LADY BELL VOL. II.

CHAPTER I. A MESSAGE OUT OF THE PAST.

One hot day in the latter end of June, Lady Bell was sitting in the orchard, with Mrs. Sundon’s child in her lap, cooing to it, tickling it, tossing it, decking it with daisies, pretending to herself and to it, that the not-many-weeks-old child noticed and appreciated its floral finery.

The long, flower-besprinkled grass grew all round, beneath the bending, leafy boughs, through the shadows of which came perpetually shifting chequers of sunshine. There could just be seen, down a vista, the quaint, grey house of Nutfield, with the last year’s yellow corn-stacks beyond the orchard, mellowing and warming the green and grey 2tints under the blue and white cloud-flecked sky.

Mrs. Sundon with her fine figure and face, in one of her white wrappers and close caps, came slowly up between the interlacing boughs; she stopped beside Lady Bell and the child, looking down upon them. The group was very sweet and graceful, and wanted only a St. Joseph and a little St. John to make it stand for one of the old Italian “Riposos.”

“Look here, Lady Bell,” said Mrs. Sundon, putting her finger on a paragraph in a newspaper which she held in her hand.

Lady Bell started and rose up in vague perturbation. For precaution’s sake Mrs. Sundon had abstained from giving her friend, even in private, that friend’s name and title, since Mrs. Sundon had discovered Lady Bell at Nutfield. What had surprised the compromising words from Mrs. Sundon now?

Lady Bell took the newspaper and looked at the place indicated. Her hand was shaking, her breath was coming fast, her eyes 3were dazzled; but the intimation was so plain and direct that she took in its meaning at a glance. There was no ambiguity there to prevent the message reaching its destination and doing its work. “If Lady Bell Trevor wish to see her husband in life, let her return at once to Trevor Court.”

A mist passed before Lady Bell’s eyes; the sunny June orchard, with the soft, fair child whom Mrs. Sundon had taken into her arms, and Mrs. Sundon herself, all grew in a moment blurred and dark, as if the very dews of death and remorse had fallen on them.

“Oh, Mrs. Sundon, what shall I do?” cried Lady Bell, wringing her hands. “I did not love him, I had no cause to love him; but I was his wife, who was yet no wife to him, and he is a dying man.”

“Go back to him immediately,” advised Mrs. Sundon, “while there is still time to wipe out your offence to him—it was light compared with his to you. But it is ill having an unsettled score with the dead. 4This would hang like a millstone round your neck, and weigh you down all your days.”

“I’ll go back if you counsel it,” submitted Lady Bell desperately, setting off in nervous haste to the house. “But how am I to face him? if he have strength left to lift his hand still, will he strike me as I have seen him strike his man? Or, if he is gone, must I stay in the house with the dead, I who never saw anybody die but Lady Lucie, who died blessing me? Would that I had minded her precepts better; she would not have had me leave the worst of husbands. And how many miles will it be to post cross country, Mrs. Sundon? you have a good head and may guess. Can you tell me if I shall be as long in going as I was in coming here? only I did not come straight! Oh! will you be so kind as to lend me the money you think I shall need, for I have only three crowns in my purse?”

“My dear, I shall take you,” said Mrs. Sundon quietly. “Do you think I would send you off on such an errand alone?”

5“Oh, I am so thankful,” Lady Bell admitted in her relief, “now I may do my duty at last; no, I don’t mean that,” she checked herself the next moment, “I cannot hear of you doing such a thing. How could you leave your baby? You are too delicate yet for such a journey—and to go to that neighbourhood above all others. It is vastly generous of you to propose it, just what I should have expected from you; but, of course, I cannot consent; I shall manage by myself, somehow.”

“Say no more, Lady Bell,” Mrs. Sundon put an end to the discussion, “I am going with you. The child will do very well with her nurse. Do you think I would put my child, any more than myself, between me and my duty and privilege? I should call that treating my child very ill, paying her a poor compliment, for which I should hope she would never thank me. I am abler for the journey than I was for coming here. I need not fear to go near Chevely, which has been sold, as I dare say you’ve heard. You 6cannot tell what I can do without harm to my health,” declared Mrs. Sundon, with a little bitterness. “I travelled from what had been my home, handed into the carriage by a bailiff on starting, and went out of town when my child was no more than ten days old. I could not have slept another night under that roof. But even if I had been a weaker woman, I should not have shrunk from this poor effort, and you would not have refused me my right.”

