by the Author of "East Lynne" [Ellen Wood].
Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.3 #11 (Feb 1862).
It was a comfortable room, even for the West-end of London. It was not the grand drawing-room of the house; it was not the commodious dining-room, where Sir Philip's patients waited their turn to go in to him; it was only a small, cozy apartment, with a bright fire, easy chairs, and, generally, plenty of litter. For a wonder, it was tidy now; nothing was on the centre table, save Lady Annesley's desk, at which she sat writing—a plain, pleasant woman of forty, wearing weeds yet. The late Sir Robert, a popular and successful physician, had risen in the world and got his baronetcy: but this had been his second wife.
On a low sofa, near the fire, sat an old lady—a cheerful, nice old lady, in spite of her blindness and her eighty-four years. She would tell you, could you speak with her, that God had seen fit to take her dear son, Sir Robert, and had spared her. Upon her lap was a bag made of white linen, resembling a pillow-case, but not so long; and she was stuffing it with handfuls of paper torn into minute bits. Since she became blind she was wont to employ some of her time in tearing up waste-paper, newspapers and the like, to stuff cushions. Maria Carr, Lady Annesley's niece, was at the far window making the case for this cushion: two square pieces of white velvet, on each of which was painted an exquisite group of flowers, Maria's doing. The cushion was intended for a present for Mary Annesley, who was on the point of marriage with Dr. Scott. She had gone out now with the late Sir Robert Annesley's ward, Georgina Livingston, who lived with them.
Mrs. Annesley looked up from her cushion and her bits of paper—if it be allowable to say that of one who has no sight; but when she spoke to people, she was in the habit of turning her face in the direction she thought they might be, as she had done before the darkness came on: "What about Charley's going to church? Is it decided?"
"Well; I suppose—" Lady Annesley stopped. The door had hastily opened, and a gentleman entered—a tall, fine man. But for the sweet smile that frequently parted his lips and lighted up his dark blue eyes, his features might have been deemed plain. And yet, ladies were apt to say that Sir Philip Annesley, being unmarried, was too attractive for a medical man.
"Is that Philip?"
"Myself, and nobody else, grandmamma;" for Sir Philip sometimes, half in sport, addressed her by the old familiar title of his boyhood.
"Who will lend me a finger?"
"A finger!" echoed Lady Annesley. "What for? Ask Maria."
Maria laid down her velvet, and came forward. Sir Philip opened a little square box, and, taking out a ring, passed it om to the third, or wedding-finger, of her left hand. She stood before him, perfectly quiet in motion and bearing, but blushing to the very roots of her hair. Two thin chains of gold crossed and re-crossed each other, enclosing a brilliant between each crossing—twelve brilliants in all, small, but of the first water—a jewel of rare beauty, remarkably light and elegant.
"Philip, what a beautiful ring!" uttered Lady Annesley.
"Yes; it took my fancy. Mary will like a keeper, and Scott, in his absent fashion, is sure not to think of one. Lucky, I say, if he remembers the wedding-ring. It is too large; is it not, Maria?"
"Much too large for a keeper. Mary would require another ring to keep this one on."
"I ought to have chosen the smaller one," said Sir Philip. "There is another, just like it, only less in size. I'll take this one back and change it."
"It must have cost a good deal?" said Lady Annesley.
"Pretty well. Forty-eight guineas."
Mrs. Annesley lifted her hands in dismay. "Oh, Philip! Forty-eight guineas fora ring! It seems next door to a sin. Your father, my dear, would have looked twice at a quarter of the money before giving it."
He crossed the room, and put the keeper into her hand, bending down to her, and speaking gently. "Feel it, grandmother; it really is a beauty. I know the sum is large;. but we do not give away Mary every day."
Mrs. Annesley passed her fingers over the ring, after the manner of the blind, and handed it back to him. "Philip, when do you intend to buy a wedding keeper on your own account? Ever?"
That sweet smile of his rose to his lips, and perhaps the least tinge of colour to his face. "A doctor has no time to think of such things."
"No time?" returned the old lady, taking the remark literally. "I think he has as much time for it as other people. Where there's a will there's a way. Philip, do you know that you are in your thirty-fifth year?"
