Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (247 page)

[Hartford, stung to recklessness, finally insults Mina by a sarcastic reference to her as Zamorna’s ‘gentle mistress’ whom he visits when he is tired by ‘the turmoil of business and the teasing of matrimony’. They part abruptly, in bitterness.

More desperate than ever, Hartford challenges Zamorna to a duel; furious that ‘a coarse
Angrian
squire’ should seek to ‘possess anything that had ever been mine’, the duke inflicts a near-fatal wound on his rival.

Having dismissed Hartford, and unaware of the ensuing duel, Mina returns to her daily tasks, and to waiting for the duke. Mary, less patent than Mina, can wait no longer, and sets out for Zamorna’s country house. An accident with her carriage lands her instead at Mina’s Cross of Rivaulx, which is on the grounds of the duke’s estate.]

Miss Laury was sitting after breakfast in a small library. Her desk lay before her, and two large ruled quartos filled with items and figures which she seemed to be comparing. Behind her chair stood a tall, well-made, soldierly, young man with light hair. His dress was plain and gentlemanly; the epaulette on one shoulder alone indicated an official capacity. He watched with a fixed look of attention the movements of the small fingers, which ascended in rapid calculation of long columns of accounts. It was strange to see the absorption of mind expressed in Miss Laury’s face; the gravity of her smooth, white brow, shaded with drooping curls; the scarcely perceptible and unsmiling movement of her lips — though those lips in their rosy
sweetness seemed formed only for smiles. An hour or more lapsed in the employment, the room meantime continuing in profound silence broken only by an occasional observation addressed by Miss Laury to the gentleman behind her concerning the legitimacy of some items, or the absence of some stray farthing, wanted to complete the necessary of the sum total. In the balancing of the books she displayed a most businesslike sharpness and strictness. The slightest fault was detected and remarked on in few words, but with a quick searching glance. However, the accountant had evidently been accustomed to her surveillance, for on the whole his books were a specimen of mathematical correctness.

‘Very well,’ said Miss Laury, as she closed the volumes. ‘Your accounts do you credit, Mr O’Neill. You may tell his grace that all is quite right. Your memoranda tally with my own exactly.’ Mr O’Neill bowed.

‘Thank you, madam.’ Taking up his books, he seemed about to leave the room. Before he did so, however, he turned and said,

‘The duke wished me to inform you, madam, that he would probably be here about four or five o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘Today?’ asked Miss Laury in an accent of surprise. ‘Yes, madam.’ She paused a moment, then said quickly,

‘Very well, sir.’ Mr O’Neill now took his leave with another bow of low and respectful obeisance. Miss Laury returned it with a slight abstracted bow; her thoughts were all caught up and hurried away by that last communication. For a long time after the door had closed, she sat with her head on her hand, lost in a tumultuous flush of ideas — anticipations awakened by that simple sentence, ‘The duke will be here today.’

The striking of the timepiece roused her. She remembered that twenty tasks waited her direction. Always active, always employed, it was not her custom to while away hours in dreaming. She rose, closed her desk, and left the quiet library for busier scenes.

Four o’clock came and Miss Laury’s foot was heard on the staircase, descending from her chamber. She crossed the large, light passage, an apparition of feminine elegance and beauty. She had dressed herself splendidly: the robe of black satin became at once her slender form, which it enveloped in full and shining folds, and her bright, blooming complexion, which it set off by the contrast of colour. Glittering through her
curls there was a band of fine diamonds, and drops of the same pure gem trembled from her small, delicate ears. These ornaments, so regal in their nature, had been the gift of royalty, and were worn now chiefly for the associations of soft and happy moments which their gleam might be supposed to convey.

She entered her drawing room and stood by the window. From thence appeared one glimpse of the high-road, visible through the thickening shades of Rivaulx; even that was now almost concealed by the frozen mist in which the approach of twilight was wrapt. All was very quiet, both in the house and in the wood. A carriage drew near, she heard the sound. She saw it shoot through the fog. But it was not Zamorna.

She had not gazed a minute before her experienced eye discerned that there was something wrong with the horses — the harness had got entangled, or they were
 
frightened. The coachman had lost command over them, they were plunging violently. She rung the bell; a servant entered; she ordered immediate assistance to be despatched to that carriage on the road. Two grooms presently hurried down the drive to execute her commands, but before they could reach the spot, one of the horses, in its gambols, had slipped on the icy road and fallen. The others grew more unmanageable, and presently the carriage lay overturned on the roadside. One of Miss Laury’s messengers came back. She threw up the window.

‘Anybody hurt?’

‘I hope not much, madam.’

‘Who is in the carriage?’

‘Only one lady, and she seems to have fainted. She looked very white when I opened the door. What is to be done, madam?’ Miss Laury, with Irish frankness, answered directly.

‘Bring the lady in directly, and make the servants comfortable.’

‘Yes, madam.’

Miss Laury shut her window; it was very cold. Not many minutes elapsed before the lady, in the arms of her own servant, was slowly brought up the lawn and ushered into the drawing-room.

‘Lay her on the sofa,’ said Miss Laury. The lady’s travelling cloak was carefully removed, and a thin figure became apparent in a dark silk dress: the cushions of down scarcely sunk under the pressure, it was so light.

