M. Or N. "Similia Similibus Curantur." Part 28

CHAPTER XXIV

PARTED

Lady Bearwarden's carriage had, without doubt, set her down at Stripe and Rainbow's, to take her up again at the same place after waiting there for so long a period as must have impressed on her servants the importance of their lady's toilet, and the careful study she bestowed on its selection. The tall bay horses had been flicked at least a hundred times to make them stand out and show themselves, in the form London coachmen think so imposing to pa.s.sers-by. The footman had yawned as often, expressing with each contortion an excessive longing for beer. Many street boys had lavished their criticisms, favourable and otherwise, on the wheels, the panels, the varnish, the driver's wig, and that dignitary's legs, whom they had the presumption to address as "John." Diverse connoisseurs on the pavement had appraised the bay horses at every conceivable price--some men never can pa.s.s a horse or a woman without thinking whether they would like to bargain for the one or make love to the other; and the animals themselves seemed to have interchanged many confidential whispers, on the subject, probably, of beans,--when Lady Bearwarden re-appeared, to seat herself in the carriage and give the welcome order, "Home!"

She had pa.s.sed what the French call a very "bad little quarter of an hour," and the storm had left its trace on her pale brow and delicate features. They bore, nevertheless, that firm, resolute expression which Maud must have inherited from some iron-hearted ancestor. There was the same stem clash of the jaw, the same hard, determined frown in this, their lovely descendant, that confronted Plantagenet and his mailed legions on the plains by Stirling, that stiffened under the wan moonlight on Culloden Moor amongst broken claymores and riven targets, and tartans all stained to the deep-red hues of the Stuart with his clansmen's blood.

Softened, weakened by a tender, doubting affection, she had yielded to an ign.o.ble, unworthy coercion; but it had been put on too hard of late, and her natural character a.s.serted itself under the pressure.

She was in that mood which makes the martyr and the heroine, sometimes even the criminal, but on which, deaf to reason and insensible to fear, threats and arguments are equally thrown away.

She had met "Gentleman Jim," according to promise, extorted from her by menaces of everything that could most outrage her womanly feelings and tarnish her fair fame before the world--had met him with as much secrecy, duplicity, and caution as though he were really the favoured lover for whom she was prepared to sacrifice home, husband, honour, and all. The housebreaker had mounted a fresh disguise for the occasion, and flattered himself, to use his own expression, that he looked "quite the gentleman from top to toe." Could he have known how this high-bred woman loathed his tawdry ornaments, his flash attire, his silks and velvets, and flushed face, and dirty, ringed hands and greasy hair!

Could he have known! He _did_ know, and it maddened him till he forgot reason, prudence, experience, commonsense--forgot everything but the present torture, the cruel longing for the impossible, the accursed conviction (worse than all the stings of drink and sin and remorse) that this one wild, hopeless desire of his existence could never be attained.

Therefore, in the lonely street to which a cab had brought her from the shop where her carriage waited, and which they paced to and fro, this strangely-a.s.sorted pair, he gave vent to his feelings, and broke out in a paroxysm that roused all his listener's feelings of anger, resistance, and disgust. She had just offered him so large a sum of money to quit England for ever, as even Jim, for whom, you must remember, every sovereign represented twenty shillings' worth of beer, could not refuse without a qualm. He hesitated, and Maud's face brightened with a ray of hope that quivered in her eyes like sunlight.

"To sail next week," said he slowly; "to take my last look of ye to-day. Them's the articles. My last look. Standing there in the daylight--a _real_ lady! And never to come back no more!"

She clasped her hands--the delicate gloved hands, with their heavy bracelets at the wrists--and her voice shook while she spoke. "You'll go; won't you? It will make your fortune; and--and--I'll always think of you kindly--and--gratefully. I _will_ indeed; so long as you keep away."

He sprang like a horse to the lash. "It's h----ll!" he exclaimed. "Put back your cursed money. I won't do it!"

"You won't do it?"

There was such quiet despair in her accents as drove him to fury.

"I won't do it!" he repeated in a low voice that frightened her. "I'll rot in a gaol first!--I'll swing on a gallows!--I'll die in a ditch!

Take care as _you_ don't give me something to swing for! Yes, _you_, with your pale face, and your high-handed ways, and your cold, cruel heart that can send a poor devil to the other end o' the earth with a 'pleasant trip, and here's your health, my lad,' like as if I was goin' across to Lambeth. And yet you stand there as beautiful as a hangel; and I--I'm a fool, I am! And--and I don't know what keeps me from slippin' my knife into that white throat o' yourn, except it is as you don't look not a morsel dashed, nor skeared, you don't; no more than you was that first night as ever I see your face. And I wish my eyes had been lime-blinded first, and I'd been dead and rotting in my grave."

With anything like a contest, as usual, Maud's courage came back.

"I am not in your power yet," said she, raising her haughty head.

"There stands the cab. When we reach it I get in, and you shall never have a chance of speaking to me after to-day. Once for all. Will you take this money, or leave it? I shall not make the offer again."

