In Three Phases
by 'The Detrimental.'
Originally published in Tinsley's Magazine (Tinsley Brothers) vol.2 #7 (Mar 1868).
Phase II.
'Dangerous?'
The next day, after luncheon, the two Fontenel women were driving down to a biggish pond in the deer-park at Stoneleigh Manor, which was usually called 'the lake.' On this pond the 'Prince's Own' had got up a skating-party, and a couple of tents. The Manor people were away; so the mess had to provide refreshment, and as it had rather a reputation for doing that sort of thing, a good many invitations had been accepted.
Beau and Belle, the Fontenel ponies, trotted pleasantly along the same road the mail-phaeton had gone the night before, as if they liked Blanche Beauregard's hand, which indeed was perfect. The sun was shining; there was a little air from the south-west; it was really quite warm, people said. In the sun it was decidedly thawing; but the frost had got well into the ground, and the thaw wasn't very perceptible as yet.
'So,' Miss Beauregard thought as she drove along, 'it was Hermy, after all? Now, who would have thought that? "Never changed," hadn't he? Loyal quand même, to the old love? He wants her still; and I'm to help him to get her. It's as well he asked me now; later, I'm not quite certain whether—Ah, sir!'
Beau had taken advantage of her abstraction to pretend to shy at an old woman's scarlet cloak. When punishment had been inflicted, Blanche's reflections took this line; 'What could she have quarrelled with my Sir Olaf about? And how am I to get her to tell me, after yesterday? She'll be as obstinate as a little mule; and till I know, and he knows, what's wrong, I don't see how matters are to be put right. Que faire?'
She had decided on no particular plan of action when the chaise had passed through the lower lodge-gates and was approaching the lake. Lady Lysle had made a headache her excuse for holding her tongue nearly all the way. She was still brooding over that story of the glove Algy had told her the night before. It was true, she knew; no one better; for—it was her own glove.
That night at the Ministère—she remembered it only too well—that long valse with Armand d'Ostaing; the heat of the crowded salle that made her feel faint and giddy; the cool, covered garden-terrace where he brought her; the passionate words he spoke, in that low soft winning voice of his, while they two stood there among the flowers; the answers she had given him. How, in the soft light of the lamps, she saw the white cruel look that frightened her come upon his handsome face; how, yet, he spoke softly, humbly, submissively, till at last he touched her into pity for him.
One of the rings she wore had twisted; the stone hurt her, and she had taken off her glove; it lay beside her on the broad marble balustrade. Leaving her for ever, as he said, he had asked for that—so little, yet so much. It was in his hand as he spoke; she let him keep it.
It had brought the proud blood hot to her face often and often afterwards, when stories of D'Ostaing and Madame de Lausac were rife, to think she had done this. But that one moment of innocent folly was to cost her more than an angry blush or two. It had cost her the happiness of her life; the love, that (the old certainty came back now) had been hers once, of the one man she had loved.
Never till to-day had my lady felt how utterly life was for her done with and over; how utterly all the sunshine had departed from it; how utterly worthless it was to her. Never before had she so thoroughly realised this; for never before had she thoroughly realised the fact that Hugh Anstruther was lost to her. How could it be otherwise? He had proved his love and his trust by the risking of his life for her sake; she had proved hers by that mad belief in a lie, that reckless marriage. What must he think?
But he had long ceased to think of her at all. And, now, Blanche. If she could only have stifled that thought! It was the bitterest of all. Was it to see this that she should care to live? Ah! to hear him say he forgave her; and then die!
My lady's reflections running after some such fashion as this, it was not very wonderful that she found little enough to say during the drive. Blanche glanced at her now and then, and would have given a good deal to know what she was thinking about. And Lady Lysle would have had anybody else in the whole world know rather than her sister.
Presently the ponies were brought to a halt at the edge of the ice. There was a considerable crowd of spectators; a thinner one of performers. The last; under the influence of the recently imbibed mess champagne, were going through a quaint series of evolutions which they called a quadrille, to the accompaniment of the Lancers' band. There was a bright sun, and the skaters generally preserved their equilibrium; so it was rather a pretty scene; and some bright new Paris ice-costumes made it picturesque as well. The quadrille came to an end. Algy Beauregard, who had been engaged in it, shot up to the bank where the Fontenel phaeton stood, with a dozen or so of men already grouped about it.
