Alice Lauder/Part 2/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
SHE was still sitting in the gallery, when Campbell at last caught sight of her—just at that period of the entertainment when all rational people think about going to bed, and the younger ones feel an ever-increasing need of chasing the glowing hours with flying feet, till the approach of morning puts even their gay spirits to flight—“Like ghosts from an enchanted fleeing.”
“Won’t you come and have another turn, Mrs. Austin?” he said lightly. “Let us have another circular?—as I heard one of the natives say just now. The floor is just perfect, and there is not such a crowd.”
Lizzie took his arm as if in a dream, and they floated round the room once more, to the melancholy music of “positively the last extra.” However pressing her secret troubles might be, she determined to shut the door in their faces for a brief space. The hour belonged to her, to her youth, her morning beauty, her keen love of living, and she would enjoy it to the very last moment. Nevertheless, as they threaded the ball-room in airy circles, still the observed of all, and outwardly radiant and triumphant, Lizzie was making up her mind to “clear the course,” as she expressed the matter to herself, at the very earliest opportunity.
The wide hall’s doors stood open to the still summer night, and by a common impulse they wandered out into the garden, and sat down to rest on a rustic seat, conveniently sheltered and arranged for the solitude à deux which the young ladies of the household so thoroughly understood. It was all very still and calm and dewy. Though daylight had not come, the night was already departing, sinking into hollows and valleys, and the bush-birds began to speed the parting guest with mellow calls and cadences. The tiny bush-wren ran up and down his sweet minor scale, and the parson-bird tried half a bar of delicious melody, and then broke off into a loud discordant whistle that would have disgraced a schoolboy’s ear for music. The dewy air was cold and exhilarating after the glare of the ball-room, and Lizzie drew her fur cloak round her shoulders, and remained silent for some moments. Odours of orange blossom and heliotrope waited round the corners, and eastward one brilliant planet sailed majestically up from a sea-green belt of sky. They could see a dim red light moving round the cape below them, on the unseen ocean. It was the mail steamer feeling her way along the rocky treacherous coast-line. The strum of throbbing strings and the muffled beat of the dancers’ feet on the floor had a fantastic unreal effect in the distance, and might have been the echo of a witches’ sabbath rather than the simple gaiety of a country-house, breaking in on the sacred hour of daybreak.
“There is something I want to speak to you about,” she began suddenly, after they had sat silent for some moments. She rested her elbow on one knee and leaned forward, much in the attitude which Michael Angelo has immortalized in the tomb of the Medici, but which is not generally adopted at evening parties. “You will think me mad I dare say, but I do want to have it out with you.”
“Let us have it out, by all means.”
He smiled, contemplating her from an artist’s point of view and finding the “impression” most satisfactory.
“I have had a nasty knock to-night,” she went on, speaking slowly and not without some natural dignity, “though the words were strong.” “Carrie Klingender has been talking to me. She says I monopolize you altogether, and that you are dying to be with some one else all the time. Is that true?”
“Good Lord, what a piece of impertinence!”
“Deliberate cheek, you might say,” said Lizzie calmly, “but is it true?”
“True!—What business is it of hers or of anyone else to pry into my doings? I wish to heaven Miss Klingender would mind her own business, and leave me alone. I have seen something of scandal and gossip in India, but this beats everything.” Campbell was quite white with anger, and one less interested than his companion might have suspected that there was some fire under this sudden puff of smoke.
“Well, she says so. She says they all say so,” Lizzie went on firmly, with her straightforward gaze fixed on his face. “Not that I mind their old gossip, but I do want to know the truth. . . . . You are angry with me for talking like this, I know, but that is better than laughing at me, as some men would. I am your friend, and I want to do you a good turn if I can. You believe that, don’t you?” she went on, with a sweet gentle look that was oddly at variance with her school-boyish method of conversation.
“Yes, you are my friend, but I cannot feel grateful to you.”
“I know you are an Englishman, and you would sooner die than talk about your private affairs, or carry a brown paper parcel down the street. But I do not care, I want you to be happy. . . . . And I have made mistakes myself. You can’t get some things right in a whole lifetime. Do not make a mistake now.”