"And do you know also what your patients say?" put in Lady Annesley. "They say —"
"I can guess: that will do!" interrupted Sir Philip, with a laugh. "If they don't like an unmarried man, they need not come to me. Let them go elsewhere."
"Not they," said Lady Annesley, significantly. "Philip, you really ought to marry. Delay it another ten years, and your children will be growing up when you are an old man. I wish you would: it would set my mind at rest."
"At rest from what?" asked Sir Philip, in a hasty and somewhat sharp tone.
"Oh, well; I am not going to explain," answered Lady Annesley. "At rest in more ways than one."
"Provided, I presume, that I married to please you," cried Sir Philip, who fully understood the bye-play.
"Of course not to please me, Philip—I am nobody. To please your sisters, and to please the world."
"Terrible if I married only to please myself, would it not be, Lady Annesley?" he laughed.
He had never called her "mother:" at one time had studiously called her "Lady Annesley." Four-and-twenty years of age when his father married this, his second wife, Philip, in his inmost heart, had rebelled at the union. They all had, at first; but they learnt to like her in time. The girls were married now, save Mary, who would be the last.
"It is no joking matter, Philip. What a nice rose that is in your button-hole!" continued Lady Annesley. "Where did you get it?"
"Out of Mrs. Leigh's conservatory,"—he replied, taking it from his coat—a magnificent white rose, beautiful as a camellia—"she seduced me into it just now, when I was at her house."
"Is her daughter better?"
"No, poor girl. And I fear —"
Sir Philip did not say what he feared. He was not one to speak, at home, of his patients. In the silence that supervened, a servant appeared.
"Lady Oliver, Sir."
Sir Philip nodded; stood a moment or two, as if in thought; then prepared to descend.
"Will you put this up for me?" he said, giving the diamond keeper to Lady Annesley as he passed her. "I will change it when I go out. There, Maria! a present for you."
He flung the white rose into Maria's lap. She did not touch it, only let it lie there, her cheeks again growing hot. Lady Annesley knitted her brow. But it cleared as her eyes fell on the ring. "I never did see a greater beauty!" she enthusiastically exclaimed, as she slipped it several times on and off her finger. "But what a judge Philip must have been to get it so large as this! Who is this, coming up?"
It was Charles Carr, Maria's brother, popularly known in the house as "Charley." A young lieutenant he; gay, careless, and handsome. Often in scrapes, always in trouble; deep in debt, in "bills," in many things that he ought not to be; altogether, a gentleman who was believed to be going to the bad headlong, especially by Lady Annesley. He was her own nephew, her dead brother's son; and he came to the house, presuming upon the relationship and upon Maria's residence in it, oftener than Lady Annesley liked. A great fear was at her heart that he had grown too fond of Georgina Livingston, or that Georgina had of him—perhaps both. Her penniless nephew, who had not cross or coin to bless himself with, steal Georgina and her nine hundred a year! The world would talk then—would say that she, Lady Annesley, had planned it! And Lady Annesley was remarkably sensitive to the world's censure.
Charley glittered in, in full regimentals; one of the handsomest young fellows that had ever bowed before Her Majesty at St. James's, And he had no objection that somebody else should see him and think so, "Where's Georgina?" asked he.
"Georgina's out," snappishly replied Lady Annesley. "What are you dressed up for?"
"I have just come from the Levee. Did you forget it?" he returned, taking up mechanically the little jewel-box and opening it. Charley's fingers had a trick of touching things, and he often got a rap on the knuckles for it, literally and metaphorically, from my lady. "What a splendid ring!" he uttered.
"Sir Philip's present to Mary. But it is to be changed; it is too large."
Charley put it on his little finger and turned it round admiringly; as they had all done. "A charming ring!" he repeated. "It is really beautiful."
"Do you not wish it were yours?" laughed Maria, from her distant window.
"I wish I had the cost of it," he said. "That would be of more use to me. What was it? Fifty guineas?"
"Not a bad guess," said Lady Annesley, who really liked Charley, and his good looks, and his good nature, au fond, when she could forget the fear and trouble touching Miss Georgina.
They stood together, singing praises of the ring; now she had it on—now he. Lady Annesley at length took it from him, and held it over the open box, as if taking a farewell of it before she dropped it in.
"Oh dear!" cried out Mrs. Annesley.
