Chapter IX: Part 9

But he did not know Mary yet, either in her strength or her weakness. Nor did he consider that her father was already more than a name to her. She hung a moment undecided and wretched, drooping as the white rose that hangs its head in the first shower. Then she turned to the elder man, and throwing her arms about his neck hung in tears on his breast. “You will be good to him, sir,” she whispered passionately. “Oh, forgive him! Forgive him, sir!”

“My dear——”

“Oh, forgive him, sir!”

Sir Robert smoothed her hair with a caressing hand, and with pinched lips and bright eyes looked at his adversary over her head. “I would forgive him,” he said, “I could forgive him—all but this! All but this, my dear! I could forgive him had he not tricked you and deceived you, cozened you and flattered you—into this! Into the belief that he loves you, while he loves only your inheritance! Or that part,” he added bitterly, “of which he has not already robbed you!”

“Sir Robert,” Vaughan said, “you have stooped very low. But it will not avail you.”

“It has availed me so far,” the baronet retorted. With confidence he was regaining also command of himself.

Vaughan winced. In proportion as the other recovered his temper, he lost his.

“It will avail me still farther,” Sir Robert continued exultantly, “when my daughter understands, as she shall understand, sir, that when you came here to-day, when you stole a march on me, as you thought, and proposed marriage to her behind my back, you knew all that I knew! Knew, sir, that she was my daughter, knew that she was my heiress, knew that she ousted you, knew that by a marriage with her, and by that only, you could regain all that you had lost!”

“It is a lie!” Vaughan cried, stung beyond endurance. He was pale with anger.

“Then refute it!” Sir Robert said, clasping the girl, who had involuntarily winced at the word, more closely to him. “Refute it, sir! Refute it!”

“It is absurd! It—it needs no refutation!” Vaughan cried.

“Why?” Sir Robert retorted. “I state it. I am prepared to prove it! I have three witnesses to the fact!”

“To the fact that I——”

“That you knew,” Sir Robert replied. “Knew this lady to be my daughter when you came here this morning—as well as I knew it myself.”

Vaughan returned his look in speechless indignation. Did the man really believe in a charge, which at first had seemed to be mere vulgar abuse. It was not possible! “Sir Robert,” he said, speaking slowly and with dignity, “I never did you harm by word or deed until a day or two ago. And then, God knows, perforce and reluctantly. How then can you lower yourself to—to such a charge as this?”

“Do you deny then,” the baronet replied with contemptuous force, “do you dare to deny—to my face, that you knew?”

Vaughan stared. “You will say presently,” he replied, “that I knew her to be your daughter when I made her acquaintance on the coach a week ago. At a time when you knew nothing yourself.”

“As to that I cannot say one way or the other,” Sir Robert rejoined. “I do not know how nor where you made her acquaintance. But I do know that an acquaintance so convenient, so coincident, could hardly be the work of chance!”

“Good G—d! Then you will say also that I knew who she was when I called on her the day after, and again two days after that—while you were still in ignorance?”

“I have said,” the baronet answered with cold decision, “that I do not know how you made, nor why you followed up your acquaintance with her. But I have, I cannot but have my suspicions.”

“Suspicions? Suspicions?” Vaughan cried bitterly. “And on suspicion, the base issue of prejudice and dislike——”

“No, sir, no!” Sir Robert struck in. “Though it may be that if I knew who introduced you to her, who opened this house to you, and the rest, I might find ground for more than suspicion! The schoolmistress might tell me somewhat, and—you wince, sir! Ay,” he continued in a tone of triumph. “I see there is something to be learned! But it is not upon suspicion that I charge you to-day! It is upon the best of grounds. Did you not before my eyes and in the presence of two other witnesses, read, no farther back than the day before yesterday, in the drawing-room of my house, the whole story of my daughter’s movements up to her departure from London for Bristol! With the name of the school to which she was consigned? Did you not, sir? Did you not?”

“Never! Never!”

“What?” The astonishment in Sir Robert’s voice was so real, so unfeigned, that it must have carried conviction to any listener.

Vaughan passed his hand across his brow; and Mary, who had hitherto kept her face hidden, shivering under the stroke of each harsh word—for to a tender heart what could be more distressing than this strife between the two beings she most cherished?—raised her head imperceptibly. What would he answer? Only she knew how her heart beat; how sick she was with fear; how she shrank from that which the next minute might unfold!

And yet she listened.

“I—I remember now,” Vaughan said—and the consternation he felt made itself heard in his voice. “I remember that I looked at a paper——”

“At a paper!” Sir Robert cried in a tone of withering contempt. “At a detailed account, sir, of my daughter’s movements down to her arrival at Bristol! Do you deny that?” he continued grimly. “Do you deny that you perused that account?”

Vaughan stood for a moment with his hand pressed to his brow. He hesitated. “I remember taking a paper in my hands,” he said slowly, his face flushing, as the probable inference from his words occurred to him. “But I was thinking so much of the disclosure you had made to me, and of the change it involved—-to me, that——”

“That you took no interest in the written details!” Sir Robert cried in a tone of bitter irony.

“I did not.”

“You did not read a word, I suppose?”

“I did not.”

Before the baronet could utter the sneer which was on his lips, Mary interposed. “I—I would like to go,” she murmured. “I feel rather faint!”

