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20
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QUEENIE
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The shadows of evening met Van, as he stepped from the outside door and started up the street. Then a figure emerged from the shadows and met him by the corner.
It was Queenie. Her eyes were red from weeping. A smile that someway affected Van most poignantly, he knew not why, came for a moment to her lips.
"You didn't expect to see me here," she said. "I had to come to see if it was so."
"What is it, Queenie? What do you mean? What do you want?" he answered. "What's the trouble?"
"Nothing," she said. "I don't want nothing I can git--I guess--unless--Oh, _is_ it her, Van? Is it sure all over with me?"
"Look here," he said, not unkindly, "you've always been mistaken, Queenie. I told you at the time--that time in Arizona--I'd have done what I did for an Indian squaw--for any woman in the world. Why couldn't you let it go at that?"
"You know why I couldn't," she answered with a certain intensity of utterance that gave him a species of chill. "After what you done--like the only real friend I ever had--I belonged to you--and couldn't even take myself away."
"But I didn't want anyone to belong to me, Queenie. You know that. I could barely support my clothes."
Her eyes burned with a strange luminosity. Her utterance was eager.
"But you want somebody to belong to you now? Ain't that what's the matter with you now?"
He did not answer directly.
"I didn't think it was in you, Queenie, to follow me around and play the spy. I've liked you pretty well--but--I couldn't like this."
She stared at him helplessly, as an animal might have looked.
"I couldn't help it," she murmured, repressing some terrible emotion of despair. "I won't never trouble you no more."
She turned around and went away, walking uncertainly, as if from physical weakness and the blindness of pain.
Van felt himself inordinately wrung--felt it a cruelty not to run and overtake her--give her some measure of comfort. There was nothing he could do that would not be misunderstood. Moreover, he had no adequate idea of what was in her mind--or in her homeless heart. He had known her always as a butterfly; he could not take her tragically now.
"Poor girl," he said as he watched her vanishing from sight, "if only she had ever had a show!"
He looked back at Mrs. Dick's. Bostwick had ousted him after all, before he could extenuate his madness, before he could ascertain whether Beth were angry or not--before he could bid her good-by.
Now that the cool of evening was upon him, along with the chill of sober reflection, he feared for what he had done. He was as mad, as crude as Queenie. Yet his fear of Beth's opinion was a sign that he loved her as a woman should be loved, sacredly, and with a certain awe, although he made no such analysis, and took no credit to himself for the half regrets that persistently haunted his reflections.
It would be a moonlight night, he pondered. He had counted on riding by the lunar glow to the "Laughing Water" claim. Would Beth, by any possibility, attempt to see him--come out, perhaps, in the moonlight--for a word before he should go?
He could not entertain a thought of departing without again beholding her. He wanted to know what she would say, and when he might see her again. After all, what was the hurry to depart? He might as well wait a little longer.
He went to the hay-yard. Dave had disappeared. Half an hour of search failed to bring him to light. On the point of entering a restaurant to allay his sense of emptiness, Van was suddenly accosted by a wild-eyed man, bare-headed and sweating, who ran at him, calling as he came.
"Hey!" he cried. "Van Buren! Come on! Come on! She's dyin' and all she wants is you!"
"What's wrong with you, man?" inquired the horseman, halted by the fellow's words. "What are you talking about?"
"Queenie!" gasped the fellow, panting for his breath. "Took poison--O, Lord! Come on! Come on! She don't want nothing but you!"
Van turned exceedingly pale.
"Poison? What you want is the doctor!"
"He's there--long ago!" answered the informant excitedly, and swabbing perspiration from his face. "She won't touch his dope. It's all over, I guess--only she wants to see you."
"Show me the way, then--show me the way. Where is she?" Van shook the man's shoulder roughly. "Don't stand here trembling. Take me to the place."
The man was in a wretched plight, from fear and the physical suffering induced by what he had seen. He reeled drunkenly as he started down the street, then off between some rows of canvas structures, heading for a district hung with red.
At the edge of this place, at an isolated cabin, comprising two small, rough rooms, the man seemed threatened with collapse.
"May be too late," he whispered hoarsely, as he listened and heard no sounds from the house. "I'm goin' to stay outside--and wait."
The door was ajar. Without waiting for anything further, Van pushed it open and entered.
"There he is--I knew it!" cried Queenie from the room at the rear. It was a cry that smote Van like a stab.
Then he came to the room where she was lying.
"I knew you'd come--I knew it, Van!" said the girl in a sudden outburst of sobbing, and she tried to rise upon her pillow. Agony, which she had fought down wildly, seized her in a spasm. She doubled on the bed.
Van glanced about quickly. The doctor--a young, inexperienced man--was there, sweating, a look of abject helplessness upon his face. The room was a poor tawdry place, with gaudy decorations and a litter of Queenie's finery. In her effort to conquer the pains that possessed her body, the girl had distorted her face almost past recognition.
Van came to the bedside directly, placed his hand on her shoulder, and gave her one of his characteristic little shakings.
"Queenie, what have you done?" he said. "What's going on?"
She tried to smile. It was a terrible effort.
"It's nobody's fault--but what was the use, Van? --what was there in it for me?"
"She won't take anything--the antidote--anything! There isn't a stomach pump in town!" the doctor broke in desperately. "She's got to! It's getting too late! We'll have to force it down! Maybe she'd take it for you." He thrust a goblet into Van's nervous hand. It contained a misty drink.
"For God's sake take this, Queenie," Van implored. "Take it quick!"
She shrank away, attempting with amazing force of will to mask her pain.
"I'd take the stuff--for your sake--when I--wouldn't for God," she faltered, sitting up, despite her bodily anguish. "You don't ask me to--do it for you."
"I do, Queenie--take it for me!" he answered, wrung again as he had been at her smiles, an hour before, but now with heart-piercing poignancy. "Take it for me, if you won't for anyone else."
She received the glass--and deliberately threw it on the floor. The doctor cried out sharply. Queenie shook her head, all the time fighting down her agony, which was fast making inroads to her life. She fell back on her pillow.
"You didn't--ask me--Van 'cause you love me. Nobody--wants me to live. That's all right. Do you s'pose you could kiss me good-by?"
The look on her face was peculiarly childish, as she drove out the lines of anguish in a superhuman effort made for him. And the yearning there brought back again that thought he had voiced before, that night--why couldn't the child have had a chance?
The doctor was feverishly mixing another potent drink.
Van bent down and kissed her, indulgently.
"Force her to take it!" cried the doctor desperately. "Force her to take it!"
"Queenie," Van said, "you've got to take this stuff."
Her hand had found his and clutched it with galvanic strength.
"Don't--make me," she begged, closing her eyes in a species of ecstacy that no man may understand. "I'd rather--not--Van--please. Only about a minute now. Ain't it funny--that love--can burn you--up?" Her grip had tightened on his hand.
The doctor ran to the window, which he found already opened. He ran back in a species of frenzy.
"Make her take it, make her take it! God!" he said. "Not to do anything--not to do a thing!"
Queenie smiled at Van again--terribly. Her fingers felt like iron rods, pressing into his flesh. As if to complete her renunciation she dropped his hand abruptly. She mastered some violent convulsion that left the merest flicker of her life.
"Good-by, Van--good luck," she whispered faintly.
"Queenie!" he said. "Queenie!"
Perhaps she heard. After an ordeal that seemed interminable her face was calm and still, a faint smile frozen on her marble features.
Van waited there a long time. Someway it seemed as if this thing could be undone. The place was terribly still. The doctor sat there as if in response to a duty. He was dumb.
When Van went out, the man on the doorstep staggered in.
The moon was up. It shone obliquely down into all that rock-lined basin, surrounded by the stern, forbidding hills--the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold that man was reheating with his passions. Afar in all directions the lighted tents presented a ghostly unreality, their canvas walls illumined by the candles glowing within. A jargon of dance-hall music floated on the air. Outside it all was the desert silence--the silence of a world long dead.
Van would gladly have mounted his horse and ridden away--far off, no matter where. Goldite, bizarre and tragic--a microcosm of the world that man has fashioned--was a blot of discordant life, he felt, upon an otherwise peaceful world. As a matter of fact it had only begun its evening's story.
He stood in the road, alone, for several minutes, before he felt he could begin to resume the round of his own existence. When he came at length to the main street's blaze of light, a deeply packed throng could be seen in all the thoroughfare, compactly blocked in front of a large saloon.
Culver, the Government representative in the land-office needs, had been found in his office murdered. He had been stabbed. Van's knife, bought for Gettysburg, had been employed--and found there, red with its guilt.
All this Van was presently to discover. He was walking towards the surging mob when a miner he had frequently seen came running up and halted in the light of a window. Then the man began to yell.
"Here he is!" he cried. "Van Buren!"
The mob appeared to break at the cry. Fifty men charged down the street in a species of madness and Van was instantly surrounded.
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
|
21
|
IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE
|
Mob madness is beyond explanation. Cattle stampeding are no more senseless than men in such a state. Goldite, however, was not only habitually keyed to the highest of tension, but it had recently been excited to the breaking point by several contributing factors. Lawless thefts of one another's claims, ore stealing, high pressure over the coming rush to the Indian reservation, and a certain apprehension engendered by the deeds of those liberated convicts--all these elements had aroused an over-revulsion of feeling towards criminality and a desire to apply some manner of law. And the primal laws are the laws that spring into being at such a time as this--the laws that cry out for an eye for an eye and a swiftness of legal execution.
Into the vortex of Goldite's sudden revulsion Van was swept like a straw. There was no real chance for a hearing. His friends of the morning had lost all sense of loyalty. They were almost as crazed as those whom his recent success had irritated. The story of his row with Culver had spread throughout the confines of the camp. No link in the chain of circumstantial evidence seemed wanting to convict him. A bawling sea of human beings surrounded him with violence and menace.
To escape the over-wrought citizens, the sheriff, assuming charge of Van, dragged him on top of a stack of lumber, piled three feet high before a building. The cry for a rope and a lynching began with a promptness that few would have expected. In normal times it could scarcely have been broached.
Snatching new-made deputies, hit-or-miss from the mob, and summarily demanding their services, the sheriff exerted his utmost powers to stem the tide that was rising. Something akin to a trial began then and there. A big red-faced drummer from Chicago, a man that Van had never seen, became his voluntary advocate, standing between him and the mob.
He had power, that man, both of limb and presence. His voice, also, was mighty. He shoved men about like rubber puppets and shouted his demands for law and order.
Van, having flung off half a dozen citizens, who in the excitement had felt some fanatical necessity for clutching him, faced the human wolves about him in a spirit of angry resentment. The big man from Chicago mowed his way to the pile of lumber and clambered up by the sheriff. The pile raised its occupants only well above the surging pack of faces.
"Stop your howling! Stop your noise!" roared the drummer from his elevation. "Don't you want to give this man a chance?"
[Illustration: "Don't you want to give this man a chance?"]
He was heard throughout the street.
"He's got to prove his innocence or hang!" cried someone shrilly. "A murder foul as that!"
Another one bawled: "Where was he then? Make him tell where he was at six o'clock!"
Culver's watch had been shattered and stopped at precisely six o'clock, presumably by his fall against a table in his office, when he suddenly went down, at the hands of his assassin. This fact was in possession of the crowd.
A general shout for Van to explain where he was at the vital moment arose from all the crowd. The drummer turned to Van.
"There you are," he said. "There's your chance. If you wasn't around the surveyor's shack, you ought to be able to prove it."
Van could have proved his alibi at once, by sending around to Queenie's residence. He was nettled into a stubbornness of mind and righteous anger by all this senseless accusation. He did not realize his danger--the blackness of the case against him. That a lynching was possible he could scarcely have been made to believe. Nevertheless, as the Queenie matter was one of no secrecy and the facts must soon be known, he was turning to the drummer to make his reply when his eye was caught by a face, far out in the mass of human forms.
It was Beth that he saw, her cheek intensely white in the light streaming forth from a store. Bostwick was there at her side. Beth had been caught in the press of the throng as they came from the telegraph office.
He realized that at best his story concerning Queenie would be sufficiently black. With Beth in this theater of accusation the story of Queenie must wait.
"It's nobody's business where I was," he said. "This whole affair is absurd!"
Half a dozen of the men who were nearest heard his reply. One of them roared it out lustily. The mob was enraged. The cries for a violent termination to the scene increased in volume. Men were shouting, swearing, and surging back and forth tumultuously, wrought to a frenzy of primal virtue.
One near Beth called repeatedly for a lynching. He had cut a long new piece of rope from a coil at a store of supplies and was trying to drag it through the crowd.
The girl had heard and seen it all. She realized its full significance. She had never in her life felt so horribly oppressed with a sense of terrible things impending. Impetuously she accosted a man who stood at her side.
"Oh, tell them he was with me!" she said.
The man looked her over, and raising himself on his tip toes, shook his hat wildly at the mob.
"Say," he shouted at the top of his might, "here's a girl he was with at six o'clock."
It seemed as if only the men near at hand either heard or paid attention. On the farther side, away from Beth, the shouts for mob law were increasing. She turned to Bostwick hotly.
"Can't you do anything? Tell them he was there with us--down at Mrs. Dick's at six o'clock!"
"He wasn't!" said Searle. "He left there at five forty-five."
The man who had shouted listened to them both.
"Five forty-five?" he repeated. "That makes a difference!"
The drummer had caught the shout from out at the edge.
"Who's that?" he called. "Who's got that alibi?"
"All wrong! --No good!" yelled the man who stood by Beth.
The girl had failed to realize how her statement would sound--in such a place as Goldite. Van had turned sick when it reached him. He was emphatically denying the story. The gist of it went through the mass of maddened beings, only to be so soon impugned by the man who had started it from Beth. The fury, at what was deemed an attempted deception, burst out with accumulated force.
The sheriff had drawn a revolver and was shouting to the mob to keep away.
"This man has got to go to jail!" he yelled. "You've got to act accordin' to the law!"
He ordered his deputies to clear the crowd and make ready for retreat. Three of them endeavored to obey. Their efforts served to aggravate the mob.
Confusion and chaos of judgment seemed rising like a tide. In the very air was a feeling that suddenly something would go, something too far strained to hold, and some terrible deed occur before these people could ask themselves how it had been accomplished.
The fellow with the rope was being boosted forward by half a dozen intoxicated fools. Had the rope been a burning fuse it could scarcely have ignited more dangerous material than did its strands of manilla, in those who could lay their hands upon it.
The drummer was shouting himself raw in the throat--in vain.
Van was courting disaster by the very defiance of his attitude. It seemed as if nothing could save him, when two separate things occurred.
The doctor who had been with Van at Queenie's death arrived in the press, got wind of the crisis, and vehemently protested the truth. Simultaneously, the lumberman, Trimmer, drunk, and enjoying what he deemed a joke, hoarsely confided to some sober men the fact that Cayuse had done the murder.
Even then, when two centers of opposition to the madness of the mob had been created, the menace could not at once be halted.
The man with the rope had approached so near the lumber-pile that the sheriff could all but reach him. A furious battle ensued, and waged around the planks, between the deputies and lynchers. It lasted till fifty active men of the camp, aroused to a sense of reaction by the facts that were now becoming known, hurled the struggling fighters apart and dragged them off, all the while spreading the news they had heard concerning the half-breed Indian.
No less excited when at last they knew that Van was innocent, the great crowd still occupied the street, hailing Trimmer to the lumber-pile and demanding to know how he came by the facts, and where Cayuse had gone.
Trimmer was frightened into soberness--at least into soberness sufficient to protect himself and McCoppet. He said he had seen the Indian coming from Culver's office, with blood upon his hands. The Indian had gone straight westward from the town, to elude pursuit in the mountains.
The fact that Van had been at Queenie's side at her death became town property at once. It came in all promptness to Beth.
With a feeling of sickness pervading all her being, she was glad to have Bostwick take her home.
It was late when at last the street was clear, and Van could finally make his escape from danger and returning friends. Dave by then had found himself; that is, he made his way, thus tardily, to the horseman's side--and the two went at length to their dinner.
At half-past eight, with the moon well up, Dave and Van were ready for departure. Their horses were saddled. One extra animal was packed with needed provisions for the crew on the "Laughing Water" claim. Van had ordered all he could for Queenie's final journey--the camp's best possible funeral, which he could not remain to attend. There was nothing to do but to mount and ride away, but--Beth was down at Mrs. Dick's.
Resistance was useless. Bidding Dave wait with the horses at the yard. Van made his way around through the shadows of the houses, and coming out upon a rocky hill, a little removed from the boarding place, was startled to see Beth abruptly rise before him.
The house had oppressed her--and the moon had called. Bostwick, in alarm concerning possible disaster to the plans he had made with McCoppet, now that Culver was dead, had gone to seek the gambler out and ascertain the status of affairs.
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
|
22
|
TWO MEETINGS AFTER DARK
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For a moment neither Beth nor Van could speak. The girl, like a startled moon-sprite, wide-eyed and grave, had taken on a mood of beauty such as the man had never seen. She seemed to him strangely fragile, a trifle pale, but wholly exquisite, enchanting.
No signs were on her face, but she had wept--hot, angry tears, within the hour. And here was the cause of them all! She had wished he would come--and feared he would come, as conflicting emotions possessed her. Now that he stood here, with moonlight on half of his face, her thoughts were all unmarshaled.
Van presently spoke.
"I'm a kid, after all. I couldn't go away without--this."
"I wish you had! I wish you had!" she answered, at his smile. "I wish I had never seen you in the world!"
His heart was sore for jesting, but he would not change his way.
"If not in the world, where _would_ you have wished to see me, then?"
"I never wished to see you at all!" she replied. "Your joke has gone too far. You have utterly mistaken my sense of gratitude."
"Guess not," he said. "I haven't looked for gratitude--nor wanted it, either."
"You had no right!" she continued. "You have said things--done things--you have taken shameful advantage--you have treated me like--I suppose like--that other--that other---- You dared!"
Van's face took on an expression of hardness, to mask the hurt of his heart.
"Who says so?" he demanded quietly. "You know better."
"It's true!" she answered hotly. "You had no right! It was mere brute strength! You cannot deny what you have been--to that miserable woman!" Tears of anger sped from her eyes, and she dashed them hotly away.
Van stepped a little closer.
"Beth," he said, suddenly taking her hand, "none of this is true, and you know it. You're angry with that woman, not with me."
She snatched her hand away.
"You shan't!" she said. "Don't you dare to touch me again. I hate you--hate you for what you have done! You've been a brute probably to her as well as to me!"
"To you? When?" he demanded "All the time! To-day! --Now! --when you say I'm angry at a--woman who is dead! --a woman who died for you!"
It hit him.
"Poor Queenie," he said, "poor child."
"Yes--poor Queenie!" Her eyes blazed in the moonlight. "To think that you dared to treat me like----" "Beth!" he interrupted, "I won't permit it. I told you to-day I loved you. That makes things right. You love me, and that makes them sacred. I'd do all I've done over again--_all_ of it--Queenie and the rest! I'm not ashamed, nor sorry for anything I've done. I love you--I say--I love you. That's what I've never done before--and never said I did--and that's what makes things right!"
Beth was confused by what he said--confused in her judgment, her emotions. Weakly she clung to her argument.
"You haven't any right--it isn't true when you say I love you. I don't! I won't! You can't deny that woman died of a broken heart for you!"
"I don't deny anything about her," he said. "I tried to be her friend. God knows she needed friends. She was only a child, a pretty child. I'm sorry. I've always been sorry. She knew I was only a friend."
She felt he was honest. She knew he was wrung--suffering, but not in his conscience. Yet what was she to think? She had heard it all--all of Queenie's story.
"You kissed her," she said, and red flamed up in her cheeks.
"It was all she asked," he answered simply. "She was dying."
"And you're paying for her funeral."
"I said I was her friend."
"Oh, the shamelessness of it!" she exclaimed as before, "--the way it looks! And to think of what you dared to do to me!"
"Yes, I kissed you without your asking," he confessed. "I expect to kiss you a hundred thousand times. I expect to make you my wife--for a love like ours is rare. Whatever else you think you want to say, Beth--now--don't say it--unless it's just good-night."
With a sudden move forward he took her two shoulders in his powerful hands and gave her a rough little shake. Then his palms went swiftly to her face, he kissed her on the lips, and let her go.
"You! --Oh!" she cried, and turning she ran down the slope of the hill as hard as she could travel.
He watched her going in the moonlight. Even her shadow was beautiful, he thought, but all his joy was grave.
She disappeared within the house, without once turning to see what he had done. He could not know that from one of the darkened windows she presently peered forth and watched him depart from the hill. He was not so assured as he had tried to make her think, and soberness dwelt within his breast.
Half an hour later he and old Dave were riding up the mountain in the moonlight. The night from the eminence was glorious, now that the town was left behind. Goldite lay far below in the old dead theatre of past activities, dotting the barren immensity with its softened lights like the little thing it was. How remote it seemed already, with its vices, woes, and joys, its comedy and tragedy, its fevers, strifes, and toil, disturbing nothing of the vast serenity of the planet, ever rolling on its way. How coldly the moon seemed looking on the scene. And yet it had cast a shadow of a girl to set a man aflame.
Meantime Bostwick had been delayed in securing McCoppet's attention. The town was still excited over all that had happened; the saloons were full of men. Culver had been an important person, needful to many of the miners and promoters of mining. His loss was an aggravation, especially as his deputy, Lawrence, was away.
The more completely to allay suspicions that might by any possibility creep around the circle to himself, McCoppet had been the camp's most active figure in organizing a posse, with the sheriff, to go out and capture Cayuse. His reasons for desiring the half-breed's end were naturally strong, nevertheless his active partisanship of law and justice excited no undesirable talk. He was simply an influential citizen engaged in a laudable work.
It was late when at length he and Bostwick could snatch a few minutes to themselves. The gambler's first question then was something of a puzzle to Bostwick.
"Well, have you got that thirty thousand?"
"Got it? Yes, I've got it," Bostwick answered nervously, "but what is the good of it now?"
It was McCoppet's turn to be puzzled.
"Anything gone wrong with Van Buren, or his claim?"
"Good heavens! Isn't it sufficient to have things all gone wrong with Culver? What could be worse than that?"
The gambler flung his cigar away and hung a fresh one on his lip.
"Say, don't you worry on Culver. Don't his deputy take his place?"
"His deputy?"
"Sure, his deputy--Lawrence--a man we can get hands down."
Bostwick stared at him hopefully.
"You don't mean to say this accident--this crime--is fortunate, after all?"
"It's a godsend." McCoppet would have dared any blasphemy.
Bostwick's relief was inordinate.
"Then what is the next thing to do?"
"Wait for Lawrence," said the gambler. Then he suddenly arose. "No, we can't afford the time. He might be a week in coming. You'll have to go get him, to-morrow."
"Where is he, then?"
"Way out South, on a survey. You'd better take that car of yours, with a couple of men I'll send along, and fetch him back mighty pronto. We can't let a deal like this look raw. The sooner he runs that reservation line the better things will appear."
Bostwick, too, had risen.
"Will your men know where to find him?"
"If he's still on the map," said the gambler. "You leave that to me. Better go see about your car to-night. I'll hustle your men and your outfit. See you again if anything turns up important. Meantime, is your money in the bank?"
"It's in the bank."
"Right," said McCoppet. "Good-night."
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
|
23
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BETH'S DESPERATION
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The following day in Goldite was one of occurrences, all more or less intimately connected with the affairs of Van and Beth.
Bostwick succeeded in making an early start to the southward in his car. McCoppet had provided not only a couple of men as guides to the field where Lawrence was working, but also a tent, provisions, and blankets, should occasion arise for their use.
Beth was informed by her fiancé that word had arrived from her brother, to whom Searle said he meant to go. The business of buying Glenmore's mine, he said, required unexpected dispatch. Perhaps both he and Glen might return by the end of the week.
By that morning's train the body of Culver was shipped away--and the camp began to forget him. The sheriff was after Cayuse.
Early in the afternoon the body of the girl who had never been known in Goldite by any name save that of Queenie, was buried on a hillside, already called into requisition as a final resting place for such as succumbed in the mining-camp, too far from friends, or too far lost, to be carried to the world outside the mountains. Half a dozen women attended the somewhat meager rites. There was one mourner only--the man who had run to summon Van, and who later had waited by the door.
At four o'clock the Goldite _News_ appeared upon the streets. It contained much original matter--or so at least it claimed. The account of the murder of Culver, the death of Queenie, and the threatened lynching of Van Buren made a highly sensational story. It was given the prominent place, for the editor was proud to have made it so full in a time that he deemed rather short. On a second page was a tale less tragic.
It was, according to one of its many sub-headings, "A Humorous Outcrop concerning two Maids and a Man." It related, with many gay sallies of "wit," how Van had piloted Mr. J. Searle Bostwick into the hands of the convicts, recently escaped, packed off his charges, Miss Beth Kent and her maid, and brought them to Goldite by way of the Monte Cristo mine, in time to behold the discomfited entrance of the said J. Searle Bostwick in prisoner's attire. Mr. Bostwick was described as having been "on his ear" towards Van Buren ever since.
In the main the account was fairly accurate. Gettysburg, Napoleon, and old Dave had over-talked, during certain liquifying processes. The matter was out beyond repair.
Mrs. Dick was prompt in pouncing on the story, hence Beth was soon presented with a copy. In the natural annoyance she felt when it was read, there was one consolation, at least: Searle was away, to be gone perhaps two or three days. He might not see the article, which would soon be forgotten in the camp.
To culminate the day's events, that evening Elsa ran away. She went with a "gentleman" lodger, taking the slight precaution to be married by the Justice of the Peace.
Beth discovered her loss too late to interfere. She felt herself alone, indeed, with Bostwick away, her brother off in the desert, and Van--she refused to think of Van. Fortunately, Mrs. Dick was more than merely a friend. She was a staunch little warrior, protecting the champion, to anger whom was unhealthy. Despite the landlady's attitude of friendliness, however, Beth felt wretchedly alone. It was a terrible place. She was cooped up all day within the lodging house, since the street full of men was more than she cared to encounter; and with life all about her, and wonderful days spreading one after another across the wide-open land, her liberties were fairly in a cage.
From time to time she thought of the horse, awaiting her order at the hay-yard. She tried to convince herself she would never accept or ride the animal. She was certain she resented everything Van had done. She felt the warmest indignation at herself for breaking into bits of song, for glowing to the tips of her ears, for letting her heart leap wildly in her breast whenever she thought of the horseman.
Two days went by and she chafed under continued restraints. No word had come from Bostwick, none from Glen--and not a sign from the "Laughing Water" claim. From the latter she said to herself she wished no sign. But Searle had no right to leave her thus and neglect her in every respect.
The morning of the third long day Mrs. Dick brought her two thin letters. One had been mailed in Goldite, by a messenger down from the "Laughing Water" claim. It came from Van. He had written the briefest of notes: "Just to send my love. I want you to wear my nugget."
Folded into the paper was a spray of the wild peach bloom.
Beth tried to think her blushes were those of indignation, which likewise caused the beat of her heart to rise. But her hand fluttered prettily up to her breast, where the nugget was pinned inside her waist. Also his letter must have been hard to understand--she read it seventeen times.
Then she presently turned to the other. It was addressed in typewritten characters, but the writing inside she knew--her brother Glen's.
"Dear Old Sis: Say, what in the dickens are you doing out here in the mines, by all that's holey? --and what's all this story in the Goldite _News_ about one Bronson Van Buren doing the benevolent brigand stunt with you and your maid, and shunting Searle off with the Cons? Why couldn't you let a grubber know you were hiking out here to the desert? Why all this elaborate surprise--this newspaper wireless to your fond and lonesome?
"What's the matter with your writing hand? Is this Van-brigand holding them both? What's the matter with Searle? I wrote him two or three aeons ago, when he might have been of assistance. Now I'm doing my eight hours a day in an effort to sink down to China. I'm on the blink, in a way, but not for long, for this is the land where opportunity walks night and day to thump on your door--and I'll grab her by the draperies yet.
"But _me_! --working as a common miner! --though I've got a few days off to go and look at a claim with a friend of mine, so you needn't answer till you hear again.
"If Searle is dead, why don't he say so? I only touched him for a few odd dollars--I only needed a grub-stake--fifty would have done the trick--and he doesn't come through. And nobody writes. I guess it's me for the Prodigal, but when I do get next to the fatted calf I'll get inside and eat my way out by way of his hoofs and horns. Why couldn't you and Searle and the maid come down and have a look at me--working? _It's worth it_. Come on. Maybe it's easier than writing. Yours for the rights of labor, GLEN."
Astonished by the contents of this communication, Beth read it again, in no little bewilderment, to make sure she had made no mistake. No letter from herself? No word from Searle? No answer to Glen's request for money? And he had only asked for a "few odd dollars?" There must be something wrong. He had sent the most urgent requirement for sixty thousand dollars. And she herself had written, at once. Searle had assured her he had sent him word by special messenger. Starlight was less than a long day's ride away. Glen had already had time to see that account in the paper and write.
She had no suspicions of Bostwick. She had seen Glen's letter and read it for herself. And Searle had responded immediately with an offer to lend her brother thirty thousand dollars. There must be some mistake. Glen might be keeping his news and plans from herself, as men so often will. Searle might even have overlooked the importance of keeping Glen fully posted, intending to go so soon to Starlight. Her own letter might have miscarried.
She tried to fashion explanations--but they would not entirely fit. Searle had been gone three days. He had gone before the Goldite _News_ was issued. The paper had arrived at Glen's while the man in his car had failed.
For a moment she sickened with the reflection that Searle might once more have fallen captive to the convicts, still at large--and with all the money! Then she presently assured herself that news so sinister as this would have been very prompt to return.
It was all too much to understand--unless Glen were ill--or out of his reason. His two letters, the one to Searle and this one to herself, were so utterly conflicting. It was not to be solved from such a distance. Moreover, Glen wrote that he was off on a trip, and asked her to wait before replying. It was irritating, all this waiting, alone here in Goldite, but there seemed to be nothing else to do.
The long morning passed, and she fretted. In the afternoon the Goldite _News_ broke its record. It printed an extra--a single sheet, in glaring type, announcing the capture of the convicts. By a bold and daring coup, it said, the entire herd of criminals, all half starved and weakened by privations, had been rounded up and transported back to prison. Unfortunately, the report was slightly inaccurate. Matt Barger, the leader in the prison delivery, and the most desperate man in the lot, had escaped the posse's vigilance. Of this important factor in the welcome story of the posse's work Goldite was ignorant, and doomed to be in ignorance a week.
The news to Beth was a source of great relief. But her troubles in other directions were fated to increase. That evening three men called formally--formally, that is to say, in so far as dressing in their best was concerned and putting on their "company manners." But Beth and courtship were their objects, a fact that developed, somewhat crudely with the smallest possible delay.
One of these persons, Billy Stitts by name, was fairly unobjectionable as a human being, since he was a quaint, slow-witted, bird-like little creature, fully sixty years of age and clearly harmless. The others were as frankly in pursuit of a mate as any two mountain animals.
Beth was frightened, when the purport of their visit flashed upon her. She felt a certain sense of helplessness. Mrs. Dick was too busy to be constantly present; Elsa was gone; the ways of such a place were new and wholly alarming. She felt when she made her escape from the three that her safety was by no means assured. Her room was her only retreat. Except for Mrs. Dick, there was not another woman in the house. She was wholly surrounded by men--a rough, womanless lot whose excitements, passions, and emotions were subjected to changes constantly, as well as to heats, by the life all around them in the mines.
That night was her first of real terror. Every noise in the building, and some in the streets, made her start awake like a hunted doe, with imaginings of the most awful description. She scarcely slept at all.
The following day old Billy Stitts called again, very shortly after breakfast. He proved such an amiable, womanly old chap that he was almost a comfort to the girl. She sent him to the postoffice, for a possible letter from Glen. He went with all the pleasure and alacrity of a faithful dog, apologizing most exuberantly on his return for the fact that no letter had come.
She remained in the house all day. The afternoon brought the two rough suitors of the night before, and two more equally crude. Mrs. Dick, to Beth's intense uneasiness, regarded the matter as one to be expected, and quite in accord with reason and proper regulations. A good-looking girl in camp, with her men-folks all giving her the go-by--and what could you expect? Moreover, as some of these would-be courtiers were husky and in line for fortune's smile, with chances as good as any other man's, she might do worse than let them come, and hear what they had to say. It was no girl's need to be neglected as Searle and Van were patently neglecting Beth.
This was the stage in which Beth at length began to meditate on Spartan remedies. The situation was not to be endured. No word had come from Searle. The world might have swallowed him up. She was sick of him--sick of his ways of neglect. And as for Van---- There was no one to whom she could turn--unless it were Glen. If only she could flee to her brother! She thought about it earnestly. She tried to plan the way.
Her horse was at the hay-yard. Starlight was only one day off in the desert. The convicts were no longer about. If only she could ride there--even alone! An early start--a little urging of the pony--she could fancy the journey accomplished with the utmost ease; then scornful defiance, both of Bostwick and of Van.
But a woman--riding in this lawless land alone! She was utterly disheartened, disillusionized at the thought. It would be no less than madness. And yet, it seemed as if she must presently go. Searle's silence, coupled to conditions here, was absolutely intolerable.
With plans decidedly hazy--nothing but a wild, bright dream really clear--she questioned Billy Stitts concerning the roads. He was familiar with every route in miles, whether roadway, trail, or "course by compass," as he termed trackless cruising in the desert. He gave her directions with the utmost minutae of detail as to every highway to Starlight. He drew her a plan. She was sure that she could almost ride to Starlight in the dark. What branches of the road to shun, which trails to choose, possibly, for gaining time, what places to water a famishing horse--all these and more she learned with feverish interest.
"Now a man would do this," and "a man would do that," said Billy time after time, till a new, fantastic notion came bounding full-fledged into Beth's anxious brain and almost made her laugh with delight. She could _dress as a man_ and ride as a man and be absolutely safe on the journey! She knew a dozen unusual arts for dying the skin and concealing the hair and making the hands look rough. Make-up in private theatricals, at professional hands, she had learned with exceptional thoroughness.
She would need a suit of kahki, miners' books, a soft, big hat, and flannel shirt. They were all to be had at the store. She could order her horse to be saddled for a man. She could readily dress and escape unseen from the house. In a word, she could do the trick!
The plan possessed her utterly. It sent her blood bounding through her veins. Her face was flushed with excitement. She loved adventure--and this would be something to do!
Nevertheless, despite all her plans, she had no real intention of attempting a scheme so mad. Subconsciously she confessed to herself it was just the merest idle fancy, not a thing to be actually ventured, or even entertained.
That night, when she was more beset, more worried than before, however, desperation was increasing upon her. The plan she had made no longer seemed the mere caprice of one in pursuit of pleasure--it appeared to be the only possible respite from conditions no longer to be borne.
When the morning came, after a night of mental torture and bodily fear, her patience had been strained to the point of breaking, and resolve was steeling her courage.
The word that should have come from Searle was still delinquent. But old Billy Stitts brought her a letter from Glen.
"Dear Sis: I can only write a line or two. Had a thump on the head, but it didn't knock off my block. Don't worry. All right in a few days, sure. Guess you couldn't come, or you'd be here, in response to my last. But Searle might show up, anyhow. You can write me now. Hope you're well and happy. Is the brigand still on the job? Can't really write. With love, GLEN."
Her heart stood still as she; read her brother's lines, in a scrawled hand indicative of weakness. She resolved in that instant to go.
"Mr. Stitts," she raid in remarkable calm, for all that she felt, "my brother needs some clothing--everything complete, boots, shirts, and all. He's just about my size. I wish you'd go and buy them."
"Lord, I know the best and the cheapest in camp!" said Billy eagerly. "I'll have 'em here before you can write him your letter--but the stage don't go back till Friday."
She had given no thought to the tri-weekly stage. She dismissed it now, with a wave of gratitude towards Van for the horse--gratitude, or something, surging warmly in her veins. She almost wished he could ride at her side, but checked that lawlessness sternly. She would ride to Glen alone!
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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24
|
A BLIZZARD OF DUST
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At daylight Beth was dressed as a man and surveying herself in the mirror. She had passed a sleepless night. She was fevered, excited, and nervous.
Her work had been admirably done. She looked no more rawly new or youthful than scores of young tenderfeet, daily in the streets of the camp. The stain on her face had furnished an astonishing disguise, supported as it was by male attire. Her hair was all up in the crown of her hat, which was set on the back of her head. It was fastened, moreover, with pins concealed beneath the leather band. Altogether the disguise was most successful. Beth had disappeared: a handsome young man had been conjured in her place.
Her mare, which Billy had ordered, came promptly to the door. She heard her arrive--and her heart stroked more madly than before. Trembling in every limb, and treading as softly as a thief, she made her way downstairs.
On the dining-room table was the package of lunch that Mrs. Dick had agreed to prepare. Beth had told her she meant to take an early morning ride and might not be back in time for breakfast. With this bundle in hand she went out at the door, her courage all but failing at thought of the man with the horse at the threshold. She shrank from being seen in such an outfit.
It was too late now to retreat, however, she told herself bravely, and out she went.
"Say, git a move, young feller," said the hostler with her pony. "I ain't got time to play horse-post here all day."
"Thank you for being so prompt," said Beth, in a voice that was faint, despite her efforts to be masculine, and she gave him a coin.
"I'll tie that there bundle on behind," he volunteered, less gruffly, and Beth was glad of his assistance.
A moment later she took a gasp of breath and mounted to the seat. Collapse of all the project had seemed imminent, but an actual feeling of relief and security ensued when she was settled in the saddle.
"So long," said the hostler, and Beth responded manfully, "So long."
She rode out slowly, towards the one main road. A feeling of the morning's chill assailed her, making her shiver. The noise of her pony's hoof-beats seemed alarmingly resonant.
But nothing happened. The streets were deserted, save for a few half-drunken wanderers, headed for the nearest saloon. On the far-off peaks of the mountains the rosy light of sunrise faintly appeared. In the calm of the great barren spaces, even Goldite was beautiful at last.
A sense of exhilaration pervaded Beth's youthful being. She was glad of what she had done. It was joyous, it was splendid, this absolute freedom in all this stern old world!
The road wound crookedly up a hill, as it left the streets of the town behind. The scattered tents extended for a mile in this direction, the squares of silent canvas, like so many dice, cast on the slopes by a careless fate that had cast man with them in the struggle.
Beth and her pony finally topped the hill, to be met by a sea of mountains out beyond. Up and down these mighty billows of the earth the highway meandered, leading onward and southward through the desert.
The mare was urged to a gallop, down an easy slope, then once more she walked as before. All the mountains in the west were rosy now, till presently the sun was up, a golden coin, struck hot from the very mints of God, giving one more day with its glory.
Its very first rays seemed a comfort, suggesting a welcome warmth. Beth could have called out songs of gladness well nigh uncontainable. She had all the big world to herself. Even the strangely twisted clouds in the sky seemed made for her delight. They were rare in this wonderful dome of blue and therefore things of beauty.
For an hour or more her way was plain, and to ride was a god-like privilege. Her ease of mind was thoroughly established. What had been the necessity for all those qualms of fear? The matter was simple, after all.
It was ten o'clock before she ate her breakfast. She had come to the so-called river, the only one in perhaps a hundred miles. It was quite a respectable stream at this particular season, but spread very thinly and widely at the ford.
By noon she was half way of her distance. The sun was hot; summer baking of the desert had begun. Her mare was sweating profusely. She had urged her to the top of her strength. Nevertheless she was still in excellent condition. To the westward the sky was overcast in a manner such as Beth had never seen, with a dark, copperous storm-head that massed itself prodigiously above the range.
Already she had come to three branchings of the road and chosen her way in confidence, according to Billy Stiff's directions. When she came to a fourth, where none had been indicated, she was sure, either in Billy's instructions, or upon his drawing, she confessed herself somewhat uncertain. She halted and felt for the map.
It was not to be found. She had left it behind at Mrs. Dick's. Dimly she fancied she remembered that Billy had said on the fourth branch, keep to the right. There could be no doubt that this branch was the fourth, howsoever out of place it appeared. She rode to the right, and, having passed a little valley, found herself enfolded in a rolling barrier of hills where it seemed as if the sun and rocks were of almost equal heat.
At mid-afternoon Beth abruptly halted her pony and stared at the world of desert mountains in confusion not unmixed with alarm. She was out at the center of a vast level place, almost entirely devoid of vegetation--and the road had all but disappeared. It branched once more, and neither fork was at all well defined, despite the fact that travel to Starlight was supposed to be reasonably heavy. She had made some mistake. She suddenly remembered something that Billy had said concerning a table mountain she should have passed no later than half-past one. It had not been seen along her way. She was tired. Weariness and the heat had broken down a little of the bright, joyous spirit of the morning. A heart-sinking came upon her. She must turn and ride back to--she knew not which of the branches of the road, any one of which might have been wrongly selected.
Her mare could not be hurried now; she must last to get her to Starlight. To add to other trifles of the moment, the bank of cloud, so long hung motionless above the western summits, moved out across the path of the sun and blotted out its glory with a density that would have seemed impossible.
Scarcely had Beth fairly turned her back to the west when a wind storm swooped upon the desert. It came as a good stiff breeze, at first, flecking up but little of the dust. Then a sudden, ominous change occurred. All the blue of the sky was overwhelmed, under a sudden expansion of the copperous clouds. An eclipse-like darkness enveloped the world, till the farthest mountains disappeared and the near-by ranges seemed to magnify themselves as they blended with the sky.
With a sound as of an on-rushing cataclysm the actual storm, cyclonic in all but the rotary motion, came beating down upon the startled earth like a falling wall of air.
In less than two minutes the world, the atmosphere, everything had ceased to be. It was a universe of dust and sand, hurtling--God knew whither.
In the suddenness of the storm's descent upon her, Beth became speechless with dismay. Her mare dropped her head and slowly continued to walk. Road, hills, desert--all had disappeared. To go onward was madness; to remain seemed certain death. Despair and horror together gripped Beth by the heart. There was nothing in the world she could do but to close her eyes and double low above the saddle, her hat bent down to shield her face.
At the end of a few minutes only the frightfulness of the thing could no longer be endured. Beth had been all but torn from her seat by the sheer weight and impact of the wind. All the world was roaring prodigiously. The sand and dust, driving with unimaginable velocity, smoked past in blinding fury.
The mare had ceased to move. Beth was aware of her inertia, dimly. She remembered at last to dismount and stand in the animal's shelter. At length on the raging and roaring of the air-sea, crashing onward in its tidal might, came a fearful additional sound. It was rushing onward towards the girl with a speed incredible--a sound of shrieking, or whistling, that changed to a swishing as if of pinions, Titanic in size, where some monstrous winged god was blown against, his will in a headlong course through the tumult.
Then the something went by--the whole roof of a house--from twenty miles away. It scraped in the earth, not ten feet off from where the pony stood--and she bolted and ran for her life.
Down went Beth, knocked over by the mare. With a hideous crash the flying roof was hurled against a nearby pinnacle of rock. The wooden wings split upon the immovable obstruction, and on they went as before.
The pony had disappeared, in panic that nothing could have allayed. The storm-pall swallowed her instantly, Beth could not have seen her had she halted a rod away. Her eyes had been opened for half a moment only before she was flung to the earth. She was rolling now, and for the moment was utterly powerless to rise or to halt her locomotion.
When she presently grasped at a little gray shrub, came to a halt, and tried to stand erect, she was buffeted bodily along by the wind with no strength in her limbs to resist.
She was blown to the big rock pinnacle on which the roof had been divided. An eddy twisted her rudely around to the shelter, and she flung herself down upon the earth.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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25
|
A TIMELY DELIVERANCE
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How long she lay there Beth could never have known. It seemed a time interminable, with the horror of the storm in all the universe. It was certainly more than an hour before the end began to come. Then clouds and the blizzard of sand and dust, together with all the mighty roaring, appeared to be hurled across the firmament by the final gust of fury and swept from the visible world into outer space.
Only a brisk half-gale remained in the wake of the huger disturbance. The sky and atmosphere cleared together. The sun shone forth as before--but low to the mountain horizon. When even the clean wind too had gone, trailing behind its lawless brother, the desert calm became as absolute as Beth had beheld it in the morning.
She crept from her shelter and looked about the plain. Her eyes were red and smarting. She was dusted through and through. In all the broad, gray expanse there was not a sign of anything alive. Her mare had vanished. Beth was lost in the desert, and night was fast descending.
Deliverance from the storm, or perhaps the storm's very rage, had brought her a species of calm. The fear she had was a dull, persistent dread--an all-pervading horror of her situation, too large to be acute. Nevertheless, she determined to seek for the road with all possible haste and make her way on foot, as far as possible, towards the Starlight highway and its possible traffic.
She was stiff from her ride and her cramped position on the earth. She started off somewhat helplessly, where she felt the road must be.
She found no road. Her direction may have been wrong. Possibly the storm of wind had swept away the wagon tracks, for they had all been faint. It had been but half a road at best for several miles. Her heart sank utterly. She became confused as to which way she had traveled. Towards a pass in the hills whence she felt she must have come she hastened with a new accession of alarm.
She was presently convinced that she had chosen entirely wrong. A realizing sense that she was hopelessly mixed assailed her crushingly. To turn in any direction might be a grave mistake. But to stand here and wait--do nothing--with the sun going down--this was preposterous--suicidal! She must go on--somewhere! She must find the road! She must keep on moving--till the end! Till the end! How terrible that thought appeared, in such a situation!
She almost ran, straight onward towards the hills. Out of breath very soon, she walked with all possible haste and eagerness, all the time looking for the road she had left, which the storm might have wiped from the desert. She was certain now that the mountains towards which she was fleeing were away from the Goldite direction.
Once more she changed her course. She realized then that such efforts as these must soon defeat themselves. At least she must stick to one direction--go on in a line as straight as possible, till she came to something! Yet if she chose her direction wrong and went miles away from anything---- She had to go on. She had to take the chance. She plodded southwestward doggedly, for perhaps a mile, then halted at something like a distant sound, and peered towards the shadows of the sunset.
There was nothing to be seen. A hope which had risen for a moment in her breast, at thought of possible deliverance, sank down in collapse, and left her more faint than before. The sun was at the very rim of the world. Its edge began to melt its way downward into all the solid bulk of mountains. It would soon be gone. Darkness would ensue. The moon would be very late, if indeed it came at all. Wild animals would issue from their dens of hiding, to prowl in search of food. Perhaps the sound she heard had been made by an early night-brute of the desert, already roving for his prey!
Once more she went on, desperately, almost blindly. To keep on going, that was the one essential! She had proceeded no more than a few rods, however, when she heard that sound again--this time more like a shout.
Her heart pounded heavily and rapidly. She shaded her eyes with her hand, against the last, slanted sun-rays, and fancied she discerned something, far off there westward, in the purples flung eastward by the mountains. Then the last bit of all that molten disk of gold disappeared in the summits, and with its going she beheld a horseman, riding at a gallop towards herself.
The relief she felt was almost overwhelming--till thoughts of such an encounter came to modify her joy. She was only an unprotected girl--yet--she had no appearance of a woman! This must be her safeguard, should this man now approaching prove some rough, lawless being of the mines.
She stood perfectly still and waited. A man would have hurried forward to meet this deliverance, so unexpectedly vouchsafed. But she was too excited, too uncertain--too much of a girl. Then presently, when the horseman was still a hundred yards away, her heart abruptly turned over in her bosom.
The man on the horse was Van. She knew him--knew that impudent pose, that careless grace and oneness with his broncho! She did not know he was chasing that flying roof which had frightened her horse from her side; that he had bought an old cabin, far from his claim, to move it to the "Laughing Water" ground--only to see it wrenched from his hold by the mighty gale and flung across the world. She knew nothing of this, but she suddenly knew how glad was her whole tingling being, how bounding was the blood in her veins! And she also knew, abruptly, that now if ever she must play the man. She had all but forgotten she was angry with Van. That, and a hundred reasons more, made it absolutely imperative now that he should not know her for herself!
She made a somewhat wild attempt at a toilet of her hair--in case the wind had ripped the tell-tale strands from beneath her hat. Then with utter faintness in her being, and weakness in her knees, she prepared to give him reception.
He had slowed his horse to a walk. He rode up deliberately, scrutinizing in obvious puzzlement the figure before him in the sand.
"Hullo," he said, while still a rod away, "what in blazes are you doing here, man--are you lost?"
Beth nodded. "I'm afraid I am." Her utterance was decidedly girlish, and quavering.
"Lost your voice somewhere, too, I reckon," said Van. "Where are you going? Where are you from?"
"Starlight," answered Beth, at a loss for a better reply, and making an effort to deepen her tones as she talked. "I lost my horse in the storm."
Van looked around the valley.
"Did, hey? Didn't happen to see a stray roof, anywhere, did you? I lost one."
"I--haven't seen anything," faltered Both, whose only wish was to have him say something about her escape from this terrible place. "But something frightened my pony."
"I was curious to see how far that roof would hike, that's all," he told her by way of explanation of his presence here on his horse, and he turned to look at her again. "Didn't you know this so-called cut-off to Starlight would take you more time than the road?"
"No, I--I didn't know it," said Beth, afraid he must presently penetrate her masquerade if he looked like that upon her. "What do you advise me to do?"
He ignored her question, demanding: "Say, is your name Kent? --Glenmore Kent?"
Beth felt her heart begin new gymnastics. This was her cue.
"Why, yes. But--how did you know--know me?"
"I've met your sister, in Goldite. You can't get to Starlight to-night."
She had passed muster! A herd of wild emotions were upon her. But first here was her predicament--and what he said was not at all reassuring. Certain alarms that his coming had banished returned in a vague array.
She showed her dread in her eyes. "Perhaps I could get to Goldite."
"How?" He was half unconsciously patting Suvy, the horse, whose ecstasy thereat was not to be concealed.
Beth knew not how. She wished Van would cease that study of her face. Perhaps she could think more clearly.
"Why--I suppose I could walk--if I knew the way," she said. "Is it very far? I admit I'm bewildered. I was lost."
"It would be a long ride," he told her. "A lost man is hopeless. I couldn't even show you the way so you could keep it--especially at night."
New fears came surging upon her in all their force and numbers.
"But--what shall I do?"
Van reflected.
"My claim is the nearest camp from here, since the wind took down that shack. And that was abandoned anyway. Can you hike some twenty-odd miles?"
Twenty-odd miles! --on foot! For a second she was almost tempted to disclose herself, and beg him, for something a trifle more sympathetic than what he seemed to be offering another fellow man. But that could not be done. And night was descending rapidly. The twilight was brief--and on the wane.
"Why--perhaps so," she answered, attempting to smile. "I'll try."
Something in her smile went straight to his heart--he wondered why. To feel as he did towards this unknown man, even the brother of the girl he madly loved--this was certainly absurd. It was not to be explained; it was simply upon him, that was enough. He dismounted.
"Here, get on my horse and ride. I want to walk and stretch my legs."
Beth all but gasped. She! --ride on Suvy! --the horse she had seen so nearly kill this man! --a horse that might perhaps permit no other living thing upon his back! Yet she knew not how to refuse--and to walk very far would be impossible.
"I'm--afraid I'm a very poor horseman," she admitted guardedly. "If your pony should happen----" Van had thought that Suvy might resent a stranger's liberties. He turned to the broncho peculiarly.
"How about it, boy?" he asked the horse gravely. "I want you to stand for it, savvy?" He looked at the animal inquiringly. How he knew that Suvy consented was only for him to comprehend. He squared about to Beth, who was watching with wonder, and something far softer, in her heart. "Get on," he said. "He was raised as a cradle for babies."
Beth was pale, but she had to be a man. She stepped to the broncho's side and mounted to the saddle. Suvy trembled in every sinew of his being.
Van gave him a pat on the neck again, turned his back and started straight northward. The pony followed at his heels like a dog with a master he loves.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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26
|
THE NIGHT IN THE DESERT
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At ten o'clock that night the moon had not yet risen. Its glow was on the eastern sky, however, and at length it appeared, a broken orb with its waning side lopped from its bulk.
Beth was still in the saddle. She was utterly exhausted; she could scarcely remain in her seat. For more than an hour Van had plodded onward without even turning to speak. They had talked intermittently, and he had told her his name. Far off in the dimness of the desert level--the floor of a second mighty valley--a lone coyote began his dismal howling. Beth, on the horse, felt a chill go down her spine. Van seemed not to hear. The howl was repeated from time to time intermittently, like the wail of a ghost, forever lost to hope.
When the moon at last shone fairly on the broncho and the girl, Van cast a glance at her face. He was startled. The young rider looked so much like Beth--and looked so utterly tired!
Van halted, and so did the pony. The man looked up at his companion.
"You're in no fit condition to go on," he said. "What's the use of our trying to make it? To camp right here is as good as going on all night, which don't suit my legs worth a cent."
Beth was wearied almost to collapse. But--to camp out here--all night! --they two! Aside from the terrors that had crept to her soul at sound of the distant coyote, this present aspect of the situation was appalling. Indeed, she began to see that whether they went on or remained, she must spend the night in this man's company.
She was almost too tired to care how such a thing would appear. He thought her a man--it had been inescapable--there was nothing she could do to prevent the course of events. And come what might she must presently slip from that saddle, in her weakness, faintness, and hunger, if the penalty were all but life itself.
"I'm--sure I can walk--and let you ride," she said. "I'd like to go on, but I know I can't sit here any longer."
She tried to dismount by herself--as any man must do. In her stiffness she practically fell from the saddle, sinking on her side upon the ground. Only for a second was she prostrate thus at his feet, but her coat fell back from her kahki vest--and a gleam of the moonlight fell upon a bright little object, pinned above her heart.
Van beheld it--and knew what it was--his nugget, washed from the "Laughing Water" claim!
The truth seemed to pour upon him like the waters of an all-engulfing wave--the overwhelming, wonderful truth that was also almost terrible, in what it might mean to them both.
There was one thing only the man could do--ignore this fact that he had discovered and treat her like a man. This he knew instantly. He turned with a man's indifference to one of his sex and vaulted to Suvy's back.
"Come on," he said, "if you're anxious to get under cover."
He could trust himself to say no more. He rode ahead.
Beth did her best to follow, and make no complaint. The broncho, however, was a rapid walker. This she had not realized while Van was striding on in the lead. She fell behind repeatedly, and Van was obliged to halt his horse and wait. She began to be lame. It had been a torture to ride; it was agony to walk.
Van now became strangely urgent. He had never loved her more. His love had taken on a sacredness, out here in the night, with Beth so weary and helpless. More than anything he had ever desired in his life he wished to keep her sacred--spared from such a complication as their night out here alone might engender.
Yet he saw the first little limp when she began to falter. He was watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect her--save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert. He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. He was torn between the wish to hasten her along, for her own greater ease of mind, and the impulse to halt this hardship. He knew not what to do.
They had gone much less than a mile when he brought up his pony at her side.
"Here, Kent," he said, "you walk like a bride-groom going up the aisle. You'll have to get up here and ride." He dismounted actively.
Beth could have dropped in her tracks for weariness. She was tired to the marrow of her bones.
"I can't," she answered. "Perhaps--we'd better camp." A hot flush rushed upward to her very scalp, fortunately, however, unseen.
Van regarded her sternly.
"I've changed my mind. I haven't time to camp out here to-night. You'll have to ride."
It seemed to Beth that, had it been to save her life, she could scarcely have climbed to that saddle. To remain on the horse would, she knew, be far beyond her strength. She continued on her feet only by the utmost exertion of her will. Someway since Van had found her in this dreadful place she had lost strength rapidly--perhaps for the leaning on him. With Van's ultimatum now to confront, she could summon no nerve or resolution.
Her face paled. "You'd better go on, if you have to be at your claim," she said, aware that she could offer no argument, no alternative plan to his wish for an onward march. "I'm--not used to riding--much. I can't ride any more tonight."
He knew she told the truth, knew how gladly she would have continued riding, knew what a plight of collapse she must be approaching to submit to a thought of remaining here till morning. He could not go and leave her here. The thought of it aroused him to something like anger. He realized the necessity of assuming a rougher demeanor.
"Damn it, Kent," he said, "you're no less lost than you were before. You know I can't go off and leave you. And I want to get ahead."
She only knew she could not ride, come what might.
"You didn't say so, a little while ago," she ventured, half imploringly. "I'm sorry I'm so nearly dead. If you must go on----" That cut him to the heart. How could he be a brute?
"I ought to go!" he broke in unguardedly. "I mean I've got to think--I've got work to do in the morning. Don't you suppose you could try?"
The moonlight was full on his face. All the laughter she knew so well had disappeared from his eyes. In its place she saw such a look of yearning and worry--such a tenderness of love as no woman ever yet saw and failed to comprehend. She divined in that second that he knew who she was--she felt it, through all her sense of intuition and the fiber of her soul. She understood his insistence on the march, the saving march, straight onward without a halt. She loved him for it. She had loved him with wild intensity, confessed at last to herself, ever since the moment he had appeared in the desert to save her.
If a certain reckless abandon to this love rocked her splendid self-control, it was only because she was so utterly exhausted. Her judgment was sound, unshaken. Nevertheless, despite judgment and all--to go on was out of the question. God had flung them out here together, she thought, for better or for worse. That Van would be the fine chivalrous gentleman she had felt him to be at the very first moment of their accidental acquaintance, she felt absolutely assured. She accepted a certain inevitable fatality in the situation---perhaps the more readily now that she knew he knew, for she seemed so much more secure.
His question remained unanswered while she thought of a thousand things. Could she try to go on?
She shook her head. "What's the use of my riding--perhaps another mile? You might go on and send a man to guide me in the morning."
What an effort it cost her to make such a harsh suggestion not even Van could know. A terrible fear possessed her that he might really act upon her word. To have him stay was bad enough, but to have him go would be terrible.
"Hell!" he said, keeping up his acting. "You talk like a woman. Haven't I wasted time enough already without sending someone out here to-morrow morning? What makes you think you're worth it?" He turned his back upon her, hung the stirrup of the saddle on the horn, and began to loosen the cinch.
Like the woman that she was, she enjoyed his roughness, his impudence, and candor. It meant so much, in such a time as this. After a moment she asked him: "What do you mean to do?"
He hauled off the saddle and dropped it to the ground.
"Make up the berths," he answered. "Here's your bedding." He tossed the blanket down at her feet. It was warm and moist from Suvy's body. He then uncoiled his long lasso, secured an end around the pony's neck, and bade him walk away and roll.
The broncho obeyed willingly, as if he understood. Van took up the saddle, carried it off a bit, and dropped it as before.
Beth still remained there, with the blanket at her feet.
Van addressed her. "Got any matches?"
"No," she said. "I'm afraid----" "Neither have I," he interrupted. "No fire in the dressing-room. Good-night. No need to set the alarm clock. I'll wake you bright and early." Once more he took up his saddle and started off in the ankle-high brush of the plain.
Beth watched him with many misgivings at her heart.
"Where--where are you going?" she called.
"To bed," he called in response. "Want room to kick around, if I get restless."
She understood--but it was hard to bear, to be left so alone as this, in such a place. He went needlessly far, she was sure.
Grateful to him, but alarmed, made weaker again by having thus to make her couch so far from any protection, she continued to stand there, watching him depart. He stooped at last, and his pony halted near him, like a faithful being who must needs keep him always in sight. Even the pony would have been some company for Beth, but when Van stretched himself down upon the earth, with the saddle for a pillow, she felt horribly alone.
There was nothing to do but to make the best of what the fates allowed. She curled herself down on the chilly sand with the blanket tucked fairly well around her. But she did not sleep. She was far too tired and alarmed.
Half an hour later three coyotes began a fearsome serenade. Beth sat up abruptly, as terrified as if she had been but a child. She endured it for nearly five minutes, hearing it come closer all the while. Then she could bear it no more. She rose to her feet, caught up her blanket, and almost ran towards the pony. More softly then she approached the place where Van lay full length upon the ground. She beheld him in the moonlight, apparently sound asleep.
As closely as she dared she crept, and once more made her bed upon the sand. There, in a child-like sense of security, with her fearless protector near, she listened in a hazy way to the prowling beasts, now cruising away to the south, and so profoundly slept.
Van had heard her come. Into his heart snuggled such a warmth and holy joy as few men are given to feel. He, too, went to sleep, thinking of his nugget on her breast.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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27
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TALL STORIES
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Daylight had barely broadened into morning when Van was astir from his bed. The air was chill and wonderfully clean. Above the eastern run of hills the sun was ready to appear.
Beth still lay deep in slumber. She had curled up like a child in her meager covering. Van watched her from his distance. A little shiver passed through her form, from time to time. Her hat was still in place, but how girlish, how sweet, how helpless was her face--the little he could see! How he wished he might permit her to sleep it out as nature demanded. For her own sake, not for his, he must hasten her onward to Goldite, by way of the "Laughing Water" claim.
He walked off eastward where a natural furrow made a deep depression in the valley. His pony followed, the lasso dragging in the sand. Once over at the furrow edge, the man took out his pistol and fired it off in the air.
Beth was duly aroused. Van saw her leap to her feet, then he disappeared in the hollow, with his broncho at his heels.
The girl was, if possible, stiffer than before. But she was much refreshed. For a moment she feared Van was deserting, till she noted his saddle, near at hand. Then he presently emerged upon the level of the plain and returned to the site of their camp.
"First call for breakfast in the dining-car," he said. "We can make it by half-past eight."
"If only we could have a cup of good hot coffee first, before we start," said Beth, and she smiled at the vainness of the thought.
"We won't get good coffee at the claim," Van assured her dryly. "But near-coffee would lure me out of this."
He was rapidly adjusting the blanket and saddle on his horse.
"You'll have to ride or we can't make speed," he added. "As a walker you're sure the limited."
She appreciated thoroughly the delicacy with which he meant to continue the fiction of her sex. But he certainly was frank.
"Thank you," she answered amusedly. "I'd do better, perhaps, if I weren't so over-burdened with flattery."
"You'll have to do better, anyhow," he observed, concluding preparations with Suvy. "There you are. Get on. Father Time with hobbles on could beat us getting a move."
He started off, leaving her to mount by herself. She managed the matter somewhat stiffly, suppressing a groan at the effort, and then for an hour she was gently pummeled into limberness as the pony followed Van.
They came at the end of that time to one of the upper reaches of that same river she had forded the previous day. To all appearances the wide shallow bed was a counterpart of the one over which her horse had waded. But the trail turned sharply down the stream, and followed along its bank.
They had halted for the pony to drink. Van also refreshed himself and Beth dismounted to lie flat down and quench her long, trying thirst.
"Right across there, high up in the hills, is the 'Laughing Water' claim," said Van, pointing north-eastward towards the mountains. "Only three miles away, if we could fly, but six as we have to go around."
"And why do we have to go around?" Beth inquired. "Aren't we going to cross the river here?"
"Looks like a river, I admit," he said, eying the placid stream. "That's a graveyard there--quicksand all the way across."
Beth's heart felt a shock at the thought of what could occur to a traveler here, unacquainted with the treacherous waters.
"Good gracious!" she said. She added generously: "Couldn't I walk a little now, and--share the horse?"
"When you walk it gets on Suvy's nerves to try to keep step," he answered. "Fall in."
They went two miles down the river, then, across on a rock-and-gravel bottom, at a ford directly opposite a jagged rift in the mountains. This chasm, which was short and steep, they traversed perspiringly. The sun was getting warm. Beyond them then the way was all a rough, hard climb, over ridges, down through canyons, around huge dykes of rock and past innumerable foldings of the range. How Van knew the way was more than Beth could understand. She was already growing wearied anew, since the night had afforded her very little rest, and she had not eaten for nearly a day.
Van knew she was in no condition for the ride. He was watching her constantly, rejoicing in her spirit, but aching for her aches. He set a faster pace for the broncho to follow, to end the climb as soon as possible.
At length, below a rounded ridge, where stunted evergreens made a welcome bit of greenery, he came to a halt.
"We're almost there," he said. "You'll have to remain at the claim till somewhere near noon, then I'll show you the way down to Goldite."
"Till noon?" She looked at him steadily, a light of worry in her eyes as she thought of arriving so late at Mrs. Dick's, with what consequences--the Lord alone knew.
"I can't get away much earlier," he said, and to this, by way of acting his part, he added: "Do you want to wear me out?"
She knew what he meant. He would wait till noon to give her time to rest. She would need all the rest he could make possible. And then he would only "show her the way to Goldite." He would not ride with her to town. She might yet escape the compromising plight into which she had been thrust. His thoughtfulness, it seemed, could have no end.
"Very well," she murmured. "I'm sorry to have made you all this trouble." She was not--someways; she was lawlessly, inordinately glad.
The "trouble" for Van had been the most precious experience in all his life.
"It has been one wild spasm of delight," he said in his dryest manner of sarcasm. "But between us, Kent, I'm glad it's no continuous performance."
He went over the ridge, she following. A moment later they were looking down upon the "Laughing Water" claim from that self-same eminence from which Searle Bostwick had seen it when he rode one day from the Indian reservation.
"This," said Van, "is home."
"Oh," said the girl, and tears sprang into her eyes.
And a very home, indeed, it presently seemed, when they came to the shack, where Gettysburg, Napoleon, old Dave, and even Algy, the Chinese cook, came forth to give them cordial welcome.
Beth was introduced to all as Glenmore Kent--and passed inspection.
"Brother of Miss Beth Kent," said Van, "who honored us once with a visit to the Monte Cristo fiasco. He's been lost on the desert and he's too done up to talk, so I want him to be fed and entertained. And of the two requirements, the feed's more important than the vaudeville show, unless your stunts can put a man to sleep."
Algy and Gettysburg got the impromptu breakfast together. The placer sluices outside were neglected. Nobody wished to shovel sand for gold when marvelous tales might be exchanged concerning the wind storm that had raged across the hills the day before.
Indeed, as Van and Beth sat together at the board, regaling themselves like the two famished beings they were, their three entertainers proceeded to liberate some of the tallest stories concerning storms that mortal ever heard.
Napoleon and Gettysburg became the hottest of rivals in an effort to deliver something good. Gettysburg furnished a tale of a breeze in the unpeopled wilds of Nebraska where two men's farms, fully twenty miles apart, had undergone an astounding experience whereby a complete exchange of their houses, barns, and sheds had been effected by a cyclone, without the slightest important damage to the structures.
When this was concluded, Napoleon looked pained. "I think you lie, Gett--metaphorical speakin'!" he hastened to add. "But shiver my bowsprit if I didn't see a ship, once, ten days overdue, jest snatched up and blowed into port two days ahead of time, and never touched nothing all the way, I remember the year 'cause that was the winter ma had twins and pa had guinea pigs."
"Wal," drawled Dave, who had all this time maintained a dignified silence, "I've saw some wind, in my time, but only one that was really a leetle mite too obstreperous. Yep, that was a pretty good blow--the only wind I ever seen which blew an iron loggin' chain off the fence, link by link."
Napoleon paid Dave a compliment. He said: "You old son of a gun!"
Van thought the storms had raged sufficiently.
"Is work unpopular, or did the wind blow the water from the creek?"
"I like to work," admitted Gettysburg, "but it's fun to watch you epicures eatin'."
Beth felt embarrassed.
"Epicures?" echoed Napoleon. "You don't know what an epicure is? That's a vulgar remark when you don't know no meaning of a word."
"Epicure? Me not know what an epicure is?" replied old Gettysburg aggressively. "You bet I do. An epicure's a feller which chaws his fodder before he swallers it."
Napoleon subsided. Then he arose and sauntered out to work, Dave and Gettysburg following. Van hastily drank his cup of coffee, which, as he had predicted, was not particularly good, and started for the others. He halted in the door.
"Make yourself comfortable, if you can here, Kent," he said. "You had an exhausting experience yesterday. Perhaps you had better lie down."
Beth merely said: "Thank you." But her smile was more radiant than sunshine.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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28
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WORK AND SONG
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Having presently finished her breakfast, Beth joined the group outside, curious to behold the workings of a placer mine in actual operation.
There was not much to see, but it was picturesque. In their lack of funds the partners had constructed the simplest known device for collecting the gold from the sand. They had built a line of sluices, or troughs of considerable length, propped on stilts, or supports about knee high, along the old bed of the canyon. The sluices were mere square flumes, set with a fairly rapid grade.
Across the bottom of all this flume, at every yard or less of its length, small wooden cleats had been nailed, to form the "riffles." Into the hoses the water from the creek was turned, at the top. The men then shoveled the sand in the running stream and away it went, sluicing along the water-chute, its particles rattling down the wooden stairway noisily. The gold was expected to settled behind the riffles, owing to its weight.
All the flume-way dripped from leakages. The sun beat down upon the place unshaded. Water escaped into all the pits the men were digging as they worked, so that they slopped around in mud above their ankles. Dave wore rubber boots and was apparently protected. As a matter of fact the boots promptly filled with water. Napoleon and Gettysburg made no effort to remain dry shod, but puddled all day with soused footgear.
Van rode off to the "reservation town," a mile below the hill, to bargain for a tent reported there for sale. Sleeping quarters here on the claim were far too crowded. Until lumber for a cabin could be purchased they must make what shifts they might.
It had taken but the briefest time for the miners to go at their work. Beth stood near, watching the process with the keenest interest. It seemed to her a back-breaking, strenuous labor. These sturdy old fellows, grown gray and stooped with toil--grown also expectant of hardship, ill-luck, and privations--were pathetic figures, despite their ways of cheer.
That Van had attached them to himself in a largeness of heart by no means warranted by their worth was a conviction at which anyone must promptly arrive. They were lovable old scamps, faithful, honest, and loyal to the man they loved--but that was all that could be stated. Perhaps it was enough. As partners with whom to share both life and fortune they might have seemed impossible to many discerning men.
Beth sat down on a rock, near Gettysburg. Someway she, too, liked the three old chaps of whom work had made three trademarks. Old Gettysburg began to sing. The words of his song, halted by grunts as he shoveled, were, to say the least, unexpected: The frog he swore he'd have a ride, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Sword and pistols by his side, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. For lunch he packed a beetle bug, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Tucked inside his tummy snug, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.
Kimo, karo, pito, garo, Kimo, bolly mitty kimo. (Shovel) Shing-shang hammyriddle, allibony, ringtang, Folderolli bolly mitty kimo. (Three shovelings and some meditation) The frog he rode a slimy eel, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. The sun made his complexion peel, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. The frog's legs went to join a fry, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. The eel became a juicy pie, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo.
(Chorus) Napoleon looked up at the end of the song and spat upon his hands.
"Gett," he said placidly, "I think that's a lie--metaphorical speakin'. Ain't mad, are you?"
Gettysburg made no response. He merely shoveled.
One of the sluices, weakened by a leak that had undermined its pinning, fell from place, at the farther end of the line. Old Dave went down to repair it. Napoleon took advantage of his absence to come to Beth, with an air of imparting something confidential.
"Splice my main brace," said he, with his head on one side, quaintly, "wasn't that a blasphermous yarn old Dave was givin' us about the wind blowing that log chain away a link at a time? Old son of a gun!"
Beth was inquisitive.
"Why do you call him a son of a gun?"
Napoleon scratched his head.
"Well, you see, Dave's mother held up his father with a Colt forty-five and makes him marry her. Then along comes Dave. I reckon that makes him a sure enough son of a gun."
Beth said: "Oh." She turned a little red.
"Yep, good old cuss, Dave is, though. No good for a seafearing man, however. He could never learn to swear--he ain't got no ear for music."
He returned to his shovel. He and Gettysburg worked in silence for fifteen minutes. Old Dave returned and joined them. Gettysburg tuned up for another of his songs, the burden of which was the tale of a hen-pecked man.
Once more at its end Napoleon looked up and spat on his hands.
"There ain't nothing that can keep some women down 'cept a gravestone--and I've seen some gravestones which was tilted."
Despite the interest and amusement she felt in it all, Beth was becoming sleepy as she sat there in the sun. She shook off the spell and arose, approaching closer to the bank and flume where Gettysburg was toiling. He labored on, silently, for several minutes, then paused, straightened up by degrees, as if the folds in his back were stubborn, and looked at their visitor steadily, his glass eye particularly fixed. One of his hands pulled down his jaw, and then it closed up with a thump.
"Guess this kind of a racket is sort of new to you, Mr. Kent," he ventured. "Ever seen gold washin' before?"
"No," Beth confessed, "and I don't see where the gold is to come from now."
Gettysburg chuckled. "Holy toads! Miners do a heap of work and never see it neither. Me and Van and Napoleon has went through purg and back, many's the time, and was lucky to git out with our skeletons, sayin' nuthin' about the gold."
"Oh." She could think of nothing else to say.
"In fact Van was all that got me out onct--Napoleon, too. We wasn't worth it, prob'ly. That's the joke on Van. Since then us three cusses has starved, and froze, and clean roasted, chasin' gold."
"Oh."
"We was lost in the snow, one winter, with nuthin' to eat but a plug of tobacker, a can of vasolene, and a porous plaster. We lived on that menu fer a week--that and snow-soup. But Van got us out all right--packed Napoleon about five miles on his back. Nap was so thin there wasn't enough of him to die." His one good eye became dreamily focused on the past. He smiled. "But someways the desert is worse than the snow. We got ketched three times without no water. Never did know, Nap or me, how Van got our two old dried-up carcasses out the last time, down to Death Valley. He's a funny cuss, old Van."
Once more Beth merely answered: "Oh."
"You bet!" resumed Gettysburg. "He never quits. It ain't in him. He works his hands off and his soul out of its socket, every time." He laughed heartily. "Lord! we have done an awful lot of fool work fer nuthin'! We've tackled tunnels and shafts, and several games like this, and pretty near died a dozen different styles--all uneasy kinds of dyin'--and we've lived when it was a darn sight uneasier than croakin', and kept on tryin' out new diggin's, and kept on bein' busted all the time. 'Nuff to make a lemon laugh, the fun we've had. But now, by Jupe! we've struck it at last--and it ain't a-goin' to git away!"
"Oh, I'm glad--I'm glad!" said Beth, winking back a bit of suspicious moisture that came unbidden in her eyes as she looked on this weather-beaten, hardship-beaten old figure, still sturdily ready for the fates. "I'm sure you all deserve it! I'm sure of that!"
"Wal, that's a question fer God Almighty," Gettysburg replied. "But there's the gold, the good yellow gold! And I'm awful glad fer Van!"
Into the water he dipped his crooked old fingers, and scratching down behind a riffle he fetched up a small amount of gold, doubly bright with the water and the sunlight upon it.
"Gold--and we git it easy," he added, repeating: "I'm awful glad fer Van. You ought to see him shovel!" He dropped the gold back into the water carelessly. "It ain't a-goin' to do us old jack-legged cusses much good, at our age, but I would like to go to San Francisco this summer once, and shoot the chutes!"
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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29
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SUSPICIOUS ANSWERS
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Beth and Van rode away from the claim just after lunch; she on a borrowed horse. The girl had not slept, but she had rested well and was far more fit for the journey back to town than either she or Van had expected.
He went with her part way only--far enough to put her safely on a trail from which she could not wander. They talked but little as they rode--perhaps because they had so much to say that could not be approached. Never for a moment did Van relax his vigilance upon himself, or treat her otherwise than as a man for whom he had conceived a natural liking.
When they came to the place of parting he pulled up his broncho and faced about in the trail.
"Well, Kent," he said, "so long. You'll have no trouble now." He held forth his hand.
Beth gave him hers--and all her heart. Nevertheless, his clasp was as brief as he would give to one of his sex.
"So long," she answered. "Good luck. I am under many obligations."
"They won't make you very round shouldered," he said. "See you again."
That was their parting. He rode back at once--and Beth continued on her way. She turned three times in her saddle to watch him as he went, but she did not catch him glancing back.
About sundown she rode into Goldite, went at once to Mrs. Dick's, and tied her horse to a post. Mrs. Dick she met in the hall.
"Snakes alive!" exclaimed that lively little person. "If you ain't back as natural as life!" The garb had not deceived her for a moment. "Where in the world have you been, in such a rig?"
Beth's answer was ready.
"I went to see my brother, and had to spend the night on the desert."
Mrs. Dick stared at her in wonder. "Talk to me about the Eastern women being mollycuddles! You don't mean his cabin was blown down by the storm?"
Beth was ill-prepared for this, but she met it.
"I wish you could have seen that roof go by!"
"Are you hungry?" the hostess demanded. "You look all wore out."
"I am," Beth admitted. "Has Mr. Bostwick been here in my absence?"
"He ain't been here in anything--nope."
Beth's relief was inexpressible. She was safe, with everything behind her! No one knew, or would ever need to know, the secret in possession of herself and Van.
"If anyone comes that you can send, will you kindly have my horse taken over to the stable?" she said. "I must go upstairs and rest."
"Here's Billy Stitts a-comin' now," replied the housewife, moving towards the door. "He's been worried to death about you bein' gone!"
Beth ran at once for the stairs, and later, from the window, saw the faithful old Billy leading her pony away. She closed her door, darkened the light, and soon clambered wearily into bed, where she dropped off to sleep like a child, lost to the world through the dinner hour and till something like three in the morning. She awaked then for a moment, long enough to think of Van, then sighed in absolute comfort and turned to sleep again.
It was nine o'clock in the morning when at last she appeared on the scene.
