And Dalrymple's quiet, "Very well. She'd see you, I think, if you want
to come. She has scarcely seen an English person in the last
three years."
And as when a gleam searches out some blurred corner of a landscape,
there returned upon him his visit to the pair in their country home. He
recalled the small eighteenth-century house, the "château" of the
village, built on the French model, with its high _mansarde_ roof; the
shabby stateliness of its architecture matching plaintively with the
field of beet-root that grew up to its very walls; around it the flat,
rich fields, with their thin lines of poplars; the slow, canalized
streams; the unlovely farms and cottages; the mire of the lanes; and,
shrouding all, a hot autumn mist sweeping slowly through the damp
meadows and blotting all cheerfulness from the sun. And in the midst of
this pale landscape, so full of ragged edges to an English eye, the
English couple, with their books, their child, and a pair of
Flemish servants.
It had been evident to him at once that their circumstances were those
of poverty. Lady Rose's small fortune, indeed, had been already mostly
spent on "causes" of many kinds, in many countries. She and Dalrymple
were almost vegetarians, and wine never entered the house save for the
servants, who seemed to regard their employers with a real but
half-contemptuous affection. He remembered the scanty, ill-cooked
luncheon; the difficulty in providing a few extra knives and forks; the
wrangling with the old _bonne_-housekeeper, which was necessary before
_serviettes_ could be produced.
And afterwards the library, with its deal shelves from floor to ceiling
put up by Dalrymple himself, its bare, polished floor, Dalrymple's table
and chair on one side of the open hearth, Lady Rose's on the other; on
his table the sheets of verse translation from Æschylus and Euripides,
which represented his favorite hobby; on hers the socialist and
economical books they both studied and the English or French poets they
both loved. The walls, hung with the faded damask of a past generation,
were decorated with a strange crop of pictures pinned carelessly into
the silk--photographs or newspaper portraits of modern men and women
representing all possible revolt against authority, political,
religious, even scientific, the Everlasting No of an untiring and
ubiquitous dissent.
Finally, in the centre of the polished floor, the strange child, whom
Lady Rose had gone to fetch after lunch, with its high crest of black
hair, its large, jealous eyes, its elfin hands, and the sudden smile
with which, after half an hour of silence and apparent scorn, it had
rewarded Sir Wilfrid's advances. He saw himself sitting bewitched
beside it.
Poor Lady Rose! He remembered her as he and she parted at the gate of
the neglected garden, the anguish in her eyes as they turned to look
after the bent and shrunken figure of Dalrymple carrying the child back
to the house.
"If you meet any of his old friends, don't--don't say anything! We've
just saved enough money to go to Sicily for the winter--that'll set
him right."
And then, barely a year later, the line in a London newspaper which had
reached him at Madrid, chronicling the death of Marriott Dalrymple, as
of a man once on the threshold of fame, but long since exiled from the
thoughts of practical men. Lady Rose, too, was dead--many years since;
so much he knew. But how, and where? And the child?
She was now "Mademoiselle Le Breton "?--the centre and apparently the
chief attraction of Lady Henry's once famous salon?
"And, by Jove! several of her kinsfolk there, relations of the mother or
the father, if what I suppose is true!" thought Sir Wilfrid, remembering
one or two of the guests. "Were they--was she--aware of it?"
* * * * *
The old man strode on, full of a growing eagerness, and was soon on Lady
Henry's doorstep.
"Her ladyship is in the dining-room," said the butler, and Sir Wilfrid
was ushered there straight.
"Good-morning, Wilfrid," said the old lady, raising herself on her
silver--headed sticks as he entered. "I prefer to come down-stairs by
myself. The more infirm I am, the less I like it--and to be helped
enrages me. Sit down. Lunch is ready, and I give you leave to eat some."
"And you?" said Sir Wilfrid, as they seated themselves almost side by
side at the large, round table in the large, dingy room.
The old lady shook her head.
