by Grant Allen
‘We do, Duchess,’ Elizabeth Woodward answered promptly, and, with a self-respecting bow, descended, well pleased, from her grace’s presence.
Her grace, left alone, leaned back on her couch, and half laughed to herself at the absurdity of this little domestic comedy. How much happier she would have been, after all, if only she could have had for her maid that dear old awkward, clumsy-fingered Emma from the rooms in Clandon Street!
Later in the evening, while she sat waiting for Bertie in the library before dinner, a servant brought in a letter for her from Douglas Harrison. She broke the seal hastily. It was only a hurried note to give some final messages from Sabine Venables, or rather Sabine Harrison, to her friend the Duchess; for Sabine and Linda, when once they met, had struck up almost at first sight an instinctive friendship. They had that likeness in fibre that makes acquaintance easy. But the note began, as Douglas Harrison’s notes were always wont to begin, ‘My dear Linda.’ He at least could never forget the woman in the Duchess. To have called her anything else would have sounded to him absurd; and being above all things natural, he wrote to his lost love exactly as he would have spoken to her.
As Linda stood reading the note, with her arm on the mantelshelf, her husband came in and glided across to her. He had had bad luck again — on the racecourse this time. A telegram had come into the club while he was lounging there that afternoon from the meeting which he had been compelled to miss, much against his will, in order to attend Sabine Venables’ wedding. A friend had put him upon ‘a safe thing’ for the Two-Year-Old Cup; and he had backed the safe thing to the tune of some monkeys, as he himself phrased it. Strange to say, however, the horse of his choice had been badly beaten. He had been in an ill-humour all the day, for things generally were out of joint. He hadn’t wished to attend the wedding at all, in the first place; for he had some feelings of remorse about Sabine Venables (especially now all the world was saying how exceedingly well Old Affability had behaved to her), and some feelings of dislike towards Hubert Harrison, as being the brother (confound his impudence!) of that other objectionable Clandon Street fellow. But the Duchess had insisted; and her husband, being now very short of funds, and feeling the necessity for humouring her, had obeyed accordingly. He meant to tell her that evening that he must raise money somehow; and that being so, he thought it best to miss the race, sorely against his will, and put in an appearance, as he said, at the wedding. But all the same, he did it with a very bad grace, and felt angry and annoyed all the rest of the day for it.
Then came this further blow of his horse being beaten — a horse in which the trainer had felt such perfect confidence — and a fellow at the club had bothered him with hints about an I O U; and that fashionable Pall Mall money-lender with the glass eye had sent in another of his politely minatory little notes about ‘further unpleasantness’; and altogether the world was going awry for the star of Powysland. But he forgot all these things in a moment when, stepping across the room with a very light tread, and glancing quietly over his wife’s shoulder, he read to his surprise these astounding words:
‘Clandon Street, Thursday.
‘My dear Linda,
‘It was such a pleasure to me to see you again at the Venables’ to-day; and though I had hardly any opportunity among all that vast crowd of really speaking to you — —’
He read no more, for as he skimmed the page Linda looked up and saw him; and, folding the letter abruptly with a disdainful smile, popped it into her pocket.
The Duke’s face was livid to look upon. The demon of the Montgomeries distorted his features into terrible shapes. ‘Good God!’ he cried, clasping her wrist in his hand with an iron grip. ‘What does this mean, Linda? It’s dated Clandon Street. Do you mean to tell me that confounded Maclaine fellow has actually the impudence to write like that to you?’
Linda was growing accustomed now to rude treatment from her husband, but she wasn’t the sort of woman to answer a question much more mildly put while he held her arm so.
‘Let go my wrist,’ she said quietly, biting her lip to keep down the tears, he was gripping her so hard with his sinewy fingers, ‘and then perhaps I may consider your question.’
The Duke started back and let her wrist drop at once, but in anger, not in penitence.
‘Perhaps you’ll consider it!’ he echoed. ‘Perhaps you’ll consider it. Pray, do you mean to tell me, then, you expect me to bandy words with you over a question like that? If you do, all I can say is you very much misunderstand me. “Yes” or “No” is the only answer I can take from you on such a subject.’
