CHAPTER XVIII.

MRS. BARLOWE.

“Miss Kingscote,” said Lady Bell, very soberly and sadly, the next time that she sat netting a cherry net by the firelight, while her companion was dozing at her side. Neither of them had to fear interruption, since Master Charles was gone for that day and the next, to be present at an inspection of the county fencibles.

“What is your will, miss?” returned Miss Kingscote curtly, not propitiated by having her sleep broken in upon.

“I have to say to you, that I shall take it as a favour if you will call me Mrs. Barlowe in future. Indeed, madam, I have, and had long before I came here, a right to the superior title, which I take blame to myself for not having confided to you. But I am one of those unfortunate creatures who, with such a ring as this”—and Lady Bell held up the third finger of her left hand, on which she had resumed the wearing of her marriage ring—“have wed slavery and desolation, instead of honour and bounty.”

Miss Kingscote had been still in sheer wonder and consternation far greater than those with which she herself had lately filled Lady Bell.

“Lord ha’ mercy! You don’t go for to say it,” she exclaimed at last, “that you are a lost woman already, and you a mere chit of a girl? Why did Madam Siddons take me in vilely?—though it might have been looked for from a play-actress. What company for Master Charles to have been tricked into!”

Lady Bell sprang to her feet.

“Miss Kingscote, you are not thinking of what you are saying, else you would not dare to speak—you would not have the heart to speak such cruel words; yes, they are cruel, cruel,” she cried again, and sobbed in her pain and distress. “Have you no pity on a poor girl’s misery, which she was confiding to you solely to re-assure you and guard you against a foolish fancy which was troubling your peace? You have been poor yourself, and put upon by a wicked uncle, as you’ve often told me, and I thought you were good-natured and kind-hearted, but you are as bad to me as the rest. I am as good a woman as you are, Miss Kingscote. I defy my worst enemy to prove me otherwise. I shall rid you of my presence this very night. Yes, I shall sooner face the howling, dark night, and go on foot to Lumley, weak girl that I am, than stay and receive another hour’s shelter from a woman who suspects me of being the basest of my kind.”

“Hoity-toity,” muttered Miss Kingscote, fanning herself, in her agitation, with a bunch of peacock’s feathers, which she had snatched from the chimney-piece.

“But I must free Mrs. Siddons from your aspersions,” said Lady Bell more calmly, “she knew nothing of what I have told you, madam; she never sought to know. Her natural nobility and candour believed in me and trusted in me from the moment that we chanced to travel together. That was the beginning and end of our acquaintance.”

“Ay, like draws to like,” commented Miss Kingscote, with a smothered groan, for she was cowardly as well as slow, and Lady Bell’s combined volubility and fire swept away and consumed Miss Kingscote’s halting indignation.

“I can guess,” continued Lady Bell, paying no heed to the interruption, “that she told you as much—that she had not been acquainted with my friends; that she had taken me on credit, and had not been disappointed in me, an orphan striving to earn her bread.”

Lady Bell had raged on without interruption, till the flame was spent.

“What’s all this to do, miss?” questioned Miss Kingscote. “Do you expect me to be mightily pleased with your queer story? Bless the girl! even if it were true, it wants looking into, that it do; wait till Master Charles comes back.”

In reality Miss Kingscote’s forces were already beginning to hang fire. Her dense stupidity and softness of temper, however goaded, were not equal to the occasion.

“If it were true!” flounced and fumed the young delinquent, who was not brought to contriteness just then, “when did I lie to you? As for Master Charles,” Lady Bell stamped her small foot, “how dare you bring a modest and honourable young gentleman, so far as I know him, into such a discussion?”

“Lud! lud!” Miss Kingscote rose and retreated, perfectly in earnest in her alarm, “you mun be in a frenzy, girl, you’ll fright me clean out of my wits, though the maids are in the kitchen; what would you have me to say or do? I never thought you were such a right-down vixen, or I wouldn’t have had the pluck to live with you so long.”

“I am not a vixen, Miss Kingscote,” denied Lady Bell, beginning to laugh excitedly, as she caught a glimpse of the absurdity of the altercation. “I’m only a poor oppressed soul, as I told you, to whom no one will afford a harbour, who must seek one in the grave,” and overcome by her own hyperbole, which she fully believed at the moment, Lady Bell sank down, sighing and moaning over her forlorn youth.

“Oh, deary me!” lamented poor Miss Kingscote in turn, “them dismals are worser than tantrums; sure, child, you may have a harbour for me, though you do be a married woman. I have no dislike to married women, though I beant matched myself. When I come to think of it,” added Miss Kingscote, recollecting herself, and speaking with reviving spirit, “them’s the best news, if so be they’re right square, which I’ve heard for many a day; your good man beant dead, be he now?” she inquired, insinuatingly.

“No, madam; and though he has been no good man to me, I dare not, as I am a sinner, wish him sent to his account,” said Lady Bell wearily.

