MAUDE'S DISOBEDIENCE.
Again the months went on, it may almost be said the years, and little took place worthy of record. Time obliterates as well as soothes; and Lady Hartledon had almost forgotten the circumstances which had perplexed and troubled her, for nothing more had come of them.
And Lord Hartledon? But for a certain restlessness, a hectic flush and a worn frame, betraying that the inward fever was not quenched, a startled movement if approached or spoken to unexpectedly, it might be thought that he also was at rest. There were no more anxious visits to Thomas Carr's chambers; he went about his ordinary duties, sat out his hours in the House of Lords, and did as other men. There was nothing very obvious to betray mental apprehension; and Maude had certainly dismissed the past, so far, from her mind.
Not again had Val gone down to Hartledon. With the exception of that short visit of a day or two, already recorded, he had not been there since his marriage. He would not go: his wife, though she had her way in most things, could not induce him to go. She went once or twice, in a spirit of defiance, it may be said, and meanwhile he remained in London, or took a short trip to the Continent, as the whim prompted him. Once they had gone abroad together, and remained for some months; taking servants and the children, for there were two children now; and the little fellow who had clasped the finger of Mr. Carr was a sturdy boy of three years old.
Lady Hartledon's health was beginning to fail. The doctors told her she must be more quiet; she went out a great deal, and seemed to live only in the world. Her husband remonstrated with her on the score of health; but she laughed, and said she was not going to give up pleasure just yet. Of course these gay habits are more easily acquired than relinquished. Lady Hartledon had fainting-fits; she felt occasional pain and palpitation in the region of the heart; and she grew thin without apparent cause. She said nothing about it, lest it should be made a plea for living more quietly; never dreaming of danger. Had she known what caused her brother's death her fears might possibly have been awakened. Lord Hartledon suspected mischief might be arising, and cautiously questioned her; she denied that anything was the matter, and he felt reassured. His chief care was to keep her free from excitement; and in this hope he gave way to her more than he would otherwise have done. But alas! the moment was approaching when all his care would be in vain; when the built-up security of years was destroyed by a single act of wilful disobedience to him. The sword so long suspended over his head, was to fall on hers at last.
One spring afternoon, in London, he was in his wife's sitting-room; the little room where you have seen her before, looking upon the Park. The children were playing on the carpet—two pretty little things; the girl eighteen months old.
"Take care!" suddenly called out Lady Hartledon.
Some one was opening the door, and the little Maude was too near to it. She ran and picked up the child, and Hedges came in with a card for his master, saying at the same time that the gentleman was waiting. Lord Hartledon held it to the fire to read the name.
"Who is it?" asked Lady Hartledon, putting the little girl down by the window, and approaching her husband. But there came no answer.
Whether the silence aroused her suspicions—whether any look in her husband's face recalled that evening of terror long ago—or whether some malicious instinct whispered the truth, can never be known. Certain it was that the past rose up as in a mirror before Lady Hartledon's imagination, and she connected this visitor with the former. She bent over his shoulder to peep at the card; and her husband, startled out of his presence of mind, tore it in two and threw the pieces into the fire.
"Oh, very well!" she exclaimed, mortally offended. "But you cannot blind me: it is your mysterious visitor again."
"I don't know what you mean, Maude. It is only someone on business."
"Then I will go and ask him his business," she said, moving to the door with angry resolve.
Val was too quick for her. He placed his back against the door, and lifted his hands in agitation. It was a great fault of his, or perhaps a misfortune—for he could not help it—this want of self-control in moments of emergency.
"Maude, I forbid you to interfere in this; you must not. For Heaven's sake, sit down and remain quiet."
"I'll see your visitor, and know, at last, what this strange trouble is. I will, Lord Hartledon."
"You must not: do you hear me?" he reiterated with deep emotion, for she was trying to force her way out of the room. "Maude—listen—I do not mean to be harsh, but for your own good I conjure you to be still. I forbid you, by the obedience you promised me before God, to inquire into or stir in this matter. It is a private affair of my own, and not yours. Stay here until I return."
Maude drew back, as if in compliance; and Lord Hartledon, supposing he had prevailed, quitted the room and closed the door. He was quite mistaken. Never had her solemn vows of obedience been so utterly despised; never had the temptation to evil been so rife in her heart.
She unlatched the door and listened. Lord Hartledon went downstairs and into the library, just as he had done the evening before the christening. And Lady Hartledon was certain the same man awaited him there. Ringing the nursery-bell, she took off her slippers, unseen, and hid them under a chair.
"Remain here with the children," was her order to the nurse who appeared, as she shut the woman into the room.
