DESPAIR.
The year had gone on, and the season was at its height. In the
breakfast-room at Sir Francis Netherleigh's house in Grosvenor Square
sat his sister, waiting to pour out the coffee. Ah, how different
things were from what they had been in his wife's time! Then he had to
wait upon himself at breakfast, often to take it alone; now he always
found his sister down before him.
Mary Lynn was good-looking as ever, her wonderful grey eyes, as Miss
Upton used to call them, were not a whit less beautiful; but the mirth
of early days had given place to a calm, sad seriousness. It could be
seen that some great sorrow had passed over her heart and left its
traces there for ever. Just now, as she laid down a letter she had
been reading, her face wore an especial air of sadness, somewhat of
perplexity. Sir Francis entered.
"I have a letter from Netherleigh, Francis, from Alice Dalrymple,"
began Mary, after they had said good-morning. "Mrs. Dalrymple has met
with an accident, and--but I will read you what she says," she broke
off, taking up the letter.
"'Selina was driving mamma in a borrowed pony-chaise yesterday; the
pony took fright at a passing caravan--a huge thing, Selina says,
covered with brooms and baskets and shining tins--ran away, and
overturned the chaise. Selina was not hurt, she never is; but mamma
has received, it is feared, some internal injury. She asks if you will
come down to her, dear Mary. Lose no time; you know how she values
you!'"
"Selina was driving carelessly, I expect," observed Sir Francis.
"Of course I will go down. But it cannot be today, Francis?"
"Not very well," he answered, as he took his cup of coffee from her
hand. "What should I do with the crowd, coming here tonight, without
a hostess to receive them?"
For Sir Francis Netherleigh had bidden the great world to his house
that evening. Such invitations from him were rare. This was the first
he had given since his wife's departure and his mother's death.
"True," observed Mary, in answer. "And you also expect that gentleman
and his wife, who are just home from India, to lunch here today.
Then I will write to Alice, and tell her I cannot be with her until
tomorrow. Her mother is not so ill, I trust, as to make a day's delay
of moment. Perhaps you will go down with me, Francis?"
"If I can. I know I am wanted at Court Netherleigh."
"That is settled, then. And now tell me, will the Hopes also be here
at luncheon?"
"Yes, I asked them last night to meet the Didnums. As I told you,
Mary, the Hopes and the Didnums were great friends out in India."
Although Francis Netherleigh had put away his wife, the intimate
relations that had existed between himself and her family had not been
interrupted. He was sometimes at Lord Acorn's and at Colonel Hope's,
and they were often with him. Mr. Didnum, the head of a great
mercantile house in Calcutta, in constant correspondence with that of
Christopher Grubb and Son in London, was an old friend of Colonel
Hope, and they were now about to meet at luncheon in Grosvenor Square.
Breakfast over, Sir Francis Netherleigh went to Leadenhall Street as
usual, returning in time to receive his visitors.
Frances Chenevix, staying with her sister, Lady Sarah Hope, made one
of the party. "I don't know whether I am expected or whether I am not,
but I shall go," she remarked to Lady Sarah, in her careless fashion.
And she went, and was warmly welcomed. Every one liked gay-hearted
Frances Chenevix.
The luncheon had been over some little time, and they were all talking
together with interest, when a telegram was brought in for Miss Lynn.
It proved to be from the Rector of Netherleigh, the Reverend Thomas
Cleveland.
"Mrs. Dalrymple has undergone an operation, and is in a very exhausted
condition. Come to her at once. I am sending also to Leadenhall Street
to your brother. She is asking for him."
Such a message creates confusion. Sir Francis looked to ascertain at
what time they were likely to find a train to carry them to
Netherleigh, and found they could just catch one if they started at
once. A servant was sent for the fleetest-looking cab he could find;
there was no time to get the carriage round.
Mary Lynn was already seated in the cab, and Sir Francis was shaking
hands with Colonel Hope, who had come out to the door, when he
remembered the guests bidden to his house that night. It caused him to
pause.
"You must stay and receive them for me, colonel: be host in my place,
and your wife hostess, if she will be so good," he hastily decided.
"Explain to every one how it is: dying wishes must be attended to, you
know: and my getting back is, I dare say, out of the question."
"All right," answered Colonel Hope. "Don't wait, or you will lose your
train."
The colonel returned indoors, went back to the dining-room and told
his wife what was required of them. Lady Sarah stared in perplexity.
