MRS. BARLOWE.
“Miss Kingscote,” said Lady Bell, very soberly and sadly, the next time
that she sat netting a cherry net by the firelight, while her companion
was dozing at her side. Neither of them had to fear interruption, since
Master Charles was gone for that day and the next, to be present at an
inspection of the county fencibles.
“What is your will, miss?” returned Miss Kingscote curtly, not
propitiated by having her sleep broken in upon.
“I have to say to you, that I shall take it as a favour if you will call
me Mrs. Barlowe in future. Indeed, madam, I have, and had long before I
came here, a right to the superior title, which I take blame to myself
for not having confided to you. But I am one of those unfortunate
creatures who, with such a ring as this”—and Lady Bell held up the third
finger of her left hand, on which she had resumed the wearing of her
marriage ring—“have wed slavery and desolation, instead of honour and
bounty.”
Miss Kingscote had been still in sheer wonder and consternation far
greater than those with which she herself had lately filled Lady Bell.
“Lord ha’ mercy! You don’t go for to say it,” she exclaimed at last,
“that you are a lost woman already, and you a mere chit of a girl? Why
did Madam Siddons take me in vilely?—though it might have been looked
for from a play-actress. What company for Master Charles to have been
tricked into!”
Lady Bell sprang to her feet.
“Miss Kingscote, you are not thinking of what you are saying, else you
would not dare to speak—you would not have the heart to speak such cruel
words; yes, they are cruel, cruel,” she cried again, and sobbed in her
pain and distress. “Have you no pity on a poor girl’s misery, which she
was confiding to you solely to re-assure you and guard you against a
foolish fancy which was troubling your peace? You have been poor
yourself, and put upon by a wicked uncle, as you’ve often told me, and I
thought you were good-natured and kind-hearted, but you are as bad to me
as the rest. I am as good a woman as you are, Miss Kingscote. I defy my
worst enemy to prove me otherwise. I shall rid you of my presence this
very night. Yes, I shall sooner face the howling, dark night, and go on
foot to Lumley, weak girl that I am, than stay and receive another
hour’s shelter from a woman who suspects me of being the basest of my
kind.”
“Hoity-toity,” muttered Miss Kingscote, fanning herself, in her
agitation, with a bunch of peacock’s feathers, which she had snatched
from the chimney-piece.
“But I must free Mrs. Siddons from your aspersions,” said Lady Bell more
calmly, “she knew nothing of what I have told you, madam; she never
sought to know. Her natural nobility and candour believed in me and
trusted in me from the moment that we chanced to travel together. That
was the beginning and end of our acquaintance.”
“Ay, like draws to like,” commented Miss Kingscote, with a smothered
groan, for she was cowardly as well as slow, and Lady Bell’s combined
volubility and fire swept away and consumed Miss Kingscote’s halting
indignation.
“I can guess,” continued Lady Bell, paying no heed to the interruption,
“that she told you as much—that she had not been acquainted with my
friends; that she had taken me on credit, and had not been disappointed
in me, an orphan striving to earn her bread.”
Lady Bell had raged on without interruption, till the flame was spent.
“What’s all this to do, miss?” questioned Miss Kingscote. “Do you expect
me to be mightily pleased with your queer story? Bless the girl! even if
it were true, it wants looking into, that it do; wait till Master
Charles comes back.”
In reality Miss Kingscote’s forces were already beginning to hang fire.
Her dense stupidity and softness of temper, however goaded, were not
equal to the occasion.
“If it were true!” flounced and fumed the young delinquent, who was not
brought to contriteness just then, “when did I lie to you? As for Master
Charles,” Lady Bell stamped her small foot, “how dare you bring a modest
and honourable young gentleman, so far as I know him, into such a
discussion?”
“Lud! lud!” Miss Kingscote rose and retreated, perfectly in earnest in
her alarm, “you mun be in a frenzy, girl, you’ll fright me clean out of
my wits, though the maids are in the kitchen; what would you have me to
say or do? I never thought you were such a right-down vixen, or I
wouldn’t have had the pluck to live with you so long.”
“I am not a vixen, Miss Kingscote,” denied Lady Bell, beginning to laugh
excitedly, as she caught a glimpse of the absurdity of the altercation.
“I’m only a poor oppressed soul, as I told you, to whom no one will
afford a harbour, who must seek one in the grave,” and overcome by her
own hyperbole, which she fully believed at the moment, Lady Bell sank
down, sighing and moaning over her forlorn youth.
“Oh, deary me!” lamented poor Miss Kingscote in turn, “them dismals are
worser than tantrums; sure, child, you may have a harbour for me, though
you do be a married woman. I have no dislike to married women, though I
beant matched myself. When I come to think of it,” added Miss Kingscote,
recollecting herself, and speaking with reviving spirit, “them’s the
best news, if so be they’re right square, which I’ve heard for many a
day; your good man beant dead, be he now?” she inquired, insinuatingly.
“No, madam; and though he has been no good man to me, I dare not, as I
am a sinner, wish him sent to his account,” said Lady Bell wearily.
“No! The Lord be thanked he is to the fore,” commented Miss Kingscote
devoutly, “and I ask your pardon, miss—madam, if I spoke like a
crosspatch when you went to break your marriage to me. It struck me all
of a heap, and put me in such a stew, my heart do go pit-a-pat still.
