"There are moments struck from midnights!"
ROBERT BROWNING.
Within a week of her return to Chancton Priory, Barbara heard of Pedro
Rebell's serious condition. A short, dry note from Andrew Johnstone
conveyed to her the fact that he was dying, and that, whether he lived a
few weeks or a few months longer was in his own hands,--a question,
however, only of time, and of a short time.
Berwick had judged truly the woman he had grown to love with so intimate
an understanding and sympathy. The news of approaching release let loose
in Barbara's mind a flood of agonising memories, which crowded out for a
while everything else. During the long years she had endured every
humiliation such a man as Pedro Rebell could inflict on so proud, and so
sensitive a human being as herself, she had never foreseen this way of
escape. He had ever seemed instinct with a rather malignant vitality,
and the young,--Barbara had remained in some ways very young after her
marriage,--are not apt to take death into their calculations.
For some days she told none of those about her of the astounding news
she had received from Santa Maria, but the two in whose thoughts she
dwelt constantly divined her knowledge. It quickened Boringdon's desire
to leave Chancton, and, with that self-delusion to which men who love
are so often prone, in Mrs. Rebell's new coldness of manner to himself,
he saw hope. Not so James Berwick,--he, judging more truly, was seized
with a great fear lest Barbara should think it her duty to go back to
Santa Maria. Rather than that, so he told himself during those days of
strain and waiting for the confidence which she withheld, he would go
himself,--men have gone stranger pilgrimages on behalf of their
beloveds.
At last he told her that he knew what was so deeply troubling her. "And
you are thinking," he said quietly, "that perhaps you ought to go back
and look after him till the end? Is not that so?"
Barbara looked at him very piteously,--they were walking under the
beeches, and, having wandered off the path, were now utterly alone. But,
before she could speak, he again opened his lips: "If such action is
necessary, if you do not think he will be well cared for by those about
him, I will go for you."
"You?" Barbara's dark eyes dilated with sudden fear--"Oh! no, not
you!----"
"Indeed, you could trust me to do all that was possible. You do not
think, surely, that your actual presence would be welcome to him?" The
words were uttered very quietly, but, as he asked the apparently
indifferent question, Berwick clenched the stick he held with a nervous
movement.
"No, I should not be personally welcome." Barbara spoke in a low voice,
almost in a whisper; she felt it impossible to make those confidences
regarding her life with Pedro Rebell which another woman would, perhaps,
in her place, have been eager to make. And yet she longed to convey to
Berwick how short-lived on his part had been the sudden attraction which
had led this half-Spaniard to behave, in those sad weeks just before and
after her father's death, so as to bring her to believe that marriage
with him was the only way out of a difficult and undignified situation;
how little, when once he was married to her, the man who was now dying
had taken her into his scheming, vicious life.
But now she could say nothing of all this. And yet those few words with
Berwick comforted her, and made her see more clearly, even gave her
courage to telegraph to the Johnstones,--only to receive the decided
answer that all that could be done was being done, and that her coming,
from every point of view, was undesirable.
Then, and not till then, did Mrs. Rebell tell her god-mother the news
which meant so much to her, indeed to them both.
Madame Sampiero made but one comment--"James Berwick must have known
this before you went to France!"
Barbara bent forward to hear the quickly muttered words. The suggestion
surprised her, perhaps troubled her a little. She hesitated,--but surely
such knowledge could not have reached him before it reached herself, and
so, "No--I do not think so," she said.
