"So every sweet with sour is tempered still,
That maketh it be coveted the more;
For easy things that may be got at will
Most sorts of men do set but little store."
SPENSER.
Berwick walked up and down the hall waiting for Mrs. Rebell. Not only
Mrs. Turke's ambiguous utterances, but his own knowledge of her parents,
made him look forward with a certain curiosity to seeing her.
The story of Richard Rebell, the one-time brilliant and popular man
about town, who, not long after his marriage to a reigning beauty, had
been overwhelmed by the shameful accusation of cheating at cards; the
subsequent libel case which had developed into a mid-Victorian _cause
célèbre_; the award of nominal damages; and Mr. and Mrs. Richard
Rebell's ultimate retreat, for ever, to the Continent--it was all well
known to James Berwick.
Still, he would rather have met this Mrs. Rebell anywhere else than at
Chancton Priory. Her presence here could not but destroy, for himself,
the peculiar charm of the place.
How unpunctual she was! Why was it that women--with the one exception of
his sister Arabella--were always either too early or too late?
McGregor's voice broke across the ungallant thought, "Mrs. Rebell, sir,
is in the Blue drawing-room. She has been down some time."
The words gave Berwick a disagreeable shock. The Blue drawing-room?
Years had gone by since the two charming rooms taking up the whole west
side of the Priory had been in familiar use. He remembered very well the
last time he had seen them filled with a feminine presence. It had been
just after his first term at Oxford, when he still felt something of the
schoolboy: Madame Sampiero, beautiful and gracious as she only knew how
to be, had received him with great kindness, striving to put him
completely at his ease. There had been there also his uncle, Lord
Bosworth, and a certain Septimus Daman, an old friend and habitué of the
Priory in those later days of Lord Bosworth and Madame Sampiero's
intimacy, when no woman ever crossed its stately threshold.
Just before the little party of four, the three men and their hostess,
had gone in to dinner, a radiant apparition had danced into the room,
little fair-haired Julia, the incarnation of happy childhood. Her mother
had placed her, laughing, beside the rather fantastic portrait which was
then being painted of the child by an Italian artist, and which now hung
in Lord Bosworth's study at Fletchings, bearing silent witness to many
past events.
With the memory of this scene singularly vivid, it shocked Berwick that
now, even after the lapse of so many years, another woman should be
installed as mistress of the room towards which he was bending his
steps. So feeling, he hesitated, and waited for a moment, a frown on his
face, before turning the handle of the door.
* * * * *
James Berwick cultivated in himself a sense of the unusual and the
picturesque; especially was he ever consciously seeking to find these
qualities in those women with whom chance brought him into temporary
contact. As he passed through into the Blue drawing-room, he became at
once aware that the former ordered beauty of the apartment had been
restored, and that the tall white figure standing by the fire
harmonised, in some subtle fashion, with the old French furniture
covered in the rather bright blue silk which gave its name to the room.
Barbara Rebell was gazing down into the wood fire, one slender hand and
arm resting on the rose marble mantel-piece. She looked singularly young
and forlorn, and yet, as she turned towards him, he saw that her whole
bearing was instinct with a rather desperate dignity. She was not at all
what the man advancing towards her had thought to find--above all she
now looked curiously unlike the clear-eyed vigorous creature she had
appeared when walking by McKirdy's side along the open down.
As James Berwick came into the circle of light thrown by the tall shaded
lamps, she turned and directly faced him,--the expression of her face
that of a shrinking and proud embarrassment. Then she spoke, the words
she uttered bringing to her hearer discomfiture and rather piqued
surprise.
"I have been wishing so much to see you, Mr. Boringdon, and also your
mother. I think your sister must have written and told you of her
kindness to me--though indeed I do not suppose for a moment she can have
made you understand how very very good she and Mr. Johnstone both were.
I am the bearer of several things from Grace. Also"--her low grave voice
faltered--"I wish to ask if you will be so kind as to arrange for the
sending back to your brother-in-law of some money he lent me." She held
out as she spoke an envelope, "It is fifty pounds, and I do not know how
to convey it to him."
