"She whom I have praised so,
Yields delight for reason too:
Who could dote on thing so common
As mere outward-handsome woman?
Such half-beauties only win
Fools to let affection in."
WITHER.
Mrs. Rebell was sitting by her god-mother's couch, pouring out tea. She
had just come in from a walk on the downs, and as she sat there, her
eyes shining, the colour coming and going in her cheeks, Madame
Sampiero's gaze rested on her with critical pleasure and approval,
lingering over every detail of the pretty brown cloth gown and neat
plumed hat, both designed by a famous French arbiter of fashion who in
the long ago had counted Madame Sampiero as among his earliest and most
faithful patronesses.
The last few days had been to Mrs. Rebell days of conquest. She had
conquered the right to come in and out of her god-mother's room without
first asking formal leave of Doctor McKirdy, and he had given in with a
good grace. She had won the heart of Mrs. Turke, and was now free of the
old housekeeper's crowded sitting-room; and she had made friends also
with all the dumb creatures about the place.
Then again, the pretty gowns, the many charming trifles which had come
from Paris, and which she had been made to try on, one by one, in her
god-mother's presence, contributed, though she felt rather ashamed of
it, to her feeling of light-heartedness. Barbara Rebell, moving as one
at home about the Priory, looked another creature from the shrinking
sad-eyed woman who had arrived at Chancton a fortnight before, believing
that youth, and all the glad things that youth represents, lay far
behind her.
There came a knock, McGregor's discreet knock, at the door. Barbara
sprang up, and a moment later came back with a letter, one which the
bearer had apparently not dared to put by, as was the rule with such
missives, and indeed with all letters addressed to the mistress of the
Priory, till Doctor McKirdy was ready to read them, and to transmit such
portions of their contents as he thought fit to his friend and patient.
"A note for you, Marraine!" The French equivalent for god-mother had
always been used by Barbara Rebell both as child and girl in her letters
to Madame Sampiero, and she had now discovered that it was preferred to
its more formal English equivalent, or to the "Madam" which all those
about her used. "Shall I read it to you?"
Barbara was looking down at the letter which she held in her hand with
some surprise. The ink was not yet dry,--it must therefore have been
written, in great haste, just now in the hall, and must call for an
immediate answer. She waited for a sign of assent, and then opened the
envelope:--
"DEAR MADAME SAMPIERO,--I am sorry to trouble you, but I fear I
must ask you to see me at your early convenience about a certain
matter concerning which your personal opinion and decision are
urgently required. Perhaps you will kindly send me word as to
what time will suit you for me to come and see you.
"Yours faithfully,
"OLIVER BORINGDON."
Madame Sampiero's eyelids flickered, "Would you like to see him,
child--our Chancton _jeune premier_?" and the ghost of a satirical smile
hovered over the still face and quivering mouth.
"Yes, indeed, Marraine, if it would not tire you! You know it was his
sister who was so kind to me in Santa Maria. May I send for him now? He
evidently wants to see you about something very important--"
But McGregor, convinced that there would be no answer to the note he had
most unwillingly conveyed upstairs, had not waited, as Barbara had
expected to find, in the corridor. She hesitated a moment, then,
gathering up her long brown skirts, ran down to the hall.
Boringdon was walking up and down, waiting with dogged patience for the
message which might, after all, not be sent to him. "Will you kindly
come up--now--to Madame Sampiero? She is quite ready to see you!" To the
young man the low, very clear voice, seemed at that moment the sweetest
in the world: he turned round quickly and looked at the messenger with a
good deal of curiosity.
No thought that this elegant-looking girl could be Mrs. Rebell came to
his mind. Doubtless she was one of the few people connected with Madame
Sampiero's past life--perhaps one of the cousins who sometimes came to
Chancton, and whom, occasionally, but very rarely as the years had gone
on, the paralysed woman consented to receive.