He was still silent, and after waiting a moment for him to respond, she went on with a certain tremor in her voice: “Carrie says that there has been a misunderstanding between you two. If so, perhaps I can put it right. They say that fools rush in, you know, and I dare say that I am a fool.”
“No, no; you are a good woman, and I believe in you. It is all the fault of this wretched gossiping little hole,” he said at last, with more warmth, moved perhaps more by the little break in her voice than by all her pleadings, “but, as you say, I am not used to talk about this sort of thing.”
“Well, no more am I, if it comes to that. Yet if it would do any good I would tell you all about myself. People say that I married for money, and that my relations forced me into it. That’s not true. I did it with my eyes open. I hated poverty—No, not hated, for then I could have fought it, I feared it, which is much worse. You don’t know what genteel poverty is. I do. It was not a matter of theory with me, and I thought that falling in love was all nonsense, and that I could be perfectly happy in my own way. So I was for a long time. I did not care for women’s ways, and I liked going about with men, riding and shooting and all that, and when they talked bosh and flattered me, I just laughed at them. People called me fast, but it was just that.”
“I know, I know—I understand,” he stammered, vaguely, anxious to escape from the situation at any cost, yet unable to render her measure for measure of openhanded truth and candour.
“And now I want to tell you that there is something more in life than I dreamed of—Is it love?—I am sure I don’t know. Perhaps it is religion; but at any rate don’t lose it if you have the chance. There is something better in life than money, or fun, or having a good time. You may bet your life on that!”
The slowly-rising light laid a brightness on her fair hair and forehead, and brought a deeper sparkle to her beautiful eyes. Not one woman in a thousand could have borne that penetrating ray without looking fatigued and faded in the cold daybreak. But Lizzie was a true child of nature, and was seldom out of harmony with the sylvan world. In her shining folds of white satin, a diamond crescent glittering in her hair, she might have been next of kin to the morning, which was already “in his cold crown and crystal silence creeping down” over the jagged purple hills.
Campbell was touched at last, and with a sudden impulse he threw his conventional defences overboard, and spoke frankly:
“Yes, I will tell you all I can. Ten years ago I met her on the voyage home” (Alice Lauder’s name was never mentioned between them—it was understood, which is a much more serious thing). “She was a solitary unfriended sort of girl, and we made friends over her music, but nothing more. She was quite mad about going on the stage then, and I tried all I could to dissuade her from it. At last I offered to marry her there and then———”
“Very noble, I am sure,” said Lizzie, with one of her sudden childish laughs.
“Well, she refused me, anyhow. Then I met her here. She had changed a good deal, and I don’t mind saying that I admired her very much.” He stopped as if he had forgotten what they were talking about; then with a sudden effort he said: “She is going to be married to that musician fellow—Piper———”
“Impossible! I don’t believe it.”
“He told me so himself. So that’s an end to everything. I have had my nasty knock, too, you see. ’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.”
“I can’t understand it at all.”
“Neither can I. But yet I do. It is the stage mania with her still. She loves it more than anything else in the world—more than old Piper too, I fancy, but he will smooth the way for her.”
“Young people, do you know that it is nearly five o’clock, and mother has gone to bed? Everybody has gone away. Are you going to come to breakfast in your ball clothes, Lizzie?” and Miss Klingender appeared for an instant on the pathway before them, like an accusing angel, and then flashed away to attend to some other pressing duty; for the entertainment of twenty guests all staying in the house was mostly depending on her efforts.
Mrs. Austin laughed carelessly, and rising flung her arms over her head with a natural free gesture, as of one who throws off an unaccustomed burden.
“Well, it is time we were off, anyway. I am going straight home now. I can’t stay for the picnic to-morrow—No, to-day it is, of course. I have had enough of talking to last me a lifetime. So good-bye.”
“Good-bye, and thanks.”
“Look here! I feel I must get away out of this place for a day or two, and pull myself together. There is a steamer going up the Dusky River on Thursday, and I’ve a great mind to go. It will be a change.”
“Good idea! Let me come with you!”
“All right; good-bye till Thursday. The steamer leaves early, mind, so don’t oversleep yourself. Adieu.”