“No! The Lord be thanked he is to the fore,” commented Miss Kingscote devoutly, “and I ask your pardon, miss—madam, if I spoke like a crosspatch when you went to break your marriage to me. It struck me all of a heap, and put me in such a stew, my heart do go pit-a-pat still. But when I’ve got over it, I should not wonder though you and me were better friends than ever.” Miss Kingscote ended by smirking and nodding.

“I am content,” submitted Lady Bell, sadly. “But, if you please, Miss Kingscote, we’ll not speak of these unhappy passages in my life. I cannot give you particulars. I must keep my own counsel, only you had better call me Mrs. Barlowe, and let Master Charles know why you do so. He will be tender of my secret. For that matter, I’m not alone; I’m not the only unhappy wife in England, who has been driven to fight her own battle to-day.”

“My word, no,” assented Miss Kingscote heartily; “I’ve known women as were beat within an inch of their lives by their brutes of men, and women as were left to shift for themselves, while their fine gentlemen gallanted with other women, and the poor wives were none to blame. What was I thinking on, Mrs. Barlowe, when I sought to bring home the guilt to a pretty babe like you? I’ll tell Master Charles with all the pleasure in life—I mean, I’ll let him know, as it is but fair, to say the least, and he’ll be main sorry and rare kind to you.”

Lady Bell and Miss Kingscote never supposed that the knowledge which they had to give, might not be an insurmountable obstacle to stay Master Charles from wishing to create a closer, warmer friendship between him and Lady Bell. They never fancied that such knowledge might prove as tow to the hell-fire of an unlawful passion, let loose to devastate human nature and social life. What did good women know of unlawful passions even in a wild age?

Happily Master Charles was, in his way, and for his sex, as innocent and ignorant as the women. He was somewhat of the stuff of which Blake and Penn had been made. He had the faults of his day; he could, especially in his raw youth, ere he had been taught a lesson, and had a discipline appointed for him, bluster and swagger a little. He was over free in the drinking and betting, and even the brawling and fighting, which were then held manly.

But he could neither have dreamt nor wished that Mrs. Barlowe’s unhappy marriage and its suppression should prove the very accidents which would put her in his power, and bestow her on him, for their mutual ruin and misery, and all without much trouble or sacrifice on his part.

He was shocked, incensed, and incredulous when he first heard his sister’s story. What! that lovely, artless, refined young woman a wife without the name!—in all probability deluded into some clandestine connection with a miscreant who had abandoned her! At least she was living apart from her husband, and had so far disowned her marriage in taking service with strangers. He demanded that he should hear the story from Miss Barlowe’s own lips; he would not believe it otherwise.

It was a trial for Master Charles even to hint at such a slander to Miss Barlowe, but he brought himself to do it.

He followed Lady Bell as she carried out the crumbs from the breakfast-table to feed the birds in the orchard. “You will forgive me for evening you to such a thing,” he said, agitated and constrained on his own account, and ready to explode with resentment on hers, should the story prove false, as how could it be true?

Yet he was troubled and disturbed in spite of himself by her changing colour, and though she did not refuse to meet his searching glances, by the wistful sorrowful look with which she bespoke his forbearance and charity.

“It must be a mistake, Miss Barlowe,” he urged. “Can it be that you are—a wedded woman, wedded to some wretch who disowns or abuses his vows?”

“Yes, sir, I was wed six months ago,” answered Lady Bell faintly, hanging her head as she spoke. “I was wed against my will, yet I consented at last, and I must abide by my consent. Do you condemn me, Master Charles?”

“I, madam? I have no right either to question or condemn,” pronounced the young man a little stiffly, and very gravely. “I pity you from my soul, and, as I am a gentleman, you may depend upon your sorrows being sacred to me.”

He spoke the truth. More than that, the pang inflicted by the communication acted as a process of disillusion on him. The deception of which Lady Bell stood convicted upon her own showing, the new character in which she appeared, robbed him of his faith in her, nipped in the bud the love which was born of single-hearted homage, and cured him by a sharp cure of his brief passion.

The spell of Lady Bell’s attractions was broken for Master Charles. She could no longer shine in his eyes as a bright particular star. For a time after her confession he avoided her, and was restless, cross, and unhappy in his mind, pining more than ever for his colours and his marching day.

But Master Charles’s healthy nature reasserted itself speedily,—the more speedily that his pursuit of Miss Barlowe had still been full of the idealism of an uncorrupted youthful manhood, of a dreamy delight in the present, and a vague grasp of the future. First he returned with renewed zest to his old interests and occupations. Then he gradually wore back to the original friendly footing, free now from all uncertainty and double meaning, on which he had been with Lady Bell.

She witnessed the change, and was a little mystified, a little mortified; but being true to herself and him, she was easily reconciled to it. She was not a budding coquette. She was not naturally weak, though girlishly weak. She had been more sinned against than sinning. She had not forgotten Lady Lucie’s lessons of religion and virtue, however she had swerved from them; and that remembrance, even in the middle of perversity and shortsightedness, with grace given her, prevented her from falling. But she had even been saved from the temptation of loving her young squire, so that she could afford to be thankful that he had soon ceased to love her, and was willing to be no more than her friend.