"O, TO WHAT END, EXCEPT A JEALOUS ONE?"
The married lovers were startled at their breakfast next morning by the
arrival of Mdlle. Latour in a hackney chair. She had travelled up from
Fairmile to the Hercules Pillars in Piccadilly by the heavy night coach,
and had come from the inn in a chair. She looked worn and haggard with
fatigue and anxiety.
"I knew where I should find my runaway," she said, clasping Irene in her
arms, and covering her fair young face with tearful kisses. "I went
first to Mr. Durnford's lodgings, where the woman told me he was staying
at Lord Lavendale's house in Bloomsbury, and the same chair brought me
here. O Irene, what a trick you have played us!"
"I loved him too well to give him up," faltered the girl. "If there had
been any hope of winning my father's consent I would have waited for
it. But tell me, Maman, how does he take my disobedience? Is he
dreadfully angry?"
"Alas, yes, _ma chérie_, his anger is indeed dreadful. I can conceive no
kind of wrath more terrible. It is a silent anger. He sits alone in his
room, or paces the corridors, and none of us dare approach him. Once he
went into Mrs. Layburne's room, and was closeted with her for an hour;
and then that awful calm broke in a tempest of angry words. Do not think
that I listened at the door, Rena, in a prying spirit. I was in the
hall, near enough to hear those furious tones, but not one word of
speech. I could hear her voice, and it had a mocking sound. I believe in
my heart, Rena, that the woman is a demoniac, and would glory in any
misfortune of her master's. She has brooded over that house like an evil
spirit, and the domestic quiet of our lives has been pain and grief to
her. And now she flaps her wings like a bird of evil omen, and croaks
out her rapture, and riots in your father's anguish."
"Why should he suffer anguish?" asked Irene. "I have married an honest
man."
"Ah, but he had his own ambitious schemes for your marriage. You were to
be a great lady, or you were at least to join wealth to wealth. Consider
that he has given himself up so long to the labour of money-making that
he has grown to think of money as the beginning and end of life. He will
die with his mind full of 'Change Alley and the rise and fall of
stocks."
"Then how could I help disappointing him--I who care so little for
money?" pleaded Rena.
"And so Mrs. Layburne has been playing the devil," said Durnford. "Well,
I am not surprised. I have heard some particulars of that lady's history
from those who were familiar with her in her youth, early in Queen
Anne's reign, and who remember her as a handsome fury, with the voice of
an angel and the temper of a fiend. She sang in _Camilla_ with
Valentini, that first mongrel opera in which two or three of the
principal performers sang in Italian and all the rest in English. It was
just before Congreve and Vanbrugh opened their new theatre in the
Haymarket. She was then in the heyday of her beauty. She is not so old a
woman as you may think her. She wore herself out untimely by the
indulgence of an evil temper. But what of her health, Mademoiselle?
Think you she is long for this world?"
"I believe that a few weeks will see that stormy nature at rest for
ever."
"Then, Rena, the sooner we beard the lion--nay, I mean no disrespect to
your father--the better for all of us. If Mademoiselle has no objection,
we will take her back in our coach. I mean to start for Fairmile as soon
as ever we can get a team of horses from the livery-yard."
"What, you will take Rena back to her father!"
"Only to justify my conduct and hers, and to obtain his forgiveness."
"What, in his present mood," exclaimed the little Frenchwoman, with a
scared countenence, "before time has softened him, while his anger rages
at white heat! You ought to wait at least a year. Let him begin to miss
his daughter's presence; to yearn after her, to mourn for her as one who
is dead; and then let her stand before him suddenly some day, rising
like a ghost out of the grave of the past, and fall on her knees at his
feet. That will be the hour for pardon."
"I have a bolder card to play," said Durnford, "and I mean to play it.
Mrs. Layburne is an element in my calculations; and I must have this
business settled with the Squire while she is above ground."
"Better wait till she is dead and forgotten. Be assured she will never
act the peacemaker. She will fan the flame of Mr. Bosworth's fury and
goad him to vengeance. She hates my innocent Rena, hates every creature
to whom the Squire was ever civil."
"Her very hatred may be made subservient to our interests. There is no
use in arguing the matter, dear Mademoiselle. I mean to have an
understanding with Mr. Bosworth, and I think I shall succeed in
convincing him that he has very little right to be angry."
