Annabel was then quite ready to leave, and the question of the Ladies Gallery came up for settlement. Mrs. Atheling declared she was too weary to go out; and Kate preferred her own happy thoughts to the tumult of a political quarrel. Annabel was equally indifferent. She had discovered that Mr. North was a son of the Earl of Westover, and might with propriety be asked to the Richmoor opera-box, that there was even an acquaintance strong enough between the families to enable her new lover to pay his respects to the Duchess in the interludes, and, in fact, an understanding to that effect had been made for that very night, if the offer of the seats in the Ladies Gallery was not accepted. So their refusal caused no regret; for when politics come in competition with youth and love, they have scarcely a hearing. But during the slight discussion, Piers found time to speak to Mrs. Atheling about the ring; and the direction of three pair of eyes to the trinket caught Annabel’s attention. Her face flamed when she saw that it had passed from Kate’s hand to the hand of Exham; and for the first time, she had a feeling of active dislike against Kate. Her sweet, calm, innocent beauty, her happy eyes and ingenuous girlish expression, offended her, and set all the worst forces of her soul in revolt.
She did not dare to trust herself with Piers. In her present mood, she knew she would be sure to say something that would hamper her future actions. She declared she would only accept Mr. North’s escort to Richmoor House; for she was sure the Duke was expecting Piers to be in his place in the Commons when the vote was taken.
Piers had a similar conviction, and he looked at his watch almost guiltily, and went hurriedly away. Then the little party was soon dispersed; but Mrs. Atheling and Kate were both far too happy to need outside aids. They talked of Edgar and Cecil North, and Annabel’s witcheries, and Piers’s great and good qualities, and the promised ring, and the excellent lunch, and the general success of the impromptu little feast. Everything had been pleasant, and the Squire’s absence was not thought worth worrying about.
“He will come round, bit by bit,” said the happy mother. “I know John Atheling. The first thing Edgar does to please him, will put all straight; and Edgar is on the very road to please him most of all.”
“What road is that, Mother?”
“Nay, I can’t tell you, Kitty; for just yet it is a secret between Edgar and me. He was glad to meet Piers again; and, if I am any judge, they will be better friends than ever before.”
Thus the two women talked the evening away, and were by no means sorry to be at their own fireside. “We could have done no good by going to the House,” said Kate. “If we were men, it would be different. They like it. Father says the House is the best club in London.”
“It gives men a lot of excuses,” said Mrs. Atheling, with a sigh. “I dare say your father won’t get home till late. You had better go to bed, Kitty.”
“Perhaps Piers may come with him.”
“I don’t think he will. He looked tired when he left here; he will be worse tired when he gets away from the Commons. He said he was going to speak again, if he got the opportunity,–that is, if he could find anything to contradict in Mr. Brougham’s speech. Piers likes saying, ‘No, sir!’ his spurs are always in fighting trim. Go to bed, Kitty. Piers won’t be back to-night, and I can say to father whatever I think proper.”
Mrs. Atheling judged correctly. Piers sat a long time before his opportunity came, and then he did not get the best of it. Brougham’s followers overflowed the Opposition benches, the Government side, and the gangway, and Piers exhausted himself vainly in an endeavour to get a hearing. It was late when he returned to Richmoor House, but the Duke was still absent, and the Duchess and Annabel at the opera. He went to the Duke’s private parlour, for there were some things he felt he must discuss before another day’s sitting; and the warmth and stillness, added to his own mental and physical weariness, soon overcame all the resistance he could make. The couch on which he had thrown himself was also a drowsy place; it seemed to sink softly down, and down, until Piers was far below the tide of thought, or even dreams.
It was then that Annabel returned. She came slowly and rather thoughtfully along the silent corridor. She had exhausted for the time being her fine spirits, her wit, almost her good looks. She hoped she would not meet Piers, and was glad in passing the door of his apartments to see no man in attendance, nor any sign of wakeful life. A little further on she noticed a band of light from the Duke’s private parlour; the door was a trifle open, left purposely so by Piers in order that his father might not be tempted to pass it. Tired as she was, she could not resist the opportunity it offered. She liked to show herself in her fineries to her guardian, for he always had a compliment for her beauty; and although she had listened for hours to compliments her vanity was still unsatiated. With a coquettish smile she pushed wider the door and saw Lord Exham. There could be no doubt of his profound insensibility; his face, his attitude, his breathing, all expressed the deep sleep of a thoroughly-exhausted man.
