Читать книгу The Ladies Lindores - Mrs. Oliphant - Страница 12

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Lady Caroline Torrance was in her morning-room with her children when her husband came to tell her of his visit to Dalrulzian. He had kept it for twenty-four hours, in order to have an opportunity of telling it at his leisure, and making it as disagreeable to her as possible; for indeed he was fully convinced in his own mind that John had been the man about whom his broken-hearted bride had made a confession to him. The confession had not disarmed or moved him to generosity: not that his delicacy was wounded by the thought of his wife's engagement to some one else before she saw him—no such fantastical reason moved him; but that he was furious at the thought that this unseen personage still remained agreeable to her, and that in secret she could retire upon the recollection of some one whom she had once preferred, or perhaps did now prefer, to himself. This was insupportable to him. He did not care very much for filling her heart himself; but he meant that she should belong to him utterly, and not at all, even in imagination or by a passing thought, to anybody else. Lady Car's morning-room was the last of a gorgeous but faded suite of rooms opening off the drawing-room, from which it was separated by heavy velvet curtains. Everything was heavy and grand even in this sanctuary, where it was supposed the lady of the house was to find her refuge when no longer on duty, so to speak—no longer bound to sit in state and receive her visitors. It was furnished like the rest, with gilded chairs, a table of Florentine mosaic, and curtains of ruby velvet, looped and puckered into what the upholsterer of the late Mrs. Torrance's time thought the most elegant and sumptuous fashion. The gilding was a little tarnished, the velvet faded; but still it was too fine for anything less than a royal habitation. It is supposed that princesses, being used to it, like to knock their elbows against ormolu ornaments, and to put down their thimbles and scissors (if they ever use such vulgar implements) upon marble; but poor Lady Car did not. She was chilly by nature, and she never had got over her horror of these additional chillinesses. The Florentine marble made her shiver. It was far too fine to have a cover over it, which she had ventured once to suggest, to her husband's horror. "What! cover it up, as if it were plain mahogany—a thing that was worth no one could tell how much!" So she gave it up, and shivered all the more. It was a chilly day of May, which the fresh foliage outside, and a deceitful sun not strong enough to neutralise the east wind, made only a little less genial, and Lady Car sat very close to the fire, in a chair as little gilt as could be found, and with a little table beside her covered with a warm and heavy cover, as if to make up for the naked coldness of the rest. The room had three large windows, looking, from the platform upon which the house stood, over the wide country—a great landscape full of greening fields and foliage, and an infinite blue and white sky, the blue somewhat pale but very clear, the clouds mounting in Alpine peaks into the far distance and lying along the horizon in long lines. The windows, it need not be said, were plate-glass, so that an impression of being out of doors and exposed to the full keenness of the breeze was conveyed to the mind. How often had poor Lady Car sat and shivered, looking over that wistful sweep of distance in her loneliness, and knowing that no one could ever come out of it who would bring joy to her or content! She had never been beautiful, the reader is aware. She was plain now, in the absence of all that sunshine and happiness which beautifies and brightens homely faces. And yet her face was not a homely face. The master of Tinto had got what he wanted—a woman whose appearance could never be overlooked, or whom, any one could undervalue. Her air was full of natural distinction though she had no beauty. Her slight, pliant figure, like a long sapling bending before every breeze, had a grace of gentle yielding which did not look like weakness; and her smile, if perhaps a little timid, was winning and gracious. But her nose and her upper lip were both too long, and the pretty wavering colour she had possessed in her youth was gone altogether. Ill-natured people called her sallow; and indeed, though it is not a pretty word, it was not, at this stage of her existence, far from the truth.

