His darling sin — Edition Insights

She had not sold herself to an unloved suitor. She had been sincerely attached to Sir Hector Perivale, and had sincerely mourned him when, after two years of domestic happiness, he died suddenly, in the prime of life, from the consequences of a chill caught on his grouse moor in Argyleshire, where he and his young wife, and a few chosen pals, made life a perpetual picnic, and knew no enemy but foul weather.

This time the enemy was Death. A neglected cold turned to pneumonia, and Grace Perivale was a widow.

"It does seem hard lines," whispered Hector, when he knew that he was doomed. "We have had such a good time, Grace; and it's rough on me to leave you."

No child had been born of that happy union, and Grace found herself alone in the world at one and twenty, in full possession of her husband's fortune, which was princely, even according to the modern standard by which incomes are measured--a fortune lying chiefly underground, in Durham coalfields, secure from change as the earth itself, and only subject to temporary diminution from strikes, or bad times. She needed a steady brain to deal with such large responsibilities, for she had not been born or reared among the affluent classes. In her father's East Anglian Rectory the main philosophy of life had been to do without things.

Her husband had none but distant relations, whom he had kept at a distance; so there were no interfering brothers or sisters, no prying aunts or officious uncles to worry her with good advice. She stood alone, with a castle on the Scottish border, round whose turrets the seamews wheeled, and at whose base the German Ocean rolled in menacing grandeur, one of the finest houses in Grosvenor Square, and an income that was described by her friends and the gossiping Press at anything you like between twenty and fifty thousand a year.

So rich, so much alone, Lady Perivale was naturally capricious. One of her caprices was to hate her castle in Northumberland, and to love a hill-side villa on the Italian Riviera, two or three miles from a small seaport, little known to travellers, save as a ragged line of dilapidated white houses straggling along the sea front, past which the Mediterranean express carried them, indifferent and unobservant, on their journey between Marseilles and Genoa.

It was Lady Perivale's whim to spend her winters in a spot unknown to Rumpelmeyer and fashion--a spot where smart frocks were out of place; where royalty-worship was impossible, since not the smallest princeling had ever been heard of there; and where for the joy of life one had only the sapphire sea and the silvery grey of the olive woods, perpetual roses, a lawn carpeted with anemones, sloping banks covered with carnations, palms, and aloes, orange and lemon trees, hedges of pale pink geranium, walls tapestried with the dark crimson of the Bougainvilliers, the delicate mauve of the wistaria; and balmy winds which brought the scent of the flowers and the breath of the sea through the open windows.

Lady Perivale came back to London in April, when the flower-girls were selling bunches of purple lilac, and Bond Street seemed as full of lemon-coloured carriages and picture-hats as if it were June. It was the pleasant season after Easter, the season of warm sunshine and cold winds, when some people wore sables and others wore lace, the season of _bals blancs_ and friendly dinners, before the May Drawing Room and the first State concert, before the great entertainments which were to be landmarks in the history of the year.

How empty the three drawing-rooms looked, in a perspective of white and gold; how black and dismal the trees in the square, as Grace Perivale stood at one of the front windows, looking out at the smooth lawns and well-kept shrubbery, in the pale English sunlight. She thought of the ineffable blue of the Mediterranean, the grey and green and gold and purple of the olive wood, and the orange and lemon grove sloping down to the sea from her verandah, where the Safrano roses hung like a curtain of pale yellow blossom over the rustic roof.

"And yet there are people who like London better than Italy," she thought.

Two footmen came in with the tables for tea.

"In the little drawing-room," she said, waving them away from the accustomed spot.

The spaciousness of the room chilled her. The Louis Seize furniture was all white and gold and silvery blue--not too much gold. An adept in the furniture art had made the scheme of colour, had chosen the pale blues and greys of the Aubusson carpet, the silvery sheen of the satin curtains and sofa-covers. It was all pale and delicate, and intensely cold.

"My letters?" she asked, when the men were retiring.

She had slept at Dover, and had come to London by an afternoon train. She liked even the hotel at Dover better than this great house in Grosvenor Square. There she had at least the sea to look at, and not this splendid loneliness.