For one moment she looked at him curiously, then, at the instigation of the Evil One, her eyes saw the ring upon his hand, and her heart instantly desired it; for what reason she did not ask. At the moment she perhaps had no reason, except the wicked hope that its loss might make trouble between Kitty and her lover. With the swift, noiseless step that Nature gives to women who have the treachery and cruelty of the feline family, she reached Piers’s side. But rapid as her movement had been, her thought had been more rapid. “If I am caught, I will say I won a pair of gloves, and took the ring as the gage of my victory.”
She stooped to the dropped hand, but never touched it. The ring was large, and it was only necessary for her to place her finger and thumb on each side of it. It slipped off without pressing against the flesh, and in a moment it was in her palm. She waited to see if the movement had been felt. There was no evidence of it, and she passed rapidly out of the room. Outside the door, she again waited for a movement, but none came, and she walked leisurely, and with a certain air of weariness, to her own apartments. Once there all was safe; she dropped it into the receptacle in which she kept the key of her jewel-case, and went smiling to bed.
Not ten minutes after her theft the Duke entered the room. He did not scruple to awaken his son, and to discuss with him the tactics of a warfare which was every day becoming more bitter and violent. Piers was full of interest, and eager to take his part in the fray. Suddenly he became aware of his loss. Then he forgot every other thing. He insisted, then and there, on calling his valet and searching every inch of carpet in the room. The Duke was disgusted with this radical change of interest. He went pettishly away in the middle of the search, saying,–
“The Reformers might well carry all before them, when peers who had everything to lose or gain thought more of a lost ring than a lost cause.”
And Piers could not answer a word. He was confounded by the circumstance. That the ring was on his hand when he entered the room was certain. He searched all his pockets with frantic fear, his purse, the couch on which he had slept. There was no part of the room not examined, no piece of furniture that was not moved; and the day began to dawn when the useless search was over. He went to his room, sleepless and troubled beyond belief. Government might be defeated, Ministers might resign, Reform might spell Revolution, the estates and titles of nobles might be in jeopardy,–but Kitty’s ring was lost, and that was the first, and the last, and the only thought Piers Exham could entertain.
CHAPTER EIGHTH
WILL SHE CHOOSE EVIL OR GOOD?
Annabel had a very good night. Her conscience was an indulgent one, and she easily satisfied its complaining. “It was after all only a joke,” she said. “In the morning I can restore the ring. The Duke will have a good laugh at his son’s discomfiture, and will praise my cleverness. The Duchess will either knit her brows, or else take it merrily; and Piers will owe me a forfeit, and that will be the end of the affair. What is there to make a fuss over?” Annabel’s conscience thought, in such case, there was nothing to fuss about; and it let her sleep comfortably on the prevaricating promise.
She considered the matter over as she was dressing. She had slept well, was refreshed and full of life, and therefore full of selfish wilfulness:–
“I will restore the ring to Piers.” She said this to please one side of her nature.
“I will not restore the ring.” She said this to please the other side. “As a thing of worth, it is by no means costly. I will give Kate Atheling a ring of twice its value. As a thing of power it is mine, the spoil of my will and my skill; and I will not part with it.” Still she kept the first decision in reserve; she promised herself to be influenced by the circumstances which the affair induced.
But the way out of temptation is always very difficult, and circumstances are rarely favourable to it. They were not in this case. Before Annabel was dressed she received a message that overthrew all her intentions. The Duchess was going to breakfast in her own parlour, and she desired Annabel’s company at the meal. The desires of the Duchess were commands, and the young lady reluctantly obeyed them; for she anticipated the reproof that came, as soon as they were alone, regarding her attitude towards Cecil North.
“It will not do, Annabel,” said the Duchess, severely. “The Norths are a fine family, but poor, even in the elder branches. This young man can look forward to nothing better than some diplomatic or military appointment, and that in an Indian Presidency.”
“What could be better?” asked Annabel, with an affectation of delight. “An Indian Court is a court. It has the splendour, the ceremony, the very air of royalty.”
