CHAPTER XXXIII.
"WHO KNOWS NOT CIRCE?"
The Cornish tors, those wild brown hills upon whose dark foreheads time writes no wrinkles, were just one year older since Julian Wyllard's death, and Bothwell Grahame was established in his house at Trevena as an instructor of the embryo Engineer. Already two lads had gone forth from Bothwell's house, after six months' training, and had done well at Woolwich. Other lads were coming to him—sons of men he had known in Bengal. He was on the high road to reputation.
After that first passionate disgust with all things, during which he had stopped the builders, and prepared to quash that contract which he had signed with such delight, there had come a more tranquil spirit; and Bothwell Grahame had faced his last unexpected trouble with a resolute mind.
A conversation which he had with Edward Heathcote soon after Julian Wyllard's death had given him his first gleam of light. Heathcote spoke to him hopefully of the future, and urged him to wait quietly.
"Your marriage will be so much the wiser, so much the more likely to result in lasting happiness, for this delay," he said. "If you are as loyal and staunch as I believe you to be; if it is really my sister you would like to many, and not this fascinating widow, who woos you with fortune in one hand and social status in the other; if you are really bent upon sacrificing these good things for Hilda's sake, be sure she will ultimately accept your sacrifice. In the mean time be patient, and pursue your independent course. A woman always respects a man who can live without her."
"But I cannot," answered Bothwell. "Life will be less than life to me till Hilda and I are one."
"Don't let her know that, if you mean to be master of your fate in the future," said Heathcote. "Time can be the only test of your truth. If when a year is past you have not married Lady Valeria Harborough, the chances are that my sister will begin to have faith in you. I know that she loves you."
"Tell me where she is, that I may go to her—that I may convince her."
"I have promised to respect her secret," answered Heathcote firmly.
Bothwell accepted this friendly counsel with a good grace, went back to his old lodgings at Trevena, set the builders at work again, spent his days in the open air and his nights in hard study, ate little, slept less, and looked like the ghost of his former self.
He saw no more of Lady Valeria; but a society paper informed him early in November that she had taken a villa at Monaco. He could guess from what fount of consolation she was obtaining oblivion of her griefs. Her grace, her charm of manner, were dwelt upon fondly by the paragraphist. She was leading a life of absolute seclusion on account of her recent bereavement; but she was the admired and observed of all wherever she appeared.
The succeeding paragraph told of Sir George Varney's residence at one of the chief hotels. He was a distinguished figure at the tables, had broken the bank on more than one occasion.
Bothwell smiled a cynical smile at the juxtaposition of those two names.
"I suppose the gentleman has forgotten his beating," he said to himself.
It was an infinite relief to him to know that Lady Valeria was on the other side of the Channel, that her pale face could not rise before him ghost-like amidst the home which she had ruined. He worked on with all the better will at that embryo home of his for the knowledge that this dreaded siren was far away—worked with such energy that the builders were whipped out of their customary jog-trot, and laid bricks as bricks were never laid before. Bothwell watched every brick, with a three-foot rule in his hand, and pointed out every flaw in the setting. He paid his builder promptly, as the work progressed, and gave him every encouragement to be speedy.
The alterations and improvements in the old cottage were all completed by the end of November, and the builders had finished the brickwork of the new rooms. The old rooms were thoroughly dry and ready for occupation before Christmas; and Bothwell spent his Christmas in his own house, the first Christmas he had so spent, and a very dismal one. But he had his dog, a devoted collie, the gift of Dora Wyllard; he had his pipe and his books; and he made the best of his solitude. He had a couple of lads—his first pupils—coming to him early in January, and he wanted to air the house in his own person. He was a little proud of this first house of his own, even in the midst of his sadness, as every man is proud of the thing that he has created. He walked about the rooms, opening and shutting doors and window-sashes, to see how they worked. Needless to say that some of them did not work at all, and that he had various interviews with foremen and carpenters, by whom a good deal of tinkering had to be done before everything was ship-shape. That was Bothwell's favourite expression. He wanted things ship-shape. "He ought to call his house Ship-shape Hall," said the foreman.
Bothwell's chief delight was derived from his own little inventions and contrivances, his shelves in odd corners, his pegs and books, and ingenious little cupboards. These he gazed upon and examined daily in silent rapture. When his two boys came to him—long-legged brawny youths, with open countenances, grinning perpetually for very shyness—he took them to see all the shelves and books, and expounded his theories in relation to those conveniences. There was not to be a slovenly corner in the house; every article was to have its peg or book, or shelf or cupboard. Tennis-balls, rackets, foils, single-sticks, skates, whips, guns, boots, caps, and gloves. Everything was to be classified, departmented. Organisation was to be the leading note.
