THE PAPER BULLET.
Like the man and woman in the toy weather-house, Mr. Schröder's two
houses never were "to the fore" at the same time. When the one was
lighted, the other was gloomy; when the one was tenanted, the other
was empty; when the one was decorated, the other was comfortless. As
the second breath of summer came floating over Kensington Gardens,
after the may- and apple-blossoms had disappeared, but long before
dust and drouth had settled down on the greensward and the umbrageous
walks of the parks; when there was evinced among young men a perpetual
desire to dine at the Star-and-Garter at Richmond, and an undying
hatred of passing the Sunday within the metropolis; when Mr.
Quartermaine began to wonder where he should stow all his visitors,
and Mr. Skindle of the Orkney Arms began to think of building; when
fashionable people thought it no more harm to sit in their carriages
outside Grange's, than to call diamonds 'dimonds,' or ribbon 'ribbin;'
when the Sunday-afternoon attendance at the Zoological Gardens began
to exceed the week-day; when green-peas began to have some taste, and
asparagus to be something else beside stalk and stick,--then the glory
of the Saxe-Coburg-Square establishment showed strong symptoms of
waning. The usual amount of solemn dinner-party had been gone through;
every body necessary had been asked to balls, music, and
_conversazioni_; Mrs. Schröder's taste and Mr. Schröder's wealth had
been exhibited constantly at the Opera and at some of the most
fashionable gatherings in London; and one, if not both, of them longed
for a little quiet. This resulted in the renting of Uplands, when
blank misery fell upon the establishment in Saxe-Coburg Square. All
the ornaments and nicknacks were removed and put away; the chandeliers
were shrouded in big holland bags; the shutters were put up; and the
spurious Schröder ancestors scowled dimly from the wall over a great
desert of dining-table, no longer shining with snowy damask or
sparkling silver and glass. The staff of servants,--the French cook
and the Italian confectioner; the ponderous butler, so frequently
mistaken by Mrs. Schröder's West-end friends for a City magnate; the
solemn footman, large-whiskered, large-calved, ambrosial, and most
offensive; the lady's-maid and the buttons,--all, down to the
kitchen-maid, who lived in a perpetual state of grease and dripping,
and who was preparing herself for "plain cook, good," in the
_Times_ column of 'Want Places,'--all went away into what the said
kitchen-maid was heard to designate "that rubbiging country;" and an
old woman, weird, puffy, dusty, with old black silk stitched about her
head where her hair should have been, and with bits of beard sticking
on her chin, came and took up her abode in the housekeeper's room and
"kep' 'ouse" herself.
But when October was well set in, and the days grew short, and the
showers not unfrequent; when, even if there were no showers, the heavy
mists of morn and dews of night left the ground moist and dank and
plappy; when weird night-winds rose and sighed Banshee-like over the
hushed fields; when the lawn lost its soft verdure and grew brown and
corrugated; when the trees, which during the summer had so
picturesquely fringed the lawn and framed the distance, now gaunt and
dismal, swayed mournfully to and fro, drearily rattling their stripped
limbs,--then a general inclination to return back to the comfort of
London began to be manifested by all the inhabitants of Uplands. It
was all very pleasant when Mr. Schröder had spun his chestnuts up the
leafy lanes, or over the breezy hills, in the summer; but it was a
very different thing when he had to come the same road from town in a
close carriage, with the rain pattering against the windows, and with
no gas for the last three miles of the journey. It was dull work for
Mrs. Schröder and whatever female companion she might happen to have,
with nothing to do but yawn over novels, or listlessly thrum the
piano, or watch the gardeners filling their high barrows with dead
leaves and unceasingly sweeping the lawns and paths. She could have
relieved her tedium by a little shopping, she thought; but there were
no shops--at least what she called shops--within miles of Uplands. As
to the servants, they all hated the place; there were no military for
the females, and the policemen were all mounted patrols, who "just
looked round at night on 'orseback, and never had no time for a
gossip, or a bit of supper, or anythink friendly;" while the male
domestics were removed from their clubs and all the other delights
which a town-life afforded. So, to the great joy of all, the word was
given to march; and the whole establishment descended on Saxe-Coburg
Square leaving Uplands to the care of the Scotch gardener, who removed
his wife and family up from one of the lodges, and encamped in the
kitchen and adjacent rooms.
