Perplexity.
Lord Sandilands was looking and feeling ill and feeble, and was mainly
occupied, as he hobbled across the not-magnificently-proportioned
drawing-room of that most desirable lodging-house, with an unrivalled
view of the Esplanade, in so putting down and moving his feet as to
cause himself the least possible pain, when he came, leaning on the
arm of his housekeeper, to meet Mrs. Bloxam and Miss Lambert. But he
was a man of too quick perception at all times, and his mind had been
dwelling of late with so much anxiety upon Gertrude and her interests,
that he was additionally keen in remarking every incident in which she
was concerned. As he put out his disengaged hand and took Gertrude's,
he glanced from her face to that of the housekeeper, and back to hers
again, and saw that each recognised the other.
"You know Mrs. Bush?" he asked, still holding Gertrude's hand in one
of his, still leaning with the other on Mrs. Bush's arm.
"Mrs. Bush and I have met before," Gertrude answered calmly; "but she
does not know my stage name. I am a singer, Mrs. Bush," she added;
"and my stage name is Lambert."
"O, indeed, ma'am!" said Mrs. Bush, in a singularly unsympathetic
voice, and with an expression which said pretty plainly that she did
not think it signified much what the speaker called herself.--"Shall I
put your lordship in the chair near the window?"
"Yes, yes," said Lord Sandilands testily; and then he added, with the
perversity of age and illness, "and where did you know Miss Keith,
Mrs. Bush?" He seated himself as he spoke, drew the skirts of his gray
dressing-gown over his knees, and again looked from one to the other.
Mrs. Bloxam, to whom the scene had absolutely no meaning, stood by in
silence. Gertrude was very calm, very pale, and her eyes shone with a
disdainful, defiant light, as they had shone on the fatal day of which
this meeting so vividly reminded her. Mrs. Bush smiled, a dubious kind
of smile, and rubbed her hands together very slowly and deliberately,
as she answered:
"If you please, my lord, I didn't never know a Miss Keith. It were
when the young lady was Mrs. Lloyd as she come to my house at
Brighton."
"When the young lady was Mrs. Lloyd!" repeated Lord Sandilands in
astonishment, and now including Mrs. Bloxam, who looked extremely
embarrassed and uncomfortable in the searching gaze he directed
towards the housekeeper and Gertrude. "What does this mean?"
"I will explain it to you," said Gertrude firmly but very gently, and
bending over him as she spoke; "but there is no occasion to detain
Mrs. Bush." The tone and manner of her words were tantamount to a
dismissal, and so Mrs. Bush received them. She immediately retreated
to the door, with an assumption of not feeling the smallest curiosity
concerning the lady with whom she was thus unexpectedly brought into
contact, and left the room, murmuring an assurance that she should be
within call when his lordship might want her. A few moments' pause
followed her departure. The astonishment and vague uneasiness with
which Lord Sandilands had heard what Mrs. Bush had said kept him
silent, while Gertrude was agitated and puzzled--the first by the
imminent danger of discovery of her carefully-kept secret, and the
second by hearing Lord Sandilands allude to her as "Miss Keith." When
she thought over this strange and critical incident in her life
afterwards, it seemed to her that something like a perception of the
truth about to be imparted to her came into her mind as Lord
Sandilands spoke. Mrs. Bloxam experienced a sensation unpleasantly
akin to threatened fainting. What was coming? Must all indeed be told?
Must her conduct be put in its true light before both Gertrude and
Lord Sandilands? Could she not escape either of the extremes which, in
her mental map of the straits in which she found herself, she
had laid down? But she was a strong woman by nature, and a quiet,
self-repressed woman by habit, and in the few moments' interval of
silence she did not faint, but sat down a little behind Lord
Sandilands, and with her face turned away from the light. As for the
old nobleman himself, the mere shock of the dim suspicion, the vague
possibility which suggested itself, shook his composure severely,
through all the restraint which his natural manliness and the acquired
impassiveness of good breeding imposed. Gertrude was the first to
speak. She stood in her former attitude, slightly leaning over him,
and he sat, his head back against the chair, and his keen, gray,
anxious eyes raised to her handsome, haughty face.
"You sent for me, my dear lord, my good friend," she said,--and there
was a tone in the rich, sweet voice which the old man had never heard
in it before, and in which his ear caught and carried to his heart the
echo of one long silent and almost forgotten,--"and I have come; in
the first place to see you, to know how you are, and to satisfy myself
that this illness has had nothing alarming in it. In the second place,
that I may hear all you mean to say to me; I know about what,"--her
eyes drooped and her colour rose--"Mrs. Bloxam has told me; she has
fully explained all your kindness, all your goodness and generosity to
me. Will you tell me all you intended to say to me, and let me say
what I meant to say to you, just as if Mrs. Bush had never called me
by that strange name in your hearing, and then I will explain all."
