The Young Step-Mother Part 99

'Contemptible fickleness!' burst out Albinia, but Sophy implored silence by a gesture.

'No,' she said; 'it was a dream, a degrading, humiliating dream; but it is over.'

'There is no degradation except to the base trifler I once thought better things of.'

'He has not trifled,' said Sophy. 'Wait! hush!'

There was a composure about her that awed Albinia, who stood watching in suspense while she went to the bed-room, drank some water, cooled her brow, pushed back her hair, and sitting down again in the same collected manner, which gave her almost a look of majesty, she said, 'Promise me, mamma, that all shall go on as if this folly had never crossed our minds.'

'I can't! I can't, Sophy!' said Albinia in the greatest agitation. 'I can't _unknow_ that you have been shamefully used.'

'Then you will lead papa to break his promise to Genevieve, and lower me not only in my own eyes, but in those of every one.'

'He little knew that he was bringing her here to destroy his daughter's happiness. So that was why she held off from Mr. Hope,' cried Albinia, burning with such indignation, that on some one she must expend it, but a tirade against the artfulness of the little French witch was cut off short by an authoritative--

'Don't, mamma! You are unjust! How can she help being loveable!'

'He had no business to know whether she was or not.'

'You are wrong, mamma. The absurdity was in thinking I ever was so.'

'Very little absurd,' said Albinia, twining her arms round Sophy.

'Don't make me silly,' hastily said Sophy, her voice trembling for a moment; 'I want to tell you all about it, and you will see that no one is to blame. The perception has been growing on me for a long time, but I was weak enough to indulge in the dream. It was very sweet!' There again she struggled not to break down, gained the victory, and went on, 'I don't think I should have dared to imagine it myself, but I saw others thought it, who knew more; I knew the incredible was sometimes true, and every little kindness he did--Oh! how foolish! as if he could help doing kindnesses! My better sense told me he did not really distinguish me; but there was something that _would_ feed upon every word and look. Then last year I was wakened by the caricature business.

That opened my eyes, for no one who had _that_ in him would have turned my sister into derision. I was sullen then and proud, and when--when humanity and compa.s.sion brought him to me in my distress--oh! why--why could not I have been reasonable, and not have selfishly fed on what I thought was revived?'

'He had no right--' began Albinia, fiercely.

'He could neither help saving Maurice, nor speaking comfort and support when he found me exhausted and sinking. It was I who was the foolish creature--I hate myself! Well, you know how it has been--I liked to believe it was _the thing_--I knew he cared less for me than--but I thought it was always so between men and women, and that I would not have petty distrusts. But when she came, I saw what the true--true feeling is--I saw that he felt when she came into the room--I saw how he heard her words and missed mine--I saw--' Sophy collected herself, and spoke quietly and distinctly, 'I saw his love, and that it had never been for me.'

There was a pause; Albinia could not bear to look, speak, or move.

Sophy's words carried conviction that swept away her sand castle.

'Now, mamma,' said Sophy, earnestly, 'you own that he has not been false or fickle.'

'If he has not, he has disregarded the choicest jewel that lay in his way,' said Albinia with some sharpness.

'But he has not been that,' persisted Sophy.

'Well--no; I suppose not.'

'And no one can be less to blame than Genevieve.'

'Little flirt, I've no patience with her.'

'She can't help her manners,' repeated Sophy, 'I feel them so much more charming than mine every moment. She will make him so happy.'

'What are you talking of, Sophy? He must be mad if he is in earnest.

A man of his family pride! His father will never listen to it for a moment.'

'I don't know what his father may do,' said Sophy; 'but I know what I pray and entreat we may do, and that is, do our utmost to make this come to good.'

'Sophy, don't ask it. I could not, I know you could not.'

'There is no loss of esteem. I honour him as I always did,' said Sophy.

'Yes, the more since I see it was all for papa and the right, all unselfish, on that 5th of November. Some day I shall have worn out the selfishness.'

She kept her hand tightly pressed on her heart as she spoke, and Albinia exclaimed, 'You shall not see it; you overrate your strength; it is my business to prevent you!'

'Think, mamma,' said Sophy, rising in her earnestness. 'Here is a homeless orphan, whom you have taught to love you, whom papa has brought here as to a home, and for Gilbert's sake. Is it fair--innocent, exemplary as she is--to turn against her because she is engaging and I am not, to cut her off from us, drive her away to the first situation that offers, be it what it may, and with that thought aching and throbbing in her heart? Oh, mamma! would that be mercy or justice?'

'You are not asking to have it encouraged in the very house with you?'

'I do not see how else it is to be,' said Sophy.

'Let him go after her, if there's anything in it but Irish folly and French coquetry--'

'How, mamma? Where? When she is a governess in some strange place? How could he leave his business? How could she attend to him? Oh, mamma! you used to be kind: how can you wish to put two people you love so much to such misery?'

'Because I can't put one whom I love better than both, and who deserves it, to greater misery,' said Albinia, embracing her.

'Then do not put me to the misery of being ungenerous, and the shame of having my folly suspected.'

