They had turned towards Brent, and Julie saw coming towards them, with
somewhat rapid steps, a small, elderly lady, gray-haired, her features
partly hidden by her country hat.
A thrill passed through Julie. This was the sister whose name her mother
had mentioned in her last hour. It was as though something of her
mother, something that must throw light upon that mother's life and
being, were approaching her along this Swiss road.
But the lady in question, as she neared them, looked with surprise, not
unmingled with hauteur, upon her daughter and the stranger beside her.
"Aileen, why did you go so far? You promised me only to be a quarter of
an hour."
"I am not tired, mother. Mother, this is Mrs. Delafield. You remember,
Uncle Uredale wrote--"
Lady Blanche Moffatt stood still. Once more a fear swept through Julie's
mind, and this time it stayed. After an evident hesitation, a hand was
coldly extended.
"How do you do? I heard from my brothers of your marriage, but they said
you were in Italy."
"We have just come from there."
"And your husband?"
"He has gone down to Montreux, but he should be home very soon now. We
are only a few steps from our little inn. Would you not rest there? Miss
Moffatt looks very tired."
There was a pause. Lady Blanche was considering her daughter. Julie saw
the trembling of her wide, irregular mouth, of which the lips were
slightly turned outward. Finally she drew her daughter's hand into her
arm, and bent anxiously towards her, scrutinizing her face.
"Thank you. We will rest a quarter of an hour. Can we get a carriage at
Charnex?"
"Yes, I think so, if you will wait a little on our balcony."
They walked on towards Charnex. Lady Blanche began to talk resolutely of
the weather, which was, indeed, atrocious. She spoke as she would have
done to the merest acquaintance. There was not a word of her father; not
a word, either, of her brother's letter, or of Julie's relationship to
herself. Julie accepted the situation with perfect composure, and the
three kept up some sort of a conversation till they reached the paved
street of Charnex and the old inn at its lower end.
Julie guided her companions through its dark passages, till they reached
an outer terrace where there were a few scattered seats, and among them
a deck-chair with cushions.
"Please," said Julie, as she kindly drew the girl towards it. Aileen
smiled and yielded. Julie placed her among the cushions, then brought
out a shawl, and covered her warmly from the sharp, damp air. Aileen
thanked her, and lightly touched her hand. A secret sympathy seemed to
have suddenly sprung up between them.
Lady Blanche sat stiffly beside her daughter, watching her face. The
warm touch of friendliness in Aileen's manner towards Mrs. Delafield
seemed only to increase the distance and embarrassment of her own. Julie
appeared to be quite unconscious. She ordered tea, and made no further
allusion of any kind to the kindred they had in common. She and Lady
Blanche talked as strangers.
Julie said to herself that she understood. She remembered the evening at
Crowborough House, the spinster lady who had been the Moffatts' friend,
her own talk with Evelyn. In that way, or in some other, the current
gossip about herself and Warkworth, gossip they had been too mad and
miserable to take much account of, had reached Lady Blanche. Lady
Blanche probably abhorred her; though, because of her marriage, there
was to be an outer civility. Meanwhile no sign whatever of any angry or
resentful knowledge betrayed itself in the girl's manner. Clearly the
mother had shielded her.
Julie felt the flutter of an exquisite relief. She stole many a look at
Aileen, comparing the reality with that old, ugly notion her jealousy
had found so welcome--of the silly or insolent little creature,
possessing all that her betters desired, by the mere brute force of
money or birth. And all the time the reality was _this_--so soft,
suppliant, ethereal! Here, indeed, was the child of Warkworth's
picture--the innocent, unknowing child, whom their passion had
sacrificed and betrayed. She could see the face now, as it lay piteous,
in Warkworth's hand. Then she raised her eyes to the original. And as it
looked at her with timidity and nascent love her own heart beat wildly,
now in remorse, now in a reviving jealousy.
Secretly, behind this mask of convention, were they both thinking of
him? A girl's thoughts are never far from her lover; and Julie was
conscious, this afternoon, of a strange and mysterious preoccupation,
whereof Warkworth was the centre.
* * * * *
Gradually the great mountains at the head of the lake freed themselves
from the last wandering cloud-wreaths. On the rock faces of the Rochers
de Naye the hanging pine-woods, brushed with snow, came into sight. The
white walls of Glion shone faintly out, and a pearly gold, which was but
a pallid reflection of the Italian glory, diffused itself over mountain
and lake. The sun was grudging; there was no caress in the air. Aileen
shivered a little in her shawls, and when Julie spoke of Italy the
girl's enthusiasm and longing sprang, as it were, to meet her, and both
were conscious of another slight link between them.
Suddenly a sound of steps came to them from below.
"My husband," said Julie, rising, and, going to the balustrade, she
waved to Delafield, who had come up from Montreux by one of the steep
vineyard paths. "I will tell him you are here," she added, with what
might have been taken for the shyness of the young wife.
She ran down the steps leading from the terrace to the lower garden.
Aileen looked at her mother.
