Мэри Элизабет Брэддон
Wyllard's Weird
It was the Wednesday before her wedding-day, and her preparations and arrangements had been for the most part made. There had been, indeed, but little to do, since her return to The Spaniards as a bride would simplify matters, and give her ample time for packing her belongings – namely, those books and nicknacks which had beautified her own rooms; her jewels, chiefly an inheritance from her mother; and those few wedding presents which had arrived from the three or four intimate friends who had heard of her engagement. Among these gifts there was an immense satin-lined work-basket, from Fräulein Meyerstein – a basket provided with an orderly arrangement of tapes, buttons, cottons, and needles, such as a careful housewife must needs require in the repair of the family linen. The Fräulein had made a special journey to Plymouth in order to purchase and furnish this treasury of usefulness; and had brought it back in triumph.
"I cannot give you beautiful things," said the kind creature apologetically. "You have too many valuable jewels of your own to care for any trinket which I could offer; but in this basket you will find all which an industrious wife needs to preserve order and neatness in her household goods. There is flourishing thread of every quality to darn your table linen. There are pearl buttons of every size for your husband's shirts; angolas of every shade for his socks; needles of every number; bobbins; scissors of every kind; and lastly, for remembrance of an old friend, there is this golden thimble, which I hope you will wear every day."
And with this little speech the Fräulein plumped her basket down in front of Hilda, and burst into tears, remembering how she, too, had once been engaged, and how adverse Fate had hindered her marriage.
"You are a dear kind soul," said Hilda, kissing her affectionately; "and I am sure you could not have given me anything I should have liked better. I shall think of you every day when I use this delightful basket. There is nothing like a useful gift for recalling an old friend."
Dora's present arrived the same day. A George II. tea-service, with two little caddies for black tea and green tea, holding about a quarter of a pound each. Hilda thought her silver teapot the sweetest thing that had ever been made, and she sat gazing at the service for an hour at a stretch, and thinking how delightful it would be to make tea for Bothwell in the cosy winter dusk, when they two should be settled in their own house above the great Atlantic sea, the curtains drawn across their old-fashioned lattices, the wind raving over the hills, the waves roaring, and they two beside the domestic hearth, wrapped in a blessed calm – two hearts united and at rest.
She had been so happy yesterday in the thought of her future; and now to-day her brother's letter seemed to have changed the aspect of things. She was full of a vague disquietude – could not settle to any occupation, did not even care to take her usual walk across the hills to the Manor to inquire about Mr. Wyllard's health, and to spend an hour in confidential talk with Dora. To-day she sent a messenger instead, and sat all day in her own room brooding over Heathcote's letter. She felt unequal to facing the twins or the Fräulein, and pleaded a headache as a reason for not going down to luncheon; and indeed her troubled thoughts about that letter from Paris had given her a very real headache.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon, when she heard a carriage drive up to the hall-door, and thought with horror that she would be summoned to receive callers. Her window commanded only an angle of the porch. She could just see a shabby-looking vehicle, which she knew could only be a fly from the station; and her heart began to beat violently as she thought that perhaps her brother had changed his mind, and had come home to do honour to her wedding.
No; it was no such pleasant surprise, only a strange lady who asked to see her. She had sent up her card:
"LADY VALERIA HARBOROUGH."
"The lady will be greatly obliged if you will see her," said the servant. "She has come from Plymouth on purpose to see you."
"Of course I will see her," answered Hilda cheerfully. "You have shown her into the drawing-room, I suppose?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Take in tea as soon as you can."
Hilda glanced at her glass before she left the room. Her plain cashmere gown was neat enough, and her hair was tolerably tidy, but her eyes had a heavy look, and she was very pale.
"I'm afraid I don't look a joyful bride, or do Bothwell credit in any way," she said to herself.
