VISIT OF THE HARE FAMILY.
The county carriages began to pour to East Lynne, to pay the wedding
visit, as it is called, to Mr. and Lady Isabel Carlyle. Of course they
displayed themselves in their most courtly state. Mr. Carlyle, always a
popular man, had gained double his former importance by his marriage
with the daughter of the late Earl of Mount Severn. Among the earliest
visitors went Justice and Mrs. Hare, with Barbara.
Isabel was in her dressing-gown, attended by Joyce, whom she was just
asking to take the place of her late maid, if Miss Carlyle would consent
to the transfer.
Joyce’s face lighted up with pleasure at the proposal. “Oh, my lady, you
are very kind! I should so like it! I would serve you faithfully to the
best of my ability.”
Isabel laughed. “But Miss Carlyle may not be inclined to transfer you.”
“I think she would be, my lady. She said a day or two ago, that I
appeared to suit you, and you might have me altogether if you wished,
provided I could still make her gowns. I make them to please her, you
see, my lady.”
“Do you make her caps also?” demurely asked Lady Isabel.
Joyce smiled. “Yes, my lady; but I am allowed to make them only
according to her own pattern.”
“Joyce, if you become my maid, you must wear smarter caps yourself. I do
not wish you to be fine like Marvel.”
“Oh, my lady! I shall never be fine,” shuddered Joyce. And Joyce
believed she had cause to shudder at finery.
She was about to speak further, when a knock came to the dressing-room
door. Joyce went to open it, and saw one of the housemaids, a girl who
had recently been engaged, a native of West Lynne. Isabel heard the
colloquy,--
“Is my lady there?”
“Yes.”
“Some visitors. Pete ordered me to come and tell you. I say, Joyce, it’s
the Hares. And she’s with them. I watched her get out of the carriage.”
“Who?” sharply returned Joyce.
“Why, Miss Barbara. Only fancy her coming to pay the wedding visit here.
My lady had better take care that she don’t get a bowl of poison mixed
for her. Master’s out or else I’d have given a shilling to see the
interview between the three.”
Joyce sent the girl away, shut the door, and turned to her mistress,
quite unconscious that the half-whispered conversation had been audible.
“Some visitors are in the drawing-room, my lady, Susan says. Mr. Justice
Hare and Mrs. Hare and Miss Barbara.”
Isabel descended, her mind full of the mysterious words spoken by Susan.
The justice was in a new flaxen wig, obstinate-looking and pompous; Mrs.
Hare, pale, delicate, and lady-like; Barbara beautiful; such was the
impression they made upon Isabel.
They paid rather a long visit, Isabel quite falling in love with the
gentle and suffering Mrs. Hare, and had risen to leave when Miss Carlyle
entered. She wished them to remain longer--had something, she said, to
show Barbara. The justice declined; he had a brother justice coming to
dine with him at five, and it was then half-past four. Barbara might
stop if she liked.
Barbara’s faced turned crimson; but nevertheless she accepted the
invitation, immediately proffered her by Miss Carlyle to remain at East
Lynne for the rest of the day.
Dinner time approached, and Isabel went to dress for it. Joyce was
waiting, and entered upon the subject of the service.
“My lady, I have spoken to Miss Carlyle, and she is willing that I
should be transferred to you, but she says I ought first to acquaint you
with certain unpleasant facts in my history, and the same thought had
occurred to me. Miss Carlyle is not over pleasant in manner, my lady,
but she is very upright and just.”
“What facts?” asked Lady Isabel, sitting down to have her hair brushed.
“My lady, I’ll tell you as shortly as it can. My father was a clerk in
Mr. Carlyle’s office--of course I mean the late Mr. Carlyle. My mother
died when I was eight years old, and my father afterwards married again,
a sister of Mr. Kane’s wife--”
“Mr. Kane, the music master?”
“Yes, my lady. She and Mrs. Kane were quite ladies; had been
governesses. People said she lowered herself greatly in marrying my
father. However, they did marry, and at the end of the year my little
sister Afy was born. We lived in a pretty cottage in the wood and were
happy. But in twelve months more my step-mother died, and an aunt of
hers adopted Afy. I lived with my father, going to school, then to learn
dressmaking, and finally going out to work to ladies’ houses. After many
years, Afy came home. Her aunt had died and her income with her, but not
the vanity and love of finery that Afy had acquired. She did nothing but
dress herself and read novels. My father was angry; he said no good
could come of it. She had several admirers, Mr. Richard Hare, Miss
Barbara’s own brother,” continued Joyce, lowering her voice, “and she
flirted with them all. My father used to go out to shoot on fine
evenings after office, or to his duties as secretary to the library, and
so Afy was generally all alone until I came home at nine o’clock; and
was free to flirt with her beaux.”