Lady Annesley hastily put the lid on, left the box on the table by Charley, and ran to her mother-in-law. The old lady had let the sack fall upon the hearthrug, and some of the ammunition was falling out.
"Don't trouble yourself, my dear," she said, as Lady Annesley began pushing it in. "Put it on my lap again; I won't be so clumsy a second time. It is nearly full, you see."
Lady Annesley did as requested, and returned to the table. Charley, restless Charley, was then standing by Maria, and the two were whispering together. Lady Annesley took a sheet of fair white paper and wrapped up the little box, without again looking in it, lighted a wax match, and sealed it.
"Well, I must be off," cried Charles. "Shall you be at home this evening?"
"I shall," laughed grandmamma, from her place "on the sofa. "I don't suppose many of the others will be out." She had not penetrated to Lady Annesley's fear; and Charley was a wonderful favourite of hers.
"Look, Maria," said Lady Annesley, as they heard Charley and his sword clattering down the stairs four at a time—"I will put it here. If Philip should come for it, you can tell him where it is."
She lifted the lid of her desk and put in the little box. Then approached Mrs. Annesley and took hold of her arm to lead her from the room. "We shall have no drive to-day, unless we make haste. Maria will finish that."
"It's finished, all but tacking," said the old lady; "it is as full as it ought to be. Maria, my dear, come and do it at once."
Maria carried her velvet to the sofa, and set about completing the cushion, kneeling down for convenience sake. She had got the velvet cover on to it, and was beginning to put round the gold cord and to sew on the tassels, when Sir Philip entered. He rested his arms on the back of the sofa, and looked down at her and her work—a fair girl she, with a gentle face.
"I wonder if folks would send me presents if I set up housekeeping on my own score?" cried he.
"You had better try them," said Maria. But she spoke the words without thought, and felt, the moment they had left her lips, that she had rather have bitten out her tongue than uttered them.
"But the flitting from the house for all of you, what a trouble it would be!" returned he, in a tone of much remonstrance. "I don't know that every one of you would have to go, though," he continued, while the too-conscious crimson dyed her face, and she played nervously with the gold cord.
"Certainly not, if Lady Annesley had her way," he resumed. Maria, astonished at the words, glanced at him in amazement. "Don't you see it all, Maria?"
"See what?" she exclaimed.
"Nay, I shall not tell you. So much the better if you have not seen it. I thought it had been patent to the house. My vanity may be in error, after all."
"What do you mean, Sir Philip?"
He was gazing hard at her with his deep blue eyes—vain and saucy enough they were, just then. She felt completely at sea.
"Give me your opinion, Maria? If I did resolve to set up housekeeping for myself, do you think that any one of you could be induced to stop and help me in it?"
Her heart beat violently;—her eyes fell. The gold cord in her fingers was wreathing itself into knots. Sir Philip came round and laid his hand upon her shoulder as she knelt, making her turn her face to him.
"Because I may be asking the question some day. Do you know Where Lady Annesley put the ring?"
She sprang up. She opened the desk, and gave the parcel to him, sealed as Lady Annesley had left it. He slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, went down to his brougham, and drove off.
In less than twenty minutes he was back again, and came flying up the stairs as fast as Charley Carr had flown down them.
"A pretty simpleton you made of me, Maria!—giving me an empty box!"
"An empty box!" she echoed.
He took the box out of his pocket, and held it open before her.
"I told the man I had brought back the ring to exchange for the smaller one, opened the box, all gingerly, to hand it to him, and behold! there was nothing in it."
"Did you drop it in the brougham? Did you open it in the brougham?" she reiterated.
"I never touched it, after you saw me put it in my pocket, until I was in the shop. I unsealed the paper before the shopman's eyes."
"Then where can it be?" exclaimed Maria. "Lady Annesley certainly sealed it up, and put it, herself, in the desk, ready for you. No one went near the desk afterwards—no one came into the room, or was in the room, but myself."
"Lady Annesley must have sealed up an empty box, that's clear," said Sir Philip. "I have brought the other ring."
But Lady Annesley, when she entered, protested that she had not sealed up an empty box—that the ring was in it. And she related the details to Sir Philip, as they have been given above. The box, she said, was not out of her hand a minute altogether. "Are you sure you put it in?—that you did not let it slip aside?" questioned Sir Philip.
