A CRISIS.
The Duchess drove home alone. Of late, her husband had seldom accompanied her, and this afternoon, he said, he was going down to the club — to attend a committee meeting on an important matter. Committee meetings occurred with abnormal frequency at the Die and Hazard, Linda fancied, but she made no comment. She was waking up fast to the reality of her position. In a moment of weakness she had yielded to a man’s passing passion for herself and lasting desire for the Amberley millions; and now she was beginning to pay the penalty. Henceforth, she felt, she must lead a life apart. Thank heaven! at least, she was strong enough to bear it.
At Onslow Gardens, she was told, as soon as she entered the door, a young person was waiting to see her grace. ‘I think,’ the gorgeous ducal footman added deferentially, ‘it’s the young person who was recommended to your grace last week for a place as lady’s-maid.’
‘Send her up to my room,’ Linda said with her imperturbable manner. ‘I’ve half an hour to spare, and then I must go out to that East-End mission meeting.’
The gorgeous flunkey bowed and disappeared. Two minutes later the young person came up and entered the Duchess’s room with a noiseless tread. She was a delicate and extremely modest-looking girl of twenty-five or thereabouts, in a plain dark dress and a very neat, almost Quakerish bonnet. Her voice was soft and low as she said ‘Good-morning, your grace,’ in answer to Linda’s greeting; and the moment she appeared, Linda had some vague recollection of having seen her before, though where exactly it might have been she couldn’t just then remember. But those narrow coils of back hair, plaited with a perfectly Puritan precision and trimness, struck her somehow as strangely familiar. The young person was slight but distinctly pretty, and she gave her name, when Linda asked for it, as Elizabeth Woodward.
‘Where have I met you before?’ Linda inquired sharply, turning her full frank eyes upon the rather shrinking lady’s-maid.
The girl looked her back in the face with a scrutinizing glance almost as keen as her own. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen your grace till this moment,’ she answered confidently. ‘I have a very good eye for faces; when I’ve seen a face once I never forget it, and your grace has features one couldn’t easily mistake, either.’
‘Curious,’ Linda went on, searching her memory in vain. ‘I’m sure I’ve met you somewhere, though I can’t recollect where. And I, too, have a very good eye for faces.’
The girl smiled a pleasant, graceful smile. ‘You may have seen me somewhere that I’ve been in a place,’ she answered respectfully, but very frankly. ‘I’ve been maid in several good houses in town where your grace is likely to have visited the ladies.’
Linda was taken at once with Elizabeth Woodward’s appearance and manner, the girl was so free from the habitual servility of the trained upper servant; so she interjected at once with her customary frankness, ‘Oh dear no! It’s not likely to have been that. I’ve hardly ever visited at any big houses in England till quite lately — since I married, I mean; and my recollection is rather of having seen you somewhere when I was in London before, at least two or three years ago. However, it doesn’t matter. What was your last place, and have you brought your character?’
When it came to character, Elizabeth Woodward’s record was so exceptionally good, not to say immaculate, that Linda, after glancing at the papers she brought, had no hesitation in immediately engaging her. She had lived, it seemed, in ‘all the best families,’ and was recommended by all as a perfect paragon of upper domestic virtue. But what specially attracted Linda was not the recommendations, but the girl’s own quiet and lady-like manner, as well as her perfect freedom from servants’-hall affectations. Self-respecting herself, Linda liked to see self-respect in others. She would have been incapable of passing on anyone that strange and inhuman criticism that they were ‘too independent.’ She hated the new-born necessity for having a maid at all: nothing but the absolute needs of her position could ever have reconciled her to that constant presence of another woman in her own private room. It sinned against her sense of the dignity of womanhood. Before she was rich, she had never been accustomed to such continual attendance; and she regretted her freedom so much now that she could never quietly submit to the slavery of the upper servants. But Elizabeth Woodward seemed so much the best specimen of her class Linda had yet seen, that she felt she could endure this woman better than any other. So in less than ten minutes the new lady’s-maid was duly engaged, and had made all needful arrangements about coming into residence that very evening.
‘One more point before you go,’ Linda said, as the girl was turning to leave the room. ‘You’re usually called Woodward, aren’t you — by your surname alone, I mean: just so, “Woodward”?’
