A MEETING ON THE STAIRS.
Since first I saw your face
I resolved to honour and renown you;
If now I be disdained,
I wish my heart had never known you.
The Sun whose beams most glorious are
Rejecteth no beholder,
And your sweet beauty past compare
Made my poor eyes the bolder.
Thomas Ford.
I have often wondered why, in the ordering of human destinies, some special Providence, some guardian spirit who is gifted with foreknowledge, is not mercifully told off to each of us so to order the trifles of our lives that they may combine to the working together of our weal, instead of conspiring, as they too often and too evidently do, for our woe.
Look back upon your own life, and upon the lives of those whose story you have known the most intimately, and see what straws, what nonentities, what absurd trivialities have brought about the most important events of existence. Recollect how, and in what manner, those people whom it would have been well for you never to have known came across you. How those whose influence over you is for good were kept out of your way at the very crisis of your life. Think what a different life you would have led; I do not mean only happier, but how much better and purer, if some absurd trifle had not seemed to play into the hands, as it were, of your destiny, and to set you in a path whereof no one could at the time foresee the end.
Some one had looked out their train in last month's Bradshaw, unwitting of the autumn alterations, and was kept from you till the next day. You took the left instead of the right side of the square on your way home, or you stood for a minute gossiping at your neighbour's door, and there came by some one who ultimately altered and embittered your whole life, and who, but for that accidental meeting, you would, probably, never have seen again; or some evil adviser was at hand, whilst one whose opinion you revered, and whose timely help would have saved you from taking that false step you ever after regretted, was kept to the house, by Heaven knows what ridiculous trifle—a cold in the head, or finger-ache—and did not see you to warn and to keep you back from your own folly until it was too late.
People say these things are ordered for us. I do not know; it may be so, but sometimes it seems rather as if we were irresponsible puppets, tossed and buffeted about, blindly and helplessly, upon life's river, as fluttering dead leaves are danced wildly along the swift current of a Highland stream. Such a trifle might have saved us! yet there was no pitying hand put forth to avert that which, in our human blindness, appeared to us to be as unimportant as any other incident of our lives.
Life is an unsolvable problem. Shall we ever, in some other world, I wonder, read its riddles aright?
All these moral dissertations have been called forth because Vera Nevill went to stay for a week at Shadonake. If she had known—what we none of us know—the future, she doubtless would have stayed away. Fate—a beneficent fate, indeed—made, I am bound to confess, a valiant effort in her behalf. Little Minnie fell ill the day before her departure; and the symptoms were such that everybody in the house believed that she was sickening for scarlet fever. The doctor, however, having been hastily summoned, pronounced the disease to be an infantile complaint of a harmless and innocuous nature, which he dignified by the delusively poetical name of "Rosalia."
"It is not infectious, Mr. Smee, I hope?" asked Marion, anxiously. "Nothing to prevent my sister going to stay at the Millers' to morrow?"
"Not in the least infectious, Mrs. Daintree, and anybody in the house can go wherever they like, except the child herself, who must be kept in a warm room for two days, when she will probably be quite well again."
"I am glad, dear, there is nothing to put a stop to your visit; it would have been such a pity," said Marion, in her blindness, to her sister afterwards.
So the fates had a game of pitch and toss with Vera's future, and settled it amongst them to their own satisfaction, probably, but not, it will be seen, for Vera's own good or ultimate happiness.
On the afternoon of the 3rd day of January, therefore, Eustace Daintree drove his sister-in-law over to Shadonake in the open basket pony-carriage, and deposited her and her box safely at the stone-colonnaded door of that most imposing mansion, which she entered exactly ten minutes before the dressing-bell rang, and was conducted almost immediately upstairs to her own room.
Some twenty minutes later there are still two ladies sitting on in the small tea-room, where it is the fashion at Shadonake to linger between the hours of five and seven, who alone have not yet moved to obey the mandate of the dressing-bell.
