Читать книгу Barbara Rebell - Marie Belloc Lowndes - Страница 8

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"Il est plus aisé d'être sage pour les autres que de l'être pour soi-même."

La Rochefoucauld.

Chancton Priory had been, from his earliest boyhood, even more James Berwick's home than was his uncle's house over at Fletchings, and it was incomparably dearer to him in every sense than Chillingworth, which came to him from his dead wife, together with the huge fortune which gave him such value in Mrs. Boringdon's eyes. The mistress of the Priory had always lavished on Lord Bosworth's nephew a measure of warm affection which she might just as reasonably have bestowed on his only sister, but Miss Berwick was not loved at Chancton Priory, and, being well aware that this was so, she rarely came there. Indeed, her brother's real love for the place, and for Madame Sampiero, was to her somewhat inexplicable: she knew that at the Priory he felt far more at home than he was at Fletchings, and the knowledge irked her.

In truth, to James Berwick one of the greatest charms of Chancton Priory had come to be the fact that when there he was able almost to forget the wealth which had come to him with such romantic fulness when he was only four-and-twenty. Madame Sampiero, Doctor McKirdy, and Mrs. Turke never seemed to remember that he was one of the richest men in the kingdom, and this made his commerce with them singularly agreeable.

Certain men and women have a curious power of visualising that fifth dimension which lies so near and yet so far from this corporeal world. For these favoured few, unseen presences sometimes seem to cast visible shadows—their intuition may now and then be at fault, but on the other hand, invisible guides will sometimes lead them into beautiful secret pastures, of which the boundaries are closely hidden from those of their fellows who only cultivate the obvious. It was so with James Berwick, and, as again so often happens, this odd power—not so much of second sight as of divination—was quite compatible with much that was positive, prosaic, and even of the earth earthy, in his nature and character. He attributed his undoubted gift to his Stuart blood, and was fond of reminding himself that the Old Pretender was said always to recognise a traitor when approached by one in the guise of a loyal servant and friend.

On the afternoon following that spent by him at the Boringdons', Berwick walked across to Chancton from Fletchings. He came the short way through the Priory park—that which finally emerged by a broad grass path into the lawn spreading before the Elizabethan front of the great mass of buildings. As he moved across, towards the porch, he thought the fine old house looked more alive and less deserted than usual, and having passed through the vestibule, and so into the vast hall, he became at once aware of some influence new to the place.

He looked about him with an eager, keen glance. A large log fire was burning in the cavernous chimney, but then he knew himself to be expected: to that same cause he attributed the rather unusual sight of a china bowl full of autumn flowers reflected in the polished mahogany round table, on which, as he drew near, he saw three letters, addressed in McKirdy's stiff clear handwriting, lying ready for the post. Berwick, hardly aware of what he was doing, glanced idly down at them: then, as he moved rather hastily away, he lifted his eyebrows in surprise—one was addressed to his sister, Miss Arabella Berwick, at Fletchings; yet another, with every possible formality of address, to the Duchess of Appleby and Kendal, at Halnakeham Castle; while the third bore the name of another great lady living some ten miles from Chancton, and to whom—Berwick would have been ready to lay any wager—no communication had been sent from the Priory for some twenty odd years, though both she and the kindly Duchess had in the long ago been intimate with Madame Sampiero.

Once more Berwick looked round the hall, and then, abruptly, went out again into the open air, and so made his way across at right angles to a glass door giving direct access to a small room hung with sporting prints and caricatures, unaltered since the time it had been the estate room of Madame Sampiero's father. Here, at least, Berwick felt with satisfaction, everything was absolutely as usual. He went through into a narrow passage, up a short steep staircase to the upper floor, and so to the old-fashioned bedroom and dressing-room which no one but he ever occupied, and which were both still filled with his schoolboy and undergraduate treasures. There was a third room on each of the floors composing the two-storied building which had been added to the Priory some fifty years before, and these extra rooms—two downstairs, one upstairs—were sacred to Mrs. Turke.

