CHAPTER XVI
BETWEEN LADY ELIZA AND CECILIA
LADY ELIZA LAMONT was like a person who has walked in the dark and been struck to the ground by some familiar object, the existence and position of which he has been foolish enough to forget. Straight from her lover, Cecilia had sought her, and put what had happened plainly before her; she did not know what view her aunt might take, but she was not prepared for the effect of her news. She sat calm under the torrent of excited words, her happiness dying within her, watching with miserable eyes the changes of her companion’s face. Lady Eliza was shaken to the depths; she had not foreseen the contingency which might take her nearest and dearest, and set her in the very midst of the enemy’s camp.
Though she forced herself to be civil to Gilbert Speid, and felt no actual enmity towards him, everything to do with him was hateful to her. Cecilia, whom she loved as a daughter, and to whom she clung more closely with each passing year, would be cut off from her, not in love nor in gratitude, as she knew well enough, but by the barrier of such surroundings as she, Lady Eliza, could never induce herself to penetrate. That house from which, as she passed its gates, she was wont to avert her face, would be Cecilia’s home. For some time she had been schooling herself to the idea of their parting. When Crauford’s laborious courtship had ended in failure, she had been glad; but, in comparison to this new suitor, she would have welcomed him with open arms. He had a blameless character, an even temper, excellent prospects, and no distance to which he could have transported Cecilia would divide them so surely as the few miles which separated Morphie from Whanland. She would hear her called ‘Mrs. Speid’; she would probably see her the mother of children in whose veins ran the blood of the woman she abhorred. The tempest of her feelings stifled all justice and all reason.
‘Why did you not take Crauford Fordyce, if your heart was set on leaving me?’ she cried.
The thrust pierced Cecilia like a knife, but she knew that it was not the real Lady Eliza who had dealt it.
‘I did not care for him,’ she replied, ‘and I love Gilbert Speid.’
‘He is not Gilbert Speid!’ burst out her companion; ‘he is no more Speid than you are! He is nothing of the sort; he is an impostor—a man of no name!’
‘An impostor, ma’am?’
‘His mother was a bad woman. I would rather see you dead than married to him! If you wanted to break my heart, Cecilia, you could not have taken a better way of doing it.’
‘Do you mean that he is not Mr. Speid’s son?’ said Cecilia, her face the colour of a sheet of paper.
‘Yes, I do. He has no business in that house; he has no right to be here; his whole position is a shameful pretence and a lie.’
‘But Whanland is his. He has every right to be there, ma’am.’
‘Mr. Speid must have been mad to leave it to him. You would not care to be the wife of an interloper! That is what he is.’
‘All that can change nothing,’ said Cecilia, after a moment. ‘The man is the same; he has done no wrong.’
‘His very existence is a wrong,’ cried Lady Eliza, her hand shutting tightly on the gloves she held; ‘it is a wrong done by an infamous woman!’
‘I love him,’ said Cecilia: ‘nothing can alter that. You received him, and you told me nothing, and the thing is done—not that I would undo it if I could. How could I know that you would be so much against it?’
‘I had rather anything in the world than this!’ exclaimed the other—‘anyone but this man! What has driven you to make such a choice?’
‘Does it seem so hard to understand why anyone should love Gilbert Speid?’
‘It is a calamity that you should; think of it again—to please me—to make me happy. I can scarcely bear the thought, child; you do not know the whole of this miserable business.’
‘And I hoped that you would be so pleased!’
The tears were starting to Cecilia’s eyes; her nerves, strained to the utmost by the emotions of the day, were beginning to give way.
‘Whanland is so near,’ she said; ‘we should scarcely have to part, dear aunt.’
She was longing to know more, to ask for complete enlightenment, but her pride struggled hard, and she shrank from the mere semblance of misgiving about Gilbert. She had none in her heart.
‘Is this that you have told me generally known?’ she said at last.
‘No one knows as much as I do,’ answered the elder woman, turning her head away.
‘Does Mr. Fullarton know?’ asked Cecilia.