“Had she any she favored particularly, was it thought?” asked Lady
Isabel.
“The chief one, my lady, was Richard Hare. She got acquainted with
somebody else, a stranger, who used to ride over from a distance to see
her; but I fancy there was nothing in it--Richard was the one. And it
went on till--till--he killed her father.”
“Who?” uttered the startled Isabel.
“Richard Hare, my lady. Father had told Afy that Mr. Richard should not
come there any longer, for when gentlemen go in secret after poor girls,
it’s well known they have not got marriage in their thoughts; father
would have interfered more than he did, but that he judged well of Mr.
Richard, and did not think he was one to do Afy real harm,--but he did
not know how flighty she was. However, one day he heard people talk
about it in West Lynne, coupling her name and Mr. Richard’s offensively
together, and at night he told Afy, before me, that it should not go on
any longer, and she must not encourage him. My lady, the next night
Richard Hare shot my father.”
“How very dreadful!”
“Whether it was done on purpose, or that they had a scuffle, and the gun
went off accidentally and killed my father, no one can tell. Afy said
she had been in the woods at the back of the house, and when she came
in, father lay dead, and Mr. Locksley was standing over him. He said he
had heard the shot, and come up just in time to see Richard fly from the
house, his shoes covered with blood. He has never been heard of since;
but there is a judgment of murder out against him; and the fear and
shame is killing his mother by inches.”
“And Afy?”
“The worst is to come my lady. Afy followed him directly after the
inquest, and nothing has been known since of either of them. I was taken
ill, after all these shocks, with nervous fever, and Miss Carlyle took
care of me, and I have remained with her ever since. This was what I had
to tell you, my lady, before you decided to take me into service; it is
not every lady who would like to engage one whose sister has turned out
so badly.”
Lady Isabel did not see that it could make any difference, or that it
ought to. She said so; and then leaned back in her chair and mused.
“What dress, my lady?”
“Joyce, what was that I heard you and Susan gossiping over at the door?”
Lady Isabel suddenly asked. “About Miss Hare giving me a bowl of poison.
Something in the dramatic line that would be. You should tell Susan not
to make her whispers so loud.”
“It was only a bit of nonsense, my lady. These ignorant servants will
talk; and every one at West Lynne knew Miss Barbara was in love with Mr.
Carlyle. But I don’t fancy she would have been the one to make him happy
with all her love.”
A hot flush passed over the brow of Lady Isabel; a sensation very like
jealousy flew to her heart. No woman likes to hear of another’s being,
or having been attached to her husband: a doubt always arises whether
the feeling may not have been reciprocated.
Lady Isabel descended. She wore a costly black lace dress, its low body
and sleeves trimmed with as costly white; and ornaments of jet. She
looked inexpressibly beautiful, and Barbara turned from her with a
feeling of sinking jealousy, from her beauty, from her attire, even from
the fine, soft handkerchief, which displayed the badge of her rank--the
coronet of an earl’s daughter. Barbara looked well, too; she was in a
light blue silk robe, and her pretty cheeks were damask with her mind’s
excitement. On her neck she wore the gold chain given her by Mr.
Carlyle--strange that she had not discarded that.
They stood together at the window, looking at Mr. Carlyle as he came up
the avenue. He saw them, and nodded. Lady Isabel watched the damask
cheeks turn to crimson at sight of him.
“How do you do, Barbara?” he cried, as he shook hands. “Come to pay us a
visit at last? You have been rather tardy over it. And how are you, my
darling?” he whispered over his wife; but she missed his kiss of
greeting. Well, would she have had him give it her in public? No; but
she was in the mood to notice the omission.
Dinner over, Miss Carlyle beguiled Barbara out of doors. Barbara would
far rather have remained in his presence. Of course they discussed Lady
Isabel.
“How do you like her?” abruptly asked Barbara, alluding to Lady Isabel.
“Better than I thought I should,” acknowledged Miss Carlyle. “I had
expected airs and graces and pretence, and I must say she is free from
them. She seems quite wrapped up in Archibald and watches for his coming
home like a cat watches for a mouse. She is dull without him.”
Barbara compelled her manner to indifference. “I suppose it is natural.”
