BEAT
Like a disturbed spirit Lady Bearwarden wandered about in the fever
of a sorrow, so keen that her whole soul would sometimes rise in
rebellion against the unaccustomed pain. There was something stifling
to her senses in the fact of remaining between the four walls of a
house. She panted for air, motion, freedom, and betook herself to
Kensington Gardens, partly because that beautiful retreat lay within
an easy walk of her house, partly perhaps, that for her, as for many
of us, it had been brightened by a certain transient and delusive
light which turns everything to gold while it lasts, leaves everything
but a dull dim copper when it has passed away.
It was a benevolent and merciful restriction, no doubt, that debarred
our first parents from re-entering the paradise they had forfeited.
Better far to carry away unsullied and unfaded the sweet sad memories
of the Happy Land, than revisit it to find weeds grown rank, fountains
dry, the skies darkened, the song of birds hushed, its bloom faded off
the flower, and its glory departed from the day.
She used to sit here in the shade with _him_. There was the very tree.
Even the broken chair they had laughed at was not mended, and yet for
her a century ago could not have seemed a more hopeless past. Other
springs would bloom with coming years, other summers glow, and she
could not doubt that many another worshipper would kneel humbly and
gratefully at her shrine, but their votive garlands could never more
glisten with the fresh dew of morning, the fumes from their lower
altars, though they might lull the senses and intoxicate the brain,
could never thrill like that earlier incense, with subtle sudden
poison to her heart.
To be sure, on more than one occasion she had walked here with Dick
Stanmore too. It was but human nature, I suppose, that she should have
looked on that gentleman's grievances from a totally different point
of view. It couldn't be half so bad in his case, she argued, men had
so many resources, so many distractions. She was sorry for him, of
course, but he couldn't be expected to feel a disappointment of this
nature like a woman, and, after all, theirs was more a flirtation
than an attachment. He need not have minded it so very much, and had
probably fancied he cared a great deal more than he really did.
It is thus we are all prone to reason, gauging the tide of each
other's feelings by the ebb and flow of our own.
Love, diffused amongst the species, is the best and purest of
earthly motives, concentrated on the individual it seems but a dual
selfishness after all.
There were few occupants of the Gardens; here two or three
nursery-maids and children, there a foreign gentleman reading a
newspaper. Occasionally, in some rare sequestered nook, an umbrella,
springing up unnecessarily and defiantly like a toadstool, above
two male legs and a muslin skirt. Lady Bearwarden passed on, with a
haughty step, and a bitter smile.
There is something of freemasonry in sorrow. Dorothea's vague
abstracted gait arrested Maud's attention even from a distance, and
involuntarily the delicate lady followed on the track of that limp
shabby figure with which she had but this one unconscious link, of a
common sorrow, an aching heart.
Approaching nearer, she watched the poor sufferer with a curiosity
that soon grew to interest and even alarm.
While Dorothea sat herself down by the water's edge, her ladyship
looked round in vain for a policeman or a park-keeper, holding herself
in readiness to prevent the horror she already anticipated, and
which drove clear off her mind every thought of her own regrets and
despondency.
There was no time to lose; when the despairing woman half rose to her
feet, Lady Bearwarden interposed, calm, collected, and commanding in
the courage which had hitherto never failed her in an emergency.
That burst of hysterical tears, that despairing cry, "I wish I was
dead!" told her for the present Dorothea was saved. She sat down on
the grass by her side. She took the poor coarse hands in her own. She
laid the drooping head on her lap, and with gentle, loving phrases,
such as soothe a suffering child, encouraged the helpless wretch to
weep and sob her fill.
She could have wept too for company, because of the load that seemed
lifted in an instant from her own breast; but this was a time for
action, and at such a season it was no part of Maud's nature to sit
down and cry.
It was long ere the numbed heart and surcharged brain had relieved
themselves sufficiently for apprehension and intelligible speech.
Dorothea's first impulse, on coming to herself, was to smooth her
unkempt hair and apologise for the disorder of her costume.
