CHAPTER VII.
THE WORKING OF THE SPELL.
Rest and quiet, it seemed, were not to fall immediately to Nita’s lot. She conducted Miss Shuttleworth to her room, and sat down in an easy-chair while that lady made her slow and lengthy, if not elaborate, toilette for the evening.
‘What’s the meaning of all this, Nita?’
‘All what, aunt?’
‘This driving about with young Wellfield, and having accidents, and losing your temper—you, of all people, and insulting your old aunt, and looking miserable?’
‘I don’t know why you should seek to attach any meaning at all to it. I was driving carelessly, when we suddenly met a traction-engine coming up the hill; the horses bolted, and but for Mr. Wellfield’s getting the reins into his own hands—but for his courage and coolness, we should both have been dead now. Surely that is enough to unnerve anyone!’
‘Then if you were so unnerved, what induced you to go to the bonnet-shop in Clyderhow?’
‘I overrated my strength, I suppose, and in the joy of being safe imagined myself less shaken than I really was.’
‘Humph!’
Miss Shuttleworth went to the drawer in Nita’s wardrobe, which was sacred to the caps she always wore at the Abbey. Looking through her store, she carefully selected a yellow and green one; the most intrinsically hideous and extrinsically least suited to her style of beauty of any of the collection, and then she returned to the glass to put it on.
‘Don’t fall in love with Mr. Jerome Wellfield, Nita. Let him fall in love with you if he likes; but don’t you do it,’ she said, deliberately.
‘Aunt Margaret! do you want to insult me?’ she asked, sitting up, pale and breathless with anger.
‘Not at all. I want to warn you. He is very romantic-looking—reminds one of Byron’s heroes, only more agreeable in general society than they would have been; but depend upon it, my dear, it is all looks. No Wellfield ever had a heart for anyone but himself.’
‘Oh, I am so tired of listening to that old story, aunt! You would not say a good word for the Wellfields to save your life. Such constant abuse makes one begin to take the side of those who are abused.’
‘Ah, I fear you are very far gone already!’
‘How dare you! How dare you speak to me in such a manner! Pray, what have you seen in my manner to Mr. Wellfield to make you assert such a monstrous thing?’
‘Plenty, and I hear plenty more in your voice now,’ was the unmoved, unwavering retort. ‘And all that an old woman like me can do, is to keep on warning and warning. Don’t fall in love with him, Nita; for if you do, it will bring nothing but disaster. He is not of the kind that makes loving and faithful husbands.’
‘When you are quite ready, I shall be glad if you will leave me alone,’ replied Nita, composedly; ‘or if you do not choose to leave me, I will leave you, and go to some other room. I am tired, and want to rest before I come down to supper. All that you say is utterly without foundation, and it makes me very unhappy.’
‘That is odd, if it is without foundation,’ said Miss Margaret, fastening on a huge lace collar with the utmost tranquillity. ‘I will say no more to-night, but I shall consider it my duty to repeat my warning at intervals. You are the only young relation I have, and I should think it wrong to do less. All I say now, is, never marry a Wellfield in the hope of happiness.’
With that she left the room. Nita was alone. Perhaps she rested; perhaps not. She threw off her hat, pushed her hair back from her aching temples, and buried her hot and throbbing brow in her hands. She felt no inclination to weep now: only a kind of feverish, breathless excitement, as the scene with the runaway horses again started vividly up before her mind’s eye, and she could think of nothing else; could only live over again what had seemed the long eternity of agony she had felt as they rushed down the hill, before Jerome had succeeded in turning the horses aside, and so saving them. It was a scene which she knew would be present with her for days, perhaps weeks. Added to that, the subtle inexplicable meaning in Wellfield’s eyes, in the tone of his voice, and in the touch of his hand; then the home-coming, and her aunt’s calm, monotonous, even-toned voice, as she repeated her warnings—warnings, the remembrance of which made the blood rush hotly to her face, then madly back to her heart, causing it to beat wildly, and leaving her pale and trembling. She felt absolutely ill. Should she send an excuse, and not go to the drawing-room again to-night? No; certainly not. She would not let anyone see how foolish she was. If she remained upstairs John would be uncomfortable, and would miss her; her father’s quiet evening with the savages would be spoiled; her aunt would wave her green and yellow cap-ribbons in triumph, convinced that her warnings had taken effect, and Wellfield would think her a poor creature, while she—would not see him, nor speak to him, nor touch his hand again till to-morrow morning. She started up, and began to make her toilette with unusual slowness and care, and with fingers which she could not compel not to tremble.
