She sighed, as she resumed her course, unable even now to blame Lady Sybil as her conduct to her child deserved. But where was the child? Not on the walk under the elms, which was deserted in favour of the more lively attractions of the park. Lady Lansdowne looked this way and that; at length availing herself of the solitude, she paced the walk to its end. Thence a short path which she well remembered, led to the kennels; and rather to indulge her sentiment and recall the days when she was herself young, and had been intimate here, than because she expected to meet Mary, she took this path. She had not followed it a dozen steps, and was hesitating whether to go on or return, the strains of Moore’s melody were scarcely blurred by the intervening laurels, when a tall dark-robed figure stepped with startling abruptness from the shrubbery, and stood before her.
“Louisa,” said the stranger. And she raised her veil. “Don’t you know me?”
“Sybil!”
“Yes, Sybil!” the other answered curtly. And then as if something in Lady Lansdowne’s tone had wounded her, “Why not?” she continued, raising her head proudly. “My name came easily enough to your ladyship’s lips once! And I am not aware that I have done anything to deprive me of the right to call my friends by their names, be they whom they may!”
“No, no! But — —”
“But you meant it, Louisa!” the other retorted with energy. “Or is it that you find me so changed, so old, so worn, so altered from her you once knew, that it astonishes you to trace in this face the features of Sybil Matching!”
“You are changed,” the other answered kindly. “I fear you have been ill?”
“I am ill. I am more, I am dying. Not here, nor to-day, nor to-morrow — —”
Lady Lansdowne interrupted her. “In that sense,” she said gently, “we are all dying.” But though she said it, the change in Lady Sybil’s appearance did indeed shock her; almost as much as her presence in that place amazed her.
“I have but three months to live,” Lady Sybil answered feverishly; and her sunken cheeks and bright eyes, which told of some hidden disease, confirmed her words. “I am dying in that sense! Do you hear? But I dare say,” with a flash of her old levity, “it is my presence here that shocks you? You are thinking what Vermuyden would say if he turned the corner behind you, and found us together!” And, as Lady Lansdowne, with a nervous start, looked over her shoulder, with the old recklessness, “I’d like — I’d like to see his face, my dear, and yours, too, if he found us. But,” she continued, with an abrupt change to impassioned earnestness, “it’s not to see you that I came to-day! Don’t think it! It’s not to see you that I’ve been waiting for two hours past. I want to see my girl! I am going to see her, do you hear! You must bring her to me!”
“Sybil!”
“Don’t contradict me, Louisa,” she cried peremptorily. “Haven’t I told you that I am dying? Don’t you hear what I say! Am I to die and not see my child? Cruel woman! Heartless creature! But you always were! And cold as an icicle!”
“No, indeed, I am not! And I think you should see her,” Lady Lansdowne answered, in no little distress. How could she not be distressed by the contrast between this woman plainly and almost shabbily dressed — for the purpose perhaps of evading notice — and with illness stamped on her face, and the brilliant, harum-scarum Lady Sybil, with whom her thoughts had been busy a few minutes before? “I think you ought to see her,” she repeated in a soothing tone. “But you should take the proper steps to do so. You — —”
“You think — yes, you do!” Lady Vermuyden retorted with fierce energy— “you think that I have treated her so ill that I have no right to see her! That I cannot care to see her! But you do not know how I was tried! How I was suspected, how I was watched! What wrongs I suffered! And — and I never meant to hide her for good. When I died, she would have come home. And I had a plan too — but never mind that — to right her without Vermuyden’s knowledge and in his teeth. I saw her on a coach one day along with — what is it?”
“There is someone coming,” Lady Lansdowne said hurriedly. Her ladyship indeed was in a state of great apprehension. She knew that at any moment she might be found, perhaps by Sir Robert: and the thought of the scene which would follow — aware as she was of the exasperation of his feelings — appalled her. She tried to temporise. “Another time,” she said. “I think someone is coming now. See me another time and I will do what I can.”