"Well," she thought, with a long-drawn sigh, "I must plunge into the vortex again, another mill-round of lunches and dinners, theatres and dances, park and Princes', Ranelagh and Hurlingham--the same things over and over and over and over again. But, after all, I enjoy the nonsense while I am in it, enjoy it just as much as the other people do. We all go dancing round the fashionable maypole, in and out, left hand here, right hand there, smiling, smiling, smiling, and quite satisfied while it lasts. We only pretend to be bored."

The little drawing-room--twenty feet by fifteen--looked almost comfortable. There was a bright fire in the low grate, reflected dazzlingly in turquoise tiles, and the old-fashioned bow window was filled with a bank of flowers, which shut out the view of the chimneys and the great glass roof over the stable-yard.

Lady Perivale sank into one of her favourite chairs, and poured out a cup of tea.

"Toujours cet azur banal," she said to herself, as she looked at the pale blue china, remembering a line of Coppée's. "Poor Hector chose this turquoise because he thought it suited my complexion, but how ghastly it will make me look when I am old--to be surrounded by a child-like prettiness--_vouée au bleu_, like a good little French Catholic!"

The butler came in with her letters. Three, on a silver salver that looked much too large for them.

"These cannot possibly be all, Johnson," she said; "Mrs. Barnes must have the rest."

"Mrs. Barnes says these are all the letters, my lady."

"All! There must be some mistake. You had better ask the other servants."

Her butler and her maid had been with her in Italy--no one else; the butler, elderly and devoted, a man who had grown up in the Perivale family; her maid, also devoted, a native of her father's parish, whom she had taught as a child in the Sunday school, when scarcely more than a child herself, not a very accomplished attendant for a woman of fashion, but for a parson's daughter, who wore her own hair and her own eyebrows, the country-bred girl was handy enough, nature having gifted her with brains and fingers that enabled her to cope with the complicated fastenings of modern frocks, changing every season.

Lady Perivale's letters had been accumulating for nearly a fortnight, and her intended arrival in London had been announced in the _Times_ and a score of papers. She expected a mountain of letters and invitations, such as had always greeted her return to civilization.

Of the three letters, two were circulars from fashionable milliners. The third was from her old friend and singing mistress, Susan Rodney:--

"So glad you are coming back to town, my dear Grace. I shall call in Grosvenor Square on Wednesday afternoon on the chance of finding you.

"Ever yours affectionately,

Miss Rodney answered every correspondent by return of post, and never wrote a long letter.

Wednesday was Lady Perivale's afternoon at home, and this was Wednesday. A double knock resounded through the silence of the hall and staircase; and three minutes later the butler announced Miss Rodney.

"My sweet old Sue," cried Grace, "now this is really too good of you. Words can't say how glad I am to see you."

They kissed each other like sisters, and then Susan seated herself opposite her friend, and looked at her with a countenance that expressed some strong feeling, affection mingled with sorrow--or was it pity?

She was Grace's senior by more than ten years. She was good-looking in her strong and rather masculine way--her complexion of a healthy darkness, unsophisticated by pearl-powder, her features rugged, but not ugly, her eyes bright and shrewd, but capable of tenderness, her gown and hat just the right gown and hat for a woman who walked, or rode in an omnibus or a hansom.

"Well, Sue, what's the news?" asked Grace, pouring out her visitor's tea. "Is it a particularly dull season? Is nobody entertaining?"

"Oh, much as usual, I believe. I can only answer for my own friends and patronesses--mostly Bayswater way--who are as anxious as ever to get a little after-dinner music for nothing. They have to ask me to dinner, though. No nonsense about that!"

"It isn't the songs only, Sue. They want an agreeable woman who can talk well."

"Oh, I can chatter about most things; but I don't pretend to talk. I can keep the ball rolling."

"Do you know, Sue, you find me in a state of profound mystification. I never was so puzzled in my life. When I was leaving Italy I wired to my people to keep back all my letters. I was ten days on the way home; and instead of the usual accumulation of cards and things I find one letter--yours."

"People don't know you are in town," Sue suggested slowly.

"Oh, but they do; for I sent the announcement to the _Times_ and the _Post_ a fortnight ago. I really meant to be back sooner, but the weather was too lovely. I stopped a couple of days at Bordighera and at St. Raphael, and I was three days in Paris buying frocks. Not a single invitation--not so much as a caller's card. One would think London was asleep. Isn't it strange?"