"What is the good of waiting?" says Beatrice, impatiently; "the train is often late, and, besides, he may not come till the nine o'clock train."
"That is just what I want to wait for," answers Helen Romer. "I want just to hear if the carriage has come back, and then I shall know for certain."
"Well, you know how frightfully punctual papa is, and how angry it makes him if anybody is late."
"Just two minutes more, Beatrice; I can dress very quickly when once I set to work," pleads Helen.
Beatrice sits down again on the arm of the sofa, and resigns herself to her fate; but she looks rather annoyed and vexed about it.
Mrs. Romer paces the room feverishly and impatiently.
"What did you think of Miss Nevill?" asks Beatrice.
"I could hardly see her in her hat and that thick veil; but she looked as if she were handsome."
"She is beautiful!" says Beatrice, emphatically, "and uncle Tom says——"
"Hush!" interrupts Helen, hurriedly. "Is not that the sound of wheels?—Yes, it is the carriage."
She flies to the door.
"Take care, Helen," says Beatrice, anxiously; "don't open the door wide, don't let the servants think we have been waiting, it looks so bad—so—so unlady-like."
But Helen Romer does not even hear her; she is listening intently to the approaching sounds, with the half-opened door in her hand.
The tea-room door opens into a large inner hall, out of which leads the principal staircase; the outer or entrance-hall is beyond; and presently the stopping of the carriage, the opening and shutting of doors from the servants' departments, and all the usual bustle of an arrival are heard.
The two girls stand close together listening, Beatrice hidden in the shadow of the room.
"There are two voices!" cries Helen, in a disappointed tone; "he is not alone!"
"I suppose it is Mr. Pryme—mamma said he might come by this train," answers Beatrice, so quietly that no one could ever have guessed how her heart was beating.
"Helen, do let us run upstairs; I really cannot stay. Let me go, at all events!" she adds, with a sudden agony of entreaty as the guests were heard advancing towards the door of the inner hall. And as Helen made not the slightest sign of moving, Beatrice slipped past her and ran lightly and swiftly across the hall upstairs, and disappeared along the landing above just as Captain Kynaston and Mr. Herbert Pryme appeared upon the scene below.
No such scruples of modesty troubled Mrs. Romer. As the young men entered the inner hall preceded by the butler, who was taking them up to their rooms, and followed by two footmen who were bearing their portmanteaus, Helen stepped boldly forward out of the shelter of the tea-room, and held out her hand to Captain Kynaston.
"How do you do? How late your train is."
Maurice looked distinctly annoyed, but of course he shook hands with her.
"How are you, Mrs. Romer? I did not expect you to be here till to-morrow. Yes, we are late," consulting his watch; "only twenty minutes to dress in—I must look sharp."
Meanwhile the stranger, Mr. Pryme, was following the butler upstairs.
Helen lowered her voice.
"I must speak to you a minute, Maurice; it is six weeks since we have met, and to meet in public would be too trying. Please dress as quickly as ever you can; I know you can dress quickly if you choose; and wait for me here at the bottom of the stairs—we might get just three minutes together before dinner."
There were the footmen and the portmanteaus within six yards of them, and Mr. Pryme and the butler still within earshot. What was Maurice to do? He could not really listen to a whole succession of prayers, and entreaties, and piteous appeals. There was neither the time, nor was it the place, for either discussion or remonstrance. All he could do was to nod a hasty assent to her request.
"Then I must make haste," he said, and ran quickly upstairs in the wake of the other guest.
The staircase at Shadonake was very wide and very handsome, and thoroughly in keeping with the spacious character of the house. It consisted of one wide flight of shallow steps, with a richly-carved balustrade on either side of it, leading straight down from a large square landing above. Both landing and steps were carpeted with thick velvet-pile carpet, so that no jarring footfall was ever heard upon them. The hall into which the staircase led was paved in coloured mosaic tiles, and was half covered over with rich Persian rugs. A great many doors, nearly all the sitting-rooms of the house, in fact, opened into it, and the blank spaces of the wall were filled in with banks of large handsome plants, palms and giant ferns, and azaleas in full bloom, which were daily rearranged by the gardeners in every available corner.
