The love child, p.15
The Love Child, page 15
8
“I should die in such a case,” Lady Stanton declared to her husband, while administering the final touch of her toilette with a mechanical gesture. She could not concentrate on her reflection, and entirely failed to notice that the eardrop in her right lobe did not match the one in her left. She would never have thought of going out at such a moment anyway, except that this was Sunday and one had—one wanted, in fact—to go to church.
Lord Stanton watched her, fully prepared to depart and walking the length of the room as was his wont. “My dear, things are impossible enough without your exaggerating,” he said, as gently as he could. He was quite as over-set as Lady Stanton, and did not care to hear his own sentiments restated.
“I am scarcely exaggerating,” she brought out, dropping her brush absent-mindedly and turning round to face her lord. “Could you go on living—would you wish to, after all—with such a disgrace as that upon our heads?”
“It is a case of the lesser of two evils,” he muttered, pacing more rapidly. His aimless gyrations brought him alongside of a highly polished Pembroke table, on which lay a little note, neatly folded. He reached for it, did not quite touch it, hesitated an instant with his hand hovering in the air, then faced away from the table abruptly. He knew its contents—knew them perfectly, indeed. It was a second demand from the Contessa di Tremini; Lady Stanton had discovered it beneath her pillow when she retired the previous night. The contessa, it appeared, was not to be satisfied with a single payment: as Lady Stanton had feared, she saw no reason to desist when she had found so successful a formula. This time she wanted a good deal more money. The Stantons could pay it, Lord Walker had told his wife, without being obliged to liquidate their major holdings. However, if they paid the countess from such funds, they would not be able to give Wyborn Amabel’s dowry as promptly as they had promised. The contessa, moreover, had made it clear that she was impatient: time was of the essence.
“Why is she so greedy?” Lady Stanton suddenly burst out tearfully. “To look at her one would never dream she wanted money! And I had understood the late count was very wealthy.” A salty droplet rolled from her eye and down her pretty, fading cheek. She was too distressed to bother with brushing it off, and it fell from her cheek to her chin, and thence to her breast.
“I can’t say, I can’t say,” her husband murmured, as puzzled as her ladyship. “Perhaps she loses at cards.”
“Then she ought to stop gaming.”
Lord Stanton made no reply.
“In any case, you will have to ask Wyborn to wait,” Lady Stanton resumed. “It will put us in an odious position, but that is nothing, I suppose, to what Lady di Tremini’s displeasure might do.”
“Precisely,” said Stanton.
“I do not know how I shall sit through church today,” his wife took up fretfully. “I am half mad with hatred for that woman. It is almost blasphemous to enter a church with such sensations. Fancy her putting that note under my pillow! I nearly died of surprise and misery.”
“At least, however, you were alone when you found it,” Lord Stanton pointed out. “The note she dealt to you at that whist table seems to me to have been much more demoniacally conceived.”
Lady Stanton did not answer, but rose and made as if to leave the room. “We must make it plain to her that there will be no payments after this,” she said in a low tone as she passed out of the apartment. “If we are forced to sell Driscow Park, all the world will know something is amiss.”
“Driscow Park!” his lordship echoed. “We will be forced to sell that, immediately. What we must hope is that we shall not be obliged to part with Baddesleigh!”
She was too dismayed to speak for a moment. Then, “Oh, Walker, is it as bad as that? I had not understood,” she cried, and seemed almost to wilt visibly. His lordship would have liked to comfort her, but there was no time, even if there had been means. He administered a bracing squeeze to her arm, and the two marched soberly off to the principal drawing-room, where a party for church had assembled.
The reader will recall that the church attached to Grasmere stood at the top of a steep hill, just across the stream which ran through a part of its park. When the weather permitted, it was the habit of the duchess to walk across the grounds to a little bridge that spanned the stream and, crossing over the bridge, ascend the knoll afoot. Today was not a mild day—in fact, it was very cold—but the sky was open and the air brisk. The earth, already frozen, made a barely audible crunching sound as the party of church-goers bent their steps upon it. They went in pairs and little knots of people; nearly everyone chose to attend services, though more from habit than piety.