Rather bewildered at the ease with which the fortress had been stormed
and taken, he followed the unknown young lady upstairs. But once in the
corridor, when close to Madame Sampiero's door, Barbara stopped, and
with heightened colour she said, "I know that you are Grace Johnstone's
brother, I have been hoping the last few days to go and see your mother.
Will you please tell her how much I look forward to meeting her?" And
before he could make any answer, she whom Boringdon now knew to be Mrs.
Rebell had opened the door, and was motioning him to precede her into
the room into which he had not been allowed to come for two months.
A moment later he stood at the foot of Madame Sampiero's couch, feeling
the place in which he found himself curiously transformed, the
atmosphere about him more human, less frigid than in those days when his
weekly conferences with the owner of Chancton had been regarded by him
with such discomfort and dread.
The presence of the low table on which now lay a tea-tray and a bowl of
freshly-gathered roses affected him agreeably, though he still quailed
inwardly when his eyes met those of the paralysed woman stretched out
before him: Boringdon was not imaginative, and yet these wide open blue
eyes had often haunted him--to-day they rested on him kindly, and then
looked beyond him, softening as they met those of her god-daughter.
Before he was allowed to begin on what he felt to be such disagreeable
business, Mrs. Rebell--the woman whom he now knew to be his sister's
friend, and regarding whom he was being compelled to alter, moment by
moment, all his preconceived notions--had poured him out a cup of tea,
and had installed him by her side. Later, when she made a movement as if
to leave him alone with Madame Sampiero, she was stopped with a look,
and Boringdon, far from feeling the presence of a third person as
disagreeable and as unwarranted as he had always felt that of McKirdy or
of Mrs. Turke, was glad that Mrs. Rebell had been made to stay, and
aware, in some odd way, that in her he would have an ally and not, as
had always been the case with McKirdy, a critic, if not an enemy.
After a short discussion, he was allowed to go with the point settled to
his satisfaction. Madame Sampiero had retained all her shrewdness, and
all her essential justness of character; moreover, his case, presented
partly through the medium of Barbara's voice, had seemed quite other
than what it would have done explained inimically by Alexander McKirdy.
Indeed, during the discussion Boringdon had the curious feeling that
this soft-voiced stranger, who, after all, was in no position to judge
between himself and the peccant farmer, was being made to give the
ultimate decision. It was Barbara also who had to repeat, to make clear
to him, reddening and smiling as she did so, her god-mother's last
words, "If you're not busy, you might take Mrs. Rebell down to the
Beeches. The trees won't look as well as they are doing now in a week's
time;" and while murmuring the words Madame Sampiero's eyes had turned
with indefinable longing towards the high windows which commanded the
wide view she loved and knew so well, but which from where she lay only
showed the sky.
* * * * *
A rude awakening awaited both Barbara and Boringdon in the hall below;
and a feeling of guilt,--an absurd unwarrantable feeling, so he told
himself again and again when he thought over the scene later,--swept
over the young man when he saw Doctor McKirdy pacing, with quick angry
steps, that very stretch of flag-stones where he himself had walked up
and down so impatiently half an hour before.
"So you've been up to see her? Against my very strict orders--orders,
mind ye, given as Madam's medical man! Well, well! All I can say is,
that I'm not responsible for what the consequences may be. Madam's not
fit to be worried o'er business--not fit at all!" The words came out in
sharp jerky sentences, and as he spoke Doctor McKirdy scowled at the
young man, twisting his hands together, a trick he had when violently
disturbed.
As the two culprits came towards him he broke out again, almost turning
his back on them as he spoke, "I cannot think what possessed the man
McGregor! He will have to be dismissed, not a doubt about it! He has the
strictest, the very strictest orders--he must have been daft before he
could take up a stranger to Madam's room!" There was a world of scorn in
the way in which McKirdy pronounced the word "stranger."
