A Singer from the Sea - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (books for students to read .TXT) 📗

the dead are dead."

But the conflict wearied her almost to insensibility. She was also physically exhausted by travel, and the next day she slept profoundly until nearly the noon hour. It had been her intention to see Elizabeth in the morning, and she was provoked at her own remissness, for what she feared in reality happened--Elizabeth was out driving when she reached her residence. The porter thought it would be six o'clock ere she could receive any visitor, "business or no business."

Denas said she would call at six o'clock, and charged the man to tell his mistress so.

But the visit and the engagement passed from the servant's mind. In fact, he had, as he claimed, a very genteel mind. Callers who came in a common cab did not find an entry into it. Elizabeth returned in due season from her drive, drank a cup of tea, and then made her evening toilet. For Lord Sudleigh was to dine with her, and Lord Sudleigh was the most important person in Elizabeth's life. It was her intention, as soon as she had paid the last tittle of mint, anise, and cummin to Mr. Burrell's memory, to become Lady Sudleigh. Everyone said it was a most proper alliance, the proposed bride having money and beauty and the bridegroom-elect birth, political influence, and quite as much love as was necessary to such a matrimonial contract.

Elizabeth, however, in spite of her pleasant prospect for the evening, was in a bad temper. The bishop's wife had snubbed her in the drive, and her dressmaker had disappointed her in a new costume. The March wind also had reddened her face, and perhaps she had a premonition of trouble, which she did not care to investigate. When informed that there was a lady waiting to see her on important business, she simply elected to let her wait until her toilet was finished. She had a conviction that it was some officious patroness on a charity mission--someone who wanted money for the good of other people. And as there are times when we all feel the claims of charity to be an unwarrantable imposition, so Elizabeth, blown-about, sun-browned, snubbed, disappointed, and anxious about her lover, was not, on this particular occasion, more to blame for want of courtesy than many others have been.

Finally she descended to the drawing-room and was ready to receive her visitor. There was a very large mirror in the room, and pending her entrance Elizabeth stood before it noticing the set and flow of her black lace dress, its heliotrope ribbons, and the sparkle of the hidden jets upon the bodice. Some heliotrope blossoms were in her breast, and her hands were covered with gloves of the same delicate colour. Denas saw her thus; saw her reflection in the glass before she turned to confront her.

For a moment Elizabeth was puzzled. The white face amid its sombre, heavy draperies had a familiarity she strove to name, but could not. But as Denasia came forward, some trick of head-carriage or of walking revealed her personality, and Elizabeth cried out in a kind of angry amazement:

"Denas! You here?"

"I am no more Denas to you than you are Elizabeth to me."

"Well, then, Mrs. Tresham! And pray where is my brother?"

"Dead."

"Dead? dead? Impossible! And if so, it is your fault, I know it is! I had a letter from him--the last letter--he said he was coming to me."

She was frightfully pale; she staggered to a sofa, sat down, and covered her face with her gloved hands. Denasia stood by a table watching her emotion and half-doubting its genuineness. A silence followed, so deep and long that Elizabeth could not endure it. She stood up and looked at Denasia, reproach and accusation in every tone and attitude. "Where did he die?" she asked.

"In New York."

"Of what did he die?"

"Of pneumonia."

"It was your fault, I am sure of it. Your fault in some way. My poor Roland! He had left you, I know that; and I hoped everything for his future."

"He had come back to me. He loved me better than ever. He died in my arms--died adoring me. His last work on earth was to give me this list of property, which I shall require you either to render back or to buy from me."

Elizabeth knew well what was wanted, and her whole soul was in arms at the demand. Yet it was a perfectly just one. By his father's will Roland had been left certain pieces of valuable personal property: family portraits and plate, two splendid cabinets, old china, Chinese and Japanese carvings, many fine paintings, antique chairs, etc., etc., the whole being property which had either been long in the Tresham family or endeared to it by special causes, and therefore left personally to Roland as the representative of the Treshams. At the break up of the Tresham home after his father's death, Roland had been glad to leave these treasures in Elizabeth's care, nor in his wandering life had the idea of claiming them ever come to him. As for their sale, that would have been an indignity to his ancestors below the contemplation of Roland.