She detached herself from her father’s arm as she spoke, and with her face averted from her lover, she moved uncertainly towards the door. She had no wish to look on him. She shrank from meeting his shamed eyes. But something, either the feeling that she would never see him again, and that this was the end of her maiden love, or the desperate hope that even at this last moment he might explain his admission—and those facts, “confirmation strong as hell” which she knew, but which Sir Robert did not know—one or other of these feelings made her falter on the threshold, made her turn. Their eyes met.

He stepped forward impulsively. He was white with pain, his face rigid. For what pain is stronger than the pang of innocence accused?

“One moment!” he said, in an unsteady voice. “If we part so, Mary, we part indeed! We part forever! I said awhile ago that you must choose between us. And you have chosen—it seems,” he continued unsteadily. “Yet think! Give yourself, give me a chance. Will you not believe my word?” And he held out his arms to her. “Will you not believe that when I came to you this morning I thought you penniless? I thought you the unknown schoolmistress you thought yourself a week ago! Will you not trust me when I say that I never connected you with the missing daughter? Never dreamed of a connection? Why should I?” he added, in growing agitation as the words of his appeal wrought on himself. “Why should I? Or why do you in a moment think me guilty of the meanest, the most despicable, the most mercenary of acts?”

He was going to take her hand, but Sir Robert stepped between them, grim as fate and as vindictive. “No!” he said. “No! No more! You have given her pain enough, sir! Take your dismissal and go! She has chosen—you have said it yourself!”

He cast one look at Sir Robert, and then, “Mary,” he asked, “am I to go?”

She was leaning, almost beside herself, against the door. And oh, how much of joy and sorrow she had known since she crossed the threshold. A man’s embrace, and a man’s treachery. The sweetness of love and the bitterness of—reality!

“Mary!” Vaughan repeated.

But the baronet could not endure this. “By G—d, no!” he cried, infuriated by the other’s persistence, and perhaps a little by fear that the girl would give way. “You shall not soil her name with your lips, sir! You shall torture her no longer! You have your dismissal! Take it and go!”

“When she tells me with her own lips to go,” Vaughan answered doggedly, “I will go. Not before!” For never had she seemed more desirable to him. Never, though contempt of her weakness wrestled with his love, had he wanted her more. Except that seat in the House which had cost him so dearly, she was all he had left. And it did not seem possible that she whom he had held so lately in his arms, she who had confessed her love for him, with whom he had vowed to share his life and his success, his lot good or bad—it did not seem possible that she could really believe this miserable, this incredible, this impossible thing of him! She could not! Or, if she could, he was indeed mistaken in her. “I shall go,” he repeated coldly, “and I shall not return.”

And Mary had not believed it of him, had she known him longer or better; had she known him as girls commonly know their lovers. But his wooing had been short, we know: and we know, too, the distrust of men in which she had been trained. He had taken her by storm, stooping to her from the height of his position, having on his side her poverty and loneliness, her inexperience and youth. Now all these things, and her ignorance of his world weighed against him. Was it to be supposed, could it be credited that he, who had come to her bearing her mother’s commendation, knew nothing, though he was her kinsman? That he, who after plain hesitation and avowed doubt, laid all at her feet as soon as her father was prepared to acknowledge her—still sought her in ignorance? That he, who had read her story in black and white, still knew nothing?

No, she could not believe it. But it was a bitter thing to know that he did not love her, that he had not loved her! That he had come to her for gain! She must speak if it were only to escape, only to save herself from—from collapse. She yearned for nothing now so much as to be alone in her room.

“Good-bye,” she muttered, with averted eyes and pallid lips. “I—I forgive you. Good-bye.”

And she opened the door with groping fingers; and still, still looking away from him lest she should break down, she went out.

He drew a deep breath as she passed the threshold; and his eyes did not leave her. But he did not speak. Nor did Sir Robert Vermuyden until his daughter’s step, light as thistledown that morning, and now uncertain and lagging, passed out of hearing, and—and at last a door closed on the floor above.

Then the elder man looked at the other. “Are you not going?” he said with stern meaning. “You have robbed me of my borough, sir—I give you joy of your cleverness. But you shall not rob me of my daughter!”

“I wonder which you love the better!” Vaughan snarled. And with the vicious gibe he took his hat and went.

XXI A MEETING OF OLD FRIENDS

It was September. The House elected in those first days of May was four months old, and already it had fulfilled the hopes of the country. Without a division it had decreed the first reading, and by a majority of one hundred and thirty-six, the second reading of the People’s Bill; that Bill by which the preceding House slaying, had been slain. New members were beginning to lose the first gloss of their enthusiasm; the youngest no longer ogled the M.P. on their letters, nor franked for the mere joy of franking. But the ministry still rode the flood tide of favour, Lord Grey was still his country’s pride, and Brougham a hero. It only remained to frighten the House of Lords, and in particular those plaguy out-of-date fellows, the Bishops, into passing the Bill; and the battle would be won,

_The streets be paved with mutton pies_,

_Potatoes eat like pine!_

And, in fine, everyone would live happily ever afterwards.