There, as Berwick well knew, she cherished the mahogany cradle in which she had so often rocked him to sleep: there were photographs of himself at every age, to which, of late years political caricatures had been added, and there also were garnered the endless gifts he had made and was always making to his old nurse. James Berwick had been sadly spoilt by the good things life had heaped on him in almost oppressive lavishness, but no thought of personal convenience would have made him give up, when at the Priory, these two rooms—this proximity to the elderly woman to whom he was so dear, and who had tended him so devotedly through a delicate and fretful childhood.

As he walked about his bedroom, he looked round him well pleased. A good fire was burning in the grate, still compassed about with a nursery fender, and his evening clothes, an old suit always kept by him at Chancton, were already laid out on the four-post bed. Everything was exactly as he would have wished to find it; and so seeing, he suddenly frowned, most unreasonably. Why was it, he asked himself, that only here, only at the Priory, were things done for him as he would have always wished them to be—that is, noiselessly, invisibly? His own servants over at Chillingworth never made him so comfortable! But then, as he was fond of reminding himself, he was one of those men who dislike to be dependent on others. A nice regard, perhaps, for his own dignity had always caused him to dispense with the services of the one dependant to whom, we are told, his master can never hope to be a hero.

There came a knock, a loud quavering tap-tap on the door. Berwick walked forward and opened it himself, then put his arms round Mrs. Turke's fat neck, and kissed her on each red cheek. The mauve and white striped gown was new to him, but each piece of handsome jewellery set about the substantial form had been his gift. "Well, Turke! well, old Turkey! it's an age since I've seen you all! I was in the village for a moment yesterday——"

"For a moment? Fie, Mr. James, I know all about it, sir! You was at the Cottage for hours!"

"Well, I really hadn't a minute to come over here! But make me welcome now that I am come, eh Turkey?"

"Welcome? Why, bless you, sir, you know well enough that you're as welcome as flowers in May! We have missed you dreadful all this summer! I can't think why gentlemen should want to go to such outlandish spots: I looked out the place in 'Peter Parley,' that I did, and I used to shake in my bed when I thought of all you must be going through, when you might be at home, here, with everything nice and comfortable about you."

"I'll tell you what we'll do, Turkey—you can tell McGregor to lay dinner in the business room to-night, and you shall have it with me."

As if struck by a sudden idea, he added, "And we'll have beans and bacon!"

Mrs. Turke went off into a fit of laughter. "In October!" she cried. "Why, my lamb, where's all your fine learning gone to? Not but what, thanks to glass and the stoves, the fruits of the earth do appear at queer times nowadays, but it would be a sin to waste glass and stoves on beans!"

Berwick was not one whit abashed, "If we can't have broad beans, we can have toasted cheese. My sister has got a French chef at Fletchings, and luncheon to-day was—well, you know, Turkey!"

"I know, sir, just kickshaws! Taking the bread out of honest Englishwomen's mouths. I'd chef him!" and Berwick realised from the expression of her face that Mrs. Turke thought to chef was French for to cook.

But there was a more important matter now in hand to be discussed, and she said slily, "You'll have better company than me to-night, Mr. James—you'll have to put on your company manners, sir, for there's a lady staying here now, you know."

"A lady?" he cried, "the devil there is!"

"You remember Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rebell, surelye? They were here constant—now let me see, a matter of twenty-five years ago and more, when you, Mr. James, were ten years old, my dear."

"What?" he said, his tone suddenly altering, "do you mean—surely you cannot mean that poor Richard Rebell's daughter is staying here—in the Priory?—now?"

"Yes, that's just what she is doing—staying."

"Oh!" he said, in an altered voice, "perhaps after all I had better go back to Chillingworth to-night." He added abruptly, "She married (her name is Barbara, isn't it?) one of the West Indian Rebells. Is he here too?"

