Lady Lochore

“ My Lady Lochore arrived towards that falling hour of the day when the shadows are growing long and soft, when the slanting light is amber: it might be called the coloured hour, for the sun begins to veil its splendour, so that eyes, undazzled, may rejoice. The swallows were dipping across the sward of golden-emerald and Bindon stood proudly golden-grey in the light, silver-grey in the shadows and against the blue. ”

“ Lady Lochore started ever so slightly and turned round sharply. Never had Margery looked more benevolent, more virtuous.
“Yes, that’s what I do be saying to myself,” pursued the housekeeper. “Somebody will be found dead, and nobody to fix the blame on, with the way things are going on.” (The pupils of Lady Lochore’s eyes narrowed like a hawk’s.) “And when I see Mrs. Marvel going about, so young and fresh and strong, and sure of herself:—‘Maybe it will be you,’ thinks I.”
“Oh, get away with you!” cried Lady Lochore, and buried her head on her hands with a frenzied gesture. ”

“ In her rustling thin silk spencer and her fluttering muslin, with hectic, handsome face, looking anxiously out from under the wide befeathered bonnet, Lady Lochore advanced her thin sandalled foot on the step of the coach and rested her hand upon David’s extended arm. ”

“ Lady Lochore flushed. She knew to what he referred; knew that there was one guest to which the doors of Bindon would never be opened in its present master’s lifetime. She was angry with herself for having made the blunder of allowing him to imagine for a moment that she was plotting so absurd a move. She hesitated, and then, with characteristic cynicism:
“What!” she cried, “do you think I want that devil here? No more than you do yourself.”
“Hey, hey!” cried Master Simon, startled from some abstruse cogitation.
Still Sir David looked rigidly down at his plate. ”

“ Margery, on her side, perfectly aware of the pretence, drew a stool with ostentatious precautions to the bedside, sat down and waited. But the feeling of being watched became quickly intolerable. Lady Lochore rolled petulantly over on her pillows.
“What in God’s name do you want? Great heavens, one would imagine that you at least would know better than to disturb me!”
“My lady,” cooed Margery, “Sir David is awake.”
Lady Lochore sat bolt upright and, under the thin cambric and lace that fell in such empty folds over her bosom, the sudden leaping of her heart was visible. ”

“ With her familiar gesture, she had to clap her hand to her mouth.
“Why, great God! He knows nothing! he remembers 317nothing! First madness, then long, long sleep! Old man, I thank thee for that fantastic drug!”
Over her gagging hand Lady Lochore’s eyes danced with a flame so fierce and unholy that the bewildered and unhappy parson shuddered. He felt instinctively as if the meshes of the web which seemed to have been skilfully flung round Ellinor were tightening in remorseless hands. ”

“ Marvel!”
At the first sound of Lady Lochore’s voice, at the sight of Margery’s face, she fell from her pinnacle, suddenly and piteously. Why were these, her enemies, here, and why had she been convened into their presence? Why did the rector sit there like a judge and wear that uneasy countenance? Her brain whirled. It could fasten on no settled thought. But in the great crisis of life what woman trusts to thought when she can feel! Ellinor felt:—this bodes evil! Yet David had looked at her with beautiful eyes of faith and gladness. ”

“ She had but the time to spring to her feet; and upon the flash of a single thought, to unfasten her cloak and fling it hastily over David’s body, before the knock was repeated louder and the door thrown open.
Lady Lochore stood on the threshold.
Behind her was a peering group. Ellinor, in the first moment of strained fancy, saw a thousand lights, a thousand staring eyes, a sea of faces. The next instant the tide of blood began slowly to ebb from her brain. She felt herself strong, cold, indifferent. ”

“ She’ll give nothing for nothing! She’s laid her plans.” Lady Lochore began reckoning on three angry fingers uplifted. “There’s the equivocal position—one; my brother’s diseased notions of honour—two; her own bread-and-butter comeliness—three. She’ll hook him, Tony. She’ll hook him, and my boy will go a beggar! Lochore has pretty well ruined us as it is.”
“I should not regard Sir David as a marrying man, myself,” said the colonel soothingly.
“No,” said she, “the last man in the world to marry, but the first to be married on some preposterous claim! Look here, Tony, we are old friends. ”