"All the world eats too much. I was brought up with people who lunched
on a biscuit and a glass of sherry."
"Lord Russell?--Lord Palmerston?" suggested Sir Wilfrid, attacking his
own lunch meanwhile with unabashed vigor.
"That sort. I wish we had their like now."
"Their successors don't please you?"
Lady Henry shook her head.
"The Tories have gone to the deuce, and there are no longer enough Whigs
even to do that. I wouldn't read the newspapers at all if I could help
it. But I do."
"So I understand," said Sir Wilfrid; "you let Montresor know it last
night."
"Montresor!" said Lady Henry, with a contemptuous movement. "What a
_poseur_! He lets the army go to ruin, I understand, while he joins
Dante societies."
Sir Wilfrid raised his eyebrows.
"I think, if I were you, I should have some lunch," he said, gently
pushing the admirable _salmi_ which the butler had left in front of him
towards his old friend.
Lady Henry laughed.
"Oh, my temper will be better presently, when those men are gone"--she
nodded towards the butler and footman in the distance--"and I can
have my say."
Sir Wilfrid hurried his meal as much as Lady Henry--who, as it turned
out, was not at all minded to starve him--would allow. She meanwhile
talked politics and gossip to him, with her old, caustic force, nibbling
a dry biscuit at intervals and sipping a cup of coffee. She was a
wilful, characteristic figure as she sat there, beneath her own portrait
as a bride, which hung on the wall behind her. The portrait represented
a very young woman, with plentiful brown hair gathered into a knot on
the top of her head, a high waist, a blue waist-ribbon, and inflated
sleeves. Handsome, imperious, the corners of the mouth well down, the
look straight and daring--the Lady Henry of the picture, a bride of
nineteen, was already formidable. And the old woman sitting beneath it,
with the strong, white hair, which the ample cap found some difficulty
even now in taming and confining, the droop of the mouth accentuated,
the nose more masterful, the double chin grown evident, the light of the
eyes gone out, breathed pride and will from every feature of her still
handsome face, pride of race and pride of intellect, combined with a
hundred other subtler and smaller prides that only an intimate knowledge
of her could detect. The brow and eyes, so beautiful in the picture,
were, however, still agreeable in the living woman; if generosity
lingered anywhere, it was in them.
The door was hardly closed upon the servants when she bent forward.
"Well, have you guessed?"
Sir Wilfrid looked at her thoughtfully as he stirred the sugar in his
coffee.
"I think so," he said. "She is Lady Rose Delaney's daughter."
Lady Henry gave a sudden laugh.
"I hardly expected you to guess! What helped you?"
"First your own hints. Then the strange feeling I had that I had seen
the face, or some face just like it, before. And, lastly, at the Foreign
Office I caught sight, for a moment, of Lord Lackington. That
finished it."
"Ah!" said Lady Henry, with a nod. "Yes, that likeness is extraordinary.
Isn't it amazing that that foolish old man has never perceived it?"
"He knows nothing?"
"Oh, nothing! Nobody does. However, that'll do presently. But Lord
Lackington comes here, mumbles about his music and his water-colors, and
his flirtations--seventy-four, if you please, last birthday!--talks
about himself endlessly to Julie or to me--whoever comes handy--and
never has an inkling, an idea."
"And she?"
"Oh, _she_ knows. I should rather think she does." And Lady Henry pushed
away her coffee-cup with the ill-suppressed vehemence which any mention
of her companion seemed to produce in her. "Well, now, I suppose you'd
like to hear the story."
"Wait a minute. It'll surprise you to hear that I not only knew this
lady's mother and father, but that I've seen her, herself, before."
"You?" Lady Henry looked incredulous.
"I never told you of my visit to that _ménage_, four-and-twenty years
ago?"
"Never, that I remember. But if you had I should have forgotten. What
did they matter to me then? I myself only saw Lady Rose once, so far as
I remember, before she misconducted herself. And afterwards--well, one
doesn't trouble one's self about the women that have gone under."
