Читать книгу Two, by Tricks - Edmund Yates - Страница 6

Podbury-street, a small and narrow street of unimportant houses, in the south-western postal district of London, has seen various mutations of fortune. Twenty years ago, it was Podbury-street, Pimlico, and the unimportant houses were for the most part occupied by persons who contented themselves with the basement floor, and let the rest of the rooms in lodgings. The tenants of these lodgings were generally young men who were engaged in qualifying themselves for the medical profession by 'walking' the near-lying St. George's Hospital; young men of convivial temperament, who attended lectures with regular irregularity, and never thought of giving up to study or sleep the hours which they apparently imagined should be devoted to comic singing. It was the perpetual presence of these gentlemen, no doubt, which caused the private residences of Podbury-street to be dotted here and there with public-houses and tobacconists' shops. A procession of slatternly maids-of-all-work, with the door-key in one hand, and a jug either dependent from the finger or firmly grasped by the other hand, was perpetually filing through Podbury-street; and the drivers of the Royal Blue omnibuses, which at that time used it as a thoroughfare, were, from the altitude of the box, enabled to peer into the drawing-room floors, or to gaze down into the parlours, in both of which localities the same spectacle of a table covered with pewter vessels, and flanked by half-a-dozen gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves, who, using it as a leg-rest, lay back in their armchairs with clay pipes in their mouths, invariably presented itself.

The lapse of time, and the enterprise of the late Mr. Cubitt, effected a wondrous change in the condition of Podbury-street. When its denizens saw themselves gradually surrounded by squares, terraces, and crescents of enormous mansions, which were each year springing up, and converting into a suburb of palaces what had recently been a dismal swamp, they unerringly perceived that the opportunity had arrived for changing the scale of their prices and the style of their lodgings. The medical students packed up their Lares and Penates, their preparations and tobacco-jars, and moved off with them to more distant quarters; the omnibuses went round another way; the beer-shops and tobacconists disappeared as the leases fell in; finally, the name of Pimlico became unsavoury in the nostrils of the neighbourhood, and the lodging-house letters had 'Podbury-street, Eaton-square,' imprinted on their cards; for they let lodgings still, but to a very different class of tenants. Gentlemen in the government offices, who invariably put on evening-dress even if they only dined at their club, who stuck the looking-glass full of the cards of invitation which they received from great people, and who smoked dainty Russian cigarettes, but would have fainted at the notion of anything so low as a pipe; managing mammas, who brought their marriageable daughters to London during the season; rich valetudinarians, who came up to town to consult famous physicians,--such were the persons of gentility who now found a temporary abode in Podbury-street. No slatternly maids-of-all-work were to be seen now; nearly every house boasted a page, a youth whose waiting at table would have been more pleasant had he been able to rid himself of the scent of the blacking which hung around him from his early domestic duties; and during the season, when some of the managing mammas gave little dinners or small musical evenings in return for the hospitality which they had experienced, and in the hope of making a special coup for their marriageable daughters, the little passage, called by courtesy the 'hall,' would be so filled up by two footmen, that the other attendant giants in plush would have to cool their calves in the open air.

In a drawing-room floor in Podbury-street, Lady Forestfield had taken up her abode, and was living in seclusion, awaiting the result of her husband's application to the Divorce Court. After the scene with Mr. Bristow, and the degradation which she had suffered before her own servants, she felt it impossible to stay on in Seamore-place, and accordingly the next day, as soon as she was able to contemplate the immediate future with some degree of calmness, and to make up her mind as to the course she should best pursue, she had removed to these lodgings, accompanied only by a young girl who had been a housemaid at Seamore-place, had always shown a strong attachment for her mistress, and now refused to be separated from her. This girl's mother, a respectable woman, was the landlady of the house in Podbury-street, and everything was done as far as possible to insure Lady Forestfield's comfort.

As far as possible indeed, but, under the circumstances, worthy Mrs. Wilson's possible went but a little way. For the first fortnight of her tenancy, May Forestfield scarcely tasted food, scarcely lifted her head from the pillow, but lay there passing the bygone days of her life in review before her, and silently bemoaning her hard fate. The loss of wealth and position--the position, that is, which her rank had given her--affected her but little; she took no heed of them, she had no time to give them a thought, nor did she trouble herself in regard to the future; her whole time was occupied in thinking over the details of her early acquaintance with her husband, and in wondering at the infatuation which had induced her to prefer the other man to him. Not that she ignored or attempted to deceive herself in regard to his heartless cynicism and savage brutality. Every bitter word seemed burnt into her brain, each cruel deed seemed to rise before her fresh as at the time of its perpetration; and yet in her present mood she found excuses for them all, and ascribed to herself the provocation of epithets which a 'beggar in his drink' would not have fouled his mouth with.

