CHAPTER X.
So Lady Ilfracombe gave in with a good grace, and the note of invitation was duly answered and accepted. It was a proof of Nora’s growing interest in the earl, that she had quite left off trying to wield her power over him in little things. It was not in her nature ever to sink down into a very submissive wife—a meaningless echo of her husband, water to his wine; but she was learning to yield her own wishes gracefully in deference to his, and in this instance, as we know, she was too much afraid of Jack Portland to press the point. He had told her plainly that if she interfered between him and Lord Ilfracombe, she would do it at her cost, and from what she had heard of the ménage at Usk Hall, both from its owners and himself, she felt pretty sure their invitation had been sent at Mr Portland’s instigation, and that he had a purpose in having it sent. He was not satisfied with having fleeced her husband all through the winter, he would drain his pockets still further at the Bowmants; in fact, she had no doubt now that he looked to the earl as the chief means of his subsistence. And till she had found some way of outwitting him—until she had that packet of letters, the contents of which she so much dreaded her husband seeing, in her own hands, Nora said to herself, with a sigh, that she must endure Mr Portland’s insolence and chicanery. They had only been asked to the Hall for a week or two, and they intended to limit their visit to a week. If she could only have foreseen what that week would bring forth. It was a notable fact that Jack Portland had never tried to rouse the countess’s anger or jealousy by an allusion to Nell Llewellyn and her former influence over the earl. Indeed, he had not even mentioned her name before Nora. The reason of this was, not because he respected her wifehood or herself, but because the remembrance of Nell was a sore one with him. He had never cared the least bit for Miss Abinger. He had thought her a very jolly sort of girl, with plenty of ‘go’ in her—a great flirt—very fast—very smart, and slightly verging on the improper. She was a great source of amusement to him whilst he stayed in Malta, and he had encouraged her in all sorts of ‘larks,’ chiefly for the fun of seeing how far she would go. When their conduct had commenced to give rise to scandal in Valetta, and his sister, Mrs Loveless, had spoken very gravely to him on the subject, he had sought to make the amende honourable by proposing for the young lady’s hand. But Sir Richard Abinger had rejected his suit with scorn. He—an impecunious adventurer, who lived from hand to mouth, and had no settled employment, presume to propose to marry his daughter Nora, and drag her down with himself—he had never heard of such a piece of impudence in his life before. So Mr Jack Portland, having done the correct thing (as the lady said when she went to church on Sunday and found there was to be no service), made haste out of Malta again, and the place knew him no more. The rest of the story has been told. Both of them had only been playing at love, and neither of them was hurt. Had it not been for those unfortunately bold and unmaidenly letters which remained in Mr Portland’s possession, Nora would long ago have forgotten all about the matter.
But there had been something in Nell Llewellyn, fallen woman though she was, that had made a much deeper impression on the heart of Mr Portland, if, indeed, he possessed such an article. He had not proposed to marry her—it was not much in his way to consider marriage a necessary accompaniment to respectability; but, had Nell made marriage a condition of their union, he would have yielded to her wishes sooner or later. There was something about her grand devotion to Ilfracombe that attracted his worldly nature, that was used to associate with the most mercenary of her sex; and when she blazed out at him in her passionately indignant manner, repudiating with scorn the idea of his advances, he admired her still more. He thought Ilfracombe a fool to have given up the one woman for the other, but he would have been the last man to have told him so. He was not going to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. And a very disagreeable feeling had been engendered in him by the knowledge of Nell’s supposed fate. He did not want to mention her name, nor to think of her after that. It was a painful reminiscence which he did his best to drown in the distractions of cards and wine. Things were in just this condition when they all journeyed up to Usk together, and Mr Portland’s portmanteau and plaids were carried over to the rooms at Panty-cuckoo Farm. Nell was like a wild creature after she had discovered for certain who their owner was. To meet Mr Portland, of all men in the world, would seal her fate. Where could she fly in order to hide herself from him? what do to avoid the contact of his presence? She dared not leave the house for fear of meeting him; she was afraid even to leave her own room lest he should have taken it into his head to explore the dairy or bakehouse. Her mother did not know what had come to her. She grew quite cross at last, and thought it must be the arrival of the grand folks at the Hall that had made her daughter so flighty and useless and forgetful.
