CHAPTER III.

LADY BAKER TELLS THE STORY OF THE PAST.

The luncheon party was gay enough, in spite of Mr. and Mrs. Wimple’s infatuation for each other, which rendered them, as it were, non-existing for the rest of the party. They gazed upon each other with rapt admiring eyes, and handed each other creams and jellies, and smiled at each other upon the smallest provocation. But to-day Lady Baker suffered them to amuse themselves after their own fashion, and gave all her attention to Geoffrey. If he was not distinguished in the realms of art, he was at least an agreeable young man, who knew how to flatter a lady of fashion on the wrong side of forty without indulging in that florid colouring which awakens doubts of the flatterer’s good faith. He improved his opportunities at luncheon to such good purpose, that when that meal was over, and the devoted Mr. Wimple had been carried off by his wife and the other two ladies to play croquet, Lady Baker volunteered to show Geoffrey the Mardenholme picture-gallery—a very fair collection of modern art, which had been acquired by her ladyship’s father, a great Manchester man; for it was commerce in soft goods which had created the wealth wherewith this lady had endowed Sir Horatio Veering Baker, and whence had arisen all the splendours of Mardenholme. This was the very thing Geoffrey desired, and for which he had been scheming, with the _finesse_ of a Jesuit, during the hospitable meal. He had affected an enthusiast’s love of art, declaring how, from his earliest youth, he had languished to behold the treasures of the Mardenholme gallery.

Lady Baker was delighted.

‘My father lived all his later life among artists,’ she said. ‘He made his fortune in commerce, as I daresay you have heard; but in heart he was an artist. I myself have painted a little.’ (What had Lady Baker not done a little?) ‘But music is my grand passion. The pictures were almost all bought off the easel—several of them inspired by my father’s suggestions. He was full of imagination. Come, Mr. Hossack, while those foolish people play croquet we will take a stroll in the gallery.’

She led the way through the wide marble-paved hall, whence ascended a staircase of marble, like that noble one in the Duke of Buccleuch’s palace at Dalkeith, and thence to the gallery, a spacious apartment lighted from the roof. It was here Lady Baker gave her concerts and musical kettledrums, to which half the county came to sip black coffee and eat ices and stare at the pictures, while the lady’s latest discovery in the world of harmony charmed or excruciated their ears, as the case might be.

To-day this apartment looked delightfully cool and quiet after the sunlit brightness of the other rooms. A striped canvas blind was drawn over the glass roof, gentle zephyrs floated in through invisible apertures, and a tender half-light prevailed which was pleasant for tired eyes, if not the best possible light for seeing pictures.

‘I’ll have the blinds drawn up,’ said Lady Baker, ‘and you shall see my gems. There is an Etty yonder that I would not part with if a good fairy offered me five additional years of life in exchange for it.’

‘With so long a lease of life still in hand, five years more or less can seem of no consequence,’ said Geoffrey gallantly; ‘but I think an octogenarian would accept even a smaller bid for the picture.’

‘Flatterer!’ exclaimed Lady Baker. ‘If you wish to see pictures, you must be good enough to ring that bell, in order that we may get a little more light.’

‘A moment, dear Lady Baker,’ pleaded Geoffrey; ‘this half-light is delightful, and my eyes are like a cat’s. I can see best in a demi-obscurity like this. Yes, the Etty is charming. What modelling, what chiaroscuro, what delicious colouring!’

‘You are looking at a Frost,’ said Lady Baker, with offended dignity.

‘A thousand pardons. I recognise the delicacy of his outlines, the purity of his colour. But forgive me, Lady Baker, when I tell you that my devotion to art is secondary to my desire to be alone with you!’

Lady Baker looked at him with a startled expression. Was it possible that this young Oxonian had been seized with a sudden and desperate passion for a woman old enough to be his mother? Young men are so foolish; and Lady Baker was so accustomed to hear herself talked of as a divinity, that she could hardly suppose herself inferior in attractiveness to Cleopatra or Ninon de l’Enclos.

‘What do you mean, Mr. Hossack?’

‘Only that, presuming on your ladyship’s well-known nobility of soul and goodness of heart, I am about to appeal to both. Women of fashion have been called fickle, but I cannot think _you_ deserve that reproach.’

