"Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two."
GEORGE MEREDITH.
"I will hold your hand so long as all may,
Or so very little longer."
ROBERT BROWNING.
Barbara Rebell, wrapped in her black domino-like cloak, bent forward and
looked out of the carriage window.
There was something fantastic, magnificent, almost unreal in the scene
she saw. The brougham in which she sat by Berwick's side was gliding
quietly and smoothly between pillars of fire. The glare lighted up the
grey castle walls, and gave added depth to the forked shadows lying
across the roadway. Already the loud shouts, the sound of wheels and
trampling horses filling the courtyard, lay far behind. In a few moments
they would be under the tower, through the iron gates, now opened wide
to speed the parting guests, and driving down the steep streets of
sleeping Halnakeham town--so into the still darkness of the country
lanes.
Suddenly, to the left of the Gate Tower under which they were about to
pass, there quickened into brightness a bengal light, making vividly
green the stretch of grass, and lending spurious life to the fearsome
dragons and stately peacocks which were the pride of the Halnakeham
topiarist.
Barbara clasped her hands in almost childish pleasure.
"Oh! how beautiful!"--she turned, sure of sympathy, to the silent man by
her side, and then reddened as she met his amused smile, and yet it was
a very kind and even tender smile, for he also felt absurdly
light-hearted and content.
Till the last moment, Berwick had trembled lest his scheme should
miscarry. Well, Providence, recognising his excellent intentions, and
realising how good an influence such a woman as Mrs. Rebell could not
but exercise on such a man as himself, had been kind. He felt as
exultant as does a schoolboy who has secured a longed-for treat, and it
was a boy's expression which rose to his mind concerning his
sister--"Arabella behaved like a brick!"
Looking back, he could still see the group of people standing in the
square entrance hall of the castle, himself gradually marshalling
Arabella's guests into the Fletchings omnibus and the Fletchings
carriage. Again he felt the thrill with which at last he had heard his
sister's clear voice say the words, "Now, Mrs. Rebell, will you please
get in there, and kindly drop my brother at Chillingworth on your way
back to Chancton?"
The whole thing had been over in a moment. He himself had placed
Barbara, bewildered but submissive, in the little brougham which he had
bought that last spring in Paris, and which was supposed to be the
_dernier cri_ in coachbuilding luxury; and then, taking the place beside
her, had found himself at last alone with her.
The old Adam in Berwick also rejoiced in having, very literally, stolen
a march on Madame Sampiero and Doctor McKirdy. These two good people had
gone to some trouble to prevent his being with Mrs. Rebell on the way to
the ball, but in the matter of her return they had proved powerless. And
yet, now that he came to think of it, what right had they to interfere?
Who could be more delicately careful of Barbara than he would ever
be?--so Berwick, sitting there, feeling her dear nearness in each fibre
of his being, asked himself with indignation. He had made every
arrangement to prevent even the most harmless village gossip. Fools all
of them, and evil-minded, not to divine the respect, the high honour in
which he held the woman now by his side! But he meant to be with her
every moment that was possible, and 'ware those who tried to thwart this
wholly honourable intention!
Thinking these thoughts, and for the moment well satisfied, he turned
his head and looked at Barbara Rebell. Her lips were smiling, and she
looked absorbed in some happy vision. The long night had left no trace
of fatigue on her flushed face and shining eyes. Berwick, with a pang of
mingled pain and pleasure, realised how much younger she was than
himself.
"You must be tired. Would you like to go to sleep?" his voice shook with
tenderness, but he put a strong restraint on himself. He was bound by
every code of honour to treat her to-night as he would have done any
stranger confided by his sister to his care.
Barbara started slightly, and shook her head. She had been living again
the last three hours of the ball. How delightful and how unexpected it
had all been! She had enjoyed intensely her long talk with the French
Ambassador. He also had spent his childhood, and part of his youth at
St. Germains, the stately forest town where the brighter days of her
parents' exile had been passed. It is well sometimes to meet with one
who can say, "I too have been in Arcadia." Even Monsieur Parisot's
little compliments on her good French had reminded Barbara of the sweet
hypocrisies which make life in France so agreeable to the humble-minded,
and especially to the very young.
Lord Bosworth had surely been the magician, for it was after his arrival
that everything had changed from grey to rose-colour. It was then that
James Berwick had again become to her what he always was in manner, and
the uncle and nephew had vied with one another in amusing and
interesting her. And then had come this delightful conclusion, the drive
back in this fairy chariot!
"This is a very pretty, curious little carriage," her eyes met his
frankly; "I feel like Cinderella going to, not coming back from, the
ball!"
