Lady Rose's Daughter Part 60

Julie drew back.

"I neither asked for it nor desired it," she said, in her coldest and clearest voice.

"That I quite understand," said Lord Uredale. "But--you cannot hurt him by refusing."

She hesitated.

"No. But afterwards--I must be free to follow my own judgment."

"We cannot take what does not belong to us," he said, with some sharpness. "My brother and I are named as your trustees. Believe me, we will do our best."

Meanwhile the younger brother had come out of the library to bid her farewell. She felt that she was under critical observation, though both pairs of gray eyes refrained from any appearance of scrutiny. Her pride came to her aid, and she did not shrink from the short conversation which the two brothers evidently desired. When it was over, and the brothers returned to the hall after putting her into the d.u.c.h.ess's carriage, the younger said to the elder:

"She can behave herself, Johnnie."

They looked at each other, with their hands in their pockets. A little nod pa.s.sed between them--an augur-like acceptance of this new and irregular member of the family.

"Yes, she has excellent manners," said Uredale. "And really, after the tales Lady Henry has been spreading--that's something!"

"Oh, I always thought Lady Henry an old cat," said Bill, tranquilly.

"That don't matter."

The Chantrey brothers had not been among Lady Henry's _habitues_. In her eyes, they were the dull sons of an agreeable father. They were humorously aware of it, and bore her little malice.

"No," said Uredale, raising his eyebrows; "but the 'affaire Warkworth'?

If there's any truth in what one hears, that's deuced unpleasant."

Bill Chantrey whistled.

"It's hard luck on that poor child Aileen that it should be her own cousin interfering with her preserves. By-the-way"--he stooped to look at the letters on the hall table--"do you see there's a letter for father from Blanche? And in a letter I got from her by the same post, she says that she has told him the whole story. According to her, Aileen's too ill to be thwarted, and she wants the governor to see the guardians. I say, Johnnie"--he looked at his brother--"we'll not trouble the father with it now?"

"Certainly not," said Uredale, with a sigh. "I saw one of the trustees--Jack Underwood--yesterday. He told me Blanche and the child were more infatuated than ever. Very likely what one hears is a pack of lies. If not, I hope this woman will have the good taste to drop it.

Father has charged me to write to Blanche and tell her the whole story of poor Rose, and of this girl's revealing herself. Blanche, it appears, is just as much in the dark as we were."

"If this gossip has got round to her, her feelings will be mixed. Oh, well, I've great faith in the money," said Bill Chantrey, carelessly, as they began to mount the stairs again. "It sounds disgusting; but if the child wants him I suppose she must have him. And, anyway, the man's off to Africa for a twelvemonth at least. Miss Le Breton will have time to forget him. One can't say that either he or she has behaved with delicacy--unless, indeed, she knew nothing of Aileen, which is quite probable."

"Well, don't ask me to tackle her," said Uredale. "She has the ways of an empress."

Bill Chantrey shrugged his shoulders. "And, by George! she looks as if she could fall in love," he said, slowly. "Magnificent eyes, Johnnie. I propose to make a study of our new niece."

"Lord Uredale!" said a voice on the stairs.

The young doctor descended rapidly to meet them.

"His lordship is asking for some one," he said. "He seems excited. But I cannot catch the name."

Lord Uredale ran up-stairs.

Later in the day a man emerged from Lackington House and walked rapidly towards the Mall. It was Jacob Delafield.

He pa.s.sed across the Mall and into St. James's Park. There he threw himself on the first seat he saw, in an absorption so deep that it excited the wondering notice of more than one pa.s.ser-by.

After about half an hour he roused himself, and walked, still in the same brown study, to his lodgings in Jermyn Street. There he found a letter which he eagerly opened.

"DEAR JACOB,--Julie came back this morning about one o'clock. I waited for her--and at first she seemed quite calm and composed. But suddenly, as I was sitting beside her, talking, she fainted away in her chair, and I was terribly alarmed. We sent for a doctor at once. He shakes his head over her, and says there are all the signs of a severe strain of body and mind. No wonder, indeed--our poor Julie! Oh, how I _loathe_ some people! Well, there she is in bed, Madame Bornier away, and everybody. I simply _can't_ go to Scotland. But Freddie is just mad. Do, Jacob, there's a dear, go and dine with him to-night and cheer him up. He vows he won't go north without me. _Perhaps_ I'll come to-morrow. I could no more leave Julie to-night than fly.

"She'll be ill for weeks. What I ought to do is to take her abroad.

She's _very_ dear and good; but, oh, Jacob, as she lies there I _feel_ her heart's broken. And it's not Lord Lackington. Oh no! though I'm sure she loved him. _Do_ go to Freddie, there's a dear."

"No, that I won't!" said Delafield, with a laugh that choked him, as he threw the letter down.

He tried to write an answer, but could not achieve even the simplest note. Then he began a pacing of his room, which lasted till he dropped into his chair, worn out with the sheer physical exhaustion of the night and day. When his servant came in he found his master in a heavy sleep.

And, at Crowborough House, the Duke dined and fumed alone.

XXI

"Why does any one stay in England who _can_ make the trip to Paradise?"

said the d.u.c.h.ess, as she leaned lazily back in the corner of the boat and trailed her fingers in the waters of Como.