"Ah! well, I do think so----"
Madame Sampiero said no other word, but when her mind--that shrewd,
acute mind, as keenly able to weigh actions and to judge those about her
as ever it had been--pondered the confession Barbara had made to her
immediately on her return from France, her heart grew very tender to
James Berwick. She realised, what one who had been a better woman than
herself would perhaps not have understood so well, the force of the
temptation which must have assailed the man who loved Barbara with so
jealous and instinctive a passion. At last, too, Madame Sampiero
understood the riddle of Oliver Boringdon's sudden resignation of the
conduct of her business. It must have been from him that Berwick had
learnt that Mrs. Rebell was on the eve of becoming a free woman. But not
even to Doctor McKirdy did the paralysed mistress of the Priory say what
was in her mind; the old Scotchman divined that her view as to the
danger of the relation of her god-daughter and Berwick had altered, and
that the change had come about because of some confidence--or was it
confession?--made by Barbara within a few hours of her return from
Paris. Only Madame Sampiero,--and, long afterwards, Arabella
Berwick,--ever knew of those three days spent by Berwick and Barbara at
St. Germains.
* * * * *
The one person in Chancton, to whom Boringdon made any explanation
concerning his resignation of the post he had now held for nearly two
years, was Lucy Kemp. His mother told her many acquaintances that the
public office her son had left to enter Parliament had found it quite
impossible to carry on its portion of the nation's work without him, and
that a very great inducement had been held out to him to persuade him to
go back! But of these confidences of Mrs. Boringdon's he was happily
ignorant, and to Lucy alone Oliver felt a longing to justify the future
as well as the present.
Shortly, baldly, making no excuse for himself, unconsciously trusting to
her sympathy, and to the instinctive understanding she had always shown
where he and his feelings were concerned, he told her the truth, adding
in conclusion: "You, now knowing her as you did not know her before the
fire, can understand my----" he hesitated, then brought the words out
with a certain effort,--"my love for her. I shall wait a year; I should
not insult her by coming any sooner. I do not expect to be listened
to--at first. She has suffered----" Again he stopped abruptly, then went
on: "Lucy, do you think it strange that I should tell you all this?"
And, as she shook her head, he added: "Lately she has seemed to avoid
me,--that is, since her return from France, in fact since I know that my
brother-in-law's letter must have reached her."
A sharp temptation assailed Lucy Kemp. Would it be so very wrong to
break her promise to Mrs. Rebell,--that promise given so solemnly the
night of the fire? Could she not say a word, only a word, indicating
that he was making a terrible mistake? What hope could there be for
Oliver Boringdon if Barbara loved James Berwick? But the girl fought
down the longing, and Boringdon's next words showed her that perhaps he
knew or guessed more than she had thought possible.
"Perhaps you have heard,--I know my mother has done so,--foolish gossip
concerning Mrs. Rebell and James Berwick, but I can assure you that
there is no truth in it. Berwick's financial condition makes it
impossible that he should think of marriage." And, as something in
Lucy's look or manner made him aware that she also had heard of, perhaps
had noticed, the constant presence of Berwick at the Priory, Oliver bit
his lip and went on, rather hurriedly: "I am not excusing him. I think
his assumption of friendship with Mrs. Rebell has been regrettable. But,
Lucy, I spoke to him about it, and though in doing so I lost his
friendship, I am quite sure that it made a difference, and that it
caused him to realise the harm he might be doing. In a country
neighbourhood such as this, a man cannot be too careful." Oliver
delivered himself of this maxim with considerable energy.
He seemed to be about to add something, then changed his mind. One
further word, however, he did say:
"I wonder if you would let me write to you sometimes, and if Mrs. Kemp
would mind your sometimes writing to me? In any case I hope my mother
will hear from you."
And then, for a short space of time, a deep calm settled over Chancton.
Berwick, who was staying at Fletchings, came almost daily, spending,
'tis true, long hours in Barbara's company, but treating her, during
that strange interval of waiting, with a silent, unmaterial tenderness
which moved and rather surprised those about them.
* * * * *
Barbara and her god-mother were in the Blue drawing-room, spending
there, not unhappily, a solitary evening. Spring had suddenly become
summer. It was so hot that the younger woman, when coming back from the
dining-room, had left the doors deliberately wide open, but no sound
came from the great hall and upper stories of the Priory.
Madame Sampiero preferred the twilight, and the two candles, placed far
behind her couch, left her own still face and quivering lips in shadow,
while casting a not unkindly light on her companion.