Linda stood back a pace too, and looked him straight in the face with unflinching eyes.
‘The letter is from Mr. Harrison,’ she said, fiery red by this time. ‘Not the one who was married this morning. My friend his brother.’
‘Your friend!’ the Duke repeated, white in the face with jealous anger now. ‘Your friend, Mr. Harrison! Show me the signature this minute, if you dare. You know it’s not from him. You know you are telling me a deliberate lie. I can see it in your face. It’s from that damned Maclaine man!’
He was fuming with rage; Linda stood in front of him in her stately beauty, all trembling with shame that her word should be so doubted.
‘Duke,’ she said angrily, not even deigning to call him Bertie, as she usually called him, ‘the letter, as I tell you, is from Douglas Harrison. I will not show you the signature. I will not be doubted. That’s a matter of principle. If you can’t believe me, I’m not fit for you to live with. You must take my word for it — or disbelieve me if you like. But in such a matter I don’t condescend to give proofs to any man. I speak the truth, and I will not be mistrusted.’
Her husband glared back at her with that same glazed expression in his eye she had noticed once or twice before when he was most suspicious.
‘Very well,’ he said doggedly. ‘We shall see. It’s a bargain. Till you show me that letter, I will have nothing more in any way to say to you.’
His manner, was insolent — nay, maddening in its contempt. Linda walked straight across the room to where the red wax candles were burning on the side-table. It was a foolish thing to do, perhaps — burning her own boats — but in her righteous indignation that any man should so doubt her word she did it unhesitatingly. She lighted the note at the candle, and held it as it blazed, watching it hard till it scorched her fingers. Then she let the charred remnant fall in the fireplace, and marched out, indignant, to her own bedroom.
‘Very well,’ the Duke said in a low voice as she went, ‘I know where I stand now. I know how you’ve betrayed me.’
The door stood open behind the Duchess as he said it, and on the landing without a gorgeous ducal flunkey was turning up a gas-lamp that flared above the console-table.
For a minute or two after she left the room the Duke paused, irresolute. It occurred to him in a flash what an awkward fix he’d managed to get himself into. His temper had done this — and that confounded Maclaine man. He had meant to ask Linda for money that very night, or, rather, to suggest obliquely that she must somehow find him some; but now — sooner than take that woman’s money! Why, he hated her, he hated her! The Montgomery demon was strong in him that minute. For the turn of a coin — heads or tails — he could have choked her or shot himself.
He staggered across blindly towards the empty fireplace, reeling with wrath as he went, and let his eye fall by accident on the smouldering embers of the burnt letter. As he looked, a curious effect came out in the charred sheets. A little rim of fire that ran along and glowed through the black mass had halted for a second against a line of ink, so that he could read two words standing out, as it were, in black against a glowing background. They seemed to be the signature. He stooped down and examined them. The two words read distinctly ‘Basil Maclaine.’ Next instant the line of fire ran across the spot; they had faded away, and all were crumbling ashes.
He strode from the room in a perfect transport of jealousy. She had lied to
him then, after all; and Maclaine had written it!
VOLUME III.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
DOUBTED!
Next morning it was authoritatively announced to the fashionable world that the Duke of Powysland had gone off to Norway alone for six weeks’ salmon-fishing, and that the Duchess would remain by herself for the present in her temporary home in Onslow Gardens.
But in the servants’ hall unofficial voices whispered freely how, the evening before, while Ruggles was arranging the flowers in the dining-room, and William attending to the gas on the stairs, the Duchess had swept out of the library, where she had been with the Duke, for all the world ‘like a play-actress,’ as the butler phrased it; and how his grace’s voice had been heard calling loudly after her, in no measured tones, ‘I know where I stand now, then. I know how you’ve betrayed me.’
There’s no place on earth like a servants’ hall for the evolution of gossip; and in less than three days those ominous words, in all their possible bearings, had been discussed and threshed out half a dozen times over by the whole household, while endless varying interpretations had been put upon them by every one of its individual members. For the Duke had found out that her grace had betrayed him!
