Kitabı oku: «A Princess of Thule», sayfa 15

“Do you suffer from headaches?” said Mrs. Lavender, abruptly.

“Sometimes,” said Sheila.

“How often? What is an average? Two a week?”

“Oh, sometimes I have not a headache for three or four months at a time.”

“No toothache?”

“No.”

“What did your mother die of?”

“It was a fever,” said Sheila, in a low voice, “and she caught it while she was helping a family that was very bad with the fever.”

“Does your father ever suffer from rheumatism?”

“No,” said Sheila. “My papa is the strongest man in the Lewis – I am sure of that.”

“But the strongest of us, you know,” said Mrs. Lavender, looking hardly at the girl – “the strongest of us will die and go into the general order of the universe; and it is a good thing for you that, as you say, you are not afraid. Why should you be afraid? Listen to this passage.” She opened the red book, and guided herself to a certain page by one of a series of colored ribbons: “ ‘He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou will be a different kind of living being, and thou wilt not cease to live.’ Do you perceive the wisdom of that?”

“Yes,” said Sheila, and her own voice seemed hollow and strange to her in this big and dimly-lit chamber.

Mrs. Lavender turned over a few more pages and proceeded to read again; and as she did so, in a slow, unsympathetic, monotonous voice, a spell came over the girl, the weight at her heart grew more and more intolerable, and the room seemed to grow darker: “ ‘Short, then, is the time which every man lives, and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short, too, the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago.’ You cannot do better than ask your husband to buy you a copy of this book and give it special study. It will comfort you in affliction, and reconcile you to whatever may happen to you. Listen: ‘Soon will the earth cover us all! then the earth, too, will change, and the things also which result from change will continue to change forever, and these again forever. For if a man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave, and with their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.’ Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” said Sheila, and it seemed to her that she was being suffocated. Would not the gray walls burst asunder and show her one glimpse of the blue sky before she sank into unconsciousness? The monotonous tones of this old woman’s voice sounded like the repetition of a psalm over a coffin. It was as if she was already shut out of life, and could only hear, in a vague way, the dismal words being chanted over her by the people in the other world. She rose, steadied herself for a moment by placing her hand on the back of the chair, and managed to say: “Mrs. Lavender, forgive me for one moment; I wish to speak to my husband.”

She went to the door – Mrs. Lavender being too surprised to follow her – and made her way down stairs. She had seen the conservatory at the end of a certain passage. She reached it, and then she scarcely knew any more, except that her husband caught her in his arms as she cried: “Oh, Frank, Frank, take me away from this house! I am afraid; it terrifies me!”

“Sheila, what on earth is the matter? Here, come out into the fresh air. By Jove, how pale you are! Will you have some water?”

He could not get to understand thoroughly what had occurred. What he clearly did learn from Sheila’s disjointed and timid explanations was that there had been another “scene,” and he knew that of all things in the world his aunt hated “scenes” the worst. As soon as he saw that there was little the matter with Sheila beyond considerable mental perturbation, he could not help addressing some little remonstrance to her, and reminding her how necessary it was that she should not offend the old lady up-stairs.

“You should not be so excitable, Sheila,” he said. “You take such exaggerated notions about things. I am sure my aunt meant nothing unkind. And what did you say when you came away?”

“I said I wanted to see you. Are you angry with me?”

“No, of course not. But then, you see, it is a little vexing just at this moment. Well, let us go up-stairs at once, and try to make up some excuse, like a good girl. Say you felt faint – anything.”

“And you will come with me?”

“Yes. Now do try, Sheila, to make friends with my aunt. She is not such a bad sort of creature as you seem to think. She’s been very kind to me – she’ll be very kind to you when she knows you more.”

Fortunately no excuse was necessary, for Mrs. Lavender, in Sheila’s absence, had arrived at the conclusion that the girl’s temporary faintness was due to that piece of Roquefort.

“You see, you must be careful,” she said, when they entered the room. “You are unaccustomed to a great many things you will like afterward.”

“And the room is a little close,” said Lavender.

