Мэри Элизабет Брэддон
Wyllard's Weird
At breakfast a few days later one of the lads, the son of a brother officer of Bothwell's, looked up from the Evening Standard with an exclamation of surprise.
"Here's the widow of one of your old friends gone and got married, Mr. Grahame," he said. "'At Galbraith Church, N.B., Sir George Varney, Bart., of the Hop Poles, Maidstone, to Lady Valeria Harborough, of Galbraith Castle, Perthshire, and Fox Hill, Plymouth.' You saved the old General's life up at the hills, didn't you?" asked the boy. "I've heard my father talk about it."
"It wasn't worth talking about, Hector," answered Bothwell. "The General was a good friend to me, and I honour his memory."
"More than Lady Valeria does, or she wouldn't marry such a cad as Varney. I've heard my father say he is a cad."
"It is safer not to repeat opinions of that kind," said Bothwell.
He tried to play the schoolmaster while his heart was beating furiously for very joy. She was married, that viper who had so well-nigh spoiled his life; she was married to a scoundrel who would make her life miserable, and he, Bothwell, was his own man again. Hilda could have no further justification for distrust. He had held himself aloof from the siren, he had demonstrated by his conduct that he had no hankering after her or her fortune; and now that she was safely disposed of in second wedlock, Hilda could have no excuse for delaying his happiness.
All things had gone well with him, except this one thing. He had built and furnished his house, and laid out his garden; people were full of praises for his taste and cleverness. He had been lucky with his pupils, and he liked his work. He was able to save money, and before the year was out he had laid aside the first hundred pounds towards the extinction of his debt to his cousin. But Dora did not want the debt extinguished, and had written him an indignant letter when he offered to pay the money into her banking account.
"How dare you pinch and scrape in order to pay me off?" she wrote. "How do I know that you are not half-starving those poor lads, in your desire to get out of my debt? It is your paltry pride which rebels at an obligation even to your adopted sister."
To atone for the harshness of her letter she sent him an old Florentine cabinet of ebony and ivory, a gem which glorified his drawing-room, already enriched by her gifts; for she had sent him bronzes from one place, and pottery from another, and glass from a third. She had made up her mind that when the time came for Bothwell to lead his young wife home, the home should be in some wise worthy of the wife.
And now there was an end of all uncertainties about that first unhappy entanglement of Bothwell's; and nothing but caprice need keep him and Hilda apart any longer.
A fortnight had gone since he had written to Hilda, and there had been no sign. It was the fifth day after the announcement of Lady Valeria's marriage in the London papers, and Bothwell started once more upon that long ride by moorland and lane, across country from Trevena to Bodmin, and thence to The Spaniards. He expected the smallest comfort at the end of his journey; only a little talk with the Fräulein, who might have had a recent letter from Heathcote, and might be able to tell him something, were it ever so little. She was always friendly and compassionate; and she was always ready to talk to him about Hilda, and that was much. On one occasion she had gone so far as to take him into Hilda's private sitting-room, and let him gloat over the rows of prettily-bound books – Tennyson and Browning, and Dickens and Thackeray – and the little tables, and manifold nicknacks, the mantelpiece border which those dear hands had worked. There stood his own photograph, framed and curtained with plush, as if it were too sacred for the common eye. He had given her a smaller copy of the same photograph, and he hoped that she had taken that with her, that she looked at it sometimes, among strange faces.
Miss Meyerstein expatiated on Hilda's abrupt departure, and the little luggage with which she had provided herself.
"Only her dressing-bag and a small portmanteau," said the Fräulein. "She left all her pretty frocks hanging in the wardrobe; all her laces and ribbons, and gloves and ornaments in her drawers. She must have had to buy everything new. And there is her wedding-gown, just as it came from the dressmaker's the day after she left home."
And then, at Bothwell's urgent, reiterated entreaty, Miss Meyerstein went into the adjoining room, and came back, after a rattling of keys, bringing with her a white object which looked like the sheeted dead being carried away from a plague-stricken house.
It was only Hilda's wedding-gown, wrapped in voluminous coverings of white linen.
