“Nor I,” said my lord, more dryly still.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE DISCLOSURE
IT has been hinted that the tutor was not the only person who had overlooked from a window the scene of that morning. Lady Ellingham had witnessed it and wondered and frowned. What did it mean, she asked herself, and what was the girl doing out there, bareheaded, thrusting herself among the shooters when her place was in the schoolroom? It was unbecoming at the best, and my lady meditated a word in season that, without too much mortifying the young lady, would set her in her place.
But when my lord joined the group and the debate, whatever its purport, seemed to be left to those two, my lady’s face set in harder lines. She saw, and she thought that she understood. Too well she knew, alas, only too well she remembered his power of fascination, his attitude when he was set on conquest, the turn of his head, the tones of his voice, its appeal, its underlying fun! And only too well she knew the charm that he could throw over a simple girl, for had she not herself succumbed to it — to be happy for a time and miserable, silently and proudly miserable, for three years past! And he was the same still, she thought bitterly; ever the same, seeking ever a new distraction, unable to resist a new face, and falling himself a willing victim to the first woman who wooed him!
“But not in my house!” she thought with passion, and unconsciously she pressed her nails into the palms of her hands. “That I will not suffer! If she is to be the next, she shall go! She shall go whatever the cost! He may follow her if he pleases, but it shall not be under my roof!”
And in a moment she was hot with a jealousy the strength of which she did not herself suspect. She watched and she lost nothing of that which passed. She noted the Captain’s indignant departure, the shrug with which Charlotte Froyle turned away, the Colonel’s summons that dragged my lord at last and reluctantly from the governess’s side. “Always the same!” she whispered, pacing her room, when they were gone. “Always the same! As light to love as to leave! Why — why was I born to love him still?”
But when that afternoon she was so unfortunate as to witness the return of the two — in company again, and smiling and talking, and apparently on the most easy terms — what could she think? What but the worst? The dog with a bad name is hanged on slight evidence, and here, to a jealous eye, was proof and to spare. The fever in my lady’s breast flamed up, but moved as she was, she was not one to act in haste. She had so long practised self-restraint, she had so firmly settled it with herself that her only armour against contempt lay in silence that she still hesitated. Though she suffered she hid her feelings and kept on her mask; and, slyly attacked by Charlotte Froyle, as they sat over their work, she foiled her friend with the old weapons.
“The governess?” she repeated, and languidly held up her plain-stitch to the light. “Who recommended her, did you ask, Charlotte?”
But she a little overdid her negligence, and “I suppose,” Charlotte replied, “you did not engage her without a recommendation!”
“Without a recommendation? Oh dear no. Of course not. Old Lady Elisabeth engaged her for me.”
“Ah! Did she?” Charlotte in her turn bent over her tambour-frame. “Don’t you think, my dear, that the young woman is a little forward?”
“I haven’t noticed it. I hope not. Ann gets on with her better than I expected. And Ann,” with a sigh, “is difficult, you know. What made you think that, my dear?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But the men” — Miss Charlotte was too wary to press directly on the sore point—” seemed to be making a good deal of her this morning. I confess, I thought her something of a minx, Kitty.”
“I should be sorry to think that,” my lady answered judicially. “She’s young, of course.”
Now Charlotte, though a very handsome girl, was not quite so young as she had been, and her voice had a rasp in it when she replied. “Yes. But don’t you think it is unwise to make much of young persons in that class? Their heads are so easily turned!”
My lady agreed, and added, “One has to be careful for their sake.”
Charlotte bent over her frame and shot her last bolt. “I saw her coming in this afternoon,” she said.
But Lady Ellingham was on guard. “Was she out? I hope that she came in in good time,” she replied. And then her ladyship’s maid came in and said that it was time to dress, and the subject dropped.