Creeping down softly she opened the door of the room behind the library, and glided in. It was a small room, used exclusively by Lord Hartledon, where he kept a heterogeneous collection of things—papers, books, cigars, pipes, guns, scientific models, anything—and which no one but himself ever attempted to enter. The intervening door between that and the library was not quite closed; and Lady Hartledon, cautiously pushed it a little further open. Wilful, unpardonable disobedience! when he had so strongly forbidden her! It was the same tall stranger. He was speaking in low tones, and Lord Hartledon leaned against the wall with a blank expression of face.
She saw; and heard. But how she controlled her feelings, how she remained and made no sign, she never knew. But that the instinct of self-esteem was one of her strongest passions, the dread of detection in proportion to it, she never had remained. There she was, and she could not get away again. The subtle dexterity which had served her in coming might desert her in returning. Had their senses been on the alert they might have heard her poor heart beating.
The interview did not last long—about twenty minutes; and whilst Lord Hartledon was attending his visitor to the door she escaped upstairs again, motioned away the nurse, and resumed her shoes. But what did she look like? Not like Maude Hartledon. Her face was as that of one upon whom some awful doom has fallen; her breath was coming painfully; and she kneeled down on the carpet and clasped her children to her beating heart with an action of wild despair.
"Oh, my boy! my boy! Oh, my little Maude!"
Suddenly she heard her husband's step approaching, and pushing them from her, rose and stood at the window, apparently looking out on the darkening world.
Lord Hartledon came in, gaily and cheerily, his manner lighter than it had been for years.
"Well, Maude, I have not been long, you see. Why don't you have lights?"
She did not answer: only stared straight out. Her husband approached her. "What are you looking at, Maude?"
"Nothing," she answered: "my head aches. I think I shall lie down until dinner-time. Eddie, open the door, and call Nurse, as loud as you can call."
The little boy obeyed, and the nurse returned, and was ordered to take the children. Lady Hartledon was following them to go to her own room, when she fell into a chair and went off in a dead faint.
"It's that excitement," said Val. "I do wish Maude would be reasonable!"
The illness, however, appeared to be more serious than an ordinary fainting-fit; and Lord Hartledon, remembering the suspicion of heart-disease, sent for the family doctor Sir Alexander Pepps, an oracle in the fashionable world.
A different result showed itself—equally caused by excitement—and the countess-dowager arrived in a day or two in hot haste. Lady Hartledon lay in bed, and did not attempt to get up or to get better. She lay almost as one without life, taking no notice of any one, turning her head from her husband when he entered, refusing to answer her mother, keeping the children away from the room.
"Why doesn't she get up, Pepps?" demanded the dowager, wrathfully, pouncing upon the physician one day, when he was leaving the house.
Sir Alexander, who might have been supposed to have received his baronetcy for his skill, but that titles, like kissing, go by favour, stopped short, took off his hat, and presumed that Lady Hartledon felt more comfortable in bed.
"Rubbish! We might all lie in bed if we studied comfort. Is there any earthly reason why she should stay there, Pepps?"
"Not any, except weakness."
"Except idleness, you mean. Why don't you order her to get up?"
"I have advised Lady Hartledon to do so, and she does not attend to me," replied Sir Alexander.
"Oh," said the dowager. "She was always wilful. What about her heart?"
"Her heart!" echoed Sir Alexander, looking up now as if a little aroused.
"Dear me, yes; her heart; I didn't say her liver. Is it sound, Pepps?"
"It's sound, for anything I know to the contrary. I never suspected anything the matter with her heart."
"Then you are a fool!" retorted the complimentary dowager.
Sir Alexander's temperament was remarkably calm. Nothing could rouse him out of his tame civility, which had been taken more than once for obsequiousness. The countess-dowager had patronized him in earlier years, when he was not a great man, or had begun to dream of becoming one.
"Don't you recollect I once consulted you on the subject—what's your memory good for? She was a girl then, of fourteen or so; and you were worth fifty of what you are now, in point of discernment."
The oracle carried his thoughts back, and really could not recollect it. "Ahem! yes; and the result was—was—"
"The result was that you said the heart had nothing the matter with it, and I said it had," broke in the impatient dowager.
"Ah, yes, madam, I remember. Pray, have you reason to suspect anything wrong now?"
"That's what you ought to have ascertained, Pepps, not me. What d'you mean by your neglect? What, I ask, does she lie in bed for? If her heart's right, there's nothing more the matter with her than there is with you."
"Perhaps your ladyship can persuade Lady Hartledon to exert herself," suggested the bland doctor. "I can't; and I confess I think that she only wants rousing."
With a flourish of his hat and his small gold-headed black cane the doctor bowed himself out from the formidable dowager. That lady turned her back upon him, and betook herself on the spur of the moment to Maude's room, determined to "have it out."
Curious sounds greeted her, as of some one in hysterical pain. On the bed, clasped to his mother in nervous agony, was the wondering child, little Lord Elster: words of distress, nay, of despair, breaking from her. It seemed, the little boy, who was rather self-willed and rebellious on occasion, had escaped from the nursery, and stolen to his mother's room. The dowager halted at the door, and looked out from her astonished eyes.
