own face.
The voluble Lady Jane interrupted him before he could open his
lips.
"Might I ask one question? Is the aspect south? Of course it is!
I ought to see by the sun that the aspect is south. These and the
other two are, I suppose, the only rooms on the ground-floor? And
is it quiet? Of course it's quiet! A charming house. Far more
likely to suit my friend than any I have seen yet. Will you give
me the refusal of it till to-morrow?" There she stopped for
breath, and gave Mr. Delamayn his first opportunity of speaking
to her.
"I beg your ladyship's pardon," he began. "I really can't--"
Mr. Vanborough--passing close behind him and whispering as he
passed--stopped the lawyer before he could say a word more.
"For God's sake, don't contradict me! My wife is coming this
way!"
At the same moment (still supposing that Mr. Delamayn was the
master of the house) Lady Jane returned to the charge.
"You appear to feel some hesitation," she said. "Do you want a
reference?" She smiled satirically, and summoned her friend to
her aid. "Mr. Vanborough!"
Mr. Vanborough, stealing step by step nearer to the
window--intent, come what might of it, on keeping his wife out of
the room--neither heeded nor heard her. Lady Jane followed him,
and tapped him briskly on the shoulder with her parasol.
At that moment Mrs. Vanborough appeared on the garden side of the
window.
"Am I in the way?" she asked, addressing her husband, after one
steady look at Lady Jane. "This lady appears to be an old friend
of yours." There was a tone of sarcasm in that allusion to the
parasol, which might develop into a tone of jealousy at a
moment's notice.
Lady Jane was not in the least disconcerted. She had her double
privilege of familiarity with the men whom she liked--her
privilege as a woman of high rank, and her privilege as a young
widow. She bowed to Mrs. Vanborough, with all the highly-finished
politeness of the order to which she belonged.
"The lady of the house, I presume?" she said, with a gracious
smile.
Mrs. Vanborough returned the bow coldly--entered the room
first--and then answered, "Yes."
Lady Jane turned to Mr. Vanborough.
"Present me!" she said, submitting resignedly to the formalities
of the middle classes.
Mr. Vanborough obeyed, without looking at his wife, and without
mentioning his wife's name.
"Lady Jane Parnell," he said, passing over the introduction as
rapidly as possible. "Let me see you to your carriage," he added,
offering his arm. "I will take care that you have the refusal of
the house. You may trust it all to me."
No! Lady Jane was accustomed to leave a favorable impression
behind her wherever she went. It was a habit with her to be
charming (in widely different ways) to both sexes. The social
experience of the upper classes is, in England, an experience of
universal welcome. Lady Jane declined to leave until she had
thawed the icy reception of the lady of the house.
"I must repeat my apologies," she said to Mrs. Vanborough, "for
coming at this inconvenient time. My intrusion appears to have
sadly disturbed the two gentlemen. Mr. Vanborough looks as if he
wished me a hundred miles away. And as for your husband--" She
stopped and glanced toward Mr. Delamayn. "Pardon me for speaking
in that familiar way. I have not the pleasure of knowing your
husband's name."
In speechless amazement Mrs. Vanborough's eyes followed the
direction of Lady Jane's eyes--and rested on the lawyer,
personally a total stranger to her.
Mr. Delamayn, resolutely waiting his opportunity to speak, seized
it once more--and held it this time.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "There is some misapprehension
here, for which I am in no way responsible. I am _not_ that
lady's husband."
It was Lady Jane's turn to be astonished. She looked at the
lawyer. Useless! Mr. Delamayn had set himself right--Mr. Delamayn
declined to interfere further. He silently took a chair at the
other end of the room. Lady Jane addressed Mr. Vanborough.
"Whatever the mistake may be," she said, "you are responsible for
it. You certainly told me this lady was your friend's wife."
"What!!!" cried Mrs. Vanborough--loudly, sternly, incredulously.
The inbred pride of the great lady began to appear behind the
thin outer veil of politeness that covered it.
"I will speak louder if you wish it," she said. "Mr. Vanborough
told me you were that gentleman's wife."
Mr. Vanborough whispered fiercely to his wife through his
clenched teeth.
"The whole thing is a mistake. Go into the garden again!"
Mrs. Vanborough's indignation was suspended for the moment in
dread, as she saw the passion and the terror struggling in her
husband's face.
"How you look at me!" she said. "How you speak to me!"
He only repeated, "Go into the garden!"
Lady Jane began to perceive, what the lawyer had discovered some
minutes previously--that there was something wrong in the villa
at Hampstead. The lady of the house was a lady in an anomalous
position of some kind. And as the house, to all appearance,
belonged to Mr. Vanborough's friend, Mr. Vanborough's friend must
(in spite of his recent disclaimer) be in some way responsible
for it. Arriving, naturally enough, at this erroneous conclusion,
Lady Jane's eyes rested for an instant on Mrs. Vanborough with a
finely contemptuous expression of inquiry which would have roused
the spirit of the tamest woman in existence. The implied insult
stung the wife's sensitive nature to the quick. She turned once
more to her husband--this time without flinching.
