A clever old lady, possessed of the inestimable advantages of worldly
experience, must submit nevertheless to the laws of Nature. Time and
Sleep together--powerful agents in the small hours of the morning--had
got the better of Mrs. Presty’s resolution to keep awake. Free from
discovery, Sydney ascended the stairs. Free from discovery, Sydney
entered her own room.
Half-an-hour later, Linley opened the door of his dressing-room. His
wife was still sleeping. His mother-in-law woke two hours later; looked
at her watch; and discovered that she had lost her opportunity. Other
old women, under similar circumstances, might have felt discouraged.
This old woman believed in her own suspicions more devoutly than ever.
When the breakfast-bell rang, Sydney found Mrs. Presty in the corridor,
waiting to say good morning.
“I wonder what you were doing last night, when you ought to have been in
bed?” the old lady began, with a treacherous amiability of manner. “Oh,
I am not mistaken! your door was open, my dear, and I looked in.”
“Why did you look in, Mrs. Presty?”
“My young friend, I was naturally anxious about you. I am anxious still.
Were you in the house? or out of the house?”
“I was walking in the garden,” Sydney replied.
“Admiring the moonlight?”
“Yes; admiring the moonlight.”
“Alone, of course?” Sydney’s friend suggested.
And Sydney took refuge in prevarication. “Why should you doubt it?” she
said.
Mrs. Presty wasted no more time in asking questions. She was pleasantly
reminded of the words of worldly wisdom which she had addressed to
her daughter on the day of Sydney’s arrival at Mount Morven. “The good
qualities of that unfortunate young creature” (she had said) “can _not_
have always resisted the horrid temptations and contaminations about
her. Hundreds of times she must have lied through ungovernable fear.”
Elevated a little higher than ever in her own estimation, Mrs.
Presty took Sydney’s arm, and led her down to breakfast with
motherly familiarity. Linley met them at the foot of the stairs. His
mother-in-law first stole a look at Sydney, and then shook hands with
him cordially. “My dear Herbert, how pale you are! That horrid smoking.
You look as if you had been up all night.”
Mrs. Linley paid her customary visit to the schoolroom that morning.
The necessary attention to her guests had left little leisure for the
exercise of observation at the breakfast-table; the one circumstance
which had forced itself on her notice had been the boisterous gayety of
her husband. Too essentially honest to practice deception of any kind
cleverly, Linley had overacted the part of a man whose mind was entirely
at ease. The most unsuspicious woman living, his wife was simply amused
“How he does enjoy society!” she thought. “Herbert will be a young man
to the end of his life.”
In the best possible spirits--still animated by her successful exertions
to entertain her friends--Mrs. Linley opened the schoolroom door
briskly. “How are the lessons getting on?” she began--and checked
herself with a start, “Kitty!” she exclaimed, “Crying?”
The child ran to her mother with tears in her eyes. “Look at Syd! She
sulks; she cries; she won’t talk to me--send for the doctor.”
“You tiresome child, I don’t want the doctor. I’m not ill.”
“There, mamma!” cried Kitty. “She never scolded me before to-day.”
In other words, here was a complete reversal of the usual order of
things in the schoolroom. Patient Sydney was out of temper; gentle
Sydney spoke bitterly to the little friend whom she loved. Mrs. Linley
drew a chair to the governess’s side, and took her hand. The strangely
altered girl tore her hand away and burst into a violent fit of crying.
Puzzled and frightened, Kitty (to the best of a child’s ability)
followed her example. Mrs. Linley took her daughter on her knee, and
gave Sydney’s outbreak of agitation time to subside. There were no
feverish appearances in her face, there was no feverish heat in her skin
when their hands had touched each other for a moment. In all probability
the mischief was nervous mischief, and the outburst of weeping was an
hysterical effort at relief.
“I am afraid, my dear, you have had a bad night,” Mrs. Linley said.
“Bad? Worse than bad!”
Sydney stopped; looked at her good mistress and friend in terror;
and made a confused effort to explain away what she had just said. As
sensibly and kindly self-possessed as ever, Mrs. Linley told her that
she only wanted rest and quiet. “Let me take you to my room,” she
proposed. “We will have the sofa moved into the balcony, and you will
soon go to sleep in the delicious warm air. You may put away your books,
Kitty; this is a holiday. Come with me, and be petted and spoiled by the
ladies in the morning-room.”
Neither the governess nor the pupil was worthy of the sympathy
so frankly offered to them. Still strangely confused, Sydney made
commonplace apologies and asked leave to go out and walk in the park.
Hearing this, Kitty declared that where her governess went she would go
too. Mrs. Linley smoothed her daughter’s pretty auburn hair, and said,
playfully: “I think I ought to be jealous.” To her surprise, Sydney
looked up as if the words had been addressed to herself “You mustn’t be
fonder, my dear, of your governess,” Mrs. Linley went on, “than you are
of your mother.” She kissed the child, and, rising to go, discovered
that Sydney had moved to another part of the room. She was standing
at the piano, with a page of music in her hand. The page was upside
down--and she had placed herself in a position which concealed her face.
Slow as Mrs. Linley was to doubt any person (more especially a person
who interested her), she left the room with a vague fear of something
wrong, and with a conviction that she would do well to consult her
husband.
Hearing the door close, Sydney looked round. She and Kitty were alone
again; and Kitty was putting away her books without showing any pleasure
at the prospect of a holiday.
