"But, Isabel--my love--my darling!--" the tender epithets did not startle her; she was so absorbed by the fear of losing the G.o.d of her idolatry,--"I am only going to town for a day or two to see my lawyer--to make arrangements--arrangements of vital importance;--I should be a scoundrel if I neglected them, or incurred the smallest hazard by delaying them an hour. You don"t understand these sort of things, Isabel; but trust me, and believe that your welfare is dearer to me than my own. I must go to town; but I shall only be gone a day or two--two days at the most--perhaps only one. And when I come back, Izzie, I shall have something to say to you--something very serious--something that had better be said at once--something that involves all the happiness of my future life. Will you meet me here two days hence,--on Wednesday, at three o"clock? You will, won"t you, Isabel? I know I do wrong in exposing you to the degradation of these stolen meetings. If I feel the shame so keenly, how much worse it must be for you--my own dear girl--my sweet innocent darling. But this shall be the last time, Isabel,--the last time I will ask you to incur any humiliation for me. Henceforward we will hold our heads high, my love; for at least there shall be no trickery or falsehood in our lives."
Mrs. Gilbert stared at Roland Lansdell in utter bewilderment. He had spoken of shame and degradation, and had spoken in the tone of a man who had suffered, and still suffered, very bitterly. This was all Isabel could gather from her lover"s speech, and she opened her eyes in blank amazement as she attended to him. Why should he be ashamed, or humiliated, or degraded? Was Dante degraded by his love for Beatrice?
was Waller degraded by his devotion to Saccharissa--for ever evidenced by so many charming versicles, and never dropping down from the rosy cloud-land of poetry into the matter-of-fact regions of prose? Degraded!
ashamed!--her face grew crimson all in a moment as these cruel words stung her poor sentimental heart.
She wanted to run away all at once, and never see Mr. Lansdell again.
Her heart would break, as a matter of course; but how infinitely preferable to shame would be a broken heart and early death with an appropriate tombstone! The tears rolled down her flushed cheek, as she turned away her face from Roland. She was almost stifled by mingled grief and indignation.
"I did not think you were ashamed to meet me here sometimes," she sobbed out; "you asked me to come. I did not think that you were humiliated by talking to me--I----"
"Why, Izzie--Isabel darling!" cried Roland, "can you misunderstand me so utterly? Ashamed to meet you--ashamed of your society! Can you doubt what would have happened had I come home a year earlier than it was my ill fortune to come? Can you doubt for a moment that I would have chosen you for my wife out of all the women in the universe, and that my highest pride would have been the right to call you by that dear name? I was too late, Izzie, too late; too late to win that pure and perfect happiness which would have made a new man of me, which would have transformed me into a good and useful man, as I think. I suppose it is always so; I suppose there is always one drop wanting in the cup of joy, that one mystic drop which would change the commonplace potion into an elixir. I came too late! Why should I have everything in this world? Why should I have fifteen thousand a year, and Mordred Priory, and the right to acknowledge the woman I love in the face of all creation, while there are crippled wretches sweeping crossings for the sake of a daily crust, and men and women wasting away in great prison-houses called Unions, whose first law is the severance of every earthly tie? I came too late, and I suppose it was natural that I should so come. Millions of destinies have been blighted by as small a chance as that which has blighted mine, I dare say. We must take our fate as we find it, Isabel; and if we are true to each other, I hope and believe that it may be a bright one even yet--even yet."
A woman of the world would have very quickly perceived that Mr.
Lansdell"s discourse must have relation to more serious projects than future meetings under Lord Thurston"s oak, with interchange of divers volumes of light literature. But Isabel Gilbert was not a woman of the world. She had read novels while other people perused the Sunday papers; and of the world out of a three-volume romance she had no more idea than a baby. She believed in a phantasmal universe, created out of the pages of poets and romancers; she knew that there were good people and bad people--Ernest Maltraverses and Lumley Ferrerses, Walter Gays and Carkers; but beyond this she had very little notion of mankind; and having once placed Mr. Lansdell amongst the heroes, could not imagine him to possess one attribute in common with the villains. If he seemed intensely in earnest about these meetings under the oak, she was in earnest too; and so had been the German knight, who devoted the greater part of his life to watching the cas.e.m.e.nt of his lady-love.
"I shall see you sometimes," she said, with timid hesitation,--"I shall see you sometimes, shan"t I, when you come home from town? Not often, of course; I dare say it isn"t right to come here often, away from George; and the last time I kept him waiting for his dinner; but I told him where I had been, and that I"d seen you, and he didn"t mind a bit."
Roland Lansdell sighed.
