“Why, Arthur, I had almost forgotten what you are like,” said Mildred, when that young gentleman at last put in an appearance at the Quinta. “Where have you been to all this time?”
“I— oh, I have been writing letters,” said Arthur.
“Then they must have been very long ones. Don’t tell fibs, Arthur; you have not stopped away from here for a day and a half in order to write letters. What is the matter with you?”
“Well, if you must know, Mildred, I detest your friend Lord Minster, the mere sight of him sets my teeth on edge, and I did not want to meet him. I only came here today because Lady Florence told me that they were going up to the Convent this afternoon.”
“So you have been to see Lady Florence?”
“No, I met her buying fruit yesterday, and went for a walk with her.”
“In the intervals of the letter-writing?”
“Yes.”
“Well, do you know I detest Lady Florence?”
“That is very unkind of you. She is charming.”
“From your point of view, perhaps, as her brother is from mine.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you think that horrid fellow charming?” asked Arthur in disgust.
“Why should I not?”
“Oh, for the matter of that there is no reason why you should not, but I can’t congratulate you either on your friend or your taste.”
“Leaving my taste out of the question, why do you call Lord Minster my friend?”
“Because Miss Terry told me that he was; she said that he was always proposing to you, and that you would probably marry him in the end.”
Mildred blushed faintly.
“She has no business to tell you; but, for the matter of that, so have many other men. It does not follow that, because they choose to propose to me, they are my friends.”
“No, but then they have not married you.”
“No more has he; but, while we are talking of it, why should I not marry Lord Minster? He can give me position, influence, everything that is dear to a woman, except the rarest of all gifts — love.”
“But is love so rare, Mildred?”
“Yes, the love that it can satisfy a woman either to receive or to give, especially the latter, for in this we are more blessed in giving than in receiving. It is but very rarely that the most fortunate of us get a chance of accepting such love as I mean, and we can only give it once in our lives. But you have not told me your reasons against my marrying Lord Minster.”
“Because he is a mean-spirited, selfish man. If he were not, he could not have talked as he did last night. Because you do not love him, Mildred, you cannot love such a man as that, if he were fifty times a member of the Government.”
“What does it matter to you, Arthur,” she said, in a voice of indescribable softness, bending her sunny head low over her work, “whether I love him or not; my doing so would not make your heart beat the faster.”
“I don’t wish you to marry him,” he said, confusedly.
She raised her head and looked full at him with eyes which shone like stars through a summer mist.
“That is enough, Arthur,” she answered, in a tone of gentle submission, “if you do not wish it, I will not,” and, rising, she left the room.
Arthur blushed furiously at her words, and a new sensation crept over him.
“Surely,” he said to himself, “she cannot —— No, of course she only means that she will take my advice.”
But, though he dismissed the suspicion thus readily, it left something that he could not quite define behind it. He had, after the manner of young men were women are concerned, thought that he understood Mildred thoroughly; now he came to the modest conclusion that he knew very little about her.
On the following afternoon, when he was at the Quinta talking as usual to Mrs. Carr, he saw Lord Minster coming up the steps of the portico, dressed in much the same way and with exactly the same air as he was accustomed to assume when he mounted those of the “Reform,” or occasionally, if he thought that the “hungry electors” wanted “pandering” to, those of the new “National Club.”
“Hullo,” said Arthur, “here comes Lord Minster in his war paint, frock coat, tall hat, eye-glass and all. Good-bye.”
“Why do you go away, Arthur? Stop and protect me,” said Mildred, laughing.
“Oh, no, indeed, I don’t want to spoil sport. I would not interfere with your amusement on any account.”
Mildred looked a little vexed.
“Well, you will come back to dinner?”
“That depends upon what happens.”
“I told you what would happen, Arthur. Good-bye.”
“Perhaps it is as well to get it over at once,” thought Mildred.
In the hall Arthur met Lord Minster, and they passed with a gesture of recognition so infinitesimally small that it almost faded into the nothingness of a “cut.” So far as he could condescend to notice so low a thing at all, his lordship had conceived a great dislike for Arthur.
“How do you do, Lord Minster?” said Mildred, cordially. “I hear that you went to the Convent yesterday; what did you think of the view?”
“The view, Mrs. Carr — was there a view? I did not notice it; indeed, I only went up there at all to please Florence. I don’t like that sort of thing.”
“If you don’t like roughing it, I am afraid that you did not enjoy your voyage out.”
“Well, no, I don’t think I did, and there was a low fellow on board who had been ruined by the retrocession of the Transvaal, and who, hearing that I was in the Government, took every possible opportunity to tell me publicly that his wife and children were almost in a state of starvation, as though I cared about his confounded wife and children. He was positively brutal. No, certainly I did not enjoy it. However, I am rewarded by finding you here.”
“I am very much flattered.”
Lord Minster fixed his eye-glass firmly in his eye, planted his hands at the bottom of his trousers pockets, and, clearing his throat, placed himself in the attitude that was so familiar to the House, and began.
“Mrs. Carr, I told you, when last I had the pleasure of seeing you, that I should take the first opportunity of renewing a conversation that I was forced to suspend in order to attend, if my memory serves me, a very important committee meeting. I was therefore surprised, indeed I may almost say hurt, when I found that you had suddenly flitted from London.”
“Indeed, Lord Minster?”
“I will not, however, take up the time of this — I mean your time, by recapitulating all that I told you on that occasion; the facts are, so to speak, all upon the table, and I will merely touch upon the main heads of my case. My prospects are these: I am now a member of the Cabinet, and enjoy, owing to the unusual but calculated recklessness of my non-official public utterances, an extraordinary popularity with a large section of the country, the hungry section to which I alluded last night. It is probable that the course of the present Government is pretty nearly run, the country is sick of it, and those who put it into power have not got enough out of it. A dissolution is therefore an event of the near future; the Conservatives will come in, but they have no power of organization, and very little political talent at their backs, above all, they are deficient in energy, probably because there is nothing that they can destroy and therefore no pickings to struggle for. In short, they are not ‘capaces imperii.’ The want of these qualities and of leaders will very soon undermine their hold upon the country, always a slight one, and, assisted by a few other pushing men, I anticipate, by carefully playing into the hands of the Irish party which will really rule England in the future, being able, as one of the leaders of the Opposition, to consummate their downfall. Then will come my opportunity, and, if luck goes with me, I shall be first Lord of the Treasury within half a dozen years. But now comes the difficulty. Though I am so popular with the country, I am, for some reason quite inexplicable to myself, rather at a — hum — a discount amongst my colleagues and that influential section of society to which they belong. Now, in order to succeed to the full extent that I have planned, it is absolutely essential that I should win the countenance of this class, and the only way that I can see of doing it is by marrying some woman charming enough to disarm dislike, beautiful enough to command admiration, rich enough to entertain profusely, and clever enough to rule England. Those desiderata are all to a striking degree united in your person, Mrs. Carr, and I have therefore much pleasure in asking you to become my wife.”
“You have, as I understand you, Lord Minster, made a very admirable statement of how desirable it is for yourself that you should marry me, but it is not so clear what advantage I should reap by marrying you.”
“Why, the advantages are obvious: if by your help I can become Prime Minister, you would become the wife of the Prime Minister.”
“The prospect fails to dazzle me. I have everything that I want; why should I strive to reach a grandeur to which I was not born, and which, to speak the truth, I regard with a very complete indifference? But there is another point. In all your speech you have said nothing of any affection that you have to offer, not a single word of love — you have been content to expatiate on the profits that a matrimonial investment would bring to yourself, and by reflection, to the other contracting party.”
“Love,” asked Lord Minster, with an expression of genuine surprise; “why, you talk like a character in a novel; now tell me, Mrs. Carr, what is love?”
“It is difficult to define, Lord Minster; but as you ask me to do so, I will try. Love to a woman is what the sun is to the world, it is her life, her animating principle, without which she must droop, and, if the plant be very tender, die. Except under its influence, a woman can never attain her full growth, never touch the height of her possibilities, or bloom into the plenitude of her moral beauty. A loveless marriage dwarfs our natures, a marriage where love is develops them to their utmost.”
“And what is love to a man?”
“Well, I should say that nine of a man’s passions are merely episodes in his career, the mile-stones that mark his path; the tenth, or the first, is his philosopher’s stone that turns all things to gold, or, if the charm does not work, leaves his heart, broken and bankrupt, a cold monument of failure.”
“I don’t quite follow you, and I must say that, speaking for myself, I never felt anything of all this,” said Lord Minster, blankly.
“I know you do not, Lord Minster; your only passions tend towards political triumphs and personal aggrandisement; we are at the two poles, you see, and I fear that we can never, never meet upon a common matrimonial line. But don’t be down-hearted about it, you will find plenty more women who fulfil all your requirements and will be very happy to take you at your own valuation. If only a woman is necessary to success, you need not look far, and forgive me if I say that I believe it will not make much difference to you who she is. But all the same, Lord Minster, I will venture to give you a piece of advice: next time you propose, address yourself a little more to the lady’s affections and a little less to her interests,” and Mrs. Carr rose as though to show that the interview was at an end.
“Am I then to understand that my offer is definitely refused?” asked Lord Minster, stiffly.
“I am afraid so, and I am sure that you will, on reflection, see how utterly unsuited we are to each other.”
“Possibly, Mrs. Carr, possibly; at present all that I see is that you have had a great opportunity, and have failed to avail yourself of it. My only consolation is that the loss will be yours, and my only regret is that I have had the trouble of coming to this place for nothing. However, there is a ship due tomorrow, and I shall sail in her.”
“I am sorry to have been the cause of bringing you here, Lord Minster, and still more sorry that you should feel obliged to cut short your stay. Good-bye, Lord Minster; we part friends, I hope?”
“Oh, certainly, Mrs. Carr. I wish you a very good morning, Mrs. Carr,” and his lordship marched out of Mildred’s life.
“There goes my chance of becoming the wife of a prime minister, and making a figure in history,” said that lady, as she watched his tall figure stalking stiffly down the avenue. “Well, I am glad of it. I would just as soon have married a speech-making figure-head stuffed full of the purest Radical principles.”
On the following day Arthur met Lady Florence again in the town.
“Where have you been to, Lady Florence?” he said.
“To see my brother off,” she answered, without any signs of deep grief.
“What, has he gone already?”
“Yes; your friend Mrs. Carr has been too many for poor James.”
“What! do you mean that he has been proposing?”
“Yes, and got more than he bargained for.”
“Is he cut up?”
“He, no, but his vanity is. You see, Mr. Heigham, it is this way. My brother may be a very great man and a pillar of the State, and all that sort of thing. I don’t say he isn’t; but from personal experience I know that he is an awful prig, and thinks that all women are machines constructed to advance the comfort of your noble sex. Well, he has come down a peg or two, that’s all, and he don’t like it. Good-bye; I’m in a hurry.”
Lady Florence was nothing if not outspoken.
A week or so after the departure of Lord Minster, Mildred suggested that they should, on the following day, vary their amusements by going up to the Convent, a building perched on the hills some thousand feet above the town of Funchal, in palanquins, or rather hammocks swung upon long poles. Arthur, who had never yet travelled in these luxurious conveyances, jumped at the idea, and even Miss Terry, when she discovered that she was to be carried, made no objection. The party was completed by the addition of a newly-married couple of whom Mrs. Carr had known something at home, and who had come to Madeira to spend the honeymoon. Lady Florence also had been asked, but, rather to Arthur’s disappointment, she could not come.
When the long line of swinging hammocks, each with its two sturdy bearers, were marshalled, and the adventurous voyagers had settled themselves in them, they really formed quite an imposing procession, headed as it was by the extra-sized one that carried Miss Terry, who complained bitterly that “the thing wobbled and made her feel sick.”
But to Arthur’s mind there was something effeminate in allowing himself, a strong, active man, to be carted up hills as steep as the side of a house by two perspiring wretches; so, hot as it was, he, to the intense amusement of his bearers, elected to get out and walk. The newly-married man followed his example, and for a while they went on together, till presently the latter gravitated towards his wife’s palanquin, and, overcome at so long a separation, squeezed her hand between the curtains. Not wishing to intrude himself on their conjugal felicity, Arthur in his turn gravitated to the side of Mrs. Carr, who was being lightly swung along in the second palanquin some twenty yards behind Miss Terry’s. Shortly afterwards they observed a signal of distress being flown by that lady, whose arm was to be seen violently agitating her green veil from between the curtains of her hammock, which immediately came to a dead stop.
“What is it?” cried Arthur and Mildred, in a breath, as they arrived on the scene of the supposed disaster.
“My dear Mildred, will you be so kind as to tell that man” (pointing to her front bearer, a stout, flabby individual) “that he must not go on carrying me. I must have a cooler man. It makes me positively ill to see him puffing and blowing and dripping under my nose like a fresh basted joint.”
