Lady Jane puts on her Brilliants.
That evening, by the late post, had arrived a letter, in old General
Lennox's hand, to his wife. It had come at dinner-time, and it was with
a feeling of _ennui_ she read the address. It was one of those billets
which, in Swift's phrase, would "have kept cool;" but, subsiding on the
ottoman, she opened it--conjugal relations demanded this attention; and
Lady Jane, thinking "what a hand he writes!" ran her eye lazily down
those crabbed pages in search of a date to light her to the passage
where he announced his return; but there was none, so far as she saw.
"What's all this about? 'Masterson, the silkmercer at Marlowe--a
very'--something--'fellow--_honest_.' Yes, that's the word. So he may
be, but I shan't buy his horrid trash, if that's what you mean," said
she, crumpling up the stupid old letter, and leaning back, not in the
sweetest temper, and with a sidelong glance of lazy defiance through her
half-closed lashes, at the unconscious Lady Alice.
And now arrived a sleek-voiced servant, who, bowing beside Lady Jane,
informed her gently that Mr. Masterson had arrived with the parcel for
her ladyship.
"The parcel! what parcel?"
"I'm not aware, my lady."
"Tell him to give it to my maid. Ridiculous rubbish!" murmured Lady
Jane, serenely.
But the man returned.
"Mr. Masterson's direction from the General, please, my lady, was to
give the parcel into your own hands."
"Where is he?" inquired Lady Jane, rising with a lofty fierceness.
"In the small breakfast-parlour, my lady."
"Show me the way, please."
When Lady Jane Lennox arrived she found Mr. Masterson cloaked and
muffled, as though off a journey, and he explained, that having met
General Lennox yesterday accidentally in Oxford Street, in London, from
whence he had only just returned, he had asked him to take charge of a
parcel, to be delivered into her ladyship's own hands, where,
accordingly, he now placed it.
Lady Jane did not thank him; she was rather conscious of herself
conferring a favour by accepting anything at his hands; and when he was
gone she called her maid, and having reached her room and lighted her
candles, she found a very beautiful set of diamonds.
"Why, these are really superb, beautiful brilliants!" exclaimed the
handsome young lady. The cloud had quite passed away, and a beautiful
light glowed on her features.
Forthwith to the glass she went, in a charming excitement.
"Light all the candles you can find!" she exclaimed.
"Well, my eyes, but them is beautiful, my lady!" ejaculated the maid,
staring with a smirk, and feeling that at such a moment she might talk a
little, without risk, which, indeed, was true.
So with bed-room and dressing-table candles, and a pair purloined even
from old Lady Alice's room, a tolerably satisfactory illumination was
got up, and the jewels did certainly look dazzling.
The pendants flashed in her ears--the exquisite collar round her
beautiful throat--the tiara streamed livid fire over her low Venus-like
forehead, and her eager eyes and parted lips expressed her almost
childlike delight.
There are silver bullets against charmed lives. There are women from
whose snowy breasts the fire-tipped shafts of Cupid fall quenched and
broken; and yet a handful of these brilliant pellets will find their way
through that wintry whiteness, and lie lodged in her bleeding heart.
After I know not how long a time spent before the glass, it suddenly
struck Lady Jane to inquire of the crumpled letter, in which the name of
Masterson figured, and of whose contents she knew, in fact, nothing, but
that they named no day for the General's return. She had grown curious
as to who the donor might be. Were those jewels a gift from the
General's rich old sister, who had a splendid suit, she had heard, which
she would never put on again? Had they come as a bequest? How was it,
and whose were they?
And now with these flashing gems still dangling so prettily in her ears,
and spanning her white throat, as she still stood before the glass, she
applied herself to spell out her General's meaning in better temper than
for a long time she had read one of that gallant foozle's kindly and
honest rigmaroles. At first the process was often interrupted by those
glances at the mirror which it is impossible under ordinary
circumstances to withhold; but as her interest deepened she drew the
candle nearer, and read very diligently the stiffly written lines before
her.
