Читать книгу Two, by Tricks - Edmund Yates - Страница 5

'We have been watched, and Forestfield knows all!' Those words seemed to have crept into Lady Forestfield's heart, deadening its action and stupefying her brain. She sat perfectly motionless until just before the curtain fell, then rose, accompanied by the duchess and attended by the two gentlemen who had subsequently come into the box, and sought her carriage. While waiting in the crush-room, in reply to a question put, she scarcely knew by whom, she pleaded a severe headache, and excused herself from seeing any more of her friends that night. The after-theatre suppers at Lady Forestfield's house in Seamore-place were renowned, and the Duchess of Melrose, who had come to that sensible time of life when eating is regarded as something more than the mere swallowing of food, and both the attendant sprites who wanted to fill up a couple of hours before going to Pratt's, were disappointed; but Lady Forestfield's look was so dazed and colourless and helpless, that it was evident that her plea was no pretence, and the duchess took advantage of an opportunity to ask her in a whisper if anything had happened.

'Nothing,' she replied in a flat tuneless tone, 'nothing.'

'I thought, my dear, from your looks, that a hawk might have dropped down into the dovecot; but you are very young and very sensitive, my poor child; in a few years you will learn to treat any little temporary storms with proper unconcern.' And then the carriages were signalled, and the ladies took their departure.

On reaching home, Lady Forestfield, with a passing glance into the dining-room, where the table was set out for supper, went straight to her room, and dismissing her maid as soon as possible, threw herself in her peignoir into a low chair near the window overlooking the Park, and gave herself up to thought.

'Forestfield knows all!' Those words were her social death-knell, ringing out farewell to friends, to position, to hope, almost to life; for what would life be to her without the surroundings in which she had revelled, and which were about to be ruthlessly cut away? Was there the remotest chance of escape? Could there be any possible motive by which her husband, cognisant of her crime, would consent to condone it? Of his own irregularities since their marriage, common and manifold as they were, she had long since been made aware, and had suffered them in silence. Might not he, in simplest justice to her, do likewise? He knew all; but none else, save the creatures in his employ, whose silence was as easily purchased as their espionage. He had been with her but five minutes before De Tournefort had told her the fatal news, and his manner, as ordinarily, was cold and cynically polite. She had seen him very different at times when she had unwittingly given him trivial cause for offence, when he had cursed and sworn, and once seized her arm and wrenched it round so violently that for weeks she had borne the blue impress of his fingers. Surely De Tournefort must have been misinformed. Surely, if Richard knew his disgrace, he would have avoided her in public; and when they met in private would have wreaked his wrath upon her, as he had done for far more venial matters.

From thinking of her husband she turned to thinking of herself, wondering how and why she had fallen; patiently, but in a vague dreamy kind of manner, analysing her feelings towards the man who had wrought her ruin, and for whose gratification she had imperilled her social status and her soul. For his gratification, not for hers! In her self-examination she did not find one grain of love for Gustave de Tournefort; she had not even had a caprice, a passion for him, and had only listened to his oft-urged suit when completely worn out with solitude, loneliness, and neglect. Love, passion--she had known them but once, in the early days of her marriage, when she thought that there had never lived on this earth a man comparable to her husband; none so handsome, none with such an easy bearing, such biting wit, such delicious insolence. She had sat down and worshipped him with all her soul and strength, heedless of her father's good-humoured raillery, heedless of her mother's tearful entreaties and solemn warnings; she had set up her idol and bowed down before it, only to find after a little time that it was a very ordinary kind of fetish indeed.

Those feelings were played out now, but at one time they had been all-powerful, and the mere recollection of them had a softening and humanising effect upon the wretched girl as she sat, her elbows resting on her knees, the lower part of her face buried in her hands, looking out across the road dotted with lamps and echoing the rattle of an occasional carriage, to the park beyond, where the big trees bent whisperingly to each other, and beckoned solemnly like dim gigantic spectres.

Suddenly a terror seized her. What Gustave had said must be true; he would never have dared to trifle with her on such a subject. They had been watched, and her husband knew all! Her husband would come home--he was on his way thither at that moment perhaps--and in his wild ungovernable fury he might murder her. Even if her life were spared it would be rendered desolate; she would be driven forth from her home, and left to fight her way in the world alone, without friends or resources.