Miss Terry’s realistic description of her bearer’s appearance, which was, to say the least of it, limp and moist, was no exaggeration. But then she herself, as Arthur well remembered, was no feather-weight, especially when, as in the present case, she had to be carted up the side of a nearly perpendicular hill some miles long, a fact very well exemplified by the condition of the bearer.
“My dear Agatha,” replied Mildred, laughing, “what is to be done? Of course the man is hot, you are not a feather-weight; but what is to be done?”
“I don’t know, but I won’t go on with him, it’s simply disgusting; he might let himself out as a watering-cart.”
“But we can’t get another here.”
“Then he must cool himself, the others might come and fan him. I won’t go on till he is cool, and that’s flat.”
“He will take hours to cool, and meanwhile we are broiling on this hot road. You really must come on, Agatha.”
“I have it,” said Arthur. “Miss Terry must turn herself round with her head towards the back of the hammock, and then she won’t see him.”
To this arrangement the aggrieved lady was after some difficulty persuaded to accede, and the procession started again.
Their destination reached, they picnicked as they had arranged, and then separated, the bride and bridegroom strolling off in one direction, and Mildred and Arthur in another, whilst Miss Terry mounted guard over the plates and dishes.
Presently Arthur and Mildred came to a little English-looking grove of pine and oak, that extended down a gentle slope and was bordered by a steep bank, at the foot of which great ferns and beautiful Madeira flowers twined themselves into a shelter from the heat. Here they sat down and gazed at the splendid and many-tinted view set in its background of emerald ocean.
“What a view it is,” said Arthur. “Look, Mildred, how dark the clumps of sugar-cane look against the green of the vines, and how pretty the red roofs of the town are peeping out of the groves of fruit-trees. Do you see the great shadow thrown upon the sea by that cliff? how deep and cool the water looks within it, and how it sparkles where the sun strikes.”
“Yes, it is beautiful, and the pines smell sweet.”
“I wish Angela could see it,” he said, half to himself. Mildred, who was lying back lazily among the ferns, her hat off, her eyes closed, so that the long dark lashes lay upon her cheek, and her head resting on her arm, suddenly started up.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing, you woke me from a sort of dream, that’s all.”
“This spring I remember going with her to look at a view near the Abbey House, and saying — what I often think when I look at anything beautiful and full of life — that it depressed one to know that all this was so much food for death, and its beauty a thing that today is and tomorrow is not.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said that to her it spoke of immortality, and that in everything around her she saw evidence of eternal life.”
“She must be very fortunate. Shall I tell you of what it reminds me?”
“What?”
“Of neither death nor immortality, but of the full, happy, pulsing existence of the hour, and of the beautiful world that pessimists like yourself and mystics like your Angela think so poorly of, but which is really so glorious and so rich in joy. Why, this sunlight and those flowers, and the wide sparkle of that sea, are each and all a happiness, and the health in our veins and the beauty in our eyes, deep pleasures that we never realize till we lose them. Death, indeed, comes to us all, but why add to its terrors by thinking of them whilst it is far off? And, as for life after death, it is a faint, vague thing, more likely to be horrible than happy. This world is our only reality, the only thing that we can grasp; here alone we know that we can enjoy, and yet how we waste our short opportunities for enjoyment! Soon youth will have slipped away, and we shall be too old for love. Roses fade fastest, Arthur, when the sun is bright; in the evening when they have fallen, and the ground is red with withering petals, do you not think we shall wish that we had gathered more?”
“Yours is a pleasant philosophy, Mildred,” he said, struggling faintly in his own mind against her conclusions.
But at this moment, somehow, his fingers touched her own and were presently locked fast within her little palm, and for the first time in his life they sat hand in hand. But, happily for him, he did not venture to look into her eyes, and, before many minutes had passed, Miss Terry’s voice was heard calling him loudly.
“I suppose that you must go,” said Mildred, with a shade of vexation in her voice and a good many shades upon her face, “or she will be blundering down here. I will come, too; it is time for tea.”
On arriving at the spot whence the sounds proceeded, they found Miss Terry surrounded by a crowd of laughing and excited bearers, and pouring out a flood of the most vigorous English upon an unfortunate islander, who stood, a silver mug in each hand, bowing and shrugging his shoulders, and enunciating with every variety of movement indicative of humiliation, these mystic words:
“Mee washeeuppee, signora, washeeuppee — e.”
“What is the matter now, Agatha?”
“Matter, why I woke up and found this man stealing the cups; I charged him at once with my umbrella, but he dodged and I fell down, and the umbrella has gone over the rock there. Take him up at once, Arthur — there’s the stolen property on his person. Hand him over to justice.”
“Good gracious, Agatha, what are you thinking about? The poor man only wants to wash the things out.”
“Then I should like to know why he could not tell me so in plain English,” said Miss Terry, retiring discomfited amidst shouts of laughter from the whole party, including the supposed thief.
After tea they all set out on a grand beetle-hunting expedition, and so intent were they upon this fascinating pursuit that they did not note the flight of time, till suddenly Mildred, pulling out her watch, gave a pretty cry of alarm.
“Do you know what time it is, good people? Half-past six, and the Custances are to dine with us at a quarter-past-seven. It will take us a good hour to get down; what shall we do?”
“I know,” said Arthur, “there are two sledges just below; I saw them as we came up. They will take us down to Funchal in a quarter of an hour, and we can get to the Quinta by about seven.”
“Arthur, you are invaluable; the very thing. Come on, all of you, quick.”
Now these sledges are peculiar to Madeira, being made on the principle of the bullock car, with the difference that they travel down the smooth, stone-paved roadways by their own momentum, guided by two skilled conductors, each with one foot naked to prevent his slipping, who hold the ropes, and when the sledge begins to travel more swiftly than they can follow, mount upon the projecting ends of the runners and are carried with it. By means of the swift and exhilarating rush of these sledges, the traveller traverses the distance, that it takes some hours to climb, in a very few minutes. Indeed, his journey up and down may be very well compared with that of the well-known British sailor who took five hours to get up Majuba mountain, but, according to his own forcibly told story, came down again with an almost incredible rapidity. It may therefore be imagined that sledge-travelling in Madeira is not very well suited to nervous voyagers.
Miss Terry had at times seen these wheelless vehicles shoot from the top of a mountain to the bottom like a balloon with the gas out, and had also heard of occasional accidents in connection with them. Stoutly she vowed that nothing should induce her to trust her neck to one of them.
“But you must, Agatha, or else be left behind. They are as safe as a church, and I can’t leave the Custances to wait till half-past eight for dinner. Come, get in. Arthur can go in front and hold you; I will sit behind.”
Thus admonished — Miss Terry entered groaning, Arthur taking his seat beside her, and Mrs. Carr hers in a sort of dickey behind. The newly-married pair, who did not half like it, possessed themselves of the smaller sledge, determined to brave extinction in each other’s arms. Then the conductors seized the ropes, and, planting their one naked foot firmly before them, awaited the signal to depart.
“Stop,” said Miss Terry, lifting the recovered umbrella, “that man has forgotten to put on his shoe and stocking on his right leg. He will cut his foot, and, besides, it doesn’t look respectable to be seen flying through a place with a one-legged ragamuffin ——”
“Let her go,” shouted Arthur, and they did, to some purpose, for in a minute they were passing down that hill like a flash of light. Woods and houses appeared and vanished like the visions of a dream, and the soft air went singing away on either side of them as they clove it, flying downwards at an angle of thirty degrees, and leaving nothing behind them but the sound of Miss Terry’s lamentations. Soon they neared the bottom, but there was yet a dip — the deepest of them all, with a sharp turn at the end of it — to be traversed.
Away went the little connubial sled in front like a pigeon down the wind; away they sped after it like an eagle in pursuit; crack went the little sledge into the corner, and out shot the happy pair; crash went the big sledge into it, and Arthur became conscious of a wild yell, of a green veil fluttering through the air, and of a fall as on to a feather-bed. Miss Terry’s superior weight had brought her to her mother earth the first, and he, after a higher heavenward flight, had lit upon the top of her. He picked her up and sat her down against a wall to recover her breath, and then fished Mildred, dirty and bruised, but as usual laughing, out of a gutter; the loving pair had already risen and in an agony of mutual anxiety were rubbing each other’s shins. And then he started back with a cry, for there before him, surveying the disaster with an air of mingled amusement and benevolence, stood — Sir John and Lady Bellamy.
Had it been the Prince and Princess of Evil — if, as is probable, there is a Princess — Arthur could scarcely have been more astounded. Somehow he had always in his thoughts regarded Sir John and Lady Bellamy, when he thought about them at all, as possessing indeed individual characters and tendencies, but as completely “adscripti glebae” of the neighbourhood of the Abbey House as that house itself. He would as soon have expected to see Caresfoot’s Staff re-rooted in the soil of Madeira, as to find them strolling about Funchal. He rubbed his eyes; perhaps, he thought, he had been knocked silly and was labouring under a hallucination. No, there was no doubt about it; there they were, just the same as he had seen them at Isleworth, except that if possible Sir John looked even more like a ripe apple than usual, while the sun had browned his wife’s Egyptian face and given her a last finish as a perfect type of Cleopatra. Nor was the recognition on his side only, for next second his hand was grasped first by Sir John and then by Lady Bellamy.
“When we last met, Mr. Heigham,” said the gentleman, with a benevolent beam, “I think I expressed a wish that we might soon renew our acquaintance, but I little thought under what circumstances our next meeting would take place,” and he pointed to the overturned sledges and the prostrate sledgers.
“You have had a very merciful escape,” chimed in Lady Bellamy, cordially; “with so many hard stones about, affairs might have ended differently.”
“Now then, Mr. Heigham, we had better set to and run, that is, if Agatha has got a run left in her, or we shall be late after all. Thank goodness nobody is hurt; but we must find a hammock for Agatha, for to judge from her groans she thinks she is. Is my nose —— Oh, I beg your pardon,” and Mrs. Carr stopped short, observing for the first time that he was talking to strangers.
“Do not let me detain you, if you are in a hurry. I am so thankful that nobody is hurt,” said Lady Bellamy. “I believe that we are stopping at the same hotel, Mr. Heigham, I saw your name in the book, so we shall have plenty of opportunities of meeting.”
But Arthur felt that there was one question which he must ask before he went on, whether or no it exceeded the strict letter of his agreement with Philip; so, calling to Mrs. Carr that he was coming, he said, with a blush,
“How was Miss Caresfoot when — when you last saw her, Lady Bellamy?”
“Perfectly well,” she answered, smiling.
“And more lovely than ever,” added her husband.
“Thank you for that news, it is the best I have heard for some time. Good-bye for the present, we shall meet tomorrow at breakfast,” and he ran on after the others, happier than he had been for months, feeling that he had come again within call of Angela, and as though he had never sat hand in hand with Mildred Carr.
At breakfast on the following morning Arthur, as he had anticipated, met the Bellamys. Sir John came down first, arrayed in true English fashion, in a tourist suit of grey, and presently Lady Bellamy followed. As she entered, dressed in trailing white, and walked slowly up the long table, every eye was turned upon her, for she was one of those women who attract attention as surely and unconsciously as a magnet attracts iron. Arthur, looking with the rest, thought that he had never seen a stranger, or at the same time a more imposing-looking, woman. Time had not yet touched her beauty or impaired her vigorous constitution, and at forty she was still at the zenith of her charms. The dark hair, that threw out glinting lights of copper when the sun struck it, still curled in its clustering ringlets and showed no line of grey, while the mysterious, heavy-lidded eyes and the coral lips were as full of rich life and beauty as they had been when she and Hilda von Holtzhausen first met at Rewtham House.
On her face, too, was the same expression of quiet power, of conscious superiority and calm command, that had always distinguished it. Arthur tried to think what it reminded him of, and remembered that the same look was to be seen upon the stone features of some of the Egyptian statues in Mildred’s museum.
“How splendid Lady Bellamy looks!” he said, almost unconsciously, to his neighbour.
Sir John did not answer; and Arthur, glancing up to learn the reason, saw that he also was watching the approach of his wife, and that his face was contorted with a sudden spasm of intense malice and hatred, whilst his little, pig-like eyes glittered threateningly. He had not even heard the remark. Arthur would have liked to whistle; he had surprised a secret.
“How do you do, Mr. Heigham? I hope that you are not bruised after your tumble yesterday. Good morning, John.”
Arthur rose and shook hands.
“I never was more surprised in my life,” he said, “than when I saw you and Sir John at the top of the street there. May I ask what brought you to Madeira?”
“Health, sir, health,” answered the little man. “Cough, catarrh, influenza, and all that’s damn —— ah! infernal!”
