A HORRIBLE SCANDAL.
Dull as the life of the little château on the lake necessarily was, yet Georgie Haggard did not suffer from ennui seemed in fact to rather revel in the quietude, and to luxuriate in the seclusion of the Swiss villa, after the fatigues and excitements of a busy London season and the turmoil and the incidental worries which must always attend an extended foreign tour, even when it is taken for pleasure, and when expense is no object. The position of the villa was sufficiently romantic; behind it were the snow-covered Alps, Mont Blanc always clearly visible; and all in front stretched the lake with its glorious blue water of that intense azure which is only seen on this Geneva lake. Why it should be so very blue is, and always will be, a mystery; of course it has been explained by scientific people in various manners satisfactory to themselves, but the fact remains that the lake is of a deeper blue than any other European water, and strange to say the intense colour is just as apparent in the shallowest parts. One may row over a place not more than a yard deep, where the bottom is clearly perceptible, but the waters are as blue as ever, a deep unnatural ultramarine blue, a blue which is seen only here and in the choicest specimens of the Oriental turquoise.
The establishment at the Villa Lambert consisted of the permanent staff of the place, the aged Savoyard and his wife, who spoke an abominable and unintelligible patois; these two people were the Gibeonites of the villa. At earliest dawn the pair rose and toiled till an hour after sunset. The man worked in the garden, broke the firewood, drew water from the well, attended to the ponies, and wore the face of a martyr. The woman got through the labours of four ordinary English servants, she was cook, housekeeper, housemaid, and an entire staff in herself; she spoke to no one save her morose husband and Haggard's polyglot Swiss servant; she scrubbed, she polished her numerous brazen pots and pans till they shone like mirrors; every particle of woodwork in the house was washed and polished by her, till it resembled that seen in the Dutch village of Broek. But the great delight of the pair was the waxing and polishing of the curious inlaid parquet flooring of the salon which looked upon the lake. Lucy Warrender had been considerably surprised when she saw this process for the first time. A strange hissing noise, which continued for some minutes, gradually diminished in intensity, and then ceased altogether, only to recommence with renewed vigour, surprised the two girls as they sat at breakfast. "What can it be, Georgie?" she remarked in astonishment to her cousin.
"It's in the next room, I think, dear," said the young matron; "but it's very easy to see." She opened the door of the salon. Husband and wife, with portentous gravity, the woman having her skirts well tucked up, their arms a-kimbo, were apparently skating up and down the room. To them it was evidently a very serious business; they never smiled, but the perspiration streamed from their foreheads as they flew up and down. A large flat brush was attached to each foot of either. They were polishing the floor, and their appearance was sufficiently ludicrous. Lucy looked at her cousin; the absurdity of the scene was too much for her; she closed the door and laughed till she cried.
Mrs. Haggard's maid was an invaluable servant, who understood her duties and never seemed to forget anything. Hephzibah seldom spoke; perhaps, like the parrot in the story, she thought the more. The girl was in her way religious. That valuable work, once so popular but now so seldom seen, "The Dairyman's Daughter," was her only literature, but she seemed to be never tired of reading it.
Capt, the valet, was equally quiet in his way, equally dull. He did not disdain to manufacture dainty little dishes for his young mistresses. He would row them about upon the lake. He was steward, footman, and general factotum. He never opened his mouth unless he was spoken to, and between him and Hephzibah there appeared to be a good understanding; as the reader is aware they were "keeping company."
Georgie and her cousin led quiet uneventful lives. They drove, they boated, they wandered in their large garden; but they made no new acquaintances, and they lived the lives of hermits. Once a week there was some slight excitement as to the arrival of news from the absent husband; his letters came with praiseworthy regularity. He had arrived safely in Mexico; the value of his property had increased enormously. He was in treaty with half-a-dozen persons for the sale of his estates. He cursed the delays of the Mexican lawyers, who seemed to do nothing but smoke big cigars and swing themselves to sleep all day in hammocks. He pathetically bemoaned the unavoidable separation from his dear Georgie. He wasn't having a bad time of it, the sport was undeniable. He had had a week with a friend at a place with an unpronounceable name. Then he described the delights of the opera house, and the great success of the new French dancer, Mademoiselle De Bondi. It seemed a pity to close finally, when land was going up in value every day, and so on, and so on, and he was his dear Georgie's affectionate husband. This was the burden of all his communications, one letter was very much like another. Haggard was evidently enjoying himself, and his affectionate Georgie, though longing for his return, did not grudge him his pleasures.
Strange to say, though by force of circumstances thrown into an eternal tête-à-tête, the cousins never quarrelled. Georgie read and re-read her husband's letters. Lucy devoured one yellow-covered novel after another, and time crept slowly on. They had been four months at the Swiss villa.