Lotta Chilton hung a little behind the rest of the company. Since her rupture with the duchess she had grown almost accustomed to attending services with the guests (instead of, as had hitherto been her custom, with the servants), but she felt awkward nonetheless—she felt awkward nearly all the time now, it seemed—and she straggled as far behind her unwilling hostess as was practicable. Karr escorted his mother; Remington and Longstreth went together, buzzing furiously over some piece of news; it was only natural, therefore, that Miss Jessica Cawley should eventually forsake her brother and fall behind to bear Lotta company. Besides, she had decided to share her strange adventure of the previous night with Miss Chilton, and could hardly wait to tell her what it was.
“You don’t think it was a hoax?” Lotta inquired, when she had been put in possession of as many facts as Miss Cawley knew.
Jessica took her companion’s arm and leaned her pert head close to Lotta’s beautiful one. “You know, I am certain it must have been,” she said confidentially, “and yet…I can’t imagine how it was contrived. Whoever arranged it certainly did it well!”
“You say you looked upstairs this morning—?”
“Yes, I prowled about while the others were gathering in the drawing-room. It was just as I thought: three guest chambers, all in a row. There is a hallway in front of them, of course, but it is not nearly in the same situation as the picture gallery. Even if it were,” she continued earnestly, “that does not explain how our prankster knew I would be in the gallery, at just that moment, on an errand only I could have known about.”
“You had mislaid your book? Was that it?”
Miss Cawley nodded. “I had been talking to Mr. Longstreth just before I went upstairs—”
“Ah, Mr. Longstreth, was it?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing, my dear,” said Lotta. “Pray continue.”
Jessica paused a moment longer, then resumed. “I remember pointing out to him that troublesome scene, the one in which everyone seems invariably to step on everyone else’s toes. I was telling him how I meant to go through it that night; I must have put the book down, somehow, while I explained. And then when I got to my desk, I found it was missing.”
Lotta pondered this, frowning slightly. A sharp wind had brought the delicate colour in her cheeks to a high glow, so that even this unattractive grimace could not spoil her prettiness. “Are you quite positive you could not have imagined it all?”
Jessica glanced at her reproachfully, as a little girl looks at an adult who is talking excessive nonsense to her. “Really, my dear! You must give me some credit for knowing truth from fancy.”
Lotta shrugged lightly. “Then it is one of those things which has happened, yet which cannot have happened. There are such things, you know.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, you know what I mean,” she said, as they crossed the little wooden bridge and began to mount the hill. “For example—”
“Yes, an example is in order!”
“For example, suppose you close a window. You stand up, you go to the window, you take hold of the latch, you pull it to, you bolt it, you sit down again. Not only do you remember closing the window, you remember that the latch had grown warm standing out in the sunshine. You remember everything, including how it felt.”
“And—?” Jessica urged impatiently.
“And yet when you look up again, there stands the window open! You know perfectly well you just shut it; you remind yourself of the warmth of the handle—and yet there is nothing to do but get up and close it all over again. It would hardly do to insist that, having done it once, it is too unjust to be obliged to do it once more.”
Miss Cawley pouted, evidently unpersuaded.
“Another example, then,” Lotta resumed. “Surely this has happened to you: you are looking for your work-box. You are seated at the worktable; you know you left it just there, just last night. But it is nowhere to be seen! You grow more and more annoyed; impatiently, you ring for the maid. ‘Susan, where is my work-box?’ you fairly shout at her. The poor girl curtsies and blushes. ‘But it is right there, ma’am,’ she says, afraid you are playing tricks with her. ‘Right in front of you!’ You look at the corner of the table where she points, and lo and behold—the work-box, which must have been there all along. Now don’t tell me you have never lived through such a scene; I won’t believe you. Certain things simply cannot be; and yet they are, as clear as day,” Lotta concluded. “That is what I make of your footsteps.”