“My husband, Mr. Heigham,” struck in Lady Bellamy, in her full, rich tones, “had a severe threatening of chest disease, and the doctor recommended a trip to some warmer climate. Unfortunately, however, his business arrangements will not permit of a long stay. We only stop here three weeks at most.”
“I am sorry to hear that you are not well, Sir John.”
“Oh! it is nothing very much,” answered Lady Bellamy for him; “only he requires care. What a lovely garden this is — is it not? By the way, I forgot to inquire after the ladies who shared your tumble. I hope that they were none the worse. I was much struck with one of them, the very pretty person with the brown hair, whom you pulled out of the gutter.”
“Oh, Mrs. Carr. Yes, she is pretty.”
After breakfast, Arthur volunteered to take Lady Bellamy round the garden, with the ulterior object of extracting some more information about Angela. It must be remembered that he had no cause to mistrust that lady, nor had he any knowledge of the events which had recently happened in the neighbourhood of the Abbey House. He was therefore perfectly frank with her.
“I suppose that you have heard of my engagement, Lady Bellamy?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Heigham; it is quite a subject of conversation in the Roxham neighbourhood. Angela Caresfoot is a sweet and very beautiful girl, and I congratulate you much.”
“You know, then, of its conditions?”
“Yes, I heard of them, and thought them ridiculous. Indeed I tried, at Angela’s suggestion, to do you a good turn with Philip Caresfoot, and get him to modify them; but he would not. He is a curious man, Philip, and, when he once gets a thing into his head, it is beyond the power of most people to drive it out again. I suppose that you are spending your year of probation here?”
“Well, yes — I am trying to get through the time in that way; but it is slow work.”
“I thought you seemed pretty happy yesterday,” she answered, smiling.
Arthur blushed.
“Oh! yes, I may appear to be. But tell me all about Angela.”
“I have really very little to tell. She seems to be living as usual, and looks well. Her friend Mr. Fraser has come back. But I must be going in; I have promised to go out walking with Sir John. Au revoir, Mr. Heigham.”
Left to himself, Arthur remembered that he also had an appointment to keep — namely, to meet Mildred by the Cathedral steps, and go with her to choose some Madeira jewellery, an undertaking which she did not feel competent to carry out without his assistance.
When he reached the Cathedral, he found her rather cross at having been kept waiting for ten minutes.
“It is very rude of you,” she said; “but I suppose that you were so taken up with the conversation of your friends that you forgot the time. By the way, who are they? anybody you have told me about?”
In the pauses of selecting the jewellery, Arthur told her all he knew about the Bellamys, and of their connection with the neighbourhood of the Abbey House. The story caused Mildred to open her brown eyes and look thoughtful. Just as they came out of the shop, who should they run into but the Bellamys themselves, chaffering for Madeira work with a woman in the street. Arthur stopped and spoke to them, and then introduced Mrs. Carr, who, after a little conversation, asked them up to lunch.
After this Mildred and Lady Bellamy met a good deal. The two women interested each other.
One night, when the Bellamys had been about ten days in Madeira, the conversation took a personal turn. Sir John and Arthur were sitting over their wine (they were dining with Mrs. Carr), Agatha Terry was fast asleep on a sofa, so that Lady Bellamy and Mildred, seated upon lounging-chairs, by a table with a light on it, placed by an open window, were practically alone.
“Oh, by the way, Lady Bellamy,” said Mildred, after a pause, “I believe that you are acquainted with the young lady to whom Mr. Heigham is engaged?” She had meant to say, “to be married,” but the words stuck in her throat.
“Oh, yes, I know her well.”
“I am so glad. I am quite curious to hear what she is like; one can never put much faith in lovers’ raptures, you know.”
“Do you mean in person or in character?”
“Both.”
“Well, Angela Caresfoot is as lovely a woman as ever I saw, with a noble figure, well-set head, and magnificent eyes and hair.”
Mildred turned a little pale and bit her lips.
“As to her character, I can hardly describe it. She lives in an atmosphere of her own, an atmosphere that I cannot reach, or, at any rate, cannot breathe. But if you can imagine a woman whose mind is enriched with learning as profound as that of the first classical scholars of the day, and tinged with an originality all her own; a woman whose faith is as steady as that star, and whose love is deep as the sea and as definite as its tides; who lives to higher ends than those we strive for; whose whole life, indeed, gives one the idea that it is the shadow — imperfect, perhaps, but still the shadow — of an immortal light: then you will get some idea of Angela Caresfoot. She is a woman intellectually, physically, and spiritually immeasurably above the man on whom she has set her affections.”
“That cannot be,” said Mildred, softly, “like draws to like; she must have found something in him, some better part, some affinity of which you know nothing.”
After this she fell into silence. Presently Lady Bellamy raised her eyes, just now filled up with the great pupils, and fixed them on Mildred.
“You are thinking,” she said, slowly, “that Angela Caresfoot is a formidable rival.”
Mildred started.
“How can you pretend to read my thoughts?”
She laughed a little.
“I am an adept at the art. Don’t be down-hearted. I should not be surprised if, after all, the engagement between Mr. Heigham and Angela Caresfoot should come to nothing. Of course, I speak in perfect confidence.”
“Of course.”
“Well, the marriage is not altogether agreeable to the father, who would prefer another and more suitable match. But, unfortunately, there is no way of shaking the young lady’s determination.”
“Indeed.”
“But I think that, with assistance, a way might be found.”
Their eyes met, and this time Mildred took up the parable.
“Should I be wrong, Lady Bellamy, if I supposed that you have not come to Madeira solely for pleasure?”
“A wise person always tries to combine business and pleasure.”
“And in this case the business combined is in connection with Mr. Heigham’s engagement?”
“Exactly.”
“And supposing that I were to tell him this?”
“Had I not known that you would on no account tell Mr. Heigham, I should not have told you.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I will answer your question by another. Did you ever yet know a woman, who loved a man, willingly help him to the arms of a rival, unless indeed she was forced to it?” she added, with something like a sigh.
Mildred Carr’s snowy bosom heaved tumultuously, and the rose-leaf hue faded from her cheeks.
“You mean that I am in love with Arthur Heigham. On what do you base that belief?”
“On a base as broad as the pyramids of which you were talking at dinner. Public report, not nearly so misleading a guide as people think, your face, your voice, your eyes, all betray you. Why do you always try to get near him to touch him?— answer me that. I have seen you do it three times this evening. Once you handed him a book in order to touch his hand beneath it; but there is no need to enumerate what you doubtless very well remember. No nice woman, Mrs. Carr, ever likes to continually touch a man unless she loves him. You are always listening for his voice and step, you are listening for them now. Your eyes follow his face as a dog does his master’s — when you speak to him, your voice is a caress in itself. Shall I go on?”
“I think that it is unnecessary. Whether you be right or not, I will give you the credit of being a close observer.”
“To observe with me is at once a task and an amusement, and the habit is one that leads me to accurate conclusions, as I think you will admit. The conclusion I have come to in your case is that you do not wish to see Arthur Heigham married to another woman. I spoke just now of assistance ——”
“I have none to give, I will give none. How could I look him in the face?”
“You are strangely scrupulous for a woman in your position.”
“I have always tried to behave like an honourable woman, Lady Bellamy, and I do not feel inclined to do otherwise now.”
“Perhaps you will think differently when it comes to the point. But in the meanwhile remember, that people who will not help themselves, cannot expect to be helped.”
“Once and for all, Lady Bellamy, understand me. I fight for my own hand with the weapons which Nature and fortune have given me, and by myself I will stand or fall. I will join in no schemes to separate Arthur from this woman. If I cannot win him for myself by myself, I will at any rate lose him fairly. I will respect what you have told me, but I will do no more.”
Lady Bellamy smiled as she answered —
“I really admire your courage. It is quite quixotic. Hush, here come the gentlemen.”
A few days after the dinner at the Quinta Carr, the Bellamys’ visit to Madeira drew to a close. On the evening before their departure, Arthur volunteered to take Lady Bellamy down to the parade to hear the band play. After they had walked about a while under the shade of the magnolia-trees, which were starred all over with creamy cups of bloom, and sufficiently inspected the gay throng of Portuguese inhabitants and English visitors, made gayer still by the amazingly gorgeous uniforms of the officials, Arthur spied two chairs in a comparatively quiet corner, and suggested that they should sit down.
“Lady Bellamy,” he said, after hesitating a while, “you are a woman of the world, and I believe a friend of my own. I want to ask your advice about something.”
“It is entirely at your service, Mr. Heigham.”
“Well, really it is very awkward ——”
“Shall I turn my head so as not to see your blushes?”
“Don’t laugh at me, Lady Bellamy. Of course you will say nothing of this.”
“If you doubt my discretion, Mr. Heigham, do not choose me as a confidante. You are going, unless I am mistaken, to speak to me about Mrs. Carr.”
“Yes, it is about her. But how did you know that? You always seem to be able to read one’s thoughts before one speaks. Do you know, sometimes I think that she has taken a fancy to me, do you see, and I wanted to ask you what you thought about it.”
“Well, supposing that she had, most young men, Mr. Heigham, would not talk of such a thing in a tone befitting a great catastrophe. But, if I am not entering too deeply into particulars, what makes you think so?”
“Well, really, I don’t exactly know. She sometimes gives me a general idea.”
“Oh, then, there has been nothing tangible.”
“Well, yes, once she took my hand, or I took hers, I don’t know which; but I don’t think much of that, because it’s the sort of thing that’s always happening, don’t you know, and nine times out of ten means nothing at all. But why I ask you about it is that, if there is anything of the sort, I had better cut and run out of this, because it would not be fair to stop, either to her, or to Angela, or myself. It would be dangerous, you see, playing with such a woman as Mildred.”
“So you would go away if you thought that she took any warmer interest in you than ladies generally do in men engaged to be married.”
“Certainly I should.”
“Well, then, I think that I can set your mind at ease. I have observed Mrs. Carr pretty closely, and in the way you suppose she cares for you no more than she does for your coat. She is, no doubt, a bit of a flirt, and very likely wishes to get you to fall in love with her — a natural ambition on the part of a woman; but, as for being in love with you herself, the idea is absurd. Women of the world do not fall in love so readily; they are too much taken up with thinking about themselves to have time to think about anybody else. With them it is all self, self, self, from morning till night. Besides, look at the common-sense side of the thing. Do you suppose it likely that a person of Mrs. Carr’s wealth and beauty, who has only to lift her hand to have all London at her feet, is likely to fix her affections upon a young man whom she knows is already engaged to be married, and who — forgive me if I say so — has not got the same recommendations to her favour that many of her suitors have? It is, of course, quite possible that Mrs. Carr’s society may be dangerous to you, in which case it might be wise for you to go; but I really do not think that you need feel any anxiety on her account. She finds you a charming companion, and in some ways a useful one, and that is all. When you go, somebody else will soon fill the vacant space.”
“Then that’s all right,” said Arthur, though somehow he did not feel as wildly delighted as he should have done at hearing it so clearly demonstrated that Mildred did not care a brass button about him; but then that is human nature. Between eighteen and thirty-five, ninety per cent. of the men in the world would like to centre in themselves the affections of every young and pretty woman they know, even if there was not the ghost of a chance of their marrying one of them. The same tendency is to be observed conversely in the other sex, only in their case with a still smaller proportion of exceptions.
“By the way,” asked Arthur, presently, “how is my late guardian, Mr. George Caresfoot?”
“Not at all well, I am sorry to say. I am very anxious about his health. He is in the south of England now for a change.”
“I am sorry he is ill. Do you know, I daresay you will think me absurd; but you have taken a weight off my mind. I always had an idea that he wanted to marry Angela, and sometimes I am afraid that I have suspected that Philip Caresfoot carted me off in order to give him a chance. You see, Philip is uncommonly fond of money, and George is rich.”
“What an absurd idea, Mr. Heigham! Why, George looks upon matrimony as an institution of the evil one. He admires Angela, I know — he always does admire a pretty face; but as for dreaming of marrying a girl half his age and his own cousin into the bargain, it is about the last thing that he would do.”
“I am glad to hear it. I am sure I have been uncomfortable enough thinking about him sometimes. Lady Bellamy, will you do something for me?”
“What is that, Mr. Heigham?”
“Tell Angela all about me.”
“But would that be quite honourable, Mr. Heigham — under the conditions of your engagement, I mean?”
“You never promised not to talk about me; I only promised not to attempt verbal or written communication with Angela.”
“Well, I will tell her that I met you, and that you are well, and, if Philip will allow me, I will tell her more; but of course I don’t know if he will or not. What ring is that you wear?”
“It is one that Angela gave me when we became engaged. It was her mother’s.”
“Will you let me look at it?”
Arthur held out his hand. The ring was an antique, a large emerald, cut like a seal and heavily set in a band of dull gold. On the face of the stone were engraved some mysterious characters.