Berwick allowed himself to look his fill. The brougham was lined with
some sort of white watered silk, and never would Barbara have a kinder
background, or one which harmonised more exquisitely with her rather
pale, dark beauty. Women were then wearing their hair cut straight
across the forehead, and dressed in elaborate plaits about the nape of
the neck; Barbara's short curls seemed to ally her with a more refined,
a less sophisticated age,--one when innocence and archness were
compatible with instinctive dignity.
And yet, such being the nature of man, Berwick would have been better
pleased had she not been now so completely, so happily at her ease. He
felt that between them there lay--not the drawn sword which played so
strange and symbolical a part in mediæval marriage by procuration--but a
sheaf of lilies. Berwick would have preferred the sword.
His had been the mood which seeks an extreme of purity in the woman
beloved. Till now he had been glad to worship on his knees, and where
she walked had been holy ground. But now he craved for some of the
tenderness Barbara lavished on Madame Sampiero. Could she not even spare
him the warmth of feeling shown by her when speaking of Grace and Andrew
Johnstone? Since that last interview with Mrs. Marshall he had felt
free--free as he had not felt for over a year. Was he to have no profit
of his freedom?
"It is you who look tired, Mr. Berwick; I'm afraid you stayed on for my
sake?"
Barbara was looking at him with real concern. How unlike himself he had
been all that evening! Perhaps, when she had been stupidly annoyed at
his supposed neglect of her, he had really been suffering. His face
looked strained and thin in the bright light thrown by a cunning little
arrangement of mirrors. She felt a pang of fear. How would she be able
to bear it if he fell ill, away from her, in that large bare house which
seemed so little his home?
It was well perhaps that Berwick could not see just then into her heart,
and yet it was still an ignorant and innocent heart. The youngest girl
present at the Halnakeham Castle ball could probably have taught Mrs.
Rebell more than she now knew of the ways of men--almost, it might be
said, of the ways of love. Her father had had the manhood crushed out of
him by his great misfortune. Barbara, as child and girl, had
reverenced--not the chill automaton, caring only for the English papers
and a little mild play, which Richard Rebell had become in middle
life,--but the attractive early image of him sedulously presented to her
by her mother. She had had no brothers to bring young people to the many
homes of her girlhood. Then, across her horizon, had come the baleful
figure of Pedro Rebell, but at no time, after her marriage, had she made
the mistake of regarding him as a normal man. No, her first real
knowledge of the average Englishman had been during those weeks of
convalescence, spent at the Government House of Santa Maria, when she
had been slowly struggling back into a wish to live. There she had
known, and had shrunk from the knowledge, that all those about her were
aware of what sort of life she had been compelled to lead on her
husband's plantation. Every step of Mr. Johnstone's negotiations with
Pedro Rebell was followed by her new friends with intense sympathy, and
when at last the planter had been half persuaded, half bribed into
signing a document binding him not to molest his wife, her only longing
had been to go away, and never to see any of the people connected with
the island again.
What could Barbara Rebell know of men--of such men as James Berwick and
Oliver Boringdon? She dowered them with virtues and qualities, with
unselfish impulses and powers of self-restraint, which would have
brought a Galahad to shame. She knew enough of a certain side of life to
recognise and shrink from such coarseness as was not the saving grace of
Mrs. Turke. She realised that that type of mind must see evil in even
the most innocent tie between a man and a woman, but on such minds she
preferred not to dwell. She knew how close had been the affection
between her mother and Madame Sampiero. Why should not some such
feeling, close and yet sexless, link her to James Berwick, to whom she
had experienced,--so much she had perforce to acknowledge to herself,--a
curious, intimate attraction from the first time they had met?
So it was that to-night she looked at him with concern, and spoke with a
new note of anxiety in her voice, "I should have been quite content to
go back with the Boringdons--I fear you stayed on for my sake."
"But I should not have been at all content if you had gone back with the
Boringdons! Why should I not stay on for your sake?" he was smiling at
her. She looked at him rather puzzled. When they were alone, they two,
with no third influence between them, Barbara always felt completely
happy and at ease. His presence brought security.
"Only if you were tired," she said rather lamely, and then again with
that new anxiety, "Old Mr. Daman said to someone before me, 'James
Berwick's looking rather fagged to-night'----"
"Let us talk of you, not of me," he said rather hastily. Heavens! what
might she not have heard during this evening concerning him and his
affairs? He lowered for a moment the window to his right and looked out
into the starless moonless night, or rather early morning.
"We are now on the brow of Whiteways. I wish it were daylight, for then
you would see the finest view in Sussex."
