Chapter 14

Lady Lucy did not reply at once. She slowly drew forward the neglected tea-table, made tea, and offered it to Sir James. He took it impatiently, the Irish blood in him running hot and fast; and when she had finished her cup, and still the silence lasted, except for the trivial question-and-answer of the tea-making, he broke in upon it with a somewhat peremptory--

"Well?"

Lady Lucy clasped her hands on her lap. The hand which had been so far bare was now gloved like the other, and something in the spectacle of the long fingers, calmly interlocked and clad in spotless white kid, increased the secret exasperation in her companion.

"Believe me, dear Sir James," she said at last, lifting her clear brown eyes, "I am very grateful to you. It must have been a great effort for you to tell me this awful story, and I thank you for the confidence you have reposed in me."

Sir James pushed his chair back.

"I did it, of course, for a special reason," he said, sharply. "I hope I have given you cause to change your mind."

She shook her head slowly.

"What have you proved to me? That Mrs. Sparling's crime was not so hideous as some of us supposed?--that she did not fall to the lowest depths of all?--and that she endured great provocation? But could anything really be more vile than the history of those weeks of excitement and fraud?--of base yielding to temptation?--of cruelty to her husband and child?--even as you have told it? Her conduct led directly to adultery and violence. If, by God's mercy, she was saved from the worst crimes imputed to her, does it make much difference to the moral judgment we must form?"

He looked at her in amazement.

"No difference!--between murder and a kind of accident?--between adultery and fidelity?"

Lady Lucy hesitated--then resumed, with stubbornness: "You put it--like an advocate. But look at the indelible facts--look at the future. If my son married the daughter of such a woman and had children, what must happen? First of all, could he, could any one, be free from the dread of inherited lawlessness and passion? A woman does not gamble, steal, and take life in a moment of violence without some exceptional flaw in temperament and will, and we see again and again how such flaws reappear in the descendants of weak and wicked people. Then again--Oliver must renounce and throw away all that is implied in family memories and traditions. His wife could never speak to her children and his of her own mother and bringing up. They would be kept in ignorance, as she herself was kept, till the time came that they must know. Say what you will, Juliet Sparling was condemned to death for murder in a notorious case--after a trial which also branded her as a thief. Think of a boy at Eton or Oxford--a girl in her first youth--hearing for the first time--perhaps in some casual way--the story of the woman whose blood ran in theirs!--What a cloud on a family!--what a danger and drawback for young lives!"

Her delicate features, under the crown of white hair, were once more flooded with color, and the passion in her eyes held them steady under Sir James's penetrating look. Through his inner mind there ran the cry: "Pharisee!--Hypocrite!"

But he fought on.

"Lady Lucy!--your son loves this girl--remember that! And in herself you admit that she is blameless--all that you could desire for his wife--remember that also."

"I remember both. But I was brought up by people who never admitted that any feeling was beyond our control or ought to be indulged--against right and reason."

"Supposing Oliver entirely declines to take your view?--supposing he marries Miss Mallory?"

"He will not break my heart," she said, drawing a quicker breath. "He will get over it."

"But if he persists?"

"He must take the consequences. I cannot aid and abet him."

"And the girl herself? She has accepted him. She is young, innocent, full of tender and sensitive feeling. Is it possible that you should not weigh her claim against your fears and scruples?"

"I feel for her most sincerely."

Sir James suddenly threw out a restless foot, which caught Lady Lucy's fox terrier, who was snoozing under the tea-table. He hastily apologized, and the speaker resumed:

"But, in my opinion, she would do a far nobler thing if she regarded herself as bound to some extent to bear her mother's burden--to pay her mother's debt to society. It may sound harsh--but is it? Is a dedicated life necessarily an unhappy life? Would not everybody respect and revere her? She would sacrifice herself, as the Sister of Mercy does, or the missionary, and she would find her reward. But to enter a family with an unstained record, bearing with her such a name and such associations, would be, in my opinion, a wrong and selfish act!"

Lady Lucy drew herself to her full height. In the dusk of the declining afternoon the black satin and white ruffles of her dress, her white head in its lace cap, her thin neck and shoulders, her tall slenderness, and the rigidity of her attitude, made a formidable study in personality. Sir James's whole soul rose in one scornful and indignant protest. But he felt himself beaten. The only hope lay in Oliver himself.

He rose slowly from his chair.