"Yes," answered Sue, looking at her with an earnest, yet somewhat furtive, scrutiny, "it is--very--strange."

"Well, dear, don't let us be solemn about it. No doubt the invitations will come pouring in now I am at home. People have been too busy to notice my name in the papers. There are always new women for the town to run after. Wives of diamond men from Africa or oil men from America. One cannot expect to keep one's place."

"No," assented Sue. "Society is disgustingly fickle."

"But I am not afraid of being forgotten by the people I like--the really nice people, the pretty girls I have cultivated, and who make a goddess of me, the clever women, worldly but large-minded--all the people I like. I am not afraid of African competitors there. They will stick to me," said Grace, with emphasis.

Her friend could see that she was troubled, though she affected to take the matter easily. There was trouble in both faces, as the friends sat opposite each other, with only the spindle-legged Louis Seize tea-table between them; but the trouble in Susan Rodney's face was graver than in Lady Perivale's.

"Tell me about your winter," said Grace, after a pause, during which tea-cups had been refilled, and dainty cakelets offered and declined.

"Oh, the usual dull mechanic round; plenty of pupils, mostly suburban; and one duchess, five and fifty, who thinks she has discovered a magnificent contralto voice of which she was unaware till quite lately, and desires me to develop it. We bawl the grand duet from Norma till we are both hoarse, and then my duchess makes me stop and lunch with her, and tells me her troubles."

"I should have put it in the singular. When she talks of her troubles she means her husband."

"Sue, you're trying to be vivacious; but there's something on your mind. If it's any bother of your own, do tell me, dear, and let me help you if I can."

"My tender-hearted Grace! You always wanted to help people. I remember your coming to me with all your little pocket-money that dreadful morning at the Rectory when I had a wire to say my mother was dying, and had to rush back to town. And my dear Gracie thought I should be hard up, and wanted to help me. That's nearly ten years ago. Well, well! Such things live in one's memory. And your father, how kind, how courteous he always was to the holiday music-mistress, and what a happy time my summer holidays were in the dear old Rectory!"

"And what a lucky girl I was to get such a teacher and such a dear friend for nothing!"

"Do you call bed and board, lavender-scented linen, cream _à discrétion_, pony-cart, lawn tennis, luncheon parties, dinner at the Squire's, a dance at the market town--do you call that nothing? Well, the bargain suited us both, I think, and it was a pleasure to train one of the finest mezzo-sopranos I know. And now, Gracie," slowly, hesitatingly even, "what about your winter?"

"Five months of books, music, and idleness. My lotus land was never lovelier. But for a January storm, that tore my roses and spoilt a Bougainvilliers that covers half the house, I should hardly have known it was winter."

"And were you quite alone all the time? No visitors?"

"Not a mortal! You know I go to my villa to read and think. When I am tired of my own thoughts and other people's--one does tire occasionally even of Browning, even of Shakespeare--I turn to my piano, and find a higher range of thought in Beethoven. You know I go the pace all through the London season, never shirk a dance, do three cotillons a week, go everywhere, see everything."

"Yes, I know you have gone the pace, since your three years' mourning."

"After Cowes comes the reaction, a month or so in Northumberland, just to show myself to my people, and see that the gardeners are doing their duty; and then when the leaves begin to fall, away to my olive woods and their perpetual grey. For half the year I revel in solitude. If you would spend a winter with me I should be charmed, for you like the life I like, and it would be a solitude _à deux_. But the common herd are only good in cities. I come back to London to be sociable and amused."

Miss Rodney rose and put on her mantle.

"Can't you stop and dine? I'll send you snugly home in my brougham."

Home was a villa facing Regent's Park.

"Alas! dear, it's impossible! I am due in Cadogan Square at half-past six--Islington and Chelsea 'bus from Regent-circus."

"Two lessons--sisters, and not an iota of voice between them. But I shall make them sing. Give me a scrap of intelligence, and I can always manage that. Good-bye, Grace. Ask me to dinner some other night, when you are alone."

"Come to-morrow night, or the night after. I have no engagement, as you know. Let us see a lot of each other before the rush begins."

"Friday night, then. Good-bye."

They kissed again. Lady Perivale rang the bell, and then followed her friend towards the drawing-room door; but on her way there Miss Rodney stopped suddenly, and burst into tears.