"Ah, don"t you understand, Isabel," he said, "that doubles our degradation? It is for the very reason that he "doesn"t mind," it is precisely because he is so simple-hearted and trusting, that we ought not to deceive the poor fellow any longer. That"s the degradation, Izzie; the deception, not the deed itself. A man meets his enemy in fair fight and kills him, and n.o.body complains. The best man must always win, I suppose; and if he wins by fair means, no one need grudge him his victory. I mystify you, don"t I, my darling, by all this rambling talk?
I shall speak plainer on Wednesday. And now let me take you homewards,"
added Mr. Lansdell, looking at his watch, "if you are to be at home at five."
He knew the habits of the doctor"s little household, and knew that five o"clock was Mr. Gilbert"s dinner-hour. There was no conversation of any serious nature during the homeward walk--only dreamy talk about books and poets and foreign lands. Mr. Lansdell told Isabel of bright spots in Italy and Greece, wonderful villages upon the borders of blue lakes deeply hidden among Alpine slopes, and snow-clad peaks like stationary clouds--beautiful and picturesque regions which she must see by-and-by, Roland added gaily.
But Mrs. Gilbert opened her eyes very wide and laughed aloud. How should she ever see such places? she asked, smiling. George would never go there; he would never be rich enough to go; nor would he care to go, were he ever so rich.
And while she was speaking, Isabel thought that, after all, she cared very little for those lovely lands; much as she had dreamed about them and pined to see them, long ago in the Camberwell garden, on still moonlight nights, when she used to stand on the little stone step leading from the kitchen, with her arms resting on the water-b.u.t.t, like Juliet"s on the balcony, and fancy it was Italy. Now she was quite resigned to the idea of never leaving Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne. She was content to live there all her life, as long as she could see Mr.
Lansdell now and then; so long as she could know that he was near her, thinking of her and loving her, and that at any moment his dark face might shine out of the dulness of her life. A perfect happiness had come to her--the happiness of being beloved by the bright object of her idolatry; nothing could add to that perfection; the cup was full to the very brim, filled with an inexhaustible draught of joy and delight.
Mr. Lansdell stopped to shake hands with Isabel when they came to the gate leading into the Graybridge road.
"Good-bye," he said softly: "good-bye, until Wednesday, Isabel.
Isabel--what a pretty name it is! You have no other Christian name?"
"Oh no."
"Only Isabel--Isabel Gilbert. Good-bye."
He opened the gate and stood watching the Doctor"s Wife as she pa.s.sed out of the meadow, and walked at a rapid pace towards the town. A man pa.s.sed along the road as Mr. Lansdell stood there, and looked at him as he went by, and then turned and looked after Isabel.
"Raymond is right, then," thought Roland; "they have begun to stare and chatter already. Let them talk about me at their tea-tables, and paragraph me in their newspapers, to their hearts" content! My soul is as much above them as the eagle soaring sunward is above the sheep that stare up at him from the valleys. I have set my foot upon the fiery ploughshare, but my darling shall be carried across it scatheless, in the strong arms of her lover."
Mrs. Gilbert went home to her husband, and sat opposite to him at dinner as usual; but Roland"s words, dimly as she had comprehended their meaning, had in some manner influenced her, for she blushed when George asked her where she had been that cold afternoon. Mr. Gilbert did not see the blush, for he was carving the joint as he asked the question, and indeed had asked it rather as a matter of form than otherwise. This time Mrs. Gilbert did not tell her husband that she had met Roland Lansdell. The words "shame and degradation" were ringing in her ears all dinner-time. She had tasted, if ever so little, of the fruit of the famous tree, and she found the flavour thereof very bitter. It must be wrong to meet Roland under Lord Thurston"s oak, since he said it was so; and the meeting on Wednesday was to be the last; and yet their fate was to be a happy one; had he not said so, in eloquently mysterious words, whose full meaning poor Isabel was quite unable to fathom? She brooded over what Mr. Lansdell said all that evening, and a dim sense of impending trouble crept into her mind. He was going away for ever, perhaps; and had only told her otherwise in order to lull her to rest with vain hopes, and thus spare himself the trouble of her lamentations.
Or he was going to London to arrange for a speedy marriage with Lady Gwendoline. Poor Isabel could not shake off her jealous fears of that brilliant high-bred rival, whom Mr. Lansdell had once loved. Yes; he had once loved Lady Gwendoline. Mr. Raymond had taken an opportunity of telling Isabel all about the young man"s early engagement to his cousin; and he had added a hope that, after all, a marriage between the two might yet be brought about; and had not the housekeeper at Mordred said very much the same thing?
"He will marry Lady Gwendoline," Isabel thought, in a sudden access of despair; "and that is what he is going to tell me on Wednesday. He was different to-day from what he has been since he came back to Mordred.