At the foot of the staircase, and with his back to it, leaning against the balustrade, stood Captain Kynaston, exactly four minutes before the dinner was announced.
Most people were in the habit of calling Maurice a good-looking man, but if anybody had seen him now for the first time it is doubtful whether they would have endorsed that favourable opinion upon his personal appearance. A thoroughly ill-tempered expression of face seldom enhances any one's good looks, and if ever a man looked in a bad temper, Maurice Kynaston did so at the present moment.
He stood with his hands in his trousers pockets, and his eyes fixed upon his own boots, and he looked as savage as it was well possible for a man to look.
He was waiting here for Helen, because he had told her that he would do so, and when Captain Kynaston promised anything to a lady he always kept his word.
But to say that he hated being there is but a mild term for the rage and disgust he experienced.
To be waylaid and attacked thus, directly he had set foot in the house, with a stranger and three servants looking on so as to render him absolutely helpless; to be uncomfortably hurried over his toilet, and inveigled into a sort of rendezvous at the foot of a public staircase, where a number of people might at any minute enter from any one of the six or eight surrounding doors, was enough of itself to try his temper; but when he came to consider how Helen, in thus appropriating him and making him obey her caprices, was virtually breaking her side of the treaty between them; that she was exacting from him the full amount of servitude and devotion which an open engagement would demand, and yet she had agreed to deny any such engagement between them openly—it was, he felt, more than he could continue to bear with meekness.
Meekness, indeed, was in no way Maurice Kynaston's distinguishing characteristic. He was masterful and imperious by nature; to be the slave of any woman was neither pleasant nor profitable to him. Honour, indeed, had bound him to Helen, and had he loved her she might have led him. Her position gave her a certain hold over him, and she knew how to appeal to his heart; but he loved her not, and to control his will and his spirit was beyond her power.
Maurice said to himself that he would put a stop to this system of persecution once and for all—that this interview, which she herself had contrived, should be made the opportunity of a few forcible words, that should frighten her into submission.
So he stood fretting, and fuming, and raging, waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.
There was a soft rustle, as of a woman's dress, behind him. He turned sharply round.
Halfway down the stairs came a woman whom he had never seen before. A black velvet dress, made high in the throat, with a wide collar of heavy lace upon her shoulders, hung clingingly about the outlines of her tall and perfect figure; her hands, with some lace ruffles falling about her wrists, were simply crossed before her. The light of a distant hanging-lamp shone down upon her, just catching one diamond star that glittered among the thick coils of her hair—she wore no other ornament. She came down the stairs slowly, almost lingeringly, with a certain grace in her movements, and without a shadow of embarrassment or self-consciousness.
Maurice drew aside to let her pass him—looking at her—for how could he choose but look? But when she reached the bottom of the steps, she turned her face towards him.
"You are Maurice—are you not?" she said, and put forth both her hands towards him.
An utter bewilderment as to who she was made him speechless; his mind had been full of Helen and his own troubles; everything else had gone out of his head. She coloured a little, still holding out her hands to him.
"I am Vera," she said, simply, and there was a little deprecating appeal in the words as though she would have added, "Be my friend."
He took the hands—soft slender hands that trembled a very little in his grasp—within his own, and some nameless charm in their gentle touch brought a sudden flush into his face, but no appropriate words concerning his pleasure at meeting her, or his gratification at their future relations, fell from Maurice Kynaston's lips. He only held her thus by her hands, and looked at her—looked at her as if he could never look at her enough—from her head to her feet, and from her feet up again to her head, till a sudden wave of colour flooded her face at the earnestness of his scrutiny.
"Vera—Vera Nevill!" was all he said; and then below his breath, as though his absolute amazement were utterly irrepressible: "By Jove!" And Vera laughed softly at the thoroughly British character of the exclamation.