Miss Meyerstein flung off the coverings, and shook out the white satin gown, satin of so rich a fabric that it took all manner of pearly and opal hues in the autumn light – a smart little frock, with a round skirt, and just one big puff at the back of the waist, like a carelessly-tied sash.
"Short, for dancing," said Miss Meyerstein, as she held out the frock at arm's length, dangling in the air.
"But she didn't expect to dance upon her wedding-day!" ejaculated Bothwell stupidly.
"No, but afterwards. She would go to dances, and she would be expected to appear as a bride."
"Of course," muttered Bothwell, wondering how many dances – save the dances of pixies in a moonlit glen – might be expected to occur within easy reach of Trevena.
He knelt and kissed the hem of the white satin frock, and then turned away with a sigh that was almost a sob.
"Not a grain of dust has got to it," said Miss Meyerstein. "It will be ready when it is wanted."
"Yes," answered Bothwell. "The gown will be ready when it is wanted; but who can tell who the bridegroom will be?"
"He will be nobody if he is not you," said Miss Meyerstein. "That poor child positively adores you."
"How do you know? It is nearly a year since you saw her."
"Such love as that does not wear itself out in a year."
To-day Bothwell felt that he wanted even such poor comfort as might be had from feminine twaddle of this kind. He felt that even a romp with the twins would do him good. They were of her race, and she had loved them, and they could prattle to him about her.
It was a rainy afternoon late in October, a dreary day for that long ride over the hills. The Atlantic yonder had a look of unspeakable melancholy; a great gray sea into which gray earth and sky melted. It would be dark before Bothwell could get back to Trevena, and the ride was not the pleasantest after nightfall; but a man who had ridden through Afghan passes in his time was not to be scared by dark hills and narrow lanes. Bothwell was in a mood to ride somewhere, were it only in the hope of riding away from his own impatient thoughts. He had delayed starting till after luncheon, having waited to give his boys the full benefit of a long morning's work. It was between five and six when he came to the iron gates of The Spaniards, and the sun was setting behind the hills yonder above Penmorval, poor deserted Penmorval, where the pictured faces looked out upon empty floors, and where the housekeeper sighed as she went from room to room, attending to fires that warmed desolate hearths.
The Spaniards looked a little more cheerful than when Bothwell had seen it last, for there were lights in many of the lower windows, and those lamp-lit casements glowed brightly across the rainy dusk. He would be able to get a good cup of tea from the Fräulein, and to put up his horse for an hour or two before he turned homewards again.
An empty carriage passed him in the drive, and turned towards an opening in the shrubbery that led to the stable-yard. There were visitors at The Spaniards, upon that wet evening! Bothwell wondered who the guest, or guests, could be, in the absence of the master.
Or was it the master himself who had come back? His heart beat faster at the thought. He dismounted and rang the bell. The door was opened directly. There were a couple of servants in the hall and some luggage. Yes, the master of the house had returned.
"Take my horse to the stables, like a good fellow," said Bothwell to the man who had opened the door. "Your master has come home, I see."
"Yes, sir, ten minutes ago."
Bothwell waited to ask no further questions, did not wait to be announced even, but walked straight to the library, Heathcote's usual sitting-room, opened the door, and went in.
There was no lamp. The room was lighted only by the fire-glow, which gleamed on bookshelves and old oak panelling, and on the massive timbers of the ceiling. There was a tea-table in front of the wide old fireplace – one of those vagabond tea-tables which can make themselves at home anywhere – and the tea was being poured out by a girl who wore a neat little black velvet toque and dark cloth jacket, a girl who looked as if she had just come off a journey, while Heathcote reposed in his armchair on the other side of the hearth.
No one but Hilda could have been so much at her ease in that room, which was in some wise a sacred chamber, especially reserved for the master of the house. No one but Hilda had such pretty hair, or such a graceful bend of the head. The girl in the velvet toque was sitting with her back to Bothwell; but he had not a moment's doubt as to her identity.
He went over to the hearth, gave his hand to Heathcote silently, and then seated himself by Hilda's side, she looking up at him dumbly the while, half in fear.
