Читать книгу Fire in Stubble - Baroness Orczy - Страница 8

Table of Contents

“My Lord is sad.”

“Oh!—”

“My Lord is weary!”

“!!—”

A pause. Mistress Julia Peyton, you understand, was waxing impatient. Can you wonder? She was not accustomed to moodiness on the part of her courtiers; to a certain becoming diffidence mayhap, to tongue-tiedness—if we may be allowed so to call it—on the part of her young adorers fresh from their country homes, fledglings scarce free from the gentle trammels of their mother’s apron strings, to humility in the presence of so much beauty, grace and wit as she was wont to display when taken with the desire to please, to all that yes, yes and a thousand times yes, the adorable Julia was fully accustomed. But to silence on the part of the wittiest gentleman about town, to moodiness akin to ill-humour on the part of the most gallant young rake this side of Westminster—no! no! and a thousand times no! Mistress Julia would have none of it.

Her daintily-shod foot beat a quick measure against the carpets, her fingers delicately tipped with rouge played a devil’s tattoo on the polished top of the tiny marqueterie table beside her, and her small teeth, white and even as those of a kitten, tore impatiently at her under lip.

Still Lord Stowmaries paid no heed to these obvious signs of a coming storm. He lolled in an armchair opposite the imperious beauty, his chin was resting in his hand, his brow was puckered, and oh! most portentous outward indication of troubles within! his cravat looked soiled and crumpled, as if an angry hand had fidgeted its immaculate whiteness away.

At last Mistress Julia found herself quite unable to control her annoyance any longer. Granted that Lord Stowmaries was the richest, most promising “parti” that had ever come her way; that he was young, good-looking, owned half the county of Hertford, and one of the oldest names in England, and that, moreover, he was of sufficiently amiable disposition to be fashioned into a model husband by and by— granted all that, say I, had not all these advantages, I pray you to admit, caused the fair Julia to hide her ill-humour for close on half an hour, whilst the young man frowned and sighed, gave curt answers to her most charming sallies, and had failed to notice that a filmy handkerchief, lace-edged and delicately perfumed, had been dropped on that veriest exact spot of the carpet which was most conveniently situated for sinking on one knee within a few inches of the most adorable foot in London?

But now the irascible beauty was at the end of her tether. She rose—wrathfully kicking aside that same handkerchief which her surly visitor had failed to notice—and took three quick steps in the direction of the bell-pull.

“And now, my lord,” she said, “I pray you to excuse me.”

And she stretched out her hand in a gesture intended to express the full measure of her wrath.

Lord Stowmaries roused himself from his unpleasant torpor.

“To excuse you, fair one?” he murmured in the tone of a man who has just wakened from slumber, and is still unaware of what has been going on around him whilst he slept.

“Ay, my good lord,” she replied with a shrill note of sarcasm very apparent in the voice which so many men had compared to that of a nightingale. “I fain must tear myself away from the delights of your delectable company—though I confess ’twere passing easy to find more entertaining talk than yours has been this last half-hour.”

“Would you be cruel to me now, Mistress?” he said with a deep and mournful sigh, “now, when—”

“Now, when what?” she retorted still pettishly, though a little mollified by his obvious distress.

She turned back towards him, and presently placed a hand on his shoulder.

“My lord,” she said resolutely, “either you tell me now and at once what ails you this afternoon, or I pray you leave me, for in your present mood, by my faith, your room were more enjoyable than your company.”

He took that pretty hand which still lingered on his shoulder, and pressing it for a few lingering seconds between both his, he finally conveyed its perfumed whiteness to his lips.

“Don’t send me away,” he pleaded pathetically; “I am the most miserable of mortals, and if you closed your doors against me now, you would be sending your most faithful adorer straight to perdition.”

“Tut, man!” she rejoined impatiently, “you talk like a gaby. In the name of Heaven, tell me what ails you, or I vow you’ll send me into my grave with choler.”

