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Ebook has 558 lines and 45729 words, and 12 pages

"But I don't!" he cried hastily, "indeed I don't! It is Berwick, only Berwick, that I blame in this matter. I think Mrs. Rebell is wholly innocent! I feel for her the greatest respect! She is incapable, I feel sure, of a wrong thought,"--he spoke with growing agitation. "But think of the whole circumstances--of Madame Sampiero's past life, of Mrs. Rebell's present position! Can you wonder that I feel sure your friendship, even your countenance, might make a great difference? But pray,"--he got up, and looked at Mrs. Kemp very earnestly,--"pray do not suppose I think ill of Mrs. Rebell! Were it so, should I suggest that you--that Lucy--should make a friend of her?" and wringing her hand he left the room, eager to escape before the return of General Kemp and his daughter.

There are times when the presence of even the best-loved and most trusted grown-up son or daughter could be well spared by father and mother. Mrs. Kemp, during the evening which followed Oliver's afternoon call, thought constantly of the conversation she had held with him, and she longed to tell her husband what had passed. Men were such strange, such inexplicable beings! Doubtless Tom would be able to reassure her as to Oliver Boringdon's interest in this Mrs. Rebell, whose charm had won over Lucy too, for the girl spoke with enthusiasm of the beauty and of the kindness of Madame Sampiero's god-daughter. But nothing could be said in the presence of Lucy, who had regained, during the last day or two, her old lightness of heart and manner, and who showed no wish to go early to bed.

General Kemp came and stood before the fire. He wore his dressing-gown,--a sure sign that he was ready for discussion, if discussion should prove necessary.

"Oh! Tom, you should not make fun of such a serious matter," but Mrs. Kemp could not help smiling--the lines were indeed apt.

"Well, my dear, what else is there to say? I can't say I should be sorry if Boringdon were to burn his wings a bit! I hate your fellow who is always trying to set the world straight. To take his information from Miss Vipen too--!" The General had also heard of Oliver's renewed interest in the Priory, and his wife's talk had not surprised him quite as much as she, in the innocence of her heart, expected it to do. "Berwick, from what you tell me, and from what I hear," he added in a low voice, "knows what he's after, and that's more than your friend Boringdon seems to do! I hate a man who goes dangling after a woman for her good; that's what he told you, I take it?"

"Well, something rather like it; but I think better of him than you do, Tom."

"They generally get caught at last." General Kemp gave a quick, short sigh: "and then comes--unless the chap's as clever as Boringdon doubtless means to be--pretty heavy punishment, eh, Mary?"

And he went off back into his dressing-room, and Mrs. Kemp, turning on her side, wet her pillow with sudden bitter tears.

Some days later Lucy and her mother called at the Priory, only to be informed that Mrs. Rebell was at Fletchings, staying there as the guest of Lord Bosworth and Miss Berwick till the following Saturday. This then,--so thought Mrs. Kemp with a quick revulsion of feeling,--was why Boringdon now found time hang so heavy on his hands, and why he had been, of late, so often at the Grange. Life, even at Chancton, was full of inexplicable cross currents,--of deep pools and eddies more likely to bring shipwreck than safe haven to the creature whom she loved so dearly, and for whom she felt that responsibility which only mothers know.

"But as we walked we turned aside Into a narrow tortuous lane Where baffling paths the roads divide And jealous brambles prick to pain: Then first I saw, with quick surprise, The strange new look in friendship's eyes.

"And now, in one stupendous dream, We wander through the purple glades, Which love has tinted with the gleam Of wonderful, enchanting shades: But I--would give it all away For those dear hours of friendship's day."

ELEANOR ESHER.

Mrs. Rebell had now been at Fletchings five days. It was Saturday night--in three days more she would be back at Chancton.

Standing before her dressing-table, she found herself counting the last hours of a holiday which had proved more enchanting than she had thought possible. How sorry she would be to leave the curious pretty room in which she found herself! This room, and that next door now turned into a dressing-room, had been fitted up when the wonders of China were first becoming known to the Western world. It was instinct with the strange charm so often found in those old English country houses where Christendom and Goblindom fight for mastery.

The greatest poet of his time had spent at Fletchings the honeymoon which formed a beginning to the most disastrous of marriage tragedies; and Septimus Daman, now Barbara's fellow guest, had managed to convey to her his belief that the rooms which she now occupied had been those set aside for the hapless pair. Was it here, so Barbara wondered--here, or perhaps sitting at the lacquer table in the dressing-room--that the bride had written the formal, yet wholly contented, letter to her parents, with its concluding sentence: "I cannot tell you any more for Lord Byron is looking over my shoulder!"--playful, intimate words, written by the proud, headstrong girl who was to lead a later life of such harsh bitterness.