“But with your fortune–”
“I assure you, Duchess, any man who marries me will need all my fortune. He will in fact deserve it. You know that I am not amiable, and that I am extravagant and luxurious.”
“But you may avoid such a foolish, unwomanly thing as flirtation, even if you are not amiable. It seems to me the world has forgotten how to be amiable. This morning, the Duke is touchy and disagreeable; and Piers has not come to ask after my health, though it is his usual custom when I remain in my room. He angered the Duke also last night.”
“Did you see him last night?” asked Annabel, with an air of indifference.
“The Duke did. Piers seems to have behaved in an absurd way about a ring he has lost. The Duke says, he turned his room topsy-turvy, and went on as if he had lost his whole estate.”
“Was it the ring with the ducal arms that he always wears?”
“No, indeed! Only a simple band of sapphires, or some other stone. The Duke thinks it must have been the gift of some woman. Were you the donor, Annabel?”
“I! I should think not! I do not give rings away. I prefer to receive them. He wore no sapphire band yesterday when he and I went to the Athelings–” and she looked the rest of the query, over her coffee-cup, straight into the eyes of the Duchess.
“What is it you mean to ask, Annabel?”
“Do you think that Miss Atheling–”
“Miss Atheling! That girl! What an absurd idea! Why should she give Lord Exham a ring?”
“Why! There are so many ‘whys’ that nobody can answer.” And with this remark, Annabel felt that her opportunity for confession had quite lapsed. For if the Duchess had thought it right to reprove her for such freedom as she had shown towards Cecil North, what would she say about an act so daring, so really improper in a social sense, as the removal of a ring from her son’s hand? Annabel had no mind to bring on herself the disagreeable looks and words she merited. She gave the conversation the political turn that answered all purposes, by asking the Duchess if she was not afraid Piers’s principles might be influenced by his friendship with young Atheling. “They were David and Jonathan yesterday,” she said; “and as for Cecil North, he is a Radical of the first water.”
“Lord Exham is not so easily persuaded,” answered the Duchess, loftily. “He could as readily change his nose as his principles. But I am seriously annoyed at this intercourse with a family distinctly out of our own caste. The Duke has been very foolish to encourage it.”
“You have also encouraged Miss Atheling.”
“I have been too good-natured. I admit that. But as I have promised to present her, I must honourably keep my word; that is, if any opportunity offers. It now appears as if there would be no court functions. The King declined the Lord Mayor’s feast,–a most unprecedented thing,–and it is said the Queen is averse to receive while the Reform agitation continues. When it will end, nobody knows.”
“It will end when it succeeds, not before,” said Annabel. “I am only a woman, but I see that conclusion very clearly.” It gave her pleasure to make this statement. It was her way of returning to the Duchess the disagreeable words she had been obliged to take from her; and she was not at all dismayed by the look of anger she provoked.
“I am astonished at you, Annabel. Are you also in danger of changing your opinions?”
“I am astonished at myself, Duchess. My opinions are movable; but I have not yet changed them. Truth, however, belongs to all sides, and I cannot avoid seeing things as they are.”
“That is, as young Atheling and Cecil North show them to you.”
“Lord Exham has still more frequent opportunities of showing me the course of events. I have ‘influences’ on both sides, you see, Duchess; but, after all, I form my own opinions.”
“Reform will never be accomplished. The people must follow the nobles, as surely as the thread follows the needle.”
“I have ceased to prophesy. Anything can happen in a long enough time; and I often heard my father say that, ‘They who care and dare may do as they like.’ I think the Reform party both ‘care’ and ‘dare.’”
“Have you fallen in love with Cecil North, or with Mr. Atheling?”
“I am in love with Annabel Vyner. I worship none of the idols that have been set up, either by Tories or Reformers. Men who talk politics are immensely stupid. I shall marry a man who is a good fighter. Mere talkers are like barking dogs. Why don’t these Reformers stop whimpering, and fly like a bull dog at the throat of their wrongs? Then I should go with them, heart and soul and purse.”
“You are talking now for talking’s sake, Annabel. You are actually advocating civil war.”