“I have been trying to tell you, Mistress, this past half-hour.”

“Well?”

“But Lud help me, I cannot.”

“Then it’s about a woman,” she concluded with firm decision.

He gave no reply. The conclusion was obvious.

The fair Julia frowned. This was threatening to become serious. It was no mere question of moodiness then, of ill-humour anon to be forgiven and dissipated with a smile.

There was a woman at the bottom of my lord Stowmaries’ ill-humour. A woman who had the power to obtrude her personality between his mental vision and the daintiest apparition that had ever turned a man’s brain dizzy with delight. A woman in fact who might prove to be an obstacle to the realisation of Mistress Julia Peyton’s most cherished dreams.

All thoughts of anger, of petulance, of bell-pulls and peremptory congés fled from the beauty’s mind. She sat down again opposite the young man; she rested her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands; she looked serious, sympathetic, interested, anything you like. A sufficiency of moisture rose to her eyes to render them soft and lustrous, appealing and irresistible. Her lips parted and quivered just sufficiently to express deep emotion held courageously in check, whilst from beneath the little lace cap one or two rebellious curls free from powder, golden in colour, and silky in texture, were unaccountably allowed to escape.

Thus equipped for the coming struggle, she repeated her question, not peremptorily this time, but gently and in a voice that trembled slightly with the intensity of sympathy.

“What ails my lord?”

“Nothing short of despair,” he replied, whilst his eyes rested with a kind of mournful abnegation on the enchanting picture so tantalisingly near to him.

“Is it quite hopeless, then?” she asked.

“Quite.”

“An entanglement?”

“No. A marriage.”

Outwardly she made no sign. Mistress Julia was not one of those simpering women who faint, or scream, or gasp at moments of mental or moral crises. I will grant you that the colour left her cheek, and that her fingers for one brief instant were tightly clutched—no longer gracefully interlaced—under her chin. But this was in order to suppress emotion, not to make a show of it.

There was only a very momentary pause, the while she now, with deliberate carelessness, brushed a rebellious curl back into its place.

“A marriage, my good lord,” she said lightly; “nay! you must be jesting—or else mayhap I have misunderstood.—A marriage to render you moody?—Whose marriage could that be?—”

“Mine, Mistress—my marriage,” exclaimed Lord Stowmaries, now in tones of truly tragical despair; “curse the fate that brought it about, the parents who willed it, the necessity which forced them to it, and which hath wrecked my life.”

Mistress Julia now made no further attempt to hide her fears. Obviously the young man was not jesting. The tone of true misery in his voice was quite unmistakable. It was the suddenness of the blow which hurt her so. This fall from the pinnacle of her golden dreams. For weeks and months now she had never thought of herself in the future as other than the Countess of Stowmaries, chatelaine of Maries Castle, the leader of society both in London and in Newmarket, by virtue of her husband’s wealth and position, of her own beauty, tact and grace.

She had even with meticulous care so reorganised her mind and memory, that she could now eliminate from them all recollections of the more humble past—the home at Norwich, the yeoman father, kindly but absorbed in the daily struggle for existence, the busy, somewhat vulgar mother, the sordid existence peculiar to impoverished smaller gentry; then the early marriage with Squire Peyton. It had seemed brilliant then, for the Squire, though past his youth, had a fine house, and quite a few serving men—but no position—he never came to London and Mistress Julia’s knowledge of Court and society was akin to that which children possess of fairies or of sprites.

But Squire Peyton it appears had more money than he had owned to in his lifetime. He had been something of a miser apparently, for even his young widow was surprised when at his death—which occurred if you remember some twenty-four months ago—she found herself possessed of quite a pleasing fortune.

This was the beginning of Mistress Julia’s golden dreams, of her longings towards a more brilliant future, which a lucky second marriage could easily now secure for her. The thousand pounds a year which she possessed enabled her to take a small house in Holborn Row, and to lay herself out to cut a passable figure in London society. Not among the Court set, of course, but there were all the young idlers about town, glad enough to be presented to a young and attractive widow, endowed with some wealth of her own, and an inordinate desire to please.