Downstairs she found, as she had expected, John Leyburn, as well as Miss Margaret. They were all in the drawing-room, and supper was announced before she had answered her father’s inquiries or sat down. This gave her the opportunity of retaining his arm, and walking into the dining-room with him. The meal seemed a long one. Nita was thankful when it was over, and they went into the drawing-room again. Wellfield did not immediately come there. He said he was going for a stroll by the river, and he went out at the open hall-door into the garden. Mr. Bolton was not a demonstrative man: he went to his accustomed table with the reading-lamp, and took up his book. Miss Shuttleworth pulled out a stocking, took a chair (a straight-backed one, as might have been expected), and knitted, with a still rocky severity of countenance. John was arranging cushions on a couch near the window.
‘Come here,’ he said to Nita. ‘You are to lie down, and I will sit beside you.’
‘I’m not tired,’ said Nita.
‘Yes, you are,’ he replied, smiling his good, pleasant smile. ‘Come here, or I put on my hat and go home this moment.’
‘Home! This is as much your home as any other place,’ she said, complying with his behest.
‘More, since my sister Nita is in it. There!’ he added, taking his place beside her as she lay down, and gave a long sigh of relief; ‘now tell me what you have been doing this afternoon.’
‘That you may give one of your favourite lectures, I suppose,’ said Nita, smiling. But by degrees she told him the history of the afternoon’s adventure, while it grew dark within the room, and their voices sank lower, and Mr. Bolton read on, and Miss Shuttleworth’s needles clicked, clicked, as if they went by clockwork.
‘Oh, John! how ashamed I was! I could not look him in the face,’ murmured Nita, at the end of this conversation.
‘Ashamed—of what?’ asked John, in his slow tones, and looking at her with his near-sighted eyes.
‘Of my carelessness, my folly, which so nearly cost him his life!’
‘And you yours. I tell you what it is, Nita; it must have been a very engrossing conversation that caused you to loose your hold on the ribbons. Is it allowable to ask what it was all about?’
‘Partly about you,’ replied Nita, surprised into the admission by this sudden appearance in John of an astuteness with which she had not for a moment credited him.
‘About me? What about me?’
She was silent.
‘You won’t say—or can’t. Forgotten, perhaps. I wonder if Wellfield has, too? I’ll ask him.’
‘He will have forgotten too,’ replied Nita
‘I thought as much,’ said John, and silence fell upon them too.
Wellfield wandered beside the river into the fields—some broad, pleasant, open fields where the river was wide, and formed a broad, shallow, brawling kind of waterfall. To-night there was a full moon, which, as night fell, replaced the day with a softer brilliance. He mused as he walked, not with the heartbeats and the tumultuous agitation which had shaken Nita, but with vague wonder, and a vague repining. Why had he not known of all this reverse of circumstances a few months earlier, before he had met Sara Ford and learnt to love her? If Sara had not been there, imperiously commanding his love, how easy it would have been to accept Father Somerville’s outspoken counsel, to make love to Nita Bolton (this with a calm obliviousness or ignoring of the fact that what he had done that afternoon was, if not love-making, at least an excellent imitation of it), marry her, and once more enjoy his own. It was now quite impossible, of course, and his little experiment this afternoon had just sufficed to show him that had he only been free, it might have been. He did not wish to be free—not he! Who would wish to be free who was loved by Sara Ford? But surely it was not wrong to picture what might have been if he had never met her. He could not tell her of what might have been; but he wished she could know it—could know what his love for her would stand, what hot temptations, what fiery trials it would carry him through unscathed.
And now, how to behave towards Nita? Of course he must not deceive her: he must try to enlighten her on the subject of his engagement; it was only fair. But not to-night: she was too shaken and unstrung to-night to bear more excitement—he tacitly assumed that the revelation would cause excitement to her—to-night he must be gentle and quiet, and let her rest. So he argued within himself, the truth being that to Jerome Wellfield it was very much easier and infinitely pleasanter to be on good than on evil terms with a woman—with all women not absolutely hideous, and that it was the most natural thing in the world for him to treat any young woman, especially if she happened to be the only one there, as if she were the object of his most special care and attention. Then too, he felt himself welcome at the Abbey, and the sense of this, and the luxury of the sympathy and commiseration, the admiration and the pity which Nita with every look, every gesture, every tone of her voice, offered to him, lulled him into a sensuous inactivity—the kind of inactivity to which his nature was always perilously prone. The pain of planning, and considering, and of conning over adverse circumstances, was great. The pleasure of half-dreamy talk with a woman whom some inner emotion made beautiful for the nonce, and who he felt wore that passing loveliness because he had called it there, and the pleasure of being worshipped, silently yet subtly, was also great, and very much easier to him than the other alternative. To-morrow, he thought, he would tell her about Sara; to-night he would tell her about herself.
