Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “I can take all the pain upon myself, and bear it without sign for their sakes,” she mentally cried. “Oh yes, and for mine, for the exposure would kill me. I can bear this; I must take it up as my daily and nightly cross; but I could not bear that my own dear father and mother, or the dear friends of my girlhood, should know he is faithless to me — that he never could have loved me. Theresa, the only one cognisant of it, will be silent for my sake.”

  Bitter though the decision was, Lucy could but choose it. She had believed Karl Andinnian to be one of the few good men of the earth; she had made him her idol; all had seen it. To let them know that the idol had fallen from his pedestal, and so fallen, would reflect its slighting disgrace on her, and be more than human nature could encounter.

  Her interview with Sir Karl took place that evening. She had managed, save at dinner, to avoid his presence until then. It was held in her dressing-room at the dusk hour. He came up to know why she stayed there alone and what she was doing. In truth, she had been schooling herself for this very interview, which had to be got over before she went to rest. The uncertainty of what she could say was troubling her, even the very words she should use caused her perplexity. In her innate purity, her sensitively refined nature, she could not bring herself to speak openly to her husband upon topics of this unpleasant kind. That fact rendered the explanation more incomplete and complicated than it would otherwise have been. He had come up, and she nerved herself to the task. As good enter on it now as an hour later.

  “I — I want to speak to you, Sir Karl.”

  He was standing by the open window, and turned his head quickly. Sir Karl! “What’s amiss, Lucy?” he asked.

  “I — I — I know all about your secret at the Maze,” she said with a great burst of emotion, her chest heaving, her breath coming in gasps.

  Sir Karl started as though he had been shot His very lips turned of an ashy whiteness.

  “Lucy! You cannot know it!”

  “Heaven knows I do,” she answered. “I have learnt it all this day. Oh, how could you so deceive me?”

  Sir Karl’s first act was to dart to the door that opened on the corridor and bolt it. He then opened the two doors leading to the chambers on either side, looked to see that no one was in either of them, shut the doors again, and bolted them.

  “Sir Karl, this has nearly killed me.”

  “Hush!” he breathed. “Don’t talk of it aloud, for the love of God!”

  “Why did you marry me?” she asked.

  “Why, indeed,” he retorted, his voice one of sad pain. “I have reproached myself enough for it since, Lucy.”

  She was silent. The answer angered her; and she had need of all her best strength, the strength she had so prayed for, to keep her lips from a cruel answer. She sat in her low dressing-chair, gazing at him with reproachful eyes.

  He said no more just then. Well-nigh overwhelmed with the blow, he stood back against the window-frame, his arms folded, his face one of pitiful anguish. Lucy, his wife, had got hold of the dreadful secret that was destroying his own peace, and that he had been so cunningly planning to conceal.

  “How did you learn it?” he asked.

  “I shall never tell you,” she answered with quiet firmness, resolved not to make mischief by betraying Theresa. “I know it, and that is enough. Put it down, if you choose, that it was revealed to me by accident — or that I guessed it.”

  “But, Lucy, it is necessary I should know.”

  “I have spoken, Sir Karl. I will never tell you.”

  The evening breeze came wafting into that room of pain; cooling, it might be, their fevered brows, though they were not conscious of it. Lady Andinnian resumed.

  “The unpardonable deceit you practised on my father and mother—”

  Sir Karl’s start of something like horror interrupted her. “They must never know it, Lucy. In mercy to us all, you must join with me in concealing it from them.”

  “It was very wicked in you to have concealed it from them at all. At least, to have married me with such a secret — for I conclude you could not have really dared to tell them. They deserved better at your hands. I was their only daughter: all they had to love.”

  “Yes, it was wrong. I have reproached myself since worse than you can reproach me. But I did not know the worst then.” —

  She turned from him proudly. “I — I wanted to tell you, Sir Karl, that I for one will never forgive or forget your falsehood and deceit; and, what I am about to say, I say for my father and mother’s sake. I will keep it from them, always if I can; I will bury it within my own breast, and remain on here in your home, your ostensible wife. I had thought of leaving your house for theirs, never to return; but the exposure it would bring frightened me; and, in truth, I shrink from the scandal.”