The lustrous earnestness of her face rendered it far more beautiful
than Lord Sandilands had ever before seen it. Her mother had never
looked at him with that purposeful expression, with that look which
told of sorrow and knowledge, and the will and resolution to live them
down.
"I will do anything you wish, my dear," said the old nobleman; and it
was remarkable that he discarded in that moment all the measured
courtesy a manner which he had hitherto sedulously preserved, and
adopted in its stead the deep and warm interest, the partial judgment,
the protecting tone of his true relationship to her. "Sit here beside
me, and listen. I have some painful things to say, but they will soon
be said; and I hope--I hope happy days are in store for you;" but his
face was clouded, and doubt, even dread, expressed itself in his
voice. Gertrude did not exactly obey him. Instead of taking a seat,
she placed herself on her knees beside his chair; and in this attitude
she listened to his words.
"I know how it is with you and Miles Challoner, my dear, and Miles is
dearer to me than any person in the world except one,--and that one
is you."
"I!" said Gertrude, amazed. "I dearer to you than Miles Challoner,
your old friend's child!"
"Yes," he said, with a faint smile, "for you are my own child,
Gertrude; that is what I sent for you to tell you, and I want to make
you happy if I can." So saying, the old man took her bent head between
his hands, and kissed her. Gertrude did not evince any violent
emotion--she turned extremely pale, and her eyes filled with tears;
but she did not say anything for a little while, and she afterwards
wondered at the quietness with which the revelation was made and
received. She was not even certain that she had been very much
surprised. Mrs. Bloxam rose, opened the window, stepped out upon the
balcony, and carefully closed the window behind her. During a
considerable time she might have been observed by the numerous
promenaders on the Esplanade, leaning over the railing, which was more
ornamental than solid, in an attitude of profound abstraction. By
those within the room her very existence was forgotten until, in the
course of their mutual interrogation, her name came to be mentioned.
Still kneeling beside him, but now with her head resting against his
breast, and one long thin white hand laid tenderly upon the bright
masses of her chestnut hair, Gertrude heard from her father the story
of her mother's brief happy life and early death;--and the sternest
might have forgiven the old man the unintentional, deception which was
self-delusion, which made him tell his daughter how only that early
death had prevented his making Gertrude Gautier his wife. For the
first time he realised now in the keenness of his longing, in the
misery of his dreaded powerlessness to secure the happiness of his
child, the full extent of the injury inflicted upon her by her
illegitimate birth.
"I know," he said, "that Miles loves you, and I think you love him,
and I know you would be happy. I have lived long enough in the world,
and seen enough of it, to know how rarely one can say that with common
sense and justice of any two human beings. Tell me, Gertrude, why it
is that you have refused Miles,--why it is that you seem determined
not to let me smooth away all obstacles to your marrying him?"
The conversation had lasted long, and had embraced many subjects,
before it reached this point. Gertrude had undergone much and varying
emotion, but she had not lost her calmness, partly because of her
exceptional strength of mind and body, and partly because she never
suffered herself to forget the danger of over-excitement to Lord
Sandilands. She had listened quietly to the story of her mother (the
idea of actually learning about her own parentage, and being able to
realise it, was quite new to her--and abstract sentiment was not in
Gertrude's way), and had rendered to it the tribute of silent tears.
She had heard her father tell how he had first recognised her at Lady
Carabas' concert, and how he had felt the strong instinctive interest
in which he had never believed, and which he had never practically
experimented in, arise at the sight of her; how he had found, first
with misgiving, and afterwards with increasing pleasure, ratified and
approved by his conscience because of his knowledge of Miles
Challoner's tastes and character, that his young friend and companion
was attached to her. She had heard him tell how he had watched the
ill-success of Lord Ticehurst's suit with pleasure, and how he had won
Miles to confide to him his hopes and plans, and encouraged him to
hope for success, and then had been induced by her refusal of Miles
and his belief that that refusal was dictated by disinterested
regard for Challoner's worldly interests, and in no degree by her own
feelings, to take the resolution of telling her all the truth--upon
which resolution he was now acting.