He went into the drawing-room, and found the group which has already been described. Nita’s little whispered dispute with John was over, and she lay still. The window was open, and Jerome had entered by it. The evening was warm, and at the Abbey in summer they never drew the curtains; and from where Nita lay, they could see the trees outside shimmering in the ghostly moonlight, and the hoary grey walls of the cloisters beside the river, and nearer, all the stiff quaint flower-beds, and clipped yews, and oddly-shaped shrubs and plants.
Mr. Bolton, at the other end of the room, had a table and a little oasis of lamplight all to himself, and was absorbed in a book of travels. Nita was wont to say that her father was not happy unless he daily made an excursion to Burnham in propria personâ; a descent into Avernus with the assistance of Dante the immortal, and an expedition in the evening into some unheard-of corner of the earth with some traveller, whose tales she averred could not be too wonderful to be credible; in fact, the more improbable, the better.
Except Mr. Bolton’s reading-lamp, there was no light in the room save moonlight; and the space was so great that the lamplight was lost in the other rays.
There was silence as Jerome came in, and just glanced at Nita’s pale face, which looked almost ghastly in the white moonlight. He paused, and asked her if she felt rested.
‘Yes, thank you,’ replied Nita, with a little catching of her breath, which John at least noticed. ‘I am all right, but John is a tyrant, and says if I get up he will go.’
‘Quite right, too,’ observed Miss Shuttleworth from her corner.
‘Would anyone like a light?’ asked Nita.
‘Oh, don’t light up! This moonlight is heavenly. It only wants music to make it complete,’ said John. ‘Wellfield, when you were a precocious infant of eleven, at which age I last knew you, you used to play tunes on the piano, and sing little Italian songs, which used to fascinate me. Have you forgotten how?’
‘Not utterly, though I have no doubt fallen off from the first engaging innocence of childhood.’
‘Well, won’t you give us a specimen,’ said the benighted barbarian—‘if Nita is not too tired?’ he added, turning to her.
‘I—oh no! if Mr. Wellfield will sing, I should like it,’ said Nita, utterly unconscious that she was invoking the most powerful of the weapons of fascination possessed by her hero, and anxious only to preserve a little longer the friendly moonlight.
‘Certainly, if one could ever sing at all, one would be able to do so in such a place, and with such surroundings as these, observed Jerome, carelessly, as he struck a chord or two. ‘Ah! your piano is a Bechstein, Miss Bolton; you might have imported it on purpose for me. All I stipulate is, that you will cry “Hold!” in a loud voice, when you have had enough of it.’
He tried his hand with a half-forgotten impromptu of Schubert’s, and with each bar that he played the old spirit came back to him. He had not touched a note since the night he had sung to Sara Ford, at Trockenau. Did he remember it? It may be so, but if he did, he carefully abstained from giving any of the songs he had sung on that eventful night. Perhaps the present audience were not worthy. At first he did not sing at all, but wandered on through some strange, cobwebby melodies of Schumann and Chopin—strange melodies, such as had probably never before palpitated through that ancient room, since it was first built, for an abbot’s refectory. At first he thought he would not sing at all; but with the flow of sound, and the exercise of the beloved art, the old intoxication and exaltation stole gradually over him. He paused a moment, struck a couple of weirdly sounding minor chords, and sang the strangely suggestive lines beginning:
If he wished to recall to Nita’s mind their perils of the afternoon, he succeeded most thoroughly in doing so. It all rushed over her mind again, overpoweringly, and the whole truth of it. She knew as she heard his voice that never, never had life been so sweet as when, the danger over, she had seen Jerome Wellfield standing at her side, and had heard his voice, though scarcely comprehending what he said.
So he sang on, song after song; each one with fresh verve and fresh pleasure—with a purer delight in the exercise of his power. Almost at haphazard, he sang the songs and the scenas which he best remembered, just as they came into his mind—Faust making love to Marguerite, and the Troubadour invoking Leonore; one little German love-song after another—‘Du bist wie eine stille Sternennacht’ made the tears rush blindingly to Nita’s eyes. John Leyburn still sat beside her couch: he leaned back in his chair, and the music wrought pleasant visions in his mind, together with a casual wonder whether Wellfield had never thought of going on the stage, where his voice would certainly have made him a fortune and brought him fame to boot. ‘But he would consider it degrading, I suppose,’ thought John. ‘I fear he is an out-and-out Tory.’ Miss Shuttleworth ceased to knit, folded her mittened hands one over the other upon her knee, and appeared at least to listen. The green and yellow cap-ribbons were portentously still, but no sign appeared upon her countenance of either approval or disapproval.
