CHAPTER XII.
Miss Gaisford had found a quiet nook in the lower grounds of the hotel, well out of view from the windows, where there was little likelihood of being disturbed by the ordinary run of visitors. Now and then, a newly married couple, or a pair of turtle-doves who were not yet married, but hoped to be before long, would invade her solitude; but such momentary interruptions served rather to amuse her than otherwise. ‘Here comes another peripatetic romance,’ she would remark to herself. ‘Now, if those two young people would only come and sit down beside me, and tell me all about it, first one telling me a bit and then the other, till I knew their story by heart, they would do me a real kindness, and save me a lot of invention. All newly married couples ought to be compelled to write their Love Memoirs, which should afterwards be bound in volumes (calf), and kept in a sort of Record Office, where we poor story-tellers could have access to them whenever we happened to be hard up for a plot.’
To this sheltered nook a table and chair had been brought from the hotel, and here, on this Friday forenoon, Miss Gaisford was busy writing. But she laid down her pen more frequently than was usual with her when so employed, and had little fits of musing between times.
‘I’m not i’ the mood this morning, that’s certain,’ she said at last. ‘My thoughts seem all in a muddle. I can’t get Mora out of my head. She puzzles me and makes me uneasy. It’s mental illness, not bodily, that keeps her to her room. Colonel Woodruffe had a long talk with her on Wednesday, and then drove her back to the hotel, which he would scarcely have done, I think, if he had been decisively and finally rejected. There’s a mystery somewhere; but Mora is a woman whom one cannot question. I have no doubt she will tell me all about it when she feels herself at liberty to do so. Meanwhile, it’s a good lesson in curbing that curiosity which certain cynical moralists of the inferior sex have had the unblushing effrontery to affirm to be the bane of ours.—But this is frivolity.’ She dipped her pen in the inkstand, and running her eyes over the few lines last written, read them half aloud:
‘“Next moment, Montblazon’s equipage, which was drawn by six coal-black steeds, and preceded by two outriders in livery, drew up at the palace gates. As the Duc alighted from his chariot, a woman, young and beautiful, though in rags, pressed through the crowd till she was almost near enough to have touched him. ‘For the love of heaven, monseigneur!’ she cried in piteous accents. A gorgeously attired lackey would have thrust her back, but an imperious gesture of Montblazon’s jewelled hand arrested him. There was something in the expression of the woman’s face which struck him as though it were a face seen in a dream long ago. Montblazon, who knew not what it was to carry money about his person, extracted from the pocket of his embroidered vest a diamond—one of a handful which he was in the habit of carrying loose about him to give away as whim or charity dictated—and dropped it into the woman’s extended palm. Then without waiting for her thanks, he strode forward up the palace stairs, and a few moments later found himself in a saloon which was lighted by myriads of perfumed wax tapers set in sconces of burnished silver. Montblazon, who towered a head taller than any one there, gazed round him with a lurid smile.”’
‘Yes, I think that will do,’ said Miss Pen as she took another dip of ink. ‘“Lurid smile” is not amiss.’
She was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. She looked up, and as she did so, a shade of annoyance flitted across her face. ‘I thought that I was safe from her here. I wonder how she has found me out,’ she said to herself.
The object of these remarks was none other than Lady Renshaw. It was quite by accident that she had discovered Miss Gaisford. The news told her by Mr Etheridge had excited her in no common degree; there was no one in the hotel that she cared to talk to; so, finding it impossible to stay indoors, she had sought relief in the open air. She was expecting Bella and Mr Golightly back every minute; meanwhile, she was wandering aimlessly about the grounds, and brightened up at the sight of Miss Penelope. Here at least was some one she knew—some one to talk to. She advanced smilingly. ‘What a number of correspondents you must have, dear Miss Gaisford,’ said her ladyship after a few words of greeting. ‘You seem to spend half your time in writing.’ She was glancing sharply at Miss Pen’s closely covered sheets of manuscript.
‘Yes, I do write a good deal,’ answered the latter as she began to put her sheets in order. ‘I rather like it. Between you and me, when Septimus is busy other ways, or is enjoying his holiday, I sometimes try my hand at writing a sermon for him.’
‘Really now! And do the congregation never detect the difference between your discourses and his?’
‘I don’t think they trouble their heads a bit about it. So long as we don’t make use of too many hard words, and get the sermon well over in twenty minutes, they are perfectly satisfied.’
Lady Renshaw was in possession of a certain secret, and although she had given her word that she would not reveal it for the present, it was too much to expect of poor human nature that she should not make some allusion to it, if the opportunity were given her, especially in conversation with another of her own sex.
‘I understand that we are likely to have one or two important arrivals at the hotel this evening,’ she remarked with studied indifference, as she shook a little dust off the flounces of her dress.
‘Indeed. A Russian Prince, an Ambassador, an Emperor travelling incog., or whom?’
‘Dear me, no!—nobody of that kind. But my lips are sealed. I must not say more.’
‘Then why did you say anything?’ remarked Miss Pen to herself.
