'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID.'
Lady Maulevrier rarely appeared at luncheon. She took some slight
refection in her morning-room, among her books and papers, and in the
society of her canine favourites, whose company suited her better at
certain hours than the noisier companionship of her grandchildren. She
was a studious woman, loving the silent life of books better than the
inane chatter of everyday humanity. She was a woman who thought much and
read much, and who lived more in the past than the present. She lived
also in the future, counting much upon the splendid career of her
beautiful granddaughter, which should be in a manner a lengthening out,
a renewal of her own life. She looked forward to the day when Lesbia
should reign supreme in the great world, a famous beauty and leader of
fashion, her every act and word inspired and directed by her
grandmother, who would be the shadow behind the throne. It was
possible--nay, probable--that in those days Lady Maulevrier would
herself re-appear in society, establish her salon, and draw around her
closing years all that is wittiest, best, and wisest in the great world.
Her ladyship was reposing in her low reading-chair, with a volume of
Tyndall on the book-stand before her, when the door was opened softly
and Lesbia came gliding in, and seated herself without a word on the
hassock at her grandmother's feet. Lady Maulevrier passed her hand
caressingly over the girl's soft brown hair, without looking up from her
book.
'You are a late visitor,' she said; 'why did you not come to me after
breakfast?'
'It was such a lovely morning, we went straight from the breakfast table
to the garden; I did not think you wanted me.'
'I did not want you; but I am always glad to see my pet. What were you
doing in the garden all the morning? I did not hear you playing tennis.'
Lady Maulevrier had already interrogated the German governess upon this
very subject, but she had her own reasons for wishing to hear Lesbia's
account.
'No, it was too warm for tennis. Fräulein and I sat and worked, and Mr.
Hammond read to us.'
'What did he read?'
'Heine's ballads. He reads German beautifully.
'Indeed! I daresay he was at school in Germany. There are cheap schools
there to which middle-class people send their boys.'
This was like a thrust from a rusty knife.
'Mr. Hammond was at Oxford,' Lesbia said, reproachfully; and then, after
a longish pause, she clasped her hands upon the arm of Lady Maulevrier's
chair, and said, in a pleading voice, 'Grandmother, Mr. Hammond has
asked me to marry him.'
'Indeed! Only that? And pray, did he tell you what are his means of
maintaining Lord Maulevrier's sister in the position to which her birth
entitles her?' inquired the dowager, with crushing calmness.
'He is not rich; indeed, I believe, he is poor; but he is brave and
clever, and he is full of confidence in his power to conquer fortune.'
'No doubt; that is your true adventurer's style. He confides implicitly
in his own talents, and in somebody else's banker. Mr. Hammond would
make a tremendous figure in the world, I daresay, and while he was
making it your brother would have to keep him. Well, my dear Lesbia, I
hope you gave this gentleman the answer his insolence deserved; or that
you did better, and referred him to me. I should be glad to give him my
opinion of his conduct--a person admitted to this house as your
brother's hanger-on--tolerated only on your brother's account; such a
person, nameless, penniless, friendless (except for Maulevrier's too
facile patronage), to dare to lift his eyes to my granddaughter! It is
ineffable insolence!'
Lesbia crouched by her grandmother's chair, her face hidden from Lady
Maulevrier's falcon eye. Every word uttered by her ladyship stung like
the knotted cords of a knout. She knew not whether to be most ashamed of
her lover or of herself--of her lover for his obscure position, his
hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man. And she
did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had she not been
cowed by the authority that had ruled her all her life.
'Lesbia, if I thought you had been silly enough, degraded enough, to
give this young man encouragement, to have justified his audacity of
to-day by any act or word of yours, I should despise, I should detest
you,' said Lady Maulevrier, sternly. 'What could be more contemptible,
more hateful in a girl reared as you have been than to give
encouragement to the first comer--to listen greedily to the first
adventurer who had the insolence to make love to you, to be eager to
throw yourself into the arms of the first man who asked you. That my
granddaughter, a girl reared and taught and watched and guarded by me,
should have no more dignity, no more modesty, or womanly feeling, than a
barmaid at an inn!'
Lesbia began to cry.
'I don't see why a barmaid should not be a good woman, or why it
should be a crime to fall in love,' she said, in a voice broken by sobs.
'You need not speak to me so unkindly. I am not going to marry Mr.
Hammond.'