So far Gertrude had been wonderfully composed. Her father had said to
her all he had urged with himself, when he had been first assailed by
misgivings that his old friend would have resented his endeavouring to
bring about a marriage between Miles and a woman to whom the
disadvantage of illegitimate birth attached; and she had assented,
adding that while she only knew herself utterly obscure, she had felt
and acted upon the sense of her own inferiority. The conversation had
strayed away from Gertrude's early life--the father met his
acknowledged daughter for the first time as a woman, and they made
haste to speak of present great interests. Mrs. Bloxam might have been
quite easy in her mind about the amount of notice her share in any of
the transactions of the past would be likely to excite. But now, when
Lord Sandilands pleaded earnestly the cause of Miles Challoner, and in
arguing it argued in favour of the weakness of Gertrude's own heart,
her fortitude gave way, and a full and overwhelming knowledge of the
bitterness of her fate rushed in upon her soul. The veil fell from her
eyes; she knew herself for the living lie she was; she realised that
the unjustifiable compact she had made with her husband was a
criminal, an accursed convention, bearing more and more fruit of
bitterness and shame and punishment, as her father unfolded the scheme
of a bright and happy future which he had formed for her.
"If he had been any other than Miles Challoner," she had said to Mrs.
Bloxam, she would have married him, would have incurred the risk for
rank and money--or she had thought so, had really believed it of
herself. What had possessed her with such an idea? What had made her
contemplate in herself a creature so lost, so utterly, coldly wicked?
It was so long since she had permitted herself to think of her real
position; she had deliberately blinded, voluntarily stultified her
mind for so long, that she had ceased to feel that she was playing a
part as fictitious off, as any she performed on the stage. But now, as
her father's voice went on, speaking lovingly, hopefully, telling her
how conventionalities should be disregarded and wealth supplied in her
interests; telling her she need have no fear in the case of such a man
as Miles--had he not known him all his life?--of any late regret or
after reproach; now the tide of anguish rushed over her, and with
choking sobs she implored him to desist.
"Don't, don't!" she said. "You don't know--O my God!--you don't
know--and how shall I ever tell you? There is another reason, ten
thousand times stronger; all the others I gave were only pretences,
anything to keep him from suspecting, from finding out the truth;
there is a reason which makes it altogether impossible."
"Another reason! What is it? Tell me at once--tell me," said Lord
Sandilands; and he raised himself in his chair, and held her by the
shoulders at arms' length from him. Dread, suspicion, pain were in his
face; and under the influence of strong emotion, which reflected
itself in her features, the father and daughter, with all the
difference of colouring and of form, were wonderfully like each other.
"I will tell you," she said; but she shut her eyes, and then hid them
with her hand while she spoke, shrinking from his gaze. "I will tell
you. I am not free to be Miles Challoner's wife. I am married to
another man."
"Married! You married?"
"Yes," she said, "I am married. Your housekeeper knows me as a married
woman. The name she called me by is my real name. You know the man who
is my husband, unhappy wretch that I am!"
"Who is he?" said Lord Sandilands hoarsely, his nerveless hands
falling from her shoulders as he spoke. She looked at him, was alarmed
at the paleness of his face, and rose hurriedly from her knees.
"You are ill," she said. "I will go--" But he caught her dress, and
held it.
"Tell me who he is."
"Gilbert Lloyd!"
Gertrude was horrified at the effect which the communication she had
made to her father had upon him. He had set his heart strongly indeed
upon her marriage with Miles Challoner, she thought, when the
frustration of the project had the power to plunge him into a state of
prostration and misery. As for herself, the alarm she experienced, and
the great excitement she had undergone in the revelation made to her
by her father, the agony of mind she had suffered in the desperate
necessity for avowing the truth, were quickly succeeded by such
physical exhaustion as she had never before felt. This effect of
mental excitement was largely assisted by the weakness still remaining
after her illness, and was so complete and irresistible, that when she
had seen the doctor hurriedly summoned to Lord Sandilands by Mrs.
Bloxam's orders--that lady's meditations on the balcony had been
terminated by Gertrude's cry for help--and learned that the patient
was not in danger, but must be kept absolutely quiet, she yielded to
it at once.
Not a word was said by Mrs. Bloxam to Gertrude concerning the
disclosure made by Lord Sandilands. In the confusion and distress
which ensued on the sudden attack of violent pain with which her
father was seized, Gertrude lost sight of time and place, and thought
of nothing but him so long as she was able to think of anything.
Little more than an hour had elapsed since Lord Sandilands had told
her the secret of his life, and she was speaking of him freely to Mrs.
Bloxam as her father, and the word hardly sounded strange. She could
not return to Hardriggs; she was not able, even if she would have left
Lord Sandilands. There was no danger of her seeing Miles if she
remained at St. Leonards. Lord Sandilands had told her early in their
interview that he had sent Miles up to town, and procured his absence
until he should summon him back by promising to plead his cause in his
absence. She and Mrs. Bloxam must remain--not in the house, indeed,
but at the nearest hotel. She would send a message to that effect to
Lady Belwether, and inform Mrs. Bush of her intention.