"It is useless, I see, to try and argue the matter further. But I warn you: I do not believe that Oliver will obey you, and--forgive me Lady Lucy!--but--frankly--I hope he will not. Nor will he suffer too severely, even if you, his mother, desert him. Miss Mallory has some fortune--"

"Oliver will not live upon his wife!"

"He may accept her aid till he has found some way of earning money. What amazes me--if you will allow me the liberty of an old friend--is that you should think a woman justified in coercing a son of mature age in such a matter!"

His tone, his manner pierced Lady Lucy's pride. She threw back her head nervously, but her tone was calm:

"A woman to whom property has been intrusted must do her best to see that the will and desires of those who placed it in her hands are carried out!"

"Well, well!"--Sir James looked for his stick--"I am sorry for Oliver--but"--he straightened himself--"it will make a bigger man of him."

Lady Lucy made no reply, but her expression was eloquent of a patience which her old friend might abuse if he would.

"Does Ferrier know? Have you consulted him?" asked Sir James, turning abruptly.

"He will be here, I think, this afternoon--as usual," said Lady Lucy, evasively. "And, of course, he must know what concerns us so deeply."

As she spoke the hall-door bell was heard.

"That is probably he." She looked at her companion uncertainly. "Don't go, Sir James--unless you are really in a hurry."

The invitation was not urgent; but Sir James stayed, all the same. Ferrier was a man so interesting to his friends that no judgment of his could be indifferent to them. Moreover, there was a certain angry curiosity as to how far Lady Lucy's influence would affect him. Chide took inward note of the fact that his speculation took this form, and not another. Oh! the hypocritical obstinacy of decent women!--the lack in them of heart, of generosity, of imagination!

The door opened, and Ferrier entered, with Marsham and the butler behind him. Mr. Ferrier, in his London frock-coat, appeared rounder and heavier than ever but for the contradictory vigor and lightness of his step, the shrewd cheerfulness of the eyes. It had been a hard week in Parliament, however, and his features and complexion showed signs of overwork and short sleep.

For a few minutes, while tea was renewed, and the curtains closed, he maintained a pleasant chat with Lady Lucy, while the other two looked at each other in silence.

But when the servant had gone, Ferrier put down his cup unfinished. "I am very sorry for you both," he said, gravely, looking from Lady Lucy to her son. "I need not say your letter this morning took me wholly by surprise. I have since been doing my best to think of a way out."

There was a short pause--broken by Marsham, who was sitting a little apart from the others, restlessly fingering a paper-knife.

"If you could persuade my mother to take a kind and reasonable view," he said, abruptly; "that is really the only way out."

Lady Lucy stiffened under the attack. Drawn on by Ferrier's interrogative glance, she quietly repeated, with more detail, and even greater austerity, the arguments and considerations she had made use of in her wrestle with Sir James. Chide clearly perceived that her opposition was hardening with every successive explanation of it. What had been at first, no doubt, an instinctive recoil was now being converted into a plausible and reasoned case, and the oftener she repeated it the stronger would she become on her own side and the more in love with her own contentions.

Ferrier listened attentively; took note of what she reported as to Sir James's fresh evidence; and when she ceased called upon Chide to explain. Chide's second defence of Juliet Sparling as given to a fellow-lawyer was a remarkable piece of technical statement, admirably arranged, and unmarked by any trace of the personal feeling he had not been able to hide from Lady Lucy.

"Most interesting--most interesting," murmured Ferrier, as the story came to an end. "A tragic and memorable case."

He pondered a little, his eyes on the carpet, while the others waited. Then he turned to Lady Lucy and took her hand.

"Dear lady!" he said, gently, "I think--you ought to give way!"

Lady Lucy's face quivered a little. She decidedly withdrew her hand.

"I am sorry you are both against me," she said, looking from one to the other. "I am sorry you help Oliver to think unkindly of me. But if I must stand alone, I must. I cannot give way."

Ferrier raised his eyebrows with a little perplexed look. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he went to stand by the fire, staring down into it a minute or two, as though the flames might bring counsel.

"Miss Mallory is still ignorant, Oliver--is that so?" he said, at last.

"Entirely. But it is not possible she should continue to be so. She has begun to make inquiries, and I agree with Sir James it is right she should be told--"

"I propose to go down to Beechcote to-morrow," put in Sir James.