She had heard her lover speak once or twice of General Harborough as his kindest and most powerful friend in India. She had heard from Dora of the General's death, and that Bothwell had attended the funeral. And now she felt flattered exceedingly at the idea that the General's widow had taken the trouble to come to see her; no doubt from pure friendliness for her dead husband's, protégé– deeming that there was no better compliment she could pay Mr. Grahame than to assume an interest in his betrothed. She, like Dora, took it for granted that old General Harborough's wife would be an elderly woman; and she went down to the drawing-room expecting to see a portly matron, gray-haired, bland, perhaps a little patronising in her double rank of Earl's daughter and General's widow. She was surprised beyond all measure when a tall and slender figure rose to meet her, and she found herself face to face with a young woman whose brilliant eyes and interesting countenance were more striking than commonplace beauty.
CHAPTER II.
LADY VALERIA FIGHTS HER OWN BATTLE
The two women stood face to face in silence for a few moments. Surprise made Hilda dumb. She gazed in unconcealed wonderment at the small pale face framed in white crape, the delicate high-bred features, refined almost to attenuation, the luminous violet eyes with their long dark lashes, eyes which alone gave life and colour to the face.
Lady Valeria looked at the girl with so piercing a scrutiny that those brilliant eyes of hers seemed to burn into the face of her rival – a scathing look, measuring and appraising that modest girlish beauty, cheapening those innocent charms in scornful wonder.
And this was the woman for whose sake she, Valeria, had been flung away like an old glove – this girl-face, with its candid blue eyes and babified bloom, its broad white forehead ringed round with infantile curls of golden brown, its delicately pencilled eyebrows, its coral lips, and small white teeth.
"For people who admire babies the girl is well enough," thought Lady Valeria.
Yet even her small knowledge of physiognomy taught her that the broad full forehead and the firmly-moulded lips meant force of character and firmness of purpose – that this girlish beauty was the beauty of a good and brave woman – that here there was no reed for her to twist and rend at her own passionate will, but a nature that was firmer and more concentrated than her own. Equal forces had met in these two – the force of passion and the force of principle.
"So you are Miss Heathcote," said the pale lips at last, after that silent interval, in which Hilda had heard the beating of her own heart; "you are the Miss Heathcote who is to marry Bothwell Grahame?"
"Yes, Lady Valeria. Bothwell has told me how kind a friend he had in General Harborough," returned Hilda calmly, trying to feel at her ease under that searching gaze. "I am very much flattened that you should come to see me."
"I fear you will feel less flattered when you know the motive of my visit. No, thanks; I prefer to stand," she said curtly, as Hilda wheeled a chair towards her guest, and courteously invited her to be seated. "You will hate me, no doubt, when you know why I am here; and yet I am come to do you a service – perhaps the greatest service which one woman can render to another."
"What service, Lady Valeria?" asked Hilda, whose girlish bloom had been momently fading, and who was now almost as pale as her visitor.
"I am here to save you from a most unhappy union – from a fatal union – from marriage with a man who loves another woman!"
"That is not true," said Hilda very calmly. "Whoever your informant may have been, you have been misinformed. I am as firmly convinced of Bothwell Grahame's love, and of the worth of his character, as I am of my existence. I would as soon doubt one as doubt the other."
"You are like most girls of your age reared in the country," said Lady Valeria, with quiet scorn. "You are very ignorant, and you are very vain. I suppose you imagine that you are the first woman Bothwell Grahame ever loved – that at seven-and-twenty he brings you a heart hitherto untouched by beauty; that his senses only awake from a life-long torpor at sight of your exquisite charms; that nothing less than your exceptional loveliness could kindle that cold nature into flame."
"Lady Valeria, if you came here only to insult me – " began Hilda, moving towards the door.
"I came here to read you a lesson, to save you from a life of misery if I can; and you shall hear me," said Valeria passionately. "I am here for your sake, do you understand? – to save you and your lover from an irreparable folly. He would sacrifice his own happiness and a brilliant future, from a mistaken sense of honour to you. Now, I want you at least to know what manner of sacrifice he is going to make for you; and if you are not made of wood – if you have a woman's heart in your bosom – you will release him."
"Release him! What do you mean, Lady Valeria? This is sheer madness. Mr. Grahame sought me of his own accord – chose me deliberately for his wife, in the face of great difficulties. We are both completely happy in our love for each other – our faith in each other. There never was a fairer prospect of a happy domestic life than that which smiles upon us. There is not a cloud, or the shadow of a cloud, between us."