Mrs. Schröder was by no means ill-pleased at the return to town. The
moving gave her no trouble; she had merely to walk into her rooms and
find every thing arranged for her; and she was in hopes that a
salutary change would be effected in at least one arrangement which
was beginning to worry her. The truth is, that during the last week of
their stay at Uplands it had begun to dawn upon Mrs. Schröder that
Charles Beresford's attentions were not what they should be. She had
more than once endeavoured to think out the subject; but her
intellects were none of the brightest, and she got frightened, and
either began to cry, or let every thing go by the board in the grand
certainty that "it would be all right in the end." But of late she had
felt the necessity of taking some steps to bring the acquaintance
between her and her admirer to some proper footing. This had not come
on her entirely of her own accord. She had noticed that her husband
(whose attentions to her increased day by day from the time when his
heart seemed to soften so suddenly and so strangely towards her)
seemed to regard the presence of the Commissioner with obvious
impatience. Mr. Schröder never, indeed, said any thing to his wife on
the subject; but he evidently chafed when Beresford was in the house:
and if Mrs. Schröder and Beresford were at all thrown together apart
from the general company, they were sure to see Mr. Schröder's eyes
fixed upon them. Others of her friends had not been so reticent.
Captain Lyster had hinted once or twice, what Barbara Churchill had
several times roundly spoken out--that Beresford was a _vaurien_,
whose attentions were compromising to any married woman; and that if
he had the smallest spark of gentlemanly feeling in him, he would
desist from paying them. So Mrs. Schröder, who was nothing but a very
silly weak little woman (there are few women who are really bad, even
among those who have erred: the Messalinas and the Lady Macbeths are
very exceptional cases), and who really had a sincere affection for
her husband, had made up her mind that she was behaving badly, and had
determined to break gradually, but uncompromisingly, with Mr.
Beresford and his attentions. She had been so completely hoodwinked by
the fraternal relations which, at Mr. Simnel's suggestion, the
Commissioner had cultivated, that it was not until immediately
previous to their quitting Uplands that she saw the danger she had
been running, and felt horribly incensed with Mr. Beresford for his
part in the affair.
They had been back for some days in Saxe-Coburg Square, and Alice
Schröder was nestling in her easy-chair after luncheon, wondering when
the opportunity would occur in which she could plainly point out to
Mr. Beresford that he must altogether alter his conduct for the
future, when Mrs. Churchill was announced, and Barbara entered the
room.
She was very pale, walked very erect, and held out her two hands to
Alice as she advanced.
"Why, Barbara! Barbara darling!" said impulsive little Alice, "I'm so
delighted to--why, what's the matter, dear? how strange and odd you
look!"
"I want you to have me here for a few days, Alice, if you will."
"Why, of course, dear! I'm so glad you've come at last; it wasn't for
the want of asking, you know. And Mr. Churchill will be here to
dinner, dear, at seven, eh?"
"Mr. Churchill will not come at all, Alice," said Barbara very
gravely. "I am here alone."
"But he knows you've come here, doesn't he?"
"You don't understand me yet, Alice. I have left my husband."
"Left your husband! oh, Barbara, how dreadful! how could you!" and
Alice Schröder's face exhibited such signs of unmistakable terror,
that for the first time the magnitude of the step she had taken, and
the apparent impossibility of its recall, seemed to flash upon
Barbara. A rush of tears blinded her eyes; and she held out her hands
appealingly, as she said, "You--you don't shrink from me, Alice?"
Astonishment, nothing more, had caused Mrs. Schröder's trepidation; in
an instant she had rushed forward and wound her arms round Barbara's
neck, saying, "Shrink from you, my darling? why, what madness to
suppose such a thing! Where should you come but to my house, in such a
case? Besides, it's nothing, darling, I suspect, but a temporary
little foolish quarrel. Mr. Churchill will be here to dinner, and take
you home with him afterwards."
