‘Do you know who that man is — the man with the long red hair, the fourth from the upper end of the table?’ she asked Mrs. Prince.
‘Lor’, no, my dear,’ answered the housekeeper; ‘I don’t know half of them at this distance, not even with my specs, and as to pointing out any one of’ em, I couldn’t do it. But it’s a very pretty sight, isn’t it? And doesn’t our fine old pewter service look lovely?’
Elizabeth could hardly take her eyes from the man with the long red hair — coarse rough hair, shaggy and long, altogether different from the close horsey cut usually affected by the London coster; and yet she was not the less certain, despite a very elaborate smock-frock, that this man was a Londoner, so vividly did his appearance recall the associates of her early days.
Supper was finished in about three-quarters of an hour, and then came a good half-hour for speeches and songs. The speeches were short, but the songs were long and of a narrative kind, with choruses which, in some cases, seemed slightly irrelevant, not to say unintelligible, but which were executed with much spirit, and gave general satisfaction. As the joviality of the company increased, under the inspiring influence of music, Elizabeth saw that the red-haired man had made for himself a friend in the person of an under-gardener who sat next him, and with whom he was now in close conversation — so close that neither of the two joined in the chorus of the song now going forward.
Elizabeth knew this under-gardener for an honest, simple-minded youth, a picture of grinning good nature, a lad who would be ready to make friends with anybody.
At half-past ten the entertainment was all over, and the men were dispersing. Just as they were clearing out of the hall — the red-haired man and James Morley, the gardener, still hanging together — Elizabeth’s attention was distracted by Mrs. Prince.
‘We’re going to have a bit of hot supper in my room,’ she said—’Mr. Scrimger, Jones, and Mason, and Tompion, and Mary Milford. You might as well join us, Miss May, if you’re not above sitting down with servants now that you’re going to be a governess. It’ll be your first and last Christmas at Ingleshaw Castle, I suppose.’
‘Indeed, I don’t hold myself above anybody in this house,’ said Elizabeth eagerly; ‘I hope no one will ever think that. I know how low I am, and that I was brought here out of charity. I shall never forget that. But you must excuse me to-night, dear Mrs. Prince; I have a bad headache, and I couldn’t eat any supper.’
‘Poor thing! Yon worked too hard at that Christmas-tree all the afternoon, ‘said the housekeeper, compassionately. ‘I never knew such a girl to work; I only wish the others were like you. Well, you shall go to your room, and I’ll bring you a glass of hot negus the last thing, or a little egg-flip, and a piece of pound-cake.’
‘No, indeed, I couldn’t take any.’
‘O, but you must; I’ll bring it as I go up to bed. Come, Tompion.’
They all trooped downstairs, leaving Elizabeth alone in the gallery. She sank down into a chair in a corner, very glad to be alone. Her side was aching, and her heart ached too, though she hardly knew why. God had been very good to her. She had come to Ingleshaw Castle a beggar in rags, newly released from the sick-ward of one workhouse, and with no better prospect than the casual-ward of another workhouse. She had been brought to this beautiful home, and had been purified from the taint of her old life, and fed, and clothed, and taught, and transformed into a new creature. And now she stood on the threshold of a new life, a useful life, in which her own labour should pay the cost of her maintenance. No one could reproach her as a beggar, or a hanger-on upon the skirts of charity, when she was Mrs. Raymond’s governess. And yet the thought of that new life brought her no ray of hope. It seemed to her that she was going to be parted for ever from all that made life worth having, when she had seen the last of Bruno Challoner. To be near him, to be a servant — yes, even the lowest scullion — in the house to which he came, or in which he lived, would be a life not altogether unblessed; but to exist in the outer darkness of a world upon which he never entered — O, how blank and dreary the prospect of such an existence seemed to her!
