[Illustration: BARBARA REBELL]
BARBARA REBELL
_By_
MRS. BELLOC-LOWNDES
Author of "The Heart of Penelope"
Frontispiece by
GILBERT WHITE
_AUTHORIZED EDITION_
NEW YORK
B. W. DODGE AND COMPANY
1907
PROLOGUE.
"Have regard to thy name; for that shall continue with thee
above a thousand great treasures of gold."
ECCLESIASTICUS xl. 12.
Barbara Rebell's tenth birthday,--that is the ninth of June, 1870,--was
destined to be long remembered by her as a day of days; both as having
seen the first meeting with one who, though unknown till then, had
occupied a great place in her imagination, if only because the name of
this lady, her godmother, had been associated every night and morning
with that of her father and mother in her prayers, and as having
witnessed the greatest of her childish disappointments.
Certain dates to most of us become in time retrospectively memorable,
and doubtless this sunny, fragrant June day would in any case have been
remembered by Barbara as the last of a long series of high days and
holidays spent by her in her French home during the first few years of
her life. Barbara Rebell left St. Germains two months after her tenth
birthday; but the town which has seen so few changes in its stately,
ordered beauty, since it afforded a magnificent hospitality to the last
Stuart King and Queen of England, always remained to her "home," in the
dear and intimate sense of the word, and that for many years after
everything save the actual roof and walls of the villa where Mr. and
Mrs. Rebell had lived such long, and on the whole such peaceful years,
had been destroyed--overwhelmed with locust-like destruction--by the
passage of an alien soldiery.
But early in the June of 1870 there was nothing to show what July and
August were to bring to France, and the various incidents which so much
impressed the child's imagination, and made the day memorable, were
almost wholly connected with that solitary inner life which is yet so
curiously affected by material occurrences.
Barbara's birthday began very differently from what she had thought it
would do. The little girl had pleasant recollections of the fashion in
which her last fête day, "la Sainte Barbe," had been celebrated. She
remembered vividly the white bouquets brought by the tradespeople, the
cakes and gifts offered by her little French friends, they who dwelt in
Legitimist seclusion in the old town--for St. Germains was at that time
a Royalist stronghold--far from the supposed malign influence of the
high forest trees, and broad, wind-swept Terrace, which had first
attracted Barbara's parents, and caused them to choose St. Germains as
their place of retreat.
And so Barbara had looked forward very eagerly to her tenth birthday,
but by eleven o'clock what, so far, had it brought her? No bouquets, no
cakes, no trifling gifts of the kind she loved! As she sat out in her
little chair on the balcony of which the gilt balustrade was now
concealed by festoons of green leaves and white roses, and from which
opened the windows of her mother's drawing-room, the child's conscience
pricked her somewhat. Had not her parents early called her into their
room and presented her with a beautiful little gold watch--a gift, too,
brought specially from London by Mr. Daman, a Queen's Messenger, who was
one of her father's oldest friends, and one of the very few
English-speaking folk who ever sought out Mr. and Mrs. Rebell in their
seclusion?
"You may wear it all to-day," her mother had said with some solemnity,
"but after to-night I will put it away until you are old enough to take
care of a watch." In time the little watch became a cherished
possession, a dear familiar friend, but on this first day of ownership
Barbara took small pleasure in her gift.
The child had not liked to ask if any further birthday treat was in
contemplation. She stood in great awe of her quiet-mannered, preoccupied
father: and, while loving her gentle, kind mother with all her eager
passionate little heart, she did not at that time understand how
tenderly she herself was loved in return by the fragile, pensive looking
woman, who seemed to those about her absorbed rather in her husband than
in her daughter.
And so, after having been dismissed rather curtly by her father, Barbara
had made her way disconsolately out to the balcony which was in a sense
her play-room, for there she spent many of her solitary hours. Sitting
in her own little wicker chair, with _The Fairchild Family_ lying on the
osier table by her side, and _Les Malheurs de Sophie_ on her lap, she
wondered rather wistfully what the day to which she had so much looked
forward was likely to bring forth.
Dressed in a white India muslin frock, her long dark hair curled, as was
the fashion in those days, and tied neatly out of the way with a pale
blue ribbon, her unseeing eyes gazing at one of the most beautiful views
in the world, little Barbara Rebell, not for the first time, fell to
wondering why her life was so different from that of the English
children of whom she read in the books her mother had lately sent for
from the home of her own childhood. Even the Fairchilds were a family,
not a solitary little girl; each of the French children she knew had at
least one brother or sister apiece to bear them company, and all through
her thoughts--her disconnected, discontented birthday thoughts--there
ran a thread of uneasy wonder as to why she and her parents were living
here in France instead of in far away England.
Barbara had of late become dimly aware that her mother made no effort to
enter into the eager, cheerful life about her; even after many years
spent entirely in France Mrs. Rebell still spoke French with a certain
difficulty, and she had tacitly refused to form any tie but one of
courteous acquaintance with the few French families with whom--entirely
for the sake of her child, but Barbara did not know that--she had
entered into social relation, using a Protestant banker as a connecting
link.
* * * * *
The summer before her tenth birthday Barbara had overheard some
fragments of a conversation held between two mothers of some of her
little French friends; and the few words, so carelessly uttered, had
roused a passion of emotion in the innocent eavesdropper: the feeling
which most predominated being the unreasoning, pathetic surprise felt by
a childish mind when brought suddenly across anything in the nature of a
masked attack.
"Enfin qu'est que ce Monsieur Rebell a bien pu faire de si terrible?
Pour moi il a un air sinistre, cet homme-là!"
"Peut-être a-t-il tué quelqu'un en duel! Il parait qu'en Angleterre on
est devenu féroce sur ce châpitre-là."
"En tous cas, cette pauvre Madame Rebell est bien jolie, et bien à
plaindre!"
The effect of these few carelessly uttered words had been to transform
the listener from a happy baby into a thoughtful, over-sensitive little
girl. Barbara had felt a wild revolt and indignation in the knowledge
that her parents were being thus discussed--that her father should be
described as "sinister," her mother pitied. Again and again she repeated
to herself the words that she had heard: their meaning had stamped
itself on her mind. Could her father have indeed killed a man in a duel?
To Barbara the thought was at once horrible and fascinating, and she
brooded over it, turning the idea this way and that: the constant
companionship of her mother--for Mrs. Rebell rarely left her alone with
their French servants--having unconsciously taught her a deep and almost
secretive reserve.
Were her father guilty of what these French ladies suspected, then--or
so thought Barbara--his subdued, melancholy air was indeed natural, as
also his apparent dislike of meeting fellow countrymen and countrywomen,
for he and his wife always markedly avoided any English visitors to St.
Germains. Now and again Mr. Rebell would spend a long day in Paris,
returning laden with a large parcel of books, the latest English novels
for his wife, more serious volumes for his own perusal; but both Mrs.
Rebell and Barbara had learnt to dread these expeditions, for they
brought with them sad after-days of silent depression and restlessness
which left their effect on the wife long after the traveller himself had
regained his usual sombre quietude of manner.
Barbara was secretly proud of the fact that her father was so extremely
unlike, both in manner and in appearance, the Frenchmen who now formed
his only acquaintances. This was perhaps owing in a measure to the
periodical visit of his London tailor, for Richard Rebell had retained
amid his misfortunes--and he was fond of telling himself that no living
man had been so unfortunate--the one-time dandy's fastidiousness about
his dress. The foreigners with whom he was unwillingly brought in
contact sometimes speculated as to the mysterious Englishman's probable
age; his hair was already grey, his pale, coldly impassive face had none
of the healthy tints of youth, yet he was still upright and vigorous,
and possessed to a singular degree what the French value above all
things, distinction of appearance. As a matter of fact Mr. Rebell was
only some twelve years older than his still girlish-looking wife; but
certain terrible events seemed to have had a petrifying effect both on
his mind and on his appearance, intensified by the fact that both he and
Mrs. Rebell tacitly chose to live as if in a world of half-lights and
neutral tints, rarely indeed alluding to the past, instinctively
avoiding any topic which could cause them emotion.
