Leo Swinford had been during all these proceedings haunted with a sense
of a visitor about the house, whose comings and goings were kept secret
from him. Those who were concerned were much too clever to permit this
to be known or suspected by the risks of absolute meeting, by sudden
withdrawal into corners, whisking past of clandestine shadows in the
dark. It was not that he ever met Mrs. Brown on the stairs or in the
hall, or just missed meeting her, as is generally the case under such
circumstances. She had, as has been said, an entrance kept for herself,
which opened upon the back part of the house, where there was a thick
shrubbery, and where it would have been as impossible to find a fugitive
in the dark as to find the proverbial needle in a bottle of hay. And
Artémise was far too deeply learned in all the lore of evasion to be
caught within the house. Nevertheless, he was well aware that the place
was haunted by a personality very, perhaps unjustly, disagreeable to
him, and with which he associated all those vague suspicions and
troubles which haunt the mind of a child brought up among family secrets
and discoveries. He had been accustomed all his life to this
uncomfortable sense of some one about who was not seen, who had
presumably unacknowledged errands of mischief-making, and whose
presence, whose very existence, was inimical to family peace. That Leo’s
thoughts went a great deal too far, and that this curious secret agent
and confidante exercised, in fact, no evil influence, but had in many
cases held the side of honour and justice, was a fact that Leo was not
only quite unaware of, but totally incapable of believing in. It had
always been, indeed, a sort of consolation when there was anything
equivocal in Mrs. Swinford’s proceedings, to be able to think that it
was not his mother who was to blame, but that wretched Artémise. Leo’s
father, so long as he lived, had laid that flattering unction to his
soul, and during his lifetime the appearance of Artémise had always
been the occasion of domestic trouble. It was natural that Leo in his
youth should have had no such right or reason to object or interfere;
and he had not even been of his father’s faction in the house until that
father was dead, and a natural compunction towards a man not happy in
his life nor lamented in his death, awoke his sense of reason, and of
right and wrong in this matter. But he had always had an instinctive
dislike to Artémise. She had teased and sneered at him as a child, which
is a recollection seldom altogether forgotten, and she was his mother’s
evil genius in life--or so it gave him a certain relief to believe.
The commission given him by Lady William to find this woman, so strange
and incomprehensible a commission, and which was not explained in any
way, roused all the indefinite feelings of disgust, and a kind of
despair which had filled his mind from the moment of her reappearance
(after a long interval, in which he had been of opinion that she was
permanently shaken off) in the house. He had expressed to his mother so
distinctly his objection to her presence, that it was difficult for him
to reopen the subject, and still more difficult to suggest, as he was
tempted to do, that since Mrs. Swinford could not live without her, it
would be better on the whole that she should come to live in the house
than haunt it clandestinely. Difficult, however, as these overtures
were, he felt the necessity of making them, as soon as he understood
that the finding of Artémise was necessary to his friend. What would not
he have done to serve her, to please her? The laugh with which she had
turned off his offer of service, the suggestion that such offers
belonged to the regions of fairy tales, had scarcely been necessary to
show Leo how futile, so far as she was concerned, was his devotion. But
this conviction rarely puts an end to devotion, and it must be said that
as there is fashion in all things, it was not disagreeable to Leo’s
fashion of man to entertain a devotion of this kind, however hopeless,
for an older woman, whom it was, in the nature of things, impossible
that he could ever marry. In the nature of things as seen by her, that
is to say, and which he clearly divined. His double breeding as
Frenchman and Englishman did him service in this complication of fate.
As an Englishman he was aware that such relationships as are possible to
a Frenchman’s ideal, without apparently injuring it in his standard of
honour, were here as impossible as that the sky should fall: while as
Frenchman he was not so determined on that strong step of marriage which
seems the foregone conclusion of love in an Englishman’s eyes. He was
willing to be utterly devoted to this lady of dreams who was not for
him, and to ask no more, seeing that more could not be--but that her
wishes should be obeyed and her commissions executed at whatever cost,
was the thing most certain to his mind.
