Nell, of Shorne Mills Part 99

She looked from him to Nell.

"What am I to do?" she asked, as if in great distress. "Miss Lorton, you see my predicament; please come to my aid, and help me to escape. Tell Lord Angleford that you do not wish me to say any more."

Still looking straight before her, Nell responded, almost inaudibly:

"Speak! Yes--tell them!"

Lady Luce still seemed reluctant; at last she said, with an embarra.s.sed laugh:

"After all, it may amount to nothing, and you'll be very much disappointed. Indeed, it is very likely not true."

Her reluctance was not altogether feigned, for it needed even her audacity and a.s.surance to make such an accusation as she was about to bring against the future Countess of Angleford, and under her future roof; but she braced herself to a supreme effort, and, though she was really as white as Nell, she looked round boldly, as if confident of the truth of the thing she was going to say.

"Everybody knows what Sir Archie is," she began. "He's the worst flirt and the most dangerous man in England. Everybody has heard stories of his delinquencies; some of them are true, but many of them, I dare say, are false, and I've not the least doubt that Miss Lorton will tell us that the story that she was about to elope with him from Wolfer House one morning, but that she was stopped by Lord Wolfer, is an absurd fable. The story goes that she did not know, until Lord Wolfer told her at the very moment that she and Sir Archie were leaving the house, that Sir Archie was a married man. Now that's the whole affair, and I really think Miss Lorton will be grateful to me for giving her an opportunity of rising in true dramatic fashion and exclaiming: 'It is not true!'"

She nodded at Nell and laughed softly.

There were many who echoed her laugh, for, indeed, the story did sound like an absurd fable. All eyes were turned on Nell, and all waited for her to bring about with a denial the satisfactory denouement. Drake did not laugh, for his heart was burning with fury against the audacity, the shameless insolence, of Lady Luce; but he smiled in a grim fashion as his eyes still rested on Nell's face.

A moment pa.s.sed. Why did she not rise? Why did she not, at any rate, speak? Four words would be enough: "It is not true!"

But she remained motionless and silent. A kind of consternation began to creep over those who were watching, Drake went up to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Pray relieve Lady Luce's anxiety, Nell, and tell her that she has amused us with a canard too ridiculous to be anything but false," he said tenderly.

She looked up at him, her brows drawn, her eyes pitiful in their agony of appeal, her lips quivering.

"It is true!" she said, in a voice which, though low, was perfectly audible.

There was an intense silence. No one moved; every eye was fixed on her in breathless excitement. They asked themselves if it were possible they had heard aright. Drake's hand pressed more heavily on Nell's shoulder; she could hear his breath coming heavily, could feel him shake. A faint cry escaped Lady Angleford's parted lips.

"Nell!" she cried.

Nell rose and looked at her with the same agony of appeal in her eyes, but with her face firmly set, as if she were buoyed up by an inflexible resolution.

"What Lady Luce has said is true," she said. "I will go----"

Drake was by her side in an instant. He took her cold hand and drew it within his arm.

"No!" he said. "You will not go----"

He looked at Lady Luce, and there was no need to finish the sentence.

She smiled, and fanned herself slowly.

"Of course, Miss Lorton can explain it all," she said. "I am very sorry to have been the cause, the innocent cause, of such an unpleasant scene.

But really you forced me to speak; and we all know that though Miss Lorton has admitted her--what shall I call it?--little escapade, there must be some satisfactory explanation. No one will believe for a moment that she really intended to elope with Sir Archie."

While she had been speaking, some of the guests had edged toward the door. At such moments the kindest thing one can do is to remove oneself as quickly as possible. When a sudden death happens in a ballroom, the dancing ceases, the music stops, the revelers vanish. Something worse than death had happened in this drawing-room. The happiness of more than one life had been blasted as by a stroke of lightning.

There was a general movement toward the door. A group of old friends--county neighbors, real friends of Drake and the countess--gathered round the little group. Falconer and d.i.c.k pushed their way through them none too ceremoniously.

"I'll take my sister home, Lord Angleford," said d.i.c.k hotly; while Falconer took her hand, his face white, his eyes flashing.

Nell would have drawn away from Drake and turned to them; but he put his arm round her waist and held her by sheer force.

"I beg that no one will go," he said; and his voice, though not loud, rang like a bell. Everybody stopped. "I think every one has heard Lady Lucille's accusation against my future wife," he said. "For reasons which concern herself and me only, my future wife"--he laid an emphasis on the words--"has seen fit not to deny this accusation. I am quite content that it should be so. If we have any friends here let----"

Before he could finish his appeal, the door opened, and Lord and Lady Wolfer entered the room. They were in traveling dress, and Lady Wolfer looked pale and in trouble, while Wolfer's face was grave and stern.