"Land snakes!" said Mrs. Dick, who had heard her coming down. "Ain't you the sleeper! Well, I've kept your breakfast, but I couldn't keep last night's supper. Your friend, Mr. Bostwick, was here about eight, but I told him he'd have to wait if it took you a week to come to."
"You didn't tell him I'd been away, I hope," said Beth, suddenly alarmed at the thought of Searle's presence in the town. "I'd rather no one knew but you."
"Lord! I wouldn't tell him if a rat was dead in his pocket!" Mrs. Dick expostulated. "I can't abide the man, and you might as well know it, even if it does hurt your feelings."
Beth sat down to her breakfast. "You're as good as you can be."
"Well, the breakfast ain't--'taint fresh," said Mrs. Dick. "But I'll see you git a decent lunch."
She bustled off into the kitchen. Beth had barely finished eating when Bostwick again appeared.
The man was tanned from his trip in the desert. He seemed alert, excited, keen over prospects rapidly coming to a head.
"Well, well, Beth," he said as he came inside the dining-room, "I'm back, you see, but I've certainly had a time of it! The car broke down, and Glen had left Starlight when at last I arrived, and I hunted for him all through the mountains and only found him four days ago, and we've been going ever since. I couldn't write, but I did feel cut up, I assure you, about leaving you here alone for so long a time."
He advanced as if to kiss her, but Beth avoided his caress. She was calm and possessed. She meant to ascertain just how far the man was trying to deceive her.
"Won't you sit down, and tell me all about it," she said. "You saw Glen four days ago?" She resumed her place in her chair.
"Three or four days ago--I'm mixed in my dates," he said, as he also took a seat. "He's looking fine, and sent his love, of course."
That the man was lying, in every particular, she began to feel convinced.
"You left him well? He was feeling strong and well?"
"Never better," he assured her. "You can see what this wonderful sunlight does, even to me."
"Yes, I see. And you left Starlight yesterday?"
"Yesterday afternoon. I had trouble running back. Otherwise we'd have been here in the evening."
She glanced at him quickly. "We? Glen didn't come along? He isn't here?"
"Oh, no, no, certainly not," he hastened to say. "I brought in a man who--who is interested in the purchase we have made."
That served to arouse her sense of wonderment at what he had really been doing with her money. He was attempting to deceive her concerning Glen, and perhaps his entire story was a fabrication.
"Oh," she said. "Then you have purchased the mine--you and Glen?"
"Well--a few minor details remain to be concluded," he said off-handedly. "We are not yet in actual possession of the property. There will be no further hitches, however--and the claim is certainly rich."
For the life of her she could not tell what lay at the bottom of the business. The strange conflicts and discrepancies between Glen's very own letters made the riddle utterly obscure. She felt that Searle was fashioning falsehoods in every direction. That he had not visited Glen at all was her fixed conviction. A sudden distrust, almost a loathing for this heavy-browed man, was settling down upon her, inescapably. Someway, somehow she must know about Glen for herself. Her own attempted trip to Starlight had discouraged all thought of further adventure, and no reliance whatsoever could be placed on Searle's reports. Perhaps the reputed mining property was likewise a myth--or if such a property existed, Glen might never have heard of it at all. But Glen's letter--she was always forgetting that letter--the one he had written to Searle.
She said: "Where is this mine that Glen has found?"
He colored slightly. "We have all agreed not to talk too much about it yet. It's not very far from here--I can tell you that. Precautions are necessary where a hundred men follow every prospector about, night and day, if he happens to have found a bit of valuable ore. A thousand men would be after this property if they knew the way to secure it."
Perhaps, after all, Glen, had purposely concealed this matter from herself. Bostwick sounded plausible. Her mind reverted to her brother's illness, for Glen to her was of far more importance than all the mines in Nevada.
"I am glad to hear that Glen is _well_," she said, determined on another tack. "He hasn't answered my letter."
Once more Bostwick colored, beneath his tan and the gun-metal tint of his jaw.
"I suppose he's been too busy," he answered. "Have you written again?"
"Not yet," she answered honestly. "I wasn't sure of his whereabouts. You are sure he's in Starlight now?"
"Yes--but you needn't write," he hastened to say. "He said he might come, perhaps to-morrow." He rose from his chair. "I've got to hurry off, little girl. These negotiations cannot wait. I'll run in when I can--this afternoon at the latest. I'm glad to see you looking so well." He approached her with lover-like intent. "My heart has been empty and forlorn, away from you, Beth. Surely you have a little--a little something for me, pet? You know how starved----" "Oh--Mrs. Dick is coming!" she interrupted desperately. "You must have a great deal to do."
Mrs. Dick was making a large and lively noise in the kitchen.
Bostwick listened for a second, his deep-set eyes keenly fixed on the girl, like very orbs of suspicion and jealousy. He lowered his voice.
"Has that ruffian, Van Buren, been here recently?"
She raised her brows in well-feigned astonishment, "I haven't heard of any ruffian being in town."
Bostwick studied her face for a moment in silence.
"I'll be around this afternoon," he repeated. "Good-by."
He departed hurriedly, glancing at his watch as he went.
Not a block from the house he met old Billy Stitts, who, though quite unknown to the New York man, knew Bostwick in a way of his own.
"Morning, Uncle. --Howdy?" he said, blocking Bostwick's path. "Back, I see. Welcome home. I guess you don't know me as well as I know you. My name is Stitts--Billy Stitts--and I'm gittin' on fine with your niece. I'm the one which runs her errands and gits the inside track."
Bostwick, staring at Billy ominously, and about to sweep him aside as a bit of old rubbish, too familiar and impudent for tolerance, paused abruptly in his impulse, at a hint which Billy had supplied.
"Oh," he said. "How are you? So you are the friend who runs Miss Kent's errands? You must be the one she asked me to befriend."
"Did she?" said old Billy, inordinately pleased. "What did I tell you about the inside track?"
"I'm glad if you have been of use," Bostwick told him insidiously. "You didn't say what your services have been. Just a few little errands, I suppose?"
"Never you mind," said Billy, with a profoundly impressive wink. "That's between her and me. That ain't even fer you, Uncle Bostwick," and he winked again.
"Of course, of course," agreed Bostwick, half consumed with rage at the old fellow's abominable manners and familiarity. "I'll keep you in mind and add some reward of my own on the next occasion."
He bowed and hastened on his way, boiling with curiosity to know what it was that Beth had been doing to require this old tattler's services. He meant to ascertain. His suspicions went at once to Van, at thought of whom he closed down his jaw like a vise.
Filled with a turmoil of thoughts that seethed in his brain, like a brew in a witch's cauldron--some of them dark and some golden bright, and some of them red with lust for many things--he proceeded down street to McCoppet's place, to find himself locked out of the private den, where the gambler was closeted with Lawrence.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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30
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BETH'S ONE EXPEDIENT
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Bostwick had told Beth partial truths. His journey had been hard. His car had been twice disabled on the desert; Lawrence had been difficult to find; delays had confronted him at every turn, and not until midnight of the day before this had he come with his quarry to Goldite--barely in time to save the situation, with the reservation opening less than forty-eight hours away.
He had not seen Glen, nor approached the town of Starlight closer than fifteen miles. He had not yet expended Beth's money, which only that morning had been practically placed at McCoppet's disposal. But having finally landed the Government surveyor in camp, he had achieved the first desirable end in the game they were playing, and matters were moving at last with a speed to suit the most exacting.
During the interim between Searle's departure and return affairs had been a trifle complicated in another direction--affairs that lay between the gambler and his friend, the lumberman, big Trimmer.
Trimmer had been paid one thousand dollars only of the sum agreed upon when he gave the name of Culver to the half-breed Indian, Cayuse. He had since spent his money, demanded the balance due, and threatened McCoppet with exposure, only to be met with a counter threat of prison for life as the half-breed's accomplice in the crime. McCoppet meant to pay a portion of the creature's price, but intended to get it from Bostwick. Indeed, to-day he had the money, but was far too much engrossed with Lawrence to give the lumberman a thought.
Trimmer, waxing greedy through the ease with which he had blackmailed McCoppet, had developed a cunning of his own. Convinced that the gambler was accustomed to incubating plans in his private office, the lumberman made shift to excavate a hole beneath the floor of that particular den of privacy, and, after having spent half a night in vain, in this place of concealment, was at last being duly rewarded as he listened to McCoppet and Lawrence.
With his ear to a knot-hole he gathered in everything essential to a knowledge of the plot. He became aware that Lawrence "fell" for twenty thousand dollars; he overheard the details of the "survey" about to be made; but to save his very life he could not have fathomed the means that were about to be employed to "jump" the mining property belonging to Van Buren and his partners.
Equipped with this latest means of squeezing McCoppet, the creature emerged from his hole in time to meet the gambler at the bar, during a moment of Bostwick's temporary absence.
"Opal," he said significantly, "I need to see you fer a minute. It won't be no healthier to refuse me now than it was the first time I come."
The gambler looked at him coldly. "I haven't got time to talk now, Larry, but some of your money is at your order any time you want it, in gold, or poker chips, or gin."
Trimmer was placated. "All right," he said, and cunningly resolved, upon the spot, to keep his latest secret on the ice.
Lawrence had already disappeared to hasten arrangements for getting out upon his work.
Bostwick had waited half an hour in the utmost impatience. With a hundred things to increase his restlessness of mind and body, he had finally gone to the postoffice and there discovered a letter from Glenmore Kent.
It was short, and now no longer fresh. It had been composed just after the young man's accident, and after relating how he had received a not inconsiderable injury, requested Searle to come to Starlight at once, if possible, and not to divulge any needless facts to Beth.
"I'm broke, and this knock puts me down and out," the letter concluded. "Come down, like a good old chap, and cheer me up."
Bostwick destroyed the letter promptly, lest it fall by some accident into other hands than his own. Not without a slight feeling of guilt, the man shut out all thought, for the present, of deserting Goldite and the plot. That Beth would learn nothing from himself as to Glen's condition was a certainty. He was glad of this wisdom in the boy--this show of courage whereby he had wished his sister spared.
But the more he thought upon Beth's attitude towards himself, and the mystifying confessions old Billy Stitts had made, concerning the errands he was running for the girl, the more Bostwick fretted and warmed with exasperation, suspicion, and jealousy. He returned to McCoppet's. The door to the den was still barred. Impatiently he started again for Mrs. Dick's. He was not in the least certain as to what he meant to do or say, but felt obliged to do something.
Meantime, Beth had written to her brother. Bostwick's evasions and lies had aroused more than merely a vague alarm in her breast. She had begun to feel, perhaps partially by intuition, that something was altogether wrong. Searle's anxiety to assure her she need not write to Glen--that he was coming to Goldite--had provided the one required element to excite a new trend in her thought. She knew that Glen would not come soon to town. She knew she must get him word. She had thought of one way only to insure herself and Glen against deceit--ask Van to go in person with her letter, and bring her Glen's reply.
Had she felt the affair to be in the slightest degree unimportant she might have hesitated to think of making this request, but the more she dwelt upon it the more essential it seemed to become. Her brothers very life might be dependent upon this promptness of action. A very large sum of money was certainly involved in some sort of business of which, she felt, both she and Glen were in ignorance. Bostwick had certainly not seen Glen at all. His deceptions might mean anything! --the gravest of dangers to them all!
It had taken her the briefest time only to resolve upon her course--and then old Billy came upon the scene, as if in answer to a question she had asked--how to get her request and the letter to Glen across the hills to Van, at the "Laughing Water" claim?
Three letters she wrote, and tore to scraps, before one was finally composed to express all she felt, in the way that she wished it expressed. Old Billy went off to wait and returned there duly, enormously pleased by his commission. He knew the way to the "Laughing Water" claim and could ride the borrowed pony.
As pleased as a dog with a parcel of meat, entrusted to his keeping by a confident master, he finally started for the hay-yard, with two dainty letters in his keeping. One was to Van, with Beth's request; the other was, of course, to her brother.
Bostwick met the proud old beau at the corner of the street.
"Say, Uncle, what did I tell you," said Billy at once. "This time it's the biggest errand yet."
Bostwick had wondered if he might not catch Mr. Stitts in some such service as he boasted now, and his wit was worthy of his nature.
"Yes," he said readily, "Miss Kent was saying she thought perhaps she could get you to carry a note to Mr. Van Buren." It was a hazardous coup but he dared it with the utmost show of pleasure in his smile. For a second, however, as he watched the old man's face, he feared he had overshot the mark.
Old Billy was pleased and disappointed together. However, his wish to prove his importance greatly outweighed his chagrin that Beth should have taken even "Uncle" Bostwick into her confidence.
"That ain't all she give me," he announced, as foolishly as a child. "I've got her letter to her brother, over to Starlight, too, and nothin' couldn't stop me from takin' it up to the 'Laughing Water' claim. You bet I'll see Van Buren gits it right into his hand from me!"
If Bostwick had contemplated making an attempt to bribe the old beau into permitting him a glance at the letters, he abandoned the thought with sagacious alacrity. He must think of something safer. A letter to Van Buren and one to Glen was more than he had counted on discovering. It made him decidedly uneasy.
"I'm sure you'll deliver everything safely," he said, masking his annoyance with a smile. "Before you go, perhaps, you'd take something to drink."
The suggestion in his mind was crude, but at least it was something.
"Huh!" said old Billy, "Me! --drink and git a jag when she's expectin' me to hike right out of camp? Guess you don't know me, Uncle, not worth a mice! Didn't I say nuthin' couldn't stop me? And I'm goin' right now."
He clapped his bony old hand over his pocket, where the two precious letters reposed, and winking prodigiously at Bostwick, departed forthwith from the scene.
Bostwick could have run him down, beaten him to the ground and snatched the letters from him, but he did not dare. Instead, he merely continued to grin while Billy remained in sight. Then instead of going on to Beth's, he circled a building and returned down street towards McCoppet's.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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31
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MCCOPPET BUSIES HIS MIND
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Unfortunately for Bostwick he knew no ruffians in the camp--none of the Trimmers who would, perhaps, accept a sum of money to waylay a man, bash him over the head, and filch required letters from his pocket. He was not precisely willing, moreover, to broach such an undertaking to the gambler. This, after all, was his private affair, to be shared with no one he knew.
The man had arrived at the truth concerning the letters with commendable skill in deduction. He had himself destroyed Beth's earlier letter to her brother, for reasons of policy. He had found her conduct cold, if not suspicious, this morning. How far she had been excited to distrust himself or the mails he could not estimate. He was certain, however, she had sent a request to Van Buren to carry a letter to Glen.
Her reasons for taking precautions so extraordinary were undoubtedly significant. He was galled; his anger against Van Buren was consuming. But first and foremost he must block the harm Beth's letter to her brother might accomplish. For two days more young Kent and Beth must remain in ignorance of what was being done through the use of her money--of the fact that no mine of Glen's discovery was the object of the scheme he was working, and that none of his own alleged money was being employed in the game.
He made up his mind to go to Starlight himself--to be on hand when Van Buren should arrive. With Glenmore ill, or injured, in his bed, the case might offer simple handling, Further neglect of Glenmore might, indeed, be fatal, at a juncture so delicate. From every possible viewpoint the thing to do was to intercept Van Buren.
He found McCoppet just returned from launching Lawrence forth upon his work. Three of the gambler's chosen men had accompanied the Government's surveyor. They had taken Bostwick's car. Instructions had been simple enough. Push over the reservation line to cover the "Laughing Water" claim, by night of the following day.
Searle was taken to the private den. McCoppet imparted his information with the utmost brevity.
"Nothing for us to do but to wait till six o'clock, day after to-morrow morning," he concluded, "then play our cards--and play 'em quick."
"You've taken my car?" said Bostwick, whose personal plans were thrown into utter confusion, for the moment. "I wanted that car for my own use. I've got to go to Starlight to-morrow."
"Sit down," said McCoppet, throwing away his unsmoked cigar and taking another from his pocket. "What's going on at Starlight?"
Bostwick had no intention of divulging his personal affairs, but there was something in this that trenched upon "company" concerns.
"Van Buren's going over there, to see young Kent," he admitted. "I've got to see him first."
McCoppet looked up at him sharply.
"Young Kent ain't next to anything?" he demanded.
"Not yet."
"Look here," said the gambler, whose wits were inordinately keen, "is anything leaking, Bostwick? What about the girl--the young chump's sister? You're not putting her wise to the layout?"
"Certainly not!" said Bostwick. "She knows nothing. But it wouldn't be safe for this mix-up to occur. At any rate, I propose to be there when Van Buren arrives."
McCoppet arose, plunged his hands in his pockets, and paced up and down reflectively.
"Someways I'm glad Van Buren's going," he said. "I've been trying to figure how I could play the game to have him away when we come to take the trick. He's hostile in a fight. I guess it's all right. Don't need you here. You can copper any possible harm down there at Starlight, and meantime I'll see if there's any known way of delaying Van Buren's return."
"But how am I going to get down there and back?" said Bostwick, intent upon the need for haste. "I can't get around without a car."
"Don't get tropical," said McCoppet calmly. "I can get you a car in fifteen minutes. It ain't as good as yours, but we needed the one that was surest to keep on its legs. If you ain't got anything more on your mind, I want to chase around for a lumberman--a friend of mine--before he gits any drunker."
Bostwick arose.
"Arrange for that car to take me to-night, after dinner. I think that's all."
He repaired to his room to attend to a dozen small affairs, then went once more to Beth's. She was not in the least surprised to hear him say he meant to return to Starlight and to Glen that night, on business of importance to them all, but she did not believe him in the least. He remained in the hope of entrapping her into some sort of self-betrayal as to what she had recently done, but without avail.
The hour that he spent at Mrs. Dick's was dull for them both--dull and distasteful to the girl, growing so rapidly to hate and distrust him, dull and aggravating to Bostwick, with jealousy increasing upon him. His one consolation lay in the fact that in less than two days Van Buren would be no better off than a pauper at best with scarcely a shelter for his head.
One of the interesting and vital chapters in the whole affair was meanwhile in McCoppet's hands and receiving his attention. Trimmer had been captured, far more sober than the gambler could have hoped. The two were in the den once more, the lumberman smoking an excellent cigar as if it had been a stick of candy.
McCoppet came to his subject promptly.
"Look here, Larry," he said, "you know Van Buren when you see him."
Trimmer glanced up sharply, ready in an instant to resent what he felt to partake of the nature of a personal affront.
"Don't git funny, Opal. If ever I fight Van Buren when I'm sober I'll eat him alive. I was drunk when he licked me, and you know it!"
McCoppet leaned back in his chair and half closed his eyes.
"I didn't know but what you'd like to sober up and lick him."
Trimmer stared, shifted uneasily in his seat, and demanded: "Where? Where is he at?"
"He's going to Starlight to-morrow--from up by the reservation--from his claim. If he don't git back for a couple of days--I could make it worth your while; and you could cash in for that time he licked you when you wasn't in condition."
Again Trimmer fidgeted. "I guess he licked me fair enough. I admit he's all right in a scrap. I ain't holdin' nuthin' agin him. Goldite's good enough fer me."
McCoppet knew the creature was afraid to meet his man--that Trimmer's attack on Van Buren, once before, had been planned with much deliberation, had amounted to an ambush, in point of fact, resulting in disaster to the bully.
"I counted on you to help me, Larry," he said, drumming on the table with his fingers. "You're the only man of your kind with brains in all the camp."
Trimmer had smoked his cigar to within an inch of his mouth. He extinguished the fire and chewed up the stump voraciously.
"Say!" he suddenly ejaculated, leaping to his feet and coming around the table, "I can fix him all right," and he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Barger would give up a leg to git a show at Van Buren!"
"Barger?" echoed McCoppet. "Matt? But they got him! Got 'em all."
"Got nuthin'," the lumberman ejaculated. "What's the good of all these lyin' papers when I seen Matt myself, readin' the piece about him goin' back to the pen?"
McCoppet rose, went to the window, and returned again.
"Larry, you're all right," he said. "Where's Barger now?"
Trimmer winked. "That's his business, and mine."
"All right--that's all right," agreed the gambler. "Wouldn't he take it as a favor if you passed him some money and the word about Van Buren's hike to Starlight?"
Trimmer got out a new cigar, lit up, and began to smoke as before.
"I was goin' to pass him some of mine," he confessed. "Yours will suit me just as good."
"Five hundred ought to help him some," said the gambler. "Come out to the bar."
At dark the lumberman left the camp on foot, heading for the mountains. Bostwick departed in the borrowed car at eight. The whole town was ablaze with light, and tumultuous with sound. Glare and disturbance together, however, only faintly symbolized the excitement and fever in the camp. A thousand men were making final preparations for the rush so soon to come--the mad stampede upon the reservation ground, barely more than a day removed.
Miners with outfits, gamblers with their paraphernalia, saloon men with case on case of liquors, assayers, lawyers, teamsters, cooks--even a half dozen women--comprised the heterogeneous army making ready for the charge. The streets were filled with horses, men, and mules. The saloons were jammed to suffocation. Musical discord filled the air. Only the land, the silent old hills, the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold, was absolutely calm. Overhead a few clouds blurred the sky. Beyond them the eternal march of the stars proceeded in the majesty of space, with billions of years in which to fulfil the cosmic cycle of existence.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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32
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THE HARDSHIPS OF THE TRAIL
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In the night, far out to the northward, a storm descended like a cataclysm. Torrential rains were poured upon the hills from a cloudburst exceptionally savage. Only the scattered outposts, as it were, of the storm were blown as far as Goldite. A sprinkle of rain that dried at once was the most those mountains received.
Van made an early start from the "Laughing Water" claim, to deliver Beth's letter in Starlight. Her note to himself he read once more as his pony jogged down the descent.
"Dear Mr. Van: I wonder if I dare to ask a favor--from one who has done so much already? My brother, in Starlight, is ill. He has hurt himself, I do not know how badly. A letter I sent has never been received, and I am worried. The effort I made to see him--well--at least, I'm glad I made the effort. But meantime, what of poor Glen? Some little fear I have may be groundless. I shall therefore keep it to myself--but I have it, perhaps because I am a woman. I must know the truth about my brother--how he is--what has been happening. It is far more important than I dare confess. I have written him a letter and sent it to you in the hope you may not find it impossible to carry it to Glen in person. If I am asking too much, please do not hesitate to say so. I am sure you will be friendly enough for that--to say 'no' if need be to another friend--_your_ friend, BETH KENT."
She did not regret that desert experience--that was almost enough for him to know! He had lived in a glow since that wonderful night--and this letter provided another. He rode like a proud young crusader of old, with his head in a region of sunshine and gold, his vision transfixed by a face. Her love had become his holy grail--and for that he would ride to death itself.
His way he shortened, or thought to shorten, by dropping down from the reservation heights to the new-made town a mile below. He came upon the place abruptly, after dipping once into a canyon, and looked with amazement on the place. In the past twelve hours it had doubled in size and increased twenty-fold in its fever. The face of the desert was literally alive with men and animals. Half of Goldite and practically all of a dozen lesser camps were there. Confusion, discomfort, and distraction seemed hopelessly enthroned. The "rush" was written in men's faces, in their actions, in their baggage, words, and rising temperature.
A dozen stalwart stampeders pounced upon Van like wolves. They wanted to know what he thought of the reservation, where to go, whether or not there was any more ground like that of the "Laughing Water" claim, what he had heard from his Indian friends, and what he would take for his placer. The crowd about him rapidly increased. Men in a time of excitement such as this flock as madly as sheep whenever one may lead. Anything is news--any man is of interest who has in his pocket a piece of rock, or has in his eye a wink. No man is willing to be left outside. He must know all there is to be known.
It was utterly useless for Van to protest his ignorance of the reservation ground. He owned a deposit of placer gold. Success had crowned his efforts. It was something to get in touch with success, rub shoulders with a man who had the gold.
His friends were there in the red-faced mob. They said they were his friends, and they doubtless knew. Some were, indeed, old acquaintances whom Van would gladly have assisted towards a needed change of fortune. He was powerless, not only to aid these men, but also to escape. Despite his utmost endeavors they held him there an hour, and to make up the time, he chose the hottest, roughest trail through the range, when at last he was clear of the town.
The climb he made on his pony to slice a few miles from his route was over a mountain and through a gulch that was known as The Devil's Slide. It was gravel that moved underfoot with never-failing treachery, gravel made hot by the rays of the sun, and flinging up a scorching heat while it crawled and blistered underfoot. On midsummer days men had perished here, driven mad by the dancing of the air and the dread of the movement where they trod. The last two miles of this desolate slope Van walked and led his broncho.
He entered "Solid Canyon" finally, and mounting once more let Suvy pick the way between great boulders, where gray rattlesnakes abounded in exceptional numbers. These were the hardships of the ride, all there were that Van felt worth the counting. He had reckoned without that far-off storm, which had raged in the darkness of the night.
He came to the river, the ford between the banks where he and Beth had found a shallow stream. For a moment he stared at it speechlessly. A great, swiftly-moving flood was there, tawny, roiled with the mud torn down and dissolved in the water's violence, and foaming still from a plunge it had taken above.
It was ten to twenty feet deep. This Van realized as he sat there on his sweating horse, measuring up the banks. The depth had encroached upon the slope whereon he was wont to ascend the further side. There was one place only where he felt assured a landing might be achieved.
"Well, Suvy," he said to the animal presently, "it looks more like a swim than a waltz quadrille, and neither of us built web-footed."
Without further ado he placed Beth's letter in his hat, then rode his pony down the bank and into the angry-looking water. Suvy halted a moment uncertainly, then, like his master, determined to proceed.
Five feet out he was swimming, headed instinctively up the stream and buried deep under the surface. Van still remained in the saddle. He was more than waist under, loosely clinging to his seat and giving the pony the reins.
Suvy was powerful, he swam doggedly, but the current was tremendous in its sheer liquid mass and momentum. Van slipped off and swam by the broncho's side. Together the two breasted the surge of the tide, and now made more rapid progress. It required tremendous effort to forge ahead and not be swept headlong to a choppy stretch of rapids, just below.
"Up stream, boy, up stream," said Van, as if to a comrade, for he had noted the one likely place to land, and Suvy was drifting too far downward.
They came in close to the bank, as Van had feared, below the one fair landing. Despite his utmost efforts, to which the pony willingly responded, they could not regain what had been lost. The broncho made a fine but futile attempt to gain a footing and scramble up the almost perpendicular wall of rock and earth by which he was confronted. Time after time he circled completely in the surge, to no avail. He may have become either confused or discouraged, Whichever it was, he turned about, during a moment when Van released the reins, and swam sturdily back whence he come.
Van, in the utmost patience, turned and followed. Suvy awaited his advent on the shore.
"Try to keep a little further up, boy, if you can," said the man, and he mounted and rode as before against the current.
The broncho was eager to obey directions, eager to do the bidding of the man he strangely loved. All of the first hard struggle was repeated--and the current caught them as before. Again, as formerly, Van slipped off and swam by his pony's side. He could not hold his shoulder against the animal, and guide him thus up the stream, but was trailed out lengthwise and flung about in utter helplessness, forming a drag against which the pony's most desperate efforts could not prevail.
They came to the bank precisely as they had before, and once again, perhaps more persistently, Suvy made wild, eager efforts to scramble out where escape was impossible. Again and again he circled, pawed the bank, and turned his eyes appealingly to Van, as if for help or suggestions.
At last he acknowledged defeat, or lost comprehension of the struggle. He swam as on the former trial to the bank on the homeward side.
There was nothing for Van but to follow as before. When he came out, dripping and panting, by the animal, whose sides were fairly heaving as he labored for breath, he was still all cheer and encouragement.
"Suvy," said he, "a failure is a chap who couldn't make a fire in hell. We've got to cross this river if we have to burn it up."
He took the broncho's velvety nose in his hands and gave him a rough little shake. Then he patted him smartly on the neck.
"For a pocket-size river," he said as he looked at the flood, "this is certainly the infant prodigy. Well, let's try it again."
Had the plunge been straight to sudden death that broncho would have risked it unswervingly at the urging of his master. Suvy was somewhat exhausted by the trials already made, in vain. But into the turgid down-sweep he headed with a newly conjured vigor.
Van now waited merely for the pony to get started on his way, when he lifted away from the saddle, with the water's aid, and clung snugly up to the stirrup. He swam with one hand only. To keep himself afloat and offer no resistance to the broncho was the most that he could do, and the best.
The struggle was tremendous. Suvy had headed more obliquely than before against the current, and having encountered a greater resistance, with his strength somewhat sapped, was toiling like an engine.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, he forged his way against the liquid wall that split upon him. Van felt a great final quiver of muscular energy shake the living dynamic by his side, as Suvy poured all his fine young might into one supreme effort at the end. Then he came to the landing, got all his feet upon the slope, and up they heaved in triumph!
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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33
|
THE CLOUDS OF TROUBLE GATHER
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By the route beyond the river that Van was obliged to choose, the distance from his claim to Starlight was more than forty miles. His pony had no shoes, and having never been ridden far, was a trifle soft for a trip involving difficulties such as this mountain work abundantly afforded. When they came to Phonolite Pass, the last of the cut-offs on the trail, Van rode no more than a hundred yards into its shadows before he feared he must turn.
Phonolite is broken shale, a thin, sharp rock that gives forth a pleasant, metallic sound when struck, like shattered crockery. For a mile this deposit lay along the trail across the width of the pass. For the bare-footed pony there was cruelty in every step. The barrier of rock was far more formidable than the river in its flood.
Van was not to be halted in his object. He had a letter to deliver; he meant to take it through, though doom itself should yawn across his path. The hour was late; the sun was rapidly sinking. Van pulled up his broncho and debated.
Absolute silence reigned in the world of mountains. But if the place seemed desolate, it likewise seemed secure. Nevertheless, death lurked in the trail ahead. Barger was there. He was lying in the rocks, concealed where the chasm was narrow. He had ridden four hours--on the mare Beth had lost--to arrive ahead of Van Buren. The muzzle of a long black revolver that he held in hand rested upon a shattered boulder. His narrow eyes lay level with a rift in the group of rocks that hid him completely from view. Van was in sight, and the convict's breath came quickly as he waited.
Van dismounted from his pony's back and picked up one of his hoofs.
"Worn down pretty flat," he told the animal. "Perhaps if I walk we can make it." He started on foot up the tinkling way, watching the broncho with solicitude.
Suvy followed obediently, but the pointed rocks played havoc with his feet. He lurched, in attempting to right his foot on one that turned, and the long lassoo, secured to the saddle, flopped out, fell back, and made him jump. Van halted as before. The convict was barely fifty yards away. His pistol was leveled, but he waited for a deadlier aim, a shorter shot.
"Nope! We'll have to climb the hill," Van decided reluctantly. "You're a friend of mine, Suvy, and even if you weren't, you'd have to last to get back." He turned his back on death, unwittingly, to spare the horse he loved.
Delayed no less than an hour by this enforced retreat, he patiently led the broncho back to the opening of the pass, and, still on foot, led the steep way up over the mountain.
Barger rose up and cursed himself for not having risked a shot. He dared not attempt a dash upon his man; he could not know where Van might again be intercepted; he was helpless, baffled, enraged. Half starved, keenly alive only in his instinct to accomplish his revenge, the creature was more like a hunted, retaliating animal than like a man. He had sworn to even the score with Van Buren; he was not to be deflected from his course. But to get his man here was no longer possible. The horse Beth had lost, now in the convict's possession, was all but famished for water, not to mention food. There was nothing to choose but retreat towards the river, to the northward, where the mountains might yet afford an ambush as Van was returning home.
Far away in the mountains, at the "Laughing Water" claim, while the sun was setting on a scene of labors, all but concluded for the day, the group of surveyors, with Lawrence in charge, appeared along the southern ridge.
Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave were still in the water by the sluices. They were grimed, soiled with perspiration, wearied by the long, hard day of toil. Shovel in hand old Gettysburg discovered the men with an instrument who trekked along the outside edge of the claim. Chain-man, rod-man, and Lawrence with his shining theodolite, set on its three slender legs, they were silhouetted sharply against the evening sky. Their movements and their presence here were beyond the partners' comprehension. It was Gettysburg who climbed up the slope, and anchored himself in their path.
"What you doin'?" he said to the rod-man presently, when that tired individual approached and continued on his way.
"What does it look like--playing checkers?" said the man. "Can't the Government do nuthin'--run no county line ner nuthin' without everybody sittin' up to notice?"
No less than fifty men they had met that day had questioned what the Government was doing. The "county line" suggestion had been the only hint vouchsafed--and that had sufficed to allay the keenest suspicion.
"That all?" said Gettysburg, and, watching as he went, he slowly returned to his partners. His explanation was ample. The surveyors proceeded on.
Meantime, in absolute ignorance of all that was happening on his property, Van continued towards Starlight unmolested. An hour after sundown he rode to the camp, inquired his way to the rough-board shack, where Kent was lying ill, and was met at the door by a stranger, whom Glen had employed as cook and "general nurse."
Bostwick was there. He remained unseen. His instructions were imperative--and the "nurse" had no choice but to obey.
"Of course, Kent's here," he admitted, in response to Van's first question. "He can't see no one, neither--no matter who it is."
"I've brought a letter from his sister," Van explained. "He's got to have it, and have it now. If he wishes to send any answer back, I'm here to take it."
The "nurse" looked him over.
"The orders from the doctor is no visitors!" he said. "And that goes. If you want to leave the letter, why you kin."
Van produced the letter.
"If the man's as ill as that, I have no desire to butt in for an interview," he said. "Oblige me by ascertaining at your earliest convenience whether or not I may be of service to Mr. Kent in returning his reply."
The man looked bewildered. He received the letter, somewhat dubiously, and disappeared. Van waited. The reception was not precisely what he might have expected, but, for the matter of that, neither had the trip been altogether what he might have chosen.
It was fully twenty minutes before the nurse reappeared.
"He was just woke up enough to say thank you and wants to know if you'll oblige him with the favor of takin' his hand-write back to his sister in the mornin'?"
Van looked him over steadily. After all, the man within might be utterly sick and weak. His request was natural. And the service was for Beth.
"Certainly," he said. "I'll be here at seven in the morning."
Starlight was nearly deserted. Gratified to discover sufficient food and bedding for himself and his pony, Van made no complaint.
At six in the morning he was rousing up the blacksmith, fortunately not yet gone to join the reservation rush. Suvy was shod, and at seven o'clock he and Van were again at Glenmore's cabin.
His man was in waiting. In his hand he held an envelope, unsealed.
"Mr. Kent's asleep, but here's his hand-write to his sister," he said. "He wants you to read it out before you hike."
Van received the envelope, glanced at the man inquiringly, and removed a single sheet of paper. It was not a note from Glen; it appeared to be the final page of Beth's own letter to her brother. Van knew the strong, large chirography. His eye ran swiftly over all the lines. " --so I felt I ought to know about things, and let you know of what is going on. There is more that I cannot tell you. I wrote you much in my former letter--much, I mean, about the man who will carry this letter, so unsuspiciously--the man I shall yet repay if it lies within my power. For the things he has done--and for what he is--for what he represents--this is the man I hate more than anything or anyone else in the world. You would understand me if you knew it all--all! Let him carry some word from you to Your loving sister, BETH."
Van had read and comprehended the full significance of the lines before he realized some error had been made--that this piece of Beth's letter had been placed by mistake in the envelope for him to take, instead of the letter Glen had written.
He did not know and could not know that Bostwick, within, by the sick man's side, had kept Glen stupid and hazy with drugs, that the one word "hate" had been "love" on the sheet he held in his hand till altered by the man from New York, or that something far different from an utterly despicable treachery towards himself had been planned in Beth's warm, happy heart.
The thing, in its enormity, struck him a blow that made him reel, for a moment, till he could grasp at his self-control. He had made no sign, and he made none now as he folded the sheet in its creases.
"I'm afraid you made some mistake," he said. "This is not the note from Mr. Kent. Perhaps you will bring me the other."
"What?" said the man, unaware of the fact that Bostwick had purposely arranged this scheme for putting the altered sheet in Van Buren's hands.
"What's that?" He glanced at the sheet in genuine surprise. "Keerect," he said. "I'll go and git you the letter."
Van mounted his horse. His face had taken on a chiseled appearance, as if it had been cut in stone. He had ridden here through desert heat and flood, for this--to fetch such a letter as this, to a man he had never seen nor cared to see, and whose answer he had promised to return.
He made no effort to understand it--why she should send him when the regular mail would have answered every purpose. The vague, dark hints contained in her letter--hints at things going on--things she could not tell--held little to arouse his interest. A stabbed man would have taken more interest in the name of the maker of the weapon, stamped on the dagger's blade, than did Van in the detail of affairs between Glenmore Kent and his sister. Beth had done this thing, and he had fondly believed her love was welded to his own. She had meant it, then, when she cried in her passion that she hated him for what he had done. Her anger that night upon the hill by Mrs. Dick's had not been jealousy of Queenie, but rage against himself. She was doubtless in love with Bostwick after all--and would share this joke with her lover.
He shrugged his shoulders. Luck had never been his friend. By what right had he recently begun to expect her smile? And why had he continued, for years, to believe in man or in Fate? All the madness of joy he had felt for days, concerning Beth and the "Laughing Water" claim, departed as if through a sieve. He cared for nothing, the claim, the world, or his life. As for Beth--what was the use of wishing to understand?
The "nurse" came out at the door again, this time with a note which Bostwick had written, with a few suggestions from Glen, in an unsealed cover as before.
"I told young Kent you didn't take no time to read the other," he said, holding up the epistle. "If you want to read this----" "Thank you," Van interrupted, taking the letter and thrusting it at once in his pocket. "Thank Mr. Kent for his courtesies, in my behalf." He turned and rode away.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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34
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THE TAKING OF THE CLAIM
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Before six o'clock that morning, while Van was arousing the blacksmith, the reservation madness broke its bounds. Twenty-five hundred gold-blinded men made the rush for coveted grounds.
The night had been one long revel of drinking, gambling, and excitement. No one had slept in the reservation town--for no one had dared. Bawling, singing, and shouting, the jollier element had shamed the coyotes from the land. Half a thousand camp fires had flared all night upon the plain. The desert had developed an oasis of flowing liquors, glaring lights, and turmoil of life, lust, and laughter. Good nature and bitter antagonism, often hand in hand, had watched the night hours pale.
By daylight the "dead line" of the reservation boundary--the old, accepted line that all had acknowledged--resembled a thin, dark battle formation, ready for the charge. It was a heterogeneous array, where every unit, instead of being one of an army mobilized against a common foe, was the enemy of all the others, lined up beside him. There were men on foot, men on horses, mules, and burros, men in wagons, buckboards, and buggies, and men in automobiles.
At half-past five the pressure of greed became too great to bear. A few unruly stragglers, far down the line, no longer to be held in check, bent portions of the long formation inward as they started out across the land. The human stampede began almost upon the instant. Keepers on their horses, riding up and down, were swept away like chips before a flood. Scattering wildly over hill and plain, through gulches, swales, and canyons, the mad troop entered on the unknown field, racing as if for their lives.
Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave had watched for an hour the human hedge below the "Laughing Water" claim. They, too, had been up since daylight, intent upon seeing the fun. They had eaten their breakfast at half-past four. At a quarter of six they returned, to their shack and began at their daily work.
The cold mountain stream, diverted to the sluices, went purling down over the riffles. The drip from countless negligible leaks commenced in its monotony. Into the puddles of mud and water the three old miners sloshed, with shovels and picks in hand. They were tired before their work began. Gettysburg, at sixty-five, had been tired for twenty-five years. Nevertheless, he began his day with song, his cheery, Rinktum bolly kimo.
They were only fairly limbered up when four active men appeared abruptly on the property, at the corners of the claim, and began the work of putting up white location posts, after knocking others down. They were agents employed by McCoppet, in behalf of Bostwick and himself.
Napoleon was the first to note their presence. He was calling attention to the nearest man when a fifth man appeared by the cabin. He, too, had a new location post, or stake, to be planted at the center of the claim. He was not only armed as to weapons, but protruding from his pocket was a wad of "legal" documents, more to be feared than his gun.
He came straight towards Gettysburg, walking briskly.
"Morning," he said. "I've come to notify you men to get off of this here claim. This ground belongs to me and my partners, by right of prior location--made right now."
He thrust his stake a little into the yielding sand and had posted a notice, made out in due form, before the wet old workers by the sluice could conclude that the man had lost his wits.
"What you givin' us, anyway?" said Gettysburg, remaining ankle-deep in the mud. "Don't you know this here is the 'Laughin' Water' claim, which was located proper----" "This claim on the reservation," interrupted McCoppet's agent. "The line was run out yesterday, according to Government instructions, and the line takes in this ground." He continued at his work.
Napoleon got stirred up then and there.
"You're a liar!" he cried out recklessly, "--metaphorical speakin'. Belay there, my hearty. You and your dog-gone pirate craft----" McCoppet himself, on horseback, came riding down the slope.
"That's enough from you!" interrupted the gambler's agent. "You and your crowd is liable for trespass, or Government prosecution, getting on the reservation land ahead of date. This ground belongs to me and my company, understand, with everything on it--and all the gold you've took out! And all you take away is your personal effects--and you take 'em and git, right now!"
"Now hold on," said Gettysburg, dazed by what he heard. "I seen that Government surveyor cuss. He said he was only running out a county line."
McCoppet took the case in hand, as he halted by the boxes.
"Now, boys, don't waste your time in argument," he said. "You've made a mistake, that's all. Take my advice and hike to the reservation now, before the gang stakes everything in sight. You can't go up against the law, and you've done too much illegal work already."
"Illegal?" cried Napoleon. "You're a liar, Opal. Ain't mad, are you? I've drunk at your saloon, and you know this claim belongs to Van and us!"
"Don't I say you've made a mistake?" repeated the gambler. "I don't hold any feelings about it. Nobody was on for a sure thing about the reservation line till Lawrence run it out. We had suspicions, from a study of the maps, but it took the Government surveyor to make the matter certain. It's a cinch you're on the reservation land. You can copper all your rights, and play to win the bet this claim belongs to me--and everything else that's any good. Now don't stop to talk. Go to Lawrence for Government facts--and git a-going pronto."
Gettysburg was pulling down his sleeves. Old age had suddenly claimed him for its own. The song had dried from his heart, and the light of his wonderful youth and hope departed from his eye. Dave was too stunned to think. All three felt the weight of conviction sink them in the chilling mire. The survey of the day before made doubt impossible.
Gettysburg looked at the boxes, the pits they had dug, the water running over the riffles, behind which lay the gold.
"I wish Van was to home," he said. "He'd know."
Their helplessness without the absent Van was complete. In the game of life they were just old boys who would never become mature.
"Van Buren couldn't do no good," McCoppet assured them. "This ain't a matter of wrangling or fighting; it's a matter of law. If the law ain't with us you'll get the property back. Van Buren would tell you the same. He didn't know the ground was reservation. We give him the benefit of that. But all the gold you've got on the place you'll have to leave with me. You never had no rights on the Government preserves, and I'm here ahead of all the bunch in staking it out at six o'clock, the legal opening hour."
Napoleon started to speak again, but glanced at Gettysburg instead. A bluff was useless, especially with Gettysburg looking so utterly defeated. From his tall, old partner, Napoleon looked at Dave.
"Can't we tack somewhere?" he said. "Couldn't we hold the wheel and wait fer Van?"
Gettysburg repeated: "I wish Van was to home."
"Come on, come on," McCoppet urged, beginning to lose his patience. "If you think you've got any rights, go to Lawrence and see. You're trespassing here. I don't want to tell you harsh to pack your duds and hunt another game, but you can't stay here no longer."
Gettysburg hesitated, then slowly came out of the water. He looked at the sluices hazily.
"Just gittin' her to pay," he said. "The only easy minin' I ever done."
Napoleon, suddenly dispirited--utterly dispirited--had nothing more to say. Slowly and in broken order the three old cronies wended towards the cabin. Less than an hour later, with all their meager treasure in worldly goods roped to the last of Dave's horses, they quitted the claim, taking Algy, the Chinese cook, along. They were homeless wanderers with no place in all the world to turn. Without Van they were utterly lost. They expected him to come that day to the cove. Therefore, on a desert spot, not far from the new reservation line, taking possession of a bit of hill so poor that no one had staked it, they made their camp in the sand and rocks, to await Van's pleasure in returning.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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35
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THE MEETINGS OF TWO STRONG MEN
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Matt Barger, riding in the night, intent upon nothing save the chance to deal out his vengeance to Van Buren, had camped beside the river, at the turn where Van and Beth had skirted the bank to the regular fording below. The convict's horse, which Beth had lost, was tethered where the water-way had encouraged a meager growth of grass. Barger himself had eaten a snake and returned to a narrow defile in the range, where his ambush could be made.
To insure himself against all misadventure he rolled a mass of boulders down the hill, to block the trail. His barrier was crude but efficient. Neither man nor horse could have scaled it readily, and the slopes on either side were not only well-nigh perpendicular, they were also built of crumbling stone that broke beneath the smallest weight. He labored doggedly, persistently, despite his half-starved condition, and when he had finished he looked to his gun, proceeded down the trail some fifty yards or more, climbed the slope, and there in the rocks, where the walls gave way to a sandy acclivity, concealed himself to wait.
The sun at noon found Van a mark for punishment. The day was the hottest of the season. The earth and rocks irradiated heat that danced in the air before him. All the world was vibrant, the atmosphere a shimmer, as if in very mockery of the thoughts that similarly rose and gyrated in his brain. His horse was suffering for water. The river was still an hour away, so steep was the climb through the range.
The trail he would gladly have avoided, had such a course been practical. He had ridden here with Beth, and therefore the mockery was all the more intense. His inward heat and the outward heat combined to make him savage. There was nothing, however, on which to vent his feelings. Suvy he loved. Perhaps, he reflected, the horse was his one faithful friend. Certainly the broncho toiled most willingly across the zone of lifelessness to bear him on his way.
Up through the narrowing walls of sand and adamant they slowly ascended. Barger saw them once, far down the trail, then lost them again as they rounded a spur of the shimmering hillside, coming nearer where he lay. He was up the slope a considerable distance--farther than he meant to risk a shot. His breath came hard as he presently beheld Van Buren fairly entering the trap.
Van's head had fallen forward on his breast. He looked at nothing. His face was set and hard. Barger raised his pistol, sighted down the barrel--and repressed the impulse to fire as the horseman came onward, unsuspiciously.
No sooner was Van around the turn, where in less than a minute he would find his progress blocked, than Barger arose and ran with all his might down the slope.
He let out a yell of exultation as he came to the trail. Van turned in his saddle instantly, beholding the man in the pass. He knew that sinister form.
His pony had bounded forward, frightened by the cry. Down went Van's hand to his own revolver, and the gun came up cocked for action.
One glance he cast up the trail ahead--and saw through Barger's trick. The _cul de sac_ was perfect, and the convict had halted to fire.
It made a singular picture on Van Buren's retina--that gaunt, savage being, hairy, wild of eye, instinct with hatred and malice, posing awkwardly, and the sun-lit barrel of polished steel, just before its yawning muzzle belched lead and a cloud and a roaring detonation.
The bullet went wide, and Barger fired again, quickly, but more steadily. That one landed. It got Van just along the arm, burning in a long, shallow wound that barely brought the blood.
Van's gun was down, despite Suvy's panic of cavortings. He pulled the trigger. The hammer leaped two ways, up and back--but the gun made no report, no buck, no cloud to answer Barger's. The cartridges, subjected to all that water of the day before, were worthless.
The third of Barger's shots was fired from a closer range, as the eager creature closed in upon his enemy. It let the daylight enter Van's hat, near the top.
Van had snapped every shell in his weapon, with amazing rapidity--to no avail. The cylinder had flung around like a wheel, but the sounds were those of a toy.
Barger was steadied in his tracks for better marksmanship. He had heard that succession of metallic snaps; he knew he had Van Buren at his mercy. Three of his shots remained unfired, and a second, unused pistol in his belt, with more ammunition. The fellow even smiled as he was aiming.
There was one thing to do--and Van did it. He leaped his broncho clean against the wall, then spurred him straight for Barger. The shot that split the air again was splattered on the rocks. Before the convict could make ready to avoid the charge, Suvy was almost upon him. He partially fell and partially leaped a little from the broncho's path, but was struck as the pony bounded by.
He yelled, for his leg was trampled and hurt by the pressure of Suvy's shoe, nevertheless he scrambled to his feet at once, and fired wildly at his man.
He emptied his gun, drew the other, and ran, too eager for his deed of revenge to halt and take a steady aim. A bullet punctured the broncho's ear, and the blood flew back upon Van.
They were past the walls in the briefest time, and Van attacked the slope. Barger came after, yelling in rage. He tripped, and his hurt leg dropped him down.
Already wearied, and famished for drink, Suvy nevertheless rose to the needs of the moment with a strength incredible. He scaled that sandy, treacherous slope like an engine built for the purpose. It was love, pure love for the master on his back, that steeled the mighty sinews in his body.
Two shots and two bullets from below proclaimed renewed activities where Barger was once more on his feet. But the man had lost too much ground to recover his advantage. He knew that Van Buren, with a horse like that, could win the high ridge and escape.
He raged; he cursed himself and his God, for this second failure of his deed. Then once again he abruptly thought of a chance whereby to redeem his galling failures. His man on the horse would be more than an hour in reaching the river by the slopes. A man on foot could beat him there, and beat him across to the farther side, from which to attack with surer aim--from the cover of the willows by the ford. The flood had subsided. This Barger knew. The water was hardly knee high on a man, and better than all, Van Buren would scarcely dream of such a plan as within the range of possibilities.
Laboriously, in a fever of impatience, Barger made shift, after strenuous work, to climb his barrier of rock. Then up to the summit of the trail he sped, and down on the farther side.
Meantime Van, disgusted with himself for riding away from a fight, could only revile his useless gun and excuse himself a trifle because of his defenselessness. The skirmish had served to arouse him, however, and for that he was thankful to the convict who had waited in the pass.
Then he wondered how it came at all that Matt should have thus been lying there in wait. The fellow must have been informed, to prepare so elaborate a trap. It hardly seemed as if a plot against his life could explain this trip that Beth had desired him to take. He could scarcely credit a thing so utterly despicable, so murderous, to her, yet for what earthly reasons had she sent him on the trip with a letter the stage could have carried?
The thing was preposterous! No woman on earth could have sanctioned an alliance with Barger. But--what of Bostwick--the man who had spent a portion of his time with the liberated convicts? A revenge like this would appeal to him, would seem to him singularly appropriate. Beth could have lent her assistance to the plan without guilty knowledge of an outcome such as this, and Bostwick--Beth knew that Barger was Van's enemy. He had told her so himself. Facts were facts. Her letter to Glen revealed her state of mind--and here was this attack, a planned attack, proving conclusively that Barger had been prepared beforehand with knowledge of the trip.
From having been depressed before, Van was made thoroughly angry. The whole thing was infamous, dastardly--and Beth could not be acquitted. Strangely enough, against the convict, Barger, the horseman felt no wrath. Barger had a grievance, howsoever mistaken, that was adequate. He was following his bent consistently. He had made his threat in the open; he must plan out his work according to his wits. He was simply a hunted beast, who turned upon his hunters.
It was Bostwick on whom Van concentrated a rising heat--and he promised the man would find things warm in camp, and the fight only well under way.
Even when the summit was achieved, the broncho slacked off nothing of his pace. Sweat glistened wetly upon him. His bleeding ear was going backward and forward tremulously, as he listened for any word from Van, and for anything suspicious before them. Van noted a certain wistfulness in the pony's demeanor.
"Take it easy, boy," he urged in a voice of affection that the broncho understood. "Take it easy." He dismounted to lead the animal down the slope, since a steep descent is far more trying on a ridden horse than climbing up the grade. He halted to pat the pony on the neck, and give his nose a rough caress, then on they went, the shadow they cast the only shade upon the burning hill.
It was fully an hour after leaving the pass, where Barger had piled in the rock, before the horseman and his broncho dropped again in the trail that led onward to the river. Van was again in the saddle. Alert for possible surprises, but assured that his man could find no adequate cover hereabouts, he emerged from behind the last of the turns all eagerness to give his horse a drink.
A yell broke suddenly, terribly, on the desert stillness. It came from Barger, out in the river, on the bar--strangely anchored where he stood.
Van saw him instantly, saw a human fantastic, struggling, writhing, twisting with maniacal might, the while the horrible quicksand held him by the legs, and swallowed him, inch by inch.
"Fer Christ's sake--help!" the creature shrilled in his plight. He had flung away revolvers, cartridges, even his coat, reducing his weight when the stuff only gripped him by the ankles. He was half to his thighs. He was sinking to his waist, and with all of his furious efforts, the frightful sand was shuddering, as if in animal ecstacy--some abominable ecstacy of hunger, voracious from long denial, as it sucked him further down.
"Fer Christ's sake, Van Buren--fer Christ's sake, man! I'm a human being," shrieked the victim of the sand. " _I'm a human being_, man!"
Van had not hesitated by so much as a moment as to what he meant to do. He was off his horse in a leap. He paused for a second to looked about for any accidental means of assistance the place might afford. It afforded none. The man in the quicksand continued to yell, to struggle hopelessly, to sink in that shivering pool of life-engulfing stuff.
Then the horseman thought of his rope, the raw-hide lasso, always secured upon his saddle. He snatched at the knots to tear it loose.
"Don't move--don't struggle!" he shouted at the man, and down toward the edge he came running, the rope-noose running out as he sped.
He dared not step beyond the bank, and so involve himself. Barger was well out from the edge. The throw at best was long and difficult.
"Hold up your hands, above your head!" he called. "Don't thrash around!"
The convict obeyed. His haggard, bearded face was turned to Van like a mask of horror. The eyes were blazing fearfully. The fellow's attitude, as he held his hands above his head, and continued to sink, was a terrible pose of supplication--an awful eloquence of prayer.
Van threw--and the cast fell short.
Barger groaned. He had ceased to yell. He remained mutely holding up his hands, while the cold abyss crept upward to his waist--the wet lips swallowing, swallowing in silence.
Van jerked in the rope with one impatient gesture. He coiled it swiftly, but with nicety. Then round and round he swung the gaping loop--and threw with all his strength.
For a second the loop hung snake-like in the air, above the convict's head. Then it fell about him, splashed the curdled sand, and was pulled up taut, embracing Barger's waist.
"Hoist it up under your arms!" called Van. "Try to move your legs when I pull!"
He wasted no time in attempting to haul the convict out himself. He led his pony quickly to the edge, took two half hitches of the rope about the pommel of the saddle, then shouted once more to his man.
"Ready, Barger. Try to kick your feet." To the horse he said: "Now, Suvy, a strong, steady pull." And taking the pony's bit in hand he urged him slowly forward, It was wonderful, the comprehension in the broncho's mind. But the pull was an awful thing. The rope came taut--and began to be strained, and Suvy was sweating as he labored. Out on the end of it, bitten by the loop, that slipped ever tighter about him, the human figure was bent over sharply, between the two contending forces.
He let out one yell, for the pain about his chest--then made no further sound. The rawhide rope was like a fiddle-string. It seemed absurd that an anchor so small, so limber, in the sand, could hold so hard against the horse. Van urged a greater strain. He knew that the rope would hold. He did not know how much the man could bear before something awful might occur. There was nothing else to do.
It seemed a time interminable. No one made a sound. The queer, distorted figure out in the stream could have uttered no sound to save his life. The silence was beginning to be hideous.
Then an inch of the rope came landward, as the broncho strained upon it. The anchor had started from its hold.
"Now! now!" said Van, and with quick, skillful urging he caught at the slight advantage.
Like an old, half-buried pile, reluctant to budge from its bed in sand and ooze, the human form was slowly dragged from the place. No corpse, rudely snatched from its grave, could have been more helplessly inert--more stretched out of all living semblance to a man.
[Illustration: No corpse snatched from its grave could have been more helplessly inert.]
Across the firmer sand, and through a lagoon of water, Barger was hurriedly drawn. The pony was halted when the man was at the bank, and back to the convict Van went running, to loosen the bite of the noose.
Barger lay prostrate on the earth, his eyes dully blinking in the sun. His feet were bare. They had slipped from his boots, which were buried beyond in the sand. His face had taken on a hue of death. From hair to his ankles he was shockingly emaciated--a gaunt, wasted figure, motionless as clay.
Van fetched a pint of water in his hat. He sprinkled it roughly in the convict's face, and, propping up his head, helped him to take a drink.
Barger could not lift a hand, or utter a word. Van recoiled the rope, secured it on the saddle, then sat down to await the man's recovery. It was slow. Barger's speech was the first returning function. It was faint, and weak, and blasphemous.
"It's hell," he said, "when God Almighty turns agin a man. Ain't the sheriff's enough--_without a thing like that_?" His thumb made a gesture towards the river, which he cursed abominably--cursing it for a trap, a seeming benefit, here in the desert, ready to eat a man alive.
Van made no reply. He rather felt the man was justified--at least in some opinions. Towards Barger he felt no anger, but rather a pity instead.
After a time the convict moved sufficiently to prop himself up against the bank. He looked at Van dully. This was the man who had "sent him up"--and saved him from the sand. There was much that lay between them, much that must always lie. He had no issues to dodge. There was nothing cowardly in Barger, despite his ways.
"I nearly got you, up yonder," he said, and he jerked his thumb towards the mountains, to indicate the pass where he and Van had met an hour before.
Van nodded. "You sure did. Who told you to look for me here?"
Barger closed his eyes. "Nothing doing." He could not have been forced to tell.
Van smiled. "That's all right." There was no resentment in the tone.
Barger looked at him curiously.
"What for did you pull me out?"
"Don't know," Van confessed. "Perhaps I hated to have the quicksand cheat the pen."
"Must have had some good reason," agreed the prostrate man. He was silent for a moment, and then he added: "I s'pose I'm your meat."
As before, Van nodded: "I reckon you are."
Barger spat. It was his first vigorous indication of returning strength.
"Someways," he said, "I'd rather you'd shoot me here, right now, than send me back to the pen. But I couldn't stand fer that!" He made his characteristic gesture towards the river. As Van made no comment the fellow concluded: "I s'pose you need the reward."
Van was aware there was ten thousand dollars as a price on the convict's head, a fact which he someway resented. To-day, more than at any time within his life, he felt out of sympathy with law--with man's law, made against man.
He began to pull off his boots.
"No," he said, "I don't want any State's reward, much less express company money. Maybe if it wasn't for those rewards I'd take you into camp." He inverted his boots and shook out a few grains of sand.
Barger glanced at him suspiciously.
"What are you goin' to do with me, then, now you've got me to rights?"
"Nothing," said Van, "nothing this afternoon." He stood up. "You and I break even, Barger, understand? Don't take me wrong. I'm not turning you loose entirely. You belong to me. Whenever I call for the joker, Matt, I want you to come."
He would never call, and he knew it. He merely left the matter thus to establish a species of ownership that Barger must acknowledge. There is law of the State, and law of God, and law of man to man. The latter it was that concerned Van Buren now, and upon it he was acting.
Laboriously, weakly, Barger arose to his feet. He looked at Van peculiarly, with a strange light dully firing in his eyes.
"I agree to that," he answered slowly. "I agree to that."
He put out his hand to shake--to bind his agreement. It was almost like offering his oath.
Van took it, and gave it his usual grip.
"So long, Barger," he said. "I reckon you need these boots."
He waved his hand loosely at the boots that lay upon the ground, went at once to his horse, and mounted to his seat.
"The regular ford of this river's down below," he added to the speechless convict, standing there gaunt and wondering upon the marge. "So long."
Barger said nothing. Van rode away on the trail by the stream, and was presently gone, around the bend.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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36
|
VAN RUNS AMUCK
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Instead of turning northward in the mountain range and riding on to the "Laughing Water" claim, Van continued straight ahead to Goldite. The letter to Beth was heavy in his pocket. Until he should rid himself of its burden he knew he should have no peace--no freedom to act for himself.
He had been delayed. The sun was setting when at last he rode his broncho to the hay-yard in the camp, and saw that he was fed with proper care. Then he got some boots and walked to Mrs. Dick's.
Beth, from her window, looking towards the sun, discovered him coming to the place. She had never in her life felt so wildly joyous at beholding any being of the earth. She had watched for hours, counting his steps across the desert's desolation one by one, tracing his course from Starlight "home" by all the signs along the trail which she and he had traveled together.
She ran downstairs like a child. She had momentarily forgotten even Glen. Nothing counted but this sight of Van--his presence here with herself. When she suddenly burst from the door into all the golden glory of the sunset, herself as glorious with color, warmth, and youth as the great day-orb in the west, Van felt his heart give one tumultuous heave in his breast, despite the resentment he harbored.
There had never been a moment when her smile had been so radiant, when the brown of her eyes had been so softly lighted and glowing, when her cheeks had so mirrored her beauty.
How superb she was, he said to himself--how splendid was her acting! He could almost forgive himself for having played the fool. His helplessness, his defenselessness had been warranted. But--her smile could befuddle him no more. He took off his hat, with a certain cold elegance of grace. His face still wore that chiseled appearance of stone-like hardness.
"Oh!" she cried, in her irrepressible happiness of heart. "You're home! You're safe! I'm glad!"
It was nothing, her cry that he was safe. She had worried only for the desert's customary perils, but this he could not know. He thought she referred to a possible meeting with Barger. He was almost swept from his balance by her look, for a bright bit of moisture had sprung in her eyes and her smile took on a tenderness that all but conquered him anew.
"I delivered your letter in Starlight," he said. "I return your brother's reply."
He had taken the letter from his pocket. He held it forth.
She took it. If memories of Glen started rushingly upon her, they were halted by something she felt in the air, something in the cold, set speech of the man she loved as never she had thought to love a creature of the earth. She made no reply, but stood looking peculiarly upon him, a question written plainly in her glance.
"If there is nothing more," he added, "permit me to wish you good-day." He swept off his hat as he had before, turned promptly on his heel, and departed the scene forthwith.
She tried to cry out, to ask him what it meant, but the thing had come like a blow. It had not been what he had said, so much as the manner of its saying--not so much what she had heard as what her heart had felt. A deluge of ice water, suddenly thrown upon her, could scarcely have chilled or shocked her more than the coldness that had bristled from his being.
Wholly at a loss to understand, she leaned in sudden weakness against the frame of the door, and watched him disappearing. Her smile was gone. In its place a dumb, white look of pain and bewilderment had frozen on her face. Had not that something, akin to anger, which her nature had felt to be emanating from him remained so potently to oppress her, she could almost have thought the thing a joke--some freakish mood of playfulness after all the other moods he had shown. But no such thought was possible. The glitter in his eyes had been unmistakable. Then, what could it mean?
She almost cried, as she stood there and saw him vanish. She had counted so much upon this moment. She had prayed for his coming safely back from the desert. She had so utterly unbound the fetters from her love. Confession of it all had been ready in her heart, her eyes, and on her lips. Reaction smote her a dulling blow. Her whole impulsive nature crept back upon itself, abashed--like something discarded, flung at her feet ingloriously.
"Oh--Van!" she finally cried, in a weak, hurt utterance, and back along the darkening hall she went, her hand with Glen's crushed letter pressed hard upon her breast.
Van, for his part, far more torn than he could have believed possible, proceeded down the street in such a daze as a drunken man might experience, emerging from liquor's false delights to life's cold, merciless facts. The camp was more emptied than he had ever known it since first it was discovered. Only a handful of the reservation stragglers had returned. The darkness would pour them in by hundreds.
Half way down the thoroughfare Van paused to remember what it was his body wanted. It was food. He started again, and was passing the bank when someone called from within.
"Hello, there--Van!" came the cry. "Hello! Come in!"
Van obeyed mechanically. The cashier, Rickart, it was who had shouted the summons--a little, gray-eyed, thin-faced man, with a very long moustache.
"How are you, Rick?" said the horseman familiarly. "What's going on?"
"Haven't _you_ heard? --_you_?" interrogated Rickart. "I thought it was funny you were loafing along so leisurely. Didn't you know to-day was the day for the rush?"
"I did," said Van. "What about it?"
"Not much," his friend replied, "except your claim has been jumped by McCoppet and one J. Searle Bostwick, who got on to the fact that the reservation line included all your ground."
Van looked his incredulity.
"What's the joke?" he said. "I bite. What's the answer?"
"Joke?" the cashier echoed. "Joke? They had the line surveyed through, yesterday, and Lawrence confirmed their tip. Your claim, I tell you, was on reservation ground, and McCoppet had his crowd on deck at six o'clock this morning. They staked it out, according to law, as the first men on the job after the Government threw it open--and there they are."
Van leaned against the counter carelessly, and looked at his friend unmoved.
"Who told you the story?" he inquired. "Who brought it into camp?"
"Why a dozen men--all mad to think they never got on," said Rickart, not without heat. "It's an outrage, Van! You might have fought them off if you'd been on deck, and made the location yourself! Where have you been?"
Van smiled. The neatness of the whole arrangement began to be presented to his mind.
"Oh, I was out of the way all right," he said. "My friends took care of that."
"I thought there was something in the wind, all along," imparted the little cashier. "Bostwick and McCoppet have been thicker than thieves for a week. But the money they needed wasn't Bostwick's. I wired to New York to get his standing--and he's got about as much as a pin. But the girl stood in, you bet! She's got enough--and dug up thirty thousand bucks to handle the crowd's expenses."
Van straightened up slowly.
"The girl?"
"Miss Kent--engaged to Bostwick--you ought to know," replied the man behind the counter. "She's put up the dough and I guess she's in the game, for she turned it all over like a man."
Van laughed, suddenly, almost terribly.
"Oh, hell, Rick, come out and git a drink!" he said. "Here," as he noted a bottle in the desk, "give me some of that!"
Rickart gave him the bottle and a glass. He poured a stiff amber draught and raised it on high, a wild, fevered look in his eyes.
"Here's to the gods of law and order!" he said. "Here's to faith, hope, and charity. Here's to friendship, honor, and loyalty. Here's to the gallant little minority that love their neighbors as themselves. Give me perfidy or give me death! Hurray for treason, strategy, and spoils!"
He drank the liquid fire at one reckless gulp, and laughing again, in ghastly humor, lurched suddenly out at the open door and across to the nearest saloon.
Rickart, in sudden apprehension for the "boy" he genuinely loved, called out to him shrilly, but in vain. Then he scurried to the telephone, rang up the office of the sheriff, and presently had a deputy on the wire.
"Say, friend," he called, "if Bostwick or McCoppet should return to camp to-night, warn them to keep off the street. Van Buren's in, and I don't want the boy to mix himself in trouble."
"All right," came the answer, "I'm on."
In less than an hour the town was "on." Men returning by the scores and dozens, nineteen out of every twenty exhausted, angered with disappointment, and clamorous for refreshments, filled the streets, saloons, and eating houses, all of them talking of the "Laughing Water" claim, and all of them ready to sympathize with Van--especially at his expense.
His night was a mixture of wildness, outflamings of satire on the virtues, witty defiance of the fates, and recklessness of everything save reference to women. Not a word escaped his lips whereby his keenest, most delighted listener could have probed to the heart of his mood. To the loss of his claim was attributed all his pyrotechnics, and no one, unless it was Rickart, was aware of the old proverbial "woman in the case," who had planted the sting that stung.
Rickart, like a worried animal, following the footsteps of his master, sought vainly all night to head Van off and quiet him down in bed. At two in the morning, at McCoppet's gambling hall, where Van perhaps expected to encounter the jumpers of his claim, the little cashier succeeded at last in commanding Van's attention. Van had a glass of stuff in his hand--stuff too strong to be scathed by all the pure food enactments in the world.
"Look here, boy," said Rickart, clutching the horseman's wrist in his hand, "do you know that Gettysburg, and Nap, and Dave are camping on the desert, waiting for you to come home?"
Van looked at him steadily. He was far from being dizzied in his brain. Since the blow received at the hands of Beth had not sufficed to make him utterly witless, then nothing drinkable could overcome his reason. " _Home_?" he said. "Waiting for me to come _home_."
Suddenly wrenching his hand from Rickart's grip he hurled the glass of liquor with all his might against the mirror of the bar. The crash rose high above the din of human voices. A radiating star was abruptly created in the firmament of glass, and Van was starting for the door.
The barkeeper scarcely turned his head. He was serving half a dozen men, and he said: "Gents, what's your poison?"
A crowd of half-intoxicated revelers started for Van and attempted to haul him back. He flung them off like a lot of pestiferous puppies, and cleared the door.
He went straight to the hay-yard, saddled his horse, and headed up over the mountains. He had eaten no dinner; he wanted none. The fresh, clean air began its work of restoration.
It was daylight when he reached the camp his partners had made on the desert. Napoleon and Gettysburg were drunk. Discouraged by his long delay, homeless, and utterly disheartened, they had readily succumbed to the conveniently bottled sympathy of friends.
No sooner had the horseman alighted at the camp than Napoleon flung himself upon him. He was weeping.
"What did I sh-sh-sh-sh-(whistle) shay?" he interrogated brokenly, "home from a foreign--quoth the r-r-r-r-r-(whistle) raven--NEVER MORE!"
Gettysburg waxed apologetic, as he held his glass eye in his hand.
"Didn't mean to git in thish condition, Van--didn't go to do it," he imparted confidentially. "Serpent that lurks in the glash."
Van resumed his paternal rôle with a meed of ready forgiveness.
"Let him who hath an untainted breath cast the first bottle," he said. Even old Dave, thought sober, was disqualified, and Algy was asleep.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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37
|
THE PRIMITIVE LAW
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Bostwick and McCoppet had made ample provision against attack at the claim. Their miners, who set to work at once to enlarge the facilities for extracting the gold from the ground, were gun-fighters first and toilers afterward. The place was guarded night and day, visitors being ordered off with a strictness exceptionally rigid.
Van and his partners were down and out. They had saved almost nothing of the gold extracted from the sand, since the bulk of their treasure had fallen, by "right of law" into the hands of the jumpers.
Bostwick avoided Van as he would a plague. There was never a day or night that fear did not possess him, when he thought of a possible encounter; yet Van had planned no deed of violence and could not have told what the results would be should he and Bostwick meet.
In his customary way of vigor, the horseman had begun a semi-legal inquiry the first day succeeding the rush. He interviewed Lawrence, the Government representative, since Culver's removal from the scene. Lawrence was prepared for the visit. He expressed his regrets at the flight Van's fortunes had taken. Bostwick had come, he said, with authority from Washington, ordering the new survey. No expectation had been entertained, he was sure, that the old, "somewhat imaginary" and "decidedly vague" reservation line would be disturbed, or that any notable properties would be involved. Naturally, after the line was run, establishing the inclusion of the "Laughing Water" claim, and much other ground, in the reservation tract, Mr. Bostwick had been justified in summary action. It was the law of human kind to reach for all coveted things.
Van listened in patience to the exposition of the case. He studied the maps and data as he might have studied the laws of Confucius written in their native tongue. The thing looked convincing. It was not at all incredible or unique. It bore Government sanction, if not its trademark. And granting that the reservation tract did actually extend so far as to lap across the "Laughing Water" claim, the right of an entrant to locate the ground and oust all previous trespassers after the legal opening was undeniable.
Much of the natural fighting spirit, welded by nature into Van's being, had been sickened into inactivity by the blow succeeding blow received at the hands of Beth Kent. The case against her was complete.
Her letter to her brother was sufficient in itself. The need for its delivery in person to her brother he thought undoubtedly a ruse to get himself out of the way. If she had not planned with the others to warn the convict, Barger, of his trip, she had certainly loaned her money to Bostwick for his needs--and her letter contained the threat, "I will repay!"
At the end of three days of dulling disgust and helplessness, Van and his "family" were camping in a tent above the town of Goldite, on a hill. They were all but penniless: they had no occupation, no hope. They were down once more at the ladder's bottom rung, depleted in spirit, less young than formerly, and with no idea of which way to turn.
Van meant to fight, if the slightest excuse could be discovered. His partners would back him, with their lives. But he and they, as they looked their prospects fairly in the face, found themselves utterly disarmed. Except for the credit, extended by friends of Van, starvation might have lurked about their tent. All delayed seeking for outside work while the prospect of putting up a fight to regain their property held forth a dim glimmer of hope.
The last of Van's money went to meet a debt--such a debt as he would not disregard. The account was rendered by a cutter of stone, who had carved upon a marble post the single legend: QUEENIE.
This post was planted where a small earth mound was raised upon the hill--and word of the tribute went the rounds of the camp, where everyone else had forgotten.
The town's excitement concerning the rush had subsided with greater alacrity as reports came back, in rapid procession--no gold on the reservation. The normal excitements of the mining field resumed where the men had left them off. News that Matt Barger was not only still at large, but preying on wayside travelers, aroused new demands for the sheriff's demonstrations of his fitness to survive. The fact was recalled that Cayuse, the half-breed murderer of Culver, was as yet unreported from the hills.
The sheriff, who had ridden day and night, in quest of either of the "wanted" men, came back to Goldite from a week's excursion, packed full of hardships, vigilance, and work, to renew his force and make another attempt. He offered a job to Van.
"There's ten thousand dollars in Barger," he said. "And I guess you could use the money. There's nothing but glory in gittin' Cayuse, but I'll give you your pick of the pair."
That some half-formed notion of procuring a secret survey of the reservation line, in his own behalf, had occupied Van's thoughts somewhat insistently, was quite to be expected. That the work would prove expensive was a matter of course. Money was the one particular thing of which he stood in need. Nevertheless, at the sheriff's suggestion he calmly shook his head.
"Thanks, old man. Blood-money wouldn't circulate worth a whoop in my system. But I think I could land Cayuse." He held no grudge against Culver now. Perhaps he regretted the fuss he had made on the day of Culver's death. "I'll take ten dollars a day," he added, "and see what I can do about the Indian."
"I knew it! I knew you'd do more than all the gang--myself in the count," the sheriff exclaimed in profound relief. "I'm beat! I own it! I ain't seen a trace of that black-headed devil since I started. If you'll fetch him in----" "Don't promise more than ten dollars a day," Van interrupted. "If you do you can get him yourself. I haven't said I'll fetch him in. I merely said perhaps I could get him."
"All right," said the sheriff, bewildered. "All right. I don't care what happens, if you git him."
Glad, perhaps, to escape the town--to flee from the air that Beth was breathing, Van rode off that afternoon.
He did not seek the Indian murderer, nor for traces of his place of concealment. He went due west, to the nearest Indian camp, on the now diminished reservation. He called upon a wise and grave Piute, as old as some of the hills.
"Captain Sides," he said, when the due formalities of greeting had been gratified, "I want you to get Cayuse. He stabbed a white man, Culver, Government man--and you Piutes know all about it. Indians know where an Indian hides. This man has broken the law. He's got to pay. I want your men to get him."
Old Captain Sides was standing before his house. He was tall and dignified.
"Yesh--he's broke the law," he agreed. "Mebbe my boys, they's get him."
[Illustration: "Yesh--he's broke the law."]
That was all, but a strange thing happened. On the following night four grim Piutes brought Cayuse from his mountain retreat. They were all his kinsmen, uncles, brothers, and cousins. He was taken to a council in the brush, a family council with Captain Sides as Chieftain, Magistrate, and father of the tribe. And a solemn procedure followed. Cayuse was formally charged with infraction of the law and asked for his defense. He had no defense--nothing but justification. He admitted the killing, and told of why it had been done. He had taken an eye for an eye.
"I have broken the white man's law," he said. "The white man first broke mine. I'm ready to pay. The Indian stands no show to get away. I broke the law, and I am glad. They want my life. That's all right. That's the law. But I don't want the white man to hang me. That ain't good Indian way. My people can satisfy this law. They can shoot me like a man. No white is going to hang Cayuse, and that's all I've got to say."
To an Anglo Saxon mind this attitude is not to be readily comprehended. To the Indian members of Cayuse's clan it addressed itself as wisdom, logic, and right. The council agreed to his demands. The case, historical, but perhaps not unique, has never been widely known.
As solemnly as doom itself, the council proceeded with its task. Some manner of balloting was adopted, and immediate members of the Cayuse totem drew lots as to which must perform the lawful deed. It fell to a brother of the prisoner--a half-brother only, to be accurate, since the doomed man's father had been white.
Together Cayuse and this kinsman departed from the camp, walking forth through the darkness in the brush. They chatted in all pleasantness, upon the way. Cayuse could have broken and run. He never for a moment so much as entertained the thought.
They came to a place appropriate, and, still in all friendliness, backed by a sense of justice and of doom, the guiltless brother shot the half-breed dead--and the chapter, with the Indians, was concluded.
Van was gone three days from Goldite camp. He returned and reported all that had been done. He had seen the executed man. An even thirty dollars he accepted for his time, and with it bought food for his partners.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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38
|
BETH MAKES DEMANDS
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Beth Kent, while the camp was writing its feverish annals, had undergone emotions in the whole varied order of the gamut. She had felt herself utterly deserted and utterly unhappy. She had hoped against hope that Van would come, that something might explain away his behavior, that she herself might have an opportunity of ascertaining what had occurred.
One clew only was vouchsafed her puzzling mind: Searle had actually gone to Glen at last, had been there at the hour of Van's arrival, and had written Glen's letter to herself. Some encounter between the men had doubtless transpired, she thought, and Van had been poisoned against her. What else could it mean, his coldness, his abrupt departure, after all that had been, and his stubborn silence since?
