when we shall be unable to forget!
After the day on which they discovered their mutual affection, Fenella
Barrington and Geoffrey Doyne met, if possible, more frequently than
they had done before. Each morning found them on the sands together,
or if the young man pleaded an unwelcome engagement with his sisters,
it was only to impress upon Fenella the double obligation of meeting
him when the evening shadows should have fallen on the landslip. Ah!
Those dangerous moments spent beneath the soft veil of dusk--when they
sat side by side upon the golden sands, and watched the stars come out
upon the summer sky, and their fresh, young voices rose up in unison to
heaven in the thrilling notes of some love melody, or the more solemn
tones of an evening hymn; when their hands lay fast locked in one
another’s, and Fenella’s head was pillowed on her lover’s breast, till
she heard no sound but the throbbing of his heart answering to her own.
And they talked of the future--that glorious and apparently certain
future, when they should always be together, and have no need to steal
out, under cover of the evening, to meet each other on the sands.
It was provoking that, as yet, Geoffrey had been unable to write to Mrs
Barrington and make a formal proposal for her daughter’s hand, because
but one letter had been received from that lady, dated from Genoa, and
averring the intention of her party to move about for a few weeks in
the South before they settled down in Mentone. But that was of little
consequence--so the lovers told each other--because as soon as Mrs
Barrington _was_ settled, Geoffrey would go over and see her, which
would be far better than writing--and they could not be happier than
they were.
It was now the end of June; two months had slipped away in this sweet
courtship, and every day might bring the letter to say that Fenella’s
mother was settled at Mentone.
Eliza Bennett was up and about again. She had even discarded the
crutches with which Dr Redfern had provided her, but her leg was still
stiff, and she had not yet ventured to walk as far as the beach. But
some rumours had reached her ears of the company in which her young
mistress so constantly indulged. Of course the boat and fishermen had
seen the courtship from the beginning. Tugwell, who had so often to put
up at the public house, would have told them of it if they had not had
eyes to see it for themselves. But it was nobody’s business to carry
the news up to Benjamin Bennett’s cottage. If the young lady liked to
amuse herself, what was the odds to Ines-cedwyn? besides, Eliza Bennett
was ailing, and there was no need to worry her with a parcel of tales
about nothing. So the men told the women to hold their tongues, and
consequently it was some time before anybody spoke of Fenella’s doings
out of their own circle.
But when Eliza Bennett had so far recovered as to be in the garden, and
Martha had more time for gossiping with her neighbours, they let their
tongues loose, and asked her to satisfy their curiosity with regard to
the handsome stranger that came over to Ines-cedwyn in his boat every
day, and if he was going to marry the young lady from the cottage
who sat for so many hours with him in the Beach Bungalow. Of course
it was all news to Martha, and she ran open-mouthed with it to her
sister-in-law.
‘Only to think, ’Liza,’ she exclaimed, ‘what Winny Williams has just
told me! Miss Fenella’s got a beau, and such a fine lookin’ feller too.
They’ve bin meetin’ each other at that there nasty ruined bungalow
for weeks past, and having fine times, I warrant. Tugwell says the
gentleman lives at Lynwern, but he’s not sure as he’s got his name
properly. Only to think of your young lady! Well, sooner or later they
all does it.’
Eliza Bennett was at first incredulous.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she replied; ‘the Ines-cedwyn folk must talk of
something. I daresay Miss Fenella may have exchanged a word or two with
the gentleman on the sands; but as for havin’ a _beau_, why, Martha,
she’s that innercent, she don’t know what it means! She’d run away more
likely if any one were to say more than “good-day” to her. You don’t
know my young lady; she’s the biggest child of her age I ever saw.’
‘Is she, now?’ replied Martha meditatively. ‘Well, I should have said
the same myself when she first come here; but d’ye know, ’Liza, she’s
a deal changed lately--more fidgety like, and don’t eat hearty, and
allays a-jumpin’ up and down from her seat, with her colour comin’ and
goin’ like a flame o’ fire. Ben ain’t very far seein’ as a rule, but he
told me only last week as he thought there was somethin’ up with her.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ exclaimed her sister-in-law, in
evident distress.
‘Why! What would ha’ been the good o’ that--a’ worryin’ you for nothin’
when you’re ill?’
‘But I’d have spoken to Miss Fenella, and found out the truth of it,
Martha. For she’s one of the best young ladies you ever see; she’s like
a lamb for obedience, and I’m sure she’d no more go to do the thing
that is wrong than she’d fly!’
‘Who said she had?’ cried Martha. ‘Lor’ bless my heart, ’Liza! Leave
the poor child alone. If she _is_ having a bit of fun with the young
feller, what harm? There’s little enough to amuse her down here, I’m
sure, and she’ll be all the better for it. You wouldn’t go and spoil
her game by makin’ a fuss over it, would you?’
‘No; not if there’s no harm, Martha; certainly not! But, you see, Miss
Fenella’s very young and easily led, and there’s no knowing what a
gentleman might get to say to her, seeing she’s so pretty, I must say I
do distrust ’em, one and all; and my mistress would never forgive me if
any harm came to the young lady.’
‘Lor’, ’Liza! How you do run on,’ said Martha. ‘I shall be sorry I said
anything about it next. Ain’t a pretty girl like that never to have a
sweetheart? and what harm do you think could come to her with a real
gentleman? He’ll only tell her a few lies, and she’ll be none the worse
for ’em; so don’t you go and fret over it now, or you’ll make yourself
ill again.’
Eliza promised she would not; but she could not dismiss the subject
from her mind, for her dread of Mrs Barrington’s possible anger made
her imagine all sorts of danger to the girl under her charge.
‘If it hadn’t been for this stupid leg,’ she thought to herself, ‘I’d
have been everywhere with Miss Fenella, and no one couldn’t have spoken
to her without my knowledge. And now Martha comes to speak of it, there
has been a great change in her lately. She’s more excited and forgetful
like; and sometimes she’s as gay as a lark, and at others I’ve seen her
staring up at the sky with the tears on her face, and yet with a smile
on her mouth. There’s something very strange about it all. How can I
have been so stupid as not to see it before! But this leg has put
everything else clean out of my head.’
It was past nine o’clock when this conversation took place, and Fenella
had gone down to the beach as usual, about an hour before. Under
the new point of view from which she now regarded her young lady’s
wanderings, Eliza Bennett grew fidgety at her absence.
‘I wonder what she’s about this evening?’ she thought presently. ‘It’s
too dark to see anything on the beach at this time o’ night, and Miss
Fenella must know that supper’s ready and waiting for her. I wonder if
I could manage to get as far as the bungalow. I’ve a good mind to try;
and I sha’n’t feel easy now if I don’t look a bit more after her.’
Martha had gone to assist her husband in the cowyard, and there was no
one to combat Eliza’s desire, or tell her it was foolish to attempt to
do so much. So she put on her bonnet and shawl, and taking a stick in
her hand, commenced to hobble slowly in the direction of the beach.
Meanwhile Fenella and Geoffrey stood together in one of the rooms of
the ruined villa. They were looking serious, but scarcely sad. Hope and
trust were too strong in them for sadness.
‘Oh, Geoffrey,’ Fenella was saying, ‘is it true? Must you really go?’
‘I am afraid I must, my darling. I have received a most imperative
letter from my brother Michael (that’s the lawyer, you know, Fenella),
urging me to go up to town and see him at once, on the most important
business. I can’t imagine what it is--something to do with money, I
suppose. I don’t think Michael would call anything else “important;”
but, any way, I must go, and I shall start to-morrow morning.’
‘And when will you be back, Geoffrey?’
‘As soon as ever I can, my darling; you may rest assured of that. And
meanwhile, I shall write to you every day. What will old Bennett say
when she sees the letters?’
‘Never mind Bennett! She may be surprised, but she will not attempt
to interfere with them. She is only my servant, Geoffrey. You do not
suppose I would allow her to come between you and me?’
‘Dear me! What an independent young woman you have grown! Who would
imagine this was the same little girl that blushed scarlet each time I
looked at her but two short months ago?’
‘You have made me a woman,’ said the girl with one of the scarlet
blushes he alluded to. ‘I feel now as if I should have courage to stand
up against the whole world if it attempted to come between me and the
love you bear me.’
‘You shall never be put to the test, my Fenella. Nothing shall ever
divide our love. I wish to goodness that letter would come from your
mother, and then the matter would be settled.’
‘And if--if she should be angry, and refuse her consent to our
marriage?’ faltered the girl.
‘Then we are to be married without her consent--is it not so? Why,
Fenella! do you think any earthly power could divide us now?’
She clung to him with a force that was almost painful.
‘Oh no, no! How could it? But, Geoffrey, I wish--oh, how I wish!--that
we could have been married before you went to London.’
‘My sweetheart, so do I. There is nothing I long for more than the day
when we shall go to church and do all that dreadful “swearing” you are
so afraid of. Only, I am afraid it must not be in Lynwern. It would not
be fair to you, nor your mother, nor any one, Fenella. Let me write to
her first, darling; it cannot be long now before you hear again; and
then if she raises any objection (which I think most unlikely), I shall
not hesitate a moment to carry you straight off before her eyes and
marry you in the first church we come to. So be patient, my love, and
trust to me, and all will be right by-and-by.’
‘And nothing--_nothing_ shall ever divide us?’ she repeated, still
clinging to him.
‘Nothing, _so help me, God_!’ he answered. And that oath was registered
in heaven, and remains there to this day.
They sat together on one of the window-sills for some time longer,
with their arms interlaced and their heads close together, talking
such sweet nonsense as the world laughs at because it has no heart to
understand, but which makes up the sum of happiness in this mortal life.
‘And what am I to send my darling from London?’ demanded Geoffrey.
‘In all this time I have not given you one present, because there was
nothing worthy of you in Lynwern; but now you must have something to
remind you of your lover. What shall it be, sweetheart?--a locket or a
ring?’
‘I don’t want anything,’ she said bashfully, ‘but _you_.’
‘Oh, you’ve got me fast enough, my child,’ he answered, laughing; ‘but
come now, answer my question. Will you have a ring?’
She shook her head.
‘No; not till you give me _that one_, Geoffrey.’
‘That won’t be long first, my darling! You’ll be wanting to get it off
again twelve months afterwards--you’ll be so sick of it and me.’
‘Don’t--_don’t_!’ she murmured, as if smitten by a sudden pain.
‘May I send you a locket, then, Mrs Doyne?’ he continued playfully, for
he saw her spirits were sinking; ‘a great big gold locket to put your
husband’s hair in, and sleep with under your pillow every night until
you see him again--for I know that is what you silly girls do when
you’ve got a lover.’
At this proposal her face brightened.
‘Yes; I should like to have a locket--very, _very_ much, dear Geoffrey;
and I will wear it as long as ever I live.’
Then he rose suddenly, and said that he must go.
‘Past ten o’clock, I declare, my dearest, and I have to be up at eight.
God bless you, my Fenella! God keep you for me! Oh, this parting is an
awful wrench, though it is but for so short a time.’
The girl did not say much, but her face went suddenly as white as a
sheet, and she clung to him as though her arms would never be unlocked
again.
‘You will come back soon?’ she whispered, trembling like a leaf.
‘Very, very soon--in a week at latest--most likely in a couple of days.
Don’t shake so, my darling! Remember we are pledged to each other for
life. Surely, Fenella, you have not one doubt of me?’
‘_I trust you as I trust God_,’ she answered solemnly. They were her
last words--their farewells had been exchanged already; in another
moment he had broken from her clasp, and was gone. Fenella watched him
as he strode across the sands and pushed off in the little boat that
was waiting for him. She kissed her hand in the moonlight again and
again, but he was too far off to see the signal; then, with a sound
that was half a sob and half a sigh, she turned away. As she did so
she saw something glittering on the dusty floor--something lying in a
streak of moonlight shone like a diamond beneath her feet. It was one
of Geoffrey’s sleeve-links that had fallen from his cuff as he embraced
her--a twisted thing of enamel and gold that Fenella had often noticed
on his wrist before. With a cry of joy she pounced upon it, and hid
it in her bosom. She did not know till that moment how much she could
prize anything that had been his; she could not realise how bitter
separation between those who love, can be, till she had tasted it. As
she prepared to return to the cottage, a dark figure in the doorway of
the bungalow made her start.
‘Bennett!’ she exclaimed, in the same moment, ‘is that you? Oh, how you
frightened me! I never supposed for a moment you could get down so far.
But how you are shaking! I am sure it has been too much for you.’
‘Miss Fenella,’ said the servant, as she sat down on the verandah floor
to recover herself, ‘I came to see after you, my dear! Do you know as
it’s past ten o’clock, and the supper’s been on the table this hour and
more? It’s too late for a young lady to be out by herself, and in such
a lonely place as Ines-cedwyn.’
‘Why, nurse, I thought its loneliness was the very thing that made it
safe. This is not the first evening I have been on the sands till ten
o’clock, and Martha never spoke to me on the subject, or told me I was
wrong.’
‘No, Miss Fenella; ’tisn’t Martha’s business to speak to you; and I’ve
been in bed, you see, and knew nothin’ about it; but I’m afraid as
your mamma wouldn’t think it was right. And--if I may make so bold,
miss--who was that gentleman who parted with you just as I came up to
the back of the house?’
Fenella was startled by the question, but she was too proud to attempt
to deny the truth.
‘That was a friend of mine, Bennett--a gentleman who often comes over
to Ines-cedwyn. You need not worry yourself about him. It is all right,
and mamma will say so, too, as soon as she hears it.’
‘Is he a friend of your mamma’s, miss?’
‘Yes; that is, he doesn’t know her yet, but he soon will. He is the
friend of all of us, nurse--the very best friend we ever had.’
‘I am glad of that, my dear; but I hope he won’t come here again till
he’s seen your mamma. Because it isn’t quite the proper thing, you
know, for a gentleman to meet a young lady so often, and at all sorts
of odd times. It makes people talk, Miss Fenella, and that’s not good
for any one.’
What was it in the girl’s face that made the servant half afraid of
saying even as much as she did? A new light, a new dignity, something
she had never seen there before, seemed to settle on Fenella’s brow,
and relegate Eliza Bennett to her proper position. She could not speak
to her young mistress now as she had done on the journey from Calais to
Dover.
‘Bennett,’ said the girl presently, ‘I daresay it may seem strange
to you, because you do not understand; neither can I give you any
explanation till I have seen my mother. But you may make your mind easy
on one score--the gentleman has gone away, for the present. He will
not be back again, most probably, until we have heard from Mentone;
and then everything will be right. And now, let me take you home, dear
nurse. I wish you hadn’t come down here after me; I am so afraid you
may have hurt yourself. There! Lean on my arm as hard as ever you like;
you cannot tire me; and we will go home together. And, please, don’t
speak to me again about the--I mean, about the subject you mentioned
just now, because I can say nothing until I have seen mamma, and then
you will understand that all your fears are groundless. Lean harder,
dear nurse; that is right. I am strong enough to bear your weight and
my own too.’
[Illustration: decorative]
[Illustration: decorative]
CHAPTER II.
IN A STRAIT.
‘Men have many loves; their true names are--or Vice
or Vanity, or Feebleness or Folly.’--_Ariadne_.
Geoffrey Doyne had but spoken the truth when he said that his brother’s
letter was a most imperative one. It had contained as sharp a summons
as it was possible to send a man:--
‘Come up to London as soon as ever you receive this,’ it ran. ‘I must
see you at once, and on business of the utmost importance.’
The brothers had inherited money at the death of their mother, which
was invested in stock, and under the management of Michael Doyne, and
Geoffrey naturally thought that his presence was needed on account of
some selling-out or buying-in. His brother did not seem to him to have
a soul above money. He could not imagine his troubling himself on any
other matter.
He went up to town by an early train the following day, and the same
idea was in his mind as he entered the lawyer’s office.
‘What’s up now?’ he said, as he encountered Michael’s portentous
countenance. ‘Have Persians fallen, or Hudson’s Bay gone up? I do wish
you could manage these matters without my interference, Michael. You
know how I detest business, and how perfectly I am satisfied that you
know a great deal more about it than I do.’
‘But this is unfortunately a matter which I could not settle on my own
authority,’ replied his brother gravely. ‘Come into the inner office,
Geoffrey. I cannot speak to you unless we are perfectly alone.’
‘This looks ominous,’ cried Geoffrey gaily, as he ensconced himself in
an arm-chair and flicked the dust off his dainty boots.
‘It is ominous,’ replied the other, ‘and I trust you are not going to
make a jest of it. It is likely to cause trouble enough before long,
unless I can bring you to reason.’
‘What are you driving at?’ said Geoffrey.
‘Simply this--that Dr Robertson called at my office yesterday morning
and gave me a piece of information that horrified me.’
The younger brother changed colour.
‘Well, go on,’ he said carelessly; ‘what had the old gentleman to say
for himself?’
‘You know, Geoffrey, as well as I do. He came to tell me that you had
broken off your engagement with his daughter Jessie.’
‘It is not true; it was Jessie who broke off her engagement with me.’
‘I cannot believe it, Geoffrey. Dr Robertson came to me in the greatest
distress. He said that both he and his wife had observed that their
daughter was out of health and spirits for some weeks past, but that
they had not connected the circumstance with your engagement until
they noticed that all correspondence had ceased between you. Then they
questioned Jessie, and the truth came out--that you had written to her
some time back, and said you didn’t care for her.’
‘Not exactly that,’ replied Geoffrey; ‘but I told her I did not care
for her as I ought to do for the woman I was going to make my wife; and
that’s the truth, Michael. I _don’t_ care for her, and I never shall;
and under the circumstances, it would be perfectly absurd my marrying
her!’
‘You should have thought of that before you proposed to her,’ remarked
Michael drily.
‘I did; but I was drawn into it. You know I was as thoroughly “hooked”
by the old woman as ever a man could be.’
‘Perhaps you were--that is your own business; but having been “hooked,”
as you call it, you must submit to be “landed.”’
‘Do you mean to say, then, that you consider I am bound to marry Jessie
Robertson?’
‘I do, most decidedly.’
‘What! After she has sent me back my letters and presents?’
‘That has nothing to do with it, Geoffrey. The poor girl sent them
back because she was ignorant how else to act. Had she consulted her
parents, they would not have permitted her to do so. Jessie would set
you free as it is; but Dr and Mrs Robertson are quite of a different
opinion. They won’t let you off so easily.’
‘They intend to keep me to my word?’
‘I am afraid there is no doubt of it. The doctor might be talked over,
but you know what his wife is. He says she is furious, and declares
that, if you refuse to keep to your engagement with Jessie, she will
sue you for a breach of promise; and that’s a sort of thing our family
could not allow, you know, Geoffrey.’
The younger man sat silent and sullen, with a face of the deepest
perplexity.
‘I _must_ get out of it somehow,’ he said presently. ‘You are cleverer
than I am, Michael; can’t you help me?’
‘I don’t see my way to it, Geoffrey. You proposed to the girl of your
own accord, and the engagement has been made public. What earthly
excuse can you have for getting out of it?’
‘Why, that I don’t love her, and that I won’t marry her. No; by George!
I won’t, if I hang for it!’
‘There’s another woman in the case,’ remarked his brother casually.
‘Yes, there is,’ said Geoffrey.
‘Some girl at Ines-cedwyn?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I heard of it when I was down at Lynwern. Well, I daresay it will be
hard lines, Geoffrey; but you must give her up. You can’t marry them
both.’
‘I won’t marry Jessie Robertson,’ said Geoffrey stoutly.
‘You _must_, man--you _must_! Don’t talk nonsense; try to look at the
matter in a reasonable light. After all, it’s only a toss-up between
them, and why should one girl suffer more than the other? There are
certain social laws, you know, Geoffrey, which we cannot break with
impunity, and this is one of them. Your honour is concerned in your
keeping your engagement, and you cannot cancel it without disgracing
the whole family. For our sakes, therefore (if not for your own), you
must do the right thing by Jessie Robertson.’
‘My honour may be concerned elsewhere as well,’ rejoined Geoffrey,
in a somewhat lowered voice, ‘and my happiness as well as my honour.
Michael, I will pay any forfeit, or incur any penalty they may choose
to put upon me; but I cannot, and I will not, marry Jessie. I will cut
my throat first.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ said his brother, as if he had proposed a thing
of every-day occurrence. ‘I don’t approve of marriage myself as a
rule, but I think of the two courses it would be the preferable one to
pursue. Little Jessie isn’t half bad, you know, when you come to think
of it; and if you would only believe me, my dear fellow,’ he continued,
as he laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder, ‘one woman will be just
the same to you as another when you have been married for three months.’
‘Ah! That’s what _you_ think of it,’ said Geoffrey; ‘it shows how much
you know of the matter.’
‘Is this young lady at Ines-cedwyn, then, so very handsome?’
‘No.’
‘Clever?’
‘Not particularly so.’
‘Rich?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Then what’s the great attraction in her, that you should wish to break
the heart of a good little girl like Jessie Robertson for her sake?’
‘It is one that I don’t think you’d understand, Michael,--_I love her_!’
The lawyer laughed.
‘My dear boy, I’ve heard you say the same thing so often before. Excuse
me if I think you could manage that (if you tried) with any one of the
sex.’
‘At any rate, I don’t intend to try it with Jessie Robertson.’
Michael Doyne looked grave; he did not like this determined refusal on
the part of his brother. It looked so much as if (for once) Geoffrey
were in earnest.
‘Well, look here!’ he said suddenly; ‘if you really want to get out of
this scrape, Geoffrey, you can only do it by persuading the old people
to let you off. Suppose you meet me at the Robertsons’ this evening to
talk the matter over? Will you do so?’
‘I shall tell them the truth,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I shall tell them I’m in
love with somebody else, and they must think what they like of it.’
‘Perhaps that will be the best plan, after all,’ replied his brother;
‘but, at any rate, you must see them. It was only by promising to
summon you to London that I dissuaded the old man from following you to
Lynwern.’
‘Was it so bad as that?’ asked Geoffrey, startled.
‘It was, indeed! They’re in a rare state in Blenheim Square, I can tell
you, and would have written straight off to the pater if I had not
promised a lot of things in your name, which I trust you will be found
ready to fulfil. I hardly know how the pater would take this, Geoffrey.
The Robertsons are his oldest friends, as you know; and he would be
quick to resent an affront to them. I’m not sure but what it might
militate against your future prospects!’
‘I can’t help it if it does,’ said Geoffrey, with a sigh. ‘I am not
going to blast all my happiness for life to please anybody.’
‘Ah! That’s only talking,’ replied his brother carelessly, as he bid
him good-bye, and told him not to fail to keep his appointment in
Blenheim Square at nine o’clock.
Geoffrey strolled towards his club, ill at ease. He did not waver for a
moment from his determination, but he was afraid he might have trouble
in keeping to it. He would have had little fear of being able to make
Dr Robertson see the matter in a sensible light, but the doctor was
unfortunately a cipher in his own house, where Mrs Robertson reigned
supreme; and Geoffrey (in common with the rest of mankind) stood
terribly in awe of her.
He tried to divert his thoughts and while away the time by purchasing
the promised locket for Fenella--a gold locket with a wreath
of laurel on it in blue enamel--(was it prophetic of her future
destiny?)--surrounding the emblems of Love and Faith and Hope. Geoffrey
thought the design a pretty one, and bought the trinket on the spot.
Fenella would think of him when she saw the laurel--the laurel which
grows to adorn the head of heroes; and the cross and heart and anchor
were emblematic of her own feelings--feelings which he had called God
to witness should never be wounded through his means.
It was something to do to buy the locket, and have a piece of his
hair put in it, and see it packed and addressed to Ines-cedwyn, and
to picture the innocent delight of the receiver when it reached her
hands the following morning. But still hours intervened before he could
set off to keep his appointment in Blenheim Square, and the men who
met him at his club, and ‘chaffed’ him on keeping out of town at the
best season of the year, could not imagine what had come to Geoffrey
Doyne--he was so _distrait_ and peevish, not to say rude, in the
irritation caused by his perplexity and doubt. When at last he reached
the house, Michael was ready to receive him in the hall.
‘I thought it better for me to come here first, and smooth matters over
a little,’ he said as his brother entered.
‘I almost wish now that I had written instead,’ replied Geoffrey.
‘However, I am sure that Dr Robertson is too sensible not to understand
my motives.’
‘I am afraid the doctor is out,’ said Michael Doyne. ‘However, you will
see Mrs Robertson, and it is all the same thing.’
He knew it was not the same thing, and so did his brother, but it was
too late for remonstrance. Geoffrey was already on the threshold of the
library, where Mrs Robertson sat in state to receive him.
To say that this lady was a conglomeration of all the most ferocious
mothers-in-law that ever existed, is not to say too much. Her sharp
tongue and vixenish temper were well known in the circle of her
acquaintance, and she joined them to an obstinacy that was unequalled.
It was she alone who had insisted upon Geoffrey Doyne being brought
to book for his defalcation, and forced to fulfil his promises to her
daughter. Good old Dr Robertson might have shaken his head over his
faithlessness to his dying day, but he would never have dreamt of
insisting that he should marry the girl; and Jessie herself, although
she inherited somewhat of her mother’s spirit, was too young to have
made such good use of it. But Mrs Robertson was above such petty
scruples. Jessie was one of seven daughters, and this young man,
who had the most excellent prospects, had formally entered into an
engagement to marry her, and now wanted to back out of it, and her
mother was determined to know the reason why. So she sat, enthroned in
her husband’s arm-chair, ready to receive the culprit--her sandy hair
drawn tightly off her forehead, as though to say she would admit of no
compromise, and her hard steel-grey eyes fixed on him with the look of
an inquisitor.
Geoffrey Doyne, though with some hesitation, advanced in the old way,
and held out his hand.
‘No, thank you, Mr Doyne,’ she said tartly; ‘not until this most
unpleasant business is settled between us. Be good enough to seat
yourself. I am glad your brother is here to be witness to what passes
at our interview.’
Geoffrey flushed to the temples, but he did as she desired him.
‘My brother is here as my friend, Mrs Robertson,’ he replied.
‘Otherwise he can have no possible concern in my private affairs.’
‘I don’t know that, Mr Doyne,’ said his hostess. ‘Did you come here
as _our friend_, it might be so; but under the circumstances, I should
think very few _gentlemen_ would be found willing to take your side.’
‘Do you mean to insinuate, madam--’ commenced Geoffrey hotly; but
Michael came between them as mediator.
‘Mrs Robertson,’ he said, ‘I persuaded my brother to come here to-night
that we might have an explanation, not a quarrel; and I do not see how
recrimination can help the cause on either side. Will you hear what he
has to say in extenuation of his conduct, or would you prefer to be the
first to speak?’
‘I wish to say first what I think of him,’ replied Mrs Robertson.
‘Let it be so, then. Geoffrey, you see the justice of this. Mrs
Robertson is not only a lady and your hostess, but she stands in the
position of the injured party. Let me ask you, therefore, to listen
patiently to whatever she may have to say, and you can justify your
own action in the matter afterwards.’
‘Which, I should imagine, Mr Geoffrey Doyne will find it most difficult
to do,’ interposed Mrs Robertson.
‘No such thing, madam,’ broke in Geoffrey warmly. ‘I have the best
possible excuse--’
But Michael came again to the rescue.
‘Patience, my dear fellow--patience! You will never arrive at a
satisfactory conclusion unless each consents to hear what the other has
to say.’
Geoffrey sank into his chair again; and Mrs Robertson turned her back
on him without ceremony.
‘You will excuse me, Mr Doyne,’ she said to the elder brother, ‘if I
prefer, for the present at all events, to address myself to you. The
case stands simply thus. Last year Mr Geoffrey Doyne stayed for a month
in our house, and I trusted him implicitly in the company of all my
daughters, with whom he appeared on the best of terms--’
‘Of course I was. I romped with one as much as the other,’ interposed
Geoffrey.
But Mrs Robertson took no notice of the remark.
‘After a while, however, I perceived that he admired Jessie above the
rest; indeed, on several occasions I had seen familiarities take place
between them--’
‘She used to come and sit on my lap whether I would or no,’ grumbled
Geoffrey.
‘So I considered it my duty as a mother,’ continued the lady, waving
her hand, as though to wave the younger brother off into infinitesimal
space, ‘to ask him his intentions with regard to her, and was greatly
astonished to find that he had no intentions whatever.’
‘Of course I hadn’t--never thought of such a thing,’ said Geoffrey.
‘But you _ought_ to have thought of it; it was most reprehensible,’
replied his brother, frowning.
‘I am so glad you see it in _our_ light, dear Mr Doyne,’ rejoined Mrs
Robertson; ‘for it is hard, after so many years of friendly intercourse
have subsisted between the families, to think of a rupture taking place
now. The dear doctor feels it keenly. The suspense has quite aged him.’
‘Oh, it must not be,’ said Michael decidedly; and Geoffrey felt a chill
run through him at the words.
‘Of course I remonstrated with your brother,’ resumed Mrs Robertson,
‘as he will do me the justice to acknowledge, and pointed out to him
the harm he had done our dear girl, and the misery he had caused her.
And then Dr Robertson and his father both spoke to him; and the issue
was, that he proposed formally to my husband for Jessie’s hand (we have
the letter now, Mr Doyne), and the engagement was ratified between
them. Of course our friends all know of it; we never dreamt for a
moment that Mr Geoffrey Doyne could be so _base_ to go back from his
written word; and the poor child has been actually making the linen
for her trousseau for the last three months. When, the other day, as I
was questioning her on her altered looks and spirits, she burst into
tears, and, to my _amazement_, told me that it was all over between
them; that Mr Geoffrey Doyne had sent for his letters and presents to
be returned to him, and that he had been cruel enough to write and tell
the dear girl that he had never cared for her, and that he refused to
marry her,--the basest, cruellest, most heartless conduct I ever heard
of in my life,’ continued Mrs Robertson, trembling with anger, ‘and
after the kindness and hospitality he had received at our hands too!