Something lightened behind Sir Wilfrid's straw-colored lashes. He bent
over his coffee-cup and daintily knocked off the end of his cigarette
with a beringed little finger.
"The women who have--not been able to pull up?"
Lady Henry paused.
"If you like to put it so," she said, at last. Sir Wilfrid did not raise
his eyes. Lady Henry took up her strongest glasses from the table and
put them on. But it was pitifully evident that even so equipped she saw
but little, and that her strong nature fretted perpetually against the
physical infirmity that teased it. Nevertheless, some unspoken
communication passed between them, and Sir Wilfrid knew that he had
effectually held up a protecting hand for Lady Rose.
"Well, let me tell you my tale first," he said; and gave the little
reminiscence in full. When he described the child, Lady Henry
listened eagerly.
"Hm," she said, when he came to an end; "she was jealous, you say, of
her mother's attentions to you? She watched you, and in the end she took
possession of you? Much the same creature, apparently, then as now."
"No moral, please, till the tale is done," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
"It's your turn."
Lady Henry's face grew sombre.
[Illustration: "LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY"]
"All very well," she said. "What did your tale matter to you? As for
mine--"
The substance of hers was as follows, put into chronological order:
Lady Rose had lived some ten years after Dalrymple's death. That time
she passed in great poverty in some _chambres garnies_ at Bruges, with
her little girl and an old Madame Le Breton, the maid, housekeeper, and
general factotum who had served them in the country. This woman, though
of a peevish, grumbling temper, was faithful, affectionate, and not
without education. She was certainly attached to little Julie, whose
nurse she had been during a short period of her infancy. It was natural
that Lady Rose should leave the child to her care. Indeed, she had no
choice. An old Ursuline nun, and a kind priest who at the nun's
instigation occasionally came to see her, in the hopes of converting
her, were her only other friends in the world. She wrote, however, to
her father, shortly before her death, bidding him good-bye, and asking
him to do something for the child. "She is wonderfully like you," so ran
part of the letter. "You won't ever acknowledge her, I know. That is
your strange code. But at least give her what will keep her from want,
till she can earn her living. Her old nurse will take care of her, I
have taught her, so far. She is already very clever. When I am gone she
will attend one of the convent schools here. And I have found an honest
lawyer who will receive and pay out money."
To this letter Lord Lackington replied, promising to come over and see
his daughter. But an attack of gout delayed him, and, before he was out
of his room, Lady Rose was dead. Then he no longer talked of coming
over, and his solicitors arranged matters. An allowance of a hundred
pounds a year was made to Madame Le Breton, through the "honest lawyer"
whom Lady Rose had found, for the benefit of "Julie Dalrymple," the
capital value to be handed over to that young lady herself on the
attainment of her eighteenth birthday--always provided that neither she
nor anybody on her behalf made any further claim on the Lackington
family, that her relationship to them was dropped, and her mother's
history buried in oblivion.
Accordingly the girl grew to maturity in Bruges. By the lawyer's advice,
after her mother's death, she took the name of her old _gouvernante_,
and was known thenceforward as Julie Le Breton. The Ursuline nuns, to
whose school she was sent, took the precaution, after her mother's
death, of having her baptized straightway into the Catholic faith, and
she made her _première communion_ in their church. In the course of a
few years she became a remarkable girl, the source of many anxieties to
the nuns. For she was not only too clever for their teaching, and an
inborn sceptic, but wherever she appeared she produced parties and the
passions of parties. And though, as she grew older, she showed much
adroitness in managing those who were hostile to her, she was never
without enemies, and intrigues followed her.
"I might have been warned in time," said Lady Henry, in whose wrinkled
cheeks a sharp and feverish color had sprung up as her story approached
the moment of her own personal acquaintance with Mademoiselle Le Breton.