A footman brought in a little bamboo table, and arranged the old-fashioned silver tea-tray; and during this brief interruption hostilities were suspended, and both women composed their faces to placid neutrality. Lady Valeria declined Hilda's cup of tea, proffered with a tremulous hand; and directly the man had gone, she coldly pursued her interrogation.
"Answer me one question, Miss Heathcote. Do you believe yourself Mr. Grahame's first love?"
"No," faltered Hilda. "I know that there was some one else – that there was an entanglement from which Mr. Grahame released himself, honourably and completely, before I accepted him as my future husband. I made that condition when first he asked me to be his wife. I waited until he could give me his assurance upon this point before I consented to marry him."
"O, then you did know that there was some one?" exclaimed Lady Valeria, with crushing scorn. "You did know that there was an entanglement – or, in plain words, you knew that you were stealing another woman's lover."
"Lady Valeria, you have no right to say such a thing."
"I have every right. Yes, you knew well enough what you were doing, in spite of your provincial bringing up. Every woman is wise in these matters. An entanglement, you say. Do you know, girl, that this entanglement, of which you speak so flippantly, was a passionate all-absorbing love – a love that had lasted three years, that had braved all consequences, that had laughed at danger – a love that burns in every line of these letters? Read them; read them, girl, and see what your 'entanglement' means."
She had opened her reticule, and had taken out a packet of letters while she was speaking. She flung the packet on to a table near Hilda.
"Read them, Miss Heathcote. I suppose you know Mr. Grahame's handwriting. I suppose he has written to you."
"I can see that they are in Bothwell's hand," said Hilda, looking down at the bundle of letters, as if they had been a nest of scorpions; "but I decline to read letters that are not addressed to me."
"You are afraid to read them?"
"I will take it upon trust that they are love-letters. May I ask if they were written to you – General Harborough's wife?"
The calm and measured accents, the steady gaze of those honest eyes, the resolute attitude, the small well-balanced head proudly erect, the nervous hands clasped firmly on the back of a chair by which the girl was standing, surprised Lady Valeria, and with a far from pleasant surprise. She had expected Hilda to be more easily crushed. She had expected to see a love-sick girl sobbing at her feet, ready to surrender her sweetheart at the first attack. And instead of girlish weakness, she found a woman prepared to do battle for her love.
"The letters are addressed to me. I should much like you to read them, in order that you may understand the nature of 'Bothwell Grahame's 'entanglement'."
"I decline to read them. It is quite enough for me to know that he was in love with a married woman, and that she encouraged his love – she, the wife of a good and brave old man – she who, by the right of her noble birth, should have been prouder, truer, purer than women of meaner race. She stooped so low! I am sorry that you came here, Lady Valeria. I am sorry that we have ever met – very sorry that you have told me your secret."
"It is everybody's secret by this time. A woman in my position is surrounded by lynx-eyed friends, who read her inmost thoughts. Everybody knows that Bothwell Grahame loved me, and that I returned his love. To you this seems terrible, no doubt. Yet I can tell you that I was a true wife to my husband, as the world estimates truth, and that he died honouring me. You, with your provincial inexperience and your narrow mind, cannot imagine a love which, although unconquered, could remain pure – passionate, intense, devoted, but unstained by sin. Such a love I cherished for Bothwell Grahame, and he for me. We had promised each other that, whenever my release came – and in the course of nature it was not likely to be long deferred – our lives should be linked, our love should be blest. I lived on that hope, and to Bothwell, as those letters would tell you, that hope was no less dear than to me. Honour, right feeling, honesty, were all involved in the promise which bound Bothwell Grahame to me; and I never for an instant doubted that he would keep that promise, never doubted that he was mine till death. But in an evil hour he met you. He was under a cloud. He was maddened by the idea that his neighbours thought the most horrible things of him. You interposed with your girlish sympathy, your sentimental prettiness. You consoled, you encouraged him in his dark hour; and that impulsive nature was moved to a step which he has repented ever since. He committed himself by an avowal which left him no possibility of retreat; and to be true to you he has broken the most sacred promise that man ever made to woman."
