Lady Henry laughed.
"Oh, my temper will be better presently, when those men are gone"--she nodded towards the butler and footman in the distance--"and I can have my say."
Sir Wilfrid hurried his meal as much as Lady Henry--who, as it turned out, was not at all minded to starve him--would allow. She meanwhile talked politics and gossip to him, with her old, caustic force, nibbling a dry biscuit at intervals and sipping a cup of coffee. She was a wilful, characteristic figure as she sat there, beneath her own portrait as a bride, which hung on the wall behind her. The portrait represented a very young woman, with plentiful brown hair gathered into a knot on the top of her head, a high waist, a blue waist-ribbon, and inflated sleeves. Handsome, imperious, the corners of the mouth well down, the look straight and daring--the Lady Henry of the picture, a bride of nineteen, was already formidable. And the old woman sitting beneath it, with the strong, white hair, which the ample cap found some difficulty even now in taming and confining, the droop of the mouth accentuated, the nose more masterful, the double chin grown evident, the light of the eyes gone out, breathed pride and will from every feature of her still handsome face, pride of race and pride of intellect, combined with a hundred other subtler and smaller prides that only an intimate knowledge of her could detect. The brow and eyes, so beautiful in the picture, were, however, still agreeable in the living woman; if generosity lingered anywhere, it was in them.
The door was hardly closed upon the servants when she bent forward.
"Well, have you guessed?"
Sir Wilfrid looked at her thoughtfully as he stirred the sugar in his coffee.
"I think so," he said. "She is Lady Rose Delaney"s daughter."
Lady Henry gave a sudden laugh.
"I hardly expected you to guess! What helped you?"
"First your own hints. Then the strange feeling I had that I had seen the face, or some face just like it, before. And, lastly, at the Foreign Office I caught sight, for a moment, of Lord Lackington. That finished it."
"Ah!" said Lady Henry, with a nod. "Yes, that likeness is extraordinary.
Isn"t it amazing that that foolish old man has never perceived it?"
"He knows nothing?"
"Oh, nothing! n.o.body does. However, that"ll do presently. But Lord Lackington comes here, mumbles about his music and his water-colors, and his flirtations--seventy-four, if you please, last birthday!--talks about himself endlessly to Julie or to me--whoever comes handy--and never has an inkling, an idea."
"And she?"
"Oh, _she_ knows. I should rather think she does." And Lady Henry pushed away her coffee-cup with the ill-suppressed vehemence which any mention of her companion seemed to produce in her. "Well, now, I suppose you"d like to hear the story."
"Wait a minute. It"ll surprise you to hear that I not only knew this lady"s mother and father, but that I"ve seen her, herself, before."
"You?" Lady Henry looked incredulous.
"I never told you of my visit to that _menage_, four-and-twenty years ago?"
"Never, that I remember. But if you had I should have forgotten. What did they matter to me then? I myself only saw Lady Rose once, so far as I remember, before she misconducted herself. And afterwards--well, one doesn"t trouble one"s self about the women that have gone under."
Something lightened behind Sir Wilfrid"s straw-colored lashes. He bent over his coffee-cup and daintily knocked off the end of his cigarette with a beringed little finger.
"The women who have--not been able to pull up?"
Lady Henry paused.
"If you like to put it so," she said, at last. Sir Wilfrid did not raise his eyes. Lady Henry took up her strongest gla.s.ses from the table and put them on. But it was pitifully evident that even so equipped she saw but little, and that her strong nature fretted perpetually against the physical infirmity that teased it. Nevertheless, some unspoken communication pa.s.sed between them, and Sir Wilfrid knew that he had effectually held up a protecting hand for Lady Rose.
"Well, let me tell you my tale first," he said; and gave the little reminiscence in full. When he described the child, Lady Henry listened eagerly.
"Hm," she said, when he came to an end; "she was jealous, you say, of her mother"s attentions to you? She watched you, and in the end she took possession of you? Much the same creature, apparently, then as now."
"No moral, please, till the tale is done," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
"It"s your turn."
Lady Henry"s face grew sombre.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "LADY HENRY LISTENED EAGERLY"]
"All very well," she said. "What did your tale matter to you? As for mine--"
The substance of hers was as follows, put into chronological order:
Lady Rose had lived some ten years after Dalrymple"s death. That time she pa.s.sed in great poverty in some _chambres garnies_ at Bruges, with her little girl and an old Madame Le Breton, the maid, housekeeper, and general factotum who had served them in the country. This woman, though of a peevish, grumbling temper, was faithful, affectionate, and not without education. She was certainly attached to little Julie, whose nurse she had been during a short period of her infancy. It was natural that Lady Rose should leave the child to her care. Indeed, she had no choice. An old Ursuline nun, and a kind priest who at the nun"s instigation occasionally came to see her, in the hopes of converting her, were her only other friends in the world. She wrote, however, to her father, shortly before her death, bidding him good-bye, and asking him to do something for the child. "She is wonderfully like you," so ran part of the letter. "You won"t ever acknowledge her, I know. That is your strange code. But at least give her what will keep her from want, till she can earn her living. Her old nurse will take care of her, I have taught her, so far. She is already very clever. When I am gone she will attend one of the convent schools here. And I have found an honest lawyer who will receive and pay out money."
