LADY RANDOLPH WINDS UP HER AFFAIRS.
Lucy contrived somehow to elude all private intercourse with her husband
that morning. She was not alone with him for a moment. To his question
about little Tom and her anxiety of last night she made as slight an
answer as possible. "Nurse tells me he is all right." "He is quite well
this morning," Lucy replied with quiet dignity, as if she did not limit
herself to nurse's observations. She talked a little to Jock about his
school and how long the holidays lasted, while Sir Tom retired behind
the shield of his newspapers. He did not get much benefit from them that
morning, or instruction as to what the country was thinking. He was so
much more curious to know what his wife was thinking, that simple
little girl who knew no evil. The most astute of men could not have
perplexed Sir Tom so much. It seemed to him that something must have
happened, but what? What was there that any one could betray to her? not
the discovery that he himself thought he had made. That was impossible.
If any one else had known it he surely must have known it. It could not
be anything so unlikely as that.
But Lucy gave him no opportunity of inquiring. She went away to see the
housekeeper, to look after her domestic affairs; and then Sir Tom made
sure he should find her in the nursery, whither he took his way, when he
thought he had left sufficient time for her other occupations. But Lady
Randolph was not there. He heard from Fletcher, whose disturbed
countenance seemed to reflect his own, that her mistress had gone out.
She was the only one of the household who shared his certainty that
something had happened out of the ordinary routine. Fletcher knew that
her mistress had not undressed in the usual way; that she had not gone
to bed. Her own services had not been required either in the morning or
evening, and she had a strong suspicion that Lady Randolph had passed
the night on a sofa in the little morning-room upstairs. To Fletcher's
mind it was not very difficult to account for this. Quarrels between
husband and wife are common enough. But her consciousness and
sympathetic significance of look struck Sir Tom with a troubled sense of
the humour of the situation which broke the spell of his increasing
agitation, if but for a moment. It was droll to think that Fletcher
should be in a manner his confidant, the only participator in his woes.
Lucy had gone out half to avoid her husband, half with a determination
to expedite the business which she had begun, with very different
feelings the day before. The streets were very gay and bright on that
April morning, with all the quickening of life which many arrivals and
the approach of the season, with all its excitements, brings. Houses
were opening up, carriages coming out, even the groups of children and
nurse-maids in the Park making a sensible difference on the other side
of the great railing. It was very unusual for her to find herself in the
streets alone, and this increased the curious dazed sensation with which
she went out among all these real people, so lively and energetic, while
she was still little more than a dream-woman, possessed by one thought,
moving along, she knew not how, with a sense of helplessness and
unprotectedness, which made the novelty all the more sensible to her.
She went on for what seemed to be a long time, following mechanically
the line of the pavement, without knowing what she was doing, along the
long course of Park Lane, and then into the cheerful bustle of
Piccadilly, where, with a sense of morning ease and leisure, not like
the artificiality of the afternoon, so many people were coming and
going, all occupied in business of their own, though so different from
the bustle of more absorbing business, the haste and obstruction of the
city. Lucy was not beautiful enough or splendid enough to attract much
attention from the passers-by in the streets, though one or two
sympathetic and observant wayfarers were caught by the look of trouble
in her face. She had never walked about London, and she did not know
where she was going. But she did not think of this. She thought only on
one subject,--about her husband and that other life which he had, of
which she knew nothing, which might, for anything she could tell, have
been going on side by side with the life she knew and shared. This was
the point upon which Lucy's mind had given way. The revelation as to
Bice had startled and shaken her soul to its foundations; but after the
shock things had fallen into their place again, and she had felt no
anger, though much pain and pity. Her mind had thrown itself back into
the unknown past almost tenderly towards the mother who had died long
ago, to whom perhaps Bice had been what little Tom was now to herself.
But when the further statement reached her ears all that softening which
seemed to have swept over her disappeared in a moment. A horrible
bewilderment had seized her. Was he two men, with two wives, two lives,
two children dear to him?
It is usual to talk of women as being the most severe judges of each
other's failures in one particular at least, an accusation which no
doubt is true of both sexes, though generally applied, like so many
universal truths, to one. And an injured wife is a raging fury in those
primitive characterisations which are so common in the world. But the
ideas which circled like the flakes in a snowstorm through the mind of
Lucy were of a kind incomprehensible to the vulgar critic who judges
humanity in the general. Her ways of thinking, her modes of judging were
as different as possible from those of minds accustomed to
generalisation and lightly acquainted with the vices of the world. Lucy
knew no general; she knew three persons involved in an imbroglio so
terrible that she saw no way out of it. Herself, her husband, another
woman. Her mind was the mind almost of a child. It had resisted all that
dismal information which the chatter of society conveys. She knew that
married people were "not happy" sometimes. She knew that there were
wretched stories of which she held that they could not be true. She was
of Desdemona's mind, and did not believe that there was any such woman.