Berwick felt keenly annoyed,--there is always something lowering to
one's self-esteem in being taken for another person, and especially in
receiving in that character anything savouring of a confidential
communication.
"You are making a mistake," he said, rather sharply; "my name is
Berwick--James Berwick. Oliver Boringdon, Mrs. Johnstone's brother,
lives at Chancton Cottage. You will certainly meet him in the course of
the next day or two."
Mrs. Rebell looked for a moment extremely disconcerted: a flood of
bright colour swept over her face, but Berwick, now considering her
closely, saw that, if confused, she was also most certainly relieved.
Her manner altered,--she became, in a gentle and rather abstracted way,
at ease. The man now standing close to her suddenly felt as if in the
presence of a shy and yet confiding creature--one only half tame, ready
to spring away at any rough unmannerly approach. He caught himself
wondering how it was that she had already made friends with McKirdy, and
he told himself that there was about this woman something at once
delicately charming and at the same time disarming--he no longer grudged
her presence at the Priory.
On their way to the dining-room, during their progress through the hall,
Berwick looked down at the fingers resting on his arm. They were
childishly small and delicate. She must have, he thought, a singularly
pretty foot: yes, there was certainly something of the nymph about
her,--his first instinct had not been at fault, after all.
Mrs. Rebell walked to the further side of the large round table,
evidently regarding her companion as her guest, and from that moment
onwards, James Berwick never disputed Barbara Rebell's sovereignty of
Chancton Priory. Indeed, soon he was glad that she had chosen so to
place herself that, whenever he looked up, he saw her small head--the
ivory tinted face so curiously framed by short curling dark hair, and
the rather widely set apart, heavy-lidded eyes--sharply outlined against
the curtainless oriel window, of which the outer side was swept by the
branches of a cedar of Lebanon.
Berwick felt himself in an approving mood. His old nurse had been right;
Mrs. Rebell would add to, not detract from, the charm of the Priory.
Many trifling matters ministered to his fancy. The dining-table was bare
of flowers and of ornament: McGregor, it was clear, had lost touch with
the outside world. Berwick was glad too that Mrs. Rebell wore no
jewels,--not even, to his surprise, a wedding ring. She must be even
more out of touch with her contemporaries than McGregor! And yet her
dress,--yes, there could be no doubt about it--had an air of
magnificence, in spite of its extreme plainness. Now that he came to
think of it, her white lace gown, vaporous and mysterious, resembled,
quite curiously so, that of a bride.
So, doubtless, sitting there, as they were sitting now, more than one
Rebell bride and bridegroom had sat in this old dining-room, at this
very round table, in those days when men brought their newly-wedded
wives straight home. The last Rebells to have done so must have been
Madame Sampiero's grandfather and grandmother, her own and her
god-daughter's common ancestors. Berwick wondered swiftly if it was from
that bride of a hundred years ago that Barbara had taken her eyes--those
singularly desolate eyes which alone in her face implied experience.
He looked across the table with a whimsical, considering look. A
stranger passing by outside that window would take them for husband and
wife. So do folk judge by mere appearance! The fact that for himself as
well as for her marriage was out of the region of practical
possibilities made amusing,--gave something of piquancy to this little
scene of pseudo-domesticity.
Barbara also looked up and across at him. She saw clearly, for the first
time, for the lamps in the Blue drawing-room gave but a quavering light,
the tanned and tense-looking face, of which perhaps the most arresting
features were the penetrating bright blue eyes. The strong jaw--not a
handsome feature, this--was partly concealed by a ragged straw-coloured
moustache, many shades lighter than the hair brushed straight across the
already seamed forehead. She smiled, a delicate heart-whole smile,
softening and brightening, altering incredibly the rather austere lines
of her face.
"I'm thinking," she said, "of Mrs. Turke. I was in her sitting-room
to-day, and she showed me the many portraits she has there of you; that
being so, I certainly ought not to have mistaken you, even for a moment,
for Mr. Boringdon!"