'Come over to the tent! he called out. The groom was unfastening the straps of the bear-skin; Blanche was preparing to alight on her side, and Sir Lorimer Losely—an old rake reformed by a remarkably clever young wife—who admired Miss Beauregard, was preparing to help her, when someone for whom the rest seemed all to make way, stepped quietly before him and forestalled him.
'We've been expecting you all the morning,' the Major said. 'Hermy had a headache,' Blanche explained. Hugh glanced across at Lady Lysle, who had not yet stirred.
'Come on!' Algy was crying.
'Allow me, Laay Lysle,' squeaked a pale-haired young Cornet with very long legs very tightly garbed, blushing at his own temerity. Lady Lysle did allow him; and got out on her own side. The long-legged Cornet began to feel for his moustache. 'Won't you come into the tent? he felt emboldened to inquire. 'Good idea, a tent on the ice, ain't it?' he continued, as they walked down the bank, Blanche and the Major following. 'All the poles and pegs had to be froze in. Great thing, wasn't it? And there's a reg'lar carpet down; and won't you have some champagne?'
The warrior's hospitable offer was made just as they reached Algy, who was tacking and filling on his skates impatiently.
'All right, old fellow!' the latter said; 'I'll see to my cousin, you know, and that. Just go and stop that duffer from twisting that unhappy Biddlecombe's foot off, will you? He's trying to screw her skates on wrong side before, I do believe.' And Algy nodded towards a chair where Miss Biddlecombe was sitting, and affording a very liberal display of scarlet leg; while her fiancé, the 'duffer' in question (Lord Lammas, the Earl Southdown's eldest son, a precocious young politician in premature spectacles, who understood skates as he did Tulce), was kneeling down before her, scarifying his unpractised fingers with the screws and points, and getting hopelessly blue and bewildered over the straps.
Cornet Greene did as he was bid, and took himself off. Algy piloted my lady over to the tent. Blanche and the Major brought up the rear.
'Well? the latter asked of his companion.
'Nothing yet,' Miss Beauregard said, following the direction of his eyes, and so understanding what he meant; 'you must give me time,' she added.
His eyes darkened, and his fingers began twisting the long hair on his upper lip. She saw that, wonderfully cool as he had kept hitherto, the effort was getting beyond him. Sir Olaf was chafing horribly.
'And in the mean time—?' he said.
'Why not speak to her yourself, then?' she returned.
'Daren't,' he confessed. 'Not yet.'
'"He either fears his fate too much,"' she began.
'What do you mean?' he asked sharply. She laughed.
'If you take my advice, you'll "put it to the touch" yourself.'
'And "win or lose it all"—which? Remember what I have lost; and how little I know why. I am in the dark; I must feel my way, not leap. And you must help me.'
He spoke with a cool air of conviction that it was simply her duty to help him under the circumstances, that Miss Beauregard would have resented instantly in another man. In the case of Sir Olaf she did no such thing. For him, and from him, suzeraine as she was, she would bear a good deal. She would rather, perhaps, have another man win what this man wanted, but she would have helped this man against the other all she could. Do you understand her state of mind?
So she said at once, 'Very well.' They entered the tent just after my lady and Algy. The latter just hobbled inside and sat down. There were a lot of county people about the lunch-table, who all began talking to Lady Lysle. This braced her nerves sharply.
That low-toned talk going on behind her while they were crossing the ice had made her feel desperate. But she found herself—with an odd sort of feeling though, that it was not herself all the time—chatting and laughing quite rationally with Sir Giles Pocock, and young Pocock, and Lady Losely, and Sir Lorimer, and the Biddlecombes, and a dozen other people.
'You girls mean to skate, I suppose?' Algy asked.
Miss Beauregard held up a charming little pair of the manly implements for her answer.
'And Lady Lysle?' Sir Lorimer inquired. Lady Lysle had brought no skates, it seemed; she wished she had now. A score pairs were proffered immediately.
