The Light of Scarthey Part 36

His wife, then, is only Cecile's child to him. I have failed when I thought to have conquered--and with the consciousness of failure have lost my power, even to the desire of regaining it. My dead mother is my rival; her shade rises between me and my husband's love. Could he have loved me, I might perhaps have loved him--and now--now I, _Molly_, I, shall perhaps go down to my grave without having known _love_.

I thought I had found it on that day when he took me in his arms in that odious library--my heart melted when he so tenderly kissed my lips. And now the very remembrance of that moment angers me.

Tenderness! Am I only a weak, helpless child that I can arouse no more from the man to whom I have given myself! I thought the gates of life had been opened to me--behold, they led me to a warm comfortable prison! And this is Molly's end!

There is a light in Madeleine's eyes, a ring in her voice, a smile upon her lip. She has bloomed into a beauty that I could hardly have imagined, and this is because of this unknown whom she _loves_. She breathes the fulness of the flower; and by-and-by, no doubt, she will taste the fulness of the fruit; she will be complete; she will be fed and I am to starve. What is coming to me? I do not know myself. I feel that I could grudge her these favours, that I _do_ grudge them to her.

I am sick at heart.

And she--even she has proved false to me. I know that she meets this man. Adrian too knows it, and more of him than he will tell me; and he approves. I am treated like a child. The situation is strange upon every side; Madeleine loving a plebeian--a sailor, not a king's officer--stooping to stolen interviews! Adrian the punctilious, in whose charge Tanty solemnly left her, pretending ignorance, virtually condoning my sister's behaviour! For though he has distinctly refused to enlighten me or help me to enlighten myself, he could not, upon my taxing him with it, deny that he was in possession of facts ignored by me.

Then there is Rupert paying now open court to this sly damsel--for the sake of her beautiful eyes, or for the beautiful eyes of her casket?

And last and strangest, the incongruous friends.h.i.+p struck up this week between her and that most irritating of melancholy fools, Sophia. The latter bursts with suppressed importance, she launches glances of understanding at my sister; sighs, smiles (when Rupert's eye is not on her), starts mysteriously. One would say that Madeleine had made a confidant of her--only that it would be too silly. What? Make a confidant of that funereal mute and deny _me_ the truth! If I had the spirit for it I would set myself to discovering this grand mystery; and then let them beware! They would have none of Molly as a friend: perhaps she will yet prove one too many upon the other side.

If I have grown bitter to Madeleine, it is her own fault; I would have been as true as steel to her if she had but trusted me. Now and again, when a hard word and look escape me, she gives me a great surprised, reproachful glance, as of a petted child that has been hurt; but mostly she scarcely seems to notice the change in me--Moonlike in dreamy serenity she sails along, wrapt in her own thoughts, and troubles no more over Molly's breaking her heart than over Rupert's determined suit. To me when she remembers me, she gives the old caresses, the old loving words; to him smiles and pretty courtesy. Oh, she keeps her secret well! But I came upon her in the woods alone, last Friday, fresh, no doubt, from her lover's arms; tremulous, smiling, yet tearful, with face dyed rose. And when to my last effort to attain the right of sisterhood she would only stammer the tell-tale words: _she had promised!_ and press her hot cheeks against mine, I thrust her from me, indignant, and from my affections for ever. Yet I hold her in my power, I could write to Tanty, put Rupert on the track.... Nay, I have not fallen so low as to become Rupert's accomplice yet!

And so the days go on. Between my husband's increasing melancholy, my own mad regrets, Rupert's watchfulness, Madeleine's absorption and Sophia's twaddle, my brain reels. I feel sometimes as if I could scream aloud, as we all sit round the table, and I know that _this_ is the life that I am doomed to, and that the days may go on, go on thus, till I am old. Poor Murthering Moll the second! Why even the convent, where at least I knew nothing, would have been better! No, it is not possible! Something is still to come to me. Like a bird, my heart rises within me. I have the right to my life, the right to my happiness, say what they may.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DAWN OF AN EVENTFUL DAY

Rupert's behaviour at home, since his brother's wedding, had been, as even Molly was bound to admit to herself, beyond reproach in tactfulness, quiet dignity, and seeming cheerfulness.

He abdicated from his position of trust at once and without the smallest reservation; wooed Madeleine with so great a discretion that her dreamy eyes saw in him only a kind relative; and he treated his sister-in-law, for all her freaks of bearing to him, with a perfect gentleness and gentility.

At times Sir Adrian would watch him with great eyes. What meant this change? the guileless philosopher would ask himself, and wonder if he had judged his brother too harshly all through life; or if it was his plain speaking in their last quarrel which had put things in their true light to him, and awakened some innate generosity of feeling; or yet if--this with misgiving--it was love for pretty Madeleine that was working the marvel. If so, how would this proud rebellious nature bear another failure?