Albinia would have argued still, but the children came in, Sophy went away, and there was no possibility of a tete-a-tete. How strange it was to have such a tumult of feeling within, and know that the same must be tenfold multiplied in the hearts of those two girls, and yet go through all the domestic conventionalities, each wearing a mask of commonplace ease, as though nothing had happened!

Genevieve had, Albinia suspected, been crying excessively; for there was that effaced annihilated appearance that tears produced on her, but otherwise she did her part in answering her host, who was very fond of her, and always made her an object of attention. Albinia found herself betraying more abstraction, she was so anxiously watching Sophy, who acquitted herself best of all, had kept tears from her eyes, talked more than usual, and looked brilliant, with a bright colour dyeing her cheeks. She was evidently sustained by eagerness to obtain her generous purpose, and did not yet realize the price.

The spray of holly was lying as if it had been tossed in vexation upon the marble slab in the hall. Albinia, from the stairs, saw Sophy take it up, and waited to see what she would do with it. The Sophy she had once known would have dashed it into the flames, and then have repented. No!

Sophy held it tenderly, and looked at the glossy leaves and coral fruit with no angry eye; she even raised it to her lips, but it was to pierce with one of the long p.r.i.c.kles till her brow drew together at the smart, and the blood started. Then she began to mount the stairs, and meeting Albinia, said quietly, 'I was going to take this to Genevieve's room, it is empty now, but perhaps you had better take care of it for her, out of sight. It will be her greatest treasure to-morrow.'

Mr. Kendal read aloud as usual, but who of his audience attended?

Certainly not Albinia. She sat with her head bent over her work, revolving the history of these last two years, and trying to collect herself after the sudden shock, and the angry feelings of disappointment that surged within, in much need of an object of wrath. Alas! who could that object be but that blind, warm-hearted, impulsive Mistress Albinia Kendal?

She saw plain enough, now it was too late, that there had not been a shadow of sentiment in that lively confiding Irishman, used to intimacy with a herd of cousins, and viewing all connexions as cousins.

She remembered his conversation with her brother and her brother's impression; she thought of the unloverlike dread of ague in Emily's moonlight walk; she recalled the many occasions when she had thought him remiss, and she could not but acquit him of any designed flirtation, any dangerous tenderness, or what Mdlle. Belmarche would call legerete. He could not be reserved--he was naturally free and open--and how could she have put such a construction on his frankness, when Sophy herself had long been gradually arriving at a conviction of the truth! It was a comfort at least to remember that it had not been the fabrication of her own brain, she had respectable authority for the idea, and she trusted to its prompter to partic.i.p.ate in her indignation, argue Ulick out of so poor a match, and at least put a decided veto upon Sophy's Spartan magnanimity--Sophy's health and feelings being the subject, she sometimes thought, which concerned him above all.

Ah! but the evil had not been his doing. He had but gossiped out a pleasant conjecture to his wife as a trustworthy help-meet. What business had she to go and telegraph that conjecture, with her significant eyes, to the very last person who ought to have shared it, and then to have kept up the mischief by believing it herself, and acting, looking, and arranging, as on a certainty implied, though not expressed? Mrs. Osborne or Mrs. Drury might have spoken more broadly, they could not have acted worse, thought she to herself.

The notion might never have been suggested; Sophy might have simply enjoyed these years of intimacy, and even if her heart had been touched, it would have been unconsciously, and the pain and shame of unrequited affection have merely been a slight sense of neglect, a small dreariness, lost in eagerness for the happiness of both friends. Now, two years of love that she had been allowed to imagine returned and sanctioned, and love with the depth and force of Sophy's whole nature--the shame of having loved unasked, the misery of having lived in a delusion--how would they act upon a being of her morbid tendency, frail const.i.tution, and proud spirit? As Albinia thought of the pa.s.sive endurance of last year's estrangement, her heart sank within her!

Illness--brain-fever--permanent ill-health and crushed spirits--nay, death itself she augured--and all--all her own fault! The last and best of Edmund's children so cruelly and deeply wounded, and by her folly!

She longed to throw herself at his feet and ask his pardon, but it was Sophy's secret as well as hers, and how could womanhood betray that unrequited love? At least she thought, for n.o.ble Sophy's sake, she would not raise a finger to hinder the marriage, but as to forwarding it, or promoting the courtship under Sophy's very eyes--that would be like murdering her outright, and she would join Mr. Kendal with all her might in removing their daughter from the trying spectacle. Talk of Aunt Maria! This trouble was ten thousand times worse!

Albinia began to watch the timepiece, longing to have the evening over, that she might prepare Mr. Kendal. It ended at last, and Genevieve took up her candle, bade good-night, and disappeared. Sophy lingered, till coming forward to her father as he stood by the fire, she said, 'Papa, did you not promise Gilbert that Genevieve should be as another daughter?'

'I wish she would be, my dear,' said Mr. Kendal; 'but she is too independent, and your mamma thinks she would consider it as a mere farce to call her little Albinia's governess, but if you can persuade her--'

'What I want you to do, papa, is to promise that she shall be married from this house, as her home, and that you will fit her out as you did Lucy.'