Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Oh, how could you!” she exclaimed. “It was so beautiful here, in your garden.”

  “Madam, it will be more beautiful there,” he rejoined, as she began to put it in her waistband.

  “I should be very sorry, but that I see other buds will soon be out.”

  “Yes, by to-morrow. Earth does not deal out her flowers to us with a niggardly hand.”

  Accompanying the resolution Miss Blake had come to the previous evening and perfected in the night — in her eyes a very righteous and proper resolution; namely, to disclose what she knew to Lady Andinnian — accompanying this, I say, was an undercurrent of determination to discover as many particulars of the ill-savoured matter as she possibly could discover. Standing at this moment on Mr. Smith’s grass-plat, that gentleman beside her and the gates of the Maze in full view opposite, an idea struck Miss Blake that perhaps he knew something of the affair.

  She began to question him. Lightly and apparently carelessly, interspersed with observations about the flowers, she turned the conversation on the Maze, asking this, and remarking that.

  “Lonely it must be for Mrs. Grey? Oh, yes. How long has she lived there, Mr. Smith?”

  “She came — let me see. Shortly, I think, before Mrs. Andinnian’s death.”

  “Ah, yes. At the time Sir Karl was staying here.” —

  “Was Sir Karl staying here? By the way, yes, I think he was.”

  Miss Blake, toying with a spray of the flourishing clematis, happened to look suddenly at Mr. Smith as he gave the answer, and saw his glance turned covertly on her through his green glasses. “He knows all about it,” she thought, “and is screening Sir Karl. That last answer, the pretended non-remembrance, was an evasion. Men invariably hold by one another in matters of this kind. Just for a moment there was a silence. —

  “Mr. Smith, you may trust me,” she then said in a low tone. “I fancy that you and I both know pretty well who it was brought the lady here and why she lives in that seclusion. But I could never have believed it of Sir Karl Andinnian.”

  Mr. Smith in his surprise — and it looked like very genuine surprise — took off his glasses and gazed at Miss Blake without them. He had rather fine brown eyes, she noticed. Not a word spoke he.

  “You wonder that I should speak of this, Mr. Smith — I see that.”

  “I don’t understand you, ma’am, and that’s the truth.”

  “Oh, well; I suppose you will not understand. Sir Karl ought to be ashamed of himself.”

  Whether it was her tart tone that suddenly enlightened Mr. Smith, or whether he had but been pretending before, there could be no mistake that he caught her meaning now. He put on his green spectacles with a conscious laugh.

  “Hush,” said he, making believe playfully to hide his face. “We are content, you know, Miss Blake, to ignore these things.”

  “Yes, I do know it, dear sir: it is the way of the world. But they cannot be ignored in the sight of Heaven.”

  The striking of nine o’clock inside the house reminded Miss Blake that the morning was getting on, and that she had best make haste if she wanted any breakfast. Mr. Smith held the gate open for her, and shook her offered hand. She stepped onwards, feeling that a mutual, if silent, understanding had been established between them — that they shared the disgraceful secret.

  Had Miss Blake wanted confirmation in her belief, this admission of Mr. Smith’s would have established it. But she did not. She was as sure of the fact as though an angel had revealed it to her. The sight of her own good eyes, the hearing of her true ears, and the exercise of her keen common sense had established it too surely. —

  “My task lies all plain before “me,” she murmured. “It is a disagreeable one, and may prove a thankless one, but I will not shrink from it. Who am I that I should turn aside from an appointed duty? That it has been appointed me, events show. I have been guided in this by a higher power than my own.”

  An appointed duty! Perhaps Miss Blake thought she had been “appointed” to watch the Maze gates in the shade of the dark night, to track the private steps of her unsuspicious host, Karl Andinnian! There is no sophistry in this world like self-sophistry; nothing else so deceives the human heart: more especially when it is hidden under a guise of piety.

