BACK AT SUMMERHILL.
It was like a dream to Lady Bell as she travelled back to Summerhill.
There passed in review before her, like the shifting scenes of a dream,
her London season and its triumphs, the love which had taken her by
storm in the middle of the world’s vanities, the declaration of love
after the play, the announcement on the Mall of the arrival of Harry
Fane’s sailing orders, the visit to Islington, the hasty private
marriage, and at last the wrench with which the bridegroom had torn
himself from his bride.
Could it all have happened to Lady Bell, and was she really a new
creature, belonging to another, and bearing another name—his precious
name, if the truth were known?
Or had she only awakened from a dream? The dream might have passed with
the bleakness and storms, which were over and gone, while in their place
had come the March of daffodils and bluebells ready to welcome her back
to Summerhill.
Ah! no, Lady Bell was a new creature. Her heart was at the sea. These
land charms had become stale, flat, and unprofitable to her, since he
was not there to share them. She would give them all willingly for a
taste of the breeze, salt on her lips. Her eyes filled with tears, “idle
tears,” at the sight of a flock of curlews hovering over a waste and
recalling to her sea-gulls skimming the waves. Her whole being seemed
dissolving in yearning and longing for her lover and husband. Existence
would not be worth having till he was restored to her.
But, in the first place, how was Lady Bell to present herself to her
dear Mrs. Sundon?—how account for the transformation in her to those
penetrating eyes, and that wise, experienced heart, unless by confiding
the truth to Mrs. Sundon? And, in that case, how was she to obtain
forgiveness for the march which she had stolen on her friend?
Captain Fane had left Lady Bell free to take what friends she chose into
the secret. It was on her account, rather than on his, that a secret had
been made.
Lady Bell had no thought but of telling the story to “Sunny” some
time—long before Captain Fane’s return.
But there was no question that the telling would call for an effort on
Lady Bell’s part, tell when she might. There would be more than a breach
of confidence to receive forgiveness—more, even, than the assertion of
Lady Bell’s independence—there would be her subjugation to the powerful
influence of another, which had superseded Mrs. Sundon’s influence.
The deed was done, yet Lady Bell felt more unequal than ever to the
sensation that she would create; the remonstrances, useless though they
must be, which she would raise, the reflections that might be cast on
another, the offence that might be taken by a friend to whom she had not
ceased to be warmly attached. In fact, instead of loving her neighbour
less, because of the one great central human love, she seemed to grow
specially tender to the wrongs and smarts of every human creature, all
for one mortal man’s dear sake.
Withal, the bashfulness of the acknowledged bride was quadrupled in the
unacknowledged bride. True, Lady Bell had been married before, but that
marriage had been altogether different—such a miserable travesty and
poor mockery, that Lady Bell actually cried over the remembrance of her
old self, and the dead Squire, for what they had defrauded each other
of, and been defrauded of, many a time, during the first weeks of her
marriage to Harry Fane.
It felt so strange to see Summerhill again.
There was the dainty, slightly fantastic women’s house and grounds
exactly as she had left them, but surely with a failure in their
qualities which she had not distinguished before.
The place presented the same want of shade and substance which Queen
Elizabeth had specially requested might be made in her picture. And the
traits of life at Summerhill had corresponded with Queen Elizabeth’s
idea that she and her maids should eat in private of the lightest and
most refined viands, while the ladies left all that was solid and strong
to the grosser appetites and needs of the gentlemen.
Everything at Summerhill was fresh and feminine to a degree; but there
was a suspicion of flimsiness and make-believe in the very delicacy and
over-abundance of knick-knacks, where two young women had kept house
together, and sworn unalterable first friendship, presuming to turn the
course of nature, like these sister figures away among the Welsh
mountains.
To recognise Summerhill the same as she had left it, and yet to look on
it with different eyes, knowing all the time that the difference lay in
her own eyes, was a singular half-remorseful experience to Lady Bell.
She was almost glad that Mrs. Sundon did not hear the carriage-wheels
and run out to meet her. There was only Caro in her nurse’s arms at the
door. It was a positive relief to see that Caro, quite in the course of
nature, had grown by the addition of a few more months to her short
lease of life, until there was some risk at her not knowing Caro, in
addition to the apprehended risk of Caro’s not knowing Lady Bell. There
was comfort in finding that anybody, even Caro, had undergone a change,
because of the tremendous change in Lady Bell, of which she was
tremblingly conscious. She should be thankful when the meeting with her
friend was over.
Lady Bell hurried, stumbling in her habit, into the bright little
parlour—blindingly bright, and at the same time empty it looked, though
it had the fine presence of Mrs. Sundon advancing to its threshold.
