A COTTAGE BY THE SEA.
All Mr. Large’s sympathies had been with Lady Gwendolyn at starting;
but now he began to think there might possibly be another side to the
question. He knew Lady Gwendolyn was naturally impulsive--and legal
men generally look upon impulsiveness as a fault, or, at best, an
inconvenient quality which stands in the way of anything like calm,
dispassionate judgment. Of course she had seen and heard something,
since she said so; but then “trifles light as air are, to the jealous,
confirmation strong as proofs of holy writ,” and a person who jumps to
conclusions is not to be trusted in any way.
He felt for this girl more than a lawyer’s interest in his client, for
he had known her since she was a child. He could not bear that she
should throw away her happiness, and, therefore, when Sir Lawrence said:
“If I write a letter to my wife, explaining matters fully, will you
forward it to her as soon as you know her address, Mr. Large?”
He answered readily:
“With great pleasure, Sir Lawrence. She did not forbid me to do that.”
“Then I won’t detain you any longer just now,” said Sir Lawrence. “I am
exceedingly obliged to you for befriending me, Mr. Large,” he added,
with a sad smile; “and I do assure you, on my honor as a gentleman,
that I am perfectly guiltless of any offense toward my wife. Where I
have sinned is against Heaven, in setting myself up an earthly idol,
and for this I am being punished deservedly now.”
His tone was one of deep emotion and unmistakable sincerity. Mr. Large
could not help saying:
“I will do the best I can for you, Sir Lawrence; but I am afraid you
will need all your patience. Her ladyship gave me to understand that
she should not write to me until she wanted money, and as she is
supposed to have her half-year’s allowance with her, that will not be
yet.”
“My only hope is that not being accustomed to economize, she will find
her income insufficient. She has been accustomed to spend more than she
has now upon her dress and charities, and will, I am sure, find it very
difficult to make both ends meet now. Excuse me for dwelling on this
possibility; but it is my one hope.”
“Then it is not to be wondered you should dwell on it, under the
circumstances,” replied Mr. Large. “But may I venture to ask, Sir
Lawrence, what your present plans are?”
“Certainly. I shall remain in London, in order that I may be on the
spot whenever you have any news for me. But I do not mean any of my
friends to know of my whereabouts, and I shall not show myself either
at Borton or Milworth until Lady Gwendolyn returns to me. In this way I
hope to shield her from remark, and make it easier for her to take up
her married life again without awkwardness or pain. We have been abroad
for six months--let the world suppose we are still there.”
“I think you are quite right,” Mr. Large said; “and I feel sure that
your consideration will touch Lady Gwendolyn when she comes to her
senses. You will bring me your letter soon, Sir Lawrence?”
“To-morrow you may count upon it,” he answered; and then, with a polite
apology for having taken up so much of the other’s time, Sir Lawrence
departed.
The next day he took the letter to Mr. Large’s office, and put it
into the worthy lawyer’s own hand. Then he went back to his solitary
lodgings, to wait for the moment when his wife should repent of her
hasty desertion, and come back to him timidly, humbly, to find such a
generous pardon ready for her, that she would never dream of leaving
him again.
* * * * *
“I am sorry I came to the seaside now,” said Lady Gwendolyn languidly,
to her faithful abigail, one morning; “the wind kept me awake all
night.”
“Yes, my lady, it does sound dolesome,” answered Phœbe. “They say
there haven’t been such gales for years. A ship was wrecked close to
the pier last night, and three poor souls drowned within sight of the
coastguard.”
“And could nothing be done to help them?” inquired Lady Gwendolyn, with
a shudder.
“No, my lady. The sea was running so high the life-boat couldn’t get
out. It makes me feel quite sad to live where such things are always
happening.”
“Nonsense! Phœbe, you exaggerate,” exclaimed her mistress, almost
sharply. “This is the first shipwreck we have had since we came here.”
“But if we are to have one every three months, it will be cheerful, my
lady,” answered Phœbe, who did not wish to make the best of the present
state of affairs, and thought it very foolish of Lady Gwendolyn to live
in a little cottage by the sea, with a couple of women servants to
wait upon her, when she might have the run of two mansions, and twenty
dependents at least.
And it was terribly dull at Wintertown. Phœbe had been accustomed to a
good deal of change, and not a soul came near Cliff Cottage, except the
clergyman of the parish, and he never brought his wife.
