Chapter XXII: Back at Summerhill

It was like a dream to Lady Bell as she travelled back to Summerhill.

There passed in review before her, like the shifting scenes of a dream, her London season and its triumphs, the love which had taken her by storm in the middle of the world’s vanities, the declaration of love after the play, the announcement on the Mall of the arrival of Harry Fane’s sailing orders, the visit to Islington, the hasty private marriage, and at last the wrench with which the bridegroom had torn himself from his bride.

Could it all have happened to Lady Bell, and was she really a new creature, belonging to another, and bearing another name—his precious name, if the truth were known?

Or had she only awakened from a dream? The dream might have passed with the bleakness and storms, which were over and gone, while in their place had come the March of daffodils and bluebells ready to welcome her back to Summerhill.

Ah! no, Lady Bell was a new creature. Her heart was at the sea. These land charms had become stale, flat, and unprofitable to her, since he was not there to share them. She would give them all willingly for a taste of the breeze, salt on her lips. Her eyes filled with tears, “idle tears,” at the sight of a flock of curlews hovering over a waste and recalling to her sea-gulls skimming the waves. Her whole being seemed dissolving in yearning and longing for her lover and husband. Existence would not be worth having till he was restored to her.

But, in the first place, how was Lady Bell to present herself to her dear Mrs. Sundon?—how account for the transformation in her to those penetrating eyes, and that wise, experienced heart, unless by confiding the truth to Mrs. Sundon? And, in that case, how was she to obtain forgiveness for the march which she had stolen on her friend?

Captain Fane had left Lady Bell free to take what friends she chose into the secret. It was on her account, rather than on his, that a secret had been made.

Lady Bell had no thought but of telling the story to “Sunny” some time—long before Captain Fane’s return.

But there was no question that the telling would call for an effort on Lady Bell’s part, tell when she might. There would be more than a breach of confidence to receive forgiveness—more, even, than the assertion of Lady Bell’s independence—there would be her subjugation to the powerful influence of another, which had superseded Mrs. Sundon’s influence.

The deed was done, yet Lady Bell felt more unequal than ever to the sensation that she would create; the remonstrances, useless though they must be, which she would raise, the reflections that might be cast on another, the offence that might be taken by a friend to whom she had not ceased to be warmly attached. In fact, instead of loving her neighbour less, because of the one great central human love, she seemed to grow specially tender to the wrongs and smarts of every human creature, all for one mortal man’s dear sake.

Withal, the bashfulness of the acknowledged bride was quadrupled in the unacknowledged bride. True, Lady Bell had been married before, but that marriage had been altogether different—such a miserable travesty and poor mockery, that Lady Bell actually cried over the remembrance of her old self, and the dead Squire, for what they had defrauded each other of, and been defrauded of, many a time, during the first weeks of her marriage to Harry Fane.

It felt so strange to see Summerhill again.

There was the dainty, slightly fantastic women’s house and grounds exactly as she had left them, but surely with a failure in their qualities which she had not distinguished before.

The place presented the same want of shade and substance which Queen Elizabeth had specially requested might be made in her picture. And the traits of life at Summerhill had corresponded with Queen Elizabeth’s idea that she and her maids should eat in private of the lightest and most refined viands, while the ladies left all that was solid and strong to the grosser appetites and needs of the gentlemen.

Everything at Summerhill was fresh and feminine to a degree; but there was a suspicion of flimsiness and make-believe in the very delicacy and over-abundance of knick-knacks, where two young women had kept house together, and sworn unalterable first friendship, presuming to turn the course of nature, like these sister figures away among the Welsh mountains.

To recognise Summerhill the same as she had left it, and yet to look on it with different eyes, knowing all the time that the difference lay in her own eyes, was a singular half-remorseful experience to Lady Bell. She was almost glad that Mrs. Sundon did not hear the carriage-wheels and run out to meet her. There was only Caro in her nurse’s arms at the door. It was a positive relief to see that Caro, quite in the course of nature, had grown by the addition of a few more months to her short lease of life, until there was some risk at her not knowing Caro, in addition to the apprehended risk of Caro’s not knowing Lady Bell. There was comfort in finding that anybody, even Caro, had undergone a change, because of the tremendous change in Lady Bell, of which she was tremblingly conscious. She should be thankful when the meeting with her friend was over.