Mrs. Bush had not relaxed her suspicious reserve during all the bustle
and confusion which had ensued on the sudden illness of Lord
Sandilands. She had been brought into contact with Gertrude frequently
as they went from room to room in search of remedies, and ultimately
met by the old nobleman's bedside after the doctor's visit. Mrs. Bush
did not indeed call Gertrude "Mrs. Lloyd" again, but she scrupulously
addressed her as "Madam;" and there was an unpleasant, though not
distinctly offensive, significance about her manner which convinced
Gertrude that not an incident of the terrible time at Brighton had
been forgotten by the _ci-devant_ lodging-house keeper, whose changed
position had set her free from the necessity of obsequiousness.
Gertrude had taken a resolution on the subject of Mrs. Bush, on which
she acted with characteristic decision, when at length her father was
sleeping under the influence of opiates, and she and Mrs. Bloxam had
agreed that their remaining at St. Leonards was inevitable. She asked
Mrs. Bush to accompany her to the drawing-room, and then said to her
at once:
"You are surprised to see me here, Mrs. Bush, no doubt; and as I
understand from Lord Sandilands that he has great confidence in you,
and values your services highly, I think it right to explain to you
what may seem strange in the matter."
Mrs. Bush looked at the young lady a little more kindly than before,
and muttered something about being much obliged, and hoping she should
merit his lordship's good opinion. Gertrude continued:
"It will displease Lord Sandilands, to whom I am closely related, if
the fact of my being married is talked about. I am separated from Mr.
Lloyd, and it is customary for singers to retain their own names. Mine
is Grace Lambert. If you desire to please his lordship, you may do so
by keeping silence on this subject, by not telling anyone that you
ever saw me at Brighton under another name."
With the shrewdness which most women of her class and calling possess
by nature, and which the necessities of her struggling career as a
lodging-housekeeper had developed, Mrs. Bush instantly perceived her
own interest in this affair, and replied very civilly that she was
sure she should never mention anything his lordship would wish
concealed; and that she was not given to gossip, thank goodness! never
had been when she had a house herself, and which her opinion had
always been as lodgers' business was their own and not hers.
Consequent, she had never said a word about the poor dear gentleman
what had died so sudden,--at this point of her discourse Gertrude's
jaded nerves thrilled again with pain,--although it had injured her
house serious. With a last effort of self-command, Gertrude listened
to her apparently unmoved, and dismissed her, with an intimation that
she should return in the morning to take her place by Lord Sandilands.
Mrs. Bush had both a talent and a taste for nursing invalids, and she
established herself in the darkened room, there to watch the troubled
sleeper, with cheerful alacrity. Her thoughts were busy with Gertrude,
however, and with what she had said to her. "So she's his near
relation, is she?" thus ran Mrs. Bush's cogitations. "_What_ relation
now, I wonder? Lambert is not a family name on any side, and he called
her Miss Keith too--and I'll be hanged if he knew she was married! I'm
sure he didn't. There's something queer in all this; but it's not my
affair. However, if his lordship asks me any questions, I'm not going
to hold my tongue to him. Separated from Mr. Lloyd! I wonder was she
ever really married to him? She looked like it, and spoke like it,
though; a more respectable young woman in her ways never came to my
place, for the little time she was in it. I wonder what she has left
him for?--though in my belief it's a good job for her, and he's a bad
lot."
The hours of the night passed over the heads of the father and the
daughter unconsciously. With the morning came the renewed sense of
something important and painful having taken place. On the preceding
evening, Gertrude had entreated Mrs. Bloxam to refrain from
questioning her. "I am too tired," she had said. "I cannot talk about
it; let me rest now, and I will tell you everything in the morning."
To this Mrs. Bloxam had gladly assented; she was naturally very
anxious, and not a little curious; but anxiety and curiosity were both
held in abeyance by the satisfaction she experienced in perceiving
that the revelations which had been made had not seriously injured her
position with Lord Sandilands or with Gertrude. The mutual recognition
between Gertrude and Mrs. Bush had been unintelligible to her. That it
had produced important results she could not doubt; but on the whole,
she did not regret them. The acknowledgment of Gertrude's marriage
might prevent future mischief, in which she (Mrs. Bloxam) might
possibly be unpleasantly involved, and at present it was evident that,
in the overwhelming agitation and surprise of the discovery, her
conduct had been entirely forgotten or overlooked. That she might
continue to occupy a position of such safe obscurity was, for herself,
Mrs. Bloxam's dearest wish; and Mrs. Bloxam's wishes seldom extended,
at all events with any animation, beyond herself.