He took the notes from her hand, with a horrible oath, and dashed them on the ground; then growing so pale she thought he must have fallen, seemed to recover his temper and his presence of mind, picked them up, returned them very quietly, and stood aside on the narrow pavement to let her pa.s.s.

"You are right," said he, in a voice so changed, she looked anxiously in his white face, working like that of a man in a fit. "I was a fool a while ago. I know better now. But I won't take the notes, my lady.

Thank ye kindly just the same. I'll wish ye good-mornin' now. O, no!

Make yourself easy. I'll never ask to see ye again."

He staggered while he walked away, and laid hold of an area railing as he turned the street corner; but Maud was too glad to get rid of her tormentor at any price to speculate on his meaning, his movements, or the storm that raged within his breast.

And now, sitting back in her carriage, bowling home-ward, with the fresh evening breeze in her face, the few men left to take their hats off looked in that face, and while making up their minds that after all it was the handsomest in London, felt instinctively they had never coveted the ownership of its haughty beauty so little as to-day. Her husband's cornet, walking with a brother subaltern, and saluting Lady Bearwarden, or, rather, the carriage and horses, for her ladyship's eyes and thoughts were miles away, expressed the popular feeling perhaps with sufficient clearness when he thus delivered himself, in reply to his companion's loudly-expressed admiration--

"The best-looking woman in London, no doubt, and the best turned out.

But I think Bruin's got a handful, you know. Tell ye what, my boy, I'm generally right about women. She looks like the sort that, if they once _begin_ to kick, never leave off till they've knocked the splinter-bar into toothpicks and carried away the whole of the front boot."

Maud, all unconscious of the light in which she appeared to this young philosopher, was meanwhile hardening her heart with considerable misgivings for the task she had in view, resolved that nothing should now deter her from the confession she had delayed too long. She reflected how foolish it was not to have taken advantage of the first confidences of married life by throwing herself on her husband's mercy, telling him all the folly, imprudence, crime of which she had been guilty, and imploring to be forgiven. Every day that pa.s.sed made it more difficult, particularly since this coolness had arisen between them, which, although she felt it did not originate with herself, she also felt a little pliancy on her part, a little warmth of manner, a little expressed affection, would have done much to counteract and put away. She had delayed it too long; but "Better late than never." It should be done to-day; before she dressed for dinner; the instant she got home. She would put her arms round his neck, and tell him that the worst of her iniquities, the most unpardonable, had been committed for love of _him_! She could not bear to lose him (Maud forgot that in those days it was the coronet she wanted to capture). She dreaded falling in his esteem. She dared all, risked all, because without him life must have been to her, as it is to so many, a blank and a mistake. But supposing he put on the cold, grave face, a.s.sumed the conventional tone she knew so well, told her he could not pardon such unladylike, such unwomanly proceedings, or that he did not desire to intrude on confidences so long withheld; or, worse than all, that they did very well as they were, got on--he had hinted as much once before--better than half the married couples in London, why, she must bear it. This would be part of the punishment; and at least she could have the satisfaction of a.s.suring him how she loved him, and of loving him heartily, humbly, even without return.

Lady Bearwarden had never done anything humbly before. Perhaps she thought this new sensation might be for her good--might make her a changed woman, and in such change happier henceforth.

Tears sprang to her eyes. How slow that man drove; but, thank heaven!

here she was, home at last.

On the hall-table lay a letter in her husband's hand-writing, addressed to herself. "How provoking!" she muttered, "to say he dines out, of course. And now I must wait till to-morrow. Never mind."

Pa.s.sing up-stairs to her boudoir, she opened it as she entered the room, and sank into a chair, with a faint pa.s.sionate cry, like that of a hare, or other weak animal, struck to the death. She had courage, nevertheless, to read it over twice, so as thoroughly to master the contents. During their engagement they used to meet every day. They had not been parted since their marriage. It was the first, literally the very first, letter she had ever received from him.

"I have no reproaches to make," it said, "nor reasons to offer for my own decision. I leave both to your sense of right, if indeed yours can be the same as that usually accepted amongst honourable people. I have long felt some mysterious barrier existed between you and me. I have only an hour ago discovered its disgraceful nature, and the impossibility that it can ever be removed. You cannot wonder at my not returning home. Stay there as long as you please, and be a.s.sured I shall not enter that house again. You will not probably wish to see or hold any communication with me in future, but should you be so ill-advised as to attempt it, remember I have taken care to render it impossible. I know not how I have forfeited the right to be treated fairly and on the square, nor why you, of all the world, should have felt ent.i.tled to make me your dupe, but this is a question on which I do not mean to enter, now nor hereafter. My man of business will attend to any directions you think proper to give, and has my express injunctions to further your convenience in every way, but to withhold my address and all information respecting my movements. With a sincere wish for your welfare, I remain,"

Yours, etc.,

"Bearwarden."

She was stunned, stupefied, bewildered. What had he found out? What could it mean? She had known of late she loved him very dearly; she never knew till now the pain such love might bring. She rocked herself to and fro in her agony, but soon started up into action. She must do something. She could not sit there under his very picture looking down on her, manly, and kind, and soldierlike. She ran down-stairs to his room. It was all disordered just as he had left it, and an odour of tobacco clung heavily round the curtains and furniture. She wondered now she should ever have disliked the fumes of that unsavoury plant.