There were two little cries of “Bell,” “Sunny,” which had a rush of old
familiar affection in their tones that meant kisses—perfectly hearty and
sincere in their fondness, and a little laughter, with twinkled-away
tears.
These tears seemed natural enough when Lady Bell was weary after an
exciting journey, and Mrs. Sundon might be wearier still with waiting,
and with staying all alone, having had no cheerful young friend at hand
to dissipate grievous memories.
It seemed to Lady Bell as if a cloud of anticipated awkwardness and
indefinable constraint and distress had burst and vanished, as such
clouds will sometimes vanish at the moment of contact. She had found
again her indulgent, magnanimous Mrs. Sundon, on whose favour and
generosity Lady Bell could throw herself confidently—only she would
spare both her friend and herself in the first hours of their meeting.
When Lady Bell had composed herself to scrutinize and draw conclusions,
it struck her with quick pain that Sunny was looking ill.
Mrs. Sundon wore an exceedingly simple muslin dress, with the tight
sleeves ending in frills at the wrist, and falling over the hands, the
neckerchief being surmounted with the same wide plaited frills, out of
which rose the fair pillar of the throat, like the neck of a white
heifer out of a garland.
But Lady Bell had never seen the grand womanly proportions brought
nearer to the spareness of attenuation, while the face was almost wan in
its colourlessness.
Clearly Mrs. Sundon had not been flourishing on keeping house alone; she
had been wont to treat “nerves” and “vapours”—regarded as bodily
complaints, with lofty derision and condemnation; yet her own nerves
were unstrung, for she continued, though she did not allow it in words,
to be agitated by Lady Bell’s arrival. There was a stir and quiver of
Mrs. Sundon’s features as of a rock which had been disturbed and shaken,
and could not at once regain its entire balance and firm quietude.
Lady Bell could not account for the involuntary disturbance and the
striving in vain to overcome it, in her friend’s expressive face, and in
her cold passive hand, which shook sensibly in Lady Bell’s feverish
clasp, unless it were that Mrs. Sundon’s health had become impaired.
If that were so, there must be laid to Lady Bell’s charge, among other
acts of wilfulness and indiscretion, an ungracious oversight—the friend
who had been so good to Lady Bell had pined in her absence, and had been
left to pine.
Or was it simply the disturbance in Lady Bell’s own flushed face, the
thrilling of her own pulses, which her morbid fancy and guilty
conscience transferred to her poor abused friend?
No; here was an absent-minded, distrait woman, who had to assume an
interest which she did not feel, in narratives that ought to have been,
from her old familiarity with the scene, and her sisterly regard for the
heroine, stimulating and engrossing in their effect upon the listener.
Lady Bell was conscious of this while she sat chattering incessantly of
all her different adventures, at the auctions and the routs, and was not
once pulled up and brought to book by such searching cross-examination
as the judge, jury, and counsel for the prosecution combined in the old
Sunny, would have known well how to conduct.
Even when Lady Bell forced her tripping tongue to speak Captain Fane’s
name, while her eyes fell convicted, until their lashes rested on her
cheeks dyed with burning blushes, she might have spared herself the
trepidation and terror of instant discovery. Sunny’s mind was
wool-gathering, and she did not recall her scattered faculties to make a
single observation.
Lady Bell would have begun to have a revulsion of feeling, and, from
being chilled, would have been mortified had she not been alarmed.
As the day wore on, however, Lady Bell talked and talked her friend out
of her stupor, and procured a measure of response in home news. These
were but vapid concerns now to Lady Bell, but she was not going to
betray her conviction of their vapidness.
Caro had cut ever so many teeth. The stubble chickens were ready for
killing. The Spanish jasmine had survived the winter. The mayor and the
good people of Lumley and Nutfield were all well, and,—oh yes, Master
Charles had got his colours, and was going up to town to practise drill
with the awkward squad in the reserve of his regiment, before he joined
the main body somewhere in the colonies—Mrs. Sundon had forgotten
exactly where. No, she could not say that she was vastly sorry for Miss
Kingscote, as the young fellow was fulfilling his calling, and going
where duty and the prospect of promotion, whether it were by life or
death, called him.
The last words, in answer to Lady Bell’s sympathetic inquiry, were
spoken so shortly as to remind Lady Bell that there was a worse end than
that of death in Mrs. Sundon’s experience.
END OF VOL II.
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD, LONDON.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Italics, bold letters and small capitals have been converted to
_underscores_, =equal signs=, and ALL CAPS respectively.
Perceived typos have been silently corrected.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.