The letter from Glen had been wholly unsatisfactory. Bostwick had written it, he said, at Glen's dictation. It echoed the phrases that Searle himself had employed so persistently, many of them grossly mendacious, as Beth was sufficiently aware. Her effort had been futile, after all. She was not at all certain as to Glen's condition; she was wholly in the dark in all directions.
On the day succeeding the reservation rush she received the news at Mrs. Dick's, not only that Van had lost his claim, and that McCoppet and Searle were its latest owners, but also that Van had run amuck that night after leaving herself.
Some vague, half-terrifying intuition that Searle was engaged in a lawless, retaliatory enterprise crept athwart her mind and rendered her intensely uneasy. Her own considerable sum of money might even be involved in--she could not fathom what. Something that lay behind it all must doubtless explain Van's extraordinary change. It was maddening; she felt there must be _something_ she could do--there _must_ be something! She was not content to wait in utter helplessness for anything more to happen--anything more that served to wreck human happiness, if not very life itself!
She felt, moreover, she had a right to know what it was affecting Van. He had come unbidden into her life. He had swept her away with his riotous love. He had taught her new, almost frightening joys of existence. He had drawn upon her very soul--kissing into being a nature demanding love for love. He had taken her all for himself, despite her real resistance. She could not cease to love so quickly as he. She had rights, acquired in surrender--at least the right to know what evil thing had wrought its way upon him.
But fret as she might, and burn as she might, with impatience, love-created anger and resentment of some infamy, doubtless practiced on them both, there was nothing in the world she could do.
She wrote again to Glen and had the letter posted in the mail. She asked for information. Was he better? Could he come to Goldite soon? Had he met Mr. Van? Had he understood that confession in her letter? Had he really purchased a mine, with Searle, or had he, by some strange mischance, concerned himself with the others in taking the "Laughing Water" claim?
She explained that she was wholly in the dark, that worry was her only companion. She begged him to come, if traveling were possible, and told of her effort to see him.
That Bostwick had opened and read her letter to Glen, suppressing that final page, together with sundry questions and references to himself, she could never have dreamed. It is ignorance always that baffles, as we grope our way in the world. And Beth had not yet entirely lost all trust in Bostwick himself.
Searle, in the meantime, having gone straight to the "Laughing Water" claim from Glenmore Kent, had remained three days away from Goldite and had taken no time to write. When he came at last the girl's suspicions were thoroughly aroused. That the man was a dangerous trickster, a liar, and perhaps a scoundrel she was rapidly becoming convinced.
He arrived at the house in the late afternoon while Mrs. Dick and Beth were engaged together in the dining-room, sewing at a quilt. The meeting was therefore a quiet one and Beth escaped any lover-like demonstrations he might otherwise have made.
Mrs. Dick, in her frank dislike of Bostwick, finally carried her work upstairs.
"Well, well, sweetheart!" Bostwick exclaimed. "You must have heard the news, of course. I expect your congratulations!"
He rose and approached her eagerly. She was standing. She moved a chair and placed herself behind it.
"I suppose you mean the claim you've--taken," she said. "You're elated over that?"
"Good Lord! aren't you?" he answered. "It's the biggest thing I've ever done! It's worth a million, maybe more--that 'Laughing Water' claim! And to think that Van Buren, the romantic fool, putting marble slabs on the graves of the _demi-monde_, and riding about like a big tin toreador, should have bought a property on reservation ground, and lost it, gold and all!"
His relish in the triumph was fairly unctuous. His jaw seemed to oscillate in oil as he mouthed his contempt of the horseman.
Beth flamed with resentment. Her love for Van increased despite her judgment, despite her wish, as she heard him thus assailed. She knew he had placed a stone on Queenie's grave. She admired the fearless friendliness of the action--the token whereby he had linked the unfortunate girl in death to the human family from which she had severed herself in life.
Not to be goaded to indiscretion now she sat down as before with her work.
"And the money--yours and mine--did it go to assist in this unexpected enterprise, and not to buy a claim with Glen?"
"Certainly. No--no--not all of it--certainly not," he stammered, caught for a moment off his guard. "Some of my funds I used, of course, in necessary ways. Don't you worry about your thirty thousand. You'll get it back a hundredfold, from your interest in the claim."
She glanced up suddenly, startled by what he had said. " _My_ interest in the claim?"
"Certainly, your interest. You didn't suppose I'd freeze you out, my little woman--my little wife--to be? You are one of the company, of course. You'll be a director later on--and we'll clean up a fortune in a year!"
She was exceedingly pale. What wonder Van had a grievance! He had doubtless heard it all before he came that night to deliver Glen's letter from Starlight. He might even have thought she had sent him to Glen to got him away from his claim.
A thousand thoughts, that seemed to scorch like fire, went rocketing through her brain. The thing was too much to be understood at once--it went too deep--it involved such possibilities. She must try to hold herself in check--try to be clever with this man.
"Oh," she said, dropping her eyes to her work, "and Glen is in it too?"
Bostwick was nervous. He sat down.
"Well, yes--to some extent--a little slice of mine," he faltered. "Naturally he has less than I've given to you."
"But--didn't he discover the opportunity--the chance?"
"Certainly not!" he declared vehemently. "It's all my doing--everything! Wholly my idea from the start!" The impulse to boast, to vaunt his cleverness, was not to be resisted. "I told Van Buren the game had only begun! He thought himself so clever!"
She clung to her point.
"But--of course you told me Glen had found the chance, requiring sixty thousand dollars."
"That was a different proposition--nothing to do with this. I've dropped that game entirely. This is big enough for us all!"
She looked the picture of unsophisticated innocence, sewing at a gaudy square of cloth.
"Did this affair also require the expenditure of sixty thousand dollars?"
"No, of course not. Didn't I say so before?"
"How much did it need--if I may ask?"
Bostwick colored. He could not escape. He dared not even hint at the sum he had employed.
"Oh, just the bare expenses of the survey--nothing much."
"Then," she said, "if you don't mind returning my thirty thousand dollars, I think I'll relinquish my share."
He rose hurriedly.
"But I--but you--it won't be possible--just yet," he stammered. "This is perfectly absurd! I want you in--want you to retain your interest. There are certain development expenses--and--they can't be handled without considerable money."
"Why not use your own? I much prefer to withdraw." She said it calmly, and looked him in the eye.
He avoided her glance, and paced up and down the room.
"It can't be done!" he said. "I've pledged my support--our support--to get the claim on its feet."
She grew calmer and colder.
"Wasn't the claim already on its feet. I heard it was paying well--that quite a lot of gold was seized when--when you and the others took the place."
His impatience and uneasiness increased.
"Oh, it was being worked--in a pickyune, primitive fashion. We're going at it right!"
The color came and went in her face. She felt that the man had employed her money, and could not repay it if he would. She pushed the point.
"Of course, you'll remember I gave you the money to assist my brother Glen. It was not to help secure or develop this other property. I much prefer not to invest my money this way. I shall have to request its return."
Bostwick was white.
"Look here, Beth, is this some maudlin sentiment over that brigand, Van Buren? Is that what you mean?"
She rose once more and confronted him angrily. It was not a mere girl, but a strong and resolute woman he was facing.
"Mr. Bostwick," she said, "you haven't yet acquired the right to demand such a thing as that of me. For reasons of my own, maudlin or otherwise, I refuse to have my funds employed in the manner you say you mean to use them. I insist upon the immediate return to me of thirty thousand dollars."
If rage at Van Buren consumed his blood, Bostwick's fear was a greater emotion. Before him he could plainly discern the abject failure of his plans--the plan to marry this beautiful girl, the plan to go on with McCoppet and snatch a fortune from the earth. It was not a time for defiance. He must fence. He must yield as far as possible--till the claim should make him independent. Of the tirade on his tongue against Van Buren he dared not utter a word. His own affairs of love would serve no better.
He summoned a smile to his ghastly lips and attempted to assume a calm demeanor.
"Very well," he said. "If that is the way you feel about your money, I will pay you back at once."
"If you please," she said. "To-day."
"But--the bank isn't open after three," he said in a species of panic. "You can't be utterly unreasonable."
"It was open much later when we were wiring New York some time ago," she reminded him coldly. "I think you'll find it open to-night till nine."
"Well--perhaps I can arrange it, then," he said in desperation. "I'll get down there now and see what I can do."
He took his hat and, glad to escape a further inquisition, made remarkable haste from the house.
Trembling with excitement, quivering on the verge of half-discovered things, flashes of intuition, fragments of deduction, Beth waited an hour for developments.
Searle did not return. She had felt he would not. She was certain her money was gone.
At dusk a messenger boy arrived with the briefest note, in Bostwick's familiar hand.
"Sudden, urgent call to the claim. No time for business. Back as soon as possible. With love and faith, yours, SEARLE."
How she loathed his miserable lie!
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
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39
|
ALGY'S COOKING AND BETH'S DESPAIR
|
Van and the new supply of provender arrived together at the tent where the partners made their temporary home. It was nearly dusk, the mellow end of a balmy day. Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave were all inside the canvas, filling the small hollow cube of air with a mighty reek from their pipes, and playing seven-up on a greasy box. The Chinese cook was away, much to Van's surprise.
"Gett," he said, throwing off his belt and revolver, "if Nap was to deal the cards on your tombstone, on the day of Gabriel's trump, I'll bet you'd break the crust and take a hand. What have you done with Algy?"
"He's went to git a job," said Gettysburg. "He called us all a lot of babies. I doggone near kicked him in the lung."
Outside, where a wagon had halted with Van's new purchases, the driver hauled out two respectable boxes and dropped them on the earth.
"What's that?" demanded Napoleon, leaping to his feet. "If it's pirates come to board us again----" "Don't scare it away," Van interrupted warningly. "It's grub."
With one accord the three old cronies started for the door of the tent. Van followed, prepared to get a dinner under way, since his system was woefully empty.
To the utter astonishment of all, a visitor was bustling up the hill. It was Mrs. Dick.
"Where's Van?" she panted, while still a rod away. "Here, Van!" she exclaimed, the moment she clapped her eyes upon him, "you're just the one I want to see, and I'm an awful busy woman, but I've got to make a deal with you and the sooner it's over the better. So as long as Charlie Sing is cookin' our victuals already I just run up to fight it out, and we might as well begin the program tonight, so all you boys come down to dinner in just about half an hour."
The men were all at sea, even Napoleon, who had once sailed a near-briny river.
"Sit down," said Van, "and give the grounds a chance to settle. We can almost see daylight through what you said, but who, for instance, is Charlie Sing?"
"As if you didn't know!" Mrs. Dick responded warmly. "If you think I'm goin' to call that Chinaman Algy, or anything white, you're way off your ca-base! Algy! for a Chinaman! Not but what he's a good enough cook, and I like him as a friend of yours--and him almost makin' me cry with his tryin' to nurse you four old helpless galoots, but I draw the line at fancy names, and don't you forget it!"
The "four old galoots" looked at one another in bewilderment. Van led Mrs. Dick gently but firmly to a box of provisions and pushed her down upon it.
"Now take a breath," he said, "and listen. Do we understand you to say that Algy has gone to your boarding-house and taken a job as cook?"
"He has," said Mrs. Dick, "but I've named him Charlie."
"That'll turn his stomick," ventured Gettysburg gravely. "He was proud of 'Algy.'"
"He certainly must be desperate," added Van. "I don't quite savvy how it happened."
"Oh, you don't?" said little Mrs. Dick. "Well, I _do_. He come down there and says to me, says he, 'We're broke, Van and us,' he says, 'and I'll go to work and cook for you if you'll board all the family,' or words to that effect, says he, 'and give Van twenty dollars a month, salary,' he says, and I says I'll do it, quicker than scat. And that's all there is to say, and if Charlie wasn't a Chinaman I'd kiss him in the bargain!" With a quick, impatient gesture she made a daub at her eye and flecked away a jewel.
Van hauled at his collar, which was loose enough around his neck.
"Say, boys," he said, "think of Algy, being kissed in the bargain. I always thought he got his face at a bargain counter."
"That's all right, Bronson Van Buren!" answered Mrs. Dick indignantly, "but I never come that near to kissin' you!"
Van suddenly swooped down upon her, picked her up bodily, and kissed her on the cheek. Then he placed her again on the box.
"Why didn't you say what you wanted, earlier?" he said. "Now, don't talk back. I want you to harken intently. I'm perfectly willing that Algy should waste his sweetness on the desert air of your boarding-house, if it pleases you and him. I'm willing these old ring-tailed galoots should continue to eat his fascinating poisons, and I certainly hope he'll draw his monthly wage, but I'm going to be too busy to board in any one place, and Algy's salary would make a load I must certainly decline to carry."
Mrs. Dick looked at the horseman in utter disappointment.
"You won't come? Maybe you mean my house ain't good enough?"
Napoleon was somewhat excited by prospects of again beholding Elsa, of whose absence he was wholly unaware.
"We won't go, neither!" he declared. "Doggone you, Van, you know we won't go without the skipper, and you're shovin' us right out of heaven!"
Gettysburg added: "I don't want to say nuthin', but my stomach will sure be the seat of anarchy if it has to git cheated out of goin' down to Mrs. Dick's."
Van was about to reply to them all. He had paused to frame his answer artfully, eager as he was to foster the comfort of his three old partners, but wholly unwilling to accept from either Mrs. Dick or Algernon the slightest hint of aid.
"I admit that a man's reach should be above the other fellow's grasp, and all that," he started, "but here's the point----" He was interrupted suddenly. A man, running breathlessly up the slope and waving his hat in frantic gestures, began to shout as he came.
"Mrs. Dick! Mrs. Dick!" he cried at the top of his voice. "Help! help! You've got to come!"
Mrs. Dick leaped quickly to her feet to face the oncoming man. It was old Billy Stitts. He had come from Beth.
"Come on! Come on!" he cried as he neared the group, towards which he ceased to run, the better to catch his breath and yell. "There's hell a-poppin' in the boarding-house! You've got to come!"
He surged up the last remaining ascent at a lively stride.
"What's the matter? What in the world are you drivin' at?" demanded Mrs. Dick. "Hold your tongue long enough to tell me what's the matter."
"It's the _chink_!" exploded Billy pantingly. "They tried to run him off the place! He's locked the kitchen and gone to throwin' out hot water and Chinese language like a fire-engine on a drunk. And now they're all a-packin' up to quit the house, and you won't have a doggone boarder left, fer they won't eat Chinese chuck!"
"What?" said Van drawlingly, "refuse to eat Algy's confections? --a crowd like that? By all the culinary gods of Worcestershire and mustard, they'll eat out of Algy's hand."
He dived inside the tent, caught up his gun, and was strapping it on before Mrs. Dick could catch her breath to utter a word of her wrath.
"Well," said Gettysburg dubiously, "I hate trouble on an empty stomach, but----" "You stay in camp till you hear the dinner bell," Van interrupted. "This game is mine and Mrs. Dick's. You'll get there in time for dessert."
He did not wait for Mrs. Dick. He started at a pace that none could follow. Mrs. Dick began to run at his heels, calling instructions as she went.
"Be careful of the crock'ry, Van! The stove's bran'-new! I'd hate to have you break the chairs! And don't forgit Miss Kent!"
Old Billy Stitts had remained with the others at the camp.
"Ain't she the female woman?" he said. "Ain't she just about it?"
No one answered. The three old cronies were watching Van as he went.
Van, for his part, heard nothing of what Mrs. Dick was saying, except the name "Miss Kent." He had not forgotten for a moment that Beth was at the seat of war, or that he would perhaps be wiser by far never to behold her again. He was speeding there despite all he felt at what she had done, for she might be involved in trouble at the house, and--at least she was a woman.
He arrived in the midst of a newly concerted plan on the part of lodgers and strangers combined to smoke Algy out of the kitchen. They had broken windows, overturned the furniture, and worked up a lively humor. Algy had exhausted his supply of hot water, but not his supply of language. It seemed as if the stream of Oriental invective being poured through the walls of the building might have withered almost anything extant. But Goldite whisky had failed on his besiegers earlier and their vitals were proof against attack.
Van arrived among them abruptly.
"What's all this pillow-fight about?" he demanded in a voice that all could hear. "Which one of you fellows is it that's forgotten he's a man? Who's looking for trouble with my Chinese cook and Mrs. Dick?"
He boded no good to any man sufficiently hardy to argue the matter to a finish. The attackers lost heart as they faced about and found him there ready for action. From a half-open window above the scene Beth was watching all that was done.
A spokesman for the lodgers found his voice.
"Well, we ain't a-goin' to stay in no doggone house with a chink shoved in fer a cook."
Van nodded: "Have you ever tried Algy's cooking?"
"No, we ain't! And we ain't a-goin' to, neither!"
The others murmured their assent.
"You're a fine discriminating cluster of bifurcated, viviparous idiots," said Van in visibly disturbing scorn. "You fellows would have to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and kicked into Eden, I reckon, even if the snake was killed and flung over the fence, and the fruit offered up on silver platters. The man who hasn't eaten one of Algy's dinners isn't fit to live. The man who refuses to eat one better begin right now on his prayers." He took out his gun and waved it loosely about, adding: "Which one of you remembers 'Now I lay me down to sleep'?"
There was no response. The ten or twelve disturbers of the peace were stirring uneasily in their tracks.
Van gave them a chance.
"All who prefer to recite, 'Now I sit me up to eat,' please raise their hands. Raise 'em up, raise 'em up!" he commanded with the gun. "Put up both hands, while you're at it."
Up went all the hands. Mrs. Dick arrived, and stood looking on and panting in excitement.
"Thanks for this unanimous vote," Van resumed. "I want to inform you boarders in particular that if ever I hear of one of you missing a meal of Algy's cooking, or playing hookey from this lodging-house, as long as Mrs. Dick desires your inglorious company, I'll hand you forthwith over to the pound-keeper with instructions not to waste his chloroform, but to drown the whole litter in a bag."
"Oh, well!" said the spokesman, "I'd just as soon eat the chink's cookin', if it's good."
"Me, too," said a follower, meek as a lamb. A number echoed "Me, too." One added: "We was just having a little bit of fun."
"Well," said Van judicially, "Algy's entitled to his share." He raised his voice: "Hey there, Algy--come out here and play with the boys."
Mrs. Dick had caught sufficient breath to explode.
"Fun!" she said. "My windows broken! My house all upset. Snakes alive, if ever I heard----" Algy appeared and interrupted.
"What's mallah you, Van?" he said. "I got no time fool lound now. Been play too much. All time play, that velly superstich! Nobody got time to work."
"That's all right," Van assured him. "The boys here wish to apologize for wasting your valuable time. In fact, they insist. Now then, boys, down on your knees, every Jack in the crowd."
That gun of his had a horribly loose way of waving about to cover all the men. They slumped to, rather than knelt on, their knees.
"Suminagot!" said Algy. "All time too muchee monkey fooling! My dinner not git leady, Van, you savvy that? What's mallah you?"
Van ignored the cook, in addressing the men.
"It's your earnest desire to apologize, boys, I believe," he said. "All in favor will please say Aye."
The men said Aye in growlings, rumblings, and pipings.
Van addressed his cook. "Do you want them to kiss your hand?" " _Ah_! Unema! hong oy!" said Algy blasphemously. "You makee me velly sick! Just wash my hands for finish my dinner. Too much monkey-doodle!" and off he went to his work, followed at once by Mrs. Dick.
"Algy's too modest," Van assured the crowd. "And none of you chaps are fit to apologize to Mrs. Dick, so you'd better go wash up for dinner. But don't let me hear so much as a peep about Algy from one of this bunch, or Eden will turn into Hades." As the men arose to their feet sheepishly, and began to slink away he added to the spokesman, "You there with the face for pie, go up to my camp and call the boys to feed."
The men disappeared. Van, left alone, was turning away when his glance was attracted to the window, up above, where Beth was looking down. His face turned red to the topmost rim of his ears.
The girl was pale, but resolute.
"May I see you a moment, please?" she said, "before the men come in?"
"Certainly." Van went to the front and waited at the foot of the stairs.
When Beth came down he was standing in the doorway, looking off at the shadowy hills. He heard her steps upon the stairs and turned, removing his hat.
For a moment Beth faced him silently, her color coming and going in rapid alternations. She had never seemed more beautiful than now, in her mood of worry and courage.
"Thank you for waiting," she said to him faintly, her heart beating wildly in her bosom, "I felt as if I had the right--felt it only right--won't you please tell me what I have done?"
It was not an easy matter for Van to hold his own, to check an impulse utterly incontinent, utterly weak, that urged him fairly to the edge of surrender. But his nature was one of intensity, and inasmuch as he had loved intensely, he distrusted now with equal force.
"What you have done?" he repeated. "I'm sure I can't tell you of anything that you do not know yourself. What do you wish me to say?"
"I don't know! I don't know," she told him honestly. "I thought if I asked you--asked you like this--you'd tell me what is the matter."
"There's nothing the matter."
"But there is!" she said. "Why not be frank? I know that you're in trouble. Perhaps you blame----" "I told you once that taking trouble and having trouble supply all the fun I have," he interrupted. "The man without trouble became extinct before he was born."
"Oh, please don't jest," she begged him earnestly. "You and I were friends--I'm sure we were friends--but now----" "Now, if we are not, do you think the fault is mine?"
He, too, was white, for the struggle was great in his soul.
"It isn't mine!" she said. "I want to say that! I had to say that. I stopped you--just to say that." She blushed to say so much, but she met his stern gaze fearlessly with courage in her eyes.
He could not understand her in the least, unless she still had more to do, and thought to hold his friendship, perhaps for Searle's protection. He forced himself to probe in that direction.
"And you'd wish to go on being friends?"
It was a hard question--hard to ask and hard to answer. She colored anew, but she did not flinch. Her love was too vast, too strong and elemental to shrink at a crucial moment.
"I valued your friendship--very much," she confessed steadily. "Why shouldn't I wish it to continue?"
It was aggravating to have her seem so honest, so splendid, so womanly and fine, when he thought of that line in her letter. He could not spare himself or her in the agitation of his nature.
"Your way and mine are different," he said. "My arts in deceit were neglected, I'm afraid."
Her eyes blazed more widely than before. Her color went like sunset tints from the sky, leaving her face an ashen hue of chill.
"Deceit?" she repeated. "You mean that I--I have deceived you? What do you mean?"
He could bear no more of her apparent innocence. It was breaking his resolution down.
"Oh, we may as well be candid!" he exclaimed. "What's the use of beating round the bush? I saw your letter--read your letter--by mistake."
"My letter?"
"Your letter to your brother. Through some mistake I was given the final page--a fragment merely--instead of your brother's reply to be brought to you. I was asked to read it--which I did. Is that enough?"
"My letter to---- The last----" At a sudden memory of that letter's last page, with her heart's confession upon it, she burned a blinding crimson. "You read----" she stammered, "--and now----" She could not look him in the face. She leaned against the stair in sudden weakness.
"After that," he said, "does my conduct occasion surprise?"
What he meant, in the light of the letter as she had written it to Glen, as she thought he must have read it, was beyond her comprehension. She had fondly believed he loved her. He had told her so in actions, words, and kisses. What terrible secret, deep hidden in his breast, could possibly lie behind this thing was more than mind could fathom. Or did he scorn and loathe her now for having succumbed to his love? He had read her confession that she loved him more than anything else in all the world. He knew the last faint word in her heart--and flung her away like this!
She cast one frightened, inquiring look at his face. It was set and hard as stone. The light in his eyes was cold, an accusing glitter. She felt herself utterly abashed, utterly shamed. Her heart had lain naked before him, throbbing with its secret. His foot was upon it. There was nothing to cover its nakedness--nothing to cover her confusion.
For a moment she stood there, attempting to shrink within herself. Her attitude of pain and shame appeared to him as guilt. He felt the whole thing poignantly--felt sorry to send his shaft so truly home, sorry to see the effect of the blow. But, what was the use? His was the way of plain, straightforward dealing. Better one swift wound, even unto death, than a lingering torture for years.
He opened his lips as if to speak. But there was nothing more to say. He turned towards the door.
Beth could not suppress one little cry.
"Oh!" It was half a moan, half a shuddering gasp.
With her last rally of strength she faced the stairway, and weakly stumbled up the steps.
A spasm of agony seized Van by the cords of his heart. He went blindly away, with a vision in his eyes of Beth groping weakly up the stairs--a doe with a mortal hurt.
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
|
40
|
GLEN AND REVELATIONS
|
How she spent that night Beth never could have told. Her mind had refused to work. Only her heart was sensible of life and emotions, for there lay her wound, burning fiercely all the long hours through. That Van had made excuses to his partners and disappeared on "business" was a matter of which she received no account.
In the morning the unexpected happened. Her brother Glen arrived in Goldite, having driven from Starlight with a friend. He appeared at Mrs. Dick's while Beth was still in her room, indisposed. She had eaten no dinner. She took no breakfast. But with Glenmore's advent she was suddenly awakened to a new excitement, almost a new sort of hope.
Young Kent was a smooth-faced, boyish chap, slightly stooped, exceedingly neat, black-haired, and of medium height. He was like Beth only in a "family" manner. His nose was a trifle large for his face, but something in his modest, good-natured way, coupled to his earnest delivery of slang in all his conversation, lent him a certain charm that no one long resisted.
He was standing in his characteristic pose, with one hand buried in his pocket, as he laughingly explained himself to Mrs. Dick, when Beth came running down the stairs.
"Glen!" she cried, as she ran along the hall, and casting herself most fervently upon him, with her arms about his neck, she had a good, sky-clearing cry, furious and brief, and looked like a rain-wet rose when she pushed him away and scrutinized him quickly through her tears.
"I say, Sis, why this misplaced fountain on the job?" he said. "Do I look as bad as that?"
"Oh, Glen," she said, "you've been ill! You were hurt! I've worried so. You're well? You've entirely recovered? Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Glen! There's so much I've got to say!"
"Land snakes!" said Mrs. Dick. "If I don't hurry----" and off she went.
"You're the phonograph for mine," said Glen. "What's the matter with your eyes? Searle hasn't got you going on the lachrymals already?"
"No, I--I'm all right," she said excitedly. "I didn't sleep well, that's all. Do sit down. I've so many things to say, so much to ask, I don't know where to begin. It was such a surprise, your coming like this! And you're looking so well. You got my letter, of course?"
Glen sat down, and Beth sat near, her hand upon his arm. They had been more like companions than mere half-brother and sister, all their lives. The bond of affection between them was exceptionally developed.
"I came up on account of your letter," he said. "Either my perceptive faculties are on the blink or there's something decaying in Denmark. It's you for the Goddess of Liberty enlightening the unenlightened savage. I'm from Missouri and I want you to start the ticker on the hum."
"You know what Searle has done?" she said. "How much do you know of what has happened?"
"Nothing. I've been retired on half knowledge for a month," said Glen. "I haven't been treated right. I'm here to register a roar. Nobody tells me you're in the State till I read that account in the paper. I dope it out to Searle that I am bumping the bumps, and there is nothing doing. He shows up at last and hands me a species of coma and leaves me with twenty-five dollars! That's what I get. What I've been doing is a longer story. I apologize for not having seen your friend who brought the letter, but it's up to you to apologize for a bum epistle to the Prodigal."
"Wait a minute, Glen--wait a minute, please; don't go so fast," she said, gripping tighter to his arm. "I must get this all as straight and plain as possible. You don't mean to say that Searle really drugged you, or something like that--what for?"
"I want to know," said Glen. "What's the answer? Perhaps he preferred I should not behold your Sir Cowboy Gallahad."
"There is something going on," she said, "something dark and horrible. How did you happen to show Mr. Van Buren--let him see the last page of my letter?"
"I didn't let him see anything," said Glen. "I was dopy, I tell you. I didn't even see the letter myself. Searle sat on the bed and read it aloud--and lit his cigar with part of it later."
"My letter?" she said, rising abruptly, and immediately sitting down again. "You never saw---- Searle got it--read it! Oh, the shamelessness! Then--it must have been Searle who made the mistake--let Mr. Van Buren see it--see what I wrote--see---- What did he read you--read about Van--Mr. Van Buren--almost the last thing in the letter?"
Glen was surprised at her agitation. He glanced at her blankly.
"Nothing," he said. "He read me nothing--as I remember--about your friend. Was it something in particular?"
She arose again abruptly and wrung her hands in a gesture of baffled impatience.
"Oh, I don't know what it all means!" she said. "To think of Searle being there, and intercepting my letter! --daring to read it! --burning it up! --reading you only a portion! Of course, he didn't read you my suspicions concerning himself?"
"Not on your half-tone," Glen assured her. "What's all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail in the mulligatawny."
Beth sat down as before and leaned her chin in her palm in an attitude of concentration.
"Don't you know what Searle has done--taking the 'Laughing Water' claim? --Mr. Van Buren's claim?"
"I don't know anything!" he told her convincingly. "I'm a howling wilderness of ignorance. I want to know."
"Let's start at the very beginning," she said. "Just as soon as Searle brought your letter--the first one, I mean--in which you asked for sixty thousand dollars to buy a mine----" "Whoap! Jamb on the emergency!" Glen interrupted. "I never wrote such a letter in my life!"
She looked at him blankly.
"But--Glen--I saw your letter. I read it myself--at this very table."
Glen knitted his brows and became more serious.
"A letter from me? --touching Searle for sixty thou? Somebody's nutty."
"But Glen--what I saw with my own eyes----" "Can't help it. Nothing doing!" he interrupted as before. "If Searle showed you any such letter as that he wrote it him--hold on, I wrote him for a grub-stake, fifty dollars at the most, but I haven't even seen a mine that any man would buy, that the other man would sell, and Searle sure got my first before I was bug-house from that wollop on the block." He put his hand to the sore spot on his head and rubbed it soothingly.
Beth was pale. She failed to observe his gesture, so absorbed were all her faculties in the maze of facts in which she was somewhat helplessly struggling.
"Could Searle have written such a letter as that?" she said. "What for?"
"For money--if he wrote it," said Glen. "Did he touch you for a loan?"
Beth's eyes were widely blazing. Her lips were white and stiff.
"Why, Glen, I advanced thirty thousand dollars--I thought to help you buy a mine. Searle was to put in a like amount--but recently----" "Searle! Thirty thousand bucks!" said Glen. "He hasn't got thirty thousand cents! The man who drove me up last night knows the bank cashier, Mr. Rickart, like a brother--and Rickart told him Searle is a four-flusher--hasn't a bean--and looks like a mighty good imitation of a crook. Searle! You put up thirty--stung, Beth, stung, good and plenty!"
Beth's hand was on her cheek, pressing it to whiteness.
"Oh, I've been afraid that something was wrong--that something terrible---- Why, Glen, that would be _forgery_--obtaining money under false pretences! He may have done anything--_anything_ to get the 'Laughing Water' claim! He may have done something--said something--written something to make Van--Mr. Van Buren think that I---- Oh, Glen, I don't know what to do!"
Her brother looked at her keenly.
"You're in trouble, Sis," he hazarded. "Is 'Van' the candy boy with you?"
She blushed suddenly. The contrast from her paleness was striking.
"He's the one who is in trouble," she answered. "And he may think that I--he does think something. He has lost his mine--a very valuable property. Searle and some Mr. McCoppet have taken it away from Mr. Van Buren and all those poor old men--after all their work, their waiting--everything! You've got to help me to see what we can do!"
"McCoppet's a gambler--a short-card, tumble weed," said Glen. "You've got to put me next. Tell me the whole novelette, beginning at chapter one."
"As fast as I can," she answered, and she did. She related everything, even the manner in which she and Searle had first become engaged--a business at which she marveled now--and of how and when she had encountered Van, the results of the meeting, the subsequent events, and the heart-breaking outcome of the trip that Van had made to carry her letter to Starlight.
In her letter, her love had been confessed. She glossed that item over now as a spot too sensitive for exposure. She merely admitted that between herself and Van had existed a friendship such as comes but once in many a woman's life--a friendship recently destroyed, she feared, by some horrible machinations of Bostwick.
"You can see," she concluded, "that Mr. Van Buren must think me guilty of almost anything. He doubtless knows my money, that I thought was helping you, went to meet the expense of taking away his property. He probably thinks I sent him to you to get him out of the way, while Searle and the others were driving his partners off the claim.
"My money is gone. I asked for its return and I'm sure Searle cannot repay me. I'm told he couldn't have used so much as thirty thousand dollars in anything legitimate, so far, on the 'Laughing Water' claim. If he'd forge a letter from you, and lie like this and deceive me so, what wouldn't he do to rob these men of their mine?"
"I scent decay," said Glenmore gravely. "Have you got any plans in your attic?"
"Why, I don't know what to do, of course!" she admitted. "But I've got to do something. I've got to show Mr. Van Buren I'm not a willful party to these horrible things. I don't believe I'll ever get my money back. I don't want a share of a stolen mine. I'd be glad to let the money go, and more--all I've got in the world--if only I could prove to Van that I haven't deceived him, haven't taken part in anything wrong--if only I could make these cheats give the 'Laughing Water' back!"
"Van _is_ the candy. I'll have to meet him, sure," said Glen with conviction, looking on her face. "I wish you were wise to more of this game--the way they worked it--how they doped it out. I'll look around and find out how the trick was done, and then we'll go to it together. Guess I'll look for Van right off the bat."
She glanced at him with startled eyes.
"No, Glen--please don't. I'd rather you wouldn't--just yet. You don't understand. I can't let him think I'm--making overtures. He must think I have a _little_ pride. If his mine has been stolen I want to give it back--before he ever sees me again. If you knew how much--oh, how very much, I wish to do that----" "I'm on," he interrupted. "It will do me good to put a crimp in Searle."
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
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41
|
SUVY PROVES HIS LOVE
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If a single ray of far-off hope had lingered in Van's meditations concerning Beth, and the various occurrences involving himself and his mining property, it vanished when he told her of the letter he had seen and beheld her apparent look of guilt.
One thing the interview had done: it had cleared his decks for action. He had lain half stunned, as it were, till now, while Bostwick held the "Laughing Water" claim and worked it for its gold. A look that was grim and a heat that would brook no resistance had come together upon him.
That claim was his, by right of purchase, by right of discovery as to its worth! He had earned it by hardships, privations, suffering! He meant to have it back! If the law could avail him, well and good! If not, he'd make a law!
McCoppet he knew for a thief--a "law-abiding" criminal of the subtlest type. Bostwick, he was certain, was a crook. Behind these two lay possibilities of crime in all its forms. That suddenly ordered survey of the line was decidedly suspicious. Bostwick and his fiancée had come prepared for some such coup--and money was a worker of miracles such as no man might obstruct.
Van became so loaded full of fight that had anyone scratched a match upon him he might have exploded on the spot. He thought of the simplest thing to do--hire a private survey of the reservation line, either to confirm or disprove the work that Lawrence had done, and then map out his course. The line, however, was long, surveyors were fairly swamped with work, not a foot could be traveled without some ready cash.
He went to Rickart of the bank. Rickart listened to his plan of campaign and shook his head.
"Don't waste your money, Van," he said. "The Government wouldn't accept the word of any man you could hire. Lawrence would have to be discredited. Nobody doubts his ability or his squareness. The reservation boundary was wholly a matter of guess. You'll find it includes that ground--and the law will be against you. I'd gladly lend you the money if I could, but the bank people wouldn't stand behind me. And every bean I've got of my own I've put in the Siwash lease."
Van was in no mood for begging.
"All right, Rick," he said. "But I'll have that line overhauled if I have to hold up a private surveyor and put him over the course at the front of a gun." He went out upon the street, more hot than before.
In two days time he was offered twenty dollars--a sum he smilingly refused. He was down and out, in debt all over the camp. He could not even negotiate a loan. From some of his "friends" he would not have accepted money to preserve his soul.
Meantime, spurred to the enterprise by little Mrs. Dick, old Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave accepted work underground and began to count on their savings for the fight.
At the "Laughing Water" claim, during this period, tremendous elation existed. Not only had three lines of sluices been installed, with three shifts of men to shovel night and day, but a streak of gravel of sensational worth had been encountered in the cove. The clean-up at sunset every day was netting no less than a thousand dollars in gold for each twenty-four hours at work.
This news, when it "leaked," begot another rush, and men by the hundreds swarmed again upon the hills, in all that neighborhood, panning the gravel for their lives. Wild-catting started with an impetus that shook the State itself. And Van could only grit his teeth and continue, apparently, to smile.
All this and more came duly to the ears of Glenmore Kent and Beth. The girl was in despair as the days went by and nothing had been accomplished. The meager fact that Lawrence had run and corrected the reservation line, at Searle's behest, was all that Glen had learned.
But of all the men in Goldite he was doubtless best equipped with knowledge concerning Bostwick's Eastern standing. He knew that Searle had never had the slightest Government authority to order the survey made--and therein lay the crux of all the matter. It was all he had to go upon, but he felt it was almost enough.
The wires to New York were tapped again, and Beth was presently a local bank depositor with a credit of twenty thousand dollars. In a quiet, effective manner, Glen then went to work to secure a surveyor on his own account, or rather at Beth's suggestion.
With the fact of young Kent's advent in the town Van was early made acquainted. When Beth procured the transfer of her money from New York to Goldite, Rickart promptly reported the news. It appeared to Van a confirmation of all his previous suspicions. He could not fight a woman, and Bostwick and McCoppet remained upon the claim. Searle wrote nearly every day to Beth, excusing his absence, relating his success, and declaring the increase of his love.
On a Wednesday morning Glenmore's man arrived by stage from Starlight, instruments and all. His name was Pratt. He was a tall, slow-moving, blue-eyed man, nearly sixty years of age, but able still to carry a thirty-pound transit over the steepest mountain ever built. Glen met him by appointment at the transportation office and escorted him at once to Mrs. Dick's.
Already informed as to what would be required, the surveyor was provided with all the data possible concerning the reservation limits.
Beth was tremendously excited. "I'm glad you've come," she told him candidly. "Can you start the work to-day?"
"You will want to keep this quiet," he said. "I need two men we can trust, and then I'm ready to start."
"Two?" said Glen. "That's awkward. I thought perhaps you could get along with little me."
Beth, in her tumult of emotions, was changing color with bewildering rapidity.
"Why--I expected to go along, of course," she said. "I've got a suit--I've done it before--I mean, I expect to dress as you are, Glen, and help to run the line."
Pratt grinned good-naturedly. "Keeps it all in the family. That's one advantage."
"All right," said Glen. "Hike upstairs and don your splendors."
He had hired a car and stocked it with provisions, tents, and bedding. He hastened off and returned with the chauffeur to the door.
Beth, in the costume she had worn on the day when Van found her lost in the desert, made a shy, frightened youth, when at length she appeared, but her courage was superb.
At ten o'clock they left the town, and rolled far out to the westward on their course.
Van learned of their departure. He was certain that Beth had gone to the "Laughing Water" claim, perhaps to be married to Bostwick. Three times he went to the hay-yard that day, intent upon saddling his broncho, riding to the claim himself, and fighting out his rights by the methods of primitive man.
On the third of his visits he met a stranger who offered to purchase Suvy on the spot at a price of two hundred dollars.
"Don't offer me a million or I might be tempted," Van told him gravely. "I'll sell you my soul for a hundred."
The would-be purchaser was dry.
"I want a soul I can ride."
Van looked him over critically.
"Think you could ride my cayuse?"
"This broach?" said the man. "Surest thing you know."
"I need the money," Van admitted. "I'll bet you the pony against your two hundred you can't."
"You're on."
Van called to his friend, the man who ran the yard.
"Come over here, Charlie, and hold the stakes. Here's a man who wants to ride my horse."
Charlie came, heard the plan of the wager, accepted the money, and watched Van throw on the saddle.
"I didn't know you wanted to sell," he said. "You know I want that animal."
"If he goes he sells himself," said Van. "If he doesn't, you're next, same terms."
"Let me have that pair of spurs," said the stranger, denoting a pair that hung upon a nail. "I guess they'll fit."
He adjusted the spurs as one accustomed to their use. Van merely glanced around. Nevertheless, he felt a sinking of the heart. Five hundred dollars, much as he needed money, would not have purchased his horse. And inasmuch as luck had been against him, he suddenly feared he might be on the point of losing Suvy now for a price he would have scorned.
"Boy," he said in a murmur to the broncho, "if I thought you'd let any bleached-out anthropoid like that remain on deck, I wouldn't want you anyway--savvy that?"
Suvy's ears were playing back and forth in excessive nervousness and questioning. He had turned his head to look at Van with evident joy at the thought of bearing him away to the hills--they two afar off together. Then came a disappointment.
"There you are," said Van, and swinging the bridle reins towards the waiting man, he walked to a feed-trough and leaned against it carelessly.
"Thanks," said the stranger. He threw away a cigarette, caught up the reins, adjusted them over Suvy's neck, rocked the saddle to test its firmness, and mounted with a certain dexterity that lessened Van's confidence again. After all, Suvy was thoroughly broken. He had quietly submitted to be ridden by Beth. His war-like spirit might be gone--and all would be lost.
Indeed, it appeared that Suvy was indifferent--that a cow would have shown a manner no less docile or resigned. He did look at Van with a certain expression of surprise and hurt, or so, at least, the horseman hoped. Then the man on his back shook up the reins, gave a prick with the spurs, and Suvy moved perhaps a yard.
The rider pricked again, impatiently. Instantly Suvy's old-time fulminate was jarred into violent response. He went up in the air prodigiously, a rigid, distorted thing of hardened muscles and engine-like activities. He came down like a new device for breaking rocks--and the bucking he had always loved was on, in a fury of resentment.
"Good boy!" said Van, who stood up stiffly, craning and bending to watch the broncho's fight.
But the man in the saddle was a rider. He sat in the loose security of men who knew the game. He gave himself over to becoming part of the broncho's very self. He accepted Suvy's momentum, spine-disturbing jolts, and sudden gyrations with the calmness and art of a master.
All this Van beheld, as the pony bucked with warming enthusiasm, and again his heart descended to the depths. It was not the bucking he had hoped to see. It was not the best that lay in Suvy's thongs. The beating he himself had given the animal, on the day when their friendship was cemented, had doubtless reduced the pony's confidence of winning such a struggle, while increasing his awe of man. Some miners passing saw the dust as the conflict waged in the yard. They hastened in to witness the show. Then from everywhere in town they appeared to pour upon the scene. The word went around that the thing was a bet--and more came running to the scene.
Meantime, Suvy was rocketing madly all over the place. Chasing a couple of cows that roamed at large, charging at a monster pile of household furnishings, barely avoiding the feed-trough, set in the center of the place, scattering men in all directions, and raising a dust like a concentrated storm, the broncho waxed more and more hot in the blood, more desperately wild to fling his rider headlong through the air. But still that rider clung.
Van had lost all sense save that of worry, love for his horse, and desire to see him win this vital struggle. A wild passion for Suvy's response to himself--for a proving love in the broncho's being--possessed his nature. He leaned far forward, awkwardly, following Suvy about.
"I'm ashamed of you, Suvy!" he began to cry. "Suvy! Suvy, where's your pride? Why don't you do him, boy? Why don't you show them? Where's your pride? My boy! my boy! --don't you love me any more? You're a baby, Suvy! You're a baby!" He paused for a moment, following still and watching narrowly. "Suvy! Suvy! You're gone if you let him ride you, lad! If you love me, boy, don't break my heart with shame!"
Suvy and a hundred men heard his wild, impassioned appeal. The men responded as if in some pain of the heart they could not escape, thus to see Van Buren so completely wrapped up in his horse. Then some all but groaned to behold the bucking cease.
It seemed as if Suvy had quit. The man in the saddle eased.
"Boy!" yelled Van, in a shrill, startling cry that made the pony shiver. He had seen some sign that no one but himself could understand. "Boy! not that! not that!"
Already Suvy had started to rise, to drop himself backwards on his rider.
He heard and obeyed. He went up no more than to half his height, then seemed to be struck by a cyclone. Had all the frightful dynamic of an earthquake abruptly focused in his being, the fearful convulsion of his muscles could scarcely have been greater. It was all so sudden, so swift and terrible, that no man beheld how it was done. It was simply a mad delirium of violence, begun and ended while one tumultuous shudder shook the crowd.
Everyone saw something loose and twisting detached from the pony's back. Everyone witnessed a blur upon the air and knew it was the man. He was flung with catapultic force against a frightened cow. He struck with arms and legs extended. He clung like a bur to the bovine's side, for a moment before he dropped--and everyone roared unfeelingly, in relief of the tension on the nerves.
The next they knew Van was there with his horse, shaking the animal's muzzle.
"My boy!" he said. "My boy! My luck has changed!"
Apparently it had. The man who had thought he could ride the horse limped weakly to a blanket-roll, and sat himself down to gather up the pieces of his breath and consciousness. He wanted no more. He felt it was cheap at the price he had paid to escape with a hint of his life.
Van waited for nothing, not even the money that Charlie of the hay-yard was holding. He mounted to the saddle that had been the seat of hell, and in joy unspeakable Suvy walked away, in response to the pressure of his knees.
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
|
42
|
THE FURNACE OF GOLD
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All the following day, which was Thursday, two small companies were out in the hills. One was Beth's, where she, Glen, and Pratt toiled slowly over miles and miles of baking mountains and desert slopes and rocks, tracing out the reservation boundary with a long slender ribbon of steel.
The other group, equally, if less openly, active, comprised the sheriff and three of his men. They were trailing out the boundary of one man's endurance, against fatigue, starvation, and the hatred of his kind.
Barger had been at his work once more, slaying and robbing for his needs. He had killed a Piute trailer, put upon his tracks; he had robbed a stage, three private travelers, and a freight-team loaded with provisions. He had lived on canned tomatoes and ginger snaps for a week--and the empty tins sufficiently blazed his orbit.
He was known to be mounted, armed, and once more reduced to extremities in the way of procuring food. A trap had been laid, a highway baited with an apparently defenseless wagon, with two mere desert prospectors and their outfit for a load--and this he was expected to attack.
The morning waned and the afternoon was speeding. Old Pratt, with Beth and Glen, was eager to finish by sunset. The farther he walked the more the surveyor apparently warmed to his work. Beth became footsore by noon. But she made no complaint. She plodded doggedly ahead, the ribbon-like "chain" creeping like a serpent, on and on before her.
At the forward end Glen was dragging the thing persistently over hills and dales, and bearing the rod for Pratt with his transit to sight.
The surveyor himself was at times as much as a mile or more behind, dumbly waving Glen to right or left, as he peered through his glass and set the course by the compass and angles of his transit. Anon he signaled the two to wait, and Beth sat down to watch him come, "set up," and wave them onward as before.
She was thus alone, at the end of the chain, for hours at a stretch. So often as Pratt came up from the rear and established a station for his instrument, she asked how the line was working out, and what were the prospects for the end.
"Can't tell till we get much closer to the claim," said Pratt, with never varying patience. "We'll know before we die."
In the heat that poured from sky and rocks it might have been possible to doubt the surveyor's prediction. But Beth went on. Her exhaustion increased. The glare of the cloudless sky and greenless earth seemed to burn all the moisture from her eyes. The terrible silence, the dread austerity of mountains so rock-ribbed and desolate, oppressed her with a sense of awe.
She was toiling as many a man has toiled, through the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold, so intensely physical all about her; and also she was toiling no less painfully through the furnace of gold that love must ever create so long as the dross must be burned from human ore that the bullion of honor, loyalty, and faith may shine in its purity and worth.
She began to feel, in a slight degree, the tortures that Van, old Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave had undergone for many weary years. It was not their weakness for the gold of earth that had drawn them relentlessly on in lands like these; it was more their fate, a species of doom, to which, like the helpless puppets that we are, we must all at last respond.
She felt a new weight in the cruelty whereby the owners of the "Laughing Water" claim had been suddenly bereft of all they possessed after all their patient years of serving here in this arid waste of minerals. The older men in Van's partnership she pitied.
For Van she felt a sense of championing love. His cause was her cause, come what might--at least until she could no longer keep alive her hope. Her passion to set herself to rights in his mind was great, but secondary, after all, to the love in her heart, which would not, could not die, and which, by dint of its intensity, bore her onward to fight for his rights.
Alone so much in the burning land all day, she had long, long hours in which to think of Van, long hours in which to contemplate the silence and the vast dispassion of this mountain world. Her own inward burning offset the heat of air and earth; a sense of the aridness her heart would know without Van's love once more returned, was counter to the aridness of all these barren rocks. The fervor of her love it was that bore her onward, weary, sore, and drooping.
What would happen at the end of day, if Pratt should confirm the Lawrence survey, bestowing the claim on Bostwick and McCoppet, she did not dare to think. Her excitement increased with every chain length moving her onward towards the cove. She did not know the hills or ravines, the canyons descended or acclivities so toilsomely climbed, and, therefore, had not a guide in the world to raise or depress her hope. There was nothing to do but sustain the weary march and await the survey's end.
All day in Goldite, meanwhile, Van had been working towards an end. He had two hundred dollars, the merest drop in the bucket, as he knew, with which to fight the Bostwick combination. He was thoroughly aware that even when the line could be run, establishing some error or fraud on the part of surveyor Lawrence, the fight would barely be opened.
McCoppet and Bostwick, with thousands of dollars at command, could delay him, block his progress, force him into court, and perhaps even beat him in the end. The enginery of dollars was crushing in its might. Nevertheless, if a survey showed that the line had been falsely moved, he felt he could somewhat rely upon himself to make the seat of war too warm for comfort.
There was no surveyor nearer than two hundred miles, with Pratt, as Van expressed it, "camping with the foe." He had shaken his partners untimely from their beds that morning--(the trio were mining nights, on the four-to-midnight shift)--and busied them all with the work of the day, by way of making preparations.
He spent nearly twenty silver dollars on the wire, telegraphing various towns to secure a competent man. He sent a friend to the Government office, where Lawrence was up to his ears in work, and procured all the data, including metes and bounds, of the reservation tract before its fateful opening.
The day was consumed in the petty affairs attendant upon such a campaign. When his three old partners went away to their work at four o'clock in the afternoon, a wire had come from far out north that a man who was competent to run the line was starting for Goldite forthwith.
The moonless night, at ten o'clock, found Van alone at his tent. From the top of the hill whereon he had camped a panoramic view of all the town swung far in both directions. The glare of the lamps, the noise of life--even the odor of man upon the air--impinged upon his senses here, as he sat before the door and gazed far down upon it. He thought that man with his fire, smells, and din made chaos in a spot that was otherwise sacred to nature.
He thought of the ceaseless persistence with which the human family haunts all the corners of the earth, pursues life's mysteries, invades its very God. He thought of this desert as a place created barren, lifeless, dead, and severe for some inscrutable purpose--perhaps even fashioned by the Maker as His place to be alone. But the haunter was there with his garish town, his canvas-tented circus of a day, and God had doubtless moved.
How little the game amounted to, at the end of a man's short span! What a senseless repetition it seemed--the same old comedies, the same old tragedies, the same old bits of generosity, and greed, of weakness, hope, and despair! Except for a warm little heartful of love--ah _love_! He paused at that and laughed, unmirthfully. That was the thing that made of it a Hades, or converted the desert into heaven!
"Dreamers! dreamers--all of us!" he said, and he went within to flatten down his blankets for the night.
He had finally blown out his candle and stretched himself upon the ground, to continue his turmoil of thinking, when abruptly his sharp ear caught at a sound as of someone slipping on a stone that turned, just out upon the slope. He sat up alertly.
Half a minute passed. Then something heavy lurched against the tent, the flap was lifted, and a man appeared, stooped double as if in pain.
"Who's there?" demanded Van. "Is that you, Gett?" He caught up his gun, but it and the hand that held it were invisible.
"It's me," said a voice--a croaking voice. "Matt Barger."
He fell on the floor, breathing in some sort of anguish, and Van struck a match, to light the candle.
The flame flared blindingly inside the canvas whiteness. A great, moving shadow of Van was projected behind him on the wall. The light gleamed brightly from his gun. But it fell on an inert mass where Barger had fallen to the earth.
He did not move, and Van, mechanically igniting the candle's wick, while he eyed the man before him, beheld dry blood, and some that was fresh, on the haggard face, on the tattered clothing, and even on one loose hand.
"Barger!" he said. "What in thunder, man----" The outlaw rallied his failing strength and raised himself up on one hand. He could barely speak, but his lips attempted a smile.
"I thought I heard you--call fer the joker," he said, "and so--I come."
Van was up. He saw that the man had been literally shot to pieces. One of his arms was broken. A portion of his scalp was gone. He was pierced in the body and leg. He had met the posse, fought his fight, escaped with wounds that must have stopped any animal on earth, and then had dragged himself to Van, to repay his final debt.
"I haven't called--I haven't called for anything," said Van. "You're wounded, man, you're----" Barger rose up weakly to his knees.
"Need the money, don't you--now?" he interrupted. "You can--use the reward, I guess."
"Good God, I don't want that kind of money!" Van exclaimed. "Who got you, Matt--who got you?"
"Sheriff," said the convict dispassionately. "Good man, Christler--and a pretty good shot--but I got away with his lead."
He slumped again, like a waxen thing on melting props, deprived of all support.
Van plunged out to the water bench, with its bucket, near the door. He brought back a basin of water, knelt on the ground, and bathed the convict's face. He poured some liquor between the dead-white lips. He slashed and unbuttoned the clothing and tried to staunch the wounds. He bound up the arm, put a bandage on the leg and body, continuing from time to time to dash cold water in the pallid, bearded face.
Barger had fainted at last. What hideous tortures the fellow had endured to drag and drive himself across the mountain roughnesses to win to this tent, Van could but weakly imagine.
The convict finally opened his eyes and blinked in the light of the candle.
"What in hell--was the use of my comin' here," he faltered, "if you don't take the money--the reward?"
"I don't want it!" said Van. "I told you that before."
Barger spoke with difficulty.
"It's different now; they've--got you in a hole. Van Buren, I'm your meat! I'm--nuthin' but meat, but you acted--as if I was a man!"
"We're all in a hole--it's life," said Van, continuing his attentions to the wounds. "I don't want a cent of blood-money, Matt, if I have to starve on the desert. Now lie where you are, and maybe go to sleep. You won't be disturbed here till morning."
"By mornin'--all hell can't--disturb me," Barger told him painfully, with something like a ghastly smile upon his lips. "I'm goin'--there to see."
He lapsed off again into coma. Van feared the man was dead. But having lived a stubborn life, Barger relinquished his hold unwillingly, despite his having ceased at last to care.
For nearly an hour Van worked above him, on the ground. Then the man not only aroused as before, but sat up, propped on his arm.
"God, I had to--wake!" he said. "I was sure--forgettin' to tell you."
Van thought the fellow's mind was wandering.
"Lie down, Matt, lie down," he answered. "Try to take it easy."
"Too late--fer me to take--anything easy," replied the outlaw, speaking with a stronger voice than heretofore. "Gimme a drink of whisky."
Van gave him the drink and he tossed it off at a draught.
"I said to myself I'd be--hanged if I'd tell you, that--day you cheated the quicksand," Barger imparted jerkily, "but you've got--a--right to know. McCoppet and that--pal of his give Lawrence twenty thousand--dollars, cash, to queer you on the--reservation line and run you off your claim."
Van scrutinized the sunken face and glittering eyes with the closest attention.
"What's that?" he said. "Bought Lawrence to fake out the reservation line? Who told you, Matt? Who told you that?"
The convict seemed to gain in strength. He was making a terrible effort to finish all he had to impart.
"Trimmer put me--on to all the game. It was him that told me--you was goin' through, when I--pretty near got you, in the pass."
Van's eyes took on a deep intensity.
"Trimmer? Trimmer?"
"Larry Trimmer--Pine-tree Trimmer," explained the convict impatiently. "McCoppet--wanted you detained, the day they--jumped your claim. Lawrence--he run the line out crooked fer--twenty thousand bucks. Culver was put away by Cayuse, mebbe because--he was square--Larry wasn't sure---- I guess--that's all, but it ought to--help you some."
He dropped himself down and languidly closed his eyes.
"Good heavens, man," said Van, still staring, "are you sure of what you're saying?"
There was no response for a time. Then Barger murmured: "Excuse me, Van Buren, fer--bein' so damn--long--dyin'."
"You're not dying, Matt--go to sleep," said. Van. "I'll be here beside you, all night."
He sat down, got up and sat down again, stirred to the depths of his being by the story the man had revealed. Beth's money, then, had gone for this, to bribe a Government agent! A tumult of mad, revengeful thoughts went roaring through his mind. A grim look came upon his face, and fire was flashing from his eyes. He arose and sat down a dozen times, all the while looking at the worn, broken figure that lay on the earth at his feet. What an ill-used, gaunt, and exhausted frame it was, loose and abandoned by the strength that once had filled it with vigor and might. What a boyish look had come at last upon the haggard, sunken face!
The night wind was chill. He had forgotten for himself, but he thought of it now for Barger. He laid his blankets on the inert limbs and up around the shoulders.
Perhaps another hour went by, with Van still sleepless by his charge. The convict stirred.
"Van--Buren," he said in a hoarse, rattling whisper, "Van----" Van was instantly alert.
"Hello."
Barger partially raised his hand.
"So long,"--and the hand dropped downward.
"Matt!" answered Van, quickly kneeling on the earth. He caught up the fingers, felt their faint attempt to close upon his own--and the man on the ground was dead.
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
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43
|
PREPARING THE NET FOR A DRAW
|
Beth Kent, as the sun was going from the sky, fell down three times in utter exhaustion. She and the others had come to within a mile of the "Laughing Water" claim. Pratt was far away in the rear, on the last of his stations. Glen, in the lead, was forging ahead on a second supply of strength. Hidden from the sight of either of the others, Beth was ready for collapse.
But onward crept that merciless ribbon of steel that Glen was dragging. Three times the girl rose and stumbled onward, up the last acclivity. Her legs were like lead. She stubbed her toes on every rock. She could almost have cried with the aches of weariness. It seemed as if that terrible hill unfolded new and steeper slopes for every one she climbed.
She went down repeatedly. To have lain there, hungry, but indifferent to anything but sleep, would have been the most heavenly thing she could conceive. She was literally falling up the hill, with all her machinery slumping towards inertia, when finally Pratt, on his distant hill, sent the signal for Glen to halt.
"All right, Beth--rest!" he called from the end of the chain, and she sank at once in her tracks.
It was almost dusk when Pratt came toiling up the hill. Glen had come down to Beth's position. He too was thoroughly tired. How the line had come out was more than he could care. But Beth, with the last of her flickering strength, arose to hasten Pratt.
"No use in the three of us being seen," he said, planting his transit in the sand, but making no effort to adjust it to a level. "That ridge there overlooks the claim. I'll climb up alone and take a bird's-eye view."
"We're as near as that!" cried Beth in startled surprise. "Then what do you think? Does the line include the claim?"
"I'll have to look around from the ridge," repeated Pratt with aggravating caution. "You can wait ten minutes here."
He started laboriously up the slope--and Beth stood tensely watching. She thought she saw him top the ridge, but he disappeared from sight.
The darkness was gathering swiftly in all the desert world. The girl's excitement and impatience grew with a new flare up of energy. To think that Searle was so near at hand, with fate a-hover in the air, sent her pulses bounding madly.
It seemed as if Pratt would never return from the hill. She could almost have dashed to the summit herself, to learn the outcome of their labors. Then at last, from a small ravine, not far away, he appeared in his leisurely manner.
Beth ran along the slope to meet him.
"Well?" she cried. "What did you find?"
He smiled. "Unless I'm crazy, Lawrence is either a liar or a fool. That claim is safe outside the line by nearly an eighth of a mile."
"Oh!" cried the girl. She collapsed on the ground and sobbed in exhaustion and joy.
She could go no further. She had kept her strength and courage up for this, and now, inside the goal, she cared not what might happen.
They camped upon the spot. The man with the car, which had taken them out, had been ordered to meet them down at Reservation town--the mushroom camp which had sprung into being no more than a week before the rush. All the way down there Pratt continued alone. He and the chauffeur, long after dark, returned with provisions and blankets. They had driven the car as far as possible, then climbed the ravine on foot.
At nine o'clock Beth was asleep beneath the stars, dreaming of her meeting with Van.
At daylight all were up, and in the chill of the rarified mountain air were walking stiffly to the car. The chauffeur, who had slept in his machine, promised breakfast by eight at Mrs. Dick's. He tore up the road and he tore away their breath, but he came into Goldite half an hour ahead of time, and claimed he had driven "pretty slow."
Meantime, the night in the mining-camp had brought no untoward excitement. Van, at his tent, with the covered figure lying on the earth, had welcomed his partners at midnight with the news that a "homeless and worn-out pilgrim of the desert" had come desiring rest. He was sleeping hard; he was not to be disturbed. In the morning he was scheduled to depart.
Tired to utter unconcern, the three old worthies made their beds with Van beside the man at peace. And the whole five slept with a trust and abandon to nature that balanced the living and the dead.
Van was out, had eaten his breakfast, and was waiting for the sheriff when Beth and her party returned. He beheld them, felt his heart lift upward like a lever in his breast, at sight of Beth in her male attire, and grimly shut his jaws.
Christler, the sheriff, arrived a little after eight, bringing in a wounded deputy. Barger had shot him in the thigh. Van did not wait for his man to eat, but urged him home to his bachelor shack and sat him down to a drink of something strong, with a cracker to munch for a meal.
Christler was tired. He was somewhat stout; he had been in the saddle almost constantly for weeks, and now, as a victim of chagrin and disappointment, he was utterly dejected and done.
"Good Lord, Van, ain't a man to breathe--hain't he got no rights to live, whatsoever?" he inquired. "You'd chase me up, or somebody would, if I was in my grave."
"You'd break out of your grave," Van told him, "if you knew what's going on."
Christler looked dubious, draining at his glass.
"Well, I dunno. It 'ud have to be something pretty rich."
"Bill," said Van, "you're going to stand in and work with me as you haven't worked for a year. It's going to be worth it. Opal McCoppet, and one Searle Bostwick, of New York, have stolen my claim by corrupting Lawrence for twenty thousand dollars, running a false reservation line, and maybe putting Culver out of the way because he was square in his business."
Christler paused in the act of biting his cracker.
"What!"
"There's going to be something doing, Bill," Van added, leaning forward on the table. "I'm going to round up all this gang to-day if it kills you to keep on the trail."
Christler still sat staring.
"By the Lord Harry!" he said. "By the Lord--but, Van, I didn't come home to rest. I've got Barger going, somewhere, shot to a sieve. But he's some disappeared. If that ain't just my luck! I'm goin' to git him though, you bet! Lord! --my pride--my profession pride--not to mention that little old reward! I admit I want that money, Van. I reckon I've pretty near----" "Yes, you've earned it," Van interrupted. "I'm going to see that you get it. Bill, but first you get busy with me."
"You'll see that I get----" Christler put the cracker in his mouth. "Don't talk to a genuine friend like that. I'm tired already."
"Are you?" said Van. "Let's see. Barger is here--in camp."
Up shot the sheriff as if from the force of a blast.
"What!" he shrilled. "Barger! Van, I'll----" Van grinned.
"Don't forget you're tired, Bill. Matt won't get away."
"Good Lord, boy--tell me where's he at!" cried Christler, dancing on the floor as he strapped his guns upon him. "Me a-thinkin' I had shot him up and all this time----" "You shot him enough, poor devil," Van interrupted quietly. "He's dead in my tent on the hill."
The sheriff paused with one hand held in the air.
"Dead! Crawled all the way to Goldite!" He started for the door.
"Hold on," said the horseman, blocking his path. "I told you Matt can't get away. We're going out to get Lawrence first, and then McCoppet and his friend."
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
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44
|
THE ENGINES OF CLIMAX
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McCoppet was in town. He had come to camp at midnight of the previous day, duly followed by his friend Larry Trimmer. The lumberman had waxed impatient. Fully two thousand dollars of the money he had "earned" was still unpaid--and hard to get. He had gone to the "Laughing Water" claim, in vain, and a surly heat was rising in his veins.
Bostwick was due, in his car, at nine o'clock, His visit to Goldite was not entirely one of business. He had grown alarmed at the lack of news from Beth. His letters had been ignored. He not only feared for the fate of his affairs of the heart, but perhaps even more for what she might have done with respect to the money she had asked him to return, a very small proportion of which he was now prepared to repay.
Meantime, Beth, her brother, and Pratt had gratified their most crying needs on Algy's cooking, much to that worthy Celestial's delight. There were two things Beth intended to perform: report the results of her labors to Van, and attack Mr. Lawrence in his den.
Precisely what she meant to say or do to the Government representative she did not or could not determine. Some vague idea of making him confess to an infamy practiced at Bostwick's instance was the most she had in mind. If half the success already achieved could be expected here, she would have a report worth while to make when Van should be presently encountered.
Impetuous, eager to hasten with her work, she insisted upon an immediate advance. Glenmore readily supported her position. Pratt developed shyness. His forte was hiking over desert hills, lugging a transit, running lines or levels; he felt out of place as a fighter, or even an accuser. Nevertheless, he went, for Beth insisted.
Already the streets were crowded full of life, as the three proceeded down the thoroughfare. A mining-camp is a restless thing; its peoples live in the streets. Freight teams, flowing currents of men, chains of dusty mules, disordered cargoes on the sidewalks, and a couple of automobiles were glaringly cut out from their shadows, as the sunlight poured upon them. Sunlight and motion, false-fronted buildings, tents, and mountains, and fever--that is the camp on the desert.
With excitement increasing upon her at every step, Beth glanced at the crowds in a rapid search for Van. He was not to be seen. In all the throng, where old men and youths, pale and swarthy, lazy and alert were circulating like the blood of Goldite's arteries, there was not a face that she knew.
They came to the office where Lawrence presided just as a stranger was departing, Lawrence was alone. He occupied the inner apartment, as Culver had done, but the door was standing open.
It was Beth who knocked and entered first as the man called out his invitation. She had never in her life appeared more beautiful. Color was flaming in her cheeks as on a rose. Her eyes were exceptionally bright and brown. The exquisite coral of her lips was delicately tremulous with all her short, quick breathing.
Lawrence arose, as she and the others appeared in the door, and removed his hat. He was a short, florid person, with a beard of fiery red. His eyes were of the lightest gray; and they were shifting.
"Good-morning," he said, in undisguised astonishment, beholding Beth. "You--pardon me--you----" "Good-morning," Beth replied faintly. "We called--are you Mr. Lawrence?"
"At your service." Lawrence bowed. "I rarely expect--in my line of work--my business. Miss--Miss----" "Miss Kent," said Glenmore, interrupting. "And my name is Kent. I suppose you're wise to Mr. Pratt."
Lawrence continued to bow.
"I'm very happy to--how are you, Pratt? How are you? Won't you have a chair, Miss Kent?"
Pratt nodded and murmured a greeting. He was decidedly uneasy.
Beth always moved by impulse. It hastened her now to the issue. She sat down and faced their man.
"Mr. Lawrence," she said, "I believe you ran the reservation line, not long ago, and gave Mr. Bostwick and a friend of his the 'Laughing Water' claim."
Lawrence looked alive.
"I certainly ran the line," he said. "Instructions came from--from headquarters, to ascertain the precise limitations of the reservation. The _results_ gave the 'Laughing Water' claim to its present owners, by right of prior location, after the opening hour, as the claim was included in the tract." He had uttered this speech before. It fell very glibly from his tongue.
"Yes, we know all that--so far as it's true," said Beth with startling candor, "but we know it isn't true at all, and you've got to confess that you made some ridiculous blunder or else that you were bribed."
She had not intended to plump it out so bluntly, so baldly, but a certain indignation in her breast had been rapidly increasing, and her impulse was not to be stayed.
"Gee!" murmured Glen, "that's going some!"
Lawrence turned white, whether with anger or fright could not have been determined.
"Miss Kent!" he said. "You--you're making a very serious----" "Oh, I know!" she interrupted. "I expect you to deny it. But a great deal of money--my money--has been used, and Mr. Pratt has run the line--with myself and my brother--yesterday--so we know that you've either been fooled or you've cheated."
Lawrence had risen. His face was scarlet.
"Upon my word!" he said. "Pratt, you and your friend I can order from the office! The lady----" "You can't order anything! --not a thing!" said Beth. "Glen! Mr. Pratt! --you've got to stay and help! I know the truth--and it's got to be confessed! Mr. Van Buren----" "I can leave myself, since you insist upon remaining," interrupted Lawrence, taking his hat and striding towards the door, in a panic to get to McCoppet for much-needed aid. "Such an utterly unheard of affront as this----" "Glen! run and find Mr. Van Buren!" Beth broke in excitedly. "Don't let him go, Mr. Pratt!"
Lawrence had reached his outer office and was almost at the door. Beth was hastening after, with Glen at her heels. All were abruptly halted.
Van and the sheriff appeared in the door, before which idlers were passing. Beth was wild with joy.
"Van," she cried, "Oh, Mr. Van Buren, I'm sure this man has cheated you out of your claim! We ran the line ourselves--my brother, Mr. Pratt, and I--yesterday--we finished yesterday! We found the claim is not inside the reservation! My money was used--I'm sure for bribery! But they've got to give you back your claim, if it takes every penny I've got! I was sending Glen to let you know. I asked Mr. Lawrence to confess! You won't let him go! You mustn't let him go! I am sure there's something dreadful going on!"
It was a swift, impassioned speech, clear, ringing, honest in every word. It thrilled Van wondrously, despite the things that had been--her letter, and subsequent events. He all but lost track of the business in hand, in the light of her sudden revelations. He did not answer readily, and Lawrence broke out in protestation.
"It's infamous!" he cried. "If anyone here except a woman had charged--had been guilty of all these outrageous lies----" Half a dozen loiterers had halted at the door, attracted by the shrill high tones of his voice.
"That's enough of that, Lawrence," Van interrupted quietly. "Every word of this is true. You accepted twenty thousand dollars to falsify that line. Your chief was murdered to get him out of the way, because it was _known_ you could be bribed. I came here to get you, and I'll get all the crowd, if it kills half the town in the fight." With one quick movement he seized his man by the collar. "Here, Bill, hustle him out," he said to Christler. "We've got no time to waste."
Lawrence, the sheriff, and himself were projected out upon the sidewalk by one of his quick maneuvers. A crowd of men came running to the place. Above the rising murmur of their voices, raised in excitement, came a shrill and strident cry.
"Van! Van!" was the call from someone in the crowd.
It was lean old Gettysburg. Dave and Napoleon were pantingly chasing where he ran.
"Van!" yelled Gettysburg again. "It's Barger! --Barger! --dead in the tent--it's Barger--up there--dead!"
Barger! The name acted as swiftly on the crowd as oil upon a flame. It seemed as if the wave of news swept like a tide across the street, down the thoroughfare, and into every shop.
Two automobiles were halted in the road, their engines purring as they stood. Their drivers dismounted to join the gathering throng. One of the men was Bostwick, down from the hills. He had searched for Beth at Mrs. Dick's, and then had followed here.
"Barger! Barger's dead in camp and the 'Laughing Water' claim was stolen--and Culver killed!" One man bawled it to the crowd--and it sped to Bostwick's ears.
One being only departed from the scene--Trimmer, the lumberman, swiftly seeking McCoppet.
Van, in his heat, had told too much, accusing the prisoner in hand. He silenced Gettysburg abruptly and started to force aside the crowd.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, move aside," he said. "I've got--by Jupe! there's Bostwick!"
It was Bostwick fleeing to his car that Van had discovered. Searle had seen enough in the briefest of glances. He had heard too much. He realized that only in flight could the temper of the mob be avoided. He had seen this mob in action once before--and the walls of his stomach caved.
Like a youthful Hercules in strength and action, Van went plunging through the crowd to get his man. But he could not win. Bostwick had speeded up his motor in a panic for haste and his car leaped away like a dragon on wings, the muffler cut-out roaring like a gattling.
Van might perhaps have shot and killed the escaping man who held the wheel, but he wanted Searle alive.
A roar from the crowd replied to the car. A score of men ran madly in pursuit. None of them knew the details of the case, but they knew that Bostwick was wanted.
They drifted rearward from the hurtling car like fragments of paper in its wake. The few down street who danced for a moment before the modern juggernaut, to stop it in its course, sprang nimbly away as it rocketed past--and Searle was headed for the desert.
One wild, sweeping glance Van cast about, for a horse or something to ride. Suvy was stabled, unsaddled, up the street. Bostwick and his cloud of dust were dropping away in a swiftly narrowing perspective. And there stood a powerful, dusty-red car--empty--its motor in motion!
There was no time to search for its owner. There were half a dozen different cars with which Van Buren was familiar. He ran to it, glanced at its levers, wheel, and clutch, recognized the one type he had coveted, and hurled himself into the seat.
"Here! You!" yelled the owner, fighting through the crowd, but three big miners fell upon him and bore him to the earth. They hoped to see a race.
They saw it begin with a promptness incredible.
One--two changes of the snarling gears they heard before the deafening cut-out belched its explosions. Then down the street, in pursuit of the first, the second machine was fired.
The buildings, to Van, were blended in grayish streaks, on either side, as his gaze was fastened on the vanishing car ahead. He shoved up his spark, gave her all the gas, froze to the wheel like a man of steel--and swooped like a ground-skimming comet out upon the world.
The road for a distance of fully five miles was comparatively level. It was rutted by the wheels of heavy traffic, but with tires in the dusty ruts a car ran unimpeded.
Both, for a time were in the road, flaying up a cloud of smoke like a cyclone ripping out its path.
Searle had not only gained a half-mile lead, but his car was apparently swifter. He knew its every trick and ounce of power. He drove superbly. He was reckless now, for he had not missed the knowledge that behind him was a meteor burning up his trail.
Like a leaping beast--a road-devouring minotaur--the car with Van shot roaringly through space. He could not tell that Searle, ahead, was slipping yet further in the lead. He only knew that, come what might, till the mechanism burst, or the earth should split, he would chase his man across the desert. The dust in the air from Bostwick's car drove blindingly upon him. Far, far away, a mere speck on the road, he beheld a freight-team approaching--a team of twenty animals at least, that he and Bostwick must encounter.
A sudden memory of road conditions decided him to move. The ruts where he was were bad enough--they were worse where the team must be passed.
He did not reduce his speed to take to the brush. The car beneath him flung clean off the ground as he swung to climb out of the grooves. It landed with all four wheels a-spin, but only struck on two. A sudden swerve, far out of the course, and the monster righted abruptly. Another sharp turn, and away it went again, crushing the brush and flinging up the sand in a track of its own that paralleled the road, but rougher though free from the ruts.
The brush was small, six inches high, but the wheels bounced over it madly. The whole car hurtled and bounded in a riot of motion. It dived, it plunged nose upward, it roared like a fiend--but it shot with cannon-ball velocity across the desert's floor.
Five minutes later Bostwick's car was almost fronting the team in the road, with its score of dusty mules. He dared not take the ruts at speed, and groaned as he slowed to climb the bank. He lost but little time, however, since once on the side he was going ahead again like mad; nevertheless, he cast a glance behind and saw that his gap had narrowed. Moreover, he would not attempt to return to the ruts as before, as a second of the teams was coming a mile or so away.
Like two pitching porpoises, discharging fiery wrath and skimming the gray of the desert sea, the two devices raced upon the brush. And nerve began to tell. Van was absolutely reckless; Searle was not. The former would have crowded on another notch of speed, but Bostwick feared, and shut off a trifle of his power. Even then he was rocking, quivering, careening onward like a star escaped from its course; and the gains Van made were slow.
The man on the second team paused to see them pass. In smoke and dust and with war's own din they cleaved the startled air. And the man who saw the look that had set on Van's hard-chiseled face was aware that unless his car should fail there was nothing on earth he could not catch.
Bostwick had begun to weaken. The pace over sage-brush, rocks, and basins of sand was racking both the car and the nerves that held the wheel. How long such a flight could be continued he dared not guess. Even steel has limitations. To what he was fleeing he could scarcely have told, since the telegraph would send its word throughout the desert-land, and overhaul him finally.
A sickening apprehension assailed him, however, within the minute. One of his cylinders was missing. His trained ear caught at the change of the "tune," and he felt his speed decreasing. He glanced back briefly, where the dusty lump of steel, like a red-hot projectile, thundered in his wake.
He beheld a sudden fan-like flare of dust in the cloud Van was making. He even faintly heard the far report, and a grim joy sprang in his being.
Van had blown out a tire. Striking the high places, crowding on the speed, holding to a straight-away course like a merciless fate, the horseman heard an air cushion go, felt the lurch and lameness of the car, and steadied it back upon its road. He did not retreat by so much as a hair the lever advancing his spark. He did not budge the gas control, but left it still wide open. If all of his tires should blow out together he would not halt his pace. He would drive that car to destruction, or to triumph in the race.
Searle's rejoicing endured but the briefest span. His motor had begun again to splutter, in mechanical death. Then, with a sudden memory, sweat broke out on Bostwick's face. His gasolene was gone! He had thoroughly intended refilling his tank, having barely had a sufficient supply to run him from the claim to camp; and this had been neglected.
His car bumped slowly for a score of yards, then died by the side of the road. He leaped out madly, to assure himself the tank was really dry. He cursed, he raved. It seemed absurd for this big, hot creature to be dead. And meantime, like a whirlwind coming on, Van Buren was crashing down upon him.
"By God!" he cried, "I'll fix you for this!" and a wild thought flashed to his mind--a thought of taking Van Buren's car and fleeing as before.