But insensible to the pricks of Miss Charlotte’s darts as the Countess seemed, they stung and rankled, though, schooled by her haughty spirit and long use, she betrayed nothing. At all times she moved among her company, among them but not of them, and with something of the stately dignity of a Handel minuet; at all times she lived a little aloof, accepting their homage — and with the exception of Ould they were shy of her — with a coldness that she did not deign to mask. And they, deeming her ice, a woman without passion, shrank from a siege to which in the case of another woman in her position they might have been tempted.
But under the lace that veiled her white bosom the fire burned. To suspicions once kindled — and God knows she had had in the past only too much reason to suspect — all is fuel; and she watched and waited, even Ould, who believed in no woman’s virtue and observed her curiously, having no clue to her thoughts. And one evening, a week later, having shepherded Charlotte from the table a little earlier than usual, she fancied that her hour was come. She heard as she sat, seemingly absorbed in the third volume of her novel, a light step cross the hall. The servants had retired to their supper — it could not be one of them; on the other hand she had not heard the door of the dining-room open, and for a moment, for some moments, she repelled the suspicion. But it returned and tormented her. The tread had been light, it had seemed to her to be stealthy; and after resisting the temptation for some minutes during which she heard no returning step, she yawned and threw down her book.
“Oh dear!” she said. “Was that Ann?” She rose to her feet.
Charlotte did not look up. “I heard nothing,” she said.
“I think I’ll see. She’s a dreadful monkey, and if she runs about barefoot she’ll get this abominable influenza. I think I will see.”
She moved slowly down the room, and seemed to be undecided whether to go or stay. At last she appeared to make up her mind, she opened the door and went out. But in the hall, with no eyes upon her, she became a different woman. She stood, listening, her every sense on the alert, her face hard. A moment and a faint stir far above — on the second floor she judged — reached her ear. Still she hesitated, her jealousy and her pride at odds. Unfaithful he was — she knew it and all the world knew it, and every day she had to confront that knowledge with an impassive face. But under her roof, with one of her household, stealing out while his guests covered his absence and smiled at his dupe? That were too much to bear! To submit to that was impossible; and the struggle ended in pride making common cause with jealousy and anger reinforcing both. She crossed the hall and with a light step she went up the wide shallow stairs. She loathed that which she was doing, and still more that which she was going to do. But what choice had she if she was not to connive at this horror? If she would put an end to it, if she would show him that there was a limit to the things that she would suffer, this was her chance.
The staircase lay partly in shadow, but on each landing there was a lamp. Her slippered feet, as she ascended, made no sound, and the faint stir which she had heard above had ceased. But something had replaced it that was infinitely more disturbing, more convincing — the murmur of whispering voices, and once a low, half-stifled laugh. Ah, but that stung her, that smarted, and if she had hesitated before, if with each stair she had mounted more slowly, she hesitated no longer. The servants were shut away in their own quarters, and save for an occasional outburst of laughter from the dining-room the house was as still as the grave — until she was half-way up the higher flight, between the first and second floors. Then, when no more than half a dozen stairs still hid the truth from her, she
stumbled over her skirt, and though she recovered herself she made sufficient noise to give the alarm. And the alarm was taken, and taken on the instant. She heard a scuffle, a hurried tread crossed the landing, a door squeaked. Quickly as she sprang up the last stairs she was only in time to see the baize door swing to.
He was gone! But the girl was there. She had risen from the settee that stood on the landing, and stood, apparently, arrested in the act of flight, her panic-stricken face turned towards the staircase and the intruder. A lamp stood on a bracket not far off, and if ever light fell on conscious guilt the Countess was convinced that it fell on it now, as it lit up Rachel’s startled face.
For a moment Lady Ellingham surveyed her victim with scathing eyes. Then, “You wicked, abominable girl!” she said, in a voice low, but quivering with abhorrence. “In my own house! You!” And moving to the lamp she raised it and pitilessly threw its light upon the shrinking girl. “You dare! You! In my house!”