"You released him from that promise, Lady Valeria."
"Never. Some hasty words passed between us on one occasion, and we parted in anger. But there was no question of a release from his solemn engagement to me."
"He told me that the lady he had once loved had released him," said Hilda, terribly crestfallen.
She could not believe that Lady Valeria Harborough would tell her a deliberate lie. She was convinced, in spite of herself. Bothwell had deceived her.
"I beg you to read those letters," urged Valeria. "If you do not read them, you may think just a little worse of me than I deserve. I do not pretend to be a good woman; but I want you to know that my attachment to Bothwell Grahame never degenerated into a low intrigue. You may hear the vilest things said of me, perhaps, by and by, when it is known that Mr. Grahame is not going to marry me."
Hilda looked at the letters. She knew that the reading of them would wring her heart; and yet the temptation was too strong to be steadfastly resisted.
Slowly, reluctantly, almost as if under the influence of a mesmerist, Hilda's hand was extended to the packet of letters. She took it up, and looked at it for a few moments, still hesitating.
The letters were folded lengthwise, without their envelopes. Bothwell's bold large hand was easy enough to read, even at a glance. Without untying the packet Hilda could see the nature of those letters. "My dearest love," "My life," "My ever beloved." Such words as those scattered on the folded pages told the character of the correspondence.
She had known from the first, from his own lips, that he had cared for another woman, that he had been in some manner bound to that other woman – his future life so compromised that he must needs win his release from that tie before he could offer himself honourably to his new love. She had known this, and yet the sight of those impassioned phrases in the hand of her betrothed tortured her almost to madness. She flung the packet from her, flung it at her rival's feet, as if it had been some loathsome reptile that had fastened on her hand.
"It is shameful, abominable!" she cried. "Such words as those written to another man's wife! I will read no more – not a line – not a syllable."
"But you shall read, or you shall hear," said Valeria, taking up the packet. "You shall know what kind of vows this man made to me, this man whom you are going to marry."
She drew out a letter haphazard, and thrust it into Hilda's hand – forced her to read by sheer strength of will, watching her with flashing eyes all the while.
Hilda read words of such passionate vehemence that it was difficult to believe that transient feelings could have inspired them – words which told of rapturous delight in a reciprocal love, and fondest hope of future union; words that made light of all things in earth and heaven as weighed against that all-absorbing love. She read of that scheme of the future in which the ultimate marriage of the lovers was counted on as a certainty.
And it was for her sake he had abandoned this old dream – this plan of a life so long cherished. It was for her, an obscure, country-bred girl, who could bring him neither fame nor fortune, that he had surrendered all hope of calling this brilliant high-born woman his wife.
And now the hour had come when he might have claimed her, when, his years of servitude being over, he had but to wait the brief span society demands, before he faced the world with this woman by his side, the sharer of her social status, her ample means. Surely this would have been a happy fate for him, if there were any truth in these words of his, words which seemed to scorch Hilda's brain as she stood, silent, motionless, poring over them.
"You see," said Lady Valeria, after a long silence, "that once at least your lover loved me."
"I thought that once in such things meant for ever," answered Hilda, with a quiet sadness, as of one who speaks of the dead. "Yet the man who wrote this letter has talked and written of his love for me as tenderly, if not as passionately, as he has written here. Yes, I knew that he had cared for some one else, but not like this. I did not think such a love as this could come twice in a lifetime."
"You are wiser than I expected to find you," said Valeria, with languid insolence. "No, child, men do not love like that twice in a lifetime. I had Bothwell Grahame's heart at its best – his constancy, his devotion – and he would have been true to me till the end of his life had it not been for that business of the murder, which made men look askance at him, and your childish pity, which touched his heart when it was sorest. He was caught in the toils of his own affectionate nature. His grateful heart, which always melted at the least kindness, betrayed him. And because he was sympathetic and grateful you thought he loved you; and now you stand between him and his first love. You are the only barrier to a marriage which would make Bothwell Grahame a rich man, and me the happiest of women."