Barbara had been fanning the paralysed woman, but during the last few
moments she had let the fan fall idly on her knee, and she was looking
down with a look of gravity, almost of suffering, on her face. She was
thinking, as she so often did think in these days, of Pedro Rebell,
wondering if she ought to have gone back to Santa Maria as soon as she
received Andrew Johnstone's letter. Had she believed that her presence
would bring pleasure or consolation to the man who, she was told, was so
soon to die, she might have found the strength to go to him,--her mother
would have said that in any case her duty was to be there,--but then her
mother had never come across, had never imagined--thank God that it was
so!--such a man as her daughter had married. And so little does even the
tenderest and most intelligent love bridge the gulf between any two of
us, that Madame Sampiero, taking note of the downcast eyes, thought
Barbara absorbed in some happy vision of dreams come true.
A good and noble deed, even if it takes the unusual form of supreme
personal self-abnegation, often has a far-reaching effect, concealed,
and that for ever, from the doer. How amazed James Berwick would have
been to learn that one result of his renunciation had been to broaden,
to sweeten Madame Sampiero's whole view of human nature! She realised,
far more than Barbara Rebell could possibly do, the kind of heroism such
conduct as that of Berwick had implied in such a nature as his, and she
understood and foresaw its logical consequence--the altering, the
reshaping in a material form, of the whole of his future life and
career.
Sometimes, when gazing at her god-daughter with those penetrating blue
eyes which had always been her greatest beauty, and which remained, in a
peculiar pathetic sense, the windows of her soul and the interpreters of
her inmost heart, the mistress of Chancton Priory wondered if Barbara
was aware of what James Berwick had done, and of what he evidently meant
to do, for her sake.
To-night these thoughts were specially present to Madame Sampiero;
slowly, but very surely, she also was making up her mind to what would
be, on her part, an act of supreme self-humiliation and renunciation.
"Barbara," she said, in the hoarse muffled tone of which the
understanding was sometimes so difficult--"listen--" Mrs. Rebell started
violently, the two words broke the silence which seemed to brood over
the vast house. "I have determined to receive Julian--Lord Bosworth. You
will prepare him"--she paused a moment, then concluded more
indistinctly, "for the sight he is to see."
"But, Marraine, it is _you_ he loves, and not--not----" Mrs. Rebell's
voice was choked by tears. She slipped down on her knees, and laid her
two hands on Madame Sampiero's stiff fingers, while she looked
imploringly up into the still face.
Suddenly, as she knelt there, a slight sound fell on Barbara's ears; she
knew it at once as that of the door, leading from the great hall to the
vestibule, being quietly closed from the inside. A moment later there
came the rhythmical thud of heavy footsteps making their way, under the
music gallery, across to the staircase. A vague feeling of fear
possessed the kneeling listener. Into her mind there flashed the thought
that whoever had come in must have walked across the lawn very softly,
also that the footfalls striking so distinctly on her ear were
unfamiliar.
Then, in a moment, an amazing, and, to Barbara Rebell, a very awful
thing took place. The stiff fingers she held so firmly slipped from her
grasp, she felt a sudden sensation of void, and, looking up, she saw
Madame Sampiero, drawn to her full height, standing by the empty couch.
A moment later the tall figure was moving with steady swiftness towards
the door which stood open at the other end of the long room--Barbara
sprang up, and rushed forward; she was just in time to put her arms
round her god-mother as Madame Sampiero suddenly swayed--wavered--
There was a moment of tense silence, for outside in the hall the heavy
footsteps had stayed their progress--
"It is Julian." Madame Sampiero spoke quite distinctly, but she was
leaning heavily, heavily, on her companion, and Barbara could feel the
violent trembling of her emaciated body. "He used to come--in that
way--long ago--He thinks I am upstairs. You must go and find him--"
To Barbara, looking back, as she often did look back during her later
life, to that night, three things, in their due sequence, stood out
clearly--the terrifying sight of the paralysed woman walking with such
firm swift steps down the long room; the slow and fearful progress back
to the couch; and then, her own fruitless, baffling search through the
upper stories of the Priory--a search interrupted at intervals by the
far-away, but oh! how clear and insistent voice, crying out "Barbara!"