“Am I really? Well, war is man’s natural condition. It takes churches, and priests, and standing armies, and constables always on hand, to keep peace in any sort of fashion. We are all barbarians under our clothes,–just civilised on the top.”
“Such assertions are odious, and you cannot prove them.”
“I can. The other evening I was reading to Lord Tatham a most exquisite poem by that young man Tennyson; and he seemed to be enjoying it, until Algernon Sydney showed him his watch, and said something about ‘the Black Boy.’ Then his face fairly glowed, and he went off with a compliment that meant nothing. The next morning I found out ‘the Black Boy’ was a famous pugilist. We are all of us, in some way or other, in this mixed condition.”
“I think you are particularly disagreeable this morning, Miss.”
“Pardon, Duchess. We have fallen on a disagreeable subject. Let us change it. Are we to drive to Richmond to-day?”
“If Piers will accompany us. Ay! that is his knock.” She turned a radiant face to meet her son, but received a sudden chill. Piers was pale and sombre-looking; he said he had not slept, and politely declined the Richmond excursion. Annabel was sure he would. “He will have an explanation at the Athelings instead,” she thought; and she waited curiously for some remark which might open the way for her confession–or else close it. But Lord Exham did not allude to his loss, and the Duchess either attached no importance to the subject, or else thought it too important to bring forward. The tone of the room was not brightened by the young lord’s advent, and Annabel quickly excused herself from further attendance.
“He will tell his mother when I am not there; and I shall get his opinions, with commentaries from her,” she thought, as she hurried to her own rooms. Once there, she dismissed her maid, and sat down to realise herself. She doubled her little hands, and beat her knees softly with them. It was her way of summoning her mental forces, and of collecting vagrant and undecided thought.
“I am just here,” she said to her own consciousness. “I have taken a ring from Lord Exham’s finger. What for? Mischief or a joke? Which? Probably mischief. I wanted to turn it into a joke, and my opportunity is gone. Not my fault. If the Duchess had been in a good humour, I should have told her all about it. If Exham’s manner had not frozen everything but the commonplaces of propriety, I would have teased him a little, and then given up the ring. It is their own fault. If people are cross at breakfast, they deserve a disagreeable day. I am not sorry to give them their deserts.”
Then she rose and went to her jewel-case, and took the ring out and put it on her finger. “It is a poor little thing after all,” she said as she turned it round and round. “The stones are not very fine; I have sapphires of far finer colour. If I give Kate Atheling my diamond locket, she will have reason to be grateful,–the setting is, however, really beautiful; that is the point, I suppose. I would like to have a ring set in the same way; but it would be dangerous–” and she laughed as if she enjoyed the thought of the danger. She took off the ring at this point, and looked at it more critically. “What must I do with the troublesome thing?” she asked herself. “Justine is a curious, suspicious creature, and when she hears the talk in the servants’ hall, if she got but a glimpse of it, she would put two and two together.” A momentary resolve to throw it into the fire-place of the Duke’s parlour came into her mind. “If it is found there,” she argued, “the only supposition will be that Piers dropped it on the hearth. If it is not found, there will be no suppositions at all.”
This resolve, however, received no real encouragement. There is a perverse disposition in human nature to keep with special care things that incriminate, or which might become sources of suspicion or trouble; and the ring exercised over the girl this fatal fascination. She closed her jewel-case deliberately, holding the lid a trifle open for a moment or two of last consideration; then she dropped it with decision, and took from her pocket a small purse, made of gold as flexible as leather or satin. There were a few sovereigns in one compartment, and a Hindoo charm in another. She put the ring with the charm, and closed the purse with a smile of satisfaction. For the time being, at any rate, it was out of her way; and there were yet possibilities of turning the whole matter into a pleasantry.
“I may even take it to Kate Atheling and tell her to claim my forfeit.” This very improbable solution satisfied Annabel’s conscience; she was at peace after it, and able to consider more personal affairs.
In order to do this under the most favourable conditions, she placed herself comfortably on her lounge. Her fine, tall form lay at length, supine and indolent, the feet, in their crimson sandals, crossed at the ankles. Her dark, powerful head, with its masses of strong, black hair, looked almost handsome on the pale amber cushions, with the hands and arms–jewelled though it was only morning–clasped above it. She was going to examine herself, and she was not one to shirk even the innermost chamber of her heart.