Do you wonder at this conduct? I take it, it is common enough. May Forestfield was no peculiar character, and in some things had a certain clearness of sense and strength of mind; but she was a woman, and consequently when she found she had been deprived of something which up to this point she did not value, but which it was impossible to regain, she set about grieving after and bewailing its loss with all her strength. Never even in the early days of her acquaintance with Lord Forestfield, when uncertainty of his regard for her rendered her doubly keen in the chase, had she felt that worship, that hungering after him which now beset her.

While she was lying in this state she received the following letter, dated from Spa:

'You will have been surprised at my silence and apparent desertion of you, but I waited until I could learn what steps that scoundrel who calls himself your husband was about to take. I knew him to be too great a coward to ask satisfaction of me, but I doubted whether, knowing with what a character he himself must come into court, he would venture to claim the aid of the law. I learn now that he has done so, and that in a short time you are likely to be free. His plots were too skilfully concocted, his spies too carefully trained, to allow of there being any doubt in the matter; the court will pronounce for the divorce, and he will be at liberty to carry to its end a pursuit in which he has been long engaged.

'Blinded by my passion for you, I have done you a grievous wrong, for which there is but one reparation. That reparation I offer you now. One line from you will bring me at once to your feet, and I swear on my honour and my name that so soon as the decree of the court is pronounced I will make you my wife.

'GUSTAVE DE TOURNEFORT.'

Two short weeks ago May would have welcomed this letter with eagerness, and would have accepted the proposal it contained with avidity; when the blow dealt her by her husband through Mr. Bristow's agency had fallen upon her with crushing force she would have welcomed almost any means to free herself from the thraldom which even the retention of his name seemed to imply. She felt most deeply the baseness of his conduct in continuing semi-amicable relations with her, relations such as for a long time had existed between them, up to the last moment of his leaving her for ever, and when he had planned and matured the design of casting her forth and holding her up to the reprobation of the world. Her caprice, passion, call it what you will, for Gustave de Tournefort had never been sufficiently strong to ennoble him in her eyes, or to prevent her from recognising him for what he really was--a careless libertine; but suffering as she had suffered at first, she would have been glad of any escape from the tortures of shame, degradation, and abandonment, and would have accepted his proffered hand, though knowing perfectly that what he called his heart would have no part in the alliance.

Now, however, all was changed. In the strange reaction which she had undergone under the revulsion of feeling which made her long to see her husband once again, she looked upon this letter from De Tournefort as little less than an insult. It was not a voluntary offer, she thought on reperusing it; it had been wrung from him by his yet remaining faint adhesion to that code of honour which even such men as he were bound to obey, and it was made, not from any love for her, but in order that he might stand well in the eyes of that world in which he still doubtless hoped to play many a similar part. He had 'done her a grievous wrong,' and he offered her 'reparation;' that was the keynote of the whole affair, his reading of that odious word 'duty,' which throughout her life she had always found put forward as an excuse. Had it been otherwise, had this offer been prompted by any feeling of liking or even of regard for what had occurred, it would have been made long since. He must have heard, for all that world in which he moved knew it perfectly, that she had left her home; and had there been the least spark of chivalrous feeling in him, he would have come to her at once. Her mind was speedily made up; she would not demean herself by accepting a proposition which was merely made to her out of charity, and M. de Tournefort's letter should remain unanswered.

O, the weary, weary days in Podbury-street! The getting-up, protracted until a late hour, in order to get over as much of the day as possible; the wretched little breakfast, with London eggs from fowls who lived in an area, and London milk from a cow which had not seen a green field for years; the long mornings, spent in reading in the newspaper the chronicled doings of that world in which she had once played so conspicuous a part,--records of dinners, balls, and fetes, with guest lists containing the names of persons her intimacy with whom she could scarcely even then imagine to be broken,--gossip of forthcoming arrangements at Goodwood and Cowes, in both of which places she had always held her court. The journal would drop from her hand as memory brought before her the ducal lawn, dotted all over with loveliest dresses, and ringing with merriest laughter from happily improvised luncheon parties; or a covered bit of sea-walk in front of the club-house at Cowes, where on the night of the last regatta-ball she had met De Tournefort, and listened to his impassioned pleading. Her thoughts were far away, busy with the memories of these once-happy times, but her eyes were gazing idly before her on the tradespeople flitting about from house to house, the flirtations of the stalwart and greasy young butcher with grinning Molly the cook, the heavily-laden postmen steadily pursuing their rounds, the loitering cabmen looking round for fares, and all the panorama of morning life in the great city.

In the afternoon, when the carriages were rolling about, and the little street was sonorous with the echoing double-knocks dealt on its tiny doors by huge footmen, May would sit behind the window-curtain watching all that was passing, and ever and anon drawing farther back into the shadow, as though fearful of being recognised. She had little cause for such anxiety, poor child, though in the course of the day she would see many of those with whom but a short time ago she used to be in constant association: the Duchess of Melrose, leaning back in her luxurious carriage, and surveying mankind superciliously, though not without interest, through her double glasses; Sir Wolfrey Delapryme in his mail phaeton, tooling his roan cobs; Captain Seaver on his neat hack; and Mrs. Ingram in her victoria. Mrs. Ingram had stopped in Podbury-street, and had come up to see May; it being her maxim, she said, that 'when any one had come to grief her pals should stick by her.' Kate Ingram's sympathy, however well meant, was not put in a very acceptable manner; she said that no doubt May had had a 'facer,' but that it was 'no use crying over spilt milk.' She spoke of De Tournefort as that 'foreign sportsman,' said she considered him a 'snob' and a 'cad,' and that May had done quite rightly in refusing to have anything more to say to him. She proposed to make up a little Sunday river-party of people who 'wouldn't mind, don't you know,' and to invite May to it, but she was rather pleased than otherwise when she found May quietly but firmly declined; and shortly after took her leave, promising to come again soon; a promise which she would not keep.

