Lady Rose's Daughter Part 67

"He has gone down to Montreux, but he should be home very soon now. We are only a few steps from our little inn. Would you not rest there? Miss Moffatt looks very tired."

There was a pause. Lady Blanche was considering her daughter. Julie saw the trembling of her wide, irregular mouth, of which the lips were slightly turned outward. Finally she drew her daughter's hand into her arm, and bent anxiously towards her, scrutinizing her face.

"Thank you. We will rest a quarter of an hour. Can we get a carriage at Charnex?"

"Yes, I think so, if you will wait a little on our balcony."

They walked on towards Charnex. Lady Blanche began to talk resolutely of the weather, which was, indeed, atrocious. She spoke as she would have done to the merest acquaintance. There was not a word of her father; not a word, either, of her brother's letter, or of Julie's relationship to herself. Julie accepted the situation with perfect composure, and the three kept up some sort of a conversation till they reached the paved street of Charnex and the old inn at its lower end.

Julie guided her companions through its dark pa.s.sages, till they reached an outer terrace where there were a few scattered seats, and among them a deck-chair with cushions.

"Please," said Julie, as she kindly drew the girl towards it. Aileen smiled and yielded. Julie placed her among the cushions, then brought out a shawl, and covered her warmly from the sharp, damp air. Aileen thanked her, and lightly touched her hand. A secret sympathy seemed to have suddenly sprung up between them.

Lady Blanche sat stiffly beside her daughter, watching her face. The warm touch of friendliness in Aileen's manner towards Mrs. Delafield seemed only to increase the distance and embarra.s.sment of her own. Julie appeared to be quite unconscious. She ordered tea, and made no further allusion of any kind to the kindred they had in common. She and Lady Blanche talked as strangers.

Julie said to herself that she understood. She remembered the evening at Crowborough House, the spinster lady who had been the Moffatts' friend, her own talk with Evelyn. In that way, or in some other, the current gossip about herself and Warkworth, gossip they had been too mad and miserable to take much account of, had reached Lady Blanche. Lady Blanche probably abhorred her; though, because of her marriage, there was to be an outer civility. Meanwhile no sign whatever of any angry or resentful knowledge betrayed itself in the girl's manner. Clearly the mother had shielded her.

Julie felt the flutter of an exquisite relief. She stole many a look at Aileen, comparing the reality with that old, ugly notion her jealousy had found so welcome--of the silly or insolent little creature, possessing all that her betters desired, by the mere brute force of money or birth. And all the time the reality was _this_--so soft, suppliant, ethereal! Here, indeed, was the child of Warkworth's picture--the innocent, unknowing child, whom their pa.s.sion had sacrificed and betrayed. She could see the face now, as it lay piteous, in Warkworth's hand. Then she raised her eyes to the original. And as it looked at her with timidity and nascent love her own heart beat wildly, now in remorse, now in a reviving jealousy.

Secretly, behind this mask of convention, were they both thinking of him? A girl's thoughts are never far from her lover; and Julie was conscious, this afternoon, of a strange and mysterious preoccupation, whereof Warkworth was the centre.

Gradually the great mountains at the head of the lake freed themselves from the last wandering cloud-wreaths. On the rock faces of the Rochers de Naye the hanging pine-woods, brushed with snow, came into sight. The white walls of Glion shone faintly out, and a pearly gold, which was but a pallid reflection of the Italian glory, diffused itself over mountain and lake. The sun was grudging; there was no caress in the air. Aileen shivered a little in her shawls, and when Julie spoke of Italy the girl's enthusiasm and longing sprang, as it were, to meet her, and both were conscious of another slight link between them.

Suddenly a sound of steps came to them from below.

"My husband," said Julie, rising, and, going to the bal.u.s.trade, she waved to Delafield, who had come up from Montreux by one of the steep vineyard paths. "I will tell him you are here," she added, with what might have been taken for the shyness of the young wife.

She ran down the steps leading from the terrace to the lower garden.

Aileen looked at her mother.

"Isn't she wonderful?" she said, in an ardent whisper. "I could watch her forever. She is the most graceful person I ever saw. Mother, is she like Aunt Rose?"

Lady Blanche shook her head.

"Not in the least," she said, shortly. "She has too much manner for me."

"Oh, mother!" And the girl caught her mother's hand in caressing remonstrance, as though to say: "Dear little mother, you must like her, because I do; and you mustn't think of Aunt Rose, and all those terrible things, except for pity."

"Hush!" said Lady Blanche, smiling at her a little excitedly. "Hush; they're coming!"