To this letter Lord Lackington replied, promising to come over and see his daughter. But an attack of gout delayed him, and, before he was out of his room, Lady Rose was dead. Then he no longer talked of coming over, and his solicitors arranged matters. An allowance of a hundred pounds a year was made to Madame Le Breton, through the "honest lawyer"
whom Lady Rose had found, for the benefit of "Julie Dalrymple," the capital value to be handed over to that young lady herself on the attainment of her eighteenth birthday--always provided that neither she nor anybody on her behalf made any further claim on the Lackington family, that her relationship to them was dropped, and her mother"s history buried in oblivion.
Accordingly the girl grew to maturity in Bruges. By the lawyer"s advice, after her mother"s death, she took the name of her old _gouvernante_, and was known thenceforward as Julie Le Breton. The Ursuline nuns, to whose school she was sent, took the precaution, after her mother"s death, of having her baptized straightway into the Catholic faith, and she made her _premiere communion_ in their church. In the course of a few years she became a remarkable girl, the source of many anxieties to the nuns. For she was not only too clever for their teaching, and an inborn sceptic, but wherever she appeared she produced parties and the pa.s.sions of parties. And though, as she grew older, she showed much adroitness in managing those who were hostile to her, she was never without enemies, and intrigues followed her.
"I might have been warned in time," said Lady Henry, in whose wrinkled cheeks a sharp and feverish color had sprung up as her story approached the moment of her own personal acquaintance with Mademoiselle Le Breton.
"For one or two of the nuns when I saw them in Bruges, before the bargain was finally struck, were candid enough. However, now I come to the moment when I first set eyes on her. You know my little place in Surrey? About a mile from me is a manor-house belonging to an old Catholic family, terribly devout and as poor as church-mice. They sent their daughters to school in Bruges. One summer holiday these girls brought home with them Julie Dalrymple as their quasi-holiday governess.
It was three years ago. I had just seen Liebreich. He told me that I should soon be blind, and, naturally, it was a blow to me."
Sir Wilfrid made a murmur of sympathy.
"Oh, don"t pity me! I don"t pity other people. This odious body of ours has got to wear out sometime--it"s in the bargain. Still, just then I was low. There are two things I care about--one is talk, with the people that amuse me, and the other is the reading of French books. I didn"t see how I was going to keep my circle here together, and my own mind in decent repair, unless I could find somebody to be eyes for me, and to read to me. And as I"m a bundle of nerves, and I never was agreeable to illiterate people, nor they to me, I was rather put to it. Well, one day these girls and their mother came over to tea, and, as you guess, of course, they brought Mademoiselle Le Breton with them. I had asked them to come, but when they arrived I was bored and cross, and like a sick dog in a hole. And then, as you have seen her, I suppose you can guess what happened."
"You discovered an exceptional person?"
Lady Henry laughed.
"I was limed, there and then, old bird as I am. I was first struck with the girl"s appearance--_une belle laide_--with every movement just as it ought to be; infinitely more attractive to me than any pink-and-white beauty. It turned out that she had just been for a month in Paris with another school-fellow. Something she said about a new play--suddenly--made me look at her. "Venez vous a.s.seoir ici, mademoiselle, s"il vous plat--pres de moi," I said to her--I can hear my own voice now, poor fool, and see her flush up. Ah!" Lady Henry"s interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir Wilfrid"s gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed: "We talked for two hours; it seemed to me ten minutes. I sent the others out to the gardens. She stayed with me. The new French books, the theatre, poems, plays, novels, memoirs, even politics, she could talk of them all; or, rather--for, mark you, that"s her gift--she made _me_ talk. It seemed to me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up the ball. She does it to perfection. She never throws to win--never!--but so as to leave you all the chances. You make a brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you another. Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation--and she never says a thing that you want to remember."
There was a silence. Lady Henry"s old fingers drummed restlessly on the table. Her memory seemed to be wandering angrily among her first experiences of the lady they were discussing.
"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, "so you engaged her as _lectrice_, and thought yourself very lucky?"
"Oh, don"t suppose that I was quite an idiot. I made some inquiries--I bored myself to death with civilities to the stupid family she was staying with, and presently I made her stay with me. And of course I soon saw there was a history. She possessed jewels, laces, little personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted explaining. So I laid traps for her; I let her also perceive whither my own plans were drifting. She did not wait to let me force her hand. She made up her mind. One day I found, left carelessly on the drawing-room table, a volume of Saint-Simon, beautifully bound in old French morocco, with something thrust between the leaves. I opened it. On the fly-leaf was written the name Marriott Dalrymple, and the leaves opened, a little farther, on a miniature of Lady Rose Delaney. So--"
"Apparently it was _her_ traps that worked," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling.
Lady Henry returned the smile unwillingly, as one loath to acknowledge her own folly.
"I don"t know that I was trapped. We both desired to come to close quarters. Anyway, she soon showed me books, letters--from Lady Rose, from Dalrymple, Lord Lackington--the evidence was complete....
""Very well," I said; "it isn"t your fault. All the better if you are well born--I am not a person of prejudices. But understand, if you come to me, there must be no question of worrying your relations. There are scores of them in London. I know them all, or nearly all, and of course you"ll come across them. But unless you can hold your tongue, don"t come to me. Julie Dalrymple has disappeared, and I"ll be no party to her resurrection. If Julie Le Breton becomes an inmate of my house, there shall be no raking up of scandals much better left in their graves. If you haven"t got a proper parentage, consistently thought out, we must invent one--""
"I hope I may some day be favored with it," said Sir Wilfrid.
Lady Henry laughed uncomfortably.