"You are an obstinate young man," said Mademoiselle, with a shrug which
expressed a kind of despairing resignation.
"Did my father send in pursuit of me?" asked Rena.
"Not he. When we told him you were missing--'twas I had to do it, I, who
had been appointed by him as your guardian, and who had kept so bad a
watch--he grew white with anger, and for some moments was speechless.
Then he said in a strange voice, which he tried to make calm and steady,
'She has run off with her penniless lover, I make no doubt. So be it.
She may starve with him, beg, thieve, die on the gallows with him, for
all I care.' I tell you this, Mr. Durnford, to show you the kind of
temper he is in, and how unwise it were to make your supplication to him
at such a time."
"And he gave no orders for pursuit, made no offer of going after us in
person?" asked Durnford, ignoring the lady's advice.
"Not once did he suggest such a thing. 'She has gone out of my house
like an ingrate,' he said; 'I have done with her.' That was all. It was
at breakfast-time we missed you, and I went to him straight with the
news. About an hour later there came a man who had seen a coach-and-four
waiting by the wicket-gate, and that seemed conclusive evidence to Mr.
Bosworth. He had no further doubt as to what had happened."
Durnford rang, and requested that a messenger should be sent to the
livery-yard to order a coach-and-four. And then he pressed Mademoiselle
to refresh herself at the breakfast-table, which was somewhat
luxuriously provided. The servants brought a fresh chocolate-pot and a
dish of rolls for the new-comer, and although Mademoiselle was too
agitated to have any appetite, her quondam pupil hung about her
affectionately, and insisted upon her taking a good breakfast.
"And so this fine house belongs to Lord Lavendale," said the little
Frenchwoman. "Are you to live here always?"
"Nay, Mademoiselle, do not think so meanly of me as to suppose I would
be content to lodge my wife in another man's house, even if I were
satisfied to live at free quarters as a bachelor, which I was not. No,
to oblige Lavendale, who was very pressing, I accepted the use of this
fine house for my honeymoon. It is a kind of enchanted palace in which
we are to begin the fairy tale of married life; but so soon as we sober
down a little, Rena and I mean to find a home of our own. We shall look
for some rustic cottage in one of the villages near London, Chelsea or
Battersea, most likely--for I must not be far from the House--and we
shall begin domestic life in an unpretending manner. We will not take a
fine house, as poor Steele did, and call it a hovel, and be over head
and ears in debt, and our furniture pledged to a good-natured friend.
No, we will live from hand to mouth if needs must, but we will pay our
way. I have a trifle put by, and I count upon my comedy for giving me
the money to furnish our nest."
"And if the Squire should turn me out of doors, as I reckon he will in a
day or so, may I come and be your housekeeper?" asked Mademoiselle. "I
should save you a servant, for I can cook as well as teach, and I would
do all your housework into the bargain, for the sake of being near Rena.
I have saved a little money, so I should not be any expense to you; and
I would have my little room apart, like Mrs. Layburne, so as not to
disturb your _tête-à-tête_ life as married lovers."
"Dearest Maman, I should love to have you with us, but not to work for
us. That would never do, would it, Herrick?"
"No, indeed, love. And though we are not rich, we shall be able to
afford some stout serving-wench. But if Mademoiselle would keep house
for us, go to market occasionally, and toss an omelette or mix a salad
now and then, just to show our silly British drudge how such things
should be done--"
"I will do all that, and more. I love the cares of the _ménage_."
After this came much hugging and kissing between governess and pupil,
and then a footman announced that the coach was at the door, and they
all three started for Fairmile.
* * * * *
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the four horses, a fresh
relay from Kingston, drew up in front of the Squire's door. It had not
entered into his mind that his runaway daughter could be so brazen as to
come back to the house she had deserted yet awhile, so he issued no
orders for her exclusion. She and her husband walked into the house
boldly, to the alarm of the old butler, and were ushered straight to the
small parlour, the Squire's den, where he sat in a dejected attitude
beside a desk strewn and heaped with papers. Uppermost among them was a
document in several folios, tied together with green ferret, which
looked suspiciously like a will.
He started at his daughter's entrance, lifted his heavy head, and glared
at her with angry eyes under scowling brows.