“What is that engraved on the stone?”
“I am not sure; but Angela told me that Mr. Fraser had taken an impression of it, and forwarded it to a great Oriental scholar. His friend said that the stone must be extremely ancient, as the character is a form of Sanscrit, and that he believed the word to mean ‘For ever’ or ‘Eternity.’ Angela said that it had been in her mother’s family for generations, and was supposed to have been brought from the East about the year 1700. That is all I know about it.”
“The motto is better suited to a wedding-ring than to an engagement stone,” said Lady Bellamy, with one of her dark smiles.
“Why?”
“Because engagements are like promises and pie-crust, made to be broken.”
“I hope that will not be the case with ours, however,” said Arthur, attempting a laugh.
“I hope not, I am sure; but never pin your faith absolutely to any woman, or you will regret it. Always accept her oaths and protestations as you would a political statement, politely, and with an appearance of perfect faith, but with a certain grain of mistrust. Woman’s fidelity is in the main a fiction. We are faithful just as men are, so long as it suits us to be so; with this difference however, men play false from passion or impulse, women from calculation.”
“You do not draw a pleasing picture of your own sex.”
“When is the truth pleasing? It is only when we clothe its nakedness with the rags of imagination, or sweeten it with fiction, that it can please. Of itself, it is so ugly a thing that society in its refinement will not even hear it, but prefers to employ a corresponding formula. Thus all passion, however vile, is called by the name of ‘love,’ all superstitious terror and grovelling attempts to conciliate the unseen are known as ‘religion,’ while selfish greed and the hungry lust for power masquerade as laudable ‘ambition.’ Men and women, especially women, hate the truth, because, like the electric light, it shows them as they are, and that is vile. It has grown so strange to them from disuse that, like Pilate, they do not even know what it is! I was going to say, however, that if you care to trust me with it, I think I see how I can take a message to Angela for you — without either causing you to break your promise or doing anything dishonourable myself.”
“How?”
“Well, if you like, I will take her that ring. I think that is a very generous offer on my part, for I do not like the responsibility.”
“But what is the use of taking her the ring?”
“It is something that there can be no mistake about, that is all, a speaking message from yourself. But don’t give it me if you do not like; perhaps you had rather not!”
“I don’t like parting with it at all, I confess, but I should dearly like to send her something. I suppose that you would not take a letter?”
“You would not write one, Mr. Heigham!”
“No, of course, I forget that accursed promise. Here, take the ring, and say all you can to Angela with it. You promise that you will?”
“Certainly, I promise that I will say all I can.”
“You are very good and kind. I wish to Heaven that I were going to Marlshire with you. If you only knew how I long to see her again. I think that it would break my heart if anything happened to separate us,” and his lips quivered at the thought.
Lady Bellamy turned her sombre face upon him — there was compassion in her eyes.
“If you bear Angela Caresfoot so great a love, be guided by me and shake it off, strangle it — be rid of it anyhow; for fulfilled affection of that nature would carry a larger happiness with it than is allowed in a world planned expressly to secure the greatest misery of the greatest number. There is a fate which fights against it; its ministers are human folly and passion. You have seen many marriages, tell me, how many have you known, out of a novel, where the people married their true loves? In novels they always do, it is another of society’s pleasant fictions, but real life is like a novel without the third volume. I do not want to alarm you, Mr. Heigham; but, because I like you, I ask you to steel your mind to disappointment, so that, if a blow comes, it may not crush you.”
“What do you mean, Lady Bellamy, do you know of any impending trouble?”
“I? Certainly not. I only talk on general principles. Do not be over-confident, and never trust a woman. Come, let us get home.”
Next morning, when Arthur came down to breakfast, the Bellamys had sailed. The mail had come in from the Cape at midnight, and left again at dawn, taking them with it.
The departure of the Bellamys left Arthur in very low spirits. His sensations were similar to those which one can well imagine an ancient Greek might have experienced who, having sent to consult the Delphic oracle, had got for his pains a very unsatisfactory reply, foreshadowing evils but not actually defining them. Lady Bellamy was in some way connected with the idea of an oracle in his mind. She looked oracular. Her dark face and inscrutable eyes, the stamp of power upon her brow, all suggested that she was a mistress of the black arts. Her words, too, were mysterious, and fraught with bitter wisdom and a deep knowledge distilled from the poisonous weeds of life.
Arthur felt with something like a shudder that, if Lady Bellamy prophesied evil, evil was following hard upon her words. And in warning him not to place his whole heart’s happiness upon one venture, lest it should meet with shipwreck, he was sure that she was prophesying with a knowledge of the future denied to ordinary mortals. How earnestly, too, she had cautioned him against putting absolute faith in Angela — so earnestly, indeed, that her talk had left a flavour of distrust in his mind. Yet how could he mistrust Angela?
Nor was he comforted by a remark that fell from Mildred Carr the afternoon following the departure of the mail. Raising her eyes, she glanced at his hand.
“What are you looking at?” he said.
“Was not that queer emerald you wore your engagement ring?”
“Yes.”
“What have you done with it?”
“I gave it to Lady Bellamy to give to Angela.”
“What for?”
“To show her that I am alive and well. I may not write, you know.”
“You are very confiding.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. At least, I mean that I don’t think that I should care to hand over my engagement ring so easily. It might be misapplied, you know.”
This view of the matter helped to fill up the cup of Arthur’s nervous anxiety, and he vainly plied Mildred with questions to get her to elucidate her meaning, and state her causes of suspicion, if she had any; but she would say nothing more on the subject, which then dropped, and was not alluded to again between them.
After the Bellamys’ departure, the time wore on at Madeira without bringing about any appreciable change in the situation. But Mildred saw that their visit had robbed her of any advantages she had gained over Arthur, for they had, as it were, brought Angela’s atmosphere with them, and, faint though it was, it sufficed to overpower her influence. He made no move forward, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the episode on the hills when he had gone so very near disaster. On the contrary, he appeared to her to grow increasingly preoccupied as time went on, and to look upon her more and more in the light of a sister, till at length her patience wore thin.
As for her passion, it grew almost unrestrainable in its confinement. Now she drifted like a rudderless vessel on a sea which raged continuously and knew no space of calm. And so little oil was poured upon the troubled waters, there were so few breaks in the storm-walls that rose black between her and the desired haven of her rest. Indeed, she began to doubt if even her poor power of charming him, as at first she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half-unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and affection. The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a freezing wind, and for a moment turned her heart to ice.
Poor Mildred! higher than ever above her head bloomed that “blue rose” she longed to pluck. Would she ever reach it after all her striving, even to gather one poor leaf, one withered petal? The path which led to it was very hard to climb, and below the breakers boiled. Would it, after all, be her fate to fall, down into that gulf of which the sorrowful waters could bring neither death nor forgetfulness?
And so Christmas came and went.
One day, when they were all sitting in the drawing-room, some eight weeks after the Bellamys had left, and Mildred was letting her mind run on such thoughts as these, Arthur, who had been reading a novel, got up and opened the folding-doors at the end of the room which separated it from the second drawing-room, and also the further doors between that room and the dining-room. Then he returned, and, standing at the top of the big drawing-room, took a bird’s-eye view of the whole suite.
“What are you doing, Arthur?”
“I am reflecting, Mildred, that, with such a suite of apartments at your command, it is a sin and a shame not to give a ball.”
“I will give a ball, if you like, Arthur. Will you dance with me if I do?”
“How many times?” he said, laughing.
“Well, I will be moderate — three times. Let me see — the first waltz, the waltz before supper, and the last galop.”
“You will dance me off my head. It is dangerous to waltz with any one so pretty,” he said, in that bantering tone he often took with her, and which aggravated her intensely.
“It is more likely that my own head will suffer, as I dance so rarely. Then, that is a bargain?”
“Certainly.”
“Dear me, Mildred, how silly you are; you are like a schoolgirl!” said Miss Terry.
“Agatha is put out because you do not offer to dance three times with her.”
“Oh! but I will, though, if she likes; three quadrilles.”
And so the matter passed off in mutual badinage; but Mildred did not forget her intention. On the contrary, “society” at Madeira was soon profoundly agitated by the intelligence that the lady Croesus, Mrs. Carr, was about to give a magnificent ball, and so ill-natured — or, rather, so given to jumping to conclusions — is society, that it was freely said it was in order to celebrate her engagement to Arthur Heigham. Arthur heard nothing of this; one is always the last to hear things about oneself. Mildred knew of it, however, but, whether from indifference or from some hidden motive, she neither took any steps to contradict it herself, nor would she allow Miss Terry to do so.
“Nonsense,” she said; “let them talk. To contradict such things only makes people believe them the more. Mind now, Agatha, not a word of this to Mr. Heigham; it would put him out.”
“Well, Mildred, I should have thought that you would be put out too.”
“I!— oh, no! Worse things might happen,” and she shrugged her shoulders.
At length the much-expected evening came, and the arriving guests found that the ball had been planned on a scale such as Madeira had never before beheld. The night was lovely and sufficiently still to admit of the illumination of the gardens by means of Chinese lanterns that glowed all around in hundreds, and were even hung like golden fruit amongst the topmost leaves of the lofty cabbage palms, and from the tallest sprays of the bamboos. Within, the scene was equally beautiful. The suite of three reception-rooms had been thrown into one, two for dancing, and one for use as a sitting-room. They were quite full, for the Madeira season was at its height, and all the English visitors who were “anybody” were there. There happened, too, to be a man-of-war in the harbour, every man-jack, or, rather, every officer-jack of which, with the exception of those on watch — and they were to be relieved later on — was there, and prepared to enjoy himself with a gusto characteristic of the British sailor-man.
The rooms, too, were by no means devoid of beauty, but by far the loveliest woman in them was Mrs. Carr herself. She was simply dressed in a perfectly-fitting black satin gown, looped up with diamond stars that showed off the exquisite fairness of her skin to great perfection. Her ornaments were also diamonds, but such diamonds — not little flowers and birds constructed of tiny stones, but large single gems, each the size of a hazel-nut. On her head she wore a tiara of these, eleven stones in all, five on each side, and surmounted over the centre of the forehead by an enormous gem as large as a small walnut, which, standing by itself above the level of the others, flashed and blazed like a fairy star. Around her neck, wrists, and waist were similar points of concentrated light, that, shining against the black satin as she moved, gave her a truly magnificent appearance. Never before had Mildred Carr looked so perfectly lovely, for her face and form were well worthy of the gems and dress; indeed, most of the men there that night thought her eyes as beautiful as her diamonds.
The ball opened with a quadrille, but in this Mrs. Carr did not dance, being employed in the reception of her guests. Then followed a waltz, and, as its first strains struck up, several applicants came to compete for the honour of her hand; but she declined them all, saying that she was already engaged; and presently Arthur, looking very tall and quite the typical young Englishman in his dress-clothes, came hurrying up.
“You are late, Mr. Heigham,” she said; “the music has begun.”
“Yes; I am awfully sorry. I was dancing with Lady Florence, and could not find her old aunt.”
“Indeed, to me Mrs. Velley is pretty conspicuous, with that green thing on her head; but come along, we are wasting time.”
Putting his arm round her waist, they sailed away together amidst of the murmurs of the disappointed applicants.
“Lucky dog,” said one.
“Infernal puppy,” muttered another.
Arthur enjoyed his waltz very much, for the rooms, though full, were not crowded, and Mildred waltzed well. Still he was a little uneasy, for he felt that, in being chosen to dance the first waltz with the giver of this splendid entertainment over the heads of so many of his superiors in rank and position, he was being put rather out of his place. He did not as a rule take any great degree of notice of Mildred’s appearance, but to-night it struck him as unusually charming.
“You look very beautiful to-night, Mildred,” he said, when they halted for breath; “and what splendid diamonds you have on!”
She flushed with pleasure at his compliment.
“You must not laugh at my diamonds. I know that I am too insignificant to wear such jewels. I had two minds about putting them on.”
“Laugh at them, indeed. I should as soon think of laughing at the Bank of England. They are splendid.”
“Yes,” she said, bitterly; “they would be splendid on your Angela. They want a splendid woman to carry them off.”
Oddly enough, he was thinking the same thing: so, having nothing to say, he went on dancing. Presently the waltz came to an end, and Mildred was obliged to hurry off to receive the Portuguese Governor, who had just put in an appearance. Arthur looked at his card, and found that he was down for the next galop with Lady Florence Claverley.
“Our dance again, Lady Florence.”
“Really, Mr. Heigham, this is quite shocking. If everybody did not know that you belonged body and soul to the lovely widow, I should be accused of flirting with you.”
“Who was it made me promise to dance five times?”
“I did. I want to make Mrs. Carr angry.”
“Why should my dancing five or fifty dances with you make Mrs. Carr angry?”