Lady Eliza did not reply for a moment, and, when she did, her head was still turned from the girl.
‘I know his real history—his whole history,’ she replied in a thick voice; ‘other people may guess at it, but they know nothing.’
‘You will not tell me more?’
‘I cannot!’ cried Lady Eliza, getting up and turning upon her almost fiercely; ‘there is no more to be said. If you want to marry him, I suppose you will marry him; I cannot stop you. What is it to you if my heart breaks? What is it to you if all my love for you is forgotten?’
‘Aunt! Dear, dear aunt!’ cried Cecilia, ‘you have never spoken to me like this in all your life!’
She threw her arms round Lady Eliza, holding her tightly. For some time they stood clinging to each other without speaking, and the tears in Cecilia’s eyes dropped and fell upon the shoulder that leaned against her; now and then she stroked it softly with her fingers.
They started apart as a servant entered, and Lady Eliza went out of the room and out of the house, disappearing among the trees. Though her heart was smiting her for her harshness, a power like the force of instinct in an animal fought against the idea of connecting all she loved with Whanland. She had called Gilbert an interloper, and an interloper he was, come to poison the last days of her life. She hurried on among the trees, impervious to the balm of the evening air which played on her brow; tenderness and fierceness dragged her in two directions, and the consciousness of having raised a barrier between herself and Cecilia was grievous. She seemed to be warring against everything. Of what use was it to her to have been given such powers of love and sympathy? They had recoiled upon her all her life, as curses are said to recoil, and merely increased the power to suffer.
She had come to the outskirts of the trees, and, from the place in which she stood, she could see over the wall into the road. The sound of a horse’s trotting feet was approaching from the direction of Kaims, and she remembered that it was Friday, the day on which the weekly market was held, and on which those of the county men who were agriculturally inclined made a point of meeting in the town for business purposes. The rider was probably Fullarton. He often stopped at Morphie on his way home, and it was likely he would do so now. She went quickly down to a gate in the wall to intercept him.
Yes, it was Robert trotting evenly homewards, a fine figure of a man on his sixteen-hand black. For one moment she started as he came into sight round the bend, for she took him for Speid. The faces of the two men were not alike, but, for the first time, and for an instant only, the two figures seemed to her almost identical. As he neared her the likeness faded; Fullarton was the taller of the two, and he had lost the distinctive lines of youth. She went out and stood on the road; he pulled up as he saw her, and dismounted, and they walked on side by side towards the large gate of Morphie.
‘Crauford has come back,’ he began, ‘and I have just seen him in Kaims. He is staying with Barclay; they seemed rather friendly when he was with me, but I am surprised. Why he should have come back I can’t think, for Cecilia gave him no doubt of her want of appreciation of him. In any case, it is too soon. You don’t like Barclay, I know, my lady.’
‘I can’t bear him,’ said Lady Eliza.
‘I have tolerated him for years, so I suppose I shall go on doing so. Sometimes it is as much trouble to lay down one’s load as to go on with it.’
‘I wish I could think as you do,’ said she.
‘Not that Barclay is exactly a load,’ he continued, pursuing his own train of thought, ‘but he is a common, pushing fellow, and I think it a pity that Crauford should stay with him.’
Lady Eliza walked on in silence, longing to unburden her mind to her companion, and shrinking from the mention of Gilbert’s name. He thought her dull company, and perhaps a little out of temper, and he was not inclined to go up to the house. She stood, as he prepared to remount his horse, laying an ungloved hand upon the shining neck of the black; his allusion to its beauty had made her doubly and trebly careful of it. Had he noticed her act, with its little bit of feminine vanity, he might have thought it ridiculous; but it was so natural—a little green sprig from stunted nature which had flowered out of season.
‘Fullarton, Gilbert Speid has proposed to Cecilia,’ she said.
‘And do you expect me to be astonished?’ he inquired, pausing with his foot in the stirrup-iron.
‘It came like a thunder-clap; I never thought of it!’ she exclaimed.
‘Pshaw, Eliza! Why, I told Crauford long ago that he had a pretty formidable rival in him,’ said he, from the saddle.
