Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1873 page)

“You mentioned Mr. Hardyman’s garden party, my Lady, when I had the honour of waiting on you,” Moody answered. “Thinking over it afterward, it seemed the fittest occasion I could find for making a little wedding present to Miss Isabel. Is there any harm in my asking Mr. Hardyman to let me put the present on her plate, so that she may see it when she sits down to luncheon? If your Ladyship thinks so, I will go away directly, and send the gift by post.”

Lady Lydiard looked at him attentively. “You don’t despise the girl,” she asked, “for selling herself for rank and money? I do — I can tell you!”

Moody’s worn white face flushed a little. “No, my Lady,” he answered, “I can’t hear you say that! Isabel would not have engaged herself to Mr. Hardyman unless she had been fond of him — as fond, I dare say, as I once hoped she might be of me. It’s a hard thing to confess that; but I do confess it, in justice to her — God bless her!”

The generosity that spoke in those simple words touched the finest sympathies in Lady Lydiard’s nature. “Give me your hand,” she said, with her own generous spirit kindling in her eyes. “You have a great heart, Moody. Isabel Miller is a fool for not marrying
you
— and one day she will know it!”

Before a word more could pass between them, Hardyman’s voice was audible on the other side of the shrubbery, calling irritably to his servant to find Lady Lydiard.

Moody retired to the further end of the walk, while Lady Lydiard advanced in the opposite direction, so as to meet Hardyman at the entrance to the shrubbery. He bowed stiffly, and begged to know why her Ladyship had honoured him with a visit.

Lady Lydiard replied without noticing the coldness of her reception.

“I have not been very well, Mr. Hardyman, or you would have seen me before this. My only object in presenting myself here is to make my excuses personally for having written of you in terms which expressed a doubt of your honour. I have done you an injustice, and I beg you to forgive me.”

Hardyman acknowledged this frank apology as unreservedly as it had been offered to him. “Say no more, Lady Lydiard. And let me hope, now you are here, that you will honour my little party with your presence.”

Lady Lydiard gravely stated her reasons for not accepting the invitation.

“I disapprove so strongly of unequal marriages,” she said, walking on slowly towards the cottage, “that I cannot, in common consistency, become one of your guests. I shall always feel interested in Isabel Miller’s welfare; and I can honestly say I shall be glad if your married life proves that my old-fashioned prejudices are without justification in your case. Accept my thanks for your invitation; and let me hope that my plain speaking has not offended you.”

She bowed, and looked about her for Tommie before she advanced to the carriage waiting for her at the gate. In the surprise of seeing Moody she had forgotten to look back for the dog when she entered the shrubbery. She now called to him, and blew the whistle at her watchchain. Not a sign of Tommie was to be seen. Hardyman instantly directed the servants to search in the cottage and out of the cottage for the dog. The order was obeyed with all needful activity and intelligence, and entirely without success. For the time being at any rate, Tommie was lost.

Hardyman promised to have the dog looked for in every part of the farm, and to send him back in the care of one of his own men. With these polite assurances Lady Lydiard was obliged to be satisfied. She drove away in a very despondent frame of mind. “First Isabel, and now Tommie,” thought her Ladyship. “I am losing the only companions who made life tolerable to me.”

Returning from the garden gate, after taking leave of his visitor, Hardyman received from his servant a handful of letters which had just arrived for him. Walking slowly over the lawn as he opened them, he found nothing but excuses for the absence of guests who had already accepted their invitations. He had just thrust the letters into his pocket, when he heard footsteps behind him, and, looking round, found himself confronted by Moody.

“Hullo! have you come to lunch?” Hardyman asked, roughly.

“I have come here, sir, with a little gift for Miss Isabel, in honour of her marriage,” Moody answered quietly, “and I ask your permission to put it on the table, so that she may see it when your guests sit down to luncheon.”

He opened a jeweler’s case as he spoke, containing a plain gold bracelet with an inscription engraved on the inner side: “To Miss Isabel Miller, with the sincere good wishes of Robert Moody.”

Plain as it was, the design of the bracelet was unusually beautiful. Hardyman had noticed Moody’s agitation on the day when he had met Isabel near her aunt’s house, and had drawn his own conclusions from it. His face darkened with a momentary jealousy as he looked at the bracelet. “All right, old fellow!” he said, with contemptuous familiarity. “Don’t be modest. Wait and give it to her with your own hand.”

“No, sir,” said Moody “I would rather leave it, if you please, to speak for itself.”

Hardyman understood the delicacy of feeling which dictated those words, and, without well knowing why, resented it. He was on the point of speaking, under the influence of this unworthy motive, when Isabel’s voice reached his ears, calling to him from the cottage.

Moody’s face contracted with a sudden expression of pain as he, too, recognised the voice. “Don’t let me detain you, sir,” he said, sadly. “Good-morning!”

Hardyman left him without ceremony. Moody, slowly following, entered the tent. All the preparations for the luncheon had been completed; nobody was there. The places to be occupied by the guests were indicated by cards bearing their names. Moody found Isabel’s card, and put his bracelet inside the folded napkin on her plate. For a while he stood with his hand on the table, thinking. The temptation to communicate once more with Isabel before he lost her forever, was fast getting the better of his powers of resistance.

“If I could persuade her to write a word to say she liked her bracelet,” he thought, “it would be a comfort when I go back to my solitary life.” He tore a leaf out of his pocket book and wrote on it, “One line to say you accept my gift and my good wishes. Put it under the cushion of your chair, and I shall find it when the company have left the tent.” He slipped the paper into the case which held the bracelet, and instead of leaving the farm as he had intended, turned back to the shelter of the shrubbery.

CHAPTER XXI.