It was the end of August. The two girls, they were but girls, sat on the terrace which overhung the lake. The sun was setting, as they sat dreamily gazing upon the lovely scene, which had even distracted Lucy's attention from the last naturalistic novel, which lay open on her lap. As she looked intently at the blue waters of the lake she sighed deeply. Georgie turned towards her and was startled to see that her lovely dark brown eyes were filled with tears! Georgie placed her arm softly round the girl's neck, for she dearly loved her cousin, and gently said, "What ails you, darling?"
But Lucy answered never a word, a violent burst of weeping was her only reply.
Lucy, never over strong at any time, had lately caused her cousin considerable anxiety; womanlike, Lucy fought against the growing weakness; till now she had hidden her increasing melancholy under an appearance of forced gaiety, which had not deceived her cousin, but only increased her alarm.
The elder girl knelt at Lucy's feet—her own Lucy whom she still looked upon in her heart as a little child.
"Does anything worry you, darling?" she said.
No answer.
"Trust me, Lucy; we are always friends, let me share this trouble."
"I can't," faltered the girl, as she gnawed her lips, which trembled and turned pale; "I think I shall drown myself."
Then Georgie took the blanched hand of the motherless girl, and entreated her.
"Do tell me, darling; you must tell me, Lucy. Something is preying on your mind; trust me, do trust me, pet."
Not then did Lucy Warrender tell her trouble to her cousin. But that night, unwillingly and ungraciously enough, she told her grief. Pale as a ghost, her fingers intertwined in a convulsive grip, she knelt by her cousin's bed and told her shameful story. She made her pitiful appeal. With dilated eyes, Georgina listened in terror to Lucy's confidence. It was the old tale. Lucy was about to become a mother; this was all she told. Was it not enough? She looked imploringly up at her cousin as she whispered:
"You can save me, Georgie, if you will—if you love me, as I know you do; and if you won't, there is nothing left for me but the lake, the cold, cruel lake." Here she laughed hysterically, and nestled to her cousin's breast.
The elder girl was struck dumb. The shame of it, the bitter shame of this accursed thing.
There was a silence, only broken by the monotonous ticking of the carved Swiss clock and the deep sobs of the kneeling girl. There was a sudden whiz of spinning wheels—"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" screamed the little painted bird derisively, as he appeared for an instant from his tiny box to mark the hour. Both girls started at the inauspicious interruption.
"I save you, my darling! How can I save you? And father, poor father. Oh, Lucy! how could you—how could you so deceive us all? But he must be sent for—who is the man? He must marry you—he will marry you, of course, at once, this gentleman!"
But Lucy only sobbed the more.
"He will never marry me, Georgie. You can save me, you alone!"
She never named the man.
They talked on far into the night; and as they wept and whispered, the painted wooden demon ever and again sprang from his box and startled them with his discordant cry,
"Cuckoo! cuckoo!"
How could she refuse? Much against her will at last she yielded; she agreed to deceive the absent husband who trusted her—that heartless husband whom she idolized. From that day forward the sound of a cuckoo clock—the voice of the bird himself, as she heard him in the woods—sounded in her ear as the cry of a mocking devil. Little did she dream that, in weakly yielding to her cousin's piteous entreaty, she was sowing the seed of which she and hers should reap the bitter harvest.
What could she do, poor girl? She felt it was her duty. Who can tell if she erred? If so, it was on mercy's side. Next morning Lucy was herself again; she was once more the buoyant, merry girl, who smiled and chattered, and sang her little scraps of French songs, making the sunshine of the house. The rôles were changed. Never again shall the light of perfect happiness beam in Georgie Haggard's once honest eyes—those eyes now red with weeping, full of the secret sorrow of her cousin's bitter confidence. It is always painful to an honourable mind to play the part of a conspirator, and that thankless rôle was now forced upon poor Georgie—willy-nilly she had to do it. Lucy's fertile brain teemed with plan, with plot, with stratagem; certain of ultimately conquering the scruples of her gentle and loving cousin, she had evidently thought the matter out.
"We ought to trust nobody, you know," said the younger girl, who had suddenly assumed the management of everything. Startled and horrified, Georgie had become in regard to her cousin, that born intriguer, but as clay in the hands of the potter. "No, we ought not to, but we must. If ever a girl in this world could keep her tongue between her teeth, it's that pale Hephzibah of ours, and trust her we must, there's nothing else for it."
Lucy's tongue, once loosed, never seemed to tire. Her despondency and melancholy, her load of carking care, were all transferred as by the wave of a magician's wand to her cousin's shoulders. Alas! that cousin, that patient, loving cousin is perhaps destined to carry to her grave the fardel of another's weakness, the punishment of a worthless woman's fault.