"Have you any idea what view Miss Mallory would be likely to take of the matter--as affecting her engagement?"

"She could have no view that was not unselfish and noble--like herself," said Marsham, hotly. "What has that to do with it?" [Illustration: "'DEAR LADY,' HE SAID, GENTLY, 'I THINK YOU OUGHT TO GIVE WAY!'"]

"She might release you," was Ferrier's slow reply.

Marsham flushed.

"And you think I should be such a hound as to let her!"

Sir James only just prevented himself from throwing a triumphant look at his hostess.

"You will, of course, inform her of your mother's opposition?" said Ferrier.

"It will be impossible to keep it from her."

"Poor child!" murmured Ferrier--"poor child!"

Then he looked at Lady Lucy.

"May I take Oliver into the inner room a little while?" he asked, pointing to a farther drawing-room.

"By all means. I shall be here when you return."

Sir James had a few hurried words in private with Marsham, and then took his leave. As he and Lady Lucy shook hands, he gave her a penetrating look.

"Try and think of the girl!" he said, in a low voice; "_the girl_--in her first youth."

"I think of my son," was the unmoved reply. "Good-bye, Sir James. I feel that we are adversaries, and I wish it were not so."

Sir James walked away, possessed by a savage desire to do some damage to the cathedral in pith, as he passed it on his way to the door; or to shake his fist in the faces of Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, whose portraits adorned the staircase. The type of Catholic woman which he most admired rose in his mind; compassionate, tender, infinitely soft and loving--like the saints; save where "the faith" was concerned--like the saints, again. This Protestant rigidity and self-sufficiency were the deuce!

But he would go down to Beechcote, and he and Oliver between them would see that child through.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Ferrier and Marsham were in anxious conclave. Ferrier counselled delay. "Let the thing sleep a little. Don't announce the engagement. You and Miss Mallory will, of course, understand each other. You will correspond. But don't hurry it. So much consideration, at least, is due to your mother's strong feeling."

Marsham assented, but despondently.

"You know my mother; time will make no difference."

"I'm not so sure--I'm not so sure," said Ferrier, cheerfully. "Did your mother say anything about--finances?"

Marsham gave a gloomy smile.

"I shall be a pauper, of course--that was made quite plain to me."

"No, no!--that must be prevented!" said Ferrier, with energy.

Marsham was not quick to reply. His manner as he stood with his back to the fire, his distinguished head well thrown back on his straight, lean shoulders, was the manner of a proud man suffering humiliation. He was thirty-six, and rapidly becoming a politician of importance. Yet here he was--poor and impotent, in the midst of great wealth, wholly dependent, by his father's monstrous will, on his mother's caprice--liable to be thwarted and commanded, as though he were a boy of fifteen. Up till now Lady Lucy's yoke had been tolerable; to-day it galled beyond endurance.

Moreover, there was something peculiarly irritating at the moment in Ferrier's intervention. There had been increased Parliamentary friction of late between the two men, in spite of the intimacy of their personal relations. To be forced to owe fortune, career, and the permission to marry as he pleased to Ferrier's influence with his mother was, at this juncture, a bitter pill for Oliver Marsham.

Ferrier understood him perfectly, and he had never displayed more kindness or more tact than in the conversation which passed between them. Marsham finally agreed that Diana must be frankly informed of his mother's state of mind, and that a waiting policy offered the only hope. On this they were retiring to the front drawing-room when Lady Lucy opened the communicating door.

"A letter for you, Oliver."

He took it, and turned it over. The handwriting was unknown to him.

"Who brought this?" he asked of the butler standing behind his mother.

"A servant, sir, from Beechcote Manor, He was told to wait for an answer."

"I will send one. Come when I ring."

The butler departed, and Marsham went hurriedly into the inner room, closing the door behind him. Ferrier and Lady Lucy were left, looking at each other in anxiety. But before they could put it into words, Marsham reappeared, in evident agitation. He hurried to the bell and rang it.

Lady Lucy pointedly made no inquiry. But Ferrier spoke.

"No bad news, I hope?"

Marsham turned.

"She has been told?" he said, hoarsely, "Mrs. Colwood, her companion, speaks of 'shock.' I must go down at once."

Lady Lucy said nothing. She, too, had grown white.

The butler appeared. Marsham asked for the Sunday trains, ordered some packing, went down-stairs to speak to the Beechcote messenger, and returned.

