Читать книгу A Life Sentence - Sergeant Adeline - Страница 14

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Hubert Lepel had accepted his sister's invitation to Beechfield Hall for two nights only; but, as he had given her to understand, he was quite ready to come again, supposing of course that she made his visit agreeable to him. So far—an hour and a half after his first arrival—it had not been very agreeable. He had been obliged to allude to a matter which was highly unpleasant to him, and he had had to stand by while his sister burst into quite unnecessary and incomprehensible tears. He was not so soft-hearted a man as he had been eight years ago, and he told himself impatiently that he could not stand much more of this kind of thing.

For the last three years he had been, as Florence had said, almost always out of England. When his search for Jane Wood proved a failure, he had taken a strong dislike for a time to London life and London ways. He had been making money by his literary work, and was well able to afford himself a little recreation. He went to Egypt therefore, and to India, took a look at China and Japan, and came home by way of South America. He did not care to go too much in beaten tracks; and during his absence he wrote a book or two which were fairly successful, and a play which made a great sensation. He had come back to London now, and was at work upon another play, on which great hopes had been founded. If it were as successful as the first, there was every likelihood of his becoming a rich man. He had got his head fairly above water, and meant to keep it there; he conceived that he had brooded too long over the past.

He had seen little Dick Vane when he first arrived, and he had spent nearly two hours with Florence; but he had not yet encountered the General or the General's niece and adopted daughter, Enid Vane. The two had gone out riding, and did not return until after five o'clock.

"Just in time for tea!" said the General, in a tone of profound satisfaction. "I thought that we were later. And how do you find yourself, Hubert, my dear boy? Why, I declare I shouldn't have known you! Should you, Enid? He is as brown as a Hindoo."

"Would you have known me?" said Hubert, with a smile at the girl who had followed her uncle into the room, and now gave him her hand by way of greeting. The smile was forced in order to conceal a momentary twitch of his features, which he could not quite control at the first sight of Sydney Vane's daughter; but it looked natural enough.

The girl raised her eyes to his face with a shy sweet smile.

"I am afraid that I don't remember very well," she said; and Hubert thought that he had never seen anything much prettier than her smile.

She was seventeen, and looked so fair, so delicate, in her almost childish loveliness of outline and expression, that Florence's white skin became haggard and hard in comparison. Her slight figure was displayed to full advantage by a well-made riding-habit, and under her correct little high hat her golden hair shone like sunshine. There was a soft color in her cheeks, a freshness on her smiling lips, that made the observer long to kiss them, as if they belonged to some simple child. Her manner too was almost that of a child—frank, naive, direct, and unembarrassed; but in her eyes there lurked a shadow which contradicted the innocent simplicity of her expressive countenance. If was not a shadow of evil, but of sadness, of a subdued melancholy—the sadness of a girl whose life had been darkened in early life by some undeserved calamity. It was a look that redeemed her face from the charge of inanimateness that might otherwise have been brought against it, and gave it that faintly sombre touch which was especially fascinating to a man like Hubert Lepel.

He continued to talk to the General, who had questions to ask him concerning his travels and his friends; but his eyes followed the movements of the girl as she stepped quietly about the room, pouring out tea for one, carrying cake and biscuits to another. Twice he sprang up to assist her, but was met with a smile and a shake of the head from her, and the assurance from her uncle that Enid liked waiting on people—he need not try to take her vocation from her. He had to sit down again, and thought, half against his will, of that other Enid—Tennyson's Enid, in her faded gown—and of Prince Geraint's desire to kiss the dainty thumb "that crossed the trencher as she set it down." He at least was no Geraint, he said to himself, to win this gentle maiden's heart. But he watched her nevertheless, with a growing admiration which was not a little dangerous.

With a faint cynical smile Florence noted the direction of his eyes. As soon as her husband and his niece entered the room, she had lapsed into the graceful indolent silence which seemed habitual to her. Enid brought her a cup of tea, and ministered to her wants with assiduity and gentleness of manner, though, as Hubert thought, with no great show of affection; and Florence accepted the girl's attentions with perfect equanimity and a caressing word of two of thanks. And yet Hubert fancied—he knew not why—that there was no look of love in Flossy's drooping eyes.