She could not bear to stay there long, but hurried up-stairs again to ring for a servant, and bid him get a cab at once, to see if Lord Bearwarden was at the barracks. She felt hopelessly convinced it was no use; even if he were, nothing would be gained by the a.s.surance, but it seemed a relief to obtain an interval of waiting and uncertainty and delay. When the man returned to report that "his lordship had been there and gone away again," she wished she had let it alone. It formed no light portion of her burden that she must preserve an appearance of composure before her servants. It seemed such a mockery while her heart was breaking, yes, breaking, in the desolation of her sorrow, the blank of a future without _him_.

Then in extremity of need she bethought her of d.i.c.k Stanmore, and in this I think Lady Bearwarden betrayed, under all her energy and force of character, the softer elements of woman's nature. A man, I suppose, under any pressure of affliction would hardly go for consolation to the woman he had deceived. He partakes more of the wild beast's sulkiness, which, sick or wounded, retires to mope in a corner by itself; whereas a woman, as indeed seems only becoming to her less firmly-moulded character, shows in a struggle all the qualities of valour except that one additional atom of final endurance which wins the fight at last. In real bitter distress they must have some one to lean on. Is it selfishness that bids them carry their sorrows for help to the very hearts they have crushed and trampled? Is it not rather a n.o.ble instinct of forgiveness and generosity which tells them that if their mutual cases were reversed they would themselves be capable of affording the sympathy they expect?

Maud knew that, to use the conventional language of the world in which they moved, "she had treated d.i.c.k ill." We think very lightly of these little social outrages in the battle of life, and yet I doubt if one human being can inflict a much deeper injury on another than that which deprives the victim of all power of enjoyment, all belief in good, all hope for the future, all tender memories of the past. Man or woman, we ought to have some humane compunction, some little hesitation in sitting down to play at that game from which the winner rises only wearied with unmerited good fortune, the loser, haggard, miserable, stripped and beggared for life.

It was owing to no forbearance of Lady Bearwarden's that d.i.c.k had so far recovered his losses as to sit down once more and tempt fortune at another table; but she turned to him nevertheless in this her hour of perplexity, and wrote to ask his aid, advice, and sympathy in her great distress.

I give her letter, though it never reached its destination, because I think it ill.u.s.trates certain feminine ideas of honour, justice, and plain dealing which must originate in some code of reasoning totally unintelligible to ourselves.

Dear Mr. Stanmore,

You are a true friend, I feel sure. I have always considered you, since we have been acquainted, the truest and most tried amongst the few I possess. You told me once, some time ago, when we used to meet oftener than we have of late, that if ever I was in sorrow or difficulty I was to be sure and let you know. I am in sorrow and difficulty now--great sorrow, overwhelming difficulty. I have n.o.body that cares for me enough to give advice or help, and I am so very, _very_ sad and desolate. I think I have some claim upon you. We used to be so much together and were always such good friends. Besides, we are almost relations, are we not? and once I thought we should have been something more. But that is all over now.

Will you help me? Come to me at once, or write.

Lord Bearwarden has left me without a word of explanation except a cruel, cutting, formal letter that I cannot understand. I don't know what I have said or done, but it seems so hard, so inhuman. And I loved him very dearly, very. Indeed, though you have every right to say you don't believe me, I would have made him a good wife if he had let me. My heart seems quite crushed and broken. It is too hard. Again I ask you to help me, and remain always

Yours sincerely,

"M. Bearwarden."

There is little doubt that had d.i.c.k Stanmore ever received this touching production he would have lost not one moment in complying with the urgency of its appeal. But d.i.c.k did not receive it, for the simple reason that, although stamped by her ladyship and placed in the letter-box, it was never sent to the post.

Lord Bearwarden, though absenting himself from home under such unpleasant circ.u.mstances, could not therefore shake off the thousand imperceptible meshes that bind a man like chains of iron to his own domestic establishment. Amongst other petty details his correspondence had to be provided for, and he sent directions accordingly to his groom of the chambers, that all his letters should be forwarded to a certain address. The groom of the chambers, who had served in one or two families before, of which the heads had separated under rather discreditable circ.u.mstances, misunderstanding his master's orders, or determined to err on the safe side, forwarded all the letters he could lay hands on to my lord. Therefore the hurt and angry husband was greeted, ere he had left home a day, by the sight of an envelope in his wife's handwriting addressed to the man with whom he believed she was in love. Even under such provocation Lord Bearwarden was too high-minded to open the enclosure, but sent it back forthwith in a slip of paper, on which he calmly "presented his compliments and begged to forward a letter he could see was Lady Bearwarden's that had fallen into his hands by mistake."

Maud, weeping in her desolate home, tore it into a thousand shreds.

There was something characteristic of her husband in these little honourable scruples that cut her to the heart. "Why didn't he read it?" she repeated, wringing her hands and walking up and down the room. "He knows Mr. Stanmore quite well. Why didn't he read it? and then he would have seen what I shall never, never be able to tell him now!"

CHAPTER XXV