Angry as Boringdon had now become, indignant with the old man for so
attacking him in the presence of one who was, as Oliver did not fail to
remind himself, the real stranger to all their concerns, he yet felt
that to a certain extent the doctor's anger and indignation were
justified. Boringdon knew well enough that, but for McKirdy's absence
from the Priory that afternoon, he could never have penetrated into
Madame Sampiero's presence. He had also been aware that McGregor was
acting in direct contravention of the doctor's orders, and that nothing
but his own grim determination to be obeyed had made the man take his
note upstairs. All this being so, he was about to say something of a
conciliatory nature, when suddenly Mrs. Rebell came forward--
"It is I," she said--and Boringdon saw that she showed no sign of
quailing before Doctor McKirdy's furious looks--"who asked my god-mother
to see Mr. Boringdon, and so it is I alone, Doctor McKirdy, who should
be blamed for what has happened. Madame Sampiero asked my advice as to
whether she should see him, and as the matter seemed urgent, I decided
that she had better do so at once, instead of waiting, as I should
perhaps have done, to ask you if she was fit to do so."
She looked inquiringly from one man to the other--at the old Scotchman
whose face still twitched with rage, and whose look of aversion at
herself she felt to be cruelly unjust, almost, she would have said, had
she not become really fond of him, impertinent; and at Boringdon, who
also looked angry, but not as surprised as she would have expected him
to be before so strange an outburst.
There was a moment of tense silence, and then, suddenly, Barbara herself
caught fire. Like most gentle, self-restrained natures, she was capable
of feeling deep instant gusts of anger, and one of these now swept over
her.
"If you will go up and see Madame Sampiero," she spoke very coldly, "I
think you will admit, Doctor McKirdy, that my god-mother has not been in
any way injured by seeing Mr. Boringdon." She turned, rather
imperiously, to the young man. "I think," she said, "that now we had
better go out. I suppose it will take at least half an hour to walk
round by the Beeches, and later my god-mother will be expecting me back
to read to her."
Without again glancing at Doctor McKirdy, Mrs. Rebell walked across to
the vestibule, and so out into the open air, Boringdon following her
rather shamefacedly, and in silence they struck off down the path which
led round the great meadow-like enclosure to the broad belt of beeches
which were the glory of Chancton Priory.
Then, somewhat to his own surprise, Boringdon found himself making
excuses for the old Scotchman, while explaining to Mrs. Rebell the odd
position in which he often found himself. The conversation which
followed caused strides, which might otherwise have taken weeks or even
months to achieve, in his own and Barbara's intimacy.
Very little was said of Grace Johnstone and of Santa Maria; it was of
the Priory, and of its stricken mistress, of Chancton and of Doctor
McKirdy, that they talked, and it was pleasant to Boringdon to hear his
own part being taken to himself, to hear McKirdy severely censured in
the grave low voice whose accents had sounded so sweetly in his ears
when it had come to call him to Madame Sampiero's presence.
So eager was their talk, so absorbed were they in what they were saying,
that neither had eyes for the noble trees arching overhead; and when at
last they came out, from the twilight of the beeches, into the open air,
Barbara felt respect and liking for the young man.
When they were once more close to the house, she put up her hand with a
quick gesture. "Don't come up with me to the porch," she said, "I am
sure you had better not meet Doctor McKirdy--I mean for the present." He
obeyed her silently, though for the moment he felt not unkindly towards
the old man he had conquered in what, he confessed to himself, had been
unfair fight. With Mrs. Rebell on his side he could afford to smile at
McKirdy's queer susceptibilities and jealousies. He must come and see
her to-morrow; there seemed so much more to say, to ask too, about
Grace--dear Grace, who had written with such warm-hearted feeling of
this charming, interesting woman who ought to be, so Boringdon told
himself, a most agreeable and softening influence at the Priory.
* * * * *
That same evening, Mrs. Boringdon, after much hesitation and searching
of heart, ventured to ask her son a question.
"How did you find them all at the Grange? It seems a long time since I
have seen Lucy."