"Sure!" repeated Lady Annesley, half inclined to resent the implied suggestion of carelessness; "I am quite sure. And, had the ring slipped aside, it would only have gone on to the table. I put it in safely, and shut it in."
"Who was in the room, beside yourselves?" asked Sir Philip.
"Only Charley Carr. He was standing by me, wishing that the ring were his."
"No," cried out Mrs. Annesley, innocently; "wishing its value in money was his! The more sensible wish of the two."
A wild, sickening sensation darted to Maria Carr's brain. It was not yet a suspicion; it was a fear lest suspicion should come: nay, a foreboding that it was coming.
The suspicion did come: came immediately, to all of them. In vain Sir Philip suggested that Charles must have done it in a joke, to put Lady Annesley in a fright, for he was as full of tricks as a monkey—that he would bring it back with him in the evening. That he had taken the ring from the box there was no doubt whatever; and Lady Annesley, in her anger, refused to be soothed.
She attacked Charles the moment he made his appearance. "Where's that keeper?" she sternly demanded, without circumlocution.
"What keeper?" returned Charles.
"The brilliant keeper, that you made off with to-day."
"I don't know what you mean, aunt."
Lady Annesley flew into a rage. "I left the box close to your hands when I turned to pick up the cushion for Mrs. Annesley. How dared you take the ring out?"
"Let's see whether I have got it about me," retorted Charley, in a careless, indifferent, provoking manner, as he made a show of feeling in all his pockets. "Oh—I must have left it in my regimentals."
Lady Annesley nearly boiled over. Words led to words; Charles grew angry in his turn; and at length she gave a hint that he must have stolen the ring. He declared he had not touched the box, or the ring; that he had turned from the table when Lady Annesley did, and remained talking to Maria while the cushion was being picked up; and he swore to this with sundry unorthodox words, forgetting that he was not in quarters, but in a lady's drawing-room.
"If nobody takes his part, I will!" hotly cried Georgina Livingston, after Charles had dashed away from the house, promising that he'd never enter it again; and her countenance was distressed, and her checks were scarlet, as she said it. "Steal a ring! You may just as well accuse me, Lady Annesley, as accuse him; I should be the more likely of the two to do it."
"Do, pray, recollect yourself, Georgina!" remonstrated my lady. "Is this avowal seemly for a young girl?"
"I don't care whether it's seemly or unseemly," responded Miss Georgina, dashing away some tears. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, all of you! Because Charley happens not to be made of money, you turn against him, and think he'd take it. I'll let him know that I don't."
Hot words, hotly spoken. A few days, and even Georgina was obliged to judge him less leniently. Sir Philip chose quietly to investigate the suspicion; and he ascertained that Charles had, the very evening subsequent to the loss of the ring, and the following day, paid sundry small debts, for which he had been long dunned. Twenty pounds, at least, of these payments were traced, and then Sir Philip dropped the search. Why pursue it? It was all too clear, for Charles had no resources of his own to draw upon.
But here Maria stepped in to his defence. She protested with earnestness, with tears, that she had furnished him herself with twenty pounds; that she had given it to him in that moment when they were whispering together. She knew Charles's wants, she said, and had been saving this money up for him. Lady Annesley flatly contradicted Maria. It did not stand to reason, she contended, that Maria, with her poor means, could save up twenty pounds, or even ten. The thing was almost against possibility; and Maria fell under nearly as great a ban as her brother, for attempting to screen him by falsehood. There were moments when, in her own sick heart, Maria did believe him to be guilty. Such things have been heard of in the world—done in the recklessness of necessity.
* * * * *
A twelvemonth passed away—and a twelvemonth brings changes. Georgina Livingston was of age now, and at liberty to choose her own residence. She was alone in the drawing-room one April evening. Mrs. Annesley was much confined to her chamber, and Lady Annesley had gone up to her. Sir Philip came in.
"Alone, Georgina! Why! what is the matter?—crying?"
"Oh, Lady Annesley set me on!" was the young lady's pettish rejoinder, as she brushed the tears away. "She was angry with me for 'moping,' as she called it; and I told her I would not stay here to be grumbled at."
"Why do you mope?" he asked.
