TWICE again only, before he started for the Continent—as he persisted in thinking at her sole behest—was Ned vouchsafed the partial company of his mistress. In each instance he must forego the desire of his heart for a personal interview. Such, by accident or design, was denied him. But he had the satisfaction of being received by madame with an ease and a familiarity that were significant of a quite particular confidence.
On the first occasion he happened upon the ladies out walking in a country lane. They were botanising, under the tutorship of a Bœotian new to him—a thin, clerical-looking individual, with a little head, appropriately like an anther. The house at Bury was, indeed, a perfect surprise-tub for the uncommon personalities it seemed to have an endless capacity for turning out. Its staff was, perhaps, twenty all told; yet this number, in view of its omniferous faculties, would often appear as self-reproductive as a stage dozen of soldiers walking itself round a rock into a company.
Madame, who was engaged in “receiving” from monsieur her stick-in-waiting the names of débutantes hedge-flowers presented to her, waved a gracious end to the ceremony, and, greeting my lord as if he were a dear friend, invited him to pace beside her.
“It is well timed,” she said. “Monsieur has received my letter? And will Friday suit our so generous cavalier to depart?”
Ned bowed with his never-failing gravity.
“Yes,” he said simply.
The lady clasped her hands.
“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, with a quite melodramatic fervour, “it is the passing of the cloud. After all the tempest-tossing, to see the shore in sight!”—and she hastily lifted her skirts from contact with a roadside puddle.
“Monsieur,” said a little voice almost at Ned’s ear, “do you know what is a corolle and what a nectaire?”
In some mood of impudence or mischief Pamela was come to give her company unbidden. She would pretend not to see the warning gestures of la gouvernante. She held in her hand the parts of a dismembered flower, and she looked up at the young man as she stepped, light as his own sudden thoughts, at his side. She felt a little warmth, a little pity towards him. He was going far away, and to serve her. That she knew. It was in the nature of a tiny confidence between them. Her glance was appealing as a child’s, asking not to be left.
And as for Ned, the sight of this sweet face close to him so inflamed his heart that his formal speech took fire.
“I know when I look at you,” he said; “they are mademoiselle’s cheek and mouth classified.”
In the near prospect of his banishment he spoke out reckless of consequences. Perhaps the unexpected answer took the girl herself by surprise. She hung her head and fell back a little.
“Mademoiselle,” cried Ned, “if I might take thence a rose to wear for a favour!”
“Oh, fie!” she answered, “that is not even original; it is to repeat Mr Sherree-den’s foolishness. And they are not roses at all.”
“Nor rouge,” said Ned, “though you once implied it.”
“No,” she said, with a pert glance at her gouvernante; “madame-maman does not approve. But sometimes to rub them with a geranium petal—that is not immoral, is it?”
“I don’t know,” cried the young man; “but the geranium shall be my queen of flowers from this time!”
“Pamela!” cried madame, in desperate chagrin over every word that passed between the two, yet impotent, under existing circumstances, to give expression to her annoyance; but she ventured to summon the child pretty peremptorily to come and walk beside her, and only in this order was my lord destined to enjoy for an hour a divided pleasure.
But on the second and final occasion of his meeting her, chance and the girl were even less favourable to him. He was to start for Belgium on the Friday morning, and on the Thursday evening he walked over to Bury to receive his instructions. He found signs of confusion in the house—boxes choking the passages, personal litter of all kinds brought together as if for removal; and in the drawing-room a little concert—such as madame loved to extemporise—was in process of performance, with Mr Sheridan, in mighty boisterous spirits, for only listener. He invited Ned to a seat beside him, and clapped him on the shoulder.
“’Tis admirable,” said he; “not concert, but concertation. There is no conductor but a lightning-conductor could direct these warring elements.”
Madame, indeed, set the time on her harp; but it was the time that waits for no man. A Bœotian—of whom there were a half-dozen in the orchestra—might pant, a mere winded laggard, into his flute; another might toilfully climb the last bars on his fiddle, as if it were a gate; a third might pound up the long hill of his double-bass, and cross its very bridge with a shriek like a view-holloa: the issue was the same—none was in at the death. Pamela, in the meantime, tinkled on a triangle; Mademoiselle Sercey shook a little panic cluster of sledge-bells whenever madame glanced her way; Mademoiselle d’Orléans played on the side-drum amiably, and with all the execution of a toy-rabbit. It was all very merry, and the girls giggled famously; and Ned closed his eyes and tried to think that the mellow ring of the steel was from the forging by Love of his bolts on a tiny anvil.
By-and-by the piece ended amidst laughter, and madame came from her place and conducted her cavalier into another room.
“It is to prove yourself the most disinterested,” she said. “How can I acquit myself of gratitude to my friend—to my knight-errant?”
Ned, in the hot longing of his soul, was near stumbling upon a suggestion as to the reward it was in her power, if not to bestow, at least to influence. But he remembered his promise to Pamela, and was fain to let the opportunity pass.
Then madame, to some fine play of emotion, produced a couple of letters under seal—the first to monsieur le duc, the second to her own son-in-law, M. Becelaer de Lawoestine. To the latter gentleman’s address in Brussels she begged my lord to proceed in the first instance. The Belgian nobleman would give him honourable welcome, no less for her sake than for monsieur’s most obvious merits. Moreover, De Lawoestine would furnish him with precise directions as to where monseigneur was at the moment to be found; if, indeed, monseigneur was not at the very time the other’s guest in Brussels.
These were Ned’s simple instructions. There were tender messages to madame’s daughter; suggestions as to the attitude most effective to be assumed towards monseigneur by madame’s plenipotentiary; references to the agony of suspense madame must suffer until she should learn the result of her envoy’s mission. Madame, in truth, either acted her part so well, or lived in it so naturally, as to half convince herself, we must believe, that she was not acting at all.
“We are ready, as you see, to start the moment monseigneur’s command shall reach us,” she said. “We pray, monsieur, for the prosperous termination to your voyage.”
Her eyes were moist; she impulsively extended her hand, which his lordship less impulsively kissed. His lips, indeed, unpractised in gallantry, were in pledge to a dream; his understanding, also. Had it not been, he might have inclined to the question, How comes it that madame, in direct communication with the Duke of Orleans, is unable to acquaint me certainly as to that prince’s present address?
Ned returned to the drawing-room, prepared to repudiate any suggestion of the glamour that might be held to attach itself to a mild form of heroism. His modesty was not put to the test. The company accepted him in a frolic mood. It was full of laughter and thoughtlessness. He was rallied only on his serious mien. Pamela, wilful and radiant, would acknowledge him for no more than the means to a jest. Her affectation of indifference was secretly a stimulus to the spirits of two, at least, of the party. For a household depressed by the gloom of impending misfortune, the atmosphere was singularly volatile.
Not to the end did Ned receive one hint that his self-sacrifice was appreciated and applauded; and at last he must make his adieux without the comfort of even a sympathetic glance from a certain direction to cheer him on his way.
He had put on his hat and coat, had reached the very porch on his way forth, when a light step sounded behind him.
“Good-bye, monsieur!”
“God bless you, Pamela!”
“Monsieur, it is only the rose you asked for.”
The door slammed behind him. He held, half stupidly, in his hand a little sweet-smelling stalk with some crushed scarlet flowers.
“My God—oh, my God!” he whispered, “it is part of herself.”