But it cannot be allowed, Mr Doyne. I will not sit by quietly and see
my poor child pine away in consequence of such treachery. Your brother
must fulfil the engagement he entered into with her, or she shall have
public compensation for his desertion. The world shall not have it in
its power to say that we boasted idly of our daughter’s expectations.’
‘Am I to be allowed to speak now?’ demanded Geoffrey, who had with
difficulty kept quiet during the last part of this harangue.
‘If Mrs Robertson has quite finished,’ said his brother coldly.
‘I have said all I wish to say,’ replied the lady, ‘and no explanations
Mr Geoffrey Doyne can offer me in return can ever excuse his conduct to
my daughter.’
‘Perhaps not in _your_ eyes, madam,’ said Geoffrey; ‘but you have
appealed to the judgment of the world. I am glad you have done me the
justice to acknowledge that I never had any intention of proposing
to Jessie until you forced me to do so. And therein lies my greatest
fault. I should have resisted your arguments then as I do now. I have
made the task doubly hard by delay. Ever since I yielded to your wishes
in that respect, I have seen how wrong I was to do so. Each day has
convinced me, more and more, that I am not, and I never was, in love
with your daughter, and that, if I marry her we shall only make each
other miserable for life. It was with this conviction that I wrote
to her a month ago--telling her the truth. I did not say I would not
marry her, neither did I ask her to return my letters or presents. I
said just what I have told you--that I had not considered sufficiently
before I made that proposal of marriage to her, and that I did not
care for her so much as I ought to do. And if that is being base and
dishonourable in your eyes, it is not in mine. I consider I should
have been much more to blame had I married her without telling her the
truth.’
‘Unfortunately, you see, Geoffrey, it is not what _you_ think, but what
the world will say about the matter,’ remarked Michael gravely; ‘and
there is no doubt that a thing of this kind militates against a girl’s
prospects in life.’
‘_Militates against her prospects_!’ cried Mrs Robertson shrilly; ‘I
should think it did--it ruins them! Do you suppose I am going to let my
daughter be pointed at as having been jilted--_and by you_!’ she ended,
with withering scorn.
‘Would you prefer her, then, to marry a man who does not love her?’
retorted Geoffrey.
‘That is of little consequence,’ replied the lady. ‘_No_ men care for
their wives (as far as I can see) in the present day. The mere fact of
their _being_ their wives is sufficient to make them indifferent! But
my daughter is of a very different disposition from you. She is amiable
and affectionate and loving, and I will not see her heart broken and
her future prospects spoiled for any man alive.’
‘If you knew all, Mrs Robertson,’ resumed Geoffrey, colouring, ‘you
would see that you could not break her heart more readily than by
marrying her to me.’
‘You had better make a clean breast whilst you are about it,’ suggested
his brother.
‘Perhaps you are right. Well, then, Mrs Robertson, my objection to
renewing my engagement with Jessie does not lie wholly in the fact that
I do not care sufficiently for her to make her a good husband. There is
a stronger reason than that--a more insurmountable one. I am in love
with another woman!’
He said the words slowly, as though they contained an argument to
quench all her maternal hopes. But they had only the effect of making
her more angry and determined.
‘And do you call that an _excuse_?’ she exclaimed; ‘it is an
aggravation of your offence. You are in love with another woman, and
so _my_ daughter is to go to the wall! My Jessie is to be deprived
throughout life of all you had promised to give her, because you have
taken it into your head to set up some one else in her stead. But you
will find it is not quite so easy to chop and change in that manner, Mr
Doyne. You have pledged your word to my daughter, and you must redeem
it--or give her such compensation as the law may award her.’
‘You will surely not bring this matter into court?’ cried Geoffrey,
with horror. ‘You will never drag your daughter’s name through the
newspapers as the plaintiff in a breach of promise case?’
Mrs Robertson saw her advantage, and clung to it.
‘We certainly _shall_,’ she replied, ‘unless you think better of the
insult you have offered us. The doctor and I have talked this matter
over, and he has left it entirely in my hands. He is no more disposed
to sit by quietly, and see Jessie’s heart broken without an effort to
save her, than I am.’
‘But how can you improve the affair by making it public? You should
consider your daughter’s feelings,’ said the young man, in evident
distress. He did not perceive that the agitation he evinced was the
weakest card he could play into her hands; nor did he guess that the
threat she used towards him had been suggested by his astute lawyer
brother.
‘That is _our_ business,’ replied Mrs Robertson coldly, ‘and we shall
do what we consider best for our child without any reference to her
feelings. Neither do I think _you_ are the proper person to remind me
of my duty in that respect, Mr Doyne, considering the _very little_
regard you have shown towards them yourself.’
‘What _am_ I to do?’ demanded Geoffrey, in a low voice, of his brother.
‘You’ll have to stick to it, my boy. I don’t see any way out of it,’
replied Michael, in the same tone.
‘I _cannot_--it is impossible. I will die first,’ said the younger man,
in a voice of despair.
‘Well, Mr Doyne,’ exclaimed Mrs Robertson after a short pause, ‘is it
of any use our prolonging this interview? Mr Geoffrey does not appear
to be disposed to do what is right and honourable in the matter, and
therefore it only remains for the doctor and myself to take the steps
that seem best to us. And the first thing, I believe, my husband
proposes to do is to go down and have an interview with your father at
Ryelands.’
‘Might I ask you, my dear Mrs Robertson, as a personal favour to
myself,’ said Michael Doyne, in his blandest voice, ‘to allow Geoffrey
a couple of days in which to think over what you have said to him? I
feel convinced that, if you will do so, we shall have arrived at some
satisfactory conclusion by that time. For my sake, Mrs Robertson--will
you do it for _my_ sake?’
‘Well, Mr Doyne, for _your_ sake I will; for I know we have your good
wishes, although we appear to have lost those of your brother. In a
couple of days, then, I shall expect to hear from you; and meanwhile I
shall say nothing to my daughter, nor take any more decided steps in
the matter. Good-night, dear Mr Doyne; whatever happens, I shall always
feel that you have proved yourself a true and faithful friend to us,’
and shaking hands with the elder brother, Mrs Robertson swept out of
the room without vouchsafing one glance towards the spot where Geoffrey
stood, silent and dejected.
‘Come on, Geoff,’ said Michael briskly, as soon as she had disappeared;
‘we had better be going home; it is no use our remaining longer here.’
The younger man followed him mechanically to the hall door. His brain
was in such a whirl he hardly knew what he was about.
‘What _am_ I to do?’ he repeated, in a confused manner, as they walked
through the square together.
‘Well, to tell you the plain truth, Geoffrey, I only see one thing for
you to do, and that is to renew your engagement, and marry the girl,
and take her back to India with you.’
‘You forget the other,’ said Geoffrey gloomily.
‘No, I don’t, my dear boy. I see the mess you’re in as plainly as
you do. But the other is a matter of _feeling_, Geoffrey, and this
is a matter of _right_. Tell me a little about this young lady at
Ines-cedwyn. Are her parents staying there?’
‘No; she is with a servant.’
‘You haven’t said anything to them about marrying her, then?’
‘Not yet.’
‘It’s only been a little spooning affair on your own account, eh?’
‘Yes; I suppose you’d call it so.’
‘Well, then, my dear Geoffrey, there’s no question about the matter.
You must break it off.’
‘I _can’t_ do that, Michael.’
‘You can, if you choose.’
‘I _cannot_. There are reasons--’
‘Oh yes! I understand all your reasons before you tell me. You like
her much better than this one; in fact, you’re over head and ears
in love with her, and you want to marry her, and take her out to
India. That’s it now, isn’t it? Well, I allow that it is very hard,
and, as I said before, I daresay it will cut you up to have to part
from her and marry Jessie Robertson instead; but _it must be done_,
Geoffrey. There’s the long and the short of it. Your honour demands
the sacrifice, and respect for your family demands it. We can’t have
our name dragged through a breach of promise case, and connected with
that of the Robertsons. It would be too disgraceful. I don’t believe my
father would ever speak to you again. And then, there’s something to be
said for Jessie into the bargain. The girl’s awfully fond of you. The
doctor says she’s so changed by your behaviour, that you’d hardly know
her; and I don’t see why she should be made to suffer any more than
the other one. You can’t keep your word to _both_, that’s clear; and
Jessie Robertson will bear the more open disgrace of the two, if you
break with her. Now, do go home and try to think it over in that light.
_Some one_ must bear the brunt of your folly in any case; but if you
persevere in your present determination, we shall _all_ have to bear
it, which isn’t quite fair upon us.’
Geoffrey did go home--miserable, undecided, and almost hopeless.
Still, he trusted that something might turn up to help him out of his
difficulty--that Jessie’s parents might relent, or the girl herself
refuse to renew their engagement. Surely, he thought, if he told her to
her face he didn’t love her, she would never hold him to his word.
Meanwhile there was no reason that his poor trusting Fenella should
suffer for his fault. Time enough for her to learn the worst when the
worst came. So he sat down and wrote her a long loving letter (such
as he knew she would carry in her bosom all the day), and told her he
was afraid his business would detain him in town longer than he had
expected; but he did not mention what that business was. And when he
had finished the letter, he laid his head down upon the paper and burst
into tears.
‘It is impossible,’ he kept on repeating to himself. ‘I _cannot_--I
_must_ not desert her. Not _now_--O God! Not _now_.’
His task would have been much easier if the other girl had not cared
for him also, but he knew too well that she did care. It had been his
flattered vanity at her evident affection that had drawn him into the
noose that galled him now. Still he thought, if all other means failed,
he must make an appeal to Jessie’s generosity to set him free. He did
not know that her temperament was of so jealous a nature, that the
very plea he urged for liberty would be an incentive to her to bind
him closer. When the two days of grace were over, he was as distracted
and undecided as ever, and Michael had the greatest difficulty in
persuading him to put in an appearance in Blenheim Square.
The meeting this time, however, was of a more friendly character. Dr
Robertson was present, and Michael Doyne had already consulted with the
parents on the most politic step to be taken.
‘We have no wish to appear harsh or oppressive, my dear young friend,’
commenced the doctor, who had been previously ‘coached’ by his wife
what to say; ‘but we have our child’s happiness to consult in this
matter, and I am bound to tell you that it is very seriously concerned.
Mrs Robertson and I have, therefore, after mature deliberation, come to
the conclusion that Jessie is, after all, the proper person to decide
whether the engagement shall continue or not, and we shall leave it
entirely in her hands.’
Geoffrey’s face flushed with hope.
‘Do I understand you, sir, that Miss Robertson and I are to settle
this business by ourselves, and that you will abide by her decision,
whatever it may be?’
‘Yes; that is our wish, Mr Doyne. After all, it is _her_ happiness, and
not _ours_, that is at stake; and if she tells us she has released you
of her own free will, we shall take no further steps in the matter.’
‘Thank you--thank you a thousand times,’ said Geoffrey fervently. ‘Does
Jessie know I am in the house? May I see her now?’
‘Yes; I have prepared my daughter for the interview,’ replied Mrs
Robertson, with a grim smile, as she preceded the young man out of the
room.
Geoffrey followed her briskly, his heart throbbing with hope. He
thought he should have no difficulty in making Jessie understand how
much better it would be for both of them to be free.
Mrs Robertson led him to the drawing-room and opened the door.
‘Jessie, my dear,’ she said quietly, ‘here is Mr Geoffrey Doyne, who
wishes to speak to you.’
Then she retreated, and left the young people together.
Now, until that morning Jessie Robertson had been entirely ignorant
that she had any rival to dispute her possession of Geoffrey Doyne.
She had accepted his letter just as he wrote it, and had never lost
hope that he would find out he had been mistaken, and return some day
and ask her to take back those presents, and give him a place in her
affections once more. And she was quite ready to do so, for, truth to
say, he had never lost that place. His handsome face and figure had
made an irrevocable impression on her mind, and if she did not love
him with all the ardour of Fenella Barrington, she loved him to the
utmost power of her nature--and no one can do more. The rupture of
their engagement had been a great shock to her, and the disappointment
had left its traces on her features--had darkened the lines beneath her
eyes, and washed the colour from her rosy cheeks.
Mrs Robertson had seen all this; she knew that the girl looked pathetic
and pretty, and the young man was emotional and easily impressed; and
she trusted a great deal to the effect Jessie’s altered appearance
would have upon him. Besides, she had, as she said, prepared her
daughter for this interview. She had hinted at the possibility of some
low-born rival as a means of rousing the girl’s jealousy, and then she
had implored her, for the sake of Geoffrey Doyne’s family (no less
than for his own), to be firm, and bring him back to his allegiance.
He would thank her for it afterwards (the mother said), when he knew
his own heart better, and could rate her devotion for him at its true
value. So Jessie came forward--rather timidly, it is true, but still
very affectionately, and much in the old style, and lifted her tearful
blue eyes to his face.
‘I _knew_ you would come back,’ she murmured. ‘I knew you would
remember our old affection some day. Mamma said it was impossible that
you could quite forget me.’
For a moment he almost forgot his mission in looking at her pale cheeks
and attenuated figure.
‘Why, Jessie,’ he exclaimed, ‘have you been ill?’
‘Yes--a little. What does it matter? I fretted, of course--I could not
help fretting; but I shall be all right again now.’
‘Do you mean to say my letter caused this? Oh, what a brute I am!’
cried Geoffrey.
‘Don’t say that,’ replied Jessie softly, as she sat down beside him.
‘You did it for the best, I am sure.’
‘I did indeed. I thought it would be less dishonourable to cancel our
engagement than to let you marry me without knowing the truth. For I
am not worthy of you, Jessie, and since we have been separated I have
thought so much more seriously of such things. Marriage is a very
solemn contract, is it not? And it would be unjust to let you enter
into it with any one who does not love you as you deserve. Don’t you
agree with me?’
‘But I always thought you loved me more than I deserved, Geoffrey,’ she
said, in a low voice; ‘for, after all, what is there in me to love?’
‘There is everything--everything to make a man happy, if he were not
only too great a fool to appreciate it, Jessie.’
‘But you made me quite happy,’ she whispered.
‘Did I? I am afraid I should not make you happy for long. I own an
atrociously bad temper, Jessie--irritable and easily put out; and I am
a selfish, heartless sort of fellow at the best. You would have wearied
of me in no time, and then there would have been no remedy for either
of us. It was better to put a stop to it before it was too late, wasn’t
it?’
‘I should soon have grown used to your tempers, Geoffrey--all men have
them, mamma says--and I never thought you heartless; at least, not
until you sent me that letter.’ And then she began to cry.
‘Jessie, did that letter hurt you so very much?’
‘Oh, terribly,’ she said, amidst her sobs; ‘how could it be otherwise
when I had made up my mind we were to be married so soon, and half my
things were made, too, and I had asked my cousins to be bridesmaids?
And now--now it seems as if everything in the whole world was over for
me, and I should never be happy again--never!’
‘Oh, don’t cry--for Heaven’s sake, don’t cry!’ said Geoffrey
despairingly, ‘and let me try and think what is best to be done.’
They sat silent for a few moments, whilst Jessie caught her breath,
and dabbed her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief. Then Geoffrey said
gravely,--
‘Jessie! I thought--and I think still--that we shall never be happy as
man and wife; but your father and mother consider that I have gone so
far in proposing to you, that I have no right even to suggest such a
thing as altering our minds, and that it must rest with _you_ to decide
whether our marriage takes place or not.’
‘I would much rather it took place,’ sobbed the girl.
‘Listen to me,’ went on her companion, ‘and don’t decide in a hurry.
Remember the whole happiness of our lives depends upon your answer. I
am compelled to tell you--in justice to you and to myself--that I do
not love you as I ought to do. In fact, Jessie, I--I--(don’t be angry
with me for saying it)--but I--care for somebody else; and that fact
alone would make my marriage with you a sacrilege and a blasphemy which
I do not dare to contemplate.’
She did not answer him, and after a while he proceeded,--
‘Don’t you think it would be very wrong of us to marry under the
circumstances, Jessie? Don’t you think it may be the wrecking of both
our lives to know there is such a barrier between us? Don’t you think
it would be more honourable in the sight of God and man for us to go
our different ways in the world, than to take vows upon ourselves which
we know it is not in our power to perform?’
He paused, waiting for and expecting her acquiescence; and had the
girl followed the natural instincts of her womanhood, she would have
told him he was right. But the hint he had given her of his love
for another, vague and undefined though it was, had raised the worst
feelings of which Jessie Robertson was capable, and made her resolve,
at all hazards, to claim him for her own. He should never, _never_ (so
she said to herself) be free to go and marry that other woman, and
leave her to be laughed at or pitied by all their acquaintance. She
loved the man, but she loved herself better, and she was determined if
possible to keep him by her side. So all she answered was,--
‘_I_ could fulfil them, Geoffrey, easily enough. Nothing could be
difficult for me to do that was done for you.’
‘By heavens!’ he exclaimed, driven to desperation by her quiet
perseverance, ‘do you mean to say that you would stoop to marry me when
I tell you plainly that I do not care for you?’
‘Yes, Geoffrey, I would; because you will care for me some day. I am
sure you will.’
‘And with the knowledge that I love some one else?’
‘It is not pleasant for me to hear, of course,’ said Jessie, ‘but you
will get over it in time--and you were engaged to me first.’
‘Then I am to understand,’ rejoined the young man gloomily, ‘that you
desire me to hold to this engagement, of which I have told you frankly
I am weary?’
‘Because you fail in your promises to me, is that any reason I should
fail also?’ she replied. ‘I should consider myself bound to you,
Geoffrey, whether you deserted me or not.’
‘And this is your final decision?’ asked her companion, with white lips.
‘How could I come to any other? I should only be telling a story if I
said I did?’
‘Jessie! I told Dr and Mrs Robertson that I would abide by what you
said. Think once more; for God’s sake, think before you answer me!
Remember it is the happiness or misery of our whole lives upon which
you are deciding. _Are we to be married to each other, or are we not_?’
He hung upon her reply as the criminal in the dock hangs upon the
decision of the jury, and she gave it with apparently as little
personal feeling.
‘If you ask _me_, Geoffrey, I can only say what I have said before,
_Yes_. If I hadn’t wished to marry you, I should never have consented
to be engaged to you. I don’t change my mind every other day, as you
seem to do!’
‘God forgive you!’ was trembling on his lips as he regarded her, but
with an effort he altered the words. ‘Be it so, then!’ he said, between
his teeth; and then, without another look, he turned upon his heel and
quitted the house, leaving Jessie Robertson to announce to her father
and mother the determination at which she had arrived.
[Illustration: decorative]
CHAPTER III.
DESERTED.
‘Castalio! Oh, how often has he sworn
Nature should change--the sun and stars grow dark--
E’er he would falsify his vows to me?
Make haste, confusion, then! Sun, lose thy light!
And stars, drop dead with sorrow to the earth!
For my Castalio’s false.’
_Otway_.
The long-expected letter from Mentone, addressed to Eliza Bennett,
arrived but a few days after Geoffrey Doyne had quitted Ines-cedwyn.
Lady Wilson’s party had finished their wanderings for the present, and
were settled in the Villa Abracci, but the event did not seem to have
fulfilled the expectations of Mrs Barrington, who complained bitterly
of all her surroundings. The heat was intolerable; the house had not
sufficient accommodation; that odious Miss Russell had joined their
party, and was making herself most conspicuous with Mr Wilson; poor
dear Colonel Ellerman had died suddenly of bronchitis the week before;
and those brutes of agents had written from London to say that the
tenants in South Audley Street wished to give up the rooms at the end
of three months. In fact, poor Mrs Barrington’s star was decidedly in
the descendent.
‘Only fancy!’ she wrote, ‘those wretches giving up the rooms in
July--the very month of all others when nobody wishes to remain in
London. I made sure they would renew their agreement until Michaelmas.
I think it is most inconsiderate of them, not to say dishonest--for
there is no chance of my letting the rooms again. And what are we to do
with ourselves in London at that time--you and I and Fenella? We shall
be roasted alive. I should remain here, of course, or go on to some
livelier place, only I am afraid I shall not be able to afford it. I
hope to goodness you and the girl are not running into any expense that
you can possibly avoid, for all my money has gone in railway fares, and
the people here change their dresses so many times a day, I haven’t
half enough clothes to wear. I consider that Lady Wilson ought, at
the very least, to offer to pay my expenses back to England, for she
has quite brought me here on false pretences. The weekly expenses are
much higher than she said they would be, and she has given the best
bedroom in the house to that hideous Anna Russell--after saying she
couldn’t receive Fenella, too. Such deceit! And the son is exactly
like his mother--stingy and false! I hate them both. I was dreadfully
distressed to hear about your leg. You really should be more careful.
It is selfish of you to go falling about in that way, when you know
how I depend upon your services. What would you have done if I had
required you to join me at Mentone? It’s just a chance that I did not.
Lady Wilson’s maid is a fool; she can’t dress hair a bit, and the
old woman is so selfish, she will hardly ever let her do any sewing
for me. I often wish I had Fenella here to help me with needlework.
I hope you or she will write soon and let me hear that your leg is
healed again. I couldn’t stand crutches about the house. And I’m sure
I’ve had trouble enough already. You may fancy the shock dear Colonel
Ellerman’s death was to me. So sudden and so sad! And he’s left every
halfpenny he possessed to his sister, too; it makes me so mad to think
of it. However, I suppose it’s the will of Heaven. I am glad to hear
your account of Miss Fenella’s looks. It is just as well one of the
family should enjoy good health. I feel ill and weak enough myself. I
am sure this place doesn’t agree with me, and Lady Wilson is the worst
housekeeper I ever met. The dinners are simply not fit to eat.’
Eliza Bennett was as distressed by the receipt of this letter as if she
took every word of it for gospel.
‘Your poor dear mamma!’ she exclaimed; ‘what worries she has in this
life, to be sure! And to think that I am not with her, too! That is the
cruellest part of it. Not that I could hope to be of much good (being
only a servant), but still it’s hard for a lady who’s been used to have
every comfort about her, to wait on herself, and eat dinners she don’t
fancy; isn’t it, Miss Fenella?’
‘Mamma might have had us both with her if she had wished it; it’s her
own fault that she’s alone!’ replied Fenella, with her eyes fixed upon
the summer sky, and her heart filled to the very brim with Geoffrey
Doyne.
‘Lor’! Miss Fenella, you seem to have grown very cold-like lately,’
remarked the servant. ‘You fretted so at parting with your mamma, I
thought you’d be all in a flutter at the idea of meeting her again.
Wouldn’t you like to go back to London, miss?’
The girl’s face flushed with the sudden joy of expectation. London was
the happy place that held her lover.
‘To _London_, nurse! Oh yes, I should; very much indeed. But is there
any chance of it?’
‘Well, I should say from your mamma’s letter as there was every chance,
my dear; for here we are in the middle of July, and even if she don’t
come back herself, some one must go and look after them rooms as soon
as they’re empty.’
‘Let me write and tell mamma that we will look after them,’ cried
Fenella impulsively, ‘and then she needn’t come home any sooner on that
account. Let us go back to London together, nurse--you and I; it will
be ever so much nicer than Ines-cedwyn.’
Eliza Bennett looked in the girl’s tell-tale face, and thought to
herself. ‘That there chap’s in London, I’d take my oath of it;’ but all
she said was,--
‘You can write what you please to your mamma, Miss Fenella; but we
couldn’t go back, at any rate, till the end of July, for the parties
don’t give up the rooms till that time.’
And her young mistress turned from her with a sigh, to console herself
by writing a long letter to Geoffrey Doyne, in which she informed him
of her mother’s permanent address, and begged him to lose no time in
acquainting her with the news of their engagement.
The letters which came and went so constantly at this period, no less
than the gold locket which Fenella wore next her heart both night
and day, had not escaped the notice of Eliza Bennett, and they made
her feel very uneasy. She could not be quite sure of what was going
on beneath her eyes--whether it was a mere childish folly, not worth
a second thought, or something more serious, that would raise Mrs
Barrington’s anger. The _amourettes_ of that lady herself had been so
profuse and vicarious, that she had somewhat dulled thereby the sense
of propriety in the breast of her servant; and Bennett was really
unable to decide whether her mistress would ridicule her fears or blame
her imprudence on the score of Fenella’s sea-side flirtation. Yet
she could not help observing that the girl had grown more thoughtful
since the young man’s departure, and she had detected her on more
than one occasion crying quietly to herself. She had heard her talk
in her sleep, too--murmuring broken sentences and loving words, as
she lay flushed on her pillows, with her fair hair falling on her
shoulders, and the child-like tears still trembling on her lashes. And
yet, withal, Fenella seemed so happy and so well, it was difficult to
believe that anything grieved her. So Bennett comforted herself with
the idea that, if her young lady _had_ had a little love affair,
she’d soon forget all about it. Girls had many such, as a rule, before
they settled down in life; and, at any rate, the gentleman had left
Ines-cedwyn--that was one blessing--and it couldn’t be long now before
her mamma came back to England to look after her herself.
Meanwhile, Fenella was what she seemed--as happy as she could be apart
from Geoffrey. For these great loves pay heavy penalties for the bliss
of being; they render separation an agony. But the tears which Bennett
saw upon her sleeping face were not those of distrust, nor of fear.
They were the natural outcome of a new-born excitement, that found its
best relief in painless weeping. The days of separation were irksome to
bear, but they were not intolerable; for Fenella had a firm belief in
their speedy termination, and each one brought her some fresh assurance
of Geoffrey’s love for her.
For here the man’s courage had utterly failed him. He knew he had
pledged himself to do that which should kill all the new-born
blossoming hopes in Fenella’s breast, as certainly as a knife drawn
across her throat would destroy the fair young life she had given up to
him. He knew that in a few weeks at the furthest, she would hear that,
that would desecrate him in her eyes for evermore; that would make him
appear falser and more cruel than anything she had ever dreamt of; that
would destroy, not only her belief in him, but in God and Heaven, and
even a hereafter. He knew all this, as surely as he knew that he was
committing the basest action of his life in deserting her; and yet he
had not the courage to strike the fatal blow, and let her learn the
worst at once. He continued to write to her, and without a hint that he
had renewed his engagement with Jessie Robertson. He told no further
falsehoods, it is true; he ceased to allude to their own marriage, or
their future life; but he told her she was his world, and that without
her he should be miserable; and Fenella could imagine the rest. To be
Geoffrey’s world was sufficient for her happiness, and, naturally, she
continued to believe that all they had spoken of together would follow.
The only shadow on her joy was their prolonged separation, and that was
soon to be put an end to.
Mrs Barrington’s first letter from Mentone was speedily followed by
another, equally querulous, in which she told her daughter and servant
that she had had a violent quarrel with Lady Wilson, who was, without
exception, ‘the most jealous, cross-grained, interfering old cat’ she
ever met with, and affirmed her intention of returning to England as
soon as ever the rooms in South Audley Street were ready to receive
her, ordering Bennett and Fenella at the same time to take up their
abode there before herself.
‘The agent tells me,’ she wrote, ‘that the creatures will go out on the
thirty-first. You had better, therefore, travel up on the first, and I
will join you on the second or third. I wouldn’t sleep in my room until
you have seen it is thoroughly cleaned and set in its usual order, for
any earthly consideration.’
To see the colour that flew into Fenella’s face at this intelligence
was a revelation. She glowed like a carnation at the very thought.
‘On the first, Bennett! We are to go to London on the first of August!’
she exclaimed; ‘only five days more. What shall I do to make them pass
away?’
‘You seem very anxious to leave poor Ines-cedwyn, miss,’ remarked
Bennett curiously. ‘I’m afraid you’ve changed your mind about it since
you first came here.’
The girl turned her grey eyes, in which the tears had suddenly risen,
towards the sea.
‘Dear, sweet Ines-cedwyn!’ she murmured, ‘with its singing waves and
golden sands. Can it ever seem less lovely to me than it does now? Oh
no, nurse! I have not changed my mind, and I am not ungrateful. I shall
always remember Ines-cedwyn as the place in which the happiest days of
my life were passed; only--only,’ she added, a little wistfully, ‘I
_do_ want to go to London now.’
‘Well, my dear, I hope as you won’t be disappointed in it, but it’s
very hot and dusty at this time of the year,’ grumbled Bennett, as she
turned away.
Yet when the first of August arrived, and Fenella found herself once
more in South Audley Street, with all the rooms in that delightful
state of dirt and confusion in which lodgers are accustomed to leave
them, and Bennett out of temper at the prospect of the work before her,
she still went singing about to that unheard accompaniment of music in
her heart.
Geoffrey was not there to meet her, it is true (how could he be?),
but he was close at hand, and she had received a letter from him, not
twelve hours before she left Ines-cedwyn, full of love and tender
allusions to the past. And she had written in reply to say that she
was there, actually _there_, in the same town with him; and it could
not be long--it was impossible it could be long--before he held her in
his arms. Mrs Barrington arrived to her time--dusty, dishevelled, and
decidedly cross. But she could not restrain her surprise at the first
view of Fenella.
‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, ‘what have you done to the child,
Bennett? Why, she’s developed to a woman; and what a lovely colour she
has! I must say it, my dear; your complexion would put the whole of
Piver’s shop to shame. It is positively like nothing but lilies and
carnations.’
‘Oh, mamma! I am so glad you think I am improved,’ said Fenella, with
a bright blush, as she knelt beside Mrs Barrington’s chair. ‘I have
been so happy down at Ines-cedwyn; I think that must be the reason that
I look so well.’
‘It’s the mountain air and the smell of the sea, ma’am,’ put in Eliza
Bennett, rather hurriedly; ‘it _must_ be, for I am sure Miss Fenella
has had no other doctors whilst you was away.’
‘Well, I wish I had had the same doctors myself, for I’m worn to death
with my trip,’ replied her mistress fretfully. ‘Do get up, Fenella;
you’re dragging my dress to one side, and I’m too tired to bear the
weight of your arms upon my knees. I’m sure I wish I had never left
London. I’ve lost all the fun of the season, and now I suppose we shall
have to vegetate here whilst everybody is away at the sea-side.’
