MISS SYBILLA SILVER
Meantime Sir Everard had aroused his valet and a brace of tall footmen,
and dispatched them to the aid of the wounded man in the wood. And
then he sought his own chamber, and, after an hour or two of aimless
tossing, dropped into an uneasy sleep.
And sleeping, Sir Everard had a singular dream. He was walking through
Brithlow Wood with Lady Louise on his arm, the moonlight sifting
through the tall trees as he had seen it last. Suddenly, with a rustle
and a hiss, a huge green serpent glided out, reared itself up, and
glared at them with eyes of deadly menace. And somehow, though he had
not yet seen the lad's face, he knew the hissing serpent and the
preserver of his life were one and the same. With horrible hisses the
monster encircled him. Its fetid breath was in his face, its deadly
fangs ready to strike his death-blow, and, with a suffocating cry, Sir
Everard a-woke from his nightmare and started up in bed.
"Good heavens! such a night of horrors, waking and sleeping! A most
ungrateful dream, truly! It is time I awoke my unknown preserver."
The mysterious youth lay fast asleep upon the bed, dressed as he had
left him, with the exception of the slouched hat and the red cotton
handkerchief. They lay on the carpet; and over the pillows, and over
the coarse velveteen jacket streamed such a wealth of blue-black hair
as the baronet in all his life never before beheld.
"Powers above!" Sir Everard gasped, in his utter amaze, "what can this
mean?"
He advanced with bated breath, bent over and gazed at the sleeper's
face. One look, and his flashing first suspicion was a certainty.
This dark, youthful, faultlessly beautiful face was a woman's face. A
girl in velveteen shooting-jacket and pantaloons, handsome as some
dusky Indian princess, lay asleep before him.
Sir Everard Kingsland, in the last stage of bewilderment and amaze,
retreated precipitately and shut the door.
The instant the chamber door closed the mysterious young man raised
himself on his elbow, very wide awake, his handsome face lighted with a
triumphant smile.
"So," he said, "step the second has been taken, and Sir Everard has
discovered the sex of his preserver. As he is too delicate to disturb
a slumbering lady in disguise, the slumbering lady must disturb him!"
He--or rather she--leaped lightly off the bed, picked up the scarlet
bandanna, twisted scientifically the abundant black hair, bound it up
with the handkerchief, and crushed down over all the slouched hat.
Then, with the handsome face overshadowed, and all expression screwed
out of it, she opened the door, and saw, as she expected, the young
baronet in the passage.
He stopped at once at sight of her. He had been walking up and down,
with an exceedingly surprised and perplexed face; and now he stood with
his great, Saxon-blue eyes piercingly fixed upon the young person in
velveteen, whose jacket and trousers told one story, and whose
streaming dark hair told quite another.
"It is past sunrise, Sir Everard," his preserver began, with a
reproachful glance, "and you have broken your promise. You said you
would awake me."
"I beg your pardon," retorted Sir Everard, quietly; "I have broken no
promise. I came to your room ten minutes ago to arouse you, as I said
I would. I knocked thrice, and received no reply. Then I entered.
You must excuse me for doing so. How was I to know I was entertaining
angels unaware?"
With a low cry of consternation his hearer's hands flew up and covered
his face, to hide the blushes that were not there.
"Your red handkerchief and hat do you good service in your masquerade,
mademoiselle. I confess I should never suspect a lady in that suit of
velveteen."
With a sudden theatrical abandon the "lady in velveteen" flung herself
on her knees at his feet.
"Forgive me!" she cried, holding up her clasped hands. "Have pity on
me! Don't reveal my secret, for Heaven's sake."
"Forgive you!" repeated Sir Everard, hastily. "What have I to forgive?
Pray get up; there is no reason you should kneel and supplicate pity
from me."
He raised her imperatively. Her head dropped in womanly confusion,
and, hiding her face, she sobbed.
"What must you think? How dreadful it must look! But, oh, Sir
Everard! if you only knew!"
"I should like to know, I confess. Come here in this window recess and
tell me, won't you? Come, look up, and don't cry so. Tell me who you
are."
"I am Sybilla Silver, and I have run away from home, and I will die
sooner than ever go back!"
She looked up with a passionate outbreak, and Sir Everard saw the
splendor of a pair of flashing Spanish eyes.
"I shall not send you back, depend upon it. Why did you run away, Miss
Silver?"
"Do you really wish to know?" she asked. "Oh, Sir Everard Kingsland,
will you indeed be my friend?"
"Your true and faithful friend, my poor girl!" he answered, moved by
the piteous appeal. "Surely I could hardly be less to one who so
bravely saved my life."
