The dinner-party had come to an end; the neighbors had taken their departure; and the ladies at Mount Morven had retired for the night.
On the way to her room Mrs. Presty knocked at her daughter’s door. “I want to speak to you, Catherine. Are you in bed?”
“No, mamma. Come in.”
Robed in a dressing-gown of delicately-mingled white and blue, and luxuriously accommodated on the softest pillows that could be placed in an armchair, Mrs. Linley was meditating on the events of the evening. “This has been the most successful party we have ever given,” she said to her mother. “And did you notice how charmingly pretty Miss Westerfield looked in her new dress?”
“It’s about that girl I want to speak to you,” Mrs. Presty answered, severely. “I had a higher opinion of her when she first came here than I have now.”
Mrs. Linley pointed to an open door, communicating with a second and smaller bed-chamber. “Not quite so loud,” she answered, “or you might wake Kitty. What has Miss Westerfield done to forfeit your good opinion?”
Discreet Mrs. Presty asked leave to return to the subject at a future opportunity.
“I will merely allude now,” she said, “to a change for the worse in your governess, which you might have noticed when she left the drawing-room this evening. She had a word or two with Herbert at the door; and she left him looking as black as thunder.”
Mrs. Linley laid herself back on her pillows and burst out laughing. “Black as thunder? Poor little Sydney, what a ridiculous description of her! I beg your pardon, mamma; don’t be offended.”
“On the contrary, my dear, I am agreeably surprised. Your poor father—a man of remarkable judgment on most subjects—never thought much of your intelligence. He appears to have been wrong; you have evidently inherited some of my sense of humor. However, that is not what I wanted to say; I am the bearer of good news. When we find it necessary to get rid of Miss Westerfield—”
Mrs. Linley’s indignation expressed itself by a look which, for the moment at least, reduced her mother to silence. Always equal to the occasion, however, Mrs. Presty’s face assumed an expression of innocent amazement, which would have produced a round of applause on the stage. “What have I said to make you angry?” she inquired. “Surely, my dear, you and your husband are extraordinary people.”
“Do you mean to tell me, mamma, that you have said to Herbert what you said just now to me?”
“Certainly. I mentioned it to Herbert in the course of the evening. He was excessively rude. He said: ‘Tell Mrs. MacEdwin to mind her own business—and set her the example yourself.’”
Mrs. Linley returned her mother’s look of amazement, without her mother’s eye for dramatic effect. “What has Mrs. MacEdwin to do with it?” she asked.
“If you will only let me speak, Catherine, I shall be happy to explain myself. You saw Mrs. MacEdwin talking to me at the party. That good lady’s head—a feeble head, as all her friends admit—has been completely turned by Miss Westerfield. ‘The first duty of a governess’ (this foolish woman said to me) ‘is to win the affections of her pupils. My governess has entirely failed to make the children like her. A dreadful temper; I have given her notice to leave my service. Look at that sweet girl and your little granddaughter! I declare I could cry when I see how they understand each other and love each other.’ I quote our charming friend’s nonsense, verbatim (as we used to say when we were in Parliament in Mr. Norman’s time), for the sake of what it led to. If, by any lucky chance, Miss Westerfield happens to be disengaged in the future, Mrs. MacEdwin’s house is open to her—at her own time, and on her own terms. I promised to speak to you on the subject, and I perform my promise. Think over it; I strongly advise you to think over it.”
Even Mrs. Linley’s good nature declined to submit to this. “I shall certainly not think over what cannot possibly happen,” she said. “Good-night, mamma.”
“Good-night, Catherine. Your temper doesn’t seem to improve as you get older. Perhaps the excitement of the party has been too much for your nerves. Try to get some sleep before Herbert comes up from the smoking-room and disturbs you.”
Mrs. Linley refused even to let this pass unanswered. “Herbert is too considerate to disturb me, when his friends keep him up late,” she said. “On those occasions, as you may see for yourself, he has a bed in his dressing-room.”
Mrs. Presty passed through the dressing-room on her way out. “A very comfortable-looking bed,” she remarked, in a tone intended to reach her daughter’s ears. “I wonder Herbert ever leaves it.”
The way to her own bed-chamber led her by the door of Sydney’s room. She suddenly stopped; the door was not shut. This was in itself a suspicious circumstance.
Young or old, ladies are not in the habit of sleeping with their bedroom doors ajar. A strict sense of duty led Mrs. Presty to listen outside. No sound like the breathing of a person asleep was to be heard. A strict sense of duty conducted Mrs. Presty next into the room, and even encouraged her to approach the bed on tip-toe. The bed was empty; the clothes had not been disturbed since it had been made in the morning!
