CHAPTER XXIX.
A TIMELY WARNING.
Mr. O'Boyneville enjoyed himself amazingly at Pevenshall. The man whose ordinary existence was one unceasing round of hard work was the most social of creatures when once set free from the daily round of labour. He enjoyed himself with a boisterous boyish delight in simple pleasures, and the Pevenshall visitors found his gaiety contagious. There are some people who succeed in society by mere force of animal spirits, and who are pardoned for solecisms that would be the perdition of a more timid blunderer. Laurence O'Boyneville did what he liked and said what he liked, with the reckless impulsiveness of his nation, and people forgave him and were pleased with him.
He gave himself up so thoroughly to the social delights of Mr. Lobyer's mansion, which was made all the pleasanter by the frequent absence of its master, that he had no leisure for morbid anxieties of a domestic nature. The idea that he had any need to doubt the allegiance of the wife he loved and honoured had never presented itself to him in any shape, howsoever impalpable. She was his wife—a creature so much above suspicion, that only the rudest of awakenings could disturb his perfect confidence in her honour and truth. That he might leave her in one moment bright, beautiful, and smiling, and return in the next to find her dead, was a possibility within his power of conception; but that he could awake from his trust in her to find her false to him was a monstrous impossibility which his mind would have been unable to grasp. So he gave himself up to the pleasure of the hour, and devoted himself to the service of the fair sex with an indiscriminate and laborious gallantry, which the gilded youth fluttering around Mrs. Lobyer, and drawling some subtle half-implied compliment once in the twenty-four hours, beheld with amazement from afar off.
"I had no idea that Mr. O'Boyneville was such a delightful creature," Flo remarked to Cecil. "I hope I shall never again be without an Irishman in the house when I have a large party. That dear good-tempered husband of yours contrives to keep all the women in good humour. I'm sure that poor Miss Skairkrow had never had a civil word said to her on the subject of her personal appearance till Mr. O'Boyneville told her she was the image of the Empress of the French. He assured Miss Skeechoule that her voice reminded him of Grisi in her prime. And then there is pretty Mrs. Fitz-Cavendish, the attaché's wife, who has been surfeited with admiration, but who declares that there never was such an absurdly-delightful creature as your husband."
Cecil acknowledged these praises somewhat coldly. This noisy frivolous Irishman, whom other people thought so delightful, was no nearer to her than the overworked barrister of Brunswick Square. She was weak enough to feel something like anger against him for his genial good temper—for his utter blindness to her own deadly peril. Hector Gordon had broken his promise. He had stayed at Pevenshall; and in the social intercourse of that pleasant mansion it was impossible for Cecil to avoid his companionship. Nor did Laurence O'Boyneville's presence shield her in any manner from that dangerous association. Serene in perfect confidence, the barrister amused himself noisily at one end of the drawing-room, while Major Gordon talked to his wife at the other.
So perverse is the human heart that this placid trustfulness offended the woman who was trusted. Cecil resented her husband's confidence as an evidence of indifference, and was angry with him for not being jealous.
"If I had a husband who loved me, he would come between me and my danger," she thought bitterly; "but my husband does not know what love is."
Unhappily there was some one at Pevenshall who did know, or who pretended to know, all the mysteries of that fatal passion; some one whose voice sounded very often in Cecil's ear, whose eyes were for ever seeking hers. Heaven knows that she did her best to avoid him; but her best efforts were very weak and futile as compared to the machinery which the Eumenides employed against her. A thousand little circumstances conspired to force her into the society of the man she feared. At races, and picnics, and water parties, and rustic gatherings of every description, she was always finding Hector Gordon by her side. The old companionship of the Fortinbras time rose again; but now there was always a guilty consciousness, a remorseful agony lurking amidst the unhallowed happiness; and oh, the meanness, the deception, the grovelling guiltiness, which was the everyday cost of that forbidden joy! Balancing one against the other, Cecil knew how heavily the perpetual remorse outweighed those brief moments of feverish gladness, when the sound of Hector's voice lulled her with its fatal music, and the tender pressure of Hector's hand lifted her above the common earth.