Her two children were playing beside her on the carpet. Poor lady! here was perhaps the worst circumstance in her hard lot. As if it were not enough to be compelled to take Pat Torrance for her husband, it had been her melancholy fate to bring other Torrances, all his in temper and feature, into the world. This is an aggravation of which nobody would have thought. In imagination we are all glad to find a refuge for an unhappy wife in her children, whom instinctively we allot to her as the natural compensation—creatures like herself and belonging to her, although the part in them of the obnoxious father cannot be ignored. But here the obnoxious father was all in all; even the baby of two years old on the rug at her feet, the little girl who by all laws ought to have been like her mother, showed in her little dark countenance as small relationship to Lady Caroline as to any stranger. They were their father's children: they had his black hair, a peculiarity which sometimes is extremely piquant and attractive in childhood, giving an idea of unusual development; but, on the other hand, sometimes is—not. Little Tom and Edie were of those to whom it is not attractive, for they had heavy fat cheeks, and the same light, large, projecting eyes which were so marked a feature in their father's face. Poor Lady Car thought they fixed their eyes upon her with a cynical gaze when she tried to sing to them—to tell them baby-stories. She tried her best, but that was perhaps too fine for these children of a coarser race. They scrambled down from her lap, and liked better to roll upon the floor or break with noisy delight the toys which were showered upon them, leaving the poor young mother to gaze and wonder, and feel as much rebuffed as if these two infants of two and three had been twenty years older. They screamed with delight when their father tossed them up in his arms, but they escaped from their mother's knee when she would have coaxed them to quiet. Poor Lady Car! they were a wonder and perplexity to her. She was half afraid of them though they were her own.

Torrance had come in from the woods, which he had been inspecting with his forester, and perhaps something had crossed him in this inspection, for he was a tyrant by nature, and could not tolerate a contrary opinion; whereas the officials, so to speak, of a great estate in Scotland, are much given to opinions, and by no means to be persuaded to relinquish them. The forester had objected to something the master suggested, and the agent had taken the forester's part. The master of Tinto came in fuming. To give in was a thing intolerable to him, and to give in to his own servant! But here was another servant whom he need not fear bullying, who could not throw up her situation and put him to inconvenience, who was forced to put up with as much indignity as he chose to put upon her. This thought gave his mind a welcome relief; he strode along through all the gilded rooms with a footstep which meant mischief. Lady Caroline heard it afar off, and recognised the sound. What could it be now? Her mind ran hurriedly over the recent occurrences of the day, to think what possible offence she could have given him. Nothing—or at least she could think of nothing. It did not require a very solid reason for the transference to her shoulders of the rage which he did not think it expedient to bestow upon some one else. He came in kicking out of the way the toys with which the children were playing.

"These monkeys," he said, "would ruin a Jew if they grow up the way you are breeding them, my lady. That cost a pound or two yesterday, and now it's all in bits. If your family could stand such extravagance, mine can't. Tom, my lad, if you break your fine toys like this, I'll break your head. But it's not the children's fault," he added, "it's the way they're bred."

"It is very wrong of Tommy," said poor Lady Car, "but you laughed and clapped your hands yesterday when I found fault."

"I won't have the boy's spirit broken—that's another thing. Breeding's an affair of day by day; but it can't be expected that you should take such trouble, with your head full of other things."

"What other things?" cried Lady Car. "Oh, Pat, have a little pity! What else have I to think of? I may not understand the children, but they are my only thought."

Here he gave a mocking, triumphant laugh. "No, I daresay you don't understand them. They're of my side of the house," he said. It was a pleasure to him, but not an unalloyed pleasure, for he would have liked to secure in his daughter at least some reflection of her mother's high-bred air, which had always been her attraction in his eyes. "As for other things," he added, "there's plenty: for instance, I have just been visiting your old friend."

"My old friend?" Lady Caroline looked at him with wondering eyes.

"Oh, that is the way, is it? pretend you don't understand! I went expressly for your sake. You see what a husband I am: not half appreciated—ready to please his wife in every sort of way. I don't think much of your taste though: under size," said Torrance, with a laugh—"decidedly under size."

Lady Car looked at him with a momentary elevation of her slender, drooping throat. The action was one that had a certain pride in it, and this was what her husband specially admired in her. But she did not understand him, nor was there any secret in her gentle soul to be found out by innuendoes. She shook her head gently, and drooped it again with her habitual bend.

"I do not know what you mean. It must be some mistake," she said.

"It is no mistake, Lady Car. That's not my way to make mistakes. It suits you not to know. That makes me all the more certain. Oh, I'm not afraid of you. We're not in Italy or any of these places. And you're a great deal too proud to go wrong: you're too cold, you have not got it in you."

Lady Caroline raised her head again, but this time in sheer surprise. "Pat," she said, faltering, "all I know is, that you mean to insult me. I know nothing but that. What is it? Do not insult me before the children."