But Barbara shook her head and burst into tears, saying that it was a
matter which admitted of no compromise and no amicable settlement. And
then, between floods of crying, she told Alice the outline of the
quarrel; dwelling specially upon Frank's refusal to give up the letter
he had received, or to say who was his correspondent. Alice seemed
deeply impressed with the atrocity of Frank's conduct, though she
doubted whether she herself would have had the courage to take such a
decided step as leaving her home ("You always said I was wanting in
spirit, Barbara; and indeed I should not have known where to go to").
She recollected Barbara's having been upset at a letter which had come
to Frank at Bissett, before they were engaged; and she was full of "O
my's!" and general wonderment, as to who could have written both these
mysterious epistles.
"Very odd," she said--"very odd, and very unpleasant. You're sure it
was a woman's hand, dear? People do make such mistakes about that
sometimes. Most dreadful, indeed! Well, that's one blessing, I've
often thought, with Gustav, and is some compensation for his grayness
and his being so much older, and that sort of thing. For grayness is
better than jealousy, isn't it, dear? and I'm sure it's pleasanter
to think of your husband at whist than waltzing, as some of them
do--whirling about the room as though there were no such thing as the
marriage service And letters too, that's awful! I'm so glad you came
here, Barbara darling; and so will Gustav be, when he comes in. We
must tell him all about it. I tell him every thing now, he is _so_
kind."
He was _very_ kind, this heavy-headed elderly German merchant. When
he came in, his wife at once told him what had occurred; and when he
met Barbara in the drawing-room, before dinner, he took her hands in
both of his, and pressed his lips gravely on her forehead, and bade
her welcome, and told her to consider his house as her home. For Mr.
Schröder had, in his strange old-fashioned way, a very keen sense of
honour and of the respect due to women; and he felt, from the story
that had been told to him, that Barbara's feelings had to a certain
extent been outraged. He had never held much good opinion of the
literary craft: he could not understand a calling which did not employ
clerks and keep ledgers and day-books, which did not minister to any
absolute requirement, and which only represented something visionary
and fanciful. He shared in a very widespread notion that the _morale_
of people engaged in that and similar pursuits was specially liable to
deterioration; and he took what he understood to be Frank Churchill's
defection from the paths of propriety as an indorsement of his idea,
and a proof that he had been right in its adoption. He happened to let
fall some remark to this effect, a few words only, and not strongly or
savagely put, but they had immense weight with Barbara Churchill.
For they immediately recalled to her recollection her several
interviews with her aunt, Miss Lexden, when she first announced the
engagement with Frank, and she remembered the acrimony with which the
old lady had spoken of the class to which her intended husband
belonged. The very words her aunt had used were ringing in her ears.
"If I were to see you with broken health, with broken spirits,
ill-used, deserted--as is likely enough, for I know these people,--I
would not lift one finger to help you after your degradation of me!"
"For I know these people!" Too well she knew them, it appears, when
she predicated what had actually occurred. Not deserted, though; that
at least could never be cast in her teeth. It was she who had taken
the initiative:--she who had broken the bonds and--what could the
world say to that? Would it not denounce her conduct as strange,
unwomanly, and unwifelike? And if it did, what did she care? Her
pride, her spirit, had often been spoken of; and she felt in no way
ashamed of having permitted herself to be swayed by them in this great
trial of her life. There must be many who would thoroughly understand
her conduct, and sympathise with her; and even if there were none, she
had the courage and the determination to stand alone. That she must to
a great extent have right on her side--that what she had done could
not be looked upon as extravagant or unjustifiable--was proved, she
argued to herself, by the kind reception she had met with at the hands
of Mr. Schröder, a man who, as she judged from all she had heard and
seen of him; would not be likely lightly to pass over any breach of
decorum. How or where the rest of her life was to be passed engrossed
very little of her attention at first. She knew that there was no
chance of reconciliation with her aunt; nor did she wish it. She had
quarrelled with her husband, certainly, and would never be induced to
live with him again; but her cheek flushed when she remembered what
insults had been heaped upon Frank by her aunt; and she thought almost
tenderly of him as she decided that after these insults nothing would
induce her to humiliate herself to Miss Lexden's caprices. The thought
of writing to Sir Marmaduke Wentworth crossed her mind; but Alice
Schröder had told her that Sir Marmaduke was laid up with a dangerous
illness in the Pyrenees; it would be very inopportune to worry him,
then, with domestic dissensions; and moreover Barbara was in very
great doubt as to whether the old gentleman, were he able, would not
take an active part in promoting a peace, and whether he would not
strongly disapprove of, and openly condemn, the course she had taken.