"Please may I come in?" said Master Dick's small treble at the door. He was a fair, blue-eyed little fellow, but not much like either his father or his mother, thought Hubert, as the child stood in the doorway and looked rather doubtfully into the room.

Florence's brow contracted for a moment.

"Why are you not having your nursery-tea?" she said. "We do not want you here unless we send for you."

"I want to see uncle Hubert," persisted the boy stolidly.

Hubert held out his hand to him with a smile that children still found winning.

"Come in, little man," he said. "I want to see you too."

Dick marched in at once, still, however, keeping an eye fixed upon his mother. There was something almost like fear in the look; and it was noticeable that neither the General nor Enid spoke to invite him into the room.

"You may come in," Florence said at last, very coldly—almost as one might speak to a grown person whom one had strong reason to dislike—"but you cannot stay more than five minutes. You are not wanted here."

"Oh, come, I think we all want him!" said Hubert good-humoredly. "I wish to make my nephew's acquaintance, at any rate. I have something for him in my portmanteau up-stairs."

Florence made a sudden and, as it seemed, involuntary gesture, and knocked down a vase of flowers on the table at her right hand. There was some confusion in consequence, as the flowers had to be gathered up and the fragments of the broken vase collected, so that Hubert had little opportunity of talking to his nephew. And, as soon as "the fuss," as he mentally called it, was over, Mrs. Vane said, in her coldest, slowest voice—

"Now, Dick, you may go to the nursery. Say good-night."

"Good-night?" questioned Hubert. "Why, he does not go to bed at this hour in the afternoon, does he?"

"He goes at half-past six or seven," replied Florence. "Pray do not interfere with nursery regulations, my dear Hubert."

"I shall see more of him to-morrow, I suppose," said Hubert, smiling at the child's wistful face as he went from one to another to say good-night.

Little Dick's eyes lit up at once, but the light in them died out when, on tip-toe, as if afraid of disturbing her, he approached his mother. Hubert thought that there was a touch of something odd in the manner of everyone present, and was glad to see that Enid's kisses and whispered words of endearment brought a flush of pleasure to the child's delicate cheeks before he turned away.

The General then took possession of the visitor and marched him off to look at the stables. The old man had recovered all his old cheeriness and heartiness of manner; there was a little more feebleness in his gait than there used to be, and he walked with a stick, but Hubert was pleased to see that his eyes were bright, and to find him loquaciously inclined. The shock of Sydney's death had not seriously affected him, and Hubert was conscious of a thrill of relief at the sight of his evident health and happiness. Considering that Mr. Lepel believed himself to have closed his heart against the past, he was singularly open to attacks of painful memory. He was annoyed by his own readiness to be hurt, and almost wished that he had not come to Beechfield.

He saw neither of the ladies again till dinner time, when he thought that Enid looked even lovelier in her simple white frock than in her riding-habit. He observed her a good deal at dinner, and made up his mind that she was the very model of an ideal heroine—sweet, gentle, pure-minded, intelligent—all that a fresh young English girl should be. The type did not attract him greatly; but it was just as well to study so perfect a specimen when he had one at hand; he wanted to introduce a girl of this sort into his next novel, and he preferred portraiture to mere invention. He would keep the novel in mind when he talked to her; it would perhaps prevent any dwelling on unpleasant subjects—for, oh, how like the girl's eyes were to those of her dear father!

So he sat by the piano after dinner while Enid played dreamy melodies, that soothed the General into slumber, and then he persuaded her to walk with him in the moonlight on the terrace, and talked to her of his strange adventures in foreign lands until the child thought that she had never heard anything half so wonderful before. And, as they passed and repassed the windows, they were watched by Florence Vane with eyes that gleamed beneath her heavy eyelids, with the narrow intentness of the emerald orbs belonging to her favorite white cat. She had never looked more as if she were silently following some malevolent design, than when she watched the couple on the terrace on that moonlit night.