"Who is that woman?" she asked.
Lady Jane was equal to the emergency. The manner in which she
wrapped herself up in her own virtue, without the slightest
pretension on the one hand, and without the slightest compromise
on the other, was a sight to see.
"Mr. Vanborough," she said, "you offered to take me to my
carriage just now. I begin to understand that I had better have
accepted the offer at once. Give me your arm."
"Stop!" said Mrs. Vanborough, "your ladyship's looks are looks of
contempt; your ladyship's words can bear but one interpretation.
I am innocently involved in some vile deception which I don't
understand. But this I do know--I won't submit to be insulted in
my own house. After what you have just said I forbid my husband
to give you his arm.
Her husband!
Lady Jane looked at Mr. Vanborough--at Mr. Vanborough, whom she
loved; whom she had honestly believed to be a single man; whom
she had suspected, up to that moment, of nothing worse than of
trying to screen the frailties of his friend. She dropped her
highly-bred tone; she lost her highly-bred manners. The sense of
her injury (if this was true), the pang of her jealousy (if that
woman was his wife), strippe
d the human nature in her bare of all
disguises, raised the angry color in her cheeks, and struck the
angry fire out of her eyes.
"If you can tell the truth, Sir," she said, haughtily, "be so
good as to tell it now. Have you been falsely presenting yourself
to the world--falsely presenting yourself to _me_--in the
character and with the aspirations of a single man? Is that lady
your wife?"
"Do you hear her? do you see her?" cri ed Mrs. Vanborough,
appealing to her husband, in her turn. She suddenly drew back
from him, shuddering from head to foot. "He hesitates!" she said
to herself, faintly. "Good God! he hesitates!"
Lady Jane sternly repeated her question.
"Is that lady your wife?"
He roused his scoundrel-courage, and said the fatal word:
"No!"
Mrs. Vanborough staggered back. She caught at the white curtains
of the window to save herself from falling, and tore them. She
looked at her husband, with the torn curtain clenched fast in her
hand. She asked herself, "Am I mad? or is he?"
Lady Jane drew a deep breath of relief. He was not married! He
was only a profligate single man. A profligate single man is
shocking--but reclaimable. It is possible to blame him severely,
and to insist on his reformation in the most uncompromising
terms. It is also possible to forgive him, and marry him. Lady
Jane took the necessary position under the circumstances with
perfect tact. She inflicted reproof in the present without
excluding hope in the future.
"I have made a very painful discovery," she said, gravely, to Mr.
Vanborough. "It rests with _you_ to persuade me to forget it!
Good-evening!"
She accompanied the last words by a farewell look which aroused
Mrs. Vanborough to frenzy. She sprang forward and prevented Lady
Jane from leaving the room.
"No!" she said. "You don't go yet!"
a terrible look, and turned from him with a terrible contempt.
"That man has lied!" she said. "In justice to myself, I insist on
proving it!" She struck a bell on a table near her. The servant
came in. "Fetch my writing-desk out of the next room." She
waited--with her back turned on her husband, with her eyes fixed
on Lady Jane. Defenseless and alone she stood on the wreck of her
married life, superior to the husband's treachery, the lawyer's
indifference, and her rival's contempt. At that dreadful moment
her beauty shone out again with a gleam of its old glory. The
grand woman, who in the old stage days had held thousands
breathless over the mimic woes of the scene, stood there grander
than ever, in her own woe, and held the three people who looked
at her breathless till she spoke again.
The servant came in with the desk. She took out a paper and
handed it to Lady Jane.
"I was a singer on the stage," she said, "when I was a single
woman. The slander to which such women are exposed doubted my
marriage. I provided myself with the paper in your hand. It
speaks for itself. Even the highest society, madam, respects
_that!_"
Lady Jane examined the paper. It was a marriage-certificate. She
turned deadly pale, and beckoned to Mr. Vanborough. "Are you
deceiving me?" she asked.
Mr. Vanborough looked back into the far corner of the room, in
which the lawyer sat, impenetrably waiting for events. "Oblige me
by coming here for a moment," he said.
Mr. Delamayn rose and complied with the request. Mr. Vanborough
addressed himself to Lady Jane.
"I beg to refer you to my man of business. _He_ is not interested
in deceiving you."
"Am I required simply to speak to the fact?" asked Mr. Delamayn.
"I decline to do more."
"You are not wanted to do more."
Listening intently to that interchange of question and answer,
Mrs. Vanborough advanced a step in silence. The high courage that
had sustained her against outrage which had openly declared
itself shrank under the sense of something coming which she had
not foreseen. A nameless dread throbbed at her heart and crept
among the roots of her hair.
Lady Jane handed the certificate to the lawyer.
"In two words, Sir," she said, impatiently, "what is this?"
"In two words, madam," answered Mr. Delamayn; "waste paper."
"He is _not_ married?"
"He is _not_ married."
After a moment's hesitation Lady Jane looked round at Mrs.
Vanborough, standing silent at her side--looked, and started back
in terror. "Take me away!" she cried, shrinking from the ghastly
face that confronted her with the fixed stare of agony in the
great, glittering eyes. "Take me away! That woman will murder
me!"
