Hermione

In Three Phases
by 'The Detrimental.'

Originally published in Tinsley's Magazine (Tinsley Brothers) vol.1 #6 (Feb 1868).

Phase I.
Freezing Hard.

A sudden mighty frost has frozen the old year into a quiet death-sleep, and held as yet in its numbing grip the waking life of the new. For days, the weather-wise, who fondly fancied they understood their English climate—that queer caprice of Nature, which, like other feminine caprices, simply passes all understanding—had been prophesying a thaw. For days, disgusted hunting-men, who felt that after a fortnight of this fun Providence really ought to do something for them, had been swearing strong prayers for one. Meantime, it had calmly gone on freezing harder than ever.
        It was a cloudless January afternoon. There was a nipping north-easter abroad. Generally, it was the sort of day the Rector of Eversley and other peculiarly constituted people call 'bracing.' So, after a brief constitutional on the terrace at Fontenel, the two sisters had gone back to the causeuses and the fire in my lady's little morning-room.
        Let me take you in there, and introduce you. To the mistress of Fontenel first, Hermione, Lady Lysle; then to her cadette, Miss Beauregard.
        Now you know their relationship, you see the likeness between them; otherwise, perhaps, it might not strike you. My lady, on one side the fireplace, with her back to the light, is small, fragile-looking, delicate-faced; with a wealth of brown hair dashed with dark gold of her own, and eyes of the hue of the purple twilight sea. Her sister opposite—whose pretty feet rest on the fender-bar as she leans forward to warm her white hands at the blaze—is three years younger, yellow-haired as Leighton's Venus, with that divinity's morbidezza tone of face-colouring; a sapphire-eyed daughter of the gods, divinely tall, divinely fair, and not fragile-looking by any means. On the whole, the three years' difference in their age at first appears to be in my lady's favour. She is two-and-twenty; but to the casual comparer, looks the more like nineteen of the two—till, indeed, you get that mignonne face of hers in certain lights, and then you perceive that a something has passé par là, and left its mark—such mark as argues her older even than she really is.
        Three winters ago she had married Sir Gervase Lysle, an amiable vaurien; a black sheep who would have been very black indeed if charitable people hadn't persistently washed him, if not snow-white, at least a very passable shade of yellow, in a Pactolus of 15,000l. a-year. Sir Gervase, having early exhausted dissipation and a not too robust constitution, had committed matrimony, partly, as he said, because it was something he had never tried before, partly because he had a natural desire to 'sell' his heir-at-law if he could; but chiefly because—blasé man of pleasure as he was, hopelessly vicious as he was not, but as the Elect, who had nothing to make by him, decided that he must be—he loved 'that little brown-haired girl of Lady Julia's' (as other girls' chaperones and mothers spoke of Miss Beauregard at this time, when they perceived the fact) with a love so honest and good and pure that, morally, it made a new man of him; physically, however, it could not. Twelve months after his marriage, the amiable vaurien—not utterly worthless, then—died. Of matrimony, old Lord Upas declared, with his most pleasing grin, when his pupil's decease was being turned into desultory jerky talk over the b.-and-s, in the Alcibiades smoking-room. Of a cold that had settled on the lungs, Sir Savile Rowe said to outsiders generally. Of sheer vital exhaustion; look at the way the man lived!—no stamina to start with, as the same distinguished personage remarked to Sir Bistoury Bland, his equally distinguished colleague, while he took a pinch from the latter's snuff-box, in the library at Lysle Court. And Sir Bistoury took snuff too, and nodded affirmatively.
        They weren't exactly right, however, these great men. Sir Gervase might have lived a while longer yet, but for a circumstance which, as he didn't think fit to mention it, the two great men knew nothing about; and would have been powerless to counteract the ill effects of, on their patient, if they had. There is no reason why you should be ignorant of it, however. It was this.
        One night, in her sleep, he had heard his wife murmur a man's name—not his name; and, by the faint dawnlight presently, he had seen that her face was wet with the tears of a sorrow he could divine only too well. His wife, the one woman he had believed in, the one woman he loved with real love, that might in time, the poor prodigal vaguely felt, have taught him in some sort to redeem the sins and follies of his wasted youth—his wife loved this man, this Hugh, whose name the child had muttered in her weary dream. I think the most bitterly virtuous of the Elect might have been satisfied with the sinner's punishment.