'Oh, you are not? that is very good of you. I am deeply grateful for
such an assurance.'
'But I like him better than anyone I ever saw in my life before.'
'You have seen so many people. You have had such a wide area for
choice.'
'No; I know I have been kept like a nun in a convent: but I don't think
when I go into the world I shall ever see anyone I should like better
than Mr. Hammond.'
'Wait till you have seen the world before you make up your mind about
that. And now, Lesbia, leave off talking and thinking like a child; look
me in the face and listen to me, for I am going to speak seriously; and
with me, when I am in earnest, what is said once is said for ever.'
Lady Maulevrier grasped her granddaughter's arm with long slender
fingers which held it as tightly as the grasp of a vice. She drew the
girl's slim figure round till they were face to face, looking into each
other's eyes, the dowager's eagle countenance lit up with impassioned
feeling, severe, awful as the face of one of the fatal sisters, the
avengers of blood, the harbingers of doom.
'Lesbia, I think I have been good to you, and kind to you,' she said.
'You have been all that is kind and dear,' faltered Lesbia.
'Then give me measure for measure. My life has been a hard one, child;
hard and lonely, and loveless and joyless. My son, to whom I devoted
myself in the vigour of youth and in the prime of life, never loved me,
never repaid me for my love. He spent his days far away from me, when
his presence would have gladdened my difficult life. He died in a
strange land. Of his three children, you are the one I took into my
heart. I did my duty to the others; I lavished my love upon you. Do not
give me cursing instead of blessing. Do not give me a stone instead of
bread. I have built every hope of happiness or pleasure in this world
upon you and your obedience. Obey me, be true to me, and I will make you
a queen, and I will sit in the shadow of your throne. I will toil for
you, and be wise for you. You shall have only to shine, and dazzle, and
enjoy the glory of life. My beautiful darling, for pity's sake do not
give yourself over to folly.'
'Did not you marry for love, grandmother?'
'No, Lesbia. Lord Maulevrier and I got on very well together, but ours
was no love-match.'
'Does nobody in our rank ever marry for love? are all marriages a mere
exchange and barter?'
'No, there are love-matches now and then, which often turn out badly.
But, my darling, I am not asking you to marry for rank or for money. I
am only asking you to wait till you find your mate among the noblest in
the land. He may be the handsomest and most accomplished of men, a man
born to win women's hearts; and you may love him as fervently as ever a
village girl loved her first lover. I am not going to sacrifice you, or
to barter you, dearest. I mean to marry you to the best and noblest
young man of his day. You shall never be asked to stoop to the unworthy,
not even if worthlessness wore strawberry leaves in his cap, and owned
the greatest estate in the land.'
'And if--instead of waiting for this King Arthur of yours--I were to do
as Iseult did--as Guinevere did--choose for myself----'
'Iseult and Guinevere were wantons. I wonder that you can name them in
comparison with yourself.'
'If I were to marry a good and honourable man who has his place to make
in the world, would you never forgive me?'
'You mean Mr. Hammond? You may just as well speak plainly,' said Lady
Maulevrier, freezingly. 'If you were capable of such idiocy as that,
Lesbia, I would pluck you out of my heart like a foul weed. I would
never look upon you, or hear your name spoken, or think of you again as
long as I lived. My life would not last very long after that blow. Old
age cannot bear such shocks. Oh, Lesbia, I have been father and mother
to you; do not bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'
Lesbia gave a deep sigh, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Yes, the
very idea of such a marriage was foolishness. Just now, in the pine
wood, carried away by the force of her lover's passion, by her own
softer feelings, it had seemed to her as if she could count the world
well lost for his sake; but now, at Lady Maulevrier's feet, she became
again true to her training, and the world was too much to lose.
'What can I do, grandmother?' she asked, submissively, despairingly. 'He
loves me, and I love him. How can I tell him that he and I can never be
anything to each other in this world?'
'Refer him to me. I will give him his answer.'
'No, no; that will not do. I have promised to answer him myself. He has
gone for a walk on the hills, and will come back at four o'clock for my
answer.'
'Sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.'
'But a letter will be so formal.'
'It is the only way in which you can answer him. When he comes back from
his walk you will have left Fellside. I shall send you off to St. Bees
with Fräulein. You must never look upon that man's face again.'
Lesbia brushed away a few more tears, and obeyed. She had been too well
trained to attempt resistance. Defiance was out of the question.