She did indeed unveil to him a portion of the sufferings his Aminta had undergone; as visibly, too, the good argumentative reasons for his previous avoidance of the deadly, dismal wrangle here forced on him.
A truly dismal, profitless wrangle! But the finish of it would be the beginning of some solace to his Aminta.
The finish of it must be to-morrow. He refrained from saying so, and simply appointed to-morrow for the resumption of the wrestle, departing in his invincible coat of patience: which one has to wear when dealing with a woman like Charlotte, he informed Mr. Eglett, on his way out at a later hour than on the foregone day. Mr. Eglett was of his opinion, that an introduction of lawyers into a family dispute was "rats in the pantry"; and he would have joined him in his gloomy laugh, if the thought of Charlotte in a contention had not been so serious a matter.
She might be beaten; she could not be brought to yield.
She retired to her bedroom, and laid herself flat on her bed, immoveable, till her maid undressed her for the night. A cup of broth and strip of toast formed her sole nourishment. As for her doctor"s possible reproaches, the symptoms might crowd and do their worst; she fought for the honour of her family.
At midday of the third day Lady Charlotte was reduced to the condition of those fortresses which wave defiantly the flag, but deliver no further shot, awaiting the a.s.sault. Her body, affected by hideous old age, succ.u.mbed. Her will was unshaken. She would not write to her bankers. Mr. Eglett might go to them, if he thought fit. Rowsley was to understand that he might call himself married; she would have no flower-basket bunch of a sister-in-law thrust upon her.
Lord Ormont and Mr. Eglett walked down to her bankers in the afternoon.
As a consequence of express injunctions given by my lady five years previously, the a.s.sistant-manager sought an interview with her.
The jewels were lodged at her house the day ensuing. They were examined, verified by the list in Lady Charlotte"s family record-book, and then taken away--forcibly, of course--by her brother.
He laughed in his dry manner; but the reminiscent glimpses, helping him to see the humour of it, stirred sensations of the tug it had been with that combative Charlotte, and excused him for having shrunk from the encounter until he conceived it to be necessary.
Settlement of the affair with Morsfield now claimed his attention. The ironical tolerance he practised in relation to Morsfield when Aminta had no definite station before the world changed to an angry irritability at the man"s behaviour now that she had stepped forth under his acknowledgement of her as the Countess of Ormont. He had come round to a rather healthier mind regarding his country, and his introduction of the Countess of Ormont to the world was his peace-offering.
As he returned home earlier on the third day, he found his diligent secretary at work. The calling on Captain May and the writing to the sort of man were acts obnoxious to his dignity; so he despatched Weyburn to the captain"s house, one in a small street of three narrow tenements ab.u.t.ting on aristocracy and terminating in mews. Weyburn"s mission was to give the earl"s address at Great Marlow for the succeeding days, and to see Captain May, if the captain was at home. During his absence the precious family jewel-box was locked in safety. Aminta and her friend, little Miss Collett, were out driving, by the secretary"s report. The earl considered it a wholesome feature of Aminta"s character that she should have held to her modest schoolmate the fact spoke well for both of them.
A look at the papers to serve for Memoirs was discomposing, and led him to think the secretary could be parted with as soon as he pleased to go: say, a week hence.
The Memoirs were no longer designed for issue. He had the impulse to treat them on the spot as the Plan for the Defence of the Country had been treated; and for absolutely obverse reasons. The secretary and the Memoirs were a.s.sociated: one had sprung out of the other. Moreover, the secretary had witnessed a scene at Steignton. The young man had done his duty, and would be thanked for that, and dismissed, with a touch of his employer"s hand. The young man would have made a good soldier--a better soldier, good as he might be as a scribe. He ought to have been in his father"s footsteps, and he would then have disciplined or quashed his fantastical ideas. Perhaps he was right on the point of toning the Memoirs here and there. Since the scene at Steignton Lord Ormont"s views had changed markedly in relation to everybody about him, and most things.
Weyburn came back at the end of an hour to say that he had left the address with Mrs. May, whom he had seen.
"A handsome person," the earl observed.
"She must have been very handsome," said Weyburn.
"Ah! we fall into their fictions, or life would be a bald business, upon my word!"
Lord Ormont had not uttered it before the sentiment of his greater luck with one of that queer world of the female lottery went through him on a swell of satisfaction, just a wave.
An old-world eye upon women, it seemed to Weyburn. But the man who could crown a long term of cruel injustice with the harshness to his wife at Steignton would naturally behold women with that eye.