He leaped in the tonneau and caught up a heavy revolver, stored beneath the seat. He glanced at the cylinder. Four of the cartridges only were unused. He remained inside the "fort" of the car, with the weapon cocked and lowered out of sight.
Charging down like a meteor, melting its very course, Van and the red car came by leaps and plunges. He was shutting off the power gradually, but still rushing up with frightening speed, when Bostwick raised his gun and fired.
The bullet went wide, and Van came on. Bostwick steadied and fired again. There was no such thing as halting the demon in the car. But the target's size was rapidly increasing! Nevertheless, the third shot missed, like the others. Would the madman never halt?
Bostwick dropped a knee to the floor, steadied the barrel on the cushion, lined up the sights, and pulled the trigger.
With the roar of the weapon Van abruptly drooped. The bullet had pierced his shoulder. And he still came on. His face had suddenly paled; his lips had hardened in a manner new to his face. He halted the car, aware that his foe had exhausted his ammunition, since no more shots were fired.
His own big gun he drew deliberately. To sustain himself, through the shock of his wound, was draining the utmost of his nerve. He was hardly ten feet away from the man who stood there, a captive in his car.
"Well, Searle," he said, "you're a better shot than I thought--and a better driver. In fact you drive so almighty well I am going to let you drive me back to camp." He arose from his seat. He was bleeding. His left arm was all but useless. "Come down," he added. "Come down and take my seat. And don't make the slightest error in etiquette, Searle, or I'll see if a forty-some-odd ball will bounce when it lands on your skull."
Bostwick had expected to be shot on the spot. No cornered rat could have been more abjectly afraid. His nerve had oozed away the more for the grimness of the man who stood before him--a man with such a wound as that who was still the master of his forces!
He was terribly white. His teeth fairly chattered in his head. He had played a desperate part--and lost. The race and this present _denouement_ had shattered the man completely. He came down to the ground and stood there, silently staring at Van.
Despite his show of strength Van stepped with difficulty to the back of his car and seated himself within.
"Up in the seat there, Searle," he repeated, "and drive back at moderate speed."
Bostwick's surrender was complete. He climbed to the driver's position, still silently, and started the car in an automatic way that knew no thought of resistance. At the rear of his head Van held the gun, and back towards Goldite they rolled.
Two miles out the sheriff, in a borrowed car, grimly seated at the driver's side, came bearing down upon them. The cars were halted long enough for the sheriff to take his place with Searle, and then they hastened on.
Christler had instantly seen that Van was wounded. He as quickly realized that to rush Van to town and medical attendance was the only possible plan.
He merely said, "You're hurt."
Van tried to smile. "Slightly punctured." He was rapidly losing strength.
Christler thought to divert him. He shouted above the purring of the car.
"Found Matt all right. I'm goin' to take him back to the State authorities in that convict suit that's hangin' 'round the store."
Van was instantly aroused. "No you don't Bill! No you don't! I've got use for those stripes myself. You'll buy Matt the best suit of clothes in town, and charge the bill to me."
If Bostwick heard, or understood, he did not make a sign. He was driving like a servant on the box, but he could not have stood on his feet.
They were nearing the town. A cavalcade of horsemen, drivers of buggies, and men on foot came excitedly trooping down the road to meet the short procession.
Despite his utmost efforts, Van was gone. Weak from the loss of blood and the shock, he could hold up his frame no longer.
"Bill," he said, as the sheriff turned around, "I guess I'm--all in--for a little. Cold storage _him_, till I get back on my feet."
He waved a loose gesture towards Bostwick, then sank unconscious on the floor.
|
{
"id": "16629"
}
|
45
|
THE LAST CIGARS
|
Trimmer, the lumberman, not to be stayed, had broken in upon McCoppet ruthlessly, with perceptions unerring concerning the troubles in the air, when Lawrence was arrested. The gambler consented to an interview with instinctive regard for his safety. That something significant was laid on Trimmer's mind he felt with a subtle sense of divination.
The lumberman, smoking furiously, came to his point with utmost directness.
"Opal," he said, "I'm goin' away, and I want ten thousand dollars. I want it now. You owe me some you ain't paid up, and now I'm raisin' the ante."
"You're raising bunions," McCoppet assured him softly, throwing away his unsmoked cigar and putting a fresh one in his mouth. "I'll pay you what I agreed--when I get the ready cash."
"Think so, do you, Opal?" inquired the lumberman, eying his man in growing restlessness. "I think different, savvy? I'm onto you and your game with Lawrence--you payin' him twenty thousand bucks to fake the reservation. I want ten thousand right away, in the next ten minutes, or you'd better pack your trunk."
McCoppet, startled by the accusation, watched the savage manner in which the lumberman ate up the smoke of his weed. He could think of one way only in which a man of Trimmer's mentality could have come upon certain private facts.
"So," he said presently, "you crawled in under this place, this floor, and caught it through the cracks."
"Knot-hole," said Trimmer gesturing, "that one over there. And I tell you, Opal, I want that money now. Do you hear? I want it now!" He smashed his heavy fist upon the table, and off flew the ash of his cigar.
"What will you do if I refuse?" the gambler asked him coldly. "Wait! Hold on! Don't forget, my friend, that Culver's murder is up to you, and I'll give you up in a minute."
The lumberman rose. Every moment that passed increased the danger to them both.
"Look a-here, Opal," he said in a threatening voice of anger, "I ain't a-goin' to fool with you no longer. Hear me shout? Culver's up to you as much as me. You stole the 'Laughin' Water' claim. There's hell a-sizzlin' down the street right now--down to Lawrence's. If you don't cough up ten thousand bucks pretty pronto----" "So, Larry--so, you've split on me already," the gambler interrupted, rising and narrowing his gaze upon the bloated face. "You've peddled it maybe, and now you come to me----" "I ain't peddled nuthin'!" Trimmer cut in angrily. "I didn't tell no one but Barger, and he ain't no friend of Van Buren's. But Lawrence is caught. Pratt run out the line, and now it's me that stands between you and trouble, and I want the money to stand."
McCoppet was far less calm than he appeared. How much was already really known to the town was a matter wholly of conjecture. And Trimmer's haste to cash in thus and probably vanish excited his gravest suspicions. He eyed his friend narrowly.
"Larry, we'll wait and see how much you've maybe leaked."
"No we won't wait fer nuthin'! --not fer nuthin', understand?" corrected Trimmer aggressively. "I ain't a-trustin' you, Opal, no more! You done me up at every turn, and now, by God! you're goin' to come to terms!" He pulled an ugly, rusty gun, and thumped with its muzzle on the table. "You'll never leave this room alive if I don't git the money. Ring fer it, Opal, ring the bell, and order it in with the drinks!"
McCoppet would have temporized. It was not so much the money now as the state of affairs in the street. How much was known? --and what was being done? These were the questions in his mind.
"Don't get excited, friend," he said. "If things are out, and you and I are caught with the aces in our sleeves, we may have to fight back to back." He was edging around to draw his pistol unobserved, But Trimmer was alert. "Stand still, there, Opal, I've got the drop," he said. "I'm lookin' out fer number one, this morning, understand? You ring the----" A sudden, loud knock at the door broke in upon his speech, and both men started in alarm.
"Opal! Opal!" cried a muffled voice in accents of warning just outside the door, "Christler's on your trail! Come out! Come out and--huh! Too late! You'll have to get out the window!"
The roar and excitement of the coming crowd, aroused to a wild indignation, broke even to the den. An army of citizens, leading the way for Christler's deputies, was storming McCoppet's saloon.
He heard, and a little understood. He knew too much to attempt to explain, to accuse even Trimmer to a mob in heat. Nothing but flight was possible, and perhaps even that was a risk.
He started for the window. Trimmer leaped before him.
"No you don't!" he said. "I told you, Opal----" "Take that!" the gambler cut in sharply. His gun leaped out with flame at its end; and the roar, fire, bullet, and all seemed to bury in the lumberman's body. A second shot and a third did the same--and Trimmer went down like a log.
His gun had fallen from his hand. With all his brute vitality he crawled to take it up. One of the bullets had pierced his heart, but yet he would not die.
McCoppet had snatched up a chair and with it he beat out the window. Then Trimmer's gun crashed tremendously--and Opal sank against the sill.
He faced his man. A ghastly pallor spread upon his countenance. He went down slowly, like a man of melting snow, his cigar still hanging on his lip.
He saw the lumberman shiver. But the fellow crowded his cigar stump in his mouth, with fire and all, and chewed it up as he was dying.
"Good shot," said McCoppet faintly. His head went forward on his breast and he crumpled on the floor.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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46
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WASTED TIME
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Van was conveyed to Mrs. Dick's. The fever attacked him in his helplessness and delirium claimed him for its own. He glided from unconsciousness into a wandering state of mind before the hour of noon.
His wound was an ugly, fiery affair, made worse by all that he did. For having returned from his lethargy, he promptly began to fight anew all his battles with horses, men, and love that had crossed his summer orbit.
Gettysburg, Dave, and Napoleon begged for the brunt of the battle. They got it. For three long days Van lay upon his bed and flung them all around the room. He hurt them, bruised them, even called them names, but ever like three faithful dogs, whom beatings will never discourage--the beatings at least of a master much beloved--they returned undaunted to the fray, with affection constantly increasing.
There were three other nurses--two women and Algy, the cook. But Beth was the one who slept the least, who glided most often to the sick man's side, who wetted his lips and renewed the ice and gave him a cooler pillow. And she it was who suffered most when he called upon her name.
"Beth! Beth!" he would call in a wildness of joy, and then pass his hand across his eyes, repeating: "--this is the man I hate more than anyone else in the world!"
That she finally knew, that the tell-tale portion of her letter had been found when Bostwick was searched--all this availed her nothing now, as she pleaded with Van to understand. He fought his fights, and ran his race, and returned to that line so many times that she feared it would kill him in the end.
At midnight on that final day of struggling he lay quite exhausted and weak. His mind was still adrift upon its sea of dreams, but he fought his fights no more. The fever was still in possession, but its method had been changed. It had pinned him down as a victim at last, for resistance had given it strength.
At evening of the seventh day he had slept away the heat. He was wasted, his face had grown a tawny stubble of beard, but his strength had pulled him through.
The sunlight glory, as the great orb dipped into purple hills afar, streamed goldenly in through the window, on Beth, alone at his side. It blazoned her beauty, lingering in her hair, laying its roseate tint upon the pale moss-roses of her cheeks. It richened the wondrous luster of her eyes, and deepened their deep brown tenderness of love. She was gold and brown and creamy white, with tremulous coral lips. Yet on her face a greater beauty burned--the beauty of her inner-self--the beauty of her womanhood, her nature, shining through.
This was the vision Van looked upon, when his eyes were open at last. He opened them languidly, as one at peace and restored to control by rest. He looked at her long, and presently a faint smile dawned in his eyes.
She could not speak, as she knelt at his side, to see him thus return. She could only place her hand upon her cheek and give herself up to his gaze--give all she was, and all her love, and a yearning too vast to be expressed.
The smile from his eyes went creeping down his face as the dawn-glow creeps down a mountain. Perhaps in a dream he had come upon the truth, or perhaps from the light of her soul. For he said with a faint, wan smile upon his lips: "I don't believe it, Beth. You meant to write 'love' in your letter."
The tears sprang out of her eyes.
"I did! I did! I did!" she sobbed in joy too great to be contained. "I've always loved you, _always_!"
Despite his wound, his weakness--all--she thrust an arm beneath his neck and pillowed her cheek on his breast. He wanted no further explanation, and she had no words to spend.
One of his arms was remarkably efficient. It circled her promptly and drew her up till he kissed her on the lips. Then he presently said: "How much time have we wasted?"
"Oh, _days_!" she said, warmly blushing. "Ever since that night on the desert."
He shook a smiling negative.
"Wrong. We've wasted all our lives."
He kissed her again, then sank into slumber with the dusk.
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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47
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A TRIBUTE TO THE DESERT
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Love is a healer without a rival in the world. Van proved it--Van and Beth, of course, together, with Gettysburg, Dave, and Napoleon to help, and Algy to furnish the sauce. All were present, including Glen and Mrs. Dick, on the summer day of celebration when at last Van came down to dinner. At sight of the wan, wasted figure, Algy, in his characteristic way, fought down his heathen emotions.
"What's mallah you, Van?" he demanded, his face oddly twitching as he spoke. "Makee evlybody _sick_! That velly superstich! Nobody's got time cly for you come home--makee my dinner spoil!"
He bolted for the kitchen, swearing in loving Chinese.
But with that day passed, Van soon snatched back his own. His strength returned like a thing that was capable of gladness, lodging where it belonged. His spirit had never been dimmed.
Bostwick, who had been detained by the sheriff, faithfully waiting till Van should "get back on his feet," was almost relieved when his day for departure finally dawned. He was dressed, at Van's express desire, in the convict suit which he had worn on the day of his arrival.
Van was on hand when at last the stage, with Bostwick and Christler for passengers, was ready to pull up the street.
"Searle," he said, "for a man of your stripe you are really to be envied. You're going to about the only place I know where it's even remotely possible to be good and not be lonesome."
Searle went. Lawrence, perhaps more fortunate, had managed to escape. He had fled away to Mexico, taking the bulk of his plunder.
Gettysburg, Dave, and Napoleon returned once more to the placer and sluices on the hill. Glenmore Kent was of the party, as superintendent of the mine. He held a degree from a school of mines, and knew even more than he had learned. Moreover, he had saved the gold pilfered by Bostwick and McCoppet.
Then one sunny morning Van and Beth were married by a Justice of the Peace. Algy and Mrs. Dick were the lawful witnesses of the rites. The only nuptial present was the gift of a gold mine in the mountains to the bride.
"You see," said Van, "_you_ are my 'Laughing Water' claim--and just about all I can handle."
They were alone. She came to his arms and kissed him with all the divinity and passion of her nature. He presently took her face in his hands and gave her a rough little shake.
"Where shall we go to spend our honeymoon?"
She blushed like a tint of sunset, softly, warmly, and hid her cheek upon his shoulder.
"Out in the desert--underneath the sky."
THE END
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{
"id": "16629"
}
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1
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None
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In that intricate and obscure locality, which stretches between the Tower and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majority of Londoners, to whom the "Port of London" is an expression purely geographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found a certain dry dock called Blackpool, but better known from time immemorial to skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to the sea in ships, as "Rainham's Dock."
Many years ago, in the days of the first Rainham and of wooden ships, it had been no doubt a flourishing ship-yard; and, indeed, models of wooden leviathans of the period, which had been turned out, not a few, in those palmy days, were still dusty ornaments of its somewhat antique office. But as time went on, and the age of iron intervened, and the advance on the Clyde and the Tyne had made Thames ship-building a thing of the past, Blackpool Dock had ceased to be of commercial importance. No more ships were built there, and fewer ships put in to be overhauled and painted; while even these were for the most part of a class viewed at Lloyd's with scant favour, which seemed, like the yard itself, to have fallen somewhat behind the day. The original Rainham had not bequeathed his energy along with his hoards to his descendants; and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak health, original Rainham had not bequeathed his energy along with his hoards to his descendants; and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak health, whose tastes, although these were veiled in obscurity, were supposed to trench little upon shipping, let the business jog along so much after its own fashion, that the popular view hinted at its imminent dissolution. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemed the normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest --and work still came in, almost by tradition, with a certain steadiness--when the hammers of the riveters and the shipwrights awoke the echoes from sunrise to sunset, with a ferocious regularity which the present proprietor could almost deplore, there was still a suggestion of mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least to the nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the ships were painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its more regular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its sordid surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool Dock, as Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial motive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by the spirit of the picturesque.
Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark, a young artist, in whose work some excellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the hand of the master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined to plume himself on having discovered, in his search after originality, the artistic points of a dockyard.
It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad some years before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance that promised to be permanent, that Lightmark had decided his study should certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the house of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved oak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the dock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartments were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, none of whom lived nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of conduct too flagrantly eccentric--on a parity with his explanation of it, alleging necessity of living on the spot: an explanation somewhat droll, in the face of his constant lengthy absence, during the whole of the winter, when he handed the reins of government to his manager, and took care of a diseased lung in a warmer climate. To Lightmark, however, dining with his friend for the first time on chops burnt barbarously and an inferior pudding, residence even in a less salubrious quarter than Blackpool would have been amply justified, in view of the many charming effects--for the most part coldly sad and white--which the river offered, towards evening, from the window of his friend's dining-room.
After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's invitation to make his property the point of view from which he could most conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he worked hard for months, with an industry that came upon his friend as a surprise, at the uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and the sharp-pointed masts that rose so trenchantly above them. He had generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early spring--whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to encounter--the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had become an almost constant feature of the landscape.
Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the finish of May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which had occupied him for some months, and which he hoped to have completed for Rainham's return. As he stood on the wharf, which ran down to the river-side, leaning back against a crane of ancient pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' distance critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain complacency.
"It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head poised a little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And, by Jove! what matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it, and if it's sold--and, confound it! it must be sold--it will be a case of three figures."
He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctively--it may have been the result of his meditation--he fell to jingling some coins in it. They were not very many, but just then, though he was a young gentleman keenly alive to the advantages of a full purse, their paucity hardly troubled him. He felt, for the nonce, assured of his facility, and doubtless had a vista of unlimited commissions and the world at his feet, for he drew himself up to his full height of six feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile that had no longer its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he stood there, in his light, lax dress and the fulness of his youth, he had (his art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows, and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history. Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade lighter than his hair--which, although he wore it cropped, showed a tendency to be curling--concealed a mouth that was his only questionable feature. It was not the sensitive mouth of the through and through artist, and the lines of it were vacillating. The lips, had they not been hidden, would have surprised by their fulness, contradicting, in some part, the curious coldness of his light blue eyes. All said, however, he remained a singularly handsome fellow; and the slight consciousness which he occasionally betrayed, that his personality was pleasing, hardly detracted from it; it was, after all, a harmless vanity that his friends could afford to overlook. Just then his thoughts, which had wandered many leagues from the warehouses of Blackpool, were brought up sharply by the noise of an approaching footstep. He started slightly, but a moment later greeted the new-comer with a pleasant smile of recognition. It was Rainham's foreman and general manager, with whom the artist, as with most persons with whom he was often in contact, was on excellent, and even familiar, terms.
"Look here, Bullen," he said, twisting the easel round a little, "the picture is practically finished. A few more strokes--I shall do them at home--and it is ready for the Academy. How do you like it?"
Mr. Bullen bent down his burly form and honoured the little canvas with a respectful scrutiny.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, sir, I suppose?" he suggested, pointing with a huge forefinger at the background a little uncertainly.
"That is Trinidad Wharf, Bullen, certainly! And those masts are from the ships in the Commercial Docks. But the river, the atmosphere--that's the point--how do they strike you?"
"Well, it's beautiful, sir," remarked Bullen cordially; "painted like the life, you may say. But isn't it just a little smudgy, sir?"
"That's the beauty of it, Bullen. It's impressionism, you Philistine! --a sort of modified impressionism, you know, to suit the hangers. 'Gad, Bullen, you ought to be a hanger yourself! Bullen, my dear man, if it wasn't that you _do_ know how to paint a ship's side, I would even go so far as to say that you have all the qualifications of an Academician."
"Ah, if it comes to that, Mr. Lightmark, I dare say I could put them up to some dodges. I am a judge of 'composition.'"
"Composition? The devil you are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail of a barge.
"I've a nephew in the Royal Artillery, sir," said Mr. Bullen; "but I fear he is a bad lot."
"Oh, they all are!" said Lightmark, "an abandoned crew."
His eyes wandered off to the bridge over which the road ran, dividing the dry dock from the outer basin and wharf on which they stood. A bevy of factory girls in extensive hats stuck with brilliant Whitechapel feathers were passing; one of them, who was pretty, caught Lightmark's eyes and flung him a saucy compliment, which he returned with light badinage in kind that made the foreman grin.
"They know a fine man when they see one, as well as my lady," he said. Then he added, as if by an afterthought, lowering his voice a little: "By the way, Mr. Lightmark, there was a young lady--a young person here yesterday--making inquiries."
Lightmark bent down, frowning a little at a fly which had entangled itself on his palette.
"Yes?" he remarked tentatively, when the offender had been removed.
"It was a young lady come after someone, who, she said, had been here lately: a Mr. Dighton or Crichton was the name, I think. It was the dockman she asked."
"Nobody comes here of that name that I know of," said Lightmark.
"Not to my knowledge," said Bullen.
"Curious!" remarked Lightmark gravely.
"Very, sir!" said Bullen, with equal gravity.
Lightmark looked up abruptly: the two men's eyes met, and they both laughed, the artist a little nervously.
"What did you tell her, Bullen?"
"No such person known here, sir. I sent her away as wise as she came. I hold with minding my own business, and asking no questions."
"An excellent maxim, Bullen!" said Lightmark, preparing to pack up his easel. "I have long believed you to be a man of discretion. Well, I must even be moving."
"You know the governor is back, sir?"
Lightmark dropped the paint-brush he was cleaning, with a movement of genuine surprise.
"I never knew it," he said; "I will run up and have a yarn with him. I thought he wasn't expected till to-morrow at the earliest?"
"Nor he was, Mr. Lightmark. But he travelled right through from Italy, and got to London late last night. He slept at the Great Eastern, and I went up to him in the City this morning. He hasn't been here more than half an hour."
"Nobody told me," said Lightmark. "Gad! I am glad. I will take him up the picture. Will you carry the other traps into the house, Bullen?"
He packed them up, and then stood a trifle irresolutely, his hand feeling over the coins in his pocket. Presently he produced two of them, a sovereign and a shilling.
"By the way, Bullen!" he said, "there is a little function common in your trade, the gift of a new hat. It costs a guinea, I am told; though judging from the general appearance of longshoremen, the result seems a little inadequate. Bullen, we are pretty old friends now, and I expect I shall not be down here so often just at present. Allow me--to give you a new hat."
The foreman's huge fist closed on the artist's slender one.
"Thank you, sir! You are such a facetious gentleman. You may depend upon me."
"I do," said Lightmark, with a sudden lapse into seriousness, and frowning a little.
If something had cast a shadow over the artist for the moment he must have had a faculty of quick recovery, for there was certainly no shade of constraint upon his handsome face when a minute later he made his way up the balcony steps and into the office labelled "Private," and, depositing his canvas upon the floor, treated his friend to a prolonged handshaking.
"My dear Dick!" said Rainham, "this is a pleasant surprise. I had not the remotest notion you were here."
"I thought you were at Bordighera, till Bullen told me of your arrival ten minutes ago," said Lightmark, with a frank laugh. "And how well----" Rainham held up his hand--a very white, nervous hand with one ring of quaint pattern on the forefinger--deprecatingly.
"My dear fellow, I know exactly what you are going to say. Don't be conventional--don't say it. I have a fraudulent countenance if I do look well; and I don't, and I am not. I am as bad as I ever was."
"Well, come now, Rainham, at any rate you are no worse."
"Oh, I am no worse!" admitted the dry dock proprietor. "But, then, I could not afford to be much worse. However, my health is a subject which palls on me after a time. Tell me about yourself."
He looked up with a smile, in which an onlooker might have detected a spark of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested topic was not without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man of middle height, and of no apparent distinction, and his face with all its petulant lines of lassitude and ill-health--the wear and tear of forty years having done with him the work of fifty--struck one who saw Philip Rainham for the first time by nothing so much as by his ugliness. And yet few persons who knew him would have hesitated to allow to his nervous, suffering visage a certain indefinable charm. The large head set on a figure markedly ungraceful, on which the clothes seldom fitted, was shapely and refined, although the features were indefensible, even grotesque. And his mouth, with its constrained thin lips and the acrid lines about it, was unmistakably a strong one. His deep-set eyes, moreover, of a dark gray colour, gleamed from under his thick eyebrows with a pleasant directness; while his smile, which some people called cynical, as his habit of speech most certainly was, was found by others extraordinarily sympathetic.
"Yes, tell me about yourself, Dick," he said again.
"I have done a picture, if that is what you mean, besides some portraits; I have worked down here like a galley slave for the last three months."
"And is the queer little _estaminet_ in Soho still in evidence? Do the men of to-morrow still meet there nightly and weigh the claims of the men of to-day?"
Lightmark smiled a trifle absently; his eyes had wandered off to his picture in the corner.
"Oh, I believe so!" he said at last; "I dine there occasionally when I have time. But I have been going out a good deal lately, and I hardly ever do have time.... May I smoke, by the way?"
Rainham nodded gently, and the artist pulled out his case and started a fragrant cigarette.
"You see, Rainham," he continued, sending a blue ring sailing across the room, "I am not so young as I was last year, and I have seen a good deal more of the world."
"I see, Dick," said Rainham. "Well, go on!"
"I mean," he explained, "that those men who meet at Brodonowski's are very good fellows, and deuced clever, and all that; but I doubt if they are the sort of men it is well to get too much mixed up with. They are rather _outré_, you know; though, of course, they are awfully good fellows in their way."
"Precisely!" said Rainham, "you are becoming a very Solomon, Dick!"
He sat playing idly with the ring on his forefinger, watching the artist's smoke with the same curiously obscure smile. It had the effect on Lightmark now, as Rainham's smile did on many people, however innocent it might be of satiric intention, of infusing his next remarks with the accent of apology.
"You see, Rainham, one has to think of what will help one on, as well as what one likes. There is a man I have come to know lately--a very good man too, a barrister--who is always dinning that into me. He has introduced me to some very useful people, and is always urging me not to commit myself. And Brodonowski's is rather committal, you know. However, we must dine there together again one day, soon, and then you will understand it."
"Oh, I understand it, Dick!" said Rainham. "But let me see the picture while the light lasts."
"Oh, yes!" cried Lightmark eagerly. "We must not forget the picture." He hoisted it up to a suitable light, and Rainham stood by the bow-window, from which one almost obtained the point of view which the artist had chosen, regarding it in a critical silence.
"What do you call it?" he asked at last. " 'The Gray River,'" said Lightmark; then a little impatiently: "But how do you find it? Are you waiting for a tripod?"
"I don't think I shall tell you. By falling into personal criticism, unless one is either dishonest or trivial, one runs the risk of losing a friend."
"Oh, nonsense, man! It's not such a daub as that. I will risk your candour."
Rainham shrugged his shoulder.
"If you will have it, Dick--only, don't think that I am to be coaxed into compliments." " _Is_ it bad?" asked Lightmark sceptically.
"On the contrary, it is surprisingly good. It's clever and pretty; sure to be hung, sure to sell. Only you have come down a peg. The sentiment about that river is very pretty, and that mist is eminently pictorial; but it's not the river you would have painted last year; and that mist--I have seen it in a good many pictures now--is a mist that one can't quite believe in. It's the art that pays, but it's not the art you talked at Brodonowski's last summer, that is all."
Lightmark tugged at his moustache a little ruefully. Rainham had an idea that his ups and downs were tremendous. His mind was a mountainous country, and if he had elations, he had also depressions as acute. Yet his elasticity was enormous, and he could throw off troublesome intruders, in the shape of memories or regrets, with the ease of a slow-worm casting its skin. And so now his confidence was only shaken for a moment, and he was able to reply gaily to Rainham's last thrust: "My dear fellow, I expect I talked a good deal of trash last year, after all"--a statement which the other did not find it worth while to deny.
They had resumed their places at the table, and Lightmark, with a half-sheet of note-paper before him, was dashing off profiles. They were all the same--the head of a girl: a childish face with a straight, small nose, and rough hair gathered up high above her head in a plain knot. Rainham, leaning over, watched him with an amused smile.
"The current infatuation, Dick, or the last but one?"
"No," he said; "only a girl I know. Awfully pretty, isn't she?"
Rainham, who was a little short-sighted, took up the paper carelessly. He dropped it after a minute with a slight start.
"I think I know her," he said. "You have a knack of catching faces. Is it Miss Sylvester?"
"Yes; it is Eve Sylvester," said Lightmark. "Do you know them? I see a good deal of them now."
"I have known them a good many years," said Rainham.
"They have never spoken of you to me," said Lightmark.
"No? I dare say not. Why should they?" He was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at his ring. Then he said abruptly: "I think I know now who your friend the barrister is, Dick. I recognise the style. It is Charles Sylvester, is it not?"
"You are a wizard," answered the other, laughing. "Yes, it is." Then he asked: "Don't you think she is awfully pretty?"
"Miss Sylvester? ... Very likely; she was a very pretty child. You know, she had not come out last year. Are you going?"
Lightmark had pulled out his watch absently, and he leapt up as he discovered the lateness of the hour.
"Heavens, yes! I am dining out, and I shall barely have time to dress. I will fetch my traps to-morrow; then we might dine together afterwards."
"As you like," said the elder man. "I have no engagements yet."
Lightmark left him with a genial nod, and a moment later Rainham saw him through the window passing with long impetuous strides across the bridge. Then he returned to his desk, and wrote a letter or two until the light failed, when he pushed his chair back, and sat, pen in hand, looking meditatively, vaguely, at the antiquated maps upon the walls.
Presently his eye fell on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its scribble of a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some time, starting a little, and covering it with his blotting-paper, when Mrs. Bullen, his housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea--a freak of his nerves which made him smile when she had gone.
Even then he left his tea for a long time, cooling and untasted, while he sat lethargically lolling back, and regarding from time to time the pencilled profile with his sad eyes.
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The period of Lightmark's boyhood had not been an altogether happy one. His earliest recollections carried him back to a time when he lived a wandering, desolate life with his father and mother, in an endless series of Continental hotels and _pensions_. He was prepared to assert, with confidence, that his mother had been a very beautiful person, who carried an air of the most abundant affection for him on the numerous occasions when she received her friends. Of his father, who had, as far as possible, ignored his existence, he remembered very little.
During these years there had been frequent difficulties, the nature of which he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated abruptness.
When his mother died, he was sent to a fairly good school in England, where his father occasionally visited him, and where he had been terribly bullied at first, and had afterwards learned to bully in turn. He spent his holidays in London, at the house of his grandmother--an excellent old lady, who petted and scolded him almost simultaneously, who talked mysteriously about his "poor dear father," and took care that he went to church regularly, and had dancing-lessons three times a week.
His father's death, which occurred at Monaco somewhat unexpectedly, and on the subject of which his grandmother maintained a certain reserve, affected the boy but little; in fact, the first real grief which he could remember to have experienced was when the old lady herself died--he was then nineteen years old--leaving him her blessing and a sum of Consols sufficient to produce an income of about £250 a year.
The boy's inclinations leaned in the direction of Oxford, and in this he was supported by his only-surviving relative, his uncle, Colonel Lightmark, a loud-voiced cavalry officer, who had been the terror of Richard's juvenile existence, and who, as executor of the old lady's will, was fully aware of the position in which her death had left him, and her desire that he should go into the Church.
At one of the less fashionable colleges, which he selected because he was enamoured of its picturesque inner quadrangle, and of the quaint Dutch glass in the chapel windows, Lightmark was popular with his peers, and, for his first term, in tolerably good odour with the dons, who decided, on his coming up to matriculate, that he ought to read for honours. And he did read for honours, after a fashion, for nearly a scholastic year, after which an unfortunate excursion to Abingdon, and a boisterous re-entry into the University precincts, at the latter part of which the junior proctor and his satellites were painfully conspicuous, ended in his being "sent down" for a term. Whereupon he decided to travel, a decision prompted as much by a not unnatural desire to avoid avuncular criticism as by a constitutional yearning for the sunny South. Besides, one could live for next to nothing abroad.
During the next few years his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of mystery which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true, saw him occasionally at this time, for, indeed, it was soon after his first arrival in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's acquaintance, sealed by their subsequent journey together to Rome. But Rainham was discreet. Lightmark before long informed his uncle, with whom he at first communicated through the post on the subject of dividends, that he was studying Art, to which his uncle had replied: "Don't be a d----d fool. Come back and take your degree."
This letter Dick had light-heartedly ignored, and he received his next cheque from his uncle's solicitors, together with a polite request that he would keep them informed as to his wanderings, and an intimation that his uncle found it more convenient to make them the channel of correspondence for the future.
At Paris it was generally conceded that, for an Englishman, the delicacy of Lightmark's touch, and the daring of his conception and execution, were really marvellous; and if only he could draw! But he was too impatient for the end to spend the necessary time in perfecting the means.
At Rome he tried his hand at sculpture, and made a few sketches which his attractive personality rather than their intrinsic merit enabled him to sell. The _camaraderie_ of the Café Grecco welcomed him with open arms; and he was to be encountered, in the season, at the most fashionable studio tea-parties and diplomatic dances. Before long his talent in the direction of seizing likenesses secured him a well-paid post as caricaturist-in-chief on the staff of a Republican journal of more wit than discretion; and it was in this capacity that he gained his literary experience. On the eve of the suppression of this enterprising organ the Minister of Police thought it a favourable opportunity to express to Lightmark privately his opinion that he was not likely to find the atmosphere of Rome particularly salubrious during the next few months. Whereupon our friend had shrugged his shoulders, and after ironically thanking the official for his disinterested advice, he had given a farewell banquet of great splendour at the Grecco, packed up palettes and paint-boxes, and started for London, where his friends persuaded him that his talent would be recognised. And at London he had arrived, travelling by ruinously easy stages, and breaking the journey at Florence, where he sketched and smoked pipes innumerable on the Lung Arno; at Venice, where he affected cigarettes, and indulged in a desperate flirtation with a pretty black-eyed marchesa; at Monaco, where he gambled; and at Paris, where he spent his winnings, and foregathered with his friends of the Quartier Latin.
His empty pockets suggested the immediate necessity for work in a manner more emphatic than agreeable. His uncle, upon whom he called at his club, invited him to dinner, lectured him with considerable eloquence, and practically declined to have any more to do with the young reprobate, which shook Lightmark's faith in the teaching of parables.
However, he set to work in the two little rooms beneath the tiles which he rented in Bloomsbury, and which served him as bedroom and studio; and for a few weeks he finished sketches by day, and wrote sonnets for magazines, and frivolous articles for dailies, by night. And, strange to say, though there were times when success seemed very hard to grasp, and when he was obliged to forestall quarter-day, and even to borrow money from Rainham--when that bird of passage was within reach--he sold sketches from time to time; he obtained commissions for portraits; and the editors occasionally read and retained his contributions.
In course of time he moved further west, to the then unfashionable neighbourhood of Holland Park, and devoted his energies to the production of a work which should make an impression at the Academy. It was his first large picture in oils, an anonymous portrait, treated with all the audacity and _chic_ of the modern French school, of a fair-haired girl in a quaint fancy dress, standing under the soft light of Japanese lanterns, in a conservatory, with a background of masses of flowers.
And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists who were intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in their expressions of approval.
"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these critics dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of discussion. "Of course it's good enough, but it's not exactly their style, you know. The old duffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't understand it----" And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham brought a wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the committee sat in judgment, the work was already on the high seas on its way to New York.
After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less important nature--a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two admirable qualities in a portrait-painter who desires to succeed.
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It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to the Sylvesters. Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a man who would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was an opportunity to add all hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by constituting himself a patron of art, a position not often attained by young barristers even when, as in Sylvester's case, they have already designs upon a snug constituency.
Sylvester began by giving his _protégé_ a commission to paint his mother's portrait, and before this work was finished a very appreciable degree of intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester family and the young painter, who found no difficulty in gratifying a woman-of-the-world's passion for small-talk and fashionable intelligence--judiciously culled from the columns of the daily newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the scissors and paste-brush.
With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task. She was a girl who had from a very early age been accustomed to have her impressions moulded by her self-assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at first, had been careful to show that he regarded Lightmark as an object of his patronage rather than as a friend who could meet him on his own exalted level. He had been known, in his earlier years, to speak somewhat contemptuously of "artists"; and, indeed, his want of sympathy with Bohemians in general had given Eve occasion for much wondering mental comment, when her brother first spoke of introducing the portrait-painter to the family circle.
However, brotherly rule over a girl's opinions is apt to be disestablished when she draws near the autumn of her teens; and after her emancipation from the schoolroom and short frocks, Miss Eve began to think it was time that she should be allowed to entertain and express views of her own. And after her first ball, an occasion on which her programme had speedily been besieged, and the _débutante_ marked as dangerous by the observant mothers of marriageable sons and daughters--after this important function, even Charles had begun to regard his pretty sister with a certain amount of deference. He certainly had reason to congratulate himself on having so attractive a young person to pour out his coffee and compose his "buttonholes" before he started for chambers in the morning. Eve was at an age when the wild-rose tints of a complexion fostered by judicious walks and schoolroom teas had not yet yielded to the baneful influence of late dinners and the other orgies which society conducts in an unduly-heated atmosphere. Her figure was still almost childishly slim, but graceful, and straight enough to defy criticism in the ball-room or the saddle. Her eyes were gray, with a curious, starry expression in their depths, which always suggested that the smile which was so often on her lips was quite ready to exaggerate the dimples in her cheeks. Her hair was refractory, from her own point of view; but Lightmark found the tangled brown masses, which she wore gathered into a loose knot high at the back of her shapely head, entirely charming, and suggestive, in a way, of one of Lancret's wood nymphs.
She could never bring herself to believe that her nose was pretty, although in the seclusion of her chamber she had frankly criticised her reflected image; and perhaps it _was_ a trifle too small for most critics. Still, her admirers declared that, especially in profile, it was delightfully piquant, and vastly preferable to the uninteresting aquilines which adorned the countenances of her mother and brother. A provoking, childish, charming face, when all was said; it was not wonderful that Lightmark would fain put it upon canvas. And, indeed, so far as the young girl herself was concerned, he had already a conditional promise. She had no objection whatever to make, provided that Charles was first consulted; only she had no dress that would meet the occasion. And when Lightmark protested that the airy white garment, with here and there a suggestion of cream-coloured lace and sulphur ribbons, which she was wearing, was entirely right, she scouted the idea with scorn.
"This old frock, Mr. Lightmark," she exclaimed, with a pretty display of disdain for his taste, "why, I've worn the old thing for months! No; if Charles says I may have my portrait painted, I shall go straight off to Madame Sophie, and then you may paint me and send me to the Academy or Grosvenor in all my glory."
Lightmark had found it quite useless to protest, well as he knew that the ordinary French milliner can be warranted to succeed in producing a garment almost as unpaintable as a masculine black frock-coat.
On the afternoon of the day after Rainham's return to the dock, Lightmark was caressing his fair moustache upon the doorstep of the Sylvesters' house, No. 137, Park Street, West, a mansion of unpretending size, glorious in its summer coat of white paint, relieved only by the turquoise-blue tiles which surrounded the window-boxes, and the darker blue of the railings and front-door. He was calling ostensibly for the purpose of inquiring how Charles Sylvester liked the frame which he had selected for the recently-finished portrait; really in order to induce her brother to allow Eve to sit to him. Sounds as of discussion floated down the wide staircase; and when the servant opened the drawing-room door preparatory to announcing him, Lightmark heard--and it startled him--a well-remembered voice upraised in playful protest.
"No, 'pon my word, Mrs. Sylvester, my young scamp of a nephew hasn't done you justice, 'pon my soul he hasn't."
At first he felt almost inclined to turn tail; though he had long been aware that the Sylvesters were cognisant of his relationship to the somewhat notorious old Colonel, and that they knew him, as everyone did, he had never contemplated the possibility of meeting his uncle there.
And when he had shaken hands in a bewildered manner with Mrs. Sylvester and Eve, he perceived that his uncle was greeting him with an almost paternal cordiality.
"Why, Dick, my boy, 'pon my soul I haven't seen you for an age! You mustn't neglect your gouty old uncle, you know, Dick; when are you going to paint his portrait, in review order, eh? Not until you've painted Miss Eve here, I'll be bound."
The prodigal nephew needed all his by no means deficient stock of nerve to enable him to present an unmoved countenance to this unexpected attack of geniality. This, he thought, as he returned the other's greeting with as great a semblance of ease as he could muster--this was the uncle who had declined to recognise him when they met a few months ago, in the broadest daylight, in Pall Mall!
Presently, while he was trying to recover his equanimity by devoting himself to the cult of Eve, he heard the colonel whisper in a confidential undertone to their hostess: "Devilish clever fellow, my nephew, y'know, though perhaps I oughtn't to say so. Those newspaper beggars think very highly of him--the critics, y'know, and all that; why, 'pon my soul, I was reading something about him only this morning at the club in the what's-his-name--the __Outcry__. Said he ought to be in the Academy."
"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically, "you are quite right to be proud of him, Colonel Lightmark. Charles thinks he is very clever, and he is _so_ pleased with my portrait. We want him to paint Eve, you know, only---- Oh, do let me give you another cup of tea, Mr. Lightmark! Two lumps of sugar, I think?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Sylvester. Do you know, I have discovered that we have a mutual friend--that is to say, I found out not long ago, quite by accident, that my very good friend, Philip Rainham, has the pleasure of your acquaintance."
"Oh, really!" said Eve delightedly; "do you know Philip--Mr. Rainham? And have you seen him lately? We haven't heard anything of him for weeks and weeks--not since Christmas, have we, mamma?"
"Ah!" answered Lightmark, smiling, and letting his eyes wander over the white expanse of the Colonel's waistcoat. "I don't wonder at that. You see, he has been nursing himself on the Riviera all the winter, lucky dog! He only came back last night. I saw him at his dock, you know, down the river--such a jolly old place. I have been sketching there, on and off, nearly all the spring. He lets me make myself quite at home."
"Take care, Dick, my boy," said the Colonel sententiously, fixing his black-rimmed eyeglass under the bushy white brow that shaded his right eye; "don't you let him entice you into that business. Don't pay nowadays! All the shipping goes up North, y'know. The poor old Thames is only used for regattas now, and penny steamers."
"How very nice for the Thames!" cried Eve. "Why, there's nothing I like more than regattas! I do so hope we shall go to Henley this year; but houseboats are so expensive, and it's no fun unless you have a houseboat. We had a punt last year, a sort of thing like a long butler's tray, and Charles got into fearful difficulties. You know, it looks so easy to push a punt along with a pole, but the pole has a wicked way of sticking in the mud at critical moments--when they are clearing the course, for instance. Oh, it was dreadful! Everybody was looking at us, and I felt like one of those horrid people who always get in the way at the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race!"
"Or the Derby dog, by Jove!" suggested the Colonel.
"I can sympathize with you fully, Miss Sylvester," said his nephew. "I shouldn't like to say how many times in the course of my first summer term at Oxford I found myself sprawling ignominiously in the Cherwell, instead of posing in a picturesque attitude in the stern of my punt. And one looked such a fool going up to college in wet things. But there aren't many regattas going on in the regions below London Bridge nowadays. It's not much like Henley or Marlow, though it's pretty enough in its way at times. You ought to get Rainham to invite you to the dock; you would create an impression on the natives, and of course he would be delighted. He's got a most amiable housekeeper, though I don't think she has heard of thin bread-and-butter; and I have discovered that his foreman is a judge of art--a regular Ruskin."
"And how is poor Philip, Mr. Lightmark?" asked Mrs. Sylvester tentatively. "You must bring him here very soon, and make him give an account of himself."
"Oh," said Lightmark vaguely, "he's looking pretty fit, though he doesn't like to be told so. I really believe he would be unhappy if he were in robust health. He finds his damaged lung such a good pretext for neglecting the dock; and if it got quite well, half the occupation of his life would be gone."
Mrs. Sylvester and Eve both protested laughingly against this somewhat heartless view of the case; and after declining an offer of the back seats of the carriage, which was already waiting at the door to take Mrs. Sylvester and her daughter for their anteprandial drive in the Park, and expressing their regret that they had not seen Charles, uncle and nephew took their leave together.
"Dick, my boy," said the colonel, when they were safely in the street, "you must come and dine with me. Not tonight; I am going to take Lady Dulminster to the French play. Let me have your address, or come and look me up at the club. I'm dev'lish glad you're getting on so well, my boy, though you were a fool not to stay up at Oxford and take your degree. After all, though, perhaps you aren't quite the cut for the Church or a fellowship, and--and the Sylvesters are dev'lish good people to know, Dick. Ta, ta! Don't forget to come and see me."
So saying, Dick's versatile uncle waved his cheroot by way of adieu, and clambered laboriously into a hansom.
"By Jove!" said the younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I _will_ look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to Brodonowski's. What a ripping sunset!"
And he strolled light-heartedly through Grosvenor Square, the smoke of his cigarette fading away behind him.
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When Rainham pushed back the door of the dim little restaurant in Turk Street, Soho, he stood a moment, blinking his eyes a little in the sudden change from the bright summer sunshine, before he assured himself that his friend had not yet arrived. Half a dozen men were sitting about smoking or discussing various drinks. The faces of several were familiar to him, but there were none of them whom he knew; so he took his seat at a table near the door and ordered a vermouth to occupy him until Lightmark, whose unpunctuality was notorious, should put in an appearance. In the interim his eyes strayed round the establishment, taking stock of the walls with their rough decorations, and the _clientèle_, and noting, not without a certain pleasure, that during the six months in which he had been absent neither had suffered much alteration.
Indeed, to Philip Rainham, who had doubtless in his blood the taint of Bohemia, Brodonowski's and the enthusiasm of its guests had a very definite charm. They were almost all of them artists; they were all of them young and ardent; and they had a habit of propounding their views, which were always of the most advanced nature, with a vehemence which to Rainham represented all the disinterestedness of youth. Very often they were exceedingly well worth knowing, though in the majority of cases the world had not found it out. He knew very few of them personally; he had been taken there first by Lightmark, when the latter was fresh from Paris, and had been himself more in touch with them. But he had often sat smoking silently a little outside the main group, listening, with a deferential air that sat upon his age somewhat oddly, to their audacious propaganda.
In his mind he would sometimes contrast the coterie with certain artistic houses, more socially important, which he had from time to time frequented: where earnest-eyed women in graceful garments--which certainly afforded a rest to the eye--dispensed tea from a _samovar_, and discoursed discreetly of the current Academy and the most recent symptomatic novel.
The delight of a visible, orderly culture permeating their manners and their conversation was a real one, and yet, Rainham reflected, it left one at the last a trifle weary, a little cold. It seemed to him that this restaurant, with its perennial smell of garlic, its discoloured knife-handles, its frequentation of picturesque poverty, possessed actually an horizon that was somewhat less limited.
Indeed, the dingy room, its assemblage apart, had many traces of an artistic patronage. The rough walls were adorned, in imitation of the familiar Roman haunt, of which this was, so to speak, a colony, with a host of fantastic sketches: rapid silhouettes in charcoal, drawn for illustration or refutation in the heat of some strenuous argument; caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly like, of the customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities, whose laurels Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there by an epigram or a doggerel couplet, damning the Philistine.
Rainham smiled as he recognised occasionally the grotesque travesty of a familiar face. Presently his eyes were arrested by a drawing which was new to him, a face of striking ugliness, offering advantages to the caricaturist of which, doubtless, he had not omitted to avail himself. It imposed itself on Rainham, for the savage strength which it displayed, and for an element in its hideousness which suggested beauty. He was still absorbed in the study of this face when Lightmark entered and took his place opposite him with a brief apology for his tardiness. He was dressed well, with a white orchid in his button-hole, and looked prosperous and rosy. Some light badinage on this score from his various acquaintances in the restaurant he parried with a good-humoured nonchalance; then he betook himself to consideration of the _menu_.
"I have been calling on your friends, the Sylvesters," he explained after a while, "and I could not get away before. My uncle was there, by the way. You have heard me speak of him?"
"Your uncle, who holds such a lax view of the avuncular offices?"
Lightmark smiled a little self-congratulatory smile.
"Ah, that's changed. The old boy was deuced friendly--gave me his whole hand instead of two fingers, and asked me to dine with him. I think," he went on after a moment, "the Sylvesters have been putting in a good word for me. Or perhaps it was Mrs. Sylvester's portrait which did the job."
"Ah," said Rainham, "you have painted her, have you?"
Their fish occupied them in silence. Lightmark, a trifle flushed from his rapid walk, smiled from time to time absently, as though his thoughts were pleasant ones. The older man thought he had seldom seen him looking more boyishly handsome. Presently his eyes again caught the head which had so struck his fancy.
"Is that yours, Dick?" he asked.
Lightmark followed the direction of his eyes to the opposite wall.
"I believe it is," he remarked, with a shade of deprecation in his manner. "It is Oswyn. Don't you know him?"
"I don't know him," said the other, sipping his thin Médoc. "But I think I should like to. What is he?"
"He will be here soon, no doubt, and then you will see for yourself. He is Oswyn! I knew him in Paris better than I do now. He was in B----'s studio; and B---- swore that he had a magnificent genius. He painted a monstrous picture which the Salon wouldn't hang; but B---- bought it, and hung it in his studio, where it frightened his models into fits. Last year he came to London, where he makes enough, when he is sober, by painting pot-boilers for the dealers, to keep him in absinthe and tobacco, which are apparently his sole sustenance. In the meanwhile he is painting a masterpiece; at least, so he will tell you. He is a virulent fanatic, whose art is the most monstrous thing imaginable. He is--but talk of the devil----" He broke off and nodded to a little, lean man of ambiguous age, in a strained coat, who entered at this moment with a rapid lurching gait. He sat down immediately opposite them, under Lightmark's presentment, with which Rainham curiously compared him. And it struck him that there was something in that oddly repulsive figure which Lightmark's superficial crayon had missed. The long, haggard face was there, with its ill-kempt hair and beard; and the lips, which, when they parted in a smile that was too full of irony, revealed the man's uneven, discoloured teeth. Rainham lost sight of his uncouthness in a sense of his extreme power. His eyes, which were restless and extraordinarily brilliant, met Rainham's presently; and the latter was conscious of a certain fascination in their sustained gaze. In spite of the air of savagery which pervaded the man, it was a movement of sympathy which, on the whole, he experienced towards him. And it seemed as if this sentiment were reciprocal, for when the German youth, who was the cupbearer of the establishment, had taken Oswyn's order, and had brought him absinthe in a long glass, he motioned it abruptly to the opposite table. Then he crossed over and accosted Lightmark, whom he had not hitherto appeared to recognise, with a word of greeting. Lightmark murmured his name and Rainham's, and the strange, little man nodded to him not unamiably.
"I must smoke, if you don't mind," he said, after a moment.
They nodded assent, and he produced tobacco in a screw of newspaper from the pocket of his coat, and began rapidly to make cigarettes. Rainham watched the dexterous movements of his long nervous hands--the colour of old ivory--and found them noticeable.
"You are not an artist, I think," he suggested after a moment, fixing his curiously intent eyes on Rainham.
"No," admitted the other, smiling, "I am afraid I am not. I am only here on sufferance. I am a mender of ships."
"He is a connoisseur," put in Lightmark gaily. "It's an accident that he happens to be connected with shipping--a fortunate one, though, for he owns a most picturesque old shanty in the far East. But actually he does not know a rudder post from a jib-boom."
"I suppose you have been painting it?" said Oswyn shortly.
Lightmark nodded.
"I have been painting the river from his wharf. The picture is just finished, and on the whole I am pleased with it. You should come in and give it a look, Oswyn, some time. You haven't seen my new studio."
"I never go west of Regent Street," said Oswyn brusquely.
Lightmark laughed a little nervously.
"Oswyn doesn't believe in me, you know, Philip," he explained lightly. "It is a humiliating thing to have to say, but I may as well say it, to save him the trouble. He is so infernally frank about it, you know. He thinks that I am a humbug, that I don't take my art seriously, and because, when I have painted my picture, I begin to think about the pieces of silver, he is not quite sure that I may not be a descendant of Judas. And then, worst of all, I have committed the unpardonable sin: I have been hung at Burlington House. Isn't that about it, Oswyn?"
The elder man laughed his low, mirthless laugh.
"We understand each other, Dick; but you don't quite do yourself justice--or me. I have an immense respect for your talent. I feel sure you will achieve greatness--in Burlington House."
"Well, it's a respectable institution," said the young man soberly.
Oswyn finished his drink at a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young man askance with his impressive eyes. Rainham noticed for the first time that he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only--or was it of sneering? --while the upper part of his face and his heavy brows frowned.
"By the way, Lightmark," he observed presently, "I have to congratulate you on your renown. There is quite a long panegyric on your picture in the _Outcry_ this week. Do you know who wrote it?"
"Damn it, man!" broke out Lightmark, with a vehemence which, to Rainham, seemed uncalled for, "how should I know? I haven't seen the rag for an age."
There was an angry light in his eyes, but it faded immediately.
Oswyn continued apologetically: "I beg your pardon. It must be very annoying to you to be puffed indiscreetly. But I fancied, you know----" Lightmark, flushing a little, interrupted him, laying his hand with a quick gesture, that might have contained an appeal in it, on the painter's frayed coat-sleeve.
"Your glass is empty, and we are about ready for our coffee. What will you take?"
Oswyn repeated his order, smiling still a little remotely, as he let the water trickle down from a scientific height to his glass, whipping the crystal green of its contents into a nebulous yellow. Rainham, who had listened to the little passage of arms in silence, felt troubled, uneasy. The air seemed thunderous, and was heavy with unspoken words. There appeared to be an under-current of understanding between the two painters which was the reverse of sympathetic, and made conversation difficult and volcanic. It caused him to remind himself, a trifle sadly, how little, after all, one knew of even one's nearest friend--and Lightmark, perhaps, occupied to him that relation--how much of the country of his mind remains perpetually undiscovered; and it made him wonder, as he had sometimes wondered before, whether the very open and sunny nature of the young painter, which was so large a part of his charm, had not its concealed shadows--how far, briefly, Lightmark's very frankness might not be a refinement of secretiveness?
If, however, a word here and there, a trait surprised, indefinable, led him on occasion to doubt of his dominant impression of Lightmark's character, these doubts were never of long duration; and he would dismiss them, barely entertained, even as a sort of disloyalty, to the limbo of stillborn fancies. And so now, with his accustomed generosity, he speedily flung himself into the breach, and did his best to drive the conversation into impersonal and presumably safer channels. He touched on the prospects of the Academy, of academic art, and art in general, and by-and-by, as Oswyn rose to the discussion, he became himself interested, and was actuated less by a wish to make conversation than to draw his new friend out. And as the artist leant forward, grew excited, with his white, lean face working into strange contortions--as he shot out his savage paradoxes, expounding the gospel of the new art a trifle thickly now, and rolling and as rapidly smoking perpetual cigarettes, he found him again strangely attractive.
He had flashes of insight, it seemed to Rainham; there was something in his caustic criticism which led him to believe that he could at another time have justified himself, defended reasonably and sanely a position that was at least tenable.
But the tide of his spleen invariably overtook him, and he abandoned exegesis for tirade. The _bourgeois_, limited scope of the art in vogue--this was the burden of his reiterated rabid attacks; art watered down to suit the public's insipid palate, and he quoted Chamfort furiously: "Combien de sots faut-il pour faire un public?" --the art of simpering prettiness, without root or fruit in life, the art of absolute convention. He ran over a list of successful names with an ever-growing rancour--artistic hacks, the crew of them, the journalists of painting--with a side glance at Lightmark, who sat pulling his flaxen moustache, looking stiff and nervous--he would hang the lot of them to-morrow if he had his way, for corrupters of taste, or, better still, condemn them to perpetual incarceration in the company of their own daubs. These people, in fine, the mutual admiration society of incompetents--where was their justification, where would they be in a decade or so? The hangers-on of the fashionable world, caring for their art as a means of success, of acquiring guineas or a baronetcy or a couple of initials, who dropped the little technique they possessed as soon as they had a competency, and foisted their pictures most on people when they had forgotten how to paint. _Pompiers_, _fumistes_, makers of respectable _pommade_--as the painter's potations increased, his English became less fluent, and he was driven back constantly to the dialect of the Paris _ateliers_, which was more familiar to him than his mother tongue. Ah! how he hated these people and their thread-paper morality, and their sordid conception of art--a prettiness that would sell!
Rainham had heard it all before; it was full of spleen and rancour, unnecessarily violent, and, conceivably, unjust. But what he could not help recognising, in spite of his repulsion, was a certain nobility and singleness in the man, ruin as he was. Virtue came out of him; he had the saving quality of genius, and it was a veritable burning passion of perfection, which masqueraded in his spleen. His conception of art for the sake of art only might be erroneous, but it was at least exalted; and the instinct which drove him always for his material directly to life, rejecting nothing as common or unclean--in the violence of his revolt, perhaps dwelling too uniformly on what was fundamentally ugly--might be disputable, but was obviously sincere. The last notion which Rainham took away with him, when they parted late in the evening (Oswyn having suddenly lapsed from the eloquence to the incoherency of drunkenness), was a wish to see more of him. He had given him his card, and he waited until he had seen him place it--after observing it for some moments attentively with lack-lustre eyes--in the security of his waistcoat. And as the two friends walked towards Charing Cross, Rainham observed that he hoped he would call.
"He is a disreputable fellow," said Lightmark a little sullenly, "and an unprofitable acquaintance. You will find it less difficult to persuade him to make you a visit than to finish it." At which Rainham had merely shrugged his shoulders, finding his friend, perhaps for the first time, a little _banal_.
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{
"id": "16703"
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A day or two later, as Rainham sat in his river-bound office struggling, by way of luncheon, with the most primitive of chops, his eyes, wandering away from a somewhat mechanic scrutiny of the _Shipping Gazette_, fell upon the shifting calendar on the mantelpiece.
The dial noted Thursday; and he reminded himself that on that day his friend, Lady Garnett, had a perennial habit of being at home to her intimates, on the list of whom Rainham could acknowledge, without undue vanity, his name occurred high. There was a touch of self-reproach in his added reminder that a week had elapsed since his return, and he had not already hastened to clasp the excellent old lady's hand. It was an unprecedented postponement and an infringement of a time-honoured habit; and Rainham had for his habit all the respect of a man who is always indolent and often ill; though it must be admitted that to his clerks, who viewed the trait complacently, and to the importunate Bullen, who resented it, he seemed to be only regular in his irregularity. He decided that at least this occasion should not be allowed to slip; a free afternoon would benefit him. He was always rather lavish of those licenses; and it seemed to him that the tintinnabulation of teacups in Lady Garnett's primrose and gray drawing-room would be a bearable change from the din of a hundred hammers, which had pelted him through the open windows all the morning. They were patching a little wooden barque with copper, and he paused a moment in the yard, leaning on his slim umbrella to admire the brilliant yellow of the renewed sheets, standing out in vivid blots against the tarnished verdigris of the old. To pass from Blackpool to the West, however, is a tardy process; and when Rainham reached the spruce, little house in one of the most select of the discreet and uniform streets which adjoin Portman Square, he found the clatter of teacups for the most part over. There were, in fact, only two persons in the long room, which, with its open Erard, and its innumerable _bibelots_, and its plenitude of quaint, impossible chairs, seemed quite cosily exiguous. An old lady with a beautiful, refined face and a wealth of white hair, which was still charming to look at, sat in an attitude full of comfortable indolence, with a small pug in her lap, who bounced at Rainham with a bark of friendly recognition. A young lady, at the other side of the room (she was at least young by courtesy), who was pouring out tea, stopped short in this operation to greet the new visitor with a little soft exclamation, in which pleasure and surprise mingled equally. The old lady also looked up smiling. She seemed both good-natured and distinguished, and she had the air--a sort of tired complacency--of a person who has been saying witty things for a whole afternoon, and is at last in the enjoyment of a well-deserved rest. She extended both hands to Rainham, who held them for a minute in his own, silently smiling down at her, before he released them to greet her companion.
She was a tall, pale girl in a black dress, whom at first sight the impartial observer might easily declare to be neither pretty nor young. As a matter of fact, she was younger than she seemed, for she was barely five-and-twenty, although her face and manner belonged to a type which, even in girlhood, already forestalls some of the gravity and reserve that arrive with years. As for her beauty, there were those who disputed it altogether; and yet even when one had gone so far as to declare that Mary Masters was plain, one had, in justice, to add that she possessed none the less a distinct and delicate charm of her own. It was a daisy-like charm differing in kind from the charm of Eve Sylvester, which was that of a violet or a child, perpetually perfuming the air. It could be traced at last--for she had not a good feature--to the possession of a pair of very soft, and shy, brown eyes, and of a voice, simply agreeable in conversation, which burgeoned out in song into the richest contralto imaginable, causing her to be known widely in society as "the Miss Masters who sings." Indeed, she had a wonderful musical talent, which she had cultivated largely. Her playing had even approved itself to the difficult Rubinstein; and, although she had a certain reputation for cleverness, the loss to society when she left the music-stool to mingle in it was generally felt not to be met by a corresponding gain; and, indeed, as a rule, people did not consider her separately. The generality were inclined simply to accept her, in relation to her aunt, Lady Garnett, with whom she had lived since she was a girl of sixteen, as any other of that witty old woman's impedimenta--her pug Mefistofèle, or her matchless enamels, or her Watteau fans. As she came towards him now with a cup in her hand, her pale face a little flushed, her dark hair braided very plainly and neatly above her high forehead, Rainham could not help thinking that she would make an adorable old maid.
"You look well, Mary," he remarked, holding her at arms' length critically, with the freedom of an old friend. "You look insultingly well--I hope you don't mean it."
"I am afraid I do," laughed the girl. "I wish I could say as much for you."
Rainham shook his head with burlesque solemnity, and sank down with his fragile cup into the most comfortable of the Louis Quinze chairs which he could select.
"It's delightful to be back again," he remarked, letting his eyes wander round the familiar walls. "I know your things by heart, Lady Garnett; there's not one of them I could spare. Thanks, Mary, no sugar; cream, if you please. After all, I don't know anyone who has such charming rooms. Let me see if there is anything new. Yes, those enamels; introduce me, Mary, please. Yes, they are very nice. By the way, I picked up some old point for you at Genoa, only I have not unpacked it yet. But the Gustave Moreau, where is that? Ah, I see you have shifted it over the piano. Yes, it is exactly the same; you are all precisely the same; it's delightful, such constancy--delightful! I take it as a personal compliment. But where are all the delightful people?"
Lady Garnett smiled placidly.
"The delightful people have gone. To tell you the truth, I am just a little glad, especially as you have dropped in from the clouds, or the Riviera di Ponente--which is it, Philip?"
"To be frank with you, from neither. I have it on my conscience to tell you that I have been back some days. I wanted to come here before."
"Ah well, so long as you have come now!" said the old lady.
"Your knock was mystifying, Philip," put in the girl presently; "we expected nobody else but the Sylvesters, and when we heard your solitary step our hearts sank. We thought that Charles Sylvester had taken it into his head to come by himself."
"He is a terrible young man," said Lady Garnett; "he is almost as limited as his mamma, and he takes himself more seriously. When he is with his sister one can tolerate him, but alone----" She held up her thin wrinkled hands with a little gesture of elision, at which her expressive shoulders assisted. She was of French extraction, the last survivor of an illustrious family; and reconciled as she had become to England--for years she had hardly left London--a slight and very pretty accent, and this trick of her shoulders, remained to remind people that her point of view was still essentially foreign. Rainham, who had from his boyhood found England somewhat a prison-house, adored her for this trait. The quaint old woman, indeed, with her smooth, well-bred voice, her elaborate complexion, her little, dignified incongruities, had always been the greatest solace to him. She had the charm of all rococo things; she represented so much that had passed away, exhaling a sort of elegant wickedness to find a parallel to which one had to seek back to the days of the Regency. Of course, in society, she passed for being very devout; and, indeed, her little pieties, her unfailing attendance at Mass on days of Obligation, at the chapel of the French Embassy hard by, struck Rainham as most edifying. Really he perceived that her devout attitude was purely traditional, a form of good manners. She remained the same wicked, charming old Sadducee as before: her morocco-bound _paroissien_ might appear on festivals and occasions; she still slept as often as not of nights with "Candide" under her pillow.
The knowledge of a certain sentiment which they shared towards the limitations of London (they were both persons strikingly without prejudice) lent a certain piquancy to their old-established relations, an allusive flavour to their conversation--it was always highly seasoned with badinage--that puzzled many of their common acquaintance enormously.
Mary Masters, as a shy and serious maiden, fresh from a country parsonage, remembered well the astonishment, mingled with something not unlike awe, with which she had first heard them talk. Philip Rainham had been calling, as it might be now, when she arrived, and Lady Garnett had promptly introduced him to her as her godson, because, as she remarked lightly, if he is not, he ought to have been. To which Philip had replied, in a like humour, that it was all the same: if they hadn't that relation, at any rate their behaviour implied it.
It was a novelty in her small and serious experience to find herself in conjunction with such frivolity; she was almost inclined to be shocked. Nevertheless, in the ten years during which she had made her home in Parton Street, Mary Masters had surmounted her awe, if her astonishment still occasionally obtained. Neither her aunt nor Rainham had altered, nor had they grown perceptibly older.
Watching the latter to-day as he sat lolling back lazily, balancing his teacup, she was curiously reminded of her first impression of him; taking stock of her humorously, silently, in almost the same attitude, with the same sad eyes. And since Mary, too, had remained virtually unchanged, it is to the credit of the head of a particularly serious little daughter of the Puritans that she had ended by appreciating them both. In fact, she had discovered that neither of them was so frivolous as it appeared, or, at least, that there were visitors in Parton Street who seemed less frivolous, and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless, and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who understood each other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they understand each other so well that they could afford to trifle? She had an idea that their silences were eloquent, and that they might well be lavish of the crudity of speech. Oh, they pretended very well! The young girl found something admirable in the hard, polished surface which her aunt presented to the world: her rouge and her diamonds, her little bird-like air of living only in the present, of being intensely interested, of having no regrets--a manner to which Rainham responded so fluently with an assumption that she was right, that things were an excellent joke. After all, perhaps they pretended too much; at least, she found herself often, when they were present, falling away into reveries full of conjecture, from which, as happened now, she only awoke with a slight blush to find herself directly addressed.
"Wake up, Mary! we are talking of the Sylvesters. I was telling Philip that his little friend Eve has become entirely charming."
"Yes," said Mary slowly; "she is charming, certainly. Haven't you seen her, Philip? You used to be constantly there."
Rainham assumed the air of reflection.
"Really, I believe I used, when Eve was in short frocks, and Charles conspicuously absent. Like Lady Garnett, I find the barrister exhausting. He is very unlike his father."
"We are going to Switzerland with them this summer, you know, Philip? Will you join us?"
"Ah!" he put his cup down, not responding for a moment. "It would be delightful, but I am afraid impossible. You see, there's the dock; I have been away from it six months, and I shall have to repeat the process when the fogs begin. No, Lady Garnett, I won't be tempted."
She began to press him, and they fenced rapidly for some minutes, laughing. Rainham had just been induced to promise that he would at least consider the proposition, when the footman announced Mr. and Miss Sylvester. They came in a moment later; and while the barrister, a tall well-dressed man, with the shaven upper lip and neat whisker of his class, and a back which seemed to bend with difficulty, explained to Lady Garnett that his mother was suffering too much from neuralgia to come with them, Rainham resumed his acquaintance with the young girl. He had seen little of her during the past two years, and in the last of them, in which she had changed most, he had not seen her at all. It was with a slight shock, then, that he realized how completely she had grown up. He remembered her in so many phases of childhood and little girlhood, ranging up from a time when her speech was incoherent, and she had sat on his knee and played with his watch, to the more recent occasions when he had met her riding in the Park with her brother; and she had waved her little whip to him, looking particularly slim and pretty in the very trying costume which fashion prescribes for little girls who ride.
They had always been very good friends; she had been a most engaging little companion, and really, he reflected, he had been extremely fond of her. It gave him a distinct pain to reflect that their relation had, in the nature of things, come to an end. Gradually, as they talked, the young girl growing out of the first restraint of her shyness, and falling back into something of her old manner, the first painful impression of her entire strangeness left Rainham. In spite of her mature, little society air, her engaging attempts at worldliness, she was, after all, not so grown-up as she seemed. The child gleamed out here and there quite daintily, and as he indulged in reminiscence, and reminded her of some of their more remote adventures, her merriment found utterance very childishly.
"Our most tragical encounter, though, was with the monkey. Have you forgotten that? It was on one of your birthdays--you had a good many of them in Florence--I forget which it was. You must have been about ten. I had taken you to the Zoological Gardens, such as they were."
Her laughter rippled out softly again.
"I remember," she nodded, "it was dreadful."
"Yes," he said; "we were at the monkey-cage; you had grown tired of feeding the ostrich with _centesimi_."
"Oh, Philip!" she interrupted him; "I never, _never_ would have done such a thing. It was you who used to give the poor bird _centesimi_. I only used to watch."
"Ah, you connived at it, anyhow," he went on. "Well, we were feeding the monkeys, this time with melon-seeds, when we somehow aroused the ire of a particularly ugly brute, who must have been distantly connected with a bull. Anyhow, he made a grab at the scarlet _berret_ you were wearing, just missed your hair, and demolished the cap."
"I remember," she laughed. "You tied your handkerchief round my head, like an old peasant woman, and took me back in a carriage. And mamma was dreadfully angry about the cap, because she had bought it at Biarritz, and couldn't replace it in Italy. She thought you ought to have taken steps to get it back."
"Dear me!" said Rainham solemnly, "why didn't I think of it before? I wonder if it's too late to do anything now."
The girl's laughter broke out again, this time attracting the attention of her brother, who was discussing the projected travels, with the aid of Bradshaw, at Mary Masters' side. He glanced at them askance, pulling at his collar in his stiff, nervous fashion a little uneasily.
"What a long time ago all that seems, Philip!" she remarked after a while.
He was silent for a moment examining his finger-nails intently.
"Yes," he said rather sadly; "I suppose it does. I dare say you wouldn't care much for the Zoo now?"
"Oh, I shouldn't mind," she said gaily, "if you will take me."
But a move had been made opposite, and Charles Sylvester, coming up to them, overheard this last remark.
"I think we must be off," he said, consulting his watch. "Where is Rainham going to take you?"
"To Florence," she said, smiling, "to the Zoo."
"Ah, a good idea," he murmured. "Well, good-bye, Lady Garnett; good-day, Rainham. I am sorry to see you don't seem to have benefited much by your winter abroad. I almost wonder you came back so soon. Was not it rather unwise? This treacherous climate, you know."
"Yes," said Rainham; "I, too, think you are right. I think I had much better have stayed--very much better."
"Ah, well," he said, "you must take care of yourself, and give us a look in if you have time."
Eve looked up at him, flushing a little, as though she found her brother's formal politeness lacking in hospitality. She was struck then, as she had not been yet during her visit, by a curious lassitude in her old friend's face. It affected her with an unconscious pity, causing her to second her brother's somewhat chilly invitation more cordially.
The humour which had shone in Rainham's eyes while they had been talking seemed to have gone out suddenly, like a lamp, leaving them blank and tired. It shocked her to realize how old and ill he had become.
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{
"id": "16703"
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Indolence and ill-health, in the opinion of many the salient points in Philip Rainham's character, had left him at forty with little of the social habit. The circle of his intimates had sensibly narrowed, and for the rest he was becoming more and more conscious that people whom one does not know exceedingly well are not worth knowing at all. The process of dining out two or three times a week in the company of two or three persons whose claims on his attention were of the slenderest he found a process attended with less and less pleasure the older he grew. There were few houses now which he frequented, and this year, when he had made an effort to devote a couple of evenings to the renewal of some acquaintance of the winter, and had discovered, as he had discovered anew each season, that the effort gave him no appreciable compensations for the disagreeables it involved, he made fresh resolutions of abstinence, and on the whole he kept them amazingly well.
For the most part, when he was not routed out by Lightmark (and since the young artist was in train to become a social acquisition this happened less frequently than of old), it was at Blackpool that he spent his evenings. He had, it is true, a standing invitation to dinner at Lady Garnett's when that old lady found herself at home; but Portman Square was remote, and evening dress, to a man with one lung in a climate which had so fickle a trick of registering itself either at the extreme top or bottom of the thermometer, presented various discomforts. His den behind the office--a little sitting-room with a bay-window facing Blackpool Reach, a room filled with books that had no relation to shipping, and hung round with etchings and pictures in those curiously-low tones for which he had so unreasonable an affection--was what he cherished most in London. He read little now, but the mere presence of the books he loved best in rough, uneven cases, painted black, lining the walls, caressed him. As with persons one has loved and grown used to loving, it was not always needful that they should speak to him; it was sufficient, simply, that they should be there. Neither did he write on these long, interminable evenings, which were prolonged sometimes far into the night. He had ended by being able to smile at his literary ambitions of twenty, cultivating his indolence as something choice and original, finding his destiny appropriate.
He spent the time in interminable reveries, sitting with a volume before him, as often as not unopened, smoking incessantly, and looking out of the window. The habit amused himself at times; it was so eminently symbolic of his destiny. Life, after all, had been to him nothing so much as that--a long looking out of window, the impartial spectatorship of a crowd of persons and passions from which he had come at last to seem strangely detached, almost as much as from this chameleon river, which he had observed with such satisfaction in all its manifold gradations of character and colour; its curious cold grayness in the beginning of an autumnal dawn; the illusion of warmth and depth which it sustained at noon, bringing up its burden of leviathans on the top of the flood; its sheen on moonless nights, when only little punctures, green and red and orange, and its audible stillness, reminded him that down in the obscurity the great polluted stream stole on wearily, monotonously, everlastingly to the sea. It was changeful and changeless. He thought he knew its effects by heart, but it had always new ones in reserve to surprise and delight him. He declared it at last to be inexhaustible. It was like a diamond on sunny days, flashing out light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which shine with the same parsimonious radiance.
One night, while he sat smoking in his wonted meditative fashion, he had a visitor--the painter Oswyn. He had almost forgotten his invitation, but he reminded himself of his first impression, and greeted him with a cordiality which the other seemed to find surprising. He took him into his sanctuary and found him whisky and a pipe; then he set himself to make the painter talk, a task which he found by no means arduous.
Oswyn was sober, and Rainham was surprised after a while at his sanity. He decided that, though one might differ from him, dissent from his premises or his conclusions, he was still a man to be taken seriously. His fluency was as remarkable as ever, and at first as spleenful; by-and-by his outrageous mood gave way, and, in response to some of Rainham's adroit thrusts, he condescended to stand on his defence. He could give a reasonable account of himself; was prepared clearly, and succinctly, and seriously with his justification. Rainham was impressed anew by his singleness, the purity of his artistic passion. His life might be disgraceful, indescribable: his art lay apart from it; and when he took up a brush an enthusiasm, a devotion to art, almost religious, steadied his hand.
"You may think me a charlatan," he said, with the same savage earnestness, "but I can tell you I am not. I may fail or I may succeed, as the world counts those things. It is all the same: I believe in myself. It is sufficient to me if I approve myself, and the world may go to damnation! What I care for is my idea! ... yes, my idea, that's it! They can howl at me," he went on; "but they can never say of any stroke of my brush that I put it there for them. I could have painted pictures like Lightmark if I had cared, you know, but I did not care!"
"And yet he has great facility," said Rainham tentatively.
"He has more," said Oswyn bitterly, "or, at least, he had--genius. And he has deliberately chosen to go the wrong way, to be conventional. He can't plead 'invincible ignorance' like the others; he ought to know better. Well, he has his reward; but I can't forgive him."
Rainham shrugged his shoulders with something between a sigh and a laugh.
"Poor boy! he is young, you know. Perhaps he will live to see the errors of his ways."
"When he's an Academician, I suppose?" suggested the other ironically. "Do they ever see the errors of their ways? If they do they don't show it. No; he will marry a rich wife, and make speeches at banquets, and paint portraits of celebrities, for the rest of his days. And in fifty years' time people will say, 'Lightmark, R.A.? Who the devil was he?'"
By this time the young moon had risen, and its cold light shimmered on the misty river. Rainham refilled his pipe, and opened the window still more widely.
"By Jove, what a night!" he said. "What a night for a painter! I am sure you are longing to be out in it. I'm afraid there's nothing to show you in the dock at present; you must come down again when there's a ship coming in at night. I feel quite reconciled to the dock on those occasions. Shall we go for a stroll in the moonlight--and seek impressions?"
Oswyn's restless humour welcomed the suggestion, and he was already waiting, his soft felt hat in one ungloved hand, and a heavy, quaintly carved stick in the other.
They stood for some minutes on the little, square, pulpit-like landing, at the top of the creaking wooden staircase, which led down the side of the building from office to yard, listening to the faint drip of the water through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child outside the walls, and the pacing step of the woman who hushed it; the distant intermittent roar of the song which reached them through the often opened doors of a public-house. Presently the night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the gates, his dim lantern sounding pools of mysterious darkness, which were untouched by the solitary gas-lamp in the street outside, and which the faint moonlight only seemed to intensify.
Oswyn drew in a long breath of the cool, caressing air, momentarily straightening his bent figure. Then he gave a short laugh, which startled Rainham from the familiar state of half-smiling reverie to which he was always so ready to recur.
"The last time I saw the river like this," he said--"the last time I was down here at night, that is--was when I went with a Malay model of mine to his favourite opium den."
"You have not repeated the experiment?" asked Rainham absently.
"No; not yet, at any rate. It made my hand shake so damnably for a week afterwards that I couldn't paint. Besides, I doubt if I could find the place again. I couldn't get the Malay to come away at all; he is probably there still."
