LADY JANE had been for two months the solitary inhabitant of those two rooms on the second floor. Yet not altogether solitary—Nurse Mordaunt had been allowed to join her, and had been the faithful companion of her captivity. She was a better companion than a younger maid would have been, for she had been a kind of second mother to Lady Jane, and knew all her life and everything that concerned her, besides being a person of great and varied experience, who had anecdotes and tales to illustrate every vicissitude of life. Nurse Mordaunt was acquainted even with parallel instances to place beside Lady Jane’s own position. She knew every kind of thing that had ever happened “in families,” by which familiar expression she meant great families like those to which she had been accustomed all her life. Little families without histories she knew nothing of. The profound astonishment which overwhelmed Lady Jane when she found herself a prisoner it would be impossible to describe. She felt once more as she had felt when her father insulted her womanly delicacy and sent the blood of shame tingling to her cheeks, shame not so much for herself as for him. Was it possible that her father, the head of so great a house, the descendant of so many noble ancestors, and again her father, the man to whom she had looked up with undoubting confidence and admiration all her life—that at the end he was no true gentleman at all, but only a sham gentleman, the shadow without any substance, the symbol, with all meaning gone out of it? Do not suppose that Lady Jane put this deliberately into words. Ah, no! the thoughts we put into words do not sting us like those that glance into our souls like an arrow, darting, wounding before we have time to put up any shield or defence to keep them out. Deeper even than her separation at such a moment from her lover, more bitter than her thoughts of his disappointment, of his rage and misery, was this empoisoned thought: her father, a great peer, a noble gentleman—yet thus suddenly showing himself not noble at all, not true, a tyrant, without any understanding even of the creatures whom he could oppress. Lady Jane was sad enough on her own account and on Winton’s, it may well be believed: but of this last wound she felt that she never could be healed. Imagine those traditions of her rank in which she had been brought up, her proud yet so earnest and humble sense of its obligations, the martyrdom which in her youth she had been so ready to accept—all come down to this, that she was a prisoner in her father’s house, locked up like a naughty child,—she who had been trained to be the princess royal, the representative of an ideal race! Ah, if it had but been a revolution, a rebellion, democracy rampant, such an imprisonment as she had once been taught to think likely! but to sink down from the grandeur of that conception to the pettiness and bathos of this! She tried to smile to herself sometimes, in the long days which passed so slowly, at her own ludicrous anticipations, and at the entire futility, after all, of this suffering to which she was being exposed. But she had not a lively sense of humour, and could not laugh at those young dreams, which, after all, were the highest of her life. And somehow the sense that the present troubles could produce no possible result of the kind intended, made her almost more impatient of them than if they had been more dangerous. That her father could think to subdue her by such means, that he could expect to convince her by so miserable an argument, that he could suppose it possible that she would change for this, abandon what she had resolved upon at the expense of all her prejudices and so many of her better feelings, because of being shut up in two rooms for two months, or two years, or any time he might choose to keep her there! If she had not thought her filial duty a sufficient reason, would she be convinced by a lock and key? Lady Jane smiled with high and silent disdain at so extraordinary a mistake. But it was unworthy, it was lowering to her moral dignity to be exposed to so vexatious and petty an ordeal. At a State prison, with the block at the end, she had been prepared to smile serenely, carrying her high faith and constancy through even the death ordeal. But confinement in her own room was laughable, not heroic; it made her blush that she should be exercised in so miserable a way—in a way so impossible to bring about any result.