To old Tories of the stamp of Sir Robert Vermuyden, the outlook was wholly dark. But it is not often that public care clouds private joy; and had Eldon been prime minister, with Wetherell for his Chancellor, the grounds of Stapylton could hardly have worn a more smiling aspect than they presented on the fine day in early September, which Sir Robert had chosen for his daughter’s first party. The abrupt addition of a well-grown girl to a family of one is a delicate process. It is apt to open the door to scandal. And a little out of discretion, and more that she, who was now the apple of his eye, might not wear her wealth with a difference, nor lack anything of the mode, he had not hastened the occasion. A word had been dropped here and there—with care; the truth had been told to some, the prepossessions of others had been consulted. But at length the day was come on which she must stand by his side and receive the world of Wiltshire.

And she had so stood for more than an hour of this autumn afternoon; with such pride on his side as was fitting, and such blushes on hers as were fitting also. Now, the prime duty of reception over, and his company dispersed through the gardens, Sir Robert lingered with one or two of his intimates on the lawn before the house. In the hollow of the park hard by, stood the ample marquee in which his poorer neighbours were presently to feed; gossip had it that Sir Robert was already at work rebuilding his political influence. Near the tent, Hunt the Slipper and Kiss in the Ring were in progress, and Moneymusk was being danced to the strains of the Chippinge church band; the shrill voices of the rustic youth proving that their first shyness was wearing off. Within the gardens, a famous band from Bath played the new-fashioned quadrilles turn about with Moore’s Irish Melodies; and a score of the fair, gorgeous as the dragon-flies which darted above the water, meandered delicately up and down the sward; or escorted by gentlemen in tightly strapped white trousers and blue coats—or in Wellington frocks, the latest mode—appeared and again disappeared among the elms beside the Garden Pool. In the background, the house, adorned and refurnished, winked with all its windows at the sunshine, gave forth from all its doors the sweet scent of flowers, throbbed to the very recesses of the haunted wing with small talk and light laughter, the tap of sandalled feet and the flirt of fans.

Sir Robert thanked his God as he looked upon it all. And five years younger in face and more like the Duke than ever, he listened, almost purring, to the praises of his new-found darling. The odds had been great that with such a breeding, she had been coarse or sly, common or skittish. And she was none of these things, but fair as a flower, slender as Psyche, sweet-eyed as a loving woman, dainty and virginal as the buds of May! And withal gentle and kind and obedient—above all, obedient. He could not thank God enough, as he read in the eyes of young men and old women, what they thought of her. And he was thanking Him, though in outward seeming he was attentive to an old friend’s prattle, when his eyes fell on a carriage and four which, followed by two outriders, was sweeping past the marquee and breasting the gentle ascent to the house. All who were likely to arrive in such state, the Beauforts, Suffolks, Methuens, were come; the old Duke of Beaufort, indeed, and his daughter-in-law were gone again. So Sir Robert stared at the approaching carriage, wondering whom it might contain.

“They are the Bowood liveries,” said his friend, who had longer sight. “I thought they had gone to town for the Coronation.”

Sir Robert too had thought so. Indeed, though he had invited the Lansdownes upon the principle, which even the heats attending the Reform Bill did not wholly abrogate, that family friendships were above party—he had been glad to think that he would not see the spoliators. The trespass was too recent, the robbery too gross! Ay, and the times too serious.

Here they were, however; Lady Lansdowne, her daughter, and a small gentleman with a merry eye and curling locks. And Sir Robert repressed a sigh, and advanced four or five paces to meet them. But though he sighed, no one knew better what became a host; and his greeting was perfect. One of his bitterest flings at Bowood painted it as the common haunt of fiddlers and poets, actors and the like. But he received her ladyship’s escort, who was no other than Mr. Moore of Sloperton, and of the Irish Melodies, with the courtesy which he would have extended to an equal; nor when Lady Lansdowne sent her girl to take tea under the poet’s care did he let any sign of his reprobation appear. Those with whom he had been talking had withdrawn to leave him at liberty, and he found himself alone with Lady Lansdowne.

“We leave for Berkeley Square to-morrow, for the Coronation on the 8th,” she said, playing with her fan in a way which would have betrayed to her intimates that she was not at ease. “I had many things to do this morning in view of our departure and I could not start early. You must accept our apologies, Sir Robert.”

“It was gracious of your ladyship to come at all,” he said.

“It was brave,” she replied, with a gleam of laughter in her eyes. “In fact, though I bear my lord’s warmest felicitations on this happy event, and wreathe them with mine, Sir Robert——”

“I thank your ladyship and Lord Lansdowne,” he said formally.

“I do not think that I should have ventured,” she continued with another glint of laughter, “did I not bear also an olive branch.”

He bowed, but waited in silence for her explanation.

“One of a—a rather delicate nature,” she said. “Am I permitted, Sir Robert, to—to speak in confidence?”

He did not understand and he sought refuge in compliments. “Permitted?” he said, with the gallant bow of an old beau. “All things are permitted to so much——”

“Hush!” she said. “But there! I will take you at your word. You know that the Bill—there is but one Bill now-a-days—is in Committee?”

He frowned, disliking the subject. “I don’t think,” he said, “that any good can come of discussing it, Lady Lansdowne.”

“I think it may,” she replied, with a confidence which she did not feel, “if you will hear me. It is whispered that there is a question in Committee of one of the doomed boroughs. One, I am told, Sir Robert, hangs between schedule A and schedule B; and that borough is Chippinge. Those who know whisper Lord Lansdowne that ultimately it will be plucked from the burning, and will be found in schedule B. Consequently it will retain one member.”