"Oh, Edward, if we were but dead! Oh, my darling, if it would only please Heaven to take us both! I couldn't send for you, child; I couldn't see you; the sight of you kills me. You don't know; my babies, you don't know!"
"What on earth does all this mean?" interrupted the dowager, stepping forward. And Lady Hartledon dropped the boy, and fell back on the bed, exhausted.
"What have you done to your mamma, sir?"
The child, conscious that he had not done anything, but frightened on the whole, repented of his disobedience, and escaped from the chamber more quickly than he had entered it. The dowager hated to be puzzled, and went wrathfully up to her daughter.
"Perhaps you'll tell me what's the matter, Maude."
Lady Hartledon grew calm. The countess-dowager pressed the question.
"There's nothing the matter," came the tardy and rather sullen reply.
"Why do you wish yourself dead, then?"
"Because I do."
"How dare you answer me so?"
"It's the truth. I should be spared suffering."
The countess-dowager paused. "Spared suffering!" she mentally repeated; and being a woman given to arriving at rapid conclusions without rhyme or reason, she bethought herself that Maude must have become acquainted with the suspicion regarding her heart.
"Who told you that?" shrieked the dowager. "It was that fool Hartledon."
"He has told me nothing," said Maude, in an access of resentment, all too visible. "Told me what?"
"Why, about your heart. That's what I suppose it is."
Maude raised herself upon her elbow, her wan face fixed on her mother's. "Is there anything the matter with my heart?" she calmly asked.
And then the old woman found that she had made a grievous mistake, and hastened to repair it.
"I thought there might be, and asked Pepps. I've just asked him now; and he's says there's nothing the matter with it."
"I wish there were!" said Maude.
"You wish there were! That's a pretty wish for a reasonable Christian," cried the tart dowager. "You want your husband to lecture you; saying such things."
"I wish he were hanged!" cried Maude, showing her glistening teeth.
"My gracious!" exclaimed the wondering old lady, after a pause. "What has he done?"
"Why did you urge me to marry him? Oh, mother, can't you see that I am dying—dying of horror—and shame—and grief? You had better have buried me instead."
For once in her selfish and vulgar mind the countess-dowager felt a feeling akin to fear. In her astonishment she thought Maude must be going mad.
"You'd do well to get some sleep, dear," she said in a subdued tone; "and to-morrow you must get up; Pepps says so; he thinks you want rousing."
"I have not slept since; it's not sleep, it's a dead stupor, in which I dream things as horrible as the reality," murmured Maude, unconscious perhaps that she spoke aloud. "I shall never sleep again."
"Not slept since when?"
"I don't know."
"Can't you say what you mean?" cried the puzzled dowager. "If you've any grievance, tell it out; if you've not, don't talk nonsense."
But Lady Hartledon, though thus sweetly allured to confession, held her tongue. Her half-scattered senses came back to her, and with them a reticence she would not break. The countess-dowager hardly knew whether she deserved pitying or shaking, and went off in a fit of exasperation, breaking in upon her son-in-law as he was busy looking over some accounts in the library.
"I want to know what is the matter with Maude."
He turned round in his chair, and met the dowager's flaxen wig and crimson face. Val did not know what was the matter with his wife any more than the questioner did. He supposed she would be all right when she grew stronger.
"She says it's you" said the gentle dowager, improving upon her information. "She has just been wishing you were hanged."
"Ah, you have been teasing her," he returned, with composure. "Maude says all sorts of things when she's put out."
"Perhaps she does," was the retort; "but she meant this, for she showed her teeth when she said it. You can't blind me; and I have seen ever since I came here that there was something wrong between you and Maude."
For that matter, Val had seen it too. Since the night of his wife's fainting-fit she had scarcely spoken a word to him; had appeared as if she could not tolerate his presence for an instant in her room. Lord Hartledon felt persuaded that it arose from resentment at his having refused to allow her to see the stranger. He rose from his seat.
"There's nothing wrong between me and Maude, Lady Kirton. If there were, you must pardon me for saying that I could not suffer any interference in it. But there is not."
"Something's wrong somewhere. I found her just now sobbing and moaning over Eddie, wishing they were both dead, and all the rest of it. If she goes on like this for nothing, she's losing her senses, that's all."
"She'll be all right when she's stronger. Pray don't worry her. She'll be well soon, I daresay. And now I shall be glad if you'll leave me, for I am very busy."
She did not leave him any the quicker for the request, but stayed to worry him, as it was in her nature to worry every one. Getting rid of her at last, he turned the key of the door, and wished her a hundred miles away.
The wish bore fruit. In a few days some news she heard regarding her eldest son—who was a widower now—took the dowager to Ireland, and Lord Hartledon wished he could as easily turn the key of the house upon her as he had turned that of the room.