"If ever mind your dress," said Lady Bearwarden, resuming, now the
crisis was past, her habitual air of authority, conscious that it
would be most efficacious under the circumstances. "You are tired and
exhausted. You must have food and rest. I ask no questions, and I
listen to no explanations, at least till to-morrow. Can you walk to
the gate? You must come home with me."
"O, miss! O, my lady!" stammered poor Dorothea, quite overcome by such
unlikely sympathy, such unexpected succour. "It's too much! It's too
much! I'm not fit for it! If you only knowed what I am!" then, lifting
her eyes to the other's face, a pang, keener than all previous
sufferings, went through her woman's heart like the thrust of a knife.
It all came on her at once. This beautiful being, clad in shining
raiment, who had saved and soothed her like an angel from heaven, was
the pale girl Jim had gone to visit in her stately, luxurious home,
when she followed him so far through those weary streets on the night
of the thunderstorm.
She could bear no more. Her physical system gave way, just as a tree
that has sustained crash after crash falls with the last well-directed
blow. She rolled her eyes, lifted both bare arms above her head, and
with a faint despairing cry, went down at Lady Bearwarden's feet,
motionless and helpless as the dead.
But assistance was at hand at last. A park-keeper helped to raise the
prostrate figure. An elderly gentleman volunteered to fetch a cab.
Amongst them they supported Dorothea to the gate and placed her in the
vehicle. The park-keeper touched his hat, the elderly gentleman made
a profusion of bows, and as many offers of assistance which were
declined, while Maud, soothing and supporting her charge, told the
driver where to stop. As they jingled and rattled away from the gate,
a pardonable curiosity prompted the elderly gentleman to inquire the
name of this beautiful Samaritan, clad in silks and satins, so
ready to succour the fallen and give shelter to the homeless. The
park-keeper took his hat off, looked in the crown, and put it on
again.
"I see her once afore under them trees," he said, "with a gentleman. I
see a many and I don't often take notice. But she's a rare sort, she
is! and as good as she's good-looking. I wish you a good-evening,
sir."
Then he retired into his cabin and ruminated on this "precious start,"
as he called it, during his tea.
Meantime, Maud took her charge home, and would fain have put her to
bed. For this sanatory measure, however, Dorothea, who had recovered
consciousness, seemed to entertain an unaccountable repugnance. She
consented, indeed, to lie down for an hour or two, but could not
conceal a wild, restless anxiety to depart as soon as possible.
Something more than the obvious astonishment of the servants,
something more than the incongruity of the situation, seemed prompting
her to leave Lady Bearwarden's house without delay and fly from the
presence of almost the first friend she had ever known in her life.
When the bustle and excitement consequent on this little adventure had
subsided, her ladyship found herself once more face to face with her
own sorrow, and the despondency she had shaken off during a time of
action gathered again all the blacker and heavier round her heart. She
was glad to find distraction in the arrival of a nameless visitor,
announced by the most pompous of footmen as "a young person desirous
of waiting on her ladyship."
"Show her up," said Lady Bearwarden; and for the first time in their
lives the two sisters stood face to face.
Each started, as if she had come suddenly on her own reflection in a
mirror. During a few seconds both looked stupefied, bewildered. Lady
Bearwarden spoke first.
"You wish to see me, I believe. A sick person has just been brought
into the house, and we are rather in confusion. I fear you have been
kept waiting."
"I called while your ladyship was out," answered Nina. "So I walked
about till I thought you must have come home again. You've never seen
me before--I didn't even know where you lived--I found your address
in the Court Guide--O! I can't say it properly, but I did so want to
speak to you. I hope I haven't done anything rude or wrong."
There was no mistaking the refinement of Nina's voice and manner.
Lady Bearwarden recognised one of her own station at a glance. And
this girl so like herself--how beautiful she was! How beautiful they
both were!
"What can I do for you?" said her ladyship, very kindly. "Sit down; I
am sure you must be tired."
But Nina had too much of her sister's character to feel tired when
there was a purpose to carry out. The girl stood erect and looked full
in her ladyship's face. All unconscious of their relationship,
the likeness between them was at this moment so striking as to be
ludicrous.
"I have come on a strange errand, Lady Bearwarden," said Nina,
hardening her heart for the impending effort--"I have come to tell a
truth and to put a question. I suppose, even now, you have some regard
for your husband?"