Delafield and Julie emerged from the iron staircase. Lady Blanche turned and looked at the tall, distinguished pair, her ugly lower lip hardening ungraciously. But she and Delafield had a slight previous acquaintance, and she noticed instantly the charming and solicitous kindness with which he greeted her daughter.

"Julie tells me Miss Moffatt is still far from strong," he said, returning to the mother.

Lady Blanche only sighed for answer. He drew a chair beside her, and they fell into the natural talk of people who belong to the same social world, and are travelling in the same scenes.

Meanwhile Julie was sitting beside the heiress. Not much was said, but each was conscious of a lively interest in the other, and every now and then Julie would put out a careful hand and draw the shawls closer about the girl's frail form. The strain of guilty compunction that entered into Julie's feeling did but make it the more sensitive. She said to herself in a vague haste that now she would make amends. If only Lady Blanche were willing--

But she should be willing! Julie felt the stirrings of the old self-confidence, the old trust in a social ingenuity which had, in truth, rarely failed her. Her intriguing, managing instinct made itself felt--the mood of Lady Henry's companion.

Presently, as they were talking, Aileen caught sight of an English newspaper which Delafield had brought up from Montreux. It lay still unopened on one of the tables of the terrace.

"Please give it me," said the girl, stretching out an eager hand. "It will have Tiny's marriage, mamma! A cousin of mine," she explained to Julie, who rose to hand it to her. "A very favorite cousin. Oh, thank you."

She opened the paper. Julie turned away, that she might relieve Lady Blanche of her teacup.

Suddenly a cry rang out--a cry of mortal anguish. Two ladies who had just stepped out upon the terrace from the hotel drawing-room turned in terror; the gardener who was watering the flower-boxes at the farther end stood arrested.

"Aileen!" shrieked Lady Blanche, running to her. "What--what is it?"

The paper had dropped to the floor, but the child still pointed to it, gasping.

"Mother--mother!"

Some intuition woke in Julie. She stood dead-white and dumb, while Lady Blanche threw herself on her daughter.

"Aileen, darling, what is it?"

The girl, in her agony, threw her arms frantically round her mother, and dragged herself to her feet. She stood tottering, her hand over her eyes.

"He's dead, mother! He's--dead!"

The last word sank into a sound more horrible even than the first cry.

Then she swayed out of her mother's arms. It was Julie who caught her, who laid her once more on the deck-chair--a broken, shrunken form, in whom all the threads and connections of life had suddenly, as it were, fallen to ruin. Lady Blanche hung over her, pushing Julie away, gathering the unconscious girl madly in her arms. Delafield rushed for water-and-brandy. Julie s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper and looked at the telegrams.

High up in the first column was the one she sought.

"CAIRO, _June_ 12.--Great regret is felt here at the sudden and tragic news of Major Warkworth's death from fever, which seems to have occurred at a spot some three weeks' distance from the coast, on or about May 25. Letters from the officer who has succeeded him in the command of the Mokembe expedition have now reached Denga. A fortnight after leaving the coast Major Warkworth was attacked with fever; he made a brave struggle against it, but it was of a deadly type, and in less than a week he succ.u.mbed. The messenger brought also his private papers and diaries, which have been forwarded to his representatives in England. Major Warkworth was a most promising and able officer, and his loss will be keenly felt."

Julie fell on her knees beside her swooning cousin. Lady Blanche, meanwhile, was loosening her daughter's dress, chafing her icy hands, or moaning over her in a delirium of terror.

"My darling--my darling! Oh, my G.o.d! Why did I allow it? Why did I ever let him come near her? It was my fault--my fault! And it's killed her!"

And clinging to her child's irresponsive hands, she looked down upon her in a convulsion of grief, which included not a shadow of regret, not a gleam of pity for anything or any one else in the world but this bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, which lay stricken there.

But Julie's mind had ceased to be conscious of the tragedy beside her.

It had pa.s.sed for the second time into the grasp of an illusion which possessed itself of the whole being and all its perceptive powers.

Before her wide, terror-stricken gaze there rose once more the same piteous vision which had tortured her in the crisis of her love for Warkworth. Against the eternal snows which close in the lake the phantom hovered in a ghastly relief--emaciated, with matted hair, and purpled cheeks, and eyes--not to be borne!--expressing the dumb anger of a man, still young, who parts unwillingly from life in a last lonely spasm of uncomforted pain.

XXIII

It was midnight in the little inn at Charnex. The rain which for so many nights in this miserable June had been beating down upon the village had at last pa.s.sed away. The night was clear and still--a night when the voice of mountain torrents, far distant, might reach the ear suddenly--sharply pure--from the very depths of silence.