Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

of talking about, take place before your very eyes?'

'What could I do? Lady Thwaite remonstrated. I am only the man's distant cousin by marriage. I never heard what was going to happen till late last night; it came upon me like a thunderbolt-I had been led to expect something so very different. But I was in time to telegraph to Mr. Miles, and he was down before breakfast this morning.'

[ocr errors]

'And what does Miles say?'

[ocr errors]

'Not much,' said Lady Thwaite, with an expressive shrug. She was beginning to recover a portion of her equanimity so as to object to being browbeaten. She felt bound to treat the subject with more philosophic resignation than she had yet shown-nay, with a shade of the banter for which she was famous. He owned that he was dreadfully disappointed, and that the ill-advised step would make a complete wreck of his client's fortunes. All the same, I think Mr. Miles would have liked to have sworn at me for bringing him down, when the man was of age and his own master-an ignorant, untrained fellow, who could not be expected to stand opposition, even in his own interest, or to

follow rational argument, whom contradiction would only make worse. There was nothing to be done, any tyro might have seen that. After the mess was made and so far advanced, where was the use of bringing an unfortunate lawyer or anybody else down from town, to render the business more hopeless, if that were possible? Sir William had not sent for him to draw out the settlements. I never saw Mr. Miles so cross, and nearly rude, though we are too old friends to count plain-speaking rudeness. He did see Sir William, however; but as Mr. Miles left for London by the next train, without coming back to me, I conclude nothing can be done.'

'You're all as mad as Sir William,' cried Lady Fermor, without softening her opinion. 'The fellow ought to be taken away, and the woman shut up;' speaking as if the primitive customs of centuries ago were still in full force, as if the power which old aristocrats had once wielded unscrupulously enough on occasions, had never departed from their hands. But I'll go to him; I'll let him hear a piece of my mind.'

The resolution was what Lady Thwaite had

VOL. II.

27

half hoped for as a last resource.

But when

it came to the point, while she entertained small expectation of the efforts producing even the little delay which might yet be of the greatest moment in arresting an irretrievable misfortune, she had qualms at sending the aged woman-let her be ever so much to blame alone into the breach on this breathless summer day.

Lady Thwaite could not accompany Lady Fermor. Indeed, the younger woman would not on any account have attended the elder on the expedition to which Lady Thwaite had nevertheless spurred on Lady Fermor. After all, Sir William Thwaite, though he was Sir John's heir, and Sir John's widow had intended him to continue to be the purveyor of many social advantages to her, was happily no relation of hers, but a remote and disowned kinsman of her late husband. It was only an irregular skirmisher in the campaign of life, an old alien from social laws, a woman who had never cared anything for public opinion, who could go to Sir William, and either in utter disregard of what had been said, or in unblushing reference to it and to what had really taken place between him and

Iris Compton, seek to stop his degrading, desperate marriage.

I am afraid it will be too much for you, Lady Fermor,' Lady Thwaite managed to say, as Lady Fermor was ringing for her maid; 'try and think over it. At least, let Soames go with you. I am sure you do not know what a trying day it is. We shall have another storm immediately, and you may be caught in the rain, with the damp so bad for your rheumatic gout. Sir John had to avoid it carefully, and-oh dear! I believe you have not taken your luncheon,' lamented Lady Thwaite, fanning her hot face.

She began to yield to a painful conviction that if anything happened suddenly to Lady Fermor in consequence of these unusual exertions and deprivations, the most lenient coroner's inquest in the country might feel justified in requesting Lady Thwaite's attendance, and in seizing the opportunity of the evidence she would be compelled to give, to censure her for her inhumanity.

'Am I to sit here and eat a chop while a poor deluded young devil-excuse me, Lady Thwaite, but you ain't averse to plain-speak

ing-a friend of my own, is on the brink of a precipice? Lady Fermor asked scornfully. 'That is not what I call friendship, and I have had a man-friend or two in my day. It seems Soames thinks she may sit and guzzle, whatever is up; but I'll teach the idiot better manners than to keep me waiting,' ringing the bell at her elbow violently a second time in rapid succession.

Soames answered in haste, and her mistress, with no more than a promise to give it to Soames hot and strong in some moment of leisure, despatched the maid to collect wraps, and to send another servant to order the carriage.

'It seems all so unreal and shocking,' said Lady Thwaite, feeling helpless for once in her life. Yet she was not averse to do more talking in the presence of the fiery zeal which could still blaze up in the shrunken veins of the woman of fourscore-the woman of another, more turbulent generation. 'Of course it is in his blood,' repeated Lady Thwaite, not without a recollection of her objection to Iris Compton for the taint in her blood, and I have heard that the woman pulled him out of some ditch and saved his life. What was a

« AnteriorContinuar »