Читать книгу The Lie Circumspect - Rita - Страница 6

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Lawrence Haughton and his wife sat opposite each other in the great dining-room, where the polished table gave back reflections of fruit and wine, and silver and crystal. The butler had withdrawn and the strain which an unwonted presence had occasioned relaxed to the sound of the closing door.

"After all position is a great burden," exclaimed Mrs. Haughton. "I suppose it's not being used to grandeur that makes it so wearisome. One seems obliged to live for other people, to keep up a pretence in which one's heart is not. How worried you look, Lawrence. What is it? Shall I venture to ask our dignified rulers if I may have the Sprite down to dessert."

"It may make things livelier," he said. "We will have her impressions by way of relief."

He rose and rang the bell and gave the order.

"We shall get used to it all in time," he said, as he resumed his seat.

"Of all the faces here I like Mary Connor's best," said his wife. "I hope she and Val will get on."

A peal of laughter, a flash of skirts through the open doorway, and to the sound of hasty remonstrances the child had flown from her nurse's restraining hand, and perched herself upon her father's knee.

"I told you I should come down. I always mean to," she said defiantly. "Mayn't I come to dinner, p'tit papa? like I used to in France. Tell Mary I may, won't you?"

"You must ask your mother," he said. "She knows what is best and how little English girls behave."

"Not to dinner, Val," said Mrs. Haughton. "To dessert, if you are very good, and—and we are alone," she added.

Then she turned to the nurse, who was standing by the door. "I am afraid Miss Valerie has been rather spoilt," she said. "Being so much with grown-up people and going wherever we went, she naturally thinks it must continue."

"Sure, me lady, a bit of wilfulness niver hurt a woman yet," answered Mary O'Connor. "And 'tis she'll be the lovely girl one of these days. Six years, she tells me; and the sense of ten. And the ways of her! Well, I'll niver be saying again an English child is wanting in spirit. When shall I come for her to go to bed, me lady?"

"At eight o'clock," answered Mrs. Haughton. "And, Mary, I am not 'my lady.' You must address me as the other servants do."

"I beg pardon, ma'am. It's being used to it, living so long with the Countess and her granddaughters."

"Why did you leave Ireland?" enquired her mistress.

"I came over with one of the young ladies on a visit. I was acting-maid for her, and the next thing she does is to get married to an officer in the army and go off with herself to India. And then I thought I'd take another situation, and I saw the advertisement of Mrs. Burton, and with me references she took me at once. And that's all, ma'am."

The child meanwhile had slipped from her father's knee and was apparently amusing herself by a survey of the room. She flitted to and fro in a pretty, fantastic fashion that was like a dance set to the music of her wilful fancies. She curtsied and grimaced at her reflection in the mirrors and the polished mahogany, tossed rosy apples to and fro and caught them with elfish laughter, and all the time her wild bright eyes watched the faces of the speakers, flashing interrogation from one to the other, as if she was forming some private judgment of her own from their words and expressions.

Her father tried to coax her back to his knee, but she refused to come, approaching only to elude his outstretched hand, and laughing softly at each futile effort.

"Is that always the way with her, ma'am?" asked Mary O'Connor. "For, indade, it took all me time to catch her, leave alone the dressing of her, and nothing but that she was set upon seeing the big dining-room would have kept her steady under me hands for the space of two minutes."

"Val, dear, this will never do," said her mother, gently. "You must be good and obedient to nurse. It is not possible for me to do everything for you as I used to do. That is why I have engaged Mary."

The child danced still her airy measure up and down the room, and gave no answer save a mocking smile.

"You may go now, Mary," said Mrs. Haughton. "And come back at 8 o'clock."

As the door closed she called the child to her side and something in the voice told the Sprite she meant to be obeyed. She stopped her fantastic movements and approached. Her mother laid a hand upon her shoulder, over which the rich brown hair rippled in natural waves.

"Listen to me, Val," she said. "Now that we have come to England and to our own home I want you to be like other little English girls. You have run wild long enough. But you are older now, and must learn there is something in the world besides play and mischief."

"Mais oui; but regard then, maman, explain to me this, when before I bring to mind we lived in one little home, n'est ce 'pas?—in a big town full of noise, of people. Do we go there again?—for it is triste, this great big house, these long galleries, what nurse calls them. Is it here we stay?"

Her mother's face flushed scarlet and she give a quick apprehensive glance at her husband. Then the flush died away, leaving only a sickly pallor behind it.

"You are talking nonsense," she said sharply. "The big town was in France; where—where we have all come from."

