Мэри Элизабет Брэддон
Wyllard's Weird
The General went on to his destination. The gay white city of Bath had no attraction for him upon this particular afternoon. He called on the widow of his old friend, and comforted her as much as it was possible for any one to comfort her in her great sorrow. He dined alone and sadly at his hotel; and as he sat and pondered on the events of the last week, he began to speculate how much or how little grief his widow would feel when her day of mourning came. Would her eyelids be puffy and red as poor Mrs. Thornton's had been this afternoon, when he was talking to her? Would her swollen lips quiver, and her distorted features twitch convulsively? Would her whole frame be shaken with sobs when she talked of the departed? He could not imagine Lady Valeria with puffy eyelids or swollen lips. He pictured her mourning gracefully, clad in softest white draperies, reclining in a darkened room, in an atmosphere perfumed with tuberose and stephanotis. He pictured her with a sphinx-like countenance, calm, beautiful, an expression which might mean deepest grief or stoniest indifference, as the world chose to construe it.
No, honestly, after considering the question from every possible point of view, General Harborough did not believe that his wife would grieve for him.
"It will be a relief to her when I am gone," he said to himself. "How could I expect her to grieve as Thornton's wife grieves? Those two were boy and girl together, had been husband and wife for thirty years."
His dinner had been only a pretence of dining, a mockery which had made the head-waiter quite unhappy. Nothing so distresses a good waiter as a guest who won't eat. The waiter would have been still more troubled in mind had he known that this fine-looking old man, with the erect figure and broad shoulders, had eaten hardly anything for the last three days. The General had been suffering all that time from a fever of the brain which had brought about a feverish condition of the body. He could neither eat nor sleep. He lay broad awake in the unfamiliar room at the hotel, staring at the blank white blinds, faintly illuminated by the lamps in the street below – he lay and thought over his wedded life, which unrolled itself before him in a series of pictures, and he saw the bitter truth underlying his marriage with Lord Carlavarock's daughter.
He had been nothing but a convenience to Valeria, the provider of fine houses and fine gowns, horses and carriages. She had not even cared for him as friend and protector. She had lived her own life; paying him for all benefits with sweet false words, and sweeter falser kisses.
And now the spell was broken; the dream had come to an end all at once. He could never believe in sweet words or kisses again. He had looked into the heart of this woman he had loved so well, and he knew that it was false to the core.
The next day was wild and stormy – rain and wind, wind and rain – a gray sky, a heavy pall of cloud, through which the sun pierced not once in the long bleak day; one of those days which Nature keeps in stock for the funerals of our friends.
General Harborough stood in the dreary cemetery, and let the wind and rain beat upon him unflinchingly for about forty minutes. He paid every tribute of respect that could be paid to his old comrade and then he went off to the railway-station, to go back to Plymouth by the train which left Bath at five o'clock, and would arrive in Plymouth a little before eleven. He had given up the idea of going on to London to execute the codicil. That could be done at Fox Hill, if need were. He felt tired and ill and shivery. He thought he had taken a chill in the cemetery, and that the best thing he could do was to go home.
He had a bad night, disturbed by a short, hard cough, which was worse next morning. Lady Valeria sent for the doctor, who pronounced the indisposition an acute attack of bronchitis. The patient was very feverish, and the utmost care was needed. Happily, the valet was a good nurse, and Lady Valeria seemed devoted. She sat by her husband's bedside; she read to him, and ministered to him with the tenderest care.
"You could not be better off," said the medical man, who was of the cheery old school. "We shall make you all right in a day or two," knowing perfectly well that the patient was in for a fortnight's close confinement and severe regimen.
The General endured his poultices and blisters meekly, but chafed at the hot room and the hissing steam-kettle.
"It is worse than being wounded on the field of battle," he said.
And then, half asleep and half delirious, he began to talk about Sir George Varney's summons.
"The scoundrel wants to make a public scandal," he muttered; "he will bring my wife's name before the public. 'I thought by this time you must have been tired of Bothwell Grahame,'" he said, repeating the words which had stung him almost to madness.
