by Grant Allen
But that was not all. Worse depths yet loomed behind. Dimly and unconsciously at first, more definitely afterwards, as she recovered strength to face that blinding blow, Sabine saw that Woodbine’s elevation to the first post at Hurst Croft meant nothing less than her own definitive though gradual deposition from her throne as heiress. She was almost too proud to acknowledge in her own mind the full degradation involved for her in that painful come-down in life. It hit her hard on her tenderest susceptibilities. She knew she was beautiful; she knew she was attractive; she knew she was rich; she knew she was made much of wherever she went; but she had never had any reason till that moment to try in her own mind the difficult task of separating herself from her father’s money-bags, of deciding how much of the admiration and adulation lavished upon her was due to her own wit, sprightliness, or beauty, and how much to the inheritance of the famous Venables’ banking interest in the City. Now she would be put to the humiliating necessity of facing that problem in practical life. She would find out before long, by her admirers’ behaviour under these altered circumstances, what proportion of their homage was due to Sabine Venables herself, viewed as a human being, and what proportion was due to the prospective heiress of Hurst Croft estate with its correlative thousands.
To so proud a soul the bare idea that the change could make any difference in her position at all was painful to recognise. Even to herself, it humiliated her to acknowledge it. She would have liked to think all this attention bestowed upon her was her guerdon as a woman; she hated the necessity for having her eyes opened to the probable fact that a very large part of it was due merely to the reflex of her father’s balance.
And yet, from the very first moment she fully appreciated — in a way — the immensity of the downfall, and the potentialities of the situation. If Woodbine gave her father (now ten years a widower) an heir for Hurst Croft, her humiliation would be complete. She would sink at once to be only the rich man’s residuary legatee. Instead of being sought after as the best match of the season, she would drop into the position of a mere target for younger sons whose modest expectations of catches were easily satisfied. Where prospective Dukes and Marquises had been wont to pay assiduous court to the fantastic heiress, an occasional honourable (probably the youngest scion of an Irish peerage in the Encumbered Estates Court) would hint henceforth the possibility of his accepting her, if approved, with a sufficient dowry to support him in unassuming idleness. To come down to that would be hateful to Sabine Venables’ haughty spirit. She didn’t wish to be taken as a modest competence. She must be wooed like a queen, if they wanted at all to woo her.
Not that Sabine really and truly cared twopence, in her heart of hearts, for all these upholsteries and gewgaws of life that Old Affability esteemed at so high a valuation. If Bertie Montgomery had proposed to her the day before, she would have kept him dangling about for half an hour, playing with him (in her own words) as a cat plays with a mouse, and then would have told him in very plain terms that, much as she thanked him for the honour he had done her in singling her out to assist in the repair of the dilapidated Powysland fortunes, and the refurbishment of the shabby Powysland mansions, she regretted she didn’t like him one quarter enough ever to dream of marrying him. What she would miss in life now would be — the chance of saying as much to other men in future. Even if you don’t want to kill anybody, says the Roman moralist in a famous line, it’s a pleasure to feel you have it in your power to kill him. And even if Sabine Venables didn’t want to marry a Duke, it was a pleasure to her, at least, to feel in her heart she had it in her power, if she willed, to refuse him.
She had grown so accustomed to that atmosphere, indeed, that she hardly knew how she could breathe any other. Nay, it was partly for that reason (though she was scarcely conscious of it to herself) that she kept Hubert Harrison so long at bay, torturing him with doubts, and teasing him with petty concessions, while she dangled the grapes temptingly all the time before his eyes, and withdrew them in a coquettish pet whenever he thought he was just going at last to really grasp them. She loved Hubert; till that moment, she had never told herself unreservedly how much she loved him; but she had delayed letting him know the fact too plainly, because she couldn’t bear to tear herself away all at once from her admiring coterie of courtesy lords and actual baronets. She didn’t want to burn her boats behind her; she didn’t want to abdicate and renounce her kingdom. If she had married Hubert, as she always figured to herself she meant to do, in her own heart, at the end of the chapter, why, that chapter at least would be ended, ended for ever, and with it all the excitement and extorted homage of a coquette’s free period of unrestricted flirtation. As Mrs. Hubert Harrison she would still have filled an important place in society, of course, and would have made Hubert rich and happy, and got him into Parliament, and all that sort of thing, and settled down to be a happy mother of children; but she would no longer be able to sway her little court of obedient suitors with the same absolute, not to say unreasoning, rule, as when she flitted before their eyes a potential and possible Duchess of Powysland.