Then there arose suddenly in her mind a scene which she had witnessed during the previous autumn, when she and Lord Forestfield were travelling in Germany. They were travelling from Ischl to Salzburg, and at the driver's request halted midway that he might bait his horses. A kermesse was being held in the little village, and amongst the numerous carts gathered together before the inn-door was a travelling-carriage, from which the horses had been removed. It was, however, still occupied, and nestled into one corner under the hood May Forestfield had made out the dim outline of a female form. The courier attached to this carriage, of course making friends and drinking with the Forestfields' courier, told him that the lady whom he was taking to Ischl was an Englishwoman, and very ill, so ill that the baths and waters of Ischl had been prescribed for her as a last resource. Lady Forestfield, hearing this from her maid, inquired the name of the lady, which in the courier's mouth was unintelligible; but May, learning that the invalid was alone, and all but unattended, acting under the kindly impulsive wish to be of some use, she scarcely knew how, made her way to the side of the carriage, and in her sweet tone spoke a few words of sympathy. The invalid, who had been lying huddled in the corner, turned quickly at the sound of the voice; and worn and ghastly as was her face, Lady Forestfield recognised her in an instant as Fanny Erle, an intimate acquaintance, who two years before had fled from her husband's roof, and had since been divorced. Some one else had recognised her at the same moment--Lord Forestfield, who, following his wife, had a look over her shoulder and instantly divined what had taken place. Mrs. Erle, on whose pale cheeks two bright red spots suddenly appeared, would have spoken; but Lord Forestfield, seizing his wife by the shoulder, hurried her away, and peremptorily insisted on her making no farther attempt to see the wretched woman again, speaking of her crime with the bitterest reprobation, and of the punishment which had fallen upon her with genuine contemptuous approbation.

Before Lady Forestfield's eyes, which were apparently fixed on the dim and distant park, rose this scene in all its minutest details: she heard the noisy laughter of the peasants; the jingle of the horses' bells and the rattle of their rope harness; the shouts and cries of the vendors in the kermesse; she saw the little square in which the inn stood, with the quaint gabled houses opposite, the loiterers round the carriage, the two couriers drinking beer on the steps of the inn; and above all, she saw the miserable look which Fanny Erle gave when Lord Forestfield hurried her away, and heard the moan of despair with which the wretched woman fell back into the corner of the carriage.

Was she to be like that, a leprous object, a pariah, from the contemplation of which people would turn in disgust? God forbid! And yet the sin of Fanny Erle was hers; why should she not incur the penalty?

Wearied and heart-sore, she at last made her way to bed, and fell into a heavy slumber, from which she did not wake till noon. Her first care was to inquire after her husband's movements. Her maid learned from the valet that his lordship had gone out early in a cab which had been fetched for him; the valet could not recollect the directions given to the driver, but had an idea it was to somewhere in the City; his lordship had said nothing as to when he should be back.

There was a respite, then. No man, May Forestfield thought, having sinister intentions would act in such a manner; he would either have blazed out at her in a personal interview, when murder might have been done, or he would have written her a cutting letter, stating the discovery he had made, and his consequent intention of getting rid of her. It was plain to Lady Forestfield that Gustave had been misinformed, and that her husband knew nothing. Though a constant attendant at afternoon service at All Saints', and quite familiar with as much of the liturgy as is then and there intoned, May Forestfield was not in the habit of putting much heart into her supplications; but in the belief that a great and deserved punishment had been averted from her, she knelt down and implored the Divine forgiveness for her past crime, and pledged herself to sin no more.

As usual there was a little luncheon party in Seamore-place, to which came Mrs. Ingram and Lady Northaw--of course, unaccompanied by their husbands--and Captain Seaver, of the Blues, and Sir Wolfrey Delapryme. Kate Ingram was a tiny blonde, with pretty fair hair and blue eyes, a creamy complexion, and the wee-est imaginable hands and feet. She was very spirituelle, and better educated than most of her class, spoke French and German to perfection, and acted and sang admirably. Théo herself, whom she much resembled, could not have given more unmistakable point and colour to a chansonette grivoise than did Mrs. Ingram, who was the daughter of a Church dignitary, and the wife of a director of the Bank of England. Her father, long since in his grave, would have been very much astonished at a display of the accomplishments by which his daughter had made herself attractive in the highest quarters; but her husband, like Gallio, 'cared for none of these things.' Lady Northaw was a brunette, with regular features, sleepy black eyes, and blue-black hair; a tall imperial Juno-like woman, with full bust and rounded arms, and a grand way of carrying herself. It is scarcely necessary to say that every rickety little knock-kneed subaltern in the Guards worshipped her. Both ladies were intimate friends of May Forestfield, both were very liberal in all their notions, and both spoke the argot of the day with perfect fluency.