“No!” the other broke in, her face flushing with sudden anger. “See you, Louisa? What do I care for seeing you? It is my girl I wish to see, that I’m come to see, that I’m going to see! I’m her mother, fetch her to me! I have a right to see her, and I will see her! I demand her! If you do not go for her — —”
“Sybil! Sybil!” Lady Lansdowne cried, thoroughly alarmed by her friend’s violence. “For Heaven’s sake be calm!”
“Calm?” Lady Vermuyden answered. “Do you cease to dictate to me, and do as I bid you! Go, and fetch her, or I will go myself and claim her before all his friends. He has no heart. He never had a heart! It’s sawdust,” with a hysterical laugh. “But he has pride and I’ll trample on it! I’ll tread it in the mud — if you don’t fetch her! Are you going, Miss Gravity? We used to call you Miss Gravity, I remember. You were always,” with a faint sneer, “a bit of a prude, my dear!”
Miss Gravity! What long-forgotten trifles, what thoughts of youth the nickname brought back to Lady Lansdowne’s recollection. What wars of maidens’ wits, and half-owned jealousies, and light resentments, and sunny days of pique and pleasure! Her heart, never anything but soft, under the mask of her great-lady’s manner, waxed sore and pitiful. Yet how was she to do the other’s bidding? How could she betray Sir Robert’s confidence? How ——
Someone was coming — really coming this time. She looked round.
“I’ll give you five minutes!” Lady Sybil whispered. “Five minutes, Louisa! Remember!”
And when Lady Lansdowne turned again to her, she had vanished among the laurels.
XXII
WOMEN’S HEARTS
Lady Lansdowne walked slowly away in a state of perplexity, from which the monotonous lilt of the band which was now playing quadrille music did nothing to free her. Whether Sybil Vermuyden were dying or not, it was certain that she was ill. Disease had laid its hand beyond mistaking on that once beautiful face; the levity and wit which had formerly dazzled beholders now gleamed but fitfully and with such a ghastly light as the corpse candle gives forth. The change was great since Lady Lansdowne had seen her in the coach at Chippenham; and it might well be that if words of forgiveness were to be spoken, no time was to be lost. Old associations, a mother’s feelings for a mother, pity, all urged Lady Lansdowne to compliance with her request; nor did the knowledge that the woman, who had once queened it so brilliantly in this place, was now lurking on the fringe of the gay crowd, athirst for a sight of her child, fail to move a heart which all the jealousies of a Whig coterie had not hardened or embittered.
Unluckily the owner of that heart felt that she was the last person who ought to interfere. It behoved her, more than it behoved anyone, to avoid fresh ground of quarrel with Sir Robert. Courteously as he had borne himself on her arrival, civilly as he had veiled the surprise which her presence caused him, she knew that he was sore hurt by his defeat in the borough. And if those who had thwarted him publicly were to intervene in his private concerns, if those who had suborned his kinsman were now to tamper with his daughter, ay, or were to incur a suspicion of tampering, she knew that his anger would know no bounds. She felt, indeed, that it would be justified.
She had to think, too, of her husband, who had sent her with the olive-branch. He was a politic, long-sighted man; who, content with the solid advantage he had gained, had no mind to push to extremity a struggle which must needs take place at his own door. He would be displeased, seriously displeased, if her mission, in place of closing, widened the breach.
And yet — and yet her heart ached for the woman, who had never w
holly lost a place in her affections. And there was this. If Lady Sybil were thwarted no one was more capable of carrying out her threat and of taking some violent step, which would make matters a hundred times worse, alike for Sir Robert and his daughter.
While she weighed the matter, Lady Lansdowne found herself back at the rustic bridge. She was in the act of stepping upon it — still deep in thought — when her eyes encountered those of a young couple who were waiting at the farther end to give her passage. She looked a second time; and she stood. Then, smiling, she beckoned to the girl to come to her. Meanwhile, a side-thought, born of the conjunction of the two young people, took form in her mind. “I hope that may come to nothing,” she reflected.