The old lady stepped out into the corridor in a state of excitement, which greatly improved her personal appearance. She looked almost young again as she mentally reviewed the list of vices and crimes which a governess might commit, who had retired before eleven o’clock, and was not in her bedroom at twelve. On further reflection, it appeared to be barely possible that Miss Westerfield might be preparing her pupil’s exercises for the next day. Mrs. Presty descended to the schoolroom on the first floor.
No. Here again there was nothing to see but an empty room.
Where was Miss Westerfield?
Was it within the limits of probability that she had been bold enough to join the party in the smoking-room? The bare idea was absurd.
In another minute, nevertheless, Mrs. Presty was at the door, listening. The men’s voices were loud: they were talking politics. She peeped through the keyhole; the smokers had, beyond all doubt, been left to themselves. If the house had not been full of guests, Mrs. Presty would now have raised an alarm. As things were, the fear of a possible scandal which the family might have reason to regret forced her to act with caution. In the suggestive retirement of her own room, she arrived at a wise and wary decision. Opening her door by a few inches, she placed a chair behind the opening in a position which commanded a view of Sydney’s room. Wherever the governess might be, her return to her bed-chamber, before the servants were astir in the morning, was a chance to be counted on. The night-lamp in the corridor was well alight; and a venerable person, animated by a sense of duty, was a person naturally superior to the seductions of sleep. Before taking the final precaution of extinguishing her candle, Mrs. Presty touched up her complexion, and resolutely turned her back on her nightcap. “This is a case in which I must keep up my dignity,” she decided, as she took her place in the chair.
One man in the smoking-room appeared to be thoroughly weary of talking politics. That man was the master of the house.
Randal noticed the worn, preoccupied look in his brother’s face, and determined to break up the meeting. The opportunity for which he was waiting occurred in another minute. He was asked as a moderate politician to decide between two guests, both members of Parliament, who were fast drifting into mere contradiction of each other’s second-hand opinions. In plain terms, they stated the matter in dispute: “Which of our political parties deserves the confidence of the English people?” In plain terms, on his sides Randal answered: “The party that lowers the taxes.” Those words acted on the discussion like water on a fire. As members of Parliament, the two contending politicians were naturally innocent of the slightest interest in the people or the taxes; they received the new idea submitted to them in helpless silence. Friends who were listening began to laugh. The oldest man present looked at his watch. In five minutes more the lights were out and the smoking-room was deserted.
Linley was the last to retire—fevered by the combined influences of smoke and noise. His mind, oppressed all through the evening, was as ill at ease as ever. Lingering, wakeful and irritable, in the corridor (just as Sydney had lingered before him), he too stopped at the open door and admired the peaceful beauty of the garden.
The sleepy servant, appointed to attend in the smoking room, asked if he should close the door. Linley answered: “Go to bed, and leave it to me.” Still lingering at the top of the steps, he too was tempted by the refreshing coolness of the air. He took the key out of the lock; secured the door after he had passed through it; put the key in his pocket, and went down into the garden.
With slow steps Linley crossed the lawn; his mind gloomily absorbed in thoughts which had never before troubled his easy nature—thoughts heavily laden with a burden of self-reproach.
Arrived at the limits of the lawn, two paths opened before him. One led into a quaintly pretty inclosure, cultivated on the plan of the old gardens at Versailles, and called the French Garden. The other path led to a grassy walk, winding its way capriciously through a thick shrubbery. Careless in what direction he turned his steps, Linley entered the shrubbery, because it happened to be nearest to him.
Except at certain points, where the moonlight found its way through open spaces in the verdure, the grassy path which he was now following wound onward in shadow. How far he had advanced he had not noticed, when he heard a momentary rustling of leaves at some little distance in advance of him. The faint breeze had died away; the movement among the leaves had been no doubt produced by the creeping or the flying of some creature of the night. Looking up, at the moment when he was disturbed by this trifling incident, he noticed a bright patch of moonlight ahead as he advanced to a new turn in the path.
The instant afterward he was startled by the appearance of a figure, emerging into the moonlight from the further end of the shrubbery, and rapidly approaching him. He was near enough to see that it was the figure of a woman. Was it one of the female servants, hurrying back to the house after an interview with a sweetheart? In his black evening dress, he was, in all probability, completely hidden by the deep shadow in which he stood. Would he be less likely to frighten the woman if he called to her than if he allowed her to come close up to him in the dark? He decided on calling to her.
“Who is out so late?” he asked.
A cry of alarm answered him. The figure stood still for a moment, and then turned back as if to escape him by flight.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “Surely you know my voice?”
The figure stood still again. He showed himself in the moonlight, and discovered—Sydney Westerfield.
“You!” he exclaimed.
