Читать книгу The Lie Circumspect - Rita - Страница 7

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Torbart Manor was situated on the borders of two counties, but it was remote enough to be exclusive and keep its neighbors at a distance if so inclined.

It had shown itself so inclined on occasions, and displayed a calm indifference as to the pursuits and opinions of those neighbors. The late owner had been counted a selfish recluse, simply because he had no political opinions, a weak digestion, and a studious disposition. When he was dead and the vault in the old churchyard of Torbart parish had duly recorded that fact, there was a brief spell of curiosity as to the next occupants of the Manor. Month after month drifted by, and that curiosity burnt itself out from sheer want of fuel to keep it alight.

No one came to the house at all. Servants were dismissed, all save the old butler and his wife and some outdoor helps, and the place was shut up, the beautiful grounds scarcely tended. Roses that had tossed gay, tangled heads to summer skies, bloomed and died unheeded as the seasons passed. The coverts bred game that no sportsman's gun affrighted. In the great elms the rooks built and cawed and held their own important conclaves and seemed striving to atone for the absence of human sounds and human voices.

Then, suddenly, with no notice or forewarning, life stirred once more within the old dark walls. Smoke curled above the trees, horses neighed within the stable-yard, shutters no longer hid the great mullioned windows. The tangled creepers and rejoicing ivy were cut and clipped and trimmed to conventional appearance.

The Manor House was occupied once more and the county announced the fact to its intimates in ceremonious calls and asked itself who should make the first overtures of friendliness.

Lady Vi Langford, one of the hunting celebrities, was entreated to lead the way and report results. She had nothing to report. The family were "Not at home" on the occasion of her visit.

The Dowager Lady Winterton then proceeded to do her duty. The old greys and the ancient landau, which no "nouveau riche" would have allowed in stable or coachhouse, crawled up the avenue of Torbart Manor. The answer was the same, and a further consultation led to a decision that the manor was again inclined to moroseness and neither cared for nor invited neighborly attentions. The county would not believe that on both occasions the answer had been strictly truthful; yet Mr. and Mrs. Haughton were really out—once on a long walk that embraced miles of their new possessions, and the second time driving to the little town of Selbury, ten miles distant, in order to meet a train conveying important parcels, which in the natural course of events would not have been delivered till the next day.

They regarded the cards with indifference—the indifference born of an utter ignorance as to county habits, rules, and obligations. Indeed, Lawrence Haughton's brows met in the blackest of frowns when he saw the creamy pasteboards on his hall table. "Callers already—— d—n it!" he muttered. "Can't people ever leave one alone."

His wife regarded the names with timidity; wondering why titles honored the Manor House, and forgetful of its attending importance—an importance dating far back, and disqualified by no mushroom appendage of knighthood such as distinguished Lady Vi's husband.

"I am glad we were out," she said, and Lawrence answered, "We must be always out; I wish to know no one in the neighborhood."

"Will that be possible?" she asked. "It will look very strange."

"It may look what it likes," he said. "I am not going to put myself out for other people. County society means perpetual boredom. I don't hunt, I'm a wretched shot, and I hate dinner parties. All this spells unpopularity. Better begin at once as we mean to go on."

"It will look—strange," she said.

"No matter. People will get used to our strangeness. We want nothing from them. If you need gaiety we can always run up to town."

"I!" she cried. "I—need gaiety? Lawrence, when did you discover that? When have you found a time that you were not enough for me—you and the child?"

He drew her suddenly to his side and kissed her.

"My dearest," he murmured, "you are too good to me. Yet I cannot but ask you to bear with my morbid habits a little while. It is not easy to live down——"

He broke off abruptly and put her away. "Let the cards lie there," he said. "We need not return the visits."

"Some day," she urged, "we must cease to be hermits—there is the child to think of."

His laugh was harsh and unmusical. "How like a woman! Are you providing a husband and trousseau for her while she is still in the nursery? Surely there is time and to spare. She has not run the gamut of childish ailments yet, nor learnt the discipline of the schoolroom."

Her cheek paled. "You are cruel, Lawrence," she said. "My suggestion was a very natural one. She is young; she has all her life before her. You cannot condemn her to the isolation that you have chosen for yourself."

"There is time and to spare for such considerations," he answered moodily.

"There is a necessity already arising that we must meet—her education. What I have taught is the mere jargon of childhood. She cannot read or spell English. She will need a governess."

"I have thought of that. It is a need easily supplied. You can advertise and then select the most promising. But for heaven's sake secure one who will keep to herself and live to herself. I want no third person to sit at my board, and talk, and listen, and——spy."

"Lawrence!" she cried nervously.

A little shadow had flitted suddenly from the dark background of the tapestried walls.

"Oh, mechant papa!" said a mocking voice. "I heard all you say. I am to have a gouvernante. V'la. Let it be. I shall only learn what I like."

"You will learn what you are told and do as you are bid, Val," said her mother sternly. "And what are you doing here? Where is Mary?"

"I have run away from her. I hide—there!" she laughed softly. "She search, she call, she cannot find. I hear you come in—and p'tit papa."

She flitted to the foot of the staircase. "I heard," she repeated, and the red firelight showed the dancing mischief in her eyes, the mocking smile on her scarlet lips, "all of the funny words he did say."

She began to ascend the stairs, looking down at the two watching figures.