‘I am not a woman of fashion,’ answered Lady Baker, still very much in the dark; ‘I have lived for art—art the all-sufficing, the eternal—not for the pretty frivolities which make up the sum of a London season. If I have lived in the midst of a crowd, it is because I have sought intellect and genius wherever they were to be found. I have striven to surround myself with great souls. If sometimes I have discovered only the empty husk where I had hoped to find the precious kernel, it is not my fault.’

‘Would that the world could boast of more such women!’ exclaimed Geoffrey, feeling that he had cleared an avenue to the subject he wanted to arrive at. ‘Amongst your protégées of years gone by, Lady Baker, there was one in whose fate I am profoundly interested. She is the sister of my most valued friend. I speak of Janet Davoren.’

Lady Baker started, and a cloud came over her face, as if that name had been suggestive of painful recollections.

‘O, Mr. Hossack, why do you mention that unfortunate girl’s name? I have been so miserable about her—have even felt myself to blame for her flight, and all the trouble it brought on that good old man her father. He never would confess that she had run away from home; he spoke of her always in the same words: “She is staying with friends in London;” but every one knew there was some sad mystery connected with her disappearance, and I was only too well able to guess the nature of that mystery. But you speak of her as if you knew her—as if you could enlighten me as to her present position. If it is in your power to do that, I shall be beyond measure grateful to you; you will take a load from my mind.’

‘I may be able to do that by and by,’ answered Geoffrey; ‘at present I can say very little, except that the lady lives, and that her brother is my friend. From you, Lady Baker, I venture to ask all the information you can give me as to those circumstances which led to Miss Davoren’s disappearance from Wykhamston.’

Lady Baker sighed and paused before she responded to this inquiry.

‘All I can tell you amounts to but little,’ she said; ‘and even that little is, for the greater part, conjecture or mere guess-work. But what I can tell shall be freely told, and if I can be of any service to that poor girl, either now or in the future, she may rely on my friendship; and, whatever the circumstances of her flight, she shall have my compassion.’

‘Those circumstances reflect no shame upon her, Lady Baker,’ answered Geoffrey with warmth. ‘She was a victim, but not a sinner.’

‘I am most thankful to hear that. And now sit down, Mr. Hossack, and you shall hear my story. I think I can guess the nature of your interest in this lady, in spite of your reserve; and if I can help you towards any good result, I shall be delighted to do so. There are few girls I ever met more worthy of admiration, and, I believe, of esteem, than Janet Davoren.’

They sat down side by side in a recess at the end of the gallery; and here Lady Baker began her story.

‘I first met Miss Davoren,’ she said, ‘at the Castle. The Marchioness had taken her up on account of her fine voice; although Lady Guildford had no more soul for music than a potato; but, like the rest of the world, she likes to have attractive people about her; and so she had taken up Miss Davoren. The dear girl was as beautiful as she was gifted.’

‘She is so still!’ cried Geoffrey with enthusiasm.

‘Ah, I thought I was right!’ said Lady Baker; at which Geoffrey blushed like a girl. ‘Yes, she was positively beautiful; and if she had sat like a statue to be looked at and admired, she would have been an attraction; but her talent and beauty together made her almost divine. My heart was drawn to her at once. I called at Wykhamston vicarage next day, and invited Mr. Davoren and his daughter to my next dinner-party; and then I asked Janet to spend a long day with me alone—not a creature to be allowed to disturb us—for, as I told her, I wanted really to know her. We spent that day together in my boudoir, giving ourselves up to the delight of music and intellectual conversation. I found Janet all soul; full of imagination and poetry, romantic, enthusiastic, a poet’s ideal heroine. I made her sing Mozart’s Masses to me until my soul was steeped in melody. In a word, we discovered that there was perfect sympathy between us, and I did not rest till I had persuaded Mr. Davoren to let his daughter come to stay with me. He was averse from this. He talked of the disparity in our modes of life, feared that the luxury and gaiety of Mardenholme would make the girl’s home seem poor and dull by comparison; but I overruled his objections, appealed to the mother’s pride in her child, hinted at the great things which might come of Janet’s introduction to society, and had my own way. Fatal persistence! How often have I looked back to that day and regretted my selfish pertinacity! But I really did think I might be the means of getting the dear girl a good husband.’