Her swoon was now passing off. The genial warmth
of the fire, which shone full on her, revived her. Opening her eyes, she looked up at Miss Laury’s face, who was bending close over her, wetting her lips with some cordial. Recognising a stranger, she shyly turned her glance aside. She looked keenly round the room, and seeing the perfect elegance of its arrangement, the cheerful and tranquil glow of a
hearthlight
, she appeared to grow more composed.

‘To whom am I indebted for this kindness? Where am I?’

‘In a hospitable country, madam. The Angrians never turn their backs on strangers.’

‘I know I am in Angria,’ she said quietly, ‘but where? What is the name of this house, and who are you?’

Miss Laury coloured slightly. It seemed as if there were some undefinable reluctance to give her real name; she knew she was widely celebrated — too widely; most likely the lady would turn from her in contempt if she heard it. Miss Laury felt she could not bear that.

‘I am only the housekeeper,’ she said. ‘This is a shooting lodge belonging to a great Angrian proprietor — -’

‘Who?’ asked the lady, who was not to be put off by indirect answers. Again Miss Laury hesitated; for her life she could not have said ‘His Grace the Duke of Zamorna.’ She replied hastily.

‘A gentleman of western extraction, a distant branch of the great Pakenhams — so at least the family records say, but they have been long naturalised in the east — -’

‘I never heard of them,’ replied the lady. ‘Pakenham? That is not an Angrian name!’

‘Perhaps, madam, you are not particularly acquainted with this part of the country — -’

‘I know Hawkscliffe,’ said the lady, ‘and your house is on the very borders, within the royal liberties, is it not?’

‘Yes, madam. It stood there before the great duke bought up the forest manor, and his majesty allowed my master to retain this lodge and the privilege of sporting in the chase.’

‘Well, and you are Mr Pakenham’s housekeeper?’

‘Yes, madam.’ The lady surveyed Miss Laury with another furtive side-glance of her large, majestic eyes. Those eyes lingered upon the diamond earrings, the bandeau of brilliants that flashed from between the clusters of raven curls; then passed over the sweet face, the exquisite figure of the young housekeeper; and finally were reverted to the wall with an expression that spoke volumes. Miss Laury could have torn the dazzling pendants from her ears; she was bitterly stung. ‘Everybody knows me,’ she said to herself. ‘ “Mistress” I suppose is branded on my brow — -’

[Realizing that Mina is lying, Mary asks for a room to withdraw to and concocts her own story: she is ‘Mrs Irving’, whose husband
is
a minister from the north. Mary retires; Mina, below, awaits Zamorna’s arrival.]

Five o’clock now struck. It was nearly dark. A servant with a taper was lighting up the chandeliers in the large dining room where a table, spread for dinner, received the kindling lamplight upon a starry service of silver. It was likewise flashed back from a splendid sideboard, all arranged in readiness to receive the great, the expected, guest.

Tolerably punctual in keeping an appointment when he meant to keep it at all — Zamorna entered the house as the fairylike voice of a musical clock in the passage struck out its symphony to the pendulum. The opening of the front door, a bitter rush of the night wind; then the sudden close and the step advancing were the signals of his arrival.

Miss Laury was in the dining room looking round and giving the last touch to all things. She just met her master as he entered. His cold lip pressed to her forehead, and his colder hand clasping hers, brought the sensation which it was her custom of weeks and months to wait for, and to consider, when attained, as the single recompense of all delay and all toil, all suffering.

‘I am frozen, Mina,’ said he. ‘I came on horseback for the last four miles and the night is like Canada.’ Chafing his icy hand to animation between her own warm and supple palms, she answered by the speechless but expressive look of joy, satisfaction, and idolatry which filled and overflowed her eyes.

‘What can I do for you, my lord?’ were her first words, as he stood by the fire raising his hands cheerily over the blaze. He laughed.

‘Put your arms around my neck, Mina, and kiss my cheek as warm and blooming as your own.’

If Mina Laury had been Mina Wellesley, she would have done so; and it gave her a pang to resist the impulse that urged her to take him at his word. But she put it by and only diffidently drew near the arm chair into which he had now thrown himself, and began to smooth and separate the curls on his temples. She noticed, as the first smile of salutation subsided, a gloom succeeded on her master’s brow, which, however he spoke or laughed afterwards, remained a settled characteristic of his countenance.

‘What visitors are in the house?’ he asked. ‘I saw the groom rubbing down four black horses before the stables as I came in.’

‘A carriage was overturned at the lodge gates about an hour since; as the lady who was in it was taken out insensible, I ordered her to be brought up here and her servants accommodated for the night.’

‘And do you know who the lady is?’ continued his grace. ‘The horses are good — first rate.’

‘She says her name is Mrs Irving, and that she is the wife of a Presbyterian minister in the north, but — -’

‘You hardly believe her?’ interrupted the duke.

‘No,’ returned Miss Laury. ‘I must say I took her for a lady of rank. She has something highly aristocratic about her manners and aspect, and she appeared to know a good deal about Angria.’

‘What is she like?’ asked Zamorna. ‘Young or old, handsome or ugly?
^’

‘She is young, slender, not so tall as I, and I should say rather elegant than handsome; very pale and cold in her demeanour. She has a small mouth and chin and a very fair neck — -’