Lady Adela

“ Remorse for her own line of conduct during the past years. With the low fever in Switzerland, she began to think of serious things. The awakening to the responsibilities that lie upon us to remember and prepare for a future and better state—an awakening that comes to us all sooner or later, in a greater or a less degree—came to Lady Adela. She saw what her past life had been, all its mocking contempt for what was good, its supreme indifference, its intense selfishness. Night by night, on her bended knees, amid sobs and bitter tears, she besought forgiveness of the Most High. ”

“ But Lady Adela and her two sisters were relations of Honnor Cunyngham; they were going down to Brighton this very week; he was anxious (though hardly knowing why) to stand well in their opinion and be of importance in their eyes. As he now walked home he thought he would go and call on Lady Adela the following afternoon; if she were going down to that house in Adelaide Crescent, there would be plenty of talk among the women-folk; his name might be mentioned.
Next morning there was no further word of Nina. ”

“ As she gazed at it, too fascinated to remove her eyes, there was a loud, reverberating crash, a hideous sound of wrenching and tearing, and the whole of the ceiling of the inner chamber came down with an [84] appalling roar. Lady Adela thinks that she must then have fainted, for she distinctly remembers falling—falling into what seemed to her a black, interminable abyss. When she recovered consciousness, she was lying on the tiles, and all around was still and normal. She got up, found and lighted her candle, and spent the rest of the evening, without further adventure, in the drawing-room. ”

“ From its general contour and the tangled mass of hair that fell about its neck and shoulders, Lady Adela concluded it was the phantasm of a woman. Its head being kept bent, she was unable to see the face in full, but every instant she expected the revelation would take place, and with each separate movement of the phantasm her suspense became more and more intolerable. At last it stood on the floor of the cellar, a broad, ungainly, horribly ungainly figure, that glided up to and past her into the far cellar. ”

“ She would have received his addresses with gentle complacency; and, being more the creature of habit than impulse, would no doubt, in the intimacy of connubial life, have blest him, or any other admiring husband, with a reasonable modicum of languid affection. Nevertheless, Lady Adela was an unconscious impostor; for, owing to a mild softness of eye and a susceptibility to blushes, a victim ensnared by her beauty would be apt to give her credit for a nature far more accessible to the romance of the tender passion than, happily perhaps for her own peace of mind, she possessed ”

“ The arrangements connected with this step had been settled between himself and Lord Acorn: and he should be glad if she made it convenient to leave Grosvenor Square that day.
Intense astonishment, gradually giving place to dismay, kept her silent. The comb dropped from her hand. "Anything but this," beat the refrain in her heart; "anything but this." For Lady Adela, so alive to the good opinion of the world, would almost rather have preferred death than that she should be publicly put away by her husband. ”

“ So unlike the staccato stuff that passes for conversation nowadays."
"Too true, too true!" agreed Lady Adela, eagerly mounting one of her pet hobby-horses. "She sounds most stimulating. It is unfashionable to-day to be elderly. My daughter informs me that no one--not even a grandmother--should have any recollection of anything that happened previous to the period when people wore bustles. All time before that she sums up as the chignon age. No, there is no sense of perspective nowadays. We are all for the present."
"Admirably put, dear Lady Adela," cooed Mr. Welwyn. ”

“ Adela looked at her, hesitated, opened her fan, shut it again, and smiled.
"Oh, I didn't mean that, Bessie," she said with half a laugh. "Do, please."
"But if you dislike him——"
"Why, my dear, doesn't one hate half the men one likes meeting—and all the women!"
Lady Semingham smiled amiably. She did not care to think out what that meant; it was Adela's way, just as it was her husband's way to laugh at many things that seemed to her to afford no opening for mirth. But Adela was not to escape. ”

“ It's Adela."
"Adela!" echoed Lady Acorn, aghast.
"I don't think he'd have Grace at a gift—or any of them but Adela. And so you told her, making her dream of wedding-rings and orange-blossoms! Poor Gracie, what a sell!"
"Adela will never have him," broke forth the countess, in high vexation, at herself, her husband, Mr. Grubb, and the world in general. "Never!"
"Oh, nonsense, she must be talked into it. With five girls, it's something to get off one of them."
"Adela is not a girl to be 'talked into' anything. She would like a duke. She is the vainest of them all." ”