‘Yes, your grace, that’s how my ladies generally address me,’ the girl answered, smiling.
‘Well, I don’t like that way,’ Linda went on, with a quiet little nod. ‘I’m too democratic for such distinctions. It grates upon me to hear a woman addressed by her surname just like a man. We don’t do it to our friends, and I don’t know why we should do it to those who wait upon us. I shall call you plain Elizabeth.’
‘Thank you, your grace. I like it much better, and I quite agree with you.’
Linda smiled her acquiescence. This new maid pleased her. So few servants would have had the boldness to venture upon agreeing with her. ‘And stop — just one other thing,’ she added, calling her back a second time from the half-open door. ‘You and I understand one another, I think, Elizabeth. You must call me “your grace” before the other people in the house. I’m afraid the Duke wouldn’t like it, you see, if you didn’t — but alone with me in my room here, if you must call me anything, call me simply Duchess. You follow exactly what I mean, don’t you?’
‘Perfectly, Duchess. And I shall remember to do so.’
Linda was pleased once more at the girl’s quick apprehension of her wishes and ready acquiescence in her unusual request. If there was anything on earth she hated, it was an animated machine, and Elizabeth Woodward was certainly not mechanical. ‘We shall get on very well together, I can see,’ the Duchess said, with a nod and a smile. ‘We know each other already.’
‘We do, Duchess,’ Elizabeth Woodward answered promptly, and, with a self-respecting bow, descended, well pleased, from her grace’s presence.
Her grace, left alone, leaned back on her couch, and half laughed to herself at the absurdity of this little domestic comedy. How much happier she would have been, after all, if only she could have had for her maid that dear old awkward, clumsy-fingered Emma from the rooms in Clandon Street!
Later in the evening, while she sat waiting for Bertie in the library before dinner, a servant brought in a letter for her from Douglas Harrison. She broke the seal hastily. It was only a hurried note to give some final messages from Sabine Venables, or rather Sabine Harrison, to her friend the Duchess; for Sabine and Linda, when once they met, had struck up almost at first sight an instinctive friendship. They had that likeness in fibre that makes acquaintance easy. But the note began, as Douglas Harrison’s notes were always wont to begin, ‘My dear Linda.’ He at least could never forget the woman in the Duchess. To have called her anything else would have sounded to him absurd; and being above all things natural, he wrote to his lost love exactly as he would have spoken to her.
As Linda stood reading the note, with her arm on the mantelshelf, her husband came in and glided across to her. He had had bad luck again — on the racecourse this time. A telegram had come into the club while he was lounging there that afternoon from the meeting which he had been compelled to miss, much against his will, in order to attend Sabine Venables’ wedding. A friend had put him upon ‘a safe thing’ for the Two-Year-Old Cup; and he had backed the safe thing to the tune of some monkeys, as he himself phrased it. Strange to say, however, the horse of his choice had been badly beaten. He had been in an ill-humour all the day, for things generally were out of joint. He hadn’t wished to attend the wedding at all, in the first place; for he had some feelings of remorse about Sabine Venables (especially now all the world was saying how exceedingly well Old Affability had behaved to her), and some feelings of dislike towards Hubert Harrison, as being the brother (confound his impudence!) of that other objectionable Clandon Street fellow. But the Duchess had insisted; and her husband, being now very short of funds, and feeling the necessity for humouring her, had obeyed accordingly. He meant to tell her that evening that he must raise money somehow; and that being so, he thought it best to miss the race, sorely against his will, and put in an appearance, as he said, at the wedding. But all the same, he did it with a very bad grace, and felt angry and annoyed all the rest of the day for it.
Then came this further blow of his horse being beaten — a horse in which the trainer had felt such perfect confidence — and a fellow at the club had bothered him with hints about an I O U; and that fashionable Pall Mall money-lender with the glass eye had sent in another of his politely minatory little notes about ‘further unpleasantness’; and altogether the world was going awry for the star of Powysland. But he forgot all these things in a moment when, stepping across the room with a very light tread, and glancing quietly over his wife’s shoulder, he read to his surprise these astounding words:
‘Clandon Street, Thursday.