Mr. Bolton, who had at first scarce been conscious of what was going on, slowly and gradually emerged from an imaginary career over the arid plains of the Pampas, over which he had been in fancy galloping madly, hotly pursued by a number of vindictive South American savages, whose arrows threatened death in the rear, while before him was a deep and rapid river, through which his exhausted horse must swim, if he were to reach the territory of the nearest friendly tribe, alive. He gradually awoke to the consciousness that music of no common order was being made in his daughter’s drawing-room. He did not quite understand it all—suddenly he heard Italian words which he recognised—passionate, tragic words:
He felt that they were beautiful; their passion and their fire stirred the blood in his veins. He listened to the glorious end of a glorious scena, and then he shut up his book and waited for more. Then it was that Wellfield turned to something quite different, and sang:
It is an exquisite romance, and he sang it to perfection. To Mr. Bolton’s mind it brought, as well it might, remembrances thronging fast of youth and love, and of a time when he had been young, and when he had wandered through the lanes of Wellfield on his Saturday half-holiday, or for his Sunday out, with a girl on his arm, whose presence was his paradise. In short, Mr. Bolton soon, to his own profound astonishment, found tears stealing from his eyes. He was thinking of himself, and of his own far-back joys and sorrows; he was in a twilight land, where he had long been a stranger—a country which all of us know, and which yet none of us with bodily eyes have seen—the country which is illumined by ‘the light that never was on sea or land’—the country in which strange plants grow—dried flowers to wit, and locks of hair tied up with faded ribbons, and bundles of old letters—the kingdom of romance.
Nita had changed her position; she had turned over on her side, with her face towards the sofa-back, so that it could not be seen. Her handkerchief was pressed against her mouth, her temples throbbed, her eyes were closed. She lay quite still, save that now and then a slight shiver shook her from her head to her feet. If it filled John Leyburn’s good honest heart with sweet, vague dreams which he had never known before, if it wafted her dry, business-like, prosaic father back into a nearly-forgotten land of faery and of dreams, what did it not do for her, attuned by nature as she was, to passion and romance? and how was she ever to find peace or freedom again?
The last thing that Jerome sung was Zelter’s glorious song, Infelice in tanto affani. When he had finished it, when the last piercing, heart-breaking notes had died away, the despairing
he rose quickly from the piano, and closed it, observing:
‘I quite forgot myself. I am afraid I have been inflicting myself upon you.’
John Leyburn rose too.
‘What a lucky dog you are, Wellfield, to have that voice. Amongst more impressionable people than the English, you could charm hearts away with it, I am sure.’
‘I do not understand music,’ observed Aunt Margaret, rising also, ‘and I am going.’
Mr. Bolton’s voice then came from afar, pedantic and particular as usual.
‘We are very much indebted to you, Mr. Wellfield. You have given us a very great treat, and I sincerely hope you will favour us in the same way on some other occasion.’
With which he pulled his lamp up to him again, and re-opened his book.
‘Nita, I am going. John will see me home,’ said Miss Shuttleworth, while John, stooping over Nita, remarked:
‘My child, you appear to have collapsed altogether.’
Aunt Margaret had gone upstairs to take off the green and yellow cap; Nita turned round, and sat up. Her face was pale, and there was an expression of suffering upon it.
‘I tell you what it is,’ said John, ‘you want a little fresh air, Nita. Suppose you and Wellfield come with Aunt Margaret and me to the gate. You are afraid to go alone, you know, being such a coward.’
Nita smiled faintly.
‘Here’s a shawl,’ pursued John. ‘I’ll put it round your shoulders—so.’
She passively allowed him to fold the little cashmere about her shoulders, and when Aunt Margaret came down, and handed John her umbrella to carry, she called out:
‘Papa, Mr. Wellfield and I are going to see the others to the gate.’
‘Folly!’ observed Miss Shuttleworth, casually, but no one took any notice of her. They all went out at the window together, Nita with her hand through John’s arm.
They went lingeringly through the garden, and down the river walk to the great cavernous gateway called ‘Abbot’s Gate.’ It was indeed a glorious night, one in a thousand, perfect, still, and clear, and around them was everything which can add to the glamour and beauty of a moonlight night.