Sir Robert’s thin face turned a dull red. So the wicked Whigs, who had drawn the line of disfranchisement at such a point as to spare their pet preserves, their Calne and Bedford and the like, had not been able with all their craft to net every fish. One had evaded the mesh, and by Heavens, it was Chippinge! Chippinge, though shorn of its full glory, would still return one member. He had not hoped, he had not expected this. Now

_Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei Vitabit Libitinam!_

he thought with jubilation. And then another thought darted through his mind and changed his joy to chagrin. A seat had been left to Chippinge. But why? That Arthur Vaughan, that his renegade cousin, might continue to fill it, might continue to hold it, under his nose and to his daily, hourly, his constant mortification. By Heaven, it was too much! They had said well, who said that an enemy’s gift was to be dreaded. But he would fight the seat, at the next election and at every election, rather than suffer that miserable person, miserable on so many accounts, to fill it at his will. And after all the seat was saved; and no one could tell the future. The lasting gain might outlive the temporary vexation.

So, after frowning a moment, he tried to smooth his brow. “And your mission, Lady Lansdowne,” he said politely, “is to tell me this?”

“In part,” she said, with hesitation, for the course, of his feelings had been visible in his countenance. “But also——”

“But also—and in the main,” he answered with a smile, “to make a proposition, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

He thought of the most obvious proposition, and he spoke in pursuance of his thought. “Then forgive me if I speak plainly,” he said. “Whether the borough lose one member or both, whether it figure in schedule B, or in schedule A, cannot affect my opposition to the Bill! If you have it in commission, therefore, to make any proposal, based on a contrary notion, I cannot listen even to your ladyship.”

“I have not,” she answered with a smile. “Sir Robert Vermuyden’s malignancy is too well known. Yet I am the bearer of a proposition. Suppose the Bill to become law, and I am told that it will surely become law, can we not avoid future conflict, and—I will not say future ill-will, for God knows there is none on our side, Sir Robert—but future friction, by an agreement? Of course it will not be possible to nominate members in the future as in the past. But for some time to come whoever is returned for Chippinge must be returned by your influence, or by my lord’s.”

He coughed drily. “Possibly,” he said.

“In view of that,” she continued, flirting her fan, as she watched his face—his manner was not encouraging, “and for the sake of peace between families, and a little, perhaps, because I do not wish Kerry to be beggared by contested elections, can we not now, while the future is on the lap of the gods——”

“In Committee,” Sir Robert corrected with a grave bow.

She laughed pleasantly. “Well,” she allowed, “perhaps it is not quite the same thing. But no matter! Whoever the Fates in charge, can we not,” with her head on one side and a charming smile, “make a treaty of peace?”

“And what,” Sir Robert asked with urbane sarcasm, “becomes of the rights of the people in that case, Lady Lansdowne? And of the purity of elections? And of the new and independent electors whom my lord has brought into being? Must we not think of these things?”

She looked for an instant rather foolish. Then she rallied, and with a slightly heightened colour, “In good time, we must,” she replied. “But for the present it is plain that they will not be able to walk without assistance.”

“What?” it was on the tip of his tongue to answer. “The new and independent electors? Not walk without assistance? Oh, what a change is here!” But he forbore. He said instead—but with the faintest shade of irony, “Without _our_ assistance, I think you mean, Lady Lansdowne?”

“Yes. And that being so, why should we not agree, my lord and you—to save Kerry’s pocket shall I say—to bring forward a candidate alternately?”

Sir Robert shook his head gravely. He would fight.

“Allowing to you, Sir Robert, as the owner of the influence hitherto dominant in the borough, the first return.”

“The first return—after the Bill passes?”

“Yes.”

That was a different thing. That was another thing altogether. A gleam of satisfaction shone for an instant under the baronet’s bushy eyebrows. The object he had most at heart was to oust his treacherous cousin. And here was a method, sure and safe: more safe by far than any contest under the new Bill?

“Well I—I cannot say anything at this moment,” he said, at last, trying to hide his satisfaction. “These heats once over I do not see—your ladyship will pardon me—why my influence should not still predominate.”

It was Lady Lansdowne’s turn. “And things be as before?” she answered. “No, Sir Robert, no. You forget those rights of the people which you were so kind as to support a moment ago. Things will not be as before. But—but perhaps I shall hear from you? Of course it is not a matter that can be settled, as in the old days, by our people.”

“You shall certainly hear,” he said, with something more than courtesy. “In the meantime——”

“I am dying to see your daughter,” she answered. “I am told that she is very lovely. Where is she?”

“A few minutes ago she was in the Elm Walk,” Sir Robert answered, a slight flush betraying his gratification. “I will send for her.”

But her ladyship would not hear of this; nor would she suffer him to leave his post to escort her. “Here’s la belle Suffolk coming to take leave of you,” she said. “And I know my way.”

“But you will not know her,” Sir Robert answered.

Lady Lansdowne let her parasol sink over her shoulder. “I think I shall,” she said with a glance of meaning, “if she is like her mother.”

And without waiting to see the effect of her words, she moved away. It was said of old time of Juno, that she walked a Goddess confessed. And of Lady Lansdowne as she moved slowly across the sunny lawn before the church, her dainty skirts trailing and her parasol inclined, it might with equal justice have been said, that she walked a great lady, of that day when great ladies still were,

_Nor mill nor mart had mocked the guinea’s stamp_.

