I do not mean to assert that John Tatham had not seen Lady Mariamne
during these twenty years, or that her changed appearance burst upon him
with anything like a shock. In society, when you are once a member of
that little world within a world, everybody sees everybody else from
time to time. He had not recognised her voice, for he was not in the
smallest degree thinking of Lady Mariamne or of any member of her
family, notwithstanding that they now and then did make a very marked
appearance in his mind in respect of the important question of that
connection which Elinor in her foolishness tried to ignore. And John was
not at all shocked by the progress of that twenty years, as reflected in
the appearance of this lady, who was about his own standing, a woman
very near fifty, but who had fought strenuously against every sign of
her age, as some women foolishly do. The result was in Lady Mariamne’s
case, as in many others, that the number of her years looked more like a
hundred and fifty than their natural limit. A woman of her class has but
two alternatives as she gets old. She must get stout, in which case,
though she becomes unwieldy, she preserves something of her bloom; or
she may grow thin, and become a spectre upon which art has to do so much
that nature, flouted and tortured, becomes vindictive, and withdraws
every modifying quality. Lady Mariamne had, I fear, false hair, false
teeth, false complexion, everything that invention could do in a poor
little human countenance intended for no such manipulation. The
consequence was that every natural advantage (and there are some which
age confers, as well as many that age takes away) was lost. The skin was
parchment, the eyes were like eyes of fishes, the teeth--too white and
too perfect--looked like the horrible things in the dentists’ windows,
which was precisely what they were. On such a woman, the very height of
the fashion, to which she so often attaches herself with desperation,
has an antiquated air. Everything “swears,” as the French say, with
everything else. The softness, the whiteness, the ease, the
self-abnegation of advancing age are all so many ornaments if people but
knew. But Lady Mariamne had none of these. She wore a warm cloak in her
carriage, it is true, but that had dropped from her shoulders, leaving
her in all the bound-up rigidity in which youth is trim and slim and
elastic, as becomes it. It is true that many a woman of fifty is, as
John Tatham was, serenely dwelling on that tableland which shows but
little difference between thirty-five, the crown of life, and
fifty-five; but Lady Mariamne was not one of these. She had gone “too
fast,” she would herself have allowed; “the pace” had been too much for
such survivals. She was of the awful order of superannuated beauties of
which Mr. Rider Haggard would in vain persuade us “She” was not one. I
am myself convinced that “She’s” thousands of years were all written on
her fictitious complexion, and that other people saw them clearly if not
her unfortunate lover. And Lady Mariamne had come to be of the order of
“She.” By dint of wiping out the traces of her fifty years, she had made
herself look as if she might have been a thousand, and in this guise she
appeared to the robust, ruddy, well-preserved man of her own age, as she
stood, with a fantastic little giggle, calling his attention, on the
threshold of his door.
Behind Lady Mariamne was a very different figure--that of the serious
and independent girl without any illusions, who is in so many cases the
child of such a mother, and who is in revolt so complete from all that
mother’s traditions, so highly set on the crown of every opposite
principle, that nature vindicates itself by the possibility that she may
at any moment topple over and become again what her mother was. He would
have been a bold man, however, who in the present stage would have
prophesied any such fate for Dolly Prestwich, who between working at
Whitechapel, attending on a ward in St. Thomas’s, drawing three days a
week in the Slade School, and other labours of equally varied
descriptions, had her time very fully taken up, and only on special
occasions had time to accompany her mother. She had been beguiled on
this occasion by the family history which was concerned, and which, _fin
de siécle_ as Dolly was, excited her curiosity almost as much as if she
had been born in the “forties.” Dolly was never unkind, sometimes indeed
was quite the reverse, to her mother. When Mr. Tatham, with a man’s
brutal unconsciousness of what is desirable, placed a chair for Lady
Mariamne in front of the fire, Dolly twisted it round with a dexterous
movement so as to shield the countenance which was not adapted for any
such illumination. For herself, Dolly cared nothing, whether it was the
noonday sun or the blaze of a furnace that shone upon her; she defied
them both to make her wink. As for complexion, she scorned that
old-fashioned vanity. She had not very much, it is true. Having been
scorched red and brown in Alpine expeditions in the autumn, she was now
of a somewhat dry whitish-greyish hue, the result of much loss of
cuticle and constant encounter with London fogs and smoke. She carried
Toto--who was a shrinking, chilly Italian greyhound--in a coat,
carelessly under one arm, and sat down beside her mother, studying the
papers on John’s table with exceedingly curious eyes. She would have
liked to go over all his notes about his case, and form her own opinion
on it--which she would have done, we may be sure, much more rapidly, and
with more decision, than Mr. Tatham could do.
“So here I am again, you will say,” said Lady Mariamne. She had taken
off her gloves, and was smoothing her hands, from the points of the
fingers downwards, not, I believe, with any intention of demonstrating
their whiteness, but solely because she had once done so, and the habit
remained. She wore several fine rings, and her hands were still pretty,
and--unlike the rest of her--younger than her age. They made a little
show with their sparkling diamonds, just catching the edge of the light
from John’s shaded lamp. Her face by Dolly’s help was in the shadow of
the green shade. “You will say so, Mr. Tatham, I know: here she is
again--without thinking how self-denying I have been, never to come,
never to ask a single question, for all these years.”