"Beg your pardon, sir," said the night-watchman hoarsely, when they reached the bottom of the difficult staircase, "there's been a young woman here asking for a gentleman of the name of Crichton. I told her there weren't no one of that name here, and Mr. Bullen, sir, he saw her, and sent her away. I thought I had better mention it to you, sir."
"Crichton? Crichton?" repeated Rainham indifferently. "I don't know anyone of that name. Some mistake, I suppose, or---- Well, sailors will be sailors! Thank you, Andrewes, that will do. Good-night--or, rather, we shall be back in half an hour or so." He turned to Oswyn, who had been hanging back to avoid any appearance of interest in the conversation, for corroboration. "You will come back, of course?"
"Rather late, isn't it? I think I had better catch some train before midnight, if there is one."
"Oh, there are plenty of trains," said Rainham vaguely. "We can settle that matter later. I can give you a bed here, you know, or a berth, at any rate."
As they stepped through the narrow opening in the gate, a dark form sprang forward out of the shadow, and then stopped timidly.
"Oh, Cyril!" cried a woman's plaintive voice. "Cyril! I knew you were here, and they wouldn't let me---- Ah, my God! it isn't Cyril after all...!"
The voice--and it struck Rainham that it was not the voice of a woman of the sort one would expect to encounter in the streets at that hour--died away in a broken sob, and the girl fell back a step, almost dropping the child she carried in her arms.
Her evident despair appealed to Rainham's somewhat inconveniently assertive sensibility.
He hesitated for a moment, glancing from the girl to Oswyn, and noting that the face, too, had a certain beauty which was not of the order affected by the women of Blackpool.
"Don't go," he said to Oswyn, who had withdrawn a few paces. "I won't keep you a moment!"
The baby in the woman's arms set up a feeble wail, and it was borne in upon Rainham's mind that the unhappy creature with the white face and pleading dark eyes had been waiting long.
"Didn't my foreman tell you that the--that the gentleman you asked for is not here?" he inquired gently. "No one here has ever heard of Mr. Crichton. I'm afraid you have made a mistake.... Hadn't you better go home? I'm sure it would be best for your child."
"Home?" echoed the girl bitterly. Then, changing her tone, "But I saw him here with my own eyes!" she pleaded. "I saw him at the window there not a week ago quite plain, and then they told me he wasn't here! I'm sure he would see me if he only knew--if he only knew!"
"He may have been here," suggested Rainham doubtfully. "There are a great many people here from day to day, and we don't always know their names. But I assure you he isn't here now."
The girl--for in spite of her pale misery she did not look more--drew her dark shawl more closely round herself and the child with a little, despairing shudder, glancing over her shoulder. Rainham let his eyes rest on the frail figure pityingly, and a thought of the river behind her struck him with a sudden chill.
He put his hand, almost surreptitiously, into his pocket.
"Where do you live?" he asked. "Near here?" The girl mentioned a street which he sometimes passed through when economy of time induced him to make an otherwise undesirable short-cut to the railway station. "Well," he said presently, "I can't keep my friend here waiting, you know. Come and see me to-morrow morning about midday, and I will see if I can help you. Only you must promise me to go straight home now! And"--here he dropped a coin quickly into her hand--"buy something for your child; you both look as if you wanted it."
The girl looked at him dumbly for a moment.
"I will come, sir, and--and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening gesture, she turned away.
Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner.
"I'm sorry to have treated you to this--scene," he said apologetically, as he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow bridge. "I felt bound to do something for the girl, after she had been wasting all that time outside my gates. Did you notice what a pretty, refined face she had? I wonder who the man can be--Crichton, Cecil Crichton, wasn't it? ... I never heard the name before. It doesn't sound like a sailor's name."
"Cecil Crichton?" echoed the other. "No ... and yet it sounds familiar. Perhaps I am thinking of the Admirable, though he wasn't Cecil, as far as I remember. The old story, I suppose. Cecil Crichton--ah, Cyril Crichton?" he repeated. Then, dismissing the subject somewhat brutally, "Ah, well, it's no business of mine! Will you give me a light? Thanks!"
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{
"id": "16703"
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At three o'clock Lightmark dismissed his model--an Italian, with a wonderfully fine torso and admirable capabilities for picturesque pose, whom he had easily persuaded to abandon his ice-cream barrow to sit for him two or three times a week, acting the part of studio servant in the intervals.
"That will do, Cesare," he said, "_aspetto persone_; besides, you're shivering: I shall have you catching cold next, and I can't paint while you're sneezing. Yes, you're quite right, _è un freddo terribile_, considering that it's July. Off with you now, and come again at the same time on Friday. _Si conservi_--that's to say, don't get drunk in the interval; it makes you look such a brute that I can't paint you."
While the model transformed himself from a scantily-attired Roman gladiator into an Italian of the ordinary Saffron Hill description, Lightmark hastily washed his brushes, turned down his shirt sleeves, and donned the becoming velvet painting-jacket, which Mrs. Dollond had so much admired.
"I hope they won't notice Cesare's pipe," he said anxiously. "Even though he doesn't smoke here, it always seems to hang about. Perhaps I had better open the window and burn a pastille. And now, are we prepared to receive Philistia? Yes, I don't think the place looks bad, and--but perhaps Mrs. Sylvester mightn't like the gladiator. He certainly is deucedly anatomical at present. I'll go and leave him in Copal's studio, and then I can borrow his tea-things at the same time."
The studio was a lofty room on the ground-floor with an elaborately-devised skylight, and a large window facing north, through which a distant glimpse of Holland Park could be obtained. Lightmark had covered the floor with pale Indian matting, with a bit of strong colour, here and there, in the shape of a modern Turkish rug. For furniture, he had picked up some old chairs and a large straight-backed settee with grotesquely-carved legs, which, with the aid of a judicious arrangement of drapery, looked eminently attractive, and conveyed an impression of comfort which closer acquaintance did not altogether belie. Then there was the platform, covered with dark cloth, on which his models posed; the rickety table with many drawers, in which he kept brushes and colours; a lay figure, disguised as a Venetian flower-girl, which had collapsed tipsily into a corner; two or three easels; and a tall, stamped leather screen, which was useful for backgrounds. A few sketches, mostly unframed, stood in a row on the narrow shelf which ran along the pale-green distempered walls; and more were stacked in the corners--some in portfolios, and some with their dusty backs exposed to view. The palette which he had been using lay, like a great fantastic leaf, upon the table, amid a chaos of broken crayons, dingy stumps, photographs of sitters, pellets of bread, disreputable colour-tubes, and small bottles of linseed-oil, varnish, and turpentine. A sketch for Mrs. Sylvester's portrait, in crayons, was propped against the foot of an easel (Lightmark hoped that her son might buy it for his chambers); the canvas which he had prepared against the much-delayed sitting due from Miss Sylvester exposed its blank surface on another. A tall Japanese jar full of purple and yellow irises, a tribute to his expected guests, stood on the dusty black stove.
He had barely had time to arrange the borrowed tea-things, and to set a kettle on a little spirit-lamp behind the screen, when Mrs. Dollond and her husband were announced. He threw his black sombrero somewhat theatrically into a corner, and advanced with effusion to meet them. Mrs. Dollond had taken a decided interest in the young painter ever since the delightfully uncandid reflection of her by no means youthful beauty, which he had exhibited at the Grosvenor, had provoked so much comment among her friends.
She was a plump, little, fair-haired woman, with blue eyes, a very pink and white complexion, small hands, and a passion for dress with which people who had known her before her marriage, as a slim maiden devoted to sage-green draperies and square-toed shoes, declined to credit her, until they were told that she had, to put it plainly, grown fat--a development which compelled her to give up æstheticism and employ a _modiste_.
Her husband, who followed her into the room, carrying her impedimenta, wore the bored expression of the R.A. who is expected to admire the work of an outsider. He was the abject slave of his good-natured wife--she _was_ good-natured, in spite of her love of scandal--and his only fault from her point of view, and his greatest one in the eyes of people in general, lay in an unfortunate habit of thinking aloud, a dangerous characteristic, which persons who are apt to find themselves in the position of critic should at any cost eradicate. Luckily, his benevolence was such that these outspoken comments were never really virulent, and not often offensive.
Mrs. Dollond seated herself smilingly on the least rickety chair, disposed of her veil with one neatly-gloved hand, and prepared a tortoiseshell eyeglass for action with the other.
"What a charming portrait!" she said, pointing with her plump index-finger to the sketch of Mrs. Sylvester. "Do I know the lady, I wonder? Oh! I do believe it's that Mrs. Sylvester."
"Yes," said Lightmark. "If you remember, you introduced me to her at the Academy soirée last year. I expect her here this afternoon, with her daughter. I am going to paint Miss Sylvester's portrait."
"Ah," said Mrs. Dollond mischievously, "and that accounts for the pastille. You never made such preparations when _I_ sat to you. I suppose you thought that a painter's wife could not possibly object to tobacco."
"And she certainly doesn't, judging by her consumption of cigarettes!" interposed her husband.
"Hugh, I'm ashamed of you. You know I'm a martyr to asthma--and cigarettes aren't tobacco. But how old is Miss Sylvester? Is she pretty?"
"Don't ask me to describe her, Mrs. Dollond. Wait till you see her--she's coming, you know. What do you think of that river-scape, most reverend signor? It's one of the little things I've been doing down at Rainham's Dock--down at Blackpool."
The Academician tried to appear interested as he assumed the conventional bird-like pose of the picture-gazer, and surveyed the sketch.
"Very pretty--very pretty! I should hardly have thought it was the Thames, though. It isn't muddy enough. In fact, the whole scheme of colour is much too clean for London. Quite absurd! Not a bit like it! Eh, my dear, what was I saying? Oh yes, I like the effect of the sunlight on that brown sail immensely. It's really very clever, very clever."
Mrs. Dollond, who never knew what her husband would say next, welcomed the influx of a small throng of visitors with a sigh of relief.
The Sylvesters and Philip Rainham, arriving at the same time, found the little studio almost crowded. Besides the Dollonds there were two or three of the Turk Street fraternity; a young sculptor, newly arrived from Rome, with his wife; Dionysus F. Quain, an American interested in petroleum, who had patronized Lightmark also at Rome; and Copal, whose studio was in the same building, and who was manifestly anxious about his Chelsea teacups.
Mrs. Sylvester greeted her _protégé_ with a flattering degree of warmth which was entirely absent from the stare and conventional smile with which she honoured Mrs. Dollond, and the somewhat impertinent air of patronage which she wore when one or two of the young artists were introduced to her. If they did not mind, Mrs. Dollond was inclined to be resentful, for the moment, at least; and, as a preliminary attack, she maliciously encouraged Eve, who, ensconced in a corner, blissfully unconscious of the maternal anxiety which the other matron had detected, was eagerly turning over the contents of a portfolio which she had unearthed from its lurking-place behind her chair.
Rainham was looking over her shoulder, admiring the charming poise of the girl's head, and the contours of her wrists and hands, as she submitted the drawings to his inspection. Charles Sylvester stationed himself close by, and devoted himself to buttonholing the American senator, to the obvious discomfort of his victim, whose knowledge of Pennsylvanian oil-wells was infinitely greater than his acquaintance with the rudiments of summary jurisdiction, as practised in his native State, and who, after hazarding a remark to the effect that Judge Lynch had long since retired from the Bench, had, as he would have put it, "pretty considerably petered out."
"I hope my daughter isn't indiscreet?" Mrs. Sylvester had hazarded, after catching Lightmark's eye on its return journey from a glance in the direction of the little group in the corner; and the young man had reassured her hastily, before misgivings had time to assail him, and when they did, he hoped for the best. For a painter's portfolio is, after all, hardly less confidential than a diary, and may be on occasion almost as compromising, in spite of the fact that the records it contains are written in cipher.
The sunlight, mellowed to a dull straw colour by its passage through London air, slanted in at the window, falling first on Charles Sylvester's handsome face, with its eminently professional, severely cut features, and the careful limitation of whisker, which seemed so completely in harmony with his shaven upper lip and the unsympathetic scrutiny of his double eyeglass; then, losing some of its brightness among the little ripples of brown hair which a gracious Providence had forbidden her hat to conceal, fell like a halo upon the pale green wall behind Eve's head.
The young artists--the "boys," as they would have called themselves--were circulating busily with teacups and _petits fours_, and the chatter of voices bore testimony to the preponderance of the Bohemian element. It is only the dwellers on the confines who lose their voices in the Temple of Art--a goddess who, to judge by her votaries, is not wont to take pleasure in silence.
"Oh," said Eve, in reply to one of Rainham's remarks, "is that Bordighera? What lovely blue water! and what perfectly delicious little fishing-boats! I should like to go there. Charles is going to take us to Lucerne in a week or two, you know, when the Long Vacation begins. But I suppose we shall hardly get to Italy."
"Yes, that's Bordighera"--with a sigh--"my happy hunting-ground. And the water is much bluer really--only don't tell Dick I said so. Yes, you ought to go there. If you stayed late enough you would have me dropping in on you one fine day, as soon as the fogs begin here. Happy thought! Why shouldn't we all winter out there?"
"That would be nice," said Eve, rather doubtfully; "but, you know, there's Charles--he would have to come back for the Law Courts in the autumn, and he would be so lonely all by himself. And--and there's my portrait. Mr. Lightmark wants to get that ready for next year's Academy; and I can't sit to him very often, as it is, because of _chaperons_, you know."
Meanwhile Lightmark was telling Mrs. Dollond, in a confidential undertone, some story of a fair American sitter, who, on his expressing himself dissatisfied with his efforts worthily to transfer her complexion to canvas, had at once offered to send her maid round to his studio with an assortment of her favourite _poudre de rose_. Dollond listened with an amused smile to a recital of the sculptor's impressions of the Salon, which he had taken on his way from Rome. Copal was making desperate efforts to count his precious teacups, a task which their scattered positions rendered distressingly difficult. Charles Sylvester was somewhat listlessly cross-examining a P.R.A. in embryo as to the exact meaning of "breadth" in a painting; and Mr. Quain had been making his way as unostentatiously as the creakiness of his boots would permit towards the door. Eve had despatched one of "the boys" in search of a portfolio to replace the one which she had exhausted, and another had been entrusted with the safe bestowal of her empty teacup. The new portfolio, when it arrived, proved to be filled, not as the others, with landscapes and waterscapes, but with studies from life--Capri fisher girls, groups of market people, Venetian boatmen, and hasty sketches for portraits.
Eve paused rather longer than usual over one of these, the picture of a pretty fair-haired girl, dressed as Pierrette, the general lack of detail and absence of background only making the vigorously outlined face more distinct.
"What a pretty girl, Philip!" said the young critic presently; "and how curiously she's dressed! What is she intended to represent? Is it a fancy dress? ... Mr. Rainham, if you don't attend, I won't show you any more pictures."
"Tyrant," said Rainham absently, as he carried his eyes from the contemplative stare with which they had been regarding the vagaries of a butterfly on the skylight. "What have you found now? --Kitty, by Jove!"
He had no sooner uttered these last three words, in a very different tone to that of his previous idle remarks, than he cursed his indiscretion. It was a piece of _gaucherie_ which he would find it hard to forgive in himself, and Lightmark might well resent it.
"Kitty?" asked Eve, with some surprise, "who is Kitty? Mr. Lightmark, please tell us who this charming young lady, whom Mr. Rainham calls Kitty, is, since he won't."
"Kitty?" repeated Lightmark, with only a momentary hesitation, which the suddenness of the query might well account for; "I'm afraid I don't quite remember. There are so many Kitties, you know. All models are either Kitty or Polly. But if Rainham says it's Kitty, depend upon it he's right. He's got a wonderful memory for faces, especially pretty ones. --Yes," he added mischievously, "you ask Rainham."
Mrs. Sylvester looked uneasy, and, to her subsequent disgust, began to press "dear Mrs. Dollond" to come and see her.
Charles, who had looked up sharply at the first mention of the name, which had so disturbed the usually imperturbable Rainham, fixed his interrogative glasses first on the latter and then on Lightmark, and finally let them rest, with an expression of inquiring censure, on Rainham, whose confusion savoured to his mind so unmistakably of guilt that "Gentlemen of the jury" rose almost automatically to his lips. Nor did Rainham's attempt to smooth matters assist him.
"I must have seen the girl at the studio," he said, "when Lightmark was painting her. It's certainly a striking likeness, and that's what astonished me, you know. Almost like seeing a ghost. Ah, that little fellow used to sit for Lightmark in Rome--little sunburnt ruffian. We picked him up on the Ghetto, almost starving, and he got quite an artistic connection before we left. He was positively growing too fat; prosperity spoiled him as a model."
"Really?" said Eve listlessly. "I don't think I want to look at any more drawings; one can have too much of a good thing, and it must be time for us to go. We're dining out, and Charles doesn't like dressing in a hurry. Yes, mamma is buttoning her gloves. Good-bye, Mr. Rainham. Shall we see you again before we go to Switzerland? Ah, well, let's hope so. Au revoir, Mr. Lightmark. If you really think it's worth while for me to give you a solitary sitting next week----" "If you would be so good. You see, I should have some ideas to go on with. Don't I deserve some reward, too, for allowing Rainham to monopolize you all the afternoon? And if you don't give me a sitting now, I'm afraid you will forget all about it when you come back to town; whereas, if we make a beginning, you will have to see it through--you will be compromised."
"What a stupid expression!" thought Mrs. Sylvester as the carriage rolled along the Kensington highroad.
Charles was unusually silent during the drive. The subject which occupied his thoughts was not one which he would have dreamed of ventilating even with his mother, and Eve's presence seemed to render the faintest allusion to it impracticable.
He had no great affection or even regard for Philip Rainham, whom he contemplated with that undefined disdain which a younger man so often feels for one who is too old to be on his own level, and too young to inspire reverence. The half-pitying regard which Mrs. Sylvester bestowed on the man who had been to her husband as a very dear younger brother had never furthered Rainham's advancement in her son's favour; and the manner in which Eve had centred her childish affections in Philip, who had made her his especial favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that quarter. Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester's vague dislike had been so undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it as such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was, however unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for ground to support it; and yet from the first moment when the man's startled voice drew the questioning eyes upon his embarrassment, the judicial mind had been able to plume itself upon the penetration which had enabled it to detect something of doubtful odour about him from the first. "Kitty!" That word might explain so much--Rainham's long sojourns away from his business, for example.
Charles looked at Eve and frowned. Decidedly, thought the young moralist, the old intimacy must be discouraged. Nor did the fact that Rainham had been the source of his first brief, as well as of subsequent others, though it was not forgotten, suggest the advisability of a compromise; he even began to take a certain pride in the determination with which he was bringing himself to contemplate the sacrifice of so useful a friendship.
When they reached home there was barely time to dress for dinner, and Charles had no opportunity for a _tête-à-tête_ discussion of the situation with his mother that evening. And as he breakfasted early next day and dined at the club, he had ample time in which to determine that, for the present, he would avoid anything in the shape of a family conference, and would content himself with keeping his eye on the _mauvais sujet_.
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{
"id": "16703"
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As soon as Lightmark and Rainham were left alone in the twilight of the studio, the former flung himself into a chair with a sigh of relief, and devoted himself to rolling and lighting a cigarette. Rainham picked up his hat, consulted his watch, with a preoccupation of mind which prevented him from noticing what the time was, and, refusing the proffered tobacco-pouch and the suggested whisky-and-soda, seemed about to go. Then he stopped, with his back turned towards his host and a pretence of examining a sketch.
"I'm sorry I made such an ass of myself about that study--that girl, you know," he said presently. "The fact is, I saw her the other day, and the coincidence was rather startling."
Lightmark blew a light cloud of smoke from his lips before he spoke.
"Oh, it doesn't matter in the least, old man. You didn't implicate me, as it happened, though I'm afraid you got yourself into rather hot water. A poor devil of a painter must have models, and it's recognised, but men of business----! It's quite another thing. There's no possible connection between girls and dry docks." Then he added lightly, "Where are you going to dine to-night? Let's go to one of our Leicester Square haunts, or shall we get into a hansom and drive to Richmond? I've sold old Quain a picture, and I feel extravagantly inclined. What do you say? Under which _chef_? Speak, or let's toss up."
Rainham appeared to consider for a moment; then he sat down again.
"About that girl," he said; "I suppose you _do_ remember something about her? She must have been very pretty when you painted her, though she's nothing wonderful now, poor thing! I don't want to pump you, Dick, but she seems to have been pretty badly treated, and I want to see if I can't help her."
"Help her!" with a shrug. "For goodness' sake tell me: is it Don Quixote or Don Lothario that you are playing?"
"I should have thought you need hardly have asked," answered the other a little sadly. "I found the wretched creature waiting, with an equally wretched baby, both apparently not far from starvation, outside the dock the other night; and--well, I thought she might be waiting for you."
Lightmark threw the stump of his cigarette into a corner viciously, with a dangerous glance at the other.
"Why the devil should she have been waiting for me? Did she say she was waiting for me? How should a model know that I had been painting there? But I don't want to quarrel with you, and, after all you've done for me, I suppose you've a certain right to put yourself _in loco parentis_, and all that sort of thing. Tell me all you have found out about the girl--all she has told you, that is to say, and then I'll see what I can do."
This masterly suggestion seemed to Rainham both plausible and practical, and he proceeded to unfold the whole story of his first meeting with Kitty. When he reached the part of his narrative which brought out the girl's explanation that she was seeking to speak with a Mr. Crichton, Lightmark looked at him again covertly, with the same threatening light in his glance. Then, apparently reassured, he resigned himself again to listen, with a cigarette unlighted between his fingers.
"You say Oswyn heard the whole story?" he asked, when Rainham had finished. "Did the girl seem to know him? Or did _he_ seem to have heard of this Crichton before?"
"No," said Rainham reflectively; "the girl didn't know Oswyn, though, on the other hand, he seemed certain that he had seen her face somewhere--probably in that study of yours, by the way; and he appeared to think that I ought to have heard of Crichton--Cyril Crichton. He told me that the man wrote clever, scurrilous articles on art and the drama for the _Outcry_. But I don't read English papers much. You see, our difficulty is that Cyril Crichton is obviously a nom de plume, and no one--not even the people at the _Outcry_ office--know, or will say, who the man is; Kitty has tried. I suppose the editor knows all right, but he is discreet."
"Ah!" cried Lightmark. "Now I remember something about her. Have you got your hat? Let's get into a hansom and go and dine--I'm positively starving. I'll stand you a dinner at the Cavour--standing you a dinner will be such a new sensation; and new sensations are the only things worth living for. I will tell you about Kitty in the cab. What a beneficent old beggar you are!"
As they drove rapidly eastward along the High Street of Old Kensington, where the pale orange of the lamplight was just beginning to tell in the dusk, Lightmark explained how, some two years ago or more, he had been talking to a stranger in a railway carriage, and lamenting the difficulty of finding really pretty girls who would act as models; how the stranger had told him that he knew of such a one--a dressmaker's apprentice, or something of that sort, who found the work and hours too hard; and how, finally, Kitty had called at his studio--the old one in Bloomsbury--and had sat to him, perhaps half a dozen times, before vanishing from his knowledge. This account had been freely interspersed with exclamations on the beauty of the evening light in the Park, and the subtle charm of the hour after sunset, more exquisite in the clear atmosphere of Paris, but still sufficiently lovely even in London, and acknowledged by both of them to be one of the few compensations accorded to the dwellers in the much-abused Metropolis.
"I'm sorry," said Rainham penitently; "I had a stupid sort of idea that you were mixed up in the business somehow. I thought so even before I saw the sketch, because I couldn't understand whom else she could have been looking for at the dock. It's very mysterious."
"I shouldn't bother about the girl if I were you," replied the other light-heartedly. "Even if I had been mixed up with her, as you gracefully express it, _you_ wouldn't have anything to do with it. I believe you think I've been playing the devil with her now, you old moralist! Hear me swear, by yon pale---- Dash it! there isn't a moon--well, by the cresset on the top of the Empire, that the young person in question has been my model for a brief space, and nothing more. Only my model in the strictest sense of the word. No, I'll pay the cab for once in a way."
When they had dined, sitting at their favourite table, which, from its position at the end, commanded a view of the bright exotic room, with its cosmopolitan contents, their wants cared for by the head-waiter, who adored Lightmark for his knowledge of his mother-tongue, recognising and being recognised by the forgotten of their acquaintance, who were also dining there, Lightmark proposed an adjournment to the little theatre in Dean Street hard by, where "Niniche" was being played for the last time by a clever company from across the Channel.
"We must go to the theatre," he said, "unless you prefer a hall; I confess I'm sick of them. I haven't satisfied my ideas of extravagance nearly yet. We will go and sit in the stalls at the Royalty and see Jane May and the others; it will remind us of old days."
"But, my dear fellow," expostulated the other, "it's so late, and we're in morning dress. Let's go to-morrow night instead."
"Ah no! to-morrow I sha'n't be in the right mood. Never put off till to-morrow, you know. Our not being in evening dress won't matter a bit, they'll only think we're critics; and 'Niniche' doesn't begin till nine."
On their speedy arrival at the modest portals of the little theatre, Lightmark instructed his companion, with an air of mystery, to wait, and presently emerged, smiling, from a triumphant encounter with the gentleman presiding at the box-office.
"They had no stalls left," he whispered; "but they're going to put us in two chairs at the side."
The house, with the exception of the more popular places, was crowded; and the boisterous absurdity of the farce was at its height. Rainham at first felt quite disconcerted by the proximity of the ludicrous figure in bathing dress who was leaning over the footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to the audience which alone would have marked the nationality of the robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the extremely hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine (Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of the rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first was disconcerted, and then he began to feel bored. He fell into a semi-comatose state of contemplation, from which he was only aroused by the cadence on his ear of one of the most charming voices he had ever heard. So he characterized it, to Lightmark's amusement, when they were discussing their cigarettes and the _jeune première_ in the interval between the acts.
"Oh for an epithet to describe her!" said Lightmark, catching his friend's enthusiasm. "She isn't exactly pretty--yes, she _is_ pretty, but she isn't beautiful! She's got any amount of what dramatic critics call _chic_. Don't shudder--I hate the word quite as much as you do, but it was inevitable. The only thing I feel sure about is that she's _espiègle_, and altogether delightful. And how funny that man is, or would be, if the authors had only given him a better chance! The fun of the piece is like those trousers--it only comes down to his knees."
"What I admire most is her voice," said the other inconsequently. "How is it that French actresses have such beautiful voices? Freedom from fogs can't be the only cause. And it's got all that delicious plaintiveness----" "Yes," interposed Lightmark, "it's the voice of a true Parisian _femme de siècle, fin de siècle_. There's the bell, let's go and hear some more of it."
After the second act Lightmark, in whom the influence of the evening was beginning to manifest itself in the shape of a geniality which was absent in a great degree from his more serious hours, and which had undoubtedly won him more friends than the other slightly pugnacious phase of his temperament, decided that Niniche was really very like Miss Sylvester, only less beautiful, and asserted that he was confident that she was younger than the newspapers made out.
Later, before the two friends parted on the steps of the modest club, which included both in its list of town members, Lightmark assumed an air of mystery, sighed once or twice, and looked at his friend with an expression in which forgiveness, reproach, and the lateness of the hour were strangely commingled.
"Old boy," he said, bending his eyebrows with an effort towards gravity, "I'm really rather cut up about that business--you thinking I was playing the gay deceiver, and all that sort of thing, you know. It was unworthy of you, Philip--it was, really. Dash it! I've been in love for ever so long. All the summer, seriously; I'm going to get married--settle down, range myself. Cut all you rips of bachelors.... But perhaps she won't see it. Oh, Lord! ... Damn it all. Why don't you congratulate me, eh?"
Rainham was growing more and more serious, and it was with a real heartache and a curious apprehension of a moral blow that he answered, as gaily as he could: "You're going a little too fast, Dick. If you haven't asked the girl, it's rather too early for congratulations, however irresistible your attractions may be. Who--who is it, Dick?"
"Oh, come, you know well enough. Eve--I wonder if she'll let me call her Eve? Eve! Isn't it a pretty name?"
"I wish you hadn't told me this, Dick," said the other, with more of the familiar weariness in his voice. "Are you sure you mean it? I don't believe you've thought it out. Why, what do you suppose Mrs. Sylvester will say, and Charles Sylvester?"
"You think they won't have anything to do with a poor devil of an artist, I suppose? Right you are, sir; but when the poor devil has a rich and gouty uncle, who is disposed to be friendly.... See? I think that alters the complexion of the case. You know, the Sylvesters are awfully well connected, and so on, but they haven't got much money. Mrs. Sylvester has a life annuity, and Charles--whom I always want to call 'Chawles,' because he's so pompous--has got his professional income. And Eve has got a little, enough to dress her, I should think. 'Payable quarterly on her attaining the age of twenty-one years, or marrying under that age, whichever shall first happen.' I've looked it all up at Somerset House. Last will and testament of Sylvester Charles Sylvester, Esq. I know they're rather ambitious, and wouldn't look at me if it wasn't for the Colonel. But the Colonel is a solid fact, and I've no doubt they think he's richer than he is. And I am making money, though you mightn't think it."
"I don't believe Mrs. Sylvester has thought about it at all," said Rainham doubtfully. "Eve is so young, and young artists are never looked on as marrying men. Take my advice and think about it." " _You_ call her Eve, do you? Ah, well, I won't be jealous of you, old boy. You shall come to the wedding and be best man; or no, the Colonel will be best man, I suppose? I can imagine him returning thanks for the bridesmaids in the most dazzling white waistcoat that was ever starched. Good-night; see you again soon."
"I don't know how it is," thought Rainham, as he walked up Old Compton Street, on his way to the attic near the British Museum which he rented when he was in England, for use on occasions of this kind. "It's very stupid of me, but I can't bear the idea of Eve marrying. A species of jealousy, I suppose; not ordinary jealousy, of course. And yet why not? I have never thought of her as anything but a child ... why shouldn't Lightmark marry her? Eve's young, and good-looking, and sure to get on; and I'm a selfish old wreck. Yes, he shall marry her, and I will buy his pictures." Still, he shook his head even as he formulated this generous solution of the question, and could not induce himself to regard the position with equanimity, though he sat up till broad daylight wrestling with it. "I wonder if I am in love," he said, with a bitter laugh, as he shook the ashes out of his last pipe.
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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9
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None
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The upper end of the Park is never so fashionably frequented as its southern regions, and Rainham, whose want of purpose had led him past gay carpet-beds and under branching trees nearly to the Marble Arch, was hardly surprised to recognise among the heterogeneous array of promenaders, tramps, and nursemaids, whom the heat of the slanting sun had prompted to occupy the benches dotted at intervals along the Row, a face whose weary pallor caused him a pang of self-reproach--Kitty!
For the last few days, since his encounter with her portrait at Lightmark's studio, he had scarcely given her troubles a thought. When the girl saw him, after a startled look and movement, she seemed to shrink still further into the folds of her rusty black cloak, and, to avoid meeting Rainham's eyes, bent her head over the child who was seated at her side. He found something irresistibly charming and pathetically generous in the girl's spontaneous denial of any claim to his notice, although, except that he had promised to let her know anything he might learn of the whereabouts of the father of her child, he would have found it hard to establish in the mind of an outside critic that any such claim in fact existed.
"Well, my poor child," he said softly, as he dropped into one of the vacant seats on the same bench, "how goes it with you and the little one?"
"Oh, sir, you shouldn't speak to me--not here. Anyone might see you. Pray go. I know I shall get you into trouble, and you so kind!"
These words were spoken in a rapid, frightened whisper, and with an apprehensive glance at the intermittent stream of carriages passing within a few yards of them. Rainham shrugged his shoulders pitifully, but found it rather difficult to say anything. Certainly, his reputation was running a risk, and he felt that his indifference was somewhat exceptional.
"I'm sorry to say I've got no news for you," he said presently, after a silent pause, during which he had observed that the wide-eyed child was really far prettier than many who (as he had been assured by the complacent matrons who exhibited them) were "little cherubs," and that it was as scrupulously cared for as the little cherubs, even in their exhibition array. "I haven't been able to discover anything; but you mustn't despair, we shall find him sooner or later."
The girl glanced at him irresolutely, and then dropped her eyes again, leaning over the child.
"It's no good, sir," she said. "I'm only sorry to have given you so much trouble already. He won't come back--he's tired of me. He could find me if he wanted to, and watching and hunting for him like this would only set him more and more against me."
Rainham, as he listened to her, rather puzzled by her sudden change of attitude since their last interview, was forced to admit mentally that her reasoning, if it lacked spontaneity, was, at all events, indisputably sound; and while he found himself doubting whether the victim was not better versed in worldliness than he had at first suspected, he still felt a curious reluctance which, though he was half ashamed of his delicacy, prevented him from suggesting that, sentimental reasons apart, the betrayer still ought to be discovered, if only in order to force him to provide for the maintenance of his child. It hardly, perhaps, occurred to him that he, after all, would be the person who would suffer most, and he certainly did not for an instant credit the girl with any ulterior designs upon his purse.
"Oh, I don't know," he said feebly. "Perhaps he does not know where you are. And I dare say, if he saw the child----" "The child?" echoed the woman bitterly. "That's just the worst of it!"
Rainham sighed, forced again to acknowledge his lower standing in the wisdom of the world. He would have given a great deal to be able to get up and go.
"Then you don't want me to employ a detective, or to advertise, or--or to make an appeal to the editor of the _Outcry_?"
Mrs. Crichton seemed to welcome the opportunity afforded by this direct questioning.
"No," she said, "I think it would be better not. I don't want to seem ungrateful, sir--and I'm sure I thank you very, very much for all you have done for me--but I think you had better take no more trouble about it. If I can get work I shall do all right."
In spite of the girl's evident attempt to pull herself together, her voice was less brave than her words, and they conveyed but little assurance to the listener. He shrugged his shoulders somewhat impatiently: the interview was beginning to tell upon his nerves.
"Of course, it's for you to decide, and I suppose you have thought it well out, and have good reason for this alteration of purpose. But when you talk about work----?"
He finished his sentence with a note of inquiry and a half apologetic glance at her slight form and frail, white fingers.
"I haven't always been a model," she explained with some dignity. "Would to God I never had! I can sew better than most, and I can work a type-machine. That's what I used to do before he came. But type-writing work isn't so easy to get as it was, and I am out of practice."
It occurred to him for a moment to ask the girl whether she could remember sitting for Mr. Lightmark, but he felt that Dick might resent the introduction of his name; and, remembering that she had told him that, for a time, before her health gave way, her artist patrons had been numerous, he dismissed the idea as not likely to be profitable.
As they spoke, she with her mournful eyes turned on Rainham's sympathetic face, he absently following the movements of the child as it laboriously raised a small edifice of gravel-stones on the seat between them, neither of them noticed the severely correct figure in the frock-coat and immaculate hat who passed close behind with observant eyeglass fixed upon the little group, and with an air which, after the first flush of open-mouthed surprise, was eloquently expressive of regretful indignation and the highest motives.
Charles Sylvester continued his walk for a distance of about fifty paces, and then seated himself in a position to command a view of the persons in whom he was interested.
"I don't like watching Rainham like this," he said to himself; "but it's a duty which I owe to society."
That the man was Rainham was as obvious as that the woman he was talking to was of a far lower rank in life than his own. And then there was the child!
"By Jove!" said Sylvester sententiously, "it's worse than I thought. People really ought to be warned. I suppose it's that girl he was talking about at the studio the other day; and he tried to shift her on to Lightmark. What a hypocrite the man must be!"
He was not, however, for long called upon to maintain, in the interests of society, his position of espionage; for Rainham, warned of the lapse of time by the clock which adorns the Park lodge, presently became aware that, if he was to fulfil his intention of calling on Mrs. Sylvester, he had no time to spare; and when he rose from his seat Charles Sylvester thought it advisable to resume the walk which his zeal had induced him to interrupt.
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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10
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None
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After all, he need not have hurried. Mrs. Sylvester was out, he was told by the butler, who proceeded to suggest, with the freedom of an old friend, that he should make his way upstairs and find Miss Eve.
"Yes, I think I will, Phelps," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "if she is disengaged."
"Miss Eve is in the music-room playing, I think, sir. Will you go up?"
They found the room empty, however, though an open violin-case on the table and a music-stand, on which leaflets of Schubert fluttered fitfully in the light breeze that entered through the open window, testified to its recent occupation.
While the butler left Rainham, with apologies, to make further search, the latter stood, hat in hand, making a survey of the little wainscoted room, which he remembered as the schoolroom. Indeed, though the name, in deference doubtless to Eve's mature age, had been altered, it still retained much of its former aspect. From the little feminine trifles lying about, scraps of unfinished crewel-work and embroidery, and the fresh flowers in the vases, he gathered that it was still an apartment which Eve frequented. He recognised her cage of love-birds hanging in the window; the cottage piano with its frontal of faded silk, on which he could remember her first painful struggles with Czerny and scales; the pictures on the walls, many of them coloured reproductions from the Christmas numbers of the illustrated papers; the ink-stained tablecloth on the round table in the centre. He examined the photographs on the mantelpiece with a smile--Charles in his wig and gown, and Mrs. Sylvester with her pretty, faded face, gazed at each other, with a curious likeness in their disparity, from a double frame in the centre; the spectacled profile of the eminently respectable woman who had superintended Miss Eve's studies held another place of honour; and, opposite, Rainham recognised a faded photograph of himself, taken six years before in Rome. He turned from these to the bookshelves, which seemed to be filled with relegations from the rest of the house--children's story-books in tarnished bright covers and dilapidated school-books. He took down one of these latter and examined it absently, with a half-sigh. He had it still in his hand when the young girl fluttered in, looking very cool and fresh in her plain, white dress with a broad sash of apple-green ribbon.
"I thought you were never coming to see us again, Philip," she said reproachfully, as she held out her little hand to him. "What possessed them to bring you here? It's awfully untidy."
"Phelps had an idea you were making music," he explained; "and, for the untidiness, I suppose he remembered that I was used to it of old."
"Yes, it's just the same. It is an untidiness of years, and it is hopeless to cope with it. What _have_ you got there?"
He turned the book round to acquaint himself.
"Ollendorf's 'Elementary German Grammar,'" he said with a smile; "it's an interesting work."
She made a little _moue_ expressive of disapproval.
"Ah, how nice it is to have done with all that, Philip! You can't believe how glad I am to be 'finished'; yes, I am finished now. I don't even have masters, and Miss Murison has gone away to Brighton and opened a school for young gentlemen. Poor little wretches! how sorry I am for them! Do you remember Miss Murison, Philip?"
She had sunk down into an arm-chair, and Rainham stood, his stooping shoulders propped against the mantelpiece, smiling down at her.
"Yes, I remember Miss Murison; and so you are glad her reign has come to an end, Eve? Well, I suppose it is natural."
She nodded her pretty head.
"Just a little, Philip. But how tired you look! Will you have some tea? I suppose you have just come from Blackpool?"
His face darkened suddenly, and the smile for a moment died away.
"No," he said shortly, "I have been in the Park."
"Well," she remarked after a moment, "you must have some tea, anyhow. Of course you will wait and see mamma; she has gone to the Dollonds' 'at home,' you know. I an all alone. If you like, we will have it in here, as we did in the old days--a regular schoolroom tea."
"It will be charming," said Rainham, seating himself; "it will only want the Murison to complete the illusion."
"Oh, it will do just as well without her," said Eve, laughing; "ring the bell, please."
Rainham sat back watching her with far-away eyes, as she moved lightly about, giving her orders with a childish imperiousness, and setting out the little tea-table between them.
"It is delightful," he said again, when they were once more alone and he had accepted a well-creamed cup and a waferlike _tartine_; "and I feel as if I had turned back several years. But how is it, by-the-bye, that you have not gone to the Dollonds'?"
She laughed up at him merrily.
"Because I have had much more important things to do. I have been with my dressmaker. I am going to a dance to-night, and I have had a great deal of bother over my new frock. But it is all right now, and I shall wear it to-night; and it is perfectly sweet. Oh, you have never seen me at a party yet, Philip."
"Never? My dear child, I have danced with you at scores."
"Oh yes, at children's parties; but never since I have grown up--'come out,' I mean. Oh, Philip, is there anything in life so delightful as one's first ball? I wish you would come out with us sometimes. I should like to dance with you again now."
"Ah," he said, "my dancing days are over. I am a wallflower, Eve, now; and my only use at balls is to fetch and carry for the chaperons."
"Philip!" she cried reproachfully, "what a dreadful thing to say! Besides, you used to dance so splendidly."
"Did I?" he asked; "I expect you would be less lenient now. Yes, I will have another cup, please."
She filled it, and he took it from her in silence, wondering how he could least obtrusively gain the knowledge of her mind he sought. He had said to himself that if he could find her alone, it would be so easy; just a word, an accent, would tell him how far she really cared. But now that she was actually with him, it had become strangely difficult. Very sadly he reflected that she had grown out of his knowledge; away from her, she rested in his memory as a child whom he could help. The actual presence of this young girl with the deep eyes, in the first flush of her womanhood, corrected him; an intolerable weight sealed his tongue, forbidding him to utter Lightmark's name, greatly as he desired. He racked himself for delicate circumlocutions, and it was only at last, by a gigantic effort, when he realized that the afternoon waned, while he wasted an unique occasion in humorous commonplace, that he broke almost brutally into Eve's disquisitions on her various festivities to ask, blushing like a girl, if Lightmark's picture progressed.
"I have had only a few sittings," she admitted, "and I expect they will be the last here. Perhaps they will be continued abroad. You know Mr. Lightmark is going to meet us in Switzerland, perhaps."
"You will like that?" suggested Rainham gravely.
She looked into her cup, beating a tattoo on the carpet with her little foot nervously.
"Yes," she said, after a minute, "I think so."
There was nothing in her words, her tone, to colour this bare statement of a simple fact. Only a second later, as if in a sudden need of confidence, a resumption of her old childish habit towards him, she raised her eyes to his, and in their clear, gray depths, before they drooped again beneath the long lashes, he read her secret. No words could have told him more plainly that she loved Lightmark--that Dick had merely to speak. Their silence only lasted a moment; but it seemed to Rainham, who had not shifted his position or moved a muscle, that it stretched over an interminable space of time. It was curiously intangible, and yet even then he realized that it would remain with its least accessories in his mind one of those trivial, indelible photographs which last a lifetime. The smell of mignonette that spread in from the window-box through the turquoise-blue Venetian blinds; the chattering of the love-birds; the strains of a waltz of Waldteufel's floating up from a German band in the street below--they ran into a single sensation that was like the stab of cold steel. He sat staring blankly at the tattered bookshelves, playing mechanically with his teaspoon; and presently he became aware that the young girl was talking, was telling him the route they should take next week, and the name of the hotel they were going to at Basel.
"Yes," he hazarded, and "Yes," and "Yes," his smiling lips belying the lassitude of his eyes. Actually, he looked out and beyond her, at another Eve, to whom he now paid his adieux. It was the dainty little figure of her childish self which he saw, with its bright, long hair, and its confiding eyes, and its caressing little ways, in the deepening shadows between the bookshelves--and for the last time. It vanished like a shadow, smiling mockingly, and he knew it would never return. In its place abode henceforth the image of this stately maiden, comely and desirable, with the profound eyes which lighted up--for Dick. An unaccountable sense of failure stole over Rainham--unaccountable because he could lay his finger upon no tangible cause of his discomfiture.
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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11
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The little town was brilliant with September sunshine; the blue smoke spired almost unbroken into the bluer vault above, and the cream-coloured façades of the houses, with their faded blue shutters and verandas, the gay striped awnings of the little fleet of rowing boats, the gray of the stone parapet, and the dull green of the mountainous opposite shore, were mirrored steeply in the bight of narrowing, sunlit lake. The wide, dusty esplanade was almost empty, except at the corners, where voluble market women gossiped over their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, little mountain-born strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then bustled back, shearing the silken flood and strangely distorting its reflections.
"The worst of Lucerne," said Mrs. Sylvester--"the worst of Lucerne is that one can't escape from Mount Pilatus and the Lion. The inhabitants all think that Pilatus regulates the weather, and they would certainly give their Lion the preference over the Venus of Milo."
They were all sitting on the terrace in front of the Schweitzerhof; Lady Garnett and Mary, Mrs. Sylvester and Eve. Lady Garnett and her companion were but newly arrived, and, as birds of passage, preferred the hotel to a _pension_. The Sylvesters had been staying in the quaint, rambling town for nearly a fortnight. It was their usual summer resort, and although the spring of each year found them deciding to go elsewhere for a change, in the end they nearly always proved faithful to the familiar lake. Their _pension_--they regarded it almost as a country house--was such an inducement! The Pension Bungay was maintained by an old servant of the family, who, when he began to find the duties of butler too exacting for his declining years, gave a warning, which applied also to one of his fellow-servants, the cook, to wit, a lady of Continental origin, who had consented to become Madame Bungay; and the pair, having souls above public-houses, and relying on their not inconsiderable connection among the servants of Mayfair, had boldly and successfully launched into an independent career as sole proprietors and managers of the Pension Bungay, Lucerne.
"Yes," said Lady Garnett sympathetically; "I suppose Pilatus _is_ rather monotonous. It's rather too near, I think. It ought to be far away, and covered with snow, more like the Jungfrau, which we have been worshipping at Interlaken, where, by the way, there are positively more Americans than natives."
"Oh," Mrs. Sylvester chimed in, "isn't it dreadful the way they overrun Europe nowadays! There are two American families staying at our _pension_, and you see them everywhere."
"I think I rather like them. They amuse me, you know, and somehow, though it may be disloyal for me, as a naturalized Englishwoman, to say so, as a rule they comport themselves much better than the ordinary British tourist. Of course, the country is not so accessible for the Americans; it's out of the reach of their cheap excursionists. But how opportune that curious tower is, and the bridge! of course, it's correct to admire them?"
Mary Masters and Eve, who had been quietly discussing _chiffons_, got up from their chairs with a preconcerted air.
"We are so tired of sitting still," said the former, balancing herself with an air of indecision, and giving Mrs. Sylvester time to note the admirable taste of her simple, maize-coloured travelling dress, which did not suffer from contrast with the younger girl's brighter and more elaborately charming toilette. "Miss Sylvester wants to show me the uncatchable trout in the lake, and I want to go and see if the salon is empty, so that I can try the piano; and we can't decide which to do. I suppose, Mrs. Sylvester, that the hotel is more within the bounds of propriety?"
"Oh, well," said Eve, laughing, "I don't care; anyhow, let's go and find the piano. Only, there is sure to be some one there already."
"By the way," said Lady Garnett, when the girls had vanished into the building, "of course you know that Philip Rainham's friend--the young man who paints and has a moustache, I mean--is here, or will be very shortly? He was staying at our hotel at Berne."
"Mr. Lightmark, I suppose?" answered the other, without showing her surprise except in her eyes. "We told him that we were coming to Lucerne, and it was more or less arranged."
"Ah, yes," interposed Lady Garnett; "am I indiscreet in suggesting an exceptional attraction?"
Mrs. Sylvester merely looked mysterious, and Lady Garnett was encouraged to continue.
"Your daughter is very beautiful. This Mr. Lightmark has been painting her portrait, _n'est ce pas_? I should think it ought to be a success. Am I to congratulate him?"
"Oh," said Mrs. Sylvester hurriedly, "dear Lady Garnett, it hasn't gone so far as that."
"The portrait?" murmured the other innocently. "Ah, I'm afraid you misunderstood me."
Mrs. Sylvester cast a meaning glance in the direction of Eve, who, sauntering along the terrace with Mary, was now behind their seat, and the conversation, which promised to become interesting, dropped, while Mary explained that they had found the music-stool occupied by a lady, who was superfluously protesting her inability to sing "the old songs"--the person who always _did_ monopolize hotel pianos, as Mary laughingly asserted.
Two days later Lightmark presented himself at the Pension Bungay. He had come to Lucerne with the fixed purpose of definitely proposing marriage to Eve. He was far too worldly-wise to fail to perceive that, so far at least, Mrs. Sylvester had certainly taken no trouble to discourage his pretensions. His attentions, he argued, had been by no means obscure; his studio had been singularly honoured by the presence of Miss Sylvester and her mother, for the purposes of the portrait; he had even been granted a sitting at the house in Park Street, when a less rigid supervision had been exercised, and when, in the absence of the mother, he had been able to assure himself that the girl was far from despising his adoration. Before leaving town he had dined with his uncle, the Colonel, at his club, and the veteran had spontaneously and strenuously urged the step, and even thrown out promising hints as to settlements. He broke in upon the little circle at the hour of afternoon tea, and Eve found his gray travelling suit, and the bronze of his complexion, exceedingly becoming. He announced that he had come to stay for a week or two; he was going to make some sketches, and he couldn't tear himself away from that delightful bridge, and his lodgings!
"My dear fellow," he said to Charles Sylvester, with an air of familiarity which gave one an insight as to the advance the artist had made in his relations with the family, "you must come and see my diggings. The most delightful old hostelry in Europe. Built straight up out of the lake, like the castle of Chillon. It's called the _Gasthof zum Pfistern_. I could fish out of my bedroom window. I assure you, it's charming. You must come and dine with me there. I hope you ladies will so far honour me?"
This project, however, fell through, and by way of compensation Lightmark and Charles enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the party, including Lady Garnett and Miss Masters, at Borghoni's; after which the younger people chartered a boat, and floated idly about the star-reflecting lake, while the dowagers maintained a discreet surveillance from their seat on the esplanade.
Of this last incident it may be said that Lightmark and Eve found it altogether delightful, the latter especially being struck by the romance of the situation; while Charles was inclined to be ponderously sentimental, and Miss Masters afterwards confessed to having felt bored.
In the course of the next day Lightmark had the privilege of a confidential interview with the mother of his adored. Mrs. Sylvester had fully armed herself for the occasion, and presented an edifying example of matronly affection and prudence.
"Of course, I was not altogether unprepared for this, Mr. Lightmark. In fact, I may as well own that I have talked it over with my son, and we agreed that the whole question resolved itself into--ah--into settlements. You must not think me mercenary." This was said with a dignified calm, which made the idea preposterous. "If you can"--here she seemed to refer to some mental note-book--"ah--satisfy Charles on that point, I am sure that it will give me great pleasure to regard you as a prospective son-in-law. Of course, you know, I can't answer for Eve, or Charles."
"Ah, my dear lady," said the other, gracefully overwhelmed, "if I may count on your good offices I am very fortunate."
That evening, as the two men sat discussing their cigars and coffee, Lightmark listened with wonderful patience to a disquisition on the subject of--he couldn't afterwards remember whether it was Strikes or the Sugar Bounty. He was rather afraid of the necessary interview with Charles. It would require some tact, and he was prepared to find him unpleasantly exacting as arbiter of his pecuniary status.
"You ought to be in the House, by Jove! that's your line, Sylvester, with a clever wife, you know, to do the canvassing for you" ("and write your speeches," he mentally added).
The other owned that he had thought of it.
"But the wife," he added, with an attempt at levity, "that's the difficulty!"
And the connection of a subsequent remark with this topic, though some conversation intervened, did not escape his astute companion, and he was careful to sing Miss Masters' praises with an absence of allusiveness, which showed the actor. Then he threw away the stump of his cigar, and mentally braced himself.
"You have seen a good deal of me lately," he said. "I want to ask you if you have any objection to me as a possible brother-in-law; in fact, I want to marry your sister."
"Yes?" said the other encouragingly.
"I have, as you may know, spoken to Mrs. Sylvester about it, and I believe she will--that is to say, I think she has no personal objection to me."
"Oh, of course, my dear fellow, my mother and I are flattered, quite flattered; but you will understand our anxiety that we should run no risk of sacrificing any of the advantages she has enjoyed hitherto. May I ask, er----" "What is my income from all sources?" suggested Lightmark rather flippantly. "Well, I have to confess that my profession, in which I am said to be rising, brings me in about four hundred and fifty a year, in addition to which I have a private income, which amounts to, say, three hundred; total, seven hundred and fifty." Then, seeing that Charles looked grave, he played his trump card: "And I ought to add that my uncle, the Colonel, you know, has been good enough to talk about making me an allowance, on my marrying with his approval. In fact he is, I believe, prepared to make a settlement on my marriage with your sister."
Charles Sylvester pronounced himself provisionally satisfied, and it was arranged that he should communicate with Colonel Lightmark, and that meanwhile the engagement should not be made public.
Eve was standing on the little balcony, appertaining to the sitting-room which had been dedicated to the ladies as a special mark of favour by the proprietor of the _pension_, and Lightmark hastened to join her there; and while Charles and his mother played a long game of chess, the two looked out at the line of moonlit Alps, and were sentimentally and absurdly happy.
"Mrs. Sylvester," said Lightmark, when that lady thought it advisable to warn her daughter that there was a cold wind blowing off the lake, "we have arranged that a certain portrait shall figure in the Academy catalogue next spring as 'Portrait of the Artist's Wife.'"
After which Mrs. Sylvester began to call him Richard, and Charles became oppressively genial: a development which led the embarrassed recipient of these honours to console himself by reflecting that, after all, he was not going to marry the entire family. " _Ma cherie_," said Lady Garnett, as the Paris train steamed out of Lucerne on the afternoon of the next day but one, "do you know that I feel a sensation of positive relief at getting away from those people? Eve is very _gentille_, but lovers are _so_ uninteresting, when they are properly engaged; and the excellent Charles! My child, I am afraid you have been very cruel."
"Cruel, aunt?" said Mary, with a demure look of astonishment. "I like Eve very much, and I suppose Mr. Lightmark must be nice, because he's such a friend of Philip's. But I don't quite like the way he talks about Philip, and ... he's very clever."
"Yes," said the old lady drowsily; "he's cleverer than Philip."
"He may be cleverer, but----" Mary began with some warmth, and paused.
Her companion opened her eyes widely, and darted a keen glance at the girl. Then, settling herself into her corner: "My dear child, to whom do you say it?"
It was eminently characteristic of Lady Garnett that, even when she was sleepy, she understood what people were going to say long before the words were spoken, and, especially with her familiars, she had a habit of taking her anticipations as realized.
Mary found something embarrassing in the humour of the old lady's expression, and devoted herself to gazing out of the window at the mountain-bound landscape, in which houses, trees, and cattle all seemed to be in miniature, until the sound of regular breathing assured her that the inquisitive eyes were closed.
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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12
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During the long, hot August, which variously dispersed the rest of their acquaintances, the intimacy of that ill-assorted couple, the bird of passage Rainham, and Oswyn the artist, was able to ripen. They met occasionally at Brodonowski's, of which dingy restaurant they had now almost a monopoly; for its artistic session had been prorogued, and the "boys" were scattered, departing one by one, as their purses and inclinations prompted, to resume acquaintance with their favourite "bits" in Cornwall, or among the orchards and moors of Brittany, to study mountains in sad Merioneth, or to paint ocean rollers and Irish peasants in ultimate Galway. On the occasion of their second meeting, Rainham having (a trifle diffidently, for the painter was not a questionable man) evinced a curiosity as to his summer movements, Oswyn had scornfully repudiated such a notion.
"Thank God!" he cried, "I have outworn that mania of searching for prettiness. London is big enough for me. My work is here, and the studies I want are here, and here I stay till the end of all things. I hate the tame country faces, the aggressive stillness and the silent noise, the sentiment and the sheep of it. Give me the streets and the yellow gas, the roar of the City, smoke, haggard faces, flaming omnibuses, parched London, and the river rolling oilily by the embankment like Styx at night when the lamps shine."
He drew in a breath thirstily, as though the picture were growing on canvas before him.
"Well, if you want river subjects you must come and find them at Blackpool," said Rainham; and Oswyn had replied abruptly that he would.
And he kept his word, not once but many times, dropping down on Rainham suddenly, unexplainedly, after his fashion, as it were from the clouds, in the late afternoon, when the clerks had left. He would chat there for an hour or two in his spasmodic, half-sullen way, in which, however, an increasing cordiality mingled, making, before he retired once more into space, some colour notes of the yard or the river, or at times a rough sketch, which was never without its terse originality.
Rainham began to look forward to these visits with a recurring pleasure. Oswyn's beautiful genius and Oswyn's savage humours fascinated him, and no less his pleasing, personal ambiguity. He seemed to be a person without antecedents, as he was certainly without present ties. Except that he painted, and so must have a place to paint in, he might have lodged precariously in a doss-house, or on door-steps, or under the Adelphi arches with those outcasts of civilization to whom, in personal appearance, one might not deny he bore a certain resemblance. To no one did he reveal his abiding-place, and it was the merest tradition of little authority that a man from Brodonowski's had once been taken to his studio. By no means a perspicuous man, and to be approached perhaps charily; yet Rainham, as his acquaintance progressed, found himself from time to time brought up with a certain surprise, as he discovered, under all his savage cynicism, his overweening devotion to a depressing theory, a very real vein of refinement, of delicate mundane sensibility, revealed perhaps in a chance phrase or diffidence, or more often in some curiously fine touch to canvas of his rare, audacious brush. The incongruities of the man, his malice, his coarseness, his reckless generosity, gave Rainham much food for thought. And, indeed, that parched empty August seemed full of problematical issues; and he had, on matters of more import than the enigmatic mind of a new friend, to be content at last to be tossed to and fro on the winds of vain conjecture.
Lightmark and the Sylvesters occupied him much; but beyond a brief note from Mrs. Sylvester in Lucerne, which told him nothing that he would know, there came to him no news from Switzerland. In the matter of the girl whom he had befriended, recklessly, he told himself at times, difficulties multiplied. A sort of dumb devil seemed to have entered into her, and, with the best will in the world, it was a merely pecuniary assistance which he could give her, half angry with himself the while that his indolent good nature (it appeared to him little else) forbade him to cast back at her what seemed a curious ingratitude almost passing the proverbial feminine perversity, and let her go her own way as she would have it. On two occasions, since that chance meeting in the Park, he had called at the lodging in which he had helped her to install herself; and from the last he had come away with a distinct sense of failure. Something had come between them, an alien influence was in the air, and the mystery which surrounded the girl, he saw with disappointment, she would not of her own accord assist to dissipate. And yet there was nothing offensive in her attitude, only it had changed, lacked frankness.
One afternoon, finding that he could leave the dock early, he made another effort. He stopped before one in a dingy row of small houses, uniformly depressing, in a street that ran into the Commercial Road, and rang the bell, which tinkled aggressively. A slatternly woman, with a bandage round her head and an air of drunken servility, responded to his inquiry for "Mrs. Crichton" by ushering him into a small back parlour, in which a pale girl in black sat with her head bent over a typewriter. She rose, as he came in, a little nervously, and stood, her thin hands clasped in front of her, looking up at him with expectant, terrified eyes.
"I am sorry to alarm you," he said stiffly. "I came to see if I could do anything for you, and to tell you once more that I can do nothing for you unless you are open with me, unless you help me."
The woman looked away to where the child sat, in a corner of the small room, playing with some disused cotton reels.
"You are very kind, sir," she said in a low, uneasy voice; "but I want nothing, we want very little, the child and I; and with what your kindness in getting me the machine helps us to, we have enough."
"You don't want to be reinstated, to get back your lover, to have your child acknowledged?"
The girl flushed; her hands, which were still locked together, trembled a little.
"I don't want for nothing, sir, except to be left alone."
Then she added, looking him straight in the face now, with a certain rude dignity: "I wouldn't seem ungrateful, sir, for your great kindness. I think you are the best man I ever met. Oh, believe me, I am not ungrateful, sir! But it is no good, not a scrap, though once I thought it. We must get along as we can now, the child and I--shame and all."
She sighed, gazed intently for a silent minute at the keys of the elaborate machine before her, and then continued, speaking very slowly, as if she were afraid of drawing too largely on her newly-found candour.
"Why should I keep it from you? It makes me feel a liar every time I see you. I will be quite plain with you, sir; perhaps the truth's best, though it's hard enough. I've seen him; that's why I couldn't tell you any more. And it's all over and done, and God help us! We must make the best of it. You see, sir, he is married," said the girl, with a sharp intonation in her voice like a sob.
Rainham had sunk into a chair wearily; he looked up at her now, drawing a long breath, which, for some reason he could not analyse, was replete with relief.
"Married?" he ejaculated; "are you sure?"
"Sure enough," said Kitty Crichton. "He told me so."
"Do you care for this fellow?" he asked curiously after a while.
The flush on her face had faded into two hectic spots on either cheek; there was a lack of all animation in her voice, whether of hope or indignation; she had the air of a person who gave up, who was terribly tired of things.
"Care?" she echoed. "I don't rightly know, sir; I think it's all dead together--love and anger, and my good looks and all. I care for the child, and I don't want to harry or hunt him down for the sake of what has been,--that's all."
He regarded her with the same disinterested pity which had seized him when he saw her first. There were only ruins of a beauty that must have once been striking. As he watched her a doubt assailed him, whether, after all, he had not been deceived by a bare resemblance; whether, in effect, she had ever been actually identical with that brilliant Pierrette whose likeness had so amazed him in Lightmark's rooms.
"By the way," he asked suddenly, "you told me you have been a model: did--was this man a painter? Has he ever painted you?"
The girl fell back a step or two irresolutely.
"Ah! why do you trouble so? What does it matter?" Then she added faintly, but hurriedly stumbling over her words: "He wasn't a painter--only for amusement; he didn't exhibit. He was a newspaper writer. But he couldn't get work, and got a place in a foreign-going steamer, to keep accounts, I think. That was afterwards, and that's why I looked for him at your dock. They told me the ship had been there, but it wasn't true. Ah! let me be, sir, let me be!"
She broke off hastily, clasping her hands across her breast.
The story, though incoherent, was possible; Rainham could see no motive for her deceiving him, and yet he believed she was lying. He merely shrugged his shoulders, with a rising lassitude. He seemed to have been infected by her own dreariness, to labour under a disability of doing or saying any more; he, too, gave it up. He wanted to get away out of the dingy room; its rickety table and chairs, its two vulgar vases on the stained mantel, its gross upholstery, seemed too trenchantly sordid in the strong August sun. The child's golden head--she was growing intelligent now, and strong on her legs--was the one bright spot in the room. He stopped to pat it with a great pity, a sense of too much pathos in things flooding him, before he passed out again into the mean street.
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{
"id": "16703"
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September set in cold, with rain and east winds, and Rainham, a naturally chilly mortal, as he handed his coat to Lady Garnett's butler, and followed him into the little library, where dinner was laid for three, congratulated himself that a seasonable fire crackled on the large hearth.
"I hardly expected you back yet," he remarked, after the first greetings, stretching out his hands to the blaze; "and your note was a welcome surprise. I almost think we are the only people in town."
Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of rich tolerance, as one who acknowledged the respectability of all tastes, whilst preferring her own.
"London has its charm, to me," she remarked. "We are glad to be back. I am getting too old to travel--that terrible crossing, and the terrible people one meets!"
Rainham smiled with absent sympathy, looking into the red coals.
"You must remember, I don't know where you have been. Tell me your adventures and your news."
"I leave that to Mary, my dear," said the old lady.
And at that moment the girl came in, looking stately and older than her age in one of the dark, high-cut dresses which she affected. She shook hands with Rainham, smiling; and as they went to table he repeated his question.
"It is difficult," she said; "we seem to have been everywhere. Oh, we have been very restless this year, Philip. I think we were generally in the train. We tried Trouville----" "Detestable!" put in Lady Garnett with genial petulance; "it was too small. Half the world was crowded into it; and it was precisely the half-world----" "I can imagine it," interrupted Rainham, with his grave smile; "and then?"
"Then we thought of Switzerland," continued the young girl. "We went to Geneva. We were almost dead when we arrived, because we had to go a very roundabout way to avoid Paris; we could not go to Paris, because we were afraid of seeing the Republic. It was very hot in Geneva. No place ever was so hot before. We lay on the sofa for three days, and then we were strong enough to run away."
"It was purgatorial!" said the elder lady; "it was full of English governesses and Swiss pastors."
"Then we went to look for cool places, and we had a charming week at Interlaken, and looked longingly at the Jungfrau, and contemplated the ascent."
Lady Garnett laughed her quaint, little laugh.
"Interlaken might have sufficed, my dear; but, unfortunately--it was one of Mary's ridiculous economies--we went to a _pension_; and we fell into the hands of an extraordinary woman with a fringe and a Bible, a native of North America, who endeavoured to persuade me that I was a Jewess."
"No, no!" laughed Mary, "not quite so bad as that. It was one of the other tribes she would have us belong to--one of the lost tribes. It was not personal."
"Ah, _Dieu merci_! if they are lost," ejaculated her aunt; "but you are wrong; it was most personal, Mary."
"I will do her the justice to add that she only suggested it once," continued the girl with a smile of elision. "However, we had to flee from her; and so we came to Lucerne."
"That was worst of all," said Lady Garnett, arching her delicate eyebrows; "it was full of lovers."
The solemn butler had placed a pair of obdurate birds before Rainham, which engrossed him; presently he looked up, remarking quietly: "Did you see the Sylvesters?"
"Ah yes! we saw the Sylvesters; we walked with the Sylvesters; we drank tea with the Sylvesters; we made music with the Sylvesters; we went on the lake with the Sylvesters. That handsome artist, Mr. Lightmark, is it not, Mary? was there, making the running with Miss Eve. The marriage seems to be arranged."
She shrugged her shoulders; the precise shade of meaning in the gesture escaped Rainham; he looked over to Mary inquiringly.
"They seem very much attached to each other," she remarked.
"Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my dear, and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad to come away from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my Constant's _vol-au-vent_, which you don't seem to have tried; but lovers are the worst of all. Though I like that young man, Lightmark; he is a type that interests me; he seems----" She looked round the room vaguely, as if the appropriate word might be lurking in some angle of the apartment; finally, the epithet proving difficult, she abandoned the search. " _Il ira loin_!" she said tersely; "he flatters me discreetly, as they did when I was young, before the Republic."
The silent, well-trained man handed round caviare and olives; Mary trifled with some grapes, her brow knitted a little, thoughtfully. Lady Garnett poured herself a glass of maraschino. When they were left alone, the girl remarked abruptly: "I am not sure whether I quite like Mr. Lightmark; he does not seem to me sincere."
Lady Garnett lifted up her hands.
"Why should he be, my dear? sincerity is very trying. A decent hypocrisy is the secret of good society. Your good, frank people are very rude. If I am a wicked old woman, it is nobody's business to tell me so but my director's."
Mary had risen, and had come over to the old lady's side.
"But then, you are not a wicked old woman, my aunt," she observed gently.
"Ah!" she threw back, "how do you judge? Do me the justice to believe, _chèrie_, that, if I tell you a good deal, there is a good deal, happily, which I don't tell you."
She pushed a box of cigarettes, which the man had placed on the table, toward Rainham. He took one and lit it silently, absently, without his accustomed protests; the girl looked up smiling.
"That means that you want your _tête-à-tête_, Aunt Marcelle? I know the signal. Well, I will leave you. I want to try over that new march of Liszt's; and I expect, by the time I have grappled with it, you will be coming up for your coffee."
"You are a good girl," answered the elder lady, stroking her hand. "Yes, run away and make music! When Philip and I have had enough scandal and frivolity, we will come and find you; and you shall play us a little of that strange person Wagner, who fascinates me, though you may not believe it."
It was a habit of the house, on occasion of these triangular dinner-parties, that Lady Garnett should remain with Rainham in the interval which custom would have made him spend solitary over his wine. It was a habit which Mary sacredly respected, although it often amused her; and she knew it was one which her aunt valued. And, indeed, though the two made no movement, and for a while said nothing, there was an air of increased intimacy, if it were only in their silence, when the door had closed on the girl and left them together. Presently Lady Garnett began holding up her little glass of crystal maraschino that vied in the light of the candelabra with the diamonds on her fingers.
"I had a conversation with that wearisome young man Charles Sylvester at Lucerne, Philip; he tried to sound me as to Mary's prospects and the state of her affections."
Rainham looked up with quiet surprise.
"Do you mean to say----?" he queried.
"It is very obvious," she answered quickly; "I saw it long ago. But don't imagine that he got much out of me. I was as deep as a well. But what do you think of it?"
"I hope they will be happy," he answered absently. She arched her expressive brows, and he coloured, recollected himself. "I beg your pardon," he said hastily; "I confess I was thinking of something else. You were talking of Mary; why should it not do? Does she care about him?"
His companion laughed, and her laugh had more than its wonted suggestion of irony.
"My dear Philip, for a clever man you can be singularly dense! Care for him! of course she does not."
"She might do worse," he said; "Sylvester is not very bright, but he works hard, and will succeed after a fashion. His limitations dovetail conveniently with his capacities. What do you intend to do?"
"Do I ever interfere in these things? My dear, you are remarkably dull to-night. I never make marriages, nor prevent them. With all my faults, match-making is not one of them. I think too ill of life to try and arrange it. You must admit," she added, "that, long as I have known you, I have never tried to marry you?"
"Ah, that would have been too fatuous!" he remarked lightly.
They were both silent for a while, regarding each other disinterestedly; they appeared to be following a train of thought which led no whither; presently Lady Garnett asked: "Are you going abroad this year?"
"Yes," he said, "as soon as I can--about the middle of October; to Mentone or Bordighera, I suppose."
"Do you find them interesting? Do they do you much good?"
He smiled rather listlessly, ignoring her second question.
"I confess," he said, "it becomes rather a bore. But, I suppose, at my time of life one finds nothing very interesting. The mere act of living becomes rather a bore after a time."
"I wonder what you are thinking about, Philip?" she asked meditatively; "something has annoyed you to-night; I wonder if you are going to tell me."
He laughed.
"Do we ever tell each other our annoyances? I think we sit and look at each other, and discover them. That is much more appropriate."
"You take things too seriously," she went on; "my dear, they are really not worth it. That is my settled conviction."
She sat and sipped her liqueur appreciatively, smiling good-humouredly, and Philip could not help regarding her with a certain admiration. Her small, sharp, subtile face, beneath its mask of smiling indifference, looked positively youthful in the judicious candle-light; only the little, bird-like, withered hands bore the stigmata of age. And he could not conceive her changing; to the last, those tell-tale hands apart, she would be comely and cynical, and would die as she had lived, secure "in the high places of laughter"--a laughter that, for all its geniality, struck him at times as richly sardonic--in the decent drapery of her fictitious youth; in a decorous piety, yet a little complicated, in the very reception of the last rites, by the amiable arching of her expressive eyebrows.
"You are wonderful," he exclaimed, after an interval, "wonderful; that was what I was thinking."
She smiled disinterestedly.
"Because you don't understand me? My dear, nothing is so easy as mystification; that is why I don't return the compliment. Yourself, you know, are not very intelligible to-night."
He looked away frowning, but without embarrassment; presently throwing up his hands with a little mock gesture of despair, he remarked: "I should be delighted to explain myself, but I can't. I am unintelligible to myself also; we must give it up, and go and find Mary."
"Ah no! let us give it up, by all means; but we will not join Mary yet; smoke another cigarette."
He took one and lit it, absently, in the blue flame of the spirit-lamp, and she watched him closely with her bright, curious eyes.
"You know this Mr. Lightmark very well, don't you, Philip?"
"Intimately," he answered, nodding.
"You must be pleased," she said. "It is a great match for him, a struggling artist. Can he paint, by the way?"
"He has great talent." He held his cigarette away from him, considered the ash critically. "Yes, he can certainly paint. I suppose it is a good thing--and for Eve, too. Why should it not be?"
"He is a charming young man"--she spoke judicially--"charming! But in effect Mary was quite right; she generally is--he is not sincere."
"I think you are wrong," said Rainham after a moment. "I should be sorry to believe you were not, for the little girl's sake. And I have known him a long time; he is a good fellow at bottom."
"Ah!" cried Lady Garnett with a little, quick gesture of her right hand, "that is precisely what he is not. He exaggerates; he must be very secret; no one ever was so frank as he seems to be."
"Why are you saying all this to me?" the other asked after a moment. "You know I should be very sorry; but what can I do? it's arranged."
"I think you might have prevented it, if you had cared; but, as you say, it is too late now."
"There was no way possible in which I could have prevented it," he said slowly, after an interval which seemed to strike them both as ponderous.
"That was an admission I wanted," she flashed back. "You _would_ have prevented it--you would have given worlds to have prevented it."
His retort came as quickly, accented by a smile: "Not a halfpenny. I make no admissions; and I have not the faintest idea of what you are driving at. I am a pure spectator. To quote yourself, I don't make marriages, nor mar them; I think too ill of life."
"Ah no!" she said; "it is that you are too indolent; you disappoint me."
"It is you, dear lady, who are inconsistent," he cried, laughing.
"No, you disappoint me," she resumed; "seriously, my dear, I am dissatisfied with you. You will not assert yourself; you do nothing; you have done nothing. There never was a man who made less of his life."
He protested laughingly: "I have had no time; I have been looking after my lungs."
"Ah, you are incorrigible," she exclaimed, rising; "let us go and find Mary. I give you up; or, rather, I give myself up, as an adviser. For, after all, you are right--there is nothing worth doing in this bad world except looking after one's lung, or whatever it may be."
"Perhaps not even that," said Philip, as he followed her from the room; "even that, after a time, becomes monotonous."
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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It occurred to Lightmark one evening, as he groped through the gloom of his studio, on his way to bed, after assisting at a very charming social gathering at the Sylvesters', that as soon as he was married he would have to cut Brodonowski's. The reasons he gave himself were plausible enough, and, indeed, he would have found himself the only Benedict among this horde of wild bachelors. The informal circle was of such recent association that, so far, no precedent for matrimony had occurred, and it was more than doubtful how the experiment might be received. In any case, he told himself, he could not be expected to introduce people like Oswyn and McAllister to his wife--or, rather, to Mrs. Sylvester's daughter. Oswyn was plainly impossible, and McAllister's devotion to tobacco so inordinate that it had come to be a matter of common belief that he smoked short pipes in his sleep.
Then he had dismissed the subject; the long, pleasant holiday in Switzerland intervened, and it was only on his return, late in the autumn, that the question again presented itself, as he turned from the threshold of the house in Park Street, where he had been dining, and half unconsciously took the familiar short cut towards Turk Street. He paused for a deliberate instant when he had hailed the first passing hansom, and then told the man to drive to Piccadilly Circus.
"I _must_ go there a few times more, if only to break it off gently," he reflected, "and I want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not to have written to him--yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? I mustn't give _him_ up, at any rate. We'll--we'll ask him to dinner, and all that sort of thing. And what the deuce am I going to send to the Academy? Thank goodness, I have enough Swiss sketches to work up for the other galleries to last me for years. But the Academy----" Then he lost himself in contemplative enjoyment of the familiar vista of Regent Street, the curved, dotted lines of crocus-coloured lamps, fading in the evening fog, the flitting, ruby-eyed cabs, and the calm, white arc-lights, set irregularly about the circus, dulling the grosser gas. He owned to himself that he had secretly yearned for London; that his satisfaction on leaving the vast city was never so great as his joy on again setting foot upon her pavements.
The atmosphere of the long, low room, with its anomalous dark ceiling and grotesquely-decorated walls, was heavily laden with the incense of tobacco and a more subtile odour, which numbered among its factors whisky and absinthe. The slippered, close-cropped waiter, who, by popular report, could speak five languages, and usually employed a mixture of two or three, was still clearing away the débris of protracted dinners; and a few men sat about, in informal groups, playing dominoes, chatting, or engrossed in their Extra Specials. The fire shone cheerfully beneath the high mantel, and the pleasant lamplight lent a mellow glow, which was vaguely suggestive of Dutch interiors, as it flickered on the dark wooden floor, and glanced from the array of china on the dresser in the corner.
When Lightmark entered, closing the door briskly on the foggy, chill October night, he was greeted warmly and demonstratively. The fraternity which made Brodonowski's its head-quarters generously admired his genius, and, for the most part, frankly envied his good-fortune. The younger men respected him as a man who had seen life; and the narratives with which he occasionally favoured them produced in such of his hearers feelings very different to those which older men, like Oswyn, expressed by a turn of the eyebrow or a shrug. They were always ready enough to welcome him, to gather round him, and to drink with him; and this, perhaps, expresses the limits of their relation.
"Lightmark, by Jove!" cried one of them, waving his pipe in the air, as the new-comer halted in the low doorway, smiling in a rather bewildered manner as he unbuttoned his overcoat. "Welcome to the guerilla camp! And a dress suit! These walls haven't enclosed such a thing since you went away. This is indeed an occasion!"
Lightmark passed from group to group, deftly parrying, and returning the chorus of friendly thrusts, and shaking hands with the affability which was so characteristic a feature of his attitude toward them. The man he looked for, the friend whom he intended to honour with a somewhat tardy confidence of his happiness, was not there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told that "the dry-docker," as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated the silent man, whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner stroll, or perchance to the theatre, with Oswyn.
"With Oswyn?" queried Lightmark, with the shadow of a frown.
"Oh, Oswyn and he are getting very thick!" said Copal. "They are almost as inseparable as you two used to be. I'm afraid you will find yourself cut out. Three is an awkward number, you know. But when did you come back? When are you going to show us your sketches? And how long did you stay in Paris? ... You _didn't_ stop in Paris? This won't do, you know. I say, Dupuis, here's a man who didn't stop in Paris! Ask him if he wants to insult you."