"But he was not with us," answered the Sprite, pointing at her father. "And you were for always, always sewing. And the people—they spoke like they do here. It all came to me when we must leave the steamer, and you say, 'It is England—we are arrived."

Her mother turned away and lifted her half-empty wineglass to her lips.

"Regard but your hand, how it shakes," said the child. "You do not like that I remember things? But I cannot help it. When I shut my eyes—so—I see pictures; and I know I have been in them—the pictures; and you, aussi—but not p'tit papa. Another sort em monsieur—a kind monsieur—who wore bright things over his eyes and did bring to me chocolates. Voila!"

"Run away and play," said her mother. "And don't talk foolish nonsense. It's not possible you can remember; you were only a baby when——"

She stopped abruptly. Her lips tightened. Lawrence rose and pushed back his chair, and went over to the fireplace. His wife's eyes rested on the child, who once again commenced her fantastic movements, tossing the fruit and catching it, and pausing here and there to examine some article of furniture or ornament that attracted her fancy.

Silence fell upon the strange trio. Silence save for the flitting to and fro of those fairly-like feet, the rustling of lace and muslin from the fluttering frock. Such silence was not new in the child's experience, not new in theirs. At times speech seemed impossible. Words could not bridge the gulf that lay betwixt their lives, slowly widening as chill spaces of reserve crept between them day by day. Now, though their hearts were full to overflowing, speech was impossible.

The woman lifted her eyes at last and glanced at the sombre figure, standing by the fire with head bent down and folded arms, and something dogged, self-restrained in attitude and face. From thence her glance travelled round the room, with all its rich appointments, its promise of affluence. "And it all means so little," she thought bitterly. "So little because of one dark stain upon it all—that awful secret he has sworn to keep. How can he keep it? How hide the stain when even a little child's foolish hand can touch it?"

She too, left her place by the table and seated herself by the fire. But neither spoke. They watched the child and the child watched them, in the midst of her fantastic play.

As the clock chimed the hour she suddenly approached her mother.

"You will come and kiss me good-night in my new nursery, is it not?" she asked.

"Yes, child."

"And tell me stories?"

"Not to-night, Val. Mother is tired."

A shadow darkened the lovely little face.

"Then I will talk," she cried passionately. "But how I will talk. All night I will talk. I will tell Irish Mary about the little room, and the sewing, and you, p'tite maman, and the monsieur with the shining eyes, and——"

Her mother's hand was on her lips, silencing them, with a force that was more angry than rebuking.

"Hush, child! You are wicked. You deserve to be punished."

A knock came to the door. The nurse entered.

"It's 8 o'clock, ma'am. Is me young lady ready?"

"Go, Val," her mother said, pushing her away. "I will come upstairs presently."

"And tell me a story?"

"Yes."

"Then, I will not talk. You don't want that I do what I said?"

"I want you to be good and quiet. And—no—there is no need to talk. Little children mix things up in their foolish little heads and think they really happened."

The child said nothing, only kissed her father, and with a quaint grace gave her hand to the waiting nurse.

"You've not wished your mamma good-night, miss," said Mary.

"It is no matter. She will come to me; she always does. 'Revoir chere p'tite maman.'"

The door closed. Husband and wife looked at one another.

"It's—true then?" he said hoarsely. "He—it was Dormer, I suppose?"

She bent her head. "Yes," she said quietly.

"He helped you?"

"That question belongs to those four years of which we were never to speak. You said the past was dead, Lawrence. Mine, as well as yours—since speaking of the one brings back the reproach of the other."

His brow clouded. "Of course, if Val knows——" he began. Then he looked at the quiet, impassive face. He longed to ask more of this friend; the man to whom he also owed a debt, the man whom he feared and disliked because of his knowledge of a time that was a perpetual shame. But something in his wife's manner checked the words. His own hand had closed the gate on those four years and now it refused to open.

"He never writes to you now, does he?" he asked suddenly.

"No. He went abroad just before—before my uncle died. I wrote to him from Paris, to tell him of the change of name, and—he did not reply. And I thought it best to write no more."

"That is wise," he said hurriedly. "No use in bringing up old memories. All that time had best be forgotten. Even the child will soon forget if she never hears the subject spoken of."

"She does not easily forget," said the mother.

"Well, it need not be alluded to, even indirectly. And here we are removed from all fear of recognition."

"Yes. You should be safe—if one is ever safe!"

She sighed heavily. Well enough she knew that to the criminal and the lawbreaker there is no such thing as safety.