HARDYMAN went on to the cottage. He found Isabel in some agitation. And there, by her side, with his tail wagging slowly, and his eye on Hardyman in expectation of a possible kick — there was the lost Tommie!

“Has Lady Lydiard gone?” Isabel asked eagerly.

“Yes,” said Hardyman. “Where did you find the dog?”

As events had ordered it, the dog had found Isabel, under these circumstances.

The appearance of Lady Lydiard’s card in the smoking-room had been an alarming event for Lady Lydiard’s adopted daughter. She was guiltily conscious of not having answered her Ladyship’s note, inclosed in Miss Pink’s letter, and of not having taken her Ladyship’s advice in regulating her conduct towards Hardyman. As he rose to leave the room and receive his visitor in the grounds, Isabel begged him to say nothing of her presence at the farm, unless Lady Lydiard exhibited a forgiving turn of mind by asking to see her. Left by herself in the smoking-room, she suddenly heard a bark in the passage which had a familiar sound in her ears. She opened the door — and in rushed Tommie, with one of his shrieks of delight! Curiosity had taken him into the house. He had heard the voices in the smoking-room; had recognised Isabel’s voice; and had waited, with his customary cunning and his customary distrust of strangers, until Hardyman was out of the way. Isabel kissed and caressed him, and then drove him out again to the lawn, fearing that Lady Lydiard might return to look for him. Going back to the smoking-room, she stood at the window watching for Hardyman’s return. When the servants came to look for the dog, she could only tell them that she had last seen him in the grounds, not far from the cottage. The useless search being abandoned, and the carriage having left the gate, who should crawl out from the back of a cupboard in which some empty hampers were placed but Tommie himself! How he had contrived to get back to the smoking-room (unless she had omitted to completely close the door on her return) it was impossible to say. But there he was, determined this time to stay with Isabel, and keeping in his hiding place until he heard the movement of the carriage-wheels, which informed him that his lawful mistress had left the cottage! Isabel had at once called Hardyman, on the chance that the carriage might yet be stopped. It was already out of sight, and nobody knew which of two roads it had taken, both leading to London. In this emergency, Isabel could only look at Hardyman and ask what was to be done.

“I can’t spare a servant till after the party,” he answered. “The dog must be tied up in the stables.”

Isabel shook her head. Tommie was not accustomed to be tied up. He would make a disturbance, and he would be beaten by the grooms. “I will take care of him,” she said. “He won’t leave me.”

“There’s something else to think of besides the dog,” Hardyman rejoined irritably. “Look at these letters!” He pulled them out of his pocket as he spoke. “Here are no less than seven men, all calling themselves my friends, who accepted my invitation, and who write to excuse themselves on the very day of the party. Do you know why? They’re all afraid of my father — I forgot to tell you he’s a Cabinet Minister as well as a Lord. Cowards and cads. They have heard he isn’t coming and they think to curry favor with the great man by stopping away. Come along, Isabel! Let’s take their names off the luncheon table. Not a man of them shall ever darken my doors again!”

“I am to blame for what has happened,” Isabel answered sadly. “I am estranging you from your friends. There is still time, Alfred, to alter your mind and let me go.”

He put his arm round her with rough fondness. “I would sacrifice every friend I have in the world rather than lose you. Come along!”

They left the cottage. At the entrance to the tent, Hardyman noticed the dog at Isabel’s heels, and vented his ill-temper, as usual with male humanity, on the nearest unoffending creature that he could find. “Be off, you mongrel brute!” he shouted. The tail of Tommie relaxed from its customary tight curve over the small of his back; and the legs of Tommie (with his tail between them) took him at full gallop to the friendly shelter of the cupboard in the smoking-room. It was one of those trifling circumstances which women notice seriously. Isabel said nothing; she only thought to herself, “I wish he had shown his temper when I first knew him!”

They entered the tent.

“I’ll read the names,” said Hardyman, “and you find the cards and tear them up. Stop! I’ll keep the cards. You’re just the sort of woman my father likes. He’ll be reconciled to me when he sees you, after we are married. If one of those men ever asks him for a place, I’ll take care, if it’s years hence, to put an obstacle in his way! Here; take my pencil, and make a mark on the cards to remind me; the same mark I set against a horse in my book when I don’t like him — a cross, inclosed in a circle.” He produced his pocketbook. His hands trembled with anger as he gave the pencil to Isabel and laid the book on the table. He had just read the name of the first false friend, and Isabel had just found the card, when a servant appeared with a message. “Mrs. Drumblade has arrived, sir, and wishes to see you on a matter of the greatest importance.”

Hardyman left the tent, not very willingly. “Wait here,” he said to Isabel; “I’ll be back directly.”

She was standing near her own place at the table. Moody had left one end of the jeweler’s case visible above the napkin, to attract her attention. In a minute more the bracelet and note were in her hands. She dropped on her chair, overwhelmed by the conflicting emotions that rose in her at the sight of the bracelet, at the reading of the note. Her head drooped, and the tears filled her eyes. “Are all women as blind as I have been to what is good and noble in the men who love them?” she wondered, sadly. “Better as it is,” she thought, with a bitter sigh; “I am not worthy of him.”

As she took up the pencil to write her answer to Moody on the back of her dinner-card, the servant appeared again at the door of the tent.

“My master wants you at the cottage, miss, immediately.”

Isabel rose, putting the bracelet and the note in the silver-mounted leather pocket (a present from Hardyman) which hung at her belt. In the hurry of passing round the table to get out, she never noticed that her dress touched Hardyman’s pocketbook, placed close to the edge, and threw it down on the grass below. The book fell into one of the heat cracks which Lady Lydiard had noticed as evidence of the neglected condition of the cottage lawn.