* * * * *
Every age,--it might be said with truth every decade,--has its ideal of
feminine beauty; and the man who had been the Richard Rebell of the
London 'fifties would instinctively have chosen and been chosen by the
loveliest girl in the brilliant world in which they both then moved and
had their being. Adela Oglander, the youngest child of a Hampshire
squire, had indeed been very lovely, satisfying in every point the ideal
of her day, of her race, and of her generation: slender and yet not over
tall: golden-haired and blue-eyed: with delicate regular features, and
rounded cheeks in which the colour soon came and went uncertainly when
Richard Rebell began to haunt the Mayfair ball-rooms where he knew he
would meet her and her placid, rather foolish mother. The girl's sunny
beauty and artless charm of manner had delighted the social arbiters of
the hour. She became, in the sense which was then possible, the fashion,
and her engagement to Richard Rebell, finally arranged at the royal
garden party which in those days took place each season in the old-world
gardens of Chiswick House, had been to themselves as well as to their
friends a happy, nine days' wonder.
Richard Rebell had been long regarded as a bachelor of bachelors, a man
whose means did not permit of such a luxury as marriage to ill-dowered
beauty. But his friends reminded themselves that he was in a sense heir
to a fine property, now in the actual ownership of his cousin, a certain
Madame Sampiero, a beautiful childless woman separated from the Corsican
adventurer whom she had married in one of those moments of amazing,
destructive folly which occasionally overwhelm a certain type of clever
and high-spirited Englishwoman. Still, if there were some who shook
their heads over the imprudence of such a marriage as that of Richard
Rebell and Adela Oglander, all the world loves a lover, and every man
who had obtained the privilege of an introduction to Miss Oglander
envied Rebell his good fortune, for his betrothed was as good and as
blithesome as she was pretty.
Later, when recalling that enchanted time, and the five happy years
which had followed, Mrs. Rebell told herself that there had then been
meted out to her full measure of life's happiness: she might, alas! have
added that since that time Providence had dealt out to her, as
completely, full measure of pain and suffering. For what was hidden from
the little circle of kindly French gossips at St. Germains had been
indeed a very tragic thing.
After those first cloudless years of happy, nay triumphant, married
life, the popular, much-envied man-about-town, the proud husband of one
of the loveliest and most considered of younger London hostesses, had
gradually become aware that he was being looked at askance and shunned
by those great folk to whose liking he attached perhaps undue
importance.
Then had followed a period of angry, incredulous amazement, till a
well-meaning friend found courage to tell him the truth. It had come to
be thought that he "sometimes" cheated at cards--more, it was whispered
that he had actually been caught red-handed in the house of a friend who
had spared him exposure in deference to what were then still the English
laws of hospitality. His chief accuser, the man to whom Rebell, once on
his track, again and again traced the fatal rumour, was, as so often
happens in such cases, himself quite unimportant till he became the man
of straw round whom raged one of the most painful and protracted libel
suits fought in nineteenth century England.
At first public opinion, or rather the opinion of those whom Rebell
regarded as important, ranged itself on his side, and there were many
who considered that he had been ill-advised to take any notice of the
matter. But when it became known, and that in the pitiless, clear
publicity afforded by a court of law, that the plaintiff's private means
were very small, much smaller than had been suspected even by those who
thought themselves his intimates, that he was noted for his high play,
and, most damaging fact of all, that he had been instrumental in forming
a new and very select club of which the stated object was play, and
nothing but play, feeling veered sharply round. Richard Rebell
admitted--and among his backers it was pointed out that such an
admission made for innocence--that a not unimportant portion of his
income had for some time past consisted of his card winnings. That this
should be even said outraged those respectable folk who like to think
that gambling and ruin are synonymous terms. Yet, had they looked but a
little below the surface, where could they have found so striking a
confirmation of their view as in this very case?
To cut the story short, the lawsuit ended in a virtual triumph for the
man whose malicious dislike and envy of the plaintiff had had to himself
so unexpected a result. Richard Rebell was awarded only nominal damages.
The old adage, "The greater the truth the greater the libel," was freely
quoted, and the one-time man of fashion and his wife disappeared with
dramatic suddenness from the world in which they had both been once so
welcome. Apart from every other reason, Mr. and Mrs. Rebell would have
been compelled, by their financial circumstances, to alter what had been
their way of life. All that remained to them after the heavy costs of
the lawsuit were paid was the income of Mrs. Rebell's marriage
settlement, and then it was that Richard Rebell's cousin, the Madame
Sampiero to whom reference has already been made, arranged to give her
cousin--who was, as she eagerly reminded him, her natural heir--an
allowance which practically trebled his small income. Thanks to her
generosity Mr. and Mrs. Rebell and their only child, born three years
after their marriage, had been able to live in considerable comfort and
state in the French town finally chosen by them as their home of exile,
where they had been fortunate in finding, close to the Forest and the
Terrace, a house which had belonged to one of the great Napoleon's
generals. The hero's descendants were in high favour at the Tuileries
and had no love for quiet St. Germains: they had accordingly been
overjoyed to find an English tenant for the stately villa which
contained many relics of their famous forbear, and of which the
furnishings, while pleasing the fine taste of Richard Rebell, seemed to
them hopelessly rococo and out of date.
As time went on, Adela Rebell suffered more rather than less. She would
have preferred the humblest lodging in the quietest of English hamlets
to the charming villa which was still full of mementoes of the soldier
who had found a glorious death at Waterloo. Sometimes she would tell
herself that all might yet go well with her, and her beloved, her noble,
her ill-used Richard--for so she ever thought of him--were it not for
their child. The knowledge that Barbara would never enjoy the happy and
lightsome youth which had been her own portion was bitter indeed: the
conviction that her daughter must be cut off from all the pleasant
girlish joys and privileges of her English contemporaries brought deep
pain.
* * * * *
Let us now return to Barbara and to the birthday which was to prove
eventful. The little girl was still hesitating between her French and
her English storybook when the door of the drawing-room opened, and she
saw her mother's slight figure advancing languidly across the shining
floor to the deep chair where she always sat. A moment later Barbara's
father came into the room: he held a newspaper in his hand, and
instinctively the child knew that he was both annoyed and angered.
"Adela," he said, in the formal and rather cold accent which both his
wife and child had come to associate with something painful or
unpleasant, "I should like you to read this,"--then he added: "Well, no,
I think I will ask you to listen, while I translate it," and slowly he
read, choosing his words with some care, anxious to render every shade
of meaning, the following sentences, composing one of the happily-named
"Echoes" printed on the front page of the _Figaro_, the then
newly-established, brilliant journal which had become the most widely
read paper in French society:--
"Her Majesty the Empress to-day received in private audience Madame
Sampiero, _née_ Rebell, one of the most sympathetic and distinguished of
English great ladies, and this in spite of the fact that the name of
Sampiero is full of glorious memories to those who know and care--and
what good Frenchman does not do so?--for the noble traditions of
Corsican history. Mylady Sampiero"--here Barbara's father suddenly
lowered the paper and, glancing at his wife, gave a queer sardonic
laugh--"was presented subsequently to his Majesty the Emperor by the
noted English statesman, Mylord Bosworth, who, it will be remembered,
was on terms of intimacy with our Sovereign when he, as Prince Louis
Napoleon, was living a life of exile in London. Indeed, it was Mylord
who first gratified the London world with the news that the prisoner of
Ham had escaped."
There was a slight pause: Mr. Rebell laid the _Figaro_ down on a
gilt-rimmed table which stood close to his wife's chair.
"Well?" he said, "what do you think of that? You'll see it dished up,
and who can wonder at it, in next week's _Vanity Fair_!"
The child, sitting out on the balcony, saw her mother's pale face become
gradually suffused with colour, and she heard the almost whispered
words, "Yes, most unfortunate! But, my dear, how could poor Bar have
foreseen such a thing?"