But with the mention of the name the smile faded, and a look of
oppression came over her face.
"Grace Johnstone," Berwick's sudden utterance of the name was an
experiment: he waited: ah! yes, that was it! The painful association was
with Mrs. Johnstone, not with Oliver Boringdon or his mother.
"Grace Johnstone," he repeated, "is a very old friend of mine, Mrs.
Rebell, and it is always a pleasure to me to have news of her."
Barbara was opening and shutting her ringless left hand with a nervous
gesture: she began crumbling the bread by her plate.
"I have not known her very long," she said, "but nothing could have
exceeded her kindness to me. I was very ill, and Mrs. Johnstone took me
into her own house and nursed me well again. It seemed so very strange a
coincidence that her mother and brother should be living at Chancton, so
near to my godmother." But Berwick realised that the coincidence was not
regarded by the speaker as a happy one.
"Mrs. Boringdon," he said slowly, "is quite unlike her daughter. I
should think there was very little confidence between them. If you will
allow me to be rather impertinent, to take advantage of our
relationship--you know my great-grandfather very wisely married your
great-grandmother's sister--I should like to give you a piece of
advice----"
Barbara looked at him anxiously--the youthfulness which had so disarmed
him again became manifest in her face.
"My advice is that you write a note to the Johnstones, and then confide
it to my care to send off with the fifty pounds you are returning to
them. I will see that they receive it safely." Some instinct--the
outcome, perhaps, of many money dealings with pretty women--made him
add, with a touch of reserve, "But perhaps Mrs. Johnstone did not know
of this loan?"
"Oh! yes, of course she did! Indeed it was she who suggested it. But for
that I could not have come home." Barbara was blushing, and Berwick saw
tears shining in her eyes. He felt oddly moved. He had often heard of,
but he had never seen, the shedding of tears of gratitude.
"Yes," he said hastily, "I felt sure that was the case. But I do not
think Mrs. Boringdon need be informed of the fact."
Mrs. Rebell had risen. A sudden fear that she might be going upstairs,
that he would not see her again that night, came over Berwick.
"Do go into the drawing-room and write that note to the Johnstones, and
I will join you there in a few moments. I am going over to my own
quarters to fetch something which will, I think, interest you."
Berwick held open the door, waited till the echo of her footsteps had
gone, then quickly lighted a pipe, and walking across the dining-room
pushed open one of the sections of the high oriel window. Then he made
his way round, almost stealthily, to the stretch of lawn on which opened
the French windows of the two drawing-rooms. The curtains were not
drawn: McGregor, and his satellite, the village lad who was being
transformed into a footman, had certainly grown careless,--and yet it
would have been a pity to shut out the moon, and it was not at all cold.
Pacing up and down, Berwick, every few moments, saw, set as in a frame,
the whole interior of the Blue drawing-room, forming a background to
Barbara Rebell. Indeed, she was quite near the window, sitting--an hour
ago the fact would have shocked him--at Madame Sampiero's own
writing-table, at that exquisite Louis XV. escritoire which had been
discovered by Lord Bosworth in a Provençal château, and given by him,
now many a long year ago, to the mistress of Chancton Priory.
Barbara had lighted the two green candles which her unseen watcher could
remember as having been there so long that their colour had almost
faded. She was bending over the notepaper, her slight supple figure
thrown forward in a curiously graceful attitude. Again and again
Berwick, walking and smoking outside, stopped and looked critically at
the little scene. It is seldom that a man can so look consideringly at a
woman, save perhaps at a place of public amusement, or in a church.
At last, slightly ashamed of himself, he turned round for the last time,
and plunged into the moonlit darkness lying the other side of the house.
In his room was a graceful sketch of Mrs. Richard Rebell, Barbara's
lovely mother. He felt certain that the daughter would greatly value it.
How surely his instinct had guided him he himself hardly knew. Barbara
had loved her mother passionately, and after this evening she never
glanced at the early presentment of that same beloved mother without a
kind thought for the giver of it.