“I don’t think so,” said his aunt, sharply; “look at the barometer.”

“I didn’t mean for you and me, Aunt Caroline,” he said, “but for her. Sheila has been accustomed to live almost wholly in the open air.”

“The open air in moderation is an excellent thing. I go out myself every afternoon, wet or dry. And I was going to propose, Frank, that you should leave her here with me for the afternoon, and come back and dine with us at seven. I am going out at four-thirty, and she could go with me.”

“It’s very kind of you, Aunt Caroline, but we have promised to call on some people close by here at four.”

Sheila looked up frightened. The statement was an audacious perversion of the truth. But then Frank Lavender knew very well what his aunt meant by going into the open air every afternoon, wet or dry. At one certain hour her brougham was brought around, she got into it and had both doors and windows hermetically sealed, and then, in a semi-somnolent state, she was driven slowly and monotonously around the Park. How would Sheila fare if she were shut up in this box? He told a lie with great equanimity, and saved her.

Then Sheila was taken away to get on her things, and her husband waited, with some little trepidation, to hear what his aunt would say about her. He had not long to wait.

“She’s got a bad temper, Frank.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Aunt Caroline,” he said, considerably startled.

“Mark my words, she’s got a bad temper, and she is not nearly so soft as she tries to make out. That girl has a great deal of firmness, Frank.”

“I find her as gentle and submissive as a girl could be – a little too gentle, perhaps, and anxious to study the wishes of other folks.”

“That is all very well with you. You are her master. She is not likely to quarrel with her bread and butter. But you’ll see if she does not hold her own when she gets among your friends.”

“I hope she will hold her own.”

The old lady only shook her head.

“I am sorry you should have taken a prejudice against her, Aunt Caroline,” said the young man, humbly.

“I take a prejudice! Don’t let me hear the word again, Frank. You know I have no prejudices. If I cannot give you a reason for anything, I believe then I cease to believe it.”

“You have not heard her sing,” he said, suddenly remembering that this means of conquering the old lady had been neglected.

“I have no doubt she has many accomplishments,” said Aunt Caroline, coldly. “In time, I suppose, she will get over that extraordinary accent she has.”

“Many people like it.”

“I dare say you do – at present. But you may tire of it. You married her in a hurry, and you have not got rid of your romance yet. At the same time, I dare say she is a very good sort of girl, and will not disgrace you if you instruct and manage her properly. But remember my words – she has a temper, and you will find it out if you thwart her.”

How sweet and fresh the air was, even in Kensington, when Sheila, having dressed and come down stairs, and after having dutifully kissed Mrs. Lavender and bade her good-bye, went outside with her husband! It was like coming back to the light of day from inside the imaginary coffin in which she had fancied herself placed. A soft West wind was blowing over the Park, and a fairly clear sunlight shining on the May green of the trees. And then she hung on her husband’s arm, and she had him to speak to instead of the terrible old woman who talked about dying.

And yet she hoped she had not offended Mrs. Lavender, for Frank’s sake. What he thought about the matter he prudently resolved to conceal.

“Do you know that you have greatly pleased my aunt?” he said, without the least compunction. He knew that if he breathed the least hint about what had actually been said, any possibly amity between the two women would be rendered impossible forever.

“Have I, really?” said Sheila, very much astonished, but never thinking for a moment of doubting anything said by her husband.

“Oh, she likes you awfully,” he said, with an infinite coolness.

“I am so glad!” said Sheila, with her face brightening. “I was so afraid, dear, I had offended her. She did not look pleased with me.”

By this time they had got into a hansom, and were driving down to the South Kensington Museum. Lavender would have preferred going into the Park, but what if his aunt, in driving by, were to see them? He explained to Sheila the absolute necessity of his having to tell that fib about the four o’clock engagement; and when she heard described the drive in the closed brougham, which she had escaped, perhaps she was not so greatly inclined as she ought to have been to protest against that piece of wickedness.