They parleyed a few moments with John and Miss Shuttleworth at the gate, and then it was shut after them with a loud resounding clang, which echoed through the hollow archway. They were alone again.
‘Draw the big bolt,’ said Nita, scarcely above a whisper, ‘then we shall know it is safe.’
‘Safe from whom? Leyburn, or Miss Shuttleworth—or both?’ asked Wellfield.
‘From all—all evil things,’ answered Nita.
‘Complimentary to them,’ he said, lightly, finding the big bolt, and drawing it without difficulty. He knew it of old, and having pushed it to its place, they stood within the dark space, and looked at the flood of grey moonlight which bathed the river walk that stretched before them.
Jerome drew Nita’s arm through his, and they passed out of the darkness into that moonlight. Nita turned her steps towards a small wicket, leading by a nearer path to her home, and the drawing-room window.
‘You don’t mean to go that way, and leave the river walk, and this glorious moonlight!’ he exclaimed. ‘That would be a sin. It is not late. Come this way.’
For a moment she wavered; then turned and went with him.
Jerome did not confess it to himself, but down in the depths of his heart he knew he was doing what was base.
They went very slowly along the grassy walk, on which the dew lay like grey gossamer in the moon-rays, and for a little time neither spoke, till Jerome said softly:
‘Will you trust me to drive you another day, Miss Bolton?’
‘I? Why not?’ said Nita, faintly.
‘Will you promise to go out with me another day, that I may be sure you have forgiven me my carelessness?’
‘I—is there anything to forgive?’
‘I think so. If I had not been talking sentimental nonsense to you, you would not have forgotten to look after your horses, and then——’
‘Do not let us say any more about it,’ said she. ‘I shall never forget it to my dying day, but I hate to think of it.’
‘It has shaken you sadly; but will you go out with me another day?’
‘Oh yes! To-morrow if you like.’
‘That is truly good of you,’ said he, softly. ‘Your shawl is not warm enough,’ he added, stopping, as she shivered a little, and he altered it and folded it more closely about her. As they stood there, his eyes looked into hers, and by the moonlight he saw that hers were full of fear, and that her face was white, and her expression one of pain.
‘I ought not to have brought you out,’ he said, regretfully.
‘No; I think I should like to go in again, please,’ said Nita.
‘You shall, now that I know how good you are,’ he answered, lifting up the hand that lay upon his arm, and stooping his beautiful head towards it, he touched the tips of her fingers with his lips. ‘What a long time it seems since we walked here this morning,’ he added, ‘does it not?’
‘A very long time,’ responded Nita, in a voice of exceeding weariness.
They entered the drawing-room again, and Wellfield, speaking to Mr. Bolton, said:
‘I am sure Miss Bolton ought not to sit up any longer. She has been more shaken than she will own by her accident this afternoon, and——’
‘Nita, say good-night, and go to bed,’ said her father, presenting her simultaneously with a candle and a kiss. ‘Here, shake hands with her, Mr. Wellfield. Good-night, child. Off with you.’
Nita, locked in her room, began her preparations for writing. She had inscribed the words:
‘How much I have to record! What a day this has been! What a century of events and emotions have been compressed into a brief and fleeting fourteen or fifteen hours. And how little I thought when——’
She broke off abruptly, cast her pen down, and started from her chair, pacing about the room; her hands before her face, and short, tearless sobs now and then breaking from her lips.
‘Oh! what shall I do?’ she whispered. ‘What will become of me? I believe I had better have died before I had seen him. But if he loved me—oh! if God would let him love me—what am I saying?... I am afraid. I wish some one were here. I dare not be alone.’
She opened the door softly. On the mat before it lay Speedwell; he raised his head, blinked at her, and moved his great tail up and down slowly.
‘Speedwell, come in!’ she whispered, beckoning to him. The mastiff obeyed. Nita locked him into the room with her, and as he sat looking up at her, inquiring why she was troubled, she cast her arms about his faithful neck, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
When the paroxysm was over, and she looked at him, tears were coursing down Speedwell’s nose too.
‘You will never tell anyone, will you, Speedwell?’ she muttered. ‘You are wiser and stronger than your mistress, old dog and old friend.’
Speedwell watched beside the bed on which his mistress passed a restless night; her brain full of the rapidly changing images of alternating hope and anguish, rapture and despair and love, with which her day had been filled.
When morning came, and she looked in her glass, it showed her a very wan, white face, with dark rings round the eyes, and a piteous curve about the lips—a face changed indeed from that which, if not beautiful, had given joy to many, and had hitherto been thought a sweet face by those who loved and knew it best.