Georgie, from that hour, was a changed girl. No more the once happy, loving eyes gazed on the younger girl with more than a mother's pride. From that day Georgie feared her cousin, and Lucy soon detected the new sentiment which she had unexpectedly inspired. The younger dictated, the elder acquiesced.
"Georgie," she once suddenly said, when they were alone together on the little platform which hung over the blue waters of the lake, "swear to me that you will never betray my secret." She clutched her cousin's hand with fierce insistance and stamped her little foot; "swear to me," she said in a hoarse whisper, "that never by word or letter you will reveal my secret—our secret," she added with a smile. If ever a pretty woman's smile was devilish, Lucy Warrender's was, as she insisted on this partnership in her guilt.
"Have I ever deceived you, Lucy, that you should want me to swear?"
"But you shall swear, Georgie," she reiterated almost savagely. "I have gone too far to hesitate at trifles now, and if you don't, you will never see me more," she added menacingly, as she pointed to the lake. Her little figure seemed to increase in height, so sternly determined was her aspect.
Georgie cowered in mingled anxiety and horror.
"Swear to me," she said, and she emphasized the command, for it was no longer an entreaty, by a fierce clutch at her cousin's wrist, "never to a soul till the day of your death will you breathe a word of it. Swear."
"I do swear it, Lucy," replied the dominated victim, and she buried her face in her hands.
The next day the two English ladies left the Villa Lambert in an open carriage.
The faithful Capt was told to be ready for their return in a few days' time. Considerably to his astonishment, he did not accompany them. As the carriage drove away the valet lighted one of those long and peculiarly nasty cigars which his countrymen seem so much to enjoy. He stood watching the carriage rapt in meditation, and his face wore a puzzled air. Then he did what no economic Switzer has probably done before or since—he actually flung away the still burning abomination. Then he spat upon the ground, and with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders re-entered the house.
The carriage took the ladies and their maid to a small town, some twelve miles off. They put up at the hotel. Next morning they took tickets by the steamer to Geneva, but less than half-way they got out at a small village, Auray, a little place totally devoid of interest, a mere hamlet never visited by the tourist; here they took a lodging, humble enough, but clean, in the house of a well-to-do widow. It was from this lodging that Georgie posted a letter containing the following advertisement, which appeared in the Times:
"At the Villa Lambert, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, the wife of Reginald Haggard, Esq., of a son. August 20, 18—."
The cousins exchanged rôles. Lucy became Madame Haggard, while Georgie was addressed by the discreet Hephzibah as Mademoiselle Warrender.
The whole thing had evidently been carefully planned by Lucy for some time previously. She had even with infinite art written numerous letters to their relatives and friends, in which she dilated upon the strange reticence of "dear Georgie" as to the whole matter. Needless to say these letters were all dated from the Villa Lambert. In her letter to Haggard, and in her more formal communication to the head of the family, the old earl at Walls End Castle, she explained how her cousin had kept the whole matter secret as a surprise for her husband; and how she, the guileless Lucy, had been unwillingly compelled to participate in the deception. All was thus satisfactorily explained as the whim of the young wife.
How she had purchased the silence of the invaluable maid it is difficult to say, whether by bribes, promises or cajolery; but Hephzibah Wallis was the servant of the Warrenders, born and bred on their land, discreet and silent.
In ten days they returned to the villa, Mrs. Haggard wrapped up as a young convalescent mother; the little bastard clothed in purple and fine linen as became his expectations as Reginald Haggard's heir. Georgie was pale, great black rings surrounded her eyes; she leant heavily on the arm of the invaluable Capt, as she stepped out of the carriage which had conveyed her from the nearest wharf. But Lucy's cheery laugh, though it failed to bring a smile to the face of her cousin, soon dominated the inhabitants of the Villa Lambert. Hephzibah, full of that added dignity which every woman assumes as the guardian of an infant, sat enthroned before a blazing fire, for in Switzerland in August the evenings are chilly. It was her custom never to address Mr. Capt, save on official matters, when a third person was present. On the present occasion she went further than this, for she declined even to answer him.
Capt had bustled about, had brought in the luggage, had handed their letters to his mistresses, had received the thanks of Miss Lucy Warrender for his tasteful floral decoration of the little salon, and had then suddenly subsided into an attitude of respectful admiration in front of Haggard's supposed heir. To no man or male person, save perhaps to their own fathers or their medical attendants, are very young infants objects of interest; we may therefore safely presume that Mr. Capt was either really wrapped up in the severe charms of the student of the "Dairyman's Daughter," or that he had some occult and ulterior reason for remaining to study the little group at the fireside.
"Ah, madame," exclaimed the major-domo, as he washed his hands in the air, "you will not think it a liberty when I respectfully felicitate you." But no answering smile appeared on Mrs. Haggard's face.