        Cruel as it was, it didn't make him unjust. He did full justice to Lady Julia, remembering now certain traits in that model mother's character which he hadn't cared to think of much before; and he passed no hasty, wrathful sentence on her daughter. He passed no sentence on his wife at all. His love (who shall say it was not perfect?) cast out, almost at once, all thought of self. He never felt how strong that love was till then, when he found himself pitying his darling—who was not his—from the very bottom of his soul.
        She never knew it. No word or look of his ever told her that he had surprised her secret. So much the worse for him, perhaps, as things were. But he made no sign. He held that unconscious confession under sacred seal.
        And that redeeming future, the faint light whereof had begun to dawn on him? Ah, well, he lost that light, of course. He hadn't much to live for now. 'No matter,' he would think, while his eyes rested on her as eyes rest on what they soon shall see no more; 'no matter! I've been happy for six months. By and by she may be happy too.'
        And by and by they told her broke the news to her with all cautious circumlocution, just as if her life had been bound up in his—that her husband was dying.
        Dying! She stood beside him white, shocked; a little remorseful, too, mayhap. By a deathbed things look differently. She bent over him. The old loving light came back for one brief moment to the glazing eyes; the old fond smile to the ashen lips. Her name parted them. Only that, and then—Then Sir Savile Rowe laid his hand upon her arm, and drew her gently away.
        Dead! And she never knew. Better men have died worse.

        No heir was born to Lysle Court. The soul of that far-away heir-at-law was filled with a ferocious joy when he heard the news. He came down upon all that was so unexpectedly his own with a whoop of triumph.
        But Fontenel was not his. Fontenel—that little place in the pleasant south country, quaint and whimsical as its name—had been the dead man's, to do with as he would. And it, and all else he could leave her, he left his wife.
        And at Fontenel, for the most part alone, with that shadow which had fallen upon her face one dreary winter's day, ever so long ago, growing darker, growing lighter, but never passing away altogether, Hermione Lady Lysle had lived for the last two years.
        The secret of that shadow has been none to you, of course. You have easily guessed this is only the old story once more. It is very simply told.
        He—that Hugh Anstruther—whose name she had one night sobbed out in her sleep—was an Indian soldier, rather famous at the time they two first met. In him she saw her hero; in her he beheld his dream. In awhile they were lovers; and, though no single word of love had been spoken, they knew they were. Watchful, prudent Lady Julia guessed it. No one else either knew or guessed it.
        Lady Julia liked it not. She had higher views for her daughter. She was the sort of woman to carry out those views coolly, cleverly, and unscrupulously. But, like the Spanish Philip, she played best and preferably with time for her partner. She held the enemy in check, and waited a little. By and by the right cards fell. Hugh Anstruther fought a duel, and nearly killed his adversary; Sir Gervase Lysle declared himself. The two events happened just in the proper sequence, and Lady Julia's little game was won.
        To have been present that afternoon when that able woman mentioned what had happened to her daughter must have been like being present at an operation. It was a sort of operation, this cutting asunder of two lives that had begun to knit themselves together. Lady Julia performed it with all the skill and sang froid of a practised hospital-surgeon. A woman, she said, had, as usual, been at the bottom of the mischief. Then she gave the name of a notorious Circe of the Paris beau monde (they were all in Paris, I may have forgotten to tell you, that winter), who had certainly been at the bottom of a good deal—Madame de Lausac. And, Lady Julia went on, calmly putting in her knife for the finishing cut, Madame de Lausac had left Paris; Captain Anstruther had followed, and—here she brought in some clever circumstantial evidence—and there could be no doubt that— Here the patient gave a little cry, and fainted on the maternal bosom. The operator administered eau de Cologne and water. Presently the patient recovered—cured, the surgeon hoped and believed. And if so, what mattered a little smart and suffering? Lady Julia thought cheerfully, as she walked off to dress for dinner.
