Lady Rose's Daughter Part 1

Lady Rose's Daughter.

by Mrs. Humphry Ward.

I

"Hullo! No!--Yes!--upon my soul, it _is_ Jacob! Why, Delafield, my dear fellow, how are you?"

So saying--on a February evening a good many years ago--an elderly gentleman in evening dress flung himself out of his cab, which had just stopped before a house in Bruton Street, and hastily went to meet a young man who was at the same moment stepping out of another hansom a little farther down the pavement.

The pleasure in the older man's voice rang clear, and the younger met him with an equal cordiality, expressed perhaps through a manner more leisurely and restrained.

"So you _are_ home, Sir Wilfrid? You were announced, I saw. But I thought Paris would have detained you a bit."

"Paris? Not I! Half the people I ever knew there are dead, and the rest are uncivil. Well, and how are you getting on? Making your fortune, eh?"

And, slipping his arm inside the young man's, the speaker walked back with him, along a line of carriages, towards a house which showed a group of footmen at its open door. Jacob Delafield smiled.

"The business of a land agent seems to be to spend some one else's--as far as I've yet gone."

"Land agent! I thought you were at the bar?"

"I was, but the briefs didn't come in. My cousin offered me the care of his Ess.e.x estates. I like the country--always have. So I thought I'd better accept."

"What--the Duke? Lucky fellow! A regular income, and no anxieties. I expect you're pretty well paid?"

"Oh, I'm not badly paid," replied the young man, tranquilly. "Of course you're going to Lady Henry's?"

"Of course. Here we are."

The older man paused outside the line of servants waiting at the door, and spoke in a lower tone. "How is she? Failing at all?"

Jacob Delafield hesitated. "She's grown very blind--and perhaps rather more infirm, generally. But she is at home, as usual--every evening for a few people, and for a good many on Wednesdays."

"Is she still alone--or is there any relation who looks after her?"

"Relation? No. She detests them all."

"Except you?"

Delafield raised his shoulders, without an answering smile. "Yes, she is good enough to except me. You're one of her trustees, aren't you?"

"At present, the only one. But while I have been in Persia the lawyers have done all that was necessary. Lady Henry herself never writes a letter she can help. I really have heard next to nothing about her for more than a year. This morning I arrived from Paris--sent round to ask if she would be at home--and here I am."

"Ah!" said Delafield, looking down. "Well, there is a lady who has been with her, now, for more than two years--"

"Ah, yes, yes, I remember. Old Lady Seathwaite told me--last year.

Mademoiselle Le Breton--isn't that her name? What--she reads to her, and writes letters for her--that kind of thing?"

"Yes--that kind of thing," said the other, after a moment's hesitation.

"Wasn't that a spot of rain? Shall I charge these gentry?"

And he led the way through the line of footmen, which, however, was not of the usual Mayfair density. For the party within was not a "crush."

The hostess who had collected it was of opinion that the chief object of your house is not to entice the mob, but to keep it out. The two men mounted the stairs together.

"What a charming house!" said the elder, looking round him. "I remember when your uncle rebuilt it. And before that, I remember his mother, the old d.u.c.h.ess here, with her swarm of parsons. Upon my word, London tastes good--after Teheran!"

And the speaker threw back his fair, grizzled head, regarding the lights, the house, the guests, with the air of a sensitive dog on a familiar scent.

"Ah, you're fresh home," said Delafield, laughing. "But let's just try to keep you here--"

"My dear fellow, who is that at the top of the stairs?"

The old diplomat paused. In front of the pair some half a dozen guests were ascending, and as many coming down. At the top stood a tall lady in black, receiving and dismissing.

Delafield looked up.

"That is Mademoiselle Le Breton," he said, quietly.

"She receives?"

"She distributes the guests. Lady Henry generally establishes herself in the back drawing-room. It doesn't do for her to see too many people at once. Mademoiselle arranges it."

"Lady Henry must indeed be a good deal more helpless that I remember her," murmured Sir Wilfrid, in some astonishment.

"She is, physically. Oh, no doubt of it! Otherwise you won't find much change. Shall I introduce you?"

They were approaching a woman whose tall slenderness, combined with a remarkable physiognomy, arrested the old man's attention. She was not handsome--that, surely, was his first impression? The cheek-bones were too evident, the chin and mouth too strong. And yet the fine pallor of the skin, the subtle black-and-white, in which, so to speak, the head and face were drawn, the life, the animation of the whole--were these not beauty, or more than beauty? As for the eyes, the carriage of the head, the rich magnificence of hair, arranged with an artful eighteenth-century freedom, as Madame Vigee Le Brun might have worn it--with the second glance the effect of them was such that Sir Wilfrid could not cease from looking at the lady they adorned. It was an effect as of something over-living, over-brilliant--an animation, an intensity, so strong that, at first beholding, a by-stander could scarcely tell whether it pleased him or no.

"Mademoiselle Le Breton--Sir Wilfrid Bury," said Jacob Delafield, introducing them.

"_Is_ she French?" thought the old diplomat, puzzled. "And--have I ever seen her before?"

"Lady Henry will be so glad!" said a low, agreeable voice. "You are one of the old friends, aren't you? I have often heard her talk of you."

"You are very good. Certainly, I am an old friend--a connection also."

There was the slightest touch of stiffness in Sir Wilfrid's tone, of which the next moment he was ashamed. "I am very sorry to hear that Lady Henry has grown so much more helpless since I left England."

"She has to be careful of fatigue. Two or three people go in to see her at a time. She enjoys them more so."

"In my opinion," said Delafield, "one more device of milady's for getting precisely what she wants."

The young man's gay undertone, together with the look which pa.s.sed between him and Mademoiselle Le Breton, added to Sir Wilfrid's stifled feeling of surprise.

"You'll tell her, Jacob, that I'm here?" He turned abruptly to the young man.

"Certainly--when mademoiselle allows me. Ah, here comes the d.u.c.h.ess!"

said Delafield, in another voice.