"Sue, Sue, what is it? I knew you had something on your mind. If it's a money trouble, dear, make light of it, for it needn't plague you another minute. I have more money than I know what to do with."

"No, no, no, dear; it's not money," sobbed Sue. "Oh, what a fool I am--what a weak-minded, foolish fool!"

A footman opened the door, and looked with vacant countenance at the agitated group. Early initiation in his superiors' domestic troubles had taught him to compose his features when storms were raging.

"The door, James--presently," his mistress said, confusedly, watching him leave the room with that incredible slowness with which such persons appear to move when we want to get rid of them.

"Very foolish, if you won't trust your old friend Gracie!" she said, making Sue sit down, and seating herself beside her, and then in caressing tones, "Now, dear, tell me all your troubles. You know there is no sorrow of yours--no difficulty--no complication--which would find me unsympathetic. What is it?"

"Oh, Gracie, Gracie, my darling girl, it's not my trouble. It's yours."

"Mine?" with intense surprise.

"Yes, dear. I meant to have kept silence. I thought it was the only course, in such a delicate matter. I meant to leave things alone--and let you find out for yourself."

"The scandal, Grace--a scandal that touches you."

"What scandal can touch me? Scandal! Why, I have never done anything in my life that the most malignant gossip in London could turn to my disadvantage."

Her indignant eyes, her full, strong voice, answered for her truth.

"Oh, Grace, I knew, I knew there couldn't be anything in it. A wicked lie, a cowardly attack upon a pure-minded woman--a woman of spotless character; the last woman upon this earth to give ground for such a story."

"Oh, Sue, if you love me, be coherent! What is the story? Who is the slanderer?"

"Heaven knows how it began! My Duchess told me. I spoke of you the other day at our _tête-à-tête_ luncheon. I told her about your lovely voice, your passion for music. She nodded her old wig in a supercilious way. 'I have heard her sing,' she said curtly. She waited till the servants left the room, and then asked me if it was possible I had not heard the scandal about Lady Perivale."

"What scandal? Oh, for pity's sake come to that, Sue. Never mind your Duchess."

"Well, I'll tell you in the most brutal way. It seems that three or four people, whose names I haven't discovered, declare they met you in Algiers, and in Corsica and Sardinia, travelling with Colonel Rannock--travelling with Colonel Rannock--passing as his wife, under a _nom de guerre_--Mr. and Mrs. Randall."

"How utterly disgusting and absurd! But what on earth can have made them imagine such a thing?"

"People say you were seen--seen and recognized--by different people who knew you, in one or the other of those places."

"Travelling with Colonel Rannock, as his wife! My God! A man I refused three times. Three times," laughing hysterically. "Why, I have had him on his knees in this room; kneeling, Sue, like a lover in an old comedy; and I only laughed at him."

"That's rather a dangerous thing to do, Grace, with some men."

"Oh, Colonel Rannock is not the kind of man to start a vendetta for a woman's laughter. He is a laughing philosopher himself, and takes everything lightly."

"Does he? One never knows what there is behind that lightness. What if Colonel Rannock has set this scandal on foot with a view to proposing a fourth time, and getting himself accepted?"

"How could he make people swear they saw me--me!--at Algiers, when I was in Italy? It is all nonsense Sue; an absurd _malentendu_; my name substituted for some other woman's. Now I am in London, the matter will be put straight in an hour. People have only to see me again to be sure I am not that kind of woman. As for Colonel Rannock, he may be dissipated, and a spendthrift; but he is well-born, and he ought to be a gentleman."

"Who said he was ill-born? Surely, you know that there are good races and bad. Who can tell when the bad blood came in, and the character of the race began to degenerate? Under the Plantagenets, perhaps. Colonel Rannock comes of a bad race--everybody knows that. His grandfather, Lord Kirkmichael, was notorious in the Regency. He left his memoirs, don't you know, to be published fifty years after his death--an awful book--that had a _succès de scandale_ six or seven years ago. He was bosom friend of Lord Hertford, and that set."

"I did not trouble myself about his grandfather."

"Ah! but you ought! A man's family history is the man. Lord Kirkmichael's grandson would be capable of anything infamous."

"The whole thing is too preposterous for consideration," Lady Perivale said angrily. "I wonder at your taking it tragically."

And then, recalling that empty salver instead of the usual pile of letters and cards, she cried, distractedly--