Oliver's face clouded over, but he was surprised at his own calmness,
his absence of annoyance; that disagreeable episode at the Grange now
seemed to have happened long ago.
"Everything was as usual," he answered hesitatingly; "--at least, no, I
should not say that, for General Kemp's manner to me was far from being
usual. I cannot help thinking, mother, that you made a mistake the other
day--I mean as regards Lucy;"--a note of reserve and discomfort crept
into his voice as he pronounced her name,--"The General's manner was
unmistakable, he all but showed me the door! I think it would be as
well, both for you and for me, if we were to put all thought of her from
our minds, and to see, in the future, less of her."
Boringdon found it less easy to answer his mother's next question, "And
Madame Sampiero,--I suppose you did not see her to-day? I wonder if she
sees anything of Mrs. Rebell?"
"Yes," he said, rather reluctantly, "McKirdy was out, and I had, on the
whole, a satisfactory interview with Madame Sampiero, owing it, in a
measure, to Mrs. Rebell. Madame Sampiero is evidently very fond of her.
By the way, she--I mean Mrs. Rebell--sent you a nice message about
Grace."
"Oh! then she's a pleasant woman--I'm so glad! Everything makes a
difference in a little place like Chancton. I suppose," Mrs. Boringdon
spoke absently, but her son knew that she would require an answer, "that
Mrs. Rebell did not mention Miss Berwick, or the Duchess?"
"Oh! no, mother," Oliver answered rather drily, "Why should she have
done so--to me?"
"Oh! well--as a kind of hint that I ought to have called. I hope you
explained the matter to her? I mean to go there to-morrow."
Boringdon made no remark. He had no intention, nay, he had an
instinctive dislike to the idea, of discussing Mrs. Rebell with his
mother, and he vaguely hoped that they would never become intimate.
* * * * *
Arabella Berwick was sitting in the little room, originally a powder
closet, which was set aside for her use at Fletchings. It was well out
of the way, on the first floor of the old manor-house, tucked away
between the drawing-room, which was very little used except in the
evening, and the long music gallery, and it was characteristic of Miss
Berwick that very few among the many who came and went each summer and
autumn to Fletchings were aware of the existence of this, her favourite
retreat.
In the Powdering Room, as it was still called, Lord Bosworth's niece
wrote her letters, scrutinised with severely just eyes the various
household accounts, and sometimes allowed herself an hour of complete
relaxation and rest. The panelled walls, painted a pale blue, were hung
with a few fine engravings of the more famous Stuart portraits,
including two of that Arabella Stuart after whom Miss Berwick had been
herself named. There was also, on the old-fashioned davenport at which
she wrote her letters, a clever etching of her brother, done when James
Berwick was at Oxford.
The mistress of such a house has a well-filled, and indeed often a
tiring, life, unless she be blessed with a highly paid, and what is not
always the same thing, a highly competent, housekeeper and factotum, to
take the material cares off her shoulders. Lord Bosworth was nothing if
not hospitable. There was a constant coming and going of agreeable men
and women in whatever place he happened to find himself. He disliked
solitude, and in the long years Miss Berwick had kept her uncle's house,
she could scarcely remember a day in which they had been absolutely
alone together.
As a high-spirited, clever girl, brought suddenly from the companionship
of an austere aunt and chaperon, she had found the life a very agreeable
one, and she had set her whole mind to making it successful. Even now,
she had pleasant, nay delightful, moments, but as she grew older, and
above all, as Lord Bosworth grew older, much in the life weighed upon
her, and any added trouble or anxiety was apt to prove almost
unbearable.
To-day, she had received a letter from her brother which had caused her
acute annoyance. James Berwick was coming back, a full fortnight before
she had expected him,--his excuse, that of wishing to be present at the
coming-of-age festivities of Lord Pendragon, the Duke of Appleby and
Kendal's only son, which were shortly to take place at Halnakeham
Castle. He had always had,--so his sister reminded herself with curling
lip,--a curious attachment to this neighbourhood, a great desire to play
a part in all local matters; this was the more strange as the Berwicks'
only connection with Sussex had been the purchase of Fletchings by their
uncle, and James Berwick's own inheritance from his wife of
Chillingworth, the huge place, full of a rather banal grandeur, where
its present possessor spent but little of his time.