There were three vacant places at the round table where M. de Tournefort usually found himself at two o'clock; this day, however, he was an absentee; but one of the places soon after the meal commenced was occupied by Lord Forestfield, who came in with a smiling salutation, which included the company, and an apology for being late, having been detained on business.

'Business?' growled Sir Wolfrey Delapryme, deep in investigating the recesses of a pie; 'nice man of business you are! What was it--horse-chaunting or rigging the market that you have been up to?'

'Don't speak with your mouth full, Wolfrey, and never talk of things you don't understand,' said Lord Forestfield. 'I assure you I have been on important business to the City.'

'I wish I had a pal who would put me up to something good in the City,' murmured Mrs. Ingram plaintively. 'I don't see the good of having a Bank director for one's husband if he can't help himself to coin.'

'Plain enough he cannot do that,' said Captain Seaver, 'or he would get himself a new hat; never saw such a confounded bad hat as Ingram wears in all my life.'

'He has to have it made large,' growled Sir Wolfrey to Lady Northaw; 'particularly over the forehead.'

'Hush!' said her ladyship with a deprecatory smile; then added aloud: 'Are any of you going to Lady Paribole's? I understand all the smart people in London are to be there.'

'I lay odds that one who thinks herself very smart won't show up,' said Mrs. Ingram; 'because I happen to know that a "distinguished person," as the newspapers say, sent for the list and ran his pen through her name.'

'Whom do you mean?' asked Lady Forestfield.

'Why, that horrible old Mrs. Van Groot, who, because she is hideous and common-looking, is always going about saying atrocious things of everybody nice.'

'I don't care much about Mrs. Van Groot myself,' said Sir Wolfrey; 'but it's enough to make a woman rear and plunge a bit when she has to run in double harness with such an unmitigated cad as Van Groot. The little Dutch pug is always getting up in the House, whelping and snarling at his betters.'

'I don't think it makes much matter what sort of a husband a woman may happen to have,' said Lord Forestfield, speaking deliberately, and looking round with his cold cynical smile. 'If she is naturally wicked, the vice is sure to show itself, no matter what treatment she may receive.'

May Forestfield struggled hard but ineffectually to repress her rising colour, and the other ladies bit their lips in silence. Ugly topics such as crime (when called up for punishment), duty, and death were habitually testily ignored by them.

Captain Seaver struck in to the rescue. 'I suppose you will be going away about the beginning of next month, Lady Forestfield?' he said. 'You generally stay at your place in Sussex--I forget its name--first, don't you?'

'You mean Woodburn?' said May, whose voice exhibited traces of the emotion under which she was suffering.

'Ay, Woodburn,' said the Captain; 'handy for Goodwood, isn't it, Dick?'

'Very handy, and a pleasant place,' said Lord Forestfield quietly. 'I am going down there this afternoon.'

'To tell the people to get it all in readiness,' said Mrs. Ingram. 'What a delightful man to take such trouble off one's hands!'

'I hope you will manage to take Snubs with you, Lady Forestfield,' said Sir Wolfrey. 'He has always been accustomed to go out of town, and he would feel it horribly if he were left behind.'

'And the cat, May, your lovely cat,' said Lady Northaw.

'I am afraid she would not stay,' said May.

'Probably not,' said Lord Forestfield; 'cats are like statesmen--they prefer places to persons. Now I must go to catch my train;' and with a smile and a general bow he left the room.

There was little reticence in that company, and so, as soon as the door was closed, Captain Seaver said, 'I wonder what Dick has got in hand now! I always notice that peculiar expression on his face just before he is going to land some great coup. He looked just like that when he won at Stockbridge last year.'