"What, madam, do you dare to intrude upon the solitude of the parent you
have outraged?" and then recognising Durnford close at his wife's elbow,
"and to bring your pauper-husband at your tail? _That_ is an insolence
which you will both repent. Leave my house this instant, fellow, or I
will have you kicked out of it by my servants."
"I doubt if there is one of them strong enough for the office," said
Herrick; "do not vent your spleen upon me, Mr. Bosworth, till you have
heard what I have to say in my own defence. That I am here to-day must
show you that I mean honestly."
"Honestly, sir! there is no such thing as honesty in a man who steals
an heiress. You have secured your prize, I take it. You have bound her
fast in matrimony."
"Yes, sir, we are bound to each other for life. We were married at the
chapel in Curzon Street at ten o'clock yesterday morning."
"What, by the Reverend Couple-Beggars, by that scurvy dealer in
marriage-lines, Parson Keith? A highly respectable marriage, altogether
worthy of a landed gentleman's daughter and heiress--a marriage to be
proud of. Leave my house, woman! You and I have nothing more to do with
each other."
"Father," she pleaded, sinking on her knee at his feet, where he sat
scowling at her, not having stirred from his brooding attitude since her
entrance; "father, can you be so cruel to me for having married the man
of my choice? As to your fortune, with all hope of being rich in days to
come, I resign it without a sigh. What I saw of wealth and splendour,
pleasure and fashion, last winter, only served to show me how false and
hollow such things are, and how one's heart may ache in the midst of
them. I can be happy with the man I love in humble circumstances, or
can rejoice in his good fortune if ever he should grow rich: but I
cannot be happy without your forgiveness."
"Then you may perish in your sorrow, for I can never forgive. You had
best drop sentiment, wench; blot me out of your life, as I have blotted
you out of mine. You have had your own way. You had a father, you have a
husband; be content to think, you have profited by the exchange."
"Why are you so angry?" she asked piteously.
"Why?" he echoed, "why?" and then bringing his clenched fist down upon
the document of many folios, "because I had built all my hopes on
you--because I had speculated and hoarded, and calculated and thought,
in order to amass a mighty fortune for you and your heirs. I would have
made you a Duchess, girl. Yes, by Heaven, I had negotiations in hand
with a ducal house, and you would have been taken to town a few weeks
hence to be courted by the heir to a dukedom. I should have lived to see
my daughter mistress of half a dozen palaces--"
"Not your daughter, sir," said Herrick gravely; "your daughter has long
been mistress of one narrow house--a tenement which none would care to
dispute with her."
"What are you raving about, fellow?"
The Squire started to his feet, and looked at Durnford in a kind of
savage bewilderment.
"I am here to reveal the trick that has been played upon you, sir, and
to justify myself as a man of honour," answered Herrick. "I stole no
heiress when I took this dear girl from beneath your roof. I counselled
no disobedience to a father when I urged her to fly with me. I
speculated upon no future fortune, hoped nothing from your relenting
bounty. The girl I loved was a nameless waif who for thirteen years has
been imposed upon you as a daughter, and who loves you and reverences
you as truly as if she were indeed your child."
"Not my daughter?" muttered the Squire; "not my daughter? It is a foul
lie--a lie hatched by you, sir, to cozen and torment me--an outrageous,
obvious, shallow, impudent lie!"
"Should I invent a lie which deprives my wife of any claim to your
wealth? However indifferent I may be to riches, I am too much a man of
the world to so wantonly sacrifice my wife's prospects."
"Upon what grounds?" cried Bosworth. "What proof?" And then suddenly
gripping Irene by the arm, "Unfasten your bodice, girl. Let me see your
right shoulder."
He almost tore the upper part of the bodice from the fair and dimpled
shoulder in his furious impatience, and there at the top of the arm was
revealed a deep cicatrice, the scar of a wound healed long ago.
"Out of my sight, you beggar's brat!" he cried huskily. "Yes, I have
been tricked, deluded, cozened damnably. But by whom? There could be
only two concerned in it. Bridget and that other one--that she-devil.
Follow me, both of you. We'll have it out! We'll have it out!"
He dashed out of the room and along the corridor with the rapid
movements of a madman, and they followed him to Mrs. Layburne's room.
