"Il est plus aisé d'être sage pour les autres que de l'être pour
soi-même."
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Chancton Priory had been, from his earliest boyhood, even more James
Berwick's home than was his uncle's house over at Fletchings, and it was
incomparably dearer to him in every sense than Chillingworth, which came
to him from his dead wife, together with the huge fortune which gave him
such value in Mrs. Boringdon's eyes. The mistress of the Priory had
always lavished on Lord Bosworth's nephew a measure of warm affection
which she might just as reasonably have bestowed on his only sister, but
Miss Berwick was not loved at Chancton Priory, and, being well aware
that this was so, she rarely came there. Indeed, her brother's real love
for the place, and for Madame Sampiero, was to her somewhat
inexplicable: she knew that at the Priory he felt far more at home than
he was at Fletchings, and the knowledge irked her.
In truth, to James Berwick one of the greatest charms of Chancton Priory
had come to be the fact that when there he was able almost to forget the
wealth which had come to him with such romantic fulness when he was only
four-and-twenty. Madame Sampiero, Doctor McKirdy, and Mrs. Turke never
seemed to remember that he was one of the richest men in the kingdom,
and this made his commerce with them singularly agreeable.
* * * * *
Certain men and women have a curious power of visualising that fifth
dimension which lies so near and yet so far from this corporeal world.
For these favoured few, unseen presences sometimes seem to cast visible
shadows--their intuition may now and then be at fault, but on the other
hand, invisible guides will sometimes lead them into beautiful secret
pastures, of which the boundaries are closely hidden from those of their
fellows who only cultivate the obvious. It was so with James Berwick,
and, as again so often happens, this odd power--not so much of second
sight as of divination--was quite compatible with much that was
positive, prosaic, and even of the earth earthy, in his nature and
character. He attributed his undoubted gift to his Stuart blood, and was
fond of reminding himself that the Old Pretender was said always to
recognise a traitor when approached by one in the guise of a loyal
servant and friend.
On the afternoon following that spent by him at the Boringdons', Berwick
walked across to Chancton from Fletchings. He came the short way through
the Priory park--that which finally emerged by a broad grass path into
the lawn spreading before the Elizabethan front of the great mass of
buildings. As he moved across, towards the porch, he thought the fine
old house looked more alive and less deserted than usual, and having
passed through the vestibule, and so into the vast hall, he became at
once aware of some influence new to the place.
He looked about him with an eager, keen glance. A large log fire was
burning in the cavernous chimney, but then he knew himself to be
expected: to that same cause he attributed the rather unusual sight of a
china bowl full of autumn flowers reflected in the polished mahogany
round table, on which, as he drew near, he saw three letters, addressed
in McKirdy's stiff clear handwriting, lying ready for the post. Berwick,
hardly aware of what he was doing, glanced idly down at them: then, as
he moved rather hastily away, he lifted his eyebrows in surprise--one
was addressed to his sister, Miss Arabella Berwick, at Fletchings; yet
another, with every possible formality of address, to the Duchess of
Appleby and Kendal, at Halnakeham Castle; while the third bore the name
of another great lady living some ten miles from Chancton, and to
whom--Berwick would have been ready to lay any wager--no communication
had been sent from the Priory for some twenty odd years, though both she
and the kindly Duchess had in the long ago been intimate with Madame
Sampiero.
Once more Berwick looked round the hall, and then, abruptly, went out
again into the open air, and so made his way across at right angles to a
glass door giving direct access to a small room hung with sporting
prints and caricatures, unaltered since the time it had been the estate
room of Madame Sampiero's father. Here, at least, Berwick felt with
satisfaction, everything was absolutely as usual. He went through into a
narrow passage, up a short steep staircase to the upper floor, and so to
the old-fashioned bedroom and dressing-room which no one but he ever
occupied, and which were both still filled with his schoolboy and
undergraduate treasures. There was a third room on each of the floors
composing the two-storied building which had been added to the Priory
some fifty years before, and these extra rooms--two downstairs, one
upstairs--were sacred to Mrs. Turke.