* * * * *
A curious hour followed: spent by Berwick and Mrs. Rebell one on each
side of Madame Sampiero's couch--Barbara listening, quite silently,
while Berwick, never seen to more advantage than when exerting himself
to please and interest the stricken mistress of Chancton Priory, told
news of that absorbing world of high politics which to Madame Sampiero
had long been the only one which counted, and in which much of her past
life had been spent.
So listening, Barbara felt herself pitifully ignorant. Pedro Rebell,
proud as he had been of his British name and ancestry, made no attempt
to keep in touch with England. True, certain names, mentioned so
familiarly before her, were remembered as having been spoken by her
father, but this evening, seeing how much this question--this mysterious
question of the Ins and the Outs--meant to Madame Sampiero, Barbara made
up her mind, rather light-heartedly considering the magnitude of the
task, to lose no time in mastering the political problems of her
country.
It must be admitted that Berwick's eager out-pouring--though it included
what one of his listeners knew was a masterly forecast of the fate he
hoped was about to overwhelm the Government which had already earned the
nickname of "The Long Parliament"--did not add much to Mrs. Rebell's
knowledge of contemporary statecraft. Still, her attention never
flagged, and the speaker, noting her absorption, thought he had never
had so agreeable an audience, or one which showed more whole-heartedly
its sympathy with Her Majesty's Opposition.
The entrance of Doctor McKirdy into the room proved a harsh
interruption.
"Be off!" he cried unceremoniously. "Madam won't be having a glint of
sleep this night!" and then as Madame Sampiero spoke, her speech sadly
involved, "Ay, ay, I've no doubt that all this company and talking has
made ye feel more alive, but we don't want you to be feeling dead
to-morrow, Madam--eh, what? That wouldn't matter? It would indeed
matter, to those who had your death on their consciences!"
But already Berwick and Mrs. Rebell were in the corridor. "I hope I have
not tired her?" he said ruefully.
"No--no, indeed! You heard what she said? You made her feel alive--no
wonder she looks forward to your coming! Oh! I hope you will be here
often."
Berwick looked at her oddly, almost doubtfully, for a moment. "I expect
to be here a good deal this winter," he said slowly.
But if he thought that the evening, so well begun, was to be concluded
in the Blue drawing-room downstairs, he was disappointed. Barbara turned
and made him an old-fashioned curtsey--such an obeisance as French and
Italian girls are taught to make to those of rank, and to the aged,--and
then in a moment she was gone, up the winding staircase, leaving Berwick
strangely subjugated and charmed.
He was turning slowly when there came the sound of shuffling feet.
"Madam insists on your coming back just for a moment. Now don't go
exciting of her or she'll never live to see you occupying that chair of
little ease."
"What chair?" asked Berwick lazily: he was fond of McKirdy with an old
fondness dating from his earliest childhood.
"The high seat, the gallows of fifty cubits set apart for the Prime
Minister of this great country!"
"I'm afraid Madam will have to wait a long time before she sees me
there!"
"Well, man, give her at least the chance of living to see that glorious
day!"
But Madame Sampiero had, as it turned out, very little to say, and
nothing of an exciting nature.
"Do I think Arabella will like her?" Berwick was rather taken aback and
puzzled. He had not thought of his sister and Mrs. Rebell in
conjunction, and the idea was not a particularly agreeable one. "Well,
yes, why shouldn't she? They are absolutely unlike," a not unkindly
smile came over his face. He added, "I am sure my uncle will be charmed
with her," then bent forward to catch the faltering utterance, "Yes, I
know Richard Rebell was a friend of his--but do I understand that you
want Arabella to ask her to Fletchings?" There was a rather long
pause--"Yes, yes, Arabella shall certainly call on Mrs. Rebell, and at
once."