She looked back, as she sat listless in her corner, leaning against the massive oaken balustrade, the great empty hall, lit only by the low glimmer of dying logs, lying below her like a dark gulf. She looked back, and remembered those summer days in which she had been the messenger between Lady Lucille and her lover; when she had seen and talked with Bruno Challoner ever so many times in the day, comforting him when he was downcast, bringing him tender messages from his betrothed, answering the same anxious questions again and again as they two strolled up and down the grassy space below Lady Lucille’s windows.
She remembered how gracious he had been to her; how grateful for the comfort she had carried to him; how he lad seemed to give her the credit of every cheering report; with what exquisite tenderness he had spoken of the sick girl lying in her darkened room up yonder, behind the silken curtains. And then she remembered how as the slow summer days went by she began to look forward to those meetings in the rose-garden with a strange delight, longing for the hour that brought Bruno Challoner to her side, dwelling upon his words, keeping his looks and tones locked in her heart; haunted by his face all the time they were parted, thrilled by the sight of him when they met, as if that face were something new and strange. He was so different from — so far above — all the men she had known in her past life. The refinement of his manner, his graciousness, the music of his voice, his lofty bearing, made him seem a godlike creature in the sight of her who had been familiar only with the outcasts of this earth, the refuse of humanity. This was her sole excuse for loving him. But she did not sin deliberately. The fatal passion crept into her heart unawares.
Then came the long days of Lady Lucille’s convalesence, during which Mr. Challoner was altogether absent; and then that August morning on the sands at Weymouth, when the lovers met after their enforced separation, and Elizabeth, not yet schooled in self-governance, rebelled against Fate as she paced the bay, alone and forgotten, while those two sat side by side, a little way off, all the world to each other. And then followed days of delight on board the yacht — days when she made a third in all their talk, lived with them and belonged to them — days in which Bruno seemed almost as much to her as he was to his plighted wife. A time of false unholy happiness — delusive, ensnaring — which ended that September night, when, in a moment of reckless, headlong, half-despairing passion, she betrayed herself, and let Bruno Challoner into the secret of his own weakness, which had made this nameless waif dearer to him than his betrothed. He had fought, and fought manfully, against his folly, and from that hour all familiar every-day association between him and Elizabeth, as between friends and equals, ceased for ever. She hated herself for the madness of that moment, the uncontrollable impulse which had wrung the truth from her despairing soul; and the thought that he scorned her for that folly galled her proud spirit, and made the burden of life almost unbearable. Then it was that the sword began to prey too fiercely on the scabbard, and that the very foundations of life were sapped. She, who had outlived hunger, cold, fever and squalor, privations and hardships unspeakable, succumbed to the keener agony of a bruised and broken spirit.
There was comfort for the wounded soul in that brief interview in the wood, when Bruno told her to be brave, and revealed his own weakness; there was comfort in the knowledge that he had never scorned her. He, whose voice trembled as he spoke to her, whose hand clasped hers in such intensity of hopeless passion, could never have despised her.
She would be brave for his sake, true for his sake; she would die sooner than that Lady Lucille should ever know that either of them had been false. Her thoughts went slowly back over that passionate, sorrowful past, as she sat in the dark gallery, lighted only by the lamp in the corridor — light that came faintly through a half-open door. Looking back to-night, life seemed strange and dreamlike: it was as if she were recalling somebody else’s story rather than her own. She seemed t
o have passed beyond caring very much about anything. Grief had. lost the sharpness of its sting. The pain was dull and deadened; but the future was quite hopeless. It was as if she stood on some little island — a mere rock — in the midst of the wide desolate sea, not caring to look to one side or the other, where all the prospect was blank and joyless.
She was glad to think she would be far away, at some unknown place by the sea, when Mr. Challoner and Lady Lucille were married. She could have schooled herself to look on at the wedding calmly enough, having acquired a wonderful power of self-command during the last three months; but still she would have felt somehow like a skeleton at the feast. She could not have rejoiced as others rejoiced, with honest unfaltering heart. Only yesterday, when Lady Lucille called her into her dressing-room to see the white satin wedding-gown, outspread upon a sofa in all its glistening loveliness, half-veiled in softest lace, and garlanded with orange-blossoms, she had shrunk shudderingly away, fancying that she saw a shroud lying there.