‘We shall manage to amuse ourselves, mamma, surely,’ said Fenella,
smiling, as she thought of the occupation which was in store for both
of them, in preparing for her wedding with Geoffrey Doyne.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, child. Everybody is out of
town at this time of the year, and the place is so hot and dusty, you
can hardly stir out of the house. However, we must bear it as best we
can, for there’s no alternative. I can’t go through the trouble and
worry of letting the rooms again, and if I did so, I don’t know where
on earth we should go.’
‘Oh no, mamma! Don’t think of it,’ cried Fenella. ‘We shall be very
happy here--I am sure we shall--and there’s no knowing what may turn up
to amuse and occupy us.’
But when Mrs Barrington found herself alone with her favourite servant,
she told a very different story.
‘Bennett,’ she said confidentially, ‘I didn’t like to say too much
before the girl (for girls are always so conceited about their personal
appearance), but I never was so startled in my life as when I saw
Fenella. I couldn’t have believed three months would make such a change
in any one. She’s positively _lovely;_ I have seen nothing to equal
her in Paris or Mentone! And so fresh too; it’s what the men run after
now-a-days, freshness! I shall let these rooms again as soon as ever I
can, Bennett, and take her abroad.’
‘Let the rooms again, ma’am!’ echoed Bennett. ‘I thought as you said
you had decided against it?’
‘So I did at first, you old goose; but don’t you see I shall have a
better chance of marrying that girl now than at any other period of her
existence. Three months ago no man would have looked at her--she was a
child, a stick, a nonentity! But now they would just rave about her.
She has unfolded like a rosebud opened this morning. She’s in the first
flush of girlhood, and yet she’s a woman! You can see it by her eyes. I
never was so astonished in the world before! What’s done it, Bennett?
Has she had a love affair at Ines-cedwyn?’
‘Oh, dear no, ma’am!’ gasped Bennett, trembling from head to foot under
the dread of discovery.
‘Ah well, I suppose it’s nature; but I must say she’s lovely, though
I’m her mother. Whom does she take most after, Bennett--me, or the poor
captain? I was always the fairer of the two, you know.’
‘Oh yes, ma’am; and Miss Fenella favours you wonderfully, especially
about the skin. I don’t know as I ever saw such another skin as hers;
it’s like white satin.’
‘And her figure’s very fine too; and men think so much of figures
now-a-days. Everybody can have a pretty face who knows how to “make up”
properly; but you can’t have a good figure in an evening dress, unless
Heaven has given it to you. It would be an _immense_ thing for me if I
could marry Miss Fenella well, and without delay, Bennett--an _immense_
thing. It would just save me from ruin, and nothing else. And she
_ought_ to go off! Dressed in white and silver, or white and gold, she
would look splendid! glorious! I believe I could turn out that girl so
that no one could come within a mile of her; and it would be worth my
while to do it, at any price! How can we manage it, Bennett? Do ransack
that good old head of yours, and find out some means by which we can
carry on the war for a few months longer, until I have introduced her
at Trouville or Baden, or some of those places where the best men go.
And she speaks French so perfectly, that she might marry a foreigner
and a title--one of those rich nobles who frequent the watering-places
through the autumn months--and I should get her off my hands and out of
my way at the same time.’
‘Yes, yes! My dear lady. We will manage it. Never you fear,’ replied
the servant, in a soothing tone.
She generally treated her mistress as if she were a teething child that
required conciliation; but the only childish thing about Mrs Barrington
was her refractoriness. In all other things Eliza Bennett was as spun
silk in her hands.
‘You’re so tired with your journey, ma’am,’ she continued. ‘You mustn’t
think of anything now but getting rested. And you’ve had nothing to eat
to-day, so to speak, and yet you turned against your dinner! Shall I
run out and get you a little lobster with a dash of salad, and a glass
of champagne, and see if that will tempt you to pick a bit?’
‘Yes, if you like, Bennett,’ returned the lady languidly, ‘for I really
don’t feel as if I could keep on my legs much longer.’
‘Lie down, my dear mistress,’ exclaimed the servant anxiously, ‘and
don’t move till I’ve brought you something to eat. There! Let me loose
your hair, and give you a fan and the eau de Cologne. And would you
like Miss Fenella to sit with you, ma’am, whilst I’m away?’
‘No, Bennett, thank you. I shall do very well. I feel as if I were at
home again, now I have you to cosset me and look after me. I’m a poor
creature, and cannot live without love.’
The servant’s plain face glowed with ardour.
‘You will always have _mine_, my dear, _dear_ lady,’ she replied.
‘Ah well, I hope I may, Bennett; but the world is very ungrateful,
and the best friends change sometimes. You would be surprised to see
the alteration in those horrid Wilsons. The old woman hardly spoke to
me the last week I was in Mentone; and as for her son, his behaviour
was positively disgusting. He and that odious creature Anna Russell
used to leave the house directly after breakfast, and never reappear
till dinner-time. It was most improper, as I told his mother, and then
we had a fight about it. I can’t stand that sort of people, Bennett;
they’re low-bred and presuming, and directly they find a cause for
quarrel, their bad blood comes to the front. I shall never call upon
Lady Wilson again.’
‘No, my dear lady; I hope you won’t. You’ve been too good and
condescendingly to her already. And you mustn’t think no more of Mr
Wilson either. He ain’t worthy of the likes of you!’
‘Dear me, no! Of course that’s all over. And poor Colonel Ellerman too.
It’s enough to upset a woman (isn’t it, Bennett?) losing two of them so
near together, and so unexpectedly!’
‘Ah! There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, ma’am;
and, please the Lord! I shall live to see you riding over the heads of
such people as the Wilsons yet.’
‘Well, if I can only get Miss Fenella married and out of the way, I
think I shall have as good a chance as any. By-the-bye, Bennett, as
you go for the lobster, you might as well look in at the agents, and
tell them to put the rooms on their books again. Say I’ll let them on
any reasonable terms, for I know I can’t get a high rent at this time
of the year. But I’m determined to take that girl abroad, Bennett, if
I pawn my jewellery to accomplish it. After all, it would be worth my
while, for I could get it out again as soon as ever she was married.’
Filled with this new idea, Mrs Barrington became so friendly and
confidential with her daughter, that Fenella (remembering her first
reception) was agreeably surprised. She did not know the little plot
that was hatching beneath her mother’s flattering notice of her beauty
or her talents. She believed it to be genuine. And so, in part, it was.
Mrs Barrington could not live without some excitement, and Fenella’s
improved appearance had suggested a new excitement to her. Having a
handsome _demoiselle à marier_ to take about and add a fresh attraction
to her own society, was a different thing altogether from being annoyed
by the presence of a half-formed school-girl, whom no man would wish to
own either by marriage or adoption. And the notion having once entered
her head, she became crazy to put it into execution.
Fenella was pleased and startled, at first, by her mother’s cordiality
towards her; but as the days went on without bringing tidings of
Geoffrey Doyne, her spirits began to sink. She had not the slightest
doubt of her lover, but her heart was filled with every sort of fear
for him. Was it possible, she thought, that he had never received her
last letter from Ines-cedwyn? Was he still sending his to the old
address? and was Martha too stupid to forward them to London? Could
he be ill, or dying?--(the ignorant imagine no greater calamity than
death can befall those whom they love)--or had his family refused their
consent to his marriage, and was he afraid to come and break the news
to her? These, and a hundred other doubts that made her heart sick with
apprehension, surged and swayed through Fenella’s bosom, until she felt
as if she must seek Geoffrey out at all hazards, and learn the truth.
But that the truth could involve anything worse than annoyance, or
delay, never entered her mind. _How could it_--with Geoffrey?
Her mother and she kept very close to the house during those few days
of suspense. Mrs Barrington (who was naturally lazy and untidy) never
appeared _en grande tenue_ unless there was something to be gained
by it, and considered a soiled dressing-gown the proper costume to
wear during a month when nobody was likely to call, and there was no
object in showing herself abroad. She sat indoors, therefore, all
day fanning herself, and making calculations for her proposed autumn
manœuvres; whilst Fenella read novels from the circulating library, or
the contents of the newspapers, aloud to her.
One evening during the first week they spent in London, the girl was
sitting with a very heavy heart, trying thus to amuse her mother.
She had stolen out that afternoon, and slipped a letter in the post
herself--imploring Geoffrey to let her know at once whether he had
received the news of her arrival in town. And now she felt almost
numbed by the suspense of waiting for an answer, as if life or death
hung on the chance of her receiving it by return of post.
‘I think that story’s abominably stupid,’ said Mrs Barrington
presently. ‘The man’s a stick, and the woman’s a goody. Don’t you think
so, Fenella?’
‘Eh! What, mamma? Oh yes, I do!’ exclaimed Fenella suddenly, as she
caught the meaning of her mother’s words.
‘I don’t think you’re enjoying it much more than I am, my dear, and I
don’t wonder at it,’ resumed Mrs Barrington. ‘The last chapter has been
a perfect sermon, and I hate preaching, especially in a novel. Suppose
you read me the paper instead? I haven’t had time to look at it to-day.
You’ll find the _Standard_ on that table.’
Fenella put down the novel and rose to fetch the paper, with that
heart-sickening suspense (which those who have experienced the feeling
will best recognise) still uppermost in her mind.
‘Let’s have the epitome of news,’ said Mrs Barrington, as the girl
reseated herself. ‘Or stay, Fenella; read the list of marriages and
deaths first. Not the births, my dear (nobody cares about births except
the people concerned; they’re much too common); but you see lots
of names amongst the marriages and deaths of people you have heard
of, though you may not know. Just run over the names as they stand,
Fenella; that will be quite enough. Dear me! I wish my sight were not
so weak by gas light. It makes me feel quite an old woman to be so
dependent on others.’
The girl began to read as she was ordered:--Adams--Messiter;
Arbuthnott--Clive; Barclay--Smith; Cadogan--Matthews; Doyne--Robertson.
And there she stopped.
‘Go on, my dear,’ said her mother somewhat impatiently.
But Fenella did not go on. Her eyes were staring in a blank vacuous
manner at the following words:--
‘August 3rd, at the Church of St Mary le Strand, by the Rev. ----,
Geoffrey Doyne, Lieut. H.M. XXX. Regiment of Hussars, second son of
Jasper Doyne, J.P., of Ryelands, in the county of Buckinghamshire;
to Jessie, fourth daughter of James Robertson, M.D., of 44 Blenheim
Square, W.C.’
Mrs Barrington could not stand the suspense.
‘Do go on, Fenella,’ she repeated irritably; ‘it drives me wild when
people stop in the middle of reading in that way. Whatever have you got
there--anything interesting?’
But all the answer she received was conveyed by the sound of a heavy
fall. Fenella had fainted on the floor. At this sight Mrs Barrington
became terribly alarmed. She was a woman who lost all presence of mind
in an emergency.
‘Bennett! Bennett!’ she screamed, flying to the door, ‘come down here
at once. Miss Fenella has fainted.’
The servant was in the room in a minute, and kneeling beside the
unconscious girl.
‘Why, bless my heart alive!’ she exclaimed, ‘how did this happen?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ wailed Mrs Barrington; ‘she was reading the
_Standard_ to me only a minute ago, when she suddenly fell on the
floor. Oh dear! Oh dear! I hope she’s not going to take to fainting;
it’s the most tiresome habit a girl can have; you never know when it’ll
come on. Did you see anything of this in the country, Bennett?’
‘Bless you, no, ma’am! And don’t go to frighten yourself; it’s only
an accident. Young ladies will faint sometimes. It’s the heat of the
weather most likely, or Miss Fenella has over-tired herself. We must
lay her down flat, that’s the best way; and please to give me the eau
de Cologne and your fan, and I’ll soon bring her to.’
But though Eliza Bennett made every effort to restore Fenella to
consciousness, twenty minutes elapsed, and still the girl lay, rigid as
stone and white as a broken lily, prostrate upon the ground.
‘I don’t like this, ma’am,’ said Bennett, shaking her head as she
found her restoratives had no effect. ‘I am afraid it is more than an
ordinary swoon. Don’t you think we’d better send round for Dr Metcalfe?’
‘It _surely_ can’t be necessary,’ replied her mistress. ‘Oh! Don’t tell
me there’s more trouble in store for us, Bennett, and I’m to have a
doctor’s bill added to my other worries. Dash some more water in her
face. I’m sure she blinked last time you did it. Perhaps she’s only
shamming. Girls _will_ sham sickness, you know, sometimes. They think
it’s interesting!’
‘Miss Fenella ain’t shamming,’ said the servant indignantly; ‘and
indeed, ma’am, you _must_ please to send Mrs Watson for the doctor, for
I can’t take the responsibility of this on myself any longer.’
Mrs Barrington was frightened into concession, and the medical man, who
lived close at hand, was soon in the room. He raised Fenella’s head and
looked in her face. ‘Cut her dress and her laces,’ he said curtly.
‘Oh dear, sir, they’re as loose as they can be!’ remonstrated Bennett.
‘Be good enough to do as I tell you,’ was the reply; and when she had
obeyed him, he lifted the girl upon the couch, and laid his ear upon
her chest.
‘That will do,’ he said presently, as he rose to his feet; ‘and now,
where is her bedroom? I will carry her up to bed.’
Bennett led the way, and Dr Metcalfe lifted the girl’s slight figure in
his arms, and followed her. The mother was left behind, wringing her
hands in feeble lamentation.
‘I hope to goodness this is not the beginning of an illness,’ she
thought selfishly, ‘for it will ruin all my plans if Fenella goes and
loses her good looks just as she requires them most.’
Presently she heard Dr Metcalfe’s footstep descending the stairs again,
and waited near the door in expectation of his entering to give her
further information about her daughter. But he passed her landing and
walked straight out of the house.
‘Such extraordinary behaviour,’ as Mrs Barrington said to her servant
a few minutes later; ‘just as if I had no concern in the matter, and
wasn’t even the girl’s mother! But what did he say upstairs, Bennett?
Is this fainting fit a mere accident, or is it likely to occur again? I
shall go mad if she takes to having them as a regular thing.’
‘Oh no, ma’am! It won’t be as bad as that; but I’m bound to say the
doctor looked grave about it, and he’ll see Miss Fenella the first
thing to-morrow morning. It was terrible to watch her come-to, ma’am.
I thought she was going out of her mind. But the doctor give her a
powerful sleeping draught, and she dropped off like a child. But I
don’t think he likes the looks of her at all.’
‘It is _I_ that shall go out of my mind with all this worry,’ cried Mrs
Barrington. ‘However, I don’t believe she _can_ be really ill with that
lovely colour, and I daresay Dr Metcalfe is making all the fuss he can
over it, just to run up a bill. It’s the way with those doctors--once
get into their hands, and you never get out again.’
‘I am afraid I must go back to Miss Fenella now, ma’am,’ said Bennett;
‘for the doctor’s orders are that she’s not to be left for a minute,
and she’s to stay in bed till after he’s seen her to-morrow.’
‘Of course,’ replied Mrs Barrington petulantly. ‘I knew how it would
be. I’m to lose _you_ now, and wait on myself, I suppose. Oh! These
children! These children! What a plague and a nuisance they are, to be
sure!’
But the affectionate mother enjoyed a good night’s rest,
notwithstanding her anxiety, although her servant sat beside her
daughter’s bed until the morning. The report she then made to her
mistress was anything but reassuring.
‘I can’t make Miss Fenella out at all, ma’am,’ she said; ‘she opened
her eyes a good while since, but she’s never turned in her bed, nor
spoken a word to me. She looks _fixed_ like, and I do hope the doctor
will keep his promise to come and see her.’
The doctor did keep his promise, and at ten o’clock Bennett tapped
again on her mistress’s door.
‘Dr Metcalfe is here, if you please, ma’am, and he’s seen Miss Fenella,
and he’d like to speak a few words with you before he leaves the house.’
‘Very well, Bennett; just tie a ribbon in my hair, and give me that
blue shawl. You must tell the doctor I’m _en deshabille_, you know;
but I’ve been too terribly anxious about the dear child to think of my
dress.’
Mrs Barrington repeated something to the same effect when the doctor
entered her room, but was unable to extract a compliment from him in
return. He took all her excuses literally.
‘You have every cause for anxiety, madam,’ he answered gravely, ‘and
I am afraid that what I have to tell you will increase instead of
diminish it. I am sorry to say that I find Miss Barrington in a very
unsatisfactory state of health. I believe she has spent this summer
away from you?’
‘Yes; I sent her to Ines-cedwyn, a most charming place in Wales, under
the charge of my own maid, who was formerly her nurse. I thought
the dear girl required sea air, and so I forced myself to make the
sacrifice of parting with her. But it is one of the healthiest spots in
the world. Surely she cannot have contracted any illness there?’
‘Miss Barrington’s present attack, madam, is more mental than
physical,’ replied Dr Metcalfe, ‘but I can tell you the cause from
which it has sprung. You must not think I am meddling with your private
affairs in speaking plainly, but I consider it my duty to let you know
the truth.’
He posed himself opposite to her, with one arm leaning on the
mantelpiece, whilst he entered into a detail of Fenella’s symptoms.
Mrs Barrington listened to him in silence--an angry and indignant
silence--feeling with each word he uttered that the fabric of her hopes
crumbled into smaller atoms. Fenella with _une affaire de cœur;_ the
girl for whom she had formed such ambitious projects, breaking her
heart for some nameless nobody in the wilds of Wales; _her_ daughter,
struck to the ground by some stupid flirtation that had made itself
patent to the eyes of the first stranger she had called in to prescribe
a soothing draught. It was too disappointing, too humiliating. At the
idea of it Mrs Barrington went pale beneath her rage, and trembled from
head to foot.
‘I am afraid I have wounded you,’ said Dr Metcalfe kindly, as he
concluded, ‘but it was impossible to help doing so. As her mother, I
considered it only right that I should speak openly to you.’
‘Oh yes! Of course--of course,’ stammered Mrs Barrington; and then she
added, ‘I was just thinking of taking her abroad.’
The doctor caught at the idea.
‘The very best thing you could do for her, Mrs Barrington. You must
be aware that in these cases change of air and scene, and a little
seclusion--unless, indeed, any attachment the young lady may have
formed might be brought to a happy issue instead. But I am sure I need
not hint at such alternatives to you. Your own heart and your affection
for your daughter will prove better guides in such a contingency than
any advice you could receive from strangers.’
But all Mrs Barrington said was,--
‘I conclude there will be no further need of your attendance, Dr
Metcalfe, and we shall leave town as soon as possible.’
‘Certainly, madam! I had no intention of calling again. May I express a
hope of seeing you and Miss Barrington at some future time, and under
pleasanter circumstances?’
He gave her his hand as he spoke, and she thrust a fee into it.
‘But it will be the last,’ she thought angrily, as he disappeared;
‘never shall he cross my threshold again after what he has said to me
to-day.’
She sat for some time where the doctor had left her--too paralysed,
apparently, to move or speak. The first thing that roused her from her
reverie was the sound of the opening door. As it turned on its hinges,
Eliza Bennett’s face peeped wistfully into the room.
‘Is the doctor gone, ma’am?’ she demanded.
The question seemed to goad Mrs Barrington into action. She sprang to
her feet, and confronted the terrified servant with the face of a fury.
‘Is the doctor gone?’ she repeated. ‘Yes, he _is_ gone; and do you know
what he came to tell me? That you have been faithless to the trust I
reposed in you, and that whilst I thought that wretched girl upstairs
was safe under your care, you let her go rushing all over the place by
herself just as she chose, and making love to every cockney tourist
that came in her way.’
‘_I_, ma’am--_I_?’ gasped Eliza Bennett, panic-stricken by the
accusation. ’Oh, don’t go to say that of _me_, ma’am, when you know I
was laid up in my bed, unable to lift hand or foot for five weeks at a
stretch, and knew no more of what was going on outside than the babe
unborn.’
‘Then you _ought_ to have known,’ thundered her mistress, ‘or set some
one else to look after her! You’ve behaved most treacherously to me,
and all the harm that comes of this will be laid at your door.’
‘But what has Miss Fenella done, ma’am? I’m sure if a young lady like
her is not to be trusted on a beach alone, who is?’
‘What has she done? It is you who should be able to answer that
question. Whom did she meet? Who did she see down there? What man has
dared to make love to her? That is what I want to know.’
Bennett’s thoughts flew at once to the gentleman in the Beach
Bungalow--the letters and the locket; but she considered it her duty to
Fenella to stand firm to her ground.
‘Nobody, ma’am,’ she answered; ‘that _I’m_ sure of! How _should_ there
be, when Ines-cedwyn’s such a lonely place? We were the only visitors
there this summer.’
‘You’d better first hear what Dr Metcalfe has told me,’ replied her
mistress; and she repeated the statement of the medical man for the
benefit of the servant.
Bennett’s face became as white as chalk during the narration.
‘Will you still insist in maintaining that you know nothing of the
matter?’ demanded Mrs Barrington angrily.
‘I don’t believe it’s true--and I know nothing about it,’ repeated the
servant stoutly.
‘I’ll see if the girl is as obstinate as you are,’ exclaimed her
mistress, darting upstairs.
Bennett, fearing the scene that might ensue between the mother and
daughter, followed her quickly, and reached the spot as soon as she did.
Fenella was standing in the centre of the room, supporting herself
with one hand against the iron railing at the foot of the bed. The
dressing-gown she wore was not whiter than her complexion; her hair
was tossed in the wildest confusion over her breast and shoulders; her
grey eyes had a scared and piteous look in them, as if she had just
awakened from some hideous dream. It was evident that she had guessed,
or overheard, the substance of the communication which Dr Metcalfe had
made to her mother.
Mrs Barrington advanced upon the trembling girl with the air of a
virago.
‘Well!’ she exclaimed, in a shrill, coarse voice (it is astonishing how
coarse the most delicate and apparently well-bred women can be when
their tempers are raised), ‘are you not ashamed to stand there staring
at me in that brazen way, when the whole town is ringing with your
disgrace? Do you know what the doctor has told me? Oh, don’t pretend to
shrink, and be extra modest, after the bold manner in which you have
been conducting yourself. You’re a nice young lady to be trusted to go
about alone, flirting with every low fisherman you may meet upon the
beach! Tell me the name of the man who dared to make love to you at
Ines-cedwyn, you innocent piece of goods! You--’
But Fenella did not speak. She continued still and rigid as a figure of
marble, with her eyes fixed upon vacancy.
‘Do you hear what I say to you?’ screamed Mrs Barrington. ‘Tell me the
name of the man who presumed to make love to my daughter (though he
never would have done so if you hadn’t given him encouragement), and I
will have him whipped through the streets like a hound. Henry Wilson
would do it for me, if he were not a cur himself--or Colonel Ellerman,
only he’s dead. Good heavens! What did your father mean by dying in
that stupid manner, and leaving us to look after such things for
ourselves? Why haven’t we a man to fight our battles for us? But you
shall tell me the name of that fellow, or I’ll shake it out of you.’
Still the girl’s mouth did not unclose, and Bennett, who was watching
her anxiously, saw her white teeth press upon her under lip until she
made the blood come. It was evident that she was resolved to keep her
own secret.
‘Oh! You’re obstinate, are you?’ exclaimed Mrs Barrington, ‘and you
will try to defy me! You think you can bring all this trouble upon our
heads with impunity; that you can go tumbling about the house and
fainting, and being threatened with a brain attack, for the sake of
some disgraceful love affair that you ought to be ashamed to think of;
and I’m to pass it over, and take you to my arms again, and say you’re
a very good girl! I’ll tell you _what_ I say, and that is that you’re a
born idiot! Just as I was going to take you to Paris or Brussels, too,
and introduce you to society! And now, you may be ill for months, you
ungrateful, wicked girl! But I am not going to be fooled by you! You
shall tell the name of that man, if you die for it.’
She advanced threateningly upon the passive figure of Fenella as she
spoke, and Bennett laid her hand upon her arm.
‘She’s really ill, ma’am,’ she whispered. ‘Pray be careful what you do
to her; you may bring on another attack.’
But her mistress was in no mood to accept advice. She shook off Eliza
Bennett’s touch as if it had been that of a scorpion.
‘Leave me alone! How dare you interfere?’ she said angrily. ‘I shall
deal with my own daughter as I choose;’ and then she turned again
upon the girl. ‘Do as I order you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Tell me the name
of your lover at once, or I’ll strike you!’ and, lifting her arm, she
brought it down with her utmost force against the white, sad face that
confronted her.
Fenella did not utter a word of entreaty or remonstrance. She only
shivered violently as the blow descended, and, sitting down upon the
nearest chair, passed her own hand in a sort of wondering way across
her eyes and forehead.
‘Oh, Lor’, ma’am! You do frighten me!’ said Bennett. ‘Let her be, my
dear lady, at least for the present. She ain’t in a fit state to listen
to you; indeed, she ain’t!’
‘It’s evident whose side _you’re_ on,’ replied her mistress
witheringly; ‘but you’ll do the girl no good by your partisanship, and
that I can tell you. She has behaved in a manner to disgrace us all;
and if she were dead and cold in her coffin, it would be the best thing
that could happen to her.’
Then, for the first time, Fenella found her voice.
‘Oh, mother! Mother!’ she wailed, ‘pity me.’
But she might as well have appealed to a stone.
‘_Pity you_!’ repeated Mrs Barrington, with a sneer. ‘_Despise_ you,
you mean. You won’t find many to pity you for having ruined all your
prospects in life. They will only laugh at and ridicule you for being
such a fool. But if this lover of yours is a gentleman, and can be
called to account for his treachery to you, he shall. If you want me to
pity you, you must tell me his name; and, as your mother, I command
you to do so.’
But Fenella had again relapsed into silence. Eliza Bennett tried the
effect of coaxing.
‘Come, my dear,’ she said; ‘I daresay it’ll be hard-like, but you’d
better confide everything to your mamma. She’s your best friend, Miss
Fenella, and it’s useless trying to keep the truth back from her.’
The girl shook her head.
‘It wouldn’t be any good,’ she said simply.
‘Nonsense!’ replied Mrs Barrington. ‘A child like you is no judge of
such matters, and, as Bennett tells you, I am your best friend. Come,
Fenella, tell me this man’s name, and if things can be set right
between you, they shall. I am sorry I slapped you, but you really are
too provoking. However, I’ll look over everything that has passed
between us, if you will place confidence in me now.’
And Mrs Barrington, who was intensely curious in the matter, lowered
her head so that her daughter might whisper in her ear.
‘It would be useless,’ repeated Fenella, in a low voice of pain.
‘Why useless? Your obstinacy surpasses anything I have ever seen for
a girl of your age. I tell you it is _not_ useless. What makes you
persist that it is so?’
‘Because--because _he is married_,’ said Fenella, with an effort that
seemed to drag at her very heart-strings.
‘_Married_!’ screamed Mrs Barrington. ‘The disgraceful, dishonourable
creature! And _you_, you shameless girl! What did you mean by letting a
married man make love to you? I never heard of such abominable iniquity
in all my life before. Here! Have I lived to the age of thirty years,
or a little over, and travelled about the world, and seen all sorts
of people, and it is left for my own daughter, a child of sixteen, to
initiate me into the horrors of vice! Bennett, get me a glass of wine!
Get me brandy! Get me anything that may help me to drown this terrible
remembrance! Or, stay! Let me leave the room. I cannot breathe this
atmosphere any longer! _A married man_! That I should have lived to
hear such a thing! I, who have had but one aim throughout my sorrowful
life--to keep myself and my child unspotted from the world. May Heaven
forgive you, Fenella!’
And with this solemn adjuration, Mrs Barrington swept out of the room.
As soon as she had quite disappeared, Eliza Bennett advanced to the
side of her young mistress. Fenella was seated where her mother had
left her--still, white, and silent, with her piteous grey eyes staring
at the opposite wall. The servant laid her rough hand on the girl’s
soft fingers.
‘Pray to God, Miss Fenella,’ she said gently. ‘He loves you, my dear;
He will hear you. Pray to Him, and maybe prayer will bring you comfort.’
Fenella lifted her eyes to those of the old woman wearily.
‘_Is_ there a God, nurse?’ she asked. ‘_I doubt it_. The reverend
mother in the convent used to tell me to pray to the good God, and He
would protect me from all harm; and I have prayed to Him regularly,
morning and evening, since. But I think He must have stayed behind in
the convent, nurse. I don’t think He came out into the world--with me.’
[Illustration: decorative]
[Illustration: decorative]
CHAPTER IV.
OVER.
‘She had fallen in her own sight--not because he
had loved her, but because he had left her.’
_Ariadne_.
In the heart of the Wallon there lies a little village called Sainte
Pauvrette, which is a mass of flowers and sweet-smelling herbs in
summer, and a mass of snow and ice in winter. It possesses no baths,
no mineral springs, no objects of historical interest--nothing, in
fact, wherewith to tempt a visitor except its climate and its flowers.
Tourists who know something of the country, and wish to get out of the
beaten track of overdone cathedrals and exhausted picture-galleries, go
to Sainte Pauvrette in the warm weather, when the hillside is covered
with lemon-scented thyme and feathery sorrel and ruddy clover, and the
surrounding country is redolent of lilies and roses and honeysuckle;
but no one ever dreams of remaining there throughout the winter. When
the snow falls, Sainte Pauvrette is left to the few peasants who till
its fields and pray in its dirty little chapel. The wooden building
that calls itself a hotel is boarded up and left to take care of
itself; and the residents who have rooms to let, lock the doors and
retreat to the lower regions, burrowing like moles until the sunshine
shall tempt them to the upper world again.