"Ah, mon cher!" expostulated the Frenchman, looking up from his game of dominoes, "I would not stop in London if I could help it."
"Oh, shut up, Copal!" said Lightmark good-humouredly. "I was with ladies--Dupuis will sympathize with me there, eh, _mon vieux_? --and they wanted to stay at Lucerne until the last minute. So we came straight through."
"Then you haven't seen Sarah in 'Cleopatra,' and we were relying on you for an unvarnished account. Ladies, too! See here, my boy, you won't get any good out of touring about the Continent with ladies. Hang it all! I believe it'll come true, after all?"
"Very likely--what?"
"Oh, well, they said--I didn't believe it, but they said that you were going to desert the camp, and prance about with corpulent R.A.'s in Hanover Square."
"And so would we all, if we got the chance," said McAllister cynically.
And after the general outcry which followed this suggestion, the conversation drifted back to the old discussion of the autumn shows, the pastels at the Grosvenor, and the most recent additions to the National Gallery.
When at last Rainham came into the room, following, with his habitual half-timid air, the shambling figure of the painter Oswyn, it struck Lightmark that he had grown older, and that he had, as it were, assimilated some of the intimate disreputability of the place: it would no longer have been possible to single him out as a foreign unit in the circle, or to detect in his mental attitude any of the curiosity of the casual seeker after new impressions, the Philistine in Bohemia. There was nothing but pleasure in the slight manifestation of surprise which preceded his frank greeting of Lightmark, a greeting thoroughly English in its matter-of-fact want of demonstrativeness, and the avoidance of anything likely to attract the attention of others.
Oswyn seemed less at his ease; there was an extra dash of nervous brusqueness in the sarcastic welcome which he offered to the new-comer; and although there was a vacant seat in the little circle, of which Copal and Lightmark formed the nucleus, and to which Rainham had joined himself, he shuffled off to his favourite corner, and buried himself in "Gil Blas" and an abnormally thick cloud of tobacco-smoke.
Rainham gazed after him for a moment or two with a puzzled expression.
"Amiable as ever!" said Lightmark, with a laugh. "Poor old beggar! Have a cigarette? You ought to give up pipes. Haven't you been told that cigarettes are--what is it? --'the perfect type----?'"
"Oh, chestnuts!" interposed Copal, "that's at least six months old. And it's rot, too! Do you know what McAllister calls them? Spittle and tissue. Brutal, but expressive. But I say, old man, won't Mrs. Thingumy drop on you for smoking in your dress-coat? Or--or---- No, break it to me gently. You don't mean to say that you possess _two_? I really feel proud of having my studio next door to you."
"Copal is becoming quite an humorist," Lightmark suggested in an impartial manner. "What a wag it is! Keep it up, my boy. By the way, Mrs. Grumbit has been talking about your 'goings on,' as she calls them: she's apparently very much exercised in her mind as to the state of your morals. She told me she had to take you in with the matutinal milk three times last week. She wants me to talk to you like a father. It won't do, you know."
"I should like to hear you, Dick," said Rainham lazily. "Fire away! But who is Mrs. Grumbit?"
"Oh, she's our housekeeper--the lady who dusts the studio, you know, and gives the models tea and good advice. She's very particular as to the models: she won't let us paint from any who don't come up to her standard of propriety. And the worst of it is that the properest girls are always the ugliest. I don't know----" "Before you proceed with this highly original disquisition," interrupted Copal, "I think you ought to be warned that we have recently formed a Society for the Protection of Reputations, models' and actresses' in particular. It was McAllister's idea. You now have the honour of being in the headquarters, the committee-room of the society, and anything like slander, or even truth, will be made an example of."
"Don't you find it rather difficult to spread your sheltering wings over what doesn't exist?" hazarded Lightmark amusedly.
"Ah, I knew you would say that! You see, that's just where we come in. We talk about their morals and reputations until they begin to imagine they have some, and they unconsciously get induced to live up to them. See? It's rather mixed, but it works beautifully. Ask the vice-president! Rainham holds that proud office. I may remark that I am treasurer, and the subscription is half a guinea, which goes towards the expenses of providing light refreshments for the,--the beneficiaries."
"This is really very interesting! Rainham vice-president, too! I thought he looked rather--rather worn by the cares of the office. You must make me a member at once. But who's president?"
"President? Who _is_ president, McAllister? I really forget. You see, whenever the president is caught speaking too candidly of any of our clients' characters, we pass a vote of censure, and depose him, and he has to stand drinks. The competition isn't so keen as it used to be. If you would like to stand--for the office, I mean--I dare say there will be an opening soon.... Well, I must be off: I'm afraid of Mrs. Grumbit, and--yes, by Jove! --I've forgotten my latchkey again! Of course you're not coming yet, Dick? Come and breakfast with me to-morrow. Good-night, you fellows!"
"Copal has been in great form to-night," said Lightmark, after the door had closed on him, getting up and stretching himself. "What does it mean? Joy at my return? Fatted calf?"
"No doubt, my boy, no doubt," growled McAllister humorously, on his way to the door. "But you must bear in mind, too, the circumstance that the laddie's just sold a picture."
"Good business!" ejaculated Lightmark, as he reflected to himself that perhaps that despaired-of fiver would be repaid after all.
About midnight most of the men left. Rainham remained, and Lightmark, who professed himself too lazy to move. Rainham lapsed into his familiar state of half-abstraction, while his friend cross-examined a young sculptor fresh from Rome.
At the next table Oswyn was holding forth, with eager gesticulations and the excitement of the hour in his eyes, on the subject of a picture which he contemplated painting in oils for exhibition at the Salon next year. Rainham had heard it all before; still, he listened with a keen appreciation of the wonderful touch with which the little, dishevelled artist enlarged on the capabilities of his choice, the possibilities of colour and treatment. The picture was to be painted at the dock, and the painter had already achieved a daringly suggestive impression in pastels of the familiar night-scene which he now described: the streaming, vivid torches, their rays struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering faintly in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side; the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms, growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull ebony.
When the tide of inspiration failed the speaker, as it soon did, Lightmark continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent consideration turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence, broken only by the occasional striking of a match and the knocking of pipe against boot-heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that he had missed his last train, and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. Rainham and Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the revellers, drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of an envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure.
The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white wreath of clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The narrow, squalid, little street was deserted, and the sound of wheels in the busier thoroughfare at the end was very intermittent.
Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath of the night air before he broke the silence.
"It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington lay in the same direction--from here, you know; we should save a fortune in cab-fares.... But--but that wasn't what I wanted to say. Philip, my dear fellow, congratulate me."
He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one of the opposite windows.
"I know," he said simply. "I _do_ congratulate you--from the bottom of my heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and looked Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you _do_ love her, Dick?"
"I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I have been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you hear of it. Has it--has it been in the papers?"
Rainham laughed in spite of himself.
"Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."
"Oh," said Dick blankly. "I--I'm much obliged to her. I thought perhaps it was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought he was a discreet old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?"
"She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a suggestion of apology in his tone; "and, of course, she knows that I am----" "My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And I ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil about it.... Well, it can't be helped. Will you have this cab, or shall I?"
Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation, as the driver reined the horse back upon its haunches with a clatter.
"I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know. Good-night, Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."
When the cab drove off, Rainham stood still for a minute and watched it out of sight. Then he started and seemed to pull himself together.
"I wish I knew!" he said aloud to himself, as he stepped rapidly towards the East. "Well, we'll be off to Bordighera now, _mon vieux_. We've lost Dick, I think, and we've lost----" The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.
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{
"id": "16703"
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15
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A day or two later, when Rainham called in the afternoon at the Kensington studio to announce his approaching flight from England, he found Mrs. Sylvester and Eve in occupation, and a sitting in progress. His greeting of Eve was somewhat constrained. He seemed to stumble over the congratulations, the utterance of which usage and old acquaintance demanded; and he was more at his ease when the ice was fairly broken.
"I expected to find you here," he said, addressing Mrs. Sylvester. "I have been to your house, and they told me you would probably be at the studio--_the_ studio--so I came on."
"Good boy, good boy!" said Lightmark, with as much approbation in his voice as the presence of the stick of a paint-brush between his teeth would allow. "You'll excuse our going on a little longer, won't you? It'll be too dark in a few minutes."
"You don't look well, Philip," remarked Mrs. Sylvester presently, with a well-assumed air of solicitude. "You ought to have come to Lucerne with us, instead of spending all the summer in town."
"Yes; why _didn't_ you, Philip?" cried Eve reproachfully. "It would have been so nice--oh, I'm so sorry, Dick, I didn't mean to move--you really ought to have come."
"Well, there was the dock, you see, and business and all that sort of thing. I can't always neglect business, you know."
Lightmark asserted emphatically that he _didn't_ know, while, on the other hand, Mrs. Sylvester was understood to remark, with a certain air of mystery, that she could quite understand what kept Philip in town.
"Don't you think I might have been rather--rather a fifth wheel?" suggested Rainham feebly, entirely ignoring Mrs. Sylvester's remark, to which, indeed, he attached no special meaning.
"Spare our blushes, old man," expostulated Dick. "It would have been awfully jolly. You would have been such a companion for Charles, you know," he added, with a malicious glance over his shoulder. "Oh dear! fog again. I think I must release you now, Eve. Tell me what you think of the portrait, now that I've worked in the background, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, now don't you think I was right about the flowers?"
There was, in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple, white dress, with only--the painter had so far prevailed over the milliner,--only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist; the quaint chippendale chair, the sombre Spanish leather screen, which formed the background, and the pot of copper-coloured chrysanthemums, counterparts of the little cluster which Eve wore in the bosom of her gown, on a many-cornered Turkish table at the side: it had all the gay realism of modern Paris without losing the poetry of the old school, or attaining the hardness of the new.
Rainham looked at it attentively, closely, for a long time. Then he said simply: "It's the best thing you have done, Dick. It will be one of the best portraits in the Academy, and you ought to get a good place on the line."
"I'm so glad!" cried Eve rapturously, clasping her hands. "On the line! But," and her voice fell, "it isn't to go to the Academy. Mamma has promised Sir--Dick is going to send it to the Grosvenor. But it's pretty much the same, isn't it? Oh, now show Philip the sketch you have made for your Academy picture," she added, pointing to a board which stood on another easel, with a protecting veil over the paper which was stretched upon it. "You know _he_ can tell us if it's like the real thing."
"If it's the Riviera, or--or dry docks," added Rainham modestly.
But Lightmark stepped forward hastily, after a moment's hesitation, and put his hand on the drawing just as Eve was preparing with due ceremony to unveil it.
"Excuse me, I don't want to show it to Rainham yet. I--I want to astonish him, you know."
He laughed rather uneasily, and Eve gave way, with some surprise in her eyes, and a puzzled cloud on her pretty brow, and went and seated herself on the settee at her mother's side.
"He's afraid of my critical eye, Mrs. Sylvester," said Rainham gravely. "That's what it is. Well, if you don't show it me now, you won't have another opportunity yet awhile."
"That's it, Eve," exclaimed Lightmark hastily. "I'm afraid of his critical what's-his-name. You know he can be awfully severe sometimes, the old beggar, and I don't want him to curl me up and annihilate me while you're here."
"I don't believe he would, if it were _ever_ so bad," said Eve, only half satisfied. "And it isn't; it's awfully good. But it's too dark to see anything now."
"By Jove, so it is! Mrs. Sylvester, I'm awfully sorry; I always like the twilight myself. Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell. Thanks. Oh, don't apologize; the handle always comes off. I never use it myself, except when I have visitors. I go and shout in the passage; but Mrs. Grumbit objects to being shouted for when there are visitors on the premises. Great hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit is."
The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new and imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she deposited, with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs. Sylvester's side.
"Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit. And now will you come to a poor bachelor's assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry, but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to imagine you're at Oxford."
Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the Satsuma teapot.
"Don't you know, mamma, it isn't--form, don't you say? to have sugar-tongs at Oxford? It was one of the things Charles always objected to. I believe he tried to introduce them, but people always threw them out of the window. _I_ think they're an absurd invention."
Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs could be so pretty--"Queen Anne, you know"--entirely unanswerable.
It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to announce that the ladies' carriage was at the door that Rainham remembered the real object of his expedition.
Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of the firelight still in her face, held out a small gloved hand with a smiling "Au revoir, Philip," he shook his head rather sadly.
"I'm afraid it must be good-bye--for some time, at least. I came to tell you that I am on the wing again. Doctor's orders, you know. I shall be in Bordighera on Friday, I expect."
"And to-day's Tuesday," complained Eve.
"And I was just going to ask you to dine with us, one day soon," expostulated her mother.
"You must come over at Christmas, old man," said Dick cheerfully. "For the wedding, you know. You've got to give me away, and be bridesmaid, and all that sort of thing."
Rainham shook his head again.
"I'm afraid not. You don't know my doctor. He wouldn't hear of it. No, you won't see me in town again before May, unless there's a radical reform in the climate."
"Couldn't--couldn't we put it off till May?" suggested Eve naïvely.
But the suggestion was not received with anything approaching enthusiasm.
"Good-bye, Philip," said Eve again, when her lover was handing Mrs. Sylvester into the little brougham. "Mind you take great care of yourself."
Rainham returned the frank pressure of her hand.
"Good-bye," he said.
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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16
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After all, Philip Rainham loitered on his way South. He spent a week in Paris, and passing on by way of the Mont Cenis, lingered in Turin, a city with a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular streets, which he detested, out of sheer idleness, for three days. On the fourth, waking to find winter upon him suddenly, and the ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he was seized with panic--an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places returning to him with fresh force, as he felt already the chill of the bleak plains of Piedmont in his bones. It sent him hurrying to his destination, Bordighera, by the first train; and it was not too soon: the misused lung asserted itself in a hæmorrhage, and by the time he reached the fair little town running out so coquettishly, amid its olive yards and palm-trees, into the blue Mediterranean, he was in no proper temper to soliloquize on its charms.
The doctor had a willing slave in him for three weeks; then he revolted, and found himself sufficiently cured to sit when the sun shone--and sometimes when it did not--covered in a gray shawl, smoking innumerable cigarettes on a green, blistered seat in the garden of his hotel. He replied to the remonstrating that he had been ill before this bout, and would surely be ill again, but that temporarily he was a well man. It was only when he was alone that he could afford to admit how savage a reminder of his disabilities he had received. And, indeed, his days of captivity had left their mark on him--the increased gauntness of his figure apart--in a certain irritation and nerve distress, which inclined him for once to regret the multitude of acquaintance that his long habit of sojourning there had obtained. The clatter of English tongues at _table d'hôte_ began to weary him; the heated controversy which waged over the gambling-tables of the little principality across the bay left him arid and tired; and the gossip of the place struck him as even more tedious and unprofitable than of old. He could no longer feign a decent interest in the flirtations of the three Miss Smiths, as they were recounted to him nightly by Mrs. Engel, the sympathetic widow who sat next to him, and whose sympathy he began, in the enlightenment of his indisposition, to distrust.
The relief with which he hailed the arrival of the post and a budget of letters from England surprised himself. It struck him that there was something feverish and strange in this waiting for news. Even to himself he did not dare to define his interest, confessing how greatly he cared.
Lightmark's epistles just then were frequent and brief. The marriage was definitely fixed; the Colonel, his uncle, had been liberal beyond his hopes: a house in Grove Road of some splendour had been taken for the young couple, who were to install themselves there when the honeymoon, involving a sojourn in Paris and a descent into Italy, was done. Hints of a visit to Rainham followed, which at first he ignored; repeated in subsequent epistles with a greater directness, their prospect filled him with a pleasure so strangely mixed with pain that his pride took alarm. He thought it necessary to disparage the scheme in a letter to Lightmark, of a coldness which disgusted himself. Remorse seized him when it had been despatched, and he cherished a hope that it might fail of its aim. This, however, seemed improbable, when a fortnight had elapsed and it had elicited no reply. From Lady Garnett, at the tail of one of those long, witty, railing letters, in which the old lady excelled, he heard that the marriage was an accomplished fact, and the birds had flown. Mrs. Lightmark! the phrase tripped easily from his tongue when he mentioned it at dinner to his neighbour, Mrs. Engel, to whom the persons were known. Later in his room, face to face with the facts which it signified, he had an intolerable hour. He had extinguished his candle, and sat, partially undressed, in a mood of singular blankness by the fire of gnarled olive logs, which had smouldered down into one dull, red mass; and Eve's face was imaged there to his sick fancy as he had seen it last in Dick's studio in the vague light of an October evening, and yet with a certain new shadow, half sad and half reproachful, in the beautiful eyes. After all, had he done his best for the child? Now that this thing was irrevocable and complete, a host of old misgivings and doubts, which he had believed long ago banished, broke in upon him. He had only asked that she should be happy--at least, he said, it had never been a question of himself. He certainly knew nothing to Lightmark's discredit, nothing which could have justified him in interfering, even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen in love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the marriage had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's ill-defined uneasiness still questioned and explored. A hundred little episodes in his friendship with the brilliant young painter, dismissed as of no import at the time, returned to him--instances, as it seemed now to his morbid imagination, in which that character, so frank and so enigmatic, rang scarcely true. And suddenly the tragical story of Kitty Crichton intruded itself before him, with all its shameful possibilities. Could Lightmark have lied to him? Had not his sudden acquiescence in the painter's rendering of the thing implied a lack of courage--been one of those undue indolences, to which he was so prone, rather than any real testimony of his esteem? Would not a more rigorous inquiry, a little patient investigation into so curious a coincidence, have been the more seemly part, as much for his friend's sake as for Eve's, so that this haunting, intolerable doubt might have been for ever put away--as surely it would have been? The contrary issue was too horrible for supposition. And he ended by mocking at himself with a half-sigh for carrying fastidiousness so far, recognising the mundane fitness of the match, and that heroic lovers, such as his tenderness for the damsel would have had, are, after all, rare, perhaps hardly existing out of visions in a somewhat gross world, where the finest ore is not without its considerable alloy.
Two days later, as he sat upon his wonted seat, in lazy enjoyment of the midday sun, a _vetturino_, heralded far down the road by the jingle of his horse's bells, deposited a couple at the door whose faces were familiar. At _table d'hôte_, though he was separated from the new-comers by half a dozen covers, he had leisure to identify them as the Dollonds; and by-and-by the roving, impartial gaze of the Academician's wife encountering him, he could assure himself that the recognition was mutual. They came together at the end of _déjeuner_, and presently, at Mrs. Dollond's instigation, started for a stroll through the olives towards the old town.
"Are you wintering here?" he asked after a moment, feeling that an affirmative answer would hardly be to his taste.
But Mrs. Dollond, with an upward inclination of her vivacious shoulders, repudiated the notion. A whim of her own, she explained to Rainham confidentially, as they came abreast in the narrowing path, while Mr. Dollond strolled a little behind, cutting down vagrant weeds absently with his heavy oak stick.
"Hugh wanted a month's holiday; and I wanted"--she dropped her voice, glancing over her shoulder with an air of mock mystery--"yes, Mr. Rainham, you must not be shocked, but I wanted a fortnight at Monte Carlo; and so I may as well tell you that our destination is there. We came from San Remo this morning, meaning to drive over right away; but this place was so pretty that Hugh insisted on staying."
Rainham helped her up a difficult terrace, and remarked urbanely that he was in fortune's way.
She threw him a brilliant smile.
"Ah, Mr. Rainham, if we had only known that you were here! then we might have arranged differently; we could have stayed here pastorally, and driven up to that delightful little place on the hill. Tell me, how is it called?"
She pointed with her scarlet parasol--they had emerged now on to the main road--at a little, turreted town perched far above them on the brow of an olive-crested hill.
"It is Sasso," said Rainham. "I should have been delighted to come with you, but I am afraid it is out of the reach of carriages, and of invalids. You might go there on a mule."
"Oh no!" she laughed; "I think on the whole we shall be more comfortable at the Hôtel de Paris. Can't we induce you to come with us now?"
Rainham lifted his eyebrows, smiling a little and groping vaguely for an excuse, while Mrs. Dollond turned to her husband with a look which demanded corroboration of her speech.
"Yes, Mr. Rainham, do come, if you possibly can," supplemented Mr. Dollond, coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each other horribly--I can answer for myself--and it would be an act of real charity."
"Well, Hugh, I am ashamed of you! You really ought not to say such things. If you can't behave better than that, you may go on maltreating those thistles. I declare we have left a regular trail of heads in our wake,--like the Revolution, or Judge Jeffreys."
"Bloody Jeffreys!" suggested Mr. Dollond mildly.
His wife turned to Rainham with the little despairing gesture which she reckoned one of her most effective mannerisms.
"Is not he dreadful? But you _will_ come, Mr. Rainham? I am sure you know all about systems, and--and things. You know I insist on winning; so I must have a system, mustn't I?"
"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said her companion humorously, "you remind me that the only system I have is a very bad one. I am afraid my doctor would not trust me with it at Monaco."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Dollond reflectively; "but you need not gamble, you know! You can help me, and see that I don't get cheated. Hugh and I will see your doctor, and promise to take care of you. Hugh shall carry your shawl--he likes carrying shawls."
"He is getting used to it," interposed her husband dryly.
"Ah, well, that is settled," continued the lady gaily, leaving her victim no time to formulate more than the lamest of protests.
By this time they had reached the middle of the cape, and they stood for a moment by the lazy fountain looking down at the Marina straggling below the palms; and beyond, at the outline of the French coast, with white Mentone set in it, precisely, like a jewel.
"The dear little place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose Monaco is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not look a bit wicked from here. I declare, I should like to live there!"
"I've no doubt you would, my dear!" said her husband; "but you sha'n't, so long as I have any voice in the matter. I don't get so much for my pictures that I can afford to contribute to M. Blanc's support."
Rainham followed the direction of her eyes absently. "I have half a mind to go with you after all," he said.
"Of course," said Mrs. Dollond; "it will do you worlds of good; we will drive you over with us to-morrow. And now, Mr. Rainham, if you don't mind, I think we will sit down. I can see that Hugh is getting out his sketch-book."
She sank down as she spoke upon one of the rough stone seats which are scattered about the cape. Mr. Dollond had ensconced himself behind them, and was phlegmatically starting on a rough study of the old town, which rose in a ragged, compact mass a hundred yards away, with its background of sad olives and sapphire sky.
Rainham followed the lady's example, tired himself by their scramble under the hot sun, and contented himself for a while by turning a deaf ear and polite, little mechanical gestures to her perennial flow of inconsequent chatter, which seemed quite impervious to fatigue, while he rested his eyes on the charming prospect at their feet; the ragged descent of red rocks, broken here and there by patches of burnt grass and pink mallows, the little sea-girt chapel of St. Ampelio, and the waste of violet sea. His inattentive ear was caught at last by the name of Lightmark occurring, recurring, in the light eddy of his companion's speech, and he turned to her with an air of apologetic inquiry.
"Yes," Mrs. Dollond was observing, "it was quite a grand wedding; rather pretentious, you know, we thought it, for the Sylvesters--but, oh, a great affair! We stayed in London for it, although Hugh wanted to take a holiday. I could tell you all about the bridesmaids' dresses, and Mrs. Lightmark's, but I suppose you would not care. She looked very charming!"
"Yes?" said Rainham, with a curious light in his averted eyes. Then he added, somewhat abruptly, "Brides always do, I suppose?"
"Of course, if they have a good dressmaker. And the presents--there was quite a show. Your pearl necklace--how I envied her that! But, after all, weddings are so much alike."
"I have never been to one," said the other absently.
"Ah, then you ought, if only to get a little experience before your own time comes, you know. Yes, you really ought to have been there. It was quite a foregone conclusion that you would be best man. It was so funny to see Colonel Lightmark in that _rôle_, with that young Mr. Sylvester giving away the bride. It would have been so much better if they could have changed parts."
"I am sorry to interrupt you," said Mr. Dollond, getting up and putting away his sketch-book; "I can't sketch; the place is full of locusts, and they are getting into my boots."
Mrs. Dollond started up, shaking her skirts apprehensively, with an affectation of horror.
"How I do hate jumping things! And, anyhow, I suppose we ought to be getting back to our hotel, or we shall be late for dinner. You don't know what Hugh can be like when one is late for dinner. He is capable of beginning without me."
Rainham had risen with a ready response to her words, bordering almost on the ludicrous; and half an hour later he was congratulating himself that at least six seats intervened between his place and that of Mrs. Dollond at the dinner-table.
And yet on the morrow he found himself, and not without a certain relief, sitting beside the mundane, little lady, and turning to her incessant ripple of speech something of the philosophic indifference to which her husband had attained, while a sturdy pair of gaily-caparisoned horses, whose bells made a constant accompaniment, not unpleasing in its preciseness, to the vagueness of Rainham's thought, hurried them over the dusty surface of the Cornice.
Certainly the excursion into which he had been inveigled, rather from indolence than from any freak of his inclination, afforded him, now that it was undertaken, a certain desultory pleasure to which he had long been a stranger. Into the little shrug, comic and valedictory, of Mrs. Dollond's shoulders, as they passed the _Octroi_, a gesture discreetly mocking of the conditions they had left, he could enter with some humour, the appreciation of a resident who still permitted himself at times the licence of a casual visitor on his domain.
"Tell me," Mrs. Dollond had asked, as they rattled out of the further gate of Ventimiglia, "why did the excellent lady who tried to monopolize conversation in the _salon_ last night appear so scandalized when I told her where we were going? Was I--surely now, Mr. Rainham, I was not indiscreet?"
"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said Rainham humorously, "you know it was a delicate subject. At our hotel we don't recognise Monte Carlo. We are divided upon the other topics in which we are interested: the intrigues of the lawn tennis club, and the orthodoxy of the English chaplain. But we are all orthodox about Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Engel is the pillar of our faith. We think it's----" "The devil?" interrupted Mr. Dollond, bending forward a little, with his bland smile.
"Precisely," said Rainham; "that is what Mrs. Engel would say. Oh no, Mrs. Dollond, we don't drive over to Monte Carlo from Bordighera. At Mentone it is more regular; you see, you can get there from Mentone pretty much by accident. But from Bordighera it has too much the appearance of being a preconcerted thing."
"It was particularly preconcerted here," put in the Academician with a yawn, and Mrs. Dollond remarked innocently that people who wintered in these places must have very singular ideas.
The prospect was increasing in beauty as they wound their way along the historical road, now rendered obscure by the thick groves of olives on either side, now varied by little glimpses of the sea, which again they skirted from time to time, and so nearly that, as Mrs. Dollond remarked, it was like driving along the sands. Rainham identified spots for them as the prospect widened, naming sea-girt Mortola with its snug château, Mentone lying placidly with its two bays in the westering sun, and, now and again, notorious peaks of the Alpes Maritimes which bounded the horizon beyond. At the frontier bridge of St. Louis, where they alighted to meet the requirements of the Douane, even Mrs. Dollond's frivolity was changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge. They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath. Rainham pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal fascination with which it had filled so many--he mentioned the name of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst the number--at the ultimate cost of their lives.
"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage, which awaited them on the French side of the bridge. "I shall dream of it to-night."
"I have dreamt of it," said Rainham simply. "When I was a boy I used to dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over. Nowadays, I dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis: the sensation is much the same."
"A very disagreeable one, I should think," said Mrs. Dollond, settling herself in her wraps with a little shudder.
"No," said Rainham, with a smile. "I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was rather nice: it was the waking up which was disagreeable."
They made their breakfast--a very late one--at Mentone, and dawdled over it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been found, after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.
When at last they drove into the principality, the evening was well advanced. Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed by the brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she had stretched herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was at an end; and Rainham with a clear conscience could betake himself immediately to bed. But, in spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long time awake; the music of the concert-room, the strains of M. Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed _persiennes_ of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.
A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he caught a last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he waved a polite farewell to them with a sensible relief. It was a week in which Mrs. Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her husband had made no secret of the willingness with which he had accepted Rainham's escort for the indefatigable lady amongst the miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving him free to study the picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he preferred. And a week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, was not good for any man to undergo.
Nor was Mrs. Dollond's verdict upon their acquaintance, who had become for the space of seven days an intimate, more complimentary.
"I suppose he was better than nobody," she remarked with philosophy as they made their way up the terrace. "He looked after my stakes, and did not play much himself, and was always at hand; but he was really very dull."
"Better than me, I suppose you mean, my dear?" suggested her husband humorously. "Was he so dull? You ought to know; I really have hardly spoken to him."
"Don't be absurd!" she remarked absently. Then she said a little abruptly: "It seems funny, now that one knows him, that there should be those stories."
"Stories? About Rainham?"
Her husband glanced at her with some surprise.
"Yes," she said. "Of course, you never know anything; but he is talked about."
"Ah, poor man!" said Mr. Dollond. "What has he done?"
Mrs. Dollond's fair eyebrows were arched significantly, and Mrs. Dollond's gay shoulders shrugged with a gesture of elision, in which the essence of many scandals, generated and discussed in the discreet undertones of the ladies' hour, was nicely distributed.
"Don't be dense, Hugh! It is quite notorious!"
Mr. Dollond laughed his broad, tolerant laugh.
"Well," he said, "I should never have thought it."
Rainham, reaching his hotel the same afternoon, met Mrs. Engel in the hall; her formal bow, in which frosty disapproval of the sin, and a widow's tenderness for the middle-aged sinner, if repentant, were discreetly mingled, amused if it scarcely flattered him. He was still smiling at his recollection of the interview when the Swiss porter, accosting him in elaborately bad English, informed him that a lady and gentleman, who had left on the previous evening, had made particular inquiries after him. The name, he confessed, escaped him, but if Monsieur pleased---- He produced the visitors' book, in which Rainham read, scarcely now with surprise, the brief inscription, "Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark, from Cannes."
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There was a ceaseless hum of voices in the labyrinth of brilliant rooms, with their atmosphere of transient spring sunshine and permeating, faint odour of fresh paint. Few people came to see the pictures, which covered the walls with a crude patchwork of seas and goddesses, portraits and landscapes: all that by popular repute were worth seeing had been exhibited already to the people who were now invited to view them,--at the studios on Show Sunday, and on the Outsiders' Day. One entered the gloomy gates of Burlington House on the yearly occasion of the Private View because it was, socially, a great public function, in order to see the celebrities, who were sure to be there, from the latest actress to the newest bishop. In one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty impressions on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; in another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and contents himself with a general survey--frequently limited to his own pictures--on Varnishing Day.
The Hanging Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark's Academy picture. When it was passed in review before these veterans, after a long procession of inanely smiling portraits, laboured, wooden landscapes, and preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of satiated boredom and damnation of draughts, which variously pervaded the little row of arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated. There was a movement of chairs, followed by an exchange of complimentary murmurs; and the picture was finally niched into a space which happened to fit it between two life-size portraits on the line in one of the smaller rooms.
On the fashionable afternoon Lightmark's work was never without the little admiring crowd which denotes a picture of more than usual interest. The canvas, which had loomed so large in the new studio in Grove Road, was smaller than many of its neighbours, but its sombre strength of colour, relieved by the pale, silvery gold of its wide frame, and the white dresses of the ladies portrayed in the pictures on either side, made it at once noticeable.
The critics next day referred to it as a nocturne in black and gold, and more than one of the daily journals contained an enthusiastic description of the subject--an ocean-steamer entering a Thames graving-dock at night-time, with torch-light effects; and a mist on the river.
Eve fluttered delightedly from room to room with her mother, recurring always to the neighbourhood of her husband's picture, and receiving congratulations by the score. It had been a disappointment to her when her husband, at the eleventh hour, expressed his inability to be present; but even Mrs. Sylvester's remonstrances had failed to move him, and the two ladies had come under the Colonel's escort.
"I didn't know your husband was so nervous," said Mrs. Dollond sceptically. "Is this the effect of matrimony? ... Oh, Mrs. Lightmark, do look at that creature in peacock blue! Did you ever see such a gown? Have you seen my husband's pictures? He's got one in every room, nearly. Between you and me, they're all of them pretty bad; but so long as people don't know any better, and buy them, what does it matter? Ah, Colonel Lightmark, how do you do? Of course I've seen your nephew's picture. I've been saying all sorts of nice things about it to Mrs. Lightmark."
"It's pretty good, I suppose," suggested the Colonel radiantly. "Have you seen the _Outcry_ this week? There's no end of a good notice about it, and about your husband's pictures, too."
"Really? I wonder who wrote it. I must ask him to dinner, if he's respectable. We never read critiques nowadays. They're so dreadfully rude to Academicians, you know--always talking about 'pot-boilers,' and suggesting that they ought to retire on their laurels. As if laurels were any good! One can't keep a carriage on laurels."
"No, by Jove! it wouldn't be good for the horses. I say, though, Mrs. Dollond, is one supposed to go through all the rooms?"
"Oh yes," replied the lady composedly; "all except the water-colours, and sculpture, and architecture. One only goes there to flirt, as a rule. Personally, I always get up the pictures from 'Academy Notes,' when I haven't seen them at the studios, you know. Yes; I should like some tea, please, since Mrs. Lightmark has deserted you. Is that Lady Garnett with her? What lovely white hair! I wonder where she gets it."
Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders a little petulantly after she had made the ghost of a return to Mrs. Dollond's airy greeting.
"My dear," she said, turning to Eve confidentially, "may I confess to you that I am not altogether too fond of that woman? Is she a great friend of yours, or don't you know her well enough to abuse her? I like the husband; he amuses me, though he is rather a bear. Otherwise, I should not see very much of Mrs. Dollond, I promise you."
Eve smiled at the thought of Mr. Dollond's eccentricities, and then her face grew rather grave.
"Shall we go into the lecture-room?" she suggested. "It is cooler there among the statues, and perhaps we shall be able to sit down."
The old lady assented with alacrity.
"Yes," she said; "by all means let us leave these painty pictures, and we will have a chat; you shall tell me of your wanderings. Apropos, did you see anything of our friend Philip? His last letter--a long time ago; he is becoming a bad correspondent--struck me as rather _triste_, even for him. I'm afraid he is not well."
"Yes," said Eve slowly; "we went over to Bordighera one day while we were at Cannes, and we stayed a night at the hotel, but we didn't see Mr. Rainham. He had gone over to Monte Carlo."
"Ah, poor fellow, what an idea! I wonder what dragged him there."
Eve looked at the old lady questioningly for a minute.
"I think he went with the Dollonds," she answered gravely.
"Ah, my dear, no wonder his letter was dull! Then you didn't see him? Well, I suppose he will come back soon. You mustn't be jealous of him, you know. He is very much _lié_ with your husband, isn't he?"
"I don't suppose he will see quite so much of him now."
There seemed to be a trace of weariness in the girl's voice as she answered, and Lady Garnett glanced at her sharply before she let her eyes continue their task of wandering in a kind of absent scrutiny of the sculptured exhibits in the room.
"But of course not.... How terrible all these great plaster figures are, and the busts, too! They are so dreary, they have the air of being made for a cemetery. Don't they make you think of tombstones and mausoleums?"
Eve looked at her a little wonderingly.
"Are they very bad? Do you know, I rather like them. Not so much as the pictures, of course; but still I think some of them are charming, though I am rather glad Dick isn't a sculptor. Don't you like that? What is it--Bacchus on a panther?"
"My dear, you are quite right," said the old lady decisively, dropping her tortoise-shell lorgnon into her lap, and suppressing a yawn. "Only, it is you who are charming! I must go to the Grosvenor as soon as it opens to see if your clever husband, who seems to be able to paint everything and everybody, has done you justice.... But you mustn't sit talking to an old grumbler like me any longer. Go back to your picture; Mr. Dollond will pilot you. And if you encounter Mary on the way, tell her that a certain discontented old lady of her acquaintance wants to be taken home. Au revoir."
About five minutes later Mary Masters found her aunt half asleep. The paint had made her stupid, she said. She could understand now why painters did not improve as they grew older; it was the smell of the paint.
"Ah," she said, as they passed out into the busy whirl of Piccadilly, "how glad I shall be to get back to my Masons and Corots. Though I like that pretty little Mrs. Lightmark.... Poor Philip! Now tell me whom you saw. Charles Sylvester, of course? But no, I am too sleepy now; you shall tell me all about it after dinner."
It was six o'clock before the Colonel was able to deposit his bulky, military person rather stiffly on a cushioned seat, and to remove his immaculate silk hat, with an expression of weary satisfaction. He had devoted all the sunny spring afternoon, (when he might have been at Hurlingham, or playing whist at the "Rag"), to making his way, laboriously and apologetically, from room to room in search of friends and acquaintances, whom, when found, he would convoy strategically into the immediate vicinity of No. 37 in the First Room.
"My nephew's picture," he explained; "nice thing! I don't know much about painting" (he called it paintin') "and art, and all that sort of thing, but I believe it's about as good as they make them."
He had accepted all the inconsistent, murmured criticism almost as a personal tribute; and for the greater part at least of the afternoon his beaming face had completely belied the discomfort occasioned by his severe frock-coat and tightly-fitting patent-leather boots; and his yearning for a comfortable chair, with a box of cigars and a whisky-and-seltzer at his elbow, had been suppressed, rigidly and heroically.
"I suppose it's devilish good," he thought, as he sat waiting for the rest of his party. "People seem to admire those splashes of yellow and black, and all those dirty colours. Personally, I think I prefer the girl in white next door. Hullo, there's Eve!"
"Don't get up, Colonel," said Mrs. Sylvester; "we want to sit here for a little and hear what people say about Richard's picture. They make such amusing remarks sometimes! Not always complimentary; but, then, they often don't know anything about art."
"Yes," said Eve, seating herself, with a delicate consideration for the new dress, which the occasion had demanded, between the Colonel and her mother; "we heard someone say that the flesh in that big Roman picture with the temple, you know--I can't pronounce the name--was like cotton wool--pink cotton wool! Oh, and that the girl in black, with the yellow fan, whose portrait is in the big room, must be at least eight feet high!"
"Now, how the dickens could he tell that!" interposed the Colonel.
"Oh, he was talking very learnedly, about heads and things. How provoking of that old gentleman in the gold spectacles! Standing just in front of Dick's picture with his back to it. He looks just exactly like a millionaire, and he won't look, and he's preventing other people from looking! Do turn him round, uncle, or move him on, or something!"
"Do you see that man there?" whispered Mrs. Sylvester presently, "the tall man with the sandy hair and beard? I think he's a painter. He said just now that Richard's picture was amazingly good, and that he thought he knew where he got the idea from."
"Why, of course," said the Colonel carelessly; "Dick got the idea from that beggar what's-his-name's dock--and a thundering good idea too! I wonder what time they close? Perhaps----" "Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester, buttoning her gloves, "I suppose we had better go."
The room was nearly empty when McAllister passed before his friend's picture again, after a satisfactory interview with a gentleman from Bond Street on the subject of one of his own. McAllister, whose criticism Mrs. Sylvester had overheard and reported, had recently been elected Associate, owing the honour, according to some malicious people, more to his nationality than to his merit as a painter of cattle and landscapes. The _Outcry_, indeed, with reference to this promotion, and the continued neglect of older artists of greater public repute, had suggested, with its usual impertinence, that the motto of _Lasciate ogni speranza_, which was reported in certain circles to be almost visibly inscribed over the door of the Academicians' Committee-room, should be supplemented by the legend, "No English need apply."
"It's good," he said reflectively, as he stopped in front of the picture, with something like a chuckle on his lips, and a twinkle in his shrewd, gray eyes. "More than good. You can see the clever French trick in every line of it, and they'll call it one of the pictures of the year. So it is, though there are dozens in the vaults downstairs worth two of it. But I thought this was Oswyn's subject? He was always talking about it. Well, I should like to see what he would have made of it!"
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As the clock struck five Rainham looked up with an air of relief, flipping negligently across the table the heap of papers which had occupied him since lunch-time.
"We must go into this some other time, Bullen," he remarked with a certain petulance. "I confess things look rather bad; but I suppose they can hold over till to-morrow?"
The foreman assented dubiously, gathering together the despised sheets, and preparing for departure.
"I've done my best, sir," he said a little sullenly; "but it is difficult for things to go smoothly when the master is always away; and you never will take no notice of business letters, you know, sir."
"Yes, yes," said Rainham wearily; "I am sure you have, Bullen. If I go into the Bankruptcy Court, as you so frequently prophesy, it will be entirely my own fault. In the meantime you might tell your wife to send me up some tea--for two, Bullen, please. Mr. Oswyn will be up presently."
The man retired, shutting the door with some ardour. Rainham rose, and, with the little, expansive shrug with which he usually discarded his commercial worries, wandered towards the window. The dock was empty and desolate: the rain, which had prevailed with a persistent dreariness since the morning, built morasses at regular intervals along the dock-side, splashed unceasingly into the stagnant green water which collected in slack seasons within the dock-gates. The dockman stood, one disconsolate figure in the general blankness, with his high boots and oilskins, smoking a short clay pipe by the door of the engine-room; and further out, under the dripping dome of an umbrella, sat Oswyn in a great pea-jacket, smoking, painting the mist, the rain, the white river with its few blurred barges and its background of dreary warehouses, in a supreme disregard of the dank discomfort of his surroundings.
Rainham had tapped three times against the streaming pane before he succeeded in attracting his attention, and then the painter only responded to the wonted signal by an impatient, deprecating flourish of the hand which held the palette. The tea was already simmering on the rickety table in the bow-window, when Oswyn, staggering under his impedimenta, climbed the staircase, and shouldered his way familiarly into the room.
"How fearfully wet you must be!" said his host lazily from the depths of an arm-chair. "Help yourself to a pair of slippers and a dry coat, and have some tea. It's strong enough even for you by this time."
The other had disembarrassed himself of his dripping jacket and overalls, and now kicked off his shoes, with a short laugh. He was never a great talker in the daytime, and the dreary charm of the river world outside was still upon him. He dropped the sketch upon which he had been working rather contemptuously against the wall, where Rainham could see it, and selected a pair of slippers from quite a small heap in the corner by the fireplace.
"I don't mind _your_ seeing my work, because you don't talk about it," he said, glancing at Rainham quickly. "I hate people who try to say complimentary things; they don't often mean them, and when they do they talk absolute rot."
"Yes," said the other sympathetically. "Shall I put a slice of lemon in your tea? I suppose I must live up to my reputation and say nothing about your sketch. But I must have it when it's finished! It's always most embarrassing to have to pay personal compliments, though I suppose some people like them."
The painter grunted inarticulately between two sips of tea.
"Like them! Don't your society artists and authors simply wallow in them? Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a puddle. Ah, thanks.... That's a pretty face. Whose is it?"
The cigarette case, which Rainham handed to his guest, was a well-worn leather one, a somewhat ladylike article, with a photograph fitted into the dividing flap inside. Before answering the question he looked at the photograph absently for a moment, when the case had been returned to him.
"It's not a very good photograph. It's meant for--for Mrs. Lightmark, when she was a little girl. She gave me the case with the portrait years ago, in Florence."
Oswyn glanced at him curiously and shrewdly through a thin haze of blue smoke, watching him restore the faded, little receptacle almost reverentially to the breast-pocket of his coat.
"Have you been to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked suddenly, after a silent pause, broken only by the ceaseless lashing of the window by the raindrops.
Rainham looked up with a start, half puzzled, seeking and finding an explanation in the faint, conscious humour which loosened the lines about the speaker's mouth.
"The Chamber of---- Do you mean the R.A.? You do, you most irreverent of mortals! No, I have not been yet. Will you go with me?"
"Heaven forbid! I have been once."
"You have? And they didn't scalp you?"
"I didn't stay long enough, I suppose. I only went to see one picture--Lightmark's."
"Ah, that's just what I want to see! And you know I still have a weakness for the show. I expect you would like the new Salon better."
"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."
Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.
"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.
"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is _triste_ as a well, and full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had a picture there this time, and I went to look at it."
"In the new Salon?"
"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here, and one or two are men of genius. But I should dearly like to set them down, _en plein air_ too, if they insist upon it, with the palette of Velasquez. I went out and wandered in the Morgue afterwards, and I confess its scheme of colour rested my eyes."
"Do I know your picture?" asked Rainham to change the subject, finding him a little grim. "Is it the thing you were doing here?"
Oswyn's head rested on one thin, colour-stained hand which shaded his eyes.
"No," he said with a suggestion of constraint, "it was an old sketch which I had worked up--not the thing you knew. I shall not finish that----" "Not finish it!" cried Rainham. "But of course you must! why, it was superb; it promised a masterpiece!"
"To tell you the truth," said Oswyn, "I can't finish it. I have painted it out."
Rainham glanced at him with an air of consternation, of reproach.
"My dear fellow," he said, "you are impossible! What in the world possessed you to do such a mad thing?"
The painter hesitated a moment, looking at him irresolutely beneath his heavy, knitted brows.
"I meant to tell you," he said, after a while; "but on the whole I think I would rather not. It is rather an unpleasant subject, Rainham, and if you don't mind we will change it."
Oswyn had risen from his chair, with his wonted restlessness, and was gazing out upon the lazy, evening life of the great river. The monotonous accompaniment to their conversation, which had been so long sustained by the drip and splash outside, had grown intermittent, and now all but ceased; while a faint tinge of yellowish white upon the ripples, and a feathery rift in the gray dome of sky, announced a final effort on the part of the setting sun.
The yard door swung noisily on its hinges, and a light step and voice became audible, and the sound of familiar conference with the dockman. Rainham lifted his head inquiringly, and Oswyn, shrugging his shoulders, left the window and regained his seat, picking up his sketch on the way.
"Yes," he said in answer to a more direct inquiry on the other's part, "I think it was Lightmark."
Almost as he spoke there was a step on the stair, followed by a boisterous knock at the door, and Dick entered effusively.
"Well, _mon vieux_, how goes it? Why, you're all in the dark! They didn't tell me you were engaged.... Oh, is that you, Oswyn? How do you do?"
"Quite an unexpected pleasure?" suggested Oswyn sardonically, nodding over his shoulder at the new-comer from his seat by the fire.
Rainham's greeting had been far more cordial, and he still held his friend's hand between his own, gazing inquiringly into his face as if he wished to read something there.
"Yes, I am back, you see," he said presently, when Dick had found himself a chair. "I have been here two days, and I was just beginning to think of looking you up. I was very sorry to miss you at Bordighera. How is Eve? It's very good of you to come all this way to see me; you must be pretty busy."
"Oh, Eve is tremendously well! Thanks, no, I won't have any tea, but you might give me a whisky-and-soda. I had to come down into these wilds to look at a yacht which we think of taking for the summer. Quite a small one," he added half apologetically, as he detected the faint, amused surprise in the other's expression; "and as I found myself here, with a few minutes to spare before my train goes, I thought I would look in on the off chance of finding you. How is business just now? The dock didn't strike me as looking much like work as I came in. Pretty stagnant, eh?"
Rainham shook his head.
"Oh, it's much as usual--perhaps a little more so! Bullen continues to threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it. Threatened men live long, you know."
"Oh, you're all right!" answered Dick genially. "As long as Bullen looks after you, you won't come to grief."
While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously, preparing for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his hat in one hand and the tools of his trade under his arm.
"May I leave some of these things, here, or will they be in your way?"
"But you're not going?" said Rainham, rising from his seat with a constraining gesture; "why, don't you remember we were going to dine together? Dick will stay too, _n'est ce pas_? It will be like old times. Mrs. Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!"
Oswyn paused irresolutely.
"Don't let me drive you away," said Dick. "In any case I'm going myself in a few minutes. Yes," he added, turning to Rainham, "I'm very sorry, but I've got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall have to catch a train in, let me see, about ten minutes."
"Really? Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won't be left alone at any price. That's right. Now, Dick, tell me what you have been doing, and especially all about your Academy picture; I haven't seen even a critique of it. Of course it's a success? Have you sold it?"
"Oh, spare my modesty!" protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with a quick glance at Oswyn. "It's all right, but we mustn't talk shop."
"Yes, for God's sake spare his modesty!" supplemented the other painter almost brutally. "Look at his blushes. It isn't so bad as all that, Lightmark."
"I don't even know the subject," pursued Rainham. "You might at least tell me what it was. Was it the canvas which you wouldn't show me, just before I went away--at the studio? The one about which you made such a mystery----?"
"Oh bosh, old man!" interrupted Dick hurriedly, "I never made any mystery. It--it wasn't that. It's quite an ordinary subject, one of the river scenes which I sketched here. You had better go and see it. And come and see us. You know the address. I must be off!"
"Wait a minute," interposed Oswyn, with a cadence in his voice which struck Rainham as the signal of something surpassing his wonted eccentricity. "Don't go yet. I said just now, Rainham, that I wouldn't tell you why I had painted out that picture, the picture which I had been fool enough to talk about so much, which I had intended to make a masterpiece. Well, I have changed my mind. I think you ought to know. Perhaps you would prefer to tell him?" he added, turning savagely to Lightmark, and speaking fast and loud with the curious muscular tremor which betokens difficult restraint. "No? Of course you will have the impudence to pretend that the conception was yours. Yes, curse you! you are quite capable of swearing that it was all yours--subject and treatment too.... But you can't deny that you heard me talking of the thing night after night at the club, when I have no doubt you hadn't even begun on your bastard imitation. One of the pictures of the year as they call it, as you and your damned crew of flatterers and critics call it...." He stopped for breath, clutching at the table with one hand and letting the other, which had been upraised in denunciation, fall at his side. He had meant to be calm, to limit himself strictly to an explanation; but in the face of his wrong and the wrong-doer the man's passionate nature had broken loose. Now, when he already half repented of the violence with which he had profaned the house of his friend, his eyes fell upon Rainham, and he felt abashed before the expression of pain which he had called into the other's face.
"I don't know what all this means," said Rainham wearily, turning from Oswyn to Dick as he spoke; "but surely it is all wrong? Be quiet, Dick; you needn't say anything. If Oswyn is accusing you of plagiarism, of stealing his ideas, I can't believe it. I can't believe you meant to wrong him. The same thing must have occurred to both of you. Why, Oswyn, surely you see that? You have both been painting here, and you were both struck in the same way. Nothing could be simpler."
Now Lightmark seemed to assume a more confident attitude, to become more like himself; and he was about to break the chain of silence, which had held him almost voiceless throughout Oswyn's attack, when Rainham again interrupted him.
"I am sure you needn't say anything, Dick. We all know Oswyn; he--he wasn't serious. Go and catch your train, and forget all about it."
The first words which Rainham spoke recalled to Oswyn the powerful reason which had determined him to preserve his old neutrality, and to make an offering of silence upon the altar of his regard for the only man with whom he could feel that he had something in common. If his vengeance could have vented itself upon a single victim, it would have fallen, strong and sure; but it was clear to his calmer self that this could not be; the consequences would be too far-reaching, and might even recoil upon himself. After all, what did it matter? There was a certain luxury in submission to injustice, a pleasure in watching the bolt of Nemesis descend when his hands were guiltless of the launching. And as he struggled with himself, hunting in retrospect for some excuse for what his passion railed at as weakness, a last straw fell into the scale, for he thought of the faded portrait in the cigarette-case.
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"My dear," said Lady Garnett, accepting a cup of tea from the hands of her niece, and regarding her at the same time, from her low cushioned chair, with a certain drollery, "do you know that it is exactly one week since Mr. Sylvester called?"
Mary Masters' head was bent a little over her long _Suède_ gloves--they had just returned from their afternoon drive in the Park--and she paused to remove her hat and veil before she replied.
"And it is at least three weeks since Mr. Rainham was here."
"Ah, poor Philip!" remarked the old lady, "he is always irregular; he may come, or he may not. I must ask him to dinner, by the way, soon. But I was talking of Mr. Sylvester, who is a model of punctuality. (Give me a piece of _baba_ for Mefistofèle, please!) Mr. Sylvester was here last Saturday, and the Saturday before that. I think it is highly probable, Mary, that we shall be honoured with a visit from Mr. Sylvester to-day."
"I hope not!" said the girl with some energy. "I have a couple of songs that I must positively try over before to-night. Surely, it is a little late too, even for Mr. Sylvester."
"It is barely half-past five," said Lady Garnett, lazily feeding her pug, "and he knows that we do not dine till eight. Resign yourself, _chèrie_; he will certainly come."
She glanced across at the young girl, pointing, with her keen gaze, words which seemed trivial enough. And Mary, her calm forehead puckered with a certain vague annoyance which she disdained to analyse, understood perfectly all that the elder lady was too discreet to say. She sat for a little while, her hands resting idly in her lap, or smoothing the creases out of her long, soft gloves. Then she rose and moved quickly across to Lady Garnett's side, knelt suddenly down by her chair.
"Ah, my aunt!" she cried impulsively, "tell me what is to be done?"
Lady Garnett glanced up from the novel into which she had subsided; she laid it on the little tea-table with a sigh of relief at this sudden mood of confidence, coming a little strangely amidst the young girl's habitual reticence.
"We will talk, my dear," she said, "now you are practical. I suppose, by the way, he has not proposed?"
Mary shook her head.
"That is it, Aunt Marcelle! That is exactly what I want to prevent. Is--is he going to?"
Lady Garnett smiled, and her smile had a very definite quality indeed.
"I would not cherish any false hopes, my dear. Charles Sylvester is a young man--not so very young though, by the way--whose conclusions are very slow, but when they arrive, _mon Dieu_! they are durable. I am sure he is terribly tenacious. It took him a long time to conclude that he was in love with you; at first, you know, he was a little troubled about your fortune, but at last he came to that conclusion--at Lucerne."
"Oh, at Lucerne!" protested the young girl with a nervous laugh. "Surely not there!"
"It was precisely at Lucerne," continued Lady Garnett, "that he decided you would make him an adorable wife, and, in effect, it was a considerable piece of wisdom. And since then his conclusions have been more rapid. The last has been that he will certainly marry you--with or without a _dot_--before the elections. You are serious, you know, my dear, though not so serious as he believes; you are a girl of intelligence, and he is going to stand for some place or other, and candidates with clever wives often obtain a majority over candidates who are clever but have no wives. Yes, my dear, he is certainly going to propose. You may postpone it by the use of great tact for a month or so; you will hardly do so for longer."
"I don't want to postpone it," said Mary ruefully; "if it be inevitable, I would sooner have it over."
"It will never be over," remarked Lady Garnett decisively. "Did I not say that he was tenacious--_comme on ne l'est plus_? You may refuse him once--twice; it will all be to go over again and again, until you end by accepting him."
"Oh, Aunt Marcelle!" protested the young girl, with little flush of righteous wrath.
"After all," continued the elder lady, ignoring her interruption, "are you so very sure that--that it would not do? There are many worse men in the world than Sylvester. Both _my_ husbands were profligates, in addition to being fools. At any rate, this dear Charles is very correct. And remember, the poor man is really in love with you."
"I know," said Mary plaintively; "that is why I am so sorry. He is a good man, a conscientious man, and a gentleman; and really, sometimes lately, he has been quite simple and nice. Only----" Lady Garnett completed the sentence for her with an impartial shrug.
"Only he is perfectly ridiculous, and as a lover quite impossible? My dear, I grant it you with all my heart, and I think he has all the qualities which make an excellent husband."
As the young girl was still silent, unconvinced, she went on after a little while: "You know, Mary, I have never tried to marry you. Frankly, my dear, I do not believe very much in pushing marriages. My own, and most others that I have known intimately, might have been very reasonably made--let us say--in purgatory. But a girl must marry some time or other, if she be rich. And you will have plenty of money, my poor child! You shall do exactly as you please, but I must admit that Charles is a most unobjectionable _parti_. After all, there is only one other man I would sooner give you to, Mary, and he is impossible."
"Aunt Marcelle! Aunt Marcelle!" pleaded the young girl faintly, her dark head bent very low now over the arm of the chair.
Lady Garnett had been talking so far in a somewhat desultory fashion, interspersing her words with brief caresses to the pug who was curled up in her lap. Now she put down the little dog with a brusqueness which hurt his dignity; he pawed fretfully at Mary's dress, and, attracting no attention, trotted of to his basket on the rug, where he settled himself with a short growl of discontent. And Lady Garnett, with a sudden change of tone and a new tenderness in her voice, just stooped a little and touched the young girl's forehead with her thin lips.
"My poor child!" she said, "my dear little Mary! Did you suppose I didn't know? Did you think I was blind, as well as very old, that I shouldn't see the change in you, and guess why?"
"Ah!" cried the girl with a break in her voice. "What are you saying? What do you make me say?"
"Nothing! nothing!" said the old lady; "you need not tell me anything. It is only I who tell you--like the old immortal in Daudet, _J'ai vu ça moi_! --and it will pass as everything passes. That is not the least sad part, though now you will hardly believe it. You see, I don't lie to you; I tell you quite plainly that it is no good. Some men are made so--_vois tu, ma chèrie_! --to see only one woman, an inaccessible one, when they seem to see many, and _he_ would be like that. Only it is a pity. And yet who would have foreseen it--that he should charm you, Mary? He so tired and old and _usé_--for he is old for you, dear, though he might be my son--with his humorous, indolent, mocking talk, and his great, sad eyes. It's wicked of me, Mary, but I love you for it; so few girls would have cared, for he _is_ a wretched match. And I blame myself, too."
"Because I am foolish and utterly ashamed?" cried the girl from her obscurity, in a hard, small voice which the other did not know.
"Foolish!" she exclaimed. "Well, we women are all that, and some men--the best of them. But ashamed? Because you have a wise mother, my darling, who guesses things? I have never had any children but you and him. And no one but I can ever know. No; I was sorry because I had to hurt you. But it was best, my dear, because you are so strong. Yes, you are strong, Mary!"
"Am I?" said the girl wearily. "What is the good of it, I wonder? Except that it makes one suffer more and longer."
"No," said Lady Garnett. "It makes one show it less, and only that matters. Aren't we going to Lady Dulminster to-night? Ah, my dear, the play must go on; we mustn't spoil the fun with sour faces, masks, and dominos except now and then! Believe me, _chèrie_, underneath it all we are much the same--very sad people. Only it wouldn't do to admit it. Life would be too terrible then. So we dance on and make believe we enjoy it, and by-and-by, if we play hard enough, we do believe it for a minute or two. From one point of view, you know, it is rather amusing."
Mary looked up at last; her eyes, shining out of the white face, seemed to have grown suddenly very large and bright.
"Does it go on always, Aunt Marcelle?" she asked with a child's directness.
"Always!" said Lady Garnett promptly. "Only there are interludes, and then sometimes one guest steals away with his bosom friend into a corner, and they look under each other's masks. But it isn't a nice sight, and it mustn't happen very often, else they wouldn't be back in their places when the music began. Ah, my child!" she broke off suddenly, "I am talking nonsense to amuse you, and making you sadder all the time. But you know I think nobody was ever consoled by consolations unless it were the consoler."
She drew the girl's blank face towards her, clasped the smooth brown head against her breast with two bird-like hands on which the diamonds glittered.
"Cry, my dear!" she said at last; "that is the best of being young--that gift of tears. When one is old one laughs instead; but ah, _mon Dieu_! it is a queer kind of laughter."
They sat locked together in silence until the room was quite dark, lit only by the vague lamplight which shone in through the fine lace curtains from the street. Then Mary rose and played a little, very softly, in the darkness, morsels of Chopin, until the footman came in with a bright lamp, announcing that dinner was on the table. And Charles Sylvester had not arrived.
He atoned for this breach of his habit, however, on the morrow by making an early call upon the two ladies, whom he found alone, immediately after luncheon. He was very clean shaven, very carefully dressed, and with his closely buttoned frock-coat and his irreproachable hat, which he held ponderously in his hand during his protracted visit, he had the air of having come immediately from church.
Lady Garnett taxed him with this occupation presently, suppressing her further thought that he looked still more like an aspirant to matrimony, and Charles admitted the impeachment; he had been in the morning with his sister, Mrs. Lightmark, to the Temple Church. His severe gaze was turned inquiringly upon Mary. Lady Garnett responded for her a little flippantly.
"Oh, Mary went nowhere this morning, Mr. Sylvester--not even to the church parade. We were very late last night, at Lady Dulminster's. London grows later and later; we shall be dining at midnight soon."
"I should like to go to the Temple Church sometimes," said Mary, "because of the singing, only it is so very far."
Charles Sylvester bent forward with bland satisfaction; he had it so obviously on the tip of his tongue that he would be charmed to be her escort, that the girl hastened to interrupt him.
"You were not at Lady Dulminster's, Mr. Sylvester? We quite expected to see you."
"If I had known that you were to be there!" he exclaimed. Then he added: "I had a card, and, indeed, I fully intended to look in. But one is always so pressed for time just before the long vacation, and yesterday I was quite exhausted. Did you see any of my people?"
"Yes," said Mary, "Eve was there; we expected her to play. It is a very musical house."
"Ah, yes! I have heard so from my sister, and from Colonel Lightmark. He says that Lady Dulminster is really a most accomplished woman."
"He looks as if he found her charming," put in Lady Garnett with a shrug. Then she added, suppressing a yawn, her thin fingers dallying regretfully with the leaves of her novel: "I suppose your exertions are nearly over, Mr. Sylvester. You will be going away soon?"
He shook his head gravely.
"I fear not for long. I may have a week's cruise with my brother-in-law--you know, he has a yacht for the summer--but my labours are only beginning. I have the elections in view. You agree with me, no doubt, Lady Garnett, that the Government is bound to go to the country in the autumn; you know, of course, that I am thinking of standing for----" "I congratulate you in advance, Mr. Sylvester! I am sure you will get in, especially if you have your sister down to canvass."
"I am afraid Eve is not sufficiently interested in politics to be of much assistance," said the candidate. Then he went on, a little nervously, pulling at his collar: "You will wish me success, Miss Masters?"
"Oh, yes!" said the girl hastily; "I am sure we both wish you that, Mr. Sylvester. We shall be most interested, shall we not, Aunt Marcelle?"
Lady Garnett came to her assistance with smiling promptitude.
"Of course, Mr. Sylvester; we will even wear your colours, if they are becoming, you know; and I am sure you would not fight under any others. And, mind, we will have no reforms--unless you like to try your hand on the climate. But nothing else! You are so fond of reforming, you English--even the most Conservative of you--that I live in constant fear of being reformed away. I hope, Mr. Sylvester, you are more Conservative than that."
Charles Sylvester flushed a little; he cleared his throat elaborately before he replied: "I fear I have failed to make myself understood, Lady Garnett; in no sense do I call myself a Conservative, though I am prepared to vote with the party on the Irish Question. I am a Liberal Unionist, Lady Garnett. I may almost call myself a Radical Unionist. My views on the emancipation of labour, for instance, are quite advanced. I am prepared----" Mary interrupted him, absently, demurely, with a little speech that appeared to be a quotation.
"Labour is a pretty beast in its cage to the philanthropic visitor with buns; its temper is better understood of the professional keeper."
Lady Garnett arched her eyebrows pensively; Charles looked surprised, displeased; Mary hastened to explain, blushing a little: "I beg your pardon! the phrase is Mr. Rainham's. I believe it is the only political principle he has."
Charles's displeasure at the maxim cooled to lofty disdain of its author.
"Ah, yes! --pretty, but cynical, as I should say most of Mr. Rainham's principles were."
Lady Garnett was aroused out of her state of vacant boredom for the first time into a certain interest. Mary sat, her hands clasped in her lap, the flush just dying away out of her pale cheeks, while Mr. Sylvester embarked upon an elaborate disquisition of his principles and his programme--it might have been an expansion of his Parliamentary address--which the elder lady, whom a chance phrase had started upon a new line of thought, scarcely considered.
Does he know? she asked herself. Has this rather stupid young man grown suddenly acute enough to be jealous? Certainly there had been a flash, a trace of curious rancour in his brief mention of Rainham's name, for which it was scarcely easy to account. That the two men, in spite of their long juxtaposition, had never been more than acquaintances, had never been in the least degree friends, she was perfectly well aware; it was not in the nature of either of them to be more intimately allied.
Rainham's indolent humour and fantastic melancholy, his genial disregard of popularity or success, could not but be displeasing to a man so precise and practical as the barrister. Only now she had scented, had dimly perceived beneath his speech, something more than the indefinable aversion of incompatible tempers, a very personal and present dislike. Had things passed between them, things of which she was ignorant? Was the sentiment, then, reciprocal? She hardly believed it: Rainham's placid temper gave to his largest hostilities the character merely of languid contempt; it was not worth the trouble to hate anyone, he had said to her so often--neither to hate nor to love. She could imagine him with infidelities on occasion to the last part of his rule; yes, she could imagine that--but for hatred, no! he had said rightly he was too indolent for that. It must be all on one side, then, as happens so frequently in life with love and hate, and the rest--all on one side. And the barrister had risen to take his leave before her reflections had brought her further than this.
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It must be admitted that when Lady Garnett insinuated, for the benefit of her half-incredulous inward counsellor, that Charles Sylvester, in spite of his almost aggressive panoply of self-assurance, had been smitten by the fever of jealousy, she fully sustained her reputation for perspicacity. Her conclusions were seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the case of a book, what one read was not always intelligible, and it might even on occasion be necessary to read between the obvious lines; but in this particular instance the page contained no cryptogram, and the astute old lady had read it without her spectacles.
Charles was jealous; he had not insulted himself by admitting it even for an instant, but he was jealous; and his jealousy was more than the roving fever of all lovers, in that it had a definite, tangible object.
It would have been contrary to his nature to allow either his love or the ensuing passion to interfere in any way with his professional duties or instincts; he was a lawyer, and an embryo Member of Parliament first, a man afterwards; and it was not until late in the afternoon of the day which followed his last recorded interview with Lady Garnett and her niece that he dismissed from his brain the complexities of "Brown and another _versus_ Johnson," and drew from an orderly mental pigeon-hole the bundle of papers bearing the neat endorsement, "_Re_ Miss Masters." When, to the ecstatic joy of his clerk, he had withdrawn himself from his chambers in Paper Buildings, and was walking briskly along the dusty Embankment in the direction of his club, he found himself, by a sequence which was natural, though he would have been the last to own it, already thinking of Rainham, and wondering, with a trace of dignified self-reproach, whether he had not been guilty of some remissness in the performance of his duty towards society, in the matter of that reprehensible individual and his aberrations from the paths of virtue. He did not stop to question himself too strictly as to the connection between his matrimonial aspirations and Rainham's peccadilloes; but he was able to assure himself that the assertion of his principles demanded a closer investigation, a more crucial analysis of certain ambiguous episodes.
"Supposing," he argued, "supposing Rainham had given signs of a desire to marry my sister, or my cousin, or any other girl in whom I was interested, or, in short, whom I knew, it would obviously have been my duty, before giving my consent or approval, to find out all about his relations with that girl, that person whom I saw with him in the park--ah, yes! Kitty, that was her name. And, in a way, don't I owe far more to society in general than I do to any of my immediate friends in particular? Well, then I ought to know more about Kitty, so as to be prepared in case--that is, for emergencies.... Why, for all I know, I may have been suspecting Rainham all this time quite unjustly. I'm sure I hope so." Here he shook his head sorrowfully. "But I'm afraid there's not much chance of that. The question remains, how am I to find out anything? It's no good asking Rainham; that goes without saying. It would be equally useless to try Lightmark: they're as thick as thieves, and he's not the sort of man to be pumped very easily. And yet, if Rainham's friends are out of the question, what's to be done? He hasn't got any enemies--that sort of man never has, except himself. How can I get hold of the girl? I suppose some people would set a detective to watch Rainham, and so on; but that's not to be thought of, in this case." He stopped close to Cleopatra's Needle, and frowned abstractedly over the stone parapet, absently following the struggles of a boy who was laboriously working a great, empty lighter across the wide, smoke-coloured river at a narrow angle with the shore. An idea suggested itself in flattering colours for a moment: he might pay a visit to the little restaurant or club in Turk Street, the shady place with a foreign name which he had forgotten. At the expense of a little tact, he might very probably succeed in inducing some of the careless, disreputable young artists who formed the frequentation of the place to talk about Rainham's amours. It even occurred to him that at a late hour Kitty herself might be seen there, dancing a can-can with Rainham, or singing songs with a riotous chorus. But in spite of this prospect, the notion was not sufficiently attractive. He had not enjoyed his introduction to the eccentric fraternity, on the occasion when he had been fired by Lightmark's early enthusiasm about the place to request to take him there to dine. He had felt, almost as much as the men to whom he was introduced, that he had no business there, that he was an outsider; he had even been snubbed. "And, after all," he said impatiently, resuming his homeward direction, "though I've got enough evidence to damn him twice over in the eyes of any man in the world, I suppose it wouldn't be enough to convince a woman, if she believed in him. I must get hold of Kitty--it's the only way to arrive at a certainty."
After much deliberation to the same effect, he determined, somewhat reluctantly, that there was nothing for it but to endeavour to enlist the sympathies of one of Rainham's more intimate friends. He had recurred by this time to the unstable hypothesis that he was acting primarily in Rainham's interest, that his real motive was to arrive at the truth on the chance that it might be favourable to his unadmitted rival. It only remained for him to select out of the limited material at his disposal the man whom he should invite to enter upon this alliance. And when he reached the gloomy library of the eminently respectable club, where he was accustomed, before dining, to study the evening papers and to write his letters, the choice had been made; and after one or two abortive efforts, he composed to his satisfaction a diplomatic epistle, which he addressed to Oswyn (with whom he enjoyed a nodding acquaintance) at the restaurant in Turk Street.
Late in the afternoon of the next day Sylvester sat alone and expectant before a pile of temporarily neglected papers, telling himself that Rainham ought to be very grateful for these strenuous efforts in the interests of his injured reputation. He was beginning to wonder nervously whether Oswyn would fail him, when he heard a knock at the outer door, followed by an unfamiliar step, and the clerk announced that a gentleman wished to see him by appointment on private business. The barrister rose from his seat with a portentous display of polite, awkward cordiality, and motioned his guest into a chair.
"It's extremely good of you to take the trouble to come," he said tentatively.
"That depends upon what you want of me," answered Oswyn shrewdly. "You said in your note that it was on a matter of vital importance to a friend of mine. I haven't so many friends that I can afford to shirk a little trouble in a matter which vitally concerns one of them. May I ask, in the first place, who is the friend?"
Sylvester picked up the open brief which lay before him on the table, and folded it scrupulously.
"Philip Rainham," he answered, and then shot a quick glance at Oswyn.
"Rainham?" echoed the other with an air suggestive at once of surprise and relief, as if, perhaps, he had been expecting to hear another name. "You are right, he is a friend," he added simply. "What can I do for him?"
"Well, the fact is, I'm afraid he's got into difficulties--a scrape, an imbroglio, with a woman!"
The painter lifted his expressive eyebrows incredulously.
"Since I last saw him--three days ago?"
"Oh, dear, no; the thing's been going on, I should say, for quite a long time--more than a year to my knowledge."
Oswyn reflected for a moment, gazing at Sylvester with some suspicion.
"I don't think it troubles him much," he said brusquely. "Is it any business of mine--or of yours? Has he spoken to you about it?"
Sylvester uttered a hasty negative.
"Oh, no! He is not the sort of man who would. But other people talk. You see, I'm afraid there's some sort of black-mail going on, and he oughtn't to submit to it. His friends oughtn't to allow it. If--if one could see the woman and frighten her a little----" "Is that what you wanted me for?" asked Oswyn impatiently. "If so, allow me----" The other hastened to reassure him.
"Oh, no, not at all. But I thought you might be able to tell me where the person is to be found, her address, or something about her. I understand that she was a model; you probably know her...." The painter shrugged his shoulders.
"Who is she? What is her name?"
"Kitty--that's all I know."
"Kitty? Kitty Crichton, I suppose."
A light dawned on him; the name opened a door to many forgotten trivial incidents. He did not speak again for a minute, and when he broke the silence there was a harder tone in his voice, and he rose from his chair at the same time.
"I don't see how this can concern me, or you, either. You must pardon me if I say that I dislike meddling, and people who meddle."
Sylvester blushed hotly.
"You don't suppose I want to do him anything but good," he said diplomatically, trying to convince himself that he was not damaging the reputation for perfect candour which he hoped that he enjoyed. "It's not a pleasant task, but there are circumstances in which one has to sacrifice one's scruples--one's feelings."
Oswyn glanced at him again, with some contempt in the lines of his worn face.
"Excuse me if I refrain from sounding your motives."
Then he paused, fingering his soft felt hat. Suddenly his face was illumined by a remarkably grim smile, and it became evident to the man who was watching him so anxiously that there had occurred some change in his mental perspective.
"I don't quite understand why you brought me into this," he added, the smile still hovering very lightly on his lips. "However, under the circumstances, I think I can't do much harm by putting you in the way of finding Mrs. Crichton. Let me recommend you to inquire for her at the office of the _Outcry_, the newspaper--she used to work for it, I believe--in Took's Court. They will know her address there. Took's Court--it's only a few minutes' walk from here. Thanks, I can find my way out...." "I suppose that was rather a stupid thing to do," he said regretfully, as he stopped in the doorway below to light a cigarette, "though not such a _bêtise_ as his, _mon dieu_! ... But I couldn't resist the temptation. Now, I wonder if he's clever enough to find out the truth?"
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The night was dark and still--so dark that above the tree-tops all was a soft, abysmal blank, so still that the Japanese lanterns scarcely swung on their strings among the apple-trees, and the leaves almost forgot to rustle. From the tent in the corner of the little garden (little, but large for a garden in London) the quaint, rapturous music of the Hungarian band floated in fitful extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously accompanying the murmur of many voices, the mingled pace of feet, and the lingering sweep of silken skirts upon the shadowed grass. The light streamed in broad, electric rays from the open windows of the low, wide house, and from the tall double doors of the studio, which had been added at the side, broken continually by the silhouettes of guests who entered the rooms or sought the cooler air outside, and dulling to the quiet glow of old stained glass the rich radiance of the fantastic coloured lanterns.
It was one of the series of summer evenings on which, according to the cards which had been so widely circulated, Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark were "at home" to their friends and to their friends' friends; and Rainham, who was a late arrival at the elaborate house in Grove Road, was able after a time to recognise many familiar faces, some of them almost forgotten, among those who had elected to be present. The rooms, in spite of the outlet afforded by the garden, were all surprisingly full; and after a hurried exchange of greetings, which Eve's duties as hostess had compelled her to curtail, he had passed through a jungle of brilliant toilettes and unfamiliar figures into the newly-built, bright studio, where he had been told that he would find his friend. He had abundant leisure to corroborate the first impression of a splendour for which he was hardly prepared, which had seized him when he entered the hall and surrendered his coat to a courteous servant in livery, before Lightmark, radiant and flushed with success, singled him out in the corner to which he had retreated in loneliness.
"So glad to see you, old man! we were hoping you would turn up. Better late than never. Isn't it a crush? I assure you our evenings are becoming quite an institution. You will find scores of people you know here. Excuse my leaving you. Not much like the old studio days, eh? Afternoon tea with Copal's cups and saucers, and Mrs. Thingumy's tea-cakes. Your friend Lady Garnett is here somewhere--I'll be shot if I know where. Try the garden; you can get out this way. See you again later."
"All right, Dick," he answered with equanimity, smiling with a little inward amusement; "you look after your people. I will find my way about."
As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the trees, or disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn, feeling himself vaguely exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of the posturing fiddlers, his eyes caressed by the soft glow of the Japanese lanterns, strung like antique jewelled necklets against the almost tangible blackness of the night, he found himself listening with an half-malicious amusement to the commonplace of the conversational formulæ affected by the young world of society, the well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers. It was very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated himself from the dreary bondage of such functions. It was croquet then, lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different. Presently he encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like himself, and they found themselves seats before long in the darkest corner of the garden, where a few chairs had been placed, outside the radius of the lanterns, underneath a weeping willow.
"And they say painting doesn't pay," said the Scotchman, extending his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in this world. But if a man's clever and canny, and has the sense to see on which side his bread's buttered ... why, it's just easier than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't even an Associate."
"Yes. I suppose he's getting on pretty well," suggested Rainham, with a lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.
"Getting on! Doesn't it look like it? Isn't he entertaining his friends like--like a Rothschild? You know, of course, that he has sold his Academy picture, and next year's as well--and four figures for each of them?"
"Yes; and he's commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the Hereditary Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst--an undertaking, by the way, for which I don't envy him. Oh, Dick's all right! What have you got in the Academy this year, by the way? I'm ashamed to say I haven't been there yet."
"You haven't! But you have seen Lightmark's picture? No? Well, it's a fine thing, and just as clever as---- But, mind you, I'm not prepared to say that Oswyn wouldn't have made something better out of it."
"Yes," said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving about his heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock, with the haunting shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed as an offence against his loyalty. "It seems to me that Oswyn has more real genius in his little finger than Dick has in his whole body; I am sure of it. It was a pity that they should both have chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, as to colour and treatment and so on, are so much the same. But, of course, Dick had a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing."
McAllister assented hastily.
"No doubt, no doubt; though Oswyn was just wild about it--you know his uncivilized ways--and I must admit I was a bit astonished myself, at first, when I saw the picture at Burlington House with Lightmark's signature to it. But then I didn't know anything of the rights of the case. He's a queer, cantankerous devil, and he's always being wronged, according to his own accounts, and not only by the critics. No one pays much attention to what he says nowadays. It's just that absinthe and the cigarettes that are the ruin of him, day and night. Poor devil! why can't he stick to whisky and a pipe, like a decent Christian!"