He had a very high opinion of Frank Churchill, who was his godson;
and unless it could be distinctly proved that he had committed
himself--unless it could be distinctly proved--could it? what proof
was there? had not her pride and spirit involved her in a snare? how
could she make her case good before an unbiassed judge? There was the
letter, and the letter in the same handwriting which he had received
at Bissett; but she had no actual proofs that they were not such as
should have been sent to any properly-conducted man. Great Heaven, if
she had been too precipitate! if she had brought about an _exposé_ by
rashness and wretched jealousy; if she had wrongly suspected that kind
and generous soul, and cruelly stabbed him without hearing his
defence! As Barbara turned these matters in her mind, sitting in her
bedroom on the first night of her arrival in Saxe-Coburg Square, she
felt the whole current of her being setting towards Frank; and she
covered with her tears and kisses his miniature which hung in a
locket at her watch-chain. Must this be the end of it? could her
fatal folly--if folly it were--darken the rest of her life? Oh, no!
she could never acknowledge her error,--that would be impossible; her
pride would never permit her to take the first steps towards a
reconciliation: but Frank would come--she knew it; he would come and
ask her to return; and she would go; and the rest of their life should
be unclouded happiness.
But Frank did not come; and the next morning when Barbara found the
hours wearing very slowly by, and no solution of her wretchedness
arrived at; when little Alice Schröder's well-meant chatter
--well-meant, intended to be consolatory, but still chatter after
all--had utterly failed in giving the smallest consolation; when
Captain Lyster had called, and having been properly prepared by Mrs.
Schröder before he saw Barbara, had evidently the greatest difficulty
in assuming ignorance and unconcern; when the day had worn on, and no
progress had been made by her in any one way,--the bitter spirit rose
in her more strongly than ever, and she felt more and more impressed
as to the righteousness of her cause. The fact that Frank had not come
to her, crying "peccavi," and imploring her to return, had, to a very
great extent, convinced her that he must have been grievously in the
wrong. Fully prepared not merely to forgive him what he had not done,
but to be generous enough to meet him half way in an advance which
ought to have been made by her alone, she was annoyed beyond
description at his making no sign; and each hour that passed over her
head strengthened her obstinacy and deepened her misery.
So several days went by. Barbara resolutely refused to go out; nothing
could induce her to be seen in public, and none were admitted to the
house save the intimate male friends of the family. Barbara
stipulated, at once, that no women should be let in, and Alice, who
believed in the most marvellous degree in Barbara, agreed to it. She
did, indeed, suggest one female name, the name of a lady in whom she
was sure, she said, Barbara would find great comfort; but Barbara, who
had some acquaintance with the person in question, hissed out, "Cat!"
with such ferocity, that little Alice never dared again to open the
question. The men-friends were restricted to two or three, among whom
Barbara was glad, for Alice's sake, to find Captain Lyster, and
equally glad not to find Mr. Beresford. She remembered Lyster's
confidence to her at Uplands (she had reason to remember it, she
thought with bitterness), and that confidence, though accidentally
distressing to herself, had impressed her with a high notion of the
Captain's truth and honour. She felt as though she would have liked to
have talked to him about her own troubles; but she did not know how to
start the subject, and Lyster never gave her the smallest chance.