“I suppose it is absurd,” was the retort of Miss Carlyle. “I give them
little of my company, especially in an evening. They go strolling out
together, or she sings to him, he hanging over her as if she were of
gold: to judge by appearances, she is more precious to him than any gold
that was ever coined into money. I’ll tell you what I saw last night.
Archibald had what he is not often subject to, a severe headache, and he
went into the next room after dinner, and lay on the sofa. She carried a
cup of tea to him, and never came back, leaving her own on the table
till it was perfectly cold. I pushed open the door to tell her so. There
was my lady’s cambric handkerchief, soaked in eau-de-Cologne, lying on
his forehead; and there was my lady herself, kneeling down and looking
at him, he with his arm thrown around her there. Now I just ask you,
Barbara, whether there’s any sense in fadding with a man like that? If
ever he did have a headache before he was married, I used to mix him up
a good dose of salts and senna, and tell him to go to bed early and
sleep the pain off.”
Barbara made no reply, but she turned her face from Miss Carlyle.
On Barbara’s return to the house, she found that Mr. Carlyle and Lady
Isabel were in the adjoining room, at the piano, and Barbara had an
opportunity of hearing that sweet voice. She did, as Miss Carlyle
confessed to have done, pushed open the door between the two rooms, and
looked in. It was the twilight hour, almost too dusk to see; but she
could distinguish Isabel seated at the piano, and Mr. Carlyle standing
behind her. She was singing one of the ballads from the opera of the
“Bohemian Girl,” “When other Lips.”
“Why do you like that song so much, Archibald?” she asked when she had
finished it.
“I don’t know. I never liked it so much until I heard it from you.”
“I wonder if they are come in. Shall we go into the next room?”
“Just this one first--this translation from the German--’ ‘Twere vain to
tell thee all I feel.’ There’s real music in that song.”
“Yes, there is. Do you know, Archibald, your taste is just like papa’s.
He liked all these quiet, imaginative songs, and so do you. And so do
I,” she laughingly added, “if I must speak the truth.”
She ceased and began the song, singing it exquisitely, in a low, sweet,
earnest tone, the chords of the accompaniment, at its conclusion, dying
off gradually into silence.
“There, Archibald, I am sure I have sung you ten songs at least,” she
said, leaning her head back against him, and looking at him from her
upturned face. “You ought to pay me.”
He did pay her: holding the dear face to him, and taking from it some
impassioned kisses. Barbara turned to the window, a low moan of pain
escaping her, as she pressed her forehead on one of its panes, and
looked forth at the dusky night. Isabel came in on her husband’s arm.
“Are you here alone, Miss Hare? I really beg your pardon. I supposed you
were with Miss Carlyle.”
“Where is Cornelia, Barbara?”
“I have just come in,” was Barbara’s reply. “I dare say she is following
me.”
So she was, for she entered a moment after, her voice raised in anger at
the gardener, who had disobeyed her orders, and obeyed the wishes of
Lady Isabel.
The evening wore on to ten, and as the time-piece struck the hour,
Barbara rose from her chair in amazement.
“I did not think it was so late. Surely some one must have come for me.”
“I will inquire,” was Lady Isabel’s answer, and Mr. Carlyle touched the
bell. No one had come for Miss Hare.
“Then I fear I must trouble Peter,” cried Barbara. “Mamma may be gone to
rest, tired, and papa must have forgotten me. It would never do for me
to get locked out,” she gaily added.
“As you were one night before,” said Mr. Carlyle, significantly.
He alluded to the night when Barbara was in the grove of trees with her
unfortunate brother, and Mr. Hare was on the point, unconsciously, of
locking her out. She had given Mr. Carlyle the history, but its
recollection now called up a smart pain, and a change passed over her
face.
“Oh! Don’t, Archibald,” she uttered, in the impulse of the moment;
“don’t recall it.”
Isabel wondered.
“Can Peter take me?” continued Barbara.
“I had better take you,” said Mr. Carlyle. “It is late.”
Barbara’s heart beat at the words; beat as she put her things on--as she
said good-night to Lady Isabel and Miss Carlyle; it beat to throbbing as
she went out with him, and took his arm. All just as it used to be--only
now that he was the husband of another. Only!
It was a warm, lovely June night, not moonlight, but bright with its
summer twilight. They went down the park into the road, which they
crossed, and soon came to a stile. From that stile there led a path
through the fields which would pass the back of Justice Hare’s. Barbara
stopped at it.