And now, in the dead hours of the night, as she lay there with burning cheeks and tearless eyes — for she couldn’t cry, poor child! her pride wouldn’t let her — she felt that all these bubbles had burst for ever, and that she might sink before long to be as nobody in the house before the face of Woodbine Weatherley’s prospective infant. How she hated, in her heart, that hypothetical atom of non-existent humanity! If she married Hubert at all, she must marry him now, as comparatively poor; for supposing a boy were borne — and to that stroke of fate Sabine resigned her soul in patience immediately — papa, of course, would leave him everything, or almost everything — people of papa’s sort always do leave things so; their great idea in life is to become the founder of a family (what gross injustice!), and then all the world would say, in chorus, she’d taken Hubert at last as a pis aller, because she found she couldn’t catch the Duke of Powysland. That abyss was too profound — from a Duke to a penny-a-liner! Yet that was what all the world would say, she felt sure; and, recognising it, she hardly knew how she could ever bring herself, much as she loved him, to marry Hubert.
Ah, how differently things had turned out, in the blind caprice of fate, from what she dreamt and intended! Her own idea had been that, after refusing Bertie Montgomery and half a dozen other equally brilliant offers, she would turn round, before the face of the world, and poor scandalized papa — how she loved to shock him! — and say boldly, ‘No, thank you, none of your coronets for me! I prefer to take the man after my own heart. I might have been a Duchess; I choose, rather, to marry Hubert Harrison!’ That would have been immense! That would have been delicious! That would have been noble! That would have been beautiful! That would have combined romance in real life with the sense of social triumph dear to the female heart, especially when built on Sabine Venables’ pattern. And now — she could hardly bear to think of it, it was so lame a conclusion. To marry Hubert Harrison, as things stood at present, would almost in a sense look like seeming to put up with him.
To put up with Hubert! That king of men! And she so loved and admired him! He was so kind and so clever; he understood her so perfectly. She loved to listen to him as he talked after dinner with the poor creatures around him; she loved to hear what people said about those brilliant things of his in the morning papers, which must lead him one day straight into the House of Commons. For Hubert’s sake, she would readily have given up a whole round dozen of Bertie Montgomerys. It would have made her feel so proud to say to Hubert, ‘My darling, my darling! they may ask me till all’s blue; but I love you ten thousand times better than all the Dukes in Christendom.’ And as things stood to-night, she could never, never, never say it.
It was an endless night; but, like all things endless, at last it ended.
When she got up in the morning, her head ached. At breakfast, she was coldly polite to Woodbine. Whatever else people said, they should never say she forgot her dignity in
her endeavours to secure some portion of the new favourite’s countenance or of her father’s fortune. If she fell, she would fall, like Clarendon, with honour. Nobody should ever be able to accuse her of having truckled to the governess girl her father selected. To her, Woodbine should always be merely ‘Mrs. Venables.’
After breakfast, Sabine went off into the library alone. It was hateful to her to face that deceitful, designing creature. She was angry with Woodbine. During the night she had harboured many hard thoughts against her. That this feeble little image, a mere Girton adventuress, should have wormed her way into the house, and into papa’s affections, by playing upon the absurd vanity and conceit of a man old enough to be her own father, in order to get his money and cheat herself, Sabine, out of her natural inheritance — oh! no words were too bad for it. She was a wretch, a criminal! If it had been any other man on earth, Sabine could almost have forgiven her; but Thorndyke Venables! oh, really too ridiculous! Papa was a very nice man in his way, of course, viewed as a father; but, that at his present age, and with his paternal habits, after ten years of celibate life, any woman under fifty should ever dream of marrying him, or, rather, of selling herself to him (for it could be nothing but that) — pah! the very thought of it shocked and disgusted her. Woodbine had sunk below zero in her estimation. She could hardly manage through breakfast to be frigidly polite to her.