"Certainly not," burst in the younger girl; "you are the first of our friends to do so, Capt," she said, with an almost perceptible emphasis on the word; "but we are both of us knocked up with the bustle, so get us some tea at once."
The humbly sympathizing friend became once more the respectful servant, and hurried away to carry out his young mistress's behest.
"Rouse yourself, Georgie," exclaimed the younger girl impatiently, "you really look very little like the mother of a possible heir to an earldom," she maliciously added.
But Georgie made no reply to her cousin's taunt, she merely extended her colourless hands towards the blazing fire of logs.
A pile of letters lay upon the table; one by one Lucy's active fingers tore them open, one by one she read them to her silent cousin, enlivening them with a running fire of comment. As she read each one aloud, she planted a fresh dagger in her cousin's heart, but she went steadily on with an occupation which seemed congenial.
They were the usual formal congratulations for the most part: one, from the old squire, gently blamed his daughter for not having taken her father into her confidence; "but the ways of women, my dear, are mysterious, and I suppose that explains it." As Lucy read the words the tears ran down her cousin's face.
One other letter yet remained; it was addressed in a crabbed hand; its contents were as follows:
"Walls End Castle.
"My dear Child,
"Miss Warrender's letter has quite taken me by surprise; I had not the slightest inkling that I should have so soon to congratulate you both on the happy event. It gives me great pleasure to do so; though I have known you, my dear, for so short a time, you have inspired me with feelings of the liveliest affection. I need not say I am greatly gratified to hear that it is a little boy. The great terror of my old age, the not unremote possibility of the extinction of my house, which always preyed upon my mind, is now removed. I shall hope to welcome the little man here ere long, and with affectionate remembrance to your cousin,
"I am, my dear child,
"Yours affectionately,
"Pit Town."
The ladies had retired for the night. A heavy mist hung over the lake, but a red spark moved slowly up and down the little terrace in front of the Villa Lambert; the spark indicated the presence of Mr. Capt, who was awaiting with lover-like impatience the arrival of the discreet Hephzibah. At length she appeared, muffled in a heavy shawl.
"Have done, do, Capt," said the maiden with indignation, as the valet imprinted a salute on her pallid lips.
"I haven't commenced, my beloved, yet," retorted he. "Will it be an indiscretion to hope that Miss Hephzibah has enjoyed herself, and that the separation from her beloved Maurice has produced ever so slight a depression?" said he as he attempted to take her hand.
"Stuff," replied the Englishwoman with an indignant snort.
Here the conversation took a distinctly amatory turn, and would probably hardly interest the reader. But, under the influences of the blind god, the stern student of the "Dairyman's Daughter" seemed to thaw. She took the proffered arm of her adorer, and, like all women in love, seemed to derive a pleasure from the peculiarly pungent aroma of his cigar.
"And how did we pass our time, my Hephzibah; did we amuse ourselves? Have you nothing to tell me, my beloved, nothing to confide to me?"
The lady's maid shook her head. "Except that I've been worked off my legs as you may suppose, what can I have to tell you?"
"Ah!" remarked the valet. "I can fancy that my Hephzibah always fulfils her duties to her mistress, but perhaps my too perfect angel forgets that between betrothed persons there should be no secrets."
"You don't mean to say you're jealous, Capt?" she exclaimed, as she raised her face to his.
"My love, you are discretion itself; I know you never betray a secret."
"If I had one, Capt, you would worm it out of me," she said with a smile and a perceptible pressure on his arm.
"Yes, my love, I should worm it out," he replied with intention.
Hephzibah took no notice of this remark.
"The mist is very damp, and I am very tired, Maurice; I must be going in; my mistress will wonder what has become of me, so good-night."
The valet kissed the girl. "Good-bye, my love," he said. "I think you had better have trusted me. Good-bye."
"Good-night, or good-bye, if you prefer it, Mr. Capt," replied the lady's maid with dignity.
"Good-bye, my dear, good-bye, till we meet again."
Hephzibah hurried into the house.
The valet continued his walk up and down the little terrace; he was immersed in thought, he still smoked his cigar, but unconsciously; he was suddenly roused from his reflections by the fire almost touching his lips. With a curse, he flung the end into the waters, and watched it disappear with a hiss. Then he walked briskly into the house.
The next morning Mr. Capt had disappeared. There was nothing wrong with the plate. On the carefully arranged breakfast table lay an envelope directed to Mrs. Haggard; it contained the man's account book, balanced to a farthing; a small sum of money due from him to his mistress, and his keys.
"What does he mean by this?" said Lucy to her cousin.
Mrs. Haggard made no answer, but turning to Hephzibah, she said coldly, "Where is Capt?"
"Please, ma'am, I don't know; he's taken his things with him, and I think he is gone. I hope there is nothing wrong," said the girl, her pale face working with suppressed emotion.
Then Mrs. Haggard fainted.