Nurse Mordaunt was an excellent companion, but after a while she began to droop and pine. She wanted the fresh air; she wanted to see her grandchildren; she wanted, oh, imperiously beyond description! a talk, a gossip, a little human intercourse with some one of her own kind. Lady Jane was a darling—the sweetest of ladies; but it was a different thing talking to that angel and chatting familiarly over things in general with Mrs Jarvis. Nurse no more than other mortals could be kept continuously on the higher level. She longed to unbend, to be at her ease, to feel herself, as the French say, chez elle, in which expression there is almost a more intimate well-being than in that of being at home, which we English think so much superior. Her health suffered, which Lady Jane would not allow that hers did; and at last, Nurse Mordaunt made such strenuous representations on the subject to the new servant, whose business it was to watch over the prisoners, that she was allowed to go out. She was allowed to go out and the Duchess to come in, two proceedings altogether contradictory of the spirit of the confinement, and which were, indeed, a confession of failure, though the Duke himself was unaware of it. This made a great change to the prisoner, whose cheeks, though still pale, got a little tinge of colour and hope in consequence. It did more for her than merely to bring her her mother’s society, though that was much. It brought her also other news of the outer world—news of Winton more definite than the distant sight of him riding or walking through the Square, which he did constantly. Now, at last, she received the budget of letters, of which her mother’s hands were full. Lady Jane smiled and cried a little at the entreaties her lover addressed to her to be steadfast—not to give him up. “I wonder what they all think,” she said; “is this an argument likely to convince one’s reason, mother, or to persuade one for love’s sake?” She looked round upon her prison—her pretty chamber furnished with every luxury—and laughed a little. “Is it my head or my heart that is appealed to?” she said. This, perhaps, was too clear-sighted for the angelic point of view from which the world in general expected Lady Jane to view most matters. But, in fact, though she had more poetry in her than her mother, Lady Jane had come into possession of part of her mother’s fortune, so to speak, her sense; and that is a quality which will assert itself. Now the Duchess, in the excitement of standing by helpless while her daughter suffered, had come to regard the matter more melodramatically than Lady Jane did, to suffer her feelings to get the mastery, and to imagine a hundred sinkings of the heart and depressions of the spirit to which the captive must be liable. She recognised the change instinctively, for it was one which had taken place long ago in herself. She, too, had been brought to see the paltriness of many things that looked imposing, the futility of les grands moyens. Lady Jane’s development had been slow. At twenty-eight she had been less experienced than many a girl of eighteen. But now her eyes were opened. Even her lover, who thought it possible that she might yield under such persuasion, was subject to almost a passing shade of that high but gentle disdain with which she contemplated the vulgar force to which she was subjected; for it was vulgar, alas! though a duke was the originator: and unspeakably weak though it was—what the French call brutal—everything, in short, that a mode of action destined to affect a sensitive, proud, and clear-seeing soul ought not to be.
The new régime had continued but a short time when Nurse Mordaunt returned one day from her walk with heightened colour and great suppressed excitement. Something, it was evident, was in her mind quite beyond the circle of her usual thoughts; but she talked less, not more, than usual, and left her lady free to read over and over the last letters, and to refresh her heart with all the raptures of her lover’s delight in having again found the means of communicating with her after the misery of six weeks of silence and complete separation. Something he said of a speedy end of all difficulties, which Lady Jane took but little thought of, being far more interested in the reunion with himself, which his letters brought about. A speedy end: no doubt an end would come some time; but at present the prisoner was not so sanguine as those outside. She did not know the gallant stand which the ladies were making, or the social state of siege which had been instituted in respect to the Duke; and she sighed, but smiled, at Winton’s hope. All went on as usual during the long, long evening. It was long, though it was provided with everything calculated to make it bearable—books and the means of writing, writing to him—which was far more amusing and absorbing than any other kind of composition. Her fire was bright, her room full of luxurious comfort—a piano in it, and materials for a dozen of those amateur works with which time can be cheated out of its length. But she sighed and wearied, as was natural, notwithstanding the happiness of having her lover’s letters, and of having talked with her mother, and of knowing as she did that some time or other this must come to an end. “After all, nurse,” she said with a little laugh, as she prepared for bed, “to be in prison is not desirable. I should like to have a run in the woods at Billings, or even a walk in Rotten Row.”
“Yes, dear,” said nurse, leaning over her, “your ladyship shall do better than that. Oh yes, my sweet, better days are coming. Don’t you let down your dear heart.”