"If you had heard him talk of our future, if you had seen him planning our home, you would hardly doubt that he meant to be happy with me, Lady Valeria," said Hilda.
"My child, I have seen your future home; I have heard what kind of a life Bothwell Grahame is to lead as your husband. He is to be a schoolmaster, cramming dull boys for impossible examinations; grinding mathematics and theoretical engineering all day long and every day, till his brain is weary; going over the same ground again and again like a horse in a mill. He is to be a nobody, a plodding bread-winner, living year after year in a God-forsaken village, far away from the great arena of life; ground down by the fathers and patronised by the mothers of his pupils. He is to cherish no higher ambition than to be able to pay the butcher and the baker, and to get himself a new coat before the old one is threadbare. That is the life to which your generous love would condemn him."
"We are not going to be quite such paupers as you imagine, Lady Valeria. I have a small income of my own, which will at least pay the baker; and I do not think Bothwell's rich cousin would see him in want of a coat."
"My dear Miss Heathcote, it is only a question of degree. Granted that Mr. Grahame is sure of his breakfast and dinner, his existence as a private tutor will be none the less a life of exile from all that makes life worth living – from the world of art and letters, from the strife and the glory of politics, from the great world of distinguished men and women. As my husband he would have the ball at his feet. His fortune would be large enough to command an opening in any career he might choose for himself, his connections on my side of the house would be powerful enough to help him, and his talents would undoubtedly bring him to the front. In the House his career would be assured. With his knowledge of India and Indian war tactics, he would inevitably make his mark. There are hardly three men in the House of Commons who have any real knowledge of that vast Eastern world for which English politicians legislate. You see I have dreamed for him, thought for him. All my ambition is for him, and not for myself."
"I am willing to believe that you love him, Lady Valeria," said Hilda, with frigid distinctness, looking her rival full in the face, "since nothing but the blindest love could induce any woman in your position to lower yourself as you have done – first in India as General Harborough's wife, and secondly to-day as General Harborough's widow – when you come to me and ask me to give up my betrothed husband, the man to whom I am to be married next Tuesday; for I suppose that is the gist of all you have said to me."
"I ask nothing from you, Miss Heathcote. I know the narrow view which most girls of your age, brought up as you have been, take of life and its obligations. I do not expect large-minded ideas from a young lady with your surroundings." This was said with infinite scorn of Hilda's rustic rearing. "But I think it well that you should know how much Bothwell Grahame surrenders for the privilege of having you for a wife. Of course it is quite possible that the recompense may be worth the sacrifice. It is for you to judge of that. I wish you good-day."
Hilda bowed and rang the bell, without a word. She did not accompany her visitor to the drawing-room door, but stood in a stony silence looking out at the window in front of her, with fixed eyes.
It was only when the outer door had closed on Lady Valeria that the girl flung herself on the nearest sofa and abandoned herself to her grief.
Alas, this entanglement of the past had been something more than a garland of roses. It had been a chain from which her lover had tried to release himself, but whose iron links yet hung about him.
All the happiness was gone out of her life, all the sweet tranquillity which had been the holiest charm in her love for Bothwell, the deep faith in her beloved, the assurance of his trustworthiness, his unalloyed love for her. How could she ever again believe in that love, after she had heard the history of his passion for another, after she had read of that wild infatuation in his own hand, after she had seen the woman he had thus loved and thus addressed – a woman to win and hold the love of men, a woman whose face had that subtle charm of supreme refinement and distinction which is far above the peach-bloom tints and perfect lines of stereotyped beauty? In Valeria the broken-hearted girl acknowledged a siren before whose fascinations the wisest man might be as a fool. She compared herself with her rival. She walked across the room and stood before the long console-glass, contemplating her own image, half-scornfully, half-sorrowfully. The pale tear-blotted face appeared at its worst, robbed of the freshness that constituted half its beauty. The slight and girlish figure looked insignificant as compared with Valeria's statelier bearing.
The girl turned herself about, and looked at herself at every angle, as if she had been trying on a gown at her milliner's.