"Barbara!" a cry which, again and again, brought the seeker hurrying
down, but with never a word of having found him whom she sought.
* * * * *
Doctor McKirdy, coming in as he always did come each evening, was the
only human being to whom Mrs. Rebell ever told what had occurred; and
she was indifferent to the knowledge that he discredited her statement
as to how far Madame Sampiero had walked before she, Barbara, had caught
the swaying figure in her arms. Would she herself have believed the
story, had it been told her? No, for nothing could have convinced her of
its truth but the evidence of her own eyes.
As was his way when what he judged to be serious illness or disturbance
was in question, the old Scotchman was very silent, intent at first only
on soothing his patient, and on having her transported upstairs as
quickly and as quietly as possible. At last Barbara heard the words, "I
promise ye most solemnly I will look mysel', but no doubt he's away by
now, slipt out somehow"--uttered in the gentle voice he only kept for
the woman to whom he was speaking, and which he rarely used even to her.
And so, when Madame Sampiero was finally left with Jean--Jean, whose
stern countenance showed no quiver of curiosity or surprise, though she
must have known well enough that something very unusual had
happened--Mrs. Rebell followed Doctor McKirdy downstairs.
"Then you do think it really was Lord Bosworth?" she asked rather
eagerly.
"Indeed I do not!" he turned on her fiercely, "I just think it was
nobody but your fancy!"
Barbara felt foolishly vexed.
"But, Doctor McKirdy, some man undoubtedly came in, and walked across
the hall. We both heard him, quite distinctly."
"And of whom were ye thinking,--ay, and may-be talking,--when ye both
heard this mysterious person?"
It was a random shot, but Barbara reddened and remained silent.
Doctor McKirdy, however, did not pursue his advantage. "Look ye here,"
he said, not unkindly, "try and get that notion out of her head, even if
ye can't out of yours. If I thought he had come, that it was he"--he
clenched his hands, "'Twould be a dastardly thing to do after what I've
told him of her state! But, Mrs. Barbara, believe me, 'twas all
fancy,"--he looked at her with an odd twisted smile, "I'll tell you
something I've never told. Years ago, just after Madam's bad illness, I
went away, more fool I, for what they call a change. Well, wherever I
went they followed me--she and little Julia, as much there before me as
you are now! 'Twas vain to reason with myself. Julia, poor bairn, was
dead--who should know it as well as I?--and Madam lay stretched out
here. And yet--well, since then I've known that seeing is not all
believing. Once I got back,--to her, to them,--I laid their wraiths."
Barbara shuddered. "Then you are not going to look any more? I quite
admit that whoever came in is probably gone away by now."
"Of course I'll make a round of the place. D'ye think I'd break my word
in that fashion?"
Together they made a long and fruitless search through the vast old
house, and up to the last moment Barbara thought it possible they might
find someone in hiding, some poor foot-sore sailor tramp, may-be, who
had wandered in, little knowing of the trouble he was bringing--but the
long search yielded nothing.
"Are ye satisfied _now_?" Doctor McKirdy held up the hooded candle, and
turned the light on her flushed, excited face.
"Yes!--no!--I mean that of course I know now there is no one in the
house, but someone, a man, certainly came in."
For long hours Barbara lay awake, listening with beating heart for any
unwonted sound, but none broke across the May night, and she fell asleep
as the birds woke singing.
At eight in the morning Léonie brought her a note just arrived from
Fletchings: "DEAREST,--Your kind heart will be grieved to learn that my
uncle died, quite suddenly, last evening. I nearly came over, then
thought it wisest to wait till the morning. Better perhaps make McKirdy
break it to her."