‘Mother,’ he said, on the first occasion when he had the possibility of
an interview, for Mrs. Swinford, after the little controversy over Lord
Will, had exercised her usual caprice, appearing only when she pleased
at the common table, and ‘was not well enough’ to receive even her own
son in her boudoir, ‘you have, I think, a very frequent visitor.’
‘I--have very frequent visitors! Where do I find them? I should be glad
if you would tell me, Leo.’
‘I have no desire to be disagreeable, mother--you have Artémise.’
‘Ah, Artémise! Yes, fate for once has been a little favourable to me. To
keep me from dying of England, and your village, and all the exciting
circumstances of my life. I have Artémise--that is occasionally. You
know that I am not permitted to have her here.’
‘Mother!’ he said; then subduing himself, ‘You are very much attached to
this woman, who has never done anything but harm, so far as I know.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘and what then? Is it not permitted to me to
love as well as to hate? Artémise is the nearest to me in blood of any
one in the world.’
‘You forget your son, it appears.’
‘My son--ah, that is a different matter. Sons have a way of being in
opposition to their mothers. Besides, isn’t there a high authority which
says that a mother is no relation, so to speak--an accident? It is so in
English law.’
‘English law has little to do with you and me, or any law. Mother, if
you prefer this Artémise to every one, why have her pay you visits
clandestinely like----’
‘Like a lover!’ she said, with her tinkling laugh. ‘Well, say she is my
lover and I like it; have it so.’
‘Such a simile is insulting,’ he said. ‘I resent for you that you should
even yourself say it.’
‘Ah, but I do not resent; I like the simile. The thing itself might not
be so impossible. But you are a Puritan, Leo, like your father. I have
tried to prevent it, but one cannot stop the course of nature.
Fortunately, my own constitution is not so.’
He rose in impatience, as was generally the result of these
conversations, and paced the long dining-room from end to end. Then he
returned to where she sat with her back to the fire, which she still
insisted on, though it was now May. He stood half behind her, leaning on
the mantelpiece. It was better, perhaps, than being face to face.
‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is, that if your comfort so depends upon this
woman--whom I don’t pretend to like, as you know; but that does not
matter: if your comfort depends upon her, mother, or if she is some
pleasure to you, it would certainly be better to have her here, living
with you, than skulking to and fro like a----’
‘Lover!’ she said again, with a laugh to madden him. Then she turned
round upon him, as he stood with his head bent regarding the glow of the
fire. ‘I don’t say that you’ve made your offer an insult, Leo, which
would be the truth--but what is the cause of such a change? You have a
motive. Ah! I think I see it!’
He looked up with a more profoundly clouded brow than had ever been seen
in Leo before.
‘What do you see?’ he said.
She laughed again. Any one who has ever listened to the dreadful endless
tinkling of an electric bell at a foreign railway station will
understand how Mrs. Swinford laughed, and how it affected the nerves of
those who listened.
‘Ah! I think I see!’ she repeated.
Perhaps it was because he was used to these _agaceries_ that he bore it
so well. What tempests of impatience were in his heart! He did not move.
He remained as still as if he had been made in bronze, leaning against
the mantelpiece till the laugh ceased. Then he said coldly:
‘I have expressed myself willing to give up what may be my own prejudice
on your account, mother. I think it would be more dignified, more fit
and becoming for you that your visitor did not come by stealth. What
motive you credit me with I can’t tell. If you do not think fit to adopt
my suggestion, so be it; but at least let her come openly, not by
stealth.’
The tinkling began again with that supreme power of exasperation, and
she said amid her laughing, every word coming tinkling out:
‘That you may have her at hand and within reach when she is wanted, eh?
I divine you, my Leo. What is becoming for the mother who is so little
capable of understanding that for herself, is a beautiful pretext--what
is convenient for some one else----’
‘Who is the person,’ he said, suddenly lifting his eyes, ‘to whom it
will be so convenient to know where this woman is?’ He did not shrink
or show any consciousness as he thus carried the war into the enemy’s
country. Leo, after all, was a man of the world, and his mother’s son.