Possibly it was for this reason, that when the man would have come also, she made it clear that the smile was not for him. “No, Mr. Flixton,” she said, the faintest possible distance in her tone. “I do not want you. I will relieve you of your charge.”
And when Mary, timid and blushing, had advanced to her, “My dear,” she said, holding out both her hands, and looking charmingly at her, “I should have known you anywhere.” And she drew her to her and kissed her. “I am Lady Lansdowne. I knew your mother, and I hope that you and my daughter will be friends.”
The mention of her mother increased Mary’s shyness. “Your ladyship is very kind,” she murmured. She did not know that her embarrassment was so far from hurting her, that the appeal in her eyes went straight to the elder woman’s heart.
“I mean to be kind at any rate,” Lady Lansdowne answered, smiling on the lovely face before her. And then, “My dear,” she said, “have they told you that you are very beautiful? More beautiful, I think, than your mother was: I hope” — and she did not try to hide the depth of her feelings— “that you may be more happy.”
The girl’s colour faded at this second reference to her mother; made, she could not doubt, with intention. Her father, even while he had overwhelmed her with benefits, even while he had opened this new life to her with a hand full of gifts, had taught her — tacitly or by a word at most — that that name was the key to a Bluebeard’s chamber; that it must not be used. She knew that her mother lived; she guessed that she had sinned against her husband; she understood that she had wronged her child. But she knew no more: and with this, since this at the least she must know, Sir Robert would have had her content.
And yet, to speak correctly, she did know more. She knew that the veiled lady who had intervened at long intervals in her life must have been her mother. But she felt no impulse of affection towards that woman — whom she had not seen. Her heart went out instead to a shadowy mother who walked the silent house at sunset, whose skirts trailed in the lonely passages, of whose career of wild and reckless gaiety she had vague hints here and there. It was to this mother, radiant and young, with the sheen of pearls in her hair, and the haunting smile, that she yearned. She had learned in some subtle way that the vacant place over the mantel in the hall which her own portrait by Maclise was to fill, had been occupied by her mother’s picture. And dreaming of the past, as what young girl alone in that stately house would not, she had seen her come and go in the half lights, a beautiful, spoilt child of fashion. She had traced her up and down the wide polished stairway, heard the tap of her slender sandal on the shining floors, perceived in long-closed chambers the fading odours of her favourite scent. And in a timid, frightened way she had longed to know her and to love her, to feel her touch on her hair and give her pity in return.
It is possible that she might have dwelt more intimately on Lady Sybil’s fate, possible that she might have ventured on some line of her own in regard to her, if her new life had been free from preoccupation; if there had not been with her an abiding regret, which clouded the sunniest prospects. But love, man’s love, woman’s love, is the most cruel of monopolists: it tramples on the claims of the present, much more of the absent. And if the novelty of Mary’s new life, the many marvels to which she must accustom herself, the new pleasures, the new duties, the strange new feeling of wealth — if, in fine, the necessity of orientating herself afresh in relation to every person and everything — was not able to put thoughts of her lover from her mind, the claims of an unknown mother had an infinitely smaller chance of asserting themselves.
But now at that word, twice pronounced by Lady Lansdowne, the girl stood ashamed and conscience-stricken. “You knew my mother?” she faltered.
“Yes, my dear,” the elder woman answered gravely. “I knew her very well.”
The gravity of the speaker’s tone presented a new idea to Mary’s mind. “She is not happy?” she said slowly.
“No.”
With that word Lady Lansdowne looked over her shoulder; conscience makes cowards, and her nervousness communicated itself to Mary. A possibility, at which the girl had never glanced, presented itself, and so abruptly that all the colour left her face. “She is not here?” she said.
“Yes, she is here. And — don’t be frightened, my dear!” Lady Lansdowne continued earnestly. “But listen to me! A moment ago I thought of throwing you in her way without your knowledge. But, since I have seen you, I have your welfare at heart, as well as hers. And I must, I ought to tell you, that I do not think your father would wish you to see her. I think that you should know this; and that you should decide for yourself — whether you will see her. Indeed, you must decide for yourself,” she repeated, her eyes fixed anxiously on the girl’s face. “I cannot take the responsibility.”