“ One may see how he loves her."
"Love!" cried Adela. "It is perfectly absurd—from him to me. But it is the way with those plebeians."
The preparations for the wedding were begun. On so magnificent a scale that the fashionable world of London was ringing with them. The bridegroom's liberality, in all that concerned his future wife, could not be surpassed. Settlements, houses, carriages, horses, furniture, ornaments, jewellery, all were perfect of their kind, leaving nothing to be wished for. The Lady Adela had once spoken of Aladdin's lamp, in reference to her sister Grace's ideal union ”

“ Rendel," the whole of the group who were standing near turned with a common impulse as if a thunderbolt had fallen into their midst, and he grasped at once that they had been talking within earshot of her of something she ought not to have heard. Lady Adela was the first to recover her presence of mind.
"Come," she said; "we must go and take our places. I mean to have some tea if we can get it before the opening," and she made a move in which the others joined.
Pateley, remaining by Rachel, lifted his hat to them as they strolled away. "How long have you been at Schleppenheim?" he asked. ”

“ Lady Adela was saying.
"You may depend upon it," said Lady Chaloner, "that it was something very bad. He is not the man to do that sort of thing for nothing."
"I am quite sure of it," Lady Adela replied, with a little tremor of excitement. "One can't help feeling that it's something really bad; that it was [Pg 273] not only that he had run away with his neighbour's wife or something of that kind. He must have done something that can't be condoned."
"I am sure of it," Lady Chaloner said seriously. "There is no doubt about that."
"Poor creature!" said Lady Adela. "Didn't he look awful?" ”

“ I should have to run; and be posted up as a defaulter, into the bargain, all over the kingdom." And, in a few brief words, he explained facts to her; making, of course, the worst of them. The obstinacy on Adela's countenance faded away as she listened: she was deeply attached to her father.
"You will be a very princess, if you take him, Adela," said Lady Acorn. "Ah! I can tell you, child, before you have come to my age you will have found out that there's little worth living for but wealth, which brings ease and comfort. ”

“ Adela had thrown off her waterproof in the cab; she stood in her lady-like costume of home, her hat only showing that she had come from a distance. For years her cheeks had been very pale; in this moment her whole face was white as marble. Her delicate beauty made strange contrast with the faces on each side and in front of her—faces of rude intelligence, faces of fathomless stupidity, faces degraded into something less than human. But all were listening, all straining towards her. There were a few whispers of honest admiration, a few of vile jest. ”

“ When they had hustled all sensibility out of their lives they invented the fiction that they felt too much to utter. Adela said nothing to her sisters; this reticence was part of the virtue it was her idea to practise for them. She was to be their mother, a direct deputy and representative. Before the vision of that other woman parading in such a character she felt capable of ingenuities, of deep diplomacies. The essence of these indeed was just tremulously to watch her father. Five days after they had dined together at Mrs. Churchley’s he asked her if she had been to see that lady. ”

“ Lionel said, in considerable surprise, "I don't see how it can be so very stupid, when Lady Adela herself is one of the brightest, cleverest, shrewdest, most intelligent women you could meet with anywhere—quite unusually so."
"That may be; but she is not the first clever woman who has made the mistake of imagining that because she is socially popular she must therefore be able to write a book."
"And what am I to say to Octavius Quirk?"
"What are you to say to the log-rollers? Don't say anything. Get Lady Adela to ask one or two of them to dinner. You'll fetch Quirk that way easily ”

“ Her cheeks turned red with shame whenever she thought of her kind and good husband, and of how she had requited him. Lady Harriet was right too in her surmise—that Adela had now grown to love her husband. How full of contradictions this human heart of ours is, experience shows us more surely day by day. ”