‘Ah!’ she cried, stopping in her laugh, which was always a gain. ‘I
congratulate you, my son, upon your _aplomb_. But don’t you know you
take away all grace from your offer, if there were any in it, when you
say _this woman_? How dare you speak of your mother’s dear friend and
relation as _this woman_? It is an affront I will not bear.’
‘Mother, this is a subterfuge,’ said Leo indignantly.
‘And is not your proposal a subterfuge? Understand that I will manage
things in my own way, Leo. Artémise shall come to me how she and I
please. She shall stay with me if I wish it, and she consents to it, as
would have been the case whatever you had felt on the subject. I am not
here, you understand, as your housekeeper,’ she laughed scornfully, ‘or
your dependent; I am, while I am here, the mistress of the house: and
shall invite whom I please. If you think your order to shut her out
affected me, any more than your order to admit her does now--I think we
have said enough on this subject. You can give me your arm upstairs.’
She held out her arm, imperiously rising from the table, and Leo obeyed.
They presented a group full of natural grace, as he led her carefully
upstairs, subduing his steps to hers. She, wonderful in all her laces
and draperies, a _marquise_, a lady of the old _régime_, exacting every
sign of devotion; he, not made of velvet or brocade, as her cavalier
ought to have been, but in the spare and reserved costume of modern
days, with a manner very grave, very self-controlled, full of care, and
attention, and duty. There was nothing in it of that pretty gallantry,
so charming from a son to a mother, of which Leo for years of his life
had been an example, but a serious care of guidance and protection,
which was as different as night from day. They went upstairs thus, she
leaning all her weight upon him, he careful above measure to keep her
foot from stumbling even upon her own too ample skirts. When he had
placed her in her favourite chair, and seen that she had everything she
liked near her, he stood gravely by her side.
‘Is this your last word, mother?’ he said.
‘It is quite my last word. Should Artémise come here, I shall expect you
to be civil to her. Should she not come, you will be careful to let her
alone.’
‘I must act in that matter according to my own judgment,’ he said.
He could hear the tinkle of the laugh as he went away. That laugh!--it
had been compared to silver bells _dans les temps_. It was not that now,
but an electric jar or vibration that got on the nerves. Mrs. Swinford’s
son did not think of this, or feel any pity for the woman who had
descended thus from the poetic state of compliment and adulation. Sons,
perhaps, rarely consider that downfall with any sympathy. And Leo was
too angry to make any sentiment possible for the moment. He was all the
more angry because of his own undisclosed motive, which his mother had
been so quick to discover. Had he been quite single-minded, desiring
only his mother’s comfort and honour, things might perhaps have gone
better; but he was not single-minded. And now the question was, not how
to justify his mother, but to discover for Lady William the woman she
wanted--to secure her, wherever she was, and whatever might be the
motive for which she was sought. He did not very clearly know what that
was, nor was he sure as to the previous connection of Artémise with Lady
William’s history. But his mother’s revelations to Lord Will had helped
the vague recollections in his own mind, and he divined something of her
possible importance--importance most probably (he thought) more fancied
than real, for it would be in the nature of a woman to give weight to a
personal witness of the marriage, above all papers and records.
Importance or not, however, real or fancied as might be the need of her,
it was enough that Lady William wanted her to make Leo’s action certain.
She must be found, he said to himself, as he went downstairs.
He questioned Morris that evening carelessly: ‘Do you remember a lady,
Morris, who came here one evening in the dusk? A lady--who insisted on
disturbing Mrs. Swinford. Don’t you remember? And by dint of insisting
was allowed to go in?’
‘Remember ‘er, sir!’ said Morris, with much emphasis. ‘I should just
think I did--as well as I remember my own name.’
‘She has never,’ said Leo, carelessly aiming at a ball on the billiard
table, ‘been here again?’
He spoke in so artificially careless a tone to convey no suspicion of
any special meaning in the question, that Morris would not have been a
man and a butler had he not been put upon the alert.