Lady Bell hurried, stumbling in her habit, into the bright little parlour—blindingly bright, and at the same time empty it looked, though it had the fine presence of Mrs. Sundon advancing to its threshold.

There were two little cries of “Bell,” “Sunny,” which had a rush of old familiar affection in their tones that meant kisses—perfectly hearty and sincere in their fondness, and a little laughter, with twinkled-away tears.

These tears seemed natural enough when Lady Bell was weary after an exciting journey, and Mrs. Sundon might be wearier still with waiting, and with staying all alone, having had no cheerful young friend at hand to dissipate grievous memories.

It seemed to Lady Bell as if a cloud of anticipated awkwardness and indefinable constraint and distress had burst and vanished, as such clouds will sometimes vanish at the moment of contact. She had found again her indulgent, magnanimous Mrs. Sundon, on whose favour and generosity Lady Bell could throw herself confidently—only she would spare both her friend and herself in the first hours of their meeting.

When Lady Bell had composed herself to scrutinize and draw conclusions, it struck her with quick pain that Sunny was looking ill.

Mrs. Sundon wore an exceedingly simple muslin dress, with the tight sleeves ending in frills at the wrist, and falling over the hands, the neckerchief being surmounted with the same wide plaited frills, out of which rose the fair pillar of the throat, like the neck of a white heifer out of a garland.

But Lady Bell had never seen the grand womanly proportions brought nearer to the spareness of attenuation, while the face was almost wan in its colourlessness.

Clearly Mrs. Sundon had not been flourishing on keeping house alone; she had been wont to treat “nerves” and “vapours”—regarded as bodily complaints, with lofty derision and condemnation; yet her own nerves were unstrung, for she continued, though she did not allow it in words, to be agitated by Lady Bell’s arrival. There was a stir and quiver of Mrs. Sundon’s features as of a rock which had been disturbed and shaken, and could not at once regain its entire balance and firm quietude.

Lady Bell could not account for the involuntary disturbance and the striving in vain to overcome it, in her friend’s expressive face, and in her cold passive hand, which shook sensibly in Lady Bell’s feverish clasp, unless it were that Mrs. Sundon’s health had become impaired.

If that were so, there must be laid to Lady Bell’s charge, among other acts of wilfulness and indiscretion, an ungracious oversight—the friend who had been so good to Lady Bell had pined in her absence, and had been left to pine.

Or was it simply the disturbance in Lady Bell’s own flushed face, the thrilling of her own pulses, which her morbid fancy and guilty conscience transferred to her poor abused friend?

No; here was an absent-minded, distrait woman, who had to assume an interest which she did not feel, in narratives that ought to have been, from her old familiarity with the scene, and her sisterly regard for the heroine, stimulating and engrossing in their effect upon the listener.

Lady Bell was conscious of this while she sat chattering incessantly of all her different adventures, at the auctions and the routs, and was not once pulled up and brought to book by such searching cross-examination as the judge, jury, and counsel for the prosecution combined in the old Sunny, would have known well how to conduct.

Even when Lady Bell forced her tripping tongue to speak Captain Fane’s name, while her eyes fell convicted, until their lashes rested on her cheeks dyed with burning blushes, she might have spared herself the trepidation and terror of instant discovery. Sunny’s mind was wool-gathering, and she did not recall her scattered faculties to make a single observation.

Lady Bell would have begun to have a revulsion of feeling, and, from being chilled, would have been mortified had she not been alarmed.

As the day wore on, however, Lady Bell talked and talked her friend out of her stupor, and procured a measure of response in home news. These were but vapid concerns now to Lady Bell, but she was not going to betray her conviction of their vapidness.

Caro had cut ever so many teeth. The stubble chickens were ready for killing. The Spanish jasmine had survived the winter. The mayor and the good people of Lumley and Nutfield were all well, and,—oh yes, Master Charles had got his colours, and was going up to town to practise drill with the awkward squad in the reserve of his regiment, before he joined the main body somewhere in the colonies—Mrs. Sundon had forgotten exactly where. No, she could not say that she was vastly sorry for Miss Kingscote, as the young fellow was fulfilling his calling, and going where duty and the prospect of promotion, whether it were by life or death, called him.

The last words, in answer to Lady Bell’s sympathetic inquiry, were spoken so shortly as to remind Lady Bell that there was a worse end than that of death in Mrs. Sundon’s experience.

END OF VOL II.

PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD, LONDON.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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Perceived typos have been silently corrected.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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