Thelma Part 49

"Philip," said Thelma suddenly. "Did you really go behind the scenes to-night?"

"Yes, I did," he answered readily. "I was obliged to go on a matter of business--a very disagreeable and unpleasant matter too."

"And what was it?" she asked timidly, yet hopefully.

"My pet, I can't tell you! I wish I could! It's a secret I'm bound not to betray--a secret which involves the name of another person who'd be wretched if I were to mention it to you. There,--don't let us talk about it any more!"

"Very well, Philip," said Thelma resignedly,--but though she smiled, a sudden presentiment of evil depressed her. The figure of the vulgar, half-clothed, painted creature known as Violet Vere rose up mockingly before her eyes,--and the half-scornful, half-jesting words of Lady Winsleigh rang persistently in her ears.

On reaching home, Philip went straight to Neville's little study and remained with him in earnest conversation for a long time--while Thelma went to bed, and lay restless among her pillows, puzzling her brain with strange forebodings and new and perplexing ideas, till fatigue overpowered her, and she fell asleep with a few tear-drops wet on her lashes. And that night Philip wondered why his sweet wife talked so plaintively in her sleep,--though he smiled as he listened to the drift of those dove-like murmurings.

"No one knows how my boy loves me," sighed the dreaming voice. "No one in all the world! How should he tire? Love can never tire!"

Meanwhile, Lady Winsleigh, in the seclusion of her own boudoir, penned a brief note to Sir Francis Lennox as follows--

"DEAR OLD LENNIE,"

"I saw you in the stalls at the theatre this evening, though you pretended not to see me. What a fickle creature you are! not that I mind in the very least. The virtuous Bruce-Errington left his saintly wife and me to talk little plat.i.tudes together, while he, decorously accompanied by his secretary, went down to pay court to Violet Vere. How stout she is getting! Why don't you men advise her to diet herself? I know you also went behind the scenes--of course, you _are_ an _ami intime_--promising boy you are, to be sure! Come and lunch with me to-morrow, if you're not too lazy."

"Yours ever, CLARA."

She gave this missive to her maid, Louise Renaud, to post,--that faithful attendant took it first to her own apartment where she ungummed the envelope neatly by the aid of hot water, and read every word of it.

This was not an exceptional action of hers,--all the letters received and sent by her mistress were subjected to the same process,--even those that were sealed with wax she had a means of opening in such a manner that it was impossible to detect that they had been tampered with.

She was a very clever French maid was Louise,--one of the cleverest of her cla.s.s. Fond of mischief, ever suspicious, always on the alert for evil, utterly unscrupulous and malicious, she was an altogether admirable attendant for a lady of rank and fashion, her skill as a _coiffeur_ and needle-woman always obtaining for her the wages she so justly deserved. When will wealthy women reared in idleness and luxury learn the folly of keeping a trained spy attached to their persons?--a spy whose pretended calling is merely to arrange dresses and fripperies (half of which she invariably steals), but whose real delight is to take note of all her mistress's incomings and outgoings, tempers and tears--to watch her looks, her smiles and frowns,--and to start scandalous gossip concerning her in the servants' hall, from whence it gradually spreads to the society newspapers--for do you think these estimable and popular journals are never indebted for their "reliable"

information to the "honest" statements of discharged footman or valet?

Briggs, for instance, had tried his hand at a paragraph or two concerning the "Upper Ten," and with the aid of a dictionary, had succeeded in expressing himself quite smartly, though in ordinary conversation his h's were often lacking or superfluous, and his grammar doubtful. Whether he persuaded any editor to accept his literary efforts is quite another matter--a question to which the answer must remain for ever enveloped in mystery,--but if he _did_ appear in print (it is only an if!) he must have been immensely gratified to consider that his statements were received with gus...o...b.. at least half aristocratic London, and implicitly believed as having emanated from the "best authorities." And Louise Renaud having posted her mistress's letter at last, went down to visit Briggs in his private pantry, and to ask him a question.

"Tell me," she said rapidly, with her tight, prim smile. "You read the papers--you will know. What lady is that of the theatres--Violet Vere?"

Briggs laid down the paper he was perusing and surveyed her with a superior air.

"What, Vi?" he exclaimed with a lazy wink. "Vi, of the Hopperer-Buff?

You've 'erd of 'er surely, Mamzelle? No? There's not a man (as is worth calling a man) about town, as don't know _'er_! Dukes, Lords, an' Royal 'Ighnesses--she's the style for 'em! Mag-ni-ficent creetur! all legs and arms! I won't deny but wot I 'ave an admiration for 'er myself--I bought a 'arf-crown portrait of 'er quite recently." And Briggs rose slowly and searched in a mysterious drawer which he invariably kept locked.

