“Sir Robert has not seen her, then?”
Miss Sibson smoothed out the lap of her dress. “No, my lady, not since she was brought into the house. Indeed, I can’t say that he saw her before, for he never looked at her.”
“Do you think that I could see her?”
The schoolmistress hesitated. “Well, my lady,” she said, “I am afraid that she will hardly live through the day.”
“Then he must see her,” Lady Lansdowne replied quickly. And Miss Sibson observed with surprise that there were tears in the great lady’s eyes. “He must see her. Is she conscious?”
“She’s so-so,” Miss Sibson answered more at her ease. After all, the great lady was human, it seemed. “She wanders, and thinks that she is in France, my lady; believes there’s a revolution, and that they are come to take her to prison. Her mind harps continually on things of that kind. And not much wonder either! But, then again she’s herself. So that you don’t know from one minute to another whether she’s sensible or not.”
“Poor thing!” Lady Lansdowne murmured. “Poor woman!” Her lips moved without sound. Presently, “Her daughter is with her?” she asked.
“She has scarcely left her for a minute since she was carried in,” Miss Sibson answered warmly. And to her eyes, too, there rose something like a tear. “Only with difficulty have I made her take the most necessary rest. But if your ladyship pleases, I will ask whether she will see you.”
“Do so, if you please.”
Miss Sibson retired for this purpose, and Lady Lansdowne, left to herself, rose and looked from the window. As soon as it had been possible to move her, the dying woman had been carried into the nearest house which had escaped the flames, and Lady Lansdowne, gazing out, looked on the scene of conflict, saw lines of ruins, still asmoke in parts, and discerned between the scorched limbs of trees, from which the last foliage had fallen, the blackened skeletons of houses. A gaping crowd was moving round the Square, under the eyes of special constables, who, distinguished by white bands on their arms, guarded the various entrances. Hundreds, doubtless, who would fain have robbed were there to stare; but for the most part the guilty shunned the scene, and the gazers consisted mainly of sightseers from the country, or from Bath, or of knots of merchants and traders and the like who argued, some that this was what came of Reform, others that not Reform but the refusal of Reform was to blame for it.
Presently she saw Sir Robert’s stately figure threading its way through the crowd. He walked erect, but with effort; yet though her heart swelled with pity, it was not with pity for him. He would have his daughter and in a few days, in a few weeks, in a few months at most, the clouds would pass and leave him to enjoy the clear evening of his days.
But for her whom he had taken to his house twenty years before in the bloom of her beauty, the envied, petted, spoiled child of fortune, who had sinned so lightly and paid so dearly, and who now lay distraught at the close of all, what evening remained? What gleam of light? What comfort at the last?
In her behalf, the heart which Whig pride, and family prejudice, and the cares of riches had failed to harden, swelled to bursting. “He must forgive her!” she ejaculated. “He shall forgive her!” And gliding to the door she stayed Mary, who was in the act of entering.
“I must see your father,” she said. “He is mounting the stairs now. Go to your mother, my dear, and when I ring, do you come!”
What Mary read in her face, of feminine pity and generous purpose, need not be told. Whatever it was, the girl seized the woman’s hand, kissed it with wet eyes, and fled. And when Sir Robert, ushered upstairs by Miss Sibson, entered the room and looked round for his daughter, he found in her stead the wife of his enemy.
On the instant he remembered the errand on which she had sought him six months before, and he was quick to construe her presence by its light, and to feel resentment. The wrong of years, the daily, hourly wrong, committed not against him only but against the innocent and the helpless, this woman would have him forgive at a word; merely because the doer, who had had no ruth, no pity, no scruples, hung on the verge of that step which all, just and unjust, must take! And some, he knew, standing where he stood, would forgive; would forgive with their lips, using words which meant nought to the sayer, though they soothed the hearers. But he was no hypocrite; he would not forgive. Forgive? Great Heaven, that any should think that the wrongs of a lifetime could be forgiven in an hour! At a word! Beside a bed! As soon might the grinding wear of years be erased from the heart, the wrinkles of care from the brow, the snows of age from the head! As easily might a word give back to the old the spring and flame and vigour of their youth!
Something of what he thought impressed itself on his face. Lady Lansdowne marked the sullen drop of his eyebrows, and the firm set of the lower face; but she did not flinch. “I came upon your name,” she said, “in the report of the dreadful doings here — in the ‘Mercury,’ this morning. I hope, Sir Robert, I shall be pardoned for intruding.”
He murmured something, as much no as yes, and with a manner as frigid as his breeding permitted. And standing — she had reseated herself — he continued to look at her, his lips drawn down.
“I grieve,” she continued, “to find the truth more sad than the report.”
“I do not know that you can help us,” he said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Because,” she rejoined, looking at him softly, “you will not let me help you. Sir Robert — —”
“Lady Lansdowne!” He broke in abruptly, using her name with emphasis, using it with intention. “Once before you came to me. Doubtless you remember. Now, let me say at once, that if your errand to-day be the same, and I think it likely that it is the same — —”
“It is not the same,” she replied with emotion which she did not try to hide. “It is not the same! For then there was time. And now there is no time. Let a day, it may be an hour, pass, and at the cost of all you possess you will not be able to buy that which you can still have for nothing!”
