John Marchmont's Legacy Part 46

John Marchmont's widow seemed entirely under the dominion of the new master of the Towers. It was as if the stormy pa.s.sions which had arisen out of a slighted love had worn out this woman's mind, and had left her helpless to stand against the force of Paul Marchmont's keen and vigorous intellect. A remarkable change had come over Olivia's character. A dull apathy had succeeded that fiery energy of soul which had enfeebled and well-nigh worn out her body. There were no outbursts of pa.s.sion now. She bore the miserable monotony of her life uncomplainingly. Day after day, week after week, month after month, idle and apathetic, she sat in her lonely room, or wandered slowly in the grounds about the Towers. She very rarely went beyond those grounds. She was seldom seen now in her old pew at Kemberling Church; and when her father went to her and remonstrated with her for her non-attendance, she told him sullenly that she was too ill to go. She _was_ ill. George Weston attended her constantly; but he found it very difficult to administer to such a sickness as hers, and he could only shake his head despondently when he felt her feeble pulse, or listened to the slow beating of her heart. Sometimes she would shut herself up in her room for a month at a time, and see no one but her faithful servant Barbara, and Mr. Weston--whom, in her utter indifference, she seemed to regard as a kind of domestic animal, whose going or coming were alike unimportant.

This stolid, silent Barbara waited upon her mistress with untiring patience. She bore with every change of Olivia's gloomy temper; she was a perpetual s.h.i.+eld and protection to her. Even upon this day of preparation and disorder Mrs. Simmons kept guard over the pa.s.sage leading to the study, and took care that no one intruded upon her mistress. At about four o'clock all Paul Marchmont's orders had been given, and the new master of the house dined for the first time by himself at the head of the long carved-oak dining-table, waited upon in solemn state by the old butler. His mother and sister were to arrive by a train that would reach Swampington at ten o'clock, and one of the carriages from the Towers was to meet them at the station. The artist had leisure in the meantime for any other business he might have to transact.

He ate his dinner slowly, thinking deeply all the time. He did not stop to drink any wine after dinner; but, as soon as the cloth was removed, rose from the table, and went straight to Olivia's room.

"I am going down to the painting-room," he said. "Will you come there presently? I want very much to say a few words to you."

Olivia was sitting near the window, with her hands lying idle in her lap. She rarely opened a book now, rarely wrote a letter, or occupied herself in any manner. She scarcely raised her eyes as she answered him.

"Yes," she said; "I will come."

"Don't be long, then. It will be dark very soon. I am not going down there to paint; I am going to fetch a landscape that I want to hang in my mother's room, and to say a few words about--"

He closed the door without stopping to finish the sentence, and went out into the quadrangle.

Ten minutes afterwards Olivia Marchmont rose, and taking a heavy woollen shawl from a chair near her, wrapped it loosely about her head and shoulders.

"I am his slave and his prisoner," she muttered to herself. "I must do as he bids me."

A cold wind was blowing in the quadrangle, and the stone pavement was wet with a drizzling rain. The sun had just gone down, and the dull autumn sky was darkening. The fallen leaves in the wood were sodden with damp, and rotted slowly on the swampy ground.

Olivia took her way mechanically along the narrow pathway leading to the river. Half-way between Marchmont Towers and the boat-house she came suddenly upon the figure of a man walking towards her through the dusk. This man was Edward Arundel.

The two cousins had not met since the March evening upon which Edward had gone to seek the widow in Paul Marchmont's painting-room. Olivia's pale face grew whiter as she recognised the soldier.

"I was coming to the house to speak to you, Mrs. Marchmont," Edward said sternly. "I am lucky in meeting you here, for I don't want any one to overhear what I've got to say."

He had turned in the direction in which Olivia had been walking; but she made a dead stop, and stood looking at him.

"You were going to the boat-house," he said. "I will go there with you."

She looked at him for a moment, as if doubtful what to do, and then said,

"Very well. You can say what you have to say to me, and then leave me.

There is no sympathy between us, there is no regard between us; we are only antagonists."

"I hope not, Olivia. I hope there is some spark of regard still, in spite of all. I separate you in my own mind from Paul Marchmont. I pity you; for I believe you to be his tool."

"Is this what you have to say to me?"

"No; I came here, as your kinsman, to ask you what you mean to do now that Paul Marchmont has taken possession of the Towers?"

"I mean to stay there."

"In spite of the gossip that your remaining will give rise to amongst these country-people!"

"In spite of everything. Mr. Marchmont wishes me to stay. It suits me to stay. What does it matter what people say of me? What do I care for any one's opinion--now?"

"Olivia," cried the young man, "are you mad?"

"Perhaps I am," she answered, coldly.

"Why is it that you shut yourself from the sympathy of those who have a right to care for you? What is the mystery of your life?"

His cousin laughed bitterly.

"Would you like to know, Edward Arundel?" she said. "You _shall_ know, perhaps, some day. You have despised me all my life; you will despise me more then."

They had reached Paul Marchmont's painting-room by this time. Olivia opened the door and walked in, followed by Edward. Paul was not there.

There was a picture covered with green-baize upon the easel, and the artist's hat stood upon the table amidst the litter of brushes and palettes; but the room was empty. The door at the top of the stone steps leading to the pavilion was ajar.

"Have you anything more to say to me?" Olivia asked, turning upon her cousin as if she would have demanded why he had followed her.

"Only this: I want to know your determination; whether you will be advised by me--and by your father,--I saw my uncle Hubert this morning, and his opinion exactly coincides with mine,--or whether you mean obstinately to take your own course in defiance of everybody?"

"I do," Olivia answered. "I shall take my own course. I defy everybody.

I have not been gifted with the power of winning people's affection.

Other women possess that power, and trifle with it, and turn it to bad account. I have prayed, Edward Arundel,--yes, I have prayed upon my knees to the G.o.d who made me, that He would give me some poor measure of that gift which Nature has lavished upon other women; but He would not hear me, He would not hear me! I was not made to be loved. Why, then, should I make myself a slave for the sake of winning people's esteem? If they have despised me, I can despise them."

"Who has despised you, Olivia?" Edward asked, perplexed by his cousin's manner.

"YOU HAVE!" she cried, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes; "you have! From first to last--from first to last!" She turned away from him impatiently. "Go,"

she said; "why should we keep up a mockery of friendliness and cousins.h.i.+p? We are nothing to each other."

Edward walked towards the door; but he paused upon the threshold, with his hat in his hand, undecided as to what he ought to do.

As he stood thus, perplexed and irresolute, a cry, the feeble cry of a child, sounded within the pavilion.

The young man started, and looked at his cousin. Even in the dusk he could see that her face had suddenly grown livid.

"There is a child in that place," he said pointing to the door at the top of the steps.

The cry was repeated as he spoke,--the low, complaining wail of a child. There was no other voice to be heard,--no mother's voice soothing a helpless little one. The cry of the child was followed by a dead silence.

"There is a child in that pavilion," Edward Arundel repeated.

"There is," Olivia answered.

"Whose child?"

"What does it matter to you?"

"Whose child?"

"I cannot tell you, Edward Arundel."

The soldier strode towards the steps, but before he could reach them, Olivia flung herself across his pathway.