Rupert spoke with unaffected regret about leaving Pulwick, at the same time, in spite of Molly's curling lip, giving it to be understood that his removal was only a matter of time.

For the ostensible purpose, indeed, of finding himself another home he made, in the beginning of March, the second month after his brother's marriage, several absences which lasted a couple of days or more, and from which he would return with an eager sparkle in his eye, almost a brightness on his olive cheek, to sit beside Madeleine's embroidery frame, pulling her silks and snipping with her scissors, and talking gaily, persistently, with such humour and colour as at last to draw that young lady's attention from far off musings to his words with smiles and laughter.

Meanwhile, Molly would sit unoccupied, brooding, watching them, now fiercely, from under her black brows, now scornfully, now abstractedly; the while she nibbled at her delicate finger-nails, or ruthlessly dragged them along the velvet arms of her chair with the gesture of a charming, yet distracted, cat.

Sir Adrian would first tramp the rooms with unwitting restlessness, halting, it might be, beside his wife to strive to engage her into speech with him; and, failing, would betake himself at length with a heavy sigh to solitude; or, yet, he would sit down to his organ--the new one in the great hall which had been put up since his marriage, at Molly's own gay suggestion, during their brief betrothal--and music would peal out upon them till Lady Landale's stormy heart could bear it no longer, and she would rise in her turn, fly to the shelter of her room and roll her head in the pillows to stifle the sound of sobs, crying from the depths of her soul against heaven's injustice; anon railing in a frenzy of impotent anger against the musician, who had such pa.s.sion in him and gave it to his music alone.

During Rupert's absences that curious intimacy which Molly had contemptuously noted between her sister and sister-in-law displayed itself in more conspicuous manner.

Miss Landale's long sallow visage sported its airs of mystery and importance, its languis.h.i.+ng leers undisguisedly, so long as her brother Rupert's place was empty; and though her visits to the rector's grave were now almost quotidian, she departed upon them with looks of wrapt importance, and, returning, sought Madeleine's chamber (when that maiden did not herself stroll out to meet her in the woods), her countenance invariably wreathed with suppressed, yet triumphant smiles, instead of the old self-a.s.sertive dejection.

The 15th of March of that year was to be a memorable day in the lives of so many of those who then either dwelt in Pulwick, or had dealings on that wide estate.

Miss Landale, who had pa.s.sed the midnight hour in poring over the delightful wickedness of Lara, and, upon at length retiring to her pillow, had had a sentimental objection to shutting out the romantic light of the moon by curtain or shutter, was roused into wakefulness soon after dawn by a glorious white burst of early suns.h.i.+ne. As a rule, the excellent soul liked to lie abed till the last available moment; but that morning she was up with the sun. When dressed she drew a letter from a secret casket with manifold precautions as though she were surrounded with prying eyes, and, placing it in her reticule, hastened forth to seek the little lonely disused churchyard by the sh.o.r.e. She afterwards remarked that she could never forget in what agitation of spirits and with what strange presentiment of evil she was led to this activity at so unwonted an hour. The truth was, however, that Miss Landale tripped along through the damp wooded path as gaily as if she were going to visit her living lover instead of his granite tomb; and that in lieu of evil omens a hundred fantastically sentimental thoughts floated through her brain, as merrily and irresponsibly as the motes in the long shafts of brilliancy that cleaved, sword-like through the mists, upon her from out the east.

Visions of Madeleine's face when she would learn before breakfast that Sophia had actually been to the churchyard already; visions of whom she might meet there; rehearsals of a romantic scene upon that hallowed spot, of her own blushes, her knowing looks, her playful remonstrances, with touching allusions to one who had loved and lost, herself, and who thus, &c. &c.

Miss Landale tossed her long faded ringlets quite coquettishly, turned one slim bony hand with coy gesture before her approving eyes. Then she patted her reticule and hurried on with fresh zest, enjoying the tart whisper of the wind against her well bonneted face, the exquisite virginal beauty of the earth in the early spring of the day and of the year.

As she stepped out of the shadow of the trees, her heart leaped and then almost stood still as she perceived in the churchyard lying below her, beside the great slab of granite which lay over the remains of her long-departed beloved one, the figure of a man, whose back was turned towards her, and whose erect outline was darkly silhouetted against the low, dazzling light.

Then a simper of exceeding archness crept upon Miss Landale's lips; and with as genteel an amble as the somewhat precipitate nature of the small piece of ground that yet divided her from the graveyard would allow, she proceeded on her way.