Sydney took the child fondly in her arms. “Would you be very sorry,”
she asked, “if I was obliged to go away, some day, and leave you?”
Kitty turned pale with terror at the dreadful prospect which those words
presented. “There! there! I am only joking,” Sydney said, shocked at
the effect which her attempt to suggest the impending separation had
produced. “You shall come with me, darling; we will walk in the park
together.”
Kitty’s face brightened directly. She proposed extending their walk
to the paddock, and feeding the cows. Sydney readily consented. Any
amusement was welcome to her which diverted the child’s attention from
herself.
They had been nearly an hour in the park, and were returning to the
house through a clump of trees, when Sydney’s companion, running on
before her, cried: “Here’s papa!” Her first impulse was to draw back
behind a tree, in the hope of escaping notice. Linley sent Kitty away to
gather a nosegay of daisies, and joined Sydney under the trees.
“I have been looking for you everywhere,” he said. “My wife--”
Sydney interrupted him. “Discovered!” she exclaimed.
“There is nothing that need alarm you,” he replied. “Catherine is too
good and too true herself to suspect others easily. She sees a change in
you that she doesn’t understand--she asks if I have noticed it--and that
is all. But her mother has the cunning of the devil. There is a serious
reason for controlling yourself.”
He spoke so earnestly that he startled her. “Are you angry with me?” she
asked.
“Angry! Does the man live who could be angry with you?”
“It might be better for both of us if you _were_ angry with me. I have
to control myself; I will try again. Oh, if you only knew what I suffer
when Mrs. Linley is kind to me!”
He persisted in trying to rouse her to a sense of the danger that
threatened them, while the visitors remained in the house. “In a few
days, Sydney, there will be no more need for the deceit that is now
forced on us. Till that time comes, remember--Mrs. Presty suspects us.”
Kitty ran back to them with her hands full of daisies before they could
say more.
“There is your nosegay, papa. No; I don’t want you to thank me--I want
to know what present you are going to give me.” Her father’s mind was
preoccupied; he looked at her absently. The child’s sense of her own
importance was wounded: she appealed to her governess. “Would you
believe it?” she asked. “Papa has forgotten that next Tuesday is my
birthday!”
“Very well, Kitty; I must pay the penalty of forgetting. What present
would you like to have?”
“I want a doll’s perambulator.”
“Ha! In my time we were satisfied with a doll.”
They all three looked round. Another person had suddenly joined in the
talk. There was no mistaking the person’s voice: Mrs. Presty appeared
among the trees, taking a walk in the park. Had she heard what Linley
and the governess had said to each other while Kitty was gathering
daisies?
“Quite a domestic scene!” the sly old lady remarked. “Papa, looking like
a saint in a picture, with flowers in his hand. Papa’s spoiled child
always wanting something, and always getting it. And papa’s governess,
so sweetly fresh and pretty that I should certainly fall in love with
her, if I had the advantage of being a man. You have no doubt remarked
Herbert--I think I hear the bell; shall we go to lunch?--you have no
doubt, I say, remarked what curiously opposite styles Catherine and Miss
Westerfield present; so charming, and yet such complete contrasts. I
wonder whether they occasionally envy each other’s good looks? Does my
daughter ever regret that she is not Miss Westerfield? And do you, my
dear, some times wish you were Mrs. Linley?”
“While we are about it, let me put a third question,” Linley interposed.
“Are you ever aware of it yourself, Mrs. Presty, when you are talking
nonsense?”
He was angry, and he showed it in that feeble reply. Sydney felt the
implied insult offered to her in another way. It roused her to the
exercise of self-control as nothing had roused her yet. She ignored Mrs.
Presty’s irony with a composure worthy of Mrs. Presty herself. “Where is
the woman,” she said, “who would _not_ wish to be as beautiful as Mrs.
Linley--and as good?”
“Thank you, my dear, for a compliment to my daughter: a sincere
compliment, no doubt. It comes in very neatly and nicely,” Mrs. Presty
acknowledged, “after my son-in-law’s little outbreak of temper. My
poor Herbert, when will you understand that I mean no harm? I am an
essentially humorous person; my wonderful spirits are always carrying me
away. I do assure you, Miss Westerfield, I don’t know what worry is. My
troubles--deaths in the family, and that sort of thing--seem to slip off
me in a most remarkable manner. Poor Mr. Norman used to attribute it to
my excellent digestion. My second husband would never hear of such an
explanation as that. His high ideal of women shrank from allusions to
stomachs. He used to speak so nicely (quoting some poet) of the sunshine
of my breast. Vague, perhaps,” said Mrs. Presty, modestly looking down
at the ample prospect of a personal nature which presented itself below
her throat, “but so flattering to one’s feelings. There’s the luncheon
bell again, I declare! I’ll run on before and tell them you are coming.
Some people might say they wished to be punctual. I am truth itself,
and I own I don’t like to be helped to the underside of the fish. _Au
revoir!_ Do you remember, Miss Westerfield, when I asked you to repeat
_au revoir_ as a specimen of your French? I didn’t think much of your
accent. Oh, dear me, I didn’t think much of your accent!”
Kitty looked after her affluent grandmother with eyes that stared
respectfully in ignorant admiration. She pulled her father’s coat-tail,
and addressed herself gravely to his private ear. “Oh, papa, what noble
words grandmamma has!”