"What a dowdy I am!" she said to herself. "Just the very pattern for a schoolmaster's wife. I doubt if Lady Valeria is more than an inch taller; and yet she looks a queen. It is the way she carries her head, I suppose, and the way she walks, like a woman accustomed to command. Yes, a man might well be proud of such a wife, and of the position such a wife could give him. Bothwell in Parliament. Bothwell a great authority on Indian affairs. How strange it sounds! But I know how clever he is, how well he can talk upon any subject. It would be a splendid career for him. And for my sake he is to forego all that, and to drudge as a tutor in a Cornish village. Yes, I suppose it would be a dreary life for such a man – though it seemed so full of brightness when we two talked about it last week. For my sake. No, Bothwell," she said to herself resolutely, striking her clenched hand upon the marble table. "No, Bothwell, not for my sake! You shall not surrender fame and fortune for my sake!"
And then, seating herself on the old-fashioned window-seat, with clasped hands lying in her lap, and steadfast eyes brooding on the ground; in an attitude of deepest thought, she retraced the history of Bothwell's courtship. She asked herself if she had verily been, as Lady Valeria had insinuated, herself half the wooer. She remembered how, in the beginning of their acquaintance, she had admired Dora Wyllard's cousin – how his riding, his singing, his conversation had alike seemed perfection. How she had contrasted him, to his wondrous advantage, with the country squires around and about. It was just possible that in her girlish inexperience she had betrayed her admiration, had flattered Bothwell into the idea that he liked her. And then, when the hour of trouble came, it was true that she had made no effort to hide her feelings; she had given Bothwell her sympathy almost unasked; she had, perhaps, lured him into declaring himself as her lover, when the feeling which inspired him was but the impulse of the moment, a transient emotion, born of gratitude.
She could understand how, in his self-contempt, his wounded honour, he had believed that his love for Valeria was a thing of the past, and had been glad to release himself from the ignoble bondage. But now that Valeria was free, his first love, fondly attached to him, valuing her fortune and position only as a means for his advancement, who could doubt that the old love would revive in his breast with all the old fervour; that his heart would go back to his first beloved, as a bird returns to its nest?
And was his whole life to be sacrificed because of this one mistaken impulse? No, the wrong was not yet irreparable. The marriage planned for next Tuesday need never take place.
Hilda began deliberately to scheme out the manner in which she should set her lover free. If the thing was to be done, it must be done bravely and thoroughly – not by halves. There must be no half-hearted action, no wavering, no pretence of surrender offered in the hope that Bothwell would refuse to accept his liberty. No; she must make the sacrifice as full and as effectual as that of Jephthah's daughter. She gave her life to save her father's honour. She (Hilda) could give her happiness, her fair future, the sweet ideal she had dreamed of, the life which to every good woman seems of all lives most perfect, an existence spent in tranquil seclusion with the husband of her choice.
After long brooding, deepest thought interrupted ever and anon by a burst of passionate weeping, tears which would not be restrained, Hilda had made her plan. She would go away, quite away, where Bothwell could not follow her. She would write him a letter which would leave him free to return to his old allegiance, while she herself would disappear, drop quietly out of the circle in which she was known, and remain hidden from all her friends for the next few months, perhaps for a year: at any rate until the joy-bells had rung for Bothwell's marriage with his old love. Alas, those joy-bells! She had imagined them ringing for her own wedding; she had heard their sweet music in her dreams.
Where should she go? What should she do with herself during the time of hiding? That was the question; and it was a difficult one for this inexperienced girl to answer. She had travelled so little, that all the wide world outside her own home was no more familiar to her than a chapter of geography. She knew the names of mountains and rivers, she had made her dream-pictures of beautiful places and scenes in far-away lands; but of railways and steamers, of the mode and manner of journeying from one place to another, of hotels and custom-houses, and the exchange of money, she knew hardly anything.
"I must go very far away, to some place where he would not think of following me, where he could never find me," she said to herself, supposing that it would be a point of honour with Bothwell to follow her, to keep his plighted troth, if it were possible.
She wanted to set him free, to make it easy for him to go back to his old love. She told herself that Lady Valeria had spoken the truth, and that it was not possible for him to have forgotten that old love.
