The Billow and the Rock | Page 6

my friends," said the President, with a good-humoured seriousness, "let me tell you that the position of either of you is no joke. It is too serious for any lightness and for any passion. I do not want to hear a word about your grievances. I see quite enough. I see a lady driven from home, deprived of her children, and tormenting herself with thoughts of revenge because she has no other object. I see a gentleman who has been cruelly put to shame in his own house and in the public street, worn with anxiety about his innocent daughters, and with natural fears--inevitable fears, of the mischief that may be done to his character and fortunes by an ill use of the confidence he once gave to the wife of his bosom."
There was a suppressed groan from Lord Carse, and something like a titter from the lady. The President went on even more gravely.
"I know how easy it is for people to make each other wretched, and especially for you two to ruin each other. If I could but persuade you to sit down with me to a quiet discussion of a plan for living together or apart, abstaining from mutual injury--"
Lord Carse dissented audibly from their living together, and the lady from living apart.
"Why," remonstrated the President, "things cannot be worse than they are now. You make life a hell--"
"I am sure it is to me!" sighed Lord Carse.
"It is not yet so to me," said the lady. "I--"
"It is not!" thundered her husband, turning suddenly round upon her. "Then I will take care it shall be."
"For God's sake, hush!" exclaimed the President, shocked to the soul.
"Do your worst," said the lady, rising. "We will try which has the most power. You know what ruin is."
"Stop a moment," said the President. "I don't exactly like to have this quiet house of mine made a hell of. I cannot have you part on these terms."
But the lady had curtseyed, and was gone. For a minute or two nothing was said. Then a sort of scream was heard from upstairs.
"My Janet!" cried Lord Carse.
"I will go and see," said the President. "Janet is my especial pet, you know."
He immediately returned, smiling, and said, "There is nothing amiss with Janet. Come and see."
Janet was on her mother's lap, her arms thrown round her neck, while the mother's tears streamed over them both. "Can you resist this?" the President asked of Lord Carse. "Can you keep them apart after this?"
"I can," he replied. "I will not permit her the devilish pleasure she wants--of making my own children my enemies."
He was going to take Janet by force: but the President interfered, and said authoritatively to Lady Carse that she had better go: her time was not yet come. She must wait; and his advice was to wait patiently and harmlessly.
It could not have been believed how instantaneously a woman in such emotion could recover herself.
She put Janet off her knee. In an instant there were no more traces of tears, and her face was composed, and her manner hard.
"Good-bye, my dear," she said to the weeping Janet. "Don't cry so, my dear. Keep your tears; for you will have something more to cry for soon. I am going home to pack my trunk for London. Have my friends any commands for London?"
And she looked round steadily upon the three faces.
The President was extremely grave when their eyes met; but even his eye sank under hers. He offered his arm to conduct her downstairs, and took leave of her at the gate with a silent bow.
He met Lord Carse and Janet coming downstairs, and begged them to stay awhile, dreading, perhaps, a street encounter. But Lord Carse was bent on being gone immediately--and had not another moment to spare.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE WRONG JOURNEY.
Lady Carse and her maid Bessie--an elderly woman who had served her from her youth up, bearing with her temper for the sake of that family attachment which exists so strongly in Scotland,--were busy packing trunks this afternoon, when they were told that a gentleman must speak with Lady Carse below stairs.
"There will be no peace till we are off," observed the lady to her maid. In answer to which Bessie only sighed deeply.
"I want you to attend me downstairs," observed the lady. "But this provoking nonsense of yours, this crying about going a journey, has made you not fit to be seen. If any friend of my lord's saw your red eyes, he would go and say that my own maid was on my lord's side. I must go down alone."
"Pray, madam, let me attend you. The gentleman will not think of looking at me: and I will stand with my back to the light, and the room is dark."
"No; your very