‘And you succeeded in uniting her to a villain,’ said Geoffrey bitterly; then remembering himself he added hastily, ‘Pray pardon my impertinence, Lady Baker, but this is a subject upon which I feel strongly.’

‘You foolish young man!’ exclaimed Lady Baker in her grand way, that air of calm superiority with which she had gone through the world, the proud serenity of mind which accompanies the possession of unlimited means. ‘Do you think if I had not read your secret at the very first that I should take the trouble to tell you all this? Well, the dear girl came to stay with me. I was charmed with her. Sir Horatio even liked her, although he rarely takes notice of any one unconnected with ologies. He showed her his specimens, recommended her to study geology—which he said would open her mind—and made himself remarkably pleasant whenever he found her with me.’

Lady Baker paused, sighed thoughtfully, and then took up the thread of her recollections.

‘How happy we were! I should weary you if I described our intercourse. We were like girls together, for Janet’s society made me younger. I felt I had discovered in this girl a mind equal to my own, and I was not too proud to place myself on a level with her. I had very few people with me when she first came, and we lived our own lives in perfect freedom, wandering about the grounds—it was in early summer—staying up till long after midnight listening to that dear girl’s singing, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. One afternoon I drove Janet in my pony carriage to Hillsleigh, where I daresay you know there is a fine old Gothic church, and a still finer organ.’

‘I can guess what is coming,’ said Geoffrey, frowning.

‘Yes, it was at Hillsleigh we first met the man whose baneful influence destroyed that poor child’s life; and O, Mr. Hossack, I blame myself for this business. If it had not been for my folly, he could never have possessed himself of Janet’s mind as he did. I saw the evil when it was too late to undo what I had done.’

‘Pray go on,’ said Geoffrey eagerly; ‘I want to know who and what that man was.’

‘A mystery,’ answered Lady Baker. ‘And unhappily it was the mystery which surrounded him that made him most attractive to a romantic girl. Please let me tell the story my own way. How well I remember that June afternoon, the soft warm air, the birds singing in the old churchyard! We wandered about among the tombstones for a little while, reading the epitaphs, and, I am afraid, sometimes laughing at them, until all at once Janet caught hold of my arm and cried “Hark!” her face lighted up with rapture. Through the open windows of the church there came such a burst of melody, the opening of the _Agnus Dei_ in Mozart’s Twelfth, played by a master-hand. “O,” whispered Janet, with a gasp of delight, “isn’t that lovely?”’

‘It was that scoundrel!’ cried Geoffrey.

‘“I told you the Hillsleigh organ was worth hearing,” said I. “Yes,” said Janet, “but you did not tell me that the organist was one of the finest players in England. I’m sure that man must be.” “Why, my dear,” said I, “when I was last here the man played the usual droning voluntaries. This must be a new organist. Let’s go in and see him.” “No,” said Janet, stopping me, “let us stay here till he has done playing. He may leave off if we go in.” So we sat down upon one of the crumbling old tombstones and listened to our hearts’ content. The man played through a great part of the Mass, and then strayed off into something else; wild strange music, which might or might not be sacred, but which sounded to me like a musical version of the great Pandemonium scene in _Paradise Lost_. Altogether this lasted nearly an hour, and then we heard the church door open and saw the player come out.’

‘Pray describe him.’

‘He was tall and thin. I should think about five-and-thirty, with a face that was at once handsome and peculiar; a narrow oval face with a low forehead, an aquiline nose, a complexion pale to sallowness—like ivory that has yellowed with age—and the blackest eyes I ever saw.’

‘And black hair that grew downward into a peak in the centre of the forehead,’ cried Geoffrey breathlessly.

‘What, you know him, then?’ exclaimed Lady Baker.

‘I believe I met with him in the backwoods of America; your description both of the man and of his style of music precisely fits the man I am thinking of. That peculiarity about the form of the hair upon the forehead seems too much for a coincidence. I wonder what became of that man?’ he added, thinking aloud.