The first few idlers soon attracted others, and gradually the pretty widow’s circle of acquaintances widened. If that circle was chiefly composed of men, who shall blame the pretty widow?

It was a husband she wanted, and not female companionship. Lord Swannes, if you remember, paid her his court, also Sir Jeremiah Harfleet, and it was well known that my lord of Craye—like the true poet that he was—was consumed with love of her. But as soon as Mistress Julia realised that richly-feathered birds were only too willing to fly into her snares, she aimed for higher game. A golden eagle was what she wanted to bring down.

And was not the young Earl of Stowmaries the veritable prince of golden eagles?

He came and saw and she conquered in a trice. Her beauty, which was unquestionable, and an inexhaustible fund of verve and high-spirited chatter which easily passed for wit were attractive to most men, and Lord Stowmaries, somewhat blasé already by the more simpering advances of the Court damsels, found a certain freshness in this young widow who had not yet shaken off the breezy vulgarity of her East Anglian home, and whose artless conversation, wholly innocent of elegance, was more amusing than the stilted “Ohs!” and “Luds!” of the high-born ladies of his own rank.

The golden eagle seemed overwilling to allow the matrimonial snare set by the fair Julia to close in around him: she was already over-sure of him, and though she did not frequent the assemblies and salons where congregated his lordship’s many friends, she was fully aware that her name was being constantly coupled with that of the Earl of Stowmaries.

But now she saw that she had missed her aim, that the glorious bird no longer flew within her reach, but was a prisoner in some one else’s cage, fettered beyond her powers of liberation.

But still Mistress Julia with persistence worthy a better cause refused to give up all hope.

“Tell me all about it, my lord,” she said as quietly as she could. “It had been better had you spoken before.”

“I have been a fool, Mistress,” he replied dully, “yet more sinned against than sinning.”

“You’ll not tell me that you are actually married?” she insisted.

“Alas!”

“And did not tell me so,” she retorted hotly, “but came here, courting me, speaking of love to me—of marriage—God help you! when the very word was a sacrilege since you were not free—Oh! the perfidy of it all!—and you speak of being more sinned against than sinning. ’Tis the pillory you deserve, my lord, for thus shaming a woman first and then breaking her heart.”

She was quite sincere in her vehemence, for self-control had now quite deserted her, and the wrong and humiliation which she had been made to endure, rose up before her like cruel monsters that mocked and jeered at her annihilated hopes and her vanished dreams. Her voice rose in a crescendo of shrill tones, only to sink again under the strength of choking sobs. Despair, shame and bitter reproach rang through every word which she uttered.

“As you rightly say, Mistress,” murmured the young man, “God help me!”

“But the details, man—the details—” she rejoined impatiently; “cannot you see that I am consumed with anxiety—the woman?—who is she?—”

“Her name is Rose Marie,” he replied in the same dull, even tones, like a schoolboy reciting a lesson which he hath learned, but does not understand; “she is the daughter of a certain M. Legros, who is tailor to His Majesty the King of France.”

“A tailor!” she gasped, incredulous now, hopeful once more that the young man was mayhap suffering from megrims and had seen unpleasant visions, which had no life or reality in them.

“A tailor’s daughter?” she repeated. “Impossible!”

“Only too true,” he rejoined. “I had no choice in the matter.”

“Who had?”

“My parents.”

“Tush!” she retorted scornfully, “and you a man!”

“Nay! I was not a man then.”

“Evidently.”

“I was in my seventh year!” he exclaimed pathetically.

There was a slight pause, during which the swiftly-risen hope a few moments ago once more died away. Then she said drily:

“And she?—this—this Rose or Mary—daughter of a tailor—how old was she when you married her?”