        If her information was not quite correct, it probably suited my lady's purpose better than if it had been. But, as a matter of fact, though Claire de Lausac had gone into winter quarters at Nice, Hugh Anstruther was no farther away from Paris than he had been for the last two months. Only he had to lie close and quiet, for—somehow Lady Julia couldn't have heard of this—he hadn't crossed blades with such a master of fence as Armand d'Ostaing and come off without a scratch. He had been wounded, and badly too. So much the worse for him, you see, for when he next heard of Hermione Beauregard, she was Lady Lysle.
        The next thing Lady Lysle heard of him was that he had gone back to India.
        A year passed; that year of her married life. Passed, too, the smart of the wrong, as cruel as it was incomprehensible to her at first, which she had endured. But her heart hardened against the man she had loved, and who had flung away her love so lightly; hardened—not all at once, but by slow, weary degrees. She learned to drug memory; she shut her ears to inner voices that yet would plead for him. It was all true, of course, what they said of him. She had believed it at the time, she must believe it always. Else, what had she done? Nevertheless, the old love wasn't so easily stifled. It cried aloud now and again, and would be heard.
        Another year passed, the first year of her freedom. The hardening process had gone on; her heart was as ice towards him. Comparing what was, with what might have been, she began to hate him with cold hate. The bloom and blossom of her life all brushed and broken from it, life looked a very barren and hopeless business. She was just one-and-twenty when she began to think in this way. She must really have cared for her husband after all, people said who marked the effect which such brooding and her solitary life had upon her. Her health suffered; lines that had no business there at all grew more marked on the mignonne face. Lady Julia grew rather uneasy; offered to leave town in the middle of the season, and come down to Fontenel and undertake her daughter's cure. Her daughter read the letter, shuddered, and declined the proposition. Since the day of the operation the girl had rather shrunk somehow from the caresses of the maternal hand.
        Besides, Lady Lysle rather fancied she might be going to die; she rather hoped so too, and didn't wish to be interfered with. Another six months passed. Blanche Beauregard, a reigning London belle, had been down at Fontenel. She had acted like a tonic. Her brisk worldliness and pleasant cynicism de société had done her sister an immensity of good before she left. She had taken the invalid into the sunshine and the air, made her ride and walk, and see people. Lady Lysle's digestion improved; she slept better, and took to eating dinner again. At the end of the second year of her widowhood—that is at the time this winter's tale begins—she had developed, or flattered herself she had, into a sensible woman of about five-and-forty, with no more illusions, no great hopes, no troublesome regrets; cool, calm, passionless; philosophically indifferent to things in general. Whether this conception of her own character was justifiable, remains to be seen.
        But certainly Lady Lysle could congratulate herself on having listened with unruffled composure to one unexpected piece of intelligence. Hugh Anstruther was in England again—in London. In a London ballroom Blanche Beauregard had met him, hearing his name for the first time when Lady Dorénavant presented him. From which you gather that Miss Beauregard was in absolute ignorance of the part he had played in the little domestic tragedy three years before—as she was.
        Yes; Hugh Anstruther was in England again; grown rather gaunt and grim after the hard work of the last long fighting-time, and rewarded for the share he had taken therein with a brevet-majority and a not very disfiguring tulwar-slash. Miss Beauregard saw a good deal of him while he was in London, and liked all she saw.
        By and by 'the Prince's Own' relieved the Fifteenth at Stoneleigh. Now, Stoneleigh is about three miles from Fontenel.
        Algy Beauregard, Lieutenant of Lancers, used to find that three miles a very pleasant distance to 'tool' the new bays over, and lunch and lounge at cousin Hermy's. The fact was, though the youth never knew it, that the Major had put the notion into his head to serve ends of his own. The youth had been Anstruther's sub in India; and, amongst other things, owed his superior his life. As that superior happened to be in his eyes the beau idéal of all that was worth being, the sub's gratitude had taken the shape of hero-worship. Whatever the Major did was right; whatever he said was law; and such sayings and doings Algy was never tired of talking about. Indeed, they formed the staple of his polite conversation.
        He was immensely gratified one day, when Anstruther vouchsafed to accompany him to Fontenel, having, as he said, already had the pleasure of meeting Lady Lysle.
        Lady Lysle never forgot the first day Hugh walked into her drawing-room, perfectly tranquil and matter-of-course, to 'renew his acquaintance.' Algy, of course, had trumpeted his impending gracious visit beforehand; but, prepared and confident as she had been, our Hermione nearly broke down.