However, he was allowed only to generalize; he could not trust himself to dwell on Lady Ormont and the Aminta inside the sh.e.l.l. Aminta and Lady Ormont might think as one or diversely of the executioner"s blow she had undergone. She was a married woman, and she probably regarded the wedding by law as the end a woman has to aim at, and is annihilated by hitting; one flash of success, and then extinction, like a boy"s cracker on the pavement. Not an elevated image, but closely resembling that which her alliance with Lord Ormont had been!
At the same time, no true lover of a woman advises her--imploring is horrible treason--to slip the symbolic circle of the law from her finger, and have in an instant the world for her enemy. She must consent to be annihilated, and must have no feelings; particularly no mind. The mind is the danger for her. If she has a mind alive, she will certainly push for the position to exercise it, and run the risk of a cla.s.sing with Nature"s created mates for reptile men.
Besides, Lady Ormont appeared, in the company of her friend Selina Collett, not worse than rather too thoughtful; not distinctly unhappy.
And she was conversable, smiling. She might have had an explanation with my lord, accepting excuses--or, who knows? taking the blame, and offering them. Weakness is pliable. So pliable is it, that it has been known for a crack of the masterly whip to fling off the victim and put on the culprit! Ay, but let it be as it may with Lady Ormont, Aminta is of a different composition. Aminta"s eyes of the return journey to London were haunting lights, and lured him to speculate; and for her sake he rejected the thought that for him they meant anything warmer than the pa.s.sing thankfulness, though they were a novel a.s.surance to him of her possession beneath her smothering cloud of the power to resolve, and show forth a brilliant individuality.
The departure of the ladies and my lord in the travelling carriage for the house on the Upper Thames was pa.s.sably sweetened to Weyburn by the command to him to follow in a day or two, and continue his work there until he left England. Aminta would not hear of an abandonment of the Memoirs. She spoke on the subject to my lord as to a husband pardoned.
She was not less affable and pleasant with him out of Weyburn"s hearing.
My lord earned her grat.i.tude for his behaviour to Selina Collett, to whom he talked interestedly of her favourite pursuit, as he had done on the day when, as he was not the man to forget, her arrival relieved him of anxiety. Aminta, noticed the box on the seat beside him.
They drove up to their country house in time to dress leisurely for dinner. Nevertheless, the dinner-hour had struck several minutes before she descended; and the earl, as if not expecting her, was out on the garden path beside the river bank with Selina. She beckoned from the step of the open French window.
He came to her at little Selina"s shuffling pace, conversing upon water-plants.
"No jewelry to-day?" he said.
And Aminta replied: "Carstairs has shown me the box and given the key. I have not opened it."
"Time in the evening, or to-morrow. You guess the contents?"
"I presume I do."
She looked feverish and shadowed.
He murmured kindly: "Anything?"
"Not now: we will dine."
She had missed, had lost, she feared, her own jewelbox; a casket of no great treasure to others, but of a largely estimable importance to her.
After the heavy ceremonial entrance and exit of dishes, she begged the earl to accompany her for an examination of the contents of the box.
As soon as her chamber-door was shut, she said, in accents of alarm: "Mine has disappeared. Carstairs, I know, is to be trusted. She remembers carrying the box out of my room; she believes she can remember putting it into the fly. She had to confess that it had vanished, without her knowing how, when my boxes were unpacked."
"Is she very much upset?" said the earl.
"Carstairs? Why, yes, poor creature! you can imagine. I have no doubt she feels for me; and her own reputation is concerned. What do you think is best to be done?"
"To be done! Overhaul the baggage again in all the rooms."
"We"ve not failed to do that."
"Control yourself, my dear. If, by bad luck, they"re lost, we can replace them. The contents of this box, now, we could not replace. Open it, and judge."
"I have no curiosity--forgive me, I beg. And the servant"s fly has been visited, ransacked inside and out, footmen questioned; we have not left anything we can conceive of undone. My lord, will you suggest?"
"The intrinsic value of the gems would not be worth--not worth Aminta"s one beat of the heart. Upon my word--not one!"
An amatory knightly compliment breasting her perturbation roused an unwonted spite; and a swift reflection on it startled her with a suspicion. She cast it behind her. He could be angler and fish, he would not be cat and mouse.
She said, however, more temperately: "It is not the value of the gems.
We are losing precious minutes!"
"a.s.sociation of them with the giver? Is it that? If that has a value for you, he is flattered."
This betrayed him to the woman waxing as intensely susceptible in all her being as powder to sparks.
"There is to be no misunderstanding, my lord," she said. "I like--I value my jewels; but--I am alarmed lest the box should fall into hands--into strange hands."
"The box!" he exclaimed with an outline of a comic grimace; and, if proved a voluptuary in torturing, he could instance half a dozen points for extenuation: her charm of person, withheld from him, and to be embraced; her innocent naughtiness; compensation coming to her in excess for a transient infliction of pain. "Your anxiety is about the box?"