“In her second year, I think,” he replied meekly. “I just remember quite vaguely that after the ceremony she was carried screaming and kicking out of the church. That was the last I saw of my wife from that day to this—”

“Bah!”

“My great-uncle, the late Lord Stowmaries, shipped my father, mother and myself off to Virginia soon after that. My father had been something of a wastrel all his life and a thorn in the flesh of the old miser. The second time that he was locked up in a debtor’s prison, Lord Stowmaries paid up for him on the condition that he went off to Virginia at once with my mother and myself, and never showed his face in England again.”

“Hm! I remember hearing something of this when you, my lord, came into your title. But these—these—tailor people—who were they?”

“Madame Legros was a distant connection of my mother’s who, I suppose, married the tailor for the same reason that I—an unfortunate lad without a will of my own—was made to marry the tailor’s daughter.”

“She is rich—of course?”

“Legros, the tailor, owns millions, I believe, and Rose Marie is his only child. It was the first time that my poor father, Captain Kestyon, found himself actually in prison and unable to pay his debts. The Earl of Stowmaries—a wicked old miser, if ever there was one—refused to come to his rescue. My mother was practically penniless then; she had no one to whom she could turn for succour except the cousin over in Paris, who had always been kind to her, who was passing rich, burning with social ambition, and glad enough to have the high-born English lady beneath her bourgeois roof.”

“And that same burning social ambition caused the worthy tailor to consent to a marriage between his baby daughter and the scion of one of the grandest families in England,” commented Mistress Julia calmly. “It were all so simple—if only you had had the manhood to tell me all this ere now.”

“I thought that miserable marriage forever forgotten.”

“Pshaw!” she retorted, “was it likely?”

“I had heard nothing of the Legros for many years,” he said dejectedly. “My father had died out in the Colony: my mother and I continued to live there on a meagre pittance which that miserly old reprobate—my great-uncle—grudgingly bestowed upon us. This was scarce sufficient for our wants, let alone for enabling us to save enough money to pay our passage home. At first my mother was in the habit of asking for and obtaining help from the Legros!—you understand? she never would have consented to the connection,” added the young man with naïve cynicism, “had she not intended to derive profit therefrom, so whenever an English or a French ship touched the coast my poor mother would contrive to send a pathetic letter to be delivered in Paris, at the house of the king’s tailor. But after a while answers to these missives became more and more rare, soon they ceased altogether, and it is now eight years since the last remittance came—”

“The worthy tailor and his wife were getting tired of the aristocratic connection,” commented Mistress Julia drily; “no doubt they too had intended to derive profit therefrom and none came.”

“Was I not right, Mistress, in thinking that ill-considered marriage forgotten?” quoth Lord Stowmaries with more vehemence than he had displayed in the actual recital of the sordid tale; “was I not justified in thinking that the Legros had by now bitterly regretted the union of their only child to the penniless son of a spendthrift father? Tell me,” he reiterated hotly, “was I not justified?—I thought that they had forgotten—that they had regretted—that Rose Marie had found a husband more fitted to her lowly station and to her upbringing—and that her parents would only be too glad to think that I too had forgotten—or that I was dead.”

There was a slight pause. Mistress Julia’s white brow was puckered into a deep frown of thought.

“Well, my lord,” she said at last, “ye’ve told me the past—and though the history be not pretty, it is past and done with, and I take it that your concern now is rather with the present.”

“Alas!”

“Nay! sigh me not such doleful sighs, man!” she exclaimed with angry impatience, “but in the name of all the saints get on with your tale. What has happened? The Legros have found out that little Rupert Kestyon hath now become Earl of Stowmaries and one of the richest peers in the kingdom—that’s it—is it not?”

“Briefly, that is it, Mistress. They demand that their daughter be instated in her position and the full dignities and rights to which her marriage entitle her.”

“Failing which?” she asked curtly.