Valeria knelt by her husband's pillow and laid her head against it, listening intently to those muttered speeches. She found out that Sir George Varney had sent the General a summons to a police-court; that the story of the blow in the verandah would be sifted in a public inquiry; that the insult offered to the wife, the prompt retaliation of the husband, would be reported in the newspapers, written about, commented upon everywhere. It was just the kind of thing to get into the society papers: and although Lady Valeria's relations had not unfrequently figured in those very papers, with various degrees of discredit to themselves and amusement to the general public, she shrank with an abhorrent feeling from the idea of seeing her own name there.
The day named in the summons was a week off; and, judging from General Harborough's condition, it did not seem likely that he would be in a fit state to answer to the summons in person. The idea of it evidently preyed upon his mind, and added fuel to the fire of the fever.
The day came, and General Harborough had obeyed a mightier summons, and had gone to appear before the bar of a greater court. Lady Valeria was a widow.
The codicil had not been executed: so Lady Valeria was a very rich widow.
CHAPTER VIII.
WIDOWED AND FREE
Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard made their way slowly back to Penmorval. It was a melancholy journey for those two who had travelled so gaily in days gone by – the young wife so full of hope, so proud of her husband, who was her senior and superior, versed in the knowledge of that wide outer world of which the Cornish heiress knew so little. She had loved him with a reverent, admiring love, looking up to him, honouring him and deferring to him in all things, pleased to be dependent upon him: and now he was the dependent, looking to her for help and comfort.
He bore his calamity with an almost awful calmness, which at times was more painful to the tender, sympathetic wife than fretfulness and complaining would have been. The dull agony of neuralgic pain wrung no groan from him; he endured the anguish of racked nerves and aching limbs with stoical composure.
"It is not a surprise to me, Dora," he said quietly, when his wife praised his patience; "I have expected some such attack. There have been sensations – strange feelings at odd times – which, although slight enough, have not been without their meaning. Life was very smooth for me here at Penmorval. Very different from my life in the past; the struggles of my boyhood; the hard work and hard thinking of my manhood. Your love made existence full of sweetness. I had the world's esteem too, which must always count for something, let a man pretend to despise the world as he may. Yes; it was a full and perfect life, and I told myself that I had come off a winner in the lottery of Fate. And now all things are changed. There was this last lot waiting for me at the bottom of the urn."
"My dearest," murmured his wife, nestling closer to him among the heaped-up pillows of his sofa, "it would be too hard, too cruel that you should be thus smitten, if this life were all. But, praised be God, it is not all! There is a bright eternity waiting for us – a long day of rest in the land where there is neither sorrow nor pain."
Her husband answered with an impatient sigh.
"My dear Dora, I have neither your sweet simplicity nor your pious faith in the letter of an old book," he answered. "This life is so palpable and so painful just now, that I cannot comfort myself by looking beyond it towards a life of which I know nothing."
They were at Penmorval. Mrs. Wyllard had established her husband in her own particular sanctum, which was the prettiest room in the house – a spacious airy room on the first floor, with a large Tudor window facing southward, and an oriel in the south-western angle. Julian Wyllard had decorated and furnished this room for his young wife; and all things it contained had been chosen with reference to her tastes and pursuits. It opened into her dressing-room, and beyond the dressing-room there was the chief bedchamber of Penmorval, the chamber of the lord of the manor from time immemorial, the birth-chamber and the death-chamber. Its very spaciousness and grandeur gave to this state apartment an air of gloom, a gloom intensified by the prevailing tints of the tapestry, a series of hunting scenes, executed in a sombre gradation of bluish greens and grayish browns. The elaborately carved oak wardrobes were like monuments in a Gothic cathedral. The bed, with its embroidered velvet hangings, fluted columns, and plumed ornaments, suggested a royal catafalque: while the fireplace, with its sculptured pillars and heavy decoration in black and white marble, recalled the entrance to the Capulets' tomb. Not a room assuredly for the occupation of an invalid – not a room in which to suffer sleepless nights and long hours of dull, wearing pain.
This was what Dora thought; and at her order her dressing-room, which was airy and sufficiently spacious, was transformed into a bedroom for Mr. Wyllard, while her morning-room was arranged for his daily occupation. It would be easy to wheel his sofa from one room to the other. All her orders had been telegraphed beforehand, and everything was in its place when the sufferer arrived.