Lord Sandilands awoke free from pain, but so weak and confused that it
was some time before he could bring up the occurrences of yesterday,
in their due order and weight of import, before his mind. He had
received a shock from which his physical system could hardly be
expected to recover; but the extent of the mental effect--the fear,
the horror, the awakening of remorse, not yet to be softened into
abiding and availing repentance--none but he could ever estimate. The
past, the present, and the future alike menaced, alike tortured him:
the dead friend, the sole sharer of whose confidence he was; the dead
man's son, whom he loved almost as well as if he were of his own flesh
and blood; the dead woman, whom he had deceived and betrayed (in the
wholesome bitterness of his awakened feelings Lord Sandilands was hard
upon himself, and ready to ignore the ignorance which had made her a
facile victim); the dreadful combination of fate which had made the
daughter whom he had neglected and disowned the wife of a man whose
tremendous guilt her father alone of living creatures knew, and had
thrown her in the path of that same guilty man's brother, to love him
and be beloved by him. In so dire a distress was he; and this girl
whom he loved with an anxious intensity which surprised himself,
imprisoned in the hopeless meshes of the net in which his feet were
involved. No wonder he found it hard, with all his natural courage,
and all the acquired calmness of his caste, to marshal these facts in
their proper order, and make head against the dismay they caused him.
But this was no time for dismay. He had to act in a terrible emergency
of his daughter's life, and to act, if indeed it were possible for any
ingenuity or prudence to enable him to do so, so that the real truth
of the emergency, the full extent of its terrible nature, should be
known to himself alone, never suspected by her. The housekeeper came
softly to the old nobleman's bedside while his mind was working busily
at this problem, the most difficult which life had ever set him for
solution; and seeing his eyes closed and his face quiet, believed him
to be still sleeping, and withdrew gently.
By degrees, the facts and the necessities of the case arranged
themselves somewhat in this order. Gertrude had told her father of her
marriage, of the misery which had speedily resulted from it, and of
the strange bargain made between her husband and herself. She knew
Lloyd's worthlessness then, though she had spoken but vaguely of him
as a gambler and a reckless, unprincipled man, not giving Lord
Sandilands any reason to think she could regard him as capable of
actual crime. The shock of the disclosure Gertrude had imputed simply
to his horror of the clandestine nature of her marriage, and the moral
blindness and deadness which had made the bargain between her and
Lloyd present itself as possible to their minds (the light of a true
and pure love had shone on Gertrude now, and shown her the full
turpitude of the transaction); his sudden seizure had prevented his
hearing more than a brief, bare outline of the dreadful episode of his
daughter's marriage. She knew nothing of the real, appalling truth;
she was ignorant that the man she had married was a criminal of the
deepest dye, the secret of his crime in her father's hands, his own
brother the object of her affections, and the only possible issue out
of all this complication and misery one involving utter and eternal
separation between her and Miles Challoner. If he and Gertrude ever
met again, she must learn the truth; she must learn that Gilbert Lloyd
was Geoffrey Challoner, and an additional weight of horror and anguish
be added to the load of sorrow her unfortunate marriage--in which Lord
Sandilands humbly and remorsefully recognised the consequence, the
direct result, of his own sin--had laid upon her. If she could be
prevented from ever knowing the worst? If he, invested with the
authority and with the affection of a parent, could induce her to
consent to an immediate separation from Miles Challoner, to a prompt
removal from the possibility of seeing him, by strengthening her own
views of the insuperable nature of the barrier between them? She would
not, however, yield to Miles's prayer for their marriage; but that
would not be sufficient for her safety: she must never see him more;
she must be kept from the misery of learning the truth. How was this
to be done? For some time Lord Sandilands found no answer to that
question; but at last it suggested itself. Miles--yes, he would make
an appeal to him; he would tell him all the truth--to him who knew
that Lord Sandilands also possessed that other secret, which, to judge
by its consequences, must be indeed a terrible one; and Miles would be
merciful to this woman, who, though she had sinned by the false
pretence under which she lived, was so much more sinned against; and,
appearing to accept her decision, Miles would not ask to see her
again. Yes, that would do; he was sure that would succeed. And then he
would acknowledge Gertrude as his daughter to all who had any claim to
an explanation of any proceedings of his--the number was
satisfactorily small--and he would leave England for ever, with
Gertrude. It was wonderful with how strong and irresistible a voice
Nature was now speaking to the old man's heart; how all the habits and
conventionalities of his life seemed to be dropping suddenly away from
him, and something new, but far more powerful, establishing itself in