“Would you choose the field way to-night, Barbara? The grass will be
damp, and this is the longest way.”
“But we shall escape the dust of the road.”
“Oh, very well, if you prefer it. It will not make three minutes’
difference.”
“He is very anxious to get home to her!” mentally exclaimed Barbara. “I
shall fly out upon him, presently, or my heart will burst.”
Mr. Carlyle crossed the stile, helped over Barbara, and then gave her
his arm again. He had taken her parasol, as he had taken it the last
night they had walked together--an elegant little parasol, this, of blue
silk and white lace, and he did not switch the hedges with it. That
night was present to Barbara now, with all its words and its delusive
hopes; terribly present to her was their bitter ending.
There are women of warm, impulsive temperaments who can scarcely help,
in certain moments of highly wrought excitement, over-stepping the
bounds of nature and decorum, and giving the reins to temper, tongue,
and imagination--making a scene, in short. Barbara had been working
herself into this state during the whole evening. The affection of
Isabel for her husband, her voice, his caresses--seen through the half
open doors--had maddened her. She felt it impossible to restrain her
excitement.
Mr. Carlyle walked on, utterly unconscious that a storm was brewing.
More than that, he was unconscious of having given cause for one, and
dashed into an indifferent, common place topic in the most provoking
manner.
“When does the justice begin haymaking, Barbara?”
There was no reply. Barbara was swelling and panting, and trying to keep
her emotion down. Mr. Carlyle tried again,--
“Barbara, I asked you which day your papa cut his hay.”
Still no reply. Barbara was literally incapable of making one. The steam
of excitement was on, nearly to its highest pitch. Her throat was
working, the muscles of her mouth began to twitch, and a convulsive sob,
or what sounded like it, broke from her. Mr. Carlyle turned his head
hastily.
“Barbara! are you ill? What is it?”
On it came, passion, temper, wrongs, and nervousness, all boiling over
together. She shrieked, she sobbed, she was in strong hysterics. Mr.
Carlyle half-carried, half-dragged her to the second stile, and placed
her against it, his arm supporting her; and an old cow and two calves,
wondering what the disturbance could mean at that sober time of night,
walked up and stared at them.
Barbara struggled with her emotion--struggled manfully--and the sobs and
shrieks subsided; not the excitement or the passion. She put away his
arm, and stood with her back to the stile, leaning against it. Mr.
Carlyle felt inclined to fly to the pond for water, but he had nothing
but his hat to get it in.
“Are you better, Barbara? What can have caused it?”
“What can have caused it?” she burst forth, giving full swing to the
reins, and forgetting everything. “You can ask me that?”
Mr. Carlyle was struck dumb; but by some inexplicable laws of sympathy,
a dim and very unpleasant consciousness of the truth began to steal over
him.
“I don’t understand you, Barbara. If I have offended you in any way, I
am truly sorry.”
“Truly sorry, no doubt!” was the retort, the sobs and the shrieks
alarmingly near. “What do you care for me? If I go under the sod to-
morrow,” stamping it with her foot, “you have your wife to care for;
what am I?”
“Hush!” he interposed, glancing round, more mindful for her than she was
for herself.
“Hush, yes! You would like me to hush; what is my misery to you? I would
rather be in my grave, Archibald Carlyle, than endure the life I have
led since you married her. My pain is greater than I well know how to
bear.”
“I cannot affect to misunderstand you,” he said, feeling more at a
nonplus than he had felt for many a day, and heartily wishing the whole
female creation, save Isabel, somewhere. “But my dear Barbara. I never
gave you cause to think I--that I--cared for you more than I did.”
“Never gave me cause!” she gasped. “When you have been coming to our
house constantly, almost like my shadow; when you gave me this” dashing
open her mantle, and holding up the locket to his view; “when you have
been more intimate with me than a brother.”
“Stay, Barbara. There it is--a brother. I have been nothing else; it
never occurred to me to be anything else,” he added, in his
straightforward truth.
“Ay, as a brother, nothing else!” and her voice rose once more with her
excitement; it seemed that she would not long control it. “What cared
you for my feelings? What recked you that you gained my love?”
“Barbara, hush!” he implored: “do be calm and reasonable. If I ever gave
you cause to think I regarded you with deeper feelings, I can only
express to you my deep regret, my repentance, and assure you it was done
unconsciously.”
She was growing calmer. The passion was fading, leaving her face still
and white. She lifted it toward Mr. Carlyle.