They showed her that the magnificent present was from himself alone. I
should be afraid to guess how many thousand pounds had been lavished
upon those jewels. An uxorious fogey--a wicked old fool--perhaps we,
outside the domestic circle, may pronounce him. Lady Jane within that
magic ring saw differently.
The brief, blunt, soldier-like affection that accompanied this
magnificent present, and the mention of a little settlement of the
jewels, which made them absolutely hers in case her "old man" should
die, and the little conjecture "I wonder whether you would sometimes
miss him?" smote her heart strangely.
"What a gentleman--what an old darling!"--and she--how heinously had she
requited his manly but foolish adoration.
"I'll write to him this moment," she said, quite pale.
And she took the casket in her hands and laid it on her bed, and sat
down on the side of it, and trembled very much, and suddenly burst into
tears, insomuch that her maid was startled, and yielding forthwith to
her sympathy, largely leavened with curiosity, she came and stood by her
and administered such consolation as people will who know nothing of
your particular grief, and like, perhaps, to discover its causes.
But after a while her mistress asked her impatiently what she meant,
and, to her indignation and surprise, ordered her out of the room.
"I wish he had not been so good to me. I wish he had ever been unkind to
me. I wish he would beat me, Good Heaven! is it all a dream?"
So, quite alone, with one flashing pendant in her ear, with the necklace
still on--incoherently, wildly, and affrighted--raved Lady Jane, with a
face hectic and wet with tears.
Things appeared to her all on a sudden, quite in a new character, as
persons suddenly called on to leave life, see their own doings as they
never beheld them before; so with a shock, and an awakening, tumbled
about her the whole structure of her illusions, and a dreadful void with
a black perspective for the first time opened round her.
She did not return to the drawing-room. When Beatrix, fearing she might
be ill, knocked at the door of the green chamber, and heard from the far
extremity Lady Jane's clear voice call "Come in," she entered. She found
her lying in her clothes, with the counterpane thrown partially over
her, upon the funereal-looking old bed, whose dark green curtains
depended nearly from the ceiling.
"Well!" exclaimed Lady Jane, almost fiercely, rising to her elbow, and
staring at Beatrix.
"I--you told me to come in. I'm afraid I mistook."
"Did I? I dare say. I thought it was my maid. I've got such a bad
headache."
"I'm very sorry. Can I do anything?"
"No, Beatrix--no, thank you; it will go away of itself."
"I wish so much, Lady Jane, you would allow me to do anything for you.
I--I sometimes fear I have offended you. You seemed to like me, I
thought, when I saw you this spring in London, and I've been trying to
think how I have displeased you."
"_Displeased_ me! _you_ displease _me_! Oh! Beatrix, Beatrix, dear, you
don't know, you can never know. I--it is a feeling of disgust and
despair. I hate myself, and I'm frightened and miserable, and I wish I
dare cling to you."
She looked for a moment as if she would have liked to embrace her, but
she turned away and buried her face in her pillow.
"Dear Lady Jane, you must not be so agitated. You certainly are not
well," said Beatrix, close to the bedside, and really a good deal
frightened. "Have you heard--I hope you have not--any ill news?"
If Lady Jane had been dead she could not have seemed to hear her less.
"I hope General Lennox is not ill?" inquired she timidly.
"Ill? No--I don't know; he's very well. I hope he's very well. I hope he
is; and--and I know what I wish for myself."
Beatrix knew what her grandmamma thought of Lady Jane's violence and
temper, and she began to think that something must have happened to
ruffle it that evening.
"I wish you'd go, dear, you _can_ do nothing for me," said Lady Jane,
ungraciously, with a sudden and sombre change of manner.
"Well, dear Lady Jane, if you think of anything I can do for you, pray
send for me; by-and-by you might like me to come and read to you; and
would you like me to send your maid?"
"Oh! no--no, no, _no_--nothing--good-night," repeated Lady Jane,
impatiently.
So Beatrix departed, and Lady Jane remained alone in the vast chamber,
much more alone than one would be in a smaller one.