She trembled; the words in which she answered him were words in fragments.
“The garden was so quiet and pretty—I thought there would be no harm—please let me go back—I’m afraid I shall be shut out—”
She tried to pass him. “My poor child!” he said, “what is there to be frightened about? I have been tempted out by the lovely night, like you. Take my arm. It is so close in here among the trees. If we go back to the lawn, the air will come to you freely.”
She took his arm; he could feel her heart throbbing against it. Kindly silent, he led her back to the open space. Some garden chairs were placed here and there; he suggested that she should rest for a while.
“I’m afraid I shall be shut out,” she repeated. “Pray let me get back.”
He yielded at once to the wish that she expressed. “You must let me take you back,” he explained. “They are all asleep at the house by this time. No! no! don’t be frightened again. I have got the key of the door. The moment I have opened it, you shall go in by yourself.”
She looked at him gratefully. “You are not offended with me now, Mr. Linley,” she said. “You are like your kind self again.”
They ascended the steps which led to the door. Linley took the key from his pocket. It acted perfectly in drawing back the lock; but the door, when he pushed it, resisted him. He put his shoulder against it, and exerted his strength, helped by his weight. The door remained immovable.
Had one of the servants—sitting up later than usual after the party, and not aware that Mr. Linley had gone into the garden—noticed the door, and carefully fastened the bolts on the inner side? That was exactly what had happened.
There was nothing for it but to submit to circumstances. Linley led the way down the steps again. “We are shut out,” he said.
Sydney listened in silent dismay. He seemed to be merely amused; he treated their common misfortune as lightly as if it had been a joke.
“There’s nothing so very terrible in our situation,” he reminded her. “The servants’ offices will be opened between six and seven o’clock; the weather is perfect; and the summer-house in the French Garden has one easy-chair in it, to my certain knowledge, in which you may rest and sleep. I’m sure you must be tired—let me take you there.”
She drew back, and looked up at the house.
“Can’t we make them hear us?” she asked.
“Quite impossible. Besides—” He was about to remind her of the evil construction which might be placed on their appearance together, returning from the garden at an advanced hour of the night; but her innocence pleaded with him to be silent. He only said, “You forget that we all sleep at the top of our old castle. There is no knocker to the door, and no bell that rings upstairs. Come to the summer-house. In an hour or two more we shall see the sun rise.”
She took his arm in silence. They reached the French Garden without another word having passed between them.
The summer-house had been designed, in harmony with the French taste of the last century, from a classical model. It was a rough copy in wood of The Temple of Vesta at Rome. Opening the door for his companion, Linley paused before he followed her in. A girl brought up by a careful mother would have understood and appreciated his hesitation; she would have concealed any feeling of embarrassment that might have troubled her at the moment, and would have asked him to come back and let her know when the rising of the sun began. Neglected by her mother, worse than neglected by her aunt, Sydney’s fearless ignorance put a question which would have lowered the poor girl cruelly in the estimation of a stranger. “Are you going to leave me here by myself?” she asked. “Why don’t you come in?”
Linley thought of his visit to the school, and remembered the detestable mistress. He excused Sydney; he felt for her. She held the door open for him. Sure of himself, he entered the summer-house.
As a mark of respect on her part, she offered the armchair to him: it was the one comfortable seat in the neglected place. He insisted that she should take it; and, searching the summer-house, found a wooden stool for himself. The small circular room received but little of the dim outer light—they were near each other—they were silent. Sydney burst suddenly into a nervous little laugh.
“Why do you laugh?” he asked good-humoredly.
“It seems so strange, Mr. Linley, for us to be out here.” In the moment when she made that reply her merriment vanished; she looked out sadly, through the open door, at the stillness of the night. “What should I have done,” she wondered, “if I had been shut out of the house by myself?” Her eyes rested on him timidly; there was some thought in her which she shrank from expressing. She only said: “I wish I knew how to be worthy of your kindness.”
Her voice warned him that she was struggling with strong emotion. In one respect, men are all alike; they hate to see a woman in tears. Linley treated her like a child; he smiled, and patted her on the shoulder. “Nonsense!” he said gayly. “There is no merit in being kind to my good little governess.”
She took that comforting hand—it was a harmless impulse that she was unable to resist—she bent over it, and kissed it gratefully. He drew his hand away from her as if the soft touch of her lips had been fire that burned it. “Oh,” she cried, “have I done wrong?”
“No, my dear—no, no.”