"What have you to say to me, Hilda, after having used me so ill?" he asked, taking her hand in his.
"Only that it was for your own sake I went away on the eve of our marriage," she answered seriously. "I did not want to stand between you and happiness."
"Would it not have been wiser, and fairer to me, if you had taken my views upon the matter before you ran away?"
"You would have been too generous to tell me the truth; you would have sacrificed yourself to your sense of honour. How could I tell you did not love Lady Valeria better than me?"
"If you had read Tom Jones you would have had a very easy way of solving that question. You would have had only to look in the glass, and there you would have seen, as Sophia Western saw, the reason for a lover's devotion. You would have seen purity and innocence, and fresh young beauty; and you would have known that your lover could not falter in his truth to you."
"I don't think Tom's conduct was altogether blameless, in spite of the looking-glass, eh, Bothwell?" said Heathcote, laughing at him. It is so hard to have to make love before a third person. "You have to thank me for bringing home your sweetheart. I read the advertisement of Lady Valeria's marriage at Genoa three days ago, as I was on my way home; so I stopped in Paris, and brought this young lady away from her musical studies at an hour's notice. I suppose she was getting tired of the Conservatoire, for she seemed uncommonly glad to come."
"And you were in Paris?" cried Bothwell. "So near! If I had only known!"
"There would have been nothing gained by following her," said Heathcote. "I never met with a more resolute young woman than this sister of mine. When she was determined to have you, there was not the least use in opposing her, and when she had made up her mind not to have you, she was just as inflexible. But now that Lady Valeria has taken to herself a second husband, and that you seem to bear the blow pretty cheerfully, perhaps Hilda may be inclined to change her mind for the second time."
"Her wedding-gown is hanging in her wardrobe ready for her," said Bothwell, drawing a little closer to his truant sweetheart, in the sheltering dusk, that delicious hour for true and loving hearts, blind-man's holiday, betwixt dog and wolf.
"How did you know that?" asked Heathcote.
"The Fräulein told me. She has been taking care of your wedding-gown, Hilda. She knew that it would be wanted. You had better wear it as soon as possible, dearest. It is a year old already; and it is going more and more out of fashion every day."
"She shall wear it before we are a month older," said Heathcote. "I have had too much trouble about this marriage already; and I'll stand no more shilly-shallying. We'll put up the banns next Sunday; and in less than a month from to-day you two foolish people shall be one."
Edward Heathcote kept his word, and the smart white satin frock was worn one bright morning in November, worn by the prettiest bride that had been seen in Bodmin Church for many a year, the townspeople said – those townspeople who had now only praises and friendliest greetings for Bothwell Grahame, albeit a year ago he had seemed to them as a possible murderer.
A telegram had informed Dora Wyllard of the wedding-day, so soon as ever the date had been fixed, but she had not responded, as Hilda and her brother had hoped she would respond, to the invitation to be present at the wedding. She could not bear to see the Cornish hills yet awhile, she told Hilda, in her letter of congratulation. Years must pass, in all probability, before she could endure to look upon that familiar landscape again, or to see that roof-tree which had sheltered her when she was Julian Wyllard's happy wife.
"I am rejoiced to know that you and Bothwell have come to a safe haven at last," she wrote. "I shall always be interested in hearing of your welfare, cheered and comforted by the thought of your bright home. I cannot blame you for having made Bothwell wait for his happiness, Hilda; for I feel that you have acted wisely in making sure of his free choice. There can now be no after-thought, no lurking suspicion to come between you and your wedded love.
"For my own part I am at peace here, and that is much. I read a great deal, paint a little every day; and my picture, however bad it may be, is a kind of companion to me, a thing that seems to live as it grows under my hand. My models interest me, and through them I have become acquainted with several humble households in Florence, and find a great deal to interest me in this warmhearted, hot-headed race. Best of all, I am away from old scenes, old associations; and sometimes, sitting dreaming in my sunny balcony, with the blue waters of the Arno gliding past under my feet, I almost believe that I am some new creature without a history, and not that Dora Wyllard who was once mistress of Penmorval.