"His queerness is all on the surface," said Rainham gravely. "You have to dig pretty deep to find out what he's really worth."
Just then Eve hurried towards them through the trees, looking about her with an air of hesitation, carrying the train of her pale-gray brocade dress over one bare, girlish arm.
"Is that you, Mr. McAllister?" she asked, recognising first in the darkness the gaunt figure and tawny beard of the Scotchman. "Oh, and Mr. Rainham too! This is really very wrong of you, monopolizing each other in this way. And don't you know," she added laughingly, "that this corner is especially dedicated to flirtations? You must really come and do your duty. Mr. McAllister, won't you take Miss Menzies in to have some supper? You know her, I think--a compatriot, isn't she? You will find her close to the tent. And you," she pursued, turning to Rainham, "you must take some one in, you know. Will you come this way, please, and I will introduce you to somebody. I am so sorry I was not at home when you called the other day," she said conventionally, as they edged their way by degrees towards the house.
"Yes; I seem to have an unfortunate capacity for missing you nowadays. At Bordighera, for instance. I have certainly had no luck at all lately. I haven't even had an opportunity of telling you how charming I find your house."
"Ah!" said Eve vaguely, her eyes wandering over the people who were grouped upon the gravel walk and under the veranda outside the windows of the supper-room, "we really seem to see nothing of you now. Oh, let me introduce you to Mrs. Gibson--Mrs. Everett P. Gibson. She's American; you'll find her very amusing."
Rainham followed her obediently, thinking, with a quickly repressed passion of regret, of the child who would have confided to him her latest impressions of sorrow, of joy; finding something, which hardly emanated from himself, which made it seem difficult for him to gather up the threads of the old, charming intimacy with this new Eve--this woman, with her pretty, dignified bearing, and self-possessed, almost cold attitude. The introduction was duly effected, and for the next half-hour Rainham devoted himself heroically to the mental and physical entertainment (he was not obliged to do much talking) of the American lady, who hailed from the Far West, and lectured him volubly, with an exorbitant accent and a monotony of delivery, which began to tell on his nerves to an alarming degree, on her impressions of Europe, and especially England; the immense superiority of gas as a cooking and heating agent; the phenomenal attainments of her children; and the antiquities of Minneapolis.
After supper he found himself listening to the band in the garden with a sentimental young lady, who made him fully conversant with her adoration of moonlit nights, waltzing, the latest tenor, and the scenery of Switzerland.
It was already growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it struck him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a certain complaisant indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the briefest of greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only a glimpse had been vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the crowded supper-room. He wandered into the studio, where a little, intimate party had assembled around an easel, and he was fortunate enough in a few minutes to find himself invited to take possession of a vacant seat precisely by Mary's side.
"Oh, you wicked person!" said Mary reproachfully. "Why do you never come to see us? and where have you been hiding yourself all the evening?"
Rainham laughed gently.
"I feel rather guilty, I own; but you know there is an execrable proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music didn't fill me with a passionate desire to dance! And how good it is to be with a person who doesn't ask you whether you play much lawn-tennis, or whether you prefer London to the country on the whole. Ah, Mary! I consider myself a model of self-denial; but I am rewarded now."
"That's rather pretty for you," answered the girl approvingly; "and you are forgiven, though you have still to make your peace with Aunt Marcelle. Tell me what you have been doing, and what you have been reading...." The conversation drifted on, now and again becoming general, and including the rest of the circle, but always recurring and narrowing into the deeper stream of their old intimacy.
"You are the only really satisfactory people I know," he said presently--"the only people who know how to enjoy life, so far as it is to be enjoyed."
"You mustn't give me any credit for it; it's all Aunt Marcelle's doing. But I don't think I know what you mean exactly. Perhaps we oughtn't to feel flattered?"
"I mean, you are the only people who understand that happiness doesn't depend on what one does or doesn't do--that it all depends on the point of view."
"The way of looking at life generally?" she hazarded.
"Precisely. True philosophy only admits one point of view--from outside. Aren't we always being told that life is only a play? Well, we clever people are the spectators, the audience. We look at the play from a comfortable seat in the stalls; and when the curtain drops at the end, we go home quietly and--sleep."
Mary looked at him for a moment silently.
"I'm not at all sure that we ought to feel flattered! You consider that you and I and her ladyship are spectators, then. Isn't it very selfish?"
"More or less. Of course, it's impossible to do the thing thoroughly without being absolutely selfish--a hermit, in fact. I sometimes think I was intended for a hermit."
Mary sighed covertly, though the smile still lingered in her brown eyes.
"I'm afraid I only take a kind of sideways view of things. I should like to--to----" "To go up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly, "and get a bird's-eye view of life?"
"Exactly; and drift about. Only then one would never get really interested in anything or anybody. I should want someone else in the balloon."
"You must take me," said Rainham, still smiling.
Mary looked at him quickly, and then turned away, shivering a little.
"What nonsense we are talking!" she said suddenly. "And I'm afraid it isn't even original nonsense. We don't, really, want to be selfish, and we're not; you needn't pretend you are. And isn't it getting very, very late? Don't you think Mrs. Lightmark looks as if we ought to go? I don't mean that she looks inhospitable. But isn't she rather pale and tired? This sort of thing doesn't seem to suit her as well as her husband. Yes, I must really go."
When Miss Masters had deserted him, after extracting a promise that he would take an early opportunity of paying his over-due respects to her aunt, and had gone with Mrs. Lightmark in search of the old lady, Rainham made his adieux, leaving Lightmark still radiant, and protesting hospitably against such early hours; and as he walked homewards, with a cigar unlighted between his lips, he smiled rather bitterly, as he thought how little he was able to adhere to the tenets of his philosophy. Why else should he regret so much and so often the act which had been rung down when ... And how many more acts and scenes were there to be?
"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One isn't obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep their seats until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early disturbs the other spectators."
While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to her years and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a square, wainscoted little room, hung with pale grass matting, and decorated brightly with quaint Breton faïence and old brass sconces.
"I was so glad to see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for him!"
"Almost as bad as too much society."
"Yes; it's only another form of dissipation."
"I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other people's society than too much of one's own."
"I don't think I ever regarded him from a--a society point of view. You know what I mean--like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I was a child I always thought of him as a sort of fairy godmother--a person who was always dropping from the clouds to take one for drives in the country, or with a box for the pantomime."
Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her curiously for a moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness or disdain in the clear voice and the pretty, childish face.
"Philip was always like that, the kindest---- He has always been quite a hero for me--a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off rather suddenly, finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly. "Isn't it curious that we should both have known him so long without knowing each other?"
"I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't think Philip talks about his friends very much...." Lady Garnett interrupted the _tête-à-tête_ conversation at this point, and when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late guests had left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few minutes in the deserted drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty chairs, meditating, with her chin resting on one hand, and her eyes absently contemplating the scattered petals of a copper-coloured rose, which had fallen from some dress or bouquet upon one of the Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet floor.
"Dick," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against the rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it ever strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?"
Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window wonderingly, almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh.
"Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely.
"I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display of mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?"
"Not much. I was only thinking.... What a pity Charles wasn't here to-night!"
"Oh, you little enigma! Is it that dear Charles who is to be pitied, or who? We, for instance?"
But Eve assumed a superior air, and Lightmark, who hated riddles, dismissed the subject and the end of his cigarette simultaneously.
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One afternoon, three months later, Rainham, finding himself in the neighbourhood of Parton Street, took the occasion of knocking at Lady Garnett's door, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that the two ladies were returned. Introduced into their presence--they were sitting in the library, in close proximity to a considerable fire--he learnt that their summer wanderings that year had been of no extensive nature, and that they had come into residence a week ago.
They had spent a month in a country house in Berkshire, the old lady told him presently, adding, with an explanatory grimace, that it was a house which belonged to a relation--the sort of place where one had to visit now and again; where a month went a very long way; where one had to draw largely on one's courtesy--on one's hypocrisy (if he preferred the word), not to throw up the cards at once, and retire after the first week.
Rainham gathered from her resigned animadversions that the relations must be by marriage only: there was no Gallic quality in the atmosphere she described.
It was a very nice house--Jacobean, she believed--or, rather, it would have been nice if they had had it to themselves. Unfortunately, it was very full: there were a great many stupid men who shot all day, and as many stupid women who talked scandal and went to sleep after dinner; also there were several pairs--or did one say "brace"? --of young people who flirted, but they lived in the conservatories. When one did not go to sleep after dinner, one played round games, or baccarat. She herself had refused to play, although they had wished to make her; personally, she preferred to go to sleep, or to listen to Mary's music. Yes, Mary was more fortunate: they had a very good piano, and an organ. Mary's music was a great success, although her admirers were apt to confuse Offenbach with Chopin; and some of the women appeared to think it was not quite ladylike to play so well, with such a professional manner. Still, Mary's music was a success, and that was more than could be said of her own conversation. That had been a distinct failure! They seemed to think she wished to make fun of things--of sacred things, the game laws, and agriculture, and the Established Church. Of course, she had no such intention: it was only that she wished for information, for instruction in these difficult national institutions, which, long as she had made her home in England, she feared she would never thoroughly comprehend.
Mary had sat silently, with her hands clasped across her knees, while her aunt placidly poured forth these and similar comments (which were interspersed by questions and sympathetic monosyllables from Rainham), not so much acrimoniously, as in the tone of the humorous reporter, who is too indifferent to be actuated by a sense of injury.
The girl struck him as having grown tired and listless--more listless than a merely physical fatigue would warrant. He interrupted now to ask her with a touch of compassion if she too had been very much bored.
Her fine eyes were averted as she answered him, smiling a little: "I am rather glad to be back. It was a pretty place, and the gardens were charming, when it did not rain."
Lady Garnett was overheard to murmur into the black ear of Mefistofèle that it always rained.
"But on the whole--yes, I was rather bored," the girl continued abruptly.
"The rain and the round games and the people?" Rainham echoed. "You have my sympathy."
"I believe I rather liked the round games," said Mary, with a little laugh. "They were less tiresome than the rest; and the organ was a great solace; it was very perfect."
"Ah, yes, she liked the round games," put in Lady Garnett; "and if two of her admirers had played them more, and turned over her music less, the organ might have been a greater solace."
"They were very foolish," sighed the girl rather wearily.
"Mr. Sylvester was there for the last fortnight," continued Lady Garnett, with some malice. "He succeeded Lord Overstock, as Mary's musical acolyte. In revenge, Lord Overstock wished to teach her baccarat, and Mr. Sylvester remonstrated. It was sublime! It was the one moment of amusement vouchsafed me."
Mary flushed, locking her hands together nervously, with a trace of passion.
"It was ridiculous! intolerable! He had no right----!"
Lady Garnett bent forward, taking her hand.
"Forgive me, _chérie_! I did not mean to annoy you.... You can imagine how glad we were to see you," she added, with a sudden turn to Rainham. "It was charming of you to call so soon; you could hardly have expected to find us."
"You must not give me too much credit. I happened to be quite near, in Harley Street. I could not pass without inquiring."
"Ah, well," she said, "since you are here----" She was looking absently away from him into an antique, silver basket which lay on the little table by her side, in which were miscellaneous trifles, odd pieces of lace, thimbles which she never used, a broken fan, a box of chocolates.
"Mary, my dear," she said quickly, "I am so stupid! The old _bonbonnière_, with the brilliants? I must have left it on my dressing-table, or somewhere. That new housemaid--we really know nothing about her--it would be such a temptation. Would you mind----" "Is this----" Rainham began, and stopped short.
Lady Garnett's brilliant eyes, and a little admonitory gesture of one hand, restrained him. When the girl had shut the door behind her, the elder lady turned to him with a quaint smile.
"Is that it? Of course it is, my friend. You are singularly obtuse: a woman would have seen through me at once."
"I beg your pardon," said Rainham, somewhat mystified. "You mean it was a pretext?"
"It was for you that I made it," she replied with dignity. "What was it you came to say?"
The other was silent for a moment, cogitating. When he looked up at last, meeting her eyes, it was with something like a shiver, in a tone of genuine dismay, that he remarked: "Dear lady, there are times when you terrify me. You see too much. It is not--no, it is not human. I had meant to tell you nothing."
He stopped short, lowering his voice, and looking from the depths of his low chair into the red fire.
"It is not necessary, Philip," she continued presently, "that you should tell me; only, if you will be so secret, you should wear smoked glasses. Your eyes were so speaking that I was afraid--yes, afraid--when you came into the room. They looked haunted; they had the air of having seen a ghost!"
"It was a very respectable ghost," he said grimly, "with a frock-coat and a bald head. You know Sir Egbert, I suppose?"
"Only by name. I imagined that he was your spectre, when you spoke of Harley Street. Does he send you South again?"
"No," said Rainham shortly; "he thinks it would be inexpedient--that was his phrase, inexpedient--in an hotel, you know, and all that.... I was obliged to him, because in any case it would have been inconvenient to me to be abroad this year. I suppose, though, that if it would have done me any good I should have gone; but I have a great deal to arrange."
He went on composedly to tell her of the most important of these arrangements--the disposal of his business. He had systematically neglected it for years, he explained, and it had ended by going to the dogs. So long as his foreman was there, that had not mattered so much; but Bullen had decided to desert him, and very wisely. He had accepted an offer to manage the works of a firm of North-Country shipbuilders; he was to shake the dust of Blackpool from off his feet in a very few months, and would probably make his fortune. And as he himself was not equal to bearing his incubus alone, he had put it in the market. A brand new company had bought it--that is to say, they had made him an offer--a ridiculously inadequate one, he was told, but which he was determined to accept; at any rate, it would leave him enough, when everything was paid, to live upon, for the rest of his life. The legal preliminaries were now being settled: they appeared to be interminable; but as in the meantime the dock-gates were shut, and the clerks had departed, he could not, so far as he saw, be losing money; that was a consolation.
He had not come to the end of his disquisition before he discovered that he spoke to deaf ears. The old lady for once was inattentive: she had sat screening her face from the fire with a large palm fan while he unburdened himself, and she began now with a certain hesitation: "My pretext, Philip! When I said that I made it for you it was only half true. In effect, my dear, I had something to tell you--something disagreeable."
"Concerning me?" he asked.
"Certainly," she said--"something I have heard."
He looked vaguely across at her, finding her obscurity a little strained, waiting for her to speak. The silence that intervened was beginning to harass him, when she said suddenly: "I will be quite plain. I think you ought to know. There is a scandal abroad about you--about you and some woman."
"Some woman!" he repeated blankly. "What woman?" He leant back in his chair, laughing his pleasant, low laugh. "I am sorry," he said, "I can't be as seriously annoyed as I ought; it is too foolish. My conscience really does not help me to discover her--this woman. Do you know any more?"
She shook her head.
"It is not a nice story," she said. "No, I have heard no name; only the story is current. I have heard it from three sources. I thought you had better know of it."
"Thank you," he answered, rising to go. "Yes, it is a thing one may as well know. It is very kind of them, these people, to take such trouble, to be sufficiently interested. Upon my honour, I do not know that I very much care. After all, what does it matter?"
"Nothing to me," said Lady Garnett, with a little shrug of disdain--"nothing, _Dieu me pardonne_! even if it were true."
"Well, good-bye," he said.
As he held her hand for a moment between his own he thought it trembled slightly.
"Ah, no!" she said quickly; "it is a phrase I decline. Come and see me soon. I am an old woman, my friend, and I have outlived my generation. I have said too many good-byes in my time. It is _au revoir_."
"With all my heart," he said, smiling. " _Au revoir_."
Her quaint intimation--that was the manner in which he characterized it--was already dismissed from his mind when he emerged into the street.
He had too many graver preoccupations to be greatly troubled by this grotesque slander. Going on his way, however--a temporary cessation of the soft, persistent rain which had been falling for most of the day suggested a walk--a chance recollection brought him to a sudden stop, changing his indifference for a moment into the shadow of pale indignation. How dull of him not to have guessed at once! it must be that unfortunate girl, Kitty Crichton, with whom busybodies were associating his name. He wondered how they had discovered her, and by whom the stupid story had been set afloat. The baselessness of the scandal, conjoined with his immense apathy just then as to anything more that the malice of men could do, inclined him to amusement, the more so as he reflected how many months it was since the girl and her wretched history had passed from his ken. He had found her gone on his return from Italy in the spring, leaving no address and but the briefest acknowledgment of his good-will in a note, which stated that she had no longer any excuse for imposing on his kindness--had found friends. The letter closed, as he imagined, a painful history, which, since his service had been, after all, so fruitless, he could see ended with relief. To his interpretation, the girl had recovered her scoundrel journalist, or at least compelled him to contribute to her support; and after all, as it seemed, he had not done with her yet, though the fashion of her return was ghostly and immaterial enough. The subject galled him; there were always dim possibilities lurking in the background of it which he refused to contemplate; he dismissed it. His meditation had carried him through the bustle of Oxford Street to the Marble Arch, and, the weather still encouraging him, he decided to turn into the Park. Many rainy days had made the air exceedingly soft, and in his enjoyment of this unusual quality, and of the strangely sweet odour of the wet earth and mildewing leaves, he forgot for a while a certain momentous sentence of Sir Egbert Rome's, which had jingled in his head all that afternoon. Presently it tripped him up again, like the gross melody of a music-hall song, and caused him to drop absently upon the first seat, quite unconscious that it was in an unwholesome condition of moisture. He had turned his back on the brilliant patches of yellow and copper-coloured chrysanthemums on the flower-plots facing Park Lane, and he looked westwards over a wider expanse of grass and trees: the grass bestrewed with bright autumnal leaves, the trees obscured and formless, in a rising white mist, through which a pale sun struggled and was vanquished. He had never been in a fitter mood to appreciate the decay of the year, and suddenly he was seized, in the midst of his depression, with an immense thrill, almost causing him to throw out his arms with an embracing gesture to the autumn, the very personal charm, the mysterious and pitiful fascination of the season whose visible beauty seems to include all spiritual things. It cast a spell over him of a long mental silence, as one might say, in which all definite thought expired, from which he aroused himself at last with a shrug of self-contempt, to find inexplicable tears in his eyes. And just then an interruption came, not altogether unwelcome, in the greeting of a familiar voice. It was Lightmark, who had discovered him in the course of a rapid walk down the Row, and had crossed over the small patch of intervening grass to make his salutations.
"I knew you by your back," he remarked, after they had shaken hands--"the ineffable languor of it; and, besides, who else but you would sit for choice on an October evening in such a wretched place?"
He looked down ruefully at his patent leather shoes, which the damp grass had dulled.
Rainham smiled vaguely; he needed an effort to pull himself together, to collect his energies sufficiently to meet the commonplace of conversation, after the curious detachment into which he had fallen; and he wondered aimlessly how long he had been there.
"I suppose, like everyone else, Dick," he remarked after a while, "it is the weather which has brought you home at such an unfashionable date."
"Yes," answered Lightmark; "it was very poor fun yachting. I shall stay in town altogether next year, I think. And you--you are not looking particularly fit; what have you done with yourself?"
"Oh, I am fit enough," said Rainham lightly; "I have been in London, you see."
"Well, I can't let you go now you are here. Won't you dine with us? Or rather--no, I believe we dine out. Come back and have some tea; Eve will be enchanted. I really decline to sit in that puddle."
Rainham rose slowly.
"Perhaps I will," he said. "I would have called before, if I had thought there was the least chance of finding you. And how do things go?"
As they strolled along through the deserted Park, and Lightmark entertained his friend with an extravagant narration of their miseries on the _Lucifer_, the chronic sea-sickness of the ladies, the incapacity and intoxication of the steward, and the discontent of everybody on board--he spoke as if they had entertained a considerable party--Rainham's interested eyes had leisure to note a change in him, not altogether unexpected. He presented the same handsome, well-dressed, prosperous figure; and yet prosperity had in some degree coarsened him. The old charm of his boyish carelessness had been succeeded by a certain hard assurance, an air of mundane, if not almost commercial shrewdness, which gave him less the note of an artist than of a successful man of business. And where the old Lightmark, the Lightmark of the Café Grecco days, broke out at times, it was less pleasantly than of old, in a curious recklessness, a tendency, which jarred on Rainham's susceptible nerves, to dilate with a vanity which would have been vulgar, had it not been almost childish, on his lavish living, the magnitude of his expenditure.
"You must find that sort of thing rather a tax?" he asked tentatively, after a description which struck him as unnecessarily exuberant of a hospitality in the summer.
"Oh, it pays in the long run," remarked the other easily, "to keep open house and go everywhere. Thank Heaven, the uncle is liberal! I admit we have been going at rather a pace lately. But, then, I can knock off a couple of pictures as soon as I have a little time, which will raise the wind again. I know what the public wants, bless it!"
Rainham shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.
"Poor public! If it wants art made in that spirit, it is worse than I believed."
Lightmark looked askance at him, frowning a little, pulling at his long moustache. He was absorbed for some time--they had turned into the Edgware Road, and the soft rain had begun again--in ineffectual pursuit of cabs. When at last he had caught a driver's eye, and they had settled themselves on the cushions of a hansom, he turned abruptly to his companion to ask him if he had seen the Academy before it closed.
"You recognised your domain?" he asked lightly, when the other had responded in the affirmative--"in my picture, I mean?"
He spoke quickly, in his accustomed blithe habit; it might have been merely a morbid fancy of Rainham's which traced a note of anxiety, of concealed uneasiness, in his accent, that the bare question scarcely justified.
Rainham paused a moment: it was not only a passing thought of Oswyn's acrimony, and of the difficult minutes during which he had been thrown across Lightmark at the Dock, that constrained him; it was rather the recollection of his own careful scrutiny of the disputed canvas, when he had at last dragged himself with a disagreeable sense of moral responsibility into Burlington House, and had come away at last strangely dissatisfied. Acquitting Dick of any conscious plagiarism, of a breach of common honesty, he was disagreeably filled with a sense of the work's immeasurable inferiority to Oswyn's ruined masterpiece. It was clever, and audacious, and striking; it had had the fortune to be splendidly hung, and that was all, for all his goodwill, he could say. And since, after all, that was so little, would strike his friend as but a cold tribute after the panegyrics of the morning papers, he preferred to say nothing, deftly dropping the subject, and responding to the first half of his friend's question alone.
"My domain, Dick? Ah, I forgot; you can hardly have heard that it is my domain no longer--or ceases to be very shortly. That has come to an end; I have sold it."
Lightmark whistled softly.
"Well, you surprise me! Of course I am glad; we will be glad too. We shall see more of you now, I suppose? or will you live abroad?"
"Abroad?" echoed Rainham absently. "Oh, yes, very probably. But tell me, how is--Eve?"
"As we seem to be arriving, I think I will let her tell you herself."
They descended, and Rainham waited silently while his friend discharged the cabman, and let him in with his latch-key into the bright, spacious hall. Then, after glancing into the empty drawing-room, Lightmark preceded him up the thick carpeted stairs, on which their footsteps scarcely sounded, and stopped at the door of Eve's boudoir, through which a woman's voice, speaking rather rapidly, and, as it struck him, in a key of agitation, fell upon Rainham's ear with a certain familiarity, though he was sure it was not Eve's, and could not remember when or where he might have heard it. After a moment they went in.
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There are occasions when thought is terribly and comprehensively sudden: the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and syllogism, so slow and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an occult vision, immediate and complete, into the obscure manner of life, and crowd an infinity of discovery into a very few seconds. It was so with Philip Rainham now. Lightmark had scarcely closed the door, against which he now stood in a black silence, with the air of a man turned to stone; Rainham's eyes had only fallen once upon the two figures on the sofa--Eve crushed in a corner, a sorrowful, dainty shape in the silk and lace of her pretty tea-gown, with the white drawn face of a scared child; Kitty Crichton, in her cloak and hat, bending forward a little, the hectic flush of strong excitement colouring her checks, that were already branded by her malady--when he underwent a moral revolution. He had no more to learn. He glanced at Lightmark curiously, almost impartially, his loathing strangely tempered by a sort of self-contempt, that he should have been so deluded. The clumsy lies which this man had told him, and which he in his indolent charity had believed! All at once, and finally, in a flash of brutal illumination, he saw Lightmark, who had once been his friend, as he really was, naked and unclean. It stripped him of all his superficial qualities; the mask of genial good-nature, the air of good-fellowship, under which his gross egoism lay concealed that it might be more securely mischievous when it went loose. His amiability was an imposture, a dangerous harlequinade; the man was bad. It was a plausible scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a handsome face and a few cheap talents--had he not been reduced to stealing the picture of his friend? --whom these two women had loved, to whom one of them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good or bad, he was Eve's husband, and she was his wife, bound to him until the end. And then, for the first time, seeing her there, helpless and terrified, in her forlorn prettiness, he deceived himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for the woman, his angry pity for her misery that was coming, in no false terms. Such self-deception, honest as it had been, was no longer possible. He knew now that he loved her, and all that his love had been--the very salt and savour of life to him, the one delicious and adorable pain relieving the gray _ennui_ of the rest of it, to remain with him always (even, as it seemed now, in the very article of death) as a reminder of the intolerable sweetness which life, under other conditions, might have contained. And inexplicably, in the midst of his desolation, his heart sang a sort of fierce pæan: as a woman, delivered of a man-child, goes triumphing to meet the sordidness of death, so was there in Rainham's rapid acceptance of his fruitless and ineffectual love a distinct sense of victory, in which pain expired--victory over the meanness and triviality of modern life, which could never seem quite mean and trivial again, since he had proved it to be capable of such moments; had looked once--and could so sing his "Nunc Dimittis"--upon the face of love. And it all happened in a second, and in a further second--for his thought, quickened by the emergency, still leapt forward with incredible swiftness--a great audacity seized Philip Rainham, to save the beloved woman pain. The devil would be at him later, would beset him, harass him, madden him with hint and opportunity of profiting by Lightmark's forfeiture. But the devil's turn was not yet; he was filled only with his great and reverent love, his sublime pity for the little tragical figure in front of him, whose house of painted cards tumbled. Well! he might save it for her for a little longer--at least, there was one desperate chance which he would try.
He had lived too long, unconsciously, in the habit of seeking her happiness, that it should fail him now in her evil hour, in the first flush of his new consciousness (ah, yes, there was beauty in that, and victory!) , for any base personal thought or animosity against the man. He would have given her so easily his life; should he grudge her his reputation? The reputation of a man with one foot in the grave--what did it matter? And it all came about in a few seconds.
Before any one of that strange company had found time to speak, Rainham had grasped the situation, knew himself at last and the others, and was prepared, scarcely counting the cost, with his splendid lie. He made a step forward, then stopped suddenly, as if he were bracing himself for a moral conflict. His face was very white and rigid, his mouth set firmly; and the other three watched him with a strange expectancy depicted on all their countenances, amidst the various emotions proper to each of them; for he alone had the air of being master of the situation. And his resolve had need to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty, distressed face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly anguish, with some of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs instinctively in its extremity to the person whom it knows best; and she gave him her two little trembling hands, which he held for a moment silently.
"Philip," she said, in a low, constrained voice--"Philip, I have known you all my life--longer than anyone. You were always good to me. Tell me whether it's true or not what this woman has told me. Philip, I shall die if this be true!"
He bent his head for a moment. He had a wild longing to give up, simply to clasp her in his arms and console her with kisses and incoherent words of tenderness, as he had done years ago, when she was a very small child, and ran to him with her tear-stained cheeks, after a difficulty with her governess. But he only put her away from him very quietly and sadly.
"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your husband."
The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote.
"I tell you it is not true. Lightmark," he added sternly, "there has been a mistake--you see that--for which I apologize. Wake up, for God's sake! Come and see after your wife; some slander has upset her. This woman is--mine; I will take her away."
The girl trembled violently; she appeared fascinated, terrified into a passive obedience by Rainham's imperious eyes, which burnt in his white face like the eyes of a dying man. She followed, half unconsciously, his beckoning hand. But Eve confronted her before she reached the door.
"Whom am I to believe?" she cried scornfully. "Why did you say it? What was the good of it--a lie like that? It is a lie, I suppose?"
"Yes, yes!" said the girl hysterically, "it seems so. Oh, let me go, madam! I'm sorry I told you. I'll trouble nobody much longer. Call it a lie."
She threw out her hands helplessly; she would have fallen, but Rainham caught her wrist, drew her toward him, supporting her with an arm.
"Come," he said firmly, "this is no place for us."
Eve regarded them all strangely, vaguely, the terror gradually dying out of her eyes--Lightmark expressionless and silent, as he had been all through the interview; the woman trembling on Rainham's arm, who stood beside her with his downcast eyes, the picture of conscious guilt. A curious anguish too pale to be indignation plucked at her heart-strings--anguish in which, unaccountably, the false charge against her husband was scarcely considered; that had become altogether remote and unreal, something barely historical, fading already away in the dim shadows of the past. What hurt her, with a dull pain which she could not analyse, was the sudden tarnishing of a scarcely-admitted ideal by Rainham's deliberate confession, making life appear for the moment intolerably sordid and mean. Would she have owned to herself that, with an almost unconscious instinct, she had judged these two men all along by a different standard? Hardly: she loved her husband, and her marriage had not yet dissipated the memory of those golden days of illusion preceding it, in which her love had been of a finer kind. Only that time, in which it would have been impossible for her to judge him, in which he could only do right in her eyes, was gone. Occasions had arrived when they had inevitably to differ, on which the girl had gently acquiesced--if not without a touch of scorn--in his action, but had not felt obliged to accept his point of view. There had been times when her pride had suffered--for underneath her childish exterior, her air of being just a dainty little figure of Watteau, she had a very sensitive and delicate pride of her own--and then, if she had succeeded in forgiving Lightmark, it had not been without an effort which had made it difficult for her to pardon herself. Sometimes, though she would scarcely have confessed it, her husband's mere approbativeness had almost shocked her. It was good, no doubt, to be popular, harmless even, to care for popularity--at least, one's traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so exorbitantly as Lightmark appeared to do, to sacrifice so much to one's enthusiasm for pleasing inferior people--people whom, behind their backs, one was quite ready to tear to pieces, allowing them neither intelligence nor virtue--in just that there seemed to her some flaw of taste that was almost like a confession of failure. Surely she loved him, and was ready to forgive him much: not for worlds would she have confessed to disillusion. And yet, now and again, when the rush and ostentation of their new life, with its monotony of dinners and dances--so little like that which she had anticipated as the future lot of a painter's wife--had left her rather weary, a trifle sad, she had thought suddenly of her old friend Philip Rainham, and the thought had solaced her. There is a sort of pleasure, even when one is married to the most amiable of husbands, and is getting quite old--very nearly twenty--in turning from time to time to a person who has known one in the very shortest of frocks, and whose intimate connection with chocolates and "treats" is among one's earliest traditions. She made no contrasts; and yet when occasionally on one of those afternoons--there seemed to be so many of them--when she was "at home," when her bright, large drawing-room was fullest, and she was distracted to find herself confusing, amidst the clatter of teacups, dear Mrs. Henderson, who painted wild-flowers so cleverly, with dear Lady Lorimer, who was going on the stage, she looked up and saw Rainham hovering in the near distance, or sitting with his teacup balanced in one long white hand as he turned a politely tolerant ear to the small talk of a neighbour, she felt strangely rested. Trouble or confusion might come, she told herself, and how suddenly all these charming people, who were so surprisingly alike, and whose names were so exasperatingly different, would disappear. Dear Mrs. Henderson and dear Lady Lorimer, and that odious Mrs. Dollond--what was she saying to Dick now which had to be spoken with an air of such exaggerated intimacy in so discreet an undertone? --how swiftly they would all be gone, like the snows of last year! Only Philip Rainham, she was sure, would be there still, a little older, perhaps, with the air of being a little more tired of things, but inwardly the same, unalterably loyal and certain. The prospect was curiously sustaining, the more in that she had no tangible cause of uneasiness, was an extremely happy woman--it was so that she would have most frequently described herself--only growing at times a little weary of the fashionable tread-mill, and the daily routine of not particularly noble interests which it involved. Catching his eyes sometimes, as he sat there, looking out idly, indifferently, upon it all--this success which was the breath of life to Dick--she found him somewhat admirable; disdainful, fastidious, reserved--beneath his surface good-humour, his constant kindness, he could scarcely be a happy man. In flashes of sudden gratitude, she would have been glad often to have done something for him, had there been anything in the world to do. And then she laughed at herself for such a vain imagination. Had it not been his proper charm all along that he was a man for whom one could do nothing? precisely, because he wanted nothing, was so genuinely indifferent to anything that life could offer? And now all that was at an end; by his own confession he had finished it, admitting himself, with a frankness almost brutal, a man like other men, only with passions more sordid, and a temper more unscrupulous, in that he had ruined this wretched woman, whose coming there had left a trail of vileness over her own life.
"Ah, yes, go!" she said, after a while, answering Rainham's exclamation. "For pity's sake, go!"
Rainham bowed his head, obeyed her; as the door closed behind them he could hear that she cried softly, and that Lightmark, his silence at last broken, consoled her with inaudible words.
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Rainham turned at random out of Grove Road, walking aimlessly, and very fast, without considering direction. He had passed the girl's arm through his own as they left the house; and in a sort of stupefied obedience she had submitted. To her, too, one way was the same as another, as dreary and as vain. With Rainham, indeed, after the tension of the last few minutes, into which he had crowded such a wealth of suffering and of illumination, a curious stupor had succeeded. For the moment he neither thought nor suffered: simply, it was good to be out there, in the darkness--the darkness of London--after that immense plunge, which was still too near him, that he should attempt to appreciate it in all its relations. By-and-by would be the season of reckoning, the just and delicate analysis, by nicely critical nature, of all that he had deliberately lost, when he might run desperately before the whips of his own thought; now he felt only the lethargy which succeeds strenuous action, that has been, in a measure, victorious; the physical well-being of walking rapidly, vaguely, through the comfortable shadows, allowing the cold rain to pelt refreshingly upon his face and aching temples. And it was not until they had gone so through several streets, whose names were a blank to him, that Rainham bethought him, with a touch of self-reproach, of his companion, and how ill her thin garments and slender figure were calculated to suffer the downpour, which he only found consoling. He drew her into the shelter of a doorway, signalled to a passing cab; and just then, the light of an adjacent street lamp falling upon her face, he realized for the first time in its sunken outline the progress of her malady.
"I beg your pardon," he said gently; "I did not understand that you were ill. You must tell me where you are lodging, and I will take you back." Then, as though he anticipated her hesitation, a tribute to her old ambiguity, become so useless, he added dryly: "You can tell me your address; you have no reason to hide yourself now."
She glanced up at him furtively, shrinking back a little as though she feared his irony.
"I live in Charlotte Street, No. --. But pray let me go alone, sir! It will not be your way."
"I have rooms in Bloomsbury," he answered. "It will be entirely on my way."
And the girl made no further protest, when he handed her into the cab, an inconvenient four-wheeler which had responded to his signal, and, after giving the driver the address which she had indicated, took his place silently beside her. Perhaps something of Rainham's own lethargy had infected her, after a scene so feverish; or perhaps she could not but feel dimly, and in a manner not to be analysed, how that, distant and apart as they two seemed, yet within the last hour, by Rainham's action, between her life and his a subtile, invisible chord had been stretched, so that the order of her going might well rest with him.
She cast furtive glances at him from time to time as he sat back, obscure in his corner, gazing out with eyes which saw nothing at the blurred gas-lamps, and the red flashes of the more rapid vehicles which outstripped them. And now that the first stupefying effect of his intervention was wearing away--it seemed like a mad scene in a theatre, or some monstrous dream, so surprising and unreal--her primitive consciousness awoke, and set her wondering, inquiring, with bewilderment that was akin to terror, into the motives and bearing of their joint conduct. It had seemed to her natural enough then, as do the most grotesque of our sleeping visions when they are passing; but now that she was awake, relieved from the coercion of his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so stupendous a fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this sin of another's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of "Philip!" at his entry recurred to her--the intimate nature of her appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted the idea. Did she not know "gentlemen" and the nature of their love? The girl was hardened by ill-usage, bitter from long brooding over her shame. She was glad when he turned to her at last, breaking a silence which the sullen roar of London outside and beyond them, the dreary rattling of the cab, seemed only to heighten, with a sudden gesture of despair.
"If I had only known! If you had only told me two years ago!"
The suppressed passion in his voice, his air, terrified the girl. She bent forward trembling.
"Ah! what have I done, what have I done?" she moaned. "How did I know that it would all come like this? I meant no harm, sir. He persuaded me to deceive you after I had found out who he really was, to put you off the scent, keeping his name a secret. He said he had a right to ask that. He told me he was married, though he wasn't then. And afterwards he made me move, when you were abroad: he wanted my address not to be known. That was the condition he made of his seeing after the child; he swore he would provide for her then, and bring her up like a lady. And he sent me the money for a bit pretty regular. Oh, it was only for her sake, I promise you that! I wouldn't have touched a brass farthing for myself. But, after all, she _was_ his child. And then, somehow or other, the money didn't come. He went away--he was away all the summer--and he said he had so many calls on him, such expenses."
"Ah, the scoundrel!" cried Rainham, between his set teeth.
The girl took him up, hardly with an echo of his own resentment, rather with a sort of crushed directness, as one who acknowledged a bare fact, making no comment, merely admitting the obscure dreariness of things.
"Yes; he was a scoundrel. He was bad all along. I think he has no heart. And he has made me bad too. I was a good enough girl of old, before I knew him. Only something came over me to-night when I found _her_ there, with that big house and the servants, and all that luxury, and thought how he couldn't spare a few pounds to bring his own child up decent. Oh, I was vile to-night. I frightened her. Perhaps it was best as it happened. It dazed her. She'll remember less. She'll only remember your part of it, sir."
She glanced across at him with timid eyes, which asked him to be so good as to explain: all that had confused her so.
"I don't understand," she murmured helplessly--"I don't understand."
He ignored the interrogation in her eyes with a little gesture, half irritable and half entreating, which coerced her.
"How did you come there?" he asked. "What was the good----" His question languished suddenly, and he let both hands fall slowly upon his knees. In effect, the uselessness of all argument, the futility of any recrimination in the face of what had been accomplished, was suddenly borne in upon him with irresistible force: and his momentary irritation against the malice of circumstance, the baseness of the man, was swallowed up in a rising lassitude which simply gave up.
The girl continued after a while, in a low, rapid voice, her eyes fixed intently upon the opal in an antique ring which shone faintly upon one of Rainham's quiet hands, as though its steady radiance helped her speech: "It was all an accident--an accident. I was sick and tired of waiting and writing, and getting never a word in reply. My health went too, last winter, and ever since I have been getting weaker and worse. I knew what that meant: my mother died of a decline--yes, she is dead, thank God! this ten years--and it was then, when I knew I wouldn't get any better, and there was the child to think of, that I wanted to see him once more. There was a gentleman, too, who came----" She broke off for a moment, clasping her thin hands together, which trembled as though the memory of some past, fantastic terror had recurred.
"It doesn't matter," she went on presently. "He frightened me, that was all. He had such a stern, smooth-spoken way with him; and he seemed to know so much. He said that he had heard of me and my story, and would befriend me if I would tell him the name of the man who ruined me. Yes, he would befriend me, help me to lead a respectable life."
Her sunken eyes flashed for a moment, and her lip was scornfully curled.
"God knows!" she cried, with a certain rude dignity, "I was always an honest woman but for Cyril--Dick she called him."
The intimate term, tossed so lightly from those lips, caused Rainham to quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete touch giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the girl's old relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present horror, startlingly real and distinct.
"Go on," he said at last, wearily.
"Ah, I didn't tell him, sir," she explained, misinterpreting his silence. "I wouldn't have done that. He sore angered me, though he may have meant well. He was set on seeing the child then, but I wouldn't let him. It came over me after he was gone that that, maybe, was what he came for--the child. Someone might have put him on to take her from me--some society. Oh, I was at my wits' end, sir! for, you see, she is all I have--all--all! Then I made up my mind to go and see him. Bad as he is, he wouldn't have let them do it. Oh, I would have begged and prayed to him on my knees for that."
She stopped for a moment, hectic and panting. She pressed both hands against her breast, as though she sought composure. Then she continued: "It was all a mistake, you know, my being shown in there to-night! I would never have sought her out myself, being where she is. Oh, I have my pride! It was the servant's mistake: he took me for a fitter, no doubt, from one of the big dressmakers. Perhaps there was one expected, I don't know. But I didn't think of that when I came in and found her sitting there, so proud and soft. It all came over me--how badly he had used me, and little Meg there at home, and hard Death coming on me--and I told her. It seemed quite natural then, as though I had come for that, just for that and nothing else, though, Heaven knows, it was never in my mind before. I was sorry afterwards. Yes, before you came in with _him_ I was sorry. It wasn't as if I owed her any grudge. How could she have known? She is an innocent young thing, after all--younger than I ever was--for all her fine dresses and her grand ladyish way. It was like striking a bit of a child.... God forgive him," she added half hysterically, "if he uses her as bad as me!"
Rainham's hand stole to his side, and for a moment he averted his head. When he turned to her again she was uncertain whether it was more than a pang of sharp physical pain, such as she well knew herself, which had so suddenly blanched his lips.
"For pity's sake, girl," he whispered, "be silent."
She considered him for a moment silently in the elusive light, that matched the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood. His expression puzzled, evaded her; and she could not have explained the pity which he aroused.
"I am sorry," she broke out again, moved by an impulse which she did not comprehend. "You did it for her."
"Oh, for her! What does it matter since it is done? Say that it was an accident--a folly--that I am sorry too."
"No," said the girl softly; "you are glad."
He shrugged his shoulders with increasing weariness, an immense desire to have the subject ended and put away with forgotten things.
"I am glad, then. Have it as you like."
But she resumed with a pertinacity which his irritated nerves found malignant.
"If it was that," she said ambiguously, "you had better have held your tongue. You had only to gain---- Ah, why did you do it? What was the good?"
He made another gesture of lassitude; then, rousing himself, he remarked: "It was a calculation, then, a piece of simple arithmetic. If it gives her a little peace a little longer, why should three persons suffer--be sacrificed--when two might serve?"
"Oh, him!" cried the girl scornfully; "he can't suffer--he hasn't a heart!"
Rainham looked up at her at last. His fingers ceased playing with his ring.
"Oh, let me count for a little," he murmured, with a little, ghastly laugh.
The girl's eyes looked full into his, and in a moment they shone out of her face, which was suffused with a rosy flush that made her almost beautiful, with the illumination of some transcendent idea.
"Ah, you _are_ a gentleman!" she cried.
In the tension of their nerves they were neither aware that the cab had come to a standstill, and before he could prevent her, she had stooped swiftly down and caught his hand passionately to her lips.
"Heaven forgive me! How unhappy you must be!" she said.
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After all, things were not so complicated as they seemed. For Kitty was nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with its commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of suffering, telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light and so wanting in buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and forgotten, amid the chaos of things broken and ruined.
"I don't want to die," she said, day after day, to the sternly cheerful nurse who had her in charge at the quiet, sunny hospital in the suburbs, where Rainham had gained admission for her as in-patient. "But I don't know that I want to live, either."
And so it had been from the beginning, poor soul, poor wavering fatalist! with a nature too innately weak to make an inception either of good or evil, the predestined prey of circumstance.
As she lay in the long, white room dedicated to those stricken, like herself, with the disease that feeds on youth, her strength ebbing away quite painlessly, she often entered upon the pathless little track of introspection, a pathetic, illogical summing up of the conduct of her life, which always led so quickly to the same broad end of reassurance, followed by unreasoned condemnation--the conventional judgement on her very inability to discover where she had so gravely sinned, how and when she had earned the extreme penalty of reprobation and of death. She was too wicked, she concluded hopelessly, vaguely struggling with the memories of the teaching of her Sunday-school, too wicked to find out wherein her exceeding wickedness lay.
One comfort she took to her sad heart, that Rainham had not condemned her; that he had only pitied her, while he reserved his damnation for the iron-bound, Sabbatarian world which had ruined and spurned another helpless victim. Rainham she believed implicitly, obeyed unquestioningly, with a sense of gratitude which had been largely mingled with self-reproach, until he had told her that, so far as he was concerned, she had nothing to reproach herself with. It never occurred to her for a moment now to question or to resent the part he had made her play on that tragical afternoon in Grove Road. Why should she? The imputation of a lie, what was that to her? Had he not taken it all, all her misery upon himself? Had he not fed, and clothed, and lodged her like the most penitent of prodigals, although she had no claim upon him until he chose to give it to her? Her benefactor could do no wrong, that was her creed; and it made things wonderfully smooth, the future on a sudden strangely simple. She had lied to him at the bidding of the other, and he had not resented it when he came to know the truth: she had brought shame on him, and he had not reproached her. A man like this was outside her experience; she regarded him with a kind of grateful amazement--a wondering veneration, which sometimes held her dumb in his presence.
If she had felt unhappy at first about the future of her child--and there had been moments when this thought had been more bitter than all the rest of her life together--this care was taken from her when Rainham promised to adopt the little girl, or, better still, to induce Mrs. Bullen to open her motherly heart to her. "They'll be only too glad to get her," he had said decisively, interrupting her awkward little speech of thanks. "That will be all right. Mrs. Bullen hasn't known what to do with herself since her son went to sea; she wants a child to care for. You needn't worry yourself about that."
It was after this that Kitty had owned to the nurse that she had no desire to live; and though the shifting of this burden enabled her to carry her life for a time less wearily, the end was not far; and the news of her death came to Rainham just after the first snowfall, in the middle of a dreary, cruel December.
The winter wore on, and still Rainham was to be seen almost nightly in his now familiar corner by the fireside at Brodonowski's, in the seat next that which had become Oswyn's by right of almost immemorial occupation. His negotiations with the company who were to buy him out of his ancestral dock were still incomplete, and now he felt a strange reluctance to hurry matters, to hasten the day on which he should be forced to leave the little room looking out upon the unprofitable river which he loved.
The two men would sit together, sometimes talking, but far more often not, until a very late hour; and when the doors were closed upon them they often wandered aimlessly in the empty streets, dismissing their cares in contemplation of great moonlit buildings, or the strong, silent river, sliding under the solemn bridges; united from day to day more closely by the rare sympathy which asks no questions and finds its chief expression in silence. One thing they both hated--to be alone; but loneliness for them was not what most mortals understand by the name. There was company for them in inanimate things--in books, in pictures, and even in objects less expressive; they were men who did not fear their thoughts, who looked to the past for their greatest pleasures. And now for Rainham the whole of life was a thing so essentially weary and flavourless that the _ennui_ of little things seemed hardly worth consideration. He was dumbly content to let destiny lead him whither it would, without apprehension, without expectation. Oswyn had asked him, one evening, just before they parted on the doorstep of the club, with a certain abruptness which the other had long since learnt to understand, why he was in London instead of being at Bordighera. Rainham sighed, echoing the question as if the idea suggested was entirely novel.
"Why, because---- Well, for one thing, because you are in London and the Dollonds are at Bordighera. You don't know Mrs. Dollond?" he added, seeing that the other looked at him with a certain air of wistful distrust, a momentarily visible desire to see behind so obvious a veil.
"No, thank God!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders, and turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impassiveness.
"But you have apparently heard of her," continued Rainham, with an effort toward humour. "And I am afraid people have been slandering her. She is a very excellent person, the soul of good-nature, and as amusing as--as an American comic paper! But in my present state of health I'm afraid she would be a little too much for me. I can stand her in homeopathic doses, but the Riviera isn't nearly big enough for the two of us as permanencies. No, I think I shall wait until next winter now."
Oswyn shot a quick glance at him, and then looked away as suddenly, and after a brief silence they parted.
Rainham was already beginning to consider himself secure from the inconvenient allusions to Lightmark and their altered relations, which he had at first nervously anticipated. Oswyn rarely mentioned the other painter's name, and accepted, without surprise or the faintest appearance of a desire for explanation, the self-evident fact of the breach between the two quondam allies; regarding it as in the natural course of events, and as an additional link in the chain of their intimacy. Indeed, Lightmark had long ceased to be a component element of the atmosphere of Brodonowski's: he no longer brought the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change, something far more significant than the general severance which had gradually been effected between them, the unreclaimed children of the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant society painter; something as to which it seemed that explanation would not be forthcoming, as to which questions were undesirable. The perception of this did not demand much subtlety, and, in accordance with the instincts of their craft, Rainham's reticence was respected.
"It was curious, when you come to think of it," Copal said reflectively one evening after his return from a late autumnal ramble in Finistère, and while the situation was still new to him, "very curious. Rainham and Lightmark were inseparable; so were Rainham and Oswyn. And all the time Lightmark and Oswyn were about as friendly as the toad and the harrow. Sounds like Euclid, doesn't it? Things equal to the same thing, and quite unequal to one another."
"Yes," assented McAllister, thoughtfully stroking his reddish beard. "And there was a time--not so very long ago, either--when Lightmark and Oswyn were on pretty good terms too!"
"Ah, well; most people quarrel with old Oswyn sooner or later. But it certainly does look a little as if--as if Lightmark had done something and the other two had found it out--Oswyn first. However, it's no business of ours. I suppose he's safe to be elected next week,--though he isn't a Scotchman, eh, Sandy old man?"
"Quite," said the other laconically.
And then their conversation was modulated into a less personal key as they resumed their discussion of the colony of American _pleinairistes_ with whom Rathbone had foregathered at Pontaven, and of the "paintability" of fields of _sarrasin_ and poplars.
Rainham found it rather difficult to satisfy his inner self as to his real, fundamental motive for wintering in England. Sir Egbert's orders? They had not, after all, amounted to much more than an expression of opinion, and it was somewhat late for him to begin to obey his doctors. The transfer of his business? That could have been carried out just as well in his absence by his solicitors.
For some time after Kitty's death--and her illness had certainly at first detained him--he was able to assure himself that he was waiting until little Margot (so he called the child) should have secured a firm foothold in the affections of his foreman's family; the fact that the Bullens were so soon to leave him seemed to render this all more necessary. But now, in the face of Bullen's somewhat deferential devotion and his wife's vociferous raptures, there hardly seemed to be room for doubt on this score. For the present, at least, the child ran no risk greater than that of being too much petted.
And at last he was obliged to own that his inability to follow his established precedent was due to some moral deficiency, a species of cowardice which he could only vaguely analyse, but which was closely connected with his reluctance to isolate himself among the loquacious herd of those who sought for health or pleasure. If Oswyn would have accompanied him to the Riviera he would have gone; but Oswyn was not to be induced to forsake his beloved city, and so he stayed, telling himself that each week was to be the last.
On a bright day, when spring seemed to be within measurable distance in spite of the cold, he made an expedition with Margot to Kensington Gardens; and they passed, on their way through the Park, the seat on which he had rested after his interview with Lady Garnett on that far-away October evening--the memory struck him now as of another life. It was frosty to-day, and the seat raised itself forlornly from quite a mound of snow. And when they left the Gardens he hailed a cab, and, before they had reached the Circus on their homeward journey, bade the man turn and drive northward, up Orchard Street and into Grove Road.
It was dusk now, and there were bright touches of light in the windows of the low, white house, which he glanced at almost surreptitiously as they passed, and two carriages waited before the outer door.
"My dear child," he remarked suddenly to the little girl, who was growing almost frightened by his frowning silence, "you should always, always remember that when a man has made a fool of himself, the best thing he can do is to clear out, and not return to his folly like the proverbial dog!"
Margot looked solemnly puzzled for a moment, and then laughed, deciding boldly that this was a new and elaborate game--a joke, perhaps--which she was too little to understand, but which politeness and good-fellowship alike required her at least to appear to appreciate. They were great friends already, these two. Children always recognised an ally in the man who made so few friends among his peers, and for children--especially for pretty children of a prettiness which accorded with his own private views--Rainham had an undeniable weakness.
On slack days--and they were always slack now--loungers about the precincts of the dock often caught a glimpse of the child's fair hair above the low level of the dark bow-window which leaned outwards from Rainham's room; and the foreman had even gone so far as to suggest that his master was bringing her up to the business. "Pays us for looking after her," he confided to his wife, "and looks after her himself!"
Mrs. Bullen laughed and then sighed, being a soft-hearted woman, and inclined to grieve over their impending desertion of their unbusinesslike master.
"Mr. Philip couldn't do more for her if he was her own father," she acknowledged appreciatively.
Whereat Bullen had smiled with the superior air of one who knew--of one who had been down to the sea in ships, and was versed in the mysteries of the great world, of fathers and of children.
"Right you are, old woman," he chuckled, "no more he could. Blessed if he could! And there's no mistake about that. And when you and me go North in the spring, why, it strikes me that we shall have to leave missie behind. Yes, that we shall: though I'd take her, glad enough, without the money."
If at first his association with Margot reminded Rainham of another little girl whom he had loved, and whose place she could never even approximately fill, the memory was not a bitter one, and he was soon able to listen to her childish questioning without more than a gentle pang. In time, he even found a dreary transient pleasure in closing his eyes on the dank dun reality of Blackpool, while the child discoursed to her doll in the nook of the bow-window, and his fancy wandered in another sunnier, larger room, with open windows, and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent snatches from the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint, colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel, sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the dream lasted and recurred: he had always been a dreamer, and every day found him more forgetful of the present, more familiar with the past.
Upon his return, rather late, to the dock, he recognised, with a thrill of pleasure tinged with something of self-reproach, among the little pile of business letters which Mrs. Bullen brought to him with his tea-tray, the delicate angular handwriting of Lady Garnett, and he made haste to possess himself of the secret of the narrow envelope, of a by-gone fashion, secured with a careful seal.
"MY DEAR" (so she wrote): "This is very absurd; yes, at the risk of offending you, I must tell you that it is not clever of you to take things so very much _au serieux_. I know more than you think, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, who means well, doubtless--but, _mon Dieu_, what a woman! --Mrs. Sylvester has been here; she has spoken to me, and I am afraid I have scandalized her. 'You don't suppose he has married her,' I said, I confess not altogether disingenuously, and how mystified she looked! You will say that Mrs. Sylvester ought to mind her own affairs, and you will even find me a trifle impertinent, perhaps. But I claim my privilege. Am I not your godmother? Still, I am rather intrigued, I own. I don't want to ask what you have done, or why; whatever it is, I approve of it. What I find fault with is what you are doing, the part you are playing. You must not give me the chagrin of seeing Mrs. Sylvester and the admirable Charles triumphant at your expense, Philip. You must show yourself: you must come and see me; you must come to dinner forthwith, or I shall have to make you a visit at your dock. I must talk to you, mon cher! I am troubled about you, and so is Mary. Come to us, and Mary shall play to you and exorcise your demons. Besides, I am bored--horribly bored. Yes, even Mary bores me sometimes, and I her, doubtless; and we want you. We will own that we are selfish, after all, but you must come!"
Then there was a postscript: "Mary suggests that possibly you are not so incomprehensible as I think; perhaps you are at Bordighera? But you ought to let us know."
Rainham sat with the letter before him until Margot came to bid him good-night. And then he decided to take advantage of the suggestion of the postscript: surely, if he did not answer the dear old lady's letter, she would conclude that he was indeed upon his travels.
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If Eve could have mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so that for the outward world it would still present the same uncompromising surface, so that no inquisitive or bungling touch could bring to light the grim, disfiguring fracture which it had sustained, it is probable that she would have chosen this part, and hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of all save those who were so inseparably connected with the tragedy of that autumnal afternoon. But it was so completely shattered, the pieces were so many; and, worst of all, some of them were lost. To forget! What a world of bitter irony was in the word! And she could not even bury her illusions quietly and unobserved of uncharitable eyes; there was the sordid necessity of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts to be fashioned, and the half-truths to be uttered, which bore an interpretation so far more damning than the full measure which it seemed so hard to give.
Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on the alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than before, had soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere; an explanation had been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat in its least attractive features by Eve's natural reticence, had gone to swell the volume of similar experiences recorded in Mrs. Sylvester's brain. That she felt a genuine sorrow for Rainham is certain, for the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral atmosphere, as she emerged from the door of her daughter's house after this momentous interview, drawing her furs about her with a little shiver before she stepped into her well-appointed brougham. She had the air of saying to herself, "Dear me, dear, dear! it's very sad, it's very terrible; but I! how clever I have been, and how beautifully I behaved!" There was nothing particularly novel from her point of view in the story which she had just extracted from her reluctant daughter; the situation called for an edifying, comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what might have been expected--though this (which was somewhat hard) did not render the episode any the less reprehensible.
And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's homeward drive, and the half hour's _tête-à-tête_, before dinner, which she had utilized for an exchange of confidences with her son.
"I didn't know that there had been an--an exposure," he said, as he stood, a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little drawing-room. "But I had an idea that it was inevitable from--from certain information which I have received. In fact, I have been rather puzzled. You must do me the justice to remember that I never liked the man--though he had his good points," he added a little awkwardly, as inconvenient memories of the many kindnesses which he had received at Rainham's hands thrust themselves upon him. "But I'm afraid he's hardly the sort of person one ought to be intimate with. Especially you, and Eve. Of course, for her it's out of the question."
"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Sylvester decisively; "and they haven't seen him since, I need hardly say. In fact, they haven't even heard of him. They haven't told a soul except me, and of course I sha'n't tell anybody," the lady concluded with a sigh, as she remembered how difficult she had found it to drive straight home without breaking the vow of secrecy which her daughter had exacted from her.
Whatever Mrs. Sylvester may have thought, it is certain that the interview, from which she enjoyed the impression of having emerged so triumphantly, had brought anything but consolation to her daughter, whose first impulse was to blame herself quite angrily for having admitted to her secret places, after all so natural a confidante.
Nor had Eve repented of this feeling. As time went on she found her mother's somewhat too obviously complacent attitude more and more exasperating, and she compared her want of reserve very unfavourably with her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his reasons for a certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also, she cherished something of resentment, for he, too, more especially in collaboration with her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly, moral reflections, which, although for the most part no names were mentioned, were evidently not directed generally and at hazard against the society of which the Colonel and Mrs. Sylvester formed ornaments so distinguished.
Upon one afternoon, when Christmas was already a thing of the past, and the days were growing longer, it was with considerable relief that Eve heard the outer door close upon her mother, leaving her alone in the twilight of the smaller portion of the double drawing-room. She was alone, for Mrs. Sylvester had been the last to depart of a small crowd of afternoon callers, and Dick was interviewing somebody--a frame-maker, a model, or a dealer--in the studio. She sat with a book unopened in her hand, gazing intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her face, giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd. Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs. Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by sharp-eyed journalists at the play-houses on "first nights"; her carriage-horses performed extensive nightly pilgrimages in the regions of Kensington and Mayfair; and she had made a reputation for her dressmaker. And already she realized that her efforts to live outside herself were futile; moments like these must come, and the knowledge that, in spite of her countless friends and voluminous visiting list, she was alone.
Her mother? Dick? After all, they were only in the position of occupying somewhat exceptionally prominent places on the visiting-list.
As for her husband, after all these long months of married life, she could not say that she knew him. She regarded him with a kind of admiration of his personal, social attractions, in which she recognised him as fully her equal, with a kind of envy of the genius, which she could not entirely comprehend, but which seemed to make him so vastly her superior. And yet there was a shadow of doubt about it all: there had been sinister flashes, illumining, dimly enough, depths which the marital intimacy still left unfathomed, making her wonder whether her husband's candour might not mask something more terrible than forgotten follies, something that might prove a more real and irremovable barrier between them than even that indefinable want of a mutual horizon, of common ground upon which their traditions could unite themselves.
So long as Dick had remained cheerfully masterful, and picturesquely _flamboyant_, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part for which he had obviously been cast--of a good-humoured, ornamental, domestic tyrant, to be openly obeyed and covertly coerced. A husband who assisted her acquisition of social laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses--yes, her mother certainly had reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there was a sting in this) where success was somewhat more difficult of achievement?
Now, moreover, he had begun to carry an aggrieved air--an air which suggested that he pitied himself, that he considered that he had been unfairly dealt with, that he was entitled to assume the attitude of an innocent, injured victim of some blindly-dealt retribution. What did that mean? The only explanation which his wife could find for this symptomatic manifestation had its origin in the unhappy episode of which the memory was always on the threshold of her solitary thoughts, and, perhaps, of his. She began to feel, with a certain compunction, that Dick must resent the circumstances which obliged him practically to sever his acquaintance with a man who had indisputably figured for so many years as his nearest friend; and she asked herself sometimes whether the circumstances in question did not, in effect, centre in herself.
Although the world was as yet far from being an open book for her, it was conceivable that Philip Rainham (even if one judged by appearances) had done nothing which need necessarily cast him beyond the pale of the unregenerate society of bachelordom. It never occurred to her that, so far as she herself was concerned, a renewal of the old relation was among possible things: if she had met Philip in public she would have made it clear to him that he was no longer on the same plane with her; that, from her point of view, he had practically ceased to exist.
It was only when she was alone, and pleasant, bitter memories of the old days recurred, that she owned to herself how hard it was to think of this intimacy as severed by a rule of moral conduct no less inexorable, and even more cruel, than death. And yet there were moments--and this was one of them--when her husband's bearing seemed more portentous, when the explanation she had found possible seemed no longer probable, and uncomfortable doubts as to the real meaning of his uneasiness assailed her mind.
A fragment of burning coal fell with a clatter into the grate: she welcomed the interruption, and for the moment abandoned her thoughts, only, however, to enter upon them again by a different path.
"I wonder why I don't hate him?" she asked herself, almost wistfully. (She was not now thinking of her husband.) "I ought to hate him, I suppose, and to pity her. But I pity him, I think, and I hate--her."
The fire still crackled cheerfully, and she began to feel its heat oppressive; she let her hands fall with a gesture half of contempt, half of despair, and then rose abruptly, and walked into the darkness of the larger room, from the unshuttered windows of which she could see the dark bulk of her husband's studio looming against the gray, smoke-coloured sky.
While she stood, leaning with something of a forward tilt of her gracile figure, upon the ledge of the low, square window, the side door of the studio opened, letting a flood of light out upon the lawn, and with absent eyes she saw that her husband's visitor was taking his leave. Presently the door closed; the broad rays which had shone coldly from the skylight of the building died out, so abruptly that the change seemed almost audible; and simultaneously she heard her husband's careless step in the long glazed passage, half conservatory, half corridor, which led from her domain to his. He came in, softly humming an air from a comic opera, and then paused, peering into the darkness for an instant before he distinguished his wife's shape in dusky relief against the pale square of window.
"Don't light the room!" she said quickly, as she saw him stretch his hand towards the little button which controlled the electric light; "we can talk in the dark."
He stopped with his hand on the porcelain knob, breaking off his ditty in the middle of a bar.
"By all means, if you like," he said, "though I should prefer to see you, you know."
Then he dropped luxuriously into an easy-chair by the side of the fire, which continued to exhibit a comfortable, glowing redness.
But very soon Lightmark became aware of a certain weight of apprehension, which took from him the power to enjoy these material comforts; unattractive possibilities seemed to hover in the silent darkness, and his more subtile senses were roused, and brought to a state of quivering tension, which was almost insupportable. His wife moved, and he felt that she had directed her eyes towards him, though he could not see her; and he winced instinctively, seeking to be first to break the silence, but unable to find a timely word to say. The blow fell, and even while she spoke he felt a quick admiration for the instinct which had enabled him to anticipate her thought.
"Dick," she said quietly, without moving from her place by the window, "have you seen _him_ since----?"
There was no need of names; he did not even notice the omission. Could she see his face, he wondered, in the firelight?
"No!" he sighed, "no!"
She came nearer to him, so near that he could hear her breathing, the touch of her fingers upon the back of a chair; and presently she spoke again: "You think there was no excuse for him?"
"Ah--for excuse! She was pretty, you know!"
He got up, and stood facing her for a moment in the darkness, and then, while she appeared to consider, glanced at his watch, and made a suggestion of movement towards the door.
"Only a minute, Dick," she said, in the same set voice. "You will do me the justice to admit that I haven't alluded to this before. But I have been thinking--I can't help it--and I want to know----" "To know?" he echoed impatiently.
"To know your position--our position; what you had to do with it all."
"What is the good? What difference can it make?"
"It's the doubt," she said--"the doubt. I thought you might like to explain."
"To explain? Good Lord! what have I to explain? Is it not all settled, all clear? My dear child, let us be reasonable, let us forget; it's the only way."
There was less of anger in his voice, but if Eve could have seen his eyes in the firelight, she might have noticed that they were very bright, and their pupils were contracted to hard, iridescent points.
"How can it be settled," she asked wearily, "while there is this shadow of doubt? And to forget--Heaven knows I have tried!"
Dick shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.
"What do you want me to say? --to explain?"
"Could you not have warned him, Dick? Did you not see it coming? She, that woman, was she not your model? Did he not meet her at your studio? Was not that the beginning of it all? Ah, can you say that you were not to blame?"
She spoke fast, following question with question, as if she anticipated the answer with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and there was more of entreaty than of denunciation in her last words.
"It's such an old story," he rejoined, with an air of feeble protest. "How could I foresee what would happen? And," he added, hardening himself, "they did not meet for the first time at my studio; on the contrary, it was he who brought her to me, and I suspected nothing. What more can I say? Surely it is all plain enough!"
Eve sighed. It seemed to her husband that she was on the whole disappointed, and he felt that, while he was about it, he might have given himself a freer hand, and made himself emerge, not only without a stain upon his character--the expression occurred to him with a kind of familiar mockery--but with beaten drums and flying colours.
He reflected that this was another example of the folly of attempting to economize. At the same time he was gently thrilled by what he owned to himself was a not ignoble emotion: that sigh seemed to speak so naturally and pathetically of disillusionment, it was such a simple little confession of a damaged ideal. It did not occur to him to suspect that the character of which his wife had formed too proudly high an estimate was his own.
"Don't you think you might trust me?" he said presently in a milder, almost paternal tone, magnanimously prepared for a charming display of penitence, which it would be his duty rather to encourage than to deprecate.
"To trust you?" replied Eve quickly. "Haven't I the appearance of trusting you? Don't I accept your explanations?"
It was Lightmark's turn to sigh. His wife moved away, with an air of dismissing the subject.
"It is quite dark; it must be time to dress for dinner. Please turn on the light." Then she added as she left the room, without waiting for an answer: "And you, do you find it so easy to forget?"
When Lightmark was alone, he stood for a few minutes before the fire in meditation; then he clenched his fist viciously.
"Confound the girl, and him, too! No, poor devil! he meant well. It was just the senseless, quixotic sort of thing one would have expected of him. But I don't know that it has done much good. It has made me feel a sneak, though I've only been lying to back him up. Why couldn't he let it alone? There would have been a storm, of course, but it would soon have blown over, and no one else need have known."
He stopped in front of a mirror--he had been pacing up and down the room--and found himself looking rather pale in the soft, brilliant glow of the incandescent lamps. Moreover, the clock pointed to an hour very near that for which the carriage had been ordered.
While he was dressing for dinner, it occurred to him--it was not for the first time--that, after all, it would take very little to render Rainham's bungling devotion, and his own meritorious aberrations from the path of truth, worse than nugatory. For what if Kitty should split? --so he elegantly expressed his fears--what if the girl, of whom he had heard nothing since the day of that deplorable scene, should break loose, and throw up the part which she had undertaken upon such very short notice?
Decidedly, he felt that he was abundantly justified in resenting the false position into which he had been thrust; the imposture was too glaring. Would it not even now be well to remodel the situation with a greater semblance of adherence to facts--to make a clean breast of it? The crudity of the idea offended him; the process would necessarily be wanting in art. But possibly it was not yet too late to substitute a story which, if it caused him temporary discomfort, would at least leave him more certain of the future, the master of an easier, a less violently outraged conscience.
At dinner the taciturnity, bordering on moroseness, of a talker usually so brilliant led his host to surmise that Lightmark had ruined a picture, his hostess to conclude that he had quarrelled with his wife. He came home early, and occupied the small hours of the morning in forming an amended plan of campaign, of which the first move took the shape of a somewhat voluminous letter, addressed to Philip Rainham.
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Charles Sylvester was a man of a somewhat austere punctuality, and there were few of his habits in which he took a juster pride than in the immemorial regularity with which he distributed the first few hours of his day. To rise at half-past seven, whatever might be the state of the temperature or the condition of the air; to reach the breakfast-room on the stroke of eight, and to devote half an hour to the perusal of the _Times_ and of his more intimate correspondence--of course, there were certain letters which he reserved until his arrival in chambers--while he discussed a moderate breakfast which seldom varied; to ride in the Row for another half-hour; and finally, having delivered his horse to a groom, who met him at the corner of Park Lane, to enter the precincts of the Temple, after a brisk walk through Piccadilly and the Strand, shortly after ten--these were infallible articles in his somewhat rigid creed.
Mrs. Sylvester, therefore, was struck with all the surprise which results from an unprecedented breach of custom when, descending to breakfast at her own laxer hour one dark morning in February, she found her son still presiding at the table, absorbed in his letters. He pushed aside these and a packet of telegram forms as she entered, and, rising to accept her discreet kiss, responded to her implicit inquiry as to whether anything was wrong--her eyes had strayed involuntarily to the clock--by pointing her attention to a paragraph in the morning paper. His manner was more solemn than usual; it betrayed an undercurrent of suppressed excitement.
"This is unusual," he remarked; "but, you see, I have an excuse."
She followed the direction of his finger: "Death of the Member for North Mallow." The cream of the news was contained for her in the heading, and so she did not read the rest of the notice, which was a short one.
Now, North Mallow was the respectable constituency in which a coalition of two parties had selected Mr. Sylvester to be their candidate at the next election, which this death had transferred into the immediate present.
"My dear boy!" said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically.
Then she checked herself, recognising that a too open satisfaction in the event--opportune as it might be--would be hardly decent.
"Of course, it is very sad for him, poor man!" she remarked. "But I cannot help feeling glad that you should be in the House, and so much sooner than we expected."
He interrupted her with another discreet embrace.
"My dear boy!" she said again vaguely, contentedly, as she poured herself a cup of tea.
"He has been in bad health for some time," continued Charles. "He died two days ago at Cannes. It is astonishing that I did not hear the news before. I have wired to Hutchins, my election agent, and if I can manage it, I shall run down to Mallow. Of course one is sorry, but since it has been ordered so, after all, one has to think of the party."
"Ah yes, the party," murmured Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically; "of course that is the great thing. I am sure you will distinguish yourself. I suppose there is no danger of a defeat?"
"Oh, it is a safe seat! But one has always to canvass; there is always a certain risk. I sometimes wish----" He stopped short, pulled nervously at his collar, finding it a little difficult to express his meaning. "I think," he went on at last with a visible effort, flushing somewhat, "that I must marry. An intelligent woman devoted to my interests would be of great service to me now."
Mrs. Sylvester allowed her eyes to remain in discreet observation of the tablecloth.
"I have often thought so," she said at last quietly.
"Indeed!" he remarked politely. "Yes; it is a matter, perhaps, which I should have discussed with you before. I am fully aware of the right you have---- I would not, I mean, have failed----" "Oh, my son!" she protested, "I am sure you have always been most correct."
"I have tried to be," he said simply. "If I have said nothing to you, it has been because I wished to be cautious, not to commit myself, to be very sure----" "Of the lady's affection, do you mean?"
"Ah, can one ever be sure of that? No; I mean rather of my own attitude, of my own situation. It has always seemed to me that marriage is a very great undertaking, a thing to be immensely considered, not to be embarked on rashly."
"You view everything so justly!" she exclaimed. "Have you--am I to understand that you have a particular person in view?"
He waved aside the compliment with a bland gesture, which asserted that only his magnanimity prevented him from acknowledging its truth.
"Surely, surely!" he said. "You are perhaps aware how immensely I admire Miss Masters; that I have paid her very great attention--marked attention, I may say?"
"I observed something of the kind at Lucerne. I did not know if it had continued; sometimes I thought so. Have you proposed to her?"
"No," he said slowly; "I have not yet proposed to her. Naturally, I wished to consult you first."
"I am sure, Charles," said his mother cheerfully, "that I shall be extremely pleased. She is a very nice girl. She is a great-niece of Lord Hazelbury, and connected with the Marshes, and I know she will have at least sixty thousand pounds."
He glanced across at her, frowning a little, with a certain irritation.
"I shall not marry her for her money," he said.
"My dear boy," she retaliated, "I did not suppose you would be mercenary; only, a little money is very desirable; and Lady Garnett has a great deal, and Mary will certainly get her share of it."
"Ah, I don't like her," put in Charles inconsequently; "she is a profane old woman."
"Neither do I; but one must accept her. And Mary, after all, is only her niece."
"She has a beautiful character," he continued slowly. (This time he was not speaking of Lady Garnett.) "I admire it more than I can say; it has very great depths."
His mother looked up at him quickly, struck by his strenuous accent, for which she was scarcely prepared. She had a high notion of his character, of his ability, and was pleased, more pleased than she cared to admit, at the suitability of the match. He had always been an excellent, even a sympathetic son; and it had been part of his excellence that whenever he should marry, she had been quite certain that he would marry like this, selecting with dignity a young woman whom one could emphatically approve--a testimony to his constancy in certain definite traditions in which he had been reared, traditions, it may be said, which he adhered to with a tenacity that even exceeded her own.
It had never entered into her calculations, however, to look upon him as an ardent lover, and yet it was as an ardent lover that he had just spoken. She recognised the tone.
And, strangely enough, for the moment it happened to touch her, to give her an increased interest in the affair, though afterwards she could reflect that in a man of Charles' character, so soberly practical and mature, it was perhaps a trifle incongruous, and, at the best, not precisely the tone by which women are most likely to be won.
She said placidly: "I hope you will succeed. If you take my advice, you will speak at once."
"I had meant to take the first occasion," he said.
"Ah, my dear," she put in, "you had better make one yourself."
Charles simply smiled. Her approbation of his views, and the unwonted dissipation of a prolonged and indolent breakfast, together with the pleasant excitement of shortly taking the political field, had rendered him singularly mild.
He remembered that he was invited that night to a dance of some magnitude, at a house big enough for privacy to be easily secured, and where Mary would certainly be.
"Perhaps I will," he said, gathering up his voluminous papers as he prepared for departure, "this evening."
He was still in the same mood of cheerful resolution when, after an exceptionally busy day, which had also ministered in an exceptional degree to his self-esteem (it had included an interview with one of the whips of his party, as well as a satisfactory conversation with his agent on the temper of the constituency whose member was so seasonably deceased), he had dressed at his club, and dawdled at his accustomed table in the large bright room over a solitary dinner.
His head had been very full of his political ambitions, into which the image of Miss Masters had not inconveniently intruded. He had eminently that orderly faculty of detachment which allows a man to separate and disconnect the various interests of his life, admitting each only in its due order and place; but none the less had he been conscious all along that somewhere in the background of his mind her image subsisted, and now that he was at leisure again to give her that place of honour in his consideration which she had long been insensibly acquiring, he was more than ever determined to do all that lay in his power to make her his wife.
It amazed him almost that he had not put the important question long before, so vital and inevitable had it become; and he scarcely considered, in his curious egoism, his scant acquaintance with the subtilty of a woman's mind, how much Mary herself might have contributed to the delay by her careful avoidance of intimate topics, by the cloak of elaborate indifference in which she had wrapped herself whenever she had not been able to avoid being alone with him; so that, however much he had desired it, he could never, without doing her gross violence, have succeeded in striking the precisely right personal note.
To-night, however, there should be no more fencing; of that he was thoroughly resolved. He would be eloquent and sustained, impassioned, and, if necessary, humble--but, above all, perfectly direct; he would brook no faltering, feminine evasions; would insist on an answer, and on a right answer too, pointing out, with the close reasoning acquired in his profession, the superb propriety of the match. And he believed that she would be convinced. Was it not half of her attraction that she was a woman of intelligence, not a silly school-girl, who flirted and danced?
In spite of his self-esteem, however, he was not unwise enough to feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them, notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who might have been first on the field.
Considering these things, he allowed himself a glass of chartreuse with his coffee, and the unwonted luxury of a cigar, over which he lingered, growing more nervous as its white ash lengthened and the occasion drew near. Yet he could remind himself at last that--at any rate, to his knowledge--there was no one else whose pretensions the lady preferred, since Rainham, the man whom he had marked as dangerous, was socially damned, and no longer to be feared.
It was very nearly eleven before he reached the house to which he had been invited, and where he found a very brilliant party already in progress. The house was chiefly a legal and political one, although there seemed to be a fair leaven of literary and artistic celebrities among the more solid reputations; and for some time he was engrossed by various of his Parliamentary acquaintances, who questioned and encouraged him. Two or three had newly arrived from the House, where an important division had just been declared; and Charles listened with some impatience to their account of it, gazing absently, over their heads, at the maze of pretty toilettes, which made an agreeable _frou-frou_ over the polished floor, although the debate had been upon a question in which he was warmly interested.
He escaped from them at last with a murmured apology, an intimation that he wished to find somebody, and made his way slowly into the adjoining room, from which the strains of waltz music floated in, and where they danced. His friends found his demeanour noticeable, and were inclined to wonder with some amusement, knowing his habitual equanimity, that the vacancy at North Mallow should have undermined it. When he entered the ball-room he stopped for a moment, flushing a little. The first person he had seen, between the heads of the floating couples, was Lady Garnett, on a little raised seat at the further end of the large room, engaged in an animated conversation with an ambassador. He realized quickly that she would not have come alone.