Ferrier retired into the farthest window, and Marsham approached his mother.

"Good-bye, mother. I will write to you from Beechcote, where I shall stay at the little inn in the village. Have you no kind word that I may carry with me?"

Lady Lucy looked at him steadily.

"I shall write myself to Miss Mallory, Oliver."

His pallor gave place to a flush of indignation.

"Is it necessary to do anything so cruel, mother?"

"I shall not write cruelly."

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Considering what you have made up your mind to do, I should have thought least said, soonest mended. However, if you must, you must. I can only prepare Diana for your letter and soften it when it comes."

"In your new love, Oliver, have you quite forgotten the old?" Lady Lucy's voice shook for the first time.

"I shall be only too glad to remember it, when you give me the opportunity," he said, sombrely.

"I have not been a bad mother to you, Oliver. I have claims upon you."

He did not reply, and his silence wounded Lady Lucy to the quick. Was it her fault if her husband, out of an eccentric distrust of the character of his son, and moved by a kind of old-fashioned and Spartan belief that a man must endure hardness before he is fit for luxury, had made her and not Oliver the arbiter and legatee of his wealth? But Oliver had never wanted for anything. He had only to ask. What right had she to thwart her husband's decision?

"Good-bye, mother," said Marsham again. "If you are writing to Isabel you will, I suppose, discuss the matter with her. She is not unlikely to side with you--not for your reason, however--but because of some silly nonsense about politics. If she does, I beg she will not write to me. It could only embitter matters."

"I will give her your message. Good-bye, Oliver." He left the room, with a gesture of farewell to Ferrier.

* * * * *

Ferrier came back toward the fire. As he did so he was struck--painfully struck--by a change in Lady Lucy. She was not pale, and her eyes were singularly bright. Yet age was, for the first time, written in a face from which Time had so far taken but his lightest toll. It moved him strangely; though, as to the matter in hand, his sympathies were all with Oliver. But through thirty years Lady Lucy had been the only woman for him. Since first, as a youth of twenty, he had seen her in her father's house, he had never wavered. She was his senior by five years, and their first acquaintance had been one of boy-adoration on his side and a charming elder-sisterliness on hers. Then he had declared himself, and she had refused him in order to marry Henry Marsham and Henry Marsham's fortune. It seemed to him then that he would soon forget her--soon find a warmer and more generous heart. But that was mere ignorance of himself. After awhile he became the intimate friend of her husband, herself, and her child. Something, indeed, had happened to his affection for her. He felt himself in no danger beside her, so far as passion was concerned; and he knew very well that she would have banished him forever at a moment's notice rather than give her husband an hour's uneasiness. But to be near her, to be in her world, consulted, trusted, and flattered by her, to slip daily into his accustomed chair, to feel year by year the strands of friendship and of intimacy woven more closely between him and her--between him and hers--these things gradually filled all the space in his life left by politics or by thought. They deprived him of any other home, and this home became a necessity.

Then Henry Marsham died. Once more Ferrier asked Lady Lucy to marry him, and again she refused. He acquiesced; their old friendship was resumed; but, once more, with a difference. In a sense he had no longer any illusions about her. He saw that while she believed herself to be acting under the influence of religion and other high matters, she was, in truth, a narrow and rather cold-hearted woman, with a strong element of worldliness, disguised in much placid moralizing. At the bottom of his soul he resented her treatment of him, and despised himself for submitting to it. But the old habit had become a tyranny not to be broken. Where else could he go for talk, for intimacy, for rest? And for all his disillusion there were still at her command occasional felicities of manner and strains of feeling--ethereally delicate and spiritual, like a stanza from the _Christian Year_--that moved him and pleased his taste as nothing else had power to move and please; steeped, as they were, in a far-off magic of youth and memory.

So he stayed by her, and she knew very well that he would stay by her to the end.

He sat down beside her and took her hand.

"You are tired."

"It has been a miserable day."

"Shall I read to you? It would be wise, I think, to put it out of your mind for a while, and come back to it fresh."

"It will be difficult to attend." Her smile was faint and sad. "But I will do my best."