Whether she smiled on this person or bowed to that, or with a slighter movement acknowledged the courtesy of those who, without claiming recognition made respectful way for her, a gracious ease and a quiet nonchalance were in all her actions. The deeper emotions seemed as far from her as were Hodge and Joan playing Kiss in the Ring. But her last words to Sir Robert had reacted on herself, and as she crossed the rustic bridge, she paused a moment to gaze on the water. The band was playing the air of “She is far from the Land,” and tears rose to her eyes as she recalled the past and pictured scene after scene, absurd or pathetic in the career of the proud beauty who had once queened it here, whose mad pranks and madder sayings had once filled these shrubberies with mirth or chagrin, and whose child she was about to see.

She sighed, as she resumed her course, unable even now to blame Lady Sybil as her conduct to her child deserved. But where was the child? Not on the walk under the elms, which was deserted in favour of the more lively attractions of the park. Lady Lansdowne looked this way and that; at length availing herself of the solitude, she paced the walk to its end. Thence a short path which she well remembered, led to the kennels; and rather to indulge her sentiment and recall the days when she was herself young, and had been intimate here, than because she expected to meet Mary, she took this path. She had not followed it a dozen steps, and was hesitating whether to go on or return, the strains of Moore’s melody were scarcely blurred by the intervening laurels, when a tall dark-robed figure stepped with startling abruptness from the shrubbery, and stood before her.

“Louisa,” said the stranger. And she raised her veil. “Don’t you know me?”

“Sybil!”

“Yes, Sybil!” the other answered curtly. And then as if something in Lady Lansdowne’s tone had wounded her, “Why not?” she continued, raising her head proudly. “My name came easily enough to your ladyship’s lips once! And I am not aware that I have done anything to deprive me of the right to call my friends by their names, be they whom they may!”

“No, no! But——”

“But you meant it, Louisa!” the other retorted with energy. “Or is it that you find me so changed, so old, so worn, so altered from her you once knew, that it astonishes you to trace in this face the features of Sybil Matching!”

“You are changed,” the other answered kindly. “I fear you have been ill?”

“I am ill. I am more, I am dying. Not here, nor to-day, nor to-morrow——”

Lady Lansdowne interrupted her. “In that sense,” she said gently, “we are all dying.” But though she said it, the change in Lady Sybil’s appearance did indeed shock her; almost as much as her presence in that place amazed her.

“I have but three months to live,” Lady Sybil answered feverishly; and her sunken cheeks and bright eyes, which told of some hidden disease, confirmed her words. “I am dying in that sense! Do you hear? But I dare say,” with a flash of her old levity, “it is my presence here that shocks you? You are thinking what Vermuyden would say if he turned the corner behind you, and found us together!” And, as Lady Lansdowne, with a nervous start, looked over her shoulder, with the old recklessness, “I’d like—I’d like to see his face, my dear, and yours, too, if he found us. But,” she continued, with an abrupt change to impassioned earnestness, “it’s not to see you that I came to-day! Don’t think it! It’s not to see you that I’ve been waiting for two hours past. I want to see my girl! I am going to see her, do you hear! You must bring her to me!”

“Sybil!”

“Don’t contradict me, Louisa,” she cried peremptorily. “Haven’t I told you that I am dying? Don’t you hear what I say! Am I to die and not see my child? Cruel woman! Heartless creature! But you always were! And cold as an icicle!”

“No, indeed, I am not! And I think you should see her,” Lady Lansdowne answered, in no little distress. How could she not be distressed by the contrast between this woman plainly and almost shabbily dressed—for the purpose perhaps of evading notice—and with illness stamped on her face, and the brilliant, harum-scarum Lady Sybil, with whom her thoughts had been busy a few minutes before? “I think you ought to see her,” she repeated in a soothing tone. “But you should take the proper steps to do so. You——”

“You think—yes, you do!” Lady Vermuyden retorted with fierce energy—“you think that I have treated her so ill that I have no right to see her! That I cannot care to see her! But you do not know how I was tried! How I was suspected, how I was watched! What wrongs I suffered! And—and I never meant to hide her for good. When I died, she would have come home. And I had a plan too—but never mind that—to right her without Vermuyden’s knowledge and in his teeth. I saw her on a coach one day along with—what is it?”

“There is someone coming,” Lady Lansdowne said hurriedly. Her ladyship indeed was in a state of great apprehension. She knew that at any moment she might be found, perhaps by Sir Robert: and the thought of the scene which would follow—aware as she was of the exasperation of his feelings—appalled her. She tried to temporise. “Another time,” she said. “I think someone is coming now. See me another time and I will do what I can.”

“No!” the other broke in, her face flushing with sudden anger. “See you, Louisa? What do I care for seeing you? It is my girl I wish to see, that I’m come to see, that I’m going to see! I’m her mother, fetch her to me! I have a right to see her, and I will see her! I demand her! If you do not go for her——”

“Sybil! Sybil!” Lady Lansdowne cried, thoroughly alarmed by her friend’s violence. “For Heaven’s sake be calm!”

“Calm?” Lady Vermuyden answered. “Do you cease to dictate to me, and do as I bid you! Go, and fetch her, or I will go myself and claim her before all his friends. He has no heart. He never had a heart! It’s sawdust,” with a hysterical laugh. “But he has pride and I’ll trample on it! I’ll tread it in the mud—if you don’t fetch her! Are you going, Miss Gravity? We used to call you Miss Gravity, I remember. You were always,” with a faint sneer, “a bit of a prude, my dear!”