"If I could get away to some quiet hiding-place at the other end of the world, where he could not follow me, I might escape him, and be innocent and happy once more," she thought. That escape for which she yearned seemed every day more difficult. The poor frail rudderless bark was hovering on the very brink of a whirlpool, and there was no friendly hand to steer it back to safety. Sometimes Cecil resolved that she would confess every thing to her husband, and demand the shelter she needed; but the barrister's good humoured indifference was more repellent to her in her present frame of mind than the fiercest severity of a jealous husband could possibly have been. It would have been a relief to her to be suspected. She wanted an occasion to throw herself into her husband's arms, and cry, "Have pity upon my wickedness, and save me from myself!" Perhaps in these latter days, when the chronicles of the Divorce-Court furnish such piquant reading for middle-class breakfast-tables, it would be well if husbands were a little more inclined to jealous watchfulness, and somewhat less disposed to believe implicitly in their own invincible claims to all love and duty. More than once had Cecil nerved herself for the ordeal. She had resolved on humiliating herself before the husband whose indifference wounded her; but after waiting for an hour or more in the loneliness of her own apartment until it should please her lord and master to withdraw himself from some social masculine gathering in the smoking-room below—after waiting with the words she meant to speak arranging and rearranging themselves in her brain, the remorseful wife found it impossible to begin her guilty story, and to open her heart to a man who was chuckling over the capital things he had been saying, and who insisted on relating the triumphs he had just achieved in argument.
Against that everyday joviality, that commonplace good-humour, the flood-tide of passion dashed impotently, as storm-beaten waters break against a groin of solid masonry. So the days went by, and Mr. O'Boyneville enjoyed himself, while the Fates worked their worst against helpless Cecil, who found herself day by day in more frequent association with the man who loved her, and who persisted in reminding her perpetually of his love.
Pevenshall was very full and very gay. Amidst so many people and so much gaiety flirtations that would have made scandal in a quieter household passed unnoticed, except by a few quiet watchers unengaged by schemes of their own. Sir Nugent Evershed appeared at the York Meeting, where one of his horses ran a bad second for the Great Ebor, and after the races was almost a daily guest at Mr. Lobyer's mansion. The Irish barrister had been some time at Pevenshall when Mrs. MacClaverhouse arrived on a flying visit. She had been visiting further north, and she took Mrs. Lobyer's house on her way homewards, in accordance with an old promise made to Flo, who liked the lively dowager.
"I must only stay with you three or four days at the most, my dear," she said to her hostess; "for I am due in Hampshire next week, at a dear old rectory which is supposed to be haunted; though I must confess the ghosts have never come my way. But there are some people who may spend their lives in tapestried chambers and not see any thing out of the common."
Before Mrs. MacClaverhouse had been half-a-dozen hours at Pevenshall she had taken occasion to interrogate her nephew respecting the sale of his commission. She put him through so sharp an examination that the Major was fain to confess the existence of motives which it was impossible for him to explain.
"Then they must be bad motives," exclaimed the dowager, "and unworthy of the true-hearted lad I used to be so proud of. You can't suppose that I wished you to go out to Japan to be killed by a herd of horrible creatures with small eyes and pigtails; but I have heard people speak sneeringly about your sudden selling out, and the malicious wretches have made me feel quite uneasy."
"You needn't be uneasy, my dear aunt," answered Hector; "it's not a case of 'the white feather,' if that's what you mean."
"That's not what I mean, and you know as well as I do that it is not. I don't like those mysterious motives which you can't explain."
The Major shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating gesture. He might give his aunt Indian shawls and ivory caskets and carte blanche upon his wine-merchant; but there were secrets which he did not hold himself bound to reveal to that lady. She took his refusal very quietly.
"When people object to tell me things, I generally contrive to find them out for myself," she said calmly; and from this time, though she enjoyed the delights of Pevenshall to the uttermost, she kept a sharp eye upon her handsome nephew, and an assiduous ear for all floating gossip that accidental breezes wafted in her way.
She stayed a week; and on hearing that Mr. O'Boyneville had occasion to run up to town on the day following her intended departure, she delayed that departure in order to avail herself of his escort.