But one day not two months after the events recorded in the last
chapter, the inhabitants of Sainte Pauvrette were astonished by the
arrival of two English ladies, who, with their maid, took up their
quarters in one of the small furnished houses that had just been
vacated by the summer visitors, and appeared disposed to settle
themselves down there for the winter. The season of Sainte Pauvrette
was over; the autumn, with its usual risk of fever and malaria, was
close at hand; the rooms for hire had been cleaned and shut up for
the next six months--and the people of Sainte Pauvrette would as soon
have expected their patron saint to appear among them, and demand
lodgings for the winter, as to see any more visitors. The circumstance
was so unusual and startling that it caused endless talk amongst
the villagers, and Madame Regnier (who was the lucky person to let
her house to the new-comers) began to think she must be under the
especial care of Providence, and that a miracle had been performed in
her behalf. But the strangers--Mrs. Barrington, Fenella, and Eliza
Bennett--kept entirely to themselves, and did not appear disposed to
satisfy the curiosity of their neighbours. The tradespeople, who were
chiefly small farmers, selling their own milk, bread, vegetables,
and poultry, tried their best to extract some information from Eliza
Bennett, but she was invulnerable. Either she could not or she would
not understand what they said to her, and never did more than haggle
with them over the prices of their merchandise, and carry off her
bargains in her market basket. But the ladies were often seen about the
village, and many were the conjectures made as to the reason of their
sojourn there.
The young lady was sick. Sainte Pauvrette decided that point very
speedily. And it was supposed that her mother had brought her to the
village for the sake of her health. The peasants soon grew to recognise
and smile at the sweet, sad face of Fenella as she passed amongst them,
and to talk of the girl who sat sometimes motionless for hours on the
hillside, looking at the horizon with a weary, impassive expression
that made their hearts ache.
There were rumours, too, that the mother and daughter did not get on
very well together, and Madame Jeanne, the proprietress of the wooden
hotel (whose offers of accommodation Mrs Barrington had peremptorily
refused), had a good deal to say to her neighbours on the subject of
that lady’s treatment of Fenella.
‘_Ma foi_!’ she would exclaim, as she lounged against the outside wall
of her house, knitting stockings of coarse yarn, and surrounded by a
bevy of women, all knitting as if their lives depended on it,--‘_ma
foi_!’ but I wouldn’t be the daughter of that Englishwoman for a great
deal. She has a tongue the length of a cow’s tail; you may hear it from
one end of Sainte Pauvrette to the other. And it’s my belief that when
she gets into a rage, she beats her!’
‘You don’t mean to say that!’ cried her neighbours, as they drew closer.
Madame Jeanne nodded her head oracularly.
‘But I do! The screams that came from that house the other night were
fearful. You might have thought there was murder being committed there,
and so I told the English servant--bah! What an ogre she is! With never
a smile nor a pleasant look on her face--and she said her young lady
was subject to hysteria. But I don’t believe that. The mother beats
her! Take my word for it.’
‘The young lady certainly looks very sad,’ interposed another woman.
‘She has the face of an angel, and the air of a martyr. I was watching
her yesterday morning. She sat for two hours on the bench by the ruined
chapel without moving. And in this cold weather too! It is not natural
that a young girl should neither jump nor run. But I do not think she
could be merry if she tried. She has a face full of care and sorrow.
And she cannot be more than seventeen or eighteen years old.’
‘It is _Madame sa Mère_ that gives her that face,’ rejoined Madame
Jeanne. ‘She is a fury, a virago, a devil, that woman, and capable of
anything that is bad.’
‘She pays the rent regularly, and they are quiet and respectable
tenants,’ said Madame Regnier, who was naturally on Mrs Barrington’s
side, ‘and you only spread these tales about them, Madame Jeanne,
because they would not take rooms in your wooden hotel. And they were
quite right too! It is draughty enough in winter to kill a delicate
_demoiselle_ like Miss Barrington. But you have no right to speak
against them on that account; and if you say more, I will inform Père
Antoine of your behaviour, and have you openly rebuked for scandal.’
‘Bah, pig!’ cried Madame Jeanne, opening her black eyes at Madame
Regnier, with a _moue_ of disdain; ‘go to--! Tell the priest and whom
you will; but all your talking will not alter matters. Everybody in
Sainte Pauvrette has heard the quarrels that go on in that house! It
was only the other day that mademoiselle ran out of it bareheaded, with
a great angry red mark across her face, and would have traversed the
village so, had not the ogre servant appeared and pulled her indoors
again. They ill-treat _la petite_, I tell you! She is sick and ailing,
poor child--consumptive, most likely, like all those English; and they
make her miserable. I have seen the tears pouring down her face like
rain. It is a pity she has no father to defend her! A man is bad enough
when he takes a spite against you, and knocks you about; but, _ma foi_!
he is nothing to a woman. A bad woman is a devil, and nothing less,
and your Madame Barrington is a bad woman, and I say it!--eh, Madame
Regnier? You had better go at once and tell Père Antoine so, and I’ll
repeat it to his face. What d’ye make of that?’
‘She pays her rent regularly,’ grumbled Madame Regnier, ‘so it’s not my
place to speak against her. And as for the rest, Madame Jeanne, we must
each think what we choose about it.’
Whatever they chose to think could hardly have been worse than the
reality. The autumn and winter months which she passed in Sainte
Pauvrette were such a tumultuous mixture of anger, strife, reproaches,
and hopeless misery, that Fenella Barrington, through all the rest of
her weary life, could never look back upon them without a shudder--as a
man who has passed days and nights of suspense tossing about the cruel
ocean, living in the very shadow of death, and beaten upon by all the
storms of heaven, might look back and wonder he still lived to tell the
tale.
Her mother’s conduct to her at this period was the very refinement
of cruelty. Had she only struck the wretched girl--as she too often
did to satisfy her own feelings of rage and disappointment--it would
have been as nothing compared to the sneers and reproaches and abuse
cast at the absent, which were so much harder to bear. And Fenella
could not say a word in defence of herself or him. She was condemned
to sit and hear it all in silence, whilst she pressed her hands upon
her aching bosom where the image of Geoffrey Doyne (though shattered
into fragments) was still cherished as the holiest thing she had ever
possessed.
How often, whilst the villagers of Sainte Pauvrette watched her sitting
on the hillside, motionless for hours, she was longing to die--praying,
in a sort of half-conscious way, that God would send down His Angel of
Death to take her out of a world which had opened upon a scene of so
much perplexity and trouble for her.
But Fenella hardly knew what she really wished for. The present and
the future were alike blanks. All she knew for certain was that
Geoffrey Doyne had passed out of her life--that he belonged to another
woman--that she should never see him again, nor hear his voice; and
the mere fact of this knowledge was too wonderful a mystery for her
to fathom. For she did not even know how it had happened, or why. Not
a line, not a sound, had reached her since she had read the public
announcement of his marriage; and sometimes she would wonder, in a
vague, childish way, if it had been all a dream, and pinch her arm,
with a sad smile, to see if she were real. But then remembrance would
rush back upon her--rush back with a feeling of shame and horror that
would flood her pale cheeks with crimson, and retreat as suddenly,
leaving them white with despair.
Eliza Bennett felt deeply for her young mistress during her illness.
Though the people of Sainte Pauvrette found her curt and harsh of
speech, she only assumed that manner to cover her emotion. She could
hardly trust herself to think of Fenella, far less to speak of her.
Had she been left to her own devices, she would have been the tenderest
of nurses and comforters to the forlorn and unhappy girl, but Mrs
Barrington would not permit it. She had her own reasons for keeping up
a sense of her ingratitude and folly in Fenella’s breast. She wanted to
force her daughter to throw off the disappointment and depression under
which she laboured, and make her thankful to rush back into the world
as soon as she was strong enough to do so.
She tried to explain her motives to Eliza Bennett, but though the
servant was afraid (in consequence) to show all the sympathy she felt
for her young mistress, she could not approve of the harshness Mrs
Barrington displayed towards her. She often attempted to stand between
the mother and daughter on the occasion of those sad quarrels, which
had made themselves patent to the ears of Sainte Pauvrette; but she
found that her interference only made matters worse, and her best plan
was to preserve neutrality.
One terrible night, however, when the frosts of December and January
had covered the country with a pall of white, and the snow lay several
feet deep in the lower parts of the village, an altercation--which
commenced (on Mrs Barrington’s part) with covert sneers and words of
contempt, and culminated in loud tones of anger and several smart
blows--had nearly proved the end of poor Fenella’s troubles.
She stood before her mother, half fainting from fear, and without a
word to say in self-defence, until the indignities offered her, and the
abuse cast upon one whom (though unnamed) she could not hear reviled
with impunity, sent all the blood in her body rushing to her brain, and
deprived her of the mastery over her senses. With a loud cry to God
for mercy, and before Mrs Barrington (being alone) could prevent the
action, Fenella had flown bareheaded from the house, and flung herself
into a sluggish stream, half ice and half water, which ran in front of
it.
Then Mrs Barrington was thoroughly alarmed, and screamed to Eliza
Bennett for assistance; and all the neighbours were roused by the
disturbance, and brought lanterns and lighted pine torches to help in
the search.
They had not to go far. The senseless figure of Fenella was soon
found--thrown violently across the mixture of ice and muddy water of
which the winter stream was composed; and being wrapped up in a blanket
by Bennett, was carried back to the house and placed in bed. But the
inhabitants of Sainte Pauvrette had plenty to say of the occurrence
afterwards, and Madame Jeanne was not backward in giving her opinion on
the matter.
‘Did I not tell you what that Englishwoman was?’ she exclaimed next
day, when it was openly announced in the village that the poor young
lady was lying dangerously ill of a brain fever. ‘A pig! a devil! For
all the fine yellow curls that she keeps in a box, and the pretty pink
colour she would have us believe to be her own! She has used that poor
_demoiselle_ shamefully ever since she came here, and now she wants to
kill her--that is my belief! Else why does not she have a doctor to see
her in this fever; and why has she sent away the ogre, Mademoiselle
Elise, just when she wants her help most? Oh, but you need not stare
at me in that manner! I only tell the truth, and Madame Regnier cannot
deny it, although she is so anxious to make out her tenant to be
everything that is good. Mademoiselle the ogre left Sainte Pauvrette
this morning by ten o’clock. I met her walking on the road to Arniers
to catch the _diligence_, with her large basket on her arm; and when
I asked her the reason of her journey, she replied she had business
to do for her mistress in Arniers. But she has not returned, _mes
dames_--she has not returned; and meanwhile _la belle petite_ lies in
bed with an attack of the brain, and no doctor is sent for to attend
her; and Collette, who has been engaged to do their housework, is not
permitted to go into the room, of which the door is kept locked by her
mother. But if she dies,’ continued Madame Jeanne, with a threatening
shake of the head,--‘if that beautiful young lady dies, without help or
assistance, and after all the cruelty she has been subjected to, _I_
shall say it is murder, for one--let who will be the other.’
Meanwhile what the irate hotel-keeper said was true. Eliza Bennett had
gone that morning to Arniers; more, she had crossed to England. She and
her mistress had been closeted all night with the unfortunate girl who
had been rescued from the mud and the ice, and who only returned to
consciousness to fall into a burning fever, and rave deliriously of the
troubles which had occasioned it.
‘This is the climax,’ said Mrs Barrington, with a look of despair,
and as if the climax had not been in a great measure brought on by
herself. ‘We must lock the door of her room, Bennett, and let no one
but ourselves pass in and out. She talks in French, and I would not
have these ignorant creatures overhear what she says for any mortal
consideration.’
The two women consulted long and earnestly on what was best to be done
in the matter; and when the morning dawned, the key unturned in the
lock of Fenella’s door, and Eliza Bennett, creeping out of it, with a
white and troubled face, went up to her own room, and attired herself
in her walking things.
In the space of a few minutes her mistress followed her, with a large
basket on her arm.
‘You will travel as quickly as ever you can,’ she said, as she placed
some money in her hands, ‘and return to us as soon as possible. This
fever is sure to abate in a few hours, and I shall not keep Fenella
here one day longer than is absolutely necessary.’
‘Return to you, my dear mistress!’ exclaimed the servant; ‘why, what
else should I do? Am I not taking this journey entirely for your sake
and that of the dear child! Keep her as cool as possible, ma’am, and
don’t let her have anything but slops and fever drinks till I come
back. I will be with you at the end of a week again, without fail.’
Mrs Barrington sat down and began to cry feebly.
‘I don’t know what I shall do without you,’ she wailed; ‘it’s horrible
to sit and listen to her ravings and reproaches; but I am sure it is
best that you should go to England at once, and then the business will
be over. But you are a dear, good, valuable creature Bennett, and I
shall count the minutes till you come back again.’
She kissed the servant on both cheeks as she spoke, and Eliza Bennett
went on her way rejoicing. She crossed to Dover the same day, and
was at Ines-cedwyn by the following evening. It was evident that the
business she had been entrusted to transact for her mistress was, in
some manner, concerned with her brother Benjamin, and the place where
Fenella had made that fatal acquaintance in the ruined bungalow, which
brought ill-luck to all who meddled with it. There was no necessity
for Eliza Bennett to remain in Ines-cedwyn after she had obtained the
information which she came to seek. She was anxious to rejoin her
mistress, and the associations of her birthplace had become distasteful
to her.
She had adhered faithfully, however, to the business upon which Mrs
Barrington had sent her to England, and been careful not to say a word
about her young lady’s illness, or the cause. She was, therefore,
considerably startled the next morning, as she was preparing to leave
the cottage, to hear Martha say,--
‘By the way, ’Liza, do you remember the talk as there was here last
summer about Miss Fenella having got a beau? Well, I expect that young
feller’s bin hangin’ about here again in hopes of gettin’ another sight
of ’er. _I_ don’t know ’im, of course, no more than Adam, but Tugwell
the boatman says he has met ’im several times in Lynwern; and the day
before yesterday, when I came back from Freshpool (where I had gone
about some eggs), my servant girl told me as a gentleman had called to
see me, and seemed quite put out like by my being from home. He was a
fine-lookin’ feller too, the girl says--tall and ’ansome; and it may
have been ’im, and it may not, but it seems likely--now don’t it?’
Eliza Bennett turned white and red under this exordium, as if she had
been accused of having a ‘_beau_’ herself.
‘It ain’t of much consequence one way or the other,’ she replied,
trying to speak indifferently; ‘my young lady looks higher than that
comes to. You don’t suppose she would think twice of a beau as she
picked up on the Ines-cedwyn sands?’
‘Lor’, no! In course not; only I thought I might as well mention it to
you. Well, good-bye, ’Liza, and thank you for thinking of us in this
matter, and thank your mistress, too, for the recommendation. And I
shall hear from the parties, I suppose, in a few days. I’m glad to have
’ad this peep at you, though you don’t look over and above well, to
my mind; but I ’opes you’ll get over safe to your ladies, and that it
won’t be long afore you’re all back in England again.’
‘Oh yes! We shall be home in the summer, never fear! Good-bye to you,
Martha,’ said Eliza Bennett, as she set off to walk to Lynwern.
She plodded along the country road, over ruts hardened by the ice and
snow, with her head bent down upon her bosom, and her mind filled with
her sister-in-law’s communication.
‘I’d like to catch him hangin’ about any place as _we_ was in,’ she
thought indignantly; ‘_I’d_ let ’im know what was what--the dirty,
mean, sneaking scoundrel, to go and leave a poor girl in that way, and
cause us all this misery! I only wish I had the handling of him! _I’d_
make him pay for his whistle.’
She was so absorbed in her dreams of revenge that she stumbled up
against some one in the road, before her brother Benjamin’s cottage was
out of sight, and had to draw back with a demand for pardon.
‘It is of no consequence,’ replied a sweet, grave voice; ‘but I think I
am speaking to Mrs Bennett, am I not?’
The woman looked up quickly. Before her stood a gentleman--young,
handsome, tall and upright--a gentleman whom she had never seen before
except by the uncertain light of the moon, but whom she recognised
at once. It was, in fact, Geoffrey Doyne; and so great in the magic
of beauty, and a superior station, and another sex, that, as Eliza
Bennett looked at him, all her deep-laid plans of revenge melted into
thin air.
‘No, sir,’ she answered, in a voice that palpably trembled, ‘I am not
_Mrs_ Bennett; I am her sister-in-law, Eliza Bennett.’
‘_Eliza Bennett_!’ he repeated quickly; ‘is it possible? Are you the
person--the maid--that accompanied a young lady down to Ines-cedwyn
last summer?’
‘Yes, sir, I am,’ said Eliza stoutly. (‘He’s very handsome, the
villin!’ she thought to herself, ‘and he’s got a winning way with his
tongue, drat it! But he sha’n’t get any information of her whereabouts
out of me--not if he was to drag me at the tail of four wild ’orses.’)
‘Oh! Then you can tell me where she is?’ exclaimed Geoffrey Doyne
excitedly. ‘Give me her address, I beg of you, in Heaven’s name! I have
a particular--a _very_ particular reason for wishing to obtain it.’
The servant looked him full in the face.
‘And I may have a particular reason, sir, for wishing to keep it from
you; for, if I’m not greatly mistaken, you are the same gentleman that
used to meet my young lady down on the sands here last summer.’
Geoffrey Doyne’s eyes fell before hers.
‘Yes,’ he answered, in a low voice, ‘I am the same.’
‘Well, may God forgive you for it,’ said the woman, ‘for _I_ can’t.
You’ve ruined her life as surely as ever a man ruined a woman! And I
brought her up from a baby; she is like my own child to me. You might
as well have killed me at the same time; I couldn’t have felt it more,’
and Eliza Bennett caught up her woollen shawl to wipe away two large
tears that were rolling down her cheeks.
At her words Geoffrey Doyne became pallid with fear.
‘Killed her! Ruined her!’ he repeated vehemently, as he caught the
servant by the arm; ‘in God’s name tell me what you mean! Is she
ill--is she dead? What have I done? If you don’t put me out of this
suspense, I shall go mad!’
They were just opposite the Beach Bungalow as he spoke. Eliza Bennett
glanced at it significantly.
‘Come in here, sir,’ she said,--‘I don’t want the whole village to hear
what I’ve got to say to you--and I’ll tell you what you’ve done.’
She led the way into the ruined villa, and Geoffrey Doyne followed her,
sick at heart with remorse and apprehension.
‘May I make so bold, sir,’ began Eliza Bennett, as soon as they were
sheltered from observation, ‘as to ask if--so be--you’re married?’
‘Yes!’ he replied; ‘I am.’
‘And what’s the good, then, of your hanging about Ines-cedwyn to try
and see my young lady? What could you say to her--how could you look at
her, if you did meet?’
‘Oh, I don’t know--I cannot tell!’ he exclaimed wildly. ‘Only the
separation, the silence, the want of seeing her is more than I can
bear. If you will only tell me where she is, or take a letter to her,
that I may have one word of kindness, one word of pardon in reply, I
fancy I could bear the rest with fortitude. Mrs Bennett, I ought to
have gone back to India long ago. My leave was up in the autumn, but I
got an extension, only for this--to find out her address and see her
once before I go. Then I will leave England and trouble her no more.’
‘You will never get your wish through me, sir,’ said Eliza Bennett,
‘for I’ll neither tell you where she is, nor carry any notes between
you. You’ve done her enough mischief already, and you’ve put it out of
your power to do her any good. The best thing you can do now, for her
and yourself, is never to write to her nor see her any more.’
‘But does she ever speak of me? Does she remember me?’ he demanded
eagerly.
‘_Remember_ you!’ echoed the servant, in a tone of contempt. ‘I should
think you’d given her enough cause to remember you, in this life and
the next too! But there are different sorts of remembrance, sir, and if
my young mistress is the lady I take her for, her best remembrance of
you will be one of hatred and of scorn!’
‘I deserve it,’ he answered brokenly.
‘And so you do,’ said Bennett, with the want of delicacy that usually
characterises her class, ‘and so you’ll say twice over when you’ve
heard what I’ve got to tell you.’
And thereupon she gave him an account of Fenella’s mental and bodily
sufferings during the autumn and winter, sparing no detail that might
add to the colouring of the picture, and winding up with a description
of her attempt at self-destruction, and the brain fever that had
succeeded it.
‘And now, what do you think of yourself, sir?’ she said, as she
concluded. ‘You’re a nice sort of gentleman, aren’t you, to ask me to
carry notes to that poor suffering angel, and rake up all her troubles
afresh, just as she has a chance maybe of getting over them. We’d
never have known your _name_ even, if it hadn’t been for her delirious
ravings; but we sha’n’t forget it in a hurry, you may take your oath of
that! And don’t you attempt to come nigh her again, sir--not for the
rest of your mortal life,--for I do believe her mamma would tear you
limb from limb if you did.’
Geoffrey Doyne during her relation had shown every symptom of the
deepest feeling. His brow had flushed darkly with shame, his nostrils
had quivered, his lips grown white, his whole frame shaken with
emotion. And now that it was concluded, all he seemed able to do was
to lean against the window-sill, whilst the words, ‘_My God! My God_!’
seemed to be wrung from the very depths of his tortured heart. His
suffering was so self-evident that even Eliza Bennett could not help
pitying him.
‘Don’t take on like that, sir,’ she said soothingly; ‘it won’t mend the
past, and the best thing we can all do now is to try and forget it. I
don’t know, I’m sure, as I’ve done right to tell you so much; but it’ll
be safe with you, and I thought as you ought to know what my young lady
has gone through. Maybe it will save others, for you gentlemen don’t
seem to stand at nothing when you’ve set your mind upon a thing. But I
didn’t mean to upset you like this, sir, and I beg your pardon if I’ve
gone too far.’
‘No, no! I should wish to have known it,’ he said huskily; and then he
pulled out several pieces of gold from his waistcoat-pocket, and tried
to thrust them in her hand. But she put them back again proudly.
‘No, Mr Doyne. I couldn’t take _your_ money, thank you; not even if I’d
done anything to deserve it, which I haven’t. But I hope you’ll give
me your promise before you go never to try and write to Miss Fenella
again. Don’t make the harm you’ve done, worse, sir. You’ve got your own
lady to consider and to look after now, and you can’t do no good to
mine! Will you promise me this?’
‘Yes--I promise!’ he said, in a broken voice.
‘And please not to walk alongside of me to Lynwern either, sir! Meeting
of you has upset me more than I care to think of, and I’d like to be
alone for the rest of the journey.’
‘I will respect your wishes,’ replied Geoffrey Doyne quickly; and then,
raising his hat, as if she had been his equal, he left the ruined
bungalow, and strode along the cliffs in the opposite direction to
Lynwern.
Eliza Bennett looked after him for a few moments before she pursued her
own way.
‘Well, he may be a villin, but he’s a fine-looking gentleman,’ she
thought as she dried her eyes, ‘and they would have made a handsome
couple. What a thousand pities it is that Miss Fenella couldn’t have
him. But there! It’s always the way in this world. Them as ought to
come together, don’t; and them as ’ates each other like poison, is tied
for life. The more I sees of marriage, the more thankful I am as I was
never tempted into it!’
She pursued her road to Lynwern after this, and proceeded on her
journey back to Sainte Pauvrette. And a few hours later Geoffrey Doyne
followed her to London, and walked into the presence of his wife. They
were living at an hotel, preparatory to going back to India. There was
no lack of love on the part of Mrs Geoffrey Doyne towards her husband,
and (except when dark thoughts of Fenella Barrington interposed between
them) he usually returned her ebullitions of affection with a certain
degree of interest. It is difficult for a young and ardent nature not
to evince some feeling when clasped in the arms of a pretty woman who
has every right to expect an adequate return. And Geoffrey Doyne had a
very affectionate disposition. His fault was that he loved too much,
not too little. He was passionate, moreover, and easily moved; and to
be caressed, and flattered, and made much of, was almost a necessity
to him. But on this occasion his wife found all her artifices to
attract his notice, failures. He had been absent nearly a week, on
some business of which she had not the faintest idea; and yet when he
returned home, instead of being glad to see her again, and anxious to
hear what she had been doing in his absence, he was morose, gloomy, and
dejected, complained of every dish that appeared on the dinner-table,
and scarcely spoke a dozen words to her during the evening. Had she
indulged his mood and left him to himself, she would have been rewarded
by seeing the cloud gradually pass away (at all events, to outward
view), but Jessie did not understand how to treat her husband.
That phantom of a former love, which he had once mentioned to her,
was ever coming between them now, and she was always quick to ascribe
his varying moods to regret that he had married her. For six months
they had been husband and wife, but they were no nearer each other in
love or confidence or friendship than they had been at first. Geoffrey
accepted her attentions to him, and that was all.
Women are very apt to imagine that the possession of the beloved object
is _everything_, and that they can bear the idea of a rival better if
they know him to be, beyond all dispute, their own. They too often
live to find out they have deceived themselves. To be married to a
person you love, but who does not love you, is very much like trying to
grasp a bubble--each time your fingers close upon it you will find them
still unsatisfied and empty.
‘What is the matter, Geoffrey?’ demanded Jessie, as he thrust away the
wine decanters and leant back moodily in his chair. ‘I never saw any
one so disagreeable as you have made yourself to-night. If this is the
effect of having a holiday, I should say you had better remain at home
for the future. Where have you been?’
‘It would not interest you to know,’ Geoffrey.
‘Oh, that is as good as saying that you don’t intend to tell me!
Just as when you receive a letter and put it into your pocket
without showing it to me, and declare it is on business that I can’t
understand.’
‘Perhaps it is!’
‘But I have a right to ask where you’ve been, and whom you’ve seen,
Geoffrey; and if you refuse to tell me, I shall think the very worst.’
‘That will only hurt yourself, Jessie. Aren’t you content with having
married me, with knowing that, wherever I go, you have a right to
demand to follow? And can’t you let me enjoy a few hours’ liberty
without pestering to ascertain exactly where I have spent them?’
‘No, I can’t! Because I always suspect you go where that other girl
lives (the girl you told me of, you remember); and I always _shall_
suspect it when you go away alone in this mysterious manner, as long as
ever I live. I know when you are thinking of her, too--when you pucker
up your eyebrows, Geoffrey, and look gloomy, and speak in that horrible
cross way; and you make me miserable--you know you do.’
‘You make yourself miserable, you mean. However, if what you say is
true, don’t recall her memory by mentioning the subject. I have
already told you it is an unpleasant one to me.’
‘Oh yes! Because you wish you had married her instead of me; and you
get wretched when you think of it. But it is most unfair of you to go
and see her, behind my back; and everybody would say the same.’
‘I have not been to see her,’ replied Geoffrey, with visible annoyance.
‘But you think of her--you cannot deny it.’
‘Yes, I _do_ think of her! A man has, not absolute control over his
thoughts.’
‘A pretty confession for a married man to make!’ pouted Jessie. ‘Why
don’t you follow it up by saying that you love her still?’
The young man was fairly roused by this time.
‘I don’t deny it,’ he answered petulantly. ‘I do love her still.’
‘And I suppose you’ll end by running away with her, and leaving me to
go back to papa in Blenheim Square! It is shameful, scandalous! And she
must be a wicked, vile creature to encourage you to forget your duty in
this way.’
Geoffrey Doyne rose from his chair, and struck his hand upon the table
with a force that made the glasses ring.
‘Don’t you dare to speak of her in such terms before me,’ he said
angrily. ‘She is no more vile nor wicked than yourself. She is as pure
and good a girl as ever walked God’s earth, and you are the only person
on whom there is any necessity to call “shame.” You chose to hold me
to my promise of marriage, when you knew that my heart was no longer
mine to give you; and, therefore, the consequences must be on your
own head. I _do_ love that girl you mention, earnestly, faithfully,
affectionately, and I _shall_ love her to my life’s end. There! You
wished for the truth, and you have it. You exacted the payment of
my bond to the last ounce of flesh. But you can’t have the blood,
Jessie--_my heart’s blood_. That belongs to another, and ever will do
so. And now, if you wish to preserve the peace, you will drop this
subject once and for ever, as it can never raise anything but strife
between us.’
This was all the satisfaction that she obtained from him, and a few
weeks after they were on their way together to rejoin his regiment in
India.
About the same time Eliza Bennett led Fenella out for her first walk in
the open air. The girl, although much pulled down by her illness, was
on the high road to recovery, but she did not appear to have regained
her spirits with her strength. The little Wallon children ran out of
the cottages as she passed, with bunches of violets and primroses in
their hands, and Fenella smiled sweetly at them as she accepted their
offerings. But the smile was as sad as ever, and the grey eyes still
looked wistful and scared; and as, accompanied by her nurse, she
dragged her steps up to the little churchyard, the peasant women shook
their heads at one another, and said she would be carried there yet.
‘You mustn’t sit down, my dear,’ said Eliza Bennett; ‘it’s too cold
for that yet. But you’ve done bravely for a first attempt, and we
shall have you stout and strong upon your legs again before many days
is past. You will try and leave off fretting now, my dear young lady,
won’t you? for your own sake, and your mamma’s, and all as love you.’
‘Oh yes, nurse, I will try.’
‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk, Miss Fenella, and you’re too young
and pretty to have your whole life wasted for a first mistake. You must
try and look at what’s past in a sensible light, my dear; and you’ll
live to laugh over these times, I warrant you.’
The girl shivered, but she answered in the same words as before.
‘Yes, nurse, I will try.’
Then Bennett lowered her voice.
‘Miss Fenella dear, you won’t mind what I’m going to say, but I
couldn’t help guessing his name on account of your raving after him
so in your illness, and when I was in London the other day about
some money business of your mamma’s, I made a few inquiries--secret
like--about him, and he’s gone, my dear. He’s left England for good and
all, and you won’t never see him, nor be troubled with him again; and
that ought to be as great a comfort to you as anything else--oughtn’t
it, now?’
The blood had ebbed and flowed in Fenella’s wasted cheeks, as Bennett
spoke to her, like waves of white and crimson, and when the servant
turned for an answer, she saw a bright hectic spot burning under
each of her eyes. But the tone in which she spoke was very calm and
deliberate.
‘Thank you, nurse,’ she said wearily. ‘You meant it kindly, I know,
but nothing is of any consequence to me now. Only, please remember
(and I am sure you will, for my sake) that I would rather not hear you
mention his name again. He is dead to me, nurse; I am dead; everything
seems dead together. Don’t forget that, and never speak to me on the
subject more! And now take me home; I have made myself worse by coming
here; the sooner my mother takes me away from Sainte Pauvrette the
better.’