"Of course Bar did not foresee this, but equally of course Bosworth must
have supplied the _Figaro_ with the main facts--how else could this
absurdly worded note have been written?" He added slowly, "This is
obviously Bosworth's idea of a rebuff to the Embassy--Ah well! I didn't
mean to tell you, but I had it from Daman yesterday that Barbara,
immediately on her arrival in Paris, had been sent word that she must
not expect, this time, to be received at the Embassy."
As he spoke Richard Rebell walked up and down the room with quick,
rather mincing steps: again he came and stood before his wife: "Our name
dragged in!" he exclaimed, "apropos of nothing!" a note of sharp chagrin
and disgust piercing in his quiet voice. "And this ridiculous, this
farcical reference to that adventurer, if indeed Sampiero is the man's
real name, of which I always had my doubts!"
The colour faded from Mrs. Rebell's cheek; she put her hand with an
instinctive movement to her side: "Richard," she said, her voice
faltering, in spite of herself, "the letter I received to-day was from
Barbara Sampiero. She is staying, as you know, at Meurice's,
and--and--pray do not be angry, my love, but she proposes to come out
and see us here, to-day!"
Her husband made no answer. He stood speechlessly looking down at her,
and when the silence became intolerable Mrs. Rebell again spoke, but in
a firmer, less apologetic tone. "And oh! Richard, I shall be so glad to
see her--I can never never forget how good she was to me years ago--how
nobly generous she has been to us all, since that time."
Richard Rebell turned abruptly away. He walked to the open window, and
little Barbara, glancing up, noticed with surprise that her father
looked very hot, that even his forehead had reddened. Standing there,
staring out with unseeing eyes at the wonderful view unrolled below, he
closed and opened his right hand with a nervous gesture, as he at last
answered, "Of course, I also shall be glad to see her. Though, mind you,
Adela, I think that during all these long years she might have found
time to come before." Turning round, he added, "Surely you are not
afraid that I shall insult my kinswoman in what is, after all, my own
house?" and then, as his wife made no answer, he said with sudden
suspicion, "Of course, she is coming alone? She would not have dared to
propose anything else?"
Mrs. Rebell rose from her chair. She came and stood by her husband, and
for the first time became aware of her little daughter's presence on the
balcony. She had, however, said too much to retreat, and perhaps she
felt that the child, sitting out there, would make her difficult task
easier.
"No, Richard, unfortunately she does not propose to come alone. It seems
that Lord Bosworth has been given the use of one of the Imperial
carriages, and he proposes to drive her here, the whole way from Paris.
He is staying, it appears, at the Bristol."
And then, turning away, she burst into sudden stormy tears, covering her
face with her hands, swaying from head to foot with suppressed sobs.
Barbara watched the scene with bewildered surprise and terror. It is
good when a child's ideal of married life is founded on that of her own
father and mother. Richard Rebell was often impatient and irritable, but
the little girl had never seen the shadow of anything resembling a
dissension between her parents. What then did this mean, what did her
mother's tears portend? But already Mrs. Rebell was making a determined
effort to command herself. Her husband put his arm, not untenderly,
round her shoulder, and, with his face set in stern lines, led her back
to her seat. Then Barbara suddenly darted into the room, and flung
herself on her mother, putting her slender arms round that dear mother's
neck, and so making, all unconsciously, a welcome diversion. Mrs. Rebell
even laughed a little. "Dear child--my little Barbara--you didn't know
that grown-up people ever cried!"
But Barbara was already retreating to the balcony, and she heard her
father say in a low voice, as if for the first time he realised that his
words might be overheard: "I am sure you do not seriously contemplate
our receiving Bar and--and Bosworth, together? The idea is monstrous!
Whatever has come and gone, however degraded I may have become among my
fellows, I still have the right to protect my wife from insult, and to
expect her to obey me in such a matter as this."
But Mrs. Rebell clasped her hands together and looked up in the troubled
face of the man opposite her with a look at once appealing and
unsubmissive. "Richard!" she cried, "oh Richard! I always _do_ obey you.
When have you ever known me go against your wish, or even desire to do
so?"
He shook his head impatiently, and she added urgently, "But in this one
matter--oh, my dear love--pray try and look at it from my point of view!
It is Barbara I wish to receive--Barbara who is of consequence to us. I
know well all you would say," the speaker gave a sudden imperceptible
look towards the open window, "but you would not put so cruel an affront
on that noble, generous creature! Ah, yes, Richard, she _is_ noble, she
_is_ generous."
"Her generosity shall cease to-morrow--nay, to-day," he said grimly.
"Do not say so!" she cried, starting up; and her little daughter, gazing
fascinated, thought she had never till to-day seen her mother look
really alive, alive as other women are. Mrs. Rebell had pushed her fair
hair off her forehead, and her cheeks were red, her blue eyes bright,
with excitement.
"Ah no, Richard, I was not thinking of _that_--not of such generosity as
can be made to cease to-morrow or to-day; but of Barbara's long goodness
to us both, nay, if you like to put it so, of her goodness to me, who am
in no way related to her! Could any sister have been kinder than she has
been? Were any of my own sisters as kind? True, we did not choose to
avail ourselves of her hospitality."
"I think that now, even you, Adela, must see that I was right in that
matter." Richard Rebell spoke rather drily.
"I never questioned it," she said, sharply; "you know, Richard, I never
questioned your decision!"
There was a pause. The memories of both husband and wife were busy with
the past, with an offer which had been made to them by Richard Rebell's
kinswoman, the offer of a home in England, and of a chance, or so the
wife had thought at the time, of ultimate rehabilitation for one whom
many even then thought completely innocent of the charge brought against
him.
Adela Rebell was a woman of high honesty, and so, "That is not quite
true," she said reluctantly, "I _did_ question your decision in my
heart, and I see now that you were right. And yet perhaps, my dear, if
we had been there----?"
Richard Rebell got up. He went and deliberately closed the window,
making a temporary prisoner of the little girl: then he came back, and
answered, very composedly, the meaning of the half-question which his
wife's shrinking delicacy had prevented her putting into words. "Our
being there, Adela, would not have made the slightest difference," he
gave her a peculiar, not unkindly look, "for as a matter of fact I was
then aware of what you apparently only began to suspect long after; and
I think that you will admit that the state of things would have made our
position at Chancton intolerable. We should very naturally have been
expected to shut our eyes--to pander----"
"Yes--yes indeed!" his wife shrank back. "But you never told me this
before----Why did you not tell me at the time?"
"My dear," he answered, very quietly, "that is not the sort of thing a
man cares to tell, even his wife, when the heroine of the tale is his
own cousin. And Barbara, as you have reminded me to-day, had behaved,
and was behaving, very generously to us both."
"But if--if you felt like that, why----"
Mrs. Rebell looked up imploringly; she knew what this conversation meant
in pain and retrospective anguish to them both. But again Richard Rebell
answered, very patiently, his wife's unspoken question, "Well, I admit
that I am perhaps illogical. But what happened two years ago, I mean the
birth of Barbara's child--has made a difference to my feeling. I don't
think"--he spoke questioningly as if to himself, "I hope to God I don't
feel as I do owing to any ignoble disappointment?"
"No, no, indeed not!" There was an accent of eager protest in Adela
Rebell's voice: "Besides, she wrote and said--she has said again and
again--that it will make no difference."
"In any case," he spoke rather coldly, "Barbara Sampiero is certain to
outlive me, and I do not think anything would make her unjust to our
girl. But to return to what I was saying, and then, if you do not mind,
Adela, we will not refer to the subject again----The birth of the child,
I say, has altered my feeling, much as it seems to have done, from what
I gather from Daman, that of the rest of the world."
"I always so disliked Mr. Daman," his wife said irrelevantly.
"No doubt, no doubt--I grant you that he's not a very nice fellow, but
he's always been fond of her, and after all he has always stuck to us.
There's no doubt as to what he says being the truth----"
"But Richard--is not that very unfair?" Mrs. Rebell spoke with a fire
that surprised herself: "if, as you tell me now, you always knew the
truth concerning Bar and Lord Bosworth, should what happened two years
ago make such a difference?"
