The Pit Town Coronet Volume Ii Part 1

The Pit Town Coronet.

Volume II.

by Charles James Wills.

CHAPTER I.

A HORRIBLE SCANDAL.

Dull as the life of the little chateau on the lake necessarily was, yet Georgie Haggard did not suffer from _ennui_. She seemed in fact to rather revel in the quietude, and to luxuriate in the seclusion of the Swiss villa, after the fatigues and excitements of a busy London season and the turmoil and the incidental worries which must always attend an extended foreign tour, even when it is taken for pleasure, and when expense is no object. The position of the villa was sufficiently romantic; behind it were the snow-covered Alps, Mont Blanc always clearly visible; and all in front stretched the lake with its glorious blue water of that intense azure which is only seen on this Geneva lake.

Why it should be so very blue is, and always will be, a mystery; of course it has been explained by scientific people in various manners satisfactory to themselves, but the fact remains that the lake is of a deeper blue than any other European water, and strange to say the intense colour is just as apparent in the shallowest parts. One may row over a place not more than a yard deep, where the bottom is clearly perceptible, but the waters are as blue as ever, a deep unnatural ultramarine blue, a blue which is seen only here and in the choicest specimens of the Oriental turquoise.

The establishment at the Villa Lambert consisted of the permanent staff of the place, the aged Savoyard and his wife, who spoke an abominable and unintelligible patois; these two people were the Gibeonites of the villa. At earliest dawn the pair rose and toiled till an hour after sunset. The man worked in the garden, broke the firewood, drew water from the well, attended to the ponies, and wore the face of a martyr.

The woman got through the labours of four ordinary English servants, she was cook, housekeeper, housemaid, and an entire staff in herself; she spoke to no one save her morose husband and Haggard's polyglot Swiss servant; she scrubbed, she polished her numerous brazen pots and pans till they shone like mirrors; every particle of woodwork in the house was washed and polished by her, till it resembled that seen in the Dutch village of Broek. But the great delight of the pair was the waxing and polis.h.i.+ng of the curious inlaid parquet flooring of the _salon_ which looked upon the lake. Lucy Warrender had been considerably surprised when she saw this process for the first time. A strange hissing noise, which continued for some minutes, gradually diminished in intensity, and then ceased altogether, only to recommence with renewed vigour, surprised the two girls as they sat at breakfast. "What can it be, Georgie?" she remarked in astonishment to her cousin.

"It's in the next room, I think, dear," said the young matron; "but it's very easy to see." She opened the door of the _salon_. Husband and wife, with portentous gravity, the woman having her skirts well tucked up, their arms a-kimbo, were apparently skating up and down the room. To them it was evidently a very serious business; they never smiled, but the perspiration streamed from their foreheads as they flew up and down.

A large flat brush was attached to each foot of either. They were polis.h.i.+ng the floor, and their appearance was sufficiently ludicrous.

Lucy looked at her cousin; the absurdity of the scene was too much for her; she closed the door and laughed till she cried.

Mrs. Haggard's maid was an invaluable servant, who understood her duties and never seemed to forget anything. Hephzibah seldom spoke; perhaps, like the parrot in the story, she thought the more. The girl was in her way religious. That valuable work, once so popular but now so seldom seen, "The Dairyman's Daughter," was her only literature, but she seemed to be never tired of reading it.

Capt, the valet, was equally quiet in his way, equally dull. He did not disdain to manufacture dainty little dishes for his young mistresses. He would row them about upon the lake. He was steward, footman, and general factotum. He never opened his mouth unless he was spoken to, and between him and Hephzibah there appeared to be a good understanding; as the reader is aware they were "keeping company."

Georgie and her cousin led quiet uneventful lives. They drove, they boated, they wandered in their large garden; but they made no new acquaintances, and they lived the lives of hermits. Once a week there was some slight excitement as to the arrival of news from the absent husband; his letters came with praiseworthy regularity. He had arrived safely in Mexico; the value of his property had increased enormously. He was in treaty with half-a-dozen persons for the sale of his estates. He cursed the delays of the Mexican lawyers, who seemed to do nothing but smoke big cigars and swing themselves to sleep all day in hammocks. He pathetically bemoaned the unavoidable separation from his dear Georgie.

He wasn't having a bad time of it, the sport was undeniable. He had had a week with a friend at a place with an unp.r.o.nounceable name. Then he described the delights of the opera house, and the great success of the new French dancer, Mademoiselle De Bondi. It seemed a pity to close finally, when land was going up in value every day, and so on, and so on, and he was his dear Georgie's affectionate husband. This was the burden of all his communications, one letter was very much like another.

Haggard was evidently enjoying himself, and his affectionate Georgie, though longing for his return, did not grudge him his pleasures.

Strange to say, though by force of circ.u.mstances thrown into an eternal _tete-a-tete_, the cousins never quarrelled. Georgie read and re-read her husband's letters. Lucy devoured one yellow-covered novel after another, and time crept slowly on. They had been four months at the Swiss villa.

It was the end of August. The two girls, they were but girls, sat on the terrace which overhung the lake. The sun was setting, as they sat dreamily gazing upon the lovely scene, which had even distracted Lucy's attention from the last naturalistic novel, which lay open on her lap.

As she looked intently at the blue waters of the lake she sighed deeply.

Georgie turned towards her and was startled to see that her lovely dark brown eyes were filled with tears! Georgie placed her arm softly round the girl's neck, for she dearly loved her cousin, and gently said, "What ails you, darling?"

But Lucy answered never a word, a violent burst of weeping was her only reply.