And when she was suddenly strangely brought face to face with a tragedy
of her own, that was not enough to turn this innocent and modest girl
into a raging Eleanor. She was profoundly reasonable in her simple way,
unapt to blame; thinking no evil, and full of those prepossessions and
fixed canons of innocence which the world-instructed are incapable not
only of understanding, but of believing in the existence of. A
connection between a man and a woman was to her, in one way or other, a
marriage. Into the reasons, whatever they might have been, that could
have brought about any such connection without the rites that made it
sacred, she could not penetrate or inquire. It was a subject too
terrible, from which her mind retreated with awe and incomprehension.
Never could it, she felt, have been intended so, at least on the woman's
side. The mock marriage of romance, the deceits practised on the stage
and in novels upon the innocent, she believed in without hesitation,
everything in the world being more comprehensible than impurity. There
might be villainous men, betrayers, seducers, Lucy could not tell; there
might be monsters, griffins, fiery dragons, for anything she knew; but a
woman abandoned by all her natural guard of modesties and reluctances,
moved by passion, capable of being seduced, she could not understand.
And still more impossible was it to imagine such sins as the outcome of
mere levity, without any tragic circumstances; or to conceive of the
mysteries of life as outraged and intruded upon by folly, or for the
darker bait of interest. Her heart sickened at such suggestions. She
knew there were poor women in the streets, victims of want and vice,
poor degraded creatures for whom her heart bled, whom she could not
think of for the intolerable pang of pity and shame. But all these
questions had nothing to do with the sudden revelation in which she
herself had so painful a part. These broken reflections were in her mind
like the falling of snow. They whirled through the vague world of her
troubled soul without consequence or coherence; all that had nothing to
do with her. Her husband was no villain, and the woman--the beautiful,
smiling woman, so much fairer, greater, more important than Lucy, she
was no wretched, degraded creature. What was she then? His wife--his
true wife? And if so, what was Lucy? Her brain reeled and the world went
round her in a sickening whirl. The circumstances were too terrible for
resentment. What could anger do, or any other quick-springing
short-lived emotion? What did it matter even what Lucy felt, what any
one felt? It was far beyond that. Here was fact which no emotion could
undo. A wife and a child on either side, and what was to come of it; and
how could life go on with this to think of, never to be forgotten, not
to be put aside for a moment? It brought existence to a stand-still. She
did not know what was the next step she must take, or how she could go
back, or what she must say to the man who, perhaps, was not her husband,
or how she could continue under that roof, or arrange the commonest
details of life. There was but one thing clear before her, the business
which she was bent on hurrying to a conclusion now.
She found herself in the bustle of the streets that converge upon the
circus at the end of Piccadilly as she thus went on thinking, and there
Lucy looked about her in some dismay, finding that she had reached the
limit of the little world she knew. She was afraid of plunging alone
into those bustling ways, and almost afraid of the only other
alternative, which, however, she adopted, of calling a cab and giving
the driver the address of Mr. Chervil in the city. To do this, and to
mount into the uneasy jingling cab, gave her a little shock of the
unaccustomed, which was like a breach of morals to Lucy. It seemed,
though she had been independent enough in more important matters, the
most daring step she had ever taken on her own responsibility. But the
matter of the cab, and the aspect of this unknown world into which it
conveyed her, occupied her mind a little, and stopped the tumult of her
thoughts. She seemed scarcely to know what she had come about when she
found herself set down at the door of Mr. Chervil's office, and
ascending the grimy staircase, meeting people who stared at her, and
wondered what a lady could be doing there. Mr. Chervil himself was
scarcely less surprised. He said, "Lady Randolph!" with a cry of
astonishment when she was shown in. And she found some difficulty, which
she had not thought of, in explaining her business. He reminded her that
she had given him the same instructions yesterday when he had the honour
of waiting upon her in Park Lane. He was far more respectful to Lady
Randolph than he had been to Lucy Trevor in her first attempts to carry
out her father's will.