Miss Gravity! What long-forgotten trifles, what thoughts of youth the nickname brought back to Lady Lansdowne’s recollection. What wars of maidens’ wits, and half-owned jealousies, and light resentments, and sunny days of pique and pleasure! Her heart, never anything but soft, under the mask of her great-lady’s manner, waxed sore and pitiful. Yet how was she to do the other’s bidding? How could she betray Sir Robert’s confidence? How——

Someone was coming—really coming this time. She looked round.

“I’ll give you five minutes!” Lady Sybil whispered. “Five minutes, Louisa! Remember!”

And when Lady Lansdowne turned again to her, she had vanished among the laurels.

XXII WOMEN’S HEARTS

Lady Lansdowne walked slowly away in a state of perplexity, from which the monotonous lilt of the band which was now playing quadrille music did nothing to free her. Whether Sybil Vermuyden were dying or not, it was certain that she was ill. Disease had laid its hand beyond mistaking on that once beautiful face; the levity and wit which had formerly dazzled beholders now gleamed but fitfully and with such a ghastly light as the corpse candle gives forth. The change was great since Lady Lansdowne had seen her in the coach at Chippenham; and it might well be that if words of forgiveness were to be spoken, no time was to be lost. Old associations, a mother’s feelings for a mother, pity, all urged Lady Lansdowne to compliance with her request; nor did the knowledge that the woman, who had once queened it so brilliantly in this place, was now lurking on the fringe of the gay crowd, athirst for a sight of her child, fail to move a heart which all the jealousies of a Whig coterie had not hardened or embittered.

Unluckily the owner of that heart felt that she was the last person who ought to interfere. It behoved her, more than it behoved anyone, to avoid fresh ground of quarrel with Sir Robert. Courteously as he had borne himself on her arrival, civilly as he had veiled the surprise which her presence caused him, she knew that he was sore hurt by his defeat in the borough. And if those who had thwarted him publicly were to intervene in his private concerns, if those who had suborned his kinsman were now to tamper with his daughter, ay, or were to incur a suspicion of tampering, she knew that his anger would know no bounds. She felt, indeed, that it would be justified.

She had to think, too, of her husband, who had sent her with the olive-branch. He was a politic, long-sighted man; who, content with the solid advantage he had gained, had no mind to push to extremity a struggle which must needs take place at his own door. He would be displeased, seriously displeased, if her mission, in place of closing, widened the breach.

And yet—and yet her heart ached for the woman, who had never wholly lost a place in her affections. And there was this. If Lady Sybil were thwarted no one was more capable of carrying out her threat and of taking some violent step, which would make matters a hundred times worse, alike for Sir Robert and his daughter.

While she weighed the matter, Lady Lansdowne found herself back at the rustic bridge. She was in the act of stepping upon it—still deep in thought—when her eyes encountered those of a young couple who were waiting at the farther end to give her passage. She looked a second time; and she stood. Then, smiling, she beckoned to the girl to come to her. Meanwhile, a side-thought, born of the conjunction of the two young people, took form in her mind. “I hope that may come to nothing,” she reflected.

Possibly it was for this reason, that when the man would have come also, she made it clear that the smile was not for him. “No, Mr. Flixton,” she said, the faintest possible distance in her tone. “I do not want you. I will relieve you of your charge.”

And when Mary, timid and blushing, had advanced to her, “My dear,” she said, holding out both her hands, and looking charmingly at her, “I should have known you anywhere.” And she drew her to her and kissed her. “I am Lady Lansdowne. I knew your mother, and I hope that you and my daughter will be friends.”

The mention of her mother increased Mary’s shyness. “Your ladyship is very kind,” she murmured. She did not know that her embarrassment was so far from hurting her, that the appeal in her eyes went straight to the elder woman’s heart.

“I mean to be kind at any rate,” Lady Lansdowne answered, smiling on the lovely face before her. And then, “My dear,” she said, “have they told you that you are very beautiful? More beautiful, I think, than your mother was: I hope”—and she did not try to hide the depth of her feelings—“that you may be more happy.”

The girl’s colour faded at this second reference to her mother; made, she could not doubt, with intention. Her father, even while he had overwhelmed her with benefits, even while he had opened this new life to her with a hand full of gifts, had taught her—tacitly or by a word at most—that that name was the key to a Bluebeard’s chamber; that it must not be used. She knew that her mother lived; she guessed that she had sinned against her husband; she understood that she had wronged her child. But she knew no more: and with this, since this at the least she must know, Sir Robert would have had her content.

And yet, to speak correctly, she did know more. She knew that the veiled lady who had intervened at long intervals in her life must have been her mother. But she felt no impulse of affection towards that woman—whom she had not seen. Her heart went out instead to a shadowy mother who walked the silent house at sunset, whose skirts trailed in the lonely passages, of whose career of wild and reckless gaiety she had vague hints here and there. It was to this mother, radiant and young, with the sheen of pearls in her hair, and the haunting smile, that she yearned. She had learned in some subtle way that the vacant place over the mantel in the hall which her own portrait by Maclise was to fill, had been occupied by her mother’s picture. And dreaming of the past, as what young girl alone in that stately house would not, she had seen her come and go in the half lights, a beautiful, spoilt child of fashion. She had traced her up and down the wide polished stairway, heard the tap of her slender sandal on the shining floors, perceived in long-closed chambers the fading odours of her favourite scent. And in a timid, frightened way she had longed to know her and to love her, to feel her touch on her hair and give her pity in return.