It was a balmy April afternoon, and she and Julie were floating through a scene enchanted, incomparable. When spring descends upon the sh.o.r.es of the Lago di Como, she brings with her all the graces, all the beauties, all the fine, delicate, and temperate delights of which earth and sky are capable, and she pours them forth upon a land of perfect loveliness.

Around the sh.o.r.es of other lakes--Maggiore, Lugano, Garda--blue mountains rise, and the vineyards spread their green and dazzling terraces to the sun. Only Como can show in unmatched union a main composition, incomparably grand and harmonious, combined with every jewelled, or glowing, or exquisite detail. Nowhere do the mountains lean towards each other in such an ordered splendor as that which bends round the northern sh.o.r.es of Como. Nowhere do b.u.t.tressed ma.s.ses rise behind each other, to right and left of a blue water-way, in lines statelier or more n.o.ble than those kept by the mountains of the Lecco Lake, as they marshal themselves on either hand, along the approaches to Lombardy and Venetia; bearing aloft, as though on the purple pillars of some majestic gateway, the great curtain of dazzling cloud which, on a sunny day, hangs over the Brescian plain--a glorious drop-scene, interposed between the dwellers on the Como Mountains, and those marble towns, Brescia, Verona, Padua, which thread the way to Venice.

And within this divine frame-work, between the glistening snows which still, in April, crown and glorify the heights, and those reflections of them which lie encalmed in the deep bosom of the lake, there's not a foot of pasture, not a shelf of vineyard, not a slope of forest where the spring is not at work, dyeing the turf with gentians, starring it with narcissuses, or drawing across it the first golden net-work of the chestnut leaves; where the mere emerald of the gra.s.s is not in itself a thing to refresh the very springs of being; where the peach-blossom and the wild-cherry and the olive are not perpetually weaving patterns on the blue, which ravish the very heart out of your breast. And already the roses are beginning to pour over the walls; the wistaria is climbing up the cypresses; a pomp of camellias and azaleas is in all the gardens; while in the gra.s.sy bays that run up into the hills the primrose banks still keep their sweet austerity, and the triumph of spring over the just banished winter is still sharp and new.

And in the heart and sense of Julie Le Breton, as she sat beside the d.u.c.h.ess, listening absently to the talk of the old boatman, who, with his oars resting idly in his hands, was chattering to the ladies, a renewing force akin to that of the spring was also at its healing and life-giving work. She had still the delicate, tremulous look of one recovering from a sore wrestle with physical ill; but in her aspect there were suggestions more intimate, more moving than this. Those who have lain down and risen up with pain; those who have been face to face with pa.s.sion and folly and self-judgment; those who have been forced to seek with eagerness for some answer to those questions which the majority of us never ask, "Whither is my life leading me--and what is it worth to me or to any other living soul?"--these are the men and women who now and then touch or startle us with the eyes and the voice of Julie, if, at least, we have the capacity that responds. Sir Wilfrid Bury, for instance, prince of self-governed and reasonable men, was not to be touched by Julie. For him, in spite of her keen intelligence, she was the _type pa.s.sionne_, from which he instinctively recoiled--the Duke of Crowborough the same. Such men feel towards such women as Julie Le Breton hostility or satire; for what they ask, above all, of the women of their world is a kind of simplicity, a kind of lightness which makes life easier for men.

But for natures like Evelyn Crowborough--or Meredith--or Jacob Delafield--the Julie-type has perennial attractions. For these are all _children of feeling_, allied in this, however different in intelligence or philosophy. They are attracted by the storm-tossed temperament in itself; by mere sensibility; by that which, in the technical language of Catholicism, suggests or possesses "the gift of tears." At any rate, pity and love for her poor Julie--however foolish, however faulty--lay warm in Evelyn Crowborough's breast; they had brought her to Como; they kept her now battling on the one hand with her husband's angry letters and on the other with the melancholy of her most perplexing, most appealing friend.

"I had often heard" [wrote the sore-tried Duke] "of the ravages wrought in family life by these absurd and unreasonable female friendships, but I never thought that it would be you, Evelyn, who would bring them home to me. I won't repeat the arguments I have used a hundred times in vain.

But once again I implore and demand that you should find some kind, responsible person to look after Miss Le Breton--I don't care what you pay--and that you yourself should come home to me and the children and the thousand and one duties you are neglecting.

"As for the spring month in Scotland, which I generally enjoy so much, that has been already entirely ruined. And now the season is apparently to be ruined also. On the Shropshire property there is an important election coming on, as I am sure you know; and the Premier said to me only yesterday that he hoped you were already up and doing. The Grand Duke of C---- will be in London within the next fortnight. I particularly want to show him some civility. But what can I do without you--and how on earth am I to explain your absence?

"Once more, Evelyn, I beg and I demand that you should come home."

To which the d.u.c.h.ess had rushed off a reply without a post's delay.

"Oh, Freddie, you are such a wooden-headed darling! As if I hadn't explained till I'm black in the face. I'm glad, anyway, you didn't say command; that would really have made difficulties.

"As for the election, I'm sure if I was at home I should think it very good fun. Out here I am extremely doubtful whether we ought to do such things as you and Lord M---- suggest. A duke shouldn't interfere in elections. Anyway, I'm sure it's good for my character to consider it a little--though I quite admit you may lose the election.