The Jewelled Snuff Box (17 page)

“I am sorry if you do, my lord,” replied Jane, in a quieter tone. “But I find that I am not suited to this post. I ask your leave to go today — now.”

“And if I refuse?”

He dropped the eyeglass, regarding her with a speculative smile.

She shook her head. “I can brook no refusal, my lord.”

He raised his brows.

“This is high-handed indeed.”

“I have the right of any human being to speak my mind when I am driven past endurance,” said Jane, with rising an¬ger.

He nodded. “To be sure, you have rights, indeed — more, perhaps, than you know of; but what is all this about being driven past endurance?”

She raised her eyes to his face. As once before, when the green and grey eyes met, something stirred between them.

“I cannot tell you, my lord,” she said, and there was regret in her voice. Unaccountably, she suddenly felt that she would have liked to confide in him. “To do so would entail speaking of matters which are not mine to reveal.”

“Do not concern yourself,” he answered, gently. “Perhaps I understand better than you believe possible.”

On a sudden, he moved across the room, and took both her hands in his.

“I cannot keep you here against your will, Jane: it must be for you to decide. Nevertheless, I beg you to stay — for my sake.”

She started, withdrawing her hands from his.

“What are you saying, my lord? I do not understand —”

“I am saying that I have come to value you, Jane, in the time that you have been in this house; to feel for you all that affection which once, long ago, I had for another object long since removed from my sight, alas, and never truly valued at its worth while there was yet time. Other kinds of love I have known indeed, and it was one of these which led me into the marriage which from the first I knew in my heart was worthless. Yet it was not until I brought you here that I fully realised just how impossible it was ever to hope for happiness from my union with Celia. You have taught me that, dear Jane, in teaching me to love you.”

Chapter XIX. The Story Of Arabella

FOR A moment, Jane stood rooted to the spot in horror. This was the final disaster; already she had endured so much today. She had received an offer of marriage from the man whom she loved, but could not accept; she had been taunted unbearably by Celia, and obliged to give up her post without any immediate prospect of obtaining another; and now, the last straw, here was the Earl of Bordesley proposing to her she dared not imagine what. Indignation finally superseded all other emotions, and she turned upon him vehemently.

“How dare you speak to me in that wanton, wicked way! Had I anyone to protect me —”

Her voice choked on a sob. A look of alarm came over the Earl’s features, and he took a quick step towards her. She backed away, and turned to fly his presence.

“No, stop!”

The sharp command halted her at the door. She half turned to face him.

“You have me wrong, my child. I am not proposing anything dishonourable to you. But it is my own fault: I am forgetting that you are not as well-informed as I. Come here, Jane; I have something to show you.”

She started to comply with the request, then halted irresolutely.

“Come!” he said, persuasively. “This is something you must know. You need have no fear of me; I will not molest you.”

Her alarm quietened at his tone, and curiosity overcame her caution. She approached the table where he was standing. He was staring down at the open book which lay there, and at the portrait which was on top of it. Jane recognised it for the one she had discovered the night before. The merry, elfin face met her gaze with a twinkle that seemed to come to life.

“I’d forgotten where this was hid,” said the Earl, in a pensive tone of voice. “Then I suddenly recollected how fond she was of this book, and that I’d placed this one picture here at the time when my father had them all destroyed. You will be wondering who she is, Jane. It is my sister, Arabella.”

All Jane’s disquiet had by now slipped away from her, for the Earl’s manner was abstracted, scarcely conscious any longer of the girl at his side. Slowly his lips formed sentences that brought to life the past.

“Yes, little Bella — bright, gay, volatile as quicksilver, worshipped by my father. My mother died giving birth to her, and afterwards the child filled his heart. I was ten years older than she, and off to school while she was still in leading-strings. Our ways did not often cross, yet I, too, was her slave. I think as she grew older, every man was at her feet: but there was only one who ever stood any chance with her.”

He broke off, and touched the portrait lightly with his fingers, as though caressing the red-gold hair.

“He was a midshipman of good, though impecunious family. God knows how she ever met him, but Bella had a way of her own: not for nothing was she born with this red hair. My father had made his plans for her future from the day she was twelve years old. She was to wed with the Duke of Norton, thus uniting two great titles and fortunes. During the next six years, he came to consider this scheme as a thing accomplished in all but fact.”