‘Let me finish my story, and then I will show you Mr. Vandeleur’s photograph,’ said Lady Baker.

‘You have a photograph of him?’ cried Geoffrey; ‘how lucky!’

‘Yes; and my possession of that portrait arises from the merest accident. I had a couple of photographers about the place at the time of Mr. Vandeleur’s visits, photographing the gardens and ferneries for me, and one afternoon I took it into my head to have my guests photographed. We had been drinking tea in the river-garden, and I sent for the men and told them to arrange us in a group for a photograph. They pulled us about and moved and fidgeted us till we were all half worn out; but they ultimately produced half-a-dozen very fair groups, in a modern Watteau style, and Janet and Mr. Vandeleur are striking figures in all the groups. But this is anticipating events. I’ll show you the photos by and by.’

‘I await your ladyship’s pleasure,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and am calm as a statue of Patience; but I would bet even money that this Vandeleur is the self-same scoundrel Lucius Davoren and I fell in with in America.’

‘Extraordinary coincidences hardly surprise me. My life has been made up of them,’ said Lady Baker. ‘Well, Mr. Hossack, enchanted with his playing, I was foolish enough to introduce myself to this stranger, whom I found a man of the world, and, as I believed, a gentleman. He was on a walking tour through the south-west of England, he told us, and having heard of the Hillsleigh church and the Hillsleigh organ, had come out of his way to spend a day or two in the quiet village to which the church belongs. His manners were conciliating and agreeable. I asked him to breakfast at Mardenholme on the following day, promising to show him my gardens and to let him hear some fine music. He came, heard Janet play and sing after breakfast, and, at my request, stayed all day. I daresay you would think me a very foolish woman if I were to attempt to describe the influence this man soon began to exercise over me. I knew nothing of him except what he chose to tell, and that was rather hinted than told. But he contrived to make me believe that he was the son of a man of position and of large wealth; that his passion for music, and his somewhat Bohemian tendencies, had made a breach between him and his father; and that he was determined to live in freedom and independence upon a small income which he had inherited from his mother rather than sacrifice his inclinations to the prejudices of a tyrannical old man who wanted his son to make a figure in the House of Commons.’

‘You made no attempt to discover who and what the man really was?’

‘No. It seemed painful to him to speak of his father; and I respected his reserve. At the risk of being thought very foolish, I must confess that I was fascinated by the air of romance, and even mystery, which surrounded him; perhaps also somewhat fascinated by the man himself, whose very eccentricities were attractive. He was so different from other people; followed in no way the conventional model by which most men shape themselves; took so little trouble to make himself agreeable. Again, he entered my house only as a passing stranger. His genius, and not the importance and respectability of his connections, gave him the right of admission to my circle. If I tried to lure a butterfly into my drawing-room for the sake of its brilliant colouring, I should hardly trouble myself about the butterfly’s parentage or antecedents. So with Mr. Vandeleur. I accepted him for what he was—an amateur musician of exceptional powers. I daresay, if he had been a professional artist, I should have taken more pains to find out who he was.’

‘I daresay,’ retorted Geoffrey bitterly, ‘if he had confessed to getting his living by his talents, you would have been doubtful as to the safety of your plate. But a fine gentleman, strolling through the country for his own pleasure, is a different order of being.’

‘Mr. Hossack, I fear you are a democrat! That dreadful Oxford is the cradle of advanced opinions. However,’ continued Lady Baker, ‘Mr. Vandeleur took up his quarters at our village inn, and spent the greater part of his time in this house. I take some credit to myself, being by nature sadly impulsive, for not having asked him to stay here altogether. For my own part, I had no doubt as to his respectability. Vandeleur was a good name. True, it might be assumed; but then the man himself had a superior air. I thought I could not be mistaken. Mardenholme filled with visitors soon after Mr. Vandeleur’s appearance among us. Every one seemed to like him. His genius astounded and charmed the women. The men liked his conversation, and admired, and even envied, him for his billiard playing, which I believe was _hors ligne_. “The time I have not given to music I have given to billiards,” he said when some one wondered at his skill. This must have been exaggeration, however, for he had read enormously, and could talk upon every possible subject.’

‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey thoughtfully, ‘the description tallies in every detail—allowing for the difference between a man in the centre of civilisation, and the same man run wild and savaged by semi-starvation. I know this Vandeleur.’

‘You know where he is, and what he is doing?’ asked Lady Baker eagerly.

‘No. At a random guess I should think it probable that his skeleton is peacefully mouldering under the pine-trees somewhere between the Athabasca and the Pacific—unless he was as lucky as my party in falling across better furnished travellers.’

Geoffrey had entertained her ladyship with a slight sketch of his American adventures during luncheon, so she understood this allusion.

‘You must tell me all about your meeting with him by and by,’ she said. ‘I have very little more to say. Those two, Janet and Mr. Vandeleur, were brought very much together by their common genius. He accompanied her songs, taught her new forms of expression, showed her the mechanics of her art; and her improvement under this tuition, even in a little less than three weeks, was marvellous. They sang together, played concertante duets for violin and piano, and sometimes spent hours together alone in this room, preparing some new surprise for the evening. You will say that I ought to have considered the danger of such companionship for a romantic inexperienced girl. I should have done so, perhaps, had I not believed in this Mr. Vandeleur, and had there not been lurking in my mind a dim idea that a marriage between him and Janet would be the most natural thing in the world. True, that according to his own showing his resources were small in the present; yet there could be no doubt, I thought, that he would ultimately be reconciled to his father, and restored to his proper position. But remember, Mr. Hossack, this was only a vague notion, an idea of something that might happen in the remote future, when we should have become a great deal better acquainted with Mr. Vandeleur and his surroundings. Of present danger I had not a thought.’

‘Strange blindness,’ said Geoffrey. ‘But then Fortune is blind, and in this instance you were Fortune.’

‘Bear in mind,’ replied Lady Baker, ‘that this man was full fifteen years Janet’s senior, that she was immensely admired by men who were younger, and, in the ordinary sense of the word, far more attractive. Why should I think this man would exercise so fatal an influence over her? But towards the end of her visit my eyes were opened. I came into this room one morning and found Janet in tears by yonder piano, while Mr. Vandeleur bent over her, speaking in a low earnest voice. Both started guiltily at sight of me. This, and numerous other trifling indications, told me that there was mischief at work; and when Mr. Davoren wrote to me a few days afterwards, urging his daughter’s return, I was only too glad to let her go, believing that the end of her visit would be the end of all danger. When she was gone, I considered it my duty, as her friend, to ascertain the real state of the case. I told Mr. Vandeleur my suspicions, and assured him of my sympathy and my interest if he were, as I believed, anxious to win Janet for his wife. But to my utter astonishment and indignation he repudiated the idea; declared his profound esteem and admiration for Miss Davoren, and talked of “fetters” the nature of which he did not condescend to explain. “Yet I found you talking to that young lady in a manner which had moved her to tears,” I said doubtfully. “My dear madam, I had been telling her the troubles of my youth,” he answered with perfect self-possession, “and that gentle heart was moved to pity.” “A gentle heart, indeed,” I replied; “who would not hate the scoundrel who could wound it?” I was by no means satisfied with this conversation, and from that moment lowered my opinion of Mr. Vandeleur. He may have perceived the change in my feelings; in any case, he speedily announced his intention of travelling farther westward, thanked me for my friendly reception, and bade me good-bye. Only a few weeks after that I heard of Janet Davoren’s disappearance. You can imagine, perhaps, what I suffered, blaming my own blindness, my foolish neglect, as the primary cause of her ruin.’

‘There is a fate in these things,’ said Geoffrey gloomily.

‘I called upon Mr. Davoren, hinted at my fears, and entreated him to be candid with me. But he evaded my questions with a proud reserve, which I could but admire, and kept the secret of his daughter’s disgrace, even though it was breaking his heart. Thus repulsed, what could I do? And the claims upon my time are so incessant. Life is such a whirligig, Mr. Hossack. If I had had more leisure for thinking, I should have been perfectly miserable about that poor girl.’

‘You never obtained any clue to her fate?’