“She is unhappy?” Mary asked, looking most unhappy herself.
“She is unhappy, and she is ill.”
“I ought to go to her? You think so? Please — your ladyship, will you advise me?”
Lady Lansdowne hesitated. “I cannot,” she said.
“But — there is no reason,” Mary asked faintly, “why I should not go to her?”
“There is no reason. I honestly believe,” Lady Lansdowne repeated solemnly, “that there is no reason — except your father’s wish. It is for you to say how far that, which should weigh with you in all other things, shall weigh with you in this.”
Suddenly a burning colour dyed Mary’s face. “I will go to her,” she cried impulsively. She had been weak once, she had been weak! And how she had suffered for that weakness! But she would be strong now. “Where is she, if you please?” she continued bravely. “Can I see her at once?”
“She is in the path leading to the kennels. You know it? No, you need not take leave of me, child! Go, and,” Lady Lansdowne added with feeling, “God forgive me if I have done wrong in sending you!”
“You have not done wrong!” Mary cried, an unwonted spirit in her tone. And, without taking other leave, she turned and went — though her limbs trembled under her. She was going to her mother! To her mother! Oh, strange, oh, impossible thought!
Yet, engrossing as was that thought, it could not quite oust fear of her father and of his anger. And the blush soon died; so that the whiteness of her cheeks when she reached the Kennel Path was a poor set off for the ribbons that decked her muslin robe. What she expected, what she wished or feared or hoped she could never remember. What she saw, that which awaited her, was a woman, ill, and plainly clad, with only the remains of beauty in her wasted features; but withal cynical and hard-eyed, and very, very far from the mother of her day-dreams.
Such as she was the unknown scanned Mary with a kind of scornful amusement. “Oh,” she said, “so this is what they have made of Miss Vermuyden? Let me look at you, girl?” And laying her hands on Mary’s shoulders she looked long into the tearful, agitated face. “Why, you are like a sheet of paper!” she continued, raising the girl’s chin with her finger. “I wonder you dared to come with Sir Robert saying no! And, you little fool,” she continued in a swift spirit of irritation, “as soon not come at all, as look at me like that! You’ve got my chin and my nose, and more of me than I thought. But God knows where you got your hare’s eyes! Are you always frightened?”
“No, Ma’
am, no!” she stammered.
“No, Ma’am? No, goose!” Lady Sybil retorted, mimicking her. “Why, ten kings on ten thrones had never made me shake as you are shaking! Nor twenty Sir Roberts in twenty passions! What is it you are afraid of? Being found with me?”
“No! “Mary cried. And, to do her justice, the emotion with which Lady Sybil found fault was as much a natural agitation, on seeing her mother, as fear on her own account.
“Then you are afraid of me?” Lady Sybil rejoined. And again she twitched the girl’s face to the light.
Mary was amazed rather than afraid: but she could not say that. And she kept silence.
“Or is it dislike of me?” the mother continued — a slight grimace, as of pain, distorting her face. “You hate me, I suppose? You hate me?”
“Oh, no, no!” the girl cried in distress.
“You do, Miss!” And with no little violence she pushed Mary from her. “You set down all to me, I suppose! I’ve kept you from your own, that’s it! I am the wicked mother, worse than a step-mother, who robbed you of your rights! And made a beggar of you and would have kept you a beggar! I am she who wronged you and robbed you — the unnatural mother! And you never ask,” she went on with fierce, impulsive energy, “what I suffered? How I was wronged! What I bore! No, nor what I meant to do — with you!”
“Indeed, indeed — —”
“What I meant to do, I say!” Lady Sybil repeated violently. “At my death — and I am dying, but what is that to you? — all would have been told, girl! And you would have got your own. Do you believe me?” she added passionately, advancing a step in a manner almost menacing. “Do you believe me, girl?”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 528