'He is uncommonly wide awake,' said Sir Wolfrey; 'though what can he be going down to Woodburn for just now? Have you any notion, Lady Forestfield?'

'Not the faintest,' said May, whose courage by this time had pretty well returned. 'One can never account for Dick or his ways. He has the habit of running off when one least expects it, and never gives one a notion of when he will return.'

'That must be very inconvenient,' said Mrs. Ingram.

'I was hearing his praises sung the other night,' said Lady Northaw. 'Mrs. Rouge-croix says there is no man in the world so well able to put one up to a wrinkle or two.'

'That is not necessary in her case,' growled Sir Wolfrey, 'for she has quite enough of her own.'

'Well,' said Mrs. Ingram, rising, 'I cannot wait, even to hear the glorification of Lord Forestfield, as I have some calls to make. Recollect, May; you come to my box at the French plays, and we can afterwards go on to Lady Paribole's.'

When her guests were gone, Lady Forestfield went to her boudoir, and seated herself at her little writing-table. Not that she had any intention of writing; her hand toyed with the pen, and wandered idly among the nicknacks with which the table was covered, as she thought of the occurrences of the morning, and tried to find a clue to the future in anything her husband had said or done. There had been nothing extraordinary, she thought; he had been quiet and reticent in his usual cool cynical way; and though she had winced at his speech about wifely duties and wifely sins, it was probably merely a conscience smart, as the observation was not pointedly addressed to her. Not another word had she heard from Gustave, who, had he found his suspicions correct, would undoubtedly have found some means of giving her farther warning. He must have been deceived; a man of Lord Forestfield's temper, with such knowledge rankling in his breast, could not have come quietly home, taken his luncheon with her in the presence of friends, and gone off to the country, as was his frequent custom, without making any sign. The danger was over, she thought; but the vow of resistance to temptation which she had made that morning should be steadfastly kept.

The door opened, and a servant presented her with a card. It bore the words, 'Mr. Bristow, 96 Bedford-row.' She knew the name to be that of the family solicitor, a gentleman enjoying an exceptionally confidential position, and who was in the habit of dining with them once or twice in the season; and she gave orders for his admission.

Mr. Bristow, a tall, white-haired, white-whiskered man, scrupulously clean and very neatly attired, appeared in the doorway, and made a grave bow.

'How do you do, Mr. Bristow?' said Lady Forestfield, rising from her chair. 'It is seldom you give us the pleasure of a visit, but I am very glad to see you.'

'I am come, Lady Forestfield,' said Mr. Bristow, 'on peculiarly painful business.'

'Painful business!' she echoed, with a sudden sinking at her heart.

'Very painful business,' he repeated. 'I have,' he added, drawing a paper from his pocket, 'to serve this paper upon you.'

'What is it?' she added, shrinking back.

'It is a citation from the Divorce Court,' said Mr. Bristow, 'which I serve upon you on behalf of Lord Forestfield. Be good enough to sit down and read it.'

She took the paper tremblingly, and glancing at it saw her name. Then she let it drop to the ground. 'What does it mean?'

'It means,' said Mr. Bristow, 'that Lord Forestfield is about to divorce your ladyship on the ground of adultery with Monsieur Gustave de Tournefort.'

'Good God!' cried May, 'why does Lord Forestfield not come to me?'

'Your ladyship will never see him again,' said Mr. Bristow quietly.

'Never see him again!' she cried. 'Why, he was here an hour ago! He has only gone down to Woodburn, and he will be back tomorrow.'

'Lord Forestfield has not left town,' said Mr. Bristow; 'nor has he any intention of leaving it at present.'

'But I must see him!' cried May.

'It is perfectly impossible,' said Mr. Bristow. 'I have now discharged my very painful duty, and all that is left for me is to express a hope on Lord Forestfield's part that your ladyship will employ a respectable solicitor.' Then turning to the door he said, 'You can come in;' and four persons entered, his own clerks and her servants, which or what May never clearly knew. 'You are witnesses that I have served this citation from the Divorce Court upon Lady Forestfield.' Then with a grave bow he left the room, and in the last glimpse he had of May Forestfield, she was standing like a statue, dumb, motionless, with the paper on the ground at her feet.