their stead as a law of his being. The tremendous truth and extent of
his responsibility as regarded Gertrude presented themselves to him
now in vivid reality, and the strongest desire of his heart was for
strength, skill, and patience, to carry out the plan which presented
itself for her benefit. He felt no anger towards her for what she had
done. Poor motherless, fatherless, unprotected girl, how was she to
understand the moral aspect of such a deed? He pitied the folly, but
he did not seriously regard the guilt, while he deplored the
consequences. Gertrude's professional career, he saw at once, must
come to an immediate and abrupt close. There was no safety for her in
the terrible unexplained attitude of the brothers Challoner, and her
total unconsciousness of it and its bearing upon her own fate, but
absence from the scene of the secret drama. With the grief of her
hopeless, impossible love at her heart, and with the help and safety
of her new-discovered relationship to him, security for her future and
escape from the present, Gertrude would not hesitate about abandoning
her career as a singer. It had never had for her the intoxicating
delight and excitement with which such a success is invested for the
fortunate few who attain it; and as for the world, the lapse of the
brilliant star from the operatic firmament would be a nine-days'
wonder, and no more, like such other of the episodes of her story and
his as the world might come to learn. That part of the business hardly
deserved, and certainly did not receive, more than the most passing
consideration from Lord Sandilands. It was all dreadfully painful, and
full of complications which involved infinite distress; but Lord
Sandilands began to see light in his difficult way. It was not until
he had thought long and anxiously of Gertrude and of Miles that his
mind turned in the direction of Gilbert Lloyd; and then it was with
inexpressible pain that he contemplated the fact that this man, whom
of all men he most abhorred, was the husband of his daughter; had had
the power to make her girlhood miserable, to blight her life in its
bloom, and to continue to blight it to the end. How great a villain
Gilbert Lloyd was, he alone knew; but no doubt Gertrude had had
considerable experience of his character. On this point he would find
out all the truth by degrees. His thoughts glanced for a moment at the
probable effect it would have on Lloyd when he should discover that
the one man in the world in whose power he was, was the father of his
wife, and had constituted himself her protector. At least there was
one bright spot in all this mass of misery: knowing this, Lloyd would
never dare to molest Gertrude, would never venture to seek her or
trouble her, in any straits, however severe, to which his unprincipled
life might drive him. In this perfectly reasonable calculation there
was but one item astray: Lord Sandilands had no suspicion of the state
of feeling in which Gilbert Lloyd now was with respect to his wife. If
he had known the fierce revival of passion for her, and the rage which
filled his baffled and desperate heart, Lord Sandilands would not have
looked with so much confidence upon the prospect of suffering no
molestation from Lloyd. Whether his tigerish nature could ever be
wholly controlled by fear, was a question to which no answer could yet
be given. But Lord Sandilands did not ask it, and his thoughts had
again reverted to Miles, and were dwelling sadly on the caprice of
fate which had brought his brother once more so fatally across his
track, and had erected so strange a link between the calamity which
had overshadowed his dead friend's life and that which must now be the
abiding sorrow of his own, when the arrival of the doctor interrupted
his musings, and obliged him to confess to being awake.
When the visit was concluded, with a favourable report but many
cautions on the part of the medical attendant, Lord Sandilands
inquired of Mrs. Bush when the arrival of the two ladies might be
looked for. They had already sent to ask how his lordship was, and
would be there at eleven. Lord Sandilands then bethought him that the
recognition of the preceding day, which had no doubt led to his
receiving his daughter's confidence, and being preserved from blindly
pursuing a course of persuasion and advocacy of Miles Challoner's
suit, which might have led to most disastrous consequences, could now
be made still more useful, as affording him an opportunity of learning
more about his daughter's married life than she had had time or
probably inclination to tell him.
The old man looked very weak and curiously older all of a sudden, and
Mrs. Bush, a kind-hearted woman in her narrow little way, was sorry to
see the change. The sympathy in her manner and voice inspired Lord
Sandilands with a resolution somewhat similar to that one which
Gertrude had noted on the previous day. He asked Mrs. Bush to take a
seat, requested her best attention to what he was going to say, and
then told her without any circumlocution that the lady called Grace
Lambert, whom she had known as Mrs. Lloyd, was his daughter, whom he
intended to acknowledge and to take abroad with him. The housekeeper
showed very plainly the astonishment which this communication
occasioned her, and her embarrassment was extreme when Lord Sandilands
continued: "And now, Mrs. Bush, I wish you to tell me all you know
about my daughter, and all that occurred while Mr. Lloyd, from whom
she separated immediately afterwards, lodged at your house at
Brighton."