“Oh! scandal! disgrace! they will apply to the Holy Father—the orders would then come direct from Rome—I could not disobey under pain of excommunication—”

“Such tyranny!”

“The Kestyons have been Catholics for five hundred years,” said the young man simply, whilst a touch of dignity—the first since he began to relate his miserable tale—now crept into his attitude. “We do not call the dictates of the Holy Father in question, nor do we name them tyranny. They are irrevocable in matters such as these—”

“Surely—a sum of money—” she hazarded.

“The Legros have more of that commodity than I have. But it is not a question of money. Believe me, fair Mistress,” he said in tones which once more revealed the sorrow of his heart, “I have thought on the matter in all its bearings—I have even broached the subject to the Duke of York,” he added after an imperceptible moment of hesitation.

“Ah? and what said His Highness?” asked Mistress Julia with that quick inward catching of her breath which the mentioning of exalted personages was ever wont to call forth in her.

“Oh! His Highness only spoke of the sanctity of the marriage tie—”

“’Twas not likely he would talk otherwise. ’Tis said that his bigotry grows daily upon him—and that he only awaits a favourable moment to embrace openly the Catholic Faith—”

“His Majesty was of the same opinion, too.”

“Ah? You spoke to His Majesty?”

“Was it not my duty?”

“Mayhap—mayhap—and what did His Majesty say?”

“Oh! he was pleased to take the matter more lightly—but then there is the Queen Mother—and—”

“Who else? I pray you, who else?” said Mistress Julia now with renewed acerbity. “His Majesty, His Royal Highness, the Queen—half London, to boot—to know of my discomfiture and shame—”

Her voice again broke in a sob, she buried her face in her hands, and tears which mayhap had more affinity to anger than to sorrow escaped freely from between her fingers. In a moment the young man was at her feet. Gone was his apathy, his sullenness now. He was on one knee and his two arms encircled the quivering shoulders of the fair, enraged one.

“Mistress, Mistress,” he entreated, whilst his eager lips sought the close proximity of her shell-like ear; “Julia, my beloved, in the name of the Holy Virgin, I pray you dry your tears. You break my heart, fair one. You—O God!” he added vehemently, “am I not the most miserable of men? What sin have I committed that such a wretched fate should overwhelm me? I love you and I have made you cry—”

“Nay, my lord,” whispered Julia through her tears, “an you loved me—”

She paused with well-calculated artfulness, whilst he murmured with pathetic and tender reproach:

“An I loved you! Is not my heart bound to your dainty feet? my soul fettered by the glance of your eyes? Do you think, Mistress, that I can ever bear to contemplate the future now, when for days, nay! weeks and months, ever since I first beheld your exquisite loveliness, I have ever pictured myself only as your slave, ever thought of you only as my wife? That old castle over in Hertfordshire, once so inimical to me, I have learnt to love it of late because I thought you would be its mistress; I treasured every tree because your eyes would behold their beauty; I guarded with jealous care every footpath in the park because I hoped that some day soon your fairy feet would wander there.”

Mistress Julia seemed inclined to weep yet more copiously. No doubt the ardently-whispered words of my lord Stowmaries caused her to realise more vividly all that she had hoped for, all that was lost to her now.

Oh! was it not maddening? Had ever woman been called upon to endure quite so bitter a disappointment?

“It’s the shame of it all, my lord,” she said brokenly, “and—” she whispered with tenderness, “I too had thought of a future beside a man whom I had learned to—to love. I suffer as you do, my lord—and—besides that, the awful shame. Your favours to me, my lord, have caused much bitter gall in the hearts of the envious—my humiliation will enable them to exult—to jeer at my discomfiture—to throw scandalous aspersions at my conduct—I shall of a truth be disgraced, sneered at—ruined—”

“Let any one dare—” muttered the young man fiercely.

“Nay! how will you stop them? ’Tis the women who will dare the most. Oh! if you loved me, my lord, as you say you do, if your protestations are not mere empty words, you would not allow this unmerited disgrace to fall upon me thus.”