'Try my lady's,' Sir Lorimer observed, tapping one of them with his stick. Now Lady Loseby's foot was miraculous.
'The very thing!' young Pocock affirmed with unhesitating gallantry. He thought he had fairly won his reward when he knelt down to put them on, and they fitted, with a little to spare.
'Not quite so tight, please,' Miss Beauregard said to Sir Olaf, who was doing a like service for her. Sir Olaf was watching young Pocock.
The band played a valse; one or two adventurous pairs tried to step to it. The others went skimming and wheeling about less ambitiously.
The gallant young Pocock and Lady Lysle had shot away together towards the far end of the lake, and were out of sight. Miss Beauregard was rather uneasy about her sister; Hermy had seemed very strange since their arrival. The Major was uneasy too; she could see that, as they two made play in the others' wake.
'He ought to go to her,' Blanche thought. 'She's making herself wretched. But if he does, there'll be a scene, I shouldn't wonder, in the state she's in. He mustn't go yet.'
'That's a case, I should say,' experienced Mrs. Biddlecombe remarked, nodding towards Miss Beauregard and her cavalier.
'Hercules and Omphale, quite!' said Sir Lorimer.
The scene grew more and more animated as the performers warmed to their work. But the bystanders even didn't feel cold; the air was so still and the sun so bright. And then there had been a good deal of champagne drunk.
'Gad, it's thawing!' Sir Giles said, looking at his boots, presently. It was, undoubtedly.
'I say,' he went on, 'I suppose they all know the ice'Il be getting very dangerous at the other end, where it's been broken for the deer?'
'O, yes?' one of the Lancers answered; 'everybody's been told about that. And, besides, we've got a rope laid across to stop 'em.'
'How well you skate!' young Pocock gasped out to his companion as they came up full-swing again, passing Blanche and the Major going down. Young Pocock was, as he expressed it, quite 'pumped' with the pace they had maintained.
'Shall you turn back?' Hermy said, wheeling as she spoke.
'By all means,' replied the flattered but breathless Pocock.
'Don't tire yourself, Hermy,' Algy said to his cousin, as he went by with Belle Bréloques, a London guest of the Biddlecombes' in tow.
'How well Lady Lysle looks!' Belle said, whose 'style' was quite different.
Lady Lysle did look very well. If anything, her face was a little too flushed, and her eyes a little too bright, her sister thought, when she caught another glimpse of her.
'We'd better not go quite so far down this time, I think,' Pocock junior managed to articulate when they were about half-way; 'the ice at the other end's been broke for the deer, you see; and—'
'Well?' she returned, without slackening speed the least. Pocock junior didn't like her tone much.
'O, nothing!' he replied rather sulkily; 'only it's rather dangerous, that's all, you know. We went a good bit beyond where they put the rope down last time.'
This was the rope whereof the Lancer had made mention to Sir Giles. Some enthusiasts had (since lunch) found it in the way, and abolished it for a board with Dangerous! chalked up big upon it.
Hermy laughed. Young Pocock liked her laugh less than her tone just now.
'I suppose as they've taken it up,' she said, 'there's nothing to be afraid of; but don't come further than you like.'
The youth felt this was scarcely fair treatment; but they had already passed the warning post, and he could feel a most unpleasant 'wave' under his feet. He thought she must really believe there was no danger. Someone behind them shouted.
'Don't you hear?' young Pocock nearly choked himself, in his anxiety and breathlessness, to say to her: 'They're calling to us! For God's sake, stop! We're ever so far past the safe ice. Don't you feel—?'
She heard a sharp sudden crack, like the crack of a rifle. Pocock junior disappeared. The ice had opened its mouth and swallowed him up while he was yet speaking.
She tried to stop. The ice heaved in one great grinding throw under her. The cruel green water, cold as death, surged up with a greedy gurgle and caught her, and closed over her. With a noise of shouting, thin and far away, in her ears; with a wild whirl before her eyes, and a wilder cry upon her lips, she sank.
Someone heard that cry—his own name. He was barely six yards from her when she went down. He had followed her when passed that last time, in a sort of nameless dread; had seen her cross the 'dangerous' line; seen all that happened. He followed her now. A desperate spring, as he felt the field splitting up under him, carried him clear of the floating blocks into the little space of open water.