He stopped for a moment, sighed, and went on again.

“I was at home on the day when this sailor fellow waited on my father to ask permission to pay his addresses to Bella. I understand that he afterwards fought many a gallant action, but that, surely, was his most courageous deed. Bella came to me, and told me that he intended to come that morning. I asked her if the fellow was mad. ‘Mad or not, you may be sure I mean to have him!’ she answered me, and I saw from her face that she would stop at nothing. I had seen that look before. He came — a handsome lad, if my memory serves me; I think we should have dealt well with each other, had our ways been fated to lie together. My father took a horsewhip to him, and locked Bella in her room. By nightfall, she had got out somehow, and was gone. She left a letter telling my father that both she and her lover considered that he had forfeited any right to her duty, and that they intended to marry without his consent.”

“She was right!” exclaimed Jane, her eyes shining, caught up in the story.

“You think so?” For a moment, he regarded her gravely; then turned his eyes back to the picture. “She would have been glad to hear you say it.”

His face was sad now, and his voice sank a little.

“We never saw her again,” he continued. “She wrote to us from time to time, but my father tore the letters across and threw them in the fire without so much as opening them. On the night when we discovered her gone, he went round the house removing all traces of her presence — tearing down and burning portraits, instructing that all her personal effects be buried at the farthest point of the grounds, even shooting her little dog. He was like one possessed. I tried to reason with him, and he struck me — I left the house, and did not return for months, until he had begged my pardon. This one picture of her I had in a drawer in my own room; it had lately been drawn by a lady of my acquaintance. I dared not leave it there, for I was frequently from home, and feared that some abigail would find it in my absence, and take it to my father. I put it in this book, knowing it would be tolerably safe there; my father was not a reading man — the same, I fear, is true of me.”

He lifted the portrait from the book, and placed it on the table, directly under Jane’s gaze. She fastened her eyes on the merry face. Had some premonition of the sad fate of this lovely girl visited her, when first she had seen that face, she wondered? She remembered the chill of the room on that previous occasion, the gentleness which had moved her to lay the picture softly by, as though it were a living thing.

“You will doubtless be wondering,” said the Earl, “why I did nothing to get in touch with my sister. I have no valid excuse to plead. I was an indolent, pleasure-loving young man, caught up in the gaieties of the Town; and I possessed no clue to her whereabouts. To have sought her out would have put me to some trouble, and I was too selfish and thoughtless to make the effort. Soon it was too late. A letter came for my father one day, written in a strange hand. It contained the news of her death.”

His head was bowed now, and he suddenly seemed to have shrunk and aged. Jane placed her hand gently on his arm, forgetting her former fears.

“I am sorry,” she murmured.

Her tone rather than the words conveyed comfort. He covered her hand with his for a moment, then let it fall away.

“There is nothing that haunts a man so much as the things he once might have done, and did not. My father made no reply to the letter, and I never saw it: I was away, and he gave me the news on my return. It stunned me for a time. I could not think her dead — so bright, so vital a being to be extinguished like that in a moment.”

He stopped. A long silence fell over the musty room. Jane shivered, as last she had done when she stood there alone; but it was not cold in the room now.

“Many years passed,” he went on, at last. “I became increasingly caught up in my own affairs, my father grew old alone, a bitter, brooding man. You may perhaps know that he died a short time since.”

He glanced at Jane questioningly. She was seeing in her imagination the old man who had ruthlessly cut himself off from the one thing he loved above all others. She nodded, too moved for speech.

“A few days before his death,” continued the Earl, “I believe he knew that his end was near. He sent for me, and told me then that some years back he had received a letter from a lawyer informing him that Arabella’s husband had been killed in action. This man had said that their only child, a daughter, was now thrown upon the mercy of the world.”

Here he paused, and looked into Jane’s face. An awareness came into her eyes, and they slowly filled with tears. He placed a gentle hand on her bright hair.