There are situations in which innocence, or what a moment ago and before the light fell on it, passed for innocence, suffers all the pains of guilt; and Rachel, startled both by the desertion of her lover and the shock of detection, endured almost as much as if she had been the guilty thing that the Countess deemed her. Her conscience was not clear; and surprised in this clandestine meeting and dazzled by the light, she fancied for a moment that she deserved Lady Ellingham’s words. She winced under the elder woman’s scorn and did for an instant look the thing she passed for.
“You abandoned creature!” the Countess said, and her words cut not the less deeply because she kept her voice low.
But this Rachel found too much. Her senses were returning, and she knew that she had not deserved this. She revolted. “Oh, but I am not that!” she quavered. “How — how dare you say it?”
“How dare you be it?” the other retorted with burning eyes.
The Countess’s passion indeed was such that it almost overpowered Rachel anew. The girl clasped her hands in appeal. “Oh, but indeed, indeed I am not,” she protested. “You have no right to say it! No right! I did but—”
“You met him here! Do not lie, wretched girl! You have been with him! You met him here — alone and secretly. He left you but this moment. I heard him go!”
“Yes, but — but you must hear me!” Rachel insisted, distraught. “You must hear me! It is true we met — here. There was nowhere else that we could meet. It was wrong perhaps, but don’t,” in distress, “don’t look at me like that, Lady Ellingham. I have done nothing to deserve such looks. And if I could tell you all, if I could explain—”
But in face of that which seemed to her so shameless an avowal, the Countess could not contain herself; and unfortunately Rachel in the agony of her pleading laid a hand on her sleeve as if to compel her to listen. “Tell me? Explain?” my lady cried, and with a gesture of loathing she plucked her dress from the pollution of the other’s touch. “You — you would dare to tell me why you met him — here, alone, by stealth? Why, girl, have you no shame left at your age? No modesty? That you dare to say to my face that you — oh!” she broke off with an exclamation of impotent contempt, “that men should be fools enough to be caught by the white face of such a little wanton as you!”
Rachel flinched as if she had been struck. The word pricked her to the quick, but it also spurred her to action, it stung her to defend herself at all costs. She must protect herself — he could not wish her, branded with that name, to be silent! And quivering with indignation, “You insult me, Lady Ellingham, grossly, wickedly!” she cried, in a tone that the other had not yet heard. “And I claim a hearing. I will be heard. I have done nothing, nothing to deserve such a word! No, ma’am, nothing! It is true, quite true, that I met Mr. Girardot here and—”
“Mr. Girardot?”
“Clandestinely, I admit it, and I was wrong! But we had no other place to meet — I would not receive him in the schoolroom — and we are betrothed. He did not wish it to be known yet, but after what you have said I am sure that he would wish me to — to speak. He has asked me to be his wife.”
Lady Ellingham stared. “Impossible!” she exclaimed. But she set the lamp back in the place from which she had taken it, and her tone, her face, her manner, all were altered. “Impossible! Mr. Girardot?” She looked hungrily at the girl. She devoured her face with her eyes.
“No,” Rachel said firmly. “It is not impossible. It is so.”
“And he was with you — here? Now? Mr. Girardot?”
“You heard him go,” Rachel answered. But she winced, for how could she explain even to herself his desertion of her? And the flight that had left her to face the trouble?
“You tell me solemnly,” the Countess persisted, “that it was Mr. Girardot that I heard go from you?”
“Lady Ellingham,” Rachel protested, trembling with indignation, “why do you doubt me? Why should I lie? I have told you the truth.”
The Countess covered her eyes with her hand. She tried to think. She had not betrayed herself? No, she had been stopped in time. And that was something! Thank God for that. But what was it that she had said to the girl? How far had she gone? So far that she must go farther. She could only set herself right by telling the girl the truth, and indeed she must tell her — she owed it to her to tell her. “Mr. Girardot is to marry you?” she said, looking again at Rachel, and this time with pity in her eyes. “Did I hear that aright?”