"Till two years ago,"--he spoke as if he had not heard her
words,--"Barbara held her own completely; so much is quite clear, and
that, mind you, with all the world, even including the strait-laced folk
about Chancton. I suppose people were sorry for her--for them both, if
it comes to that----Besides, it was nobody's business but their own.
Now----" he hesitated: "Daman tells me that she's absolutely solitary, I
mean of course as regards the women." He added musingly, as if to
himself, "She's acted with extraordinary, with criminal folly over this
matter."
"Then she is being treated as we should have been treated,--indeed as we
were, by most people, during the short time we stayed in England eight
years ago?"
"I do not think," Mr. Rebell spoke very coldly, "that your comparison,
Adela, holds good. But now, to-day, the point is this: am I to be
compelled to receive, and indeed to countenance, Barbara Sampiero and
her lover? and further, am I to allow my wife to do so? Do you
suppose"--he spoke with a sudden fierceness,--"that either Barbara or
Bosworth would have ever thought of doing what you tell me they have
actually written and proposed doing, to-day, had our own circumstances
been different? Barbara may be--nay she is, as you very properly point
out--a noble and generous creature, but in this matter, my dear Adela,
she's behaving ungenerously; she's exacting a price, and a heavy price,
for her past kindness. But it is one which after to-day I shall take
care she shall not be in a position to exact.
"Yes," he went on slowly, "we shall of course have to give up this
house," his eyes glanced with a certain affection round the room which
had always pleased his taste. "Our requirements," he concluded, "have
become very simple. We might travel, and show our child something of the
world."
A light leapt into his wife's eyes; oh! what joy it would be to leave
St. Germains, to become for a while nomadic, but with a sigh she
returned to the present. "And to-day, what is to happen to-day, Richard?
There is no time to stop them--they will be here in two or three hours."
Mr. Rebell remained silent for some moments, and then: "Not even to
please you," he said, "can I bring myself to receive them. But I admit
the force of what you said just now. Therefore, if you care to do so,
stay--stay and make what excuse for my absence seems good to you.
Bosworth will know the reason well enough, unless he's more lost to a
sense of decency than I take him to be. But Bar--poor dear Bar," a note
of unwilling tenderness crept into his cold voice, "will doubtless
believe you if you tell her, what indeed is true enough, that I have an
important engagement to-day with Daman, and that, if she cares to see
me, I will come and see her before she leaves Paris----"
The speaker went to the window and opened it. He bent down and touched
Barbara's forehead with his dry lips. "I trust," he said in his thin
voice, "that you will have a pleasant birthday. I will bring you back a
box of chocolates from Marquis'," and then, without waiting to hear the
child's murmured thanks, he turned on his heel and was gone. Barbara did
not see her father again till the next morning.
* * * * *
It was early afternoon, and the fair-haired Englishwoman and her little
dark, eager-eyed daughter were sitting out on the rose-wreathed balcony
of the Villa d'Arcole. Mrs. Rebell was very silent. She was longing for,
and yet dreading, the coming meeting with one she had not seen since
they had parted, with tears, at Dover, eight long years before. Her
restlessness affected the child, the more so that Barbara knew that her
marraine, that is to say in English, her godmother, the source of many
beautiful gifts, was at last coming to see them, and in her short life
the rare coming of a visitor had always been an event.
Below the balcony, across the tiny formal garden now bright with
flowers, the broad sanded roadway stretching between the Villa d'Arcole
and the high cool screen formed by the forest trees, was flecked with
gay groups of children and their be-ribboned nurses. St. Germains was
beginning to awake from its noonday torpor, and leisurely walkers,
elegant women whose crinolines produced a curious giant blossom-like
effect, elderly bourgeois dressed in rather fantastic summer garb,
officers in brilliant uniforms--for in those days Imperial France was a
land of brilliancy and of uniforms--were already making their way to the
Terrace, ever the centre of the town's life and gossip.
Suddenly there came on Barbara's listening ears a sound of wheels, of
sharply ringing hoofs, of musical jingling of harness bells. Several of
the strollers below stayed their footsteps, and a moment later Mrs.
Rebell became aware that before the iron-wrought gilt gates of the villa
there had drawn up the prettiest and most fantastic of equipages, while
to the child's eager eyes it seemed as if Cinderella's fairy chariot
stood below!
Had Richard Rebell been standing by his wife, he would doubtless have
seen something slightly absurd, and in any case undignified, in the
sight presented by the low, pale blue victoria, drawn by four white
horses ridden by postillions, two of whom now stood, impassive as
statues, each at one of the leaders' heads. But to Richard Rebell's
little daughter the pretty sight brought with it nothing but pure
delight; and for a few moments she was scarcely aware of the two figures
who sat back on the white leather cushions. And yet one of these
figures, that of the woman, was quite as worthy of attention as the
equipage which served to frame her peculiar and striking beauty, and so
evidently thought the small crowd which had quickly gathered to gaze at
what had been at once recognised as a carriage from the Imperial
stables.
Dowered, perhaps to her own misfortune, with a keen dramatic instinct,
and a rather riotous love of colour, Barbara Sampiero had chosen to
dress, as it were, for the part. Her costume, a deep purple muslin gown,
flounced, as was the fashion that spring, from hem to waist, her
cross-over puffed bodice, and short-frilled sleeves, the broad Leghorn
hat draped with a scarf of old lace fastened down with amethyst bees,
and the pale blue parasol matching exactly in tint the colour of the
carriage in which she was sitting, recalled a splendid tropical flower.
A certain type of feminine beauty has about it a luminous quality; such
was that of Barbara Sampiero, now in full and glowing perfection: some
of its radiance due to the fact that as yet Time--she was not far from
forty--had spared her any trace of his swift passage. The involuntary
homage of those about her proved that she was still as attractive as she
had been as a younger woman; her beauty had become to her an
all-important asset, and she guarded and tended it most jealously.
Her companion was also, though in a very different way, well worthy of
attention. Before stepping out of the carriage he stood up for a
moment, and, as he looked about him with amused and leisurely
curiosity, the spectators at once recognised in him a typical
Englishman of the ruling class. Every detail of his dress, the very
cut of his grizzled hair and carefully trimmed whiskers, aroused the
envy of those Frenchmen among the crowd who judged themselves to be of
much his own age. He had not retained, as had done his contemporary
and one-time friend, Richard Rebell, the figure of his youth, but he
was still a fine, vigorous-looking man, with a bearing full of dignity
and ease.
As his eyes quickly noted the unchanged aspect of the place where he
found himself, he reminded himself, with some quickening of his pulses,
that no Englishman living had a right to feel in closer touch with the
romance of this French town. In the great grim castle--so unlike the
usual smiling château--which rose to the right behind the Villa
d'Arcole, his own Stuart forbears had spent their dignified exile. More,
he himself had deliberately chosen to associate the most romantic and
enchanting episode of a life which had not been lacking in enchanting
and romantic episodes, with this same place, with St. Germains. He and
Madame Sampiero had good reason to gaze as they were both doing at that
famous hostelry, the Pavillon Henri IV., of which they could see,
embowered in trees, the picturesque buildings overhanging the
precipitous slopes.
Julian Fitzjames Berwick, Lord Bosworth of Leicester, had always made it
his business to extract the utmost out of life. He had early promised
himself that, whoever else were debarred from looking over the hedge, he
would belong to the fortunate few who are privileged to walk through the
gate. So far he had been wonderfully successful in attaining the various
goals he had set himself to attain. This had been true even of his
public life, for he had known how to limit his ambitions to what was
easily possible, never taking undue risks, and ever keeping himself free
from any connection with forlorn hopes. This perhaps was why this
fortunate man was one of the very few statesmen in whom his fellow
countrymen felt a comfortable confidence. All parties were apt to
express regret when he was out of office, and though he was no longer in
any sense a young man, it was believed that he had a future or several
futures before him.