And yet--and yet--" And yet what? Isabel tried in vain to fathom the meaning of all Roland Lansdell"s wild talk--now earnestly grave--now suddenly reckless--one moment full of hope, and in the next tinctured with despair. What was this simple young novel-reader to make of a man of the world, who was eager to defy the world, and knew exactly what a terrible world it was that he was about to outrage and defy?
Mrs. Gilbert lay awake all that night, thinking of the meeting by the waterfall. Roland"s talk had mystified and alarmed her. The ignorant happiness, the unreflecting delight in her lover"s presence, the daily joy that in its fulness had no room for a thought of the morrow, had vanished all at once like a burst of sunlight eclipsed by the darkening clouds that presage a storm. Eve had listened to the first whispers of the serpent, and Paradise was no longer entirely beautiful.
CHAPTER XXIV.
LADY GWENDOLINE DOES HER DUTY.
Mrs. Gilbert stayed at home all through the day which succeeded her parting from Roland Lansdell. She stayed in the dingy parlour, and read a little, and played upon the piano a little, and sketched a few profile portraits of Mr. Lansdell, desperately inky and sentimental, with impossibly enormous eyes. She worked a little, wounding her fingers, and hopelessly entangling her thread; and she let the fire out two or three times, as she was accustomed to do very often, to the aggravation of Mrs. Jeffson. That hard-working and faithful retainer came into the parlour at two o"clock, carrying a little plate of seed-cake and a gla.s.s of water for her mistress"s frugal luncheon; and finding the grate black and dismal for the second time that day, fetched a bundle of wood and a box of matches, and knelt down to rekindle the cavernous cinders in no very pleasant humour.
"I"m sorry I"ve let the fire out again, Mrs. Jeffson," Isabel said meekly. "I think there must be something wrong in the grate somehow, for the fire always _will_ go out."
"It usen"t to go out in Master George"s mother"s time," Mrs. Jeffson answered, rather sharply, "and it was the same grate then. But my dear young mistress used to sit in yon chair, st.i.tch, st.i.tch, st.i.tch at the Doctor"s cambric shirt-fronts, and the fire was always burning bright and pleasant when he came home. She was a regular stay-at-home, she was," added the housekeeper, in a musing tone; "and it was very rare as she went out beyond the garden, except on a summer"s evening, when the Doctor took her for a walk. She didn"t like going out alone, poor dear; for there was plenty of young squires about Graybridge as would have been glad enough to follow her and talk to her, and set people"s malicious tongues chattering about her, if she"d have let "em. But she never did; she was as happy as the day was long, sitting at home, working for her husband, and always ready to jump up and run to the door when she heard his step outside--G.o.d bless her innocent heart!"
Mrs. Gilbert"s face grew crimson as she bent over a sheet of paper on which the words "despair" and "prayer," "breath" and "death," were twisted into a heartrending rhyme. Ah, this was a part of the shame and degradation of which Roland had spoken. Everybody had a right to lecture her, and at every turn the perfections of the dead were cast reproachfully in her face. As if _she_ did not wish to be dead and at rest, regretted and not lectured, deplored rather than slandered and upbraided. These vulgar people laid their rude hands upon her cup of joy, and changed its contents into the bitter waters of shame. These commonplace creatures set themselves up as the judges of her life, and turned all its purest and brightest poetry into a prosaic record of disgrace. The glory of the Koh-i-noor would have been tarnished by the print of such base hands as these. How could these people read her heart, or understand her love for Roland Lansdell? Very likely the serene lady of the Rhineland, praying in her convent-cell, was slandered and misrepresented by vulgar boors, who, pa.s.sing along the roadway beneath, saw the hermit-knight sitting at the door of his cell and gazing fondly at his lost love"s cas.e.m.e.nt.
Such thoughts as this arose in Isabel"s mind, and she was angry and indignant at the good woman who presumed to lecture her. She pushed away the plate of stale cake, and went to the window flushed and resentful.
But the flush faded all in a moment from her face when she saw a lady in a carriage driving slowly towards the gate,--a lady who wore a great deal of soft brown fur, and a violet velvet bonnet with drooping features, and who looked up at the house as if uncertain as to its ident.i.ty. The lady was Lord Ruysdale"s daughter; and the carriage was only a low basket-phaeton, drawn by a stout bay cob, and attended by a groom in a neat livery of dark blue. But if the simple equipage had been the fairy chariot of Queen Mab herself, Mrs. Gilbert could scarcely have seemed more abashed and astounded by its apparition before her door. The groom descended from his seat at an order from his mistress, and rang the bell at the surgeon"s gate; and then Lady Gwendoline, having recognized Isabel at the window, and saluted her with a very haughty inclination of the head, abandoned the reins to her attendant, and alighted.
Mrs. Jeffson had opened the gate by this time, and the visitor swept by her into the little pa.s.sage, and thence into the parlour, where she found the Doctor"s Wife standing by the table, trifling nervously with that sc.r.a.p of fancy-work whose only progress was to get grimier and grimier day by day under Isabel"s idle fingers.