Jessica’s pout had deepened. “Well, I do not like it,” she said stubbornly. “It seems to me that is a very poor explanation—though I do admit, such things can happen.”
“If you find a better explanation, I hope you will tell me,” Lotta said, not at all offended at being disbelieved.
“I have certain ideas,” Jessica said darkly, staring very hard at Algernon Longstreth’s back while they toiled after the others up the hill. “Mr. Longstreth,” she said, in a low, breathy tone (the hill was rather precipitous, and she had to speak her words in little groups so that she could breathe between them) “seems to have the most…particular interest…in convincing me the castle is…haunted. He even had…Frant…tell me some cock-and-bull…story about…Robin Hood.” The ascent complete, the two women stood for a moment at the door of the ancient stone church. “I mean to have a talk with that young fellow,” Jessica continued, still panting slightly. “But I won’t for the world admit I was frightened! If it was he who set the trap, it would give him too much satisfaction.”
Miss Chilton smiled as her friend passed before her into the church. This postscript to the mysterious account seemed to her to clarify many things: Mr. Longstreth must have been ingenious indeed to baffle Miss Cawley so thoroughly. Though the sermon was long and tedious, Miss Chilton submitted to the discomfort of sitting through it almost gratefully. She had been enjoying the past few weeks far too much, she felt. It was the first time in all her life she had had no duties whatever to perform, except the most personal ones; she was unaccustomed to so leisurely an existence. It almost made her nervous, particularly as she found herself adapting to it so easily, and she did not think an hour of tedium would come at all amiss. Miss Chilton’s family, being of lower rank than the families of her companions, had taken their religion a bit more sincerely, caring less for flourishes and more for sagacity in the sermons they heard and read. Some of that seriousness had rubbed off, inevitably, on Lotta, and though she did not care much for visions and miracles, she did have a deep sense of good and evil.
Miss Cawley, on the other hand, cared for religion about as much as she cared for the rules of precedence: she would never have thought of either herself (and if she had, she would have fashioned them differently), but so long as they were there, she was just as glad to have them. The sermon seemed to her interminable, and she very frankly said something of this sort to Mr. Longstreth, as they left the church together. She had made sure to gain his side for the journey back home, speaking of trifles until they had descended the hill, but addressing him carefully thereafter. “You know, Mr. Longstreth,” she told him, nonchalantly availing herself of the arm he offered her, “I rather think I met your ghost last night.”
“My ghost! I should hope not,” he returned. “I should be dead, if you had.”
“You know what I mean,” she replied, rather crossly. “Frant’s ghost, if you will. Grasmere’s ghost.”
“Oh! Robin Hood’s ghost,” he exclaimed.
“Hush!” She did not, for some reason, wish this conversation to be widely heard. “Yes, Robin—that one,” she amended. It annoyed her to pretend, as he did, that such things could be.
“Did you see him?” Algernon inquired eagerly.
“You know perfectly well I did not. I heard him. Or rather, I heard whatever it was you contrived—”
“Miss Cawley, this is fascinating,” he broke in. “Where did you find him? In your apartments?”
“Can’t you guess?” she asked, with emphasis.
“Oh! You don’t mean to say you went to the picture gallery and listened!” he cried. “That was very bold, but foolish.”
“I did not go to the gallery to listen,” she corrected quite harshly. “I went to fetch a book I’d lost.”
“Oh! And the ghost was waiting for you there?”
“What do you mean, waiting for me?”
“Well, no doubt…if there is anything to that ring you found, you know—no doubt he is more interested in you than in anyone else.”
“Mr. Longstreth—!” she said, in annoyance.