There, as Berwick well knew, she cherished the mahogany cradle in which
she had so often rocked him to sleep: there were photographs of himself
at every age, to which, of late years political caricatures had been
added, and there also were garnered the endless gifts he had made and
was always making to his old nurse. James Berwick had been sadly spoilt
by the good things life had heaped on him in almost oppressive
lavishness, but no thought of personal convenience would have made him
give up, when at the Priory, these two rooms--this proximity to the
elderly woman to whom he was so dear, and who had tended him so
devotedly through a delicate and fretful childhood.
As he walked about his bedroom, he looked round him well pleased. A good
fire was burning in the grate, still compassed about with a nursery
fender, and his evening clothes, an old suit always kept by him at
Chancton, were already laid out on the four-post bed. Everything was
exactly as he would have wished to find it; and so seeing, he suddenly
frowned, most unreasonably. Why was it, he asked himself, that only
here, only at the Priory, were things done for him as he would have
always wished them to be--that is, noiselessly, invisibly? His own
servants over at Chillingworth never made him so comfortable! But then,
as he was fond of reminding himself, he was one of those men who dislike
to be dependent on others. A nice regard, perhaps, for his own dignity
had always caused him to dispense with the services of the one dependant
to whom, we are told, his master can never hope to be a hero.
There came a knock, a loud quavering tap-tap on the door. Berwick walked
forward and opened it himself, then put his arms round Mrs. Turke's fat
neck, and kissed her on each red cheek. The mauve and white striped gown
was new to him, but each piece of handsome jewellery set about the
substantial form had been his gift. "Well, Turke! well, old Turkey! it's
an age since I've seen you all! I was in the village for a moment
yesterday----"
"For a moment? Fie, Mr. James, I know all about it, sir! You was at the
Cottage for hours!"
"Well, I really hadn't a minute to come over here! But make me welcome
now that I am come, eh Turkey?"
"Welcome? Why, bless you, sir, you know well enough that you're as
welcome as flowers in May! We _have_ missed you dreadful all this
summer! I can't think why gentlemen should want to go to such outlandish
spots: I looked out the place in 'Peter Parley,' that I did, and I used
to shake in my bed when I thought of all you must be going through, when
you might be at home, here, with everything nice and comfortable about
you."
"I'll tell you what we'll do, Turkey--you can tell McGregor to lay
dinner in the business room to-night, and you shall have it with me."
As if struck by a sudden idea, he added, "And we'll have beans and
bacon!"
Mrs. Turke went off into a fit of laughter. "In October!" she cried.
"Why, my lamb, where's all your fine learning gone to? Not but what,
thanks to glass and the stoves, the fruits of the earth do appear at
queer times nowadays, but it would be a sin to waste glass and stoves on
beans!"
Berwick was not one whit abashed, "If we can't have broad beans, we can
have toasted cheese. My sister has got a French chef at Fletchings, and
luncheon to-day was--well, you know, Turkey!"
"I know, sir, just kickshaws! Taking the bread out of honest
Englishwomen's mouths. I'd chef him!" and Berwick realised from the
expression of her face that Mrs. Turke thought to chef was French for to
cook.
But there was a more important matter now in hand to be discussed, and
she said slily, "You'll have better company than me to-night, Mr.
James,--you'll have to put on your company manners, sir, for there's a
lady staying here now, you know."
"A lady?" he cried, "the devil there is!"
"You remember Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rebell, surelye? They were here
constant,--now let me see, a matter of twenty-five years ago and more,
when you, Mr. James, were ten years old, my dear."
"What?" he said, his tone suddenly altering, "do you mean--surely you
cannot mean that poor Richard Rebell's daughter is staying here--in the
Priory?--now?"
"Yes, that's just what she is doing--staying."