Before a week was over, the boys had begun to adore Bothwell. They were sporting, and could afford to keep horses; and Bothwell and they hunted with fox-hounds and harriers all through that long winter, far into the gladness of spring. The boys were always with their tutor. He had no leisure in which to abandon himself to sadness; except when he shut himself up in his study to write to his cousin Dora, who was living in Florence, attended by the faithful Priscilla, who hated Italy as the stronghold of the Scarlet Lady, and by Stodden, the old Penmorval butler. Julian Wyllard's widow was living in absolute retirement, broken-hearted, seeing no one, seen by no one. The society papers had nothing to say about her.
From Bothwell, Heathcote sometimes heard of her, heard of her with an aching heart. No message of friendship, no line of recognition had there ever been for him in any of those letters to Bothwell, of which he was generally told, some of which had been read to him.
Hilda had been quietly pursuing her studies at the Conservatoire all this time, seeing a good deal of Parisian life in a very modest way—that inner life of struggling artists and men of letters, and their homely industrious families, a life in which she found much that was intellectual, blended with a pleasant simplicity, an absence of all pretence. She liked the Tillet girls, and she liked her surroundings; while music, which had always been a passion with her, now became the sole object of her existence.
"I suppose you will come back to The Spaniards some day, and take care of the twins and me," her brother said to her when they met for an hour in the August after Wyllard's death. He had stopped in Paris to see Hilda, on his way to Switzerland.
"Yes, I shall go back to the old home—when Bothwell is married."
"That is rather hard lines for me, seeing that I don't believe Bothwell has any idea of getting married to any one except you."
Hilda blushed, and then shook her head despondingly.
"Who can tell what he means to do?" she said. "General Harborough died less than a year ago. Lady Valeria could scarcely marry within the year."
"But if Bothwell meant to marry Lady Valeria, he would scarcely be grinding lads at Trevena," answered Heathcote. "He has behaved so well that I feel it my duty to plead for him."
Hilda put her arms round her brother's neck and kissed him, by way of answer.
"Let me finish my studies at the Conservatoire; and then, at the beginning of next winter, I will go back to The Spaniards, if you still want me there. But perhaps you will have found another mistress for the old house before that time."
"I know what you mean, Hilda," he answered gravely. "No, there is no hope of that."
"Not yet, perhaps. It is too soon. Dora is too loyal and true to forget easily. But the day will come when her heart will turn to her first love. You have never ceased to care for her, have you, Edward?"
"No, dear; such a love as mine means once, and once only. My wife was all goodness, and I was grateful to her, and fond of her—but that affection was not like the old love, and it never extinguished the old love."
"Be sure your reward will come in due time."
"I can afford to wait."
He went on to Switzerland, and from Switzerland strayed into Italy, the St. Gotha route inviting him. He spent a month at Florence, and he saw Dora Wyllard several times during that period, for half an hour at a time. She had taken up her abode for the summer at an hotel—near the Abbey of the Gray Monks, in the forest of Vallombrosa, a truly romantic spot amidst wooded hills. Hither Edward Heathcote made his pilgrimage, deeming himself richly rewarded by half an hour's interview; but there was little in those interviews to stimulate hope. The widow was bowed down by the burden of her sorrow. Her only feeling in relation to Edward Heathcote was that he alone upon earth knew the story of her husband's life, and that he alone could fully sympathise with her in her hopeless misery.
There are widows and widows. While Dora Wyllard was living alone among the pines and chestnuts of the Apennines, seeing no one but monks and occasional tourists, and religiously, avoiding the latter, Lady Valeria Harborough was living up the Thames, in a neighbourhood which has of late become so fashionable that it now ranks rather as an annexe to West-End-London than as the country.
General Harborough's widow had hired one of the prettiest villas at Marlow, a dainty bungalow, built by an artist, who soon tired of his toy, and exchanged the villa for a house-boat, which was less commodious and a good deal more unhealthy, but which possessed the charm of not being rooted in the soil. The house had seemed perfect when Lady Valeria took it, but she had sent down a West End upholsterer with a keen eye for the beautiful to make all possible improvements; and the result was a nest which might have satisfied a modern Cleopatra. But it did not quite satisfy Lady Valeria, who found fault with a good many things, and informed the upholsterer that although his taste was fairly good, and his colouring well chosen, there was an absence of originality in his work.
