THE public of Sliplin gave Lady Jane the pas. Though every individual who had the least right of acquaintance with Lady Somers longed to call, to see how she was looking, to see how she was taking it, to see the dear babies, &c., &c., yet there was a universal consent, given tacitly, that Lady Jane, not only as the head of the local society, but as having been so deeply involved in Stella’s marriage, should come first; and, accordingly, for two whole days the neighbours had refrained, even Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay holding back. When Lady Jane’s carriage appeared at last, there was a little rustle of interest and excitement through the place. The Stanhopes of the old Leigh House, who were half-way between Steephill and Sliplin, saw it sweep past their lodge gates, and ran in in a body to say to their mother, “Now, to-morrow we can call!” and the same sentiment flew over the place from one house to another. “Lady Jane has just driven down to the Cliff. I have just seen Lady Jane’s carriage pass on her way to see Lady Somers.” “Well, that will be a meeting!” some ladies said. It appeared to a number of them somehow that it must have been Lady Jane’s machinations that secured Mr. Tredgold’s fortune for his undutiful child—though, indeed, they could not have told how.
These days of seclusion would have been very dreary to Stella had she not been occupied with her dressmaker, a visitor who is always more exciting and delightful than any other. Louise, who had insisted so on the payment of her little bill in Stella’s days of humiliation, was now all obsequiousness, coming down herself to receive Lady Somers’ orders, to fit Lady Somers’ mourning, to suggest everything that could be done in the way of lightening it now, and changing it at the earliest opportunity. Hours of delightful consultation as to Stella’s figure, which she discussed as gravely as if it had been a matter of national importance—as well as the stuffs which were to clothe it, and the fashion in which they were to be made—flew over her head, during which time her husband mooned about the stables, generally with little Job upon his shoulder, and finally, unable to endure it any longer, went up to town, where no doubt he was happy—though the wail of the little boy left behind did not add to the peace of the house. The dressmaker had been dismissed by the time that Lady Jane arrived, and Stella sat contemplating her crape in all the mirrors round, and assuring herself that when it was perfectly fresh as now, it was not so bad, and unquestionably becoming to a very fair complexion. “I can’t say you look very well in it, Kate; you are darker, and then yours is not quite fresh. To be quite fresh is indispensable. If one was a widow, for instance, and obliged to wear it, it ought to be renewed every week; but I do think it’s becoming to me. It throws up one’s whiteness, don’t you think, and brings out the colour,” said Stella standing before the glass. “Oh, Kate, you are so unsympathetic; come and see what I mean,” she cried.
“Yes, I see—you look very nice, Stella. The black is becoming to you—but, after all, we don’t wear crape to be becoming.”
“Oh, Fudge!” cried Stella, “what do you wear it for? Because it’s the custom, and you can’t help yourself. What does it matter to poor papa what we wear? He always liked to see me in gay colours—he had too florid a taste, if the truth must be told. If I hadn’t known better by instinct (for I’m sure I never had any teaching), and if we hadn’t been so fortunate as to fall into the hands of Louise, I should have been dressed like ‘Arriet out for a holiday. It’s curious,” said Stella reflectively, “taste is just born in some people and others you can’t teach it to. I am so glad the first was my case. We labour under disadvantages, you know, being our father’s daughters—that is, not me, now everything has come straight, but you will, Kate, especially as you have not got the money. To be papa’s daughter and yet not his heiress, you know, is a kind of injury to people that might come after you. You will be going into the world upon false pretences. I wonder now that you did not marry somebody before it was all known.”
“It was only known on the night of papa’s funeral, Stella. I could not have married many people between then and now,” said Katherine, trying to take this speech as lightly as it was made.
“That is true—still you must have had people after you. With your expectations, and a good-looking girl. You always were quite a good-looking girl, Kate.”
“I am grateful for your approbation, Stella.”
“Only a little stuck-up looking—and—well, not quite so young as you used to be. If I were you I would go in for that old fellow, don’t you remember, whom papa got rid of in such a hurry—the man that came over with us in the Aurungzebe. Somebody told me he had done very well out there, and, of course, Charlie asked him to come and see us. And you know you were his fancy, Kate; it was you, not me—don’t you remember how everybody laughed? I should go in for him now if I were you. An old affair like that is quite a nice foundation. And I hear he has done very well, and he is just a suitable age, and it doesn’t really matter that—— What is passing the window? Oh,” cried Stella, clapping her hands, “the very same old landau that I remember all my life, and Lady Jane in her war paint, just the same. Let’s prepare to receive cavalry!” she cried. With a twist of her hand she drew two chairs into position, one very low, graceful and comfortable for herself, another higher, with elbows for Lady Jane. And Stella seated herself, with her fresh crape falling about her in crisp folds, her fair face and frizzy locks coming out of its blackness with great éclat, and her handkerchief in her hand. It was as good as a play (she herself felt, for I doubt whether Katherine relished the scene) to see her rise slowly and then drop, as it were, as lightly as a feather, but beyond speech, into Lady Jane’s arms, who, deeply impressed by this beautiful pose, clasped her and kissed her and murmured, “My poor child; my poor, dear child!” with real tears in her eyes.