‘My dear Linda,
‘It was such a pleasure to me to see you again at the Venables’ to-day; and though I had hardly any opportunity among all that vast crowd of really speaking to you — —’
He read no more, for as he skimmed the page Linda looked up and saw him; and, folding the letter abruptly with a disdainful smile, popped it into her pocket.
The Duke’s face was livid to look upon. The demon of the Montgomeries distorted his features into terrible shapes. ‘Good God!’ he cried, clasping her wrist in his hand with an iron grip. ‘What does this mean, Linda? It’s dated Clandon Street. Do you mean to tell me that confounded Maclaine fellow has actually the impudence to write like that to you?’
Linda was growing accustomed now to rude treatment from her husband, but she wasn’t the sort of woman to answer a question much more mildly put while he held her arm so.
‘Let go my wrist,’ she said quietly, biting her lip to keep down the tears, he was gripping her so hard with his sinewy fingers, ‘and then perhaps I may consider your question.’
The Duke started back and let her wrist drop at once, but in anger, not in penitence.
‘Perhaps you’ll consider it!’ he echoed. ‘Perhaps you’ll consider it. Pray, do you mean to tell me, then, you expect me to bandy words with you over a question like that? If you do, all I can say is you very much misunderstand me. “Yes” or “No” is the only answer I can take from you on such a subject.’
Linda stood back a pace too, and looked him straight in the face with unflinching eyes.
‘The letter is from Mr. Harrison,’ she said, fiery red by this time. ‘Not the one who was married this morning. My friend his brother.’
‘Your friend!’ the Duke repeated, white in the face with jealous anger now. ‘Your friend, Mr. Harrison! Show me the signature this minute, if you dare. You know it’s not from him. You know you are telling me a deliberate lie. I can see it in your face. It’s from that damned Maclaine man!’
He was fuming with rage; Linda stood in front of him in her stately beauty, all trembling with shame that her word should be so doubted.
‘Duke,’ she said angrily, not even deigning to call him Bertie, as she usually called him, ‘the letter, as I tell you, is from Douglas Harrison. I will not show you the signature. I will not be doubted. That’s a matter of principle. If you can’t believe me, I’m not fit for you to live with. You must take my word for it — or disbelieve me if you like. But in such a matter I don’t condescend to give proofs to any man. I speak the truth, and I will not be mistrusted.’
Her husband glared back at her with that same glazed expression in his eye she had noticed once or twice before when he was most suspicious.
‘Very well,’ he said doggedly. ‘We shall see. It’s a bargain. Till you show me that letter, I will have nothing more in any way to say to you.’
His manner, was insolent — nay, maddening in its contempt. Linda walked straight across the room to where the red wax candles were burning on the side-table. It was a foolish thing to do, perhaps — burning her own boats — but in her righteous indignation that any man should so doubt her word she did it unhesitatingly. She lighted the note at the candle, and held it as it blazed, watching it hard till it scorched her fingers. Then she let the charred remnant fall in the fireplace, and marched out, indignant, to her own bedroom.
‘Very well,’ the Duke said in a low voice as she went, ‘I know where I stand now. I know how you’ve betrayed me.’
The door stood open behind the Duchess as he said it, and on the landing without a gorgeous ducal flunkey was turning up a gas-lamp that flared above the console-table.
For a minute or two after she left the room the Duke paused, irresolute. It occurred to him in a flash what an awkward fix he’d managed to get himself into. His temper had done this — and that confounded Maclaine man. He had meant to ask Linda for money that very night, or, rather, to suggest obliquely that she must somehow find him some; but now — sooner than take that woman’s money! Why, he hated her, he hated her! The Montgomery demon was strong in him that minute. For the turn of a coin — heads or tails — he could have choked her or shot himself.
He staggered across blindly towards the empty fireplace, reeling with wrath as he went, and let his eye fall by accident on the smouldering embers of the burnt letter. As he looked, a curious effect came out in the charred sheets. A little rim of fire that ran along and glowed through the black mass had halted for a second against a line of ink, so that he could read two words standing out, as it were, in black against a glowing background. They seemed to be the signature. He stooped down and examined them. The two words read distinctly ‘Basil Maclaine.’ Next instant the line of fire ran across the spot; they had faded away, and all were crumbling ashes.
He strode from the room in a perfect transport of jealousy. She had lied to him then, after all; and Maclaine had written it!