Pocock junior reappeared, snorting like a young sea-horse, and buoying himself prudently on one of the blocks till aid should come.
'There!' he spluttered out, as Anstruther leaped in; and pointed to a bubbling circle.
No need to tell him where! In a moment he had plunged and seized her, and snatched her in his strong loving arm from the grip of death, and lifted her up to life.
Saved! Not yet. He knew that. Even with the help he might expect at hand, it would be no such easy matter to save her. He managed to reach a tolerably substantial mass of loose ice, and supported himself and his precious burden à la Pocock upon it. He looked at her. She was dead-white and unconscious; but he felt her heart beating under his hand. Then he looked round anxiously. They were shouting to him from the banks, and the upper end of the lake, where the ice yet held firm, that aid was coming.
'I say,' observed Pocock junior from his buoy. The youth was perfectly cool now, in more senses than one. 'I say, it's all right! They're bringing the rope.'
The fact was, that there had been a frightful confusion and alarm when the catastrophe happened; though from the circumstance of its happening where it did, no one else had got even wet feet. The only people who kept their heads were old Sir Giles, the soldiers, and Blanche Beauregard.
It was the old squire who remembered the rope; it was Algy Beauregard who rushed off over very delicate ground, and succeeded at last in finding it; and it was Blanche who, pale, but cool and ready, thought of the boat, that was probably in the boathouse. Half-a-dozen men were there in a moment. The door was locked—and smashed. There was the boat. A shout of triumph arose, that infused fresh life into the benumbed Pocock junior, whose female relatives were gathered together on the bank, unable to do anything for him but shriek.
Presently down came Algy and the long-legged cornet, as near the edge of the break as they dared.
'How is she, Hugh?' Algy asked, coiling the line in his hand. 'We'll have you both out directly, old man!'
'Be quick' Hugh said; and they noticed that his voice was strangely altered and weak. 'The cold's killing her; and I can't hang on to this much longer.'
The cold was killing him too; and besides, to support an unconscious woman in a soaked velvet dress, while one is clad oneself in winter garments equally soaked, and has, moreover, skates upon one's feet, on a slippery, shifting block of floating ice, is exhausting work. Strong as he was, the major, as he said, couldn't have hung on much longer.
Whizz! flew the rope. It fell a little short. The people on the bank gasped with excitement. They could do nothing-—between them and the people in the water, the ice was even more rotten than what had given way. They could only look on. More weight even where Algy stood would have been dangerous.
Whizz! flew the rope again. It fell within reach this time; Hugh's arm was so numbed that he could barely grasp it, but he managed to get it between his teeth; and still holding the end there, twisted it round his wrist. So they hauled him and his burden gently towards where they stood, till the line slipped from his aching hold in spite of himself. He struck out silently, desperately with his one free arm, only to bruise it uselessly against the sharp edges of the drift round him. It was getting very serious indeed. Algy tore off his coat.
'I'm coming, old boy! he muttered.
'So's the boat!' cried the long-legged cornet. So it was.
A cheer from the bank; a crash lower down, as the thin 'skin' gave under the weight; a furious dashing of oars in the clogged, half-frozen water, and the boat had reached them.
Just in time! Or too late, after all? They were all got into the boat; Pocock junior, who had behaved with much matter-of-course heroism during the attempted rescue of my lady, not much the worse, barring a temporary incapacity to make use of any of his limbs; but my lady lay in Hugh Anstruther's arms again like one dead.
Phase III.
Thaw.
However, she didn't die. I don't think she even took any harm worth mentioning from her cold bath. This was probably owing to a medicine Blanche administered while my lady lay slowly coming back to life by the fire at the lower lodge. It operated so wonderfully that she was enabled to go back to Fontenel, and, to speak the truth, dine. That night the sisters had a long talk; and that night the long frost broke up, and the thaw set in.
The roads were heavy with clinging mud, when, in the forenoon of the next day, and a warm drizzling rain, Algy Beauregard's mail-phaeton turned sharply out of the barrack gates, and took the straight course to Fontenel.