She cast the violets and primroses upon the grave by which she had been
standing as she spoke, and then throwing her arm about Bennett’s neck,
turned from the spot without another word.
[Illustration: decorative]
[Illustration: decorative]
CHAPTER V.
SIR GILBERT CONROY.
‘He that hath nature in him must be grateful,
’Tis the Creator’s primary great law.’
_Madan_.
A month after this date Fenella and her mother were settled in
Paris, and mixing in all the dissipations of the French capital. Mrs
Barrington had many acquaintances there, and having hired a suite of
apartments in the very centre of the town, their lives soon became
one round of gaiety. Theatres and operas, balls and conversaziones,
followed one another in quick succession, and Fenella retired to
bed each night almost too weary to think. It was good for her, and
it would be untrue to say that she did not, in a measure, enjoy the
change. To depict either a man or a woman as brooding incessantly over
their trouble, and never for a moment losing sight of it, to raise
cheerful eyes to the light of Heaven, would be utterly unnatural. No
one ever did so in this world and preserved his senses. The strain
upon the nerves would be too great, and the mind would break down
beneath it. Fenella often returned from the gay scenes into which her
mother took her, to think how much more she would have enjoyed them had
Geoffrey Doyne not proved unfaithful, and sob herself to sleep over
the remembrance. Yet, whilst she was mixing in them, they distracted
her thoughts, and drew her out of herself. The theatre was a wondrous
revelation to her; the opera, a sublime delight; even at the balls and
assemblies she began to take pleasure in the knowledge that she was
admired, and that all men did not consider her so worthless a thing
that they could take her up, and cast her aside, as the humour seized
them.
Mrs Barrington had shown wisdom in her generation in making her
daughter’s sojourn in Sainte Pauvrette a time which she shuddered to
recall. Anything which would expunge that terrible remembrance from her
mind would have been welcome to Fenella; it may be supposed, then, how
gladly she hailed the fresh scenes which opened before her, and how
gratefully she accepted the salve they offered to her wounded vanity.
For we are all mortal, and there is no doubt that trouble is easier
to bear when we have less time to think about it. And it is well it
is so, else the world would be full of lunatics and suicides. The man
who receives a bullet during the heat of battle in his body, which the
surgeons are unable to extract, will feel its presence to the last day
of his life, and at some times more than at others. A change in the
weather or a derangement of his system will cause the pain to be as
acute as on the day he was shot; and yet when the sun shines, and his
blood is free from acid, he may go for months without remembering he
ever encountered such an accident. So it is with our hearts. The mercy
of God and the goodness of friends may dull the sense of injury or loss
for months together, but it never totally disappears. If a lesser grief
overtakes us, a lesser love becomes estranged, the old wound opens and
bleeds afresh, the bullet stirs in the flesh, and we recognise the fact
that we are maimed for life. Let us not grudge the wounded, then, their
moments of forgetfulness, nor ridicule the trifles which may have the
power to divert their thoughts.
To an older person, perhaps, white satin and pearls might appear an
unworthy panacea for a disappointed affection; but to a young creature
like Fenella, who had never possessed anything but serge and cotton
frocks before, they held their charm. She sighed, it is true, when she
saw the pale loveliness, which Bennett had taken such pains to adorn,
reflected in the looking-glass, and wondered, if Geoffrey could have
seen her like that, if he would ever have forsaken her. Still, she
preferred to be handsome rather than ugly, and could take a pride in
her personal appearance, though her lover was not there to praise it.
It was natural that she should do so, and it is of no use crying out
against nature.
But there was one thing in which Fenella’s faith had been utterly
destroyed and could never be built up again, and that was her
mother’s love for her. Mrs Barrington would have had it otherwise.
When she found that her daughter’s beauty had not been destroyed
by her illness--that she was, in fact, better looking than she had
been before, and that she made no objection to going out to dances
and theatres every night, and wearing any sort of costume which was
provided for her, Mrs Barrington’s good temper began to revive, and she
would have had Fenella share her rouge and powder and her hare’s-foot,
and forget all old injuries. But the girl was unable to do so. About
the past she was as silent as the grave. She never mentioned Geoffrey
Doyne, nor Ines-cedwyn, nor Sainte Pauvrette; but to blot out the
memory of them was impossible. She could not forget her mother’s
harshness and cruelty, nor the sneers and contempt cast upon her when
her heart was bleeding for one word of affection or sympathy. She saw
Mrs Barrington in her true colours--worldly, selfish, and deceitful;
and as long as she lived, Fenella could never set her up again on the
pedestal her childish enthusiasm had raised for her. She accepted her
caresses without any exhibition of dislike; she thanked her for her
compliments, and followed her wishes; but here the link between them
ended. Mrs Barrington had brought her into the world, certainly; but
Fenella, remembering Sainte Pauvrette, could never again think of her
as her _mother_.
The word ‘mother’ is sacred. It holds within its couple of syllables a
host of loving possibilities; and the woman who cannot sympathise with
every pulsation of the life she gave, is not worthy of the name.
Fenella put the thought resolutely from her--it was only another
trouble added to the load she bore--and tried to believe that the sweet
dream she had once cherished was of a mother who had died when she was
born.
Mrs Barrington was her adviser, and protector, and chaperon--everything
that was needful in the world of fashion she had entered, but
something which she never wished to encounter when alone. At such
times, a suspicious reserve and awkwardness would fall upon both mother
and daughter, which warned them to make the interview as short as
possible.
Mrs Barrington, however, was quite in her element again. Her ambitious
views for Fenella had all revived (though she did not like to say too
much about them to the girl herself), and she spared no pains nor
expense to render her as attractive as she possibly could.
The pale loveliness of the English girl, which owed so much to her
lofty bearing and look of serious innocence, soon began to be talked of
in the Parisian _salons_, and more than one man of fashion was said to
be a suitor for her hand.
But Mrs Barrington was very cautious who she admitted as a visitor to
her own house. She had no intention of marrying Fenella to a penniless
_attaché_, or an officer dependent on his pay. She wanted to secure
both a title and a fortune for her daughter, and the only admirer she
had who combined these advantages was her own old acquaintance, Sir
Gilbert Conroy.
Time had been--and not so very long ago either--when the fair widow
had hoped to get Sir Gilbert for herself, but her chances had never
had any existence except in her own brain, and she was sensible enough
to perceive that, if she snubbed his advances to Fenella, he was not
likely to ask for her mother’s hand instead. Besides, the baronet’s
suit had great advantages. He was not a hot-headed boy, determined
to have his own way at all hazards, and run the risk of a refusal by
speaking too soon. He rather preferred the dignified old fashion of
consulting the parents or guardians of the young lady he desired to
make his wife, before he mentioned the subject to herself. And Mrs
Barrington preferred this method of courtship also.
She knew Fenella’s impulsive temperament, and her love of truth and
honour; and she was terribly afraid of what her daughter might say to
any young man who addressed her on the subject of marriage. If the
preliminary matters were kept in _her_ hands, she felt that she could
smooth down any little unpleasantnesses that may have occurred in the
past, so as to make them appear rather desirable experiences for a
young woman than otherwise.
Sir Gilbert Conroy was a gentleman in every sense of the word. He
was a man of birth and education, of almost courtly breeding and
ultra-refinement. In age he was about five-and-thirty; in appearance
he was fair and aristocratic, with hair cropped closely to his head,
and rather bald about the temples, where he brushed it backwards; with
a handsome nose, quiet blue eyes, and a thin-lipped mouth shaded by a
small moustache. He was a man whom any woman might have been proud
to be connected with--but he was a man who would be severe in his
judgments, and unforgiving where he was offended.
He had been struck with Fenella Barrington on the first occasion of
their meeting at an embassy ball, and had assiduously followed up
the acquaintance since. And the girl liked him--not with any idea of
marriage (she had conceived a notion that it was impossible she could
ever marry now), but as a pleasant acquaintance, who could talk more
sensibly than the generality of men, and who always seemed delighted to
meet her, and proud to be her partner for the evening!
But when Mrs Barrington first mentioned the possibility of her marrying
Sir Gilbert Conroy, Fenella felt as if she had been struck with a
sudden blow. It was the morning after they had attended a large party
at the house of the Russian ambassador, and Eliza Bennett announced
to her young lady that coffee was waiting for her in her mamma’s
dressing-room.
‘The mistress is too tired to go downstairs, Miss Fenella; so she says,
please will you go in and take it with her there.’
The girl threw on her _robe de chambre_, and obeyed the summons. Her
cheeks were flushed from sleep; her eyes were languid; her fair hair
hung in two thick plaits down her back.
‘Really, child,’ exclaimed Mrs Barrington, as she entered, ‘you grow
handsomer every day. It’s no wonder Sir Gilbert is making such a fool
of himself about you.’
Fenella laughed.
‘Poor Sir Gilbert! Why is he to be called a fool for liking me, more
than any one else?’
‘Because he likes you more than any one else does. Surely, Fenella, you
are not so blind as not to see that!’
The girl opened her eyes.
‘Does he? I hope not!’
‘And why so, my dear? Most young ladies would be proud of his
preference. His title is one of the oldest baronetcies in England, and
he has five thousand a-year on which to keep it up.’
‘Oh, I don’t mean that, mamma; I am aware he is rich; only--you
know--it would be of no use his liking me, because I could never marry
him--nor anyone! So I hope it is all fancy on your part.’
‘What nonsense, Fenella. You must put such fantastical ideas out of
your head. And as for its being my fancy that Sir Gilbert likes you, he
has already asked my consent to his proposing for your hand.’
Fenella grew scarlet.
‘Oh, mamma, did you tell him?’
‘What?’ cried Mrs Barrington sharply.
‘About--about--what has happened, you know.’
‘Am I a born fool, or an idiot?’ exclaimed her mother. ‘No! _of course_
I didn’t tell him! What are you thinking of, Fenella?’
‘Forgive me, mamma! I ought to have known without asking. You would not
tell him, naturally, for my sake as well as your own. But what did you
say, then?’
‘I told him he had my heartiest wishes for his success, and he might
propose to you whenever he liked.’
Fenella’s distress was genuine.
‘Oh, mamma, why did you do that, when you know I can have but one
answer to give him? I _couldn’t_ marry him even if I liked him. How
could I? You might have saved me from the ordeal of having to tell him
so.’
‘But you must tell him no such thing, Fenella, and I will not allow you
to see Sir Gilbert again until I have talked you into a more sensible
frame of mind. Now, my dear, do try and look at the matter in a
reasonable light. You _must_ marry; you know that!’
‘No, indeed I don’t. I never intend to marry. I have given up all
thoughts of it--once and for ever.’
‘And how do you suppose I am to support you, then?’ exclaimed her
mother. ‘Do you think I have sufficient money to maintain a household,
and provide you with dresses, and take you about to places of
amusement, for the remainder of your life?’
Fenella stared.
‘Yes, I thought so, mamma. Haven’t we money? Didn’t papa leave any
behind him?’
‘_Your papa_!’ repeated Mrs Barrington witheringly. ‘A fine provision
he left us! The pension for a post-captain’s widow, and a few thousands
in the bank. Why, I spent that to the last farthing ages ago, and have
nothing but my pension at the present time. I am going in debt for
every mortal thing we use, and eat, and wear. And then you sit there
and tell me calmly that you never intend to marry! Why, it’s flying in
the face of Providence; it’s condemning us both to perpetual poverty,
and your mother to losing everything she possesses; for if I can’t
pay my bills, my creditors will certainly put in a distraint upon the
furniture in South Audley Street.’
‘Oh, mamma! Mamma! Why didn’t you tell me of this long ago? Why have
you dressed me up in expensive clothes, and taken me to all these
fine places, when you could not afford it? I would rather have gone
in sackcloth and eaten dry bread, than run you into such terrible
difficulties!’
‘Why have I done it, Fenella?’ replied Mrs Barrington. ‘Why, to procure
you the very chance which you declare you shall throw away--to see you
suitably married, and placed above the reach of poverty and care.’
‘But how _can_ I, mamma? Answer the question yourself. How _can_ I?’
said Fenella pleadingly.
‘I suppose I can guess what you are alluding to,’ replied her mother
coldly; ‘but if you intend to let that foolish love affair stand in
the way of your future prospects, all I can say is that you will be
intensely selfish. Most people would think you had caused me sufficient
trouble and anxiety already, without making more. If you are really
sorry for what is past, Fenella, now is your time to redeem it. You
will never have a better chance.’
‘Oh, I _am_ sorry,’ returned the girl, with troubled eyes and clasped
hands; ‘God knows I am! But how can I remedy it? You know my heart is
broken, mother; that my whole life is spoiled. What man would marry me
now, if he knew the truth?’
‘No one, of course! Very few men would marry at all if they knew the
truth about the women they make their wives. But who do you suppose
will tell Sir Gilbert Conroy anything? I sha’n’t--you may take your
oath of that; and our dear good Bennett is as secret as the grave.
There is no fear of his ever knowing the truth. You may set your mind
entirely at rest on that point.’
‘But I wouldn’t accept him unless he knew it,’ said Fenella. ‘Mamma,
what do you take me for? Do you think I could be so false, so
dishonourable as that?’
Mrs Barrington wheeled round in her chair and regarded her daughter
with the utmost astonishment.
‘Fenella,’ she said solemnly, ‘you’re a born fool, and where you get it
from beats my comprehension. If you are going to enter into marriage
with the idea of telling your husband everything that has ever happened
to you, or that ever will happen to you, you may dismiss at once the
idea of having any peace in your life. Why, if the world were conducted
on that plan, it would be a perfect volcano! Now, I have seen a great
deal more of it than you have, and you must allow yourself to be guided
by me. Your husband will never tell you any more about his own affairs
than he chooses, you may make up your mind to that; and the less you
tell him about yourself the better.’
But Mrs Barrington’s worldly wisdom had no effect upon the frank and
generous mind of her daughter.
‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘if I marry Sir Gilbert Conroy, or anybody else, you
know that I can never love him. I might learn to be grateful for his
kindness to me, but my heart is gone. I don’t think I’ve got any heart
left. I feel as if the place where it ought to be was empty.’
‘That’s nonsense, my dear,’ said her mother impatiently. ‘We are all
like that when we’re young. We have a first love, and we fancy we can
never love again; and after a while we find the difficulty is to keep
ourselves from loving too much. And even if it were not the case,
it’s no good carrying that enthusiastic, gushing sort of feeling into
marriage. It worries a man to death, and wears out his affection
sooner than anything else. Never refuse any attention your husband may
wish to show you, but keep your own feelings within bounds. That is
the secret of a happy marriage, and you will find a man will care all
the more for you if there is a little indifference and reserve on your
part.’
Fenella sighed. Her idea of a happy marriage had been so very different
from that.
‘But if it is unnecessary to give love to the man you marry, mamma,’
she answered, ‘is it not all the more incumbent to be perfectly open
with him? And I could not live my life with a secret always weighing at
my heart. I should fancy each time he frowned at me that he was going
to tell me he had discovered I was false to him.’
‘Oh, well, if you are determined to stand in your own light and mine,
and take no advice from those who know better than yourself, there is
no more to be said on the subject,’ replied Mrs Barrington, with the
air of a martyr; ‘but I must say that it is hard upon me--bitterly,
cruelly hard.’
‘Oh, how can I help you?’ cried the girl. ‘What can I do to remedy the
evil I have brought upon us both?’
‘The only thing you can do, you refuse to do,’ said her mother,
reproachfully.
‘I cannot do a dishonourable action,’ replied Fenella, with dignity.
And after that conclusion they passed several days in a miserable state
of coldness and silence towards each other.
Mrs Barrington confided the whole affair to Bennett, and implored her
to argue it out with Fenella. For the sympathy she had displayed during
her illness had drawn the girl and the old woman very closely together.
Indeed, Bennett may be said to have been the only real friend Fenella
had; and many a time since those miserable days had she cried herself
to sleep upon the servant’s bosom. So it seemed nothing more than
natural when Bennett said to her,--
‘Why have you made your mamma so angry with you, Miss Fenella? What is
it that you don’t like in Sir Gilbert Conroy?’
‘I like him well enough, Bennett,’ said the girl, with a sigh. ‘In
fact, I see nothing to dislike in him. Only that has nothing to do with
marriage, you know; and mamma can’t understand that it is impossible
for me to forget.’
‘But it’s your _duty_ to forget, my dear,’ replied Bennett, who was
brushing Fenella’s hair at the time. ‘Here’s Sir Gilbert Conroy, a
fine, handsome gentleman, with plenty of money to keep you comfortable
and give you everything you want, and dying to make you his lady, and
yet you won’t listen to a word he says. And all because of a business
as can never come to anything. For, you see, there’s where it is, Miss
Fenella. If there was any hope or probability like of things turning
out as you would wish them, there might be some sense in waiting; but
you know as there isn’t. And when all’s said and done, my dear, the
first wasn’t a patch upon Sir Gilbert.’
‘_Don’t_, nurse--_don’t_,’ murmured Fenella, in a voice of pain, as her
hands went up to shade her blinded eyes. Ah! _that First_! Let a dozen
come after him--fairer, better, and more true than he--but they will
never have the power to drive his image from the heart that sheltered
it.
The nurse laid down her brush, and kissed the crown of the fair head
that was bowed upon the dressing-table.
‘There--there, my lamb,’ she said affectionately; ‘I wish I had bit out
my tongue afore I’d said them words. But it was for the sake of your
mamma, Miss Fenella. She’s regular put out, my dear; and no wonder,
for she quite counted on your marriage as a means of righting herself,
and I’m afraid she’ll be in a terrible fix if you continue to set your
face against it.’
Fenella looked up suddenly.
‘Bennett, tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘Are we so very poor? is mamma
really in want of money?’
‘Indeed she is, miss. Don’t you remember my telling you at the convent
a year ago, that your dear mamma was full of troubles, and it was her
debts at that time that worried her so, though, of course, it wasn’t
fit telling to a child. And they’ve gone on increasing ever since, till
I’m sure I don’t know how the mistress will go back to London, unless
she finds some way out of ’em first.’
‘And I must have been an extra expense to her,’ said Fenella, with a
sigh.
‘Well, miss, you have--there’s no denying it! What with your long
illness, and your dresses, and hire of carriages, and all that. But
the mistress did it with an object. So she’s naturally disappointed at
your refusing to marry Sir Gilbert. And to be “my lady” too, miss! I
wonder how you can!’
‘Mamma has hardly spoken to me for three days,’ said Fenella.
‘No, my dear! But she will, directly she sees you have changed your
mind. She’s had a many troubles in this life, poor dear lady! And it
seems hard that you should add to ’em--don’t it, now?’
‘If you will do up my hair, I will go and speak to her about it,’ said
Fenella wearily; and half-an-hour later she walked into her mother’s
room.
‘Mamma, I have come to tell you that I have made up my mind to accept
Sir Gilbert’s offer,’ she said; ‘but it must be on one condition, that
you tell him my whole history. Tell it him without reserve, mamma;
don’t spare me in any way; and if, after hearing it, he should still
wish to make me his wife, I will marry him!’
Mrs Barrington was just about to call her by her favourite name of a
fool, and say she might as well have kept her wonderful condescension
to herself, when it suddenly struck her that she might find a way by
which to keep the game in her own hands. So she smiled sweetly instead,
and answered.
‘Well, Fenella, if this is the only condition on which you will
listen to Sir Gilbert’s suit, of course I must comply with it, but
I have already told you my opinion of the matter. It is quixotic
and unnecessary! And if he _does_ propose to you afterwards (which
I doubt), you must be doubly grateful to him in return. He has been
waiting nearly a week for his answer, and I received a note from him
this morning on the subject. I shall therefore write and tell him to
call upon me this evening. Madame de Beaupré can chaperon you to the
Thellussons. It is better that you should be out of the way, as the
interview is likely to be a painful one.’
‘I have been thinking a great deal about it,’ replied Fenella, ‘and I
am sure it is the only right and honourable course to pursue. And if
it fails, mamma (as doubtless it will), then you must let me go out as
a governess or a companion, and earn my own living. It is unfair that
I should be a burden on you any longer, just because I have been so
wicked and so weak.’
‘A governess!’ thought Mrs Barrington as her daughter left the room.
‘As if I could allow such a scandal, and with that face too! But if my
right hand has not lost its cunning, I will contrive this marriage for
her.’
When Sir Gilbert Conroy walked into her little _salon_ that evening, he
found her looking the very soul of honour and the pink of propriety,
arrayed in a grey cashmere dress, with a white lace _fichu_ that gave
her almost the look of a quaker.
‘No, no! Sir Gilbert,’ she said playfully, as she saw his glance wander
round the room, ‘you will not find my little girl hidden under any
of the sofa or chair covers. Fenella is spending the evening at the
Thellussons. I thought it best she should be out of the way whilst you
and I discuss this subject together.’
‘I am afraid Miss Barrington’s absence does not augur a favourable
answer to my suit,’ replied Sir Gilbert, flushing up to the roots of
his fair hair.
‘Indeed! You are quite mistaken! My daughter is exceedingly well
disposed--shall I say _too_ well disposed?--to receive your advances,
and thinks highly of the compliment you pay her. But Fenella feels
that you are the soul of honour, Sir Gilbert (as she is herself), and,
therefore, before granting you an interview, she has set me a little
task which she thinks I can execute better than she can.’
‘A task!’ echoed Sir Gilbert.
‘Yes! I am sure you will laugh at us for a couple of silly women, and I
told my daughter so; still, I could not blame her decision, as it was
founded on the very principles it has been the aim and object of my
life to instil into her.’
‘You alarm me, Mrs Barrington! Pray don’t keep me in suspense,’ gasped
the baronet.
‘Indeed, I will not, for it is not worth while,’ laughed the lady
pleasantly. ‘The fact is, Sir Gilbert, about a year ago my silly
child had one of those foolish love affairs which we all know of, and
laugh at,--a boy-and-girl flirtation, which never could have come to
anything, and which she had almost forgotten, until the agitation
caused by your very flattering proposal recalled it to her mind. And
then she begged me to tell you of it before you met again. I thought
it perfectly unnecessary to worry you about such a trifle, and told
her so; but Fenella’s soul is of so pure and lofty a character that I
cannot bear to dull even its lightest aspiration. She is so truthful,
so honourable, so open, Sir Gilbert. Her mind is like a sheet of
crystal.’
‘Yes,’ stammered the baronet uneasily; ‘but--but--about this love
affair, Mrs Barrington? Are you quite certain she _has_ forgotten all
about it, or that it may not crop up to disturb our domestic felicity?
Is the gentleman in England still? Is she likely to meet him again?’
Mrs Barrington was annoyed that he took her communication so seriously.
‘In England? Oh, dear, no! He went to the colonies, or he’s dead--or
something. I forget which. But he was such a boy, it’s really not
worth inquiring. And as for Fenella meeting him again--why, my dear
Sir Gilbert, she wouldn’t speak to him if she saw him in the streets
to-morrow!’
‘But these first attachments are sometimes the most enduring, you know,
Mrs Barrington; and if your daughter had quite forgotten all about
hers, I hardly think she would have considered it necessary to ask you
to break the intelligence to me.’
Then Mrs Barrington could have bitten out her tongue that she had told
him anything at all. It would have been just as easy to have assured
Fenella that she had. She played with her fan, and looked virtuously
reproachful.
‘If you take it in that light, Sir Gilbert, I shall be indeed sorry
that I spoke. _Need_ I have said anything to you on the subject at all?
It was only the extreme purity of my child’s mind--the truthfulness
of her feelings--that made her think of making such a confession! She
would not go to you with even the shadow of a secret (however innocent)
upon her soul. But it is only a mind of equal candour with her own that
could appreciate the delicacy of her motives.’
‘But I can--I do!’ exclaimed Sir Gilbert. ‘I confess that one of the
great attractions that drew me to your daughter, Mrs Barrington, was
her youth and apparent innocence. I have grown sick and weary of the
women of the world, with their artifice and falsehood and intrigues. I
long to have an unsophisticated, guileless maiden for my wife. Indeed,
I would put none else in the place once occupied by my honoured mother.
I come of an old and unblemished family; and one of our proudest boasts
is that no one has ever been able to point the finger of scorn at a
Lady Conroy!’
Mrs Barrington went pale with agitation.
‘Good heavens! Sir Gilbert, what are you thinking of? Would you link
such an expression as that with the silly little flirtation I have just
been foolish enough to tell you of?’
‘No--certainly not,’ he answered; ‘and if I cannot secure even your
lovely and innocent daughter for my wife without hearing that she has
already been courted by one of my own sex, it is hopeless for me to
look farther.’
‘Unless you go to the nursery for your Lady Conroy,’ laughed Mrs
Barrington. ‘But, unfortunately, I have no more daughters there, Sir
Gilbert, or I should certainly ask you to go and take your choice of
them. You are a son-in-law of whom any woman might be proud.’
‘You are very good to say so, my dear madam,’ replied the baronet. ‘Am
I to understand, then, that Miss Barrington consents to receive my
offer for her hand?’
‘The silly creature waits to see if you will renew it after having
heard this terrible secret of her former life--that she actually
flirted for the space of a few weeks with a lad, who ought to have been
whipped by his tutor for his precocity.’
‘Miss Barrington might have been sure I should not have permitted such
a trifle to stand in the way of my happiness,’ rejoined Sir Gilbert.
‘At the same time, as I confess I am rather sensitive on such matters,
will you ask her, as a personal favour, not to allude to the subject
before me? Perhaps it is as well I should have heard it; but having
heard it, I should wish to forget it again. Cannot it be buried in
oblivion? I should like to try and fancy (even if it be only a fancy)
that my wife never had a lover before myself.’
‘And neither has she, my dear Sir Gilbert. You surely would not dignify
the wretched boy I spoke of by the name of “lover”? However, I shall
repeat your wishes to Fenella, and I am certain they will be attended
to. When may I count on the pleasure of seeing you again?’
‘With your permission I will call to-morrow afternoon,’ he said, as
he rose to take his leave. ‘I shall not be quite happy until I have
learned Miss Barrington’s decision from her own lips.’
‘Well, of all the glaring pieces of folly I ever took part in, this is
the worst,’ thought Mrs Barrington, when the baronet had disappeared.
‘Fenella as nearly lost her chance of becoming Lady Conroy as possible,
and entirely through her own fault. The idea of rousing a man’s
suspicions unnecessarily! I wish I had followed my own judgment and
told him nothing. However, the girl is so strange, she might allude
in some way to the matter, so it is as well, perhaps, that he should
be prepared. But it must go no farther. I must impress on Fenella the
absolute necessity of holding her tongue henceforward.’
As soon as she returned home from the Thellussons, Fenella ran up to
her mother’s room, eager to learn her fate.
‘Well, mamma!’ she exclaimed breathlessly, as she entered it, ‘has he
been?’
‘Yes, certainly; Sir Gilbert is too much of a gentleman not to keep his
appointments.’
‘And you told him?’
‘I did!’
‘_Everything_?’
‘Everything!’
The girl leaned back against the wall, almost speechless from
excitement.
‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘What _did_ he say?’
‘He said all that was most kind and courteous. His affection for you is
great enough to surmount any obstacle. He renews his offer of marriage
to you.’
The faint colour died out of Fenella’s cheeks. It was evident which way
her hopes had lain. But surprise was her predominant feeling at the
news.
‘You told Sir Gilbert _everything_, and yet he said that?’ she asked
incredulously.
‘Haven’t I answered the question already! Do you doubt my word?’
returned Mrs Barrington, in a sharp voice.
‘Oh no, mamma; but it seems so wonderful to me! I thought when he
heard it he would just walk out of the house and never come back again.
What did you tell him? Does he know that I cannot pretend to love him;
that--that--I cannot forget what is past, whatever pleasures the future
may hold for me? I will be a good wife to him, mamma (as far as I can),
and I shall always feel grateful for his forbearance in this matter;
but I _hope_ you told him that he must not expect any more?’
‘If you will sit down and talk like a reasonable creature, instead of
a woman out of a play, I will repeat exactly what passed between us,’
replied Mrs Barrington.
She saw that it would be useless to try half measures with Fenella;
that if her conscience were not entirely satisfied, she would probably
speak to Sir Gilbert herself on the subject; and that, whilst she was
about it, she might as well tell a good lie as a feeble one. The girl
sat down, but impatiently, with large wondering eyes of expectation
still turned upon her mother.
‘I told Sir Gilbert Conroy _everything_, from the beginning to the
end,’ commenced Mrs Barrington emphatically, whilst her daughter’s face
grew scarlet. ‘Of course he was very much distressed at hearing it (who
wouldn’t be?); I am not sure that he didn’t shed tears, but men are
sensitive about such things, and he turned his head the other way.’
‘How _good_ of him,’ murmured Fenella.
‘He felt it _deeply_, there is no doubt--and so did I. It was anything
but a pleasant task you set me, Fenella; but when his emotion had
subsided, he told me it could make no difference in his affection for
you; on the contrary (if anything), he loved you more for what you had
suffered, and he repeated his offer to make you his wife.’
‘He must be a very generous man,’ said her daughter meditatively.
‘He is more than generous,’ replied Mrs Barrington; ‘he is noble,
chivalrous, heroic! But he coupled his decision with a request which I
was obliged to accord him in your name, Fenella, and which you must be
good enough to pay particular attention to.’
‘What is it, mamma?’ said the girl dreamily.
‘Sir Gilbert said to me, “I am willing to overlook and forget all that
is past, Mrs Barrington, on one condition, and that is, that a total
silence is preserved on the subject henceforward. I love your daughter
dearly, and am most desirous of making her Lady Conroy; but I am a
proud man, and do not care to think that any one ever courted my wife
before myself. I should wish to fancy (even if it be only fancy) that I
am her first lover.”’
‘He can never be my _lover_,’ cried Fenella quickly.