"Dites, donc! Say, what is it to spy?" she asked. "And why did mamma say 'hush?'"

"Valerie, come here," said her father peremptorily. "You are a naughty, wilful, little girl. You deserve to be punished."

"For why then?" asked the child defiantly. "Because it is so dull, so triste, in this great dark house, and I run from Mary to hide? I could not tell you would talk secrets. It was not much, only that I am to have someone to teach me. I shall be glad. I want to learn. I will then know everything that is told me; and no one will say, 'Never mind,' and 'Do not ask questions,' and 'That is not for children, les petites, to know.' And I shall ask her, first of all things, 'Are you a spy, mademoiselle?"

Step by step she had advanced until with the last word she had reached the corridor above. They watched her scarlet frock flash and flutter into the darkness, they caught the gleam of her mocking eyes as she peered through the open oak railings of the gallery running round the hall. They heard the peal of her childish laughter and the challenge of her childish voice as her nurse came towards her. Lawrence Haughton turned suddenly to his wife.

The leaping firelight showed the pallor of her face and flashed on the anger of his own.

"You called her your comfort," he said, in a repressed and wrathful voice. "A strange comforter indeed! The license of her tongue outstrips her years. There is something elfish—uncanny—about her at times. Take care that in years to come she is not more scourge than comfort."

"That must be as God wills," answered the mother. "Her nature, her soul, are of His giving. I only know she saved me once from madness and despair."

She turned away then and went slowly up the wide, old stairs and passed into her room, closing and locking the door behind her. There were times when repression and silence became a living torture, when the restraint on words, looks, memories, was beyond passive endurance. It seemed to her that she was perpetually fighting shadows with straws that bent and mocked her feeble blows.

The child was at once a puzzle and a torment. She had passed from infancy into this mocking, elfish sprite with a rapidity which attendant circumstances scarcely excused. Yet, on the other hand, no traceable accident of heredity could account for the almost foreign style of her beauty, her aptitude for languages, and her fantastic personality.

Her fancy was as swift as a bird's flight, and often as unexpected. Her mind seized on passing words and circumstances, to magnify, distort, or play with them as her whim dictated. She seemed to love her mother, yet at times spent her whole soul on distressing and agitating her. There was something nervous and timid about this mother which she recognised and despised, her father she treated with alternate humor, petulance, and insubordination. He could not influence her even by anger or win any obedience that was not voluntary. When their wills clashed, his had to give way. Punishment enforced nothing except an hysterical frenzy that was too terrifying to risk, once witnessed. Words and threats she mocked at if the fancy took her, or railed back in the broken French and English of a dialect peculiar to herself.

In their wanderings to and fro in foreign lands she had picked up an extraordinary amount of knowledge, to which her natural shrewdness lent precocious importance. She was childish in all but intelligence. There she outstripped her years and her prerogatives. Her vivid fancy, leaping from surmise to certainty, would set its seal of comprehension on details that were less patent to ordinary observers than herself. Her mind played for her the part of a magic lantern, and its various slides held impressions of scenes and events that no one credited her with noticing, and still less remembering.

Her mother sat now before the fire in her great and somewhat dreary bed-chamber, thinking out, as she had been compelled of late to think out, the problem of this child's future.

The passion and force of her own feelings made the task before her all the more difficult. Her temperament was not of an order that escapes from suffering or evades its own responsibilities. She must deal with Val, and Val's future, in the best and wisest fashion that circumstances allowed.

She had to shield her husband's morbid sensibilities and enforce his authority—both matters of difficulty, and threatening yet greater difficulty in the future. His resolution to avoid all intimacy or exchange of courtesies with his neighbors did not seriously disturb one by nature unobtrusive and not anxious to shine as a social star of any importance. But it aroused a new fear—the fear of awakening curiosity and its attendant gossip. If they lived here secluded and unvisited people would naturally think there must be a reason. To find a reason at once sufficient and convincing was the task she set herself.

She lifted her head, and in doing so caught the reflection of her hair, burnished by the flames; of her face sad and wistful, yet still young and still lovely. She started slightly, then kept her gaze fixed on that pictured self, looking into the eyes dark and pain filled; reading the tragedy of past years in the lines of the brow and the sorrowful curve of unsmiling lips.

"It rests with me," she thought. "Whatever reason or excuse has to be made I must make it. No one must think the cause has anything to do with him."

Her eyes wandered round the room and a faint smile touched her pale lips. "It won't be a very dreary prison," she thought. "But a prison it must be. Here I shall stay and spend my days and years, a chronic invalid, a recluse who shuts herself in from outer sympathy or friendship. Can I play the part? Can I cheat him also?"

She rose and slowly paced the room, her hands clasped before her, her head bent.

"Perhaps he will not notice," she went on. "And sometimes we can go away. There are always spas and cures to be found. The plea can hold good still. Yes—it must be. I see no other way. But I must find Val's governess first. It will be less easy to play the part to a woman. I must evolve the woman I want, and then trust to my own intuition to detect her likeness in the answers I receive."

She paused, and again her eyes turned to the graceful figure in the long mirror—to the face whose youth and beauty of womanhood she had determined to deny.

"It will not be easy," she said slowly. "Not easy and not pleasant. But at any cost he must be saved. What was that he said once, I have a genius for martyrdom? . . If so, I must prove it, . . . Perhaps he will never guess why."