At the click of the lych-gate under her hand the man turned sharply round and looked at her without moving further. An open letter fluttered in his hand.

His face was still against the light, and Miss Landale's eyes had wept so many tears by day and night that her sight was none of the best.

She dropped a very elegant curtsey, simpered, drew nearer, and threw a fetching glance upwards. Then her shrill scream rang through the still morning air and frightened the birds in the ruined church.

"You are early this morning, Sophia," said Mr. Landale.

Sophia sank upon the tombstone. To say that she was green or yellow would ill describe the ghastliness of the tint that suffused her naturally bilious countenance; still speechless, she made a frantic plunge towards the great urn that adorned the head of the grave. Mr.

Landale looked up from his reading again with a quiet smile.

"I shall have done in one minute," he remarked, "It is a fine production, egad! full of n.o.ble protestations and really high-sounding words. And then, my dear Sophia, you can take charge of it, and I shall be quite ready for the other, which I presume you have as usual with you--ah, in your bag! Thanks."

"Rupert?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the unfortunate lady, first in agonised query, and next in agonised reproach, clasping her hands over the precious reticule--"Rupert!"

Mr. Landale neatly folded the sheet he had been reading, moistened with his tongue a fresh wafer which he drew from his waistcoat pocket, and, deftly placing it upon the exact spot from which the original one had been removed, handed the letter to his sister with a little bow.

But, as with a gesture of horror the latter refused to take it, he shrugged his shoulders and tossed it carelessly into the urn.

"Now give me Madeleine's," he said, peremptorily.

Rolling upwards eyes of appeal the unhappy Iris called upon heaven to witness that she would die a thousand deaths rather than betray her solemn trust. But even as she spoke the fict.i.tious flame of courage withered away in her shrinking frame; and at the mere touch of her brother's finger and thumb upon her wrist, the mere sight of his face bending masterfully over her with white teeth just gleaming between his twisting smile and half-veiled eyes of insolent determination, she allowed him, unresisting, to take the bag from her side; protesting against the breach of faith only by her moans and the inept wringing of her hands.

Mr. Landale opened the bag, tossed with cynical contempt upon the flat tombstone, sundry precious relics of the mouldering bones within, and discovered at length in an inner pocket a dainty flower-scented note.

Then he flung down the bag and proceeded with the same deliberation to open the letter and peruse its delicate flowing handwriting.

"Upon my word," he vowed, "I think this is the prettiest she has written yet! What a sweet soul it is! Listen, Sophia: 'You praise me for my trust in you--but, Jack, dear love, my trust is so much a part of my love that the one would not exist without the other. Therefore, do not give me any credit, for you know I could not help loving you.'

Poor heart! poor confiding child! Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Landale as if to himself, carefully proceeding the while with his former manoeuvres to end by placing the violated missive, to all appearance intact, beside its fellow, "we have here a rank fellow, a foul traitor to deal with!"

Then, wheeling round to his sister, and fixing her with piercing eyes: "Sophia," he exclaimed, in tones of sternest rebuke, "I am surprised at you. I am, indeed!"

Miss Landale raised mesmerised, horror-stricken eyes upon him; his dark utterances had already filled her foolish soul with blind dread.

He sat down beside her, and once more enclosed the thin arm in his light but warning grasp.

"Sophia," he said solemnly, "you little guess the magnitude of the harm you have been doing; the frightful fate you have been preparing for an innocent and trusting girl; the depth of the villainy you are aiding and abetting. You have been acting, as I say, in ignorance, without realising the awful consequences of your folly and duplicity.

But that you should have chosen _this_ sacred place for such illicit and reprehensible behaviour; that by the grave of this worthy man who loved you, by the stones chosen and paid for by my fraternal affection, you should plot and scheme to deceive your family, and help to lead a confiding and beautiful creature to ruin, I should never have expected from _you_, Sophia--Sophia!"

Miss Landale collapsed into copious weeping.

"I am sure, brother," she sobbed, "I never meant any harm. I am sure n.o.body loves the dear girl better than I do. I am sure I never wished to hide anything from you!--Only--they told me--they trusted me--they made me promise--Oh brother, what terrible things you have been saying! I cannot believe that so handsome a young gentleman can mean anything wrong--I only wish you could have seen him with her, he is so devoted--it is quite beautiful."

"Alas--the tempter always makes himself beautiful in the eyes of the tempted! Sophia, we can yet save this unhappy child, but who knows how soon it may be too late!--You can still repair some of the wrong you have done, but you can only do so by the most absolute obedience to me.... Believe me, I know the truth about this vile adventurer, this Captain Jack Smith."

"Good Heavens!" cried Sophia, "Rupert, do not tell me, lest I swoon away, that he is married already?"