“You treated me ill in showing signs of love, if you felt it not. Why
did you kiss me?”
“I kissed you as I might kiss a sister. Or perhaps as a pretty girl; man
likes to do so. The close terms on which our families have lived,
excused, if it did not justify, a degree of familiarity that might have
been unseemly in--”
“You need not tell me that,” hotly interrupted Barbara. “Had it been a
stranger who had won my love and then thrown me from him, do you suppose
I would have reproached him as I am now reproaching you? No; I would
have died, rather than that he should have suspected it. If she had not
come between us, should you have loved me?”
“Do not pursue this unthankful topic,” he besought, almost wishing the
staring cow would run away with her.
“I ask you, should you have loved me?” persisted Barbara, passing her
handkerchief over her ashy lips.
“I don’t know. How can I know? Do I not say to you, Barbara, that I only
thought of you as a friend, a sister? I cannot tell what might have
been.”
“I could bear it better, but that it was known,” she murmured. “All West
Lynne had coupled us together in their prying gossip, and they have only
pity to cast on me now. I would far rather you have killed me,
Archibald.”
“I can but express to you my deep regret,” he repeated. “I can only hope
you will soon forget it all. Let the remembrance of this conversation
pass away with to-night; let us still be to each other as friends--as
brother and sister. Believe me,” he concluded, in a deeper tone, “the
confession has not lessened you in my estimation.”
He made a movement as though he would get over the stile, but Barbara
did not stir; the tears were silently coursing down her pallid face. At
that moment there was an interruption.
“Is that you, Miss Barbara?”
Barbara started as if she had been shot. On the other side of the stile
stood Wilson, their upper maid. How long might she have been there? She
began to explain that Mr. Hare had sent Jasper out, and Mrs. Hare had
thought it better to wait no longer for the man’s return, so had
dispatched her, Wilson, for Miss Barbara. Mr. Carlyle got over the
stile, and handed over Miss Barbara.
“You need not come any further now,” she said to him in a low tone.
“I should see you home,” was his reply, and he held out his arm. Barbara
took it.
They walked in silence. Arrived at the back gate of the grove, which
gave entrance to the kitchen garden, Wilson went forward. Mr. Carlyle
took both Barbara’s hands in his.
“Good-night, Barbara. God bless you.”
She had had time for reflection, and the excitement gone, she saw her
outbreak in all its shame and folly. Mr. Carlyle noticed how subdued and
white she looked.
“I think I have been mad,” she groaned. “I must have been mad to say
what I did. Forget that it was uttered.”
“I told you I would.”
“You will not betray me to--to--your wife?” she panted.
“Barbara!”
“Thank you. Good-night.”
But he still retained her hands. “In a short time, Barbara, I trust you
will find one more worthy to receive your love than I have been.”
“Never!” she impulsively answered. “I do not love and forget so lightly.
In the years to come, in my old age, I shall still be nothing but
Barbara Hare.”
Mr. Carlyle walked away in a fit of musing. The revelation had given him
pain, and possibly a little bit of flattery into the bargain, for he was
fond of pretty Barbara. Fond in his way--not hers--not with the sort of
fondness he felt for his wife. He asked his conscience whether his
manner to her in the past days had been a tinge warmer than we bestow
upon a sister, and he decided that it might have been, but he most
certainly never cast a suspicion to the mischief it was doing.
“I heartily hope she’ll soon find somebody to her liking and forget me,”
was his concluding thought. “As to living and dying Barbara Hare, that’s
all moonshine, and sentimental rubbish that girls like to--”
“Archibald!”
He was passing the very last tree in the park, the nearest to his house,
and the interruption came from a dark form standing under it.
“Is it you, my dearest?”
“I came out to meet you. Have you not been very long?”
“I think I have,” he answered, as he drew his wife to his side, and
walked on with her.
“We met one of the servants at the second stile, but I went on all the
way.”
“You have been intimate with the Hares?”
“Quite so. Cornelia is related to them.”
“Do you think Barbara pretty?”
“Very.”
“Then--intimate as you were--I wonder you never fell in love with her.”
Mr. Carlyle laughed; a very conscious laugh, considering the recent
interview.
“Did you, Archibald?”
The words were spoken in a low tone, almost, or he fancied it, a tone of
emotion, and he looked at her in amazement. “Did I what, Isabel?”
“You never loved Barbara Hare?”
“Loved her! What is your head running on, Isabel? I never loved but one;
and that one I made my own, my cherished wife.”