"Oh!" he said, in an altered voice, "perhaps after all I had better go
back to Chillingworth to-night." He added abruptly, "She married (her
name is Barbara, isn't it?) one of the West Indian Rebells. Is he here
too?"
Mrs. Turke folded her hands together, and shook her head sadly, but with
manifest enjoyment. It was well that Mr. James knew nothing, and that it
had been her part to tell the great news. "Oh no, we never mention him;
his name is never heard! From what I can make out from the doctor,--but
you know, Mr. James, what he's like,--the poor young lady, I mean Mrs.
Rebell, has been most unlucky, matrimonially speaking; just like--_you
know who_, sir----"
"Oh! she's left her husband, has she? It seems to run in the family. Has
she been here long, Turkey?"
"Only since the day before yesterday. But Madam has already took to her
wonderful: she does the morning reading now."
"I should think that would be a great improvement on McKirdy's. But, by
the way, isn't McKirdy jealous?"
Mrs. Turke shook her finger at the speaker. "That's only your fun now,
Mr. James! What call would the doctor have to be such a thing as
jealous? Fie! Besides, he's quite taken to her himself."
"Why then, the girl we saw with McKirdy yesterday must have been Mrs.
Rebell! A tall, dark, slim creature, eh, Turkey? Very oddly dressed?" He
turned and looked hard at his old nurse; she, in return, gave her
nurseling a quick shrewd glance from out of her bright little eyes.
"She's not what I call dressed at all," she said, "I never did see a
young lady so shabby, but there, out in those hot climates----" she
paused tolerantly. "Never mind; we'll soon make that all right. Madam
set Léonie to work at once. As for looks," Mrs. Turke bridled, "Mrs.
Rebell favours her poor papa more than she does her poor mamma," she
said, primly, "but she's a very pleasant-spoken young lady. I do think
you'll like her, Mr. James; and if I was you, sir, I would make up my
mind to stay to-night and to be kind to her. I don't think you'll want
much pressing----"
Again she gave him that quick shrewd look which seemed to say so much
more than her lips uttered. Sometimes Berwick felt an uncomfortable
conviction that very little he thought and did remained hidden from his
old nurse. To-night, as Mrs. Turke had felt quite sure he would do, he
made up his mind to remain at Chancton Priory and to follow, in this
matter of Mrs. Rebell, the advice given him.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the subject of their discussion was sitting on a stool at the
foot of her godmother's couch. It was strange how two days of constant
communion with this stricken woman had impressed Barbara Rebell with a
sense of Madame Sampiero's power of protecting and sheltering those over
whom was thrown the mantle of her affection. The whole of Barbara's past
life, her quiet childhood, her lonely girlhood, even the years she had
spent with Pedro Rebell, had accustomed her to regard solitude as a
normal state, and she now looked forward eagerly to what so many would
have considered the long dull stretch of days spread out before her.
All she desired, but that most ardently, was to become dear,--she would
whisper to herself, perhaps necessary,--to Madame Sampiero. The physical
state others might have regarded with repugnance and horror produced no
such effect on Barbara's mind and imagination. All the tenderness of a
heart long starved, and thrown back on itself and on the past, was now
beginning to be lavished on this paralysed woman who had made her so
generously welcome, and who, she intuitively felt, was making so great
and so gallant a stand against evil fortune.
Even to-night Mrs. Rebell, coming into the room, had been struck by
the mingled severity and splendour of Madame Sampiero's appearance.
The white velvet gown, the black lace cross-over, and the delicate
tracery of the black coif heightened the beauty of the delicate
features,--intensified the fire in the blue eyes, as a brighter scheme
of colouring had not known how to do.