Lady Florence shrugged her pretty shoulders.
“Are you blind?” she said.
Arthur felt uncomfortable.
In due course, however, the last waltz before supper came round, and he, as agreed upon, danced it with his hostess. As the strains of the music died away, the doors of the supper-room and tent were thrown open.
“Now, Arthur,” said Mildred, “take me in to supper.”
He hesitated.
“The Portuguese Governor ——” he began.
She stamped her little foot, and her eyes gave an ominous flash.
“Must I ask you twice?” she said.
Then he yielded, though the fact of being for the second time that night placed in an unnecessarily prominent position made him feel more uncomfortable than ever, for they were seated at the head of the top table. Mildred Carr was in the exact centre, with himself on her right and the Portuguese Governor on the left. To Arthur’s left was Lady Florence, who took an opportunity to assure him solemnly that he really “bore his blushing honours, very nicely,” and to ask him “how he liked the high places at feasts?”
The supper passed off as brilliantly as most successful suppers do. Mrs. Carr looked charming, and her conversation sparkled like her own champagne; but it seemed to him that, as in the case of the wine, there was too much sting in it. The wine was a little too dry, and her talk a little too full of suppressed sarcasm, though he could not quite tell what it was aimed at, any more than he could trace the source of the champagne bubbles.
Supper done, he led her back to the ball-room. The second extra was just beginning, and she stood as though she were expecting him to ask her to dance it.
“I am sorry, Mildred, but I must go now. I am engaged this dance.”
“Indeed — who to?” This was very coldly said.
“Lady Florence,” he answered, confusedly, though there really was no reason why he should be ashamed.
She looked at him steadily.
“Oh! I forgot, for to-night you are her monopoly. Good-bye.”
A little while after this, Arthur thought that he had had about enough dancing for awhile, and went and sat by himself in a secluded spot under the shadow of a tree-fern in a temporary conservatory put up outside a bow-window. The Chinese lantern that hung upon the fern had gone out, leaving his chair in total darkness. Presently a couple, whom he did not recognize, for he only saw their backs, strayed in, and placed themselves on a bench before him in such a way as to entirely cut off his retreat. He was making up his mind to disturb them, when they began a conversation, in which the squeezing of hands and mild terms of endearment played a part. Fearing to interrupt, lest he should disturb their equanimity, he judged it best to stop where he was. Presently, however, their talk took a turn that proved intensely interesting to him. It was something as follows:—
She. “Have you seen the hero of the evening?”
He. “Who? Do you mean the Portuguese Governor in his war-paint?”
She. “No, of course not. You don’t call him a hero, do you? I mean our hostess’s fiance, the nice-looking young fellow who took her in to supper.”
He. “Oh, yes. I did not think much of him. Lucky dog! but he must be rather mean. They say that he is engaged to a girl in England, and has thrown her over for the widow.”
She. “Ah, you’re jealous! I know that you would like to be in his shoes. Come, confess.”
He. “You are very unkind. Why should I be jealous when ——”
She. “Well, you need not hurt my hand, and will you never remember that black shows against white!”
He. “It’s awfully hot here; let’s go into the garden.” [Exuent.]
Arthur emerged from his hiding-place, horror-struck at hearing what was being said about him, and wondering, so far as he was at the moment capable of accurate thought, how long this report had been going about, and whether by any chance it had reached the ears of the Bellamys. If it had, the mischief might be very serious. In the confusion of his mind, only two things were clear to him — one was, that both for Mildred’s and his own sake, he must leave Madeira at once; and, secondly, that he would dance no more with her that night.
Meanwhile the ball was drawing to a close, and presently he heard the strains of the last galop strike up. After the band had been playing for a minute or two, a natural curiosity drew him to the door of the ball-room, to see if Mildred was dancing with anybody else. Here he found Lady Florence, looking rather disconsolate.
“How is it that you are not dancing?” she asked.
He murmured something inaudible about “partner.”
“Well, we are in the same box. What do you think? I promised this galop to Captain Clemence, and now there he is, vainly trying to persuade Mrs. Carr, who won’t look at him, and appears to be waiting for somebody else — you, I should think — to give him the dance. I will be even with him, though.”
Just then the music reached a peculiarly seductive passage.
“Oh, come along!” said Lady Florence, quite regardless of the proprieties; and, before Arthur well knew where he was, he was whirling round the room.
Mrs. Carr was standing at the top corner, where the crush obliged him to slacken his pace, and, as he did so, he caught her eye. She was talking to Lady Florence’s faithless partner, with a smile upon her lips; but one glance at her face sufficed to tell him that she was in a royal rage, and, what was more, with himself. His partner noticed it, too, and was amused.
“Unless I am mistaken, Mr. Heigham, you have come into trouble. Look at Mrs. Carr.” And she laughed.
But that was not all. Either from sheer mischief, or from curiosity to see what would happen, she insisted upon stopping, as the dance drew to a close, by Mildred’s corner. That lady, however, proved herself equal to the occasion.
“Mr. Heigham,” she said sweetly, “do you know that that was our dance?”
“Oh, was it?” he replied, feeling very much a fool.
“Yes, certainly it was; but with such a temptation to error”— and she smiled towards Lady Florence —“it is not wonderful that you made a mistake, and, as you look so contrite, you shall be forgiven. Agatha, there’s a dear, just ask that man to go up to the band, and tell them to play another waltz, ‘La Berceuse,’ before ‘God save the Queen.’”
Arthur felt all the while, though she was talking so suavely, that she was in a state of suppressed rage; once he glanced at her, and saw that her eyes seemed to flash. But her anger only made her look more lovely, supplying as it did an added dignity and charm to her sweet features. Nor did she allow it to have full play.
Mildred felt that the crisis in her fortunes was far too serious to admit of being trifled with. She knew how unlikely it was that she would ever have a better chance with Arthur than she had now, for the mirrors told her that she was looking her loveliest, which was very lovely indeed. In addition, she was surrounded by every seductive circumstance that could assist to compel a young man, however much engaged, to commit himself by some act or words of folly. The sound and sights of beauty, the rich odour of flowers, the music’s voluptuous swell, and last, but not least, the pressure of her gracious form and the glances from her eyes, which alone were enough to make fools of ninety-nine out of every hundred young men in Europe — all these things combined to help her. And to them must be added her determination, that concentrated strength of will employed to a single end, which, if there be any truth in the theories of the action of mind on mind, cannot fail to influence the individual on whom it is directed.
“Now, Arthur.”
The room was very nearly clear, for it was drawing towards daylight when they floated away together. Oh! what a waltz that was! The incarnate spirit of the dance took possession of them. She waltzed divinely, and there was scarcely anything to check their progress. On, on they sped with flying feet as the music rose and fell above them. And soon things began to change for Arthur. All sense of embarrassment and regret vanished from his mind, which now appeared to be capable of holding but one idea of the simplest and yet the most soaring nature. He thought that he was in heaven with Mildred Carr. On, still on; now he saw nothing but her shell-like face and the large flash of the circling diamonds, felt nothing but the pressure of her form and her odorous breath upon his cheek, heard nothing but the soft sound of her breathing. Closer he clasped her; there was no sense of weariness in his feet or oppression in his lungs; he could have danced for ever. But all too soon the music ceased with a crash, and they were standing with quick breath and sparkling eyes by the spot that they had started from. Close by Miss Terry was sitting yawning.
“Agatha, say good-bye to those people for me. I must get a breath of fresh air. Give me a glass of water, please, Arthur.”
He did so, and, by way of composing his own nerves, took a tumbler of champagne. He had no longer any thought of anxiety or danger, and he, too, longed for air. They passed out into the garden, and, by a common consent, made their way to the museum verandah, which was, as it proved, quite deserted.
The night, which was drawing to its close, was perfect. Far over the west the setting moon was sinking into the silver ocean, whilst the first primrose hue of dawn was creeping up the eastern sky. It was essentially a dangerous night, especially after dancing and champagne — a night to make people do and say regrettable things; for, as one of the poets — is it not Byron?— has profoundly remarked, there is the very devil in the moon at times.
They stood and gazed awhile at the softness of its setting splendours, and listened to the sounds of the last departing guests fading into silence, and to the murmurs of the quiet sea. At last she spoke, very low and musically.
“I was angry with you. I brought you here to scold you; but on such a night I cannot find the heart.”
“What did you want to scold me about?”
“Never mind; it is all forgotten. Look at that setting moon and the silver clouds above her,” and she dropped her hand, from which she had slipped the glove, upon his own.
“And now look at me and tell me how I look, and how you liked the ball. I gave it to please you.”
“You look very lovely, dangerously lovely, and the ball was splendid. Let us go.”
“Do you think me lovely, Arthur?”
“Yes; who could help it? But let us go in.”
“Stay awhile, Arthur; do not leave me yet. Tell me, is not this necklace undone? Fasten it for me, Arthur.”
He turned to obey, but his hand shook too much to allow him to do so. Her eyes shone into his own, her fragrant breath played upon his brow, and her bosom heaved beneath his shaking hand. She too was moved; light tremors ran along her limbs, the colour came and went upon her neck and brow, and a dreamy look had gathered in her tender eyes. Beneath them the sea made its gentle music, and above the wind was whispering to the trees. Presently his hand dropped, and he stood fascinated.
“I cannot. What makes you look like that? You are bewitching me.”
Next moment he heard a sigh, the next Mildred’s sweet lips were upon his own, and she was in his arms. She lay there still, quite still, but even as she lay there rose, as it were, in the midst of the glamour and confusion of his mind, that made him see all things distraught, and seemed to blot out every principle of right and honour, another and far different scene. For, as in a vision, he saw a dim English landscape and a grey ruin, and himself within its shadows with a nobler woman in his arms, “Dethrone me,” said a remembered voice, “desert me, and I will still thank you for this hour of imperial happiness.” The glamour was gone, the confusion made straight, and clear above him shone the light of duty.
“Mildred, dear Mildred, this cannot be. Sit down. I want to speak to you.”
She turned quite white, and sank from his arms without a word.
“Mildred, you know that I am engaged.”
The lips moved, but no sound issued from them. Again she tried.
“I know.”
“Then why do you tempt me? I am only a man, and weak as water in your presence. Do not make me dishonourable to myself and her.”
“I love you as well as she. There — take the shameful truth.”
“Yes, but — forgive me if I pain you, for I must, I must. I love her.”
The beautiful face hid itself in the ungloved hands. No answer came, only the great diamond sparkled and blazed in the soft light like a hard and cruel eye.
“Do not, Mildred, for pity’s sake, involve us all in shame and ruin, but let us part now. If I could have foreseen how this would end! But I have been a blind and selfish fool. I have been to blame.”
She was quite calm now, and spoke in her usual singularly clear voice.
“Arthur dear, I do not blame you. Loving her, how was it likely that you should think of love from me? I only blame myself. I have loved you, God help me, ever since we met — loved you with a despairing, desperate love such as I hope that you may never know. Was I to allow your phantom Angela to snatch the cup from my lips without a struggle, the only happy cup I ever knew? For, Arthur, at the best of times, I have not been a happy woman; I have always wanted love, and it has not come to me. Perhaps I should be, but I am not — a high ideal being. I am as Nature made me, Arthur, a poor creature, unable to stand alone against such a current as has lately swept me with it. But you are quite right, you must leave me, we must separate, you must go; but oh God! when I think of the future, the hard, loveless future ——”
She paused awhile, and then went on —
“I did not think to harm you or involve you in trouble, though I hoped to win some small portion of your love, and I had something to give you in exchange, if beauty and great wealth are really worth anything. But you must go, dear, now, whilst I am brave. I hope that you will be happy with your Angela. When I see your marriage in the paper, I shall send her this tiara as a wedding present. I shall never wear it again. Go, dear; go quick.”
He turned to leave, not trusting himself to speak, for the big tears stood in his eyes, and his throat was choked. When he had reached the steps, she called him back.
“Kiss me once before you go, and I see your dear face no more. I used to be a proud woman, and to think that I can stoop to rob a kiss from Angela. Thank you; you are very kind. And now one word; you know a woman always loves a last word. Sometimes it happens that we put up idols, and a stronger hand than ours shatters them to dust before our eyes. I trust this may not be your lot. I love you so well that I can say that honestly; but, Arthur, if it should be, remember that in all the changes of this cold world there is one heart which will never forget you, and never set up a rival to your memory, one place where you will always find a home. If anything should ever happen to break your life, come back to me for comfort, Arthur. I can talk no more; I have played for high stakes — and lost. Good-bye.”
He went without a word.