Many of Lord Bosworth's contemporaries and friends would have shrunk
from taking part in such an expedition as that of to-day, but the
intelligent epicurean had so arranged every detail of this visit to
Richard Rebell and his wife, that it must bring, at any rate to himself,
more pleasure than annoyance. Still, he was not sorry to stand for a
moment enjoying the pretty, bright scene, the wonderful view, and his
own and his beautiful companion's sentimental memories, before going in
to face, as he fully believed he was about to do, the man who was at
once Barbara Sampiero's unfortunate kinsman and his own former intimate.
Meanwhile Mrs. Rebell had made her way swiftly down the house: hurriedly
she herself opened the front door, waving back the French servant: then,
when she saw the little crowd gathered round the gate, she retreated
nervously, leaving her two guests to make their way alone up the
geranium-bordered path. But once they had passed through into the cool
dim hall, once the light and brightness were shut out, then with a cry
of welcome Adela Rebell put her arms round the other woman's neck, and
with a certain shy cordiality gave her hand to the man whose coming
to-day had caused Richard Rebell to be absent from this meeting, and
this although, Mrs. Rebell eagerly reminded herself, Lord Bosworth also
had been true and kind during that bitter time eight years ago.
At last all four, for little Barbara was clinging to her mother's
skirts, made their way up the narrow turning staircase, and so into the
long, sparsely furnished drawing-room, full of grateful quiet and
coolness to the two who had just enjoyed a hot if a triumphal drive from
Paris.
At once Madame Sampiero sat down and drew the child to her knee: "And
so," she said, in a deep melodious voice, "this is little Barbara
Rebell? my god-daughter and namesake! For do you know, my child, that I
also am a Barbara Rebell? One always keeps, it seems, a right to one's
name, and lately--yes really, Adela, I have sometimes thought of going
back to mine!" Then, with a quick change of voice, her eyes sweeping the
room and the broad balcony, "But where is Richard?" she asked. "Surely
you received my letter? You knew that I was coming, to-day?"
But she accepted with great good humour Mrs. Rebell's faltered
explanation, perhaps secretly relieved that there need be no meeting
with the cousin who owed her so much, and who yet, she had reason to
believe, judged with rather pitiless severity the way she had chosen to
fashion her life.
Meanwhile, Lord Bosworth and little Barbara had gone out on the balcony,
and there, with the tact for which he had long been famed, and which had
contributed not a little to his successes when Foreign Minister, he soon
made friends with the shy, reserved child.
But Madame Sampiero took no advantage of the _tête-à-tête_ so
thoughtfully arranged by her friend; instead, but looking intently the
while into Adela Rebell's sensitive face, she dwelt wholly on the
immediate present; telling of her stay in Paris, the first for many
years; of her visit to St. Cloud--in a few satirical sentences she
described to her silent listener the interview with the Empress Eugénie
amid the almost theatrical splendour of the summer palace. But the gay
voice altered in quality as she asked the quick question, "I suppose
Richard reads the _Figaro_? Did he tell you of that reference to--to my
visit to St. Cloud?" As her companion bent her head, she added: "It has
annoyed us so very much! I am sorry that Richard saw it--I cannot
imagine how they became aware of my maiden name, or why they brought in
that reference to Corsica!"
Mrs. Rebell, the kindest, least critical of women, yet felt a certain
doubt as to whether in this matter her cousin was speaking the truth,
but Madame Sampiero had already dismissed the subject with an impatient
sigh. She rose from her chair, and walked to and fro, examining with
apparent interest the fine pieces of First Empire furniture at that time
so completely out of fashion as to appear curiosities. Then she said
suddenly, "Surely we might go out of doors. May little Barbara take
Julian to the church where James II. is buried? He is anxious to see the
inscription the Queen has had placed there. Meanwhile you and I might
wait for them on the Terrace; I seem to have so much to tell you, and
you know we cannot stay much more than an hour," and, as she noted
remorsefully Mrs. Rebell's flush of keen disappointment, she added, "Did
I not tell you in my letter that Julian was anxious to see the little
place near here belonging to James Berwick, I mean the hunting lodge
bought years ago by Julian's brother? However, there may be no time for
that, as we are going on to St. Cloud, and also---- But I will ask you
about that later."
* * * * *
Once out of doors, leaning over the parapet of the Terrace, gazing down
on the wide plain below, and following abstractedly the ribbon-like
windings of the river, Madame Sampiero at last touched on more intimate
matters, on that which had been in both her own and her companion's
minds ever since Mrs. Rebell had drawn her, with such eager hands, into
the hall of the villa.
"If Richard had been here," she said, "I could not have spoken to you of
my child--of my darling Julia. And though I'm sorry not to see him, I'm
glad to have this opportunity of telling you, Adela, that I regret
nothing, and that I do not feel that I have any reason to be ashamed."
As the other looked at her with deeply troubled eyes, she continued: "Of
course I know you think I have acted very wrongly. But in these matters
every woman must judge for her own self. After all, that man over
there,"--she waved her hand vaguely as if indicating some far distant
spot, and Mrs. Rebell, slight though was her sense of humour, felt a
flash of melancholy amusement as she realised that the place so
indicated meant the Corsican village where Napoleone Sampiero was
leading a most agreeable life on the income which he wrested only too
easily from his English wife,--"That man, I say, has no claim on me! If
there came any change in the French divorce laws he could easily be
brought to do what I wish----Oh Adela, if you only knew what a
difference my child has made to me,--and in every way!"
For a few moments there was silence between them. Adela Rebell opened
her lips--but no words would come, and so at last, timidly and tenderly
she laid her hand on the other woman's, and Barbara again spoke. "I used
to feel--who would not have done so in my position?--how little real
part I played in Julian's life. The knowledge that Arabella and James
Berwick were to him almost like his own children was, I confess, painful
to me, but now that he knows what it is to have a child of his own--ah,
Adela, I wish you could see them together! Only to-day he said to me: 'I
love you, Barbara, but I adore our Julia!' I used to think he would
never care to spend much of the year in the country; but now, since the
child came, he seems quite content to stay for long weeks together at
Fletchings."
"And I suppose," said Mrs. Rebell,--she did not know how to bring
herself to speak of little Julia--"I suppose that James and
Arabella--how well I remember them as small children--are a great deal
with him?"
"Well, no," for the first time during the conversation Madame Sampiero
reddened deeply. "Arabella has been taken possession of by her mother's
people. They have not been quite kind about--about the whole matter--and
I think at first Julian felt it a good deal. But after all it would have
been rather awkward for him to have charge of a niece of eighteen. As to
James Berwick, of course he comes and goes, and I'm told he's
prodigiously clever. He doesn't grow better-looking as he grows older.
Sometimes I find it difficult to believe that the ugly little fellow is
Julian's nephew!"
"And Jane Turke?"
"Oh! I've left her and Alick McKirdy at Chancton, in charge of Julia, of
course."
"Will you remember me to him--I mean to Doctor McKirdy,--you know I
always liked him in old days."
"Yes, a very good fellow! Of course I'll tell him. He'll feel very
flattered, I'm sure, that you remember him."
"And the Priory--I wish stones could feel! For then, Bar, I should ask
you to give my love to the Priory--I do so cherish that place! Sometimes
I dream that we, Richard and I, are there, as we used to be long
ago----" Mrs. Rebell's voice broke.
Madame Sampiero put her hand through her companion's arm, and slowly
they began to pace up and down. "As I told you," she said, rather
suddenly, "we cannot stay long, for we are driving round by St. Cloud,
and--and, Adela, I have a great favour to ask of you"--there came an
eager, coaxing note into the low, full voice. "May I take little Barbara
too? I mean with us to St. Cloud? The Prince Imperial is giving a
children's party. Look, I have brought her a special invitation all to
herself!" and from her pocket--for those were the days of voluminous
pockets--the speaker drew a small card on which was written in gold
letters, "Le Prince Impérial a l'honneur d'inviter Mademoiselle Barbara
Rebell à gouter. St. Cloud, 9 Juin, 1870." "I told the Empress," she
added eagerly, "that I should like to bring my god-daughter and
namesake, and she made the boy--he is such a well-mannered little
fellow--write Barbara's name on the card."