Barbara felt a vague retrospective pity for the long-dead writer of these words. How far superior is friendship to what people call love! Every day she was proving the truth of this, her own, and--yes, her friend's--discovery.

After those five perfect days, it seemed strange to remember that she had wondered if she were acting rightly in accepting Miss Berwick's invitation. There had not been much time for thought. The note had come only two days after the ball at Halnakeham Castle, and, as she held it in her hand, before telling any of those about her of its contents, there had swept over Barbara Rebell a foreboding memory. Was she about to expose herself to a repetition of what she had gone through during those first hours at the ball? Was she to see Berwick avoiding her company,--gazing at her, when he looked her way, with alien eyes?

But then Berwick himself had come, full of eagerness, and with his abrupt first words--"Has Arabella written? That's right!--I think you will like it. My uncle wants me to be over there in order to see something of Daniel O'Flaherty, and we are also to have old Septimus Daman; he always spends part of November at Fletchings"--her fears, her scruples had vanished.

Just before leaving the Priory, Barbara's heart had again misgiven her. Madame Sampiero, looking at her with the wide-open, dark-blue eyes which could express so many shades of feeling, had murmured, "Do not be too long away, child. Remember what befell the poor Beast when Beauty stayed away too long!" How could she have had the heart to write, on the second day of her visit, "They want me to stay on till Tuesday"?

And now it was Saturday night. In a few days she would again take up the life which till so very lately had seemed to fulfil each aspiration, to content every longing of her heart. Now, she found herself dreading her god-mother's glances of uneasy, questioning tenderness; Mrs. Turke's eager interest in Berwick's comings and goings; most of all, and for reasons of which her mind avoided the analysis, Barbara shrank from the return to the long mornings--they had become very long of late--spent by Boringdon at the Priory.

In contrast to all that awaited Mrs. Rebell at Chancton, how happy these few days at Fletchings had been! With the possible exception of Daniel O'Flaherty--and, after all, both he and Arabella knew better--the six people gathered there under Lord Bosworth's roof, were linked in close bonds of old and new friendship, of old and new association.

Barbara could tell herself in all honesty that she did not seem to see very much of James Berwick, and yet, in truth, they were much together, he encompassing her with a depth of voiceless tenderness, and a devotion so unobtrusive that it seemed to lack every gross element of self. Then again, her host had been especially kind. To Lord Bosworth she had been "Barbara" from the first, and during that week he had talked much to her of that wide world in which he himself had played so noted and agreeable a part; of her own parents as they had been during the unshadowed years of their life; of present politics which he had soon discovered interested her in a singular degree. One day he had exclaimed--and had been surprised to see the vivid blush his words called forth--"Why, we shall make a politician of you yet!" During those days, however,--and the omission pained her,--Lord Bosworth made no allusion to Madame Sampiero.

Perhaps, of all those at Fletchings, the most contented of the party was Septimus Daman. Because he seemed to each of the others the odd man out, they were all particularly kind to him, and eager that he should not feel himself neglected. The old man did not, however, burden his fellow-guests with much on his company, for he was busily engaged in writing his recollections, and he rarely made his appearance downstairs before the afternoon.

To-day, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, Berwick's mood had changed. Arabella was the first to become aware of it; she knew of old the danger signals. The day had been spent by him and by O'Flaherty at Laxgrove, where Squire Laxton was as proud of his coverts as of his hounds. The two men came in wet and tired, and Berwick, after a long fruitless search for his sister and Mrs. Rebell, at last found them sitting together where Arabella so seldom entertained a guest--in the powder closet.

"I have been looking for you everywhere!" he exclaimed. "Daman is wandering about downstairs, evidently afraid to pour himself out a cup of tea and O'Flaherty has disappeared,--tealess,--to his room!"

While he was speaking, gazing at his sister and her friend with an accusing glance, Barbara went out, and for a moment the other two stayed on alone together.

Arabella rose and faced her brother. Her own nerves were not wholly under control. Neither her conscience nor her heart was really at ease.

"I don't know, James, and I don't inquire, what your relations to Mrs. Rebell may be! But this I do know--you will not advance your friendship with her by being savage to me. Besides, it is so absurd! However delightful she finds your company, she may yet prefer to be occasionally with me. I have been doing--I am doing--all I can for you."