“No; that would not do much good,” Lady Jane said with a sigh: but she did not remark, which was strange, that nurse was full of a secret, and that a delightful secret, exultingly dwelt upon, and ready to burst out at the least encouragement. Or perhaps she did perceive it, but was too tired to draw it forth. And she gave no encouragement to further disclosure, but went to her rest sighing, with a longing to be free, such as since the first days of her imprisonment she had not felt before. And she could not sleep that night. Lady Jane was not of a restless nature. She did not toss about upon her pillows and make it audible that she was sleepless: and she had much to occupy her thoughts, so many things that were pleasant, as well as much that it hurt her to contemplate. She put the hurtful things away and thought of the sweet, and lay there in the darkness of the winter’s night, lighted and calmed by sweet thought. When it was nearly morning, at the darkest and chilliest moment of all, there came a rustling and soft movement, which, however, did not alarm her, since it came from Nurse Mordaunt’s room. Then she perceived dimly, in the faint light from an uncurtained window, a muffled figure, with which indeed she was very familiar, being no other than that of nurse herself in a dressing-gown and nightcap, with a shawl huddled about her throat and shoulders, stealing round the room. What was nurse doing at this mysterious hour? But Lady Jane was not afraid. She was rather glad of the incident in the long monotony of the night. She turned her head noiselessly upon her pillow to watch. But the surprise of Lady Jane was great at the further operations of her attendant. Nurse arranged carefully and noiselessly a small screen between the door and the bed, then with great precaution struck a light and began with much fumbling and awkwardness to operate upon the door. What was she doing? The light, throwing a glimmer upward from behind the screen, revealed her face full of anxiety, bent forward towards the lock of the door, upon which many scratches and ineffectual jars as of tools badly managed soon became audible. The candle threw a portentous waving shadow, over the further wall and roof, of the old woman’s muffled figure, and betrayed a succession of dabs and misses at the door which Lady Jane for a long time could not understand. What did it mean? The noise increased as nurse grew nervous over her failure. She hurt her fingers, she pursed her mouth, she contracted her brows; it was work that demanded knowledge and delicate handling, but she had neither. When Lady Jane raised herself noiselessly on her arm, and said in her soft voice, “What are you doing, nurse?” the poor woman dropped the tools with a dull thump on the floor, and almost went down after them in her vexation. “Oh, my lady, I can’t! I can’t do it, I’m that stupid!” She wept so that Lady Jane could scarcely console her, or understand her explanation. At last it came out by degrees that the tools had been given her, with many injunctions and instructions, to break open the lock of the door. “By whom?” Lady Jane demanded, with a deep blush and sparkling eyes. Why she should have felt so keen a flash of indignation at her lover for thinking of such an expedient is inscrutable, but at the moment it seemed to her that she could never forgive Winton for such an expedient. But it was Lady Germaine who was the offender, and Lady Jane was pacified. She bound up nurse’s finger, and sent her off summarily to bed. Then, it must be allowed, she herself looked upon the tools long and anxiously with shining eyes. It seemed to her that it would be fighting her father with his own weapons. It would be as unworthy of her to get her freedom that way, as it was of him to make a prisoner of her. Would it be so? Lady Jane’s heart began to beat, and her brow to throb. Would it be so? The mere idea that she held her freedom in her hand filled her whole being with excitement. She locked them away into a little cabinet which stood near her bed. She was too tremulous, too much excited by the mere possibility, to be able to think at all.
That night had been a very exciting one for the Duke. Again he had been the centre of a demonstration. It did not seem to him that he could turn anywhere without hearing these words, “Half-married,” murmuring about. This time it was at the house of the Lord Chancellor that the émeute occurred. A very distinguished lady was the chief guest: not indeed the most distinguished personage in the realm, but yet so near as to draw inspiration from that fountain-head. She said, “We could not believe it,” as Mrs Coningsby had said; but naturally with far more force. “I am afraid you are not of your age, Duke.”
“There is little that is desirable in the age, madam, that any one should be of it,” his Grace replied with dignity. Here he felt himself on safe ground.
“Ah, but we cannot help belonging to it: and it is for persons of rank to show that they can lead it, not to be driven back into antiquity. All that is over,” said the gracious lady. The Duke bowed to the ground as may be supposed. “Lady Jane I hope will appear at the Drawing-Room on her marriage,” his distinguished monitress said as she passed on. The emphasis was unmistakable. And how that silken company enjoyed it! They had all gathered as close as possible, and lent their keenest ear. And there was a whisper ran round that this was indeed the way in which royalty should take its place in society. As for the Duke, he stumbled out of these gilded halls, more confused and discomfited than ever duke was. He did not sleep much more than Lady Jane did all that long and dark night. What was he to do? Must he Give In? These words seemed to be written upon the book of fate. Relinquish his prejudices, his principles, all the traditions of his race—retrace his steps, own himself in error, undo what he had done? No! no! no! a thousand times no! But then there seemed to come round him again that rush of velvet feet, that sheen of jewelled brows, the look with which the central figure waved her lily hand—— The Duke felt his forehead bedewed with drops of anguish. How could he stand out against that? he, the most loyal of subjects, and one whose example went so far? If he set himself in opposition, who could be expected to obey? He thought of nothing else all night, and it was the first thing which occurred to him when he woke in the morning. What to do? He was tired of it all, all, and tired of other things too, if he could have been brought to confess it. His heart was sore, and his soul fatigued beyond measure. He had not even his wife to lean the weight of his cares upon, and everything was going wrong. He could now at last feel the sweep of the current moving towards Niagara. It bore him along, it carried him off his feet. Ruin at hand: he would not allow himself even now to believe in it—but in his heart was aware that it was ruin. And this other matter in the foreground, occupying the thoughts which had so many other claims upon them! The reader will feel with us that the subject is too sacred, otherwise there is enough to fill a volume of the Duke’s self-communings, and perplexed, distressful thoughts. He got up in the morning, still half-dazed, not knowing what to do. But in his heart the Duke was aware he was beaten. There was no more fight in him. He swallowed his breakfast dolefully, and sat down in his vast, cheerless library by himself to settle what he was to do, when—But for this we must go back a little in the record of the family affairs.