  Miss Blake found her opportunity in the course of the morning. A shade of pity crossed her for the happiness she was about to mar, as she saw the husband and wife out together after breakfast, amid the flowers. Now Lucy’s arm entwined fondly in his, now tripping by his side, now calling his attention to some rare or sweet blossom, as Mr. Smith had called Miss Blake’s in the morning, went they. In Lucy’s bright face, as she glanced perpetually at her lord and husband, there was so much of love, so much of trust: and in his, Sir Karl’s, there was a whole depth of apparent tenderness for her.

  “Men were deceivers ever,” angrily cried Miss Blake, recalling a line of the old ballad. “It’s enough to make one sick. But I am sorry for Lucy; it will be a dreadful blow. How I wish it could be inflicted on him instead of her! In a measure it will fall on him — for of course Lucy will take active steps.”

  Later, when Sir Karl, as it chanced, had gone over to Basham, and Lucy was in her pretty little dressing-room, writing to some girl friend, Miss Blake seized on the opportunity. Shutting herself in with Lady Andinnian, she made the communication to her. She told it with as much gentle consideration as possible, very delicately, and, in fact, rather obscurely. At first Lady Andinnian did not understand, could not understand; and when she was made to understand, her burning face flashed forth its indignation, and she utterly refused to believe.

  Miss Blake only expected this. She was very soothing and tender.

  “Sit down, Lucy,” she said. “Listen. On my word of honour, I would not have imparted this miserable tale to inflict on you pain so bitter, but that I saw it must be done. For your sake, and in the interests of everything that’s right and just and seemly, it would not have done to suffer you to remain in ignorance, a blind victim to the dastardly deceit practised on you by your husband.”

  “He could not so deceive me, Theresa; he could not deceive any one,” she burst forth passionately.

  “My dear, I only ask you to listen. You can then judge for yourself. Do not take my word that it is, or must be, so. Hear the facts, and then use your own common sense. Alas, Lucy, there can be no mistake: but for knowing that, should I have spoken, think you? It is, unfortunately, as true as heaven.”

  From the beginning to the end, Miss Blake told her tale. She spoke out without reticence now. Sitting beside Lucy on the sofa, and holding her hands in hers with a warm and loving clasp, she went over it all. The mystery that appeared to encompass this young lady, living alone at the Maze in strict seclusion with her two old servants, who were man and wife, she spoke of first as an introduction. She said how curiously it had attracted her attention, unaccountably to herself at the time, but that now she knew a divine inspiration had guided her to the instinct. She avowed how she had got in, and that it was done purposely; and that she had seen the girl, who was called Mrs. Grey, and was “beautiful as an angel,” and heard her sing the characteristic song (which might well indeed have been written of her), “When lovely woman stoops to folly.” Next, she described Sir Karl’s secret visits; the key he let himself in with, taken from his pocket; the familiar and affectionate words interchanged between him and the girl, who on the second occasion had come to the gate to wait for him. She told Lucy that she had afterwards had corroborative evidence from Mr. Smith, the agent: he appeared to know all about it, to take it as a common matter of course, and to be content to ignore it after the custom of the world. She said that Sir Karl had brought Mrs. Grey to the Maze during the time he was staying at Foxwood in attendance on his sick mother: and she asked Lucy to recall the fact of his prolonged sojourn here, of his unwillingness to leave it and rejoin her, his wife; and of the very evident desire he had had to keep her altogether from Foxwood. In short, as Miss Blake put the mat
ter — and every syllable she spoke did she believe to be strictly true and unexaggerated — it was simply impossible for the most unwilling listener not to be convinced.

  Lady Andinnian was satisfied: and it was as her death-blow. Truth itself could not have appeared more plain and certain. After the first outburst of indignation, she had sat very calm and quiet, listening silently. Trifles excite the best of us, but in a great calamity heart and self alike shrink into stillness. Save that she had turned pale as death, there was no sign.

  “Lucy, my poor Lucy, forgive me! I would have spared you if I could: but I believe the task of telling you was laid on me.”

  “Thank you, yes; I suppose it was right to tell me, Theresa,” came the mechanical answer from the quivering lips.

  “My dear, what will be your course? You cannot remain here, his wife.”