Fortunately Mr. Tresham's lawyer had insisted upon Mrs. Burrell giving Roland a list of the articles left in her charge and an acknowledgment of Roland's right to them. "Life is so queer and has so many queer turns," he said, "that nothing can be left to likelihoods. Mrs. Burrell is not likely to die, but she may do so; and then there may be a new Mrs. Burrell who may make trouble, and I can conceive of many other complications which would render nugatory the intentions of the late Mr. Tresham. The property must, therefore, be set behind the bulwark of the law." Elizabeth herself had acknowledged this danger, and she had done all that was required of her in order to keep the Tresham family treasures within the keeping of the Treshams.

She was now confronted with her own acknowledgment and agreement, or at least with a copy of it, and she was well aware that it would be the greatest folly to deny the claim of Roland's wife. But the idea of robbing her beautiful home for Denasia was very bitter to her. She glanced around the room and imagined the precious cabinets and china, the curious carvings and fine paintings taken away, and then the alternative, the money she would have to pay to Denasia if she retained them, came with equal force and clearness to her intelligence.

"Mrs. Tresham," she said in a conciliating voice, "these objects can be of no value to you."

"Roland told me they were worth at least two thousand pounds, perhaps more. There is a picture of Turner's, which of----"

"What do you know about Turner? And can you really entertain the thought of selling things so precious to our family?"

"Roland wished you to buy them. If you do not value them sufficiently to do so, why should I keep them? In my father's cottage they would be absurd."

"Your father's cottage? You are laughing at me!"

"I am too sorrowful a woman to laugh. A few weeks ago, if I had had only one of these pictures I would have sold it for a mouthful of bread--for a little coal to warm myself; oh, my God! for medicine to save my child's life or to ease his passage to the grave."

"I had forgotten the child. Where is he?"

"By his father's side."

"That is well and best, doubtless."

"It is not well and best. What do you know? You have never been a mother. God never gave you such sorrowful grace."

"We will return to the list, if you please. What do you propose to do?"

"I have spoken to a man in Baker Street who deals in such things. If you wish to buy them and will pay their fair value I will sell them to you, because Roland desired you to have them. If you do not wish to buy them or will not pay a fair price I will remove them to Baker Street. There are others who will know their value."

"I advanced Roland a great deal of money."

"You gave him it. You demanded and accepted his thanks. The sums all told would not pay for the use of the property."

"I shall do right, of course. Bring the man you have spoken of to-morrow afternoon, and I also will have here an expert of the same kind. I will pay you whatever they decide is a proper sum."

"That will satisfy me."

"I am sorry affairs have come to this point between us. I tried to be kind to you. I think you have been very ungrateful."

"You were kind only to yourself. You never were a favourite in St. Penfer. Other ladies did not often call upon you. In me you had a companionship which you could control, you had your sewing done for next to nothing, you had the news of the town brought to you. You played upon my restless disposition, my love of fine clothing, my ambition to be some one greater than Denas Penelles, and as soon as good fortune came to you and you had everything you desired, you found me a bore, a claimant on your sense of justice which you did not like to meet. Understand that the fact of wearing silk and jewelry does not give you the right to take up an immortal soul and play with it or cast it aside as you find it convenient. I owe you the deepest grudge. You made me dissatisfied with my own life, you showed me the pleasant vistas of a different life, and when I hoped to enter with you, I found myself outside and the door shut in my face. You have always tried to make Roland dissatisfied with me. You insinuated, you deplored, in every letter to him. You stabbed while you pretended to kiss me. I found you out long ago. Everyone finds you out. You never had a friend. You never will have one."

She spoke with that pitiless scorn which is the language of suppressed passion. Elizabeth only lifted her eyebrows and turned away from her. And Denasia knew that she had made a mistake, and yet she did not regret it. There are times when it is a relief to be angry, whether we do well to be so or not; when to lose the temper is better than to keep it. Of course there are great and beautiful souls with whom nothing turns to bitterness, but the soul of Denasia was not one of these. It had been born ready to feel and ready to speak, and regarded it as something of a virtue to do so.

She left Elizabeth's house in a very unhappy mood, and at a rapid walk proceeded to her lodging in Bloomsbury. She would have felt the confinement of a cab to be intolerable, but it was a relief to set her personality against the friction of a million of encompassing wills. And in a short time she succumbed to that condition of electricity which they evolve, and permitted herself to be moved by it without considering her steps.

At length she was hungry, and she turned into a place of refreshment and ate with more healthy desire than she had felt for many months, and then the restless, fretting creature within was pacified, and she resolved to walk quietly to her room and sleep before she suffered herself to think any more.