The Ladies Lindores · Chapter 15 (2/2)

All this time, however, while Millefleurs was frequenting the house almost daily, Lady Lindores’s perception had been partly confused by the effort it cost her to avoid being drawn into what she felt must be an unnecessary confidential disclosure to Beaufort of the history of the family since they last met. Beaufort did not insist upon accompanying his charge⁠—for such, more or less, Millefleurs was, his family being too much alarmed lest he should disappear again, to leave him without this species of surveillance, which the good-natured young fellow allowed to be perfectly natural, and neither resisted nor resented; but he came sometimes, and he never relinquished his appeal to Lady Lindores. He was not posing in any attitude of a heartbroken lover. Even to her he expressed no despair. He took his life gravely, but not without cheerfulness, and had, she felt almost with a little pique, got over it, and been able to put Carry out of his life. But he wanted to know: that seemed all that was left of the old romance. He wanted to be told how it had happened⁠—how his love had been lost to him. It did not seem to be resentment or indignation that moved him, but a serious kind of interest. And strangely enough, it seemed to Lady Lindores that he did not want to avoid her, or keep out of hearing of the name of the girl who had forsaken him. He seemed to like herself, Carry’s mother, as well as ever, and to regard Edith with the same elder-brotherly air which had pleased her so much in the old days. Between the inquiring countenance which seemed without ceasing to ask an explanation from her, and the prattle of Millefleurs, which ran on in a pleasant stream, and to which it seemed so ridiculous to attach any serious meaning, Lady Lindores was kept in a perplexity and harassment of mind which took away altogether her pleasure in society at the end of their stay in London. After her impatient rejection of Rintoul’s counsels, she began to consider them, as was natural; and much as all the particulars of the chasse-aux-maris disgusted her, she came at length, against her will, to recognise that there was something in what he said. “I have been imprudent, as usual,” she said to herself. Alas that all the natural proceedings of life should be hampered by these rules of prudence!⁠—these perpetual previsions of what might happen, to which she felt it was impossible she could ever bow her spirit. But the idea that it would be said that a boy like Millefleurs had “amused himself” with her daughter⁠—that he had loved and ridden away⁠—that Edith, her high-spirited, pure-minded girl, had been left planté là⁠—broke over Lady Lindores like a wave of passionate feeling: the suggestion was intolerable and odious. This happened when Millefleurs was in the room with her, in full tide of talk, and entirely at his ease. The sudden sensation disclosed itself in a flush of colour mounting in a moment to her very hair. Intolerable! The thought was so odious that she started to her feet and walked to the open window, as if the change of position would throw it off⁠—and also, suffocated as she felt by that sudden fiery breath, to get fresh air, lest she should, as she said, make an exhibition of herself.

“You are ill, Lady Lindores,” cried Millefleurs. Those little beady eyes of his saw everything. He ran forward to support her (he was just up to her shoulder), putting forward a reclining-chair with one hand, picking up a bottle of eau de cologne with the other. He had all his wits about him. “I am used to it. Sometimes my mother se trouve mal in the same way. It will pass over,” he said encouragingly to Edith, who, unused to anything of the kind, started up in alarm. “Dear Lady Lindores, put yourself here.”

“I am not ill,” she said, almost angrily. “Pray do not make any⁠—fuss. How rude I am! but there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you. The room is warm, that is all.”

Millefleurs looked at her curiously. He put down the eau de cologne, and took his hand from the chair. For a moment he seemed about to speak, but then stood aside more serious than his wont. In terror lest he should have divined her thoughts, Lady Lindores returned to her seat, calming herself down with an effort, and made the best attempt she could to resume their easy conversation of the moment before. She was vexed beyond measure when Edith, a short time after, left the room to go and look for something which Millefleurs was anxious to see. He took instant advantage of the opportunity thus afforded him. “Lady Lindores,” he said, with that serious air as of a candid child, going up to her, “you are not ill, but you are vexed and angry, and it is something about me.”

“About you, Lord Millefleurs! how could that be?⁠—you have never given me the least occasion to be angry.”

“That is why,” he said, gravely. “I see it all. You have nothing to find fault with. I am quite innocent and harmless, yet I am in the way, and you do not know how to tell me so. For my part, I have been so happy here that I have forgotten all sorts of precautions. One does not think of precautions when one is happy. Dear Lady Lindores, you shall tell me exactly what I ought to do, and I will do it. I have all my life been guided by women. I have such faith in a lady’s instinct. I might be confused, perhaps, in my own case, but you will hit upon the right thing. Speak to me freely, I shall understand you at a word,” the droll little hero said. Now Lady Lindores was in a strait as serious as she had ever experienced in her life; but when she glanced up at him, and saw the gravity upon his baby face, his attitude of chubby attention, such a desire to laugh seized her, that it was all she could do by main force to keep her gravity. This insensibly relaxed the tension, and restored her to her usual self-command. Still there was no denying that the situation was a very peculiar one, and his request for guidance the strangest possible. She answered hurriedly, in the confusion of her mingled feelings⁠—

“I don’t know what there is to do, Lord Millefleurs, or how I can advise you. A sudden want of breath⁠—a consciousness all at once that it is a very warm morning⁠—what can that have to do with you?”

“You will not tell me, then?” he said, with an air half disappointed, half imploring.