“Oh, yes, she likes you awfully,” he repeated, “and you must get to like her. Don’t be frightened at her harsh way of saying things; it is only a mannerism. She is really a kind-hearted woman, and would do anything for me. That’s her best feature, looking at her character from my point of view.”

“How often must we go to see her?” asked Sheila.

“Oh, not very often. But she will get up dinner parties, at which you will be introduced to batches of her friends. And then the best thing you can do is to put yourself under her instructions, and take her advice about your dress and such matters, just as you did about your hair. That was very good of you.”

“I am glad you were pleased with me,” said Sheila. “I will do what I can to like her. But she must talk more respectfully of you.”

Lavender laughed that little matter off as a joke, but it was no joke to Sheila. She would try to like that old woman – yes; her duty to her husband demanded that she should. But there are some things that a wife – especially a girl who has been newly made a wife – will never forget; which, on the contrary, she will remember with burning cheeks and anger and indignation.

PART VI

CHAPTER XII.
TRANSFORMATION

HAD Sheila, then, Lavender could not help asking himself, a bad temper, or any other qualities and characteristics which were apparent to other people, but not to him? Was it possible that, after all, Ingram was right, and that he had yet to learn the nature of the girl he had married? It would be unfair to say that he suspected something wrong about his wife – that he fancied she had managed to conceal something – merely because Mrs. Lavender had said that Sheila had a bad temper; but here was another person who maintained that when the days of his romance were over he would see the girl in another light.

Nay, as he continued to ask himself, had not the change already begun? He grew less and less accustomed to see in Sheila a beautiful wild sea-bird that had fluttered down for a time into a strange home in the South. He had not quite forgotten or abandoned those imaginative scenes in which the wonderful sea-princess was to enter crowded drawing-rooms and have all the world standing back to regard her and admire her and sing her praises. But now he was not so sure that that would be the result of Sheila’s entrance into society. As the date of a certain dinner-party drew near, he began to wish she was more like the women he knew. He did not object to her strange, sweet ways of speech, nor to her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to an unhesitating frankness that nearly approached rudeness sometimes in its scorn of all compromise with the truth; but how would others regard these things? He did not wish to gain the reputation of having married an oddity.

“Sheila,” he said, on the morning of the day on which they were going to this dinner-party, “you should not say like-a-ness. There are only two syllables in likeness. It really does sound absurd to hear you say like-a-ness.”

She looked up to him, with a quick trouble in her eyes. When had he spoken to her so petulantly before? And then she cast down her eyes again, and said, submissively, “I will try not to speak like that. When you go out I take a book and read aloud, and try to speak like you; but I cannot learn all at once.”

“I don’t mind,” he said; “but, you know, other people must think it so odd. I wonder why you should always say gyarden for garden now, when it is just as easy to say garden?”

Once upon a time he had said there was no English like the English spoken in Lewis, and had singled out this very word as typical of one peculiarity in the pronunciation. But she did not remind him of that. She only said, in the same simple fashion, “If you will tell me my faults, I will try to correct them.”

She turned away from him to get an envelope for a letter she had been writing to her father. He fancied something was wrong, and perhaps some touch of compunction smote him, for he went after her and took her hand, and said, “Look here, Sheila. When I point out any trifles like that, you must not call them faults, and fancy that I have any serious complaint to make. It is for your own good that you should meet the people who will be your friends on equal terms, and give them as little as possible to talk about.”

“I should not mind their talking about me,” said Sheila, with her eyes still cast down, “but it is your wife they must not talk about; and if you will tell me anything I do wrong I will correct it.”

“Oh, you must not think it is anything so serious as that. You will soon pick up from the ladies you will meet some notion of how you differ from them; and if you should startle or puzzle them a little at first by talking about the chances of the fishing or the catching of wild duck, or the way to reclaim bog-land, you will soon get over all that.”

Sheila said nothing, but she made a mental memorandum of three things she was not to speak about. She did not know why these subjects should be forbidden, but she was in a strange land and going to see strange people, whose habits were different from hers. Moreover, when her husband had gone she reflected that these people, having no fishing and peat-mosses, and no wild-duck, could not possibly be interested in such affairs; and thus she fancied she perceived the reason why she should avoid all mention of these things.