"Dear Bar, it was more than kind of you. But I fear--I know, that
Richard would not allow it!"
"But Adela--if I take all the blame! Surely you would not wish the child
to miss such a delightful experience?" Madame Sampiero spoke in a
mortified tone, but Adela Rebell scarcely heard the words; to her the
proposal did not even admit of discussion. "I cannot allow what Richard
would certainly disapprove," she said; and then, with the eager wish of
softening her refusal, "You do not realise, Barbara, my poor Richard's
state of mind. We go nowhere, we know nobody; it was with the greatest
difficulty I persuaded him to allow the Protestant banker to bring me in
touch with a few people who have children of our child's own age. More
than once we have been offered introductions which would have brought us
in contact with the Tuileries and with St. Cloud, but Richard feels that
in the circumstances we cannot live too quietly. And on the whole," she
hastened to add, "I agree with him."
Before another word could be uttered on either side, the two oddly
contrasted figures of Lord Bosworth and his small companion were seen
hastening towards them. The man and the child had already become good
friends, and, as they drew near to Madame Sampiero and Mrs. Rebell,
little Barbara, a charming figure in her white muslin frock, blue sash
and large frilled hat, ran forward with what was for her most unusual
eagerness and animation.
"Oh mamma," she cried, "have you heard? The Prince Imperial has invited
me to his _gouter_, and my marraine and this gentleman are going to take
me to St. Cloud! There is a little seat in the carriage which can be let
down." Her voice wavered; perhaps she had already become aware of her
mother's look of utter dismay, "You know that Marthe Pollain went last
year, and the little Prince danced with her--I do wonder if he will
dance with me!"
She stopped, a little out of breath, and Madame Sampiero turned with a
half-humorous, half-deprecating look at her cousin, "Come, Adela," she
said, "surely you would never have the heart to refuse those pleading
eyes?"
But the words seemed to nerve Mrs. Rebell to instant decision. "No,
Barbara," she said, in a very low tone. "My poor little girl--I cannot
allow you to accept this invitation. It would make your father very very
angry." And then, as the child, submitting at once, to Bosworth's
admiring surprise, turned away, the tears running down her cheeks, the
mother added, even more really distressed than was the nervous, excited
little girl herself: "I am so very sorry, Barbara, but we will try to
think of something to do to-morrow which you will like almost as well."
Madame Sampiero bent towards the child. "Never mind, little Barbara,"
she said, her voice trembling a little, "only wait till you see me
again, I will bring you the sweetest of playfellows! And some day I will
myself persuade your father to let me take you to a real ball, at the
Tuileries!" Turning to Mrs. Rebell, she added: "Julian and I both agree
that in time, say in six or eight years, I should do very well to take
some small château near Paris, and spend there part of each year. Julia
will then be old enough to have masters, and I am sure, indeed we both
think,"--she turned to the impassive man now walking slowly by her
side,--"that I had better really try and make a half Frenchwoman of her,
and perhaps ultimately, who knows, settle her in France!"
Mrs. Rebell suddenly laughed. "Oh Barbara," she said, "how fond you have
always been of making plans, of looking forward! Surely this is rather
premature?"
Madame Sampiero smiled. "English people," she said, quickly, "don't give
half enough thought to the future. But, Adela, I was not only thinking
of my Julia, but also of your little Barbara. Richard cannot mean her
always to lead a cloistered life. In eight years she will be grown-up,
eager to see something of the world. Where could she make her début so
delightfully as at the Tuileries? Well, little Barbara"--and again she
bent over the child--"look forward to the time when I shall be quite
ready to play my _rôle_ of fairy godmother, and so introduce you to the
most beautiful, the most brilliant, the most delightful Court in the
world!"
The group of walkers turned, and slowly they made their way back to the
Villa d'Arcole. Then, after long clinging leave-taking, Mrs. Rebell and
Barbara, both with bitter tears in their eyes, watched the fairy-like
equipage disappear down the sanded road leading to the Grande Place, and
so towards the broad highway which would bring it ultimately to St.
Cloud.
* * * * *
When the carriage was clear of the town, Bosworth, laying his large
powerful hand on that of his companion, as if to deaden the full meaning
of his words, said suddenly, "I suppose, Barbara, that you never had the
slightest doubt as to Richard Rebell's complete innocence?"
"Never!" she said sharply. "Never the slightest doubt! In fact I would
far rather believe myself guilty of cheating at cards than I would
Richard. I think it was an infamous accusation! Why, surely you, Julian,
felt and feel the same?" She looked at him with real distress and anger
in her blue eyes.
"Oh yes," he said slowly, "I certainly felt the same at the time. Still,
his present way of going on looks very odd. It doesn't seem to me that
of an innocent man. Why should he compel his wife to lead such a life as
that she evidently does lead at St. Germains?"
"But how young she still looks," said Madame Sampiero eagerly. "I really
think she's as pretty as ever!"
"H'm!" he said. "Rather faded--at least so I thought. And then,--another
notion of Richard's no doubt,--there seemed something wrong about her
dress."
Barbara Sampiero laughed. "You are quite right," she said, "but how odd
that you should have noticed it! Richard won't allow her to wear a
crinoline! Isn't he absurd? But she hasn't changed a bit. She loves him
as much as ever--nay, more than ever, and that, Julian,"--again their
hands clasped,--"is, you must admit, very rare and touching after all
that has come and gone."
But each of the speakers felt that this visit to St. Germains had been
vaguely disappointing, that it had not yielded all they had hoped it
would do.
Barbara Sampiero made up her mind that before leaving Paris she would
come again, and come alone. She did not carry out her good resolution,
and many long years were to pass by before she and her god-daughter met
again. And to both, by the time of that second meeting, St. Germains had
become a place peopled with sad ghosts and poignant memories which both
strove rather to forget than to remember.
END OF THE PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
"Mon pauvre coeur maladroit, mon coeur plein de révolte et
d'espérance...."
"The past is death's, the future is thine own."
SHELLEY.
Fifteen years had gone by since the eventful birthday and meeting at St.
Germains.
As Barbara Rebell, still Barbara Rebell, though she had been a wife, a
most unhappy wife, for six years, stepped from the small dark vestibule
into the dimly-lighted hall of Chancton Priory, her foot slipped on the
floor; and she would have fallen had not a man's hand, small but
curiously bony and fleshless, grasped her right arm, while, at the same
moment, a deep voice from out the darkness exclaimed, "A good omen! So
stumbled the Conqueror!"
The accent in which the odd words were uttered would have told a tale as
to the speaker's hard-bitten nationality to most English-speaking folk:
not so to the woman to whom they were addressed. Yet they smote on her
ear as though laden with welcome, for they recalled the voice of a
certain Andrew Johnstone, the Scotch Governor of the West Indian island
of Santa Maria, whose brotherly kindness and unobtrusive sympathy had
been more comfortable to her, in a moment of great humiliation and
distress, than his English wife's more openly expressed concern and more
eagerly offered friendship.
And then, as the stranger advanced, hesitatingly, into the hall, she
found herself confronted by an odd, indeed an amazing figure, which yet
also brought a quick sense of being at last in a dear familiar place
offering both welcome and shelter. For she was at once aware that this
must be the notable Jane Turke, Madame Sampiero's housekeeper, one to
whom Barbara's own mother had often referred when telling her little
daughter of the delights of Chancton Priory--of the Sussex country house
to which, when dying, the thoughts of Richard Rebell's wife seemed ever
turning with sick longing and regret.
Mrs. Turke wore a travesty of the conventional housekeeper's costume.
There, to be sure, were the black apron and lace cap and the bunch of
jingling keys, but the watered silk of which the gown was made was of
bright yellow, and across its wearer's ample bosom was spread an
elaborate parure of topazes set in filigree gold, a barbaric ornament
which, however, did not seem out of place on the remarkable-looking old
lady. Two earrings, evidently belonging to the same set, had been
mounted as pins, and gleamed on the black lace partly covering Mrs.