"I assure you," he said, "I have not neglected your wishes. I have
written to Rushton on the subject. We both know by this time, Lady
Randolph, that when you have made up your mind--and you have the most
perfect right to do so--though we may not like it, nor think it anything
but a squandering of money, still we are aware we have no right to
oppose----"
"It is not that," said Lucy faintly. "It is that the circumstances have
changed since yesterday. I want to--I should like to----"
"Give up your intention? I am delighted to hear it. For you must allow
me to say, as a man of business----"
"It is not that," Lucy repeated. "I want to increase the sum. I find the
young lady has a claim--and I want it to be done immediately, without
the loss of a day. Oh, I am more, much more in earnest about it than I
was yesterday. I want it settled at once. If it is not settled at once
difficulties might arise. I want to double the amount. Could you not
telegraph to Mr. Rushton instead of writing? I have heard that people
telegraph about business."
"Double the amount! Have you thought over this? Have you had Sir
Thomas's advice? It is a very important matter to decide so suddenly.
Pardon me, Lady Randolph, but you must know that if you bestow at this
rate you will soon not have very much left to you."
"Ah, that would be a comfort!" cried Lucy; and then there came over her
the miserable thought that all the circumstances were changed, and to
have a subject of disagreement between her husband and herself removed
would not matter now. Once it had been the only subject, now---- The
suddenness of this realisation of the change filled her eyes with tears.
But she restrained herself with a great effort. "Yes," she said, "I
should be glad, very glad, to have done all my father wished--for many
things might happen. I might die--and then who would do it?"
"We need not discuss that very unlikely contingency," said Mr. Chervil.
(He said to himself: Sir Tom wouldn't, that is certain.) "But even under
Mr. Trevor's will," he added, "this will be a very large sum to
give--larger, don't you think, than he intended; unless there is some
very special claim?"
"It is a special claim," cried Lucy, "and papa made no conditions. I was
to be free in doing it. He left me quite free."
"Without doubt," the lawyer said. "I need not repeat my opinion on the
subject, but you are certainly quite free. And you have brought me the
young lady's name, no doubt, Lady Randolph? Yesterday, you recollect you
were uncertain about her name. It is important to be quite accurate in
an affair of so much importance. She is a lucky young lady. A great many
would like to learn the secret of pleasing you to this extent."
Lucy looked at him with a gasp. She did not understand the rest of his
speech or care to hear it. Her name? What was her name? If she had not
known it before, still less did she know it now.
"Oh," she cried, "what does it matter about a name? People, girls,
change their names. She is Beatrice. You might leave a blank and it
could be filled up after. She is going to--marry. She is--must
everything be delayed for that?--and yet it is of no importance--no
importance that I can see," Lucy said, wringing her hands.
"My dear Lady Randolph! Let me say that to give a very large sum of
money to a person with whose very name you are unacquainted--forgive me,
but in your own interests I must speak. Let me consult with Sir
Thomas."
"I do not wish my husband to be consulted. He has promised me not to
interfere, and it is my business, not his," Lucy said, with a flush of
excitement. And though there was much further conversation, and the
lawyer did all he could to move her, it need not be said that Lucy was
immovable. He went down to the door with her to put her into her
carriage, as he supposed, not unwilling even in that centre of practical
life to have the surrounding population see on what confidential terms
he was with this fine young lady. But when he perceived that no carriage
was there, and Lucy, not without a tremor, as of a very strange request,
and one which might shock the nerves of her companion, asked him to get
a cab for her, Mr. Chervil's astonishment knew no bounds.
"I never thought how far it was," Lucy said, faltering and apologetic.
"I thought I might perhaps have been able to walk."
"Walk!" he cried, "from Park Lane?" with consternation. He stood looking
after her as she drove away, saying to himself that the old man had
undoubtedly been mad, and that this poor young thing was evidently
cracked too. He thought it would be best to write to Sir Thomas, who was
not Sir Tom to Mr. Chervil; but if it was going to happen that the poor
young lady should show what he had no doubt was the hereditary weakness,
Mr. Chervil could not restrain a devout wish that it might show itself
decisively before half her fortune was alienated. No Sir Thomas in
existence would carry out a father-in-law's will of such an insane
character as that.
In the meanwhile Lucy jingled home in her cab, feeling more giddy, more
heartsick than ever. There now came upon her with more potency than ever,
since now it was the matter immediately before her, the question what was
she to do? What was she to do? She had eluded Sir Tom on the night before,
and obliged him to accept, without any demand for explanation, her strange
retirement. But now what was she to do? Little Tom would not answer for a
pretext again. She must either resume the former habits of her life,
subdue herself entirely, meet him with a cheerful face, ignore the sudden
chasm that had been made between them--or---- She looked with terrified
eyes at this blank wall of impossibility, and could see no way through it.
Live with him as of old, in a pretence of union where no union could be,
or explain how it was that she could not do so. Both these things were
impossible--impossible!--and what, then, was she to do?