“ So long as she had life and could stand before him, no one should lift that cloak to see who lay beneath it.
She took her post and faced the intruders:—Lady Lochore, with harpy countenance, craning forward, greedy of vengeance; Mr. Villars, with goatish face, looking over 279her shoulder, greedy of scandal; Margery with stony eyes, holding the candelabra up aloft to shed more light upon her enemy’s shame; Mrs. Geary, staring with pallid orbs.... Ellinor clenched her arms over her heaving breast. ”

“ Villars, again, could have informed you, how he came upon Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt brawling on the bridge an hour later, both in torn garments and as highly incensed one against the other, as only rivals——”
“Needless, all this,” said Ellinor, in a low clear voice. She had flung back her head and stood, white as death, but composed, holding herself as proudly as a queen. “I deny nothing. It would be useless to deny, did I wish it, what Lady Lochore and her friends and Mrs. Nutmeg have seen for themselves.” ”

“ That would be the first time!”
“For God’s sake, lock him up, lock him up!” screamed Lady Lochore, suddenly breaking into fury. “One’s life’s not safe in this lunatic asylum, between your potions and your idiots. Lock him up, I say, or I’ll not dare trust myself alone another minute. I ought to be thankful, surely,” she turned sneering upon Ellinor, “that David’s hospitality ends for us to-morrow.”
“Come, come,” said Master Simon, as if the afflicted creature could hear him. ”

“ Lady Lochore did not answer, for she was seized with laughter.
“Dear father,” insisted Ellinor. She had come round to the old man and had laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder, “I have nothing but mistrust for your new Elixir. You have taught me too much for me not to 256realise its danger. If you were not now under its influence yourself, I know you would see it too. Even a mere infusion of the leaves has so strange an effect, that I have ceased—forgive me, dear—to let the villagers have it.”
The simpler threw off her touch in high displeasure.
“A woman all over!” he muttered. ”

“ I could hear the sound of their voices—she has great power with Sir David—has Mrs. Marvel.”
Lady Lochore sat down again. Her fingers closed on the muslin of the dressing-table. Helplessly and hopelessly 234her haggard eyes looked forth into a black prospective. Oh, she had failed—failed!
“’Tis indeed a sad day for Bindon,” said Margery after a pause, as if in answer to Lady Lochore. “No wonder your ladyship is anxious. There are times when I do think we’ll have some dreadful catastrophe here. If it’s nothing worse there’ll be an accident with them drugs, as sure as fate. ”

“ Mrs. Geary caught her daughter’s wrist and the girl gave a cry of pain. “Disobedient child, back to your room!”
Priscilla whimpered and writhed; but the lady maintained her firm grasp and, with dignity accepting a candle 282from Margery’s candelabra, turned and marched the truant down the passage that led to her apartments.
Bowing and smirking, Mr. Villars, whose further advice and proffers of help were ruthlessly cut short by an impatient wave of Lady Lochore’s hand, had no resource but to betake himself with his triple light in the direction of his own quarters. ”

“ As little for the game, as little for loss or profit, as small Priscilla herself, whose black-rimmed eyes pleaded for bed, who took no pains to conceal her yawns and played her cards as if she were already in a dream.
Yet Lady Lochore was eager to keep company about her to-night. She was the first to insist on the fresh round; the first to press the willing elderly gamblers to another cast. It seemed as if she wanted to throw her heart into the excitement; to hear the rattle of the dice 266and her own loud laugh; to force herself to interest in her opponents’ wrangles ”

“ Villars, Colonel Harcourt, and Mrs. Geary. The younger generation, of whose acquaintance I have not yet the honour, will no doubt prove worthy of such elders!” He paused again, to continue in his uninflected voice: “Since these are the sort of guests you most wish to see at Bindon, you have my permission to invite them.”
He rose as he spoke, giving the signal for the breaking up of the uncomfortable circle. As Lady Lochore whisked past Master Simon, in his antiquated blue garment, she paused. ”

“ Ellinor might have been more alarmed had she not remembered his attack on Lady Lochore, and been persuaded 267that the poor fellow was still suffering from the effects of her father’s mania for experiment.
She resolved at length to humour the boy as far as she could, and at the same time, from her own little pharmacy downstairs, to obtain some harmless sedative and then coax him into bed again. Drawing her cloak more closely over her white garb, she took up the rushlight in one hand and extended the other to Barnaby, who in joy staggered to his feet and precipitated himself forward. ”