"Ah! that was nothing. I lay no claim on that. Serve me as you would
serve any friendless girl in distress; and you are brave and generous
and noble, I know."
"You 'do me proud,' mademoiselle. Suppose you cease complimenting, and
begin at the beginning. Who are your friends, and why did you leave
them, and where have you run away from?"
"From Yorkshire, Sir Everard--yes, all the way from Yorkshire in this
disguise. Ah! it seems very bold and unwomanly, does it not? But my
uncle was such a tyrant, and I had no appeal. I am an orphan, Sir
Everard. My father and mother have been dead since my earliest
recollection, and this uncle, my sole earthly relative, has been my
guardian and tormentor. I can not tell you how cruelly he has treated
me. I have been immured in a desolate old country-house, without
friends or companions of my own age or sex, and left to drag on a
useless and aimless life. My poor father left me a scant inheritance;
but, such as it is, my uncle set his greedy heart upon adding it to his
own. To do this, he determined upon marrying me to his only son. My
cousin William was his father over again--meaner, more cruel and crafty
and cold-blooded, if possible--and utterly abhorred by me. I would
sooner have died ten thousand deaths than marry such a sordid, hateful
wretch! But marry him I surely must have done, if I remained in their
power. So I fled. With inconceivable trouble and maneuvering. I
obtained this suit of clothes. If I fled undisguised, I knew I would
certainly be pursued, overtaken, and brought back. In the dead of
night I opened my chamber window and made my escape. I took a loaded
pistol of my uncle's with me; I knew how to use it, and I felt safe
with such a protector. My old nurse lived in Plymouth with her
daughter, and to her I meant to go. I had a little money with me, and
made good my escape. My disguise saved me from suspicion and insult.
Last night, on my way to Worrel, I heard your cry for help, and my
pistol stood me in good stead, for the first time. There, Sir Everard,
you know all. I hate and despise myself for the dress I wear, but
surely there is some excuse to be made for me."
The Spanish eyes, swimming in tears, were raised imploringly to his,
and Sir Everard was two-and-twenty, and very susceptible to a beautiful
woman's tears.
"Very much excuse, my poor girl," he said, warmly. "I am the last on
earth to blame you for flying from a detested marriage. But there is
no need to wear this disguise longer, surely?"
"No; no need. But I have had no opportunity of changing it; and if I
do not succeed in finding my nurse at Plymouth, I don't know what will
become of me."
"Have you not her address?"
"No; neither have I heard from her in a long, long time. She lived in
Plymouth years ago with her married daughter, but we never
corresponded; and whether she is there now, or whether indeed she is
living at all, I do not know. I caught at the hope as the drowning
catch at straws."
Sir Everard looked at her in that thoughtful pause. How beautiful she
was in her dark, glowing girlhood--how friendless, how desolate in the
world.
"It would be the wildest of wild-goose chases, then," he said, "knowing
as little of your nurse's whereabouts as you do, to seek her in
Plymouth now. Write first, or advertise in the local journals. If she
is still resident there, that will fetch her."
"Write! advertise!" Sybilla Silver repeated, with unspeakable
mournfulness; "from whence, Sir Everard?"
"From here," answered the baronet, decidedly. "You shall not leave
here until you find your friends. And you shall not wear this odious
disguise an hour longer. Go back to your chamber and wait."
"What an egregious muff he is!" she said to herself, contemptuously.
"There is no cleverness in fooling such an imbecile as that. I am
going on velvet so far; I only hope my lady may be as easily dealt with
as my lady's only son."
My lady's only son went straight to a door down the corridor, quite at
the other extremity, and opened it.
It was a lady's dressing-room evidently. Laid out, all ready for wear,
was a lady's morning toilet complete, and without more ado Sir Everard
confiscated the whole concern. At the white cashmere robe alone he
caviled.
"This is too gay; I must find a more sober garment. All the
maid-servants in the house would recognize this immediately."
He went to one of the closets, searched there, and presently reappeared
with a black silk dress. Rolling all up in a heap, he started at once
with his prize, laughing inwardly at the figure he cut.
"If Lady Louise saw me now, or my lady mother, either, for that matter!
What will Mildred and her maid say, I wonder, when they find burglars
have been at work, and her matutinal toilet stolen?"
He bore the bundle straight to the chamber of his pretty runaway, and
tapped at the door. It was discreetly opened an inch or two.
"Here are some clothes. When you are dressed, come out. I will wait
in the passage."
"Thank yon," Miss Silver's soft voice said.