“But what a comfort it must be to your mind,” Lady Jane said, when she had seated herself and was holding Stella’s hand, “to feel that there could be nothing against you in his mind—no rancour, no unkindness—only the old feeling that he loved you beyond everything; that you were still his pet, his little one, his favourite——” Lady Jane herself felt it so much that she was almost choked by a sob.
“Oh, dear Lady Jane,” cried Stella, evidently gulping down her own, “if I did not feel that, how could I ever have endured to come to this house—to dear papa’s house—to my own old home! that I was so wicked as to run away from, and so silly, never thinking. My only consolation is, though Kate has so little, so very little, to tell me of that dreadful time, that he must have forgiven me at the last.”
It was a very dreadful recollection to obtrude into the mind of the spectator in such a touching scene; but Katherine could not keep out of her eyes the vision of an old man in his chair saying quite calmly, “God damn them,” as he sat by his fireside. The thought made her shudder; it was one never to be communicated to any creature; but Lady Jane perceived the little tremulous movement that betrayed her, and naturally misinterpreted its cause.
“Yes,” she said, “my dear Stella, I am very happy for you; but there is poor Katherine left out in the cold who has done so much for him all these years.”
Stella, as was so natural to her, went on with the catalogue of her own woes without taking any notice of this. “Such a time as we have gone through, Lady Jane! Oh, I have reflected many a time, if it had not been for what everybody told us, I never, never, would have done so silly a thing. You all said, you remember, that papa would not hold out, that he could not get on without me, that he would be quite sure to send for me home. And I was over-persuaded. India is a dreadful place. You have double pay, but, oh, far more than double expenses! and as for dress, you want as much, if not more, than you would in London, and tribes upon tribes of servants that can do nothing. And then the children coming. And Job that has never had a day’s health, and how he is to live in England with a liver like a Strasburg goose, and his father stuffing him with everything that is bad for him, I don’t know. It has been a dreadful time; Kate has had all the good and I’ve had all the evil for seven years—fancy, for seven long years.”
“But you’ve had a good husband, at all events, Stella; and some pleasant things,” Lady Jane murmured in self-defence.
“Oh, Charlie! I don’t say that he is any worse than the rest. But fancy me—me, Stella, that you knew as a girl with everything I could think of—going to Government House over and over again in the same old dress; and Paris diamonds that cost ten pounds when they were new.”
At this dreadful picture Lady Jane bowed her head. What could she reply? Katherine had not required to go anywhere a number of times in the same old dress—but that was probably because she went to very few places—nor in Paris diamonds at ten pounds, for she had not any diamonds at all, false or true. To change the subject, which had taken a turn more individual than was pleasant, she asked whether she might not see the dear children?
“Oh yes,” said Stella, “if they will come—or, at least, if Job will come, for baby is too small to have a will of her own. Kate, do you think that you could bring Job? It isn’t that it is any pleasure to see him, I’m sure. When his father is here he will speak to no one else, and when his father isn’t here he just cries and kicks everybody. I think, Kate, he hates you less than the rest. Will you try and get him to come if Lady Jane wants to see him? Why anybody should want to see him I am sure is a mystery to me.”
It was an ill-advised measure on Stella’s part, for Katherine had no sooner departed somewhat unwillingly on her mission than Lady Jane seized her young friend’s hand again: “Oh, Stella, I must speak to you, I must, while she is away. Of course, you and Charlie have settled it between you—you are going to set everything right for Katherine? It was all settled on her side that if she got the money you should have your share at once. And you will do the same at once, won’t you, without loss of time, Charlie and you?”
“You take away my breath,” cried Stella, freeing her hand. “What is it that I have got to do in such a hurry? I hate a hurry; it makes me quite ill to be pressed to do anything like running for a train. We only came a few days ago, Lady Jane; we haven’t been a week at home. We haven’t even seen the lawyer yet; and do you think Charlie and I discuss things about money without loss of time—oh, no! we always like to take the longest time possible. They have never been such very agreeable things, I can tell you, Lady Jane, discussions about money between Charlie and me.”
“That, to be sure, in the past,” said Lady Jane, “but not now, my dear. I feel certain he has said to you, ‘We must put things right for Katherine—’ before now.”
“Perhaps he has said something of the kind; but he isn’t at all a man to be trusted in money matters, Charlie. I put very little faith in him. I don’t know what the will is, as yet; but so far as I possibly can I shall keep the management of the money in my own hands. Charlie would make ducks and drakes of it if he had his way.”