Léonie--the lean, clever-looking, deft-fingered French maid who had
grown old in the service of her mistress--stood by the couch looking
down at her handiwork with an air of pride: "Madame a voulu faire un
petit bout de toilette pour Monsieur Berwick," she explained
importantly. Poor Barbara was by now rather nervously aware that there
was something about her own appearance to-night which did not please her
godmother. Indeed, sitting there, in this lofty room full of beautiful
and extremely ornate pieces of furniture and rich hangings, she felt
acutely conscious that she was, as it were, out of the picture. Words
were not needed to tell her that, for some mysterious reason, her
godmother wished her to look well before this Mr. James Berwick, who, if
Mrs. Turke was to be believed, seemed to come and go so often at the
Priory, but regarding whom, she, Barbara, felt as yet no interest.
Almost involuntarily she answered the critical expression which rested
on the clear-cut face. "I care so little how I look,--after all what
does it matter?"
But more quickly than usual she realised the significance of the
murmured words, "Nonsense, child, it does matter, very much!" and she
divined the phrase, "A woman should always try to look her best."
Barbara smiled as Léonie joined in with "Une jolie femme doît sa beauté
à elle-même," adding, in response to another of those muffled
questioning murmurs, "Mais oui, Madame, Monsieur Boringdon a dû venir
avec Monsieur Berwick."
Mrs. Rebell looked up rather eagerly; if Oliver Boringdon were to be
there this evening, and if outward appearance were of such consequence
as these kind people, Madame Sampiero and the old Frenchwoman, seemed to
think, then it was a pity that one of the only two people whom she had
wished to impress favourably at Chancton should see her at a
disadvantage.
Again came low murmurs of which the significance entirely escaped
Barbara, but which Léonie had heard and understood: quickly the maid
went across the great room, and in a moment her brown hands had pulled
open a deep drawer in the Buhl wardrobe which had once adorned the bed
chamber of the last Queen of France. Now Léonie was coming back towards
her mistress' couch, towards Barbara, her arms laden with a delicate
foam of old lace.
A few minutes of hard work with a needle and white thread, much eager
chatter of French, and Barbara's thin white silk gown had been
transformed from a straight and, according to the fashion of that day,
shapeless gown, into a beautiful and poetic garment.
A gleam of amused pleasure flashed across Madame Sampiero's trembling
lips and wide open blue eyes: she realised that a little thought, a
little trouble, would transform her god-daughter, if not into a beauty,
then into a singularly distinguished and attractive-looking young woman.
Like most beautiful people, Barbara Sampiero had always been generous in
her appreciation of the beauty of others, and she would have been
pleased indeed had Richard Rebell's daughter turned out as lovely as had
been her mother,--lovely with that English beauty of golden hair and
perfect colouring. But Barbara's charm, so far at least, seemed of the
soul rather than of the body, and, recognising this fact, Madame
Sampiero had at first felt disappointed, for her own experience--and in
these matters a woman can only be guided by her own personal
experience--was that in this world beauty of body counts very much more
in obtaining for those who possess it their heart's desire than does
beauty of soul.
* * * * *
The mistress of Chancton Priory had hesitated painfully before allowing
Doctor McKirdy to write the letter which had bidden Barbara Rebell come
to England. The old Scotchman, who to her surprise had urged Madame
Sampiero to send for her god-daughter, regarded the coming of Barbara as
a matter of comparatively small moment. If the experiment was not
successful, well then Mrs. Rebell could be sent away again; but the
mistress of the Priory knew that to herself the coming of Richard
Rebell's daughter must either bring something like happiness, and the
companionship for which she sometimes craved with so desperate a
longing, or the destruction of the dignified peace in which she had
known how to enfold herself as in a mantle.
For a few days, Barbara's fate had indeed hung in the balance, and could
money have taken the place of the shelter asked for, it would have been
sent in ample measure. At last what had turned the balance and weighed
down the scale had been a mere word said by Mrs. Turke--a word referring
incautiously to James Berwick as the probable future owner of Chancton
Priory.
