Lady Rose's Daughter Part 39

Then, approaching her, he placed his hand on her arm.

"Let me look at you," he commanded.

Julie raised her eyes to him, and at the same time dumbly held out to him a miniature she had been keeping hidden in her hand. It was one of the miniatures from the locked triptych.

He took it, looked from the pictured to the living face, then, turning away with a groan, he covered his face with his hands and fell again into the chair from which he had risen.

Julie hurried to him. Her own eyes were wet with tears. After a moment's hesitation she knelt down beside him.

"I ought to ask your pardon for not having told you before," she murmured.

It was some time before Lord Lackington looked up. When at last his hands dropped, the face they uncovered was very white and old.

"So you," he said, almost in a whisper, "are the child she wrote to me about before she died?"

Julie made a sign of a.s.sent.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-nine."

"_She_ was thirty-two when I saw her last."

There was a silence. Julie lifted one of his hands and kissed it. But he took no notice.

"You know that I was going to her, that I should have reached her in time"--the words seemed wrung from him--"but that I was myself dangerously ill?"

"I know. I remember it all."

"Did she speak of me?"

"Not often. She was very reserved, you remember. But not long before she died--she seemed half asleep--I heard her say, 'Papa!--Blanche!' and she smiled."

Lord Lackington's face contracted, and the slow tears of old age stood in his eyes.

"You are like her in some ways," he said, brusquely, as though to cover his emotion; "but not very like her."

"She always thought I was like you."

A cloud came over Lord Lackington's face. Julie rose from her knees and sat beside him. He lost himself a few moments amid the painful ghosts of memory. Then, turning to her abruptly, he said:

"You have wondered, I dare say, why I was so hard--why, for seventeen years, I cast her off?"

"Yes, often. You could have come to see us without anybody knowing.

Mother loved you very much."

Her voice was low and sad. Lord Lackington rose, fidgeted restlessly with some of the small ornaments on the mantel-piece, and at last turned to her.

"She brought dishonor," he said, in the same stifled voice, "and the women of our family have always been stainless. But that I could have forgiven. After a time I should have resumed relations--private relations--with her. But it was your father who stood in the way. I was then--I am now--you saw me with that young fellow just now--quarrelsome and hot-tempered. It is my nature." He drew himself up obstinately. "I can't help it. I take great pains to inform myself, then I cling to my opinions tenaciously, and in argument my temper gets the better of me.

Your father, too, was hot-tempered. He came, with my consent, once to see me--after your mother had left her husband--to try and bring about some arrangement between us. It was the Chartist time. He was a Radical, a Socialist of the most extreme views. In the course of our conversation something was said that excited him. He went off at score. I became enraged, and met him with equal violence. We had a furious argument, which ended in each insulting the other past forgiveness. We parted enemies for life. I never could bring myself to see him afterwards, nor to run the risk of seeing him. Your mother took his side and espoused his opinions while he lived. After his death, I suppose, she was too proud and sore to write to me. I wrote to her once--it was not the letter it might have been. She did not reply till she felt herself dying. That is the explanation of what, no doubt, must seem strange to you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY"]

He turned to her almost pleadingly. A deep flush had replaced the pallor of his first emotion, as though in the presence of these primal realities of love, death, and sorrow which she had recalled to him, his old quarrel, on a political difference, cut but a miserable figure.

"No," she said, sadly, "not very strange. I understood my father--my dear father," she added, with soft, deliberate tenderness.

Lord Lackington was silent a little, then he threw her a sudden, penetrating look.

"You have been in London three years. You ought to have told me before."

It was Julie's turn to color.

"Lady Henry bound me to secrecy."

"Lady Henry did wrong," he said, with emphasis. Then he asked, jealously, with a touch of his natural irascibility, "Who else has been in the secret?"

"Four people, at most--the d.u.c.h.ess, first of all. I couldn't help it,"

she pleaded. "I was so unhappy with Lady Henry."

"You should have come to me. It was my right."

"But"--she dropped her head--"you had made it a condition that I should not trouble you."