"It is a special privilege to be nursed by a good fairy," he said, smiling up at his wife, with that rare smile which had so peculiar a charm in her eyes – the smile of a man who has not the same set graciousness for all comers.
After this there came the dull monotony of suffering – the life of routine, that death-in-life from which all possibility of action is gone, all power of choice, all changes and chances of the outer world cut off for ever – a life in which a man feels that he has suddenly dropped back into infancy, and is as helpless as a child upon his mother's knee. The child has all the unexplored future before him, the infinitive potentialities of life. The man turns his sad eyes backward and reviews the past. All the things he has done and the things he has left undone pass in a shadowy procession before his mind's eye. He sees how much wiser he might have been. The faults and follies of those departed years are unrolled before him as on a magic scroll. His maturer judgment, his colder blood, condemn the sins of his passionate youth.
Dora was her husband's companion through many an hour of gloom and depression. There were times when he would talk to her with a kind of feverish animation – talk of the books he had read, or of the men he had known – recall the memories of his youth – his boyhood even.
"I can only live in the past," he said, "and in your love. You are my present and my future, Dora. Were it not for you and your love I should have anticipated annihilation. The grave could hardly reduce me to more complete nothingness than this death-in-life here."
He looked round the room with an impatient sigh. And then, touched by the pathetic look in his wife's face, he added,
"Were it not for you, Dora. I have infinite riches while I possess your love. If I were to lose that now – "
"You know that you can never lose it. My love is a part of my life."
"Yes, but there might come a crushing blow that would kill it. Or if I were to sink into feebleness and imbecility – if the mind were to decay like the body – "
"The only difference would be to make me love you more fondly, knowing that you stood in greater need of my love," answered his wife quietly.
"Yes, I believe you are noble enough for the extremity of self-sacrifice," he said, gazing at her with a searching look, a look of the deepest love and keenest pain, a look that told of anguish surpassing the common woes of humanity. "Yes, I believe it is within the compass of a woman's nature to love a human wreck like me, or even to love a creature stained with blackest sin. There is no limit to the sublimity of a woman's love."
His wife was kneeling by his couch, her head leaning against his pillow. There were times when she could find no words of comfort, when she could only comfort him with the light touch of her lips upon his brow, her sympathy, her presence, her hand laid gently upon his.
"I love to hear you talk of your youth," she said one day, when he had been talking of his boyhood at Marlborough, and at home – the dull old parsonage – the house-mother, always busy, and often scolding, troubled about many things; the father, chewing the cud of somebody else's sermon, in a shabby little den of a study, reeking of tobacco; a sermon to be dribbled out slowly next Sunday morning, in a style of elocution, or non-elocution, happily almost extinct.
"Tell me about your life in Paris," she went on, encouraging him to forget his present pains in those old memories. "That must have been full of interest."
"It was a life of grinding toil, and gnawing anxiety," he answered impatiently. "There is not a detail that could interest you."
"Everything in your past history interests me, Julian. I know how hard you worked in Paris. I saw your desk, the place where you sat night after night, the lamp that lighted you. Mr. Blümenlein has altered nothing in your rooms."
"Vastly civil of him," muttered Wyllard, as if revolting against patronage from a dealer in fancy goods.
"But however hard you worked, you must have had some associations with the outer world," pursued Dora. "You must have felt the fever and the excitement of that time. You must have been interested in the men who governed France."
"I was interested in the stocks that went up and down, and in the men who governed France, so far as their conduct influenced the Bourse. A man who is running a race, neck or nothing, a race that means life or death, has no time to think of anything outside the course. The external world has no existence for him."
"And you knew nothing of the master-spirits of the Empire, the men of science, the writers, the painters?"
"My child, how innocent you are! The men who write books and paint pictures have no more direct influence upon an epoch than the tailors who build coats and the milliners who make gowns. The master-spirits are the politicians and financiers. Those are the rulers of their age. All the rest are servants."