Lady Jane had begun the day with a sense of underlying excitement, which she covered with her usual calm, but which was not her usual calm. She had the means of escape in her power. She said nothing to nurse, who, subdued by her failure, and crushed by her lady’s first flash of indignation, effaced herself as much as possible, and left Lady Jane in the room which looked out upon the Square, which was her dressing-room (nominally) and sitting-room, undisturbed. Lady Jane could not forget that the tools were in that little carved cabinet, which, never in the course of its existence, had held anything of such serious meaning before. She could not keep them out of her mind. To use them might be unworthy of her, a condescension, putting herself on the same level as her tyrant; but after all, to think that the means were in her power! Lady Jane was very well aware that, once outside that door, her captivity was over. It was a thing that could not be repeated. Once upon the staircase, in the passage, and all the world was free to her. When you think of that after two months’ imprisonment, it is hard to keep the excitement out of your pulses. At last it overcame her so much that she got up, half-stealthily, timidly, and went to the door to examine the lock, and see whether, by the light of nature, she could make out what was to be done. It had been closed not long before to permit of the exit of the maid who carried their meals to the prisoners. The tools were in the cabinet, and in all likelihood Lady Jane would be as maladroit with those poor small white hands of hers as nurse had been. She went to the door and examined the lock closely. All at once something occurred to her which made her heart jump. She took hold of the handle, it turned in her hand. Another moment and she flung it open with a little cry of terror and triumph. Open! and she free, out of her prison. It was but one step, but that step was enough. Her amazement was so great that it turned to something like consternation. She stepped out on to the landing, which was somewhat dark on this February morning: and there she paused. She was a woman born to be a heroine, one of the Quixotic race. She paused a moment, holding her head high, and reflected. This must have been an accident: for once the jailer had made a mistake, had slept upon his post, had turned the key amiss. Was it good enough to take advantage of a mistake, to save herself by the slip of a servant? She hesitated, this spiritual descendant of the great Spanish cavalier, that noblest knight. But then Lady Jane’s sense came in. She was aware that now, at this moment, she was delivered,—that no force in the world could put her again within that door. She gathered the long skirt of her black gown in her hand, and slowly, stately, not like a fugitive, like the princess she was, went down-stairs.
The Duke was in his library thinking what to do, and the Duchess—in her morning-room, with her heart greatly fluttered by that little royal speech, which had been reported to her already—sat with, strange to say, only half a thought of Jane, looking in the face that other dark and gloomy thing,—the ruin that was approaching. She had palpable evidence of it before her, and knew that it was now a matter of weeks, perhaps of days, so that though her heart, like an agitated sea after the storm, was still heaving with the other emotion, her thoughts for the moment had abandoned Jane. But the Duke’s mind was full of his daughter. He would have to Give In! Look at it how he would, he saw no escape for that. “The women,” as Lord Germaine in his slangy way prophesied, “had made it too hot for him,” and royalty itself—clearly he could not put his head out of his door, or appear in the society of his peers again, till this was done. But how was it to be done? To make his recantation in the eye of day, in the sight even of his household, was more than he could calmly contemplate. It was no longer, What was he to do? but, How was he to do it? that was in his mind. He had got up, unable to keep still, and feeling that some step must be taken at once. When——
We had already got this length on a previous page. At this memorable crisis, when all the world seemed to his consciousness to be standing still to see what he would do, the door of the library was pushed slowly open from without. The doors in Grosvenor Square did not squeak and mutter like the wizards in the Old Testament, as our doors so often do, but rolled slowly open, majestically, without sound. This was what happened while the Duke stood still, something within him seeming to give way, his heart fluttering as if what he expected was a visitor from the unseen. He stood with his eyes opening wide, his lips apart. Was it a deputation from Mayfair? was it the royal lady herself? was it—— It was something more overwhelming, more miraculous than any of these. It was Lady Jane. The reader is already aware who was coming, but the Duke was not aware. He gasped at her with speechless astonishment, as if she had been indeed a visitor from the unseen.