There were three reasons why Miss Berwick would have much preferred that
her brother should carry out his original plan. The first, and from her
point of view the most important, concerned, as did most important
matters to Arabella, Berwick himself. She had just learned, from one of
the guests who had arrived at Fletchings the day before, that the woman
whom, on the whole, she regarded as having most imperilled her brother,
would almost certainly be one of the ducal house-party at Halnakeham.
This lady, a certain Mrs. Marshall, was now a widow, and the sister
feared her with a great fear.
The second reason was one more personal to herself. Miss Berwick was
trying to make up her mind about a certain matter, and she felt that her
brother's presence--nay, even the mere fact of his being in the
neighbourhood--would make it more difficult for her to do so. She knew
herself to be on the eve of receiving a very desirable offer of
marriage. Its acceptance by her would be, in a sense, the crowning act
of her successful life. The man was an ambassador, one of the most
distinguished of her uncle's friends, a childless widower, who, as she
had long known, both liked and respected her. In a few days he would be
at Fletchings, and she knew that the time had come when she must make up
her mind to say yes or to say no.
The third complication, from the thought of which Miss Berwick shrank
with a pain which surprised herself, was the fact that both Lord
Bosworth, and now her brother in this letter which lay before her, had
requested her to write and ask Daniel O'Flaherty--the man whom she had
once loved--to come and spend a few days at Fletchings. They had met
many times since that decisive interview in Kensington Gardens which had
been so strangely interrupted by Oliver Boringdon--for such meetings are
the unforeseen penalties attendant on such conduct as had been that of
Arabella--but both had hitherto contrived to avoid staying under the
same roof. Now, however, she felt she could no longer put off giving
this invitation, the more so that it was for her brother's sake that
Lord Bosworth wished O'Flaherty to be asked to Fletchings.
Miss Berwick had early found it advisable, when something painful had to
be done, to "rush her fences." She took up her pen and wrote, in her
fine, characteristic hand-writing, the words, "Dear Mr. O'Flaherty."
Then she laid the pen down, lay back in her chair, and closed her eyes.
Even after so long a time had gone by, the memory of what had passed
between Daniel O'Flaherty and herself was intolerably bitter. Arabella
even now never thought of him without asking herself how it happened
that she had not realised what manner of man he really was, and why she
had not foreseen how sure he was to make his way. She never saw his name
printed, never heard it uttered, without this feeling of shamed surprise
and acute self-reproach coming over her.
The strong attraction she had felt for the then untried Irishman had in
a sense blinded her--made her distrustful of his real power. Her uncle,
Lord Bosworth, had been more clear-sighted, in those far-off days when
he had encouraged the unknown barrister to come about Bosworth House,
just before she herself so ruthlessly sent him away.
And now she found the wording, as well as the writing, of her letter
difficult: she wished to leave the matter of Daniel O'Flaherty's coming
to Fletchings, or his staying away, entirely to his own sense of what
was fitting. He had become, as she had reason to know, a man much sought
after: perhaps the dates which she was able to offer him would all be
filled up.
* * * * *
There came a slight sound; Miss Berwick opened her eyes, she sat up, an
alert look on her face, ready to repel the intruder whoever he might be.
Lord Bosworth, introducing his ample person through the narrow door of
the tiny room, was struck by the look of age and fatigue which had come
over--it seemed to him only since yesterday--his niece's delicate
clear-cut features and shadowed fairness. Arabella Berwick had always
been a good-looking replica of her remarkable-looking brother, but
youth, which remains so long with many women, had gone from her. She
often looked older than thirty-eight, and her deep-set compelling bright
blue eyes, of which the moral expression was so different from that
produced by those of James Berwick, gave an impression of singular
disenchantment.