  “Would you please let me be alone, now, Theresa? I do not seem to be able to think yet collectedly.”

  The door closed on Miss. Blake, and Lady Andinnian bolted it after her. She bolted the other two doors, so as to make sure of being alone. Then the abandonment began. Kneeling on the carpet, her head buried on the sofa pillow, she lay realizing the full sense of the awful shock. It shook her to the centre. Oh, how dreadful it was! She had so loved Karl, so believed in him: she had believed that man rarely loved a maiden and then a wife as Karl had loved her. This, then, must have been the secret trouble that was upon hint! — which had all but induced him to break off his marriage! So she reasoned, and supposed she reasoned correctly. All parts of the supposition, had she thought them well out, might not perhaps have fitted-in to one another: but in a distress such as this, no woman — no, nor man either — is capable of working out problems logically. She assumed that the intimacy must have been going on for years: in all probability long before he knew her.

  An hour or so of this painful indulgence, and then Lady Andinnian rose from the floor and sat down to think, as well as she could think, what her course should be. She was truly religious, though perhaps she knew it not. Theresa Blake was ostensibly so, and very much so in her own belief: but the difference was wide. The one had the real gold, the other but the base coin washed over. She, Lucy, strove to think and to see what would be right and best to do; for herself, for her misguided husband, and in the sight of God.

  She sat and thought it out, perhaps for another hour. Aglaé came to the door to say luncheon was served, but Lady Andinnian said Miss Blake was to be told that she had a headache and should not take any. To make a scandal and leave her husband’s home — as Theresa seemed to have hinted — would have gone well nigh to kill her with the shame and anguish it would entail. And oh, she hoped, she trusted, that her good father and mother, who had yielded to her love for Karl and so sanctioned the marriage, might never, never know of this. She lifted her imploring eyes and hands to Heaven in prayer that it might be kept from them. She prayed that she might be enabled to do what was right, and to bear: to bear silently and patiently, no living being, save Sir Karl, knowing what she had to endure.

  For, while she was praying for the way to be made clear before her and for strength to walk in it, however thorny it might be, an idea had dawned upon her that this matter might possibly be kept from the world, — might be held sacred between herself and Sir Karl. Could she? could she continue to live on at the Court, bearing in patient silence — nay, in impatient — the cruel torment, the sense of insult? And yet, if she did not remain, how would it be possible to conceal it all from her father and mother? The very indecision seemed well nigh to kill her.

  Visitors drove up to the house in the course of the afternoon — the county families were beginning to call — and Lady Andinnian had to go down. Miss Blake was off to one of St. Jerome’s services — of which the Reverend Guy Cattacomb was establishing several daily. Sir Karl came home while the visitors were there. After their departure, when he came to look round for his wife, he was told she had hastily thrown on bonnet and mantle and gone out. Sir Karl rather wondered.

  Not only to avoid her husband, but also because she wanted to see Margaret Sumnor, and perhaps gain from her a crumb of comfort in her utter wretchedness, had Lady Andinnian run forth to gain the vicarage. Margaret was lying as before, on her hard couch, or board; doing, for a wonder, nothing. Her hands were clasped meekly before her on her white wrapper, her eyelids seemed heavy with crying. But the eyes smiled a cheerful greeting to Lady Andinnian.

  “Is anything the matter, Margaret?”

  It was but the old story, the old grievance; Margaret Sumnor was pained by it, more or less, nearly every day of her life — the home treatment of her father: the contempt shown to him by his second family; ay, and by his wife.

  “It is a thing I cannot talk of much, Lucy. I should not speak of it at all, but that it is well known to Foxwood, and commented on openly. Caroline and Martha set papa at naught in all ways: the insolence of their answers to him, both in words and manner, brings the blush of pain and shame to his face. This time the trouble was about that new place of Miss Blake’s, St. Jerome’s. Papa forbid them to frequent it; but it was just as though he had spoken to a stone — in fact, worse; for they retorted and set him at defiance. They wanted daily service, they said, and should go where it was held. So now papa, I believe, thinks of resuming his daily services here, at Trinity, hoping it may counteract the other. There, that’s enough of home and my red eyes, Lucy. You don’t look well.”