        He had turned to shake hands with Miss Beauregard, who was more than glad to see him, and began talking to that damsel about the weather.
        Then they were all talking—she too; with a sort of desperate coolness that wasn't what she intended at all, but that, at any rate, reflected his own quite passably. Then he was gone, and his voice was ringing in her ears yet; and Blanche was belauding him, half in jest, half in earnest.
        How Lady Lysle hated him that day! But she got quite her proper little icy self again before the Major made another call at Fontenel—for he did make another, several others; and was freezingly hard and firm, under his eye and against his voice. However, he didn't look at or speak to her very much, confining himself principally to Miss Beauregard, who was equal to any amount of undivided homage, and took his present quantum simply as a matter of course.
        One day, watching the two together, a thought suddenly struck our Hermione. What made him come so persistently? Not surely now that cruel wish to show how utterly he ignored their past? Had he not sufficiently done that? Suppose his motive for coming was—Blanche? There was a terrible idea.
        All night long she lay awake, thinking it over. Would he dare, after what he had done? Did he think she (the thinker) would suffer—? Here a whole flood of other counter-questions rushed upon her. What had he done which should bar him, of itself, from Blanche? The wrong he had done her was no wrong done to her sister. And, again, had he even wronged her? Had he loved her? She had believed so; but might she not have deceived herself from first to last about this man, whom she couldn't understand now? Not suffer it! How was she to help it? What could she say or do? No; she must sit by and—and all the time she made up her mind she could not so sit by.
        For days following, under her icy-calm exterior, Lady Lysle was sore perplexed and troubled. It is not impossible that the Major meant she should be just that.
        Such briefly, then, was the 'situation' at the commencement of this little life-drama.
        The two sisters sat silently for awhile over the morning-room fire, where we left them; my lady lying back in her chair, apparently lazy—in reality, very busy thinking; Miss Beauregard warming those peach-white hands of hers, till they were warm enough. Then she, too, dropped back into a comfortable gossipping position, and picked up the thread of her discourse just now upon the terrace.
        'Well, Hermy,' she resumed, smiling—and you would have been puzzled to say which was the more delicious, the voice or the smile—'the conclusion I've come to is, that you hate him. Poor Sir Olaf!'
        Sir Olaf was a name Miss Beauregard had given Anstruther, who, indeed, wasn't unlike that hero in modern guise—a straight, deep-chested, lithe-limbed beau sabreur, with the fair hair and fearless blue eyes of his race; a born soldier, and an Indian hero to boot; a little war-worn, and, as aforesaid, by no means disfigured by a battle-scar.
        'I don't think, though, you know,' she went on, 'he cares very much whether you hate him or not, Hermy. He must see it; but he comes here just the same. What do you suppose he comes for?'
        'What a question? my lady murmured, with a little movement of her shoulders, and a little bitter curving of her lips.
        The other misunderstood her.
        'You mean, I think, he comes for me?' the belle said coolly.
        'Well, perhaps. But,' she added, and about half in earnest, 'I wouldn't mind feeling sure it was for me, petite sœur. Homage from Sir Olaf is worth having.'
        'That depends, I suppose.' The bitter curve on my lady's lips deepened.
        'On the "taste and fancy," as Algy says, of the suzeraine. I think I should like it. I'm like the Lady of Shallott, "half-sick of shadows," of my vapid London puppets, every one of whose little tricks I know by heart, and whose strings I'm tired of pulling. I should like a "man to govern in this wood," Miss Beauregard declared plaintively; 'a man without strings, dear, like Sir Olaf.'
        What was my lady to say to this? She did what was perhaps best, and said nothing. Only thought; and her thoughts were so many stabs. There was a pause. Blanche broke it.
        'Fancy your hating him! I can't understand a woman hating a man like that—under ordinary circumstances, that is. A woman might get to hate him if she were jealous of him; though a woman who could mistrust my Sir Olaf would deserve to lose him; but you—what do you hate him for, Hermy?'
        The torture was exquisite; it was as well Lady Lysle's face was turned from the light, if she wished to keep her secret; Miss Beauregard's practised eye would have read it like a book.