"'Ere she is, as large as life, Mamzelle," he continued, exhibiting a "promenade" photograph of the actress in question. "There's a neck for you! There's form! Vi, my dear, I saloot you!" and he pressed a sounding kiss on the picture--"you're one in a million! Smokes and drinks like a trooper, Mamzelle!" he added admiringly, as Louise Renaud studied the portrait attentively. "But with all 'er advantages, you would not call 'er a lady. No--that term would be out of the question. She is wot we men would call an enchantin' female!" And Briggs kissed the tips of his fingers and waved them in the air as he had seen certain foreign gentlemen do when enthusiastic.

"I comprehend," said the French maid, nodding emphatically. "Then, if she is so, what makes that proud Seigneur Bruce-Errington visit her?"

Here she shook her finger at Briggs. "And leave his beautiful lady wife, to go and see her?" Another shake. "And that _miserable_ Sieur Lennox to go also? Tell me that!" She folded her arms, like Napoleon at St.

Helena, and smiled again that smile which was nothing but a sneer.

Briggs rubbed his nose contemplatively.

"Little Francis can go ennywheres," he said at last. "He's laid out a good deal of tin on Vi and others of 'er purfession. You cannot make enny-think of that young feller but a cad. I would not accept 'im for my pussonal attendant. No! But Sir Philip Bruce-Errington--" He paused, then continued, "Air you sure of your facts, Mamzelle?"

Mamzelle was so sure, that the bow on her cap threatened to come off with the determined wagging of her head.

"Well," resumed Briggs, "Sir Philip may, like hothers, consider it 'the thing' you know, to 'ang on as it were to Vi. But I _'ad_ thought 'im superior to it. Ah! poor 'uman natur, as 'Uxley says!" and Briggs sighed. "Lady Errington is a sweet creetur, Mamzelle--a _very_ sweet creetur! _Has_ a rule I find the merest nod of my 'ed a sufficient saloot to a woman of the aristocracy--but for _'er_, Mamzelle, I never fail to show 'er up with a court bow!" And involuntarily Briggs bowed then and there in his most elegant manner. Mamzelle tightened her thin lips a little and waved her hand expressively.

"She is an angel of beauty!" she said, "and Miladi Winsleigh is jealous--ah, _Dieu!_ jealous to death of her! She is innocent too--like a baby--and she worships her husband. That is an error! To worship a man is a great mistake--she will find it so. Men are not to be too much loved--no, no!"

Briggs smiled in superb self-consciousness. "Well, well! I will not deny, Mamzelle, that it spoils us," he said complacently. "It certainly spoils us! 'When lovely woman stoops to folly,'--the hold, hold story!"

"You will r-r-r-emember," said Mamzelle, suddenly stepping up very close to him and speaking with a strong accent, "what I have said to-night!

Monsieur Briggs, you will r-remember! There will be mees-cheef!

Yes--there will be mees-cheef to Sieur Bruce-Errington, and when there is,--I--I, Louise Renaud--I know who ees at the bottom of eet!"

So saying, with a whirl of her black silk dress and a flash of her white muslin ap.r.o.n, she disappeared. Briggs, left alone, sauntered to a looking-gla.s.s hanging on the wall and studied with some solicitude a pimple that had recently appeared on his clean-shaven face.

"Mischief!" he soliloquized. "I des-say! Whenever a lot of women gets together, there's sure to be mischief. Dear creeturs! They love it like the best Clicquot. Sprightly young pusson is Mamzelle. Knows who's at the bottom of 'eet,' does she! Well--she's not the only one as knows the same thing. As long as doors 'as cracks and key'oles, it ain't in the least difficult to find out wot goes on inside boo-dwars and drorin'-rooms. And 'ighly interestin' things one 'ears now and then--'ighly interestin'!"

And Briggs leered suavely at his own reflection, and then resumed the perusal of his paper. He was absorbed in the piquant, highly flavored details of a particularly disgraceful divorce case, and he was by no means likely to disturb himself from his refined enjoyment for any less important reason than the summons of Lord Winsleigh's bell, which rang so seldom that, when it did, he made it a point of honor to answer it immediately, for, as he said--

"His lordship knows wot is due to me, and I knows wot is due to 'im--therefore it 'appens we are able to ekally respect each other!"

CHAPTER XXII.

"If thou wert honorable, Thou would'st have told this tale for virtue, not For such an end thou seek'st; as base, as strange.

Thou wrong'st a gentleman who is as far From thy report, as thou from honor."

