Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Seed Time/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII.
And mine that I was proud on; mine so much
That I myself was to myself not mine
Valuing of her; why she—oh! she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea
Hath drops too few to wash her clean again."
"Most extraordinary!" says Laura Fielding, resting her chin on her hands, and her elbows on her desk, "He actually left his hat behind!"
"Does any one know what became of it!" asks Kate Lishaw.
"It was put in a bandbox," says Dora, "and carried to the parsonage by a maid-servant, who made him a curtsey and said, 'I've brought you something as you dropped among our young ladies,sir!'"
"Nonsense!" says Kate; "but I must confess I am disappointed in him! After all he proved a very little more valiant than Mr. Russell's friend! He is very nice, though," she adds, "and he dances splendidly."
"He is magnificent," says Belle. "Did you ever see such shoulders, or such a head? And then his style—unimpeachable!"
"His moustache is———," says Laura; "it has that long, bold sweep that you never see on a plain man's face; and as to his eyes———"
"Bravo! Laura," says Kate.
"He was a man——— You know the rest. I'll tell you one thing," says Belle, "that I am sure of; that exquisite piece of white and gold, Miss Fleming, was at the bottom of his sudden departure; and I am certain that if they are not lovers now, they were once with a vengeance. They disappeared together that night. I would have reconnoitred, but was curveting in the Lancers. After that, you know, he went."
"I should not mind being you, Helen Adair," says Kate, patting me on the shoulder. "You do all the visiting, while we stay at home."
I am sitting in my bonnet and jacket, awaiting the carriage that is to take me to Lady Flytton's.
"I don't want to go," I say, earnestly; "indeed, I do not. Why Lady Flytton asked me I cannot think, for she did not know mother very well."
"What it is to have so many friends!" says Belle. "I wish I had some!"
"Are you coming back on Monday, child?"
"Yes."
"I wonder if Mr. Vasher will go there?" says Kate. "Keep your eyes open, Helen Adair, and tell us all you see when you come back. Hark! there is the carriage."
We go out. Yes, there it is; and the spirited black horses, with their scarlet rosettes, looked far more fitted for a drive in Hyde Park than to bowl along these country lanes.
"Good-bye! good-bye!" say the Buffs.
The footman puts in my portmanteau, and away I go, feeling like Cinderella without the beauty. It is a lovely day; but oh! I wish I had a companion, for it is dull sitting all alone behind those two gorgeous-backed men-servants. How invitingly the nuts nod their brown faces at me from the hedge! I should be happier walking in the road with Jack, free to pick them, than perched up here with nothing to do. I wonder if I dare ask one of those men to gather me some? I cannot call them, for I do not know their names; so I uplift my voice in a "hem!" which I delivered point blank at the middle of the footman's back.
"Did you speak, miss?" he asked, touching his hat and turning.
"A—not exactly," I say; "but I want some of those nuts, can you pick them for me?"
Certainly, miss," and in another minute he is in the road, and scrambling up the hedge; his long coat hampers his legs, the powder flies from his hair to his shoulders, but he is a man "for a' that"; and finally, he brings me my nuts with an unruffled countenance. I fancy I hear him saying later in the servants' hall, "She's low, she is; she ate nuts out in the carriage, and cracked them with her own teeth, she did."
And now we have passed through the lodge gates, and are rolling along between the avenue of tall trees that mark the approach to Flytton. It is a beautiful old place, and a footman ushers me through stately passages and ante-rooms to the drawing-room, in which I have some difficulty in discovering Lady Flytton—so little, so wizen, so shrunken is she. I make her out at last in a far corner. I think she is asleep, but she opens her eyes suddenly, and bids me welcome very kindly, desiring the footman to bring white wine and grapes; while I eat the latter she chatters away, with the garrulity of old age, of mother, who was, she says, a beautiful young woman;" of everything, in short, that her wandering thoughts hit upon. Presently she leans back in her chair, and without the smallest sign or word, goes soundly to sleep. I am just wondering what I am going to do with myself, and thinking how lively it will be here, when the glass-door leading to the garden swings back, and Silvia Fleming comes into the room, and, without looking about her, sits down with her back to me in a low chair. Her hair is hanging down her back in thick curls; she wears a plain white wrapper, that by its severity makes her beauty more than ever conspicuous.
There is a listless droop about the whole figure as she leans back with her arms clasped under her head. She has not been seated there twenty seconds, when the door opens, and 'Captain Chichester" is announced: he is tall, languid, blasé, but his steps and face quicken as he spies the recumbent figure in the red velvet chair.
"How do you do?” he says, stooping over her and holding out his hand; but she does not put out hers; she only looks up at him with a lazy look of welcome-provocation, which is it?
"Too hot!" she says; "would not one think it August instead of September?"
He sits down beside her, and they talk in low voices. They do not seem to know any one is present; however, as I cannot hear what they are saying, it is somewhat unnecessary for me to announce myself, though indeed I am not anxious to play the degrading part of eavesdropper again, as I did a week ago.
Is yonder coquette the passionate, despairing woman that Paul Vasher kissed a while ago so hotly? Was it but a fine piece of acting—her love and her misery? For surely, surely she is acting her own proper character at this moment? No, she was not acting then, but she was taken out of herself for the time; and Paul's estimate of her is the right one, the taint of infidelity in her nature is too deep to permit her to be either a good or a faithful woman. Admiration is meat and drink to her, flattery the very air she breathes; no man could keep this woman straight any more than a rope can be made of sand. She does not love this man to whom she is talking, does not even admire him, but she will fool him to the top of his bent. A woman's vanity takes many lives to feed it. So much I guess randomly as I sit and watch her.
"Little devil!" says Lady Flytton, softly. On turning to look at the old woman, I find that she has come out of her sleep as suddenly as she entered it, and is surveying the couple yonder with an expression of countenance, that is, to say the least of it, vicious.
"Good afternoon, Captain Chichester!" she remarks austerely.
The young man looks round with an astonishment that is ludicrous, rises and comes toward the old lady. Silvia, I observe, does not move an inch.
"I did not know any one was here," he says, holding out a hand that Lady Flytton altogether overlooks.
"I dare say you did not," she says, frostily; and he goes back to his charmer, looking somewhat red, and decidedly snubbed Tea is brought in and we partake of it apart. Oh, it is dull! If the little woman does not like her company, why does she not leave it? Anon Captain Chichester takes his departure, and it being near the dinner hour, I am shown to my room, where I array myself in my little all, and modestly habited in the same, descend to the drawing-room. Silvia Fleming is there, and she speaks some half-words of greeting, giving me the contemptuous, indifferent regard that apparently she always bestows on her own sex. Mrs. Fleming comes in, fat and kind (I like her better than her daughter) and last of all, Lady Flytton. We go in to dinner, where there is next to no conversation, for the hostess devotes herself to her knife and fork with the assiduity of a woman who knows her time for wielding the same is short, and the other two have little conversation. In the drawing-room later the two elders sit together, knitting and talking, while Silvia's restless figure paces up and down, up and down, the terraced walk outside, and I sit at a table, turning over a photograph book, and pitying myself from the very bottom of my soul.
"It is too ridiculous," says Mrs. Fleming's vexed voice, rising in her excitement, "and the offers and the admiration she has had too."
"She is a bad little cat," says Lady Flytton, shaking her ungodly, Madeira-warmed old head, "and she'll never come to any good, never! As to Paul Vasher, he won't marry her; he knows her too well for that!"
I move quickly away before I hear more, and marvel for the ninety-ninth time why I was ever invited to Flytton.