"Receive the people tonight in his place! Why, we cannot do so,
colonel. Did you forget that we dine with those people at Hounslow?
It's hard to say at _what_ time we shall get back."
Colonel Hope looked a little perplexed too. "I did forget it," he said
in his solemn way. "What is to be done?"
"Let mamma be here early and receive them," suggested Lady Frances. "I
will help her."
It was an excellent solution of the difficulty. Mr. and Mrs. Didnum
took their departure; and Lady Sarah Hope, accompanied by Frances,
entered her carriage and ordered it to Chenevix House. The colonel
walked away to his club.
Lady Acorn was alone when they entered. She listened to the news her
daughters told her of her son-in-law's being summoned away, and of the
request that she would take his place that night, and receive his
guests.
"I suppose I must," said she, in her tart way; "but I shall have to
get round to Grosvenor Square at an inconveniently early hour.
Something is sure to happen when you want things to go particularly
smoothly. And now--who do you suppose is here?" continued Lady Acorn.
"How can we tell, mamma?" cried Frances, before Sarah had time to
speak. "Mary?"
"No; Adela."
"_Adela!_"
The countess nodded. "She and MacIvor arrived here this morning by the
Scotch mail. Sandy had an unexpected summons to London, from the
lawyers who are acting for him in the action about that small property
he lays claim to; and when he was starting from home, nothing would do
for Adela, it seems, but she must accompany him."
"Has Harriet come also?" asked Lady Sarah.
"No. Sandy goes back in a day or two."
"And Adela? Does she return with him?"
"_I_ don't know. Sir Sandy says she seems miserable with them, and he
thinks she will be miserable everywhere."
"Where is she?" asked Frances.
"Upstairs somewhere: Grace is with her. Grace pities and soothes her
just as though she were a martyr--instead of a silly woman who has
wilfully blighted her own happiness in life, and entailed no end of
anxiety on us all."
After their short stay in Paris in the spring, where we last saw Lady
Adela, the MacIvors went straight to Scotland, avoiding London and the
cost that would have attended a London season, which they could ill
afford. Adela also shrank from that; she would have left them had they
sojourned in the metropolis. They took up their abode in the
Highlands, in the old castle that was the paternal stronghold of the
MacIvors, which was utterly bleak, dull, and remote; and, here, for
the past three months, Adela had been slowly dying of remorse.
No wonder. Her mind, her whole being, so to say, was filled with the
image of her husband; with the longing only to see him; with the
bitter, unavailing remorse for the past. That one solitary sight of
him, in Paris at Mrs. Blunt's, had revived within her the pain and
excitement, which had been previously subsiding into a sort of dull
apathy. The château in Switzerland had been, as a residence, lonely
and wearisome; it was nothing, in those respects, compared with this
old castle of Sir Sandy's. At least, Adela, found it so. In fact, she
did not know what she wanted. She shrank from even the bare suggestion
of publicity, and she shrank from solitude. She felt herself in the
position of one whose whole interest in life has departed while yet a
long life lies before her: the saddest of all sad positions, and the
most rare.
Was it to continue so for ever and for ever? Yes, she would wail out
in answer, when asking herself the question: at least, as long as time
should last. For there could be no change in it. She had forfeited all
possibility of that. The lone, miserable woman that she was now, must
she remain to the end.
She wondered sometimes whether any one ever died of repentance and
regret. Existence was becoming all but unendurable. When she opened
her weary eyelids to the dawn of a new day she would moan out a faint
prayer that God in His compassion would help her to get through it,
and would bury her face in the pillow, wishing she could so bury
herself and her misery.
It must not be thought she was encouraged in this state of mind. Lady
Harriet MacIvor had become intolerably cross about it long ago, openly
telling Adela she had no patience with her. From her Adela received no
sympathy whatever. Look where she would, not a gleam of brightness
shone for her. Sick at heart, fainting in spirit, it seemed to Adela
that any change would be welcome; and when Sir Sandy received a letter
one morning, telling him his presence was needed in London, and he
announced his intention of starting that same day, Adela said she
should go with him.
Lady Harriet did not oppose it. In truth, it brought her relief. Adela
was becoming more of a responsibility day by day; and she had held
some anxious conferences with her husband as to the expediency of
their resigning charge of her.