She who had once been the delight of crowded playhouses, the admired of
bucks and wits in the days of the Godolphin ministry, now presented the
saddest spectacle of hopeless decay.
She lay on a sofa beside a pinched and poverty-stricken fire, burning
dully in one of those iron grates by means of which our forefathers
contrived to keep themselves cold while they were mocked by the
semblance and abstract idea of heat. A small table with a basin that had
held broth, and two or three medicine bottles, stood near her. Her gaunt
and wasted form was clad in a dingy printed calico dressing-gown, over
which her white hair fell in neglect and abandonment. Her eyes--once the
stars of a playhouse--now looked unnaturally large in her pinched and
shrunken countenance--unnaturally bright, too, with the lustre of
disease; while on each hollow cheek there burned a hectic spot, which
made the sickly pallor of the skin only the more livid by contrast.
She looked up with a startled air when the Squire burst into her room,
followed immediately by Herrick and Irene. She struggled into a sitting
position, and sat trembling, either with the effort of shifting her
attitude, or with the agitation caused by this strange intrusion.
"Do you see this girl?" demanded Bosworth, thrusting Irene in front of
him. "Do you see her, woman?"
"Ay, sir, I see her well enough. My sight is not yet so dim but I can
recognise a familiar face."
"Who and what is she?"
"Your daughter; your disobedient rebellious daughter, whom you were
howling about yesterday, and whom you welcome home to-day."
"She is not my daughter, and you know it. She is a pauper's nameless
brat, foisted upon me by you, by you, she-devil, so that you might be
able to twit and laugh at me, to revel in the sight of my discomfiture,
before you sink into the grave. _This_ was your vengeance upon me, was
it--your vengeance upon me for not having been more your victim than I
was, though God knows I paid dear enough for my folly! _This_ is what
your innuendoes and mysterious speeches of yesterday hinted at, though I
was too dull to understand them."
"What makes you think she is less than your daughter?" asked Mrs.
Layburne, with a mocking smile, a smile that seemed to gloat over the
Squire's agony of rage.
"What?--this," pointing to the naked shoulder, from which kerchief and
bodice had been so rudely wrenched away. "This scar, which _you_ pointed
out to me when first this beggar-brat was brought into my house. 'You
may always know her by that mark,' you said: ''twill last her
lifetime.' And I forgot all about the mark, and loved the impostor that
was foisted upon me, and believed in her, and toiled for her, and
schemed for her as my very daughter. It flashed upon me all at once--the
memory of that scar, and your words and voice as you showed it--just
now, when her husband yonder told me what his wife is; and I knew in a
moment that I had been duped. Why did you do this thing, Barbara?"
"Why? To be even with you, as I told you I would be--ay, swore it by my
mother's grave, when you forsook me to marry a fine lady. I told you I
would have my revenge, and I have lived to enjoy it. Mr. Durnford has
only anticipated my confession. I should have told you everything upon
my death-bed. I have feasted upon the bare thought of that parting hour,
when you should learn how your discarded mistress had tricked you."
"Devil!" muttered Bosworth. "What had you to gain by such an infamy?"
"Everything! Revenge! 'the most luscious morsel that the devil puts into
the sinner's mouth.' That is what the Preacher says of it. I have tasted
that sweet morsel, chewed and mumbled it many a time by anticipation, as
I have sat by this desolate hearth. It has been sweeter to me than the
applause of the playhouse, the lights, the music, the flattery, the
jewels, and savoury suppers, and wines, and rioting. I have watched your
growing love for another man's child, while your own, your _wife's_
child, lay mouldering in her grave. I have seen you gloating over your
schemes for a spurious daughter's aggrandisement--heard you praise her
beauty and boast of her likeness to your ancestors. Poor fool, poor
fool! To think that a man of the world, a speculator of 'Change Alley,
could be so easily hoodwinked!"
"When was the change made?" asked Bosworth, ringing the bell furiously.
"Bridget must have been concerned in it. I will prosecute you both for
felony."
"Prosecute a dying woman! fie for shame, Squire! Where is your
humanity?"
"I would drag you from your death-bed to a gaol if the law would let me.
Whatever I can do I will; be sure of that, Jezebel."