‘Oh, don’t be so tiresome,’ said her mother, ‘catching one up in that
rude way. It is not at all likely he _will_ be your lover--husbands
never are--but the thing is, that you are not to speak of, nor allude
to the other; nor to anything, in fact, that happened before your
marriage.’
‘Am I likely to do so?’ sighed Fenella, with her hand pressed upon her
aching heart.
‘Well, that’s the condition, my dear, and I hope you understand it. Sir
Gilbert is coming here to-morrow afternoon to receive his answer from
your own lips. Just give it simply and say no more about it. Let the
past be buried in oblivion, as he wishes it to be, and depend upon it
you will be as happy a woman as the world contains. It is an excellent
marriage, and I must say, after your _escapade_ of last year, that
you are a very lucky girl to secure it, and it is much more than you
deserve.’
‘I know that,’ said Fenella, ‘and I shall always be very grateful to
Sir Gilbert for his kindness to me; but as for being _happy_, mother,
that is impossible.’
‘Stuff and nonsense, child! Don’t begin to _pose_ for a martyr, and
fancy you are being dragged into a marriage against your will, like the
heroine of a novel.’
‘Oh no! I should never be so silly as that, because I really wish to
be married. I am sure I shall be happier with Sir Gilbert than I am at
home,’ replied the girl ingenuously.
‘Well, I must say that’s grateful of you; and after all the trouble
you’ve given me!’ cried Mrs Barrington.
‘Yes, I suppose I must have been the cause of a great deal of trouble
and disappointment to you, mamma, and I am sorry for it; but still, you
know, we have not been very happy together, and if Sir Gilbert really
loves me, I am sure I shall grow fond of him. My heart does _ache_ so
for love sometimes,’ cried Fenella, in a voice of pain.
Mrs Barrington thought it just as well to keep down her rising wrath,
and be polite to the future Lady Conroy.
‘Well, my sweet girl, I acknowledge we might have spent a pleasanter
year than the last; but there have been _causes_, you know, Fenella,
and my maternal pride has been sorely wounded. But it will be better
now, dearest, will it not? Bennett and I will do our utmost to get
together a decent trousseau for you, and once launched on the world as
Lady Conroy, you will never remember your former life except as an ugly
dream.’
‘Will he want it to be _soon_?’ faltered Fenella.
‘I should think so, my dear. Sir Gilbert is not a boy, you see, and
there is no reason for delay. I shall see you presented at Court before
you are eighteen.’
‘Yes, I was only seventeen last birthday,’ said Fenella, with a piteous
smile, as the mention seemed to recall how much she had passed through
before that time.
‘Most people would take you for older,’ remarked Mrs Barrington. ‘Sir
Gilbert thought you were nineteen or twenty.’
‘The last year has made a woman of me; I shall never be a girl again,’
said her daughter, as she gathered up her evening wraps and retired to
bed.
But the night did not bring much rest to her. Emphatically as Mrs
Barrington had asserted that Sir Gilbert Conroy had been made
acquainted with all the facts of her former life, Fenella was not
satisfied. She had learnt to distrust her mother’s statements--to
discredit her pretty oaths and smiles, as she did her blooming cheeks
and perfumed skin--and she lay awake, wondering how she could arrive at
the truth for herself. She did not feel any particular agitation at the
idea of seeing Sir Gilbert Conroy and telling him that she would be his
wife. Her heart was empty and sodden, and she thought she would just
as soon marry him as remain single: it was all the same to her; she
could never feel very happy or very miserable again, and she believed
that her future life would be more bearable passed with Sir Gilbert
than with her mother. So that when the baronet entered her presence the
following afternoon, he could detect nothing different from her usual
appearance, except a questioning look in her eye, as if she longed
to find out exactly what he thought of her. But she coloured when he
approached her side, and he interpreted the action according to his own
wishes.
‘Miss Barrington,’ he commenced, as he took her hand, ‘your mother has,
of course, prepared you for this interview. Am I right in conjecturing
that you would not have granted it unless you intended to give me a
favourable answer?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘mamma has told me all about it, and--I thank
you, Sir Gilbert.’
‘Does that mean that you will be my wife, Fenella?’
‘Since you wish it to be so--yes.’
At this answer Sir Gilbert naturally professed to be enraptured. He
kissed the hand he held, and, not being rebuked for forwardness, kissed
the fair face that glowed above it, and then he put his arm round her
waist, and drew Fenella to a sofa, and sat down beside her, and talked
of his mansion in town and his castle in Scotland--of the family jewels
which had not been worn since the death of his mother, Lady Valeria
Conroy, and how she had been the daughter of the Duke of Ben Nevis,
whose kinsman, David of Ben Nevis, had fought side by side on the field
of Bosworth with his own great ancestor, Gilbert de Conn, one of the
‘roys’ or ‘kings’ of Scotland. For Sir Gilbert’s favourite hobby was
the age and stainlessness of his family tree, and he looked down with
the supremest contempt on all the unfortunate ones of the earth who
could not produce a parchment roll inscribed with their pedigree.
Fenella’s parents were not noble, but he had taken good care to
ascertain before proposing to her that the family on both sides was
irreproachable. He would not have transformed Venus Aphrodite herself
into Lady Conroy unless she had been able to prove that she had
respectable ancestors. But even the enumeration and description of the
late Lady Valeria’s diamonds and emeralds did not seem to awaken much
interest in the bosom of the girl, who kept her clear, grey eyes fixed
upon Sir Gilbert with the same questioning look in them with which she
had welcomed him.
‘But,’ she said presently, interrupting him in the midst of a
description of the gardens at Conroy Castle, ‘are you _quite_ sure that
I shall be able to please you in all things? I am not a very loving
girl, you know (mamma will have told you that), and perhaps you might
expect more from me than I shall feel myself able to perform.’
‘I shall always do my utmost to meet your wishes, Fenella, and I hope
you will be as ready to meet mine. I expect no more from you than that.
Is it too much?’
‘Oh no! How could I give you less?’ she murmured. ‘It is very, _very_
good of you to accept so little,’ and then, with a sudden impulse,
she laid her hand upon his arm. ‘Sir Gilbert, mamma said I was not to
mention the subject, but I must--only this once. She told you last
night everything--about--about--last year, and still you come and ask
me to be your wife! How can I ever be grateful enough to you for your
forbearance to me?’
He almost laughed at the varying colour which came and went in her
cheeks, and made her look so earnest and so beautiful as she said the
words.
‘My dearest girl,’ he answered, as he drew her closer to himself, ‘I
had already forgotten all about it. I am a man of the world, you see,
Fenella, and used to hear all sorts of things; and although I confess
that, just at first, I was a little disappointed, the unworthy feeling
soon wore off again, and I am perfectly contented to take you _as
you are_! Only--will you grant me one favour?--not to make the past
a subject of constant allusion! Let it die out, my dear Fenella, and
forget it yourself, as I have.’
‘I will try,’ she replied, in a low voice; and Sir Gilbert recommenced
his description of the glories upon which she was about to enter,
whilst she mused to herself in silence, and thought what a generous,
noble heart he must have, and how good and grateful she should be in
return.
Before he left in the evening, the wedding was fixed for that day
month. The baronet’s only near relation was a married sister, who
would be charmed to find an excuse to visit Paris, and so he thought
the marriage had better take place at the English Embassy, with as
little fuss as needful.
‘Too soon! Too soon! Too terribly soon!’ cried Mrs Barrington
playfully. ‘Why, my poor child will only be seventeen years and three
months old! She oughtn’t to _think_ of marriage even for the next five
years--ought you, Fenella, darling? However, I suppose you wilful
lovers will have your own way!’
But a look from her daughter’s eyes stopped Mrs Barrington’s banter.
She was still very much afraid of Fenella, and would feel relieved when
those honest, serious eyes of hers were well out of the way.
‘Will the time we have fixed upon be agreeable to you?’ said Sir
Gilbert, turning to Fenella.
The girl started and flushed.
‘Oh yes; it is all the same to me! That is--I mean--I would rather
please you than myself. It is the least I can do in return for all
your goodness to me.’
That was the keynote of her life thenceforward, and her belief in it
made her marriage seem almost a gladsome thing. She grew more and more
contented with her prospects as the days went on. She felt that, by
God’s mercy, she was going to lead an honourable and useful life for
the future, and she tried to persuade herself that she was happy.
But there were times--sad times alone and in the dark--when the picture
was reversed, and the past came back so vividly upon her memory that
she was ready to leap out of bed, and write to Sir Gilbert and say she
had been mad, and that never--never--never could she be his wife--nor
the wife of any man. Times--when the passionate looks and tones of
Geoffrey Doyne, as she remembered them upon the sands of Ines-cedwyn,
would return to torture her with their dead sweetness--when she
fancied she could hear his voice, and see his eyes, and feel the very
clasp of his arms about her beating heart. And the present and the
future would become a black and mighty void, and she stood face to face
with the living, unforgotten past. But Fenella had strength at least to
battle with such memories, and call herself hard names for weeping over
them. She would resolutely stamp upon the vision; she would pray until
she had drowned the voice; she would tell herself that she was worse
than a fool even to bestow another thought upon the man who had been so
base as to betray her. He was a traitor, she would say to herself, with
the tears streaming down her face--a traitor and a liar! He _must_ be,
else why did he swear to keep to her alone when he knew he was going to
marry another woman? Why did he accept her vows of fidelity when he was
about to break his own? She would be brave--she would be strong--she
would tear his very image from her heart; she would not shelter there
one who could be so cowardly and so untrue to her and to himself.
Ah, how many women have said the same before! How many tortured
wretches have cried to God to take away the memory that rose before
them like a mocking devil, gibing at their despair! And with all their
resolutions, their oaths, and their prayers, how hard it is--how
bitterly hard--to erase a true love (however unworthy) from the heart!
The man who is bound by swathes too powerful for him to rend asunder,
may be strong, and courageous, and determined. He may fight like a lion
for his release, he may strain every nerve and muscle to get free; but
if the bonds are beyond his physical capability to rupture, he will
only injure himself, and sink back again, exhausted by his efforts.
It were wiser for him to accept the inevitable, and get up and walk
through the world with as much ease as his crippled condition will
allow him.
So Fenella waked up at the appointed time, to find that she was the
wife of Sir Gilbert Conroy; waited on with all attention and kindness
by her husband, and surrounded by every luxury that money could procure
for her.
Yet the swathes were around her still, and she would lie bound with
them in her coffin.
[Illustration: decorative]
[Illustration: decorative]
CHAPTER VI.
SMOOTH WATERS.
‘It is vain that we would coldly gaze
On such as smile upon us: the heart must
Leap kindly back to kindness.’--_Byron_.
Whether from intuition, or the common-sense that characterised most of
his actions, Sir Gilbert Conroy went just the right way to win such
kindly feeling as it was in the power of his young wife to bestow upon
him. He treated her as a friend. He did not (after the usual manner of
bridegrooms) load her with caresses and compliments until she was sick
of flattery. Neither did he sit gazing at her hour after hour, as if he
could not satisfy himself with the contemplation of her beauty. Had he
done so, Fenella would probably have become shy and distant with him,
or openly expressed her dislike to his behaviour, and then quarrels
would have ensued between them. But there was nothing in Sir Gilbert’s
attentions from which the most delicate nature could have revolted; he
was chivalry itself. He waited on his wife in public with the greatest
assiduity, anticipating every wish, and never permitting her to do a
single thing for herself. Still, he would have done as much for any
lady confided to his charge.
Even in private, although he was always polite and affectionate in his
manner towards her, he was never exacting. He allowed her to follow her
inclinations in the matter of their intercourse, rather than to press
his own upon her. So that after a few days Fenella lost her shyness,
and became quite friendly and intimate with her husband, and after a
few weeks she would have missed him very much had he been called away
from her.
The fact is, Sir Gilbert Conroy was not in love with Fenella, and
never had been. Her chief attraction in his eyes (as he had told her
mother) was her youth and innocence. He was weary of the fickleness
and falsehood of fashionable women (as, indeed, he had just cause to
be), and he believed that Fenella would make a Lady Conroy of whom he
need never be ashamed. Of course he admired her. He was not quite such
a stoic at five-and-thirty as to have lost all faith in female beauty,
but he had seen handsomer women--as he coolly informed his sister,
Lady Marjoram, on the day of the wedding. And Lady Marjoram, who was
one of the most charming women who ever spent her life in a round of
frivolity, had shaken her head at him and said,--
‘You’re as bad as ever, Bertie. I believe you’d pick holes in the Venus
de Milo if she could find those lost arms of hers and wind them round
you. But mark my words--Fenella may not be as beautiful as some of your
former loves, but she is a better woman than the whole lot of them put
together. She’s the first girl that has ever taken your fancy who is
fit to fill our mother’s place.’
‘I believe you there,’ replied Sir Gilbert.
‘And I hope you’ll be a good boy to her, Bertie, and put the thought of
that horrid Mrs Messiter out of your head altogether,’ continued his
sister more seriously.
‘You may be sure of that, Janie,’ was his quick reply. ‘That portion of
my life is over for ever.’
And Sir Gilbert was right. That portion of his life during which he had
been held in thrall by an unprincipled woman, who cared for nothing but
using his purse and gratifying her own vanity, was over for ever. It
had extended over many years, and been the cause of much anxiety to
his family, who feared it might stand in the way of his settlement; but
it was done with, and it would never be renewed.
Sir Gilbert was too honourable a man to deceive the girl whom he had
made his wife. He would exact the utmost propriety of conduct from
Lady Conroy, and he would render her the same in return. But an old
attachment is not to be forgotten in a day, and the remembrance of Mrs
Messiter tended to make the baronet more deferential in his manners
towards Fenella than he would otherwise have been. And she was so glad
of it. She was so thankful that he did not call her ‘darling,’ and make
her sit upon his lap, and try and force confessions of love from her,
which she would have been unable to refuse to make without offending
him. It was so much nicer as it was (she said to herself); and she
actually began to feel a sort of affection for Sir Gilbert, because he
did not exhibit it too freely towards her. The life they led together
was like a dream of fairyland to the girl, who had left a convent
school only to see Ines-cedwyn and Sainte Pauvrette.
Sir Gilbert took her for a month to Italy, previous to their returning
to London for the season; and as the days went on, Fenella began to
ask herself if she were asleep or awake, everything was so new and
wonderful to her; she had not believed that living could be made so
easy. If she wished to dress for the evening or for walking, her robes
were laid in readiness for her, and her new maid was in obsequious
attendance, ready to put them on; if she rose to leave the room or the
house, a man-servant sprang up to open the door, to carry her shawl,
or to receive the orders she might wish to leave behind her. She was
never permitted to walk, especially through the streets; a carriage was
always at her beck and call; and her purse was liberally supplied with
money to make any purchase she might feel inclined for. Her husband
considered that it was his duty to see that Fenella preserved a certain
amount of state--not for her own sake, but for that of Lady Conroy--and
he would have done the same for the honour of the name she bore, had
his wife been the ugliest old woman in Christendom. But the girl did
not consider this. Her path was strewn with roses for her; her husband
was always kind and courteous; and her heart was a grateful one, and
responded accordingly. Even when they returned to their town house in
Portman Square, the pleasure continued. The first coming back to London
was painful to her--she could not deny that--but she shook the feeling
off bravely, and her new sister-in-law soon made her feel at home.
It has already been said that Lady Marjoram was a very sweet woman. She
was, moreover, a very grand lady (as titles go), and her family were
proud of the connection, but no accession to rank and fortune had been
able to spoil her unaffected womanly nature.
Her husband was Henry Frederick Charles Albert Ernest, fifth Earl of
Marjoram and tenth Baron Carberry, with an annual rent-roll of twenty
thousand, and estates in all the countries of the United Kingdom. He
was a fat, good-tempered, farmerlike-looking person of middle age, who
allowed his countess to have her own way in everything, and expected to
enjoy the same privileges himself.
This very grand sister-in-law might, under ordinary circumstances, have
turned up her nose at her brother’s choice, and would, under _most_
circumstances (for some of the worst-bred women in the world are to be
found sheltering their vulgarity beneath the strawberry leaves), have
mixed up so much condescension in her intercourse with the young and
portionless girl as to turn her politeness into an insult. But Lady
Marjoram was a gentlewoman, and that is a rank which, if we do not
inherit it from the goodness of our own hearts, no strawberry leaves
can give us. She had been working ‘like a nigger’ (as she herself
expressed it) to get the Portman Square house into proper order for the
Conroys’ first season in town; and as soon as Fenella was ensconced in
it, Lady Marjoram flew to her side, and offered her every assistance in
her power.
‘Of course you must be presented at Court, dear,’ she said,--‘that must
be the first thing; and then you must give dinners and receptions, and
all kinds of horrors! Oh, how I hated them when I married Marjoram; but
they must be done, you know. And if you wish it, I’ll come and help you
through with everything that your cook and housekeeper can’t do for
you.’
The kind tone and feeling of her sister-in-law moved Fenella deeply.
She pressed closer to Lady Marjoram and thanked her, with the tears in
her eyes.
‘Why, my dear child, what is this?’ cried the Countess; ‘you didn’t
suppose I was going to leave you to do it all by yourself, did you? I
am not quite such a wretch as that comes to. I remember too well what I
suffered when I married Marjoram, and the old Countess-Dowager wouldn’t
give me a single hint, and only found fault with everything I did. But
is the house as you like it, Fenella? Can you suggest any alteration?’
‘Nothing, dear Lady Marjoram; it is just perfect, I assure you.’
‘You mustn’t call me Lady Marjoram. I must be Janie to you, Fenella.
Don’t forget that we are sisters, though I suppose I am nearly old
enough to be your mother. What is your age, dear?’
‘I was seventeen last January,’ replied Fenella, with a little sigh.
‘And how do you and my brother get on together? Does he treat you
kindly? Are you quite happy with him?’
Fenella opened her eyes.
‘Oh, Janie! What a question. Of course he is kind to me--very, very
kind.’
‘No “_of course_” in the matter, my dear. The generality of men are
brutes, and marriage (as a rule) is a mistake. Not but what my Marjoram
is an awfully good old fellow; I wouldn’t change him for the world. And
my brother is a gentleman, too, which is, after all, the main thing. A
woman can generally get on with a gentleman, whether she loves him or
not; but so very few men _are_ gentlemen to their wives! It’s a lost
art, Fenella. The man who would fell another to the ground for daring
to say he was _not_ a gentleman, will behave in the rudest manner to
the unfortunate woman who is compelled to listen to whatever he may
choose to say to her.’
‘I am not an unfortunate woman,’ laughed Fenella softly; ‘Gilbert has
never said a rude word to me.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it, my dear; and I think I know my brother
well enough to say that he never will. You will find Gilbert very
particular--in fact, he’s a bit of a prude; but so long as you remain
what you are now--innocent, modest, and refined in your speech and
manners--he will make you the best of husbands. Gilbert couldn’t stand
a woman that was talked of. He is very fond of you and very proud of
you, and so he ought to be; but he is fonder and prouder of his family
name (that has been his weakness from a boy), and I believe he would
kill the woman he loved, with his own hand, sooner than she should
disgrace it.’
‘I will never disgrace it,’ said Fenella, in a low voice.
‘I am sure you won’t,’ rejoined Lady Marjoram heartily, as she took the
girl in her arms and affectionately embraced her.
Under the tuition and guidance of her sister-in-law, all those ordeals
which appear so terrible to a young wife, first launched upon the
fashionable world, were transformed into pleasures; and Fenella had
been presented at Court, and attended her first ball, and given her
first dinner-party before she had time to wonder whether she should be
a success or a failure.
The upshot was that she proved an undoubted success. Introduced
everywhere by the Countess of Marjoram, the youthful Lady Conroy became
an object of universal attention and admiration. The extreme delicacy
of her skin, the clearness of her complexion, and the child-like hue of
her soft fair hair, all combined to make Fenella look even younger than
she was; and as it was one of Sir Gilbert’s fancies that she should
always appear dressed in white, she soon gained the name of ‘The Lily’
in the circles she frequented. The baronet mentioned this fact to his
sister, with pride beaming in his eyes.
‘I don’t approve,’ he said, ‘of the modern custom of giving nicknames
to ladies of rank; but since the licence has unfortunately been allowed
to creep into society, they could not have chosen one for Lady Conroy
that would have offended me less.’
‘That would have pleased you more, you mean,’ cried Lady Marjoram,
laughing. ‘Take care, Sir Gilbert de Conn--Roy of Scotland! If you
don’t mind your P’s and Q’s, you’ll be guilty of the plebeian crime of
falling in love with your own wife.’
The baronet took her jest quite seriously.
‘No, Janie; I assure you I feel nothing of that kind for Fenella, and
neither does she for me. We are the best of friends, and nothing more.
That is as it should be. Any warmer feeling than friendship is sure to
suffer from so close a contact. By the way, she asked me yesterday if
she might take singing lessons. What shall I do about it?’
‘Get her the very best master you can,’ replied his sister decidedly.
‘Let her have Signor Possetrina. She has a lovely voice, and is fond of
music. Besides, she is the very best little girl in the world, and you
must give her every mortal thing she has a fancy for.’
‘You are quite right,’ said Sir Gilbert, ‘and I will engage Signor
Possetrina for her at once.’
These singing lessons soon became Fenella’s greatest pleasure, and,
under the tuition of the best master in town, she made rapid progress.
Signor Possetrina was charmed both with her voice and her ability. He
found her well grounded in the art, and he was never tired of praising
the purity of her tones, the delicacy of her ear, and the earnestness
with which she pursued her studies. She would have given up her
engagements for her music, if Sir Gilbert would have permitted such a
sacrifice to art. But every spare hour she spent at her piano, and her
singing soon began to be talked of as much as her face had been.
‘Almost too much talked of,’ as Sir Gilbert remarked, with a shrug of
his shoulders, to Lady Marjoram. ‘I hope she’s not going to turn out
a genius, Janie. Geniuses are generally erratic sort of persons, with
wills of their own, and I shouldn’t care for Lady Conroy to become too
decided and clever.’
‘Bertie, you’re a fool,’ rejoined his sister (it is only sisters that
can call men ‘fools’ with impunity; they won’t stand it from their
wives); ‘wouldn’t you rather your children had a clever mother than a
stupid one? Besides, do you imagine women are any the less obstinate
or deceitful for being boobies? Not a bit of it! It’s the wives that
have no intellectual qualities wherewith to amuse themselves, that try
and get their amusement out of flirting, and sometimes even out of
champagne.’
‘_Don’t_, Janie,’ said Sir Gilbert, with a shudder.
‘Well, then, my dear boy, be sensible, and let Fenella sing all day,
and all night too, if she wishes it, so long as she is contented with
no more dangerous audience than old Signor Possetrina and yourself.’
So Fenella was allowed to follow her talent to her heart’s content, and
it did content her wonderfully. Her music sang to her--sadly enough,
and yet sweetly--of her unforgotten past. Geoffrey’s tones (although
unconsciously to herself) were wafted back from the shores of memory,
upon the wings of song; and whilst Fenella sat at the piano, she would
wander off into the realms of fancy, picturing a future perhaps in
which all the crooked paths of this world would be made straight, and
all the rough places plain, and lose herself in impossible dreams,
until she was recalled to earth again, and found her cheeks were wet
with tears.
Yet she was happy; as happy as any one can be who has outlived the
thoughtlessness of childhood--because it is impossible to grow up and
think, without weeping for ourselves or others. There were times,
indeed, when a chance word or look--a chord of music, or the scent
of a flower--would bring back the remembrance of Geoffrey Doyne so
powerfully on Fenella’s mind, as to make her sick with longing to see
his face once more (if only for a moment). But it was the sort of
feeling with which we regard the dead--those hallowed dead whose still,
white features we sometimes feel as if we would give our lives to look
on once again. It had no more hope, and no more real desire of being
realised, than we have of unsoldering the coffins that have been closed
so long.
There was one trait in Fenella’s character which somewhat puzzled
Lady Marjoram; she seemed to think so tenderly of little children, and
yet to be almost ashamed if detected in any kindness towards them.
The Countess had a nursery full of little ones, from big boys and
girls of twelve and fourteen, to a tiny stranger who had only made his
appearance in this wicked world about three months previously. Lady
Marjoram thought very little of babies; they were amongst the natural
nuisances of this life, she said, that must be endured. She romped
with all her children alike, from the eldest to the youngest, and was
quite offended if one of them dared to be weakly or sick. It was unlike
either herself or Marjoram, she would declare; and if the brat didn’t
get well soon, she should begin to think that he had been changed at
nurse.
‘Take the boy! He won’t break,’ she exclaimed one day, as she threw her
infant into Fenella’s arms.
Something--what was it?--swelled in the girl’s breast as she received
the little creature, and the tears rushed suddenly to her eyes.
‘Please take him back again,’ she faltered to her sister-in-law;
‘I--I--am not much used to babies.’
‘You mean you don’t like them, my dear. Well, I don’t wonder at it.
Nobody does until they have them of their own. But you must get your
hand in, you know, Lady Conroy. Bertie won’t be satisfied till he has a
son.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ replied Fenella, ‘and some day I hope he may have
one.’
‘How quietly you said that, child! Too quietly a great deal for your
age. One would think you had had a dozen.’
Fenella coloured.
‘I _am_ older than my age, Janie,’ she said, with a sigh; ‘but I was
not always so happy as I am now.’
‘I expect not,’ thought Lady Marjoram; and then she asked, as a natural
sequence, ‘Have you heard lately of Mrs Barrington, Fenella?’
‘I have not, and I feel rather anxious about it. She was to have been
in town last month, and then she caught this attack of low fever, and
Bennett seems to think it may be some time yet before she is able to
move. I am sure she must be very weak, or she never would have missed
coming to town for the season.’
‘Well, the season may be said to be over now, so I suppose Mrs
Barrington will not join you until you go to Conroy Castle.’
‘I do not see how it will be possible, Janie. Gilbert told me yesterday
that we must be there by the twelfth.’
‘Of course, for the grouse! Bertie would not miss the first day of the
season for anything. Sport is his great pastime, Fenella; he loves it
as enthusiastically as you do, music. You must never throw any obstacle
in the way of his pursuing it.’
‘Why should I?’ asked Fenella simply.
She was quite at her ease in the presence of her husband, but she
was equally happy when he was absent. Her present content did not
arise from being married to him (though she may have deceived herself
into thinking so); it was due rather to the fact that he never urged
the circumstance of their marriage too strongly on her notice. Her
relations with her mother had caused Fenella some uneasiness since
she had become Lady Conroy. Mrs Barrington had appeared to imagine
that she ought to derive as many advantages from the marriage as her
daughter, and Sir Gilbert had not seen the matter in the same light.
Indeed, the greatest drawback in his eyes to marrying Fenella had been
the existence of her mother. He despised the widow’s character from
every point of view--he would have removed his wife entirely from her
influence had he been able, and the last thing he desired was that she
should continue to exert it. Fenella had, therefore, been placed in a
very difficult position,--forced to read and answer Mrs Barrington’s
letters of reproach, and complaints of poverty, on the one hand, and
to bear with equanimity Sir Gilbert’s animadversions on her mother’s
conduct, on the other.
At last the difference of opinion had been settled by the baronet
giving his wife permission to invite Mrs Barrington to stay with them
for a month, either in London or Scotland, but this invitation (as
has already been shown) she was unable through illness to accept.
Fenella could not feel quite sorry about it,--not so sorry as, she told
herself, she ought to feel--because she had a premonition that Mrs
Barrington’s advent would not be productive of increased happiness in
her married life. She would rather be with Gilbert alone, she thought.
Her mother’s presence could only remind her of the darkest passages in
her young life.
And she was spared the ordeal she had begun to dread; for she and her
husband had only been settled in Scotland for a fortnight, when the
news reached them from Paris that Mrs Barrington had succumbed to the
weakness supervening her attack of fever.
[Illustration: decorative]
[Illustration: decorative]
CHAPTER VII.
A REVELATION.
‘Thy words have darted hope into my soul,
And comfort dawns upon me.’--_Southern_.
It was naturally a great shock to Fenella’s nervous system to hear
of her mother’s death. It is a shock to learn (thus unexpectedly) of
the death of any one whom we have lately seen in apparent health and
strength. And it seemed so impossible to picture Mrs Barrington dead,
and laid out in her coffin. Mrs Barrington, with her painted cheeks
and skin, her dyed hair, her toilettes of pink and blue and silver,
her artificial ways and words and looks. Fenella could not realise
her mother shorn of these frivolous accompaniments; she wondered how
she would get on without them, even in the other world. But when the
first shock was over, the girl’s honest heart could not pretend there
was much grief remaining for their present separation. There might have
been. Mrs Barrington, in repulsing her daughter’s affection, had thrust
from her a rich store of love that might have been her consolation and
her stay till her life’s end. But love is a plant of growth; it can
no more live without nourishment than a flower can flourish without
earth and water. And Mrs Barrington had killed the beautiful blossom
that was springing up in her child’s heart. She had trampled it under
foot and neglected it, and it had perished for lack of food. And now
that she had passed out of sight, she had not left one loving memory in
Fenella’s mind by which to mourn her. On the contrary, her daughter, in
deference to the fact that she had been her father’s wife, and she was
dead, felt herself compelled, resolutely, to put away all thoughts of
her, since remembrance brought reproach in its train.
But she could not help thinking of Bennett--dear good old Bennett, who
had been with them before her own birth, and who had been so attached
to her late mistress; she was terribly anxious to know what was to
become of Bennett. The servant was no longer young--she was at least
fifty years of age, twenty of which had been spent in their service;
and she had become so wedded to their ways, it was unlikely she would
find another place to suit her. Fenella wanted to send for her at once
to Conroy Castle. There was a baby expected there in the spring, and
her wish was to instal Eliza Bennett as head of the nursery.
‘She loves me,’ she said to her husband, with big pathetic eyes, ‘and
she will take every care of our little child for my sake.’