It is possible that she might have dwelt more intimately on Lady Sybil’s fate, possible that she might have ventured on some line of her own in regard to her, if her new life had been free from preoccupation; if there had not been with her an abiding regret, which clouded the sunniest prospects. But love, man’s love, woman’s love, is the most cruel of monopolists: it tramples on the claims of the present, much more of the absent. And if the novelty of Mary’s new life, the many marvels to which she must accustom herself, the new pleasures, the new duties, the strange new feeling of wealth—if, in fine, the necessity of orientating herself afresh in relation to every person and everything—was not able to put thoughts of her lover from her mind, the claims of an unknown mother had an infinitely smaller chance of asserting themselves.

But now at that word, twice pronounced by Lady Lansdowne, the girl stood ashamed and conscience-stricken. “You knew my mother?” she faltered.

“Yes, my dear,” the elder woman answered gravely. “I knew her very well.”

The gravity of the speaker’s tone presented a new idea to Mary’s mind. “She is not happy?” she said slowly.

“No.”

With that word Lady Lansdowne looked over her shoulder; conscience makes cowards, and her nervousness communicated itself to Mary. A possibility, at which the girl had never glanced, presented itself, and so abruptly that all the colour left her face. “She is not here?” she said.

“Yes, she is here. And—don’t be frightened, my dear!” Lady Lansdowne continued earnestly. “But listen to me! A moment ago I thought of throwing you in her way without your knowledge. But, since I have seen you, I have your welfare at heart, as well as hers. And I must, I ought to tell you, that I do not think your father would wish you to see her. I think that you should know this; and that you should decide for yourself—whether you will see her. Indeed, you must decide for yourself,” she repeated, her eyes fixed anxiously on the girl’s face. “I cannot take the responsibility.”

“She is unhappy?” Mary asked, looking most unhappy herself.

“She is unhappy, and she is ill.”

“I ought to go to her? You think so? Please—your ladyship, will you advise me?”

Lady Lansdowne hesitated. “I cannot,” she said.

“But—there is no reason,” Mary asked faintly, “why I should not go to her?”

“There is no reason. I honestly believe,” Lady Lansdowne repeated solemnly, “that there is no reason—except your father’s wish. It is for you to say how far that, which should weigh with you in all other things, shall weigh with you in this.”

Suddenly a burning colour dyed Mary’s face. “I will go to her,” she cried impulsively. She had been weak once, she had been weak! And how she had suffered for that weakness! But she would be strong now. “Where is she, if you please?” she continued bravely. “Can I see her at once?”

“She is in the path leading to the kennels. You know it? No, you need not take leave of me, child! Go, and,” Lady Lansdowne added with feeling, “God forgive me if I have done wrong in sending you!”

“You have not done wrong!” Mary cried, an unwonted spirit in her tone. And, without taking other leave, she turned and went—though her limbs trembled under her. She was going to her mother! To her mother! Oh, strange, oh, impossible thought!

Yet, engrossing as was that thought, it could not quite oust fear of her father and of his anger. And the blush soon died; so that the whiteness of her cheeks when she reached the Kennel Path was a poor set off for the ribbons that decked her muslin robe. What she expected, what she wished or feared or hoped she could never remember. What she saw, that which awaited her, was a woman, ill, and plainly clad, with only the remains of beauty in her wasted features; but withal cynical and hard-eyed, and very, very far from the mother of her day-dreams.

Such as she was the unknown scanned Mary with a kind of scornful amusement. “Oh,” she said, “so this is what they have made of Miss Vermuyden? Let me look at you, girl?” And laying her hands on Mary’s shoulders she looked long into the tearful, agitated face. “Why, you are like a sheet of paper!” she continued, raising the girl’s chin with her finger. “I wonder you dared to come with Sir Robert saying no! And, you little fool,” she continued in a swift spirit of irritation, “as soon not come at all, as look at me like that! You’ve got my chin and my nose, and more of me than I thought. But God knows where you got your hare’s eyes! Are you always frightened?”

“No, Ma’am, no!” she stammered.

“No, Ma’am? No, goose!” Lady Sybil retorted, mimicking her. “Why, ten kings on ten thrones had never made me shake as you are shaking! Nor twenty Sir Roberts in twenty passions! What is it you are afraid of? Being found with me?”

“No!” Mary cried. And, to do her justice, the emotion with which Lady Sybil found fault was as much a natural agitation, on seeing her mother, as fear on her own account.

“Then you are afraid of me?” Lady Sybil rejoined. And again she twitched the girl’s face to the light.

Mary was amazed rather than afraid: but she could not say that. And she kept silence.

“Or is it dislike of me?” the mother continued—a slight grimace, as of pain, distorting her face. “You hate me, I suppose? You hate me?”

“Oh, no, no!” the girl cried in distress.

“You do, Miss!” And with no little violence she pushed Mary from her. “You set down all to me, I suppose! I’ve kept you from your own, that’s it! I am the wicked mother, worse than a step-mother, who robbed you of your rights! And made a beggar of you and would have kept you a beggar! I am she who wronged you and robbed you—the unnatural mother! And you never ask,” she went on with fierce, impulsive energy, “what I suffered? How I was wronged! What I bore! No, nor what I meant to do—with you!”