  Lady Andinnian drew her chair quite close to the invalid, so that she might let her hand rest in the one held out for her. “I have a trouble too, Margaret,” she whispered. “A dreadful, sudden trouble, a blow; and I think it has nearly broken my heart. I cannot tell you what it is; I cannot tell any one in the world—”

  “Except your husband,” interposed Miss Sumnor. “Never have any concealments from him, Lucy.”

  Lady Andinnian’s face turned red and white with embarrassment. “Yes, him; I shall have to speak to him,” she said, in some hesitation: and Miss Sumnor’s deep insight into others’ hearts enabled her to guess that the trouble had something to do with Sir Karl. She suspected it was that painful thing to a young wife — a first quarrel.

  “I am not like you, Margaret — ever patient, ever good,” faltered poor Lady Andinnian. “I seem to be nearly tom apart with conflicting thoughts — perhaps I ought to say passions — and I thought I would come to you for a word of advice and comfort. There are two ways in which I can act in this dreadful matter; and indeed that word is no exaggeration, for it is very dreadful. The one would be to make a stir in it, take a high tone, and set forth my wrongs; that would be revenge, just revenge; but I hardly know whether it would be right, or bring right. The other would be to put up with the evil in silence, and bear; and leave the future to God. Which must I do?”

  Margaret Sumnor turned as much as she could turn without assistance, and laid both her hands imploringly on Lady Andinnian’s.

  “Lucy! Lucy! choose the latter. I have seen, oh, so much of this revenge, and of how it has worked. My dear, I believe in my honest heart that this revenge was never yet taken but it was repented of in the end. However grave the justifying cause and cruel the provocation, the time would come when it was heartily and bitterly regretted, when its actor would say, Oh that I had not done as I did, that I had chosen the merciful part!”

  There was a brief silence. Miss Sumnor resumed.

  “‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay; you know who says that, Lucy: but you cannot know what I have seen and marked so often — that when that vengeance is taken into human hands, it somehow defeats itself. It may inflict confusion and ruin on the adversary; but it never fails to tell in some way on the inflictor. It may be only in mental regret: regret that may not set in until after long years; but, rely upon it, he never fails, in his remorseful heart, to wish the past could be undone. A regret, such as this, we have to carry with us to the grave; for it can never be remedied, the revengeful act cannot be blotted out. It has been done; an
d it stands with its consequences for ever: consequences, perhaps, that we never could have foreseen.”

  Lady Andinnian sat listening with drooping face. A softer expression stole over it.

  “There is one thing we never can repent of, Lucy; and that is, of choosing the path of mercy — of leniency. It brings a balm with it to the sorely-chafed spirit, and heals in time. Do you choose it, my dear. I urge it on you with my whole heart.”

  “I think I will, Margaret; I think I will,” she answered, raising for a moment her wet eyes. “It will mortify my pride and my self-esteem: be always mortifying them; and I shall need a great deal of patience to bear.”

  “But you will be able to bear; to bear all; you know where to go for help. Do this, Lucy; and see if in the future you do not find your reward. In after years, it may be that your heart will go up with a great bound of joy and thankfulness. ‘I did as Margaret told me,’ you will say, ‘and bore.’ Oh, if men and women did but know the future that they lay up for themselves according as their acts shall be! — the remorse or the peace.”

  Lucy rose and kissed her. “It shall be so, Margaret,” she whispered. And she went away without another word.

  She strove to keep the best side uppermost in her mind as she went home. Her resolution was taken; and, perhaps because it was taken, the temptation to act otherwise and to choose revenge, rose up in all manner of attractive colours. She could abandon her ill-doing husband and start, even that night, for her parents’ home; reveal the whole, and claim their protection against him. This would be to uphold her pride and her womanly self-respect: but oh, how it would pain them! And they had given their consent to the marriage against their better judgment for her sake; so to say, against their own will. No; she could not, for very shame, tell them, and she prayed again that they might never know it.