"Isn't she wonderful?" she said, in an ardent whisper. "I could watch
her forever. She is the most graceful person I ever saw. Mother, is she
like Aunt Rose?"
Lady Blanche shook her head.
"Not in the least," she said, shortly. "She has too much manner for me."
"Oh, mother!" And the girl caught her mother's hand in caressing
remonstrance, as though to say: "Dear little mother, you must like her,
because I do; and you mustn't think of Aunt Rose, and all those
terrible things, except for pity."
"Hush!" said Lady Blanche, smiling at her a little excitedly. "Hush;
they're coming!"
Delafield and Julie emerged from the iron staircase. Lady Blanche turned
and looked at the tall, distinguished pair, her ugly lower lip hardening
ungraciously. But she and Delafield had a slight previous acquaintance,
and she noticed instantly the charming and solicitous kindness with
which he greeted her daughter.
"Julie tells me Miss Moffatt is still far from strong," he said,
returning to the mother.
Lady Blanche only sighed for answer. He drew a chair beside her, and
they fell into the natural talk of people who belong to the same social
world, and are travelling in the same scenes.
Meanwhile Julie was sitting beside the heiress. Not much was said, but
each was conscious of a lively interest in the other, and every now and
then Julie would put out a careful hand and draw the shawls closer about
the girl's frail form. The strain of guilty compunction that entered
into Julie's feeling did but make it the more sensitive. She said to
herself in a vague haste that now she would make amends. If only Lady
Blanche were willing--
But she should be willing! Julie felt the stirrings of the old
self-confidence, the old trust in a social ingenuity which had, in
truth, rarely failed her. Her intriguing, managing instinct made itself
felt--the mood of Lady Henry's companion.
* * * * *
Presently, as they were talking, Aileen caught sight of an English
newspaper which Delafield had brought up from Montreux. It lay still
unopened on one of the tables of the terrace.
"Please give it me," said the girl, stretching out an eager hand. "It
will have Tiny's marriage, mamma! A cousin of mine," she explained to
Julie, who rose to hand it to her. "A very favorite cousin. Oh,
thank you."
She opened the paper. Julie turned away, that she might relieve Lady
Blanche of her teacup.
Suddenly a cry rang out--a cry of mortal anguish. Two ladies who had
just stepped out upon the terrace from the hotel drawing-room turned in
terror; the gardener who was watering the flower-boxes at the farther
end stood arrested.
"Aileen!" shrieked Lady Blanche, running to her. "What--what is it?"
The paper had dropped to the floor, but the child still pointed to it,
gasping.
"Mother--mother!"
Some intuition woke in Julie. She stood dead-white and dumb, while Lady
Blanche threw herself on her daughter.
"Aileen, darling, what is it?"
The girl, in her agony, threw her arms frantically round her mother, and
dragged herself to her feet. She stood tottering, her hand over
her eyes.
"He's dead, mother! He's--dead!"
The last word sank into a sound more horrible even than the first cry.
Then she swayed out of her mother's arms. It was Julie who caught her,
who laid her once more on the deck-chair--a broken, shrunken form, in
whom all the threads and connections of life had suddenly, as it were,
fallen to ruin. Lady Blanche hung over her, pushing Julie away,
gathering the unconscious girl madly in her arms. Delafield rushed for
water-and-brandy. Julie snatched the paper and looked at the telegrams.
High up in the first column was the one she sought.
"CAIRO, _June_ 12.--Great regret is felt here at the sudden
and tragic news of Major Warkworth's death from fever, which
seems to have occurred at a spot some three weeks' distance
from the coast, on or about May 25. Letters from the officer
who has succeeded him in the command of the Mokembe
expedition have now reached Denga. A fortnight after leaving
the coast Major Warkworth was attacked with fever; he made a
brave struggle against it, but it was of a deadly type, and
in less than a week he succumbed. The messenger brought also
his private papers and diaries, which have been forwarded to
his representatives in England. Major Warkworth was a most
promising and able officer, and his loss will be keenly
felt."
Julie fell on her knees beside her swooning cousin. Lady Blanche,
meanwhile, was loosening her daughter's dress, chafing her icy hands, or
moaning over her in a delirium of terror.
"My darling--my darling! Oh, my God! Why did I allow it? Why did I ever
let him come near her? It was my fault--my fault! And it's killed her!"
And clinging to her child's irresponsive hands, she looked down upon her
in a convulsion of grief, which included not a shadow of regret, not a
gleam of pity for anything or any one else in the world but this bone of
her bone and flesh of her flesh, which lay stricken there.
But Julie's mind had ceased to be conscious of the tragedy beside her.
It had passed for the second time into the grasp of an illusion which
possessed itself of the whole being and all its perceptive powers.
Before her wide, terror-stricken gaze there rose once more the same
piteous vision which had tortured her in the crisis of her love for
Warkworth. Against the eternal snows which close in the lake the phantom
hovered in a ghastly relief--emaciated, with matted hair, and purpled
cheeks, and eyes--not to be borne!--expressing the dumb anger of a man,
still young, who parts unwillingly from life in a last lonely spasm of
uncomforted pain.