‘She wants to marry him,’ said Lady Eliza, looking up at him, and restraining the quivering of her lips with an effort.
‘Well, if she won’t take Crauford, she had better take him; he’ll be the more interesting husband of the two. Good-night, my lady.’
She went back to the house, her heart like lead, her excitement calmed into dull misery. Fullarton did not understand, and, while she was thankful that he did not, the fact hurt her in an unreasonable way.
The evening was a very quiet one, for, as neither of the two women could speak of what she felt, both took refuge in silence. It was the first shadow that had come between them, and that thought added to the weight of Lady Eliza’s grief. She sat in the deep window-seat, looking out at the long light which makes northern summer nights so short, seeming to notice nothing that went on in the room. The sight was torture to Cecilia, for a certain protectiveness which mingled with her love for her aunt made her feel as though she had wounded some trusting child to death. Her anticipations of a few hours ago had been so different from the reality she had found, and she could not bear to think of her lover sitting in his solitary home, happy in the false belief that all was well. If ever she had seen happiness on a human face, she had seen it on his as they parted. To-morrow Lady Eliza would receive his letter.
‘Cecilia,’ she said, turning suddenly towards the girl, ‘I said things I did not mean to you to-day; God knows I did not mean them. You must forgive me because I am almost beside myself to-night. You don’t understand, child, and you never will. Oh, Cecilia, life has gone so hard with me! I am a miserable old woman with rancour in her heart, who has made a sorry business of this world; but it is not my fault—it is not all my fault—and it shall never divide you from me. But have patience with me, darling; my trouble is so great.’
As they parted for the night, she looked back from the threshold of her room.
‘To-morrow I shall feel better,’ she said; ‘I will try to be different to-morrow.’
Cecilia lay sleepless, thinking of many things. She recalled herself, a little, thin girl, weak from a long illness, arriving at Morphie more than a dozen years ago. She had been tired and shy, dreading to get out of the carriage to face the unknown cousin with whom she was to stay until the change had recruited her. Life, since the death of her parents, who had gone down together in the wreck of an East Indiaman, had been a succession of changes, and she had been bandied about from one relation to another, at home nowhere, and weary of learning new ways; the learning had been rough as well as smooth, and she did not know what might await her at Morphie. Lady Eliza had come out to receive her in a shabby riding-habit, much like the plum-coloured one she wore now and in much the same state of repair, and she had looked with misgiving at the determined face under the red wig. She had cried a little, from fatigue of the long journey and strangeness, and the formidable lady had petted her and fed her with soup, and finally almost carried her upstairs to bed. Well could she recall the candlelight in the room, and Lady Eliza sitting at her bedside holding her hand until she fell asleep. She had not been accustomed to such things.
She remembered how, next day, she had been coaxed to talk and to amuse herself, and how surprised she had been at the wonderful things her new friend could do—how she could take horses by the ears as though they were puppies, and, undaunted, slap the backs of cows who stood in their path as they went together to search for new entertainment in the fields. She had been shown the stable, and the great creatures, stamping and rattling their head-ropes through the rings of their mangers, had filled her with awe. How familiar she had been with them since and how different life had been since that day! One by one she recalled the little episodes of the following years—some joyful, some pathetic, some absurd; as she had grown old enough to understand the character beside which she lived, her attitude towards it had changed in many ways, and, unconsciously, she had come to know herself the stronger of the two. With the growth of strength had come also the growth of comprehension and sympathy. She had half divined the secret of Lady Eliza’s life, and only a knowledge of a few facts was needed to show her the deeps of the soul whose worth was so plain to her. She was standing very near to them now.
She fell into a restless sleep troublous with dreams. Personalities, scenes, chased each other through her wearied brain, which could not distinguish the false from the true, but which was conscious of an unvarying background of distress. Towards morning she woke and set her door open, for she was feverish with tossing and greedy of air. As she stood a moment on the landing, a subdued noise in her aunt’s room made her go quickly towards it and stand listening at the door. It was the terrible sound of Lady Eliza sobbing in the dawn.