He was silenced; and once more he leaned against the mantel-piece and hid his face from her, till, by a secret impulse, both moved. She rose and approached him; he laid his hands on her arms. With his persistent instinct for the lovely or romantic he perceived, with sudden pleasure, the grave, poetic beauty of her face and delicate form. Emotion had softened away all that was harsh; a quivering charm hovered over the features. With a strange pride, and a sense of mystery, he recognized his daughter and his race.

"For my Rose's child," he said, gently, and, stooping, he kissed her on the brow. She broke out into weeping, leaning against his shoulder, while the old man comforted and soothed her.

XV

After the long conversation between herself and Lord Lackington which followed on the momentous confession of her ident.i.ty, Julie spent a restless and weary evening, which pa.s.sed into a restless and weary night. Was she oppressed by this stirring of old sorrows?--haunted afresh by her parents' fate?

Ah! Lord Lackington had no sooner left her than she sank motionless into her chair, and, with the tears excited by the memories of her mother still in her eyes, she gave herself up to a desperate and sombre brooding, of which Warkworth's visit of the afternoon was, in truth, the sole cause, the sole subject.

Why had she received him so? She had gone too far--much too far. But, somehow, she had not been able to bear it--that buoyant, confident air, that certainty of his welcome. No! She would show him that she was _not_ his chattel, to be taken or left on his own terms. The, careless good-humor of his blue eyes was too much, after those days she had pa.s.sed through.

He, apparently, to judge from his letters to her from the Isle of Wight, had been conscious of no crisis whatever. Yet he must have seen from the little d.u.c.h.ess's manner, as she bade farewell to him that night at Crowborough House, that something was wrong. He must have realized that Miss Lawrence was an intimate friend of the Moffatts, and that--Or was he really so foolish as to suppose that his quasi-engagement to this little heiress, and the encouragement given him, in defiance of the girl's guardians, by her silly and indiscreet mother, were still hidden and secret matters?--that he could still conceal them from the world, and deny them to Julie?

Her whole nature was sore yet from her wrestle with the d.u.c.h.ess on that miserable evening.

"Julie, I can't help it! I know it's impertinent--but--Julie, darling!--do listen! What business has that man to make love to you as he does, when all the time--Yes, he does make love to you--he does!

Freddie had a most ill-natured letter from Lady Henry this morning. Of course he had--and of course she'll write that kind of letter to as many people as she can. And it wouldn't matter a bit, if--But, you see, you _have_ been moving heaven and earth for him! And now his manner to you"

(while the sudden flush burned her cheek, Julie wondered whether by chance the d.u.c.h.ess had seen anything of the yielded hands and the kiss) "and that ill-luck of his being the first to arrive, last night, at Lady Henry's! Oh, Julie, he's a wretch--_he is!_ Of course he is in love with you. That's natural enough. But all the time--listen, that nice woman told me the whole story--he's writing regularly to that little girl. She and her mother, in spite of the guardians, regard it as an engagement signed and sealed, and all his friends believe he's _quite_ determined to marry her because of the money. You may think me an odious little meddler, Julie, if you like, but I vow I could stab him to the heart, with all the pleasure in life!"

And neither the annoyance, nor the dignity, nor the ridicule of the supposed victim--not Julie's angry eyes, nor all her mocking words from tremulous lips--had availed in the least to silence the tumult of alarmed affection in the d.u.c.h.ess's breast. Her Julie had been flouted and trifled with; and if she was so blind, so infatuated, as not to see it, she should at least be driven to realize what other people felt about it.

So she had her say, and Julie had been forced, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, upon discussion and self-defence--nay, upon a promise also. Pale, and stiffly erect, yet determined all the same to treat it as a laughing matter, she had vouchsafed the d.u.c.h.ess some kind of a.s.surance that she would for the future observe a more cautious behavior towards Warkworth. "He is my _friend_, and whatever any one may say, he shall remain so," she had said, with a smiling stubbornness which hid something before which the little d.u.c.h.ess shrank. "But, of course, if I can do anything to please you, Evelyn--you know I like to please you."