Turke's grey hair, which was cut in a straight fringe above the shrewd,
twinkling eyes, Roman nose, and firm, well-shaped mouth and chin.
For a few moments the housekeeper held, as it were, the field to
herself: she curtsied twice, but there was nothing servile or menial
about the salutation, and each time the yellow gown swept the
stone-flagged floor she uttered the words, "Welcome, Ma'am, to
Chancton," running her eyes quickly the while over the slender stranger
whose coming might bring such amazing changes to the Priory.
Then, as Mrs. Rebell, half smiling, put out her hand, the old
woman--for, in spite of her look of massive strength Mrs. Turke was by
now an old woman--said more naturally, "You don't remember Jane Turke,
Ma'am, but Jane Turke remembers you, when you was little Missy, and your
dear Mamma used to bring you here as a babby."
Mrs. Turke's voice was quite amazingly unlike that which had uttered,
close to the door, the few words of what Barbara had felt to be a far
sincerer welcome. It was essentially a made-up, artificial voice,--one
to which only the old-fashioned but expressive word "genteel" could
possibly apply: an intelligent listener could not but feel certain that
Mrs. Turke would be bound to speak, if under stress of emotion, in quite
other accents.
A muttered exclamation, a growl from that other presence who still stood
apart, hidden in the deep shadows cast by the music gallery which
stretched across the hall just above the head of the little group,
seemed to nerve the housekeeper to a fresh effort: "This gentleman,
Ma'am," she cried, waving a fat be-ringed hand towards the darkness, "is
Doctor McKirdy. He also knew your dear Mamma, and is very pleased to see
you once more at Chancton Priory."
From behind Barbara Rebell lumbered forth into the light another strange
figure, a man this time, clad in evening dress. But he also seemed oddly
familiar, and Mrs. Rebell knew him for a certain Alexander McKirdy, of
whom, again, she had often heard from her mother. "I'll just thank ye,"
he said harshly, "to let me utter my own welcome to this lady. My words,
no doubt, will be poor things, Mrs. Turke, compared to yours, but they
will have the advantage of being my own!"
Alexander McKirdy was singularly ugly,--so much had to be conceded
to his enemies and critics, and at Chancton there were many who
felt themselves at enmity with him, and few who were capable of
realising either the Scotchman's intellectual ability or his entire
disinterestedness. Of fair height, he yet gave the impression of being
short and ungainly, owing to the huge size of his head and the
disproportionate breadth of his shoulders. His features were rough-hewn
and irregular, only redeemed by a delicate, well-shaped mouth, and
penetrating, not unkindly pale blue eyes. His hair, once bright red, now
sandy grey streaked with white, was always kept short, bristling round a
high intelligent forehead, and he was supposed to gratify Scotch economy
by cutting it himself. He was clean-shaven, and his dress was habitually
that of a man quite indifferent to his outward appearance; like most
ugly and eccentric-looking men, Doctor McKirdy appeared at his best on
the rare occasions when he was compelled to wear his ancient dress
clothes.
Such was the man who now turned and cast a long searching look at
Barbara Rebell. "I shall know if you are welcome--welcome to me, that
is--better an hour hence than now, and better still to-morrow than
to-day"--but a twinkle in his small bright eyes softened the
ungraciousness of his words: "Now," he said, "be off, Mrs. Turke! You've
had your innings, and said your say, and now comes my turn."
"You're never going to take Mrs. Rebell up to Madam now,--this very
minute?--before she has taken off her bonnet?--or seen her room?--or had
her dinner?" but the man whom she addressed with such fussy zeal made no
reply. Instead, he jerked his right shoulder, that as to which Barbara
wondered if it could be higher than the other, towards the shadows from
which he had himself emerged, and Mrs. Turke meekly turned away, her
yellow silk gown rustling, and her barbaric ornaments jingling, as she
passed through the swing door which shut off the hall, where they had
all three been standing, from the commons of the Priory.
Doctor McKirdy lifted one of the high lamps, which seemed to make the
darkness of the hall more visible, in his strong, steady hands. Then he
turned abruptly to Mrs. Rebell. "Now," said he, "just a word with you,
in your private ear."
Without waiting for an answer, he started walking down the hall, Barbara
following obediently, while yet finding time to gaze, half fearfully, as
she went, at the quivering grotesque shadows flung by herself and her
companion across the bare spaces of flagged floor, and over the
high-backed armchairs, the Chinese screen, and the Indian cabinets which
lined the walls on either side of the huge fire-place.
At last they stopped before a closed door--one curiously ornate, and
heavy with gilding. Doctor McKirdy motioned to his companion to open it,
and as she did so they passed through into what was evidently the
rarely-used drawing-room of the Priory.
Then, putting the lamp down on the top of a china cabinet, the Scotchman
turned and faced his companion, and with a certain surprise Mrs. Rebell
realised that he was much taller than herself, and that as he spoke she
had to look up into his face.
"I should tell you," he said, with no preamble, "that it was I who wrote
you the letter bidding you come."
Barbara shrank back: of course she had been aware,--painfully
aware,--that the letter which had indeed bidden her, not unkindly, to
leave the West Indian island where she had spent her wretched married
life, and make Chancton Priory her home, had not been written by her
godmother's own hand. The knowledge had troubled her, for it implied
that her letter of appeal, that to which this was an answer, had also
been read by alien eyes.
"Yes," the doctor repeated, as though unwilling to spare her, "I wrote
it--of course at Madam's dictation: but it was my notion that when going
through London you should see Goodchild. He's an honest man,--that is,
honest as lawyers go! I thought may-be he might explain how matters are
here--Well, did you see him?"
"Yes, I went there this morning. Mr. Goodchild told me that my godmother
was paralysed,--but that, of course, I knew already. Perhaps you have
forgotten that you yourself long ago wrote and told me of her illness?
Mr. Goodchild also explained to me that Madame Sampiero sees very few
people. He seemed to doubt"--Barbara's soft, steady voice suddenly
trembled--"whether she would consent to see me; but I do hope"--she
fixed her dark eyes on his face with a rather piteous expression--"I do
hope, Doctor McKirdy, that she will see me?"
"Don't fash yourself! She _is_ going to see you,--that is, if I just
wish it!"
He looked down at the delicate, sensitive face of the young woman
standing before him, with an intent, scrutinising gaze, allowed it to
travel slowly downwards till it seemed wholly to envelop her, and yet
Barbara felt no offence: she realised that this strange being only so
far examined her outward shape, inasmuch as he believed it would help
him to probe her character and nature.
In very truth the doctor's mind was filled at the present moment with
the thought of one in every way differing from Mrs. Rebell. How would
this still young creature--Barbara's look of fragility and youth gave
him something of a shock--affect Madame Sampiero? That was the question
he had set himself to solve in the next few moments.
"Are you one of those," he said suddenly, and rather hoarsely, "who
shrink from the sight of suffering?--who abhor distortion?--who only
sympathise with pain when they themselves are in the way to require
sympathy?"
Barbara hesitated. His questions, flung at her with quick short words,
compelled true answers.
"No," she said, looking at him with steady eyes, "I have not--I have
never had--the feelings you describe. I believe many people shrink from
seeing suffering, and that it is not to their discredit that they do so
shrink----" There was a defiant note in her voice, and quickly her
companion registered the challenge, but he knew that this was no time to
wage battle.
Mrs. Rebell continued: "I have never felt any horror of the sick and
maimed, and I am not given to notice, with any repugnance, physical
deformity." Then she stopped, for the strong lined face of her companion
had become, as it were, convulsed with some deep feeling, to which she
had no clue.
"Perhaps I will just tell you," he said, "why I believe Madame Sampiero
may see you, apart from the fact that she desires to do so. Mrs. Turke
was quite right," he went on with apparent irrelevancy, "I _did_ know
your mother. I had a sincere respect for her, and----" Again his
thoughts seemed to take an abrupt turn. "I suppose you realise that I am
Madame Sampiero's medical attendant,--I have no other standing in this
house,--oh no, none in the world!"
