CLAUDIA'S TROUBLES AND PERILS.
Like love in a worldly breast
Alone in my lady's chamber
The lamp burns low, suppressed
'Mid satins of broidered amber
Where she lies, sore distressed.
My lady here alone
May think till her heart is broken
Of the love that is dead and done,
Of the day that with no token
For evermore hath gone.
--_Owen Meredith._
All day long Claudia lay abed within her darkened chamber, It was a
scene of magnificence, luxury, and repose. Scarcely a ray of light
stole through the folds of the golden-brown curtains of window and
bed. No sound broke the stillness of the air, except the dull,
monotonous thunder of the sea upon the rocks below. This at length
soothed her nervous excitement and lulled her to repose.
She slept until the evening, and awoke comparatively free from pain.
Her first thought on waking was of the housekeeper, and her first
feeling was the desire to see the old creature, and if possible make
a friend of her.
Ah! but it was bitterly galling to Lady Vincent's pride to be
obliged to stoop to the degradation of questioning a servant
concerning the domestic affairs of her own husband's family! But she
felt that her life and honor were imperiled, and that she must use
such means for her safety as circumstances offered. Mrs. Murdock
impressed her as being an honest, truthful, and trustworthy woman.
And Claudia wished to discover, by what should seem casual
conversation with her, how much or how little truth there might be
in Lord Vincent's representations of Mrs. Dugald's position in the
family.
She put out her hand and rang the bell that hung just within her
reach.
Katie answered it.
"Tell the housekeeper I would like to see her now," said Lady
Vincent.
Katie tossed her head and went out. Katie was already jealous of the
housekeeper.
In a few minutes Mrs. Murdock entered.
"I hope your leddyship is better," she said, courtesying.
"I am better; do not stand; sit down on that chair beside me," said
Claudia kindly.
The dame sank slowly into the offered seat and said: "Will your
leddyship please to take onything?"
"Nothing, just yet."
"Can I do naething for you, me leddy?"
"Yes, thank you; you can take that flagon of carmelite water on the
stand beside you and bathe my forehead and temples while you sit
there," said Claudia slowly and hesitatingly; for she was thinking
how best to open the subject that occupied her mind. At length,
while the dame was carefully bathing her head, Claudia said, with
assumed carelessness:
"Mrs. Dugald is very beautiful."
"Ou, aye, me leddy, she's weel eneugh to look upon, if that was a',"
replied the housekeeper dryly.
"Has she been here long?"
"Ever sin' Mr. Kenneth died, me leddy."
"Mr. Kenneth?" echoed Claudia, in an interrogative tone; for she
remembered well that Kenneth was the name of Lord Vincent's younger
brother, said to have been married to La Faustina; but she wished to
hear more without, however, compromising herself by asking direct
questions.
"Mr. Kenneth?" she repeated, looking into the housekeeper's face.
"Ou, aye, your leddyship; just the Honorable Kenneth Dugald, puir
lad!"
"Why do you say poor lad?"
"I beg your leddyship's pardon. I mean just naething. It's on'y just
a way I ha'."
Claudia reflected a moment; and then, though it went sorely against
her pride so to speak to a dependent, she said:
"Mrs. Murdock, I am a very young and inexperienced woman; I have
been motherless from my infancy; I am 'a stranger in a strange
land'; unacquainted even with the members of my husband's family; my
meeting with Mrs. Dugald here was unexpected, Lord Vincent never
having mentioned her existence to me; my first impression of her was
very unfavorable; some words you dropped deepened that impression;
and now I feel that there are circumstances with which I ought to be
made acquainted and with which you can acquaint me; will you do so?"
"Aye, me leddy, and with the freer conscience that I ken weel his
lairdship the airl would approve. Ye ken, me leddy, there were but
twa brithers; Laird Vincent and the Honorable Kenneth Dugald?"
"I am aware of that."
"Aweel they were in Paris tegither and fell in somewhere with this
quean."
"This--what?"
"This player-bodie, me leddy; who afterwards put the glamour over
Mr. Kenneth's eyes to make her Mrs. Dugald."
"Oh," said Claudia to herself, "then that is true; the woman really
is the widow of Kenneth Dugald and the sister-in-law of Lord
Vincent. Go on, Mrs. Murdock; I am listening."
"Aweel, she had the art, me leddy, to make him marry her. A burning
shame it was, me leddy, in one of his noble name, but he did it. He
was a minor, ye ken, being but twenty years of age, and sae he could
na be lawfu' married in France nor in England, and sae he brought
his player-woman to auld Scotland and made her his wife--woe worth
the day!"