She was very pale after her long incarceration, and the hollow, alas! very visible on her delicate cheek. She was dressed in a long, soft cashmere gown, black, with an air of having fitted her admirably once, but which now was too loose for her, as could be seen. But though she was thin and pale, she held her head high, and there was a sort of smile in the look with which she regarded her father. Hers was indeed the triumph. She was too high-minded, too proud to fly. She came into the room, and closed the door with a sort of indignant stateliness. “I have come to tell you,” she said, “that by some accident or misadventure my door was found unlocked this morning, and I have left my prison.” She held her head high, and he bowed and crouched before her. But yet, had she but known, her own relief and ecstasy of freedom was nothing to her father’s. It was as if the load of a whole universe had been taken off his shoulders.
“This is Martin’s fault,” he said; “the fellow shall be dismissed at once. Jane, you will believe me or not as you please, but I had meant to come myself and open the door to you to-day.”
He dropped down into a chair all weak and worn, and held his head in his hands: his nerves now more shattered than her own. It was all he could do to keep himself from bursting like a woman into tears.
“You surely do not imagine that I could doubt what you say? I am glad, very glad, that it was so——” she said, her voice melting. He was her father still, and she was not guiltless towards him. “I wish that I had waited till you came,” she said.
“Yes;” he seized eagerly upon this little advantage. “I wish that you had waited till I came: but it was not to be expected. I do not say that it was to be expected.” Then he hoisted himself by his hands pressing upon the table, and looked at her. “Bless me,” he said, “how thin you are, and how pale!—is this—is this my doing? Gracious! shut up so long, poor girl!—I suppose you must hate me, Jane?”
Lady Jane went up to him holding out her hands. “Father, I have sinned against you too. Forgive me!” she cried, too generous not to take upon herself the blame; and so the father and daughter kissed each other, he crying like a child, she like a mother supporting him. Such a moment had never been in the Duke’s long life before.
And we are bound to allow that neither the Duchess, who was his faithful wife, nor Winton, always ready to appreciate the noble sentiments of Lady Jane, could ever understand the fulness of this reconciliation. It is to be hoped that the reader will comprehend better. They were too resentful and indignant to resume their old relations in a moment as if nothing had happened, which Lady Jane did with perhaps more tenderness than before. But into this question there is no time to enter. When Lady Jane went in softly, as if she had left her mother half an hour before, into the morning-room, the Duchess flung away her papers with a great cry, and rushed upon her daughter, clasping her almost fiercely, looking over her shoulder with all the ferocity of a lioness in defence of her offspring. She would have ordered the carriage at once to take Lady Jane away, or even have gone with her on the spot, on foot or in a cab, to a place of safety: but Lady Jane would not hear of any such proceeding. She calmed her mother, as she had soothed her father, and in an hour’s time Winton was in that little room, which suddenly was turned into Paradise. He had been carrying about with him all this time a special licence ready for use, and as everything can be done at a moment’s notice in town, even in February, Lady Jane Altamont, attended by a small but quite sufficient train, and before a whole crowd of excited witnesses, was married next morning at St George’s, Hanover Square, like everybody else of her degree. Needless to say that there was in the ‘Morning Post’ next morning, as well as in most of the other papers, an account of the ceremony, with a delicate hint of difficulties, unnecessary to enter into, which had gone before. This was read by many who understood, and by a great many more who did not understand; but nowhere with greater excitement than in the rectory-house of St Alban’s, E.C., where Mrs Marston took the fashionable paper, poor lady, because in that wilderness she was so out of the way of everything. She rushed in upon her husband in his study (who had just seen it in the ‘Standard’ with feelings which are indescribable) with the broadsheet in her hand. “Listen to this, William,” she cried solemnly; “didn’t I tell you it was none of our business to meddle! and your fine Duke, whom you were so anxious to be serviceable to, and that never said thank you—— But I told you what you had to expect,” Mrs Marston cried.