‘Still, when you come to know, I feel sure that you will be surprised—very greatly surprised. Strange events may happen here before to-morrow. But I dare not say more, so you must not press me.’
‘I won’t,’ responded Miss Pen emphatically.
‘Why, I declare, yonder come my darling Bella and Mr Golightly! I’ve been looking out for them this hour or more.—You will excuse me, my dear Miss Gaisford, I’m sure.’
‘Certainly,’ was the uncompromising reply.
Her ladyship smiled and nodded, and then tripped away as lightly and gracefully as a youthful elephant might have done.
‘Now, what can the old nincompoop mean?’ asked Miss Pen of herself. ‘That there is some meaning in her words, I do not doubt. She is no friend of Mora, I feel sure. Can what she said have any reference to her? But I’m altogether in the dark, and it’s no use worrying. If there’s trouble in the wind, we shall know about it soon enough.’
‘He has proposed—I know it from his manner,’ exclaimed Lady Renshaw to her niece as soon as they were alone in the hotel; ‘so it’s no use your telling me that he hasn’t.’
‘I had no intention of telling you anything of the kind,’ answered the girl demurely.
‘What did you say to him in reply?’
‘Very little. You told me not to say much. Besides,’ added Bella slily, ‘he seemed to like to do most of the talking himself.’
‘Men generally do at such times.—But didn’t the young man say anything about speaking to me?’
‘O yes, aunt.’
‘And very properly so, too. But you need not refer him to me just at present; I will give you a hint when the proper time arrives. Meanwhile, I hope you will not allow yourself to get entangled to such an extent that you won’t be able to extricate yourself, should it become necessary to do so.’
Bella was taken with a sudden fit of sneezing.
‘Mr Archie Ridsdale’s affair is by no means a fait accompli,’ continued her ladyship; ‘and we shall see what we shall see in the course of the next few hours.’ She nodded her head with an air of mystery and tried to look oracular.
Presently Bella pleaded a headache and escaped to her own room.
Clarice was at the station at least twenty minutes before the train by which Archie was to travel could by any possibility arrive. It showed great remissness on the part of the railway people, considering how anxious she was for her sweetheart’s arrival, that this very train should be five minutes and fourteen seconds late. Such gross disregard of the feelings of young ladies in love ought to be severely dealt with.
At length the train steamed slowly in, with Archie’s head and half his long body protruding from the window, to the annoyance of every other passenger in the compartment. He was out of the train before any one else, and as it glided slowly forward before coming to a stand, those inside were favoured with a sort of panoramic glimpse of a very pretty girl being seized, hugged, and unblushingly kissed by a young fellow, to whom, at that moment, the code of small social proprieties was evidently a dead letter.
‘What about your father?’ asked Clarice as soon as she had recovered her breath in some measure and had given a tug or two to her disarranged attire.
‘What about him?’ queried Archie, who was looking after his portmanteau.
‘Of course he has not come down by this train, or you would have travelled together. But I suppose you know he’s expected at the Palatine to-night—at least so Mr Etheridge told me.’
‘Etheridge! is he here?’
‘Yes; didn’t you know? He reached here a few hours after you left for London. He brought a letter for you from your father all the way from Spa.’
Archie scratched his head: even heroes go through that undignified process occasionally. ‘Upon my word, I don’t know what to make of the governor,’ he said. ‘He seems to get more crotchety every day. Here, according to what you say, he sends poor Etheridge all the way from Spa as the bearer of a letter which any other man would have intrusted to the post; then he apparently changes his mind and telegraphs for me to meet him in London. To London I go, and there wait, dangling my heels; but no Mr Governor turns up. Then Blatchett receives a telegram from somewhere—by-the-bye, he never told me where he did receive it from—in which I am instructed to return to Windermere immediately, and am told that my long-lost papa will meet his boy there. It’s jolly aggravating, to say the least of it.’
‘Mr Etheridge says that Sir William may perhaps want to see me. O Archie, I was never so frightened in my life!’
He soothed and petted her after the fashion which young men are supposed to find effectual in such cases, and presently they drew up at the hotel.
They went at once to the sitting-room, the only inmates of which they found to be Lady Renshaw, Bella, and Mr Golightly. The last had come to inquire whether Miss Wynter would go for a row on the lake after dinner. If she would, there was a particular boat which he would like to engage beforehand.
Lady Renshaw was doubtful. She was inclined to think that Bella had caught cold on the lake in the morning. She had sneezed more than once. It would scarcely be advisable, her ladyship thought, for Miss Wynter to venture on the water again in the chill of the evening. Besides, the clouds looked threatening, and to be caught in a storm on the lake, she had been told, was dangerous.
In short, without exactly wishing to discourage Mr Golightly, she was desirous of damping his ardour in some measure for the time being. Till she should be able to judge how events were likely to shape themselves, he must not be allowed too many opportunities of being alone with Bella; perhaps even, at the end, it might become necessary to give him the cold shoulder altogether.