Lady Bell had no longer the heart, any more than the will, to decline Mrs. Sundon’s support in the emergency. If Mrs. Sundon’s presence made Mr. Trevor mad—should he regard it as another act of wilful disobedience even when Lady Bell was pretending to obey him—it would be time enough then to undertake the ungracious task of refusing the elder woman’s countenance.

The great news that Mrs. Sundon and Mrs. Barlowe were to set off on horseback within the hour, availing themselves, by permission, of Miss Kingscote’s and Master 7Charles’s horses, in order to reach Lumley, where they were to hire a chaise to proceed on a journey of indefinite duration, fell flat. It was as nothing compared to the stunning shock inflicted on Miss Kingscote when Mrs. Sundon saw fit to communicate to the hostess the real rank and history of her companion.

“Lud! lud! a Lady Bell all the time, and I to have gone and found fault with her, and kept her pottering about my business, mending lace, and cleaning silver, lud-a-mercy, what shall I do, brother? Mayn’t I be took up by the King or the Lords, like the ‘torney was, whom I’ve heard tell of, no farther gone than father and mother’s day, afore we came down in the world, and I were a mite of a child—he gave a warrant to arrest a fine lady in her coach in the street, at the suit of a tradesman, and he himself was had up before the justices—I mean afore the Lords, for an insult to the quality. Mayn’t I be had up and put in prison, though I never knowed, nor meant it, and I’ll beg her pardon over and over 8again, and she was a right-down pleasant lass, madam—Lud! I’m losing my head—lady, save when she was in the tantrums.”

“Nonsense, Deb,” exclaimed Master Charles impatiently; “you did her a kindness, and helped her in her end. As it proves,” he continued a little sarcastically; “whether Miss or Madam, she has been all along far beyond our flight, and will never waste another thought on us, now that she has found birds of her own feather, and is ready to go off with them to her own perch.”

“She were a runaway wife all the same,” reflected Miss Kingscote sapiently, “though she were ten times a Lady Bell, and she had left her man as must have been hers in the face of day, which made the leaving a heap bolder in my madam—nay, my lady. I vow I as good as telled her she was no match for the Kingscotes of Nutfield.”

“You had nothing to do to say anything of the kind, even though this Lady Bell had been a simple waiting-maid or scullion. 9I don’t care which,” Master Charles was provoked into telling his sister, as his good-humoured indulgence gave way. “The Kingscotes have not kept their own in the world without loss, and they can ill afford to despise the humblest—I say that, if I am supposed to have anything to do with the future matching of the Kingscotes,” declared the young gentleman loftily, “and they’ll be long enough of being matched for me, since I could bring a mate to little better than a farm-house, and a farmer’s kin. I’ll thank you, Deb, not to meddle in the matter.”

“There, I’ve given offence to Master Charles,” Miss Kingscote reflected glumly after she was alone. “He’s taken to hurting my feelings by twitting me with what we’ve lost, as if the worsest loss weren’t mine! not that I show it neither, for I’m sure I’m a powerful fine woman, considering my lack of education. And so she’s Lady Bell, and if she had bidden still, I mun have said my lady every blessed word, and 10run at her heels as I’ve never made her run at mine. But if this Squire Trevor, as she has given leg-bail to, had not come on the carpet, first and foremost, ere we set eyes on her, mightn’t she have been my Lady Bell Kingscote! That do sound fine! prodigious fine! But if there had never been no Squire Trevor, there would never have been no bolting, banding with the players, turning up at Nutfield, and making friends with Master Charles, so there is an end on’t. My Master Charles mun go to the wars, and risk a sabre’s cut spoiling his bonnie face,” mused Miss Kingscote, whimpering at the very thought, “afore he fill

his chimney-corner, and bring home his lady to sit down cheek by jowl with him, while I’ll be right glad to retire to mother’s room, save when they want my company, for I ain’t teethy or prideful—I never were. That mun be the order of the day, as Master Charles ought to know.”

Even before the parting, Master Charles had cause to renounce his mortified conviction 11of how little he and his sister were to Lady Bell Trevor, and of how she had done with them from this day.