        'I—I don't hate him, Blanchie,' the victim answered wearily.
        Blanchie thought she was bored; but she went on persistently.
        'Si, si! petite sœur. You hate a man whom nine women out of ten would worship more or less openly; and quand même. I want to know why.'
        'You never can, then.'
        'Take care! Blanche laughed. 'It might be wrong to leave me in the dark.' But she felt she was becoming enlightened.
        'What do you mean?' my lady asked quickly, unable to stop herself.
        'What does she mean?' the other thought. Then she said:
        'Only this, dear. Do you hate the man enough to leave him to me, or don't you? Which?'
        She who was undergoing the question could fairly stand this no longer. She rose in angry revolt, and showed the anger and the revolt in the eyes that looked straight into her questioner's, in the voice that trembled ever so little as she answered.
        'Whichever you please,' she said, as if she had been offered peace or war, and meant war to the knife; 'and now we needn't talk any more about him.'
        To that end she went away out of the room swiftly. When she had reached her own, and hidden the white mignonne face in the big sofa-cushion, after the manner of women when they weep, a passionate cry escaped her lips. She had told herself the truth at last.
        Downstairs in the morning-room Blanche Beauregard was still sitting where my lady had left her, though her first impulse had been to follow the fugitive. Prudently, if heartlessly, she checked that impulse.
        'No,' she thought; 'I'll wait till she's had her cry. Poor Hermy! I think I understand.'
        And when the wheels of a mail-phaeton were crunching the gravel of the drive about ten minutes later, Miss Beauregard had made a resolution; and, what is more, kept it. The mail-phaeton belonged to Algernon Nugent Beauregard, of the Prince's Own; and it was that youthful Jehu who was controlling the vagaries of the new bays, dancing on four legs between them up to the porch. The other seat beside him was occupied by his admirable Crichton, the Major.
        The new bays vouchsafed to resume their normal position and stand still for a minute, and the two Lancers got out. 'Hullo!' observed Algy, turning round, as the inner glass-doors were heard to open, from the contemplation of his cattle, 'Hullo! here's Blanchie.'
        There was Blanchie; in bronze velvet and sealskin, and a little round velvet toque with a white feather, fashionable at that period. And Blanchie came down the snowy steps and shook hands.
        'Well, where's Hermy?' Algy asked, when the ceremony was over.
        'Upstairs, I think,' Miss Beauregard answered.
        So she was; peeping out of a window which commanded the drive.
        'All right! I'll go up to her,' Algy returned, mounting the little perron; 'got to get back for stables; and I want to arrange about the skating to-morrow. Frost's good for a week.' And away he went, just as the Major had intended. Miss Beauregard made no objection; perhaps because she had none.
        'Poor old fellow, then!' She was patting Dandy, the near horse's neck, as she spoke; a liberty which that quadruped resented by tossing his head violently, flattening back his ears, and commencing a pas seul.
        'It's rather cold for them, standing here, you see,' Hugh remarked apologetically. 'You'd better keep them moving, Dixon.' The mail-phaeton moved off. 'You were going out, I see, Miss Beauregard,' he went on.
        Yes; Miss Beauregard was going out. On to the terrace.
        'There's some sun there, still,' the Major said. Whereupon the two walked away in quest of it down a little path that diverged from the gravel plateau where they were.
        The watcher at the window upstairs saw them disappear. Her teeth set hard, and the baby hands clenched tight.
        'Anything but that! she muttered. There came a knock at the door.
        'Hermy,' Algy's voice said outside, 'are you in here? What's the row?'
        My lady smoothed the mignonne face rapidly; saw in the glass that her eyes were red, but passable; and appeared before her cousin on the threshold.
        'Anything wrong?' he asked affectionately. The boy was immensely fond of her, and had been since the days when she was his first love. He put his arm round her waist, and kissed her. 'What were you doing up there, all alone?'
        'Taking off my hat,' she said.
        'Well, come along down; I want to talk to you. You must drive down to the lake to-morrow, you and Blanchie. We've got a morning skating-party coming off. There's a tent fixed; and we shall give you all a feed. We came over, Hugh and I did, to tell you all about it. Now, look here.'
        He had got her by the fire in the drawing-room by this time; and talked about the skating-party for fully ten minutes. When she had promised to come, he dropped into a chair and looked at his watch.