Reader, have you ever, in the winter or early spring, come from a hot-house where you have admired some rich tropical bloom, and then, in walking by the hedgerows, suddenly seen a pure primrose opening its sweet eye, and looking bravely into bitter weather’s face? If so, you will, if it is your habit to notice flowers, have experienced some such sensation as takes possession of my mind when I pass from the story of Mildred as she was then, storm-tossed and loving, to Angela, as loving indeed, and yet more anxious, but simple-minded as a child, and not doubtful for the end. They were both flowers indeed, and both beautiful, but between them there was a wide difference. The one, in the richness of her splendour, gazed upon the close place where she queened it, and was satisfied with the beauty round her, or, if not satisfied, she could imagine none different. The limits of that little spot formed the horizon of her mind — she knew no world beyond. The other, full of possibilities, shed sweetness even on the blast which cut her, and looked up for shelter towards the blue sky she knew endured eternally above the driving clouds.
Whilst Sir John Bellamy’s health was being recruited at Madeira, Angela’s daily life pursued an even and, comparatively speaking, a happy course. She missed Pigott much, but then she often went to see her, and by way of compensation, if she had gone, so had George Caresfoot and Lady Bellamy. Mr. Fraser, too, had come back to fill a space in the void of her loneliness, and for his presence she was very grateful. Indeed none but herself could know the comfort and strength she gathered from his friendship, none but himself could know what it cost him to comfort her. But he did not shrink from the duty; indeed, it gave him a melancholy satisfaction. He loved her quite as dearly, and with as deep a longing as Mildred Carr did Arthur; but how different were his ends! Of ultimately supplanting his rival he never dreamt; his aim was to assist him, to bring the full cup of joy, untainted, to his lips. And so he read with her and talked with her, and was sick at heart; and she thanked him, and consecrating all her most sacred thoughts to the memory of her absent lover, and all her quick energies to self-preparation for his coming, possessed her soul in patience.
And thus her young life began to bloom again with a fresh promise. The close of each departing day was the signal for the lifting of a portion of her load, for it brought her a day nearer to her lover’s arms, subtracting something from the long tale of barren hours; since to her all hours seemed most barren that were not quickened by his presence. Indeed, no Arctic winter could be colder and more devoid of light and life than this time of absence was to her, and, had it not been for the warm splendour of her hopes, shooting its beautiful promise in unreal gleams across the blackness of her horizon, she felt as though she must have frozen and died. For hope, elusive as she is, often bears a fairer outward mien than the realization to which she points, and, like a fond deceiver, serves to keep the heart alive till the first bitterness is overpast, and, schooled in trouble, it can know her false, and yet remain unbroken.
But sometimes Angela’s mood would change, and then, to her strained and sensitive mind, this dead calm and cessation of events would seem to resemble that ominous moment when, in tropic seas, the fierce outrider of the tempest has passed howling away clothed in flying foam. Then comes a calm, and for a space there is blue sky, and the sails flap drearily against the mast, and the vessel only rocks from the violence of her past plunging, while the scream of the sea-bird is heard with unnatural clearness, for there is no sound nor motion in the air. Intenser still grows the silence, and the waters almost cease from tossing; but the seaman knows that presently, with a sudden roar, the armies of the winds and waves will leap upon him, and that a struggle for life is at hand.
Such fears, however, did not often take her, for, unlike Arthur, she was naturally of a hopeful mind, and, when they did, Mr. Fraser would find means to comfort her. But this was soon to change.
One afternoon — it was Christmas Eve — Angela went down the village to see Pigott, now comfortably established in the house her long departed husband had left her. It was a miserable December day, a damp, unpleasant ghost of a day, and all the sky was packed with clouds, while the surface of the earth was wrapped in mist. Rain and snow fell noiselessly by turns; indeed, the only sound in the air was the loud dripping of water from the trees on the dead leaves beneath. The whole outlook was melancholy in the extreme. While Angela was in her old nurse’s cottage, the snow fell in earnest for an hour or so, and then held up again, and when she came out the mist had recovered its supremacy, and now the snow was melting.
“Come, miss, you must be getting home, or it will be dark. Shall I come with you a bit?”
“No, thank you, Pigott. I am not afraid of the dark, and I ought to know my way about these parts. Good-night, dear.”
The prevailing dismalness of the scene oppressed her, and she made up her mind to go and see Mr. Fraser, instead of returning at present to her lonely home. With this view, leaving the main road that ran through Rewtham, Bratham, and Isleworth to Roxham, she turned up a little bye-lane which led to the foot of the lake. Just as she did so, she heard the deadened footfall of a fast-trotting horse, accompanied by the faint roll of carriage-wheels over the snow. As she turned half involuntarily to see who it was that travelled so fast, the creeping mist was driven aside by a puff of wind, and she saw a splendid blood-horse drawing an open victoria trotting past her at, at least, twelve miles an hour. But, quickly as it passed, it was not too quick for her to recognize Lady Bellamy wrapped up in furs, her dark, stern face looking on straight before her, as though the mist had no power to dim her sight. Next second the dark closed in, and the carriage had vanished like a dream in the direction of Isleworth.
Angela shivered; the dark afternoon seemed to have grown darker to her.
“So she is back,” she said to herself. “I felt that she was back. She makes me feel afraid.”
Going on her way, she came to a spot where the path forked, one track leading to a plank with a hand-rail spanning the stream that fed the lake, and the other to some stepping-stones, by crossing which and following the path on the other side a short cut could be made to the rectory. The bridge and the stepping-stones were not more than twenty yards apart, but so intent was Angela upon her own thoughts and upon placing her feet accurately on the stones that she did not notice a little man with a red comforter, who was leaning on the hand-rail, engaged apparently in meditation. The little man, however, noticed her, for he gave a violent start, and apparently was about to call out to her, when he changed his mind. He was Sir John Bellamy.
“Better let her go perhaps, John,” he said, addressing his own effigy in the water. “After all, it will be best for you to let things to take their course, and not to burn your own fingers or commit yourself in any way, John. You will trap them more securely so. If you were to warn the girl now, you would only expose them; if you wait till he has married her, you will altogether destroy them with the help of that young Heigham. And perhaps by that time you will have touched those compromising letters, John, and made a few other little arrangements, and then you will be able to enjoy the sweets of revenge meted out with a quart measure, not in beggarly ones or twos. But you are thinking of the girl — eh, John? Ah! you always were a pitiful beggar; but tread down the inclination, decline to gratify it. If you do, you will spoil your own hand. The girl must take her chance — oh! clearly the girl must take her chance. But all the same, John, you are very sorry for her — very. Come, come, you must be off, or her ladyship and the gentle George will be kept waiting,” and away he went at a brisk pace, cheerfully singing a verse of a comic song. Sir John was a merry little man.
In due course Angela reached the rectory, and found Mr. Fraser seated in his study reading.
“Well, my dear, what brings you here? What a dreary night!”
“Yes, it is dreadfully damp and lonesome; the people look like ghosts in the mist, and their voices sound hollow. A proper day for evil things to creep home,” and she laughed drearily.
“What do you mean,” he answered, with a quick glance at her face, which wore an expression of nervous anxiety.
“I mean that Lady Bellamy has come home; is she not an evil thing?”
“Hush, Angela; you should not talk so. You are excited, dear. Why should you call her evil?”
“I don’t know; but have you ever noticed her? Have you never seen her creep, creep, like a tiger on its prey? Watch her dark face, and see the bad thoughts come and peep out of her eyes as the great black pupils swell and then shrivel, till they are no larger than the head of this black pin, and you will know that she is evil, and does evil work.”
“My dear, my dear, you are upset to talk so.”
“Oh! no, I am not upset; but did you ever have a presentiment?”
“Plenty; but never one that came true.”
“Well, I have a presentiment now — yes, a presentiment — it caught me in the mist.”
“What is it? I am anxious to hear.”
“I don’t know — I cannot say; it is not clear in my mind. I cannot see it, but it is evil, and it has to do with that evil woman.”
“Come, Angela, you must not give way to this sort of thing; you will make yourself ill. Sit down, there is a good girl, and have some tea.”
She was standing by the window staring out into the mist, her fingers alternately intertwining and unlacing themselves, whilst an unusual — almost an unearthly expression, played upon her face. Turning, she obeyed him.
“You need not fear for me. I am tough, and growing used to troubles. What was it you said? Oh! tea. Thank you; that reminds me. Will you come and have dinner with me tomorrow after church? It is Christmas Day, you know. Pigott has given me a turkey she has been fatting, and I made the mincemeat myself, so there will be plenty to eat if we can find the heart to eat it.”
“But your father, my dear?”
“Oh! you need not be afraid. I have got permission to ask you. What do you think? I actually talked to my father for ten whole minutes yesterday; he wanted to avoid me when he saw me, but I caught him in a corner. He took advantage of the opportunity to try to prevent me from going to see Pigott, but I would not listen to him, so he gave it up. What did he mean by that? Why did he send her away? What does it all mean? Oh! Arthur, when will you come back, Arthur?” and, to Mr. Fraser’s infinite distress, she burst into tears.
Presentiments are no doubt foolish things, and yet, at the time that Angela was speaking of hers to Mr. Fraser, a consultation was going on in a back study at Isleworth that might almost have justified it. The fire was the only light in the room, and gathered round it, talking very low, their features thrown alternately into strong light and dark shadow, were George Caresfoot and Sir John and Lady Bellamy. It was evident from the strong expression of interest, almost of excitement, on their faces that they were talking of some matter of great importance.
Sir John was, as usual, perched on the edge of his chair, rubbing his dry hands and eliciting occasional sparks in the shape of remarks, but he was no longer merry; indeed, he looked ill at ease. George, his red hair all rumpled up, and his long limbs thrust out towards the fire, spoke scarcely at all, but glued his little bloodshot eyes alternately on the faces of his companions, and only contributed an occasional chuckle. But the soul of this witches’ gathering was evidently Lady Bellamy. She was standing up, and energetically detailing some scheme, the great pupils of her eyes expanding and contracting as the unholy flame within them rose and fell.
“Then that is settled,” she said, at last.
George nodded, Bellamy said nothing.
“I suppose that silence gives consent. Very well, I will take the first step tomorrow. I do not like Angela Caresfoot, but, upon my word, I shall be sorry for her before she is twenty-four hours older. She is made of too fine a material to be sold into such hands as yours, George Caresfoot.”
George looked up menacingly, but said nothing.
“I have often urged you to give this up; now I urge no more — the thing is done in spirit, it may as well be done in reality. I told you long ago that it was a most dreadfully wicked thing, and that nothing but evil can come of it. Do not say that I have not warned you.”
“Come, stop that devil’s talk,” growled George.
“Devil’s talk!— that is a good word, George, for it is of the devil’s wages that I am telling you. Now listen, I am going to prophecy. A curse will fall upon this house and all within it. Would you like to have a sign that I speak the truth? Then wait.” She was standing up, her hand stretched out, and in the dim light she looked like some heathen princess urging a bloody sacrifice to her gods. Her forebodings terrified her hearers, and, by a common impulse, they rose and moved away from her.
At that moment a strange thing happened. A gust of wind, making its way from some entrance in the back of the house, burst open the door of the room in which they were, and entered with a cold flap as of wings. Next second a terrible crash resounded from the other end of the room. George turned white as a sheet, and sank into a chair, cursing feebly. Bellamy gave a sort of howl of terror, and shrank up to his wife, almost falling into the fire in his efforts to get behind her. Lady Bellamy alone, remaining erect and undaunted, laughed aloud.
“Come, one of you brave conspirators against a defenceless girl, strike a light, for the place is as dark as a vault, and let us see what has happened. I told you that you should have a sign.”
After several efforts, George succeeded in doing as she bade him, and held a candle forward in his trembling hand.
“Come, don’t be foolish,” she said; “a picture has fallen, that is all.”
He advanced to look at it, and then benefited his companions with a further assortment of curses. The picture, on examination, proved to be a large one that he had, some years previously, had painted of Isleworth, with the Bellamys and himself in the foreground. The frame was shattered, and all the centre of the canvass torn out by the weight of its fall on to a life-sized and beautiful statue of Andromeda chained to a rock, awaiting her fate with a staring look of agonized terror in her eyes.
“An omen, a very palpable omen,” said Lady Bellamy, with one of her dark smiles. “Isleworth and ourselves destroyed by being smashed against a marble girl, who rises uninjured from the wreck. Eh, John?”
“Don’t touch me, you sorceress,” replied Sir John, who was shaking with fear. “I believe that you are Satan in person.”
“You are strangely complimentary, even for a husband.”
“Perhaps I am, but I know your dark ways, and your dealings with your master, and I tell you both what it is; I have done with the job. I will have nothing more to do with it. I will know nothing more about it.”
“You hear what he says,” said Lady Bellamy to George. “John does not like omens. For the last time, will you give it up, or will you go on?”