"I suppose you won't object to take care of an old woman between this and King's Cross, Mr. O'Boyneville," she said after proposing this arrangement. Of course the barrister declared himself delighted to be of service; but Cecil, who knew her strong-minded kinswoman's independent spirit, was not a little surprised by this sudden desire for masculine protection. Mr. O'Boyneville was only to sleep one night in Brunswick Square, and then go on to the west of England where he had business of importance to transact for a friend. The affair would not occupy him more than a week, he said, and he should hurry back to Pevenshall directly he was free to do so. Cecil made no objection to this arrangement. It pleased her husband to leave her in order to attend to his business, and she let him go. A strange calmness had taken possession of her during the last few days. She was absent-minded, and frequently answered at random; more than once she had complained of headache, and had kept her room; but when her husband asked her if there was any thing serious the matter, and intreated her to see a medical man, she assured him that her illness was only nervous. The dowager visited her on this occasion, and questioned her sharply; but, for the first time in her experience, that worthy matron found herself repulsed by a sullen obstinacy on the part of her niece.
"Your questioning me won't cure my headache," Lady Cecil said; "believe me it is much better to let me alone. I am not worth the trouble you take about me."
"But, Cecil, if you are really ill, I must insist upon your having advice; and if you are not ill, this shutting yourself up in your room is very absurd. That dear good O'Boyneville is most uneasy about you."
The stentorian laughter of the dear good O'Boyneville floating upward in the summer air made itself heard at this moment through the open windows. The barrister was enjoying himself on the terrace with the most lively of the Pevenshall visitors.
"Yes; he is very uneasy about me, auntie," said Cecil; "any one can perceive that."
Mrs. MacClaverhouse gave an impatient shrug and departed.
"If I had been your mother in the days when George III. was a young man, and pert chits like you were taught to respect their elders, how soundly I would have boxed those pretty little ears of yours! A sound box on the ear is what you want, Lady Cecil, and I only wish that Laurence O'Boyneville were the man to give it to you."
Thus soliloquised the dowager as she lingered for a few moments at the door of her niece's chamber. She encountered Hector Gordon by-and-by in the lower regions, and treated him more cavalierly than that favourite of fortune was wont to be treated. He bore her ill-usage very meekly, and carefully avoided the severe glare of those hard grey eyes which had been apt to soften when they looked at him.
On the next morning the dowager and Mr. O'Boyneville took their departure. Cecil bade them adieu in a strange mechanical manner, which the barrister was too busy and too hurried to notice. He did indeed perceive that his wife was paler than usual, and that she drew herself away from him when he would have embraced her at parting; but the pallor was accounted for by the nervous headache, from which she confessed herself still a sufferer, and the chilling refusal of the embrace was attributed to the inconvenient presence of the matched footmen, who were on guard in the hall, and of Mr. and Mrs. Lobyer, who had emerged from the dining-room to speed their parting guests. The generous-minded Othello needs a hint from Iago before he can see flaw or speck in Desdemona's purity, though she may plead never so persistently for Cassio's reinstatement; and the idea that his wife's conduct had any hidden meaning was still far away from Laurence O'Boyneville's mind.
"I shall come back for you in a week, Cecil," he said; and amid the confusion of adieus and good wishes he had no time to perceive his wife's silence.
At the station Mrs. MacClaverhouse suggested that the barrister should secure a compartment for their own special use by the diplomatic administration of a half-crown to the guard.
"I want to have a little quiet talk with you as we go up to town," she said.
Mr. O'Boyneville complied, wondering. At the first junction the branch train melted into an express, which tore London-wards at the rate of fifty miles an hour; but Mrs. MacClaverhouse and her nephew-in-law had their quiet talk in spite of the ponderous pantings of the giant that was bearing them to their destination; and the quiet talk must needs have been of a very serious nature, for the barrister was as pale as a ghost when he alighted at King's Cross.
He conducted Mrs. MacClaverhouse to a cab nevertheless, and saw her packages and her maid safely bestowed along with her in that vehicle. On bidding her adieu, he bent his head to say something which was not to be heard by the maid.
"I thank you very much," he said,—"very much. I am not afraid. No, Mrs. MacClaverhouse, with God's help, I am not afraid!"