“ From that moment you were no more to me than a strange young lady; and that I forget this and tell you all that I am saying now, is due to the sight of those wreaths and of your tears."
"And when the wreaths are withered and the tears are dried, must we be strangers again?" Adela whispered softly, with a questioning glance. ”

“ He is very nice; very; and the advantages are very great. Tell me why you will not, Adela—dear Adela?"
Adela turned her head away. "I do not care to marry yet; him, or any other man."
A light—or rather a doubt—seemed to break upon Lady Grace. "Adela," she whispered, "it is not possible you are still thinking of Captain Stanley?"
"Where would be the use of that?" was the answer. "He is fighting in India, and I am here: little chance of our paths in life ever again crossing each other." ”

“ For Lady Adela knew better than to deceive herself with vain hopes; she knew that to cherish them would be the veriest mockery; that when Francis Grubb threw her off, it was for ever.
Many a moment did she spend now, regretting that she had not died in the fever. It would at least have brought about a last interview; for Harriet would have kept her word and sent for him.
"Better for me to die than live," she murmured to herself, lifting her fevered hand. "I could have died happily, with his forgiveness on my lips. Whereas, to live is nothing but pain ”

“ Therefore Adela was not much pleased to see her. She found that Frances had been dining at home, and had ordered the carriage round here on her way back to Lady Sarah Hope's. It was about nine o'clock.
"Is your husband at home?" she inquired of Adela, without any circumlocution, when she entered the drawing-room.
"No. He has not been home since yesterday morning. I expect he is at Blackheath with that wavering old mother of his, dying today and well tomorrow," listlessly added Adela.
"Had he been at home I should have sent him round to the mother and Grace; they are so frightfully uneasy." ”

“ Lady Adela received both Lionel and his friend in the most kindly manner.
"What a charming photograph that is of you in evening{344} dress," she said to Lionel. "Really, I've had to lock away my copy of it; girls are such thieves nowadays; they think nothing of picking up what pleases them and popping it in their pockets." And therewith Lady Adela turned to Mr. Quirk, with whom she had been talking ”

“ Grace went on to Colonel Hope's place near Cheltenham, to stay with her sisters, Sarah and Frances. This left Adela and Lady Acorn alone; and her ladyship very nearly drove the girl wild with her tartness. She would have driven her quite wild had Adela's spirit been what it once was; but it was altogether subdued.
"Mamma," said Adela to her one day, after some mutual bickering, "do you want me to die?"
"Don't talk like a simpleton," retorted Lady Acorn.
"I think I shall die—if I have to lead this life much longer."
"You are as much likely to die as I am. What do you mean?" ”

“ Probably several hundreds a year will be left, and many men would be thankful for that. Then other people say it is such a pity that now he cannot marry Lady Rose Bright. They have the effrontery to say that to me, as if £800 a year were not enough for them to marry on if they cared for each other!"
All this tirade seemed to Adela the very natural outpouring of jealousy, and, as she fully intended to be an intimate friend of Molly's she sympathised and agreed, and agreed and sympathised till she fairly, roused Molly's sense of the ludicrous. ”

“ Quirk, with much satisfaction, as if Providence were working hand in hand with him, "I mean to advise Lady Adela to send him a copy of 'Kathleen's Sweethearts.' Now do you understand? No? Why, man, if there's any luck, when he dies and all the memoirs come out in the newspapers, it will be mentioned that the last book the deceased statesman tried to read was Lady Adela Cunyngham's well-known novel. Do you see? Good business? Then there's another thing she must absolutely do with her new book. These woman-suffrage people are splendid howlers and spouters ”

“ Nothing in a small way had ever surprised Lady Harriet so much, as to find Adela take out her Bible and Prayer-book, and keep them near her.
She sat today, buried as usual in the past, the bitter anguish of remembrance rending her soul. We are told in Holy Writ that the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. The heart of woman is undoubtedly contradictory. When Adela was Mr. Grubb's wife, she had done her best to scorn and despise him, to persuade herself she hated him: now that he was lost to her for ever, she had grown to love him, passionately as ever man was loved by woman. ”