The young person whose adventures were so highly sensational doffed her
velveteens and donned the dainty garments of Miss Mildred Kingsland.
All the things were beautifully made and embroidered, marked with the
initials "M. K.," and adorned with the Kingsland crest.
"Miss Mildred Kingsland must be tall and slender, since her dress fits
me so well. Ah, what a change even a black silk dress makes in one's
appearance! He admired me--I saw he did, in jacket and
pantiloons--what will be do, then, in this? Will he fall in love with
me, I wonder?"
One parting peep in the glass, and she opened the door and stepped out
before Sir Everard Kingsland, a dazzling vision of beauty.
He stood and gazed. Could he believe his eyes? Was this
superb-looking woman with the flowing curls, the dark, bright beauty
and imperial mien, the lad in velveteen who had shot the poacher last
night? Why, Cleopatra might have looked like that, in the height of
her regal splendor, or Queen Semiramis, in the glorious days that were
gone.
"This is indeed a transformation," he said, coming forward. "Your
disguise was perfect. I should never have known you for the youth I
parted from ten minutes ago."
"I can never thank you sufficiently, Sir Everard. Ah, if you knew how
I abhorred myself in that hateful disguise! Nothing earthly will ever
induce me to put it on again."
"I trust not," he said, gravely; "let us hope it may never be
necessary. You are safe here, Miss Silver, from the tyranny of your
uncle and cousin. The friendless and unprotected shall never be turned
from Kingsland Court."
She took his hand and lifted it to her lips, and once more the luminous
eyes were swimming in tears.
"I would thank you if I could, Sir Everard," the sweet voice murmured:
"but you overpower me! Your goodness is beyond thanks."
A footstep on the marble stair made itself unpleasantly audible at this
interesting crisis. Miss Silver dropped the baronet's hand with a wild
instinct of flight in her great black eyes.
"Return to your room," Sir Everard whispered. "Lock the door, and
remain there until I apprise my mother of your presence here and
prepare her to receive you. Quick! I don't want these prying prigs of
servants to find you here."
She vanished like a flash.
Sir Everard walked down-stairs, and passed his own valet sleepily
ascending.
"I beg your parding, Sir Heverard," said the valet; "but we was all
very anxious about you. Sir Galahad came galloping home riderless,
and--"
"That will do, Edward. You did not disturb Lady Kingsland?"
"No, Sir Heverard."
Sir Everard passed abruptly on and sought the stables at once. Sir
Galahad was there, undergoing his morning toilet, and greeted his
master with a loud neigh of delight.
The young baronet dawdled away the lagging morning hours, smoking
endless cigars under the waving trees, and waiting for the time when my
lady should be visible. She rarely rose before noon, but to-day she
deigned to get up at nine. Sir Everard flung away his last cigar, and
went bounding up the grand stairs three at a time.
Lady Kingsland sat breakfasting in her boudoir with her daughter--a
charming little bijou of a room, all filigree work, and fluted walls,
delicious little Greuze paintings, and flowers and perfume--and Lady
Kingsland, in an exquisitely becoming robe de matin, at five-and-fifty
looked fair and handsome, and scarce middle-aged yet. Time, that deals
so gallantly with these blonde beauties, had just thinned the fair hair
at the parting, and planted dainty crow's-feet about the patrician
mouth, but left no thread of silver under the pretty Parisian lace cap.
Mildred Kingsland, opposite her mother, scarcely bore her thirty years
so gracefully. She had had her little romance, and it had been
incontinently nipped in the bud by imperious mamma, and she had
dutifully yielded, with the pain sharp in her heart all the same. But
he was poor, and Mildred was weak, and so Lady Kingsland's only
daughter glided uncomplainingly into old-maidenhood.
My lady glanced over her shoulder, and greeted her son with a bright,
loving smile. He was her darling and her pride--her earthly idol--the
last of the Kingslands.
"Good-morning, Everard! I thought you would have done Mildred and
myself the honor of breakfasting with us. Perhaps it is not too late
yet. May I offer you a cup of chocolate?"
"Not at all too late, mother mine. I accept your offer and your
chocolate on the spot. Milly, good-morning! You are white as your
dress! What is the matter?"
"Mildred is fading away to a shadow of late," his mother said. "I must
take her to the sea-shore for change."
"When?" asked Sir Everard.
"Let me see. Ah! when you are married, I think. What time did you
come home last night, and how is Lady Louise?"
"Lady Louise is very well. My good mother"--half laughing--"are you
very anxious for a daughter-in-law at Kingsland to quarrel with?"
"I shall not quarrel with Lady Louise."
"Then, willy-nilly, it must be Lord Carteret's daughter, and no other?"