On the fourth day after Barbara's arrival, Mrs. Schröder asked her
guest, as usual, if she would drive out after luncheon, and having
received the usual negative, declared that she could not stand it any
longer, but that air she must have. Barbara would excuse her? Of
course Barbara would; nothing she liked so much as being left alone.
Then Mrs. Schröder determined on riding, and ordered her horse and
groom round to the door, and went out for a ride.
She though& she would go for a stretch round the suburban lanes; it
was better and more fitted for an unaccompanied lady than the Park. So
turning in at Queen's Gate, she skirted the Row, and riding over the
Serpentine bridge turned up towards Westbourne Terrace, at the end of
which, leisurely riding along, she saw Mr. Beresford. He saw her too,
and in an instant was at her side; sitting his horse to perfection,
and bowing with perfect ease and grace. He asked her where she was
riding, and begged to be allowed to accompany her. She had a refusal
on the tip of her tongue; then recollected that she might never have
another chance of speaking to him as frankly and decidedly as she had
made up her mind to speak. So she consented. During the ride, she
spoke earnestly and well; Beresford tried sophistry and special
pleading; but they had little chance with her, so thoroughly in
earnest was she. It was while in the height of his argument that they
passed the lodge-gates of The Den, and were seen by Kate Mellon.
Mrs. Schröder rode home that evening in a happier frame of mind than
she had been in for months. She felt that she had effectually settled
all Mr. Beresford's pretentious, and that she might meet her husband
without the smallest shadow on her brow. Her joy was a little dashed
by the receipt of a letter from her husband, which was put into her
hand as she alighted from her horse. It said that an Egyptian prince,
with whom the house had large transactions, had arrived at
Southampton, and that he, Gustav, as representing the house, was
compelled to go down and do the honours to him; that he had
telegraphed to his brother to relieve him as soon as possible; and
that he hoped to be back the next day.
Mrs. Schröder's hopes were realised. In the course of the next
afternoon a cab drove up to the door in Saxe-Coburg Square, and Mr.
Schröder descended from it. His wife, who had rushed to the balcony at
the sound of wheels, noticed that his step was slow, and that--a thing
she had never seen him do before--he leant upon the cabman's arm. When
he entered the room she rushed to him, and, embracing him, asked him
how he was.
"I am well, my darling," he answered; "quite well, but that I have
rheumatism, or something like it. A curious pain--dead, dull, stupid
pain--in my left arm and shoulder. Rheumatism, of course! And you,
Barbara, my dear; you are well? That's right; no news with you, of
course? Ah! I have been thinking much about you in the train, and we
will talk to-morrow of your affairs. Well, Alice, what news? Did you
persuade Barbara to drive yesterday?"
"No, she refused again; so I went out on horseback."
"Ah, ah! that was right. Alone?"
"I went alone; but I met Mr. Beresford."
"Beresford! I hate that name; he is a bad man. Bad! bad!"
And Mr. Schröder shook his hand in the air, and was obviously very
much excited.
"Gustav," said Mrs. Schröder, "I'm very sorry that--"
"Ah, you don't know! More of this Beresford another time. A bad man,
my dear! Now I must look through my letters. Dinner at seven, eh?"
And with a bow, Mr. Schröder descended to his library.
The clock had struck seven, the gong had boomed through the house, and
Alice and Barbara were standing at the dining-table; the place at the
head being vacant.
"You had better tell your master, Pilkington," said Mrs. Schröder to
the great butler; "he is probably in his dressing-room."
The great butler condescended to inform his mistress that he did not
think his master had left the libery.
Mrs. Schröder then bade him find his miter, and tell him they were
waiting dinner.
The butler left the room, and the next moment came running back, with
a face whiter than his own neckcloth. Barbara saw him ere he had
crossed the threshold; in an instant she saw that something had
happened; and motioning the butler to precede her, walked to the
library, followed by Mrs. Schröder.
Fallen prone on his face, across the library-table, lay Mr. Schröder,
dead, with an open letter rustling between his stiffening fingers.