"What do you mean?"

Berwick's steady, angry gaze disconcerted his sister, but she was mentally adroit, and determined not to fear him in his present mood.

"You know best what I ought to mean!" she cried. "You apparently take pleasure in Mrs. Rebell's company, and it was to please you that I asked her to come here. I mean nothing else. But I should like to add that, now I know her, I have grown to like, and even to respect her." Berwick's face softened, but again he looked at her in the way she dreaded as she added, "I do not think you should act so as to make those about you aware that you so greatly prefer her company to that of our other guests. I am sure Mr. O'Flaherty has noticed it. Perhaps I ought to add that I am speaking entirely for her sake."

On leaving Miss Berwick and her brother, Mrs. Rebell went up to her room. There she sat down and fulfilled a neglected duty,--the writing of a long letter to Grace Johnstone. She did not find the task an easy one. She knew that her friend would expect to be told much of the occupants of Chancton Cottage, and especially of Oliver. The writer was well aware how letters were treasured at Santa Maria, and, till the last fortnight she had written to the woman who had been so good a friend to her by every mail. Suddenly she bethought herself of the ball. Why, here was a subject all ready to her pen! But Barbara was no polite letter-writer, and she found the description difficult; especially did her references to Oliver and to his mother seem hypocritical. During those hours at Halnakeham Castle she had been scarcely aware of the young man's existence, while Mrs. Boringdon she actually disliked.

One reason why Barbara had been glad to come to Fletchings had been that it meant escape from Boringdon's constant presence at the Priory, and the daily morning walk with him to the home farm. She had come to resent Oliver's assumption of--was it brotherly?--interest in what she did and left undone. The thought that in three days she would again be subject to his well-meant criticism and eager, intimate advice certainly added another and a curiously acute touch of discomfort to her return to Chancton.

For the first time since Mrs. Rebell's stay at Fletchings, dinner, served in a blue and white octagon room which seemed to have been designed to serve as background to Miss Berwick's fair, delicate type of beauty, passed almost silently and rather dully. Berwick and O'Flaherty, tired after their long day in the open air, scarcely spoke; Mr. Daman alone seemed entirely at ease, and he babbled away happily, trying to extract material for his recollections from Lord Bosworth's better garnished memory.

And so it was with a sense of relief that Barbara followed her hostess out of the room. During the last few days the two women had become, in a sense, intimate. Each liked the other better than either would have thought possible a week before. They had one subject in common of which neither ever tired, and yet how surprised they both would have been to learn how constantly their talk drifted to the political past, the uneventful present, the brilliant nebulous future, of James Berwick!

Arabella led the way up to the music gallery, and there, very soon, the two younger men joined them.

Miss Berwick was sitting at an inlaid spinet, playing an old-fashioned, jingling selection of Irish melodies, and O'Flaherty, taking up his stand by the fire-place, was able to look down at the player without seeming to do so.

Listening to the woman he had loved making music for him, Daniel O'Flaherty's mind went back, setting out on a sentimental excursion, dolorous as such are apt to be, into the past. No other woman's lips had touched his since their last interview, thirteen years before; and yet, standing there, his arm on the mantel-piece, his right hand concealing his large rather stern mouth, he told himself that his love for Arabella Berwick had burned itself out, and that he could now look at her quite dispassionately.

Still, love may go, and interest,--even a certain kind of sentiment,--may remain. What else had brought him to Fletchings? Above all, what else had made him stay on there, as he was now doing? O'Flaherty still felt an odd closeness of heart,--aye, even of body,--

Miss Berwick, to this woman whom others found so unapproachable. The years which had gone by, the long separation, had not made them strangers. After she had left him, as he thought so cruelly, he had made up his mind to put away all thought of her. He had believed it certain that she would marry--indeed, during that last interview she had told him that she intended to do so--and thinking of this, to a man so callous and incredible a statement, his heart had hardened, not only to her, but in a sense to all women.

Then time had gone on, and Lord Bosworth's niece had remained unmarried--wholly devoted, so said rumour, to her brother, but living with her uncle instead of with James Berwick because of her filial affection and gratitude to the older man. That O'Flaherty had known not to be true, for no special tie bound Arabella to her uncle. The arrangement was probably one of convenience on either side.

