Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

Claude was a part of her life. From the day when she had met him for the first time after her marriage, at a luncheon party at Lady Okehampton's, and they two had sat talking in the embrasure of a window, recalling delicious memories of her childhood's one happy holiday—the ponies, the dogs, the gardens, the woods, the beach and sea—all the joy his kindness had created for her in that verdant paradise, upon that summer sea—from that happy hour when they had sat, talking, talking, talking, while Lady Okehampton waited with growing displeasure for an unpunctual dowager duchess, she had felt that this kinsman of hers belonged to her, that to him she might look as the guide, philosopher, and friend, indispensable to the happiness of every woman whose husband is occupied with serious interests and has a mind above trivialities.

There was nothing too trivial for Claude to understand and discuss with interest. The merest nothing would command his serious thought, if it were something that interested Vera; nor was any flight of her fancy too wild or too high for him. From the colour of a frock or the shape of a hat, to the most oracular utterance of Zarathustra, she could command his attention and counsel. He came and went in her house like the idle wind; and his entrances and exits were no more considered than the wind. When her particular friends asked her whether she had seen Mr. Rutherford lately, she would shrug her shoulders and smile.

"My cousin Claude? Yes, he was here yesterday. I see him almost every day. If he has nothing better to do he comes in after his morning ride, and sometimes stays for luncheon."

People were not unkind; but as years went on the situation was taken for granted, and there were quiet smiles, gently significant, when Madame Provana and her cousin were talked about. Their relations were accepted as one of those open secrets, not to know which is not to be in Society.

Lady Susan did her best to establish the scandal by telling people that Vera and Claude had been brought up together, or almost, and that their attachment was the most innocent and prettiest thing imaginable—"like Paul and Virginia"—a classic which Lady Susan had never read. The "almost" was necessary, as most people knew that Vera had been brought up with Lady Felicia, in furnished lodgings, and had hardly had a second frock to her back, to say nothing of being underfed, which early privation was the cause of the pale slenderness that some people called "ethereal."

Lady Susan's friends, furthermore, being well up in Burke, were satirical about the link of kindred between third or fifth cousins.

Yet on the whole there was indulgence; and when Vera went on a week-end visit to the seats of the mighty she generally found Mr. Rutherford one of the party; which was hardly a cause for wonder, since he was of the stuff of which week-end parties are made.

Vera was more than innocent. She was unconscious of anything particular in her friendship for this friend of her childhood. What could be more natural than that she should love to talk of that one blissful interval in her dull existence—the solitary oasis in the desert of genteel poverty? Only then had she known the beauty of woods and gardens; only then had she known what summer could mean to the emancipated child: the rapture of riding over dancing waves in a cockle-shell of a boat, with the warm wind blowing her hair and the sea-gulls flashing their white wings overhead, the adorable birds whose name was legion. To talk of those young days, and to feel again as she had felt then, was a delight which only Claude could give her; and the more hollow and unsatisfying the things that money could buy became to her, the more she loved to sit with her locked hands upon her knee and talk of that unforgotten holiday.

"Do you remember that evening I asked you to row me out to the setting sun, right into the great golden ball, and you said you would, and you went too far, and we were out till after dark, and everybody was first frightened and then angry?"

All their talk began with "Do you remember?" His memory was better than hers, and he recalled adventures and moments that she had forgotten. One day he brought her a little sketch on thick cardboard, roughly painted in oils, one of his early bits of impressionism before he had studied art, a little girl in a short white frock, with hair flying about her head, cheeks like roses, and the blue of the sea in her eyes.