Lady Renshaw was in the midst of her platitudes when Archie and Clarice entered the room. On their way from the station Clarice had spoken of her sister’s indisposition, so that Archie was prepared not to find Madame De Vigne downstairs; but probably he had hardly counted upon coming so unexpectedly on her ladyship. As, however, she was there, the only possibility left him was to look as pleasant as possible.
He greeted her with as much cordiality as he could summon up at a moment’s notice, and then he turned to Miss Wynter, whose pretty face he was really pleased to see again. There was a hidden meaning laughing out of his eyes as he shook hands with her. It was as though he had said: ‘You naughty girl, I should like to spoil your little game, just for the fun of the thing, but I won’t.’
He did spoil it, however, a moment later, all unwittingly. Turning to Dick, who appeared to be gazing abstractedly out of one of the windows, he gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder. ‘Dulcimer, old chappie, how are you? Delighted to see you again.’
Next moment he could have bitten his tongue out.
‘Dulcimer!’ shrieked her ladyship, whose ears had caught the name.
The young people turned and stared at each other in blank dismay. Dick shrugged his shoulders, and was the first to recover his sang-froid. The moment had come for him to take the bull by the horns.
‘Dulcimer!’ again exclaimed her ladyship in a tone of hopeless bewilderment, that was at once both ludicrous and pathetic, as she glanced at the dismayed faces around her.
‘Even so, Lady Renshaw. I am Richard Dulcimer, at your service.’ He spoke as quietly as though he were mentioning some fact of everyday occurrence.
‘You, that Richard Dulcimer—that impudent pretender—that—that cockatrice, who used to follow my niece about in London wherever she went! No, no’—peering into his face—‘I cannot believe it. You are amusing yourself at my expense.’
‘Nevertheless, unless I was changed at nurse, I am that cockatrice, Richard Dulcimer. As any further attempt at concealment would be useless, if your ladyship will permit me, I will enlighten you in a few words.’
She only stared at him, breathing very hard, but otherwise showing by no sign that she heard what he was saying.
‘I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Wynter on several occasions in London,’ resumed Dick. ‘Whether your ladyship believes it or not, I fell in love with her, hopelessly and irremediably. I am a poor man, and you scouted my pretensions, and forbade your niece ever to speak to me again. It is not in my province to blame your ladyship for doing that which you deemed to be for Miss Wynter’s advantage; but it by no means followed that I should fall in with your views. I heard that you and Miss Wynter were coming to this place, and I determined to follow you. Had I not made some change in my appearance, you would at once have recognised me, and my plans would have been frustrated. I took off my beard and moustache, dyed my hair and eyebrows, donned a clerical costume which I happened to have by me for another purpose, and trusted to my good fortune to escape detection. The rest is known to your ladyship.’
‘The rest—yes. You said that your name was Golightly, and you introduced yourself to me as the son of the Bishop of Melminster, which shows plainly what a wicked wretch you must be.’
‘Your ladyship must excuse me if I set you right as regards the facts of the case. I said that my name was Golightly. So it is—Richard Golightly Dulcimer; but I never said, nor even hinted, that I was the son of Bishop Golightly. It was your ladyship who arrived at that conclusion by some process of reasoning best known to yourself.’
‘Oh!’ was all that her ladyship could find to say at the moment.
Archie and Clarice stole quietly out of the room.
Lady Renshaw turned to her niece. ‘Am I to presume, Miss Wynter, that you have been a party to this vile fraud?’ she asked in her iciest tones. ‘Am I to understand that you have known all along that this person was Mr Dulcimer, and that you have been cognisant of this wicked conspiracy?’
Bella hung her head.
‘Your silence convicts you. It is even so, then. I have nourished a viper, and knew it not. But, understand me, from this time I discard you; I cast you off; I have done with you for ever!’
Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes. ‘O aunt, forgive me!’ she exclaimed as she sprang forward and tried to clasp her ladyship’s hand.
The latter drew back a step or two and waved her away. ‘Touch me not!’ she said. ‘Henceforth, you and I are strangers. You have chosen to sacrifice me for the sake of this impostor. Marry him—you can do no less now—and become a pauper’s wife for the rest of your days. That is your fate.’
Lady Renshaw turned without another word, drew her skirts closer around her, and stalked slowly out of the room.
The weeping girl would have hurried after her, had not Dick put his arm round her and held her fast.
‘No,’ he said; ‘you shall not go just yet. She wants to make you believe that she is an ill-used victim, whereas it is you who have been the victim all along. Yes, the victim of her greed, her selfishness, and her willingness to sacrifice you for the sake of her own social advancement. What would she have cared whom you married, or whether you were happy or miserable, if only, by your means, she could have climbed one rung higher on the ladder of her ambition! Here is the proof: Now that she finds you are no longer of use to her for the furtherance of her schemes, she casts you off with as little compunction as she would an old glove. Dearest, she is not worth your tears!’
But Bella’s tears were not so readily stanched, and for a time she refused to be comforted.