Hearing that word, the present owner's trembling lips had closed tightly
together. So that was what they were all planning? That the Priory
should be, in the fulness of time, handed over to James Berwick, to be
added to the many possessions he had acquired by the sale of
himself--Madame Sampiero, discussing the matter in the watches of her
long night, did not choose and pick her words--by that of his young
manhood, and of his already growing political reputation, to a sickly
woman, older than himself, whose death had been the crowning boon she
had bestowed on her husband.
And so Chancton, which Madame Sampiero loved with so passionate an
affection, was meant to take its place, as if by chance, at the end of
the long list of Berwick's properties--that list which all who ran might
read in those books of reference where the mightiness of Lord Bosworth's
nephew was set forth--after Chillingworth, after the town house, after
Churm Paddox, Newmarket, even after the property he had inherited from
his own father in France. The thought whipped her as if with
scorpions--perhaps the more so that for one moment, in the long ago, at
a time when Barbara Sampiero wished to share everything with the man she
loved, and before little Julia, that _enfant de miracle_, was born, she
had seriously thought of making Lord Bosworth's nephew her heir. But his
marriage had revolted her profoundly, and had, of course, made the
questions of his future and his career, which had at one time been a
matter for anxious thought on the part of his uncle and political
godfather, more than secure. Well, indeed, had he, or rather his sister
Arabella, feathered James Berwick's nest!
Like most lonely wealthy women, Madame Sampiero had made and destroyed
many wills in the course of her life, but since the death of her child
she had made no new disposition of her property. Let the place go to any
Rebell who could establish his or her claim to it--such had been her
feeling. But while Barbara's short, pitiful, and yet dignified letter
still remained unanswered, and while Mrs. Turke's incautious word still
sounded in her ears, she had sent for her lawyer, and, after making a
will which surprised him, had dictated to Doctor McKirdy the letter
bidding Mrs. Rebell come and take up her permanent home at Chancton.
And now--ah! even after only very few hours of Barbara's company, Madame
Sampiero lay and trembled to think how nearly she had let this good
thing which had suddenly come into her shadowed life slip by. All her
life through she had acted on impulse, and often she had lived to regret
what she had done, but this time, acting on what was to be, so she had
assured herself, the last memorable impulse of her life, her instinct
had guided her aright.
What Barbara had felt, on the first morning when she wandered about the
beautiful old house, her god-mother had since also experienced, with
increasing regret and self-reproach. Why had she not sent for the girl
immediately after Richard Rebell's death? Why had she allowed the
terrible grief and physical distress which then oppressed her to prevent
the accomplishment of that act of humanity and mercy? True, poor Barbara
had already met the man whom she had married almost immediately
afterwards, but had she, Madame Sampiero, done her duty by her
god-daughter, the girl might have been saved from the saddest because
the least remediable fate which can befall a woman, that of an unhappy
uncongenial marriage--how unhappy, how uncongenial Madame Sampiero did
not yet fully know.
But now it was no use to waste time in lamenting the irreparable, and
the paralysed woman set her clear mind to do all that could be done to
make the life of her young kinswoman as much as might be honoured and
happy. Those old friends and neighbours whose disapproval and
reprobation the owner of Chancton Priory had endured during many years
with easy philosophy, and whose later pity and proffered sympathy she
had so fiercely rejected when her awful loss and subsequent physical
disability had made them willing to surround her once more with love,
with sympathy, ay and almost with the respect she had forfeited, should
now be asked to show kindness to Richard Rebell's daughter. Hence the
letters dictated to Doctor McKirdy which Berwick had seen lying ready
for post in the hall.
Other epistles, of scarcely less moment from the point of view of Madame
Sampiero, had also been despatched from the Priory during the last two
days. Barbara must be made fit in every way for the place which she was
to take now, and in the future, at Chancton Priory. In material matters,
money can do so much! Madame Sampiero knew exactly how much--and alas!
how little--money can do. Her wealth could not restore poor Barbara's
girlhood, could not obliterate the fact that far away, in a West Indian
island, there lived a man who might some day make Barbara as wretched as
she herself had been made by Napoleone Sampiero. But there remained the
power of so acting that Barbara should be armed _cap-à-pie_ for any
worldly warfare that might come--the power of surrounding her with that
outward appearance of importance and prosperity which, as Madame
Sampiero well knew, means much in this world.