‘No. Yet at one moment the thread seemed almost in my hand, had I been but in time to follow it. Three years after that fatal summer, a cousin of Sir Horatio’s, a young lieutenant in the navy, who had been with us at the time of Miss Davoren’s visit, came here for the shooting. “What do you think, Lady Baker?” he drawled out at dinner the first day in his stupid haw-haw manner, “I met that fellow Vandeleur last Christmas, at Milford, in Dorsetshire. I was down there to look up my old uncle Timberly—you remember old Timberly, Sir Horatio, the man from whom I’m supposed to have expectations; revolting old fellow, who has gout in his stomach twice a year and never seems any the worse for it. Well, Lady Baker, I found a fellow I knew down at Milford, an ensign in the regiment quartered there, and he was dooced civil, and asked me to dine with him on their guest night, and there, large as life, I beheld our friend Vandeleur. He seemed uncommonly popular in the mess, but he wasn’t overpleased to see me; and my friend Lucas told me afterwards that in his opinion the man was no better than an adventurer, and the colonel was a fool to encourage him. He was always winning everybody’s money, and never seemed to lose any of his own; altogether there was something queer about him. There was an uncommonly pretty woman with him—his wife, I suppose—but she never went anywhere, or visited anybody, and she looked very unhappy, Lucas told me. I came back to London next day, and I had a letter from Lucas a week afterwards to say that there’d been an awful burst-up at Milford; that Vandeleur had been caught in the act of cheating at whist—the stakes high, and so on—and had been morally, if not physically, kicked out of the mess-room; after which he had bolted, leaving the poor little wife and no end of debts behind him.”’

‘Did you act upon this information, Lady Baker?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘I went to Milford next day, and with some difficulty found the house in which the Vandeleurs had lodged; but Mrs. Vandeleur had left the town within the last few weeks with her little girl, and no one could tell me what had become of her. She was very good, very honourable, very unhappy, the landlady told me; had lived in the humblest way, and supported herself by teaching music after her husband left her. I made the woman describe her to me, and the description exactly fitted Janet.’

‘You have not heard a Mrs. Bertram, a singer who appeared at a good many concerts in London last winter?’

‘No. I spent last winter in Paris. Do you mean to tell me that this Mrs. Bertram is Janet Davoren under an assumed name?’

‘I hardly feel myself at liberty to tell you even as much as that without permission from the lady herself. But since you have been so very good to me, Lady Baker, I cannot be churlish enough to affect secrecy in anything that concerns myself alone. You have guessed rightly. I am attached to this lady, and my dearest hope is that I may win her for my wife; but to do this I must discover the fate of her infamous husband, since she refuses to repudiate a tie which I have strong reason to believe is illegal. And now, Lady Baker, pray show me those photographs, and let me see if the man who ruined Janet Davoren’s bright young life is really the man I met in the American backwoods.’

‘Come to my room,’ said Lady Baker, ‘and you shall see them.’

She led the way to a charming apartment on the upper story, and at one end of the house, spacious, luxurious, with windows commanding every angle of view—bow-windows overhanging the river on one side, an oriel commanding the distant hills on another, long French windows opening upon a broad balcony on the third. Here were scattered those periodicals with which Lady Baker fortified her mind, and supplied herself with the latest varieties in opinion; here were divers davenports and writing-tables at which Lady Baker penned those delightful epistles which were doubtless destined to form part of the light literature of the next generation, printed on thickest paper, and sumptuously bound, and adorned with portraits of her ladyship after different painters, and at various stages of her distinguished career.

Here, on a massive stand, were numerous portfolios of photographs, one of which was labelled ‘Personal Friends.’

‘You will find the groups in that, Mr. Hossack,’ she said, and looked over Geoffrey’s shoulder while he went slowly through the photographs.

They came presently to a garden scene, a group of young men and women against a background of sunlit lawn and river; light rustic chairs scattered about, a framework of summer foliage, a tea table on one side, a Blenheim spaniel and a Maltese terrier in the foreground.

Janet’s tall figure and noble face appeared conspicuously among figures less perfect, faces more commonplace, and by her side stood the man whom Geoffrey Hossack had seen in the flesh, wild, unkempt, haggard, famished, savage, amidst the awful solitude of the pine-forest.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is the man.’