"If any friend, whether it be man or woman, deems an explanation due to them, I will ask Miss Lorton if she can give it to them," continued Drake. "If she should not think fit to do so----"

Lady Wolfer, until now unnoticed except by a very few, came through the circle which at once had formed round the princ.i.p.al actors in this social tragedy. She went straight up to Nell, and took her hand and drew her into her embrace, as if to shelter and succor her. With a faint cry, Nell's head fell on Lady Wolfer's bosom. Lady Wolfer looked round, not defiantly, but with the air of one facing death bravely.

"I will explain," she said. "It was not she who was going to elope with Sir Archie Walbrooke. It was I!"

"No, no; you must not!" panted Nell.

The living circle drew closer, and listened and stared in breathless silence.

"It was I!" said Lady Wolfer.

"You!" exclaimed Lady Luce. "Then Burden----"

"Burden lied," said Lady Wolfer. "I want to tell every one; it is due to this saint, this dear girl, who sacrificed herself to me. I only heard this morning from my husband that he had found a note which Sir Archie had sent me, asking me to leave England with him. He placed this note on a pedestal in my drawing-room. Both my husband and Nell saw it, not knowing that the other had seen it. It never reached me; but this dear girl kept the appointment which Sir Archie had made for the library the next morning. She wanted to save me. I know, almost as if I had been there, how she pleaded with him, how she strove for my honor. While they were there my husband came upon them. The letter was not addressed to me, and he leaned to the conclusion that it was intended for Nell. She permitted him to make the hideous mistake, and, to save me, she left the house with her reputation ruined--in his eyes, at least. Until this morning he has never breathed a word of this to a soul. I am confident that Sir Archie Walbrooke, who went away full of remorse and penitence, has also kept silent. It was reserved for a woman to strike the blow aimed at the honor and happiness of an innocent and helpless girl--a girl so n.o.ble that she is ready to lay down her life's happiness and honor rather than betray the friend she loves. Judge between these two, between us three, if you will."

It was not a moment for cheering, but sudden exclamations burst from the men, most of the women were in tears, and Nell was sobbing as she lay on her friend's bosom.

Lady Luce alone remained smiling. Her face was white, her breath came in quick, labored gasps.

"What a charming romance!" she exclaimed, with a forced sneer. "So completely satisfactory!"

At the sound of her voice, the countess' spirit rose in true Anglo-Saxon fashion. She checked her sobs, wiped her eyes with a morsel of lace she called a handkerchief, and, sweeping in a stately manner to the door, said, with the extreme of patrician hauteur:

"A carriage for Lady Lucille Turfleigh, please!"

Lady Luce shrugged her shoulders, turned, and slowly moved toward the door; and, as she went, the crowd made way for her, and left her a clear pa.s.sage, as if she had suddenly become infectious.

Nell did not see her go, did not hear the mingled expressions of indignation and congratulation which buzzed round her.

All she heard was Drake's "Nell! Nell! My dearest! my own!" as he put his arms round her and drew her head to his breast.

Those persons who are fortunate enough to receive invitations to the summer and shooting parties, which Lord and Lady Angleford give at Anglemere, have very good reason to congratulate themselves; but those who are still more fortunate to receive a letter from Nell, asking them to spend a fortnight at the picturesque and "cottagy" house which Drake has built at a certain out-of-the-way spot in Devonshire called Shorne Mills, go about pluming themselves as if they had drawn one of the prizes in life's lottery. For only very intimate and dear friends are asked to Shorne Mills.

The house is not large. With the exception of the grooms, there are no menservants; there is no state, and very little formality; life there is mostly spent in the open air, in that delicious mixture of sea and moorland air in which everyday worries and anxieties do not seem able to exist.

At The Cottage no one finds time hanging heavily on his or her hands; no one is bored. It is a small Liberty Hall. There are horses to ride; there are tramps to be taken across the heather-scented hills; there are yachting and fishing in the bay, and there is always light-hearted laughter round and about the house--especially when her ladyship's brother, Mr. d.i.c.k Lorton, is present; and he and the famous musician, Mr. Falconer, always come down together, and remain while the family occupy The Cottage. There, too, the dowager countess is always a regular visitor; indeed, Nell and she are very seldom apart, for, if the countess could tear herself away from Nell, she certainly could not leave the baby son and heir, who is as often in her arms as in his mother's.