There was an embarrassment in his manner, the inevitable result of his fear of himself if he faltered in the resolute exercise of self-restraint, which was perfectly incomprehensible to Sydney. He moved his seat back a little, so as to place himself further away. Something in that action, at that time, shocked and humiliated her. Completely misunderstanding him, she thought he was reminding her of the distance that separated them in social rank. Oh, the shame of it! the shame of it! Would other governesses have taken a liberty with their master? A fit of hysterical sobbing burst its way through her last reserves of self-control; she started to her feet, and ran out of the summer-house.
Alarmed and distressed, he followed her instantly.
She was leaning against the pedestal of a statue in the garden, panting, shuddering, a sight to touch the heart of a far less sensitive man than the man who now approached her. “Sydney!” he said. “Dear little Sydney!” She tried to speak to him in return. Breath and strength failed her together; she lifted her hand, vainly grasping at the broad pedestal behind her; she would have fallen if he had not caught her in his arms. Her head sank faintly backward on his breast. He looked at the poor little tortured face, turned up toward him in the lovely moonlight. Again and again he had honorably restrained himself—he was human; he was a man—in one mad moment it was done, hotly, passionately done—he kissed her.
For the first time in her maiden’s life, a man’s lips touched her lips. All that had been perplexing and strange, all that had been innocently wonderful to herself in the feeling that bound Sydney to her first friend, was a mystery no more. Love lifted its veil, Nature revealed its secrets, in the one supreme moment of that kiss. She threw her arms around his neck with a low cry of delight—and returned his kiss.
“Sydney,” he whispered, “I love you.”
She heard him in rapturous silence. Her kiss had answered for her.
At that crisis in their lives, they were saved by an accident; a poor little common accident that happens every day. The spring in the bracelet that Sydney wore gave way as she held him to her; the bright trinket fell on the grass at her feet. The man never noticed it. The woman saw her pretty ornament as it dropped from her arm—saw, and remembered Mrs. Linley’s gift.
Cold and pale—with horror of herself confessed in the action, simple as it was—she drew back from him in dead silence.
He was astounded. In tones that trembled with agitation, he said to her: “Are you ill?”
“Shameless and wicked,” she answered. “Not ill.” She pointed to the bracelet on the grass. “Take it up; I am not fit to touch it. Look on the inner side.”
He remembered the inscription: “To Sydney Westerfield, with Catherine Linley’s love.” His head sank on his breast; he understood her at last. “You despise me,” he said, “and I deserve it.”
“No; I despise myself. I have lived among vile people; and I am vile like them.”
She moved a few steps away with a heavy sigh. “Kitty!” she said to herself. “Poor little Kitty!”
He followed her. “Why are you thinking of the child,” he asked, “at such a time as this?”
She replied without returning or looking round; distrust of herself had inspired her with terror of Linley, from the time when the bracelet had dropped on the grass.
“I can make but one atonement,” she said. “We must see each other no more. I must say good-by to Kitty—I must go. Help me to submit to my hard lot—I must go.”
He set her no example of resignation; he shrank from the prospect that she presented to him.
“Where are you to go if you leave us?” he asked.
“Away from England! The further away from you the better for both of us. Help me with your interest; have me sent to the new world in the west, with other emigrants. Give me something to look forward to that is not shame and despair. Let me do something that is innocent and good—I may find a trace of my poor lost brother. Oh, let me go! Let me go!”
Her resolution shamed him. He rose to her level, in spite of himself.
“I dare not tell you that you are wrong,” he said. “I only ask you to wait a little till we are calmer, before you speak of the future again.” He pointed to the summer-house. “Go in, my poor girl. Rest, and compose yourself, while I try to think.”
He left her, and paced up and down the formal walks in the garden. Away from the maddening fascination of her presence, his mind grew clearer. He resisted the temptation to think of her tenderly; he set himself to consider what it would be well to do next.
The moonlight was seen no more. Misty and starless, the dark sky spread its majestic obscurity over the earth. Linley looked wearily toward the eastern heaven. The darkness daunted him; he saw in it the shadow of his own sense of guilt. The gray glimmering of dawn, the songs of birds when the pure light softly climbed the sky, roused and relieved him. With the first radiant rising of the sun he returned to the summer-house.
“Do I disturb you?” he asked, waiting at the door.
“No.”
“Will you come out and speak to me?”
She appeared at the door, waiting to hear what he had to say to her.
“I must ask you to submit to a sacrifice of your own feelings,” he began. “When I kept away from you in the drawing room, last night—when my strange conduct made you fear that you had offended me—I was trying to remember what I owed to my good wife. I have been thinking of her again. We must spare her a discovery too terrible to be endured, while her attention is claimed by the guests who are now in the house. In a week’s time they will leave us. Will you consent to keep up appearances? Will you live with us as usual, until we are left by ourselves?”
“It shall be done, Mr. Linley. I only ask one favor of you. My worst enemy is my own miserable wicked heart. Oh, don’t you understand me? I am ashamed to look at you!”