"It is the best thing that could have happened, Sandy," she said to
him in private. "Take her over to mamma, and tell her everything. I
think they had better keep her themselves for a time."
Hence the unexpected irruption of the travellers at Chenevix House.
Lady Acorn was not pleased. Not that she was sorry to see Adela once
more; but she had lived in a chronic state of anger with her since the
separation, and the accounts written to her from time to time by her
daughter Harriet in no way diminished it.
After the briefest interview with her mother, Adela escaped to the
chamber assigned her; the one she used to occupy. This left Sir Sandy
free to open the budget his wife had charged him with, and to say that
for the present he and Harriet would rather not continue to have the
responsibility of Adela. Lady Acorn, as she listened, audibly wished
Adela was a child again, that she might "have the nonsense shaken out
of her."
Lady Sarah Hope raised her condemnatory shoulders, as her mother
related this. She had never had the slightest sympathy with the
trouble Adela had brought upon herself, or with the remorse it
entailed.
"Will you see her, Sarah?" asked Lady Acorn.
"No; I would rather not. At least, not today. I must be going
shortly."
Poor Adela! True, she had been guilty of grievous offences, but they
had brought their punishment. As we sow, so do we generally reap. This
return to her mother's home seemed to bring back all the past sin, all
the present anguish, in colours tenfold more vivid.
Kneeling on the floor in the bedroom, her hands clasped round Grace's
knees as she sat, Adela sobbed out her repentance, her hopeless
longings for the life and the husband she had thrown away.
"Poor child!" sighed Grace, her own tears falling as she stroked with
a gentle hand her unhappy sister's hair, "your sorrow is, I see, hard
to bear. If I only knew how to comfort you!"
No answer.
"Still, Adela, although he is yet, in one sense of the word, your
husband, it is not well for you to indulge these thoughts; these
regrets. Were there even the most distant hope that things between you
would alter, it would be different; but I fear there is none."
"I know it," bewailed Adela. "What he did, he did for ever."
"Then you should no longer, for your own peace' sake, dwell upon his
memory. Try and forget him. It seems curious advice, Adela, but I have
none better to give."
"I cannot forget him. My dreams by night, my thoughts by day, are of
him, of him alone. If I could only be with him for just one week of
reconciliation, to show him how I would, if possible, atone to him, to
let him see that my repentance is lasting, though he put me away again
at the week's end, it would be something. Oh, Grace, you don't know
what my remorse is--how hard a cross I have to bear."
She knelt there in her bitter distress. Not much less distressing was
it to Grace. By dint of coaxing, Adela was at length partially calmed,
and lay back, half-exhausted, in an easy-chair.
At lunch-time, for this had occurred in the morning, she refused to go
down, or to take anything. In the afternoon, when Grace was back
again, Darvy brought up a cup of chocolate and some toast. Whilst
languidly taking this, Adela abruptly renewed the subject: the only
one, as she truly said, that ever occupied her mind.
"Do you see him often, Grace?"
"Rather often," replied Grace, knowing that the question must refer to
Sir Francis.
"He is friendly with you, then?"
"Quite so. The friendship has never been interrupted. We are going to
his house tonight," she added, perhaps incautiously.
"To Grosvenor Square?" cried Adela.
"Yes. I think it is the first entertainment he has given since you
left it. Half London will be there."
"If I could only go!" exclaimed Adela, a light rising in her eye, a
flush to her pale cheek. Grace looked at her in surprise; she had
forfeited the right ever to enter there. Grace made no comment, and a
pause ensued.
"Did you read the speech he made last Thursday night to the Commons?"
resumed Adela, in a low tone.
"Yes. Every one was talking of it. Did _you_ read it, Adela?--in
Scotland?"
Grace received no answer. Sir Sandy below could have told her that
Adela used to seize upon the _Times_, when it arrived, with feverish
interest, to see whether any speech of her husband's was reported in
it. If so, Sir Sandy's belief was that she learnt it by heart, so long
did she keep the paper.
The chocolate finished, she lay back in the chair, her eyes looking
into vacancy, her listless hands folded before her. Grace, sitting
opposite, ostensibly occupied with some work, for she was rarely idle,
had leisure to note her sister's countenance. It was much changed.
Worn, wan, and weary it looked, but there was no special appearance
now of ill health.
"You are much better, are you not, Adela?"
"Oh, I am very well," was the languid answer.
"Do you like Scotland?"