When, in the evening, Sheila came down dressed and ready to go out, Lavender had to admit to himself that he had married an exceedingly beautiful girl, and that there was no country gawkiness about her manner, and no placid insipidity about her proud and handsome face. For one brief moment, he triumphed in his heart, and had some wild glimpse of his old project of startling his small world with this vision from the Northern seas. But when he got into the hired brougham, and thought of the people he was about to meet, and of the manner in which they would carry away such and such impressions of the girl, he lost faith in that admiration. He would much rather have had Sheila unnoticeable and unnoticed – one who would quietly take her place at the dinner-table, and attract no more special attention than the flowers, for example, which every one would glance at with some satisfaction, and then forget in the interest of talking and dining. He was quite conscious of his own weakness in thus fearing social criticism. He knew that Ingram would have taken Sheila anywhere in her blue serge dress, and been quite content and oblivious of observation. But then Ingram was independent of these social circles in which a married man must move, and in which his position is often defined for him by the disposition and manners of his wife. Ingram did not know how women talked. It was for Sheila’s own sake, he persuaded himself, that he was anxious about the impression she should make, and that he had drilled her in all that she should do and say.

“Above all things,” he said, “mind you take no notice of me. Another man will take you in to dinner, of course, and I shall take in somebody else, and we shall not be near each other. But it’s after dinner, I mean: when the men go into the drawing-room don’t you come and speak to me or take any notice of me whatever.”

“Mayn’t I look at you, Frank?”

“If you do, you’ll have half a dozen people all watching you, saying to themselves or to each other, ‘Poor thing! she hasn’t got over her infatuation yet. Isn’t it pretty to see how naturally her eyes turn toward him?’ ”

“But I shouldn’t mind them saying that,” said Sheila, with a smile.

“Oh, you musn’t be pitied in that fashion. Let them keep their compassion to themselves.”

“Do you know, dear,” said Sheila, very quietly, “that I think you exaggerate the interest people will take in me? I don’t think I can be of such importance to them. I don’t think they will be watching me as you fancy.”

“Oh, you don’t know,” he said. “I know they fancy I have done something romantic, heroic and all that kind of thing, and they are curious to see you.”

“They cannot hurt me by looking at me,” said Sheila simply. “And they will soon find out how little there is to discover.”

The house being in Holland Park, they had not far to go; and just as they were driving up to the door a young man, slight, sandy-haired, and stooping, got out of a hansom and crossed the pavement.

“By Jove!” said Lavender, “there is Redburn. I did not know he knew Mrs. Lorraine and her mother. That is Lord Arthur Redburn, Sheila; mind, if you should talk to him, not to call him ‘my lord.’ ”

Sheila laughed and said, “How am I to remember all these things?”

They got into the house, and by-and-by Lavender found himself, with Sheila on his arm, entering a drawing-room to present her to certain of his friends. It was a large room, with a great deal of gilding and color about it, and with a conservatory at the further end; but the blaze of light had not so bewildering an effect on Sheila’s eyes as the appearance of two ladies to whom she was now introduced. She had heard much about them. She was curious to see them. Many a time had she thought over the strange story Lavender had told her of the woman who heard that her husband was dying in a hospital during the war, and started off, herself and her daughter, to find him out; how there was in the same hospital another dying man whom they had known some years before, and who had gone away because the girl would not listen to him; how this man, being very near to death, begged that the girl would do him the last favor he would ask of her, of wearing his name and inheriting his property; and how, some few hours after the strange and sad ceremony had been performed, he breathed his last, happy in holding her hand. The father died next day, and the two widows were thrown upon the world, almost without friends, but not without means. This man, Lorraine, had been possessed of considerable wealth, and the girl who had suddenly become mistress of it found herself able to employ all possible means in assuaging her mother’s grief. They began to travel. The two women went from capital to capital, until at last they came to London; and here, having gathered around them a considerable number of friends, they proposed to take up their residence permanently. Lavender had often talked to Sheila about Mrs. Lorraine; about her shrewdness, her sharp sayings, and the odd contrast between this clever, keen, frank woman of the world and the woman one would have expected to be the heroine of a pathetic tale.

