After some repose, the cousins treated their horrible misadventure as a piece of history. Livia was cool; she had not a husband involved in it, as Henrietta had; and London"s hoa.r.s.e laugh surely coming on them, spared her the dread Henrietta suffered, that Chillon would hear; the most sensitive of men on any matter touching his family.
"And now a sister added to the list! Will there be names, Livia?"
"The newspapers!" Livia"s shoulders rose.
"We ought to have sworn the gentlemen to silence."
"M. de St. Ombre is a tomb until he writes his Memoirs. I hold Sir Meeson under lock. But a spiced incident, a notorious couple,--an anecdotal witness to the scene,--could you expect Mr. Rose Mackrell to contain it? The sacredest of oaths, my dear!"
That relentless force impelling an anecdotist to slaughter families for the amus.e.m.e.nt of dinner-tables, was brought home to Henrietta by her prospect of being a victim; and Livia reminding her of the excessive laughter at Rose Mackrell"s anecdotes overnight, she bemoaned her having consented to go to those Gardens in mourning.
"How could Janey possibly have heard of the project to go?
"You went to please Russett, he to please you, and that wild-cat to please herself," said Livia. "She haunts his door, I suppose, and follows him, like a running footman. Every step she takes widens the breach. He keeps his temper, yes, keeps his temper as he keeps his word, and one morning it breaks loose, and all that"s done has to be undone.
It will bemust. That extravaganza, as she is called, is fatal, dogs him with burlesque--of all men!"
"Why not consent to meet her once, Chillon asks."
"You are asking Russett to yield an inch on demand, and to a woman."
"My husband would yield to a woman what he would refuse to all the men in Europe and America," said Henrietta; and she enjoyed her thrill of allegiance to her chivalrous lord and courtier.
"No very extraordinary specimen of a newly married man, who has won the Beauty of England and America for his wife-at some cost to some people,"
Livia rejoined.
There came a moisture on the eyelashes of the emotional young woman, from a touch of compa.s.sion for the wealthy man who had wished to call her wife, and was condemned by her rejection of him to call another woman wife, to be wifeless in wedding her, despite his wealth.
She thinks he loves her; it is pitiable, but she thinks it--after the treatment she has had. She begs to see him once."
"And subdue him with a fit of weeping," Livia was moved to say by sight of the tear she hated. "It would harden Russett--on other eyes, too!
Salt-water drops are like the forced agony scenes in a play: they bring down the curtain, they don"t win the critics. I heard her "my husband"
and saw his face."
"You didn"t hear a whimper with it," Henrietta said. "She"s a mountain girl, not your city madam on the boards. Chillon and I had her by each hand, implored her to leave that impossible Whitechapel, and she trembled, not a drop was shed by her. I can almost fancy privation and squalor have no terrors for Janey. She sings to the people down there, nurses them. She might be occupying Esslemont--our dream of an English home! She is the destruction of the idea of romantic in connection with the name of marriage. I talk like a simpleton. Janey upsets us all. My lord was only--a little queer before he knew her: His Mr. Woodseer may be encouraging her. You tell me the creature has a salary from him equal to your jointure."
"Be civil to the man while it lasts," Livia said, attentive to a degradation of tone--in her cousin, formerly of supreme self-containment.
The beautiful young woman was reminded of her holiday in town. She brightened, and the little that it was, and the meanness of the satisfaction, darkened her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer, on her husband"s behalf, grew horridly conscious for being reproved. So she plucked resolution to enjoy her holiday and forget the contrasts of life-palaces running profusion, lodgings hammered by duns; the pinch of poverty distracting every simple look inside or out. There was no end to it; for her husband"s chivalrous honour forced him to undertake the payment of her father"s heavy debts. He was right and admirable, it could not be contested; but the prospect for them was a grinding gloom, an unrelieved drag, as of a coach at night on an interminable uphill flinty road.