Lady Gwendolyn received him because his visits comforted her, and,
moreover, she knew that he was too much of a gentleman to pry into her
affairs, but she never allowed him to suppose that she was other than
what she called herself--Mrs. St. Maur.
Her beauty and aristocratic air made her an object of great curiosity
in Wintertown, and, of course, the women were all against her, and felt
sure that her seclusion was the cover for some disgraceful secret; but
what did all this matter to her?
She believed that she was doing right at the sacrifice of all her
earthly happiness, and when her heart yearned with a great yearning
toward her husband, she knelt down and prayed wildly not to be
delivered into temptation, but to have strength to endure even to the
end.
One night, just as the earth was beginning to grow green again, and
primrose and violets were sweetening the hedgerows, Lady Gwendolyn,
only half-conscious still, came stupefied out of her hour of anguish to
find a little face nestling against her bosom, and to hear with deep
thankfulness that a man child was born into the world, and born to her.
Coming back to life herself from the very edge of the grave, the joy of
maternity swallowed up the recollection of past peril, and she thrilled
through her whole being as she pressed her white lips to the soft,
wrinkled cheek.
“I never saw a bonnier babe, ma’am,” said the nurse cheerfully. “How
proud his poor pa would be of him if he could see him.”
Lady Gwendolyn shivered, and her joy was poisoned in a moment. This
child belonged to her husband as well as to herself, and how could
she ever look at it without being reminded of the saddest page in her
life--of the wrong and treachery that had made her future a blank.
The boy had his father’s deep blue eyes, and when they began to open
fuller, Lady Gwendolyn had a strange fancy that they reproached her,
and would turn uneasily away.
Was it possible that she had been too hasty? She had, of course, done
right to leave Sir Lawrence, but she might have written and explained
her motives, and given him a chance of excusing himself, for her
own sake. In trying to punish him, she had left herself without any
comfort, and the position was irretrievable now, since, if she showed
any signs of relenting, he would imagine that she was ready to condone
the past, and live with him, anyhow, rather than not live with him at
all.
The boy was a month old before Lady Gwendolyn began to recover her
strength, and, meanwhile, her expenses were very large. Doctors and
nurses cost money, and the young mother’s extreme delicacy made economy
out of the question for the present. Then, in her maternal pride, she
was apt to forget that Master Lawrence was not heir to Milworth Abbey
and Borton Hall, and indulged in extravagances her income would not
stand.
Keeping no accounts, she did not realize, indeed, what she was
spending, and was horrified one day, when, in looking in what she
called her reserve purse, she found that it only contained five pounds.
And it wanted a month yet of dividend day. What was to be done? She had
been in the habit of paying ready money for everything, and did not
even know that she could obtain credit in the town, neither would her
pride allow her to ask it.
She had left all her jewels in Mr. Large’s charge, otherwise she would
have sacrificed a diamond ornament, and taken care to be more careful
for the future. But under present circumstances this was out of the
question, and meanwhile she must have sufficient to pay her weekly
bills. She pondered the question anxiously all night, and by morning
she had come to the conclusion that there was no help for it, and she
must write to Mr. Large.
This was a sore humiliation to Lady Gwendolyn, the more so that Mr.
Large had seemed to think she would not be able to manage on her
income, having been accustomed to such lavish expenditure, and she had
assured him that she intended to make it do, and had taken rather a
lofty tone on the occasion. But it was better to eat humble pie than to
run into debt, in a place where her only claim to consideration was the
punctuality of her payments; so she put her pride in her pocket, and
wrote off to Mr. Large, saying that her expenses had been much greater
than she had anticipated of late, that she must ask him to advance her
fifty pounds, and deduct them from her dividends when they became due.
Directly this letter was despatched, Lady Gwendolyn felt easier in her
mind, although the effort it had cost her to write it had made her
quite ill.
“And if I am embarrassed now,” she said to herself grimly, “what will
it be when baby gets a big boy, and wants educating, and all that sort
of thing? I haven’t even a rich maiden aunt to leave me money, and I
have always heard that boys are expensive things to bring up. If we
were in our right position now----But I will not think of that, since
it is so impossible,” she added quickly. “I must do my best, and trust
all the rest to Providence. I have heard of people who lived upon even
less than six hundred a year, and now that I always dress in black, my
clothes won’t cost me much.”