Lucy, never over strong at any time, had lately caused her cousin considerable anxiety; womanlike, Lucy fought against the growing weakness; till now she had hidden her increasing melancholy under an appearance of forced gaiety, which had not deceived her cousin, but only increased her alarm.

The elder girl knelt at Lucy's feet--her own Lucy whom she still looked upon in her heart as a little child.

"Does anything worry you, darling?" she said.

No answer.

"Trust me, Lucy; we are always friends, let me share this trouble."

"I can't," faltered the girl, as she gnawed her lips, which trembled and turned pale; "I think I shall drown myself."

Then Georgie took the blanched hand of the motherless girl, and entreated her.

"Do tell me, darling; you must tell me, Lucy. Something is preying on your mind; trust me, do trust me, pet."

Not then did Lucy Warrender tell her trouble to her cousin. But that night, unwillingly and ungraciously enough, she told her grief. Pale as a ghost, her fingers intertwined in a convulsive grip, she knelt by her cousin's bed and told her shameful story. She made her pitiful appeal.

With dilated eyes, Georgina listened in terror to Lucy's confidence. It was the old tale. Lucy was about to become a mother; this was all she told. Was it not enough? She looked imploringly up at her cousin as she whispered:

"You can save me, Georgie, if you will--if you love me, as I know you do; and if you won't, there is nothing left for me but the lake, the cold, cruel lake." Here she laughed hysterically, and nestled to her cousin's breast.

The elder girl was struck dumb. The shame of it, the bitter shame of this accursed thing.

There was a silence, only broken by the monotonous ticking of the carved Swiss clock and the deep sobs of the kneeling girl. There was a sudden whiz of spinning wheels--"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" screamed the little painted bird derisively, as he appeared for an instant from his tiny box to mark the hour. Both girls started at the inauspicious interruption.

"I save you, my darling! How can I save you? And father, poor father.

Oh, Lucy! how could you--how could you so deceive us all? But _he_ must be sent for--who is the man? He must marry you--he will marry you, of course, at once, _this gentleman_!"

But Lucy only sobbed the more.

"He will never marry me, Georgie. You can save me, you alone!"

She never named the man.

They talked on far into the night; and as they wept and whispered, the painted wooden demon ever and again sprang from his box and startled them with his discordant cry,

"Cuckoo! cuckoo!"

How could she refuse? Much against her will at last she yielded; she agreed to deceive the absent husband who trusted her--that heartless husband whom she idolized. From that day forward the sound of a cuckoo clock--the voice of the bird himself, as she heard him in the woods--sounded in her ear as the cry of a mocking devil. Little did she dream that, in weakly yielding to her cousin's piteous entreaty, she was sowing the seed of which she and hers should reap the bitter harvest.

What could she do, poor girl? She felt it was her duty. Who can tell if she erred? If so, it was on mercy's side. Next morning Lucy was herself again; she was once more the buoyant, merry girl, who smiled and chattered, and sang her little sc.r.a.ps of French songs, making the suns.h.i.+ne of the house. The _roles_ were changed. Never again shall the light of perfect happiness beam in Georgie Haggard's once honest eyes--those eyes now red with weeping, full of the secret sorrow of her cousin's bitter confidence. It is always painful to an honourable mind to play the part of a conspirator, and that thankless _role_ was now forced upon poor Georgie--w.i.l.l.y-nilly she had to do it. Lucy's fertile brain teemed with plan, with plot, with stratagem; certain of ultimately conquering the scruples of her gentle and loving cousin, she had evidently thought the matter out.

"We ought to trust n.o.body, you know," said the younger girl, who had suddenly a.s.sumed the management of everything. Startled and horrified, Georgie had become in regard to her cousin, that born intriguer, but as clay in the hands of the potter. "No, we ought not to, but we must. If ever a girl in this world could keep her tongue between her teeth, it's that pale Hephzibah of ours, and trust her we must, there's nothing else for it."

Lucy's tongue, once loosed, never seemed to tire. Her despondency and melancholy, her load of carking care, were all transferred as by the wave of a magician's wand to her cousin's shoulders. Alas! that cousin, that patient, loving cousin is perhaps destined to carry to her grave the fardel of another's weakness, the punishment of a worthless woman's fault.

Georgie, from that hour, was a changed girl. No more the once happy, loving eyes gazed on the younger girl with more than a mother's pride.

From that day Georgie feared her cousin, and Lucy soon detected the new sentiment which she had unexpectedly inspired. The younger dictated, the elder acquiesced.

"Georgie," she once suddenly said, when they were alone together on the little platform which hung over the blue waters of the lake, "swear to me that you will never betray my secret." She clutched her cousin's hand with fierce insistance and stamped her little foot; "swear to me," she said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "that never by word or letter you will reveal my secret--_our_ secret," she added with a smile. If ever a pretty woman's smile was devilish, Lucy Warrender's was, as she insisted on this partners.h.i.+p in her guilt.

"Have I ever deceived you, Lucy, that you should want me to swear?"

"But you shall swear, Georgie," she reiterated almost savagely. "I have gone too far to hesitate at trifles now, and if you don't, you will never see me more," she added menacingly, as she pointed to the lake.

Her little figure seemed to increase in height, so sternly determined was her aspect.

Georgie cowered in mingled anxiety and horror.

"Swear to me," she said, and she emphasized the command, for it was no longer an entreaty, by a fierce clutch at her cousin's wrist, "never to a soul till the day of your death will you breathe a word of it.

Swear."

"I do swear it, Lucy," replied the dominated victim, and she buried her face in her hands.