  “What do you mean?” he exclaimed. “My ‘ostensible’ wife?”

  “I shall never be your wife again in reality. That can be your room” — pointing to the one they had jointly occupied; “this one is mine,” indicating the chamber on the other hand. “Aglaé has already taken my things into it.”

  Sir Karl stood gazing at her, lost in surprise.

  “No one but ourselves need know of this,” she resumed, her eyes dropping before the tender, pitiful gaze of his. “The arrangements are looked upon by Aglaé as a mere matter of convenience in the hot weather; the servants will understand it as such. I would spare us both gossip. For your sake and for mine I am proposing this medium course — to avoid the scandal that otherwise must ensue. I shall have to bear, Karl — to bear—” her heart nearly failed her in its bitter grief— “but it will be better than a public separation.”

  “You cannot mean what you say,” he exclaimed. “Live apart from me! The cause cannot justify it.”

  “It scarcely becomes you to say this. Have you forgotten the sin?” she added, in a whisper.

  “The sin? Well, of course it was sin — crime, rather. But that is of the past.”

  She thought she understood what he wished to imply, and bit her lips to keep down their bitter words. He was surely treating her as the veriest child, striving to hoodwink her still! That he was agitated almost beyond control, she saw: and did not wonder at.

  “The sin is past,” he repeated. “No need to recall it or talk of it.”

  “Be it so,” she scornfully said. “Its results remain. This, I presume, was the great secret you spoke of the night before our marriage.”

  “It was. And you see now, Lucy, why I did not dare to speak more openly. I grant that it would have been enough to prevent our marriage, had you then so willed it: but, being my wife, it is not any sufficient cause for you to separate yourself from me.” And, in answer to a question of mine, he could boast that night of his innocence! ran her indignant thoughts.

  “I am the best judge of that,” she said aloud, in answer. “Not sufficient cause! I wonder you dare say it. It is an outrage on all the proprieties of life. You must bring — them — to the Maze here, close to your roof and mine!”

  In her shrinking reticence, she would not mention to him the girl in plain words; she would not even say “her,” but substituted the term “them,” as though speaking of Mrs. Grey and her servants collectively. Sir Karl’s answer was a hasty one.

  “That was not my doing. The coming to the Maze was the greatest mistake ever made. I was powerless to help it.”

  Again she believed she understood. That when Sir Karl had wished to shake off certain trammels, he found himself not his own master in the matter, and could not.

  “And so you submitted?” she scornfully said.

  “I had no other choice, Lucy.”

  “And you pay your visits there!”

  “Occasionally. I cannot do otherwise.”

  “Does it never occur to you to see that public exposure may come?” she continued, in the same contemptuous tone. For the time, Lucy Andinnian’s sweet nature seemed wholly changed. Every feeling she possessed had risen up against the bitter insult
thrust upon her — and Sir Karl seemed to be meeting it in a coolly insulting spirit.

  “The fear of exposure is killing me, Lucy,” he breathed, his chest heaving with its painful emotion. “I have been less to blame than you imagine. Let me tell you the story from the beginning, and you will see that—”

  “I will not hear a word of it,” burst forth Lucy. “It is not a thing that should be told to me. At any rate, I will not hear it.”

  “As you please, of course; I cannot force it on you. My life was thorny enough before: I never thought that, even if the matter came to your knowledge, you would take it up in this cruel manner, and add to my pain and perplexity.”

  “It is for the Maze that we have to be economical here!” she rejoined, partly as a question, her hand laid on her rebellious bosom.

  “Yes, yes. You see, Lucy, in point of fact—”

  “I see nothing but what I do see. I wish to see no further.”

  Sir Karl looked searchingly at her, as though he could not understand. Could this be his own loving, gentle Lucy! It was indeed difficult to think so.