Bothwell had shown himself deeply moved by the affliction that had fallen on his cousin's husband. Every feeling of ill-will vanished in a breath before the face of that supreme misfortune – a life smitten to the dust. Bothwell was too generous-hearted to remember that the master of Penmorval had not been altogether kind in the past. His only thought was how he could help, were it by ever so little, to lighten Julian Wyllard's burden. He was all the more sympathetic when he found that the sufferer had thought of him and of his interests even in the hour of calamity, while the blow that crushed him was still a new thing.
"It was more than good of you to consider my happiness at such a time," said Bothwell, when Dora had told him of her husband's conversation with Heathcote.
"My dear Bothwell, my wife's interests are my own; and I knew that she was keenly interested in your happiness. Heathcote has not found out very much about the girl who was killed; but he has found out just enough to dispel his suspicions about you, and he withdraws all opposition to your marriage with Hilda. Now, it is my earnest desire to see you happily married before I am called away; and as life is always uncertain – trebly uncertain for a man in my condition – the sooner you are married the better."
"I shall not plead, for delay," said Bothwell, "if I can win Hilda's consent to an early marriage. But I hope, my dear Wyllard, that you may live to see our children growing up."
"That is to hope for the indefinite prolongation of an incurable disease, and is hardly a kind wish on your part. All you have to do is to hurry on this marriage."
"Unfortunately the house I have pitched upon will want three or four months' work before it can be habitable."
"What does that matter? You can live at Penmorval till your house is ready. There is room for half a dozen families in this rambling old place. There will be no one here to interfere with your privacy. You may be almost as much alone as in your own home, and Hilda's presence in the house will help to cheer my poor wife. Hurry on your marriage, Bothwell, while Heathcote is in the humour to accept you. Don't be hindered by any absurd consideration about houses; secure your good fortune while you can."
He spoke with an almost feverish impatience, the fretfulness of a sick man who cannot bear the slightest opposition to his will.
"My dear Julian, you may be sure that Bothwell will be only too glad to act on your advice," said his wife soothingly.
"Let him do so, then, and don't let him talk about houses," retorted Wyllard.
Bothwell was to meet his betrothed the next day at Trevena, where she was to go with Fräulein Meyerstein to inspect the old-fashioned cottage which her lover wanted to turn into a commodious house. There could not be a better opportunity for pleading his cause.
He rode across country, and arrived in time to receive Hilda and her chaperon, who had posted from Launceston to Trevena. It was a delicious autumn day, and, after the cottage had been inspected and approved, the lovers wandered about the wild crest of Tintagel, utterly happy in each other's company; while that discreet spinster, Miss Meyerstein, sat on a grassy bank in the valley below, absorbed in a strip of honeycomb knitting, intended to form part and parcel of a counterpane, which great work had been in progress for the past ten years.
Bothwell was the bearer of a letter from Dora, entreating Hilda to go to her at the Manor, and stay there until Heathcote's return. Bothwell was to stay at Trevena meanwhile, and set the builders at work upon his improvements. The old cottage and the land about it had been secured on a lease for three lives, Bothwell being one, Hilda another, and one of the twins the third. Bothwell hoped to be able to buy the place long before any of these lives gave out.
"You and I have so much to arrange and to talk about," wrote Mrs. Wyllard – "your furniture, your linen, your trousseau. I venture to think I am your nearest friend, and the person you would be most likely to consult in these matters. Your presence will comfort me, dear, and hinder me from dwelling too exclusively on my great trouble. Julian, too, will be glad to have you in the house, and to hear your songs sometimes of an evening. He has his good days and his bad days; and there are times when he is cheerful and likes company. Do come to me at once, Hilda. I am sure you must be tired of Dawlish by this time. It is a very nice little place, but I can imagine a limit to its attractions, and the season is rather late for your favourite diversion of swimming. You shall be free to return to The Spaniards when your brother comes back to England; but in the mean time I am sure I want you more than Miss Meyerstein, who has those all-absorbing twins to occupy her cares and thoughts. I shall expect you the day after to-morrow, by the afternoon train. I shall send a carriage to meet you. – Yours lovingly, DORA WYLLARD."
What could Hilda say to such an invitation from one who had been to her as an elder sister, and whom she loved as fondly as ever sister was loved? She wrote to Dora at the hotel where they lunched and took tea, and gave her letter to Bothwell.