Mrs. Turke folded her hands together, and shook her head sadly, but with manifest enjoyment. It was well that Mr. James knew nothing, and that it had been her part to tell the great news. "Oh no, we never mention him; his name is never heard! From what I can make out from the doctor—but you know, Mr. James, what he's like—the poor young lady, I mean Mrs. Rebell, has been most unlucky, matrimonially speaking; just like—you know who, sir——"

"Oh! she's left her husband, has she? It seems to run in the family. Has she been here long, Turkey?"

"Only since the day before yesterday. But Madam has already took to her wonderful: she does the morning reading now."

"I should think that would be a great improvement on McKirdy's. But, by the way, isn't McKirdy jealous?"

Mrs. Turke shook her finger at the speaker. "That's only your fun now, Mr. James! What call would the doctor have to be such a thing as jealous? Fie! Besides, he's quite taken to her himself."

"Why then, the girl we saw with McKirdy yesterday must have been Mrs. Rebell! A tall, dark, slim creature, eh, Turkey? Very oddly dressed?" He turned and looked hard at his old nurse; she, in return, gave her nurseling a quick shrewd glance from out of her bright little eyes.

"She's not what I call dressed at all," she said, "I never did see a young lady so shabby, but there, out in those hot climates——" she paused tolerantly. "Never mind; we'll soon make that all right. Madam set Léonie to work at once. As for looks," Mrs. Turke bridled, "Mrs. Rebell favours her poor papa more than she does her poor mamma," she said, primly, "but she's a very pleasant-spoken young lady. I do think you'll like her, Mr. James; and if I was you, sir, I would make up my mind to stay to-night and to be kind to her. I don't think you'll want much pressing——"

Again she gave him that quick shrewd look which seemed to say so much more than her lips uttered. Sometimes Berwick felt an uncomfortable conviction that very little he thought and did remained hidden from his old nurse. To-night, as Mrs. Turke had felt quite sure he would do, he made up his mind to remain at Chancton Priory and to follow, in this matter of Mrs. Rebell, the advice given him.

Meanwhile, the subject of their discussion was sitting on a stool at the foot of her godmother's couch. It was strange how two days of constant communion with this stricken woman had impressed Barbara Rebell with a sense of Madame Sampiero's power of protecting and sheltering those over whom was thrown the mantle of her affection. The whole of Barbara's past life, her quiet childhood, her lonely girlhood, even the years she had spent with Pedro Rebell, had accustomed her to regard solitude as a normal state, and she now looked forward eagerly to what so many would have considered the long dull stretch of days spread out before her.

All she desired, but that most ardently, was to become dear—she would whisper to herself, perhaps necessary—to Madame Sampiero. The physical state others might have regarded with repugnance and horror produced no such effect on Barbara's mind and imagination. All the tenderness of a heart long starved, and thrown back on itself and on the past, was now beginning to be lavished on this paralysed woman who had made her so generously welcome, and who, she intuitively felt, was making so great and so gallant a stand against evil fortune.

Even to-night Mrs. Rebell, coming into the room, had been struck by the mingled severity and splendour of Madame Sampiero's appearance. The white velvet gown, the black lace cross-over, and the delicate tracery of the black coif heightened the beauty of the delicate features—intensified the fire in the blue eyes, as a brighter scheme of colouring had not known how to do.

Léonie—the lean, clever-looking, deft-fingered French maid who had grown old in the service of her mistress—stood by the couch looking down at her handiwork with an air of pride: "Madame a voulu faire un petit bout de toilette pour Monsieur Berwick," she explained importantly. Poor Barbara was by now rather nervously aware that there was something about her own appearance to-night which did not please her godmother. Indeed, sitting there, in this lofty room full of beautiful and extremely ornate pieces of furniture and rich hangings, she felt acutely conscious that she was, as it were, out of the picture. Words were not needed to tell her that, for some mysterious reason, her godmother wished her to look well before this Mr. James Berwick, who, if Mrs. Turke was to be believed, seemed to come and go so often at the Priory, but regarding whom, she, Barbara, felt as yet no interest.

Almost involuntarily she answered the critical expression which rested on the clear-cut face. "I care so little how I look—after all what does it matter?"