Who shall say what tortuous thoughts rose in Mistress Peyton’s mind at this moment? Is there aught in the world quite so cruel as a woman baffled? Think on it, how she had been fooled. The very intensity of the young man’s passion, which had been revealed to her in its fulness now that he knew that an insuperable barrier stood between him and the fulfilment of his desires, showed her but too plainly how near she had been to her goal.

At times—ere this—she had dreaded and doubted. The brilliancy of his position, his wealth and high dignity had caused her sometimes a pang of fear lest he did not think her sufficiently his equal to raise her to his own high rank. At such moments she had redoubled her efforts, had schemed and had striven, despite the fact that her efforts in that direction had—as she well knew—not escaped the prying eyes of the malevolent. What cared she then for their sneers so long as she succeeded?

And now with success fully in sight, she had failed—hopelessly, ridiculously—ignominiously failed.

Oh! how she hated that unknown woman, that low-born bourgeoise, who had robbed her of her prize! She hated the woman, she hated the family, the Parisian tailor and his scheming wife. God help her, she even hated the unfortunate young deceiver who was clinging passionately to her knees.

She pushed him roughly aside, springing to her feet, unable to sit still, and began pacing up and down the small room, the tiny dainty cage wherein she had hoped to complete the work of ensnaring the golden bird.

“Julia!”

He too jumped to his feet. Once more he tried to embrace the quivering shoulders, to imprison the nervous, restless fingers, to capture the trembling lips. But she would no longer yield. Of what use were yielding now?

“Nay! nay! I pray you, leave me,” she said petulantly. “Of what purpose are your protestations, my lord—they are but a further outrage. Indeed, I pray you, go.”

Once more she turned to the bell-pull, and took the heavy silken cord in her hand, the outward sign of his dismissal. Some chivalrous instinct in him made him loth to force his company on her any longer. But his glowering eyes, fierce and sullen, sought to read her face.

“When may I come back?” he asked.

“Never,” she replied.

But we may be allowed to suppose that something in her accent, in her attitude of hesitancy, gave the lie to the cruel word, for he rejoined immediately:

“To-morrow?”

“Never,” she repeated.

“To-morrow?” he insisted.

“What were the use?”

“I vow,” he said with grim earnestness, “that if you dismiss me now, without the hope of seeing you again, I’ll straight to the river, and seek oblivion in death.”

“’Twere the act of a coward!” she retorted.

“Mayhap. But Fate has dealt overharshly with me. I cannot face life if you turn in bitterness from me. Heaven only knows how I can face it at all without you—but your forgiveness may help me to live; it would keep me back from the lasting disgrace of a suicide’s grave, from eternal damnation. Will you let me come to-morrow? Will you give me your forgiveness then?”

He tried to draw near her again, but she put out her hand and drew resolutely back.

“Mayhap—mayhap,” she said hurriedly. “I know not—but not now, my lord—I entreat you to go.”

She rang the bell quickly, as if half afraid of herself, lest she might yield, after all. Mistress Julia knew but little of love—perhaps until this moment she had never realised that she cared for this young man, quite apart from the position and wealth which he would be able to give her. But now, somehow, she felt intensely sorry for him, and there was quite a small measure of unselfishness in her grief at this irrevocable turn of events. The glance which she finally turned upon him softened the cruelty of his dismissal.

“Come and say good-bye to-morrow,” she murmured. Then she raised a finger to her lips. “Sh!—sh!—sh!” she whispered scarce above her breath; “say nothing more now—I could not bear it. But come and say good-bye to-morrow.”

The serving man’s steps were heard the other side of the door. He was coming in answer to the bell.

Lord Stowmaries dropped on one knee. He contrived to capture a feebly-resisting little hand and to impress a kiss upon the rouge-tipped fingers.

Then after a final low bow, he turned and walked out of the room.