She seated herself in an arm-chair, and pretended to begin reading the Morning Post. The words swam before her eyes illegibly, of course, but that didn’t matter. It gave her some ostensible reason for sitting there alone. Presently there came a timid little knock at the door. The sound annoyed Sabine beyond expression. Such infamous vulgarity! What did the person who made it mean by knocking? So exceedingly ill-bred! Didn’t she know that in a gentleman’s house nobody ever knocks at the door of any reception-room? If that was the new under-housemaid’s idea of her duty, Sabine said to herself savagely, she’d speak to her upon the subject. Or, rather, she added to herself with a bitter little smile, she’d ask the future Mrs. Venables, in anticipation of her coming reign, to offer a few appropriate words of advice to her.
‘Come in!’ she answered, as one answers a servant, and sat pretending still to be absorbed in that interesting cause célèbre.
‘Sabine!’ a little voice said piteously and pleadingly by her side. It was a very small voice, and its tones were enough to disarm a tiger.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ Sabine answered, looking up unconcernedly. ‘I thought it was Julia, and I was going to ask you (as it’s more your place than mine) to tell her that nobody ever knocks at all at a downstairs door — any door but a bedroom, I mean — in anything better than a tradesman’s family.
Woodbine turned her eyes towards her imperious friend with an imploring look. ‘Forgive me, Sabine dear,’ she cried, flinging herself passionately upon the tall girl’s neck, and taking both hands in hers as she kissed them a dozen times over. ‘I saw by your manner at breakfast that Mr. Venables had told you all; and I couldn’t help observing that you were very, very angry with me. And just now I asked him, and he said he had, and he was afraid it had hurt you, and it had made him so wretched. And, oh! Sabine, I know exactly how you feel; I sympathize with you so much; but when he asked me last night — my dear, my dear, what on earth could I answer?’
A great red spot burnt in Sabine’s cheek as she drew herself up and replied slowly, ‘You could have said that no money on earth would ever tempt you to do anything so mean, so heartless, or so wicked.’
Woodbine fell upon her friend’s lap and sobbed in an agony of misery. ‘Oh, Sabine!’ she cried, ‘I haven’t slept a wink all night, wondering how you’d feel and what you’d say to it; and I was horribly afraid of the effect it might produce upon you. But anything as bad as this, oh! I never dreamt of it.’
‘You’ve brought it upon yourself,’ Sabine answered, unmoved, with the stern virtue of retributive justice. ‘If you’d had a spark of womanly pride, or honesty, or shame in your nature, you could never have accepted him. I didn’t mean to say it to you; I meant to leave you to your own conscience; but when you come here asking me for my forgiveness and my sympathy almost — me, whom you’ve insulted, and disgraced, and supplanted — I can’t help speaking out, Woodbine. I can’t help it. I can’t help it.’
‘Sabine!’ Woodbine cried once more, raising up her face in her agony, and confronting even those terrible angry black eyes of hers; ‘I thought of you before I answered him; I thought more than once of you; for weeks before, ever since it first occurred to me he might perhaps be going to ask me — ever since I began to notice how gentle and kind he was — I said to myself over and over again fervently, “Even if he asks me, for Sabine’s sake it’s my duty to refuse him.” I meant to refuse him all along, even yesterday afternoon, when the play was over.’ She paused and hesitated. ‘It was as you and Mr. Harrison were walking up from the ground,’ she went on; ‘Mr. Venables lingered behind with me, and congratulated me on my acting, and was so very, very sweet and good to me. And he took me quite by surprise. When he asked me, I faltered. I wanted to say No — I thought I ought to say No — but somehow I couldn’t, couldn’t frame my lips to say it. Sabine, Sabine, my own heart wouldn’t let me. I thought of you; but he pleaded so hard. And even then I didn’t. I held my lips tight, though my heart went fast; but he saw what I thought, dear. And he slipped this on my finger before I could make up my mind to falter out No. And then he smiled and said I had accepted him.’