“First,” she thought, “there is Lord Exham. Do I really want to marry him? Let me be sure of this, and then there is nothing for him to do, but make out the settlements. He cannot resist my influence when I choose to exert it. As yet I have not troubled him much; but I can trouble him–and I will, if I want to. Do I? Be honest, Annabel. There is no use lying to yourself. Well, then, I want to be Duchess of Richmoor; but I do not want to be Exham’s wife. And if I marry him, the present Duke may live ten, twenty, even thirty years. I would not wait for the crown of England thirty years, with a husband I rather despised; only–only what? I do not want that Atheling girl to marry him. Jane Warwick, or Helen Percy, or Margaret Gower, I would not mind–but Kate Atheling! No! Why? I cannot tell.” Nor could she. It was one of those apparently unreasonable dislikes we bring into the world with us, and which, probably, are the most reasonable dislikes of all. “Very well, then,” she continued, “I will not marry Piers, nor shall Kate Atheling marry him. That is fair enough. If I manage to make her give him up, I give him up myself also. I am only doing to her as I do to myself.
“Now there is Wynn, and Sidmouth, and Russell–and others. Every one of them have appraised my value, and made inquiries about my wealth. No one has told me this, but I know it. I know it with that invincible certainty with which women know things they are never told. Cecil North? Yes, I like Cecil North. He really fell in love with me,–with me, myself. A woman knows; she is never deceived about that unless she wants to be deceived. He is poor,–the Westovers are all poor,–I do not care if he is as poor as Job. I am tired to death of rich people. If Cecil North would get a military commission in India, I could be his wife. I could follow the drum, or live in quarters with him, and I should be a better and a happier woman than I am here. This life is too small for me.”
She was right in this estimation of herself. Her nature was one fitted to respond to great emergencies. She was a woman for frontiers and forts, for strife with men or elements, for days of danger in the shadow of suffering or death; and she was living in a society so artificial that any real cry of nature and needless familiarity, any sign of genuine passion was startling and distasteful to it. The soldierly temper inherited from her father demanded an adventurous life, because people made for overcoming obstacles cannot be morally healthy without obstacles to overcome. And, therefore, it was a poor life for Annabel Vyner that offered her no difficulty to surmount but the claims of Kate Atheling. She was quite aware of this, and the ring in her purse was no real triumph. It was rather one of those irreparable facts, the very thought of which gives pain.
If she had been morally stronger, she would have dominated her environment, and defied the circumstances that so easily prevented her from doing the right thing. She would have been obedient to Duty; and that grand, immutable principle would have given her strength to resist temptation, or, having fallen into it, to make the obvious reparation; for
“So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, ‘Thou Must,’
The Soul replies, ‘I Can.’”
This morning, though she was far from diagnosing her feelings correctly, Annabel soon began to suffer from that nervous and even that physical fatigue which is bred of moral indifference. For nothing is more certain than that moral strength is the very Life of life. She yawned; she felt the hours too long to be endured, while she pictured to herself the scene in the Atheling parlour, when Piers would confess the loss of the ring, and Kate lovingly excuse it. Finally, she became nervously angry at the persistence of the vision. In every possible way she tried to banish it, but though she fetched memories from farthest India, the exasperating phantasm would not be driven away.
In reality the affair produced very little apparent effect. Piers made his confession to Mrs. and Miss Atheling with so much genuine emotion that they could not but make light of the loss while he was present. Yet it troubled both women very much. Mrs. Atheling cried over it when she was alone; and Kate took it as a sign of some untoward event in the course of love between Piers and herself. No one is able to put aside such inferences and presentiments; and, quite unconsciously, it worked towards the end Kate feared. Piers began to fancy–perhaps unjustly–that he never entered Kate’s or Mrs. Atheling’s presence without seeing in their first glance an unspoken inquiry after the lost ring. In some measure he was to blame, if this was so. He had employed detectives to watch such servants of the Richmoor household as could have had access to the Duke’s parlour on that unhappy night; and as the ladies were aware of this movement, it was only natural they should desire to know if any result came from it.