"But I have seen the view. I was at the meet, and thanks to your
kindness, for I rode Saucebox. Mr. Berwick, I do not think I have ever
thanked you sufficiently for Saucebox!"
He turned to her with a quick movement. "I do not think there should
ever be a question of thanks between you and me. We are--at least I hope
so--too good friends for that." And with a certain gravity he added, "Do
you not believe friendship possible between a man and woman?" He waited
a moment, then hurried on, "Listen! I offer you my friendship; I have
never done so, in the sense I do now, to any other woman. Shall I tell
you who has been my best, indeed my only, woman friend? only my sister,
only Arabella. I owe her more than one debt of very sincere gratitude.
You will not grudge her place in my--" again he hesitated,--"in my
heart."
Barbara smiled tremulously. What a strange question to ask her! She felt
a little afraid of Miss Berwick, and yet how friendly and gracious had
been her manner to-night.
"Tell me," he said urgently, "you do not mind my saying this to you? I
only wish to seal an existent compact. Ever since we met, have we not
been close friends, you and I? I take it we are both singularly placed,"
he bent down and tried to look into her downcast eyes, "I am very
solitary, and you have only Madame Sampiero--is not that so?"
Barbara bent her head. She felt that Berwick's low, ardent voice was
slowly opening the gates of paradise, and drawing her through into that
enchanted garden where every longing of the heart may be safely and
innocently satisfied.
The carriage was going slowly down the steep hill leading from Whiteways
to Chillingworth, and Berwick knew that he would soon have to leave her.
His voice dropped to a lower key--he ventured, for a moment, to take her
ringless left hand and hold it tightly: "I ask but little--nothing you
do not think it right to give. But your friendship would mean much to
me--would protect me from evil impulses of which, thank God, you can
know nothing. Even to-night I suffered from misdeeds--to put it plainly,
from past sins I should not have been even tempted to commit had I known
you when I committed them."
His words--his confession--moved Barbara to the soul. "I am your
friend," she spoke with a certain difficulty, and yet with solemnity.
She looked up, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
The carriage stopped, and they both, or perhaps it was only Berwick,
came down again to the everyday world where friendship between a man and
a woman is regarded as so dangerous a thing by the prudent.
"Good-night! Thank you for bringing me." He added a word or two as to
the carriage and the Priory stables--his coachman was a Chancton
man--and then he was gone, leaving Barbara to go on alone, happy,
content with life, as she had never thought it possible to be.
* * * * *
James Berwick, making his way quickly up the steep path leading from the
wall built round Chillingworth Park to the high plateau on which stood
the house, felt less content and very much less happy. Had he not been
rather too quixotic in this matter of leaving Barbara to go on her way
alone? Why should he not have prolonged those exquisite moments? What
harm could it have done had he given himself the pleasure of
accompanying his friend to the Priory, and then driving back to
Chillingworth by himself? Perhaps there had been something pusillanimous
in his fear of idle gossip. Oh! why had he behaved in this matter so
much better than there was any occasion to do?
So our good deeds rise up and smite us, and seldom are we allowed the
consolation of knowing what alternative action on our part might have
brought about.
Thus it was an ill-satisfied and restless man who let himself in by a
small side-door into the huge silent house. He had given orders that no
one should sit up, and in such a matter disobedience on the part of a
servant would have meant dismissal. Yet Berwick was an indulgent master,
and when he walked into the comparatively small room which he always
used when at Chillingworth, the only apartment in the house which in any
way betrayed its owner's tastes and idiosyncrasies, he became aware that
his comfort, or what it had been thought would be his comfort, had been
studied; for a tray, laden with food and various decanters of wines and
spirits, stood on a table, and the remains of what had been a large fire
still burned in the grate.
He stifled an exclamation of disgust. How hot, how airless the room was!
He walked over to the high window, pulled back the curtains and threw it
open. It was still intensely dark, but along the horizon, above the
place where he knew the sea to be, was a shaft of dim light--perhaps the
first faint precursor of the dawn. Leaving the window open he came back
to the fireplace and flung himself down in a chair, and there came over
him a feeling of great depression and of peculiar loneliness.