_Cymbeline._

Summer in Shakespeare Land! Summer in the heart of England--summer in wooded Warwickshire,--a summer brilliant, warm, radiant with flowers, melodious with the songs of the heaven--aspiring larks, and the sweet, low trill of the forest-hidden nightingales. Wonderful and divine it is to hear the wild chorus of nightingales that sing beside Como in the hot languorous nights of an Italian July--wonderful to hear them maddening themselves with love and music, and almost splitting their slender throats with the bursting bubbles of burning song,--but there is something, perhaps, more dreamily enchanting still,--to hear them warbling less pa.s.sionately but more plaintively, beneath the drooping leaf.a.ge of those grand old trees, some of which may have stretched their branches in shadowy benediction over the sacred head of the grandest poet in the world. Why travel to Athens,--why wander among the Ionian Isles for love of the cla.s.sic ground? Surely, though the clear-brained old Greeks were the founders of all n.o.ble literature, they have reached their fulminating point in the English Shakespeare,--and the Warwickshire lanes, decked simply with hawthorn and sweet-briar roses, through which Mary Arden walked leading her boy-angel by the hand, are sacred as any portion of that earth once trodden by the feet of Homer and Plato.

So, at least, Thelma thought, when, released from the bondage of London social life, she found herself once more at Errington Manor, then looking its loveliest, surrounded with a green girdle of oak and beech, and set off by the beauty of velvety lawns and terraces, and rose-gardens in full bloom. The depression from which she had suffered fell away from her completely--she grew light-hearted as a child, and flitted from room to room, singing to herself for pure gladness. Philip was with her all day now, save for a couple of hours in the forenoon which he devoted to letter-writing in connection with his Parliamentary aspirations,--and Philip was tender, adoring and pa.s.sionate as lovers may be, but as husbands seldom are. They took long walks together through the woods,--they often rambled across the fragrant fields to Anne Hathaway's cottage, which was not very far away, and sitting down in some sequestered nook, Philip would pull from his pocket a volume of the immortal Plays, and read pa.s.sages aloud in his fine mellow voice, while Thelma, making posies of the meadow flowers, listened entranced.

Sometimes, when he was in a more business-like humor, he would bring out Cicero's Orations, and after pondering over them for a while would talk very grandly about the way in which he meant to speak in Parliament.

"They want dash and fire there," he said, "and these qualities must be united with good common sense. In addressing the House, you see, Thelma, one must rouse and interest the men--not bore them. You can't expect fellows to pa.s.s a Bill if you've made them long for their beds all the time you've been talking about it."

Thelma smiled and glanced over his shoulder at "Cicero's Orations."

"And do you wish to speak to them like Cicero, my boy?" she said gently.

"But I do not think you will find that possible. Because when Cicero spoke it was in a different, age and to very different people--people who were glad to learn how to be wise and brave. But if you were Cicero himself, do you think you would be able to impress the English Parliament?"

"Why not, dear?" asked Errington with some fervor. "I believe that men, taken as men, _pur et simple_, are the same in all ages, and are open to the same impressions. Why should not modern Englishmen be capable of receiving the same lofty ideas as the antique Romans, and acting upon them?"

"Ah, do not ask _me_ why," said Thelma, with a plaintive little shake of her head--"for _I_ cannot tell you! But remember how many members of Parliament we did meet in London--and where were their lofty ideas?

Philip, had they any ideas at all, do you think? There was that very fat gentleman who is a brewer,--well, to hear him talk, would you not think all England was for the making of beer? And he does not care for the country unless it continues to consume his beer! It was to that very man I said something about _Hamlet_, and he told me he had no interest for such nonsense as Shakespeare and play-going--his time was taken up at the '_'Ouse_.' You see, he is a member of Parliament--yet it is evident he neither knows the language nor the literature of his country! And there must be many like him, otherwise so ignorant a person would not hold such a position--and for such men, what would be the use of a Cicero?"

Philip leaned back against the trunk of the tree under which they were sitting, and laughed.

"You may be right, Thelma,--I dare say you are. There's certainly too much beer represented in the House--I admit that. But, after all, trade is the great moving-spring of national prosperity,--and it would hardly be fair to refuse seats to the very men who help to keep the country going."

"I do not see that," said Thelma gravely,--"if those men are ignorant, why should they have a share in so important a thing as Government? They may know all about beer, and wool, and iron,--but perhaps they can only judge what is good for themselves, not what is best for the whole country, with all its rich and poor. I do think that only the wisest scholars and most intelligent persons should be allowed to help in the ruling of a great nation."

"But the people choose their own rulers," remarked Errington reflectively.