But were there two Mrs. Lorraines? That had been Sheila’s first question to herself when, after having been introduced to one lady under that name, she suddenly saw before her another, who was introduced to her as Mrs. Kavanagh. The mother and daughter were singularly alike. They had the same slight and graceful figure, which made them appear, taller than they really were, the same pale, fine, and rather handsome features, the same large, clear gray eyes, and apparently the same abundant mass of soft, fair hair, heavily plaited in the latest fashion. They were both dressed entirely in black, except that the daughter had a band of blue round her slender waist. It was soon apparent, too, that the manner of the two women was singularly different; Mrs. Kavanagh bearing herself with a certain sad reserve that almost approached melancholy at times, while her daughter, with more life and spirit in her face, passed rapidly through all sorts of varying moods until one could scarcely tell whether the affectation lay in a certain cynical audacity in her speech, or whether it lay in her assumption of a certain coyness and archness, or whether there was any affectation at all in the matter. However that might be, there could be no doubt about the sincerity of those gray eyes of hers. There was something almost cruelly frank in the clear look of them; and when her face was not lit by some passing smile, the pale and fine features seemed to borrow something of severity from her unflinching, calm and dispassionate habit of regarding those around her.

Sheila was prepared to like Mrs. Lorraine from the first moment she had caught sight of her. The honesty of the gray eyes attracted her. And, indeed, the young widow seemed very much interested in the young wife, and, so far as she could, in that awkward period just before dinner, strove to make friends with her. Sheila was introduced to a number of people, but none of them pleased her as well as Mrs. Lorraine. Then dinner was announced, and Sheila found that she was being escorted across the passage to the room on the other side by the young man whom she had seen get out of the hansom.

This Lord Arthur Redburn was the younger son of a great Tory duke; he represented in the House a small country borough, which his father practically owned; he had a fair amount of ability, an uncommonly high opinion of himself, and a certain affectation of being bored by the frivolous ways and talk of ordinary society. He gave himself credit for being the clever member of the family; and if there was any cleverness going, he had it; but there were some who said that his reputation in the House and elsewhere as a good speaker was mainly based on the fact that he had an abundant assurance, and was not easily put out. Unfortunately, the public could come to no decision on the point, for the reporters were not kind to Lord Arthur, and the substance of his speeches was as unknown to the world as his manner of delivering them.

Now, Mrs. Lorraine had intended to tell this young man something about the girl whom he was to take in to dinner, but she herself had been so occupied with Sheila that the opportunity escaped her. Lord Arthur accordingly knew only that he was beside a very pretty woman, who was a Mrs. Somebody – the exact name he had not caught – and that the few words she had spoken were pronounced in a curious way. Probably, he thought, she was from Dublin.

He also arrived at the conclusion that she was too pretty to know anything about the Deceased Wife’s Sister bill, in which he was, for family reasons, deeply interested, and considered it more likely that she would prefer to talk about theatres and such things.

“Were you at Covent Garden last night?” he said.

“No,” answered Sheila. “But I was there two days ago, and it is very pretty to see the flowers and the fruit; and then they smell so sweetly as you walk through.”

“Oh, yes, it is delightful,” said Lord Arthur. “But I was speaking of the theatre.”

“Is there a theatre in there?”

He stared at her, and inwardly hoped she was not mad.

“Not in among the shops, no. But don’t you know Covent Garden Theatre?”

“I have never been in any theatre, not yet,” said Sheila.

And then it began to dawn upon him that he must be talking to Frank Lavender’s wife. Was there not some rumor about the girl having come from a remote part of the Highlands? He determined on a bold stroke: “You have not been long enough in London to see the theatres, I suppose?”