‘It will be your turn to be married soon, I daresay,’ said Lucille, knowing nothing about Tom Brook, ‘ and then I shall give you your wedding gown.’
The clock struck eleven. Sounds of music, or of laughter, came now and then from the corridor. The little Christmas party were sitting in Lucille’s morning-room, just as they had sat last night. It was one of the prettiest rooms in the Castle, and the Earl preferred it to any, except his library. Once the door remained open all through. ‘ Batti, batti,’ which Lucille sang exquisitely. 0, what deep love the melody breathed from those young lips! Elizabeth could guess how Bruno stood by the piano, looking down at his betrothed as she sang; or sat close by the angle of the instrument, with his face on a level with, the singer’s. So she would sing to him for many and many a year to come, till Time dulled the freshness of the voice; but it would be sweet in his ears to the end, sweetest when he heard her singing to her children. No one could doubt that those two would be happy together, for they loved each other with a deep-rooted affection, a love of old days and early years, which no fleeting passion, born of a truant fancy, could undermine.
While Elizabeth sat in, her corner of the shadowy gallery there were warmth and life and brightness in Lady Lucille’s morning-room, from which the sound of music and voice came with such pathetic meaning to the ear of that lonely listener. Never had Lucille felt happier than she felt to-night, never more secure of her lover’s affection. The cloud that had been between them for a little while had passed away altogether, and perfect confidence was restored. Lord Ingleshaw looked on from his easy chair by the hearth, as those two sat by the piano — looked on with silent rejoicing, grateful to Providence, which, in this union, had fulfilled his long-cherished desire. He had never told Lucille how fondly he hoped for her marriage with his heir; how dear a dream it had ever been with him to picture his daughter in the old home, her husband occupying that place which his son would have held had his wife lived to give him a son. Not for worlds would he have influenced her choice, in order to gratify any desire of his. He loved her too well for that. But this thing had come about naturally, without his interference, and he was deeply thankful. God had been very good to him.
‘My little Lucille,’ he said presently, when his daughter crept to his side, and knelt down by the arm of his chair, and nestled her fair head against his shoulder, ‘ my dear one, it seems only yesterday that you were a child upon my knees. And now so soon to be a wife! I used to think the years were long and slow; but now I know how swift my darling has made them for me. I can measure the tranquillity of my days by your growth, Lucille. You have grown from a baby to a woman almost unawares.’
‘It has seemed a long, long life to me, dear father,’ said Lucille, ‘ but not an hour too long. You dream away so many hours over Horace and Virgil, and all your favourite books, that I daresay the days do slip by unawares.’
‘True,’ said the Earl, ‘ I waste a good deal of time among my books: but it is pleasant dreaming. And I mean to be more active in future. I shall help Bruno in all his humanitarian schemes. Elizabeth May has been talking to me about the dwellings of the London poor — that is a subject I should like to go into thoroughly. But it is too late to talk about it to-night. There goes half-past eleven, a most unholy hour for Ingleshaw Castle. Suppose you read us Milton’s hymn, Lucille, to give us a comfortable Christmas-tide feeling before we go to bed. You used to read those noble verses very prettily.’
‘I taught her,’ said Miss Marjorum, folding her mittened hands, and smiling the smile of self-satisfaction. ‘Before she was twelve years old I had made her familiar with some of the masterpieces of our language. She knows the “Hymn to the Nativity “ by heart.’
Lucille, sitting on a stool by her father’s chair, sheltered from observation, began, in her calm, well-modulated voice, the grand Miltonic hymn,
‘It was the winter wild
While the heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger.’
Miss Marjorum was not a genius, but she was a most capable teacher, and she had taught her pupil to pronounce her own language, a gift which very few young ladies of the present day possess, or perhaps would care to possess; for there is a savour of the archaic in the English tongue so spoken, as old-fashioned as the prose of Addison. Young ladies prefer, for the most part, to talk society language, which is almost as unlike English as if it were Ojibbeway, and which tortures and mystifies the intelligent foreigner who has learnt our language out of books.