“My father had, at that time, paid no more attention to this information than he had to the news of my sister’s death: when he felt that his last moments had come, he bitterly regretted this fact. He spoke to me of his repentance over his treatment of my sister, and how different his life might have been had he shown her the understanding she surely ought to have been able to count upon from him. He felt very strongly the wrong he had done her, and the love which might have changed his life had he guarded it. His bitterest regret was that he could make no amends to Arabella; but he said that he had provided for her child, having sent for his lawyer, and settled half his fortune upon the unknown girl. He bade me seek her out, and love her if I could, for Bella’s sake. He prayed earnestly that I might not be too late, and I should not find the girl fallen upon evil ways.”

Jane was sobbing now, quietly, unashamedly. The Earl placed his arm comfortingly about her shoulders.

“I reassured my father as best I might, and set about my task. It was not easy, for he did not remember the lawyer’s name, and had not kept the letter. Up to the moment of his death, I had made no headway, and was forced to tell him so. Yet, at the very end, I believe he knew that all would be well: for with his last breath he named my sister, and he passed with a peaceful smile on his lips such as I had not seen for many a long year.”

He ceased speaking, and tenderly regarded the girl at his side. After a moment, he produced a lace-bordered handkerchief and gently wiped the tears away from her cheeks, as though she had been a child.

“It all happened a long time ago,” he said, softly. “We must believe that they are happy now — even my father.”

Jane raised her tear-stained face. He touched the locket at her neck.

“I have often wondered what that contained,” he said. “May I not see?”

She put up her hands to unclasp the chain, then, opening the locket, passed it to him.

“It is my father,” she said, in a low tone.

He looked full at the proud, handsome head and piercing eyes of the miniature.

“It is very like,” he said, quietly, and set the locket down beside the picture of Arabella.

“Let them lie thus awhile, dear child: they were man and wife.”

Her eyes sought and held his, and this time she was glad of the warmth that flowed between them.

“Then I am your niece.”

There was no surprise in her tone. He raised one eyebrow, and the sadness left his face.

“You had guessed? Yes, I sensed it at some point in my story.”

“When you mentioned Mr. Sharratt’s letter,” said Jane, “I was certain, although I had suspected before. It is just what he would have done. But he knew I was coming here, yet he said nothing to me of all this. Why was that, my lord?”

He took her hand, and carried it gently to his lips.

“Can you not call me uncle? You are very like your mother, Jane, though you have your father’s eyes, and the hair which one would expect from a fusion of black and red. Yes, well — this lawyer — he could not tell you, because he did not know.”

“Not know?” She was incredulous.

“He knew, of course, that you were my niece. Why he kept silent on that head, I cannot say; you must ask him yourself. But he knew nothing of my father’s will, for I took care to tell no one of it. With the aid of my own lawyers, I managed at last to trace you. It was difficult enough, for you had changed your name, and it took time to prove that Jane Spencer was indeed Jane Tarrant. It is ironical to think that my wife could have saved me all my trouble. However, I could have no notion of that at the time. I wished to become acquainted with you without your knowing in what relationship I stood to you; so I hit upon the plan of engaging you as a companion for my wife. Poor Jane! It was not, in the event, a happy plan; but, naturally, I had no idea that you had met before. Thus, Jane, I came to love you; and can only hope that, little as I deserve it, you may have some small liking for me.”

Jane pressed the hand that still retained hers in its grasp, and bent a warm smile on her uncle, though her lips trembled slightly.

“Ever since I first came here,” she said, “I’ve felt that a strange bond existed between us. It used to make me uneasy, but now I understand.”

“May that bond grow ever stronger,” he answered fervently.

He picked the locket up from the table, and fastened it about Jane’s neck.

“And now, my dear,” he said, “that you know in what relationship we stand to one another, is there anything more that you feel able to tell me of your reasons for wishing to quit this house?”

Jane hesitated. She would have liked to forge a stronger link between them by confiding in him completely, by asking his advice, even seeking his comfort. But once again she was faced with the impossibility of saying anything without betraying Celia and Sir Richard.

It seemed, however, that there was no need of words between them. He glanced shrewdly into her eyes, and knew her decision.

“I see you will not speak,” he said, in a disappointed tone.

“Forgive me if you can — there are obstacles —”

“Not of your making?”

She nodded.

“I understand. What of this fellow Carisbrooke, and that Cheltenham tragedy my wife enacted me last night?”

She hesitated a moment, then answered him in a low voice that was not quite steady.

“I — I love him. That much I may tell you, at least.”

“And he?”

She was silent.