Once May saw her husband. Lord Forestfield drove through Podbury-street in a hansom cab, sitting well back, with his arms crossed and a pleasant smile upon his face. With her renewed feeling for him, May would rather not have seen that smile; it showed that he was happy and careless, while she was suffering such acute misery. In the eyes of the world she was the guilty one, and had to bear the consequences of her guilt; but in his own inmost mind he must know that he had been at least equally criminal, and that if it had not been for his neglect and desertion of her she would never have committed the crime for which he was now exacting so fearful a penalty.

And as she pondered over this a horrible idea flashed across her; a passage in De Tournefort's letter recurred to her mind, in which, speaking of Lord Forestfield, he had said, 'he will be at liberty to carry to its end a pursuit in which he has been long engaged.' What could that mean? What but that her husband had determined on divorcing her, with the view of marrying some one else to whom he had been long attached. Of marrying some one else! The fact that he himself was married had had no effect in preventing his forming other connections, but marriage while she lived undivorced was for him impossible; it was in that view, then, that he had determined on pursuing his vengeance to the bitter end.

The thought drove her nearly mad. She felt that she could not support it in silence, that she must go to him at once and make one final appeal. She rose and looked in the glass. Her beauty had suffered but little from what she had undergone; she was perhaps a trifle paler than usual, but Lord Forestfield had always expressed his dislike of blooming hoydens, and there was no doubt that at one time he admired her deeply and was greatly influenced by her beauty. Would he be so again? She would see.

The next day the maid, who had been sent to see her former fellow-servants in Seamore-place, returned with the information that Lord Forestfield had gone down to Woodburn. May looked upon this as a happy chance, and determined on following him there at once. She could see him more readily, could speak to him more freely, in the seclusion of Woodburn than if he had remained in town; she would go down there that very afternoon. In pursuance of this determination she set out, accompanied only by her maid, and dressed in a common gown and bonnet in order to escape any recognition. After a two hours' railway journey they arrived at Crawley, the station from which Lord Forestfield's seat was reached, and taking a fly were driven over to the gates of Woodburn Park. There they halted, leaving the vehicle to await their return. The maid, who was known to the lodge-keeper, went forward; and after learning that his lordship was there and alone, easily obtained admission for herself and friend to pass through the gates. Up the long avenue, the scene of her great reception by her husband's tenants on her return home after her marriage, May Forestfield now crept with trembling limbs and a desperate sinking at heart, her humble companion endeavouring to sustain her by well-meant though ill-chosen exhortation. Far away in the distance glimmered the house, a long low stone building, from one window of which a light was shining. So far as May could make out, this proceeded from the library, a room immediately on the left hand of the porch, to which access was perfectly easy. The thought of seeing her husband and completely humbling herself before him, and of begging, not indeed to be placed back in her old position in the eyes of the world--that she scarcely dared to wish, much more to hope--but for restoration to his favour and his love, for permission at least to pass some portion of her life in his society,--the thought of this nerved her with fresh strength, and enabled her to reach the end of the avenue. There she and her companion halted for a moment and looked around them. So far as they could make out through the deepening dusk the hall-door was open. It was May's intention to creep in there, and enter the library immediately, to throw herself at her husband's feet. By the aid of the lamp which burned on the writing-table, she could discern through the open window the dim outline of Lord Forestfield's figure bending over some papers. From time to time he looked up, and it was necessary for her to watch the moment of his absorption in order to effect her entrance unobserved.

The opportunity offered itself, and May stole quietly towards the porch. Just at that moment Lord Forestfield walked to the window and peered out into the gloom.

'Who is there?' he cried, as he observed the shrinking figure.

May was silent.

'Who is there?' he repeated. 'I insist upon an answer.'

'Richard,' faltered May, spreading her hands towards him, 'I--'

'I thought it was you,' he said, in a harsh low tone. 'I shall discharge the lodge-keeper to-morrow for having permitted you to pass the gate. Now be off!' he cried, waving his hand; 'I should be sorry to have to ring for the servants to turn you away. Be off, do you hear?'

But May heard nothing. She had sunk in a fainting state on the steps.

Lord Forestfield then turned to the maid, who was hastening to her mistress's assistance. 'Take this woman away,' he cried; 'and if you value your own liberty, never bring her here again.' Then he violently closed the window and returned to his papers.