"You are going to Penmorval," he said.
"Yes, I am going there the day after to-morrow."
"And I am to be banished. I am to live here and see that my plans are carried out properly. I daresay my cousin thinks that if I were to stay at Penmorval while you are there I should forget all the serious business of life; lapse into a rapturous idiotcy of love. Well, I am too happy to complain. I shall be happy in the thought that I am building our nest. I shall watch every brick that is laid, every timber that is sawn. You shall not have a badly baked brick or a plank of green wood in your house. I shall think of the plans night and day, dream of them – leap out of my sleep in the dead of the night to make some improvement."
"If you chop and change too much you will have dear to pay," said Miss Meyerstein; and then she launched into a long story about a German Grand Duke, with an unpronounceable name, who built himself a summer palace which cost three times as much as he intended, because of his Serene Highness's artistic temperament, which had beguiled him into continual tampering with the plans.
Never in his life had Bothwell felt happier than on that breezy September day, pottering about the old cottage on the hillside, planning the house and gardens of the future – the study, the drawing-room, the ingle-nook in the dining-room, the little entrance-hall which would hardly be more than a lobby, the closets and clever contrivances, and shelves, and cosy nooks, which were to make this house different from all other houses – at least in the eye of its possessor – the quaint old lattices which were to be retained in all their primitive simplicity, and still quainter casements which were to be added – here an oriel and there a bow – an Early English chimney-stack on one side, and a distinctly Flemish weathercock on the other. Bothwell could draw well enough to show the builder what he wanted done. He had his pocket-book full of sketches for chimneys, pediments, doors and windows, and ornamental ventilators.
"One would think you were going to build a town," said the practical Fräulein.
Never had Bothwell been happier than as he rode across the moors in the fading daylight, thinking of the day that was over. What a simple domestic day it had been – so homely, so tranquil, so sweet; ending with the cosy tea-drinking in the parlour at the inn, Hilda presiding at the tea-tray, and as self-possessed as if she and Bothwell had been married for ten years. The time of tremors and agitations was past. They were secure in each other's love, secure in the consent and approval of those who loved them. Henceforward their lives were to sail calmly on a summer sea.
How different was this newer and purer love of his from the old passion, with its alternations of fever and remorse! How different his simple-minded sweetheart of to-day – gentle, unselfish, conscientious, religious – from the woman who had been all exaction and caprice; insatiable in her desire for admiration, self-indulgent, luxurious, caring not a jot how the world outside her own boudoir went on, who suffered or who was glad, provided her wishes were gratified and her vanity fed!
It was dinner-time when Bothwell arrived at Penmorval, and the dinner-hour was of all seasons the most melancholy, now that the master of the house was a helpless invalid on the upper floor, perhaps never again to enter that stately dining-hall, where the butler insisted upon serving Bothwell's dinner in just as slow and ceremonial a manner as if family and guests had been assembled in full force.
Vainly did Bothwell plead against this ceremony.
"I wish you would ask them to cook me a chop, Stodden," he said. "A chop and a potato would be ample. I hate a long dinner at any time, but most especially when I am to eat it alone. You need not take so much trouble as you do about me."
But Stodden ascribed all such speeches to overweening modesty on Mr. Grahame's part. The poor young man knew that he was in somewise an interloper; and he did not wish to give trouble. It was a very proper feeling on his part; and Stodden was resolved that he should not be a loser by his modesty. Stodden gave him an even handsomer dinner on the following day, and when remonstrated with smiled the smile of incredulity.
"Lor, sir, you know you like a good dinner," he said. "You mayn't wish to give trouble; but you must like a good dinner. We all like a good dinner. It's human nature."
After this Bothwell felt that remonstrance was useless.
Mrs. Wyllard dined with her invalid husband. She rarely left him except when he was sleeping under the influence of morphia, or when he asked to be alone. There were hours in his long and weary day in which even his wife's presence seemed a burden to him, and when he preferred to fight his battle in solitude.
Upon this particular evening of Bothwell's return from Trevena his cousin joined him at the dinner-table, an unexpected pleasure.