“And what is that?” he asked, frowning.
“An easy heart.” He had not looked for that answer, and he started. “Sir Robert,” she continued, rising from her seat, and speaking with even deeper feeling, “forgive her! Forgive her, I implore you. The wrong is past, is done, is over! Your daughter is restored — —”
“But not by her!” he cried, taking her up quickly. “Not by her act!” he repeated sternly, “or with her will! And what has she done that I should forgive? I, whose life she blighted, whose pride she stabbed, whose hopes she crushed? Whom she left solitary, wifeless, childless through the years of my strength, the years that she cannot, that no one can give back to me? Through the long summer days that were a weariness, and the dark winter days that were a torpor? Yet — yet I could forgive her, Lady Lansdowne, I could forgive her, I do forgive her that!”
“Sir Robert!”
“That, all that!” he continued, with a gesture and in a tone of bitterness which harmonised but ill with the words he uttered. “All that she ever did amiss to me I forgive her. But — but the child’s wrong, never! Had she relented indeed, at the last, had she of her own motion, of her own free will given me back my daughter, had she repented and undone the wrong, then — but no matter! she did not! She did not one,” he repeated with agitation, “she did not any of these things. And I ask, what has she done that I should forgive her?”
She did not answer him at once, and when she did it was in a tone so low as to be barely audible.
“I cannot answer that,” she said. “But is it the only question? Is there not another question, Sir Robert — not what she has done, or left undone, but what you — forgive me and bear with me — have left undone, or done amiss? Are you — you clear of all spot or trespass, innocent of all blame or erring? When she came to you a young girl, a young bride — and, oh, I remember her, the sunshine was not brighter, she was a child of air rather than of earth, so fair and heedless, so capricious, and
yet so innocent! — did you in the first days never lose patience? Never fail to make allowance? Never preach when wisdom would have smiled, never look grave when she longed for lightness, never scold when it had been better to laugh? Did you never forget that she was a score of years younger than you, and a hundred years more frivolous? Or” — Lady Lansdowne’s tone was a mere whisper now— “if you are clear of all offence against her, are you clear of all offence against any, of all trespass? Have you no need to be forgiven, no need, no — —”
Her voice died away into silence. She left the appeal unfinished.
Sir Robert paced the room. And other scenes than those on which he had taught himself to brood, other days than those later days of wasted summers and solitary winters, of dulness and decay, rose to his memory. Sombre moods by which it had pleased him — at what a cost! — to make his displeasure known. Sarcastic words, warrant for the facile retort that followed, curt judgments and ill-timed reproofs; and always the sense of outraged dignity to freeze the manner and embitter the tone.
So much, so much which he had forgotten came back to him as he walked the room with averted face! While Lady Lansdowne waited with her hand on the bell. Minutes were passing, minutes; who knew how precious they might be? And with them was passing his opportunity.
He spoke at last. “I will see her,” he said huskily.
And on that Lady Lansdowne performed a last act of kindness. She said nothing, bestowed no thanks. But when Mary entered — pale, yet with that composure which love teaches the least experienced — she was gone. Nor as she drove in all the pomp of her liveries and outriders through Bath, through Corsham, through Chippenham, did those who ran out to watch my lady’s four greys go by, see her face as the face of an angel. But Lady Louisa, flying down the steps to meet her — four at a time and hoidenishly — was taken to her arms, unscolded; and knew by instinct that this was the time to pet and be petted, to confess and be forgiven, and to learn in the stillness of her mother’s room those thrilling lessons of life, which her governess had not imparted, nor Mrs. Fairchild approved.
But more than wisdom sees, love knows.
What eye has scanned the perfume of the rose?
Has any grasped the low grey mist which stands
Ghost-like at eve above the sheeted lands?
Meanwhile Sir Robert paused on the threshold of the room — her room, which he had first entered two-and-twenty years before. And as the then and the now, the contrast between the past and the present, forced themselves upon him, what could he do but pause and bow his head? In the room a voice, her voice, yet unlike her voice, high, weak, never ceasing, was talking as from a great distance, from another world; talking, talking, never ceasing. It filled the room. Yet it did not come from a world so distant as he at first fancied, hearing it; a world that was quite aloof. For when, after he had listened for a time in the shadow by the door, his daughter led him forward, Lady Sybil’s eyes took note of their approach, though she recognised neither of them. Her mind was still busy amid the scenes of the riot; twisting and weaving them, it seemed, into a piece with old impressions of the French Terror, made on her mind in childhood by talk heard at her nurse’s knee.
“They are coming! They are coming now,” she muttered, her bright eyes fixed on his. “But they shall not take her. They shall not take her,” she repeated. “Hide behind me, Mary. Hide, child! Don’t tremble! They shan’t take you. One neck’s enough and mine is growing thin. It used not to be thin. But that’s right. Hide, and they’ll not see you, and when I am gone you’ll escape. Hush! Here they are!” And then in a louder tone, “I am ready,” she said, “I am quite ready.”
Mary leant over her.