Sir Gilbert was good-naturedly disposed to acquiesce in anything his
wife might desire. He was going over to Paris to attend the funeral
of his mother-in-law, and, had the truth been known, in a more
contented frame of mind than he would have cared to exhibit openly. Mrs
Barrington had been his _bête noire_, but she was (fortunately) removed
to a better sphere; it was quite immaterial to him what became of the
servant.
‘Do just as you like about it, my dear,’ he replied. ‘I have no
doubt the old woman will be quite as efficient a guardian for the
heir-apparent as anyone else.’
‘Oh, Gilbert, you are so very good to me!’ murmured Fenella gratefully.
‘Then I will write Bennett a letter, dear, and you shall deliver it to
her yourself.’
In consequence of which, Bennett, having first paid a short visit to
her brother in Ines-cedwyn, arrived at Conroy Castle robed in the
deepest mourning, and clasped her young mistress in her arms again.
Had it been a meeting between a mother and child it could hardly have
been more affectionate. The servant forgot all the grandeur attendant
on Sir Gilbert and Lady Conroy, as she showered kiss after kiss on
Fenella’s face; and the girl herself was scarcely less delighted to lay
her head on that kind, homely breast once more.
There was a link between Bennett and herself which nothing on this
earth could have the power to rupture. The servant was, of course, full
of the account of Mrs Barrington’s illness and death, and for awhile
neither of them could speak of anything else.
‘And to think, dear Miss Fenella,’ cried Bennett, who could not get
out of the habit of using the old name, ‘that you shouldn’t have been
with us at the time! But it was so sudden, my dear; the doctor was as
surprised as any of us--for we had thought she was doing so nicely,
poor dear lady, and would be able to be moved at the farthest in a
week or two. But she sank (as you may say) in a few hours--nothing
would save her; and her teeth was so fixed we couldn’t even get a drop
of brandy and water down her throat.’
‘Did she speak of me, Bennett? Did she send me any message?’ demanded
Fenella timidly.
‘Oh, she spoke often of you when she was in the fever, my dear; and she
used to talk of Conroy Castle, and the time when she’d get here, and
what a fine place it was, and all that. Poor dear! Little she thought
she’d never see it. And as for me, Miss Fenella, it seems as if my
hands was empty, now she’s gone. She was just like a child to me--so
sweet and amiable--always wanting this or that. It was “Bennett, come
here!” or “Bennett, go there!” all day long. She didn’t seem to be able
to do anything without her poor Bennett--did she, now?’
‘No; I am sure she looked on you as her very best friend, Bennett, and
I shall do the same for her sake. But when she was dying--when the end
came--couldn’t poor mamma speak then? Didn’t she say one word of me, or
send me any message?’
‘Well, miss, you see, I don’t think your poor dear mamma knew as
her death was so near at hand, for she only seemed a little more
fractious-like to me. I had just handed her some _limonade_, and I
suppose she wanted _tisane_, bless her! For she pushed it aside and
spilt it all over the counterpane, and said, “Take it away.” And
them was her last words, Miss Fenella; for as I was setting the bed
to rights, I see a change come over her face, and I caught her up
in my arms, and she was gone. I couldn’t believe it. You might have
knocked me over with a feather.’ And Bennett buried her face in her
rough hands, and cried like a little child. ‘She was my life, Miss
Fenella--just my life and nothing else,’ she sobbed. ‘It seemed as if I
hadn’t a will of my own when she was near--as if I couldn’t move hand
nor foot unless she ordered me. You know how I used to wait on her from
morning till night. And now the world seems empty. I shall never have
any rest for thinking of her. I wouldn’t mind twice the trouble if I
could only have her back again.’
Fenella tried to comfort the good-hearted creature with some of those
ordinary arguments which sound like empty wind to ears on which a
beloved voice has ceased to fall.
‘You mustn’t fret, dear Bennett. You must try and think how much better
it is for her to be free of all the trouble of this world. I don’t
think poor mamma can have been very happy here. She always seemed full
of worry and anxiety; and now--now we must hope that it is all over,
and--and--that she is in heaven,’ said Fenella hesitatingly.
‘In _heaven_! My dear lady!’ replied Bennett, wiping her eyes. ‘Yes,
I’m sure of _that_! I know for certain as my darling mistress is
walking in her robes of glory, with her ’arp in her ’and--and not a
more beautiful angel in the whole place. Oh, yes! _she’s_ happy now,
if _any one_ is, miss. It isn’t her (sweet angel!) as I’m thinking
of--it’s myself, and you, poor lamb! It’s what _we_ shall do without
her.’
‘We must try and comfort each other,’ said Fenella gently. ‘And now
tell me of your brother, dear Bennett, and of Martha. Were you glad to
see them again, and are they well and happy?’
Eliza Bennett coloured and looked ill at ease.
‘Oh, yes! Miss Fenella--that is, my lady--Ben and Martha was looking
well enough, and of course they was glad to see me, notwithstandin’
the sad event as took me there.’ And then she continued rather
irrelevantly, ‘I always carried out all your poor dear mamma’s wishes
to the very letter, Miss Fenella; there was never nothing she told me
to do but what I thought it right to obey her; and I hope it _has_
been right, or if not, that the Almighty won’t lay it to my charge. But
I made a sort of idol of her, Miss Fenella; and I know that’s wrong,
and sometimes we’re punished for doing of it--still, when she _was_ my
mistress, I considered myself bound to serve her, even to the uttermost
farthing.’
Fenella stared at this address--it seemed so uncalled for; but she
answered warmly,--
‘I am sure God, who looks on our hearts, dear Bennett, will never blame
you for doing _more_ than your duty. The majority of us do so much
less. But I should like to hear something about your own affairs. Did
poor mamma pay you your wages? I know they had been due for a long
time; and has she left any debts in Paris?’
Bennett looked round cautiously, and lowered her voice.
‘Well, my dear, to my thinking, your good gentleman must have cleared
’em off. I know there _was_ some, but after the funeral he called me
into the _salon_, and paid me my wages, and something very handsome
over, and told me I was to pack up my dear mistress’s bits of jewellery
for you, and to consider her wardrobe as my own, which I thought was
most generous of him. And then I ventured to ask him about the bills,
and Sir Gilbert said I wasn’t to worry my head on the matter, as he
would see to ’em himself.’
‘Dear Gilbert!’ said Fenella. ‘Oh! he is so good and so generous to me,
nurse. I don’t know what I have done to deserve so kind a husband.’
‘And such a fine-looking gentleman, too, Miss Fenella; and such a
princely home! It does my heart good to see you so comfortable and so
happy. Ah! if my poor dear mistress had only lived to enjoy it with us!’
‘Yes; I never thought that I _could_ be so happy,’ said Fenella gravely.
‘I’ve heard there’s an old saying, “_All’s well as ends well_,” my
dear, and I am sure _you_ ought to be able to understand it. But I see
you wear that old locket still, Miss Fenella.’
Fenella coloured, and put her hand up to her bosom, in which reposed
the present that Geoffrey Doyne had given her.
‘Oh yes! I promised I would wear this till my death, nurse. Nothing can
make any difference to that, you know.’
‘And don’t Sir Gilbert notice it, my dear?’
‘He has never mentioned it to me, and I don’t think he ever will. He is
not that sort of man. He has a soul above such trifles.’
‘Ah, well! You got a lucky exchange,’ replied the servant; but her
young mistress turned the conversation, and she said no more.
As the weeks went on, however, and the influence of the dead woman was
farther and farther removed from her, Bennett became at one and the
same time more confidential and more reserved with Lady Conroy. It
seemed as though she had some revelation at the very tip of her tongue
which she longed, and yet did not dare to make. The temptation seemed
greatest when she was assisting Fenella with the usual preparations
for the expected heir; and sometimes as together they inspected and
arranged the lace and muslin and fine linen that arrived from London to
fill the nursery wardrobe, Bennett seemed almost unable (as she herself
expressed it) to keep her tongue between her teeth.
‘Lor’ bless us!’ she exclaimed one day, as she tossed some baby-linen
almost impatiently to one side; ‘to think of the pounds and pounds as
is thrown away just to decorate one infant, as you may say, whilst
another poor little creature has hardly enough clothes to its back! If
_I_ was a fine lady, like you, my dear, with heaps of money to spend
as I chose, I should give a little thought to them as has none, if I
wanted my own child to thrive and do well.’
Fenella looked up at this tirade, surprised but smiling.
‘Dear nurse,’ she said, ‘I believe we give a great deal away annually
in charity as it is, but if there are any particular cases of want that
you know of, I shall be only too glad to relieve them. I should like to
do it (as you say) in hopes it might come back in a blessing on my own
baby.’
The servant looked mollified.
‘You was always good and sweet, my dear, from a little child. You take
after your blessed mamma in heaven for that. I daresay a lot of money
_does_ go from this house to the poor--and food, and blankets, and what
not beside; but if I was to ask you, Miss Fenella, for a few pounds for
a little one as has got no mother and no father (so to speak)--for such
a little one as we might both have heard of, you know, in our day--what
would you say then, my dear? Would you give it?’
Fenella’s trembling hands began to play at once with the fastening of
her purse, from which she managed to extract a ten-pound note; but
before she could hand it over to the servant, her fortitude gave way,
and sinking down on her knees by the bedside, she burst into a flood of
tears.
Bennett left her place, and approaching the spot where her mistress
knelt, laid her hand gently on the bowed head.
‘So you haven’t forgotten yet, my lamb?’ she whispered.
‘_Forgotten_! My God! No; I shall never, _never_ forget!’
She knelt for a few minutes in the same position, then rising suddenly,
turned with an April smile upon the servant.
‘Am I not silly, nurse?--as great a baby as when you brought me home
from the convent? But here’s the note for the little one you spoke
of--and may God bless it! And if there are any others that I can help
in the same way, let me hear of them. I have more money, dear nurse,
than I know how to spend; and I have less--less expenses than I might
have had.’
The servant took the note and put it carefully away.
‘Dear heart!’ she thought, as Lady Conroy left the room. ‘I’m sorely
perplext to know what’s best to be done. It seems so hard she shouldn’t
know; and yet, now she’s living so happy and loving and grand, ’twould
be a pity to rake up old scores. Well, this isn’t the time, any way.
She’s got too much on her mind just now to think of anything else. And
perhaps I need never tell her; it looks likely enough.’
And, indeed, at that moment Fenella had what is technically termed
‘her hands full.’ The castle was filled with Christmas visitors,
amongst which were the Earl and Countess of Marjoram, who had with
them a cousin, Lord Laurence Grantham, a fine manly young fellow
of five-and-twenty, who established himself from the very first as
Fenella’s chief friend and knight-errant. Lady Marjoram had not brought
any of her children with her. She left home, she affirmed, to enjoy
herself, and had no desire to keep her domestic miseries for ever in
sight.
‘You will be quite of my opinion in another year’s time, my dear
Fenella,’ she said to her sister-in-law, ‘and only too thankful to
leave Portman Square or Conroy Castle, or wherever the nursery may be
located, behind you. I positively begin to hate children, and believe
they are only sent into this world to plague their parents out of
it. Mine have had measles and hooping-cough already this year, and
now they’ve all broken out with ringworm; so I couldn’t stand it any
longer, but packed the whole lot off to Bournemouth for the winter.
There they are, nine of them, with a governess and two nurses, eating
their heads off, and sending us in weekly bills that make Marjoram
swear in the most awful manner. It’s no use laughing, Fenella. You’ll
laugh on the wrong side of your mouth some day, my dear. Wait till you
have nine.’
‘I hope I shall wait a long time,’ rejoined Lady Conroy, who was much
amused at her sister-in-law’s indignation. ‘But what is it that Lord
Marjoram is speaking to Gilbert about?’
‘About a vacant governorship at Sovooranooko, on the Gold Coast of
Africa, my dear, where yellow fever and smallpox reign triumphantly
from January to December, and elephants are shot for the sake of their
steaks, and alligators appear at the breakfast-table _en papillotes_
like sardines.’
‘What interest can that have for Gilbert?’ demanded Fenella, rather
anxiously. ‘He would never accept an appointment in such a climate as
that?’
‘He says he should enjoy it above all things, Lady Conroy,’ interposed
Lord Laurence Grantham mischievously. ‘He is already consulting
Marjoram now about the proper-sized “bore” for elephant-shooting,
and they are going down to the stackyard after luncheon to practise
alligator-spearing.’
‘Oh, the poor cows!’ laughed the Countess. ‘Marjoram will most likely
get a spear in the calf of his leg, and be out of temper for the rest
of the day!’
‘Gilbert! You would never really go to a place like Sovooranooko?’ said
Fenella, as she went up to her husband’s side.
‘My dear child, what nonsense! What are you thinking of?’ replied Sir
Gilbert. ‘I am about as likely to go to Timbuctoo!’
‘Oh no, you are not!’ retorted his sister. ‘There are no elephants
there.’
But his wife was quite satisfied with his answer, and troubled her head
no further in the matter.
When February came round again with its pale spring flowers, a little
daughter was born at Conroy Castle. Sir Gilbert was excessively annoyed
at the fact of its being a girl--more annoyed than Fenella had ever
seen him during their married life. He had calculated so certainly upon
having a son; it did not seem to have entered his head that he might
have a daughter.
‘Better luck next time, Bertie,’ cried Lady Marjoram, who was still a
guest at the castle; but her brother did not take the jest in good part.
‘My dear, he’s as cross as a bear!’ she whispered afterwards to
Fenella, who could not be put out of conceit with her little girl,
although no one seemed to value her but herself; ‘but it’s always
the way with men. They think the world was made for them, and it’s a
personal insult if they don’t get their own way. Marjoram was just the
reverse. _He_ wanted a daughter, and I had five sons in succession.
I can remember his disgusted expression, when he used to exclaim,
“_Another_ boy! Too bad--too bad!” as if _I_ could help the young
wretches being boys! At last a girl came, and then, of course, he
spoilt her. She’s the most odious brat of the lot. However, I don’t
think Bertie will spoil yours--not just yet, at all events.’
‘I am afraid not,’ said Fenella, with a sigh.
‘Don’t sigh over it, you muff; it’s not _your_ fault; and if Bertie
begins any more grumbling, just give him a bit of your mind. You’re too
easy with him, Fenella. He’s growing a regular bully!--No, nurse! Don’t
ask me to kiss the baby, _please_! I daresay she’s a very nice baby,
and everything she ought to be; but, you see, I have nine of my own,
and the gilt has somewhat worn off the gingerbread! In fact (not to put
too fine a point upon it) the game’s played out.’
And without another look at the infant, the lively Countess ran away.
The new-comer was left entirely to the admiration of its mother and
nurses, but doubtless it fared none the worse for that.
‘And she’s come in _February_ too,’ remarked Bennett, significantly, to
Fenella, as she cradled the little Conroy in her arms; ‘that seems as
if she was to be a special gift, my lady, doesn’t it?’
This idea seemed to linger in the mind of the young mother, and when
next she saw Sir Gilbert she asked him if their little girl might be
called Theodora.
‘Theodora--Theodora!’ he repeated, wrinkling his brows. ‘Why Theodora?
It wasn’t your mother’s name, was it?’
‘Oh no; mamma was called Rosina! But Theodora, you know, means “the
gift of God.”’
‘Exactly so, though I don’t see that this baby is more especially the
gift of God than any other baby--do you?’
Fenella looked down at the child lying on her breast.
‘She is such a _comfort_ to me!’ she answered, as she strained her to
her heart.
‘I am glad of that, dear,’ said her husband, ‘and I should like to
indulge your fancy in the matter; but being the eldest daughter, I
think she ought to be called after my mother, Lady Valeria; and so does
Janie.’
‘Valeria is such a _fine_ name. It doesn’t seem to _fit_ her!’ said
Fenella dubiously.
‘It is not so long as Theodora, at any rate,’ laughed Sir Gilbert;
‘however, Valeria, she must be, so I am sure you will not oppose
yourself to what I think best.’
She had never done so yet, and was not likely to begin now. The
baby was baptized in the name of Valeria, and Fenella soon became
reconciled to a matter of so little importance. But when the child
was about a month old, a real trial assailed her. Sir Gilbert Conroy
was offered the governorship of Sovooranooko, and decided to accept
it. The temptation was too great for him. What real sportsman could
resist the chance of bagging game in the African forests? Visions
of elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotami, gorillas, elands, and buffalo
floated rapturously through the baronet’s brain, until he was no longer
master of himself. He accepted the post without even consulting his
wife in the matter, and made immediate arrangements for going up to
town and purchasing every sort of weapon and equipment necessary for
his expected experiences. Lord Laurence Grantham (as enthusiastic a
sportsman as himself) was to accompany him as his private secretary,
and much good might Sovooranooko expect to derive from their united
services whilst a head of game remained within range of their rifles.
On first hearing the news of her husband’s appointment, Fenella
naturally supposed she was to accompany him.
‘But will Sovooranooko be a good place to take baby to?’ she demanded
timidly. ‘Do you think the climate will agree with her, Gilbert?’
‘My dear girl, what are you dreaming of? Drag a baby and suite after me
into the centre of Africa? I’d as soon think of introducing a gorilla
into your London drawing-room.’
‘But how can I leave her behind, so young as she is?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t wish you to leave her behind. I should no more think of
risking your health than I should that of the child. No, my dear
Fenella, this is not an expedition for women and children. Grantham
and I shall spend half our time in the jungle, and what would you do
without society, grilling away on the burning plains of Sovooranooko?
It would kill you both.’
‘But if it is so dangerous a climate, why do you go there, Gilbert?’
she exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of affection. ‘Why should you
leave us for years, to hold an appointment which you do not require,
and from which you may never return?’
Sir Gilbert had to consider for a moment why he did do this thing,
before he could answer his wife’s question.
‘Well, the reason, my dear, is obvious. I certainly do not actually
require the appointment, nor do I admire the climate; but still it is
a great honour conferred upon me, and my longing to have some sport in
Central Africa has always been intense. In my position as governor of
Sovooranooko, I shall not only have better opportunities of following
the pursuit, but be able to penetrate farther and with greater security
than I should otherwise be able to do. But as for my remaining away for
_years_, that is nonsense. There is no necessity for me to go at all,
and I can resign the appointment whenever I feel inclined.’
‘Janie says, when you once get there, it is a question whether you will
_ever_ come back again,’ said Fenella.
‘Janie knows nothing about it. We certainly cannot commence following
up the large game until a particular season of the year; but I shall
not remain out there a minute longer than I find it pay me to do so.
Meanwhile, Fenella, there is no need for you to mope. You will be a
great deal with my sister, I hope, when you are in London; and the
autumn you will spend at the sea-side, or wherever pleases you. Perhaps
the Marjorams may ask you down to Southfield for Christmas. I am sure
they will, if you evince the slightest disposition to join them. But
since Dr M’Kenzie advises your going to some warmer place for the next
few months, I shall not leave England until I have seen you comfortably
settled at Nice, or wherever you like best.’
From the extreme cold of Scotland Fenella had developed a cough after
her baby’s birth. Had she been an ordinary patient it would have been
treated with syrup of squills, but in the position of Sir Gilbert
Conroy’s wife the family doctor considered it necessary to prescribe
a visit to the south coast to expedite her cure; and, after some
deliberation, Hyères in France was chosen for her temporary sojourn.
Sir Gilbert would have had his wife travel with a courier, and a
flunky, and a couple of women, and engage the best suite of rooms in
the best hotel. He was a man who loved pomp and show, and if there was
an ungentlemanly trait in his character, it was his weakness to be
thought a very big person, and to have everything belonging to him in
equal style. Fenella pleaded hard to be excused the courier and the
flunky, for neither of whom she had the slightest use; but she took
Bennett and her lady’s-maid with her, and permitted her husband to
establish them in the hotel at Hyères, and impress the proprietor and
attendants with a sense of the importance of Miladi Conroy, and the
necessity that she should be supplied with everything that was best
and most expensive. And thus, having fulfilled the very letter of the
law as a husband and protector, Sir Gilbert gave Fenella unlimited
credit at his banker’s, and parted with her as carelessly as if he had
been running into the country for a fortnight’s fishing.
His wife felt very lonely after he was gone--still more so when she
heard that he had left England in the Cape steamer, and was on his way
to Sovooranooko. She began to wish she had not left Conroy Castle,
or that she had asked her sister-in-law to receive her as a guest at
Southfield. But the Earl and Countess were paying a round of visits,
and she would have been almost as lonely in either of those places
as at Hyères. Then her lady’s-maid (who had never been a favourite
with Fenella) began to give her trouble. She was an independent,
free-born Britisher, and not disposed to fall in kindly with any of the
ways of ‘them nasty furriners.’ She complained of the food and the
accommodation; she couldn’t ‘abide’ to see the invalids who had come to
Hyères (perhaps only to die) being dragged about in their wheel-chairs;
and she didn’t understand ‘hupper’ servants being put to one side
by ‘nusses,’ and such like--which being interpreted, meant that the
lady’s-maid was jealous of the confidences reposed in Bennett by her
mistress.
‘_Hif_ her la’ship required her services, would she be good enough to
say so? and _hif_ her la’ship didn’t, would she be good enough to let
her go?’
When it came to this pointed appeal, Fenella found she could do very
much better without her.
‘Do send her away, my dear lady,’ whispered Bennett. ‘I can do
everything that you and the baby require; and she’s always got her ear
at the keyhole, listening to every word we say.’
So the lady’s-maid (much to her surprise and annoyance) was dismissed
from Lady Conroy’s service, and sent back to England; and shortly
after her departure Fenella removed from the hotel, and took a lovely
little cottage standing in its own garden, on the outskirts of the
town, where Bennett, and a _fille de quartier_ hired in Hyères,
rendered her all the assistance she required.
These may appear to be trifling and unnecessary details, but they
exerted a strong influence upon her future conduct. Here, in this
solitude, with no society but that of Eliza Bennett and her little
infant, Fenella lapsed into very low spirits. Her life had become calm
and contented, but it was not sufficiently happy to bear the strain of
her own thoughts, without the outward distraction of cheerful company
and lively surroundings. Left to herself, she was too apt to dream; and
dreaming revealed a state of mind that half frightened her. She was
sadly disappointed, too, at Sir Gilbert leaving her for Sovooranooko,
although she would not acknowledge it, even to herself. But she had
begun to lean upon the fact that he was her husband; to misconstrue
the courtesy and deference (which he would have shown to any woman) as
marks of love for herself, and to deceive her own heart into the belief
that she loved him in return. And yet he had left her for an indefinite
period, whilst he ran all the risks attendant on an unhealthy climate
and a dangerous pursuit; and Fenella could not help recognising her
true place in his estimation. She was Lady Conroy, his wife, and the
possible mother of his heir--that was all. As for the poor little girl
in the cradle, he had not even looked at her before he went away. She
was a female, of no consequence at all in his family tree; that she
was her mother’s child gave her no individual claim upon her father’s
heart. But the little Valeria (now three months old) was daily becoming
more engaging in Fenella’s eyes, who thought that a lovelier specimen
of babyhood had never existed. And she was partly right. The infant
was unusually large and fat for her age--too much so, indeed, for
health, as the sequel proved. For one day, as the little creature was
lying, flushed and rosy in her sleep, she was seized (without the
slightest warning) with a convulsion, from which she never recovered.
Bennett (who had frequently seen infants in fits before) plunged her
at once into a warm bath, and held her there until the convulsions
had ceased. But when they were over, life was over too. The beautiful
baby had closed her blue eyes upon this world for ever, and Bennett
was forced to break the intelligence to her mistress. The _fille de
quartier_ was sent flying into Hyères for a doctor, but he only arrived
to confirm the nurse’s opinion. The spirit of the little child was gone
beyond recall--‘if he could be of any other use to Miladi he would be
but too happy, but as for _this_,’ shrugging his shoulders, ‘he was
_accomblé_ with regret to say it--but no one could help Miladi _here_.’
It was some time before Fenella could be made to believe that her
infant was really dead. But when the doctor had departed, and the
little body was laid out, stiff and white, upon the bed, her agony was
overwhelming.
‘There is a curse upon me, Bennett,’ she cried, as she fell, sobbing,
on her knees beside the corpse. ‘God is still angry with me! I shall
never be the mother of a living child!’
‘No, no! My dear lady; don’t say that, for it isn’t the truth. Oh, if
I only dared to tell you!’ said Bennett, with the tears streaming down
her own face.
‘You cannot tell me anything to give me comfort,’ replied Fenella,
as she rocked herself to and fro. ‘They all leave me; no one stays
with me! I believe I am doomed to live and die alone! _What_ had I,
nurse--_whom_ had I--but this little child? and God has taken even her
away! Oh! It is cruel--it is _cruel_ of Him! He might have left me
_one_ of them, just to save my heart from breaking!’
The servant, who was almost as upset as her mistress, sat by her side
all night long, and never left her for one moment to herself.
On the evening of the next day (according to the custom of that part of
the country) Fenella’s child was buried, and the little house seemed as
if it had died itself--it was so empty and still and forlorn.
Lady Conroy had wept until her sight was dull and her face sodden;
she had paced up and down the room until she had nearly fainted from
fatigue and want of nourishment; but still she could not rest. She
moved about incessantly, with dry eyes, but burning cheeks, recalling
every incident in her baby’s short life which could increase her grief
and heighten her despair. At last she made a dart at her blotting-case.
‘I cannot write to Sir Gilbert,’ she said, ‘until I have heard of his
arrival at Sovooranooko; but I must let Lady Marjoram know the news at
once. They would never forgive me if I kept them in ignorance of such
an event. Though I don’t suppose any of them will care if she is alive
or dead. No one loved her but myself. My darling little Valeria! my
poor lost baby!’
She sat down with the blotting-book in her hand, and burst into a fresh
flood of tears. This was the moment Bennett had been watching for.
As the tempest of Fenella’s grief subsided, she found her faithful
dependant close at hand.
‘Don’t write this evening, my darling child,’ she said affectionately;
‘you ain’t fit for it. Let it be till to-morrow, for there’s something
as I want to tell you.’
‘Tell it me afterwards, dear Bennett. Let me write my letters first,’
pleaded Fenella. ‘It will do me good to have some occupation. Besides,
we must leave this place, nurse. I can’t stay here, now my baby’s
gone. I should fancy I heard her voice crying every minute.’
‘Yes, yes! My dear lady,’ replied Bennett soothingly; ‘and you know as
you can do exactly as you choose in all things. Only there’s something
as I want to tell you, my dear, and I’ve wanted to tell it you for
months and months past, only I didn’t dare; but the time’s come now,
I’m sure, and I don’t feel as if I should do right to keep it to myself
any longer. I think it will be a comfort to you, and yet how to begin
the story I don’t know.’
The woman’s manner was so earnest and yet full of mystery, as she
walked to the door and locked it, lest they should be interrupted, that
Fenella’s curiosity was immediately aroused.
‘Nurse, what is it you can have to tell me that requires so much
preparation? Is it anything to do with poor mamma?’
‘Well, it has and it hasn’t, Miss Fenella; and I expect you’ll be so
surprised, you’ll hardly believe as I’m telling you the truth. But you
mustn’t blame me, my dear, for I can call Heaven to witness as I never
did anything in this world but what I thought was for your good.’
‘What on earth is it?’ cried Fenella, as the blotting-case slid to the
ground. ‘I begin to be frightened, nurse. Surely it cannot be more bad
news for me?’
‘No, no, my lamb. I think you’ll say as it’s good news, and I am sure
you will say I am right to tell it you. Do you remember the time, Miss
Fenella, when you was so ill at Sainte Pauvrette?’
Lady Conroy shuddered.
‘Ah, Bennett, as if I could _ever_ forget it! It is the one great black
spot in my life.’
‘Your mamma told you then, miss, as your baby was dead, and you cried
bitterly for its loss, didn’t you?’
The tears streamed afresh down Fenella’s face. The old wound had
recalled the new.
‘Oh yes, I did! My poor wee baby that never saw the light! God might
have left me _this_ one (mightn’t He, nurse?) just to help me to forget
the other.’
‘And what should you say, my dear,’ continued Bennett, as she softly
stroked the girl’s hand; ‘what should you say, now, if I was to tell
you as your first baby--the baby that was born at Sainte Pauvrette--was
still alive?’
Lady Conroy half sprung from her seat, and stared into the servant’s
face incredulously.
‘But my mother--my _mother_,’ she panted, ‘told me it was born
dead--that it never even breathed on entering the world!’
‘My mistress didn’t tell the truth then, Miss Fenella--God forgive her!
That child was born alive, and is living now.’
‘But I never saw it, nurse! I never heard it cry!’
‘I daresay not, my dear, or you don’t remember it. But you were raving
with fever all the time, and the baby was safe in England long before
you came to your senses again.’
‘But you showed me her grave!’ continued Lady Conroy, with eyes wide
open with surprise. ‘You pointed out a little mound to me in Sainte
Pauvrette churchyard, and told me my poor baby lay beneath it, and I
left violets and primroses there for her sake.’
‘My dear, I did; and I’m not going to deny it. They was your poor
mamma’s orders, and I obeyed them, as I’ve obeyed many an order of hers
that’s laid on my conscience since. But it was untrue, Miss Fenella. I
took your dear baby myself to England the very day she was born, and
she’s living there to this hour. And that’s God’s truth, my lamb, if I
never utter another word on this side the grave!’
Fenella stood still and silent for one moment, as if to try and
grasp the truth of this unexpected revelation. Then with a cry of
indignation she bounded to her feet.
‘And _my mother_ did this!’ she exclaimed. ‘_My mother_, who brought me
into the world, and knew all that I had suffered! She stepped into the
place of God and bereaved me of my child! How did she _dare_ to do it?’
she went on fiercely, as she confronted Eliza Bennett. ‘How did _you_
dare to uphold her in such a falsehood? What right had you to conspire
together to steal my child from me--_his_ child--and leave me to the
desolation and despair that followed? How did you _dare_--how did you
DARE to do it?’
She paced up and down the room as she spoke, alarming Bennett beyond
measure by her heightened colour and rapid utterance.