"How like an Englishman!" she said. "An Italian would have paid me fifty pretty compliments in half the time you have taken just to stare at me!"
"What a charming tableau vivant!" exclaims a voice above them as Mrs. Romer comes down the staircase. "You really look like a scene in a play! Pray don't let me disturb you."
"I am making friends with my sister-in-law that is to be, Mrs. Romer," says Maurice, who has dropped Vera's hands with a guilty suddenness, and now endeavours to look completely at his ease—an effort in which he signally fails.
"Were you? Dear me! I thought you and Miss Nevill were practising the pose of the 'Huguenots'!"
Now the whole armoury of feminine weapons—impertinence, spite, and bad manners, born of jealousy—is utterly beneath the contempt of such a woman as Vera; but she is no untried, inexperienced country girl such as Mrs. Romer imagines her to be disconcerted or stricken dumb by such an attack. She knew instantly that she had been attacked, and in what manner, and she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
"I have never seen that picture, the 'Huguenots,' Mrs. Romer," she said, quietly; "do you think there is a photograph or a print of it at Kynaston, Maurice? If so, you or John must show it to me."
And how Mrs. Romer hated her then and there, from that very minute until her life's end, it would not be easy to set forth!
The utter insouciance, the lady-like ignoring of Helen's impertinence, the quiet assumption of what she knew her own position in the Kynaston family to be, down to the sisterly "Maurice," whereby she addressed the man whom in public, at least, Mrs. Romer was forced to call by a more formal name—all proved to that astute little woman that Vera Nevill was no ordinary antagonist, no village maiden to be snubbed or patronised at her pleasure, but a woman of the world, who understood how to fight her own battles, and was likely, as she was forced to own to herself, to "give back as good as she got."
Not another single word was spoken between them, for at that very minute a door was thrown open, and the whole of the party in the house came trooping forth in pairs from the drawing-room in a long procession on their way to the dining-room.
First came Mr. Miller with old Mrs. Macpherson on his arm. Then Mr. Pryme and Miss Sophy Macpherson; her sister behind with Guy Miller; Beatrice, looking melancholy, with the curate in charge; and her mother last with Sir John, who had come over from Kynaston to dinner. Edwin Miller, the second son, by himself brought up the rear.
There was some laughter at the expense of the three defaulters, who, of course, were supposed to have only just hurried downstairs.
"Aha! just saved your soup, ladies!" cried Mr. Miller, laughingly. "Fall in, fall in, as best you can!"
Mrs. Miller came to the rescue, and, by a rapid stroke of generalship, marshalled them into their places.
Miss Nevill, of course, was a stranger; Helen had been on intimate terms with them all for years; Vera, besides, was standing close to Maurice.
"Please take in Miss Nevill, Captain Kynaston; and Edwin, my dear, give your arm to Mrs. Romer."
Edwin, who was a pleasant-looking boy, with plenty to say for himself, hurried forward with alacrity; and Helen had to accept her fate with the best grace she could.
"Well, how did you get on with Vera, and how did you like her?" asked Sir John, coming round to his brother's side of the table when the ladies had left the room. He had noted with pleasure that Vera and Maurice had talked incessantly throughout the dinner.
"My dear fellow!" cried Maurice, heartily, "she is the handsomest woman I ever met in my life! I give you my word that, when she introduced herself to me coming downstairs, I was so surprised, she was so utterly different to what I and the mother have been imagining, that upon my life I couldn't speak a word—I could do nothing but stare at her!"
"You like her, then?" said his brother, smiling, well pleased at his openly expressed admiration.
"I think you are a very lucky fellow, old man! Like her! of course I do; she's a downright good sort!"
And if Sir John was slightly shocked at the irreverence of alluding to so perfect and pure a woman as his adored Vera by so familiar a phrase as "a good sort," he was, at all events, too pleased by Maurice's genuine approval of her to find any fault with his method of expressing it.