‘Oh, ‘asn’t she, sir!’ said Morris. ‘I should say, sir, as she’s here
most days, is that lady; as if the house was her own----’
‘I have never seen her,’ said Leo, with as natural an expression of
surprise as he could put on.
‘No more haven’t I,’ said Morris. ‘Never; and how she gets in and goes
out is more nor I can say; but she’s favoured, sir, of course, in the
‘igher suckles; that we know.’
‘Morris, my man,’ said Leo briskly, ‘you forget yourself, I think. I
asked you if a lady, who is a friend of my mother’s, had been here
again: and you take it upon you to talk of how she comes into the house
without attracting your intelligent attention, which was not the
question at all.’
‘I ‘umbly beg your pardon, sir,’ said Morris; and here the conversation
stayed. Leo felt that he had done as much as in the meantime it was
possible to do. His own faculties alone must arrange the rest. Those
faculties, thoroughly awakened and put to the sharpest usage that was in
them, were, however, of but little use to Leo for a day or two. There
could be no doubt, he felt sure, that Artémise was continually in the
house. But it was impossible for him to storm his mother’s apartments in
search of her, and equally impossible to show himself to a keen-eyed
houseful of servants as in waiting to trap her near his mother’s door.
The situation was one of the utmost difficulty, and demanded extreme
caution, and the only result he attained after twenty-four hours’
sustained observation was that it was possible from Mrs. Swinford’s
rooms to reach, without going near the formal entrance, a servants’
door, apparently little used, and which opened at an unfrequented angle
of the house, quite apart from the noisy and populous kitchen entrance.
He had made up his mind to post himself in the shrubbery close to this
door at the hour of dinner, when his mother would imagine him to be
occupied with his meal. She had sent down word that she herself was not
coming to dinner, and the opportunity seemed propitious. Leo was
pondering upon this resolution, and how to carry it out, as he returned
from the village, where Lady William had told him that the need for
finding Artémise was greater than ever. It was a hazy, rainy evening,
not dark, but growing towards dusk, as he walked home soberly under his
umbrella, full of this intention. And he had just passed the glimmer of
the lake, all dimpled with the circlets of the falling rain, when a
movement in the shrubbery behind caught his eye. The bushes were thick
there, a heavy _bosquet_ of all the flowering shrubs that make spring
delicious, a thicket of lilac and syringa, which extended along the
further side of the pretty piece of water. Leo scarcely paused to think,
but, putting down his umbrella, and pulling himself together, started at
full speed for the house to intercept the visitor who, on whatsoever
errand, was making her way towards the back entrance: probably only a
servant using the legitimate way. He was not near enough, nor was there
light enough to make out absolutely who it was, or, indeed, more than
that the figure was that of a woman, covered from head to foot with one
of the shapeless garments, ulster or waterproof, which are the habitual
wear of a humble class of the community. He managed so well that he
reached the neighbourhood of the house sooner than this gliding figure,
who was more a movement than a being, and whom, in a less excited state
of his nerves, he would probably not have noticed at all. He made for
the little entrance which he had discovered and arrived there before
her. Would he be convicted of spying by the astonished eyes of some
innocent maidservant? Or would he----? What was that? Certainly the
movement had been there for a moment in the bushes, and there had been a
pause--a pause was it of consternation to see him on the watch? A moment
after, he perceived that the almost imperceptible quiver of the pale
lilac, washed almost white with the rain, had gone further off; the
visitor had retreated. He hurried along in the track, his heart beating.
Certainly it was retreating. Down again along the edge of the little
lake he followed, cautious, tracking the faint swaying in the branches.
If the evening had not been perfectly still, he could not have noted any
progress at all, the path of the fugitive was so judiciously chosen.
Then he gave almost a shout of satisfaction; skirting among the bushes
became no longer practicable, and, trusting to the dark and the rain, an
indistinct form suddenly appeared in the open, moving like a shadow, but
with great speed, over the grass. He uttered a cry, almost without
knowing it, and launched himself forth in pursuit.