"Am I disturbing you?"--Lord Bosworth spoke very courteously--"if so, I
will speak to you some other time." Arabella at once hid the great
surprise she felt at seeing him here, for this was, as far as she could
remember, her uncle's first visit to the Powdering Room: "Oh! no," she
said, "I was only writing to Mr. O'Flaherty. You would like him to come
soon, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, certainly! I am told he will have to be Attorney-General. He is
the sort of man James ought to have got hold of long ago. We seem to
have lost sight of him. I know I went to some trouble for him years
ago--and then somehow he disappeared. Perhaps it was my fault--in that
case I ought to write him a line myself."
Then he became silent, looking at his niece with a curious persistent
gaze which embarrassed her. There had never been any real intimacy
between the uncle and niece, and the thought that Lord Bosworth had
suspected anything concerning what had occurred between herself and
O'Flaherty would have been intensely disagreeable to Arabella. She felt
herself flushing, but met his look with steady eyes, comforted by the
knowledge that, whatever he knew or suspected, he would most certainly
say nothing.
"I see," he said, "that you guess what I have come to tell you. I have
had a letter from Umfraville--you know he comes to-morrow? It is a very
good letter, a better letter than I should have thought he could have
written on such a subject, but it amounts to this: before offering
himself, he wishes to be sure of what your answer will be, and he wants
you to make up your mind within the next few days,--in fact before he
leaves us. It would be a great position, my dear, and one which you
would fill admirably."
As he spoke the colour had faded from Miss Berwick's face. She felt
relieved and rather touched. "But what would _you_ do?" she said
involuntarily.
Lord Bosworth made none of the answers which might have been expected
from him. He said no word as to his niece's happiness being of more
consequence than his own comfort, and if he had done so, Miss Berwick
would not have believed him.
"I do not suppose that you are aware,"--he put his strong hands on the
table before him, and looked at her with a sudden pleading look which
sat oddly on his shrewd, powerful face--"I do not suppose, Arabella,
that you are aware that I made Madame Sampiero an offer of marriage some
six or seven years ago, not long after the death of--of Sampiero. I
believe her answer was contained in one of the very last letters she
ever wrote with her own hand. Well, now--in fact for a long time past--I
have been contemplating a renewal of that offer. Nay more, should she
again refuse, which I know well to be more than probable, I cannot see
why, at our time of life, especially in view of her present state, we
should even so not be together."
His niece looked at him in frank incredulous astonishment. She felt
mortified to think how little she had known this man with whom she had
lived for so long.
"Surely," she said, "surely you would find such an existence absolutely
intolerable?"
"I do not know what I have done that you should judge me so
severely."--Lord Bosworth's answer was made in a very low tone. "You are
a clever woman, Arabella, and I have always done full justice to your
powers, but, believe me, there are certain things undreamt of in your
philosophy, and I do not think"--he stopped abruptly, and finished the
sentence to himself, "I do not think Umfraville is likely to bring them
any nearer to you."
He got up. "I thought I ought to tell you," he said, with a complete
change of tone, "because my intention may influence your decision.
Otherwise, I should not have troubled you with the matter." Then his
heart softened to her: he suddenly remembered her long and loyal, if
loveless, service. "Quite apart from any question of our immediate
future, you must remember, my dear, that I'm an old man. I cannot help
thinking that your life alone would be very dreary, and, much as you
care for James, I cannot see either of you making in a permanent sense
any kind of life with the other. In your place--and I have thought much
about it--I should accept Umfraville. The doing so would enable you to
lead the same life that you have led for the last twenty years, with
certain great added advantages. Then Umfraville, after all, is a very
good fellow,--good yet not too good, clever and yet not too clever!"
She smiled at him an answering but rather wavering smile, and he went
out, closing the door behind him, leaving her alone with her thoughts,
and with her scarcely begun letter to O'Flaherty lying before her.