Meanwhile, the Duchess remained in solitary state in Onslow Gardens; and Elizabeth Woodward, slimmest and discreetest of lady’s-maids, waited assiduously upon her in her temporary widowhood.
The more Linda saw of Elizabeth the better she liked her. There’s nothing a capable woman admires so much as capability in others; and the new maid was almost as capable in her own way as Linda herself. She moved about the room so noiselessly; she saw what was wanted so quickly; she anticipated every contingency so intelligently and well, that Linda felt something very like real friendship for her dove-eyed attendant. The Duchess, of course, stood in need of sympathy. Strong and self-reliant though she was, she was still a woman, and it was no small trial to her that her husband should have thus gone off, in the first year of her marriage, on an insufficient pretext, in a fit of jealous anger, and left her alone in that dreary town house, to be a subject of whispered gossip for half the inquisitive quidnuncs of London. She was too proud to show it, of course. Linda could never wear her heart on her sleeve, no matter what happened; but she felt the slight none the less bitterly in her own inmost soul, and often on evenings when she didn’t dine out she sat by herself in that dainty little boudoir, absorbed in thought, and wondered what end it might all portend — what sort of married life might henceforth be in store for her.
Now, all these things Elizabeth Woodward divined with silent attentiveness; and though she never said a word to her mistress that might seem overtly to acknowledge the trouble in which Linda was involved, she gave her none the less that quiet and soothing sort of mute sympathy which is expressed only by gentle action, soft speech, and the constant instinctive avoidance of anything that could suggest unhappy trains of thought or unpleasant reminiscences.
‘Elizabeth,’ Linda said to her new maid one day, in a sudden access of gratitude for her unspoken kindliness, ‘I declare, I like better to be up here alone in my own room with you than with anyone else in all London. You’re a lady at heart — that’s what makes me like you so.’
A hot flush rose red on the maid’s cheek as she answered, bending low over her mistress’s hair to hide the tears that filled her eyes, ‘Thank you very much, Duchess. You’re far too kind. I don’t know how it is, but I somehow feel as if I’d never met anybody in the world I could take to as I’ve taken to you. You make me feel better than anybody else ever did. You make me feel I should like to be like you, you’re so good and kind and considerate to everybody.’ And she held her breath hard, and fell for the rest of that evening’s work into a silent reverie.
During those six weeks while Bertie was away, Linda went out but little, and that little only just enough to save appearances and prevent scandal. If she were to shut herself up in the house altogether, and refuse all invitations from no matter what quarter, people would say something had gone wrong internally in the Powysland family. Noblesse oblige, and if you are a Duchess you must ‘behave as such,’ by bearing your fair share in the festivities of society. So Linda accepted a few unavoidable engagements, and drove out from time to time in that horrid recurrent treadmill of the park, just to make a show of being still in London, and of not being ashamed to appear openly. On two or three such occasions when she quitted the house, her eye happened to fall upon an idle-looking man in a gray felt hat, loafing loose about the gardens; and her attention being once directed to him, she observed at last from the drawing-room window that this man was pretty constantly lounging close by, in the roadway outside; nay, more, that he seemed to be relieved at intervals by another unpleasant person in a rough pea-jacket, to whom he nodded distantly and unobtrusively when they passed one another at the street corner. She noticed also with some surprise that one or other of the same two seedy-looking men turned up accidentally now and again in the park whenever she was driving there. In itself, this little recognition didn’t at first disturb her equanimity; but two small episodes that occurred shortly after gave an unexpected importance in her eyes to the shabbily-dressed strangers.
She was standing one morning by the window of her bedroom, shortly after breakfast, and looking out into the street, when the man with the gray felt hat passed by opposite, and was presently crossed by his companion in the pea-jacket, who seemed to be going in the other direction. Neither spoke a word, but each had a glimmer of intelligence in his eye as he passed, which to Linda’s keen apprehension was as eloquent as volumes. She turned half unconsciously to Elizabeth Woodward, who stood a little away, looking out also from behind the curtains; and, to her great surprise, Elizabeth Woodward’s eyelids dropped suddenly, and a very pained expression came over her features. In a moment, Linda saw her maid had observed the men — not for the first time — and she felt sure from her look that Elizabeth knew what errand they were sent upon.