  “In a day or two when you shall have had time to recover from the blow, Lucy — and a blow I acknowledge it to be — you will, I hope, judge me more leniently. You are my wife and I will not give you up: there is no real cause for it. When you shall be calmer you may feel sorry for some things you have said now.” —

  “Sir Karl, listen: and take your choice. I will stay on in your home on the terms I have mentioned, and they shall be perfectly understood and agreed to by both of us; or I will leave it for the protection of my father’s home. In the latter case I shall have to tell him why. It is for you to choose.”

  “Have you well weighed what your telling would involve?”

  “Yes; exposure: and it is that I wish to avoid. If it has to come, it will be your fault The choice lies with you. My decision is unalterable.”

  Sir Karl Andinnian wiped his brow of the fever-drops gathered there. It was a bitter moment: and he considered that his wife was acting with most bitter harshness. But no alternative was left him, for he dared not risk exposure and its awful consequences.

  And so, that was the decision. They were to live on, enemies, under the same roof-top: or at best, not friends. The interview lasted longer; but no more explicit explanation took place between them: and when they parted they parted under a mutual and total misapprehension which neither of the two knew or suspected. Misapprehension had existed throughout the interview — and was to exist. It was one of those miserable cases that now and then occur in the world — a mutual misunderstanding, for which no one is to blame. Sometimes it is never set right on this side the grave. —

  Her heart was aching just as much as his. She loved him passionately, and she was calming down from her anger to a softer mood, such as parting always brings. “Will you not send the — the people away?” she whispered in a last word, and with a burst of grief.

  “If I can I will,” was his answer. “I am hemmed in, Lucy, by all kinds of untoward perplexities, and I cannot do as I would. Good-night. I never could have believed you would take it up like this.”

  They shook hands and parted. The affair had been at last amicably arranged, so so say: and the separation was begun.

  And so Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian were henceforth divided, and the household knew it not.

  Miss Blake did not suspect a word of it. She saw no signs of any change — for outwardly Karl and his wife were civil and courteous to each other as usual, meeting at meals, present together in daily intercourse. After a few days Miss Blake questioned Lady Andinnian.

  “Surely you have not been so foolishly soft as to condone that matter, Lucy?”

  But Lucy wholly refused to satisfy her. Nay, she smiled, and as good as tacitly let Miss Blake suppose that she might have been soft and foolish. Not even to her, or to any other living being, would Lucy betray what was sacred between herself and her husband.

  “I am content to let it rest, Theresa: and I must request that you will do the same. Sir Karl and I both wish it.”

  Miss Blake caught the smile and the gently evasive words, and was struck mute at Lucy’s sin and folly. She quite thought she ought to have an atonement offered up for her at St. Jerome’s. Surely Eve was not half so frail and foolish when she took the apple!

  CHAPTER XVI.

  A Night at the Maze.

  THE Maze was an old-fashioned, curious house inside, full of angles and passages and nooks and corners. Its rooms were small, and not many in number, the principal ones being fitted up with dark mahogany wainscoting. The windows were all casement windows with the exception of two: into those, modern sashes of good size had been placed by the late owner and occupant, Mr. Throcton. At Mr. Throcton’s death the property was put up for sale and was bought by Sir Joseph Andinnian, furniture and all, just as it stood. Or, it may rather be said, was bought by Lady Andinnian; for the whim to buy it was hers. Just after the purchase had been entirely completed Lady Andinnian sickened and died. Sir Joseph, ill at the time, did nothing whatever with the new place; so that on his death it came into the possession of his heirs in exactly the same state as when it was purchased. They let it be also, and it remained shut up. According to what Mr. Smith informed Miss Blake — and he was in the main correct, though not quite — Mrs. Grey had come to it and taken possession while Mrs. Andinnian lay ill at Foxwood and her son Karl was in attendance on her. But the little fable the agent had made use of — that he had gone over to the Maze to receive the premium from Mrs. Grey on taking possession — had no foundation in fact. He had certainly gone to the Maze and seen the lady called Mrs. Grey, but not to receive a premium, for she paid none.