'We sha'n''t be long spinning over, Hugh!' the Jehu said to his companion. 'Moderate your ardour for twenty minutes, if you can, you know. Now, my beauties, fly!'
The dancing bays did fly.
'Gad!' Algy said meditatively, as they whirled along, 'fancy it's being Hermy! I thought, you know, it was Blanchie; and told Hermy herself it was, too. Put my foot in it nicely, as it happened.'
So Hugh thought; but there was a little note he had received just half-an-hour ago, in Miss Beauregard's writing, lying in his pocket, whereof the whole contents was the one word Come! which told him he hadn't much to fear from anything of that sort now.. All mal-entendu, or the chance of it, was over now for ever.
However, they had already discussed Algy's not inexcusable mistake.
'But what,' said that individual suddenly, 'did you quarrel with Hermy about?'
'There was no quarrel. How could there be? She married Lysle, that's all.'
'Why? Why did you let her?'
'I fancy Lady Julia meant her to.'
Algy whistled.
'And besides, I was hors-de-combat at the time.'
Algy whistled louder.
'I see it all now,' he said. 'You'd been wounded in that duel with what's-his-name, the Frenchman; Dyneley told me all about that. Without mentioning names, of course. And Hermy was the woman! And then Algy broke his promise, and told Hugh what had happened when he had related his little anecdote to my lady.
'And you may depend upon it Aunt Julia gave her own version of the business,' he concluded; 'and that's been the cause of all the row.'
In his turn, Hugh saw it all then.
Five minutes later they were at Fontenel. Blanche met them in the hall.
'That will do!' she said, as she extricated her hand from Sir Olaf's silent clasp. 'Go and talk to her.'
She nodded towards the door of the little morning-room. It opened, and closed. She and Algy were left alone.
'You're a nice young woman!' the youth said.
'Come into the drawing-room,' Miss Beauregard returned, leading the way thither.
'I hope you're satisfied with your little game,' Algy observed, dropping into a chair.
'Quite,' she answered. So she was—later. An hour passed; the two people in the morning-room were talking still. They had so much to talk about. We may listen to them a little before the curtain falls upon this winter's tale.
'I saw it all, darling,' Hugh was explaining. 'I came on the terrace just as he had finished speaking, and I saw him carry off that little white glove I would have given the whole world for. You and he went back to the ball-room by the other window; neither of you saw me.'
'And what did you think?' Hermy asked, looking up into his face.
'Never mind! It was wrong, whatever it was; and it could not alter what I felt. You were my one love, Hermy; first and last. And when d'Ostaing boasted that night of—'
'Yes? she said, her face flushing; for he paused here.
'And challenged anyone,' he went on, 'to disprove what he had said, I lifted the glove—your glove, darling—he had flung down, and—'
'O, Hugh!'
'How glad I was to be there to do it! Hermy, I have that glove still. Well, of course, that business happened then that you heard about from Algy.'
'For me!' she murmured passionately; 'for me, who hated you!'
'No,' he said, 'who loved me. You loved me then, Hermy?'
'Do you know what they told me?'
'Lady Julia? Something bad,' he answered, smiling.
'About Madame de Lausac?'
'That! That was clever. D'Ostaing and she were notoriously liés; and, of course, you believed—'
'Can you forgive me?'
There was a pleasant pause while he did forgive her.
'When you came back,' she said presently, 'I thought I hated you still.'
'In an icy sort of way, of course your did. But you rather overdid it at times, Hermy, do you know? I began to think there might be a chance of a thaw. Still, I was puzzled to know why you hated me.'
'And then,' she went on, 'I began to think you came here not to show you didn't care for me, as I had thought at first, but because—'
'I know,' he laughed; 'Blanche—well?'
'Of course I hated you all the more.'
'Naturally; and I was too much in the dark to help myself.'
'It was only yesterday, Hugh, when—when that happened, that I knew—'
'What, my own?'
'That I was your own; that I had loved you always.'
The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour after two. The door opened; and Blanche—whose very existence the selfish pair had forgotten altogether by that time—appeared. 'Perhaps,' Miss Beauregard said, surveying them coolly, 'perhaps you people will be good enough to come to luncheon.'