“The loss is mine, Lady Mariamne,” said John, gravely.
“It’s very pretty of you to say that, isn’t it, Dolly? One’s old flirts
don’t always show up so well.” And here the lady gave a laugh, such as
had once been supposed to be one of Lady Mariamne’s charms, but which
was rather like a giggle now--an antiquated giggle, which is much less
satisfactory than the genuine article. “How I used to worry you about
poor Phil, and that little spitfire of a Nell--and what a mess they have
made of it! I suppose you know what changes have happened in the family,
Mr. Tatham, since those days?”
“I heard indeed, with regret, Lady Mariamne, that you had lost a
brother----”
“A brother! two!” she cried. “Isn’t it extraordinary--poor Hal, that was
the picture of health? How little one knows! He just went, don’t you
know, without any one ever thinking he would go. Regg in India was
different--you expect that sort of thing when a man is in India. But
poor Hal! I told you Mr. Tatham wouldn’t have heard of it, Dolly, not
being in our own set, don’t you know.”
“It was in all the papers,” said Miss Dolly.
“Ah, well, you didn’t notice it, I suppose: or perhaps you were away. I
always say it is of no use being married or dying or anything else in
September--your friends never hear of it. You will wonder that I am not
in black, but black was always very unbecoming to me, and dark grey is
just as good, and doesn’t make one quite so ghastly. But the funny thing
is that now Phil--who looked as if he never could be in the running,
don’t you know--is heir presumptive. Isn’t it extraordinary? Two gone,
and Phil, that lived much faster than either of them, and at one time
kept up an awful pace, has seen them both out. And St. Serf has never
married. He won’t now, though I have been at him on the subject for
years. He says, not if he knows it, in the horrid way men have. And I
don’t wonder much, for he has had some nasty experiences, poor fellow.
There was Lady---- Oh, I almost forgot you were there, Dolly.”
“You needn’t mind me,” said Dolly, gravely; “I’ve heard just as bad.”
“Well,” said Lady Mariamne, with a giggle, “did you ever know anything
like those girls? They are not afraid of anything. Now, when I was a
girl--don’t you remember what an innocent dear I was, Mr. Tatham?--like
a lamb; never suspecting that there was any naughtiness in the
world----”
John endeavoured to put on a smile, in feeble sympathy with the
uproariousness of Lady Mariamne’s laugh--but her daughter took no such
trouble. She sat as grave as a young judge, never moving a muscle. The
dog, however, held in her arms, and not at all comfortable, then making
prodigious efforts to struggle on to its mistress’s more commodious lap,
burst out into a responsive bark, as shrill and not much unlike.
“Darling Toto,” said Lady Mariamne, “come!--it always knows what it’s
mummy means. Did you ever see such a darling little head, Mr.
Tatham?--and the faithful pet always laughs when I laugh. What was I
talking of?--St. Serf and his ladies. Well, it is not much wonder, you
know, is it? for he has always been a sort of an invalid, and he will
never marry now--and poor Hal being gone there’s only Phil. Phil’s been
going a pace, Mr. Tatham; but he has had a bad illness, too, and the
other boys going has sobered him a bit; and I do believe, _now_, that
he’ll probably mend. And there he is, you know, tied to a---- Oh, of
course, _she_ is as right as a--as right as a--trivet, whatever that may
be. Those sort of heartless people always are: and then there’s the
child. Is it living, Mr. Tatham?--that’s what I want to know.”
“Philip is alive and well, Lady Mariamne, if that is what you want to
know.”
“Philip!--she called him after Phil, after all! Well, that is something
wonderful. I expected to hear he was John, or Jonathan, or something.
Now, where is he?” said Lady Mariamne, with the most insinuating air.
John burst into a short laugh. “I don’t suppose you expect me to tell
you,” he said.
“Why not?--you can’t hide a boy that is heir to a peerage, Mr.
Tatham!--it is impossible. Nell has done the best she could in that way.
They know nothing about her in that awful place she was married from--of
course you remember it--a dreadful place, enough to make one commit
suicide, don’t you know. The Cottage, or whatever they call it, is let,
and nobody knows anything about them. I took the trouble to go there, I
assure you, on my own hook, to see if I could find out something. Toto
nearly died of it, didn’t you, darling? Not a drop of cream to be had
for him, the poor angel; only a little nasty skim milk. But Mr. Tatham
has the barbarity to smile,” she went on, with a shrill outcry. “Fancy,
Toto--the cruelty to smile!”
“No cream for the angel, and no information for his mistress,” said
John.
“You horrid, cruel, cold-blooded man!--and you sit there at your ease,
and will do nothing for us----”
“Should you like me,” said John, “to send out for cream for your dog,
Lady Mariamne?”