The Duchess started.
‘What does this mean, my child?’ she cried, with a little tremor of presentiment.
‘I don’t know,’ Elizabeth answered, trembling violently. ‘But — I — I’ve noticed them before, more than once, that’s all. They’re often about, on the watch, in the gardens.’
‘You don’t suppose they’re burglars?’ Linda suggested, glancing rapidly round the room, towards the place where she kept the Amberley diamonds. ‘They’re not watching the house intending to rob us while the Duke’s away, do you think, Elizabeth?’
‘Oh dear no!’ Elizabeth answered with the emphatic confidence of one who knows. ‘Burglars wouldn’t show themselves openly like that, of course. They’re a deal too clever. They’d know better than to give anybody such a clue beforehand.... I wish to goodness I thought it was only burglars.’
‘Why, what can they be, then?’ Linda exclaimed, half amused and half frightened. ‘What’s worse than housebreakers?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ the girl answered with a faint shudder. ‘But they’ve no right to be hanging about here, anyhow. I’d just like to give them a piece of my mind, that’s all, skulking around like that where you are, Duchess.’
And so the matter dropped for the moment.
A day or two later, however, Linda was out in the park in her victoria, when to her immense surprise, on a penny seat by the side of the drive, she saw Douglas Harrison, drawing circles with his stick in the dust, and looking listlessly on at the monotonous stream of carriages that passed and repassed him.
It took her aback, because she knew Douglas Harrison had never been a consumer of giddy pennyworths in the haunts of fashion. He despised the park and all that appertains thereto. Indeed, to say the truth, he had only gone out there that particular afternoon on the stray chance of catching a passing glimpse of Linda. It was foolish of him, he knew, but, then, it was only friendship. Nevertheless, he felt a very remarkable bound of his heart when Linda’s green and gold livery appe
ared in the Drive. Mere friendship seldom makes one’s heart beat quite so fast as that, and when Linda herself, seeing him rise from his chair, all aglow, and lift his hat awkwardly, pulled up just in front of him for five minutes’ chat, Douglas felt himself raised all at once for the moment to the seventh heaven.
Alas for the brevity of human happiness!
As he stood there, talking, beside the ducal carriage, utterly unconscious of the honour which would have turned Basil Maclaine’s head, and aware only of Linda’s gracious smile and her friendly presence, he happened to notice a shabby-looking man in a gray felt hat, who passed carelessly by, swinging a short cane in his hand, and whistling a tune to himself in the broad May sunshine. A keen look of satisfaction lighted up the fellow’s eyes as he glanced sideways, half stealthily, at Douglas and Linda. The barrister started back with some nameless sense of disgust, and at the very same moment Linda caught sight of the unwelcome figure.
‘Who on earth can that man be, Mr. Harrison?’ she asked, leaning forward confidentially with a half-frightened air. ‘Do you know, he’s always lounging around our house in Onslow Gardens. He makes me quite afraid, he has such a jaunty manner, and yet such a hang-dog look about him. But I somehow fancied you seemed to recognise him.’
‘You’re quite right,’ Douglas answered, immensely impressed. ‘How quick you women are, to be sure, at reading one’s countenance! I have seen him before. To tell you the truth, Maclaine and I often notice him or another man on the watch at Clandon Street. And Maclaine fancies he’s observed them once or twice following him up and down from the house to the office in Whitehall.’
A horrible suspicion flashed all at once across Linda’s mind — a suspicion too horrible almost for her to believe or realize. Could Bertie have set on these hateful men to dog her steps and spy out her actions? But no, no, no! She could never believe it. Bertie, whatever else he might be, was at least an English gentleman. He would surely never expose his innocent wife to such an unspeakable, such an unthinkable, indignity.