"Pshaw! how should the children understand?"

"Not what you mean; but neither do I understand that. The children know as well as I do that you mean to hurt me. What is it?—what have I done?"

"By Jove!" he said, looking at her, "to see you there with your white face, one would think you never had done anything but good all your life. You look as if butter would not melt in your mouth. Not the sort of woman to look down upon her husband and count him a savage, and keep thinking of a nice, smooth, soft-spoken——You would never tell me his name, and I was a fool, and didn't insist upon it; but now he has come back to be your ladyship's neighbour, and see you every day."

She did not answer immediately. She looked at him with a curious light stealing into her soft grey eyes, raising her head again. Then she said slowly, "I think you must mean Mr. Erskine of Dalrulzian. If so, you have made a great mistake. I think he is younger than I am. He was not much more than a boy when I knew him. He never was anything—but an acquaintance."

"It's likely you'll get me to believe that," cried Torrance, scornfully. He jumped up from his seat, and came and stood in front of the fire, with his back to it, brushing against her dress, so close to her that she had to draw back out of his way. "An acquaintance! There are different meanings to that word. I've been to see him on your account, my lady. I've asked him to come here. Oh, I'm not afraid of you, as I tell you. You're too cold and too proud to go wrong. You shall see him as much as you like—I have every confidence in you—see him, and talk to him, and tell him what you think of your husband. It will be a nice sentimental amusement for you; and as for me, I'll always be by to look on."

He laughed as he spoke, angrily, fiercely, and glared down upon her from under his eyelids with a mixture of fury and satisfaction. She pushed her chair back a little with a shiver, drawing away her dress, upon which he had placed his foot.

"If it was as you suppose," she said, trembling, "what misery you would be planning for me! It makes me cold indeed to think of such cruelty. What! you would put me in such a strait! You would force me into the society of one——Oh, Pat, surely you are doing yourself wrong! You could not be so cruel as that!"

He laughed again, striding across the fireplace, ever encroaching more upon her corner. His face had grown red with wrath. He was not without feeling, such as it was, and this which he supposed his wife's acknowledgment that his cruel device could indeed wound her, gave himself a start of self-reproach and alarm, though there was pleasure in the power he felt he had acquired of causing pain.

"Ah, I've caught you, have I? I've caught you at last!" he cried, with a tone of triumph.

"You could not do it!" cried Lady Caroline, her pale face flushed. "No! do not say you made such a cruel plan—no, no!—to entrap the poor woman who is your wife—alas! who never did you harm—to rend her heart in two, and make her life more miserable. No, no! do not tell me you have this cunning as well as—all the rest; do not tell me! You would not do it, you could not do it. There is no such cruelty in man."

"It's a satisfaction," he cried, his face burning and glowing, "to think I have you in my grip, Lady Car."

She breathed quick and hard, pushed back in her corner, gazing up at him with a look from which a stronger tremor had taken all the timidity. It was some time before she could speak. "Do not think," she said, "that I am afraid of you. I am only horrified to think—but I might have known. Mr. Erskine, by whom you think you can make me more unhappy, is nothing to me—nothing, nothing at all, nothing at all! He is not the gentleman I thought it right to tell you about—no, no! a very different person. I do not want to see him, because I should not like—old friends to know; but Mr. Erskine is nothing to me—nothing!"

Whether he would have been convinced by the vehemence with which she said this alone, cannot be known—for at that moment the carefully festooned velvet curtains were disturbed in the regulated folds which nobody at Tinto had ever ventured to alter, and Edith suddenly appeared with an anxious and pale countenance. She had heard the raised voices as she approached, and her sister's "nothing to me, nothing!" had been quite distinct to her as she came in. She could not imagine what it was that could have excited poor Carry so much, and Edith had a nervous dislike of any scene. She could not draw back, having with difficulty sent away the servant who was conducting her punctiliously to her sister's presence, and she felt herself compelled to face the quarrel, which was evidently a serious one. Edith was fastidious and sensitive, with all the horror of a girl who had never seen anything like domestic contention or the jars of family life. Lord Lindores and his wife had not always agreed since his recent elevation—indeed they had disagreed bitterly and painfully on the most serious questions; but such a thing as a quarrel had been unknown in their household. To Edith it seemed such an offence against good taste and all the courtesies of life, as nothing could excuse—petty and miserable, as well as unhappy and wrong. She was annoyed as well as indignant to be drawn into it thus against her will. Carry had hitherto concealed with all her might from her young sister the state of conflict in which she lived. Her unhappiness she did not hide; but she had managed to keep silent in Edith's presence, so that the girl had never been an actual witness of the wranglings of the ill-matched pair. But poor Lady Car for once was moved out of her usual precautions. She was too much excited even to remember them. She appealed to her sister at once, hailing her appearance with eagerness, and without pausing to think.