He had only to examine his own heart, and to know what she meant. “Say no more,” he answered sadly. “We will keep as much away from each other as we can.”
She shuddered at that open recognition of the guilty love which united them, in spite of their horror of it, and took refuge from him in the summer-house. Not a word more passed between them until the unbarring of doors was heard in the stillness of the morning, and the smoke began to rise from the kitchen chimney. Then he returned, and spoke to her.
“You can get back to the house,” he said. “Go up by the front stairs, and you will not meet the servants at this early hour. If they do see you, you have your cloak on; they will think you have been in the garden earlier than usual. As you pass the upper door, draw back the bolts quietly, and I can let myself in.”
She bent her head in silence. He looked after her as she hastened away from him over the lawn; conscious of admiring her, conscious of more than he dared realize to himself. When she disappeared, he turned back to wait where she had been waiting. With his sense of the duty he owed to his wife penitently present to his mind, the memory of that fatal kiss still left its vivid impression on him. “What a scoundrel I am!” he said to himself as he stood alone in the summer-house, looking at the chair which she had just left.
A clever old lady, possessed of the inestimable advantages of worldly experience, must submit nevertheless to the laws of Nature. Time and Sleep together—powerful agents in the small hours of the morning—had got the better of Mrs. Presty’s resolution to keep awake. Free from discovery, Sydney ascended the stairs. Free from discovery, Sydney entered her own room.
Half-an-hour later, Linley opened the door of his dressing-room. His wife was still sleeping. His mother-in-law woke two hours later; looked at her watch; and discovered that she had lost her opportunity. Other old women, under similar circumstances, might have felt discouraged. This old woman believed in her own suspicions more devoutly than ever. When the breakfast-bell rang, Sydney found Mrs. Presty in the corridor, waiting to say good morning.
“I wonder what you were doing last night, when you ought to have been in bed?” the old lady began, with a treacherous amiability of manner. “Oh, I am not mistaken! your door was open, my dear, and I looked in.”
“Why did you look in, Mrs. Presty?”
“My young friend, I was naturally anxious about you. I am anxious still. Were you in the house? or out of the house?”
“I was walking in the garden,” Sydney replied.
“Admiring the moonlight?”
“Yes; admiring the moonlight.”
“Alone, of course?” Sydney’s friend suggested.
And Sydney took refuge in prevarication. “Why should you doubt it?” she said.
Mrs. Presty wasted no more time in asking questions. She was pleasantly reminded of the words of worldly wisdom which she had addressed to her daughter on the day of Sydney’s arrival at Mount Morven. “The good qualities of that unfortunate young creature” (she had said) “can not have always resisted the horrid temptations and contaminations about her. Hundreds of times she must have lied through ungovernable fear.” Elevated a little higher than ever in her own estimation, Mrs. Presty took Sydney’s arm, and led her down to breakfast with motherly familiarity. Linley met them at the foot of the stairs. His mother-in-law first stole a look at Sydney, and then shook hands with him cordially. “My dear Herbert, how pale you are! That horrid smoking. You look as if you had been up all night.”
Mrs. Linley paid her customary visit to the schoolroom that morning.
The necessary attention to her guests had left little leisure for the exercise of observation at the breakfast-table; the one circumstance which had forced itself on her notice had been the boisterous gayety of her husband. Too essentially honest to practice deception of any kind cleverly, Linley had overacted the part of a man whose mind was entirely at ease. The most unsuspicious woman living, his wife was simply amused “How he does enjoy society!” she thought. “Herbert will be a young man to the end of his life.”
In the best possible spirits—still animated by her successful exertions to entertain her friends—Mrs. Linley opened the schoolroom door briskly. “How are the lessons getting on?” she began—and checked herself with a start, “Kitty!” she exclaimed, “Crying?”
The child ran to her mother with tears in her eyes. “Look at Syd! She sulks; she cries; she won’t talk to me—send for the doctor.”
“You tiresome child, I don’t want the doctor. I’m not ill.”
“There, mamma!” cried Kitty. “She never scolded me before to-day.”
In other words, here was a complete reversal of the usual order of things in the schoolroom. Patient Sydney was out of temper; gentle Sydney spoke bitterly to the little friend whom she loved. Mrs. Linley drew a chair to the governess’s side, and took her hand. The strangely altered girl tore her hand away and burst into a violent fit of crying. Puzzled and frightened, Kitty (to the best of a child’s ability) followed her example. Mrs. Linley took her daughter on her knee, and gave Sydney’s outbreak of agitation time to subside. There were no feverish appearances in her face, there was no feverish heat in her skin when their hands had touched each other for a moment. In all probability the mischief was nervous mischief, and the outburst of weeping was an hysterical effort at relief.