"For one or two of the nuns when I saw them in Bruges, before the
bargain was finally struck, were candid enough. However, now I come to
the moment when I first set eyes on her. You know my little place in
Surrey? About a mile from me is a manor-house belonging to an old
Catholic family, terribly devout and as poor as church-mice. They sent
their daughters to school in Bruges. One summer holiday these girls
brought home with them Julie Dalrymple as their quasi-holiday governess.
It was three years ago. I had just seen Liebreich. He told me that I
should soon be blind, and, naturally, it was a blow to me."
Sir Wilfrid made a murmur of sympathy.
"Oh, don't pity me! I don't pity other people. This odious body of ours
has got to wear out sometime--it's in the bargain. Still, just then I
was low. There are two things I care about--one is talk, with the people
that amuse me, and the other is the reading of French books. I didn't
see how I was going to keep my circle here together, and my own mind in
decent repair, unless I could find somebody to be eyes for me, and to
read to me. And as I'm a bundle of nerves, and I never was agreeable to
illiterate people, nor they to me, I was rather put to it. Well, one day
these girls and their mother came over to tea, and, as you guess, of
course, they brought Mademoiselle Le Breton with them. I had asked them
to come, but when they arrived I was bored and cross, and like a sick
dog in a hole. And then, as you have seen her, I suppose you can guess
what happened."
"You discovered an exceptional person?"
Lady Henry laughed.
"I was limed, there and then, old bird as I am. I was first struck with
the girl's appearance--_une belle laide_--with every movement just as it
ought to be; infinitely more attractive to me than any pink-and-white
beauty. It turned out that she had just been for a month in Paris
with another school-fellow. Something she said about a new
play--suddenly--made me look at her. 'Venez vous asseoir ici,
mademoiselle, s'il vous plaît--près de moi,' I said to her--I can hear
my own voice now, poor fool, and see her flush up. Ah!" Lady Henry's
interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir Wilfrid's
gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed: "We talked for two
hours; it seemed to me ten minutes. I sent the others out to the
gardens. She stayed with me. The new French books, the theatre, poems,
plays, novels, memoirs, even politics, she could talk of them all; or,
rather--for, mark you, that's her gift--she made _me_ talk. It seemed to
me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I
had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up
the ball. She does it to perfection. She never throws to
win--never!--but so as to leave you all the chances. You make a
brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you
another. Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation--and she
never says a thing that you want to remember."
There was a silence. Lady Henry's old fingers drummed restlessly on the
table. Her memory seemed to be wandering angrily among her first
experiences of the lady they were discussing.
"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, "so you engaged her as _lectrice_,
and thought yourself very lucky?"
"Oh, don't suppose that I was quite an idiot. I made some inquiries--I
bored myself to death with civilities to the stupid family she was
staying with, and presently I made her stay with me. And of course I
soon saw there was a history. She possessed jewels, laces, little
personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted explaining. So I laid
traps for her; I let her also perceive whither my own plans were
drifting. She did not wait to let me force her hand. She made up her
mind. One day I found, left carelessly on the drawing-room table, a
volume of Saint-Simon, beautifully bound in old French morocco, with
something thrust between the leaves. I opened it. On the fly-leaf was
written the name Marriott Dalrymple, and the leaves opened, a little
farther, on a miniature of Lady Rose Delaney. So--"
"Apparently it was _her_ traps that worked," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
Lady Henry returned the smile unwillingly, as one loath to acknowledge
her own folly.
"I don't know that I was trapped. We both desired to come to close
quarters. Anyway, she soon showed me books, letters--from Lady Rose,
from Dalrymple, Lord Lackington--the evidence was complete....
"'Very well,' I said; 'it isn't your fault. All the better if you are
well born--I am not a person of prejudices. But understand, if you come
to me, there must be no question of worrying your relations. There are
scores of them in London. I know them all, or nearly all, and of course
you'll come across them. But unless you can hold your tongue, don't come
to me. Julie Dalrymple has disappeared, and I'll be no party to her
resurrection. If Julie Le Breton becomes an inmate of my house, there
shall be no raking up of scandals much better left in their graves. If
you haven't got a proper parentage, consistently thought out, we must
invent one--'"
"I hope I may some day be favored with it," said Sir Wilfrid.