But more quickly than usual she realised the significance of the murmured words, "Nonsense, child, it does matter, very much!" and she divined the phrase, "A woman should always try to look her best." Barbara smiled as Léonie joined in with "Une jolie femme doît sa beauté à elle-même," adding, in response to another of those muffled questioning murmurs, "Mais oui, Madame, Monsieur Boringdon a dû venir avec Monsieur Berwick."

Mrs. Rebell looked up rather eagerly; if Oliver Boringdon were to be there this evening, and if outward appearance were of such consequence as these kind people, Madame Sampiero and the old Frenchwoman, seemed to think, then it was a pity that one of the only two people whom she had wished to impress favourably at Chancton should see her at a disadvantage.

Again came low murmurs of which the significance entirely escaped Barbara, but which Léonie had heard and understood: quickly the maid went across the great room, and in a moment her brown hands had pulled open a deep drawer in the Buhl wardrobe which had once adorned the bed chamber of the last Queen of France. Now Léonie was coming back towards her mistress' couch, towards Barbara, her arms laden with a delicate foam of old lace.

A few minutes of hard work with a needle and white thread, much eager chatter of French, and Barbara's thin white silk gown had been transformed from a straight and, according to the fashion of that day, shapeless gown, into a beautiful and poetic garment.

A gleam of amused pleasure flashed across Madame Sampiero's trembling lips and wide open blue eyes: she realised that a little thought, a little trouble, would transform her god-daughter, if not into a beauty, then into a singularly distinguished and attractive-looking young woman.

Like most beautiful people, Barbara Sampiero had always been generous in her appreciation of the beauty of others, and she would have been pleased indeed had Richard Rebell's daughter turned out as lovely as had been her mother—lovely with that English beauty of golden hair and perfect colouring. But Barbara's charm, so far at least, seemed of the soul rather than of the body, and, recognising this fact, Madame Sampiero had at first felt disappointed, for her own experience—and in these matters a woman can only be guided by her own personal experience—was that in this world beauty of body counts very much more in obtaining for those who possess it their heart's desire than does beauty of soul.

The mistress of Chancton Priory had hesitated painfully before allowing Doctor McKirdy to write the letter which had bidden Barbara Rebell come to England. The old Scotchman, who to her surprise had urged Madame Sampiero to send for her god-daughter, regarded the coming of Barbara as a matter of comparatively small moment. If the experiment was not successful, well then Mrs. Rebell could be sent away again; but the mistress of the Priory knew that to herself the coming of Richard Rebell's daughter must either bring something like happiness, and the companionship for which she sometimes craved with so desperate a longing, or the destruction of the dignified peace in which she had known how to enfold herself as in a mantle.

For a few days, Barbara's fate had indeed hung in the balance, and could money have taken the place of the shelter asked for, it would have been sent in ample measure. At last what had turned the balance and weighed down the scale had been a mere word said by Mrs. Turke—a word referring incautiously to James Berwick as the probable future owner of Chancton Priory.

Hearing that word, the present owner's trembling lips had closed tightly together. So that was what they were all planning? That the Priory should be, in the fulness of time, handed over to James Berwick, to be added to the many possessions he had acquired by the sale of himself—Madame Sampiero, discussing the matter in the watches of her long night, did not choose and pick her words—by that of his young manhood, and of his already growing political reputation, to a sickly woman, older than himself, whose death had been the crowning boon she had bestowed on her husband.

And so Chancton, which Madame Sampiero loved with so passionate an affection, was meant to take its place, as if by chance, at the end of the long list of Berwick's properties—that list which all who ran might read in those books of reference where the mightiness of Lord Bosworth's nephew was set forth—after Chillingworth, after the town house, after Churm Paddox, Newmarket, even after the property he had inherited from his own father in France. The thought whipped her as if with scorpions—perhaps the more so that for one moment, in the long ago, at a time when Barbara Sampiero wished to share everything with the man she loved, and before little Julia, that enfant de miracle, was born, she had seriously thought of making Lord Bosworth's nephew her heir. But his marriage had revolted her profoundly, and had, of course, made the questions of his future and his career, which had at one time been a matter for anxious thought on the part of his uncle and political godfather, more than secure. Well, indeed, had he, or rather his sister Arabella, feathered James Berwick's nest!