“I am afraid, my dear, you have had a bad night,” Mrs. Linley said.
“Bad? Worse than bad!”
Sydney stopped; looked at her good mistress and friend in terror; and made a confused effort to explain away what she had just said. As sensibly and kindly self-possessed as ever, Mrs. Linley told her that she only wanted rest and quiet. “Let me take you to my room,” she proposed. “We will have the sofa moved into the balcony, and you will soon go to sleep in the delicious warm air. You may put away your books, Kitty; this is a holiday. Come with me, and be petted and spoiled by the ladies in the morning-room.”
Neither the governess nor the pupil was worthy of the sympathy so frankly offered to them. Still strangely confused, Sydney made commonplace apologies and asked leave to go out and walk in the park. Hearing this, Kitty declared that where her governess went she would go too. Mrs. Linley smoothed her daughter’s pretty auburn hair, and said, playfully: “I think I ought to be jealous.” To her surprise, Sydney looked up as if the words had been addressed to herself “You mustn’t be fonder, my dear, of your governess,” Mrs. Linley went on, “than you are of your mother.” She kissed the child, and, rising to go, discovered that Sydney had moved to another part of the room. She was standing at the piano, with a page of music in her hand. The page was upside down—and she had placed herself in a position which concealed her face. Slow as Mrs. Linley was to doubt any person (more especially a person who interested her), she left the room with a vague fear of something wrong, and with a conviction that she would do well to consult her husband.
Hearing the door close, Sydney looked round. She and Kitty were alone again; and Kitty was putting away her books without showing any pleasure at the prospect of a holiday.
Sydney took the child fondly in her arms. “Would you be very sorry,” she asked, “if I was obliged to go away, some day, and leave you?” Kitty turned pale with terror at the dreadful prospect which those words presented. “There! there! I am only joking,” Sydney said, shocked at the effect which her attempt to suggest the impending separation had produced. “You shall come with me, darling; we will walk in the park together.”
Kitty’s face brightened directly. She proposed extending their walk to the paddock, and feeding the cows. Sydney readily consented. Any amusement was welcome to her which diverted the child’s attention from herself.
They had been nearly an hour in the park, and were returning to the house through a clump of trees, when Sydney’s companion, running on before her, cried: “Here’s papa!” Her first impulse was to draw back behind a tree, in the hope of escaping notice. Linley sent Kitty away to gather a nosegay of daisies, and joined Sydney under the trees.
“I have been looking for you everywhere,” he said. “My wife—”
Sydney interrupted him. “Discovered!” she exclaimed.
“There is nothing that need alarm you,” he replied. “Catherine is too good and too true herself to suspect others easily. She sees a change in you that she doesn’t understand—she asks if I have noticed it—and that is all. But her mother has the cunning of the devil. There is a serious reason for controlling yourself.”
He spoke so earnestly that he startled her. “Are you angry with me?” she asked.
“Angry! Does the man live who could be angry with you?”
“It might be better for both of us if you were angry with me. I have to control myself; I will try again. Oh, if you only knew what I suffer when Mrs. Linley is kind to me!”
He persisted in trying to rouse her to a sense of the danger that threatened them, while the visitors remained in the house. “In a few days, Sydney, there will be no more need for the deceit that is now forced on us. Till that time comes, remember—Mrs. Presty suspects us.”
Kitty ran back to them with her hands full of daisies before they could say more.
“There is your nosegay, papa. No; I don’t want you to thank me—I want to know what present you are going to give me.” Her father’s mind was preoccupied; he looked at her absently. The child’s sense of her own importance was wounded: she appealed to her governess. “Would you believe it?” she asked. “Papa has forgotten that next Tuesday is my birthday!”
“Very well, Kitty; I must pay the penalty of forgetting. What present would you like to have?”
“I want a doll’s perambulator.”
“Ha! In my time we were satisfied with a doll.”
They all three looked round. Another person had suddenly joined in the talk. There was no mistaking the person’s voice: Mrs. Presty appeared among the trees, taking a walk in the park. Had she heard what Linley and the governess had said to each other while Kitty was gathering daisies?
“Quite a domestic scene!” the sly old lady remarked. “Papa, looking like a saint in a picture, with flowers in his hand. Papa’s spoiled child always wanting something, and always getting it. And papa’s governess, so sweetly fresh and pretty that I should certainly fall in love with her, if I had the advantage of being a man. You have no doubt remarked Herbert—I think I hear the bell; shall we go to lunch?—you have no doubt, I say, remarked what curiously opposite styles Catherine and Miss Westerfield present; so charming, and yet such complete contrasts. I wonder whether they occasionally envy each other’s good looks? Does my daughter ever regret that she is not Miss Westerfield? And do you, my dear, some times wish you were Mrs. Linley?”