"Edith," she cried, "you have come in time. Tell Mr. Torrance that Mr. Erskine, who has just come home, was not a—special friend of mine. You can speak, for you know. Mr. Torrance says—he thinks——" here Lady Car came to herself, perceiving the disturbed looks of her sister, and remembering her own past reserve. She paused, and forced herself into a miserable smile. "It is not worth while entering into the story," she said; "it does not—matter much. It is only a mistake, a—a difference of opinion. You can tell Mr. Torrance——"

"I don't want any information," said Torrance, sulkily. He, too, felt embarrassed by the sudden introduction of Edith into the discussion. He moved away from the fire with a rude attempt at civility. Edith, in her youthful absolutism, and want of toleration or even understanding of himself, overawed him a little. She was not, he thought, nearly so aristocratic in appearance as his wife; but he was slightly afraid of her, and had never been at his ease in her presence. What was the opinion of this little chit to him? He asked himself the question often, but it did not divest him of that vague perception of his own appearance in her eyes, which is the most mortifying of all reflections. No caricature made of us can be so disconcerting. Just so Haman must have seen himself, a wretched pretender, through the eyes of that poor Jew in the gate. Torrance saw himself an exaggerated boor, a loud-speaking, underbred clown, in the clear regard, a little contemptuous, never for a moment overawed by him, of Edith Lindores. He had perhaps believed his wife's denial in respect to John Erskine while they were alone, but he believed her entirely when she called Edith to witness. He was subdued at once—he drew away from before the fire with sulky politeness, and pushed forward a chair. "It's a cold day," he said. The quarrel died in a moment a natural death. He hung about the room for a few minutes, while Edith, to lessen the embarrassment of the situation, occupied herself with the children. As for Lady Car, she had been too much disturbed to return at once to the pensive calm which was her usual aspect. She leant back in her chair, pushed up into the corner as she had been by her husband's approach, and with her thin hands clasped together. Her breath still came fast, her poor breast heaved with the storm—she said nothing to aid in the gradual restoration of quiet. The spell being once broken, perhaps she was not sorry of the opportunity of securing Edith's sympathy. There is a consolation in disclosing such pangs, especially when the creator of them is unbeloved. To tell the cruelties to which she was subject, to pour out her wrongs, seemed the only relief which poor Carry could look forward to. It had not been her will to betray it to her sister; but now that the betrayal had taken place, it was almost a pleasure to her to anticipate the unburdening of her heart. All that she desired for the moment was that he would go away, that she might be free to speak. The words seemed bursting from her lips even while he was still there. Perhaps Torrance himself had a perception of this; but then he did not believe that his wife had not a hundred times made her complaint to Edith before. And thus there ensued a pause which was not a pleasant one. Neither the husband nor the wife spoke, and Edith's agitated discourses with the children were the only sounds audible. They were not prattling, happy children, capable of making a diversion in such circumstances; and Edith was not so fond of the nephew and niece, who so distinctly belonged to their father, as she ought to have been. The situation was relieved by a summons to Torrance to see some one below. He went away reluctantly, jealously, darting a threatening look at his wife as he looked back. Edith was as much alarmed for what was coming as Torrance was. She redoubled her attentions to the children, hoping to avert the disclosure which she, too, saw was so near.

"It is their time to—go back to the nursery," said Carry, with a voice full of passion, ringing the bell; and the children were scarcely out of hearing when the storm burst forth: "I have borne a great deal, oh, a great deal—more, far more, than you can ever know; but think, think! what he intended for me. To invite John Erskine here, thinking he was—some one else; to bring us into each other's company day after day; to tempt me to the old conversations, the old walks. Don't contradict me—he said so: that I might feel my misery, and drink my cup to the last dregs."