"I wish you and Bothwell would take your honeymoon holiday in the South, and spend a week or two here with me. There is plenty of accommodation for you in these grand old apartments of mine – a first-floor of a dozen rooms, all large and lofty. My old servants keep everything in exquisite order, and are devoted in their attention to me.
"It was a pleasure to me to see your brother when he was staying in Florence. Tell him that I left Vallombrosa only a week ago, and was very sorry to come away from wood and mountain even then."
Hilda and her husband accepted this friendly invitation, and spent half their honeymoon on the road to Florence, and the other half in that picturesque city. They found Dora the shadow of her former self. She had a gentle air of resignation, a pensive placidity which was inexpressibly touching. She never mentioned her dead husband. She was full of thoughtfulness for others, and had made herself the adored benefactress of a little colony of poor Florentines. She had furnished her rooms and established herself in a manner which indicated the intention to make a permanent home in the city; and here Bothwell and his wife left her, with deep regret.
"Will you never come back to Cornwall, Dora?" Hilda asked piteously, in the last farewell moments at the railway-station.
"Never is a long word, dearest. I suppose I shall see the old places again some day; but I must be a good deal older than I am now – a good deal further away from my old sorrows."
Dora spoke without reckoning upon that Providence which shapes our ends in spite of us; and happily for the cause of true love, Providence found a way of bringing Dora Wyllard back to Cornwall much sooner than she had intended to return.
A little more than a year after Bothwell and his wife left Florence, the happy home at Trevena was darkened by the shadow of an awful fear. A son had been born to Bothwell Grahame; and before the boy was a week old the young mother was in imminent danger of death. Edward Heathcote was in Italy, spending his autumn holiday, going over much of the same ground that he had visited before, and loitering longer and later than the previous year. A telegram from Bothwell told him of his sister's peril; and another telegram reached Mrs. Wyllard from the same source. Moved by the same impulse, Dora and Heathcote met at the station, each on the same errand, bent on starting by the first train for Paris. They travelled together in sad and silent companionship, each oppressed by the fear of a great calamity.
Heathcote had telegraphed before he started, asking for a telegram to meet him at the Paris station, and here the message brought a ray of comfort.
"A little better. The doctors are more hopeful."
Anxious days and nights followed Dora's arrival at Trevena. Poor Bothwell suffered a suppressed agony of grief, which seemed to have aged him at least ten years by the time the crisis was past, and the young mother was able to smile upon her firstborn. Happily these markings of care are soon erased from youthful faces; and before Christmas Bothwell was himself again, and ready to receive a new batch of pupils, the old lot having been disposed of triumphantly in the summer before his son's birth.
Dora stayed in Cornwall during that winter of '83 and '84, and she is in Cornwall still, but not at Penmorval. She has established herself at her birth-place, Tregony Manor, near the Land's End; and here old friends and neighbours flock round her, the people who knew her mother, the friends of her childish days, of her happy girlhood. They bring back sweet memories of the old time, and help to wean her from her gloomy thoughts.
One of her old companions, a spinster of thirty summers, is very often with her in the familiar home. They seem almost like the girl-friends of the past, painting together, playing, singing, working. All the old occupations have been resumed; as if the ten years intervening had hardly made any break in the two lives.
"Sometimes I fancy it is all a dream, and that you have never been away from Tregony," says Miss Beauchamp, one morning when they are sitting at work. "If we had but your dear good mother over there in her favourite, chair by the fireplace, I should quite believe the last ten years to be only a dream. But she is gone, dear soul, and that makes a sad difference. Do you know, yesterday, when I looked out of the window, and saw you and Mr. Heathcote walking on the terrace, I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I was awake. You both looked exactly as you used to look ten years ago, when you were engaged."
Dora went on with her work in placid silence.
"Dora, he is so good, so loyal, so devoted to you," cried Miss Beauchamp, in her affectionate impulsive way. "You cannot be so cruel as to spoil his life for ever. Surely you will reward him some day."
"Some day," sang Dora softly, with her face bent low over her work: and her story ends thus with the refrain of a popular ballad.