"I don't know."
Grace thought she was tired after the night journey, and resolved to
leave her to silence; but an interruption occurred. Frances came in.
And, that Frances Chenevix could be melancholy for more than a minute
at any time, was not to be expected. In spite of Adela's evidently
subdued state of mind, she, after a few staid sentences, ran off at a
gay tangent.
"What do you think, Grace?" she began. "We had very nearly lost our
party tonight--one, Adela, that your whilom husband gives. He and his
sister have been telegraphed for this afternoon to Netherleigh. Poor
Mrs. Dalrymple has met with some serious accident; there has been an
operation, and the result is, I suppose, uncertain. They have both
started by train, and therefore cannot be at home to receive the
people tonight."
"Is the party put off, then?" questioned Grace.
"No, there was not time to do it: how could he send round to all the
world and his wife? It is to take place without him, mamma playing
host in his absence."
"I wonder what Mrs. Dalrymple could want with him?"
"Just what I wondered, Grace. Mamma thinks it must be to speak to him
about her affairs. He is her executor, I believe: not, poor woman,
that she has much to leave."
Adela had listened to this in silence: an eager look was dawning on
her face.
"Do you mean to say, Frances, that he--that my husband--will not be
there at all?--in his own house?"
"To be sure I mean it, Adela. He cannot be in two places at once, here
and Netherleigh. He and Mary Lynn have only now started on their way
there. I tell mamma that whilst she plays host I shall play hostess.
Won't it be fun!"
"Grace," began Adela very quietly, after her sisters had left, for
Lady Sarah, thinking better of it, came up to see her for a moment, "I
shall go with you tonight."
"Go--where did you say?" questioned Grace, in doubt.
"To my husband's
house."
Grace dropped her work in consternation. "You cannot mean it, Adela."
"I do mean it. I shall go."
"Oh, Adela, pray consider what you are saying. Go _there_. Why, you
know that you must not do so."
"It was my house once," said Adela, in agitation.
"But it is yours no longer. Pray consider. Of all people in the world,
you must not attempt to enter it. It would be unseemly."
Adela burst into tears. "If you knew--if you knew how I long for a
sight of it, Gracie," she gasped, "you would not deny me. Only just
one little look at it, Grace! What can it matter? _He_ is not there."
How Grace would have contrived to combat this wish, cannot be told:
but Lady Acorn came in. In answer to her questioning as to what Adela
was crying about now, Grace thought it well to tell her.
"Oh," said the countess, receiving the affair lightly, for she did not
suppose Adela could be serious. "Go _there_, would you! What would the
world say, I wonder, if they met Lady Adela Netherleigh at that house?
Don't be silly, child."
What indeed! Adela sighed and said no more. Yet, she did so want to
go. Lying back in her chair, her thoughts busy with the past and
present, the longing took a terrible hold upon her.
She dressed, but did not go down to dinner, refusing that meal as she
had refused luncheon. Lady Acorn went straight from the dinner-table
to Grosvenor Square, calling on her way at Colonel Hope's for her
daughter Frances, as had been arranged. Grace, who did not care to
leave Adela alone for too long an evening, would go later with Sir
Sandy. She hastened to dress, not having done so before dinner, and
then went to her sister's room to remain with her to the last moment.
But when Grace got there, she found, to her dismay, that Adela _was
prepared to go also_. Her fan lay on the table, her gloves beside it.
"Adela, indeed you must not go!" decisively spoke Grace. "Only think
how--I said it this afternoon--_unseemly_ it will be."
"If you only knew how I am yearning for it," came the piteous
reiteration, and Adela entwined her wasted arms entreatingly about her
sister. "My own home once, Gracie, my own home once! I seem to be
dying for a sight of it."
Never had Grace felt so perplexed, rarely so distressed. "Adela, I
_dare_ not sanction it; dare not take you. What would be said and
thought? Mamma----"
"You need not take me; I don't wish to get you into trouble with
mamma. Darvy can tell them to get a cab. Grace, you have no right to
oppose me," went on Adela, in low, firm tones; "what right can you
have? My husband will not be there, and I must see my old home. It may
be the last time I shall have the chance of it."
Sir Sandy's step was heard outside in the corridor, passing to his
chamber. Grace opened the door, and told him of the trouble. He put
his little head inside and said a few words to Adela in his mild way,
begging her not to attempt to go; and then went on to his room.