And now, during these last few days? O'Flaherty acknowledged that Miss Berwick's manner to him had been perfect--courteous and kind, nay, even deferential, and then sometimes a look, a word, would subtly acknowledge his claim on her special attention, while putting forward none of her own. How could he help being flattered? From where he now sat, he could see, without seeming to observe too closely, the delicate, cameo-like profile, the masses of flaxen hair, less bright in tint than when he had first admired what was still Arabella's greatest beauty.

The barrister was under no illusion as to why he had received this invitation to Lord Bosworth's country house. His present host, and of course his hostess, wished him not merely to be on James Berwick's side in the coming political struggle, for that he was already, but to ally himself in a special sense with this future Cabinet-Minister, and to join the inner circle of his friends and supporters. Neither of them yet understood that in politics all O'Flaherty cared for supremely was his own country, in spite of the fact that he had always sat for an English constituency, and had never identified himself, in any direct sense, with the Irish party. Whatever his future relations to Miss Berwick might be, his attitude to her brother must be influenced by Berwick's attitude to Ireland and Irish affairs. Perhaps it would be more honest, so he told himself to-night, to let Arabella know this fact, for during the last few days he had avoided any political discussion with his host or his hostess.

Daniel O'Flaherty had watched James Berwick's career with painful interest. During his brief, passionate intimacy with the sister, the young Irishman had disliked the brother intensely. He had despised him for squandering,--as for a while Berwick had seemed to do,--his many brilliant gifts. Perhaps O'Flaherty had also been jealous of those advantages which came to the younger man by the mere fact of his name, and of his relationship to Lord Bosworth.

Then, with the passing of years, the barrister had become, as the successful are apt to do, more indulgent, perhaps more understanding, in his view of the other's character and ambitions. Also nothing succeeds like success, and James Berwick had himself by no means lagged behind. To O'Flaherty there had been nothing untoward in Berwick's marriage. He had regarded it as one of those strokes of amazing luck which seem to pursue certain men; and though a trifling circumstance had made the barrister vividly aware of the young politician's conditional tenure of his dead wife's fortune, the man who had fought his way to eminence naturally regarded the other as belonging to that class which seems in this country sufficiently wealthy, with the garnered wealth of the past, to consider the possession of a larger or of a lesser income as of comparatively small account.

Daniel O'Flaherty was an Irishman, a lonely man, and a Roman Catholic--thus traditionally interested in romance. And so, during these days at Fletchings, he had become aware, almost in spite of himself, of Berwick's evident attraction to Mrs. Rebell--to the gentle, intelligent woman whom he, O'Flaherty, naturally regarded as Arabella's widowed friend. It amused him to see the course of true love running smooth. What amazing good fortune seemed to pursue James Berwick!

True, the shrewder half of O'Flaherty's mind warned him that Miss Berwick's action in deliberately throwing her brother with so charming a woman as Barbara was an odd, an almost unaccountable move on her part. But there was no getting over the fact that she was doing this, and most deliberately.

Well, all that money could do for Berwick had surely been accomplished. The barrister, watching the two--this man and woman wandering in a paradise of their own making--felt that Berwick was indeed to be envied, even if he was on the eve of forfeiting the huge income which had for so many years given him an almost unfair prestige and power among his fellows. Still, now and again,--to-night for instance, when he became aware that Berwick and Mrs. Rebell had retreated together to the further end of the long, bare room,--he wondered if Arabella was acting sentiently, if she really wished her brother to marry again.

Mrs. Rebell and the man she called her friend stood together, half concealed by the organ which gave the gallery its name. They were practically alone, for the long room was only lighted by the candles which threw a wavering light on Arabella's music-book. For the first time since she had arrived at Fletchings, Barbara felt ill at ease with her companion. Twice during dinner she had looked up and seen Berwick's eyes fixed on her, or so she thought, coldly and accusingly. What had she done? For what must she ask forgiveness?

He put two envelopes down on the ledge of a prie-dieu behind which Barbara was standing, and which formed a slight barrier between them. She took the letters in her hand, and then, partly because of the dim light, put them back again on the prie-dieu. One note, unstamped, was from Oliver Boringdon,--she knew the handwriting, and so did Berwick. Barbara was to have gone back to-day; doubtless this note concerned some village matter which the writer was unwilling to mention to Doctor McKirdy. The other envelope bore the peculiar blue West Indian stamp. Why had not McGregor kept these letters till Tuesday? For the moment Barbara wanted to forget Boringdon and his rather morbid susceptibilities--to forget, till her next letter to the Johnstones, Santa Maria.

"Won't you read your letters?" Berwick was looking straight across at her with a singular expression--was it of appeal or of command?--in his eyes.

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