Mr. Vanborough gave her his arm and led her to the door. There
was dead silence in the room as he did it. Step by step the
wife's eyes followed them with the same dreadful stare, till the
door closed and shut them out. The lawyer, left alone with the
disowned and deserted woman, put the useless certificate silently
on the table. She looked from him to the paper, and dropped,
without a cry to warn him, without an effort to save herself,
senseless at his feet.
He lifted her from the floor and placed her on the sofa, and
waited to see if Mr. Vanborough would come back. Looking at the
beautiful face--still beautiful, even in the swoon--he owned it
was hard on her. Yes! in his own impenetrable way, the rising
lawyer owned it was hard on her.
But the law justified it. There was no doubt in this case. The
law justified it.
The trampling of horses and the grating of wheels sounded
outside. Lady Jane's carriage was driving away. Would the husband
come back? (See what a thing habit is! Even Mr. Delamayn still
mechanically thought of him as the husband--in the face of the
law! in the face of the facts!)
No. Then minutes passed. And no sign of the husband coming back.
It was not wise to make a scandal in the house. It was not
desirable (on his own sole responsibility) to let the servants
see what had happened. Still, there she lay senseless. The cool
evening air came in through the open window and lifted the light
ribbons in her lace cap, lifted the little lock of hair that had
broken loose and drooped over her neck. Still, there she lay--the
wife who had loved him, the mother of his child--there she lay.
At the same moment the quiet of the summer evening was once more
disturbed. He held his hand suspended over the bell. The noise
outside came nearer. It was again the trampling of horses and the
grating of wheels. Advancing--rapidly advancing--stopping at the
house.
Was Lady Jane coming back?
Was the husband coming back?
There was a loud ring at the bell--a quick opening of the
house-door--a rustling of a woman's dress in the passage. The
door of the room
opened, and the woman appeared--alone. Not Lady
Jane. A stranger--older, years older, than Lady Jane. A plain
woman, perhaps, at other times. A woman almost beautiful now,
with the eager happiness that beamed in her face.
She saw the figure on the sofa. She ran to it with a cry--a cry
of recognition and a cry of terror in one. She dropped on her
knees--and laid that helpless head on her bosom, and kissed, with
a sister's kisses, that cold, white cheek.
"Oh, my darling!" she said. "Is it thus we meet again?"
Yes! After all the years that had passed since the parting in the
cabin of the ship, it was thus the two school-friends met again.
Part the Second.
THE MARCH OF TIME.
V.
ADVANCING from time past to time present, the Prologue leaves the
date last attained (the summer of eighteen hundred and
fifty-five), and travels on through an interval of twelve
years--tells who lived, who died, who prospered, and who failed
among the persons concerned in the tragedy at the Hampstead
villa--and, this done, leaves the reader at the opening of THE
STORY in the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight.
The record begins with a marriage--the marriage of Mr. Vanborough
and Lady Jane Parnell.
In three months from the memorable day when his solicitor had
informed him that he was a free man, Mr. Vanborough possessed the
wife he desired, to grace the head of his table and to push his
fortunes in the world--the Legislature of Great Britain being the
humble servant of his treachery, and the respectable accomplice
of his crime.
He entered Parliament. He gave (thanks to his wife) six of the
grandest dinners, and two of the most crowded balls of the
season. He made a successful first speech in the House of
Commons. He endowed a church in a poor neighborhood. He wrote an
article which attracted attention in a quarterly review. He
discovered, denounced, and remedied a crying abuse in the
administration of a public charity. He r eceived (thanks once
more to his wife) a member of the Royal family among the visitors
at his country house in the autumn recess. These were his
triumphs, and this his rate of progress on the way to the
peerage, during the first year of his life as the husband of Lady
Jane.
There was but one more favor that Fortune could confer on her
spoiled child--and Fortune bestowed it. There was a spot on Mr.
Vanborough's past life as long as the woman lived whom he had
disowned and deserted. At the end of the first year Death took
her--and the spot was rubbed out.
She had met the merciless injury inflicted on her with a rare
patience, with an admirable courage. It is due to Mr. Vanborough
to admit that he broke her heart, with the strictest attention to
propriety. He offered (through his lawyer ) a handsome provision
for her and for her child. It was rejected, without an instant's
hesitation. She repudiated his money--she repudiated his name. By
the name which she had borne in her maiden days--the name which
she had made illustrious in her Art--the mother and daughter were
known to all who cared to inquire after them when they had sunk
in the world.
There was no false pride in the resolute attitude which she thus
assumed after her husband had forsaken her. Mrs. Silvester (as
she was now called) gratefully accepted for herself, and for Miss
Silvester, the assistance of the dear old friend who had found
her again in her affliction, and who remained faithful to her to
the end. They lived with Lady Lundie until the mother was strong
enough to carry out the plan of life which she had arranged for
the future, and to earn her bread as a teacher of singing. To all
appearance she rallied, and became herself again, in a few
months' time. She was making her way; she was winning sympathy,