“There is nothing to tell. Here is Edith. For heaven’s sake, not another word!” said Lady Lindores, in alarm. She did not perceive that she betrayed herself in this very anxiety that her daughter should suspect nothing. He looked at her very curiously once more, studying her face, her expression, even the nervousness of the hand with which she swept her dress out of her way. He was a young man full of experiences, knowing all the ways of women. How far she was sincere⁠—how far this might be a little scheme, a device for his instruction, so that he might see what was expected of him without any self-betrayal on the lady’s part⁠—was what he wanted to know. Had it been so, he would at once have understood his role. It is usual to say that simplicity and sincerity are to the worldly-bred much more difficult to understand than art; but there is something still more difficult than these. “Pure no-meaning puzzles more than wit.” Though Lady Lindores had far more meaning in her than nine-tenths of her contemporaries, she was in this one case absolutely incomprehensible from want of meaning. She had no more notion than a child what to do, or even what she wished to be done. If this little chubby fellow asked Edith to marry him, her mother believed that the girl would laugh in his face. There could be no question of Edith marrying him. But what then? Was Edith to be held up before the whole world (according to Rintoul’s version) as the plaything of this little Marquis, as having failed to catch him, as being planté là. She was in the most painful dilemma, not knowing any more than a child how to get out of it. She gave him a look which was almost pathetic in its incompetency. Lady Lindores was full of intellect⁠—she was what is called a very superior woman; but nobody would have been more stupid, more absolutely without any power of invention in this crisis, which had never come within the range of her calculations, which she had not been able to foresee.

And that same afternoon Beaufort came by himself and was admitted, no one else being in the drawing-room⁠—no one to shield the poor lady, who could not help remembering that this stranger was the man to whom she had once given a mother’s kiss, receiving him as a son. He did not forget it either. He held her hand when she gave it him, and sat down by her with an expression of satisfaction which she was very far from sharing. “At last I find you alone,” he said, with a sigh of content. Poor Lady Lindores had already been so greatly tried this morning, that she felt unable to keep up the strain. Why should she be forced to put on so many semblances?

“Mr. Beaufort,” she cried, “I cannot pretend to be glad to see you alone. Cannot you understand? You have been wronged⁠—we have treated you badly⁠—they say it is the injured person who is always most ready to forgive; but do not ask me to go into a matter which I have tried all these years to forget.”

“And yet,” he said, gently, “I do not mean to reproach you, Lady Lindores.”

“That may be; I do not know that you have much occasion to reproach me. You were not yourself, perhaps, so much in earnest. No⁠—I mean no reproach either; but you are a man of your century too, according to the usual slang. You don’t force events, or do what is impossible. Men used to do so in the old days.”

He listened to her in silence, bowing his head two or three times. “I accept your reproof,” he said, a faint colour coming over his face. “I am glad you have made it⁠—it helps me to understand. Lady Lindores, there is something else I want to speak to you about. Lord Lindores has invited me, with Millefleurs, in August⁠—”

“With Millefleurs, in August? Has he asked Lord Millefleurs in August?” Lady Lindores cried.

This was a great blow to Beaufort’s self-opinion. He had thought, naturally, that the embarrassment of his appearance as a visitor would have overweighed everything else. He grew more red this time, with the irritated shame which follows a slight.

“Certainly he has asked him. It is ridiculous that a young man so entirely able to take care of himself should have anyone in charge of him; but as the Duke has implored me to keep his son company⁠—Here is my situation, Lady Lindores. God knows I would not thrust myself where I might⁠—where I should be⁠—I mean, to cause the faintest embarrassment to⁠—anyone.”

“Mr. Beaufort,” cried Lady Lindores, “do not come, either of you!⁠—oh, never mind what I mean. What is the use of going over that old ground? It would cause embarrassment⁠—to me if to no one else. And Lord Millefleurs⁠—what does he want at Lindores? Let him stay away; persuade him to stay away.”

“But that is settled without any power of interference on my part. Of course he thought you were aware. For myself, I am ready to give up my own prospects, to sacrifice anything⁠—rather than give you a moment’s anxiety.”

Lady Lindores gazed at him for a moment with wide-open eyes, like a creature at bay. Then she let her hands fall on her lap. “It is I that need to be guided what to do,” she said, with a sigh; “they are too many for me. Oh, Edward! had we but remained poor and obscure, as we were when you knew us⁠—” She put out her hand instinctively, with a kind of involuntary appeal. He took it, going upon his knees with that movement, equally involuntary, which deep emotion suggests, and put it to his lips. They were both overcome by a sudden flood of old sympathy, old communion. “Has Carry forgotten me altogether⁠—altogether? Is she happy? God bless her!” he said.

It was in this attitude that Edith, coming in suddenly, surprised these two imprudent people. She gave a cry of amazement, and, Lady Lindores thought, reproach. “Mother! Edward!” The old name came to her lips, too, in the shock.

“Edith,” Lady Lindores cried, “your father has invited him with Lord Millefleurs to Lindores.”

“But I will do nothing save as you advise,” said Beaufort, rising to his feet.

Then the mother and the daughter consulted each other with their eyes. “Of course he will⁠—not⁠—” Edith stopped and faltered. She had begun almost with passion; but she was made to break off by the warning in her mother’s eyes. Lady Lindores, too, had gone through a shock and panic; but now all the secondary elements came in⁠—all those complications which take truth out of life.