"Of course, my lord," replied Mrs. Bush, in a nervous and hesitating
manner, "I cannot refuse to do as your lordship wishes, nor do I wish
so to do; but Mrs. Lloyd did not lodge at my house at all in a manner;
she only came there unexpected, and went away at night, after the poor
gentleman died, as were took so sudden--dear, dear, how sudden he were
took, to be sure!"
"What gentleman? I don't understand you. Pray tell me the whole story,
Mrs. Bush; don't omit any particulars you can remember; it is of great
importance to me."
Mrs. Bush possessed no ordinary share of that very common gift of
persons of her class--circumlocution, and she told her story with a
delightful sense of revelling in the fullest details. Her hearer, not
under ordinary circumstances distinguished for patience, neither
hurried nor interrupted her, but, on the contrary, when he asked her
any questions at all, put to her such as induced her to lengthen and
amplify the narrative. When the housekeeper took her seat beside his
bed, Lord Sandilands had been lying with his face towards her. As she
progressed in her account of the sojourn of Gilbert Lloyd and Harvey
Gore at her house, he turned away, and lay towards the wall against
which his bed was placed, so that at the conclusion of the story she
did not see his face. Ashy pale that face was, and it bore a fixed
look of horror; for, bringing his own secret knowledge of Gilbert
Lloyd to bear upon the story told by the housekeeper, Lord Sandilands
readily divined what was that swift, unaccountable illness of which
Lloyd's friend had died, what the irresistible power his wife had
wielded in insisting upon the separation which had taken place. "The
wretched girl! What must she not have suffered!" the father thought.
"Alone, in the power of such a man, in possession of such a secret,
whether by positive knowledge or only strong suspicion, no matter.
Good God, what must she not have suffered! What has she not yet before
her to suffer!"
Here, as he afterwards thought, in reflecting upon the unconscious
disclosure which Mrs. Bush had made to him--here was another barrier
against any possible molestation of Gertrude by her husband, a
horrible truth to grasp at with something like ghastly satisfaction.
But horrible truths were all around them in this miserable
complication, on every side.
"Thank you," said Lord Sandilands, when Mrs. Bush had concluded her
narrative. "I am much indebted to you for telling me all these
particulars. You will oblige me very materially by not mentioning the
subject in any way to anyone."
Mrs. Bush was aware that Lord Sandilands not only possessed the means
but the inclination to make it very well worth anyone's while to
oblige him, so she immediately resolved upon maintaining undeviating
fidelity to the obligation he imposed upon her; and she afterwards
kept her resolution, which she found profitable.
When Gertrude arrived, Mrs. Bush met her with a request that she would
go to his lordship at once, which implied that Mrs. Bloxam was to
remain in the drawing-room. This she did, composedly occupying herself
with needlework, and feeling her hopes that she should be entirely
overlooked in the crisis of affairs growing stronger and stronger. It
may as well be said here, once for all, that these hopes were
justified. Mrs. Bloxam was never called to account by Lord Sandilands
for his money, or her own conduct.
"I take it upon myself, my dear," said Lord Sandilands to his
daughter, when many hours passed in close and mournful consultation
between them had gone by; "as soon as I am able to move--and, you see,
I am greatly better already--the arrangements shall all be made."
From the bed where he lay, the old man's eyes were turned anxiously,
sadly, towards the figure of his daughter. Gertrude was seated in a
deep chintz-covered chair, in the bay of the window, which overlooked
a small garden of the sterile and sandy order, familiar to the memory
of occasional dwellers in seaside lodging-houses. She was leaning
forward, her head resting on her hands, her arms supported by a little
three-legged table, her attitude full of grace and dejection. The
afternoon sun tinged her pale cheek and her clustering hair, but for
the moment the brilliance that was so characteristic of her appearance
was gone. But she touched the old man's heart all the more keenly for
the lack of brilliancy, for she was more like her mother without
it,--the dead mother whom she had never seen, and whose name had as
yet been barely mentioned between them.
"Yes," she said absently, drearily, "I must leave it all to you. How
strange it is to me to know that I have you to help me, to leave it
all to!"
"You will not pine for the excitement and applause to which you are so
accustomed, Gertrude?"
"No; they have been very wearisome to me of late, since I have known
how much might have been mine that never can be now."
"No indeed, my dear," said her father earnestly, "it never, never can
be now; and your true courage, your true good sense is in
acknowledging this at once, and consenting to turn your back upon it
all promptly. You shall have none of the misery of severing these
ties; I will write to Munns, and tell him I am ready to indemnify his
real or imaginary losses."
"It will cost you a great deal of money," she said, still absently,
still drearily.
"It is almost time that I began to spend it on you," said her father,
with a very unsuccessful attempt at a smile.