“But, my dear Stella, this is a matter that you cannot hesitate about for a moment; the right and wrong of it are quite clear. We all thought your father’s money would go to Katherine, who had never crossed him in any way——”
“What does that matter? It was me he was fond of!” Stella cried, with disdain.
“Well; so it has proved. But Katherine was prepared at once to give you your share. You must give her hers, Stella—you must, and that at once. You must not leave a question upon your own sense of justice, your perception of right and wrong. Charlie!” cried Lady Jane with excitement, “Charlie is a gentleman at least. He knows what is required of him. I shall stay until he comes home, for I must speak to him at once.”
“That is his dog-cart, I suppose,” said Stella calmly, “passing the window; but you must remember, Lady Jane, that the money is not Charlie’s to make ducks and drakes with. I don’t know how the will is drawn, but I am sure papa would not leave me in the hands of any man he didn’t know. I shall have to decide for myself; and I know more about it than Charlie does. Katherine has money of her own, which I never had. She has had the good of papa’s money for these seven years, while I have not had a penny. She says herself that she did not nurse him or devote herself to him, beyond what was natural, that she should require compensation for that. He liked the nurse that had her wages paid her, and there was an end of it; which is exactly what I should say myself. I don’t think it’s a case for your interference, or Charlie’s, or anybody’s. I shall do what I think right, of course, but I can’t undertake that it shall be what other people think right. Oh, Charlie, there you are at last. And here’s Lady Jane come to see us and give us her advice.”
“Hallo, Cousin Jane,” said Sir Charles, “just got back from town, where I’ve had a bit of a run since yesterday. Couldn’t stand it any longer here; and I say, Stella, now you’ve got your panoply, let’s move up bag and baggage, and have a bit of a lark.”
“You are looking very well, Charlie,” said Lady Jane, “and so is Stella, considering, and I am waiting to see the dear children. You’d better come over to us, there is some shooting going on, and you are not supposed to have many larks while Stella is in fresh crape. I have been speaking to her about Katherine.” Here Lady Jane made a sudden and abrupt stop by way of emphasis.
“Oh, about Kate!” Sir Charles said, pulling his moustache.
“Stella doesn’t seem to see, what I hope you see, that your honour’s concerned. They say women have no sense of honour; I don’t believe that, but there are cases. You, however, Charlie, you’re a gentleman; at least you know what’s your duty in such a case.”
Sir Charles pulled his moustache more than ever. “Deuced hard case,” he said, “for Kate.”
“Yes, there is no question about that; but for you, there is no question about that either. It is your first duty, it is the only course of action for a gentleman. As for Stella, if she does not see it, it only proves that what’s bred in the bone—I’m sure I don’t want to say anything uncivil. Indeed, Stella, it is only as your friend, your relation,” cried Lady Jane, putting much emphasis on the word, “that I allow myself to speak.”
It cost Lady Jane something to call herself the relation of Mr. Tredgold’s daughter, and it was intended that the statement should be received with gratitude; but this Stella, Lady Somers, neither felt nor affected. She was quite well aware that she had now no need of Lady Jane. She was herself an extremely popular person wherever she went, of that there could be no doubt—she had proved it over and over again in the seven years of her humiliation. Popular at Government House, popular at every station, wherever half-a-dozen people were assembled together. And now she was rich. What need she care for anyone, or for any point of honour, or the opinion of the county even, much less of a place like Sliplin? Lady Jane could no longer either make her or mar her. She was perfectly able to stand by herself.
“It is very kind of you,” she said, “to say that, though it doesn’t come very well after the other. Anyhow, I’m just as I’ve been bred, as you say, though I have the honour to be Charlie’s wife. Lady Jane wants to see Job; I wish you’d go and fetch him. I suppose Kate has not been able to get that little sprite to come. You need not try,” said Stella calmly, when Somers had left the room, “to turn Charlie against me, Lady Jane. He is a fool in some things, but he knows on which side his bread is buttered. If I have fifty thousand a year and he not half as many farthings, you may believe he will think twice before he goes against me. I am very proud to be your relation, of course, but it hasn’t a money value, or anything that is of the first importance to us. Kate won’t be the better, but the worse, for any interference. I have my own ways of thinking, and I shall do what I think right.”
“Oh, here is the dear baby at last!” cried Lady Jane, accomplishing her retreat, though routed horse and foot, behind the large infant, looking rather bigger than the slim ayah who carried her, who now came triumphantly into the room, waving in her hand the rather alarming weapon of a big coral, and with the true air of Stella’s child in Stella’s house. A baby is a very good thing to cover a social defeat, and this one was so entirely satisfactory in every particular that the visitor had nothing to do but admire and applaud. “What a specimen for India,” she cried; but this was before Job made his remarkable entrance in the dimness of the twilight, which had begun by this time to veil the afternoon light.