"I want to hear all your news, Bothwell," she said. "Julian is asleep, and I have half an hour free."
Bothwell told his news gladly, gaily.
"She is coming the day after to-morrow," he said, "and I am to be banished, like Romeo. But I am not afraid of Romeo's ill-luck. You won't give my Juliet a sleeping potion, and bury her alive while I am away, will you? I have taken two rooms in a cottage at Trevena, with an old goody who is to do for me. That will be ever so much cheaper than the inn; and you know that in my position I ought to be economical."
"You ought not to make yourself uncomfortable for the sake of a few pounds."
"Ah, that is your spendthrift's argument. He never can understand that he ought to save a few pounds; and so he dies a pauper; while the man who has a proper respect for pounds – and pence, even – blossoms into a millionaire. I shall be very comfortable with my goody. I shall be out all day, superintending the builder. I shall live upon chops and porter; and I shall sleep like a top every night, in a dear little bedroom smelling of lavender. My goody is clean to a fault. She cast an evil eye at my boots as I went up-stairs. All the articles of furniture in her rooms are veiled with crochet-work, as if the wood were too precious to be exposed to the light. But how grave you are looking, Dora! Has Wyllard been any worse to-day?"
"No; he has been much the same – a sad monotony of suffering. It was of you I was thinking, Bothwell. I saw some news in the county paper which I know will grieve you."
"There has been no accident between Launceston and Dawlish, has there?" gasped Bothwell, starting up from his chair; "the train got back all right – "
"You foolish boy! If there had been an accident, how do you suppose I could hear of it?" exclaimed his cousin, smiling at his vehemence. "How like a lover to imagine that any ill news must needs be about your betrothed, though you only left her three hours ago! No, Bothwell, my bad news concerns an old friend of yours, General Harborough."
"What of General Harborough?" asked Bothwell anxiously.
"The announcement of his death is in the county paper."
"His death? Impossible! Why, I met him less than ten days ago. He seemed hale and hearty as ever."
"He caught a severe cold at the funeral of a friend, and died of bronchitis after a very short illness. Poor Bothwell! I can sympathise with your sorrow for so staunch a friend. I have often heard you say how good he was to you in India."
Dora had heard of General Harborough only as an Indian friend of her cousin's. She knew of Lady Valeria's existence, and that was all. No rumour of Bothwell's flirtation with that lady had ever reached her ears. She did not know that Bothwell's frequent journeys to Plymouth had been on Lady Valeria's account; that his mysterious journeys to London had been made in her interests – troublesome journeys to interview Jew money-lenders, to renew bills and tide over difficulties.
And now Valeria was a widow, and would have been able to exact the fulfilment of old vows – breathed under tropical stars, far away in that Eastern land which they both loved: she would have been able to claim him as her slave, if he had not boldly broken his fetters in that last interview at Fox Hill.
"Thank God I delayed no longer!" he said to himself; "thank God I got my release before this happened!"
And then he thought sadly, affectionately, of his old friend; and he remembered with thankfulness that last meeting, that farewell grasp of the good man's hand which he had been able to return as honestly as it was given.
"Why did I ever sin against him?" he asked himself. "What an arrant sneak I must have been!"
"You will go to General Harborough's funeral, I suppose?" said Dora presently.
"Yes, of course I must be at the funeral. When does it take place?"
"To-morrow."
"Yes, I shall go without doubt. I shall join the procession at the cemetery. As I am not invited, there will be no need for me to go to the house."
"I suppose not. The poor widow will feel the blow terribly, no doubt."
"Yes, I have no doubt she will be sorry."
This was not a lie. Bothwell thought that even Valeria could not fail to feel some touch of sorrow for the loss of that chivalrous friend and benefactor, the man who had given so much, and had received so poor a return for his gifts. There would be the anguish of a guilty conscience; even if there were no other form of sorrow.
"But, as I suppose she is elderly too, perhaps she will not survive him very long," pursued Dora, infinitely compassionate for the woes of a broken-hearted widow.
"Lady Valeria elderly!" exclaimed Bothwell. "She is not thirty."
"What, was your good General Harborough so foolish as to marry a girl?"