But when I’ve got over it, I should not wonder though you and me were
better friends than ever.” Miss Kingscote ended by smirking and nodding.
“I am content,” submitted Lady Bell, sadly. “But, if you please, Miss
Kingscote, we’ll not speak of these unhappy passages in my life. I
cannot give you particulars. I must keep my own counsel, only you had
better call me Mrs. Barlowe, and let Master Charles know why you do so.
He will be tender of my secret. For that matter, I’m not alone; I’m not
the only unhappy wife in England, who has been driven to fight her own
battle to-day.”
“My word, no,” assented Miss Kingscote heartily; “I’ve known women as
were beat within an inch of their lives by their brutes of men, and
women as were left to shift for themselves, while their fine gentlemen
gallanted with other women, and the poor wives were none to blame. What
was I thinking on, Mrs. Barlowe, when I sought to bring home the guilt
to a pretty babe like you? I’ll tell Master Charles with all the
pleasure in life—I mean, I’ll let him know, as it is but fair, to say
the least, and he’ll be main sorry and rare kind to you.”
Lady Bell and Miss Kingscote never supposed that the knowledge which
they had to give, might not be an insurmountable obstacle to stay Master
Charles from wishing to create a closer, warmer friendship between him
and Lady Bell. They never fancied that such knowledge might prove as tow
to the hell-fire of an unlawful passion, let loose to devastate human
nature and social life. What did good women know of unlawful passions
even in a wild age?
Happily Master Charles was, in his way, and for his sex, as innocent and
ignorant as the women. He was somewhat of the stuff of which Blake and
Penn had been made. He had the faults of his day; he could, especially
in his raw youth, ere he had been taught a lesson, and had a discipline
appointed for him, bluster and swagger a little. He was over free in the
drinking and betting, and even the brawling and fighting, which were
then held manly.
But he could neither have dreamt nor wished that Mrs. Barlowe’s unhappy
marriage and its suppression should prove the very accidents which would
put her in his power, and bestow her on him, for their mutual ruin and
misery, and all without much trouble or sacrifice on his part.
He was shocked, incensed, and incredulous when he first heard his
sister’s story. What! that lovely, artless, refined young woman a wife
without the name!—in all probability deluded into some clandestine
connection with a miscreant who had abandoned her! At least she was
living apart from her husband, and had so far disowned her marriage in
taking service with strangers. He demanded that he should hear the story
from Miss Barlowe’s own lips; he would not believe it otherwise.
It was a trial for Master Charles even to hint at such a slander to Miss
Barlowe, but he brought himself to do it.
He followed Lady Bell as she carried out the crumbs from the
breakfast-table to feed the birds in the orchard. “You will forgive me
for evening you to such a thing,” he said, agitated and constrained on
his own account, and ready to explode with resentment on hers, should
the story prove false, as how could it be true?
Yet he was troubled and disturbed in spite of himself by her changing
colour, and though she did not refuse to meet his searching glances, by
the wistful sorrowful look with which she bespoke his forbearance and
charity.
“It must be a mistake, Miss Barlowe,” he urged. “Can it be that you
are—a wedded woman, wedded to some wretch who disowns or abuses his
vows?”
“Yes, sir, I was wed six months ago,” answered Lady Bell faintly,
hanging her head as she spoke. “I was wed against my will, yet I
consented at last, and I must abide by my consent. Do you condemn me,
Master Charles?”
“I, madam? I have no right either to question or condemn,” pronounced
the young man a little stiffly, and very gravely. “I pity you from my
soul, and, as I am a gentleman, you may depend upon your sorrows being
sacred to me.”
He spoke the truth. More than that, the pang inflicted by the
communication acted as a process of disillusion on him. The deception of
which Lady Bell stood convicted upon her own showing, the new character
in which she appeared, robbed him of his faith in her, nipped in the bud
the love which was born of single-hearted homage, and cured him by a
sharp cure of his brief passion.
The spell of Lady Bell’s attractions was broken for Master Charles. She
could no longer shine in his eyes as a bright particular star. For a
time after her confession he avoided her, and was restless, cross, and
unhappy in his mind, pining more than ever for his colours and his
marching day.
But Master Charles’s healthy nature reasserted itself speedily,—the more
speedily that his pursuit of Miss Barlowe had still been full of the
idealism of an uncorrupted youthful manhood, of a dreamy delight in the
present, and a vague grasp of the future. First he returned with renewed
zest to his old interests and occupations. Then he gradually wore back
to the original friendly footing, free now from all uncertainty and
double meaning, on which he had been with Lady Bell.
She witnessed the change, and was a little mystified, a little
mortified; but being true to herself and him, she was easily reconciled
to it. She was not a budding coquette. She was not naturally weak,
though girlishly weak. She had been more sinned against than sinning.
She had not forgotten Lady Lucie’s lessons of religion and virtue,
however she had swerved from them; and that remembrance, even in the
middle of perversity and shortsightedness, with grace given her,
prevented her from falling. But she had even been saved from the
temptation of loving her young squire, so that she could afford to be
thankful that he had soon ceased to love her, and was willing to be no
more than her friend.