“Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, “you have been very rude to me; I have not insulted you, nor did I mean to do so. It never occurred to me,” she added, with a fine sting in her words which penetrated through all his armour, “that I need fear anything from you which I should not have encountered in—another rank of life. But I do not wish to make reprisals,” she said, with a faint smile, rising from her seat. “If you question your daughter on such a subject it ought not to be before me.”
“My lady,” cried Spears, his face full of passion, “unless it is to be open war between us it shall be before you. If there’s love between them there should be no shame in it. My girl is one that can hold up her head before any on the face of the earth. It is not my beginning, but it shall be settled and cleared up on the spot. Janet! come down here, I want you,” he called at the foot of the stairs.
Even in the midst of her agitation, Lady Markham had been conscious of sounds above, footsteps and young voices, one of which indeed had been persistently singing all the time, some trivial song of the moment in a clear little sweet voice, like the trill of a bird. The insignificant tune had run through all this exciting interview, and worked itself into Lady Markham’s head, and in spite of herself she stood still, not resisting any longer, turning towards the stairs involuntarily, watching for the appearance of the girl who (perhaps) was dearer to her boy than anything else, who, perhaps, was his motive for relinquishing everything else, including his mother’s happiness and the comfort of his family. What woman could remain unmoved under such circumstances? Once more her heart began to beat as she turned her face towards the dingy stairs. Was it some beautiful apparition which was to appear from it, some creature such as exists in poetry, some woman for whom it would be comprehensible that a man should give up all? Lady Markham had romance enough in her to feel that this was possible, almost to wish it, while she feared it. If it were so, it would be more easy to forgive Paul. Ah, forgive him!—that was never hard; that was not the question. Our forgiveness, like a weeping angel, is it not always hovering, forestalling even the evil to be forgiven, over our children’s wayward ways? But to get it out of her mind, out of her memory, that he had deceived her, that was not so easy. She, who had come in search of evidence to exonerate Paul, can any one wonder that she stood trembling, scarcely seeing, scarcely hearing, yet all eyes and ears, to receive the testimony of this indisputable witness, against whom there could be no appeal? But when the girl’s foot sounded on the stair it seemed to Lady Markham that she had already given up all hope that Paul was true—provided only that this woman for whom he had compromised the honour of his word, might at least afford some justification for the sacrifice.
CHAPTER XIV.
“What is it, father? do you want me?”
The girl spoke to her father, but her eyes were caught instantly by the unusual apparition of the lady in the shop. Who was she? not an ordinary customer, not anybody with an order for picture frames. A flutter awoke in Janet’s breast. Was it perhaps somebody sent from the shop to offer that situation which was the dream of her fancy? a situation, she did not quite know what, varying as her hopes and sense of self-importance varied from that of a companion (which, the forewoman of the shop had told her, her manners and look were equal to—not to speak of her education) to that of a lady’s maid. Emigration was not an idea which pleased Janet. She was afraid of the sea, afraid of the unknown, and not at all desirous of being always at home, shut up within the circle of family duties and companionship. She wanted to see the world, as all young people had, she thought, a right to do. To go into the wilds had no charm for her. She had grown up in the close presence of all her father’s theories without being affected by one of them. She had heard him speak by the hour and had paid no attention. All his moral independence, the haughtiness of his determination to be his own master, and stand under subjection to no man, affected his child no more than to make her wish the more fervently for that “situation,” which would deliver her from the monotony of these “holdings forth.” Janet’s ideal of a happy existence was that of a large “establishment” where there would be a crowd of servants, elegant valets and splendid butlers at the feet of the pretty maid whom nobody would be able to tell from a lady—or perhaps a chance of catching the eye of the master of one of these fine gentlemen, who would make her a lady in earnest, with servants of her own. Nobody knew of these secret dreams which occupied her fancy, and grew and flourished in the atmosphere of the shop; but when her father called her suddenly, and she came down to see Lady Markham standing so exactly like (she thought) a lady whom the forewoman might have sent with the offer of a situation, her heart began to beat, and her head to turn round with excitement—excitement only not so great as that of the woman who stood gazing at her with wistful eyes, asking herself if this was the woman whom Paul preferred to all the world.
Janet was tall, and possessed what the people at the shop called “a lovely figure;” the mantles and jackets never looked so well as upon her. The habit of putting these garments on, and making a little parade in front of the glass to show them, which was her daily duty, had given a certain ease of carriage not usual in her class. When you are accustomed to be gazed at, whether for yourself, or what you carry on your shoulders, it takes away the native embarrassment of the self-conscious creature. She was dressed in that gown of black alpaca which is the uniform of the shops, and which did full justice to the fine lines of her form. These were not the mere slim outlines of a girlish figure which might turn to anything, but really beautiful, finely proportioned, and imposing. She came down into her father’s shop, into the line of sunshine that crossed it, with the air of a young queen. Her face, however, was not so fine. She was pale, her nose not quite so delicate, her mouth not so small as beauty demanded. Her hair was fair, with little colour in it, and affording but little relief to the forehead upon which it clustered in a wild but careful disorder, according to the fashion of the time. Lady Markham took in every line and every feature as the girl advanced: far more critically than if she had been, as Janet thought, an intending employer did she examine this new unknown being who (was it possible?) had Paul’s future in her hands. They gazed at each other, forgetting the man who stood by watching their mutual interest with what would have been amusement had he been less indignant and curious. Men and women are always so strange to each other. He looked at these two with a half-despairing, half-comic (notwithstanding his seriousness) consciousness that the ideas that were going through their minds were to him a sealed book. He did not know, poor man, that the lady, who was a stranger, was the one of the two that was comprehensible to him, and that stranger than all Greek or Latin, more mysterious than philosophy, would have been to him, had he been able to see them, the thoughts in the mind of his own child.
“I want to ask you a question, Janet. Don’t be alarmed, it is not anything to frighten you,” he said. “In the first place this is Lady Markham, the mother of Mr. Markham whom you have so often seen here.”
Janet made a curtsey to the lady, uttering a little confused “Oh!” of wonder, and opening her eyes, and even her mouth, in surprise. Could Mr. Markham have recommended her? Mr. Markham! She did not know what to think. Why should he wish her to be under his mother’s care? Thought goes quick at all times, quickest of all in such a crisis, when the next word may change all your prospects in life. Her mind plunged forward in a moment into a world of possibilities, while her eyelids quivered with that expression, and her mouth kept the form of the “Oh!” tremulous and astonished. The quiver communicated itself to her whole frame—what might come next?
“You must understand,” said Lady Markham quickly, “that I have nothing to do with the question your father is going to ask you. It is not put in consequence of anything I have told him—nor is it put at my desire.”