Lady Henry laughed uncomfortably.
"Oh, I've had to tell lies," she said, "plenty of them."
"What! It was _you_ that told the lies?"
Lady Henry's look flashed.
"The open and honest ones," she said, defiantly.
"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, regretfully, "_some_ sort were indispensable.
So she came. How long ago?"
"Three years. For the first half of that time I did nothing but plume
myself on my good fortune. I said to myself that if I had searched
Europe through I could not have fared better. My household, my friends,
my daily ways, she fitted into them all to perfection. I told people
that I had discovered her through a Belgian acquaintance. Every one was
amazed at her manners, her intelligence. She was perfectly modest,
perfectly well behaved. The old Duke--he died six months after she came
to me--was charmed with her. Montresor, Meredith, Lord Robert, all my
_habitués_ congratulated me. 'Such cultivation, such charm, such
_savoir-faire!_ Where on earth did you pick up such a treasure? What are
her antecedents?' etc., etc. So then, of course--"
"I hope no more than were absolutely necessary!" said Sir Wilfrid,
hastily.
"I had to do it well," said Lady Henry, with decision; "I can't say I
didn't. That state of things lasted, more or less, about a year and a
half. And by now, where do you think it has all worked out?"
"You gave me a few hints last night," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating.
Lady Henry pushed her chair back from the table. Her hands trembled on
her stick.
"Hints!" she said, scornfully. "I'm long past hints. I told you last
night--and I repeat--that woman has stripped me of all my friends! She
has intrigued with them all in turn against me. She has done the same
even with my servants. I can trust none of them where she is concerned.
I am alone in my own house. My blindness makes me her tool, her
plaything. As for my salon, as you call it, it has become hers. I am a
mere courtesy-figurehead--her chaperon, in fact. I provide the house,
the footmen, the champagne; the guests are hers. And she has done this
by constant intrigue and deception--by flattery--by lying!"
The old face had become purple. Lady Henry breathed hard.
"My dear friend," said Sir Wilfrid, quickly, laying a calming hand on
her arm, "don't let this trouble you so. Dismiss her."
"And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I haven't the
courage--yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't know how I have
been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you the worst of all.
Listen! Do you know whom she has got into her toils?"
She paused, drawing herself rigidly erect. Sir Wilfrid, looking up
sharply, remembered the little scene in the Park, and waited.
"Did you have any opportunity last night," said Lady Henry, slowly, "of
observing her and Jacob Delafield?"
She spoke with passionate intensity, her frowning brows meeting above a
pair of eyes that struggled to see and could not. But the effect she
listened for was not produced. Sir Wilfrid drew back uncertainly.
"Jacob Delafield?" he said. "Jacob Delafield? Are you sure?"
"Sure?" cried Lady Henry, angrily. Then, disdaining to support her
statement, she went on: "He hesitates. But she'll soon make an end of
that. And do you realize what that means--what Jacob's possibilities
are? Kindly recollect that Chudleigh has one boy--one sickly,
tuberculous boy--who might die any day. And Chudleigh himself is a poor
life. Jacob has more than a good chance--ninety chances out of a
hundred"--she ground the words out with emphasis--"of inheriting
the dukedom."
"Good gracious!" said Sir Wilfrid, throwing away his cigarette.
"There!" said Lady Henry, in sombre triumph. "Now you can understand
what I have brought on poor Henry's family."
A low knock was heard at the door.
"Come in," said Lady Henry, impatiently.
The door opened, and Mademoiselle Le Breton appeared on the threshold,
carrying a small gray terrier under each arm.
"I thought I had better tell you," she said, humbly, "that I am taking
the dogs out. Shall I get some fresh wool for your knitting?"