        'He's had pretty near a quarter of an hour,' Mr. Algy thought.
        'Where's Blanche?' my lady asked, as soon as she got a chance.
        'Out on the terrace with Hugh. Saw 'em pass just this moment,' he responded. 'I wouldn't show for a bit, I think, Hermy,' as my lady had murmured something about it being too cold to be on the terrace, and gone a step towards the window; 'let 'em alone, you know.'
        She stopped, and looked at him. He was contemplating his boots with an air of great wisdom.
        'Let 'em alone, you know,' he looked up and repeated, nodding, finding she didn't say anything.
        She came back now, and sat down. With only the firelight at that end of the room he couldn't see, if he had been noticing it, how white her pale face had grown. Algy leaned forward with his arms resting on his knees, and his finger-tips touching, in a sort of confidential attitude, and went on.
        'I tell you what, Hermy—mind, I don't know, but I do think, that there's something up with Hugh and Blanchie.'
        'What?' she gasped—in astonishment, he thought.
        He nodded again.
        'I say I think so. Hugh's said nothing to me; but—'
        Here the astute youth gave his reasons, which don't concern us, for his opinion. They tallied pretty well, though, with my lady's for a similar opinion.
        She let her head drop back helplessly. 'It must be so!' she thought; as if she hadn't thought so before.
        He had gone off at score on his favourite topic, the Major. She let him go on, too beaten with her 'punishment' to stop him.
        'Of course women spoon him, and that,' Algy was saying at last; 'though he don't seem to care about it much. I've never known him be more than ordinarily civil, and that, to any of 'em. Not till now, that is. But, then, you see, besides what he is, there's stories going about him that make 'em spoon him. He does things for 'em that doosid few other fellows do. Why, he half-killed a fellow in a duel once, Dyneley was telling me, about some woman. A Frenchman, it was.'
        She would have cried to him to stop now; and her tongue was powerless.
        'This cad,' Algy went on, taking up one of his legs to nurse,—'I forget the beggar's name; but, anyhow, he stole or picked up some woman's glove, and went about swearing she'd given it him; and saying fishy things about her, and that, you know. And Hugh came down on him, and kicked him, or something of that sort; and, of course, the Frenchman wanted to fight after that; and—Hullo!' he broke off, 'what is it, Hermy?'
        For she had risen, and was standing close beside him, with clasped hands and terribly bright eyes, and a white, eager face.
        'Algy! for God's sake—is this the truth?'
        'Gospel, I believe,' he responded, staring at her. 'But—'
        She uttered a little low wailing cry, and hid her face in her hands. Algy mechanically fixed his glass in his eye, and stared at her through that, much disturbed.
        'Now what the devil is the meaning of this, if you please?' he asked himself.

        The conversation out on the terrace had been rather different from what Algy Beauregard and my lady had fancied. The concluding sentences will suffice for us.
        'That's how it was, you see,' Anstruther was saying; 'I never knew my crime; I've never been able to guess it since. But I've never altered. She has turned to ice. Yes,' he continued, while a faint smile lightened his rather anxious look, 'it freezes too hard, I think, for a thaw to be very distant. The happiness, as I believe, of both of us, ought really not to be killed by artificial frost like this. Still, it may be real.'
        Miss Beauregard smiled.
        'In short, you will do what I ask?' he said quickly.
        In spite of that resolution she had made before she saw him that day, she paused just one second before she answered. He never dreamed it was so, but he was asking her to do for him rather a hard thing. Her Sir Olaf, she had called him an hour ago; and now—Yes, it was hard. But she did it—for him.
        'Yes,' she said, with the proud sapphire eyes looking him loyally in the face, 'I will do what you ask me; and she gave him the peach-white hand upon it; and then they went in.

        'Why the blazes ain't I to say anything about her crying to Hugh?' Algy Beauregard kept asking himself as he drove the Major back to barracks; 'of course I shouldn't. But what made her go on that way at all? And why does she funk his knowing? Eh?'
        The mail-phaeton rolled swiftly along the smooth, hard-frozen road. But, as Hugh Anstruther said, it had been freezing a long time; the wind was changing, and there were signs of a thaw at last.