These were her sensations, and she found it diverting to be admired; admired by many while she knew herself to be absorbed in the possession of her by one. It bestowed the before and after of her marriage. She felt she was really, had rapidly become, the young woman of the world, armed with a husband, to take the flatteries of men for the needed diversion they brought. None moved her; none could come near to touching the happy insensibility of a wife who adored her husband, wrote to him daily, thought of him by the minute. Her former worshippers were numerous at Livia"s receptions; Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and the rest. Odd to reflect on--they were the insubstantial but coveted wealth of the woman fallen upon poverty, ign.o.ble poverty! She could not discard her wealth. She wrote amusingly of them, and fully, vivacious descriptions, to Chillon; hardly so much writing to him as entering her heart"s barred citadel, where he resided at his ease, heard everything that befell about her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleetwood"s kindness in providing entertainments, her object was to mollify Chillon"s anger in some degree. She was doing her utmost to gratify him, "for the purpose of paving a way to plead Janey"s case." She was almost persuading herself she was enjoying the remarks of his friend, confidant, secretary, or what not, Livia"s worshipper, Mr. Woodseer, "who does as he wills with my lord; directs his charities, his pleasures, his opinions, all because he is believed to have wonderful ideas and be wonderfully honest." Henrietta wrote: "Situation unchanged. Janey still At that place"; and before the letter was posted, she and Livia had heard from Gower Woodseer of the reported disappearance of the Countess of Fleetwood and her maid. Gower"s father had walked up from Whitechapel, bearing news of it to the earl, she said.
"And the earl is much disturbed?" was Livia"s inquiry.
"He has driven down with my father," Gower said carelessly, ambiguously in the sound.
Troubled enough to desire the show of a corresponding trouble, Henrietta read at their faces.
"May it not be--down there--a real danger?"
The drama, he could inform her, was only too naked down there for disappearances to be common.
"Will it be published that she is missing?"
"She has her maid with her, a stout-hearted girl. Both have courage. I don"t think we need take measures just yet."
"Not before it is public property?"
Henrietta could have bitten her tongue for laying her open to the censure implied in his muteness. Janey perverted her.
Women were an illegible ma.n.u.script, and ladies a closed book of the binding, to this raw philosopher, or he would not so coldly have judged the young wife, anxious on her husband"s account, that they might escape another scorching. He carried away his impression.
Livia listened to a remark on his want of manners.
"Russett puts it to the credit of his honesty," she said. "Honesty is everything with us at present. The man has made his honesty an excellent speculation. He puts a piece on zero and the bank hands him a sackful.
We may think we have won him to serve us, up comes his honesty. That"s how we have Lady Arpington mixed in it--too long a tale. But be guided by me; condescend a little."
"My dear! my whole mind is upon that unhappy girl. It would break Chillon"s heart."
Livia pished. "There are letters we read before we crack the seal. She is out of that ditch, and it suits Russett that she should be. He"s not often so patient. A woman foot to foot against his will--I see him throwing high stakes. Tyrants are brutal; and really she provokes him enough. You needn"t be alarmed about the treatment she "ll meet. He won"t let her beat him, be sure."
Neither Livia nor Gower wondered at the clearing of the mystery, before it went to swell the scandal. A young n.o.bleman of ready power, quick temper, few scruples, and a taxed forbearance, was not likely to stand thwarted and goaded-and by a woman. Lord Fleetwood acted his part, inscrutable as the blank of a locked door. He could not conceal that he was behind the door.
CHAPTER XXV. THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION
Gower"s bedroom window looked over the shrubs of the square, and as his form of revolt from a city life was to be up and out with the sparrows in the early flutter of morning, for a stretch of the legs where gra.s.s was green and trees were not enclosed, he rarely saw a figure below when he stood dressing. Now there appeared a petticoated one stationary against the rails, with her face lifted. She fronted the house, and while he speculated abstractedly, recognition rushed on him. He was down and across the roadway at leaps.
"It"s Madge here!"
The girl panted for her voice.
"Mr. Woodseer, I"m glad; I thought I should have to wait hours. She"s safe."
"Where?"
"Will you come, sir?"
"Step ahead."
Madge set forth to north of the square.
He judged of the well-favoured girl that she could steer her way through cities: mouth and brows were a warning to challenger pirate craft of a vessel carrying guns; and the red lips kept their firm line when they yielded to the pressure for speech.
"It"s a distance. She"s quite safe, no harm; she"s a prisoner; she"s well fed; she"s not ill treated."
"You "re out?"