"This must have been a terrible mortification to the earl?"
"Ye may weel say that, me leddy. His lairdship never saw or spoke to
Mr. Kenneth afterwards. But he purchased him a commission in a
regiment that was just about to embark for the Crimea, where the
young gentleman went, taking his wife with him, and where he died of
the fever, leaving his widow to find her way back as she would."
"Poor young man!"
"Aye, puir laddie! nae doubt regret helped the fever to kill him.
Aweel, his widow come her ways back to Scotland, as I had the honor
to tell your leddyship, and made her appeal to his lairdship the
airl for dower. But your leddyship may weel ken that me laird would
ha'e naething to say till her. Will I bathe your leddyship's head
ony langer?"
"Yes, please, and go on with what you are telling me."
"Aweel, me leddy, failing to come over the airl, she began to cast
her spells over his lairdship my Laird Vincent. This gave the airl
great oneasiness, for ye ken he feared this woman that she should
bewitch the ane as she had the ither, e'en to the length of making
him marry her. And to say naething of ony ither reason against
siccan a marriage, we think it wrang for ony mon to wed wi' his
brother's widow. Sae the airl took short measures wi' his son, Laird
Vincent, and stopped his siller; but got him an appointment to carry
out papers to the minister, away yonder in the States. Sae the young
laird sent his sister-in-law, as he calls her, up here to bide her
lane, telling his feyther, the airl, he could na' turn his brither's
widow out of doors. Which, ye ken, me leddy, sounded weel eneugh.
Sae hither she cam'. And an unco' sair heart she's gi'e us a' sin'
ever she cam'!"
"Has she been here ever since?"
"Nay, me leddy; she left hame last August and did na come back till
a month."
Claudia was satisfied. This was the same woman that she had seen on
the platform of the railway station at Jersey City.
"Does the earl know of this lady's continued residence beneath his
roof?"
"I dinna ken, me leddy. But I'm just thinking his lairdship will na
care onything about it ony langer, sin' his son is weel married to
yoursel', me leddy."
"The earl liked his son's marriage, then?" inquired Claudia, for
upon this point she felt anxious for authentic information.
"Aye, did he! didna it keep the lad out o' danger o' the wiles o'
siccan a quean as yon? And now, will I bring your leddyship some
refreshment ?"
"Yes," said Claudia, "you may bring me a bowl of your oatmeal
porridge. I should like to taste your national food."
The housekeeper left the room and Claudia fell into thought. Two
important facts she had gained by descending from her dignity to
gossip with an upper servant, namely: That La Faustina was really
the widow of Kenneth Dugald, and that the Earl of Hurstmonceux was
well pleased with his son's marriage to herself, and would therefore
be likely to be her partisan in any trouble she might have on
account of Mrs. Dugald. She resolved, therefore, to be very wary in
her conduct until the arrival of her father, and then to request an
introduction to the earl's family. Bitterly galling as it would be
to her pride, she even determined to meet Mrs. Dugald in the drawing
room and at the table without demur; since she could treat her as
the widow of the Honorable Kenneth Dugald without openly
compromising her own dignity. Finally she concluded to meet Lord
Vincent's treacherous courtesy with assumed civility.
On the third day Lady Vincent felt well enough to join the viscount
and Mrs. Dugald at breakfast. Pursuant to her resolution she
received their congratulations with smiles, and answered their
inquiries as to her health with thanks.
It was a foggy, misty, drizzly day the precursor of a long spell of
dark and gloomy weather, that Claudia at length grew to fear would
never come to an end.
During this time the monotony of Claudia's life at the castle was
really dreadful.
And this was something like it: She would wake about seven o'clock,
but knowing that it was hours too early to rise in that house, she
would lie and think until she was ready to go mad. At nine o'clock
she would ring for her maid, Sally, and spend an hour in dawdling
over her toilet. At ten she would go down to breakfast--a miserable,
uncomfortable meal of hollow civility or sullen silence. After
breakfast she would go into the library and hunt among the old,
musty, worm-eaten books for something readable, but without success.
Then, ready to kill herself from weariness of life, she would wrap
up in cloak and hood and climb the turret stairs and go out upon the
ramparts of the castle and walk up and down with the drizzling mist
above and around her and the thundering sea beneath her--up and
down--hour after hour--up and down--lashing herself into such
excitement that she would be tempted to throw herself from the
battlements, to be crushed to death by the rocks or swallowed up by
the waves below.