‘Just as I want all the help you can give me,’ she grumbled, ‘and it’s little enough use you are to me at the best of times, you get one of your lardy-dardy, high-flier fits on, and go shivering and shaking about the house, as if you expected to meet a ghost in the passage or the cellar. Now, what made you run away in that flighty fashion just now, when you were in the middle of doing the lodgers’ rooms? I went in expecting to find them finished, and there were half the things upset and you nowhere.’
‘I thought I heard one of the gentlemen coming across the grass, and so I left the room till he should be gone again.’
‘But why, my lass? They won’t eat you. They’re both as nice-spoken gentlemen as ever I see. And you must have met plenty of gentlefolk up in London town. It isn’t as if you were a country-bred girl, and too frightened to open your mouth. However, if you don’t like to take charge of the rooms, I’ll do it myself. But why won’t you go out a bit instead? Here’s Hugh been over every evening, and you won’t stir for him. I hope you are not carrying on with Hugh for a bit of fun, Nell, for he’s a good lad as ever stepped, and a minister into the bargain, and it would be most unbecoming in you. You must go for a walk with him this evening, like a good lass.’
‘Not if I don’t feel inclined,’ replied Nell haughtily. ‘Hugh Owen has no right to look aggrieved if I fancy walking by myself. Men think a deal too much of themselves in my opinion.’
‘Ah, well, my lass, you must have your own way; but I hope you won’t play fast and loose with Hugh Owen, for you’ll never get a husband at this rate. I said, when you first came home, that I’d look higher than him for you, but you’re not the girl you were then. You’ve lost more than a bit of your beauty, Nell, since you had the fever, and it’s ten to one if it will ever come back again. And now that father is so down about the farm rent being raised, and talks in that pitiful way about leaving the country, or going to the workhouse, I think you might go farther and fare worse, than Hugh Owen.’
‘Very well, mother, I’ll think about it,’ the girl would say, more to put an end to the discussion than anything else, and she would wander away from the farm, keeping well to the back of the Hall, and ready to dart off like a hare, if she saw any chance of encountering strangers. Whilst Nell was leading this kind of hide-and-seek life, the festivities at the Hall were going on bravely. They began, as the old housekeeper had said, as soon as breakfast had concluded, and were kept up till dawn the following morning. A few hours were certainly devoted to eating, drinking and sleeping, and a few more to fishing, riding and driving; but the intervals were filled with cards, smoke and drink, till Nora opened her eyes in astonishment, and wondered if she had got into a club in mistake for a private house. Her hostess appeared quite used to that sort of thing, and entered into it with avidity. She played whist or baccarat as well as anyone there, and could sip her brandy and soda, and smoke her Turkish cigarette with the keenest enjoyment. She began to think that Lady Ilfracombe was rather slow after a day or two, and, indeed, Nora’s fastness, such as it was, looked quite a tame, uninteresting thing beside that of Lady Bowmant’s. So she fell naturally to the company of the other ladies who were staying there, and her husband seemed pleased it should be so, and more than once whispered to her that the whole concern was ‘a bit too warm’ for him, and they would certainly ‘cut it’ at the end of the week. All the same, he played night after night with his hosts and their guests, and seemed to be enjoying himself with the best of them. The other lady visitors, of whom one or two bore rather a shady character (though of this fact Nora was entirely ignorant), were ready to avail themselves of all the luxuries provided for them, but that did not deter them from saying nasty things about Lady Bowmant behind her back, which struck Lady Ilfracombe as being particularly ill-bred and ungrateful.
‘My dear Lady Ilfracombe,’ said one of them to her, ‘you know she was positively nobody—a grocer’s daughter, I believe, or something equally horrible; and this old fool, Sir Archibald, was smitten by her red cheeks and ringlets, and married her six months after his first wife’s death. She is just the sort of person to take an old dotard’s fancy. Don’t you agree with me?’