Like most lonely wealthy women, Madame Sampiero had made and destroyed many wills in the course of her life, but since the death of her child she had made no new disposition of her property. Let the place go to any Rebell who could establish his or her claim to it—such had been her feeling. But while Barbara's short, pitiful, and yet dignified letter still remained unanswered, and while Mrs. Turke's incautious word still sounded in her ears, she had sent for her lawyer, and, after making a will which surprised him, had dictated to Doctor McKirdy the letter bidding Mrs. Rebell come and take up her permanent home at Chancton.

And now—ah! even after only very few hours of Barbara's company, Madame Sampiero lay and trembled to think how nearly she had let this good thing which had suddenly come into her shadowed life slip by. All her life through she had acted on impulse, and often she had lived to regret what she had done, but this time, acting on what was to be, so she had assured herself, the last memorable impulse of her life, her instinct had guided her aright.

What Barbara had felt, on the first morning when she wandered about the beautiful old house, her god-mother had since also experienced, with increasing regret and self-reproach. Why had she not sent for the girl immediately after Richard Rebell's death? Why had she allowed the terrible grief and physical distress which then oppressed her to prevent the accomplishment of that act of humanity and mercy? True, poor Barbara had already met the man whom she had married almost immediately afterwards, but had she, Madame Sampiero, done her duty by her god-daughter, the girl might have been saved from the saddest because the least remediable fate which can befall a woman, that of an unhappy uncongenial marriage—how unhappy, how uncongenial Madame Sampiero did not yet fully know.

But now it was no use to waste time in lamenting the irreparable, and the paralysed woman set her clear mind to do all that could be done to make the life of her young kinswoman as much as might be honoured and happy. Those old friends and neighbours whose disapproval and reprobation the owner of Chancton Priory had endured during many years with easy philosophy, and whose later pity and proffered sympathy she had so fiercely rejected when her awful loss and subsequent physical disability had made them willing to surround her once more with love, with sympathy, ay and almost with the respect she had forfeited, should now be asked to show kindness to Richard Rebell's daughter. Hence the letters dictated to Doctor McKirdy which Berwick had seen lying ready for post in the hall.

Other epistles, of scarcely less moment from the point of view of Madame Sampiero, had also been despatched from the Priory during the last two days. Barbara must be made fit in every way for the place which she was to take now, and in the future, at Chancton Priory. In material matters, money can do so much! Madame Sampiero knew exactly how much—and alas! how little—money can do. Her wealth could not restore poor Barbara's girlhood, could not obliterate the fact that far away, in a West Indian island, there lived a man who might some day make Barbara as wretched as she herself had been made by Napoleone Sampiero. But there remained the power of so acting that Barbara should be armed cap-à-pie for any worldly warfare that might come—the power of surrounding her with that outward appearance of importance and prosperity which, as Madame Sampiero well knew, means much in this world.

Hence milliners and dressmakers were told to hie them to Chancton, from Bond Street, and, better still, from the Rue de la Paix. Doctor McKirdy was amused, bewildered, touched to the heart, as he bent his red-grey head over the notepaper, and drew heavy cheques "all for the covering of one poor perishable body." So much fling he allowed himself, and then suddenly "Madam" had said something—now what had she said? The doctor was completely nonplussed, angry with himself—he, whose mind always leapt to hers! Again and again the long sentence was murmured forth—it must be something of the utmost importance—luckily Mrs. Turke just then bustled into the room, and with startling clearness had come the words, "You tell him, Turkey!" Again the muttered incomprehensible murmur, and Mrs. Turke's instant comprehension, "Why, of course, Madam reminds you, doctor, that