“Mother!” she cried, unable to bear the scene in silence. “Mother! Don’t you know me?”
“Hush!” the dying woman answered, a look of terror crossing her face. “Hush, child! Don’t speak! I’m ready, gentlemen; I will go with you. I am not afraid. My neck is small, and it will be but a squeeze.” And she tried to raise herself in the bed.
Mary laid gentle hands on her, and restrained her. “Mother,” she said. “Mother! Don’t you know me? I am Mary.”
But Lady Sybil, heedless of her, looked beyond her, with fear and suspicion in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I know you. I know you. I know you. But who is — that? Who is that?”
“My father. It is my father. Don’t you know him?”
But still, “Who is it? Who is it?” Lady Sybil continued to ask. “Who is it?”
Mary burst into tears.
“What does he want? What does he want? What does he want?” the dying woman asked in endless, unreasoning repetition.
Sir Robert had entered the room in the full belief that with the best of wills it would be hard, it would be well-nigh impossible to forgive; to forgive his wife with more than the lips. But when he heard her, weak and helpless as she was, thinking of another; when he understood that she who had done so great a wrong to the child was willing to give up her own life for the child; when he felt the sudden drag at his heart-strings of many an old and sacred recollection, shared only by her, and which that voice, that face, that form brought back, he fell on his knees by the bed.
She shrank from him, terrified. “What does he want?” she repeated.
“Sybil,” he said, in a husky voice, “I want your forgiveness, Sybil, wife! Do you hear me? Will you forgive me? Can you forgive me, late as it is?”
Strange to say, his voice pierced the confusion which filled the sick brain. She looked at him steadily and long; and she sighed, but she did not answer.
“Sybil,” he repeated in a quavering voice. “Do you not know me? Don’t you remember me? I am your husband.”
“Yes, I know,” she muttered.
“This is your daughter.”
She smiled.
“Our daughter,” he repeated. “Our daughter!”
“Mary?” she murmured. “Mary?”
“Yes, Mary.”
She smiled faintly on him. Mary’s head was touching his, but she did not answer. She remained looking at them. They could not tell whether she understood, or was slipping away again. He took her hand and pressed it gently. “Do you hear me?” he said. “If I was harsh to you in the old days, if I made mistakes, if I wronged you, I want you — wife, say that you forgive me.”
“I — forgive you,” she murmured. A faint gleam of mischief, of laughter, of the old Lady Sybil, shone for an instant in her eyes, as if she knew that she had the upper hand. “I forgive you — everything,” she murmured. Yes, for certain now, she was slipping away.
Mary took her other hand. But she did not speak again. And before the watch on the table beside her had ticked many times she had slipped away for good, with that gleam of triumph in her eyes — forgiving.
XXXVII
IN THE MOURNING COACH
It is a platitude that the flood is followed by the ebb. In the heat of action, and while its warmth cheered his spirits, Arthur Vaughan felt that he had done something. True, what he had done brought him no nearer to making his political dream a reality. Not for him the promise,
It shall be thine in danger’s hour
To guide the helm of Britain’s power
And midst thy country’s laurelled crown
To twine a garland all thy own.
Yet he had done something. He had played the man when some others had not played the man.
But now that the crisis was over, and he had made his last round, now that he had inspected for the last time the patrols over whom he was set, seen order restored on the Welsh Back, and panic driven from Queen’s Square, he owned the reaction. There is a fatigue which one night’s rest fails to banish; and low in mind and tired in body, he felt, when he rose late on Tuesday afternoon, that he had done nothing worth doing; nothing that altered his position in essentials.
For a time, indeed, he had fancied that things were changed. Sir Robert had requested his assistance, and allowed him to share his searc
h; and though it was possible that the merest stranger, cast by fortune into the same adventure, had been as welcome, it was also possible that the Baronet viewed him with a more benevolent eye. And Mary — Mary, too, had flown to his arms as to a haven; but in such a position, amid surroundings so hideous, was that wonderful? Was it not certain that she would have behaved in the same way to the merest acquaintance if he brought her aid and protection?
The answer might be yes or no! What was certain was that it could not avail him. For between him and her there stood more than her father’s aversion, more than the doubt of her affection, more than the unlucky borough, of which he had despoiled Sir Robert. There were her possessions, there was the suspicion which Sir Robert had founded on them — on Mary’s gain and his loss — there was the independence, which he must surrender, and which pride and principle alike forbade him to relinquish.
In the confusion of the night Vaughan had almost forgotten and quite forgiven. Now he saw that the thing, though forgotten, though forgiven, was there. He could not owe all to a man who had so misconstrued him, and who might misconstrue him again. He could not be dependent on one whose views, thoughts, prejudices, were opposed to his own. No, the night and its doing must stand apart. He and she had met, they had parted. He had one memory more, and nothing was changed.
In this mood the fact that the White Lion regarded him as a hero brought him no comfort. Neither the worshipping eyes of the young lady who had tried to dissuade him from going forth on the Sunday, nor the respectful homage which dogged his movements, uplifted him. He had small appetite for his solitary dinner, and was languidly reading the “Bristol Mercury,” when a name was brought up to him, and a letter.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 545