At length, as fearing to trust herself with this temptation, she
would descend into the castle again, and go to her own rooms, and
try to interest herself in a little needle-work, a little writing, a
talk with Katie or with Mrs. Murdock.
At last the creeping hours would bring luncheon, when the same
inharmonious party would assemble around the same ungenial table,
and eat and drink without enjoyment or gratitude.
After that she would lie down and try to sleep, and then write a
letter home, do a little embroidery, yawn, weep, wish herself dead,
and wonder how soon she would hear from her father.
The dragging hours would at length draw on the late dinner, when she
would make an elaborate toilet, just for pastime, and go to dinner,
which always seemed like a funeral feast. Here Claudia formed the
habit of drinking much more wine than was good for her: and she did
it to blunt her sensibility; to obtund the sharpness of her
heartache; to give her sleep.
After dinner they would go into the drawing room, where coffee would
be served. And after that, if Mrs. Dugald were in the humor, there
would be music. And then the party would disperse. Claudia would go
into her own room and pass a long, lonely, wretched evening,
sometimes speculating on life, death, and immortality, and wondering
whether, in the event of her deciding to walk out of this world with
which she was so much dissatisfied, into the other of which she knew
nothing, she would be any better off.
At eleven o'clock she always rang for wine and biscuits, and drank
enough to make her sleep. Then she would go to bed, sink into a
heavy, feverish sleep, that would last until the morning, when she
would awake with a headache, as well as a heartache, to pass just
such a day as the preceding one.
Such were Claudia's days and nights. Ah! how different to those she
had pictured when she sold herself and her fortune for rank and
title.
Her days were all so much alike that they could only be
distinguished by the change in her dinner dress, and the difference
in the bill of fare.
"It is maize-colored moire antique and mutton one day and violet-
colored velvet and veal another; that is all!" wrote Claudia in one
of her letters home.
That was all! The same leaden sky overhung the land and sea; the
same fine, penetrating mist drizzled slowly down and sifted like
snow into everything; the same stupid routine of sleeping, walking,
dressing, eating, drinking, undressing, and sleeping again, occupied
the household.
No visitors ever came to the house, and of course Claudia went
nowhere. She was unspeakably miserable, and would have wished for
death, had she not been a firm believer in future retribution.
"Misery loves company," it is said. There was one inmate in this
unblessed house who seemed quite as miserable as Claudia herself.
This was one of the housemaids; the one who had charge of Claudia's
own rooms. Lady Vincent had noticed this poor girl, and had observed
that she was pale, thin, sad, always with red eyes, and often in
tears. Once she inquired kindly:
"What is the matter with you, Ailsie?"
"It's just naething, me leddy," was the weeping girl's answer.
"But I am sure it is something. Can you not tell me? What is it
troubles you?"
"Just naething, me leddy," was still the answer.
"Are you away from all your friends? Are you homesick?"
"I ha'e naebody belanging to me, me leddy."
"You are an orphan?"
"Aye, me leddy."
"Then you must really tell me what is the matter with you, my poor
child; I will help you if I can."
"Indeed I canna tell you, my leddy. Your leddyship maun please to
forgi'e me, and not mind me greeting. It's just naething; it's ony a
way I ha'e."
And this was all that Claudia could get out of this poor girl.
Once she inquired of Mrs. Murdock: "What ails Ailsie Dunbar? Her
looks trouble me."
"Indeed, me leddy, I dinna ken. The lassie is greeting fra morning
till night, and will na gie onybody ony satisfaction about it! But I
will try to find out." And that was all Lady Vincent could get out
of the housekeeper.
The month of November crept slowly by. And December came, darker,
duller, drearier than its predecessor. And now anxiety was added to
Claudia's other troubles. She had not heard from her father.
The monotony, deepened by suspense, grew horrible. She wished for an
earthquake, or an inundation--anything to break the dreadful spell
that bound her, to burst the tomb of her buried life and let in air
and light.
Sometimes she overheard the precious pair of friends who shared her
home murmuring their sinful nonsense together; and she was
disgusted.
And sometimes she heard them in angry and jealous altercation; and
she grew insane, and wished from the bottom of her heart that one
might murder the other, if it were only to break the horrible
monotony of the castle life, by bringing into it the rabble rout of
inspectors, constables, coroners, and juries. At length there came a
day when that frenzied wish was gratified.