“ Sometimes, however, downward thrusts, like spears, when Sol was high; or again when he was about to sink a level shaft, rose-red in winter, amber glowing in summer, would come driving in through the vaulted spaces, high above Master Simon’s head and show to the eye that cared to notice, how dim and vapour-heavy was all the room below.
The two fires then came not amiss. Despite the flame on the open hearth and the glow of the little furnace, Lady Lochore, as she entered, shivered after the hot sunshine.
“How dark it is with you!” she cried. “And what strange odours! Ha! ”

“ Tutterville. “There is more in this than meets the eye. Ellinor, you have let yourself be caught in some cunning trap!”
“Uncle Horatio,” answered she, “you are right. Yes, things are not as you think.”
And upon this enigmatic phrase she left them.
Lady Lochore went straight up to her child. She told herself she was extraordinarily happy. She had been 325providentially saved from fratricide and yet had encompassed her end:—Ellinor’s position at Bindon had at last been rendered untenable. And her boy’s inheritance was safe! ”

“ Her anxiety was not lessened when Master Simon now wound up his first oration by proclaiming that, after various long hours of work, he had at last extracted so pure an essence of the Euphrosine that one drop had sufficed to produce this result upon himself.
“Then, surely, father,” she cried, “you have prepared a dangerous drug! Out of its beneficence you must have drawn a deadly poison——”
Lady Lochore had seated herself on the bench on the other side of the old student. She evinced a great interest 240in his remarks; encouraged him by exclamation, laughter and question to further garrulity. ”

“ If you wished to give me pleasure, Bell, you would not fly in my face, as Clara did. If you attended to your person, I might yet be gratified by hearing praises of your beauty, and receive pleasure in contemplating your future establishment; but I have no hopes for you. I have no inducement to quit this dreary Lochleven. I will not carry forth a daughter who is blind to her own advancement, or subject myself to ridicule, by the constant appendage of a young woman who is likely to pass single to her grave. ”

“ Lochinvar shook off his cousin's hand a little impatiently. He wanted nothing better than just to go on watching Kate McGhie's profile as it outlined itself against the broad, shining reach of water. He marvelled that he had been aforetime so blind to its beauty; but then these ancient admirations in Scotland had been only lightness of heart and a young man's natural love of love-making. But Walter Gordon knew that this which had stricken him to the heart, as he came suddenly upon the girl pillowing her head on her palms at Maisie's knee, was no mere love-making. ”

“ Then, with a single swift movement, lithe and instantaneous as that of a young wild animal which has never known restraint, Kate of the Dark Lashes rose to her feet.
"Walter Gordon of Lochinvar," she said, "is a Scottish gentleman. He will never be willing to remember that which a lady chooses to forget." ”

“ He had therefore written a line to his banker, and a line to his lawyer, and he had himself seen Locock, and his wife's hands had been loosened. "I didn't think, your Grace," said Locock, "that his Grace would be so very—very—very—" "Very what, Locock?" "So very free, your Grace." The Duchess, as she thought of it, declared to herself that her husband was the truest nobleman in all England. She revered, admired, and almost loved him. She knew him to be infinitely better than herself. ”

“ There was a child-like innocence, a fascinating simplicity, joined to an expression of vivacity and happiness, in Lady Lodore's countenance, which impressed at first sight, as being the completion of feminine beauty. She looked as if no time could touch, no ill stain her; artless affection and amiable dependence spoke in each graceful gesture. Others might be beautiful, but there was that in her, which seemed allied to celestial loveliness. ”

“ Kate rose and walked away without answering a word. She cared no jot for Wat Gordon, so she told herself. He was nothing to her, save that she desired his safety and had risked much to give him shelter. Yet this Duchess of Wellwood—that woman of whom the gross popular tongue whispered commonly the most terrible things! Had Lochinvar made love to her? Was he to meet her at the end of the avenue? She could not believe it. It was, indeed, no matter if he did. What did she care? Go to the arbor, become an eavesdropper—not for any man alive, least of all for Wat Gordon! ”