"I have seen other houses almost as pretty," she said, "and I have seen drawing-rooms just like this, which is worse. I hate to live in rooms like other people's."
The upholsterer murmured something about a royal princess and a royal duchess, both of whom had condescended to express themselves pleased at his decoration of their houses; but Lady Valeria froze him with her look of scorn.
"I hope you don't compare me with royal princesses," she said contemptuously. "They are accustomed to let other people think for them, poor creatures, and they take anything they can get. No one expects originality in a palace. I don't wish to grumble, Mr. Sherrendale, but I am just a little disappointed in your work. It has no cachet."
The upholsterer accepted his rebuke meekly, but with an air of being wounded to the quick; and he took care to debit his wounded feelings against Lady Valeria when he made out his bill.
That villa up the river in the lovely June and July weather seemed to be in the midst of the world's fair. It was gayer than Park Lane—a more concentrated gaiety. Pleasure wore her zone a little looser here than in London. There was just a touch of Bohemianism. People dressed as they liked, said what they liked, did as they liked. There were few stately entertainments, few formal dinners, or smart dances; but every one kept open house; there was a perpetual dropping in, or going and coming, which kept carriages and horses at work all day between houses and stations. The river was like a high-road, and half the population lived in white flannel, and smart tennis frocks, and eccentric hats. It was a world apart—a bright glad summer world in which there was no such thing as thought or care; a world of shining blue water and green meadows, dipping willows, rushy eyots, and hanging woods; a world in which there were hardly any regular meals, only a perpetual picnic, the popping of champagne corks heard in every creek and backwater, while humbler revellers rested on their oars to drink deep of shandygaff; a world musical every evening with glees, and songs, and serenades, to an accompaniment of feathering oars.
In such a world as this Lady Valeria Harborough lived over again the same kind of life she had lived at Simla—but not quite the same; for at Simla she had maintained her dignity as General Harborough's wife; she had received the worship of her admirers as a queen in the old days of chivalry might receive the homage of true knights. Now she had a different air; and the homage that was offered was of a different quality. That winter of widowhood at Monaco, with her staunch ally Sir George Varney in constant attendance upon her, had made a curious change in Lady Valeria. It had vulgarised her with that gratuitous vulgarity which has become of late years one of the leading notes in English society—the affectation of clipped words and slang phrases, the choice of vulgar ideas, the studious cultivation of vulgar manners. Naturally this acquired vulgarity of Mayfair is not quite the same as that of Brixton or Highbury. There is not the genuine ring about it. The accent is the accent of Patricia, but the words are the words of Plebeia. It is, however, all the more offensive, because of that blending of aristocratic insolence—that Pall Mall swagger which gives ton to the idioms of Hoxton and Holloway.
Lady Valeria had fallen into the fashionable slang and the current drivel. She had left off reading, and had taken to cigarettes. Her court was less of a court than of old, and more of a smoke-room. People came and went, and did and said what they liked in her presence. Sometimes in the dreamy noontide, when the closed Venetians and the shadowy rooms recalled the atmosphere of Simla, Lady Valeria reclined in her lounging chair, fanning herself languidly, and half stupefied with chloral, a state which she described as being "a little low." Sometimes in the evening she was all fire and sparkle, a vivacity which her enemies attributed to dry champagne. There was a great deal of champagne consumed at that ideal villa, but with a perpetual dropping in of visitors—a household conducted upon the laxest principles—who could tell what became of the wine? The empty bottles were the only difficulty, since there seems to be no use yet invented for empty champagne bottles; the very outcasts, the rag and bone collectors, reject them.
Lady Valeria was going to the bad. That was the general opinion among her nearest and dearest—the people who ate her dinners and drank her wine, and smoked her cigarettes, and used her luxurious rooms as if the villa had been a club. She had taken a horror of solitude, must have a crowd about her always, be amused, cost what it might; and as she hated her own family she would have none of them at any price. Hence the somewhat rowdy following which made the house by the river notorious; known by those lighted windows which shone late into the small hours, when all other casements were dark; known by the sound of strident laughter and the rattle of dice.
Lady Valeria had been ruined by a winter at Monaco. That was what some people said. Others ascribed her deterioration to the fact of having escaped all control, and having too much money at her disposal. Others shook their heads, and asked what could be expected of any woman whose guide, philosopher, and friend was George Varney.
"And he means to be her husband," added one shrewd observer.
"My dear Aubrey, she detests him," urged another.
"That makes no difference. He means to marry her. A woman who takes chloral will marry any man who makes up his mind to have her."