Enid very quickly made friends with Mr. Lepel—so quickly indeed that she was led to confide some of her most private opinions to him before he had been much more than twenty-four hours at Beechfield Hall. It was anent little Dick and his mother that the first confidence took place.

The whole party had been having tea under the great beech-tree on the lawn, and after a time Enid and Hubert were left alone by the others. They chatted gaily together, he answering her eager questions about London and Paris and Berlin, she catechising him with an eagerness which amused and interested him. Presently they saw Dick running towards them across the lawn. A white figure at one of the windows on the terrace, a call to the boy, and Dick's wild career was arrested. He stood still for a moment, then turned slowly towards the house, breaking into a childish wail of grief as he did so. Hubert stopped short in the sentence that he was addressing to his young cousin, and looked after the boy.

"What is the matter with the poor little chap?" he asked.

Enid's eyes were fixed anxiously upon the window where the white figure had appeared.

"Florence called him," she said, in a very small voice.

"And why should the fact of his mother's calling him make him cry?"

"Florence thinks it best to be strict," said Enid, still with unnatural firmness of manner. "He is running away from his nurse now, I know; and I suppose he will be sent to bed directly after tea for doing so—as he was yesterday."

"Was he? Poor little beggar! Was that the reason why he looked so miserable and you were all so solemn? What had he done?"

"He came into the drawing-room without permission. He was let off very easily because you were there, but I have known his mother punish him severely for doing so."

"But, good heavens," said Hubert, rising from his seat, and leaning against the trunk of the beech-tree, while he looked down at Enid with an expression of utter perplexity, "why on earth should the child have so little freedom; and why should Florence be so hard on him? She must be altered! She was never fond of children, but she was too indolent to be severe. Was not that your experience of her when you were a child?"

"Yes," said Enid, but too hesitatingly to give Hubert all the assurance that he wished for—"yes; she did not take much trouble about what I did. It is different with her own child."

"Surely she loves her own child better than she loved other children—better even than you!" said Hubert, with the soft intonation that turned the words into a compliment. "It is natural in a mother."

"One would think so," said the girl. Then, as if moved by a sudden impulse, she spoke hurriedly, with her beautiful eyes full of tears. "Oh, cousin Hubert"—it was thus that she had addressed him ever since her babyhood—"do not think that I am unkind to Florence—I do not mean it unkindly—but it does seem sometimes as if she really hated her little boy! Poor little Dick has never known what it is to have a mother's love. I am so sorry for him! I know what it is to be motherless." Hubert averted his face, and gazed into the distance. "I have lived many years without either father or mother," said the girl, in a tone the simple pathos of which seemed to pierce her hearer's heart, "but at any rate I remember what it was to have their love."

She wondered why Hubert stood motionless and irresponsive; it was not like him to be so silent when an appeal was made to his sympathy. She colored rosy red, with the instinctive fear that she had gone too far, had said something of which he did not approve, and she tried, in her naive unconsciousness of ill, to put the matter straight.

"But I have been very happy," she said earnestly. "Florence has always been kind, and dear mamma herself could not have done more for me. It is only that she seems cold and severe with Dick——Dear cousin Hubert, I hope you are not angry with me for saying what I have said about your sister?"

He was obliged to look at her when she addressed him thus directly. She was surprised by the expression of pain—bitter humiliating pain—upon his face. Was it sympathy for her loss, she wondered, or grief for little Dick's position, or distress at her accusation of Florence that caused his face to wear that look of positive anguish? She could not tell.

"Angry?" he said, stretching out his hand and laying it tenderly on her own, while the pain in his eyes softened into a melancholy as inscrutable as the pain. "Could I ever be angry with you, Enid? Poor little lonely motherless child! Heaven knows, if I could protect you from sorrow or pain henceforth, I would do so at the cost of my life!"

He withdrew his hand and walked away somewhat abruptly, without once looking round. Enid remained where he had left her, pale with emotion, overpowered by a feeling that was neither joy nor fear, but which partook of both.