‘Well, there’s still time to undeceive him, before he becomes the laughing-stock of the county,’ Sabine answered coldly. ‘Sooner than I’d marry a man for his money — and a man twice one’s own age, too — I’d cut off my right hand, or I’d starve in the gutter. Money or title, I’d despise them both, unless love went with them. Do you think I’d marry that wretched Montgomery man, for example, just because he’s a Duke? Why, sooner than take him, I’d die an old maid; I’d work my fingers to the bone, and take in washing. I know you’re poor, and too weak to work, and unable to earn your own living, and all that, and I’d make every allowance for you; but sooner than marry a man for board and lodging and a roof over my head, I’d — I’d sell flowers at a crossing, and die of consumption at last in a hospital. If you wanted help or befriending, you know I’d have given it you; but that you should come into my own house — you, such an innocent-looking girl as you are, that one would think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth — and then set yourself to work to steal my father’s heart away from me, and marry him for a home — oh! I call it despicable. I call it despicable, despicable, despicable!’
Woodbine rose, and confronted her, all tearful, with a puzzled look of wonderment and of childish innocence. ‘But, Sabine,’ she cried pitifully, in a very earnest voice, ‘I do so love him!’
Sabine drew back almost as if she had been stung. She could forgive Woodbine almost anything else save that; but not hypocrisy. ‘Love him!’ she repeated incredulously, with a scornful intonation. ‘Love papa! Love him in that sort of way! Oh, Miss Weatherley, how ridiculous!’
Woodbine gazed hard into her face once more, with eyes more puzzled and surprised than ever. ‘But I do love him, Sabine,’ she cried. ‘I love him with all my heart and soul. From the very first moment I ever saw him, almost, I loved him, oh — I loved him, I loved him, inexpressibly!’
Her voice had the genuine ring of truth in it, but what she said was too utterly incredible for Sabine to believe. The proud girl gazed, and wondered whether that poor feeble little atomy’s head was going wrong somehow. Love poor papa with all her heart and soul! Such a man as papa! Oh, it was too, too comical.
‘Why, Woodbine,’ she said slowly, in a very cold voice, ‘you must be joking.’
Woodbine flung herself upon the ground at Sabine’s feet once more. ‘No, no, dear,’ she cried, laying her head in her friend’s lap and hugging her knees nervously; ‘I’m in earnest. I mean it. How could I ever help loving him? He’s so good an
d so gentle. Nobody else ever spoke to me on this earth as he’s done. Nobody else ever understood me. Nobody else ever sympathized with me. He’s talked to me till he’s wormed his way deep into my heart, and I can’t bear to leave him, I can’t bear to go away from him. It made me so sad yesterday to think I must go. When he asked me last night, I had a hard struggle with myself. I said to myself, “For Sabine’s sake I ought to say No to him.” And then it flashed across me suddenly, like a great fierce pain, that if I said No, I should have to go away, and perhaps stay away for ever and ever from him. And I couldn’t have borne that. It would have killed me outright. Oh, Sabine darling, I could never now live anywhere without him.’
Sabine looked down upon her with the wondering pity one bestows in an asylum upon some pathetic mania. The girl really meant it — she couldn’t doubt that any longer. Woodbine, who acted so ill, could never in her life have acted like this! But, oh, how insane of her! Sabine couldn’t see (for, like so many girls, though quick in passing intuition, she was lacking in any real depth of psychological insight into the minds of others very unlike herself) how natural it was that this feeble little stray should have fallen in love at first sight with the only living being who, in all her poor short life, had ever paid attention to her, sympathized with her, flattered her. She didn’t see how natural it was that Woodbine should make much of such a man as Mr. Venables when he laid, as it were, all his honours and riches, a willing gift, at the feet of the poor little despised governess. She didn’t see how natural it was for a shrinking, sensitive, affectionate soul to repose its confidence freely in the very first person who had ever shown the faintest desire to obtain it. ‘Nobody else ever understood me,’ she said. Why, that was just what Sabine herself thought about Hubert Harrison. The coincidence struck her. But, oh, what a difference! She wasn’t psychologist enough to know herself that every woman who ever fell in love on this earth thinks just so about her own soul and the man who loves her.
