At that moment the chaise, which had been proceeding for some time at a more sober pace, swerved sharply to one side; it appeared to sweep round a corner, jolted over a rough patch of ground, and came to a stand.
CHAPTER XXII
FACILIS DESCENSUS
Let not those who would judge her harshly forget that Julia, to an impulsive and passionate nature, added a special and notable disadvantage. She had been educated in a sphere alien from that in which she now moved. A girl, brought up as Sir George's cousin and among her equals, would have known him to be incapable of treachery as black as this. Such a girl, certified of his love, not only by his words and looks but by her own self-respect and pride, would have shut her eyes to the most pregnant facts and the most cogent inferences; and scorned all her senses, one by one, rather than believe him guilty. She would have felt, rightly or wrongly, that the thing was impossible; and would have believed everything in the world, yes, everything, possible or impossible--yet never that he had lied when he told her that he loved her.
But Julia had been bred in a lower condition, not far removed from that of the Pamela to whose good fortune she had humbly likened her own; among people who regarded a Macaroni or a man of fashion as a wolf ever seeking to devour. To distrust a gentleman and repel his advances had been one of the first lessons instilled into her opening mind; nor had she more than emerged from childhood before she knew that a laced coat forewent destruction, and held the wearer of it a cozener, who in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred kept no faith with a woman beneath him, but lived only to break hearts and bring grey hairs to the grave.
Out of this fixed belief she had been jolted by the upheaval that placed her on a level with Sir George. Persuaded that the convention no longer applied to herself, she had given the rein to her fancy and her girlish romance, no less than to her generosity; she had indulged in delicious visions, and seen them grow real; nor probably in all St. James's was there a happier woman than Julia when she found herself possessed of this lover of the prohibited class; who to the charms and attractions, the nice-ness and refinement, which she had been bred to consider beyond her reach, added a devotion, the more delightful--since he believed her to be only what she seemed--as it lay in her power to reward it amply. Some women would have swooned with joy over such a conquest effected in such circumstances. What wonder that Julia was deaf to the warnings and surmises of Mr. Fishwick, whom delay and the magnitude of the stakes rendered suspicious, as well as to the misgivings of old Mrs. Masterson, slow to grasp a new order of things? It would have been strange had she listened to either, when youth, and wealth, and love all beckoned one way.
But now, now in the horror and darkness of the post-chaise, the lawyer's warnings and the old woman's misgivings returned on her with crushing weight; and more and heavier than these, her old belief in the heartlessness, the perfidy of the man of rank. At the statement that a man of the class with whom she had commonly mixed could so smile, while he played the villain, as to deceive not only her eyes but her heart--she would have laughed. But on the mind that lay behind the smooth and elegant mask of a _gentleman's_ face she had no lights; or only the old lights which showed it desperately wicked. Applying these to the circumstances, what a lurid glare they shed on his behaviour! How quickly, how suspiciously quickly, had he succumbed to her charms! How abruptly had his insouciance changed to devotion, his impertinence to respect! How obtuse, how strangely dull had he been in the matter of her claims and her identity! Finally, with what a smiling visage had he lured her to her doom, showed her to his tools, settled to a nicety the least detail of the crime!
More weighty than any one fact, the thing he had said to her on the staircase at Oxford came back to her mind. 'If you were a lady,' he had lisped in smiling insolence, 'I would kiss you and make you my wife.' In face of those words, she had been rash enough to think that she could bend him, ignorant that she was more than she seemed, to her purpose. She had quoted those very words to him when she had had it in her mind to surrender--the sweetest surrender in the world. And all the time he had been fooling her to the top of her bent. All the time he had known who she was and been plotting against her devilishly--appointing hour and place and--and it was all over.
It was all over. The sunny visions of love and joy were done! It was all over. When the sharp, fierce pain of the knife had done its worst, the consciousness of that remained a dead weight on her brain. When the paroxysm of weeping had worn itself out, yet brought no relief to her passionate nature, a kind of apathy succeeded. She cared nothing where she was or what became of her; the worst had happened, the worst been suffered. To be betrayed, cruelly, heartlessly, without scruple or care by those we love--is there a sharper pain than this? She had suffered that, she was suffering it still. What did the rest matter?
Mr. Thomasson might have undeceived her, but the sudden stoppage of the chaise had left no place in the tutor's mind for aught but terror. At any moment, now the chaise was at a stand, the door might open and he be hauled out to meet the fury of his pupil's eye, and feel the smart of his brutal whip. It needed no more to sharpen Mr. Thomasson's long ears--his eyes were useless; but for a time crouching in his corner and scarce daring to breathe, he heard only the confused muttering of several men talking at a distance. Presently the speakers came nearer, he caught the click of flint on steel, and a bright gleam of light entered the chaise through a crack in one of the shutters. The men had lighted a lamp.
It was only a slender shaft that entered, but it fell athwart the girl's face and showed him her closed eyes. She lay back in her corner, her cheeks colourless, an expression of dull, hopeless suffering stamped on her features. She did not move or open her eyes, and the tutor dared not speak lest his words should be heard outside. But he looked, having nothing to check him, and looked; and in spite of his fears and his preoccupation, the longer he looked the deeper was the impression which her beauty made on his senses.
He could hear no more of the men's talk than muttered grumblings plentifully bestrewn with curses; and wonder what was forward and why they remained inactive grew more and more upon him. At length he rose and applied his eyes to the crack that admitted the light; but he could distinguish nothing outside, the lamp, which was close to the window, blinding him. At times he caught the clink of a bottle, and fancied that the men were supping; but he knew nothing for certain, and by-and-by the light was put out. A brief--and agonising--period of silence followed, during which he thought that he caught the distant tramp of horses; but he had heard the same sound before, it might be the beating of his heart, and before he could decide, oaths and exclamations broke the silence, and there was a sudden bustle. In less than a minute the chaise lurched forward, a whip cracked, and they took the road again.
The tutor breathed more freely, and, rid of the fear of being overheard, regained a little of his unctuousness. 'My dear good lady,' he said, moving a trifle nearer to Julia, and even making a timid plunge for her hand, 'you must not give way. I protest you must not give way. Depend on me! Depend on me, and all will be well. I--oh dear, what a bump! I'--this as he retreated precipitately to his corner--'I fear we are stopping!'
They were, but only for an instant, that the lamps might be lighted. Then the chaise rolled on again, but from the way in which it jolted and bounded, shaking its passengers this way and that, it was evident that it no longer kept the main road. The moment this became clear to Mr. Thomasson his courage vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
'Where are they taking us?' he cried, rising and sitting down again; and peering first this way and then the other. 'My G--d, we are undone! We shall be murdered--I know we shall! Oh dear! what a jolt! They are taking us to some cut-throat place! There again! Didn't you feel it? Don't you understand, woman? Oh, Lord,' he continued, piteously wringing his hands, 'why did I mix myself up with this trouble?'
She did not answer, and enraged by her silence and insensibility, the cowardly tutor could have found it in his heart to strike her. Fortunately the ray of light which now penetrated the carriage suggested an idea which he hastened to carry out. He had no paper, and, given paper, he had no ink; but falling back on what he had, he lugged out his snuff-box and pen-knife, and holding the box in the ray of light, and himself as still as the road permitted, he set to work,