“While we are about it, let me put a third question,” Linley interposed. “Are you ever aware of it yourself, Mrs. Presty, when you are talking nonsense?”
He was angry, and he showed it in that feeble reply. Sydney felt the implied insult offered to her in another way. It roused her to the exercise of self-control as nothing had roused her yet. She ignored Mrs. Presty’s irony with a composure worthy of Mrs. Presty herself. “Where is the woman,” she said, “who would not wish to be as beautiful as Mrs. Linley—and as good?”
“Thank you, my dear, for a compliment to my daughter: a sincere compliment, no doubt. It comes in very neatly and nicely,” Mrs. Presty acknowledged, “after my son-in-law’s little outbreak of temper. My poor Herbert, when will you understand that I mean no harm? I am an essentially humorous person; my wonderful spirits are always carrying me away. I do assure you, Miss Westerfield, I don’t know what worry is. My troubles—deaths in the family, and that sort of thing—seem to slip off me in a most remarkable manner. Poor Mr. Norman used to attribute it to my excellent digestion. My second husband would never hear of such an explanation as that. His high ideal of women shrank from allusions to stomachs. He used to speak so nicely (quoting some poet) of the sunshine of my breast. Vague, perhaps,” said Mrs. Presty, modestly looking down at the ample prospect of a personal nature which presented itself below her throat, “but so flattering to one’s feelings. There’s the luncheon bell again, I declare! I’ll run on before and tell them you are coming. Some people might say they wished to be punctual. I am truth itself, and I own I don’t like to be helped to the underside of the fish. Au revoir! Do you remember, Miss Westerfield, when I asked you to repeat au revoir as a specimen of your French? I didn’t think much of your accent. Oh, dear me, I didn’t think much of your accent!”
Kitty looked after her affluent grandmother with eyes that stared respectfully in ignorant admiration. She pulled her father’s coat-tail, and addressed herself gravely to his private ear. “Oh, papa, what noble words grandmamma has!”
On the evening of Monday in the new week, the last of the visitors had left Mount Morven. Mrs. Linley dropped into a chair (in, what Randal called, “the heavenly tranquillity of the deserted drawing-room”) and owned that the effort of entertaining her guests had completely worn her out. “It’s too absurd, at my time of life,” she said with a faint smile; “but I am really and truly so tired that I must go to bed before dark, as if I was a child again.”
Mrs. Presty—maliciously observant of the governess, sitting silent and apart in a corner—approached her daughter in a hurry; to all appearance with a special object in view. Linley was at no loss to guess what that object might be. “Will you do me a favor, Catherine?” Mrs. Presty began. “I wish to say a word to you in your own room.”
“Oh, mamma, have some mercy on me, and put it off till to-morrow!”
Mrs. Presty reluctantly consented to this proposal, on one condition. “It is understood,” she stipulated “that I am to see you the first thing in the morning?”
Mrs. Linley was ready to accept that condition, or any condition, which promised her a night of uninterrupted repose. She crossed the room to her husband, and took his arm. “In my state of fatigue, Herbert, I shall never get up our steep stairs, unless you help me.”
As they ascended the stairs together, Linley found that his wife had a reason of her own for leaving the drawing-room.
“I am quite weary enough to go to bed,” she explained. “But I wanted to speak to you first. It’s about Miss Westerfield. (No, no, we needn’t stop on the landing.) Do you know, I think I have found out what has altered our little governess so strangely—I seem to startle you?”
“No.”
“I am only astonished,” Mrs. Linley resumed, “at my own stupidity in not having discovered it before. We must be kinder than ever to the poor girl now; can’t you guess why? My dear, how dull you are! Must I remind you that we have had two single men among our visitors? One of them is old and doesn’t matter. But the other—I mean Sir George, of course—is young, handsome, and agreeable. I am so sorry for Sydney Westerfield. It’s plain to me that she is hopelessly in love with a man who has run through his fortune, and must marry money if he marries at all. I shall speak to Sydney to-morrow; and I hope and trust I shall succeed in winning her confidence. Thank Heaven, here we are at my door at last! I can’t say more now; I’m ready to drop. Good-night, dear; you look tired, too. It’s a nice thing to have friends, I know; but, oh, what a relief it is sometimes to get rid of them!”
She kissed him, and let him go.
Left by himself, to compare his wife’s innocent mistake with the terrible enlightenment that awaited her, Linley’s courage failed him. He leaned on the quaintly-carved rail that protected the outer side of the landing, and looked down at the stone hall far below. If the old woodwork (he thought) would only give way under his weight, there would be an escape from the coming catastrophe, found in an instant.