She was grateful for the assistance and escort as far as Lumley, which he offered so soon as he ascertained that the offer would be agreeable to her and Madam Sundon.

Lady Bell put her head out of the chaise window at the last. Her scared eyes looked with almost timid beseeching into his face. She told him, without any sign of haughtiness, but with many tokens of a retentive memory for the smallest act of consideration and kindness, of contrition for having played a part to him and his sister, and for not having trusted them in full, that she had been very well off and happy at Nutfield. She hoped that his colours would arrive soon, that he would see a campaign to his wish, and return safe and sound to cheer his sister’s heart.

Lady Bell sent Miss Kingscote her grateful duty. Lady Bell trusted they would meet again, when she would be able to 12finish her chair-covers. In the meantime, she would not forget to procure patterns for Miss Kingscote. Miss Kingscote must be especially kind to Lady Bell’s brood of chicks—the first brood she had seen set, seen hatched, and fed every day with her own hands.

It was plain that for the moment, in place of being eager to resume her cast-off rank and state, Lady Bell had forgotten where and why she was going, and everything about Squire Trevor and his danger. It was only when the chaise rolled off, and she sank back in her corner, that she withdrew into herself to face the grim record of the bond she had broken, and the forfeit she was called on to pay.

It was on a fresh summer morning, when, having started early to accomplish the last stage of their journey, Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon came in sight of Trevor Court.

The gates were standing open; early as it was, the lodge seemed deserted, so that 13the chaise entered without parley. The dew was lying like pearls on the grass by the drive, and silvering the yews on the terrace. The spirals of smoke from the red chimney-stacks were rising straight in the clear air. A gush of birds’ song sounded far and wide. There was something light, bright, and exhilarating in the air, and in the aspect of nature, which lent a peculiar charm to what was imposing in the pile of building and its grounds.

“I have not seen Trevor Court before, save from a distance,” Mrs. Sundon let fall the remark. “You never told me, Lady Bell, what a fine old place it was.”

“I don’t think I ever noticed it till the last time I saw it,” Lady Bell replied almost in a whisper; she recalled vividly that last time sitting on the September morning in the travelling chariot beside its master, who lingered in taking a short leave of his treasure.

The next moment Lady Bell gave a shriek and put her hands before her face. 14The chaise had turned into the sweep before the house, where, in sombre contrast to the summer morning, the windows were all shrouded, and the hatchment was up.

CHAPTER II. FREED BY THE VISITATION OF GOD.

It was as a quailing widow, and not as a reluctant wife, that Lady Bell re-entered the old oak parlour, where she still trembled lest she should hear her husband’s loud, rough accents stuttering with rage, and his stick, when gout confined him to his chair, savagely beating the floor.

Mrs. Walsh, in her towering cap and starched frill, received Lady Bell, and spoke to the point, without softening or reservation. “Yes, it is all over, Lady Bell, the Squire died last night at ten o’clock. He was took with a jaundice on Wednesday se’en night; but no danger was apprehended till five days ago, when Mr. Walsh writ the 16notice for the papers—to no purpose, so far as the Squire’s desiring to see and speak with you once more was concerned. You and he will not see and speak with each other on this side of the judgment day.”

“Oh, Mrs. Walsh, I came as fast as ever I could.” Lady Bell humbled herself in the dust before her ancient enemy. “I know now I was a bad, bad wife. I would give all I have in the world to be able to live the last year over again, and do my duty by your cousin, who is lying stiff and cold in one of these rooms, where I shall never hear him say that he forgives me, that he makes allowance at last for my youth, my wounded pride—what had a sinful creature to do with pride?—my forced inclinations. Oh! tell me he did not lay his curse upon me with his last breath?” implored Lady Bell, ready to sink down with grief and terror, while she clasped her hands and looked up, her distended eyes brimming over with scalding tears, in Mrs. Walsh’s inflexible face.

17“Yes, Lady Bell, you were a bad wife, and you would not take a telling while it was in your power,” declared the uncompromising woman, standing bolt upright, her very mittens bristling with her righteous protest.

“Madam,” interposed Mrs. Sundon with rising indignation, “it is monstrous to reproach this poor child at such a time. She is sufficiently crushed by the nature of the event which has taken place, following on her rashness. She will not be likely to forget it, even without your accusations to embitter the blow. I vouch for Lady Bell’s having lived in safety and honour since she quitted her husband. Madam, you will not refuse my voucher?”