  The two rooms into which sash windows had been placed were — the one that faced Miss Blake when she had penetrated to the confines of the Maze on that unlucky day, and within which she had seen the unconscious Mrs. Grey; and the one above it. They were at the end of the house, looking towards the entrance gates. Into this upper room the reader must pay a night visit. It was used as a sitting-room. The same dark mahogany wainscoting lined the walls as in the room below, the furniture was dark and heavy looking; and, in spite of the sultry heat of the night, the shutters were closed before the window and dull crimson curtains of damask wool were drawn across them. There was nothing bright in the appendages of the room, save the lighted lamp on the table and a crystal vase of hot-house flowers.

  Seated at the table at work — the making of an infant’s frock — was Mrs. Grey. Opposite to her, in the space between the table and the fire-place, sat Sir Karl; and by her side, facing him — Adam Andinnian.

  It is more than probable that this will he no surprise; that the reader has already divined the truth of the secret, and all the miserable complication it had brought and was bringing in its train. It was not Adam Andinnian who had died in that fatal scuffle off Portland Island — or more strictly speaking, off Weymouth — but one of the others who had been concerned in it.

  Yes, there he sat, in life and in health; his speech as free, his white and beautiful teeth not less conspicuous than of yore — Sir Adam Andinnian. Karl, sitting opposite with his grave, sad face, was not in reality Sir Karl and never had been.

  But Adam Andinnian was altered. The once fine black hair, which it had used to please him to wear long in the neck, was now short, scanty, and turned to grey; his once fine fresh colour had given place to pallor, and he was growing a beard that looked grey and stubbly. Decidedly old-looking now, as compared with the past, was Adam Andinnian. He wore evening dress: just as though he had been attired for a dinner party — say — at Foxwood Court. Mrs. Grey — as she was called, though she was in reality Lady Andinnian — wore a summer dress of clear white muslin, through which might be seen her white neck and arms. It was the pleasure of her husband, Sir Adam, that in the evening, when only he dared to come out of his hiding-shell, they should keep up, in attire at least, some semblance of the state that ought to have been theirs.
r />   “I can tell you, Karl, that I don’t approve of it,” Sir Adam was saying, with all his old haughty bearing and manner. “It’s a regular scandal. What business has any one to set up such a thing on my land?”

  “It’s Truefit’s land for the time being, you know, Adam. He gave the consent.”

  “A parcel of foolish people — be-vanitied boys of self-called priests, and be-fooled girls, running and racing to the place four or five times a day under pretence of worship!” continued Sir Adam, getting up to pace the room in his excitement, as though he would have burst through its small confines. “I won’t permit it, Karl.”

  He seemed to have got somewhat shorter, and his walk had a limp in it. But he was the same hasty, fiery, Adam Andinnian. A man cannot well change his nature.

  “I do not see how it is to be prevented,” was Karl’s answer. “It will not do in our position, to raise a stir over anything, or to make enemies. I daresay it will bring itself to an end some way or other.”

  “The whole parish is making fun of it, I find: Ann hears it talked of when she goes on errands. And it is a downright insult on Mr. Sumnor. What a curious-minded person that Miss Blake must be! Rose” — Sir Adam halted close to his wife— “if ever you put your foot inside this St. Jerome’s I’ll not forgive you.”

  She lifted her eyes to his from the baby’s frock. “I am not likely to go to it, Adam.”

  “The empty-headed creatures that girls are, now-a-days! If bull-baiting came up, they’d run off to it, just as readily as the good girls of former days would run from any approach of evil to take shelter under their mother’s wing. Does your wife frequent St. Jerome’s, Karl?”

  “Oh no.”

  “She shows her sense.”

  Karl Andinnian smiled. “You have not lost the old habit, Adam — the putting yourself into a heat for nothing. I came over this evening to have some serious talk with you. Do sit down.” —