A timely remembrance of Sydney recalled him to himself. For her sake, he was bound to prevent Mrs. Presty’s contemplated interview with his wife on the next morning.
Descending the stairs, he met his brother in the corridor on the first floor.
“The very man I want to see,” Randal said. “Tell me, Herbert, what is the matter with that curious old woman?”
“Do you mean Mrs. Presty?”
“Yes. She has just been telling me that our friend Mrs. MacEdwin has taken a fancy to Miss Westerfield, and would be only too glad to deprive us of our pretty governess.”
“Did Mrs. Presty say that in Miss Westerfield’s presence?”
“No. Soon after you and Catherine left the room, Miss Westerfield left it too. I daresay I am wrong, for I haven’t had time to think of it; but Mrs. Presty’s manner suggested to me that she would be glad to see the poor girl sent out of the house.”
“I am going to speak to her, Randal, on that very subject. Is she still in the drawing-room?”
“Yes.”
“Did she say anything more to you?”
“I didn’t give her the chance; I don’t like Mrs. Presty. You look worn and worried, Herbert. Is there anything wrong?”
“If there is, my dear fellow, you will hear of it tomorrow.”
So they parted.
Comfortably established in the drawing-room, Mrs. Presty had just opened her favorite newspaper. Her only companion was Linley’s black poodle, resting at her feet. On the opening of the door, the dog rose—advanced to caress his master—and looked up in Linley’s face. If Mrs. Presty’s attention had happened to be turned that way, she might have seen, in the faithful creature’s sudden and silent retreat, a warning of her son-in-law’s humor at that moment. But she was, or assumed to be, interested in her reading; and she deliberately overlooked Linley’s appearance. After waiting a little to attract her attention, he quietly took the newspaper out of her hand.
“What does this mean?” Mrs. Presty asked.
“It means, ma’am, that I have something to say to you.”
“Apparently, something that can’t be said with common civility? Be as rude as you please; I am well used to it.”
Linley wisely took no notice of this.
“Since you have lived at Mount Morven,” he proceeded, “I think you have found me, on the whole, an easy man to get on with. At the same time, when I do make up my mind to be master in my own house, I am master.”
Mrs. Presty crossed her hands placidly on her lap, and asked: “Master of what?”
“Master of your suspicions of Miss Westerfield. You are free, of course, to think of her and of me as you please. What I forbid is the expression of your thoughts—either by way of hints to my brother, or officious communications with my wife. Don’t suppose that I am afraid of the truth. Mrs. Linley shall know more than you think for, and shall know it to-morrow; not from you, but from me.”
Mrs. Presty shook her head compassionately. “My good sir, surely you know me too well to think that I am to be disposed of in that easy way? Must I remind you that your wife’s mother has ‘the cunning of the devil’?”
Linley recognized his own words. “So you were listening among the trees!” he said.
“Yes; I was listening; and I have only to regret that I didn’t hear more. Let us return to our subject. I don’t trust my daughter’s interests—my much-injured daughter’s interests—in your hands. They are not clean hands, Mr. Linley. I have a duty to do; and I shall do it to-morrow.”
“No, Mrs. Presty, you won’t do it to-morrow.”
“Who will prevent me?”
“I shall prevent you.”
“In what way, if you please?”
“I don’t think it necessary to answer that question. My servants will have their instructions; and I shall see myself that my orders are obeyed.”
“Thank you. I begin to understand; I am to be turned out of the house. Very well. We shall see what my daughter says.”
“You know as well as I do, Mrs. Presty, that if your daughter is forced to choose between us she will decide for her husband. You have the night before you for consideration. I have no more to say.”
Among Mrs. Presty’s merits, it is only just to reckon a capacity for making up her mind rapidly, under stress of circumstances. Before Linley had opened the door, on his way out, he was called back.
“I am shocked to trouble you again,” Mrs. Presty said, “but I don’t propose to interfere with my night’s rest by thinking about you. My position is perfectly clear to me, without wasting time in consideration. When a man so completely forgets what is due to the weaker sex as to threaten a woman, the woman has no alternative but to submit. You are aware that I had arranged to see my daughter to-morrow morning. I yield to brute force, sir. Tell your wife that I shall not keep my appointment. Are you satisfied?”
“Quite satisfied,” Linley said—and left the room.
His mother-in-law looked after him with a familiar expression of opinion, and a smile of supreme contempt.
“You fool!”
Only two words; and yet there seemed to be some hidden meaning in them—relating perhaps to what might happen on the next day—which gently tickled Mrs. Presty in the region assigned by phrenologists to the sense of self-esteem.