"Is it come to Jezebel? I was your Helen once, your Cleopatra, the
sovereign beauty of the world."
"Ay, 'tis a quick transmutation which such cattle as you make--from your
dupe's brief vision of beauty and love to the hag that will turn and
rend him. Where is Bridget?" (to the servant who answered the bell;)
"bring her to me this instant."
"I think I had best take my wife from the reach of your violence, sir,
now that I have convinced you that I did you no wrong in marrying her,"
said Durnford, with his arm round Irene, as if to shelter her in this
moral tempest, this confusion and upheaval of all the baser elements in
human nature.
"Take her away. Yes, remove her from my sight at once and for ever. Let
me forget how I have loved her, that I may less deeply loathe her."
"Father," cried Irene piteously, holding out her arms to him, "do not
forget that you have loved me, and that I have returned your love
measure for measure. Is there no tie but that of blood? I have been
brought up under your roof, and you have been kind to me, and I am sure
I love you as much as daughters love their fathers. If you scorn me, do
not scorn my love."
"You poor beggar's brat," muttered the Squire contemptuously, yet with a
relenting look at the pale pathetic face, "you are the lightest sinner
of them all, perhaps. But to have been cheated--to have taken a
vagabond's spawn to my breast--"
"She is no vagabond's child, but of as gentle blood on the father's side
as your own. She comes of a good old Hampshire family--as old as William
the Norman. Her father was Philip Chumleigh, the son of a younger son, a
gentleman born and bred."
"I thought as much when I saw him dead and stark upon Flamestead
Common," said the Squire. "So-ho, mistress," to Bridget, who came in
with a cowed air, and guilt written in every feature; "you were in the
conspiracy to cheat your master with a supposititious child; but I'd
have you to know that you were accomplice in a felony, for which you
shall swing higher than Jack Sheppard, if there's justice in this land."
"O sir, is it hanging?" exclaimed the nurse, "and I as innocent as the
unborn babe. Never would such a thought have come into my head, to put
another into my darling's place; but she made me do it, and I was half
distracted--loving them both so well--so full of sorrow for the little
angel that was gone, and of tenderness for her that was left, and
she--Mrs. Layburne--threatened me she would say 'twas by my neglect my
precious treasure died, though God knows I neglected nothing, and
watched day and night. But I was scarcely in my right senses; so I gave
way, and held my tongue, and once done it was done for ever--there was
no going back upon it. And when I saw your honour so fond of my pretty
one, and she growing nearer and dearer to you every day, I thought it
was well as it was. You had something to love."
"Something, but not of my own blood--something that had no right to my
affection, an impostor, an alien, a sham, a cheat, a mockery. You had
better have poisoned me, woman. It would have been a kinder thing to
do."
"It was her doing," sobbed Bridget, pointing to Mrs. Layburne, who
listened and looked on with a ghastly smile, the exultation of a fiend
doomed to everlasting torment, and rejoicing in the agony of another.
"'Twas all her doing, and I knew it was a sin, and have been troubled
with the thought of it ever since; yes, I have never known real peace
and comfort since I did her bidding. But she told me 'twas a good thing
to do; your heart was so set on the child that it would all but kill you
to lose her, and one child was equal to another in the sight of God, and
the one that was left would grow up to be a blessing to you, did you but
think she was your daughter; and so I yielded, and let her lie to you.
But, O sir, as you are a Christian, do not punish that innocent lamb for
our sin. Do not take your love from her."
"It is gone," cried the Squire. "She has become hateful to me."
"She shall trouble you no more, sir," said Irene, with a quiet dignity,
which moved her husband almost to tears. "I am very sorry that you
should have been cheated, but you must at least own that I have been an
innocent impostor. You have been very good to me, sir, and I have loved
you as a father should be loved, and though you may hate me, my heart
cannot turn so quickly. It cleaves to you still, sir. Good-bye."
She dropped on her knee again and kissed his reluctant hand, then put
her hand in her husband's, and glided from the room with him, Mdlle.
Latour following.
"We had best go back to London in the coach that brought us," said
Herrick. "Will you come with us, Mademoiselle, or will you follow us
later?"