‘Say what you like to me, Miss Fenella,’ she replied piteously; ‘I
daresay I did very wrong, though I acted under orders. But don’t go
to blame your dear mamma as is a saint in heaven. She did it for the
best, my dear; she thought to save you the shame and the distress it
might prove in after-years. We talked a deal together about it before
we decided what to do, but the little one’s been safe and well with my
sister Martha ever since, and you’ll be able to see her now whenever
you like. And oh! Do stop walking in that fashion, my dear, for if
you fall ill, I shall never forgive myself for having told you; but I
thought maybe it might be a comfort for you to hear, now that the other
dear baby’s gone.’
Fenella stopped short, and flung herself on her knees by the old
woman’s side.
‘It _is_ a comfort, dear Bennett,’ she said; ‘but tell me the
truth--don’t deceive me any more--is she really alive?’
‘She _is_ alive, my dear. She’s a poor creature, as might be expected,
brought up by hand; but she’s alive and well.’
‘And what is she like, nurse? Oh, tell me what my child is like.’
‘She ain’t so good-looking as the angel that’s gone, Miss Fenella, but
I should think she’d take after you when she fills out a bit. She’s
very backward, poor lamb; she can’t say a word, and she’s got no use of
her legs. But Martha’s took every care of her, and couldn’t love her
better if she were her own.’
‘And--and--does Martha know that she belongs to _me_, nurse?’ asked
Lady Conroy hesitatingly.
‘Bless your heart, _no_! Do you think I’d go to pull down the family in
_that_ way, Miss Fenella? In course not! I said ’twas a child belonging
to a friend of my mistress, and they didn’t ask no questions. Why
should they? They’ve been paid reg’lar ever since.’
‘Who has paid them, Bennett?’
‘Well, your dear mamma did up to her death, my lady, and since that
your ten-pound note has kept them going till such time as I could make
up my mind to tell you the truth.’
‘Oh, if I could see her! If I could only see her!’ cried Fenella,
clasping her hands.
‘My dear, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, and that’s why I wanted to
tell you my story before you wrote to Lady Marjoram.’
‘What has that to do with it, Bennett? I couldn’t tell _her_, you know.’
‘I should think not! You’ll be very soft if you tell any one now. Let
the matter rest between you and me, my dear. But ain’t it next to a
moral certainty as Sir Gilbert will be out in that African place for
some years?’
‘I believe so. For two or three years, without doubt, unless some
accident sends him home.’
‘Well, then, Miss Fenella, I’d risk it!’
‘Risk what, Bennett?’
‘I’d have that baby home in place of the one that’s gone, and trust to
his never finding out the difference.’
‘Nurse! What are you thinking of? My first baby must be fifteen months
old by this time.’
‘I know she is, my dear, and of course you couldn’t manage it if you
was in England, or Sir Gilbert likely to come home soon. But she’s
a puny little thing, you must be prepared for that; and though you
couldn’t pass her off now for a baby of three months, I warrant that
when she’s three years you will be very well able to pass her off as a
child of two. And Sir Gilbert is not a gentleman to fuss over children,
you know. He’ll never put his foot in the nursery if he can help it. I
believe you might bring up half-a-dozen there without his being any the
wiser.’
‘Lady Marjoram?’ faltered Fenella.
‘I’ll manage the Countess, my dear. You see, if you fall in with my
notion, you must say the baby’s delicate, and leave her with me when
you go to London for the season. Lady Marjoram will never trouble you
with any questions about her.’
‘Oh, if I _could_--if I only could!’ cried the mother, with a new hope
beaming in her eyes. ‘My poor neglected baby! My poor fatherless lamb!
I _must_ have her back again.’
‘It would do my heart good to see her in your arms,’ said Bennett, ‘for
it smites me every time I go to Ines-cedwyn and look at the poor little
thing. For ’tain’t _her_ fault, you see, Miss Fenella; _she_ ain’t
the one to blame, pretty dear; and it seems terrible hard she should
grow up without any one to love her as she has a claim to, and no more
knowledge than can be got in Ines-cedwyn.’
‘She never shall!’ exclaimed Lady Conroy; ‘I will claim her and look
after her, even if I am not able to bring her up by my side. Bennett!
Bennett!’ she continued, in a lower voice, as she pulled the old
woman’s face close down to her own, ‘tell me, _dear_ Bennett, is she
at all like _him_?’
‘Lor’! Miss Fenella, why should you go to ask me such a thing? I’m sure
I don’t know, my dear, and I hopes, for your sake, as she’s not, for
you ought to have forgotten all about him long and long ago.’
Lady Conroy hid her face in the servant’s bosom.
‘Oh yes! I know I _ought_, and I think I have too (nearly, that is to
say), only this stirs it up, you see, Bennett--it stirs it up.’
‘But has it comforted you, my dear lady, or have I made matters worse
by my chattering?’
‘No, no! May God Almighty bless you, Bennett, for having told me that
my baby lives. It has comforted me as nothing else in this world could
have done. It has almost reconciled me to giving back the other one to
Heaven.’
[Illustration: decorative]
[Illustration: decorative]
CHAPTER VIII.
THE INDISSOLUBLE LINK.
‘Child of my love! Essence of all things fair,
Sweet outcome of my happy, hopeful youth,
Sweet mem’ry of thy father’s passionate truth,
Come nearer; let me feel that thou art there.
Give me thy hand--’twas thus I held his own;
Look in my eyes--’twas thus I gaz’d in his;
Kiss me for him--one fervent, long-drawn kiss--
And tell me that we part for earth alone.’
How will it be possible to adequately describe Fenella’s feelings
at this juncture, so as to make those who read of them judge her
leniently? No _man_ could do it; no man could even understand the
emotions that passed through her mind, or enter into the passion that
actuated her conduct. A man must stand on one side and be dumb. And
neither could a woman, unless she had been a mother, and received back
her child, as it were, from the dead; even a woman must have passed
through similar circumstances before she could comprehend the difficult
position in which Fenella was placed. Picture her wild surprise on
hearing that the child of her love--the child of the man whom she could
not forget--still lived, and was dependent on her; that somewhere in
this wide world it stretched tiny arms to the empty air, yearning for a
mother’s tenderness; and then think of the impossibility of her telling
the secret to any one--of the impossibility of her having the infant
with her at all unless she stooped to a deception which seemed innocent
beside the crime of disowning it. Once made aware of its existence,
Fenella could not close her eyes to her responsibility. She could not
have done it under any circumstances, for her heart was that of a true
mother, and she would have gone forth into the world, if needful, with
her baby in her arms, and supported it by the most menial of labour,
sooner than have confided it any longer to the care of strangers.
But there was another motive working in her breast, a motive for which
the world (who embraces coroneted courtesans) will be the most ready to
condemn her,--she loved the father of her child with every fibre of her
heart. It was her greatest sin, this impossibility to be faithless and
forget. Let it be written down against her. This is not the history of
a saint. It only professes to be the record of an erring woman’s life.
But Fenella did not intend at first to follow Bennett’s suggestion
in all its details. It is questionable, indeed, if she ever intended
to do so, for she was true by nature (as has already been pointed
out), and it was only the greater passion fighting against the lesser
that made her untrue to her nature now. It is the same with all of
us when brought face to face with the greatest difficulties of our
lives--the master-passion (whichever it may be) prevails. And Fenella’s
master-passion--whether it demonstrated itself in one phase or
another--was love.
When the wonder and the surprise of the revelation had somewhat
subsided--when she had heard every detail that the nurse could give
her of the circumstances under which her infant had been placed in
the charge of Martha Bennett, and was thoroughly convinced that there
was a living being dependent upon her alone for care and support and
affection in the future, then all the mother’s love came welling forth,
and Fenella felt as if she could not rest until she held her child in
her arms.
Bennett did not fail to improve the occasion. Her conscience had sorely
upbraided her for taking part in the deception even from the beginning,
but she had been a tool in the hands of Mrs Barrington, and had simply
done as her mistress commanded her. But the spell was broken now; the
magnetic chain which the frivolous woman of fashion seemed to have
woven about the will of her dependant was snapt in two, and Eliza
Bennett could once more think and speak for herself. She impressed the
truth on Lady Conroy that, if she was ever to act in the matter, it
must be then; that next year, even next month, might be too late; and
that it would give her incalculable trouble, and the child incalculable
disadvantages (not only now, but in the future), if she were not
brought up by her side.
‘Just think what she may be, fifteen or twenty years hence, my lady.
Why, the very thought makes me shudder! Even if you was to give her
the best of homes and education, where is she to go when she’s a grown
lady?--for a lady she is, my dear, and nothing can’t unmake her that.
And for my part, it seems a moral duty to me that you should have her
home; and, if I may make so bold as to say it, God Almighty seems to
have paved the way for you Himself.’
‘I intend to reclaim her, Bennett; don’t have any fear of that. Do you
think I could be so cruel and cowardly as to leave my own little child,
that I brought into the world, to grow up without knowing that I am her
mother?’ exclaimed Fenella. ‘Oh no! It is only the _means_ of doing it
that perplexes me. It can never be justifiable to deceive, you know.
And if they should ever find it out--’
‘Well, my dear, I shouldn’t worry myself about that matter now; and you
can do as you think best with respect to Sir Gilbert afterwards. There
can never be no call for you to tell Lady Marjoram, surely.’
‘Oh no, no!’
‘Take a week or two to think over it,’ suggested the servant; ‘second
thoughts is always best. And meanwhile I can fetch the little one,
that you may have a look at her.’
Fenella’s eyes sparkled with a sudden joy.
‘But when, Bennett--_when_? How soon can you go?’
‘You won’t have her _here_, Miss Fenella,’ said the woman dubiously.
‘I’ll do just what you think best.’
‘I’d like you to move farther on, my dear--to some place where you
are not likely to meet any of your fine friends; and then when you’re
settled, I’ll go over quietly and bring the child back with me.’
‘We will go to St Pré,’ said Lady Conroy; ‘there is no one there at
this time of the year.’
She was burning with anxiety to clasp her baby in her arms. She would
have stripped herself of every earthly possession to attain her object.
She could think of nothing else until it was accomplished.
Yet the time which Fenella passed alone in the little _auberge_ of St
Pré, during the two or three days that her servant was necessarily
absent in England, was one of great perplexity to her. A dozen plans
for telling the truth, and yet keeping her first-born by her side,
darted into her mind, and had to be as summarily rejected. Her husband
knew every particular of her former history--of _that_ she felt
certain--it had never entered her head for a moment that it could
be otherwise; but, of course, Mrs Barrington had told him the same
falsehood she did to herself, and he believed the baby to be dead.
_What_ would he say if he were told it lived? Would he not order her
never to see it again, never to speak of it--to bury the fact of its
existence in oblivion, as he had desired her to bury the remembrance of
its birth? And Fenella felt this was what she could not do. A chord had
been struck in her breast which vibrated through her whole body. Her
child lived! The life that was one with hers had not been quenched, and
whilst it existed they must exist together. Yet she could not make up
her mind what to do, and she put the question from her as something to
be settled in the future. But she did not write to announce the death
of little Valeria to Lady Marjoram, and so the first thread was woven
of the net in which her life was to become entangled.
On the evening on which she had been led to expect Bennett back again
from Ines-cedwyn, Lady Conroy behaved like a wild creature. Her
suspense, her agitation, her anxiety were so extreme, that she was
compelled to go and lock herself into her own room, that she might be
able to pace the floor, and laugh, and cry, and talk to herself, as she
felt inclined, without the fear of making the inmates of the _auberge_
say she had gone mad. At last, after hours of restless expectation,
Fenella heard a bustle on the stairs, accompanied by a fretful cry. She
threw open her bedroom door, and stood panting on the threshold.
‘Give her to me!’ she cried impetuously, as Bennett approached with a
bundle in her arms.
‘Oh, my lady, be careful! You’ll frighten the child to death.’
But Fenella was not in a condition to listen to any advice. She hastily
tore open the shawl that enveloped the infant, and met the gaze of two
startled blue eyes, shaded by dark lashes; a little white face, hardly
bigger than that of the child she had just lost, surrounded by rings
of silky brown hair; and a sad drooping mouth that had just puckered
itself up for another cry. She pounced upon the baby like a tigress on
its prey, and clasped her vehemently to her bosom.
‘Take care, my dear; pray take care,’ repeated the servant fearfully.
‘Don’t forget she’s just come off a long journey, and everything is
strange to her.’
But the mother had got the child’s face close to her own; she saw
nothing but the child--she heard nothing but the throbbing of her own
heart beneath which God had called it into being.
‘_Baby_,’ she murmured, in a soft, tremulous voice; ‘baby, do you know
I am your mother?’
The sweet pathos in her tones attracted the little one’s attention. She
had just been going to cry, but she thought better of it, and smiled
instead.
‘She _knows_ me!’ Fenella cried triumphantly. ‘She recognises me,
nurse. She sees something in my face she has been waiting for.’
‘Bless her heart!’ said Eliza Bennett, with the stereotyped nursery
benediction, ‘she’s been good as gold all the way coming over, and
Martha was finely put out parting with her, I can tell you; but I
said as her mamma had come back from the Injies, and wanted to look
after her herself. And I give her the money you sent, my dear, and she
considered it most handsome, and she hopes that the child’s things
(such as they are) will be found in decent order; but, of course, it’s
little she’s been able to do for her that way, for what your dear
mamma paid her, though ample, didn’t leave much and above over for
clothes. But we’ll soon put that to rights, won’t we, my lady? It’ll be
quite a pleasure to me to dress the little dear in decent things. But
she is a rare little one--ain’t she now?’
Bennett might have gone on talking till doomsday, for Fenella was not
listening to a word she said. Her eyes, dim with unshed tears, were
riveted upon the child, who lay in her arms, passive and contented, as
if she knew where she had got to. Suddenly the blue eyes glistened, the
tiny fingers were stretched upward, and in another moment had firmly
grasped a gold locket which had escaped from the bosom of Fenella’s
dress. The last pledge that Geoffrey Doyne had given her, in token of
his unalterable fidelity, lay in the hands of his child. At that sight
Lady Conroy’s tears fell like rain. She turned her face aside, and hid
it in the cushion of the sofa upon which she was seated.
‘You have been unfaithful to me,’ she murmured inwardly; ‘you left me
without a thought whether I might not be destroyed, body and soul,
by your desertion; but I will not desert your child. Whatever may
happen to me in consequence--whatever I may lose, or give up, or have
to resign, I pledge myself here to redeem as much of _my_ past as
is possible to me, by devoting the rest of my life to the life you
created. O Geoffrey! Geoffrey! Why did you not take mine before you
laid this burden on my soul?’
Bennett perceived that Fenella was weeping, and came at once to the
rescue.
‘Now, my lady, please, we mustn’t have anything of this sort. I shall
be sorry I’ve brought the baby over here, if she’s to be a misery to
you instead of a comfort. Lor’! What has she got now? That there nasty
locket! I thought there was something of that kind in the wind. Now, my
little dear, you please to give that up, and come to Bennett. ’Twould
have been a deal better for your poor mamma if she’d never seen the
trumpery thing, nor the one as give it to her neither. Come, my lady,
let me take her, and you rest yourself on the sofa, whilst I feed her
and put her to bed. She’ll sleep without rocking to-night, I warrant.’
But Fenella would not be parted from her new-found treasure. Together
the women undressed and washed the infant, and put it to sleep in the
nurse’s bed. And late that night, when the inmates of the little hotel
had long retired, and Eliza Bennett thought that her mistress too was
wrapt in slumber, a white-robed figure stole softly to her side, and a
low voice whispered,--
‘Is she sleeping, nurse? Has she taken her food? Are you sure she is
quite comfortable and well?’
‘Bless you, yes! My lady. The dear child’s sleeping like an angel!
Just look at her little face upon the piller. Ain’t she like a little
wax doll--the pretty dear! But do go back to your bed, Miss Fenella,
for you’ll get your death of cold standing about these nasty painted
boards.’
‘I’ll go back directly, nurse; but couldn’t you bring her and lay her
by my side? I think I could go to sleep if I knew that she was there.’
‘Lor’! My dear, you’d never rest with a baby in your bed. It’s
terrible, till you’re used to them.’
‘I think I could--and I would like to try; do wrap a shawl round her
and bring her to me. You don’t know how my heart does ache! I think if
I had my baby next it, it would be a little comfort to me.’
Bennett did not attempt any further remonstrance, but lifting up the
sleeping child, carried it into the next room and laid it by its
mother’s side. And when she crept in again towards the early morning,
to see how they both fared, she found them in the same position and
fast asleep, the infant’s tiny face nestled in Fenella’s bosom. The
servant stood and gazed at them until her eyes filled with tears.
‘Well,’ she thought to herself, ‘if to bring them two together is a
sin, may God forgive me! But I can’t see it. Poor little mite! Don’t
she look as if she’d got home at last? And my sweet young lady, too, is
dreaming a happy dream with that smile upon her lips. May God bless ’em
both! And if any harm comes of it, I’ll work to keep ’em to my life’s
end.’
And Fenella too, with this new legitimate love awakened in her bosom at
the very moment when it felt so empty and so cold, was ready to resign
the world itself, if necessary, sooner than give up her child again.
It seemed to her as if she had never really known what it was to be a
mother until she clasped her in her arms, and before she had regained
possession of her for a week her infant had become her idol. She could
not bear her to go out of her sight; she was always in terror lest
some ill should happen to her; and she spent her days in studying the
tiny features, and watching the development of the tardily awakening
intellect. She was scarcely ever out of her mother’s arms; day after
day Fenella’s tall, lithe figure might be seen traversing the byroads
and field paths around St Pré, with the fragile baby clasped to her
breast; and the affection of the English lady for her little child
was the observation of every one. And yet Fenella was not happy. In
her case the saying, ‘_Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute_,’ was
eminently true. In delaying to write and announce the death of Sir
Gilbert’s child to Lady Marjoram, she had taken that first step which
she would never be able to retrace; and as day succeeded day, and the
time drew near for her return to London, she felt that she must adopt
Bennett’s suggestion and keep her own counsel, whether she wished it
or not, for there was no possibility of disclosing the truth at that
date.
When May arrived she parted from her child with many tears, and
leaving it at St Pré under the charge of her nurse and a French
_bonne_, travelled to England with her lady’s-maid (a new acquisition
imported from Paris) to spend the London season under the wing of her
sister-in-law.
Lady Marjoram was delighted to receive Lady Conroy, and equally
delighted to hear that she had left the baby behind her.
‘My dear, how sensible and nice you are! One would believe you were
eight-and-twenty instead of eighteen. I can’t tell you how I have been
dreading the advent of your nursery brigade--not, of course, that they
could make any difference to me with my terrible tribe, only I was
afraid you’d be running upstairs to see if the little animal was dead
or alive twenty times a-day, and wanting to stuff it, with its nurse,
on the back seat of the carriage whenever we drove in the park, and all
that sort of thing. So interesting you know, my dear, and so abominably
disagreeable!’
‘I am afraid you must have a very small idea of my common sense,
Janie,’ replied Fenella, colouring. ‘I confess I was very sorry
to leave my little girl behind me, but I thought it best for
her--particularly as we shall be out, I suppose, day and night.’
‘Indeed, we shall, Fenella. This promises to be the gayest season we
have had for years. My engagement list is something terrible to look
at already. By the way, the Culletons are going to have a series of
_tableaux vivants_ and private theatricals at Fotheringay House in June
and July, and I have promised faithfully that you will assist them.
They want the loan of your voice, too, for some amateur concerts. I
hope you have not neglected your singing lately?’
‘No; I have had a piano wherever I went, and practised assiduously,
and I intend to take another course of lessons from Signor Possetrina.
By the way, Janie, I have not yet shown you Gilbert’s last letter. He
seems quite delighted with Sovooranooko, and talks of having me out
there next year to judge of it for myself.’
‘Don’t you believe a word of that, my dear; it’s only a sop for
Cerberus. Bertie has no more idea of having you out to Sovooranooko
than of coming home himself. We had a letter from Lord Laurence by
last mail, and he says Bertie is mad to get into the interior, and
already organising a shooting party to start as soon as the cool
weather commences. He has got the Englishman’s mania on him to “kill
something,” Fenella, and the best thing you can do is to let him tire
himself out. He’ll get a grab from a lion or a squeeze from a bear
some day, and come crying home to you to kiss the place and make it
well; but he won’t come before. And what should you want to go out
to that horrid place for--to lose your complexion and your hair, and
perhaps get the yellow fever, or some pleasantry of that sort? Don’t
you be so silly. You had better stay at home with the baby than do
that.’
‘Oh yes! I don’t want to leave my baby,’ cried the mother, with a
sudden thrill.
‘Well, you couldn’t take her with you, so let’s talk no more about it.
Besides, it is time we went to dress. We have a concert at the Duke of
Doldrum’s at two.’
The next three months were spent by Fenella in a round of dissipation,
during which she distinguished herself in theatricals and at concerts,
and heard her talents talked of as much as her beauty had been the year
before.
But her heart and all her thoughts were at St Pré. She required
_bulletins_ to be sent her daily of the health and well-doing of her
child, and she bought every dainty little garment or expensive toy
she could light upon, to decorate the body, or amuse the mind, of her
absent baby.
Lady Marjoram noticed this almost feverish anxiety and restlessness
on the part of her sister-in-law concerning her child, and laughed at
it. ‘It was very becoming,’ she said patronisingly, and just as it
ought to be, she wished she could get up the same sort of excitement
about her own brats. It gave one such a pretty flush to be anxious, and
one’s eyes looked so quick and bright about the time that the post was
expected.
But for all that, Lady Marjoram did not quite believe in the
genuineness of Fenella’s concern, and she could no more have entered
into her real feelings respecting her child than she could sympathise
with Sir Gilbert’s exultation at bringing down an elephant. The one
sensation was as much a sealed book to her as the other. However, as
soon as the season was over, Lady Conroy flew to the side of her child
again, and shed tears of real joy, because it held out arms of welcome
as soon as it recognised her.
The Earl and Countess of Marjoram were bound for Norway that year, and
as soon as they had left England, Fenella brought her little party
over, and established them in a lovely Devonshire village by the sea,
where she spent all her days upon the beach with the little Valeria in
her arms. For the infant who had been unbaptized when restored to its
mother, had of course to be called by the name of the one whose place
she assumed.
And here it was, whilst yielding herself up to the softening
influence which nature generally exerts on a mind fitted to perceive
and appreciate her beauties, and whilst watching the daily growing
resemblance to her father in the face of her little child, that
Fenella began to have gentler and more generous thoughts of Geoffrey
Doyne. For since the day on which she received the shock of hearing
of his marriage, the remembrance of him had been fraught with torture
to her. He had never come into her mind but to suggest something that
was most cruel and heartless and untrue. She had tried to shut out the
memory even of the time she knew him, as of some horrible dream that to
dwell upon would madden her. But now, as little Valeria’s baby lips met
hers, as she watched her toddle feebly from one spot to another, as she
heard her faltering tongue trying to frame the syllables of ‘_mother_,’
the child’s angel whispered to her thoughts of forgiveness and of
mercy, and from the child’s eyes there beamed a look that softened her
recollection of the past.
In fancy, Fenella saw again the flowery landslip, strewn with fallen
petals--fallen like her hopes! She saw the golden sands, the ruined
bungalow, the stretch of placid sea, and blue unclouded sky; and then
above, beyond them all, in beauty and in pleasantness, the smile, the
look, the tones of Geoffrey Doyne. And she began to make excuses for
him--she, who had called him (and justly) by all sorts of hard and
ugly names, whose life had been ruined by his desertion--she began to
wonder if some dark mystery might not lie at the bottom of his apparent
cruelty; whether he could have been told falsehoods of her, or been
forced into that marriage that broke her heart; whether he might not
believe that she was dead, or had refused ever to see or speak to him
again. A hundred reasons, all equally vague and improbable, floated
through Fenella’s mind as she attempted, in her loving generosity, to
account for as dastardly a piece of cruelty as ever a man employed to
wreck a woman’s life.
She could not satisfy herself. Her own nature was too true to accept
any excuse for his conduct, still less for the silence which preceded
and followed it; yet she tried so hard, ‘_for baby’s sake_,’ she would
say to herself with quivering lips, to make out the father of her child
less undeserving than he was.
But often (after Fenella had been thinking thus for hours) she would
catch her infant in her arms and sob over it in so piteous a manner,
that the little creature would weep with terror. And then Fenella
would soothe it, and kiss it, and sing to it, until it smiled again,
and whisper in its ear that its mother would always love it for its
father’s sake, although he had trampled on her heart as if it had been
the ground beneath his feet.
Meanwhile, the little Valeria grew strong and fat, but still remained
so tiny that Bennett’s prophecies concerning her apparent age seemed
likely to be verified, and when the second London season dawned upon
the world, Fenella ventured to send her with her nurses up to Conroy
Castle, where she remained until her mother could rejoin her.
‘Really, Fenella,’ exclaimed Lady Marjoram, ‘you are getting too
absurdly domestic! Why should you go and bury yourself all alone in
Scotland with that child? Why cannot you spend the autumn at Southfield
with us? I shall be horribly dull without you.’
‘I thought, Janie, that as I had not been at the castle all last year,
and Gilbert talks of returning in the spring, he might consider it my
duty to go and look after the place a little.’
‘My dear girl, what rubbish! Who do you suppose looked after it all
the years before he met you? Bertie was never there, except for the
shooting. He was better employed elsewhere, I can tell you. Now, do
come down to Southfield with me! It will be a perfect charity. And send
for the child and nurses to join you there, as I know you will not
come without her.’
‘No, I will not come without her,’ replied Fenella, smiling; and so
Bennett was written to, and in due course appeared with her baby and
her _aide-de-camp_ at Southfield.
‘And now, pray let us see this wonderful baby,’ exclaimed the Countess,
on the first day as they sat together after dinner. ‘Your devotion to
her is so extraordinary that it has excited my curiosity. I expect a
_rara avis_. Give your orders, Fenella, for Bennett to bring the young
lady down to dessert.’
Lady Conroy looked uneasy.
‘I think you had better not see her now,’ she said; ‘you don’t like
children, and she is very shy with strangers, and will most likely cry.’
‘Never mind! If she cries, we’ll send her back again,’ replied Lady
Marjoram, who always liked to have her own way. ‘I think it is quite
time I made the acquaintance of my niece. Let me see! How old is she?’
‘Eighteen months,’ said Fenella, in a low voice.
‘Quite grown up, I declare,’ laughed her sister-in-law. ‘Send for her
at once. The girls are so precocious now-a-days, that at this rate she
will be married before I see her.’
The order was given, and in a few minutes a tap was heard upon the
dining-room door, and Bennett entering, set down with much pride upon
the carpet a tiny creature, dressed in lace and ribbons, of about two
feet high, who stood the centre of attraction, looking with scared and
wistful eyes upon the strangers.
‘Baby!’ said Fenella, in her sweet, low voice.
The little figure fluttered like a blue-and-white butterfly, and
then with a cry of pleasure tottered to her mother’s side, and laid
her curly head against her knee. Fenella lifted her in her arms, and
pressed her glowing face in the folds of the infant’s frock.
‘What a little fairy,’ cried the Countess. ‘She looks as if she had
just stepped, ready dressed, out of the Soho Bazaar! Marjoram! Why
don’t my children make a rush at me like that? Why do they always hang
back and stick their fingers in their mouths, and their heads in the
nurse’s apron? Look at that child! Stroking Fenella’s face like a grown
being! I should get quite fond of a baby if it showed as much sense as
that.’
‘She has always been with me,’ said Fenella ingenuously.
‘That’s it,’ acquiesced the Earl. ‘Lady Conroy has nursed her child,
and you leave yours to a set of hirelings.’
‘Hold your tongue, Marjoram! You don’t know anything about it. How old
did you say she was, Fenella? Can she talk?’
‘Very little, Janie. She can only say “mother,” and “father,” and
“Bennie.”’
‘And whom does she resemble? Turn her face round, my dear, that I may
see it,’ continued Lady Marjoram.
Fenella grew crimson.
‘They say she is very like _me_,’ she answered, with a rapidly beating
heart.
‘Not a bit of it,’ cried the Countess. ‘She’s the very image of Bertie!
The hair’s a trifle darker, perhaps, but that is the only difference I
can see. I shall tell him so in my next letter. Well, Bennett, you can
take Miss Conroy away now if you like, and I think she is a very fine
little girl for her age, and does you a great deal of credit.’
‘Thank you, my lady,’ replied the servant, as she disengaged the
clinging arms from about her mistress’s neck, and conveyed little
Valeria out of sight again.
After that interview Fenella’s heart grew secure, and she took her
child about with her wherever she went.
Since she had passed the crucible of Lady Marjoram’s scrutiny, she
considered that all risk of discovery was over; and so much does custom
become our second nature, that at times Fenella almost forgot what she
had done, and detected herself waking with a start, to remember that
Valeria was not Sir Gilbert Conroy’s child. That is, she contrived
to lull her uneasy conscience to sleep respecting the deception she
had practised, so long as it seemed to concern no one but herself.
But the day arrived when the person who had been most injured by the
transaction reappeared upon the scene, and from that moment the heart
of Fenella reasserted itself, and refused to be quieted by any specious
arguments that tried to make a wrong thing look as if it were right.
With the return of spring came Sir Gilbert Conroy from Sovooranooko.
He had not resigned his appointment, but he required change of air
and relaxation, and had procured so many months’ leave to England in
consequence. He came back accompanied by his private secretary, and
laden with the spoils of the chase, in excellent humour with the world,
his wife, himself, and everybody belonging to him. But with the first
kiss of welcome he bestowed upon her, all Fenella’s fancied serenity
fled like a dream, and for the first time she saw what she had done in
its true light.
END OF VOL. II.
COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
Transcriber’s Notes
p278 “it’s” changed to “cried bitterly for its loss”.
p294 “your” changed to “and then when you’re settled”.
p312 “ike” changed to “fallen like her hopes”.
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