He took up a volume of Dean Church's sermons, and began to read. Presently, as always, his subtler self became conscious of the irony of the situation. He was endeavoring to soothe her trouble by applying to it some of the noblest religious thought of our day, expressed in the noblest language. Such an attempt implied some moral correspondence between the message and the listener. Yet all the time he was conscious himself of cowardice and hypocrisy. What part of the Christian message really applied to Lady Lucy this afternoon but the searching words: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

Yet he read on. The delicate ascetic face of his companion grew calmer; he himself felt a certain refreshment and rest. There was no one else in the world with whom he could sit like this, to whom he could speak or read of the inner life. Lucy Marsham had made him what he was, a childless bachelor, with certain memories in his past life of which he was ashamed--representing the revenge of a strong man's temperament and physical nature. But in the old age she had all but reached, and he was approaching, she was still the one dear and indispensable friend. If she must needs be harsh and tyrannical--well, he must try and mitigate the effects, for herself and others. But his utmost effort must restrain itself within certain limits. He was not at all sure that if offended in some mortal point, she might not do without him. But so long as they both lived, he could not do without her.

* * * * *

Early the following morning Alicia Drake appeared in Eaton Square, and by two o'clock Mrs. Fotheringham was also there. She had rushed up from Leeds by the first possible train, summoned by Alicia's letter. Lady Lucy and her daughter held conference, and Miss Drake was admitted to their counsels.

"Of course, mamma," said Isabel Fotheringham, "I don't at all agree with you in the matter. Nobody is responsible for their mothers and fathers. We make ourselves. But I shall not be sorry if the discovery frees Oliver from a marriage which would have been a rope round his neck. She is a foolish, arrogant, sentimental girl, brought up on the most wrong-headed principles, and she could _never_ have made a decent wife for him. She will, I hope, have the sense to see it--and he will be well out of it."

"Oliver, at present, is very determined," said Lady Lucy, in a tone of depression.

"Oh, well, of course, having just proposed to her, he must, of course, behave like a gentleman--and not like a cad. But she can't possibly hold him to it. You will write to her, mamma--and so shall I."

"We shall make him, I fear, very angry."

"Oliver? Well, there are moments in every family when it is no use shirking. We have to think of Oliver's career, and what he may do for his party, and for reform. You think he proposed to her in that walk on the hill?" said Mrs. Fotheringham, turning to her cousin Alicia.

Alicia woke up from a brown-study of her own. She was dressed with her usual perfection in a gray cloth, just suggesting the change of season. Her felt hat with its plume of feathers lay on her lap, and her hair, slightly loosened by the journey, captured the eye by its abundance and beauty. The violets on her breast perfumed the room, and the rings upon her hands flashed just as much as is permitted to an unmarried girl, and no more. As Mrs. Fotheringham looked at her, she said to herself: "Another Redfern! Really Alicia is too extravagant!"

On that head no one could have reproached herself. A cheap coat and skirt, much worn, a hat of no particular color or shape, frayed gloves and disreputable boots, proclaimed both the parsimony of her father's will and the independence of her opinions.

"Oh, of course he proposed on the hill," replied Alicia, thoughtfully. "And you say, Aunt Lucy, that _he_ guessed--and she knew nothing? Yes!--I was certain he guessed."

"But she knows now," said Lady Lucy; "and, of course, we must all be very sorry for her."

"Oh, of course!" said Isabel. "But she will soon get over it. You won't find it will do her any harm. People will make her a heroine."

"I should advise her not to go about with that cousin," said Alicia, softly.

"The girl who told you?"

"She was an outsider! She told me, evidently, to spite her cousin, who seemed not to have paid her enough attention, and then wanted me to swear secrecy."

"Well, if her mother was a sister of Juliet Sparling, you can't expect much, can you? What a mercy it has all come out so soon! The mess would have been infinitely greater if the engagement had gone on a few weeks."

"My dear," said her mother, gravely, "we must not reckon upon Oliver's yielding to our persuasions."

Isabel smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Oliver condemn himself to the simple life!--to the forfeiture of half a million of money--for the sake of the _beaux yeux_ of Diana Mallory! Oliver, who had never faced any hardship or gone without any luxury in his life!

Alicia said nothing; but the alertness of her brilliant eyes showed the activity of the brain behind them. While Mrs. Fotheringham went off to committees, Miss Drake spent the rest of the day in ministering to Lady Lucy, who found her company, her gossip about Beechcote, her sympathetic yet restrained attitude toward the whole matter, quite invaluable. But, in spite of these aids, the hours of waiting and suspense passed heavily, and Alicia said to herself that Cousin Lucy was beginning to look frail.