Barbara divined the feeling which had prompted the last words to be
bitter, bitter.
"I know," she said gently, "that you have been here a long time, and
that my mother"--a very charming smile lighted up her sad face--"fully
returned the feeling you seem to have had for her."
But Doctor McKirdy hardly seemed to hear the words, for he hurried on,
"One day, many years ago--I think before you were born--your mother and
I went for a walk. It was about this time of the year--that is the time
when keepers and vermin are busy. We were walking, I say, and I--young
fool!--was full of pride, for it was the first walk a lady had ever
deigned to take with me. I was uglier, yes, and I think even more
repulsive-looking than I am now!" he gave Barbara a quick glance from
under his shaggy eyebrows, but she made no sign of dissent, and he
smiled, wryly.
"Well, as I say, I was pleased and proud, for I thought even more ill of
women than I think now; but Mrs. Richard,--that's what we call her here,
you know,--was so beautiful, such a contrast to myself: just a pretty
doll, I took her to be, and as thoughts are free, looking at her there
walking along, I was glad to know that I had all the sweets of her
company and none of the bitter!"
And still Barbara Rebell, staring at him, astonished at his words, felt
no offence.
"At last," he went on, "we reached the edge of the first down. I'll take
you there some day. And we heard suddenly a piteous squeal: it was a
puppy, a miserable little beastie, caught in a rabbit trap. You've never
seen such a thing? Ay, that's well, I hope you never will: since that
day you run no risk of doing so in Chancton Woods! 'Twas a sickening
sight, one of the doggie's paws nearly off, and I felt sick--wanted to
get away, to fetch someone along from the village. But Mrs. Richard--she
was the tenderest creature alive, remember--never flinched. Those were
not the days of gun ladies, but there, with me standing by, foolish,
helpless, she put an end to the poor beastie--she put it out of its
misery--with my knife too. Now that deserved the Humane Society's medal,
eh? I never go by there without thinking of it. It's a pity," he said,
in abrupt irrelevant conclusion, "that you're not more like her. I mean,
as regards the outer woman"--he added hastily--"you are dark, like your
father. Well now, I'll be calling Mrs. Turke, and she shall show you
your rooms. We thought you would like those Mrs. Richard used to have
when she came here. She preferred them to those below, to those grander
apartments on Madam's floor."
"And when shall I see my godmother?"
Doctor McKirdy looked at her consideringly:
"Time enough when you've had a rest and a good supper. Never fear, she's
as eager to see you as you are to see her," then, as he watched her
walking back into the hall, he muttered under his breath, "There's
something of Mrs. Richard there after all!"
* * * * *
A few moments later Barbara was following the stout housekeeper up the
small winding stair which occupied, opposite the porch and vestibule,
one of the four corners of the great hall, for those who had designed
and built the newer portion of Chancton Priory had had no wish to
sacrifice any portion of the space at their disposal to the exigencies
of a grand staircase.
Mrs. Turke, on the first landing, called a halt, and Barbara looked
about her with languid curiosity. To the right stretched a dark recess,
evidently the music gallery which overlooked the hall; to the left a
broad well-lighted corridor led, as Mrs. Rebell at once divined, if only
because of the sudden silence which had fallen on her companion, to the
apartments of the paralysed mistress of the Priory, to those of her
godmother, Madame Sampiero.
Then Mrs. Turke, her loquacity stilled, laboured on up more narrow
winding stairs till they reached the third storey, and, groping her way
down many winding turnings, she finally ushered Mrs. Rebell with some
ceremony--for every incident connected with daily life was to Mrs. Turke
a matter of ritual--into a suite of low-ceilinged, plainly furnished
rooms, of which the windows opened on to the Tudor stone balcony which
was so distinctive and so beautiful a feature of the great house, as
seen from the spreading lawns below.
* * * * *
Till Barbara found herself left solitary--she had declared herself well
able, nay, desirous to unpack and dress alone--all that had taken place
during the last hour had seemed hardly real.
It is said that the first feeling of those who, after being buffeted in
the storm, tossed to and fro by the waves, are finally cast up on dry
land, is not always one of relief. Barbara was no longer struggling in
deep water, but she still felt terribly bruised and sore, and the smart
of the injuries which had befallen her was still with her. Standing
there, in the peaceful rooms which had been those of her own mother, a
keen, almost a physical, longing for that same dear tender mother came
suddenly over her.
Slowly she put on her one evening dress, a white gown which had been
hurriedly made during the hours which had elapsed between the arrival of
the Johnstones' invitation to Government House, and the leaving by her
of her husband's plantation. Then she looked at herself in the glass,
rather pitifully anxious to make a good impression on her godmother--on
this paralysed woman, who, if the London lawyer said truly, was yet
mentally so intensely and vividly alive.
To give herself courage, Barbara tried to remember that her hostess was
not only of her own blood, but that she had been the one dear, intimate,
and loyal friend of her mother--the only human being whom Richard
Rebell's wife had refused to give up at his bidding, and even after
Madame Sampiero and her kinsman had broken off all epistolary
relationship. Why had they done so? Out of the past came the memory of
sharp bitter words uttered by Barbara's father concerning Madame
Sampiero and a certain Lord Bosworth. Then, more recently, when she was
perhaps about thirteen, had come news of a child's death--the child had
been called Julia--and Barbara's mother had wept long and bitterly,
though admitting, in answer to her young daughter's frightened
questions, that she had not known the little Julia.
Mrs. Rebell wrapped a shawl, one of Grace Johnstone's many thoughtful
gifts, round her white gown, and so stepped through her window on to the
stone balcony. Standing there, looking down on the great dark spaces
below, she suddenly felt, for the first time, a deep sense of peace and
of protection from past sorrows and indignities. For the first time also
she felt that she had been justified in coming, and in leaving the man
who,--alas! that it should be so, he being kinsman as well as
husband,--had treated her so ill.
During the long, solitary journey home--if, indeed, England was
home--there had been time for deep misgiving, for that quick examination
of conscience which, in a sensitive, over-wrought nature, leads to
self-accusation, to a fear of duty neglected. Barbara Rebell was but now
emerging from what had been, and that over years, the imprisonment of
both body and soul. Physically she had become free, but mentally she
still had often during the last five weeks felt herself to be a
bondswoman. During the voyage--aye, even during the two days spent by
her in London--she had seemed to suffer more sentiently than when
actually crushed under the heel of Pedro Rebell, the half-Spanish
planter whose name seemed the only English thing about him. Since she
had escaped from him, Barbara had felt increasingly the degradation of
her hasty marriage to one whose kinship to herself, distant though it
was, had seemed to her girlish inexperience an ample guarantee. That she
had once loved the man,--if, indeed, the romantic, high-strung fancy
which had swept over the newly-orphaned girl could be dignified by the
name of love,--served but to increase her feeling of shame.
To-night, leaning over the stone balcony of Chancton Priory, Barbara
remembered an incident which had of late receded in her mind: once more
she seemed to feel the thrill of indignation and impotent anger which
had overwhelmed her when she had found out, a few weeks after her
wedding day, that the sum of money paid yearly by Madame Sampiero to
Richard Rebell's account, and untouched by him for some ten years before
his death, had been discovered and appropriated by her bridegroom, with,
if she remembered rightly, the scornful assent of Madame Sampiero.
Again she turned hot, as though the episode had happened but yesterday
instead of six long years before; and she asked herself, with sudden
misgiving, how she had ever found the courage to petition her godmother
for the shelter of her roof. She could never have brought herself to do
so but for the kindly letter, accompanied by a gift of a hundred pounds,
which had reached her once a year ever since her ill-fated marriage.
These letters seemed to tell her that the old link which had bound her
mother and Barbara Sampiero so closely had not snapped with death, with
absence, or even, on the part of the writer of them, with physical
disablement.
At last Barbara turned back into the room, and, taking up a candle, made
her way slowly and noiselessly down the old house.