“You did,” Rachel said with dignity. “Though I fear that I shall have displeased him by avowing it. It was his wish that our engagement should be private — for a time.”
“Why?”
“For certain reasons, Lady Ellingham.”
“What were they, if you please?”
“He thought that you might not like it,” Rachel confessed, losing a little of her dignity.
“For no other reason that he gave you?”
“No.”
“Then I can tell you one,” Lady Ellingham said firmly, “that he did not tell you. And one more to the point. If you are sure,” with a penetrating look at the girl’s face, “that you do not know it? Are you sure that you do not know it?”
“I do not.” Rachel tried to speak with confidence, but there was a shade of hesitation, even of pity, in the Countess’s manner, and her heart misgave her. “Unless, indeed,” she allowed in a lower voice, “he wished it to be our secret — between us.”
“I fear he did wish that,” Lady Ellingham said, “but it was not his true motive. Miss South, he is deceiving you,” she continued very gravely. “I too undertook to keep a secret for him, but I hold myself released by his conduct. Mr. Girardot may have promised to marry you, but he cannot do so.” Rachel recoiled and the colour left her face. “Why?” she exclaimed.
“Because he is married already. He is a married man and his wife is alive.”
“Oh, no, no! No! No!” Rachel cried, raising her voice and repeating the denial as if her disbelief would keep the thing at bay. “No! No!” she cried again. But she was white to the lips. “Do not say it! You are deceiving me!”
The Countess regarded her sombrely. “No, I am not deceiving you,” she said. “He is not a good man, and it is he who has deceived you.”
“Married?” She stared with terrified eyes at the elder woman.
“I know that he is married. I have it from his own mouth. He was married before he came to us. And his wife is still alive.”
The Countess fully expected that the girl would swoon or would burst into passionate sobbing. But Rachel did neither. She sank upon the seat which she had so lately shared with him and stooping forward with her face hidden in her hands, she swayed herself to and fro. Once, twice a violent shudder convulsed her body and betrayed the storm that raged within.
The Countess looked at her with compassion and for a moment she hesitated. Then, “He is not a good man,” she went on, in a low voice, “if indeed there be any good men. And you, girl, be thankful, oh, be thankful, that you have learned the truth in ti
me, and not, as others, have learned it too late! Be thankful that by God’s mercy I heard his step and followed him and found you. You have not loved him. You have loved like many another, the creation of your own fancy. From the reality, could you have seen him in his true colours, you would have turned with horror. You have — you have but made the mistake that all women make. But you are warned in time, you are spared the fate he had prepared for you — and how many are not spared! Oh, girl, whip up your pride! Think, think not of that to which you looked forward, but of that which he meant for you! Of that which you have escaped! And for the future trust no man, remember, remember always,” she repeated with growing feeling, “that there is no man who will not deceive you, who does not think you his prey, who when he has got from you what he wants will not trick you, scorn you, flout you with cold courtesy, dishonour you with a smiling face — ay, even though you bear his name, though the world call you wife and outwardly he keep faith with you! Trust him not, trust him not,” the Countess continued wildly — and had Rachel looked up she would have seen that the proud handsome face was distorted by passion, “he will make you his plaything for a year and his scorn for life! Wife or mistress, lorette or lady, there is but one fate for us! To be used while it is their pleasure and cast off when it is their will!”
Rachel rose, swaying on her feet. She kept her white stricken face turned away. “May I go?” she whispered with a convulsive shiver. She could bear no more.
My lady’s thoughts had left her, but they returned. She looked at her pitifully. “Yes, poor child, go,” she said. “Yet, think — think for your comfort how it would have been with you had you learned the truth too late! And, thank God, girl, thank Him on your knees that you have been spared.”
Rachel tried to say something, but her parched throat refused to let the words pass. She had only one wish, one thought — to be alone, to hide herself with her misery. Blindly she groped her way to the swing-door, fumbled for the handle, and found it. With a dull sound the door closed behind her.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 725