And then Sheila, taking it for granted that he knew her husband very well, and that he was quite familiar with all the circumstances of the case, began to chat to him freely enough. He found that this Highland girl, of whom he heard vaguely, was not at all shy. He began to feel interested. By and by he actually made efforts to assist her frankness, by becoming equally frank, and by telling her all he knew of the things with which they were mutually acquainted. Of course, by this time they had got up into the Highlands. The young man had himself been in the Highlands – frequently, indeed. He had never crossed to Lewis, but he had seen the island from the Sutherlandshire coast. There were very many deer in Sutherlandshire, were there not? Yes, he had been out a great many times, and had had his share of adventures. Had he not gone out there before daylight, and waited on the top of a hill, hidden by some rocks, to watch the mist clear along the hillsides and in the valley below? Did he not tremble when he fired his first shot, and had not something passed before his eyes, so that he could not see for a moment whether the stag had fallen, or was away like lightning down the bed of the stream? Somehow or other, Lord Arthur found himself relating all his experiences, as if he were a novice begging for the good opinion of a master. She knew all about it, obviously, and he would tell her his small adventures, if only that she might laugh at him. But Sheila did not laugh. She was greatly delighted to have this talk about the hills, and the deer, and the wet mornings. She forgot all about the dinner before her. The servants whipped off successive plates without her seeing anything of them; they received random answers about wine, so that she had three full glasses standing by her untouched! She was no more in Holland Park at that moment than were the wild animals of which she spoke so proudly and lovingly. If the great and frail masses of flowers on the table brought her any perfume at all, it was a scent of peat-smoke. Lord Arthur thought that his companion was a little too frank and confiding, or rather that she would have been had she been talking to any one but himself. He rather liked it. He was pleased to have established friendly relations with a pretty woman in so short a space; but ought not her husband to give her a hint about not admitting all and sundry to the enjoyment of these favors? Perhaps, too, Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to himself there were some men who, more than others, inspired confidence in women. He laid no claims to being a fascinating person, but he had had his share of success, and considered that Sheila showed discrimination, as well as good nature, in talking so to him. There was, after all, no necessity for her husband to warn her. She would know how to guard against admitting all men to a like intimacy. In the meantime, he was very well pleased to be sitting beside this pretty and agreeable companion, who had an abundant fund of good spirits, and who showed no sort of conscious embarrassment in thanking you with a bright look of her eyes, or by a smile when you told her something that pleased or amused her.

But these flattering little speculations were doomed to receive a sudden check. The juvenile M. P. began to remark that a shade occasionally crossed the face of his fair companion, and that she sometimes looked a little anxiously across the table, where Mr. Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were seated, half hidden from view by a heap of silver and flowers in the middle of the board. But though they could not easily be seen, except at such moments as they turned to address some neighbor, they could be distinctly enough heard when there was any lull in the general conversation. And what Sheila heard did not please her. She began to like that fair, clear-eyed young woman less. Perhaps her husband meant nothing by the fashion in which he talked of marriage and the condition of a married man, but she would rather have not heard him talk so. Moreover, she was aware that in the gentlest possible fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun of her companion, and exposing him to small and graceful shafts of ridicule; while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy these attacks.

The ingenuous self-love of Lord Arthur Redburn, M. P., was severely wounded by the notion that, after all, he had been made a cat’s paw of by a jealous wife. He had been flattered by this girl’s exceeding friendliness; he had given her credit for genuine impulsiveness, which seemed to him as pleasing as it was uncommon; and he had, with the moderation expected of a man in politics, who hoped some day to assist in the government of the nation, by accepting a junior lordship, admired her. But was it all pretence? Was she paying court to him merely to annoy her husband? Had her enthusiasm about the shooting of red deer been prompted by a wish to attract a certain pair of eyes at the other side of the table? Lord Arthur began to sneer at himself for having been duped. He ought to have known. Women were as much women in a Hebridean Island as in Bayswater. He began to treat Sheila with a little more coolness, while she became more and more pre-occupied with the couple across the table, and sometimes was innocently rude in answering his questions somewhat at random.