Hence milliners and dressmakers were told to hie them to Chancton, from
Bond Street, and, better still, from the Rue de la Paix. Doctor McKirdy
was amused, bewildered, touched to the heart, as he bent his red-grey
head over the notepaper, and drew heavy cheques "all for the covering of
one poor perishable body." So much fling he allowed himself, and then
suddenly "Madam" had said something,--now what had she said? The doctor
was completely nonplussed, angry with himself--he, whose mind always
leapt to hers! Again and again the long sentence was murmured forth--it
must be something of the utmost importance--luckily Mrs. Turke just then
bustled into the room, and with startling clearness had come the words,
"You tell him, Turkey!" Again the muttered incomprehensible murmur, and
Mrs. Turke's instant comprehension, "Why, of course, Madam reminds you,
doctor, that
"The very sheep and silkworms wore
The selfsame clothing long before!"
Well, well, as long as it all added a moment of cheerfulness, of
forgetfulness of the bitter past to his patient, what did anything
matter? Doctor McKirdy told himself rather ruefully that Madam had
always been fond of fine raiment: for his part, he thought Mrs. Rebell
looked very well as she was, especially when wearing that long white
cloak of hers, but if it pleased Madam to dress her up like a doll, why,
of course, they must all give in with a good grace.
Meanwhile, oh! yes, he quite understood that she was not to be shown
overmuch to the critical eyes of the village--there was to be no going
to church, for instance, till the fine feathers were come which were to
transform the gentle modest dove-like creature into a bird of paradise.
To-day, for the first time for many years, Madame Sampiero could have
dispensed with the presence of James Berwick at the Priory. Of all men
he was the most fastidious in the matter of women's looks. A first
impression, so Barbara's godmother reminded herself, counts so much with
a man, and what James thought now of Barbara Rebell would be sure to be
reported at once at Fletchings.
Fletchings, never long out of Madame Sampiero's thoughts, yet rarely
mentioned to those about her--Fletchings the charming, rather small
manor-house originally bought by Lord Bosworth in order that he might be
close--and yet not too close, in the eyes of a censorious world--to
Chancton Priory. This had been some thirty years ago, long before the
memorable later period when both of them became entirely indifferent to
what that same world might think.
And now James Berwick had come to be the only link between Fletchings
and the Priory. It had been Madame Sampiero's will, ruthlessly carried
out, that all relationship between herself and Lord Bosworth should
cease--that they should no longer meet, even to mourn together their
child Julia. She wished to be remembered as she had been, not as she now
was, a living corpse, an object of repulsion--so she told herself with
grim frankness--to any sanely constituted man.
The mistress of Chancton Priory never allowed herself to regret her
decision, but still there were times when James Berwick's prolonged
absences saddened her and seemed to make the lamp of her life burn very
low. From him alone she chose to learn what her old friend was thinking
and doing, and how he regarded those struggles in the political arena of
which she was still almost as interested a spectator as he was himself.
Through Berwick, she was thus able to follow each phase of the pleasant
life Lord Bosworth had made for himself, in this, the evening of his
days.
Madame Sampiero, during the long hour just before the dawn, had debated
keenly within herself as to whether it would be well for Barbara to go
to Fletchings. Certainly, yes, if the so doing would add to her
happiness or consolidate her position, but then Arabella Berwick must be
won over and propitiated, made to understand that Mrs. Rebell was
destined to become a person of importance. What Arabella should be
brought to think rested with James Berwick. For the first time for
years, Madame Sampiero would have given much to be downstairs, to-night,
to see what was going on in the great Blue drawing-room which lay just
below her own room.