"I will follow in a day or two," answered the little Frenchwoman. "It
would seem like sneaking away to go to-day. I will wait till the tempest
is lulled. I am really sorry for that poor man, savage as he is in his
chagrin and disappointment; I will see the end of it. That woman is a
devil."
"Can you forgive me, Rena, for having sprung this surprise upon you?"
asked Herrick, drawing his young wife to his breast, and kissing away
her tears. "Or do I seem to have been cruel? I feared your courage might
fail if I told you what was coming: and I wanted to have you face to
face with your sham father and that wicked witch yonder. I was prepared
for her denial of the facts."
"How did you make this discovery, Herrick?"
"That is a long story, dearest. You shall know all about it by and by.
And now, dear love, you are my very own. No tyrannical father can come
between my orphan wife and me. We stand each alone, love, and all in all
to each other."
"I am content to be yours and yours only," she said, looking up at him
with adoring eyes. "But I hope my--I hope Mr. Bosworth will forgive me
some day."
"Be sure he will, my pet, and that he loves you dearly at this moment,
though he roars and blusters about hatred. All will come well, dearest,
in the end."
"And you have married a pauper, after all," said Irene.
"I have married the girl I love, and that is enough for me," answered
Herrick. "But it is not so clear to me but that I have married a fortune
into the bargain. Wait and see, love; the end has not come yet. And now
settle your hood and wrap your cloak round you, and we are off again for
London."
And thus, clinging to her husband's arm, she who had so long been called
Irene Bosworth left the home that had seemed her birthplace. It had been
a solitary joyless life which she had lived there, for the most part,
yet she looked back at the old panelled hall with a sigh of regret, the
instinctive yearning of an affectionate nature.
"We are as unfettered as our first parents, Irene, and the world is
before us," said Herrick gaily, as he lifted her into the coach. "Back
to Kingston, my men," to the postillions. "We will stay at the inn there
to-night, and go on to London to-morrow morning."
* * * * *
"Go," said the Squire to Bridget, when the door had closed upon his
sometime daughter; "go about your business, woman, and consider
yourself lucky if I do not send you to gaol."
"You had better think twice of that, Squire," said Mrs. Layburne. "To
have this business out before a magistrate might lead to the asking of
strange questions."
"Do you think _I_ care what questions they ask?" cried Bosworth
scornfully. "Do you suppose I am such an arrant cur as to quail before
my fellow-worms because I have lived my own life, crawled upon this
earth after my _own_ fashion, and not wriggled in _their_ particular
mode? No, Barbara Layburne, if I have been a profligate, I have at least
been a bold sinner, and I have never feared the face of a man. Were not
the grip of death upon you, madam, _you_ should answer to the law for
the trick you have played me."
"What if it was an accident?" asked Barbara; "both the children were so
reduced by sickness out of their own likeness, that one might easily
mistake one for another."
"You could not. 'Twas you called my attention to the scar upon the
baby's arm when she was but an hour in this house."
"Ay, I remember. I bade you mark it well. I had it in my mind even then
to ring the changes on you--to cheat you out of a daughter--you who had
cheated me out of name and honour, the world's respect, and a good
husband--for I might have made a good match, were it not that I was a
slave to my passion for you. When I came into this house and met only
scorn and ignominy, I resolved to be quits with you. I have lain awake
many a night trying to hit upon the way; but the devil himself would not
help me to a plan till you brought that beggar's brat into the house.
Then in a moment I saw the chance of being even with you. I knew how you
prided yourself on your ancient race, how you heaped up riches, caring
not as other men care for the things that gold can buy: only caring for
wealth as misers care for it, to heap moneybags upon moneybags. I knew
you had made your scheme of leaving a vast fortune, as Marlborough did
t'other day, marrying your child to a great nobleman, leaving your name
among the mighty ones of the land. I knew this, for though you were
rarely civil to me, you could not help confiding in me; 'twas an old
habit that remained to you from the days when we were lovers. I knew
this, and I meant to drag your pride in the dust; and so, as the whole
scheme flashed upon me, I bade you note the cicatrice on the baby's arm,
so that when my hour came you should see the sign-manual of the lie that
had been foisted on you. Your son-in-law has anticipated me by a short
time--that is all. My play is played out."
"You are a devil!" muttered Bosworth, walking towards the door.
"I am as God made me--a woman who could love, and who can hate."