“Indeed, indeed——”

“What I meant to do, I say!” Lady Sybil repeated violently. “At my death—and I am dying, but what is that to you?—all would have been told, girl! And you would have got your own. Do you believe me?” she added passionately, advancing a step in a manner almost menacing. “Do you believe me, girl?”

“I do, I do!” Mary cried, inexpressibly pained by the other’s vehemence.

“I’ll swear it, if you like! But I hoped that he—your father—would die first and never know! He deserved no better! He deserved nothing of me! And then you’d have stepped into all! Or better still—do you remember the day you travelled to Bristol? It’s not so long ago that you need forget it, Miss Vermuyden! I was in the coach, and I saw you, and I saw the young man who was with you. I knew him, and I told myself that there was a God after all, though I’d often doubted it, or you two would not have been brought together! I saw another way then, but you’d have parted and known nothing, if,” she continued, laughing recklessly, “I had not helped Providence, and sent him with a present to your school! But—why, you’re red enough now, girl! What is it?”

“He knew?” Mary murmured, with an effort. “You told him who I was, Ma’am?”

“He knew no more than a doll!” Lady Sybil answered. “I told him nothing, or he’d have told again! I know his kind. No, I thought to get all for you and thwart Vermuyden, too! I thought to marry his heir to the little schoolmistress—it was an opera touch, my dear, and beyond all the Tremaynes and Vivian Greys in the world! But there, when all promised well, that slut of a maid went to my husband, and trumped my trick!”

“And Mr.—Mr. Vaughan,” Mary stammered, “had no knowledge—who I was?”

“Mr.—Mr. Vaughan!” Lady Sybil repeated, mocking her, “had no knowledge? No! Not a jot, not a tittle! But what?” she went on, in a tone of derision, “Sits the wind there, Miss Meek? You’re not all milk and water, bread and butter and backboard, then, but have a spice of your mother, after all? Mr.—Mr. Vaughan!” again she mimicked her. “Why, if you were fond of the man, didn’t you say so?”

Mary, under the fire of those sharp, hard eyes, could not restrain her tears. But, overcome as she was, she managed in broken words to explain that her father had forbidden it.

“Oh, your father, was it?” Lady Sybil rejoined. “He said ‘No,’ and no it was! And the lord of my heart and the Man of Feeling is dismissed in disgrace! And now we weep in secret and the worm feeds on our damask cheek!” she ran on in a tone of raillery, assumed perhaps to hide a deeper feeling. “I suppose,” she added shrewdly, “Sir Robert would have you think that Vaughan knew who you were, and was practising on you?”

“Yes.”

“And you dismissed him at papa’s command, eh? That was it, was it?”

Mary could only confess the fact with tears, her distress in as strange contrast with the gaiety of her dress as with the strains of the neighbouring band, which told of festivity and pleasure. Perhaps some thought of this nature forced itself upon Lady Sybil’s light and evasive mind: for as she looked, the cynical expression of her eyes gave place to one of feeling and emotion, better fitted to those wasted features as well as to the relation in which the two stood to one another. She looked down the path, as if for the first time she feared an intrusive eye. Then her glance reverted to her daughter’s slender form and drooping head: and again it changed, it grew soft, it grew pitiful. The laurels shut all in, the path was empty. The maternal feeling, long repressed, long denied, long buried under a mountain of pique and resentment, of fancied wrongs and real neglect, broke forth irresistibly. In a step she was at the girl’s side, and snatching her to her bosom in a fierce embrace, was covering her face, her neck, her hair with hungry kisses.

The action was so sudden, so unexpected, that crushed and even hurt by the other’s grasp, and frightened by her vehemence, Mary would have resisted, would have tried to free herself. Then she understood. And a rush of pent-up affection, of love and pity, carried away the barriers of constraint and timidity. She clung to Lady Sybil with tears of joy, murmuring low broken words, calling her “Mother, Mother,” burying her face on her shoulder, pressing herself against her. In a moment her being was stirred to its depths. In all her life no one had caressed her after this fashion, no one had embraced her with passion, no one had kissed her with more than the placid affection which gentleness and goodness earn, and which kind offices kindly performed warrant. Even Sir Robert, even her father, proud as he was of her, much as he loved her, had awakened in her respect and gratitude—mingled with fear—rather than love.

After a time, warned by approaching voices, Lady Sybil put her from her; but with a low and exultant laugh. “You are mine, now!” she said, “Mine! Mine! You will come to me when I want you. And I shall want you soon! Very soon!”

Mary laid hold of her again. “Let me come now!” she cried with passion, forgetting all but the mother she had gained, the clinging arms which had cherished her, the kisses that had rained on her. “Let me come to you! You are ill!”

“No, not now! Not now! I will send for you when I want you,” Lady Sybil answered. “I will promise to send for you. And you will come,” she added with the same ring of triumph in her voice. “You will come!” For it was joy to her, even amid the satisfaction of her mother-love, to know that she had tricked her husband; it was joy to her to know that though she had taken all from the child and he had given all, the child was hers—hers, and could never be taken from her! “You will come! For you will not have me long. But,” she whispered, as the voices came nearer, “go now! Go now! And not a word! Not a word, child, as you love me. I will send for you when—when my time comes.”