Of course there was no result; and the real culprit remained absolutely unsuspected. As the days wore away, her conscience grew accustomed to the situation; it made no troublesome demands; and Annabel even began to feel a certain pleasurable excitement in holding in her hands what might prove to be a power for great good, or great evil,–for she was not yet ready to admit an entirely evil intention; she chose rather to regard it as a practical jest which she might undo, or explain, in some future, favourable hour.
She kept the jewel always in her purse; she went frequently to the Athelings; and once or twice she had a transitory impulse to tell Kate the whole circumstance, and be guided by her advice in the matter. But the Evil One, who had prompted her in the first instance to take it, always met these intents or impulses with some plausible excuse; and every good impulse which does not crystallise into a good action, only tends towards the strengthening of the evil one. Then outside events made delay more easy. On the fifteenth of November, there was a short, decided argument in the House of Commons on the Civil List; a division was promptly taken, and the Government was found to be in a minority of twenty-nine. The Squire and Lord Exham returned home together, both very much annoyed at this result.
“All this election business will be to go over again,” the Squire said, wearily. “Wellington and Peel are sure to take this opportunity to resign.”
“Why should they resign, John?” asked Mrs. Atheling.
“Well, Maude,” he answered, “they are bound to resign sooner or later; and I should think, if they have any sense left, they will go out as champions of the royal prerogative, rather than be driven out by a Reform division, which is sure to come. They will go out, my word for it, Maude!”
“And what then, John?”
“Well, then, we shall have all the bother of another election; and Earl Grey will form a new Ministry, and Lord Brougham will bully the new Ministry, as he has done the old one, about this Reform Bill. He intended to have begun that business this very night; but there wasn’t any Ministers, nor any Administration to arraign, and so he said, in his domineering way, that he would put the question of Reform off until the twenty-fifth of this month, and not a day longer, no matter what circumstances prevailed, nor who were His Majesty’s Ministers. I can tell you the city was in a pretty commotion as we came home. We shall have a Reform Government now, with Earl Grey at the head, and the real fight will then begin.”
“Earl Grey!” said Mrs. Atheling; “that is Edgar’s friend.”
“Well, I wouldn’t brag about it, Mother, if I was thee. I shall have to go back to Yorkshire, and so will Exham; and there will be no end of bother, and a Reform Ministry at the end of it. It is too bad! What they will do with Mr. Brougham, I am sure I don’t know. No Ministry can live without him; and it will be hard work for any Ministry to live with him; for if he drew up a bill himself, he would find faults in it, and never rest until he had torn it to pieces.”
Piers was sitting in the embrasure of a window, holding Kate’s hands, and talking to her in those low, sweet tones that women love; and at this remark he rose, and, coming towards the Squire, said with a grave smile, “For such dilemmas, Squire, there are remedies made and provided. If it is a clever clergyman who arraigns the church, or his superiors, he is made a bishop; and thereafter, he sees no faults. If it is a clever Commoner who arraigns the Government, the Government makes him a peer; and in the House of Lords, he finds the grace of silence. Earl Grey will have Mr. Brougham made Lord High Chancellor, and then Lord Brougham will only have the power to put the question.”
Exham’s prophecy proved to be correct. Brougham had declared that under any circumstances he would bring up Reform on the twenty-fifth of November; but, on the twenty-second of November, he took his seat as Chancellor in the House of Lords. It was said the Great Seal had been forced upon him; but the Squire wondered what pressure, never before known, had been discovered to make Henry Brougham do anything, or take anything, he did not want to do or take.
However the feat was an accomplished one; and with Earl Gray, Lord Durham, Sir James Graham, Viscounts Melbourne and Palmerston, and other great leaders, Brougham kissed the King’s hand on his appointment just three days before his threatened demonstration for Reform. Soon after Parliament adjourned for the re-election of Members in the Lower House; and the Duke, with Lord Exham and Squire Atheling, went down into Yorkshire.
Edgar and Cecil North also disappeared. “They have gone into the country on business, and I’ll tell you what it is, Kitty,” said Mrs. Atheling, with a little happy importance. “A friend of Earl Grey has a close borough, and Edgar is to have it. I am sure I don’t know what will happen, if he should clash with father in the House. Father cannot bear contradicting.”