Soon his longing for Barbara's soothing intimate presence became
intolerably intense. For the first time since they had come to know one
another well, Berwick deliberately tried to analyse his feeling towards
her. He was not in love with Barbara Rebell--of that he assured himself
with a certain fierceness. He thought of what he had said to her
to-night. In a sense he had told her the exact truth. He had never
offered any other women the friendship he had asked her to accept. He
had always asked for less--or more--but then, looking back, he could
tell himself that there was no one woman who had ever roused in him the
peculiar sentiment that he felt for Mrs. Rebell. The feeling he now
experienced was more akin, though far deeper and tenderer in texture, to
the fleeting fancy he had had for that pretty _débutante_ whom Arabella
had so greatly feared. But, whereas he had borne the girl's defection,
when it had come, with easy philosophy, he knew that his relation to
Barbara was such that any defection there would rouse in him those
primeval instincts which lead every day to such sordid tragedies in that
class where the passion of love is often the only thing in life bringing
hope of release and forgetfulness from ignoble and material cares.
Berwick had many faults, but personal vanity was not one of them. He
considered Oliver Boringdon more a man to attract women than he was
himself, and he had thought his friend lamentably backward in making use
of his opportunities. Now, the knowledge that Boringdon was daily in
Mrs. Rebell's company was distinctly disturbing. Was Barbara the type of
woman--Berwick knew there were many such--who make a cult of sentimental
friendships? Then he felt deeply ashamed of the thought, and in his
heart he begged her forgiveness.
A Frenchman, once speaking to him of an acquaintance whose unhappy
passion for a celebrated beauty was being much discussed, had observed,
"Il l'a dans la peau! Dans ces cas-là il n'y a rien à faire!" He had
thought the expression curiously apt, and he remembered it to-night.
More than once during the last few days he had found himself planning
his immediate future entirely by the light, as it were, of Chancton
Priory. By every post he was refusing invitations, and avoiding coming
political engagements. But there was one great exception. Even while
speaking to Arabella at the ball, he had been wondering whether he could
persuade her to secure Mrs. Rebell's inclusion in a very small and
entirely political house-party in Scotland, the occasion of which was a
series of important political meetings, and to which both brother and
sister had been for some time pledged. It would be good to be away with
Barbara, among strangers, far from Chancton and from Chillingworth.
Berwick hated Chillingworth. When there he felt himself to be the
unwelcome guest of the man who had built the huge place, and whose
personality it seemed to express and to perpetuate, as houses so often
do the personality of their builders. The creator of Chillingworth had
been an acute early Victorian manufacturer, a worthy man according to
his lights, and a pillar of the Manchester School. He had taken fortune
at the flood, and his late marriage to a woman of slightly better birth
and breeding than his own had produced the sickly, refined daughter whom
Berwick had married.
Chillingworth seemed plastered with money. Every room bore evidence of
lavish expenditure; money spent on furniture, on pictures, on useless
ornaments, during a period of our history when beauty seemed wholly in
eclipse; and this was all the more pitiable because the house was
gloriously placed on a spur of the down, and the views from its windows
rivalled those of Chancton Priory.
Even had Berwick wished to do so, he could not have made any serious
alterations to the place, for the trustees of his marriage settlement
were the very people, distant relatives of his wife's, whose children
would benefit were he to forfeit his life interest in her fortune. To
these people Chillingworth spelt perfection, and was a treasure-house of
beautiful, because costly, objects of art. Occasionally, perhaps once in
two years, its present owner would fill the great mansion for a few
weeks with men and women--political acquaintances and their wives--to
whom an invitation to James Berwick's Sussex estate gave pleasure, but
otherwise he was little there, and the neighbourhood had long since left
off wondering and exclaiming at his preference for Chancton Priory.
* * * * *
"If Miss Berwick sends over for a carriage, the French brougham which
was used last night is not to go."
"Very good, Sir." And then, after a short pause, "Anything wrong with
the carriage, Sir?"
"No. By the way, it may be required at Chancton. I have told Madame
Sampiero that she may have the use of it for the lady who is staying
there. Where's Dean?"
Berwick, haggard-looking, and evidently in a mood which his servants
knew and dreaded, was looking sharply round the stable yard. If he, the
master, was up and about by nine o'clock, the morning after the
Halnakeham Castle ball, then surely his coachman could be the same.
"Dean's in trouble, Sir. He will be sending to ask if you can spare him
to-day. Wife was taken ill last night, babby dead."
The laconic words struck Berwick with a curious chill, and served to
rouse him from his self-absorption. He was fond of Dean. The man had
been with him for many years. They were the same age,--Berwick could
remember him as a stolid Chancton child--and he had only been married
about a year, after one of those long, faithful engagements common in
those parts. Heavens! If Dean felt for his wife a tenth of what he,
Berwick, felt for Barbara Rebell, what must not the man have gone
through that night--that early morning?
Muttering some expression of concern, he turned and went off into the
house, there to consult with the housekeeper as to the sending of
practical relief to the stricken household, and to write a note telling
Dean he could be absent for as long as he wished.