“Cream in the Temple?” said the lady. “What sort of a compound would it
be, Dolly? All plaster of Paris, or stuff of that sort. Perhaps you have
tea sometimes in these parts----”
“Very seldom,” said John; “but it might be obtainable if you would like
it.” He put forward his hand, but not with much alacrity, to the bell.
“Mother never takes any tea,” said Miss Dolly, hastily; “she only
crumbles down cake into it for that little brute.”
“It is you who are a little brute, you unnatural child. Toto likes his
tea very much--he is dying for it. But you must have patience, my pet,
for probably it would be very bad, and the cream all stucco, or
something. Mr. Tatham, do tell us what has become of Nell? Now, have
you hidden her somewhere in London, St. John’s Wood, and that sort of
thing, don’t you know? or where is she? Is the old woman living? and how
has that boy been brought up? At a dame’s school, or something of that
sort, I suppose.”
“Mother,” said Dolly, “you ought to know there are now no dame’s
schools. There’s Board Schools, which is what you mean, I suppose; and
it would be very good for him if he had been there. They would teach him
a great deal more than was ever taught to Uncle Phil.”
“Teach him!” said Lady Mariamne, with another shriek. “Did I ask
anything about teaching? Heaven forbid! Mr. Tatham knows what I mean,
Dolly. Has he been at any decent place--or has he been where it will
never be heard of? Eton and Harrow one knows, and the dame’s schools one
knows, but horrible Board Schools, or things, where they might say young
Lord Lomond was brought up--oh, goodness gracious! One has to bear a
great many things, but I could not bear that.”
“It does not matter much, does it, so long as he does not come within
the range of his nearest relations?” This was from John, who was almost
at the end of his patience. He began to put his papers back in a
portfolio, with the intention of carrying them home with him, for his
hour’s work had been spoilt as well as his temper. “I am afraid,” he
added, “that I cannot give you any information, Lady Mariamne.”
“Oh, such nonsense, Mr. Tatham!--as if the heir to a peerage could be
hid.”
It was not often that Lady Mariamne produced an unanswerable effect, but
against this last sentence of hers John had absolutely nothing to say.
He stared at her for a moment, and then he returned to his papers,
shovelling them into the portfolio with vehemence. Fortunately, she did
not herself see how potent was her argument. She went on diluting it
till it lost all its power.
“There is the ‘Peerage’ if it was nothing else--they must have the right
particulars for that. Why, Dolly is at full length in it, her age and
all, poor child; and Toto, too, for anything I know. Is du in the
‘Peerage,’ dear Toto, darling? And yet Toto can’t succeed, nor Dolly
either. And this year Phil will be in as heir presumptive and his
marriage and all--and then a blank line. It’s ridiculous, it’s horrible,
it’s a thing that can’t, can’t be! Only think of all the troops of
people, nice people, the best people, that read the ‘Peerage,’ Mr.
Tatham!--and that know Phil is married, and that there is a child, and
yet will see nothing but that blank line. Nell was always a little fool,
and never could see things in a common-sense way. But a man ought to
know better--and a lawyer, with chambers in the Temple! Why, people come
and consult you on such matters--I might be coming to ask you to send
out detectives, and that sort of thing. How do you dare to hide away
that boy?”
Lady Mariamne stamped her foot at John, but this proceeding very much
incommoded Toto, who, disturbed in his position on her knee, got upon
his feet and began to bark furiously, first at his mistress and then,
following her impulse, at the gentleman opposite to her, backing against
the lady’s shoulder and setting up his little nose furiously with
vibrations of rage against John, while stumbling upon the uncertain
footing of the lap, volcanically shaken by the movement. The result of
this onslaught was to send Lady Mariamne into shrieks of laughter, in
the midst of which she half smothered Toto with mingled endearments and
attempts at restraint, until Dolly, coming to the rescue, seized him
summarily and snatched him away.
“The darling!” cried Lady Mariamne, “he sees it, and you can’t see it, a
great big lawyer though you are. Dolly, don’t throttle my angel child.
Stands up for his family, don’t he, the dear? Mr. Tatham, how can you be
so bigoted and stubborn, when our dear little Toto---- But you always
were the most obstinate man. Do you remember once, when I wanted to take
you to Lady Dogberry’s dance--wasn’t it Lady Dogberry’s?--well, it was
Lady Somebody’s--and you said you were not asked, and I said, what did
it matter: but to make you go, and Nell was with me--we might as well
have tried to make St. Paul’s go----”
“My dear Lady Mariamne,” said John.
She held up a finger at him with the engaging playfulness of old. “How
can I be your dear Lady Mariamne, Mr. Tatham, when you won’t do a thing
I ask you? What, Dolly? Yes, we must go, of course, or I shall not have
my nap before dinner. I always have a nap before dinner, for the sake of
my complexion, don’t you know--my beauty nap, they call it. Now, Mr.
Tatham, come to me to-morrow, and you shall give Toto his cream, to show
you bear no malice, and tell me all about the boy. Don’t be an obstinate
pig, Mr. Tatham. Now, I shall look for you--without fail. Shan’t we look
for him, Dolly?--and Toto will give you a paw and forgive you--and you
must tell me all about the boy.”