"Carry, Carry! you must be mistaking him; he could not wish that; it would be an insult—it would be impossible."

"That is why it pleases him," cried the poor wife; "he likes to watch and make sure that I suffer. If I did not suffer, it would do him no good. He says I am too proud and too cold to—go wrong, Edith! That is how he speaks to your sister; and he wishes to show me—to show me, as if I did not know—what I have and what I have lost!"

"Carry, you must not. Oh, don't let us even think of what is past now!"

"It is easy for you to say so. I have tried—oh, how I have tried!—never to think of the past—even now, even to-day. Think, only think! Because he supposed that, he went expressly to see John Erskine, to ask him to come here, planning to torture me—no matter to him, because he was sure I was too proud to go wrong. He wanted to watch the meeting—to see how we would look at each other, what we would say, how we would behave ourselves at such a moment. Can you believe it, Edith? Was there ever anything in a book, in the theatre, so cruel, so terrible? Do you suppose one can help, after that, thinking of the past, thinking of the future too?—for suppose it had been—Edward——Oh no, no! I don't want to name his name; but suppose it had been—he. Another time it may be he. He may come to visit John Erskine. We may meet in the world; and then I know—I know what is before me. This man—oh, I cannot call him by any name!—this man, whom I belong to, who can do what he pleases with my life—I know now what his pleasure will be—to torture me, Edie!—for no purpose but just to see me suffer—in a new way. He has seen me suffer already—oh, how much!—and he is blasé! he wants something more piquant, a newer torture, a finer invention to get more satisfaction out of me. And you tell me I must not think of the past!"

"Carry, Carry!" cried Edith, trembling; "what can I say? You ought not to bear it. Come home; come back to us. Don't stay with him, if this is how you feel about him, another day."

Carry shook her head. "There is no going back," she said; "alas! I know that now, if never before. To go back is impossible: my father would not allow it; my mother would not approve it. I dare not myself. No, no, that cannot be. However dreadful the path may be, all rocks or thorns, and however your feet may be torn and bleeding—forward, forward one must go. There is no escape. I have learned that."

There was a difference of about six years between them—not a very great period; and yet what a difference it made! Edith had in her youthful mind the certainty that there was a remedy for every evil, and that what was wrong should not be permitted to exist. Carry knew no remedy at all for her own condition, or indeed, in the reflection of her own despair, for any other. Nothing was to be done that she knew of; nothing could do any good. To go back was impossible. She sat leaning back in her chair, clasping her white thin hands, looking into the vacant air—knowing of no aid, but only a little comfort in the mere act of telling her miseries—nothing more; while Edith sat by her, trembling, glowing, impatient, eager for something to be done.

"Does mamma know?" the girl asked, after a pause.

Carry did not move from her position of quiet despair. "Do you think," she said, "it is possible that mamma, who has seen so much, should not know?"

To this Edith could make no reply, knowing how often the subject had been discussed between her mother and herself, with the certainty that Carry was unhappy, though without any special explanation to each other of the manner of her unhappiness.

"But if my father were to speak to him, Carry? My father ought to do it; it was he who made you—it was he who——"

"No one can say anything; no one can do anything. I am sorry I told you, Edie; but how could I help it? And it does me a little good to speak. I must complain, or I should die."

"Oh, my poor Car, my poor Car!" Edith cried, throwing herself upon her knees beside her sister. Die! she said, within herself; would it not be better—far better—to die? It was living that seemed to her impossible. But this was another of the sad pieces of knowledge which Carry had acquired: that you cannot die when you please, as the young and untried are apt to suppose—that mortal anguish does not always kill. It was Edith who was agitated and excited, seeking eagerly for a remedy—any remedy—even that heroic and tragical one; but Carry did not feel that even in that there was any refuge for her now.

This was by no means John Erskine's fault. He was as innocent of it, as unconscious of it, as any man could be; but Edith, an impatient girl, felt a sort of visionary rage against him, in which there was a certain attraction too. It seemed to her as if she must go and tell him of this sad family secret, though he had so little to do with it. For was not he involved, and his coming the occasion of it? If she could but have accused him, confided in him, it would have given her mind a certain relief, though she could not well tell why.