"I must go, Gracie; I _must_ go! Grace, don't look harshly at me, for
I am very miserable."
What was Grace to do? A little more combating, and she yielded in very
helplessness. The conviction lay upon her that if she refused to the
end, Adela would certainly go alone. When an ardent desire, such as
this, takes possession of one weakened in spirit and in health, it
assumes the form of a fever that must have its course.
The contention delayed them, and it was late when they went down to
the carriage. Little Sir Sandy took his seat opposite Grace and Adela.
"I wash my hands of it," he said, amiably. "Do not let your mother put
the blame of it upon me, Lady Adela, and tell me I ought not to have
brought you."
A few minutes, and the carriage stopped in Grosvenor Square. Other
guests were entering the house at the same moment. Adela shrank
behind Grace and Sir Sandy, and was not observed in the crowd. Her
dress was black net, as it had been at Mrs. Blunt's, though she was
not in mourning now; she kept her thin black burnous cloak on and held
it up to her face as she passed close to Hilson. The man stepped back
in astonishment, recollected himself, and saluted her with an
impassive face.
Keeping in the shade as much as was possible, shrinking into corners
to avoid observation, Adela lost the others. She heard their names
shouted out in a louder voice than Hilson's, "Lady Grace Chenevix and
Sir Sandy MacIvor," and she lingered behind looking about her.
How painful to her was the sight of the old familiar spots! She turned
into a small niche and halted there; her heart was beating too
painfully to go on, her breath had left her. No, she should not be
able to carry out this expedition; she saw now how wrong and foolish
it had been to attempt it; she had put herself into a false position,
and she felt it in every tingling vein.
Just one peep she would give at the drawing-rooms above. Just one. No
one would notice her. Amidst the crowds pressing in she should escape
observation. One yearning look, and then she would turn back and
escape the way she came.
Three or four persons in a group, strangers to her, were passing
upwards. Adela glided on behind them. Their names were shouted out as
her sister's and Sir Sandy's had been; as others were; and she stole
after them, within the portals.
But only to steal back again. Nay, to start back. For a
too-well-remembered voice had greeted the visitors: "I am so glad to
see you," and a tall, distinguished form stood there with outstretched
hands: the voice and form of her husband. Later, she knew how it was.
The faintness succeeding to the operation (a very slight one), which
had alarmed Mrs. Dalrymple herself, and also the surgeon and the
Rector, had passed off, and she was really in no danger. So that when
Sir Francis learnt this on his arrival at Netherleigh, he found
himself at liberty to return.
Feeling as if she must die in her agony of shame, shame at her
unwarrantable intrusion, which the unexpected sight of her husband
brought home to her, Adela got down the stairs again unseen and
unnoticed, and encountered Hilson in the hall.
"Can I do anything for you, my lady?--can I get you anything?" he
asked, his tone betraying his compassion for her evident sickness.
"Yes," she said, "yes. I want to go home; I find I am not well enough
to remain: perhaps one of the carriages outside would take me?"
"Can I assist you, Lady Adela?" said a voice at her side, from one who
was then entering and had overheard the colloquy: and Adela turned to
behold Gerard Hope.
"Is it you?" she faintly cried. "I thought you were abroad, Gerard.
Are you making one of the crowd here tonight?"
"Not as a guest. These grand things no longer belong to me. I am in
England again, and at work--a clerk in your husband's house, Lady
Adela; and I have come here tonight to see him on a pressing matter
of business."
Hilson managed it all. An obliging coachman, then setting down his
freight, was only too willing to take home a sick lady. Gerard Hope
and Hilson both went out with her.
"Don't say to--to any one--that I came, Hilson," she whispered, as she
shrank into a corner of the carriage: and Hilson discerned that by
"any one" she must especially mean Sir Francis Netherleigh.
"You may depend upon me, my lady. Chenevix House," he added to the
friendly coachman: and closed the door on the unhappy woman who was
once his master's indulged and idolized wife.
"How she is changed!" thought Gerard, gazing after the carriage as it
bowled away. "Hilson," he said, turning to the butler, "I must see
your master for a minute or two. Have you any room that you can put me
into, away from this crowd?"
"There's the housekeeper's parlour, sir: if you don't mind going
there. It's quite empty."
"All right, Tell Sir Francis I bring a note from Mr. Howard. Something
important, I believe."