* * * * *
One fact necessarily dominated Berwick's relations with, and attitude
towards, women. That he often forgot this fact, and would remain for
long periods of time quite unaware that it lay in wait for him to catch
him tripping, was certain. But even so, any little matter, such as a
moment of sudden instinctive sympathy with some pretty creature standing
on the threshold of life, was apt to bring back the knowledge, to make
the Fact the one thing to be remembered.
Again, it was never forgotten--not for a moment--by the human being who
had Berwick's interest most at heart, and who had played from his
earliest boyhood a preponderant part in his life. Arabella Berwick
always remembered that her brother's dead wife, behaving on this unique
occasion as a man might have done, and as men have often done, had so
left her vast fortune that even the life interest must pass away from
him, and that irrevocably, in the event of his making a second marriage.
At the time of his wife's death, James Berwick had been annoyed--keenly
so--by the comment this clause in her will had provoked--far more so
indeed than by the clause itself. His brief experience of married life
had not been such as to make him at all desirous of repeating the
experiment; and what he saw of marriage about him did not incline him to
envy the lot of the average married man. Accordingly, the condition of
bachelorhood attaching to his present wealth pressed very lightly on
him. It was, however, always present to Miss Berwick, and when her
brother was staying at Fletchings--even more, when she was acting, as
she sometimes did, as hostess to his friends--attractive girls were
never included in the house party, and the agreeable, unattached widow,
who has become a social institution, was rigorously avoided by her.
Unless the attraction is so strong as to cause him to overleap each of
the many barriers erected by our rather elaborate civilisation, a man of
the world--a man interested supremely in politics, considerably in
sport, and in the hundred and one matters which occupy people of wealth
and leisure--is generally apt to know, in an intimate social sense, only
those women with whom he is brought in contact by his own womenfolk.
Berwick went into many worlds to which his sister had no wish to have
access, but both before his marriage and since he had become a widower,
she had been careful to throw him, as far as lay in her power, with
women who could in no way dispute her own position as his trusted
counsellor and friend. This was made the more easy because James Berwick
in all good faith disliked that feminine type which plays in politics
the part of francs-tireurs--he called them by the less agreeable name of
"stirabouts." Miss Berwick cultivated on her brother's behalf every type
of pretty, amusing, and even clever married woman, but no worldly mother
was ever more careful in keeping her daughter out of the way of
detrimentals than was Arabella Berwick in avoiding for her brother
dangerous proximities of an innocent kind.
Unfortunately Berwick was not always as grateful as he should have been
to so kind and far-sighted a sister. He would suddenly take a fancy to
the freshest and prettiest _débutante_, and for a while, perhaps from
June to August, Arabella would tremble. On one occasion she had conveyed
some idea of her brother's position to an astute lady who had regarded
him as a prospective son-in-law, and when once the mother had thoroughly
realised the dreadful truth concerning the tenure of his large income,
the young beauty had been spirited away.
Then, again,--and this, it is to be feared, happened more
frequently--Berwick would deliberately put himself in the way of some
devastating charmer, who, even if technically "safe" from his sister's
standpoint, belonged to the type which breeds mischief, and causes those
involuntary appearances in the law courts of his country which stand so
much in the way of the ambitious young statesman. Such ladies, as Miss
Berwick well knew, have a disconcerting knack of getting rid of their
legal impediment to re-marriage. Berwick had lately had a very narrow
escape from such a one. In the sharp discussion between the brother and
sister which had followed, he had exclaimed sardonically, "Really,
Arabella, what you ought to look out for--I mean for me--is some poor
pretty soul with a mad husband safe out of the way. You know lunatics
live for ever." And Arabella, though she had smiled reprovingly, had
been struck by the carelessly uttered words.
Miss Berwick's attitude to certain disagreeable and sordid facts of
human life had been early fixed by herself as one of disdainful
aloofness. She did not permit herself to judge those about her, and far
preferred not to know of their transgressions. When such knowledge was
thrust upon her--as had necessarily been the case with her uncle, Lord
Bosworth, and Madame Sampiero--she judged narrowly and hardly the woman,
contemptuously and leniently the man.