“Miss Cawley,” he went on, ignoring her, “this is most astonishing. I don’t mind telling you that—even while I insisted upon it so strongly to you—I had my doubts about the real existence of this spectre. I know I pushed it rather far, but I think you guessed that I was only half in earnest. If you did not, I apologize—” He broke off, as if waiting for her to murmur an acceptance, but she said nothing. “Anyway, I did feel a trifle sceptical about it…you know—so very superstitious! One does not care to give in to such, ah, Gothic notions…But this puts a whole new light upon the matter! So you actually heard him? Tell me about it, pray!”
Miss Cawley glanced at him askance; this was not the response she had expected to provoke. He did look, she was obliged to admit, very excited. “I can’t but believe that you know more of it than I do,” she said, after a moment. “Come, Mr. Longstreth—confess, won’t you?”
“Confess? But…” He stopped as if bewildered.
“It was all your doing, now wasn’t it?”
“Miss Cawley!” cried he, reproachfully.
“Do not play innocent with me, I beg you!” she said, in a tone which was far from beseeching.
“Miss Cawley,” he repeated, still aghast. “I own, I am not above playing such a trick on a fellow; Mr. Remington would tell you that, if I did not. But to frighten a lady! For a joke! Miss Cawley, do you truly suspect me of such ungentle behaviour?”
She hesitated for an instant, then answered, “Yes. And besides, I wasn’t frightened.”
“My dear ma’am,” said he, as if about to protest again. Then his tone changed abruptly and he continued, “Your suspicions grieve me, but are really neither here nor there just now. The chief thing is, you have actually heard the ghost! That is extraordinary. That is so extraordinary that—if you will do me the goodness to tell me just where and when you heard him—I will listen for him myself tonight.”
“You will not hear anything.”
“But you did!”
“Good sir, I think you know what I mean.”
“Do I?” He mused for a minute. “Oh! This business of its all being a trick of mine. Well, dear Miss Cawley, you may be persuaded of that, but I am not.”
“That is extraordinary,” she said acidly; but the truth was, she was bluffing. Mr. Longstreth’s surprise seemed so authentic, his curiosity so genuine, that she had begun to wonder if, after all, there might really be a ghost. It was very near to Christmastide; that was when, according to Frant, the ghost was wont to appear. Perhaps Mr. Longstreth was telling the truth! In that case she would be a fool not to investigate further. Who could tell when she would have another opportunity to encounter a ghost? And it would not only be foolish to avoid the spectre; it would be cowardly as well. Algernon seemed aware of this when he spoke again.
“I would invite you to listen with me,” he said, “but for two things. First a mid-night meeting such as that would have the look of a tryst between us. Secondly, I have no doubt the experience will be rather frightening, and fear itself can be hazardous to a lady, if the ghost is not.”
If mere curiosity could not decide her, this did. Faced with the double threat of society’s disapprobation and a reencounter with terror, Miss Cawley could not cry craven. “I will listen with you,” she said, evenly and firmly.
“My dear ma’am, I entreat you,” said Longstreth. “I only mentioned the possibility in order to dismiss it. I would not for the world expose you to such—”
“You expose me to nothing,” she broke in, laying a heavy emphasis on the word expose. “I have not maintained my independence for nine-and-twenty years for nothing. If I do a thing, I do it. No one else does it for me, or to me.”
“Ah! You are very wilful,” he murmured.
“If you chuse to characterize it so,” she assented.
They had been keeping up a brisk pace all this while, and had almost arrived again at the castle. “At what time precisely did you hear him last night?” Algernon asked, while they crossed a terraced garden made barren by frost.
“I imagine it was some time after two,” she said. “Even the gentlemen of the billiard room had retired.”
“Very good, then. I shall wait for you in the picture gallery at two.”
“I will be there,” she replied, but the boldness of this suddenly struck her. “Dear sir,” she added, somewhat more softly, “do you think we ought to invite a third party? Merely for corroboration, as it were…” Her voice trailed off. She was lying, and felt that her companion knew it.
“Ah, that is a delicate thought,” he said, “but I suspect we will scare off our—er—quarry if too many persons accumulate. Even as it is, with two of us, I am afraid he will hesitate to walk.”