Lady Bearwarden started. "What do you know about my husband?" she
asked, turning very pale.
"That he is in danger," was the answer, in a voice of such
preternatural fortitude as promised a speedy break-down. "That he is
going to fight a duel--and it's about _you_--with--with Mr. Stanmore!
O! Lady Bearwarden, how _could_ you? You'd everything in the world,
everything to make a woman good and happy, and now, see what you've
done!"
Tears and choking sobs were coming thick, but she kept them back.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Maud, trembling in every limb, for
through the dark midnight of her misery she began to see gleams of a
coming dawn.
"I mean _this_," answered Nina, steadying herself bravely. "Lord
Bearwarden has found everything out. He has sent a challenge to Mr.
Stanmore. I--I--care for Mr. Stanmore, Lady Bearwarden--at least, I
_did_. I was engaged to him." (Here, notwithstanding the tumult of her
feelings, a little twinge crossed Lady Bearwarden to learn how quickly
Dick had consoled himself.) "I'm only a girl, but I know these things
_can_ be prevented, and that's why I'm here now. You've done the
mischief; you are bound to repair it; and I have a right to come to
you for help."
"But I haven't done anything!" pleaded Maud, in for humbler tones than
she habitually used. "I love my husband very dearly, and I've not
set eyes on Mr. Stanmore but once since I married, in Oxford Street,
looking into a shop-window, and directly he caught sight of me, he got
out of the way as if I had the plague! There's some mistake. Not a
minute should be lost in setting it right. I wonder what we ought to
do!"
"And--and you're not in love with Mr. Stanmore? and he isn't going to
run away with you? Lady Bearwarden, are you quite sure? And I don't
deserve to be so happy. I judged him so harshly, so unkindly. What
will he think of me when he knows it? He'll never speak to me again."
Then the tears came in good earnest, and presently Miss Algernon
grew more composed, giving her hostess an account of herself, her
prospects, her Putney home, and the person she most depended on in the
world to get them all out of their present difficulty, Simon Perkins,
the painter. "I know he can stop it," pursued Nina eagerly, "and be
will, too. He told the other man nothing should be done in a hurry.
I heard him say so, for I listened, Lady Bearwarden, I _did_. And I
would again if I had the same reason. Wouldn't _you_? I hope the other
man will be hanged. He seemed to want them so to kill each other.
Don't you think he can be punished? For it's murder, you know,
_really_, after all."
Without entering into the vexed question of duelling--a practice for
which each lady in her heart entertained a secret respect--the sisters
consulted long and earnestly on the best method of preventing a
conflict that should endanger the two lives now dearer to them than
ever.
They drank tea over it, we may be sure, and in the course of that
refreshment could not fail to observe how the gloves they laid aside
were the same number (six and three-quarters, if you would like to
know), how their hands were precisely similar in shape, how the turn
of their arms and wrists corresponded as closely as the tone of their
voices. Each thought she liked the other better than any one she had
ever met of her own sex.
After a long debate it was decided that Nina should return at once to
her Putney home, doubtless ere now much disturbed at her prolonged
absence; that she should have full powers to inform Simon of all the
confidences regarding her husband Lady Bearwarden had poured in her
ear; should authorise him to seek his lordship out and tell him the
whole truth on his wife's behalf; also, finally, for women rarely
neglect the worship of Nemesis, that after a general reconciliation
had been effected, measures should be taken for bringing to condign
punishment the false friend who had been at such pains to foment
hostilities between the men they both loved.
Lady Bearwarden had her hand on the bell to order the carriage for her
visitor, but the latter would not hear of it.
"I can get a cab every twenty yards in this part of the town," said
Nina. "I shall be home in three-quarters of an hour. It's hardly dark
yet, and I'm quite used to going about by myself. I am not at all a
coward, Lady Bearwarden, but my aunts would be horribly alarmed if one
of your smart carriages drove up to the gate. Besides, I don't believe
it could turn round in the lane. No; I won't even have a servant,
thanks. I'll put my bonnet on and start at once, please. You've been
very kind to me, and I'm so much obliged. Good-night!"