Oh, what a dingy shabby place that Graybridge parlour was always! how doubly and trebly dingy it seemed to-day by contrast with that gorgeous Millais-like figure of Gwendoline Pomphrey, rich and glorious in violet velvet and Russian sable, with the yellow tints of her hair contrasted by the deep purple shadows under her bonnet. Mrs. Gilbert almost sank under the weight of all that aristocratic splendour. She brought a chair for her visitor, and asked in a tremulous voice if Lady Gwendoline would be pleased to sit. There was a taint of sn.o.bbishness in her reverential awe of the Earl"s handsome daughter. Was not Lady Gwendoline the very incarnation of all her own foolish dreams of the beautiful? Long ago, in the Camberwell garden, she had imagined such a creature; and now she bowed herself before the splendour, and was stricken with fear and trembling in the dazzling presence. And then there were other reasons that she should tremble and turn pale Might not Lady Gwendoline have come to announce her intended marriage with Mr. Lansdell, and to smite the poor wretch before her with sudden madness and despair? Isabel felt that some calamity was coming down upon her: and she stood pale and silent, meekly waiting to receive her sentence.
"Pray sit down, Mrs. Gilbert," said Lady Gwendoline; "I wish to have a little conversation with you. I am very glad to have found you at home, and alone."
The lady spoke very kindly, but her kindness had a stately coldness that crept like melted ice through Isabel"s veins, and chilled her to the bone.
"I am older than you, Mrs. Gilbert," said Lady Gwendoline, after a little pause, and she slightly winced as she made the confession; "I am older than you; and if I speak to you in a manner that you may have some right to resent as an impertinent interference with your affairs, I trust that you will believe I am influenced only by a sincere desire for your welfare."
Isabel"s heart sank to a profounder depth of terror than before when she heard this. She had never in her life known anything but unpleasantness to come from people"s desire for her welfare: from the early days in which her step-mother had administered salutary boxes on the ear, and salts and senna, with an equal regard to her moral and physical improvement. She looked up fearfully at Lady Gwendoline, and saw that the fair Saxon face of her visitor was almost as pale as her own.
"I am older than you, Mrs. Gilbert," repeated Gwendoline, "and I know my cousin Roland Lansdell much better than you can possibly know him."
The sound of the dear name, the sacred name, which to Isabel"s mind should only have been spoken in a hushed whisper, like a tender pianissimo pa.s.sage in music, shot home to the foolish girl"s heart. Her face flushed crimson, and she clasped her hands together, while the tears welled slowly up to her eyes.
"I know my cousin better than you can know him; I know the world better than you can know it. There are some women, Mrs. Gilbert, who would condemn you unheard, and who would consider their lips sullied by any mention of your name. There are many women in my position who would hold themselves aloof from you, content to let you go your own way. But I take leave to think for myself in all matters. I have heard Mr. Raymond speak very kindly of you; I cannot judge you as harshly as other people judge you; I cannot believe you to be what your neighbours think you."
"Oh, what, what can they think me?" cried Isabel, trembling with a vague fear--an ignorant fear of some deadly peril utterly unknown to her, and yet close upon her; "what harm have I done, that they should think ill of me? what can they say of me? what can they say?"
Her eyes were blinded by tears, that blotted Lady Gwendoline"s stern face from her sight. She was still so much a child, that she made no effort to conceal her terror and confusion. She bared all the foolish secrets of her heart before those cruel eyes.
"People say that you are a false wife to a simple-hearted and trusting husband," Lord Ruysdale"s daughter answered, with pitiless calmness; "a false wife in thought and intention, if not in deed; since you have lured my cousin back to this place; and are ready to leave it with him as his mistress whenever he chooses to say "Come." That is what people think of you; and you have given them only too much cause for their suspicion. Do you imagine that you could keep any secret from Graybridge? do you think your actions or even your thoughts could escape the dull eyes of these country people, who have nothing better to do than watch the doings of their neighbours?" demanded Lady Gwendoline, bitterly. Alas! she knew that her name had been bandied about from gossip to gossip; and that her grand disappointment in the matter of Lord Heatherland, her increasing years, and declining chances of a prize in the matrimonial lottery had been freely discussed at all the tea-tables in the little country town.
"Country people find out everything, Mrs. Gilbert," she said, presently.
"You have been watched in your sentimental meetings and rambles with Mr.
Lansdell; and you may consider yourself very fortunate if no officious person has taken the trouble to convey the information to your husband."
Isabel had been crying all this time, crying bitterly, with her head bent upon her clasped hands; but to Lady Gwendoline"s surprise she lifted it now, and looked at her accuser with some show of indignation, if not defiance.