Lucille recited without bombast or rant of any kind — calmly, quietly, but with a clear and finished utterance, and with the expression which results naturally from perfect intelligence.
Bruno listened with delight. It was a new gift revealed to him in his future wife.
‘It is better than music. You shall recite for me every evening when we are alone, Lucille,’ he said, with serio-comic authority. ‘You can get up your Milton and your Keats, your Wordsworth and your Shelley, in the odd half-hours of your day; and after dinner, when I am worn-out with public work, you can recite to me, as I lie on the sofa and smoke. It will soothe my harassed nerves.’
And now, on the stroke of twelve, they bade each other good-night, after a Christmas-day without a cloud. Few such happy days come into any lifetime; days at once good and happy, since they have ministered to the happiness of the many.
Midnight sounded from the clock in the Gothic gateway, from the clock in the stables, from the old eight-day clock on the staircase, and the Louis Quatorze bracket-clock in the corridor. All was hushed and dark in the Castle; but still Elizabeth sat in her corner of the gallery, with no more inclination for sleep than if it had been midday instead of midnight. She had watched the servants in the hall below — two of them going their rounds with a lantern, locking and bolting doors, and making sure that all was secure for the night. They performed their work in a somewhat perfunctory manner on this occasion, as men who had supped heavily off the lukewarm remains of the ‘baron,’ and who had not been limited in the item of beer. A dozen burglars might have hidden in the Gothic hall while the two men went round with their lantern, peering into the corner to which its rays were directed, and ignoring all the rest of the hall. The figures in armour, behind which it would be so easy for a living man to conceal himself; the big oaken settles; the tall Japanese screen, which fenced off the draught from one door; the heavy tapestry curtain hanging before another — all these remained unexplored by men or by lantern. There was infinite security to the minds of the two custodians in the very sound of the ponderous bolts, in the very scroop of the mighty keys in the ancient locks.
When they were gone, Elizabeth looked over into the hall from her corner, which was in deepest shadow. The moon had risen, and her cold clear light streamed through the high painted window in the wall behind Elizabeth, and flooded that side of the hall opposite to her hiding-place. The plated armour sent forth silvery gleams in that romantic light. A little while ago, before the men came to lock the
doors, Elizabeth had fancied she saw one of those effigies of dead and gone warriors faintly stirred, as if some one had moved in the background. This was nearly an hour ago, by the red light of the expiring fire. Now, by the more vivid light of the moon, she distinctly saw one of those armour-men shiver upon his base, and a dark figure stirring behind it. Then the living figure crept out from behind the armed image, and moved stealthily towards the curtained doorway which opened into an anteroom communicating with the Earl’s library. She saw him lift the curtain, and go into the anteroom, and then, in the absolute stillness of the house, she heard the opening of a window, and the gruff murmur of men’s voices. There were midnight intruders in the Castle — secret intruders, who must needs mean evil.
What should she do — alarm the house, and get those men taken into custody? They had not seen her. She could easily slip away by the corridor to the back staircase and the tower in which the men-servants slept, and the household would rise, strong in numbers, capable of defying a band of burglars, be they never so desperate. One consideration only restrained Elizabeth from hastening, as fast as her feet would carry her, to the house-steward’s door. She had the face of that red-haired man still in her mind. She had been recalling it, puzzling herself about it, trying desperately to make it out, since the revellers dispersed; and she knew now that the savage projecting jaw, the thin lips, the crafty look, belonged to her husband, Tom Brook, and no other. She remembered her fears after that meeting in October, how closely Tom Brook had questioned her about the interior of the Castle — questions from which she had withheld all satisfactory replies. And now she felt very sure that Brook had entered the Castle, disguised and unsuspected, among the crowd of villagers. To give the alarm would be to destroy the man who had once cared for her and cherished her, after his brutal fashion. Yet she was resolutely bent upon hindering Tom Brook and his accomplices from doing any wrong to life or property in that house.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1116