"Because I choose," was the wilful retort. "I can leave now if I like you know, Philip."
"If you like—yes," assented Sir Philip. "Where should you go?"
"I don't know, and I don't much care," dreamily responded Georgina.
"Would you like to remain in the house for good?" resumed Sir Philip, after a pause. "I was thinking of asking you to do so."
A faint blush rose to her face, but she showed no other emotion: and his tone, considering the momentous words, was wonderfully calm. Perhaps both had been conscious for some little time that these words would be spoken. Sir Philip bent his head towards her.
"The world has reproached me with not marrying. Help me, Georgina, to put the reproach away! There is no one I would ask to be my wife but you."
"Look here, Philip!" she exclaimed, pushing back her hair, and turning her face, full of its own eager excitement, towards him—excitement not caused by him. "I'll speak out the truth to you; I could not to every one: but you are good, and true, and noble. Were I to say to you 'Yes,' and let you take me believing that I loved you, I should just be acting a lie. I loved some one else; I am trying to forget him with my whole heart and might—but I did love him."
"Who was this?"
"Charles Carr."
Sir Philip's blue eyes flashed with a peculiar light, and he looked into the fire—not at Georgina.
"That love ought to end," he said. "It can bring you no good."
"Don't I tell you that it has ended—that I am putting it from me as fast as ever I can? But the remembrance cannot go all at once. I did love him; and I believe it was your generosity, in hushing up his dreadful disgrace, instead of proclaiming it and prosecuting him, that first made me like you more than common."
"You acknowledge, then, that you do like me?" smiled Sir Philip.
"Very—very much."
"Well enough to take me for better and for worse?"
"Yes; if, after this confession, you would still wish it."
"I do," he answered, drawing her to him, and taking his first kiss from her lips. Georgina flew to her room, and there burst into a flood of tears.
Lady Annesley was strangely elated at the news. She had hoped for it in her inmost heart—long and long.
"You have done well, Philip," she said to her step-son.
"I shall escape the worrying about not getting married, at any rate," responded Sit Philip.
"Philip"—lowering her voice confidentially—"do you know, I frightened myself to death, at one time, lest you should marry Maria. I fancied you were growing attached to her; and people would have said I had set it on."
The red colour flashed into Sir Philip's face. "I should have married her, but for that affair of the diamond keeper."
Lady Annesley looked blank. "Did you like her so much as that?"
"Like her!" he echoed, in emotion, "I loved her. I am not sure but I love her still. Why, Lady Annesley, I all but asked her to be my wife the very afternoon that wretched boy did the mischief."
"I'm sure I am very glad he did do it, if it prevented that," retorted my lady.
"I might have got over that; his fault; but I could not get over Maria's. To uphold him in his deceit—to invent a falsehood to screen him—how could I make her my wife?"
"Whatever is there about Maria to like?" fretfully interrupted Lady Annesley.
"She's more likeable than any one in this world, to my thinking —"
"Hush, Philip!"
The news of the engagement went forth to the house. Maria had still remained in it, making herself useful, as she had done before, especially to Mrs. Annesley, for she had no other home. Better she had quitted it: to see Sir Philip daily was not the way to cure her love for him.
"I hope you will be happy, Sir Philip; I wish you every happiness," she stammered, believing it was incumbent on her to say something to him to that effect. But Sir Philip observed that her face turned ghastly with emotion as she spoke.
"Thank you; I hope we shall be," he coldly replied; and, since that unhappy episode, he had never spoken to her but coldly. "Georgina Livingston possesses one great essential towards making herself and others happy—truth."
The preparations for the wedding went briskly on. Lady Annesley would first move into another residence. No change had been made since Sir Robert's death, but Sir Philip must have his house to himself now. One evening Sir Philip was spending an hour with Dr. Scott. A navy surgeon was also there—Mr. Blake, once their chum at Bartholomew's: and Georgina was sitting upstairs with Mary Scott and her baby.
"Is smoking allowed here?" asked the surgeon—glancing at the elegant sofa on which he sat, where was displayed that beautiful cushion painted by Maria Carr—"I'm half dead without my pipe."
Receiving assent, he lighted it, and then walked across the room to Sir Philip and the Doctor, who stood at the window. There was some disturbance in the street, and they all three remained there chatting and looking out.