“I can’t give her up — I can’t indeed; it would kill me,” answered George, wringing his hands. “There is a fiend driving me along this path.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Sir John, who was staring at the broken picture with chattering teeth, and his eyes almost starting out of his head; “but if I were you, I should get him to drive me a little straighter, that’s all.”
“You are poor creatures, both of you,” said Lady Bellamy; “but we will, then, decide to go on.”
“Fiat ‘injuria’ ruat coelum,” said Sir John, who knew a little Latin; and, frightened as he was, could not resist the temptation to air it.
And then they went and left George still contemplating the horror-stricken face of the nude marble virgin whose eyes appeared to gaze upon the ruins of his picture.
Next morning, being Christmas Day, Lady Bellamy went to church, as behoves a good Christian, and listened to the Divine message of peace on earth and good-will towards men. So, for the matter of that, did George, and so did Angela. After church, Lady Bellamy went home to lunch, but she was in no mood for eating, so she left the table, and ordered the victoria to be round in half an hour.
After church, too, Angela and Mr. Fraser ate their Christmas dinner. Angela’s melancholy had to some extent melted beneath the genial influence of the Christmas-tide, and her mind had taken comfort from the words of peace and everlasting love that she had heard that morning, and for awhile, at any rate, she had forgotten her forebodings. The unaccustomed splendour of the dinner, too, had diverted her attention, for she was easily pleased with such things, and altogether she was in a more comfortable frame of mind than she had been on the previous evening, and was inclined to indulge in a pleasant talk with Mr. Fraser upon various subjects, mostly classical and Arthurian. She had already cracked some filberts for him, plucked by herself in the autumn, and specially saved in a damp jar, and was about to settle herself in a chair by the fire, when suddenly she turned white and stood quite still.
“Hark!” she said, “do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Lady Bellamy’s horse — the big black horse that trots so fast.”
“I can hear nothing, Angela.”
“But I can. She is on the high-road yet; she will be here very soon; that horse trots fast.”
“Nonsense, Angela; it is some other horse.”
But, as he spoke, the sound of a powerful animal trotting very rapidly became distinctly audible.
“It has come — the evil news — and she has brought it.”
“Rubbish, dear; somebody to see your father, no doubt.”
A minute elapsed, and then Mrs. Jakes, now the only servant in the house, was heard shuffling along the passage, followed by a firm, light step.
“Don’t leave me,” said Angela to Mr. Fraser. “God give me strength to bear it,” she went on, beneath her breath. She was still standing staring vacantly towards the door, pale, and her bosom heaving. The intensity of her anxiety had to some extent communicated itself to Mr. Fraser, for there are few things so catching as anxiety, except enthusiasm; he, too, had risen, and was standing in an attitude of expectancy.
“Lady Bellamy to see yer,” said Mrs. Jakes, pushing her head through the half-opened door.
Next second she had entered.
“I must apologize for disturbing you at dinner, Angela,” she began hurriedly, and then stopped and also stood still. There was something very curious about her reception, she thought; both Mr. Fraser and Angela might have been cut out of stone, for neither moved.
Standing thus in the silence of expectancy, the three made a strange picture. On Lady Bellamy’s face there was a look of stern determination and suppressed excitement such as became one about to commit a crime.
At last she broke the silence.
“I come to bring you bad news, Angela,” she said.
“What have you to say? tell me, quick! No, stop, hear me before you speak. If you have come here with any evil in your heart, or with the intention to deceive or betray, pause before you answer. I am a lonely and almost friendless woman, and have no claim except upon your compassion; but it is not always well to deal ill with such as I, since we have at last a friend whose vengeance you too must fear. So, by the love of Christ and by the presence of the God who made you, speak to me only such truth as you will utter at his judgment. Now, answer, I am ready.”
At her words, spoken with an earnestness and in a voice which made them almost awful, a momentary expression of fear swept across Lady Bellamy’s face, but it went as quickly as it came, and the hard, determined look returned. The mysterious eyes grew cold and glittered, the head erected itself. At that moment Lady Bellamy distinctly reminded Mr. Fraser of a hooded cobra about to strike.
“Am I to speak before Mr. Fraser?”
“Speak!”
“What is the good of this high-flown talk, Angela? You seem to know my news before I give it, and believe me it pains me very much to have to give it. He is dead, Angela.”
The cobra had struck, but as yet the poison had scarcely begun to work. There was only numbness. Mr. Fraser gave a gasp and half dropped, half fell, into his chair. The noise attracted Angela’s attention, and pressing her hand to her forehead she turned towards him with a ghost of a laugh.
“Did I not tell you that this evil woman would bring evil news.” Then addressing Lady Bellamy, “But stop, you forget what I said to you, you do not speak the truth. Arthur dead! How can Arthur be dead and I alive? How is it that I do not know he is dead? Oh, for shame, it is not true, he is not dead.”
“This seems to me to be a thankless as well as a painful task,” said Lady Bellamy, hoarsely, “but, if you will not believe me, look here, you know this, I suppose? I took it, as he asked me to do, from his dead hand that it might be given back to you.”
“If Mr. Heigham is dead,” said Mr. Fraser, “how do you know it, where did he die, and what of?”
“I know it, Mr. Fraser, because it was my sad duty to nurse him through his last illness at Madeira. He died of enteric fever. I have got a copy of his burial certificate here which I had taken from the Portuguese books. He seems to have had no relations living, poor young man, but Sir John communicated with the family lawyer. Here is the certificate,” and she handed Mr. Fraser a paper written in Portuguese and officially stamped.
“You say,” broke in Angela, “that you took this ring from his dead hand, the hand on which I placed it. I do not believe you. You beguiled it from his living hand. It cannot be that he is dead; for, if he were, I should have felt it. Oh, Arthur!” and in her misery she stretched out her arms and turned her agonized eyes upwards, “if you are dead, come to me, and let me see your spirit face, and hear the whisper of your wings. Have you no voice in the silence? You see he does not come, he is not dead; if he were dead, Heaven could not hold him from my side, or, if it could, it would have drawn me up to his.”
“My love, my love,” said Mr. Fraser, in a scared voice, “it is not God’s will that the dead should come back to us thus ——”
“My poor Angela, why will you not believe me? This is so very painful, do you suppose that I want to torture you by saying what is not true about your love? The idea is absurd. I had meant to keep it till you were calmer; but I have a letter for you. Read it and convince yourself.”
Angela almost snatched the paper from her outstretched hand. It ran thus, in characters almost illegible from weakness:—
“Dearest,— Good-bye. I am dying of fever. Lady Bellamy will take back your ring when it is over. Try to forget me, and be happy. Too weak to write more. Good-bye. God ——”
At the foot of this broken and almost illegible letter was scrawled the word, “ARTHUR.”
Angela read it slowly, and then at length the poison did its work. She did not speak wildly any more, or call upon Arthur; she was stung back to sense, but all the light went out of her eyes.
“It is his writing,” she said, slowly. “I beg your pardon. It was good of you to nurse him.”
Then, pressing the paper to her bosom with one hand, with the other she groped her way towards the door.
“It is very dark,” she said.
Lady Bellamy’s eyes gave a flash of triumph, and then she stood watching the pitiable exhibition of human misery as curiously as ever a Roman matron did an expiring gladiator. When Angela was near the door, the letter still pressed against her heart, she spoke again.
“The blow comes from God, Angela, and the religion and spiritual theories which you believe in will bring you consolation. Most likely it is a blessing in disguise — a thing that you will in time even learn to be thankful for.”
Lady Bellamy had overacted her part. The words did not ring true, they jarred upon Mr. Fraser; much more did they jar upon Angela’s torn nerves. Her pale cheek flushed, and she turned and spoke, but there was no anger in her face, nothing but sorrow that dignified, and unfathomable love lost in its own depths. Only the eyes seemed as sightless as those of one walking in her sleep.
“When your hour of dreadful trouble comes, as it will come, pray God that there may be none to mock you as you mock me.” And she turned like a stricken thing, and went slowly out, blindly groping her way along.
Her last words had hit the victor hard. Who can say what hidden string they touched, or what prescience of evil they awakened? But they went nigh to felling her. Clutching the mantel-piece, Lady Bellamy gasped for air; then, recovering a little, she said:
“Thank God, that is over.”
Mr. Fraser scarcely saw this last incident. So overwhelmed was he at the sight of Angela’s agony that he had covered his face with his hand. When he lifted it again, Lady Bellamy was gone, and he was alone.
Three months had passed since that awful Christmas Day. Angela was heart-broken, and, after the first burst of her despair, turned herself to the only consolation which was left her. It was not of this world.
She did not question the truth of the dreadful news that Lady Bellamy had brought her, and, if ever a doubt did arise in her breast, a glance at the ring and the letter effectually quelled it. Nor did she get brain-fever or any other illness; her young and healthy frame was too strong a citadel to be taken out of hand by sorrow. And this to her was one of the most wonderful things in her affliction. It had come and crushed her, and life still went on much as before. The sun of her system had fallen, and yet the system was not appreciably deranged. It was dreadful to her to think that Arthur was dead, but an added sting lay in the fact that she was not dead too. Oh! how glad she would have been to die, since death had become the gate through which she needs must pass to reach her lover’s side.
For it had been given to Angela, living so much alone, and thinking so long and deeply upon these great mysteries of our being, to soar to the heights of a noble faith. To the intense purity of her mind, a living heaven presented itself, a comfortable place, very different from the vague and formularised abstractions with which we are for the most part satisfied; where Arthur and her mother were waiting to greet her, and where the great light of the Godhead would shine around them all. She grew to hate her life, the dull barrier of the flesh that stood between her and her ends. Still she ate and drank enough to support it, still dressed with the same perfect neatness as before, still lived, in short, as though Arthur had not died, and the light and colour had not gone out of her world.
One day — it was in March — she was sitting in Mr. Fraser’s study reading the “Shakespeare” which Arthur had given to her, and in the woes of others striving to forget her own. But the attempt proved a failure; she could not concentrate her thoughts, they would continually wander away into space in search of Arthur.
She was dressed in black; from the day that she heard her lover was dead, she would wear no other colour, and as she gazed, with her hands idly clasped before her, out at the driving sleet and snow, Mr. Fraser thought that he had never seen statue, picture, or woman of such sweet, yet majestic beauty. But it had been filched from the features of an immortal. The spirit-look which at times had visited her from a child now continually shone upon her face, and to the sight of sinful men her eyes seemed almost awful in their solemn calm and purity. She smiled but seldom now, and, when she did, it was in those grey eyes that the radiance began: her features scarcely seemed to move.
“What are you thinking of, Angela?”
“I am thinking, Mr. Fraser, that it is only fourteen weeks today since Arthur died, and that it is very likely that I shall live another forty or fifty years before I see him. I am only twenty-one, and I am so strong. Even this shock has not hurt me.”
“Why should you want to die?”
“Because all the beauty and light has gone out of my life; because I prefer to trust myself into the hands of God rather than to the tender mercies of the world; because he is there, and I am here, and I am tired of waiting.”
“Have you no fear of death?”
“I have never feared death, and least of all do I fear it now. Why, the veriest coward would not shrink back when the man she loved was waiting for her. And I am not a coward, and if I were told that I must die within an hour, I could say, ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!’ Cannot you understand me? If all your life and soul were wrapped up in one person, and she died, would you not long to go to her?”
Mr. Fraser made no reply for a while, but in his turn gazed out at the drifting snow, surely not more immaculately pure than this woman who could love with so divine a love. At length he spoke.
“Angela, do you know that it is wrong to talk so? You have no right to set yourself up against the decrees of the Almighty. In His wisdom He is working out ends of which you are one of the instruments. Who are you that you should rebel?”
“No one — a grain, an atom, a wind-tossed feather; but what am I to do with my life, how am I to occupy all the coming years?”
“With your abilities, that is a question easy to answer. Work, write, take the place in scholastic or social literature which I have trained you to fill. For you, fame and fortune lie in an inkstand; your mind is a golden key that will open to your sight all that is worth seeing in the world, and pass you into its most pleasant places. You can become a famous woman, Angela.”
She turned upon him sadly.
“I had such ideas; for Arthur’s sake I wished to do something great; indeed I had already formed a plan. But, Mr. Fraser, like many another, when I lost my love I lost my ambition too; both lie buried in his grave. I have nothing left to work for; I do not care for fame or money for myself, they would only have been valuable to give to him. At twenty-one I seem to have done with the world’s rewards and punishments, its blanks and prizes, its satisfactions and desires, even before I have learnt what they are. My hopes are as dull and leaden as that sky, and yet the sun is behind it. Yes, that is my only hope, the sun is behind it though we cannot see it. Do not talk to me of ambition, Mr. Fraser. I am broken-spirited, and my only ambition is for rest, the rest He gives to His beloved ——”
“Rest, Angela! that is the cry of us all, we strive for rest, and here we never find it. You suffer, but do not think that you are alone, everybody suffers in their degree, though perhaps such as you, with the nerves of your mind bared to the roughness of the world’s weather, feel mental pain the more acutely. But, my dear, there are few really refined men and women of sensitive organization, who have not at times sent up that prayer for rest, any rest, even eternal sleep. It is the price they pay for their refinement. But they are not alone. If the heart’s cry of every being who endures in this great universe could be collected into a single prayer, that prayer would be, ‘Thou who made us, in pity give us rest.’”