“Madam, I have not heard your honesty questioned, therefore I grant that Lady Bell has come back in honest company,” acknowledged Mrs. Walsh stiffly, “which is more than might have been hoped, from her flying in the face of law and duty, and exposing herself to the worst perils.”

18“Though you are the late Mr. Trevor’s kinswoman, you must know,” said Mrs. Sundon, “that Lady Bell Trevor has been more sinned against than sinning.”

“I know that she is not too young or fair or fine to be accountable for her errors to a Power before which the most wilful lady will not dare to plead her daintiness,” maintained Mrs. Walsh doggedly. “But I know, too, that you were sinned against, Lady Bell,” she added candidly, turning to the overwhelmed offender. “So far as that goes, Squire Trevor did not deserve your duty. But you had the will of a higher than my poor cousin to consider, and where should we all be, if we got our due, and no more? It was on the Squire’s mind at the last that he had wronged you; and he sought to receive, as well as to bestow, forgiveness, before he could die in peace.”

“I did not merit it,” said Lady Bell; “but you told him, dear Mrs. Walsh—oh, say that you told the old man that I forgave him, as I hope to be forgiven?”

19“I charged him to repent, and if he had done any wrong to a fellow-creature which he could atone for, to make amends. Then I bade him turn for forgiveness for that, and all his sins, to the great God and Saviour, against whom he had chiefly sinned, but who would never refuse him forgiveness, since, in the very act of his seeking it, they were pledged for his salvation.”

“Oh, thank God! that he died in peace with me,” broke in Lady Bell impetuously.

“Rather thank God that he died in peace with his Maker, madam,” Mrs. Walsh did not fail to rebuke her. “I think he did; I am fain to hope he did, though he was not able to fulfil his part of the obligation here; the will must stand for the deed. ‘Torney Kenyon, who did all the Squire’s business, was from home, at the wedding of his son in Bristol. We sent twice, but we could not get hold of the man in time. I think it is better to tell you at once, Lady Bell, what you will hear later.”

20“As you will, madam,” replied Lady Bell dejectedly.

“The Squire’s will was executed long before he ever saw your face, when his estate was bequeathed, failing any heir of his body, to my eldest son Jack. The substance of that will has been repeated since you offended the Squire, and it has neither been revoked nor altered, as my cousin certainly desired it to be altered, in his dying moments. But Mr. Walsh and me, expecting that you, or some one for you, would answer our summons, if you were in the country, have made up our minds, and will answer for Jack at his college, to take your wishes on the matter.”

“I have no wishes, Mrs. Walsh,” exclaimed Lady Bell hastily.

“We shall let you have whatever compensation you desire,” went on Mrs. Walsh, paying no heed to the demur, “being well aware that such were Squire Trevor’s intentions while he was yet in the body, and in his right mind, so that you are indebted to 21no bounty, but to bare justice for your share of the worldly inheritance that our cousin has left behind him.”

“Madam, this honourable conduct does you and Mr. Walsh infinite credit.” Mrs. Sundon could not refrain from awarding her hearty approbation to her late antagonist.

“Mrs. Sundon, I repeat that ‘tis but justice,” argued Mrs. Walsh with a stateliness of her own, winding up with her own favourite axiom, “The world and I have shaken hands long ago.”

“You are all a great deal too kind to me,” wept Lady Bell, “a rebel who deserted my post. But indeed I had liefer, if you do not think it an impertinence in me to make an objection, that Mr. Trevor’s goods went to you and your son Jack, his friends. I am sure I have no right to a single sixpence.”

“Beware of pride and sauciness still under the garb of disinterestedness, Lady Bell,” Mrs. Walsh said severely.

22“Nay, I’ll do whatever you will,” Lady Bell hastened to amend her statement, quite subdued, and feeling sadly as if she would never have the heart to have a will of her own again.

“Madam, a second time everything shall be as you will, and as your friends—such as Madam Sundon and your man of business, if you will please to name him—may decide for you,” Mrs. Walsh laid down the law.

Lady Bell knew that she was not and never would be mistress of Trevor Court. Not that she desired it; she even recoiled from it as from a sacrilege.

After the funeral, when the two ladies happened to be alone together, Mrs. Sundon said to Lady Bell—