"Everard," his mother said, earnestly, "you know I have set my heart on
seeing Lady Louise your wife; and she loves you, I know. And you, my
darling Everard--you will not disappoint me?"
"I should be an ungrateful wretch if I did! Rest easy, _ma mère_--Lady
Louise shall become Lady Kingsland, or the fault shall not be mine. I
believed I should have asked the momentous little question last night
but for that interloper, George Grosvenor!"
"Ah! jealous, of course. He is always _de trop_, that great, stupid
George," my lady said. "And was the dinner-party agreeable; and what
time did you get home?"
"The dinner-party was delightful, and I came home shortly after
midnight. What time Sir Galahad arrived I can't say--half an hour
before I did, at least."
Lady Kingsland looked inquiringly.
"Did you not ride Sir Galahad?"
"Yes, until I was torn from the saddle! My dear mother, I met with an
adventure last night, and you had like never to see your precious son
again."
"Everard!"
"Quite true. But for the direct interposition of Providence, in the
shape of a handsome lad in velveteen, who shot my assailant, I would be
lying now in Brithlow Wood yonder, as dead as any Kingsland in the
family vault."
And then, while Lady Kingsland gazed at him breathlessly, Sir Everard
related his midnight adventure.
"Good heavens!" my lady cried, clasping him in her arms. "Oh, to think
what might have happened! My boy--my boy!"
"Very true, mother; but a miss is as good as a mile, you know.
Poetical justice befell my assailant; and here I am safe and sound,
sipping chocolate."
"And the preserver of your life, Everard--where is he?"
"Upstairs, waiting like patience on a monument; and by the same token,
fasting all this time! But it isn't a he, _ma mère_; it's a she."
"What?"
Sir Everard laughed.
"Such a mystified face, mother! Oh; it's highly sensational and
melodramatic, I promise you! Sit down and hear the sequel."
And then, eloquently and persuasively, Sir Everard repeated Miss
Sybilla Silver's extraordinary story, and Lady Kingsland was properly
shocked.
"Disguised herself in men's clothes! My dear Everard, what a dreadful
creature she must be!"
"Not at all dreadful, mother. She is as sensitive and womanly a young
lady as ever I saw in my life. And, she's a very pretty girl, too."
Lady Kingsland looked suspiciously at her son. She highly disapproved
of pretty girls where he was concerned; but the handsome face was frank
and open as the day.
"Now don't be suspicious, Lady Kingsland. I'm not going to fall in
love with Miss Sybilla Silver, I give you my word and honor. She saved
my life, remember. May I not fetch her here?"
"What! in men's clothes, and before your sister? Everard, how dare
you?"
Sir Everard broke into a peal of boyish laughter that made the room
ring.
"I don't believe she's in men's clothes!" exclaimed Mildred, suddenly.
"Honorine told me robbers must have been in my dressing-room last
night--half my things were stolen. I understand it now--Everard was
the robber."
"I am going for her, mother. Remember she is friendless, and that she
saved your son's life."
He quitted the room with the last word. That claim, he knew, was one
his mother would never repudiate.
"Oh!" she said, lying back in her chair pale and faint, "to think what
might have happened!"
As she spoke her son re-entered the room, and by his side a young
lady--so stately, so majestic in her dark beauty, that involuntarily
the mother and daughter arose.
"My mother, this young lady saved my life. Try and thank her for me.
Lady Kingsland, Miss Silver."
Surely some subtle power of fascination invested this dark daughter of
the earth. The liquid dark eyes lifted themselves in mute appeal to
the great lady's face, and then the proudest woman in England opened
her arms with a sudden impulse and took the outcast to her bosom.
"I can never thank you," she murmured. "The service you have rendered
me is beyond all words."
An hour later Sybilla went slowly back to her room. She had
breakfasted _tête-à-tête_ with my lady and her daughter, while Sir
Everard, in scarlet coat and cord and tops, had mounted his bonny bay
and ridden off to Lady Louise and the fox-hunt, and to his fate, though
he knew it not.
"Really, Mildred," my lady said, "a most delightful young person,
truly. Do you know, if she does not succeed in finding her friends I
should like to retain her as a companion?"
In her own room Sybilla Silver stood before the glass, and she smiled
back at her own image.
"So, my lady," she said, "you walk into the trap with your eyes open,
too--you who are old enough to know better? My handsome face and black
eyes and smooth tongue stand me in their usual good stead. And I saved
Sir Everard Kingsland's life! Poor fools! A thousand times better for
you all if I had let that midnight assassin shoot him down like a dog!"