“Yes, we suffer, no doubt, all of us, and implore a peace that does not come. We must learn
“‘How black is night when golden day is done,
How drear the blindness that hath seen the sun!’
“You can tell me that; but tell me, you who are a clergyman, and stronger to stand against sorrow than I, how can we win even a partial peace and draw the sting from suffering? If you know a way, however hard, tell it me, for do you know,” and she put her hand to her head and a vacant look came into her eyes, “I think that if I have to endure much more of the anguish which I sometimes suffer, or get any more shocks, I shall go mad? I try to look to the future only and to rise superior to my sorrows, and to a certain extent I succeed, but my mind will not always carry the strain put upon it, but falls heavily to earth like a winged bird. Then it is that, deprived of its higher food, and left to feed upon its own sadness and to brood upon the bare fact of the death of the man I loved — I sometimes think, as men are not often loved — that my spirit almost breaks down. If you can tell me any cure, anything which will bring me comfort, I shall indeed be grateful to you.”
“I think I can, Angela. If you will no longer devote yourself to study, you have only to look round to find another answer to your question as to what you are to do? Are there no poor in these parts for you to visit? Cannot your hands make clothes to cover those who have none? Is there no sickness that you can nurse, no sorrow that you can comfort? I know that even in this parish there are many homes where your presence would be as welcome as a sunbeam in winter. Remember, Angela, that grief can be selfish as well as pleasure.”
“You are right, Mr. Fraser, you always are right; I think I am selfish in my trouble, but it is a fault that I will try to mend. Indeed, to look at it in that light only, my time is of no benefit to myself, I may as well devote it to others.”
“If you do, your labour will bring its own reward, for in helping others to bear their load you will wonderfully lighten your own. Nor need you go far to begin. Why do you not see more of your own father? You are naturally bound to love him. Yet it is but rarely that you speak to him.”
“My father! you know he does not like me, my presence is always a source of irritation to him, he cannot even bear me to look at him.”
“Oh, surely that must be your fancy; probably he thinks you do not care about him. He has always been a strange and wayward man, I know, but you should remember that he has had bitter disappointments in life, and try to soften him and win him to other thoughts. Do this and you will soon find that he will be glad enough of your company.”
“I will try to do as you say, Mr. Fraser, but I confess I have only small hopes of any success in that direction. Have you any parish work I can do?”
Nor did the matter end there, as is so often the case where parish work and young ladies are concerned. Angela set to her charitable duties with a steady determination that made her services very valuable. She undertook the sole management of a clothing club, in itself a maddening thing to ordinary mortals, and had an eye to the distribution of the parish coals. Of mothers’ meetings and other cheerful parochial entertainments, she became the life and soul. Giving up her mathematics and classical reading, she took to knitting babies’ vests and socks instead; indeed, the number of articles which her nimble fingers turned out in a fortnight was a pleasant surprise for the cold toes of the babies. And, as Mr. Fraser had prophesied, she found that her labour was of a sort which brought a certain reward.
On one point, however, Angela’s efforts failed completely; she could make no headway with her father. He shrank more than ever from her society, and at last asked her to oblige him by allowing him to follow his own path in peace. Of Arthur’s death he had never spoken to her, or she to him, but she knew that he had heard of it.
Philip had heard of it thus. On that Christmas afternoon he had been taking his daily exercise when he met Lady Bellamy returning from the Abbey House. The carriage stopped, and she got out to speak to him.
“Have you been to the Abbey House to pay a Christmas visit?” he asked. “It is very kind of you to come and see us so soon after your return.”
“I am the bearer of bad news, so I did not loiter.”
“Bad news! what was it?”
“Mr. Heigham is dead,” she answered, watching his face narrowly.
“Dead, impossible!”
“He died of enteric fever at Madeira. I have just been to break the news to Angela.”
“Oh, indeed, she will be pained; she was very fond of him, you know.”
Lady Bellamy smiled contemptuously.
“Did you ever see any one put to the extremest torture? If you have, you can guess how your daughter was ‘pained.’”
Philip winced.
“Well, I can’t help it, it is no affair of mine. Good-bye,” and then, as soon as she was out of hearing; “I wonder if she lies, or if she has murdered him. George must have been putting on the screw.”
Into the particulars of Arthur Heigham’s death, or supposed death, he never inquired. Why should he? It was no affair of his; he had long ago washed his hands of the whole matter, and left things to take their chance. If he was dead, well and good, he was very sorry for him; if he was alive, well and good also. In that case, he would no doubt arrive on the appointed date to marry Angela.
But, notwithstanding all this unanswerable reasoning, he still found it quite impossible to look his daughter in the face. Her eyes still burnt him, ay, even more than ever did they burn, for her widowed dress and brow were agony to him, and rent his heart, not with remorse but fear. But still his greed kept the upper hand, though death by mental torture must result, yet he would glut himself with his desire. More than ever he hungered for those wide lands which, if only things fell out right, would become his at so ridiculous a price. Decidedly Arthur Heigham’s death was “no affair of his.”
About six weeks before Angela’s conversation with Mr. Fraser which ended in her undertaking parish work, a rumour had got about that George Caresfoot had been taken ill, very seriously ill. It was said that a chill had settled on his lungs, which had never been very strong since his fever, and that he had, in short, gone into a consumption.
Of George, Angela had neither seen nor heard anything for some time — not since she received the welcome letter in which he relinquished his suit. She had, indeed, with that natural readiness of the human mind to forget unpleasant occurrences, thought but little about him of late, since her mind had been more fully occupied with other and more pressing things. Still she vaguely wondered at times if he was really so ill as her father thought.
One day she was walking home by the path round the lake, after paying a visit to a sick child in the village, when she suddenly came face to face with her father. She expected that he would as usual pass on without addressing her, and drew to one side of the path to allow him to do so, but to her surprise he stopped.
“Where have you been, Angela?”
“To see Ellen Mim; she is very ill, poor child.”
“You had better be careful; you will be catching scarlet fever or something — there is a great deal about.”
“I am not at all afraid.”
“Yes; but you never think that you may bring it home to me.”
“I never thought that there was any likelihood of my bringing anything to you. We see so little of each other.”
“Well, well, I have been to Isleworth to see your cousin George; he is very ill.”
“You told me that he was ill some time back. What is it that is really the matter with him?”
“Galloping consumption. He cannot last long.”
“Poor man, why does he not go to a warmer climate?”
“I don’t know — that is his affair. But it is a serious matter for me. If he dies under present circumstances, all the Isleworth estates, which are mine by right, must pass away from the family forever.”
“Why must they pass away?”
“Because your grandfather, with a refined ingenuity, made a provision in his will that George was not to leave them back to me, as he was telling me this afternoon he is anxious to do. If he were to die now with a will in my favour, or without any will at all, they would all go to some far away cousins in Scotland.”
“He died of heart-disease, did he not?— my grandfather, I mean?”
Philip’s face grew black as night, and he shot a quick glance of suspicion at his daughter.
“I was saying,” he went on, without answering her question, “that George may sell the land or settle it, but must not leave it to me or you, nor can I take under an intestacy.”
Angela did not understand these legal intricacies, and knew about as much about the law of intestacy as she did of Egyptian inscriptions.
“Well,” she said, consolingly, “I am very sorry, but it can’t be helped, can it?”
“The girl is a born fool,” muttered Philip beneath his breath, and passed on.
A week or so afterwards, just when the primroses and Lent-lilies were at the meridian of their beauty and all the air was full of song, Angela heard more about her cousin George. Mr. Fraser was one day sent for to Isleworth; Lady Bellamy brought him the message, saying that George was in such a state of health that he wished to see a clergyman.
“I never saw a worse case,” he said to Angela on his return. “He does not leave the house, but lies in a darkened room coughing and spitting blood. He is, I should say, going off fast; but he refuses to see a doctor. His frame of mind, however, is most Christian, and he seems to have reconciled himself to the prospect of a speedy release.”
“Poor man!” said Angela sympathetically; “he sent and asked to see you, did he not?”
“Well — yes; but when I got there he talked more about the things of this world than of the next. He is greatly distressed about your father. I daresay you have heard how your cousin George supplanted your father in the succession to the Isleworth estates. Your grandfather disinherited him, you know, because of his marriage with your mother. Now that he is dying, he sees the injustice of this, but is prevented by the terms of your grandfather’s will from restoring the land to your branch of the family, so it must pass to some distant cousins — at least, so I understand the matter.”
“You always told me that it is easy to drive a coach and four through wills and settlements and legal things. If he is so anxious to do so, can he not find a way out of the difficulty — I mean, some honourable way?”
“No, I believe not, except an impossible one,” and Mr. Fraser smiled a rather forced smile.
“What is that?” asked Angela carelessly.
“Well, that he should — should marry you before he dies. At least, you know, he says that that is the only way in which he could legally transfer the estates.”
Angela started and turned pale.
“Then I am afraid the estates will never be transferred. How would that help him?”
“Well, he says he could then enter into a nominal sale of the estates to your father and settle the money on you.”
“And why could he not do this without marrying me?”
“I don’t know, I don’t understand much about these things, I am not a business man; but it is impossible for some reason or another. But of course it is absurd. Good night, my dear. Don’t overdo it in the parish.”
Another week passed without any particular news of George’s illness, except that he was getting weaker, when one day Lady Bellamy appeared at the Abbey House, where she had not been since that dreadful Christmas Day. Angela felt quite cold when she saw her enter, and her greeting was as cold as herself.
“I hope that you bring me no more bad news,” she said.
“No, Angela, except that your cousin George is dying, but that is scarcely likely to distress you.”
“I am sorry.”
“Are you? There is no particular reason why you should be. You do not like him.”
“No, I do not like him.”
“It is a pity though, because I have come to ask you to marry him.”
“Upon my word, Lady Bellamy, you seem to be the chosen messenger of everything that is wretched. Last time you came to this house it was to tell me of dear Arthur’s death, and now it is to ask me to marry a man whom I detest. I thought that I had told both you and him that I will not marry him. I have gone as near marrying as I ever mean to in this world.”
“Really, Angela, you are most unjust to me. Do you suppose that it was any pleasure to me to have such a sad duty to perform? However, it is refreshing to hear you talk so vigorously. Clearly the loss of your lover has not affected your spirits.”
Angela winced beneath the taunt, but made no reply.
“But, if you will condescend to look at the matter with a single grain of common-sense, you will see that circumstances have utterly changed since you refused to marry George. Then, Mr. Heigham was alive, poor fellow, and then, too, George wanted to marry you as a wife, now he is merely anxious to marry you that he may be enabled to make reparation to your father. He is a fast-dying man. You would never be his wife except in name. The grave would be his only marriage-bed. Do you not understand the difference?”
“Perfectly, but do you not understand that whether in deed or in name I cannot outrage my dead Arthur’s memory by being for an hour the wife of that man? Do you not know that the marriage service requires a woman to swear to ‘Love, honour, and obey,’ till death parts, whether it be a day or a lifetime away? Can I, even as a mere form, swear to love when I loathe, honour when I despise, obey when my whole life would rise in rebellion against obedience! What are these estates to me that I should do such violence to my conscience and my memories? Estates, of what use are they to one whose future lies in the wards of a hospital or a sisterhood? I will have nothing to do with this marriage, Lady Bellamy.”
“Well, I must say, Angela, you do not make much ado about ruining your father to gratify your own sentimental whims. It must be a comfortable thing to have children to help one in one’s old age.”
Angela reflected on Mr. Fraser’s words about her duty to her father, and for the second time that day she winced beneath Lady Bellamy’s taunt; but, as she returned no answer, her visitor had no alternative but to drop the subject and depart.
Before she went, however, she had a few words with Philip, urging the serious state of George’s health and the terms of his grandfather’s will, which prevented him from leaving the estates to himself, as a reason why he should put pressure on Angela. Somewhat, but not altogether to her surprise, he refused in these terms:
“I don’t know to what depths you have gone in this business, and it is no affair of mine to inquire, but I have kept to my share of the bargain and I expect you to keep to yours. If you can bring about the marriage with George, well or ill, on the terms I have agreed upon with him, I shall throw no obstacle in the way; but as for my trying to force Angela into it, I should never take the responsibility of doing so, nor would she listen to me. If she speaks to me on the subject I shall point out how the family will be advantaged, and leave the matter to her. Further I will not go.”