The past, the present, and the future had been discussed during the
hours they had passed together, and emotion had worn itself out.
Steadily keeping in mind the concealment he desired to practise, and
the effect he designed to produce, the old nobleman had received the
confidences which his daughter--who more and more strongly felt
the tie between them hour by hour, and softened under its
influence--imparted to him with the utmost tenderness and indulgence,
but with as little effusion as possible. He had induced her to tell
him the whole truth concerning her separation from her husband; and
had received the terrible revelation with calmness which would have
perhaps shocked Gertrude had she not been too much absorbed in the
newer, sacred sorrow of her hopeless love to perceive as keenly as was
her wont, had she not also been much exhausted physically, and thus
mercifully less sensible to impressions. She had also told him of
Gilbert Lloyd's late pursuit of her; and at that portion of her
narrative Lord Sandilands ground his still strong white teeth with
furious anger, and a thrill of exultation mingled with the rage and
misery of the circumstances, as he thought how utterly this villain
was in his power, how soon he would set his foot upon his neck and see
him writhe in impotent anguish and humiliation. But this was one of
the feelings which he had to conceal from Gertrude, and he did
effectually conceal it.
The plan decided upon was that Gertrude and Mrs. Bloxam should return
on that evening to Hardriggs, and terminate their stay there as soon
as possible; and then go to London and occupy the interval which must
elapse before Lord Sandilands could travel, in making preparations for
departure. The pretty villa was to be given up; the household gods
which Gertrude had gathered around her were to be dispersed, and her
life was "to begin over again." Is there any drearier phrase than
that? can words represent any harder fact, any more painful idea? Then
Lord Sandilands and his daughter would go abroad, and leave the
English world behind them, to think and say just what it might please.
The place of their abode was not even discussed. All foreign countries
were alike new to Gertrude, and old to Lord Sandilands. One little
point of detail had been mentioned between them. If Gertrude wished
it, her father would take Mrs. Bloxam with them. He inclined to the
belief that it would be butter not; better to be away from everyone
connected with the past, from which it was their wish, their object to
escape. And his daughter agreed with him, as did Mrs. Bloxam, when the
matter was mentioned to her. She hated foreign countries--her trip to
Italy was a standing grievance--and she was very glad to retire from
her post of chaperone to Miss Lambert, with such a handsome present in
money from Lord Sandilands--an ill-deserved acknowledgment of her
services--as, added to the savings she had accumulated at the Vale
House, rendered her free from the presence or the apprehension of
poverty. When the time of parting came, this lady, on the whole a not
unfortunate member of society as human affairs are constituted, took
leave of Lord Sandilands and his daughter with the utmost propriety;
and it is more than probable that by this time she has ceased to
remember their existence.
Gertrude took leave of her father, when the appointed time came for
her return to Hardriggs, with little visible emotion. She was dazed
and exhausted; and it was not until the events of the last few days
were weeks old, and she passed them in review under a foreign sky, in
a distant land, far away from the man she loved and the man she bated,
that she began to realise them in detail, and to feel that she had,
indeed, "begun life over again."
When Lord Sandilands contemplated the prospect of the interview he was
about to have with Miles Challoner, he shrunk from it with dread. But
he had to go through with it; and perhaps the most painful moment of
the many painful hours he and his friend passed together was that in
which the young man advanced to him with beaming looks, with
outstretched hand, with agitated voice, and said, "You have sent for
me? you have good news for me?"
The task was done the task in which the old man felt the hand of
retribution striking him heavily through the suffering of those he
loved--the pain was borne, and the day after that which witnessed the
arrival of Gertrude and Mrs. Bloxam in London saw Miles Challoner
leaving the great city for Rowley Court, where he shut himself up in
such gloomy seclusion that the people about began to talk oddly of it.
Somehow the Court seemed an unlucky place, they said. First, the
mysterious disgrace and banishment of the younger son; then the
lonely, moping, moody life of the Squire; and now here was the young
Squire going the same gait. There was surely something in it which was
not lucky, that there was, and time would tell.
The world did talk, as they had anticipated, of the departure of Lord
Sandilands and Miss Lambert for foreign parts; and as it was some
little time before it got hold, of anything like a correct version of
the story, it started some very pretty and ingenious theories to
account for that "unaccountable" proceeding. Managers were savage,
_débutantes_ delighted, and Lady Carabas, who knew nothing whatever of
the matter, was charmingly mysterious, and assured everyone that her
dear Grace had been guided in everything by her advice, and that that
dear Lord Sandilands was the most perfect of creatures, and had
behaved like an angel. And then, in even a shorter time than Lord
Sandilands and Gertrude had calculated upon, the world, including Lady
Carabas, forgot them.