Suddenly a burst of light shot up in the twilight of the room, and they wheeled round in consternation. A blaze was ascending from the velvet cushion. They caught up the hearthrug and succeeded in putting out the fire. Georgina Livingston, hearing the commotion, came in with a white face.
In lighting his pipe Mr. Blake must have suffered a spark to fall upon the cushion. There it had smouldered, penetrating at length to the stuffing, which then blazed up. You may remember that it consisted of paper.
"Oh, that lovely cushion!" lamented Georgina.
"What's this?" uttered Dr. Scott, picking up something bright and glistening from the ashes. "If I don't believe it's a ring!"
A ring it was. The lost, the beautiful, the brilliant keeper! The eyes of Sir Philip and Georgina met.
Maria was, that same evening, sitting alone; she and her breaking heart. It had felt breaking ever since that cloud fell upon it. She heard Sir Philip come home—and she began gathering her work together.
"Don't run away, Maria; I have something to tell you!"
She looked at him in wonderment. His voice wore the same loving tone as in days gone by; a tone long past, for her.
"Lend me your hand, Maria!" And, without waiting for assent, he took it in his, the left hand, and slipped upon the third finger, as he had done once before, the diamond keeper. "Do you recognize it?"
"It is Mrs. Scott's," replied Maria. "Why have you brought it here, Sir Philip?"
"It is not Mrs. Scott's: it is larger than hers. Do not remove it, Maria. It shall be your own keeper, if you will let me add the wedding-ring."
Confused, bewildered, wondering what it meant, wondering at the strangely loving expression that gleamed on her from his dark blue eyes, she burst into tears. Was he saying this to mock her?
No: not to mock her. No! Sir Philip wound his arms round her as he told the tale; he drew her face to his breast, his eyelashes glistening in the intensity of his emotion. "I can never let you go again, my darling! I do not ask your forgiveness; I know that you will give it me unasked, for you and I have been alike miserable."
"Charley innocent!—been innocent all this while?" she gasped.
"He has, in good truth! We must try and make it up to him. I —"
"Oh, Philip!" she interrupted, with streaming eyes; "you will believe me now! I did give him the twenty pounds—I did, indeed! I had saved in so many trifles; I had made old gowns look like new ones; all for him. You should not have doubted me, if the rest did."
"My whole life shall atone to you, Maria," he softly whispered. "Georgina —"
She broke from him, her cheeks flushing crimson. In the moment's bewilderment she had totally forgotten his engagement to Georgina. He laughed merrily, his eyes dancing, and drew her back again.
"Never fear that I am about to turn Mormon, and marry you both! Georgina has given me up, Maria. In the excitement caused by the discovery, she spoke her mind out to me, that she did not like me, with all her 'trying,' half as well as she did Charley Carr, and that none but Charley should be her husband, Scott has gone to tell Charles the news, and bring him up. If —"
"What on earth is this?" ejaculated Lady Annesley, as she came in and stood like one petrified.
"It's this," replied Sir Philip, holding out Maria's hand, on which shone the brilliant keeper. "This mischief-making ring has turned up again. When you held it that day over the open box, and Mrs. Annesley called out, there can be no doubt that you, in the hurry, unconsciously slipped it on your finger, instead of into the box, and lost it off your finger again immediately amidst the paper stuffing. The cushion has just given up its prey."
Lady Annesley sank upon the first seat, with a very crest-fallen expression. "I never heard of such a thing!" she stammered. "My finger! Whatever will be the consequence? Poor Charley!"
"The consequence, I expect, will be that you will have two weddings instead of one," laughed Sir Philip. "Georgina has proclaimed her intentions, and I don't suppose Charley will bear malice. I think I ought to have given the ring to him as a memento, instead of to Maria."
"To Maria!" irascibly returned Lady Annesley, not precisely understanding, but not feeling comfortable. "What in the world need is there to give it to her, Sir Philip?"
"Great need," he replied, his tone becoming serious. "But it is given with a condition attached to it—that I add one of plain gold. Ah! Lady Annesley, we cannot be false to ourselves, try as we will, Maria has remained my best and dearest love up to this hour, cajole and deceive my heart as I would. And now, I trust, she will remain so, so long as time shall last!"