He waited until the music ceased and the dispersal of the dancers made the passage of the floor practicable, then he set off in her direction, trusting that he might find her niece in the vicinity. Halfway down he stopped again; he had recognised his sister, who fanned herself languidly, seated on one of two chairs partially concealed by a great mass of exotic shrubbery, in pots, which formed almost an alcove. She removed her long soft skirt, which she had thrown over the vacant seat, as he approached; and at this tacit invitation he accepted it.
"Only until the rightful owner comes," he explained. "But I see you so seldom now that I must not lose this chance. I suppose you are keeping it for someone?"
"It is for Miss Masters," said Mrs. Lightmark; "but she won't want it yet. She has just gone down to supper."
"Ah, so much the better. I want to see her."
"Do you?" she asked indifferently. "Well, you had better keep me company until she comes. It is a long time since I saw you."
He considered her for a moment with a heavy, fraternal appreciation.
"Yes," he said--"yes, it is a long time, Eve. But, of course, we have each our own occupations, our own duties now. And being the wife of a successful painter must involve almost as many as being--if I may say so--a fairly successful barrister. Gratified as we are, my dear--my mother and I--at the success of your marriage, which has proved more brilliant even than we hoped, I must say that we often regret having lost you. We are duller people, I fear, since you have left us. However, we can still think of the old days, as you, no doubt, do sometimes."
She gave a faint, little, elusive smile, behind her fan.
"Oh, I am afraid I have forgotten them," she said. Then she went on quickly, before he had time to reply: "Another thing, too, I had almost forgotten--to congratulate you--on Mr. Humphrey's death."
"My dear Eve!" He looked at her with some reproof, with an air of finding her a little crude. "You should not say such things, Eve! I deeply deplore----" "Shouldn't I?" she asked flippantly. "Dick told me you were to succeed to his seat. Isn't it true?"
He ignored her question, busied himself with an obdurate button on his glove. She watched him over her fan, half smiling, with her brilliant eyes.
"You are cynical," he remarked at last. "I dare say I shall get in. Is Lightmark here?"
"Yes, he is here. He has taken Mrs. Van der Gucht--the American Petroleum Queen they call her, don't they? --down to supper. She wants him to paint her portrait, at his own price. He will be here to fetch me at half-past eleven. I believe we have to move on then."
"Move on?" he asked, with an air of mystification.
"Show ourselves at another house," she replied. "It's a convenient practice, you know; one gets two advertisements in one night. Besides, one saves one's self a little that way; one sometimes gets an evening off."
"You talk as if you were an actress," he said, with offended irony. "I don't understand your tone. Does Miss Masters accompany you?"
"I think not. Did you say you wanted to see her?"
"Particularly; it is chiefly for that I am here."
"She is a very nice girl," remarked his sister gently. "I hope----" She hesitated slightly; then held out her hand to him, which involuntarily he clasped. "I hope you will have a satisfactory conversation, Charles."
He glanced at her for a moment silently, feeling a secret pleasure in her discrimination.
"You look very well," he said at last, "only rather tired. That is a very pretty dress."
She smiled vaguely.
"I didn't know you ever noticed dresses. Yes, I am rather tired. Ah, there is Mary--and Dick."
The girl came towards them at this moment, looking pretty and distinguished in her square-cut, dark gown; and Lightmark followed, carrying her bouquet of great yellow roses, which he held appreciatively under his nose.
He nodded to Charles Sylvester, who was shaking hands with Mary; then he turned to his wife.
"If you are ready, dear," he said lightly, "I expect the carriage is. Miss Masters, you know we have another dance to do. My brother-in-law will see after you and your bouquet, if you will allow me."
"Oh, give it me, please," cried the girl, with a nervous laugh. "I really did not know you were carrying it. Thanks so much."
She had succeeded almost mechanically to Mrs. Lightmark's vacated chair; and as she sat there, with her big nosegay on her lap, he was struck by her extreme pallor, the lassitude in her fine eyes. He ventured to remark on it, when the other two had left them, and she had not made, as he had feared and half anticipated, any motion to rise.
"Yes, the rooms are hot and dreadfully full. There are too many sweet-smelling flowers about; they make one faint. It's a relief to sit down in comparative quiet and calm for a little."
He was emboldened by her quiescence to resume his chair at her side.
"I won't ask you to dance, then," he said; "and allow me to hope that no one else has done so."
She glanced indifferently at her card.
"No. 10," he added anxiously; "a waltz, after the Lancers."
"I see some vague initials," she said; "but probably my partner will not be able to find me, thanks to these shrubs."
"I hope not, with all my heart," said Charles devoutly. "At any rate, I can sit with you until you are claimed."
"As you like," she replied wearily. "Are you not anxious to dance?"
"I am not a great dancer at any time," he protested; "and to-night my heart would be particularly out of it. I came for another purpose."
He spoke tensely, and there was a slight tremor in his voice, ordinarily so clear and dogmatic, which alarmed the girl so that she forgot her weariness and meditated a retreat.
"Oh, so did I," she replied with forced gaiety. "I came to look after my aunt, which reminds me that this is hardly the way to do it. Will you please take me to her?"
"I assure you she does not want you," cried Charles eagerly. "I saw her not ten minutes ago with M. de Loudéac. They seemed to be talking most intimately."
"He is an old friend," said Mary; "but, still, they may have finished by this time. One can say a great deal in ten minutes."
"Ah!" he put in quickly, "only give me them, Miss Masters."
"I really think it is unnecessary," she murmured with a rapid flush. She made another movement, as if she would rise, dropping her bouquet in her haste to prevent his speech. He picked it up quickly and replaced it in her hands.
"No, don't go, Miss Masters," he insisted. "I surely have a right to be heard. After all, I do not require ten minutes, nor five. Only I came to say----" "Ah, don't say it, Mr. Sylvester," she pleaded. "What is the good?"
"I mean that I love you! I want you immensely to be my wife."
She bent her head over her flowers, so that her eyes were quite hidden, and he could not see that they were full of tears; and for a long time there was silence, in which Sylvester's foot kept time nervously with the music. The girl bitterly reproached her tiredness, which had dulled apprehension so far that she had not realized at once the danger of the situation, nor retreated while there was yet time. She had always dreaded this; and now that it was accomplished, an illimitable vista of the disagreeable consequences broadened out before her. The ice being once broken, however she might answer him now, a repetition, perhaps even several, could scarcely be avoided; she foresaw that his persistence would be immense, so that with whatsoever finality she might refuse him, it would all be to go over again. And with it all was joined her natural reluctance to give an honest gentleman pain, only heightened by her sense that, for the first time in her knowledge of the man, the evident sincerity of his purpose had given simplicity to his speech. He for once had been neither formal nor absurd, and the uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share in it, seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a dart without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a desire to deal gently with him.
"Mr. Sylvester," she said at last, looking up at him, "I am so sorry, but please do not speak of this any more. Believe me, it is quite impossible. I am sensible of the honour you do me, deeply sensible, only it is impossible. Let us forget this--this mistake, and be better friends than we have ever been before."
"Ah, Mary," he broke out, "you must not answer me like that, without consideration. Why should it be impossible?"
"Forgive me," she said gently; "only I am tired now. And consideration would not alter it. Let me go."
He put one hand out detaining her, and she sank back again wearily on her chair.
"If you are tired, so much the more reason that you should hear me. You will not be tired if you marry me. If you are tired, it is because your life has no great interests: it's frivolous; it is dribbled away on little things. You don't really care for it--you are too good for it--the sort of life you lead."
"The sort of life I lead?"
"The ideals of your set, of the people who surround your aunt, of your aunt herself. The whole thing is barren."
"Are we more frivolous than the rest?" she asked suddenly.
"You are better than the rest," he said promptly. "That is why I want you to marry me. You were made for great interests--for a large scene."
"What are they--your great interests, your ideals?" she asked presently. "How are they so much better than ours? --though I don't know what ours may be."
"If you marry me, you will find out," he said. "Oh, you shall have them, I promise you that! I want you immensely, Mary! I am just going into public life, I mean to go far--and if I have your support, your sympathy, if you become my wife, I shall go much farther. And I want to take you away from all this littleness, and put you where you can be felt, where your character--I can't say how I admire it--may have scope."
"I am sorry," she said again; "you are very good, and you do me great honour: but I can only answer as before--it is not possible."
"Ah, but you give no reason!" he cried. "There is no reason."
"Is it not a good enough one that I do not love you?" said the girl.
"Only marry me," he persisted, "and that will come. I don't want to hurry you, you know. I would rather you would take time and consider; give me your answer in a week or two's time."
They were silent for a little; Sylvester was now perfectly composed: his own agitation seemed to have communicated itself to the girl, whom he watched intently, with his bland, impartial gaze. She had closed her eyes, was resting her chin on her bouquet, and appeared to be deeply meditating his words. She looked up at last with a little shiver.
"I am very tired," she said. "If I promise to think over what you have said to-night and to give you my answer in a month's time, will you try and find Lady Garnett for me now?"
"Ah, Miss Masters--Mary!" he said, "that is all I want."
"And in the meantime," she pursued gently, "to allow the subject to drop?"
"You must make your own terms," he said; "but surely I may come and see you?"
"Very well," she consented, after a moment; "if it gives you any pleasure, you may come."
At which Charles simply took her cold, irresponsive hand in his own, with a silent pressure. Irresponsive as it was, however, he reminded himself, she had made no effective protest against the gesture.
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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28
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At Lady Day, when the negotiations for the sale of his unprofitable riverside domain were finally concluded, Rainham scarcely regretted to find that an ample margin had been left before the new company took possession; and he had still several months, during which he might remain in occupation of his old habitation, and arrange leisurely for the subsequent disposition of his books and more intimate personal chattels. The dilapidated old house was to be pulled down by the new owners (the plans for an extensive warehouse, to be erected on the site of it, were already in the hands of the builders), and this also was a fact from which Rainham derived a certain satisfaction.
Insensibly, the spot had discovered a charm for him: the few rooms, which had been his for so long, although, actually, so small a proportion of his days had been spent in them, had gradually taken the impress of his personality--the faded carpets, the familiar grouping of pictures and books, the very shape of the apartment, and the discoloured paper on the walls, expressed him in a way that certainly no other abiding place, which might conceivably await him, could ever do. And he took a dreary pleasure in the consideration that, after he had gone, the rooms would know no other occupant; that from the glazed and barred windows of the dreary building, which was to take the place of the quaint old house, when it was levelled to the ground, no person would ever gaze out, exactly as he had done, at the white and melancholy river; in which, as he said to himself fantastically, he had cast, one by one, as the days lengthened, his interests, his passions, his desires.
Years before, by an accident of inheritance, he had come into the property with an immense antipathy:--a white elephant that would bring him neither profit nor honour, but which the modest competence that he had previously enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had altered the tenor of his existence, destroyed his youth and his ambitions, and represented for many years, more completely than anything else, the element of failure which had run through his life.
And, after all, now that deliverance was at hand, he was by no means jubilant. In escaping from this thraldom of so many years, he felt something of the chagrin with which a man witnesses the removal of some long-cherished and inveterate grievance; the more so, in that he could now remind himself impartially how small it had been, how little, after all, he had allowed it to weigh upon him. In effect, had he not always done very much as he liked, lived half his time abroad in his preferred places, chosen his own friends, and followed his own tastes without greatly considering his inherited occupation? He must look deeper than that, he reflected, within himself, or into the nature of things themselves, actually to seize and define that curious flaw which had made life seem to him at last (from what wearied psychologist, read long ago and half forgotten, did he cull the phrase?) "a long disease of the spirit."
For appreciations of this kind, he had, nowadays, ample leisure; and unprofitable as it appeared (he did not even pretend to himself that it would lead anywhere, since what faint illumination he might strike from it could only refer to the past), he was seldom tired of searching for them.
A hard March, cited generally as the coldest within the memory of a generation, following a winter of fog and rain, had made him an inveterate prisoner within the four walls of his apartment. He had, indeed, the run of others at this time, for the Bullens had left him (at the last there had been no question of little Margot's appropriation; Rainham had taken it so serenely for granted that she would remain with him), but this was a privilege of which he did not avail himself. And the place, stripped of all its commercial attributes, had fallen into an immense desuetude, to which the charm of silence, and of a deeper solitude than it had ever possessed before, was attached.
The dock gates were finally closed; a hard frost of many days' duration had almost hermetically sealed them, and the drip of Thames water through the sluices formed immediately into long, fantastic stalactites of clear ice. Rainham found it difficult to believe, at times, that the bustle of the wharves, the roar of maritime London, still went on at his elbows, the deserted yard cast such a panoply of silence round him. It was as though he had fallen suddenly from the midst of men into some wholly abandoned region, a land of perpetual snows. It symbolized well for him the fantastic separation which he had suffered from the rest of the world; so that, but for the painter Oswyn, who was a constant visitor, and had, indeed, since the departure of the Bullens, a room set apart for him in the house, he might have been already dead and buried, and his old life would not have seemed more remote. And if he found the atmosphere of Blackpool, more often than not, to be of soothing quality, or at least a harmonious setting to the long and aimless course of introspection on which he had embarked, there were also times when it had a certain terror for him.
It came upon him in the evening, as a rule, when Margot had been carried away to bed by the hard-featured old woman who had succeeded Mrs. Bullen in the superintendence of his household; for the child, with her sweet, shrill voice and her infantile chatter, had come to seem to him far more even than Oswyn, about whom there would always lurk something shadowy and unreal, a last link with the living; when the tide was nearly out, so that the stillness was not even broken by the long, lugubrious syren of a passing steamer, his isolation was borne in upon him with something of the sting of sharp, physical pain.
The dark old room, with its mildewing wainscot, became full of ghosts; and he could fancy that the spirits of his ancestors were returned from the other side of Styx to finger the pages of bygone ledgers, and to mock from between the shadows of his incongruous bookshelves, at their degenerate descendant. And these did but give place, amid strange creaking and contortions of the decaying walls, to spectres more intimate, whose reprobation moved him more: the faces of many persons whom he had known forming themselves, with extraordinary vividness, out of the darkness, and in the red embers of the fire, and each adding its item of particular scorn to the round accusation of futility brought by the rest. They were part of his introspection, all those--he was not sick enough to hold them real--but nevertheless they gave him food for much vigilant thought, which came back always to the great interest of his life. Futility! Did she too, the beloved woman, point an accusing finger, casting back at him a sacrifice which, certainly, in his then disability seemed to him vain enough? For all his goodwill, had he gained any more for her than a short respite, the temporal reconstruction of a fading illusion? --and at what a price! The irony of things was just then so present to him that he could readily believe he had done no more than that--enough merely to embitter her knowledge when it should finally come. And an old saying of Lady Garnett's returned to him, which, at the time, he had disputed; but which struck him now with the sharp stab of an intimate truth. "You could have prevented it, had you wished." Yes, he might have prevented it, if only he had foreseen; the wise old woman had not made a mistake. And yet he had wished to prevent it, in a manner, only his colder second thoughts--he made no allowance now for their generous intention--had found propriety in the match, and his long habit of spectatorship had made the personal effort, which interference would have involved, impossible.
Harking back scrupulously to the remote days of Eve's girlhood, his morbid recollection collected a variety of scattered threads, of dispersed signs and tokens, which led him to ask at last, with a gathering dread, whether he had not made a mistake, must not plead guilty to a charge of malingering, or, at least, of intellectual cowardice in acquiescing so supinely in defeat?
Was it true, then, that a man found in life very much what he brought to the search?
Certainly, the world was full of persons who had been broken on the wheel for their proper audacity, because they had sought so much more than was to be found; but might it not be equally true that one could err on the other side, expect, desire too little, less even than was there, and so reap finally, as he had done, in an immense lassitude and disgust of all things, born neither of satiety nor of disappointment, the full measure of one's reward? Perhaps success in the difficult art of life depended, almost as much as in the plastic arts, upon conviction, upon the personal enthusiasm which one brought to bear upon its conduct, and was never really compatible with that attitude of half-disdainful toleration which he had so early acquired.
Yet that was a confession of failure he was loath to make, or admit that he had been too much afraid of high passions and great affairs, had been fastidious and reserved only to dissipate his life on whims and small interests--those seemed to him now too great refusals to be contemplated without regret. His depression had reached its lowest pitch when he had asked himself whether in love, as in life, his error might not have been the same; and his passion, like the rest, a thing without conviction, and thereby foredoomed to fail. And it was a sensible alleviation of his mood when he could answer this question finally with a firm negative.
Certainly, his vain desire for her personal presence, for the consolation of her voice and eyes, was with him always, like the ache of physical hunger or thirst--the one thing real in a world of shadows.
Reaching this point one night, and relapsing, as was his wont, into a vaguer mood of reminiscence, not wholly unpleasant, which the darkness of the quiet room, lit only by the fire of logs, turned at last into drowsiness, he looked up presently, with a sudden start, to find Oswyn standing over him.
"I am sorry," said the painter; "I am afraid I have awaked you. The room was so dark that I imagined you had gone to bed. I came to warm myself before turning in."
Rainham shifted his chair a little, and watched the other as he extended his thin, nervous hands to the glow.
"Don't apologize," he said; "I haven't so many visitors that I can afford to miss the best of them. Besides, I was only half asleep, or half awake, as you like to look at it."
"Oh, look at it!" cried Oswyn. "My dear fellow, I don't, and won't."
He pointed his words, which Rainham found meaningless enough, with an impatient dig of his rusty boot against the fragrant wood, and his friend considered him curiously in the light of the blaze which his gesture had provoked.
"Is there anything wrong?" he asked. "More wrong than usual, I mean."
"As you like to look at it," echoed the other; "a mare's nest--a discovery of the blessed public--oh, but a discovery! Two or three clever young newspaper men, with a tip from Paris to help them, have made a discovery; they have unearthed a disreputable painting genius, one Oswyn, and found the inevitable Jew of culture--you know the type, all nose and shekels--to finance their boom. Oh, it's genuine! I have Mosenthal's letter in my pocket--it was handed me by McAllister--offering his gallery, the pick of Bond Street. Oswyn's Exhibition, with expurgations and reservations, of course, but an exhibition! Don't you congratulate me?"
Rainham glanced up at him, smiling; at last he said whimsically: "If you don't want me to, of course I won't. But _après_, where's the harm?"
"Ah, they don't understand," cried the other quickly, acridly. "They don't understand."
He had drawn his chair beside Rainham, and sat with his large, uncouth head propped on one hand, and the latter could perceive that his mouth was twisted with vague irony and some subtile emotion which eluded him.
"You are the great paradox!" he sighed at last. "For Heaven's sake, be reasonable! It is a chance, whoever makes it, and you mustn't miss it, for the sake of a few--the just, the pure, the discreet, who do know good work--as well as for your own. After all, we are not all gross, and fatuous, and vulgar; there are some of us who know, who care, who make fine distinctions. Consider us!"
"Consider you?" cried the other quickly. "Ah, _mon gros_, don't I--more than anything?"
Then he continued in a lighter key: "However, I don't refuse; you take me too literally. It was the last bitter cry of my spleen. I have put myself in Mosenthal's hands; I've sold him two pictures."
"In that case, then, why am I not to be glad?"
"Oh, it's success!" said Oswyn. He glanced contemptuously at his frayed shirt-cuff, with the broad stains of paint upon it. "Be glad, if you like; I am glad in a way. God knows, I have arrears to make up with the flesh-pots of Egypt. And I have paid my price for it. Oh, I have damnably paid my price!"
Rainham shrugged his shoulders absently.
"Yes, one pays," he agreed--"one pays, some time or other, to the last penny."
His friend rose, pushed his chair back impatiently: he had the air of suppressing some fierce emotion, of anxiously seeking self-control. At last he moved over to the black square of window, and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at nothing, at the frosty fantasies which had collected on the glass.
"If it had come ten years ago," he said in a low, constrained voice, "ten years ago, in Paris.... Oh, man, man!" he went on bitterly, "if you could know, if you could dimly imagine the horrors, the mad, furious horrors, the things I have seen and suffered, since then."
He pulled himself up sharply, and concluded with a little mirthless laugh, as though he were ashamed of his outburst.
"You would consume a great deal of raw spirit, to take the taste out of your mouth. And my 'Medusa' is to hang for the future in Mr. Mosenthal's dining-room! Will he understand her, do you think?"
Rainham was silent, wondering at his friend's departure from his wonted reticence, which, however, scarcely surprised him. He had never sought to penetrate the dark background, against which the painter's solitary figure stood. He was content to accept him as he was, asking no questions, and hardly forming, even in his own mind, conjectures as to what his previous history and relations might have been. He was not ignorant, indeed, that he was a man who had been in dark places; it had always seemed possible to account for him on the theory that he lived on the memory of an inextinguishable sorrow.
And now this possibility had received corroboration from his own words, shedding a new light, in which both his character and his genius became more intelligible. He had only stood out of the shadows which obscured him for one instant; but that instant had been enough.
And Rainham did not find the occasion less valuable, nor the impression which he had received less pitiful, because he believed it to be ultimate and unique; his friend would make no vain, elaborate confidences; he would simply step back into his old obscurity, leaving Rainham with the memory of that instructive cry which had been wrung from him by the irony of tardy recognition, when he had seen him luridly standing over the wreck of his honour and of his life. And with his pity there came to him a fresh sense of the greatness of the painter's work. His genius, so full of suffering, and of the sense of an almost fiendish cruelty in things, was, simply, his life, his experience, his remorse.
With the hand of a master, with the finest technique, which made his work admirable even to persons who misinterpreted or were revolted by its conception, he rendered the things he had known, so that his art was nothing so much as an expression of his personal pain in life.
In the light of this vision into the bottom of Oswyn's soul, Rainham's own pain seemed suddenly shallow and remote; he had gazed for a moment upon a blacker desolation than any which he could know. He felt a new, a tolerant sympathy towards his friend, and it struck him, not for the first time, but with an increased force, as he reminded himself how his days were bounded, that they had many things which they had still to say, things which must certainly be said.
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In the same room one afternoon a fortnight later, Oswyn sat, absently correcting the draft catalogue of his exhibition, when he received an intimation, which for some days he had expected--his friend felt strong enough to see him. He put down his pen, glancing up inquiringly at the bearer of this message, a young woman in the neat, depressing garb of a professional nurse; but for answer she slightly shook her head with the disinterested complacency of the woman used to sickness, who would encourage no false notions.
"It is only temporary," she said with deliberation. "I fear there has been no real improvement; the patient is steadily losing strength. Only he insists on seeing you; and when they are like that, one must give them what they want. I must beg you to excite him as little as possible."
Oswyn bowed a dreary assent, and followed her up the obscure staircase, which creaked sullenly beneath his tread. And he stood for a few moments in silence, until his eyes were accustomed to the darkened room, when the nurse had gently closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with his friend.
He almost believed, at first, that Rainham must be sleeping, he lay back with such extreme quietness in the large old-fashioned bed. And seeing him there in that new helplessness, he realized, almost for the first time, how little there was to say or to hope.
He had never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life was precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind before; only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting attitude towards his disabilities had half imposed on him, and made that possibility appear intangible and remote. But now, in view of the change which the last fortnight had wrought in him, he could cherish no illusions; the worst that was possible was all now that one could expect. He was a charming, generous, clever fellow, and he was dying; that was a thing one could not get over.
He moved across to the bedside, and Rainham's eyes suddenly opened. They were immensely large, strangely brilliant; his face had fallen in, was so white and long and lean, that these tremendous eyes seemed almost all of the man that was still to be accounted.
Oswyn derived the impression from them that, while his friend's body had been failing, his mind had never been more vigorous; that, during these long nights and days, when he had lain so motionless, in so continued a silence, it had only been because he was thinking with redoubled intensity.
Presently, as Rainham's lips moved slightly, he drew nearer, and bent his head over him.
"Don't talk," he said nervously, as Rainham appeared to struggle with the difficulty of utterance; "don't tire yourself. I've only come to look at you. Wait until you are a little stronger."
Rainham raised his hand impatiently.
"It won't tire me, and tired or not there are things I must speak of. Is she in the room--the nurse?"
He spoke slowly, and with a visible effort; but his voice, although it scarcely rose above a whisper, and seemed shadowy and far away, was deliberate and distinct. Oswyn shook his head.
"She has given me half an hour; you must not abuse it. I have promised to keep you quiet. I really believe you are a little better."
"I am well enough for what I want--to talk to you. After that, I will be as quiet as you like, for as long as you like. Only I have been keeping myself for this all these last few days that I have lain here like a log, listening to the ticking of that merciless clock. They thought I was sleeping, unconscious, very likely. I have been collecting myself, thinking immensely, waiting for this."
"I have always been here," said the other simply, "in case you should send for me. I have been painting Margot. She is a dear little soul; she misses you sadly."
"It is of her partly that I must speak. I have left all I can to her. If you will sometimes give her a thought; she is absolutely without belongings. I don't wish to make it a charge on you, a burden, only sometimes it has struck me lately that you were interested in the child, that you liked her, and I have taken the liberty of making you a sort of guardian. She could live with the Bullens----" "Oh, I like her--I like her!" cried Oswyn, with a short laugh. Then he went on more seriously, half-apologetically, as though the other might have found his mirth ill-timed: "My dear friend, it is a great honour, a great pleasure, you give me. I, too, have no belongings, no interests; this might be a great one. I never thought of it before, I must admit; but I will adopt her. She shall live with me, if it's necessary. Only, ah! let us hope still that this may not be necessary, that it is premature."
The other held up a thin hand deprecatingly.
"Ah, don't let us fence with the truth. I have always seen it coming, and why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which happens--one dies. You don't suppose I should have sent for you like this if it hadn't been so?"
He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if the effort which speech cost him was considerable. At last he said abruptly: "There are things you should know; she is Lightmark's child."
Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with absent eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of medicine-bottles on the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia of a sick-room.
"Yes, she is Lightmark's child," continued Rainham; "and the mother was that girl whom we found two years ago--do you remember? --the night of your first visit here outside the gates. She called herself Mrs. Crichton. It's a miserable story; I only discovered it quite recently."
Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the strangely still room.
It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which a man feels when accident permits him to express cognizance of some fact of which he has long been inwardly assured.
"I knew that long ago," he said at last. "I suspected it when I first saw the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time; perhaps I was wrong. Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed no occasion; I had almost forgotten the episode."
"Yes," went on the other faintly; "we have all made mistakes--I more than most folk, perhaps."
Then he asked suddenly: "Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?"
"It was the name Crichton--the man's pseudonym on the _Outcry_. It flashed across me then that she was after Lightmark. He was just severing his connection with the paper. He had always kept it very close, and I dare say I was one of the few persons who were in the secret. That is why, at the bottom of his heart, he is afraid of me--afraid that I shall bring it up. It's the one thing he is ashamed of."
"I see, I see," cried Rainham wearily; "the wretched fellow!"
"Dear man, why should we think of him?" broke in Oswyn; "he isn't worth it. Now of all seasons can't we find a topic less unsavoury?"
"You don't understand," continued Rainham, after a slight pause in his thin, far-away voice. "I am not thinking of him, or only indirectly. I have found him out, and I should be content enough to forget him if it were possible. Only, unfortunately, he happens to be inextricably entangled with all that is most sacred, most important to me. It is of his wife--Mrs. Lightmark: do you know her? --that I think."
Oswyn shook his head.
"I know her only by sight, as we all do; she is very beautiful."
"I don't mind telling you that I have considered her a great deal--yes, immensely. I should not speak of it--of her--unless I were dying; but, after all, when one is dying, there are things one may say. I have held my peace so long. And since I have been lying here I have had time to ponder it, to have thought it all out. It seems to me that simply for her sake someone should know before--before the occasion passes--just the plain truth. Of course, Sylvester by rights ought to be the man, only I can't ask him to come to me--there are reasons; and, besides, he is an ass."
"Yes, he is an ass," admitted Oswyn simply; "that is reason enough."
And just then there flashed into his mind the one notable occasion on which the barrister had run across him, his intriguing letter and the ineffectual visit which had followed it--ineffectual as he had supposed, but which might nevertheless, he reflected now, have had its results, ironical and inopportune enough. It was a memory of no importance, and yet it seemed just then to be the last of a long train of small lights that led to a whole torch of illumination, in which the existence of little Margot and her quaint juxtaposition with his friend, which in his general easy attitude towards the fantastic he had not troubled to investigate, was amply and generously justified. He turned round suddenly, caught his friend's thin hand, which he held.
"Ah, don't trouble to explain, to make me understand," he murmured. "It's enough that I understand you have done something very fine, that you are the most generous of men."
Rainham was silent for a moment: he had no longer the physical capacity of smiling; but there was a gleam of the old humour in his eyes, as he replied: "Only the most fortunate--in my friends; they are so clever, they see things so quickly. You make this very easy."
Oswyn did not shift for a while from his position: he was touched, moved more deeply than he showed; and there was a trace of emotion in his voice--of something which resembled envy.
"The happy woman! It is she who ought to know, to understand."
"It is for that I wished to tell you," went on Rainham faintly, "that she might know some day, that there might be just one person who could give her the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be always in ignorance of what she had made of her life, of the kind of man she has married. She was such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It was for that I did it, damned myself in her eyes, to give her a little longer--a sort of respite. Very likely I made a mistake! Those things can't be concealed for ever, and the longer the illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only if it might serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it won't have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to know immensely--to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to me. Ah, don't mistake me! It's not for myself, it's not yet; I shall have done with life, done with love, by that time. When one is as tired as I am, death seems very good; only it hasn't those things. Nothing can make any difference to me; I am thinking of her, that some day or other it will be for her benefit to understand, to remember----" "To remember?"
"Yes, to remember," repeated Rainham quietly, "that her unhappiness has its compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also been fervently loved."
The other said nothing for a long time, simply considered the situation which Rainham's words, and still more even than anything that he had said, the things that he had not said, had strikingly revealed to him, leaving him, at the last, in a state of mingled emotions over which, perhaps, awe predominated.
At last he remarked abruptly: "It _is_ you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all; you've such a long rest before you." Then he added with a new solemnity: "You may trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs. Lightmark shall know the truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it-- Heaven knows! --stranger things have happened. You have my hand upon it; I think you are right."
"Right? You mean that it wasn't a mistake, a _bêtise_?" " _Felix culpa_! If it was a mistake it was a very fine one."
"Ah! I don't regret it," said Rainham, "only----" "Only it was a mistake to suppose that life was to be arranged. That was all I meant. Yes; I don't believe in much, but I believe in necessity. You can't get over it yourself, and you can't--no, not for all your goodwill, your generosity--get over it for another. There are simply inevitable results of irrevocable causes, and no place for repentance or restitution. And yet you help her, not as you meant to, and not now; but ah, you help her!"
"So long as I do that----" murmured Rainham, with a deep inhalation, closing his eyes wearily, in a manner which revealed how severely the intimate strain of conversation had told upon him.
Oswyn waited a little longer, in half expectation of his further utterance; but Rainham made no sign, lay quite motionless and hushed, his hands clasped outside of the counterpane as if already in the imitation of death; then the other rose and made a quiet exit, imagining that his friend slept, or would soon sleep.
And yet actually, in spite of the extreme physical weariness which had gradually stolen over him, dulling his senses, so that he was hardly conscious of Oswyn's departure, or of the subdued entrance of the nurse, who had been discreetly waiting for it, Rainham's mind was still keenly vigilant; and it was in the relief of a certain new lucidity, an almost hieratic calm, that he reviewed that recent interview, in which he had so deliberately unburdened himself. It seemed as if, in his great weakness, the ache of his old desire, his fever of longing, bad suddenly left him, giving place (as though the literal wasting away of his body had really given freer access to that pure spirit, its prisoner), to a love now altogether purged of passion, and become strangely tolerable and sweet.
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If Philip Rainham's name, during that long, hard winter and ungracious spring--near the close of which he turned his face, with the least little sigh of regret, to the wall--was not often mentioned in the house in Parton Street, at whose door he had formerly knocked so often, it must not be supposed that by its occupants it had been in any way forgotten. He had not committed the discourtesy of leaving Lady Garnett's note unanswered; on the contrary, he had answered it both promptly and--as it seemed to him--well, in a letter which was certainly diplomatic, suggesting as it did--at least, to Mary Masters, to whom it had been shown--that he was on the point of an immediate flight South.
Whether the elder lady was equally deceived by his ambiguous phrases, it was not so easy to declare. She had, at this time less than ever, the mode of persons who wear their hearts upon their sleeves; her mask of half-cynical good-humour was constantly up; and she met the girl's hinted interrogations--for directly the nature of their uneasiness, by a sort of tacit agreement, was not alluded to--with the same smiling indifference, the same air of bland reassurance which she brought to the discussion of a sauce or an _entremet_ at one of those select little dinner-parties on which she piqued herself, and which latterly had been more incessant and more select than ever.
Only on Mary's sensitive ear something in the elaborately cheerful tone in which she mentioned their vanished friend would occasionally jar. It was too perfectly well done not to appear a little exaggerated; and though she could force a smile at Lady Garnett's persistent picture of the recalcitrant godson basking, with his pretext of ill-health, on the sunny terraces of Monte Carlo, she none the less cherished a suspicion that the picture was as little convincing to its author as to herself, that her aunt also had silent moments in which she credited the more depressing theory.
And the long silence simply deepened her conviction that, all the time they were imposing upon themselves with such vain conjectures, he was actually within their reach, sick and sorry and alone, in that terrible Blackpool, which she peopled, in her imagination of a young lady whose eastward wanderings had never extended beyond a flower show in the Temple Gardens, with a host of vague, inconceivable horrors.
From Bordighera, from Monaco, she argued, he would certainly have written, if it were only a line of reassurance, for there his isolation was impregnable. Only the fact that he had stayed on in London could account for the need of this second arm of silence, as well as of solitude, to enforce his complete withdrawal from the torment of tongues.
Certainly, wherever he might actually be, the girl had never realized more fully than just then what an irreparable gap estrangement from him made in her life.
There was, indeed, no pause in the stream of clever, cultivated, charming persons who rang daily at their discriminating door, who drank tea in their drawing-room, and talked felicitously for their entertainment.
It was a miscellaneous company, although the portal was difficult in a manner, and opened only on conditions of its own--conditions, it may be said, which, to the uninitiated, to the excluded, seemed fantastic enough.
One might be anything, Lady Garnett's constant practice seemed to enunciate, provided one was not a bore; one could represent anything--birth or wealth, or the conspicuous absence of these qualities--so long as one also effectively represented one's self. This was the somewhat democratic form which the old lady's aristocratic tradition assumed.
It was not, then, without a certain pang of self-reproach that Mary wondered one evening--it was at the conclusion of one of their most successful entertainments--that a company so brilliant, so distinguished, should have left her only with a nervous headache and a distinct sense of satisfaction that the last guest had gone.
Was she, then, after all an unworthy partaker of the feast which her aunt had so long and liberally spread for her delectation?
As she sat in her own room, still in her dress of the evening, before the comfortable fire, which cast vague half-lights into the dark, spacious corners--she had extinguished the illumination of candles which her maid had left her, a sort of unconscious tribute to the economical traditions of her youth--she found herself considering this question and the side issues it involved very carefully.
Was it for some flaw in her nature, some lack of subtilty, or inbred stupidity, that she found the inmates of Parton Street so uninspiring, had been so little amused?
The dozen who had dined with them to-night--how typical they might be of the rest! --original and unlike each other as they were, each having his special distinction, his particular note, were hardly separable in her mind. They were very cultivated, very subtile, very cynical. Their talk, which flashed quickest around Lady Garnett, who was the readiest of them all, could not possibly have been better; it was like the rapid passes of exquisite fencers with foils. And they all seemed to have been everywhere, to have read everything, and at the last to believe in nothing--in themselves and their own paradoxes least of all. There was nothing in the world which existed except that one might make of it an elegant joke. And yet of old, the girl reflected, she had found them stimulating enough; their limitations, at least, had not seemed to her to weigh seriously against their qualities, negative though these last might be.
Had it been, then, simply the presence of Mr. Rainham which had leavened the company, and the personal fascination of his friendship--indefinable and unobtrusive as that had been--which had enabled her to adopt for the moment their urbane, impartial point of view?
Perhaps there had been a particle of truth in the charge so solemnly levelled at her by Mr. Sylvester: it was a false position that she maintained.
The attitude of Lady Garnett and her intimates, of persons (the phrase of Steele's recurred to her as meeting it appropriately) "who had seen the world enough to undervalue it with good breeding," must seem to her at last a little sterile when she was conscious--never more than now--of how clearly and swiftly the healthy young blood coursed through her veins, dissipating any morbid imaginations that she might feel inclined to cherish. She looked out at life, in her conviction that so little of it had yet been lived, that for her it might easily be a long affair, with eyes which were still full of interest and, to a certain degree, of hope; and this did not detract from at least one "impossible loyalty," from which it seemed to her she would never waver. And Charles Sylvester's infelicitous proposal recurred to her, and she was forced to ask herself whether, after all, it was quite so infelicitous as it seemed. Might not some sort of solution to the difficulties which oppressed her be offered by that alliance? Conscientiously she considered the question, and for a long time; but with the closest consideration the prospect refused to cheer her, remained singularly uninviting. And yet, arid as the notion appeared of a procession hand-in-hand through life with a husband so soberly precise, to the tune of political music, she was still hardly decided upon her answer when she at length reluctantly left her comfortable fire and composed herself to sleep.
It was not until a day or two later that a prolonged visit from the subject of these hesitations reminded her--perhaps more forcibly than before--that, however in his absence she might oscillate, in his actual presence a firm negative was, after all, the only answer which could ever suffice.
At the close of what seemed a singularly long afternoon, during which her aunt, who was confined to her room with a bad headache, had left to her the burden of entertaining, Mary came to this conclusion.
Mr. Sylvester had come with the first of her callers, and had made no sign of moving when the last had gone. And in the silence, a little portentous, which had ensued when they were left together, the girl had read easily the reason of his protracted stay. She glanced furtively, with a suggestion of weariness in her eyes, at the little jewelled watch on her wrist, wondering if in the arrival of a belated visitor there might not still be some respite.
"You are not going out?" he asked tentatively, detecting her. "I expect my sister will be here soon."
"No, I am not going out," admitted the girl reluctantly. "I am on duty, you know. Somebody may arrive at any minute," she added, not quite ingenuously. "Let us hope it will be your sister."
"I hope not--not just yet," he protested. "It is so long, Miss Masters, since I have seen you alone. That is my excuse for having remained such an unconscionable time. I have to seize an opportunity."
She made no remark, sitting back in the chair, her fine head bent a little, thoughtfully, her hands folded quietly in her lap, in an attitude of resignation to the inevitable.
"You can't mistake me," he went on at last eagerly. "I have kept to the stipulation; I have been silent for a long time. I have been to see you, certainly, but not so often as I should have liked, and I have said nothing to you of the only thing that was in my head. Now"--he hesitated for an instant, then completed his phrase with an intonation almost passionate--"now I want my reward! Can't you--can't you give it me, Mary?"
The girl said nothing for a moment, looking away from him into the corners of the empty room, her delicate eyebrows knitted a little, as though she sought inspiration from some of Lady Garnett's choicer _bibelôts_, from the little rose and amber shepherdess of Watteau, who glanced out at her daintily, imperturbably from the midst of her _fête galante_. At last she said quietly: "I am sorry, Mr. Sylvester, I can only say, as I said before, it is a great honour you do me, but it's impossible."
"Perhaps I should have waited longer," suggested Charles, after a moment's silence, in which he appeared to be deeply pondering her sentence. "I have taken you by surprise; you have not sufficiently considered----" "Oh, I have considered," cried the girl quickly, with a sudden flush. "I have considered it more seriously than you may believe, more, perhaps, than I ought."
"Than you ought?" he interrupted blankly.
"Yes," she said simply. "I mean that if it could ever have been right to answer you as you wished, it would have been right all at once; thinking would not alter it. I am sorry, chiefly, that I allowed this--this procrastination; that I did not make you take my decision that night, at Lady Mallory's. Yes, for that I was to blame. Only, some day I think you will see that I was right, that it would never have done."
"Never have done!" he repeated, with an accent full of grieved resentment. "I think it would have done so admirably. I hardly understand----" "I mean," said poor Mary helplessly, "that you estimated me wrongly. I _am_ frivolous--your interests would not have been safe in my hands. You would have married me on a misunderstanding."
"No," said Charles morosely, "I can't believe that! You are not plain with me, you are not sincere. You don't really believe that you are frivolous, that we should not suit. In what way am I so impossible? Is it my politics that you object to? I shall be happy to discuss them with you. I am not intolerant; I should not expect you to agree with me in everything. You give me no reasons for this--this absurd prejudice; you are not direct; you indulge in generalizations."
He spoke in a constrained monotone, which seemed to Mary, in spite of her genuine regret for the pain she gave him, unreasonably full of reproach.
"Ah!" she cried sharply, "since I don't love you, is not that a reason? Oh, believe me," she went on rather wearily, "I have no prejudice, not a grain. I would sooner marry you than not. Only I cannot bring myself to feel towards you as a woman ought to the man she marries. Very likely I shall never marry."
He considered her, half angrily, in silence, with his unanimated eyes; his dignity suffered in discomposure, and lacking this, pretentious as it was, he seemed to lack everything, becoming unimportant and absurd.
"Oh, you will marry!" he said at last sullenly, an assertion which Mary did not trouble to refute.
He returned the next minute, with a persistency which the girl began to find irritating, to his charge.
"I don't understand it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you, your reasons; it's perverse--yes, that is what it is, perverse! You are not really happy here; the life doesn't suit you."
"What a discovery!" cried the girl half mockingly. "I am not really happy! Well, if I admit it?"
"I could make you so by taking you out of it. You are too good for it all, too good to sit and pour out tea for--for the sort of people who come here."
"Do you mean," she asked, with a touch of scorn in her voice, "that we are not respectable?"
"That is not you who speak," he persisted; "it is your aunt who speaks through you. I know it is the fashion now to cry out against one, even in good society, to call one straitlaced, if one respects certain conventions. There are some I respect profoundly; and not the least that one which forbids right-minded gentlewomen to receive men of notoriously disgraceful lives. One should draw the line; one should draw it at that Hungarian pianist who was here this afternoon. Your aunt, of course, is a Frenchwoman; she has different ideas. But you, I can't believe that you care for this society, for people like Kronopolski and--and Rainham. Oh, it hurts me, and I imagine how distasteful it must be to you, that you must suffer these people. I want to take you away from it all."
The girl had risen, flushing a little. She replied haughtily, with a vibration of passion in her voice: "You are not generous, Mr. Sylvester. You are not even just. What right have I ever given you to dictate to me whom I shall know or refuse to know? I, too, have my convictions; and I think your view is narrow, and uncharitable, and false. You see, we don't agree enough.... Ah, let it end, Mr. Sylvester!" She went on more gently, but very tiredly, her pale face revealing how the interview had strained her: "I wish you all the good in the world, but I can't marry you. Let us shake hands on that, and say good-bye."
Sylvester had also risen to his feet, and he stood facing her for a moment indecisively, as though he hardly credited the finality of his rejection.
They were still in this attitude, and the fact gave a certain tinge of embarrassment to their greetings, when the door opened, and Mrs. Lightmark was announced.
"I was on the point of going," explained Charles nervously. "I thought you were not coming, you know."
Eve made no effort to detain him, half suspecting that she had appeared at a strenuous moment. When the barrister had departed (Mary had just extended to him the tips of her frigid fingers), and Eve's polite inquiries after Lady Garnett's health had been satisfied, she remarked: "I really only came in for a cup of tea. I walked across from Dorset Square. I have sent the carriage to pick up my husband at his club: it's coming back for me. You look tired, Mary. I think I oughtn't to stay. You look as if you had been having a political afternoon. Poor Charles, since he has been in the House, can think of nothing but blue-books."
"Tired?" queried the girl listlessly; "no, not particularly. Besides, I am always glad to see you, it happens so seldom."
"Yes; except in a crowd. One has never any time. Have you heard, by the way, that my husband is one of the new Associates?"
She went on quickly, preventing Mary's murmured congratulations: "Yes, they have elected him. I suppose it is a very good thing. He has his hands full of portraits now."
Then she remarked inconsequently--the rapidity with which she passed from topic to topic half surprised Mary, who did not remember the trait of old: "We are going to the theatre to-night--that is to say, if my husband has been able to get seats. It's the first night of a new comedy. I meant to ask you to come with us, only it was an uncertainty. If the box is not forthcoming, you must come when we do go. Only, of course, it will not be the _première_."
"I should like to," said Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about first nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle does not care for English plays; she says they are like stale bread-and-butter. I tell her that is not so bad."
"The _mot_, you mean?"
"Partly; but also the thing. Bread-and-butter is a change after a great many _petits fours_."
Mrs. Lightmark smiled a little absently as she sat smoothing the creases out of her pretty, fawn-coloured gloves.
"Oh, the _petits fours_," she said, "for choice. One can take more of them, and amuse one's self longer."
They heard a carriage draw up suddenly in the street below, and Eve, who had been glancing from time to time expectantly at the window, went over and looked out. She recognised her liveries and the two handsome bays.
"Perhaps I had better not let him come up," she said; "it is late already, and you will be wanting to dress."
Lightmark had just alighted from the carriage when his wife joined him in the street. He held the door for her silently, and stopped for a moment to give the direction, "Home," to the coachman before he took the place at her side.
She turned to him after a while inquiringly, finding something of unwonted gravity in his manner.
"Did you get the box?" she asked.
"The box?" he repeated blankly. Then, pulling himself up, "No," he said quickly, "I forgot all about it. The fact is, I heard something this afternoon which put it out of my head. I am afraid," he went on, with a growing hesitation, "you will be rather shocked."
"Ah," she cried quickly, catching at her breath, "something has happened. Tell me. Don't preface it; I can bear anything if you will only tell me straight out."
"It's Rainham," he murmured. "He died last night at Blackpool. I heard it from McAllister, at the club."
He looked away from her vaguely out of his window at the pale streets, where a few lamps were beginning to appear, waiting in a fever of apprehension, which he vainly sought to justify, for some word or comment on the part of his wife.
As none came, and the silence grew intolerable, he ventured at last to glance furtively across at her. Her face seemed to him a shade paler than before, but that might be exaggerated by the relief of her rich and sombre furs. Her eyes were quite expressionless and blank, although she had the air of being immensely thoughtful; her mouth was inscrutable and unmoved. And he experienced a sudden pang of horror at the anticipation of a dinner alone with her, with the ghostly presence of this news dividing them, before he reminded himself that Colonel Lightmark was to be of the party.
For, perhaps, the first time in his life the prospect of his uncle's company afforded him a sensation of relief.
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When Oswyn emerged from the narrow doorway of the gallery in Bond Street, which on the morrow was to be filled with the heterogeneous presence of those who, for different reasons, are honoured with cards of invitation to private views, it was still daylight, although the lamps had been lighted; and the east wind, which during the earlier hours of the day had made the young summer seem such a mockery of flowery illusions, had taken a more genial air from the south into alliance; and there was something at once caressing and exhilarating in their united touch as they wandered in gentle eddies up the crooked thoroughfare.
Oswyn paused upon the pavement, outside the showroom which Mosenthal called a gallery, gazing up the road towards Oxford Street, with a momentary appreciation of the subtile early evening charm, which lent so real a beauty even to a vista of commonplace shop-fronts and chimney-pots, straightening his bent figure, and wondering whither to betake himself.
He had not allowed his friend's death to be an excuse for abandoning the projected exhibition; indeed, when this event occurred, he was already too far compromised; and he even found the labour involved in the preparations for the new departure a very welcome distraction--the one thing which made it possible for the desolate man to stay on in London, which, he assured himself dogmatically, was the only place on earth where he could face life with an indifference which was at least a tolerable imitation of equanimity.
To get together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for finishing, mounting, and retouching.
The man who made frames for Oswyn knew him of old as an exacting customer and hard to please, who insisted on a rigid adherence to his own designs, and was quick to detect inferior workmanship or material; but during the last few days he had been driven almost to rebellion by the painter's exigencies; never had such calls been made upon him for flawless glass, and delicately varied shades of gold and silver; never had artist's eye been so ruthless in the condemnation of imperfect mitres and superfluous plaster.
But now the work of preparation was at an end: the catalogues had been printed, and his _impresario_ had judiciously circulated invitations to press and public: the work was done, and the workman felt only weary and indifferent. If the public howled, what did it matter? Their hostility would be for him a corroboration, for his Jew an invaluable advertisement. If they fawned, so much the better: it would not hurt him, and Mosenthal would still have his advertisement. If they were indifferent, well, so was he.
The question of pecuniary profit troubled him not at all (though here his Jew joined issue): what in the world could he do with money, now? He could paint a picture in a month which would keep him for six, and the dealer who bought it probably for a year.
Margot was already provided for, even handsomely: in that respect, at least, her first adopted father had left no void for his successor to fill.
So again he shrugged his shoulders. And upon that evening, for the first time since Rainham's death, he dined, more solitary and more silent than ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski's. He found that, after all, his nervous anticipation of inconvenient protestations of sympathy was not fulfilled; there were not many men who knew him more than by sight at Brodonowski's, and the few of his old associates who were there had the good sense to exhibit nothing extraordinary in their demeanour towards him. Only they were a little less wildly humorous than of old, and more forbearing in their sallies; the conversation died out for an instant as he made his way quickly, with the faintest sign of recognition, through their midst--and that was all.
Rainham's death had affected some of them for a few days perhaps, but it had not the shock of the unexpected; they chiefly wondered that he had dragged his life through so cruel a winter. And his close alliance with Oswyn had, as a natural consequence, debarred him from a real intimacy with any of the other men, who, for the most part younger, cultivated different friendships and different pursuits.
They had missed Oswyn during his seclusion of the last few weeks; he was so essentially the presiding, silent genius of the place--a man to be pointed out to new-comers, half ironically, as the greatest, most deeply injured, of them all; the possessor of a talent unapproached and unappreciated. They felt that his presence lent a distinction to the dingy resort which it otherwise frequently lacked: and he had come to be so far regarded as a permanent institution, of an almost official nature, that even on the coldest nights his chair by the fireside had remained untenanted.
When the next morning came, Oswyn felt desperately inclined to break the promise which Mosenthal had, with some difficulty, exacted from him, and to keep far from Bond Street and the crowd who even then were assembling to cast their careless glances and light words at the work of his life; it was only the fear of the taint of cowardice, and a certain perversity, which induced him eventually to present himself within the gallery rather late in the afternoon.
As he entered the room, looking about him with a kind of challenge, many eyes were turned upon him (for people go to private views not to see pictures--that is generally impossible--but to see and be seen of men), but few had any suspicion that this strange man, with the shabby, old-fashioned apparel, and expression half nervous, half defiant, was the painter whose pictures they were pretending to criticise.
Very few of those present--hardly half a dozen perhaps--knew him even by sight; and while his evident disregard for social convention marked him, for the discerning observer, as a person of probably artistic distinction, the general conjecture set him down, not as a painter--he did not seem to be of that type--but as a man of letters--probably a maker of obscure verse.
When he had mastered the first wild impulse which prompted him to tear his pictures down, to turn their faces to the wall--anything to hide them from this smiling, languid, well-dressed crowd--and resigned himself to observation, he saw that Mosenthal was beaming at him complacently, through the massive gold spectacles which adorned and modified the bridge of his compromising nose, from his seat behind the table, where information as to the prices of the exhibits could be obtained.
There were exactly forty drawings and paintings to be seen upon the sparsely-covered walls, which had been draped for the occasion with coarsely-woven linen of a dull olive-green, and about half of these were drawings and studies, small in point of size, executed in chalk and pastels.
The greater part of these represented ordinary scenes of London outdoor life--a deserted corner of Kensington Gardens, with tall soot-blackened trees lifting their stately tracery of dark branches into the sky; a reach of the wide, muddy river, with a gaunt bridge looming through the fog; a gin-palace at night time, with garish lamps shining out upon the wet streets and crouching beggars.
Of the remainder, which included a few portraits and some imaginative subjects, the greater number were painted in oils, and the largest canvas would not have seemed out of place on the walls of an ordinary room.
Oswyn smiled grimly as he noticed that the portrait of Margot, which he had begun for Rainham and finished for himself, was a considerable centre of attraction; there was quite a dense crowd in the vicinity of this canvas (it is true, it was near the tea-table), and it included two bishops, a duke, and an actress, of whom the last-named was certainly more stared at than the picture.
It irritated him, in spite of his contempt for the throng, to see people standing, chatting, with their backs turned towards his creations; and when Mosenthal informed him in a triumphant stage-whisper, leaning across the table littered with catalogues, that nine of the pictures had already found purchasers, he was almost inclined to rebel, to refuse to ratify the sales.
The only friendly face which he encountered during the afternoon was that of McAllister, who presently brought his congratulations and conspicuous presence to the corner to which Oswyn had betaken himself; and for a time he found himself listening, while the Scotchman enlightened him, somewhat against his will, as to the names and celebrity of the distinguished visitors whom he was supposed to be receiving.
He was assured that the press notices could not fail to be favourable (he mentally promised himself that nothing should induce him to read a newspaper for at least a fortnight), and the flattering comments of Mr. This and Lady That were half-apologetically retailed for his presumed delectation.
As his eyes wandered, with his attention, furtively round the room, they presently encountered, in their passage from group to group, a face which seemed vaguely familiar--the face of a woman, whom he certainly had never known, but whose beauty, he thought, was not appealing to his admiration for the first time.
She was standing with her profile turned towards him, gazing gravely at his study of a pale figure, with beautiful eyes and an armful of wonderfully coloured poppies, which he called "Thanatos, the Peace-bearer."
When she moved, presently, her gaze rested on him for a moment, with the faintest note of inquiry interrupting the smile with which she was listening to the sallies of her escort for the time being; the smile and glance revealed her more perfectly to Oswyn, and he was prepared to hear McAllister greet her as Mrs. Lightmark when, a few minutes later, she passed them on her way round the room.
Eve had spent the week which followed the afternoon upon which her husband had stunned her with the news of Philip Rainham's death almost in solitude.
Lightmark had been obliged to pay a hasty visit to Berlin, on business connected with an International Art Congress, and his wife at the last moment decided, somewhat to his relief, that she would not accompany him. A man of naturally quick perception, and with a certain vein of nervous alertness underlying his outer clothing of careless candour, he could not help feeling that when he was alone with his wife he was being watched, that traps were set for him--in short, that he was suspected. And not only when they were alone had he cause for alarm: in crowded rooms, at mammoth dinner-parties, and colossal assemblies he frequently became aware, by a sense even quicker than vision, that his wife's eyes were directed upon him from the farther side of the room, the opposite end of the dinner-table, with that wistful, childish expression in their depths, which, growing sterner and more critical of late, had ended by boring him.
Before Rainham's death, Eve, in her private discussions of the situation, had generally concluded by dismissing the subject petulantly, with a summing-up only partially convincing, that everything would come right in the end; that in time that miserable scene would be forgotten or explained away; and that the old intimacy, of which it was at once so bitter and so pleasant to dream, would be restored.
Her training--of which her mother was justly proud--had endowed her with a respect for social convention too great to allow her to think of rebelling against the existing order of things. She consoled herself by the reflection that at least she had committed no fault, and that no active discipline of penitence could justly be expected of her.
Concerning the truth of Rainham's story she could not fail to harbour doubts; that her husband was concealing something was daily more plainly revealed to her.
It was hard that she should suffer, but what could she do? At the bottom of her heart, in spite of the feeling of resentment which assailed her when--as it often did--the idea occurred to her that he had not exhibited towards her the perfect frankness which their old friendship demanded, she pitied Rainham. There were even times--such was her state of doubt--when she pitied her husband, and blamed herself for suspecting him of--she hardly owned what.
But, most of all, she pitied herself. She felt that in any case she had been wronged, whether Philip's ill-told tale was true or false.
But her pride enabled her to keep her doubts locked within her own heart, to present a smiling, if occasionally pale, face to the world, in whose doings she took so large a part, and even to deceive Mrs. Sylvester.
And now Philip was dead! The severance, which she had persuaded herself was only temporary, was on a sudden rendered inexorably complete and eternal.
The blow was a cruel one, and for a time it seemed to be succeeded by a kind of rebellious insensibility. Eve felt demoralized, and careless of the future; her frame of mind was precisely that of the man who is making his first hasty steps along the headlong road which is popularly spoken of as leading to the devil.
Later she began to reproach herself. She reflected, with a kind of scornful wonder at her weakness, that she had allowed all chance of explanation to escape; the one man whom she could trust, who would surely give her a straightforward answer if she appealed to him by the memory of the old days, was beyond the reach of her questions, silent to eternity. Her former sorrow seemed trivial by comparison with this.
On his return, Lightmark found his wife looking so pale and tired that he broke off in the middle of the story of his flattering reception at the German Court to express a suggestion for her benefit, that she had better go to Brighton or somewhere to recruit. She would never get through the season at this rate. Yes, she must certainly take a holiday, directly after the Academy Private View.
Eve caught at the idea, only she did not wait for the Academy to open. She went for a fortnight, accompanied by an old servant of the family, who regarded her mistress's birth as quite a recent event, to Mrs. Sylvester's cottage in Norfolk.
When Mrs. Lightmark came back to town her face was still pale, but her brow wore a serener air, and her eyes had lost their look of apprehension. The woman had arisen triumphant out of the ashes of her childhood, with a heart determined to know the truth, and to face it, however bitter it might prove to be. Meanwhile, she would not judge hastily.
As she drove up Bond Street one day soon after her return to town, the advertisement of Oswyn's exhibition caught her eye. She would probably have remembered a name so uncommon if she had only heard it once, and, as it was, she had heard it several times, and associated with it, moreover, a certain reticence which could not fail to arouse a woman's curiosity.
Later, when Mosenthal's card of invitation for the Private View arrived, she noted the day upon her list of engagements.
On the morning of Oswyn's ordeal, Eve sent a message to her husband, who was engaged with a model in the studio, to notify to him her intention of taking the carriage into town later in the afternoon; to which he had returned a gallant reply, expressing a hope that, if it would not bore her too much, she would pick him up somewhere and drive him home. Where and when could he meet her? The reply, "At Mosenthal's at five o'clock," did not surprise him. He did not happen to have the vaguest idea as to what was the attraction of the day at that particular gallery. It might be Burmese landscapes, or portraits of parrots; it was all one to him. It was extremely decorous in his wife to affect picture-galleries, and Mosenthal's place was conveniently near to his favourite club.
A few minutes before the appointed hour he made his way, from the new and alarmingly revolutionary club-house, where he had been indulging in afternoon tea in company with Felicia Dollond, to the gallery, outside which his horses were already waiting, and, perceiving Oswyn's name on the placards disposed on either side of the entrance, he felt only a momentary hesitation.
Oswyn would probably not be there; and, after all, why should he not inspect the man's pictures?
Before reasons had time to present themselves he had passed into the room, and had been deferentially welcomed and presented with a catalogue by the proprietor in person.
The room was still crowded, and it was oppressively warm, with an atmosphere redolent of woollen and silken fabrics, like a milliner's shop on the day of a sale.
At first he made no effort to join his wife, whom he discerned from afar talking to a pillar of the Church in gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat.
He looked at the pictures whenever there was a break in the sequence of bows and greetings which had to be exchanged with two-thirds of the people in the room; and as he looked he was smitten with a quick thrill of admiration: he was still young enough to recognise the hand of the master. And in his admiration there was a trace of a frank envy, a certain unresentful humiliation--the feeling which he could remember to have experienced many times in the old days, when he put aside the sonnet he had just finished for some fashionable magazine, and took down from his limited bookshelf the little time-worn volume which contained the almost forgotten work of a poet whose name would have fallen strangely on the editorial ear.
Before long there was a general departure, and Lightmark, flushed with the triumphs of a conversation in which, in the very centre of an admiring group of his antagonist's worshippers, he had successfully measured swords with a notorious wit, turned to look for his wife; and, for the first time, meeting Oswyn's eye, half-involuntarily advanced to greet him.
"This is an unexpected honour," said Oswyn coldly, disregarding the proffered hand; "unexpected and unwelcome!"
Then he would have turned away, leaving his contempt and hatred unspoken, but his passion was too strong.
"Have you come to seek ideas for your next Academy picture," he continued quickly, with a sneer trembling on his lips, "or for the _Outcry_?"
Lightmark grew a little pale, biting his lip, and frowning for a moment, before he assumed a desperate mask of good-humour.
"Hang it, man!" he answered quickly, "be reasonable! Haven't you forgiven me yet? Though what you have to forgive---- I only want to congratulate you, to tell you that I admire your work--immensely."
"I don't want your congratulations," interrupted the other hoarsely. "I might forget the wrong which, as you well know, you have done me; that is nothing! But have you forgotten your--your friend, Rainham? You had better go," he added, with a savage gesture. "Go! before I denounce you, proclaim you, you pitiful scoundrel!"
The man's forced calm had given way to a quivering passion; his lips trembled under the stress of the words which thronged to them; and as he turned on his heel, with a glance eloquent of loathing, he did not notice that Eve was standing close behind her husband, with parted lips, and intent eyes gleaming out of a face as pale as his own.
Lightmark recovered himself quickly, shrugging his shoulders as soon as the other was out of earshot. He glanced at his wife, who was following Oswyn with her eyes; he did not dare to ask, or even to think, what she might have heard.
"The man's mad," he said lightly, "madder than ever!"
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It was Margot who gave him the letter: Oswyn remembered that afterwards with a kind of superstition. She came to meet him, wearing an air of immense importance, when his quick step fell upon the bare wooden stairway which led to his rooms.
"There's a letter for you," she said, nodding impressively, "a big letter, with a seal on it; and Mrs. Thomas had to write something on a piece of green paper before the postman would give it to her."
Then she followed him into the twilight of the attic which was his studio, and watched him gravely while he lighted the gas and, in deference to her curiosity, broke the seal.
The envelope contained a letter, and a considerable bundle of papers, folded small, and neatly tied together with red tape.
When he had read the letter, he turned the package over with a sigh, reflectively eying it for some minutes, and then put it aside.
Later, when Mrs. Thomas, his landlady, had carried the child away to bed, he took, the papers up again, and, after some hesitation, slowly untied the tape which encircled them.
The letter was from Messrs. Furnival and Co., the firm of solicitors who had acted for Rainham, and were now representing Oswyn as his friend's sole executor.
It contained a brief intimation that the grant of probate of the late Mr. Rainham's will had been duly extracted, and ended with a request that the executor would consider the inclosed bundle of documents, which appeared to be of a private nature, and decide whether they should be preserved or destroyed.
When he had removed the tape, Oswyn noticed that a great many of the letters had the appearance of being in the same handwriting; these were tied up separately with a piece of narrow faded silk riband, and it was evident that they were arranged more or less in order of date; the writing in the case of the earliest letter being that of a child, while the most recent, dated less than a year ago, was a short note, an invitation, with the signature "Eve Lightmark."
Oswyn contemplated the little bundle with an air of indecision, falling at last into a long reverie, his thoughts wandering from the letters to the child, the woman who had written them, the woman whose name his friend so rarely breathed, whose face he had seen for the first time, proud, and cold, and beautiful, that very afternoon. Did she, too, care? Would she guard her secret as jealously?
Suddenly he frowned; the thought of Lightmark's effrontery recurred, breaking his contemplative calm and disturbing his speculations. He laid the papers aside without further investigation, and, after gazing for a few minutes vacantly out of the uncurtained window, rolled a fresh cigarette and went out into the night.
Next morning he made an expedition to Lincoln's Inn Fields to see Messrs. Furnival and Co., taking the packet with him. The partner who had the matter in hand was engaged, and he was kept waiting for nearly half an hour, in a dusty room with an elaborately moulded ceiling, and a carved wooden chimney-piece and scrolled panelling of some beauty, both disfigured with thick layers of dingy brown paint. A fire had just been lighted, in deference to the unseasonable coldness of the June day, and the room was full of pungent smoke.
As he waited his irritation increased. Lightmark's impertinent intrusion (such it appeared to him) and the scene which had ensued, had entirely aroused him from the state of indifference into which, when the incident occurred, he was beginning to relapse. The man was dangerous; a malign passion, a craving for vengeance, slept in him, born of his southern blood, and glancing out now and again at his eyes, like the fire which darts from the windows of a burning building.
He wondered now, as he thought of the wrongs he had borne, as it seemed to him, so patiently; in Rainham's lifetime there had doubtless been reasons, but was he never to retaliate? Had not he considered other people enough? His forbearance struck him now as a kind of weakness, as something almost contemptible, to be thought of with a feeling akin to shame.
Finally he was ushered up into Mr. Furnival's room, a pleasant apartment on the first floor, with windows looking out upon a charming oasis of grass and trees. The lawyer apologized for keeping him waiting, intimated delicately that he had a pressing appointment in five minutes' time, and expressed his sympathy with Oswyn's difficulty as to the letters.
"It's quite a matter for you to decide," he said. "If you like to take the responsibility you may burn them forthwith, unread; or you may give them to me, to file with the other papers. But I should advise you to glance through the later letters, at all events. May I look at them? Thanks."
Oswyn had given him the packet of letters, and he spread them out on the table at which he was sitting, methodically, in little heaps, clearing a space among the piles of drafts and abstracts which lay before him.
"I think we may destroy these," said Oswyn, pointing to the little bundle tied up with riband. "I think I know what they are."
"As you like," said Mr. Furnival; "they appear to be from a lady. Yes, I don't think you need read them."
"And these," continued Oswyn. "They are all from Lady Garnett, and it is extremely unlikely that they can have any business reference."
"That disposes of nearly all," said the lawyer cheerfully. "I may put them on the fire, then?"
Oswyn bowed a grave assent, and Mr. Furnival dropped the little packets quickly into the hottest part of the fire.
"Now, here is a letter with a very recent postmark," he continued. "A man's writing, too, I should say. Will you read this, while I go through the others? It looks like rather a long epistle."
The handwriting seemed familiar to Oswyn, and his hand trembled slightly as he turned to the signature for corroboration. As he guessed, it was from Lightmark.
"I think I had better read this," he said grimly, half to himself.
He glanced quickly through the letter, and then read it a second time slowly, and while he was reading it his expression was such as to confirm the solicitor's previous opinion, that the man was a little bit mad.
When he had finished his perusal (he thought at the time that he should never forget a single word of that disgraceful letter), Oswyn sat in silence for some minutes, intently watching Mr. Furnival's struggles with a large bundle of papers and a small black bag.
The letter had, if such a thing were possible, increased his contempt for the writer; that the man was insincere (Oswyn would have used a far stronger term) he had been aware from the beginning; now he knew that he was a coward, a creature almost unworthy of his hatred.
A quick thought struck him, and he smiled.
"We won't burn this--at present, at any rate," he said quietly. "Is there anything else for me to read?"
The lawyer shuffled the remaining papers together quickly.
"I think not: these are chiefly bills which have since been paid. Will you keep that letter, or do you wish us to do anything about it?"
Oswyn deliberated for a moment, with a curious expression flitting over his face, biting his lip and frowning slightly, as he gazed at the fireplace, where Rainham's long-cherished letters from Eve and Lady Garnett's delicate, witty compositions were represented by a little heap of wavering black ashes.
The lawyer looked at his watch uneasily.
"I beg your pardon," said Oswyn quickly; "I needn't keep you any longer. Will you let me have an envelope? I dare say they can give me Mr. Sylvester's address downstairs--Mr. Charles Sylvester, the barrister?"
"The new member, you mean, of course?" said the lawyer. "He has chambers in Paper Buildings, No. 11. Do you know him?"
"I am going to send him this letter," said Oswyn briefly, folding it up and bestowing it in the envelope which Mr. Furnival had given him. "Thanks, no, I needn't trouble you to have it posted: I prefer to leave it at Mr. Sylvester's chambers myself."
"He was a great friend of the late Mr. Rainham, as, of course, you know," said the lawyer, as they parted at the door. "Mr. Rainham introduced him to us when he was quite a young man--soon after he was called, in fact, and we gave him his first brief--the first of a good many! He's been one of our standing counsel for years. Good-day!"
As he made his way towards the Temple, Oswyn smiled to himself rather savagely, tasting in anticipation the sweets of long-deferred revenge. The flame of his ancient discontent with the academical art of the day, which had been fed by his personal hatred of one particularly successful exponent of it, was fanned into fury. And, at the same time, as he proceeded, with short, hasty steps, amply armed for the vindication of his friend, in his grim fatalism he seemed to himself immensely the instrument of destiny, which had so given his enemy into his hands.
He paused when he reached Fleet Street; entering the first public-house, at haphazard, to order six pennyworth of brandy, which he drank neat across the counter, with slow, appreciative sips, as he reminded himself that, the excellence of his ammunition notwithstanding, he was still without any definite plan of campaign.
Would his luck desert him again? Would Sylvester be away, or refuse to see him? or, while receiving him, contrive by some sinuous legal device, adroitly to divert his attack? The mere contemplation of any such frustration dulled him strangely.
He called for his glass to be replenished, and emptied it sharply: and immediately the generous spirit moved his pulse, rebuked him for his depression, sent him briskly on on his way.
As he lifted the ponderous knocker upon Sylvester's door, he remembered vividly the only other occasion upon which he had visited those chambers. With the member for Mallow, too, indiscreet busybody that he was, had he not a reckoning to settle? The choice of him as an instrument of his punishment, which, if it was primarily directed against another, should not leave him wholly unscathed, gave a zest to his malice, and increased firmness to his manner, as he curtly ordered the clerk to take in his card.
"Is it an appointment?" this youth had asked dubiously, "because if it isn't----" "Mr. Sylvester will see me," said Oswyn with irritation, "if you will have the goodness to do as you are told, and give him my name."
At which the youth had smiled loftily and retired, only to return five minutes later with an air of greater humility and information that the legislator was disengaged.
Charles looked up at him from the table at which he was sitting, with an open volume of Hansard before him, coldly waving him to a chair--an offer which Oswyn, mentally damning his superciliousness, ignored.
"My business is very brief," he said quickly; "I can explain it standing."
"I understand that it is urgent, Mr.--Mr. Oswyn. Otherwise, you know, I am a busy man."
"You mean that my call is inconvenient? I can quite imagine it. I should hardly have troubled you if you had not once taken the trouble to send for me--you, perhaps, have forgotten the occurrence; that seemed to give me a sort of right, a claim on your attention."
"I recognised it," said Charles gravely, in a tone which implied that, had he not given this nicety the benefit of his liberal consideration, the intruder would never have penetrated so far. "Since that is agreed, may I ask you to explain your business as expeditiously as possible?"
Oswyn smiled with some irony; and Sylvester suppressed a little shudder, reflecting that the man's uncouthness almost transgressed the bounds of decency.
"I can quote your own words on a previous occasion: it concerns the honour of a friend--the honour of your family, if you like it better."
Sylvester shut his volume sharply, glanced up at the other with suppressed irritation.
"That is not a matter I can discuss with you," he said at last.
"I simply intend you to read," went on Oswyn calmly, "a letter which your brother-in-law wrote to my friend, Philip Rainham, a few weeks before his death."
Charles rose from his chair quickly, avoiding the other's face.
"I regret that I can't assist you," he said haughtily; "I have no interest whatever in the affairs of the late Mr. Rainham, and I must decline to read your letter."
He glanced significantly at the door, not suppressing a slight yawn; it was incredible how this repulsive little artist, with his indelicate propositions, bored him.
But Oswyn ignored his gesture; simply laid the missive in question on the table; then he glanced casually at his watch.
"I can't compel you to read this letter," he said in the same studiously calm voice. "I warn you that your honour is gravely interested in its contents, and I will give you five minutes in which to decide. If you still persist in your determination, I have no course left but to send copies of it to some of Rainham's most intimate friends, and to your sister, Mrs. Lightmark."
He had his watch in one hand, but his gaze, curiously ironical, followed the direction of Charles's irresolute eyes, and the five minutes had not elapsed before he realized--and a touch of triumph mingled with his immense contempt of the man and his pompous unreality--that Charles's resolution had succumbed.
He stretched out his hand for the letter, unfolded it deliberately, and read it once, twice, three times, with a judicial slowness, which the other, who was now curiously moved, found exasperating.
When at last he looked up at Oswyn he shaded his eyes with one hand, but his face remained for the rest imperturbable and expressionless. The painter saw that his discretion was larger than he had imagined.
If the reading had been disagreeably illuminative--and Oswyn believed that under his surface composure he concealed, at least, a terrible wound to his pride--he was not going to allow this impression to appear.
"I might suggest that this document is a forgery," he said after a moment.
Oswyn indulged in a little, harsh laugh, shrugging his shoulders.
"That would be too fatuous, Mr. Sylvester."
"I might suggest it," went on Charles slowly. "Perhaps, then, you will be surprised when I tell you that I believe it to be genuine. May I ask, Mr. Oswyn, why you move in this matter?"
"As Rainham's friend," said Oswyn quickly, "I intend to expose the miserable calumny which clouded his last days."
"A public scandal would be greatly to be deplored," Charles hazarded inconsequently, in the tone of a man who argued with himself.
Oswyn made as if he would have taken up the letter with a gesture of sudden impatience; but Charles intercepted him quickly, and his voice had a grave simplicity in it which arrested the other's attention.
"Don't mistake me, Mr. Oswyn; I have not the least desire or intention to suppress this document. I must expect you to judge me harshly; but you will surely see that my honour is as deeply concerned in the redressing of Mr. Rainham's reputation as anyone's can be, only I am naturally desirous of sparing my--of sparing the innocent persons who are unfortunately mixed up in the affair unnecessary pain, the scandal of publicity."
"There are certain persons who must absolutely know the truth," said Oswyn bluntly.
"If I pledge you my word that the persons whom you mean shall be immediately enlightened, will you leave me to act alone?"
The other was silent for a moment revolving the proposition, half surprised at the unwonted humility of the barrister's eagerness. At last he said, with a short, ambiguous laugh: "I will leave it in your hands, Mr. Sylvester."
He underwent a momentary repentance of his own readiness when he was in the street, and had turned his face to Soho again; it seemed almost childishly trusting. But presently, remembering he knew not what shade of curious sternness in Sylvester's manner, he decided that he had done wisely--it was on some such result as this that he had counted in his coming--and that the score, stupendous as it was, would be accurately settled.
For a long while, after his unwelcome visitor had departed, Charles sat silent and buried in deep thought.
From time to time he glanced vaguely at the letter which Oswyn had abandoned, and he wondered--but quite inconsequently, and with no heart to make the experiment--whether any further perusal of those disgraceful lines could explain or palliate the blunt obloquy of the writer's conduct. His concise, legal habit of mind forbade him to cherish any false illusions.
Lightmark, writing in an hour of intimate excitement, when the burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated, promised; had been abject, hypocritical, explicit.
It seemed to Sylvester, in the first flush of his honourable disgust, that there was no generous restitution which the man had not promised, no craven meanness to which he had not amply confessed.
He dropped his correct head upon his hands with something like a moan, as he contrasted the ironical silence which had been Rainham's only answer to this effusion--a silence which had since been irrevocably sealed. He had never before been so disheartened, had never seemed so intimately associated with disgrace.
Even the abortive ending of his passion--he knew that this was deep-seated and genuine, although its outward expression had been formal and cold--seemed a tolerable experience in comparison.
But this was dishonour absolute, and dishonour which could never be perfectly atoned.
Had not he in his personal antipathy to Philip Rainham--the tide of that ancient hostility surged over him again even while he vowed sternly to make the fullest amends--had he not seized with indecent eagerness upon any pretext or occasion to justify his dislike?
He had, at least, assisted unjustly to destroy Rainham's reputation, giving his adherence to the vainest of vain lies; and however zealous he might be in destroying this elaborate structure which he had helped to build, however successful the disagreeable task of enlightening his sister and the maligned man's most interested friends might prove, the reproach upon his own foresight would remain.
It was notable that, in the somewhat hard integrity of his character, he did not for a moment seek to persuade himself, as a man of greater sympathy might have done, that Eve was a person to whom the truth could legitimately be spared.
How she would suffer it, and whither her indignation might lead her, he did not care to inquire; these were matters with which henceforth he should decline to meddle. His part would be done when he had given her the simple information that was her due--that they had made a great mistake; that her husband was not to be trusted.
He tried to prepare the few set phrases in which the intelligence would be couched, but found none that were satisfactory. The effort appeared more and more stupendous as the afternoon advanced, until at last, with astonishment at his weakness which refused to be analysed, he recognised that, after all, it was not possible. It was news which he could not give to his sister with his own lips.
Mary Masters as a possible mediator suddenly occurred to him. He recognised by some occult instinct that she was one of the persons for whom Oswyn had stipulated, to whom restitution was due, and at once he resolved to appeal to her.
He reminded himself that the Lightmarks were entertaining that evening on a scale of quite exceptional grandeur, that he had a card for their fancy-dress ball, from which Lady Garnett and her niece would hardly be absentees. If he could see the girl beforehand, she would doubtless find the time and occasion to say what was necessary.
He had recovered his composure when, at no considerable interval after the formation of this resolve, he was ushered into Lady Garnett's drawing-room. It was his first appearance there since the rejection of his suit (he had not had the courage to renew it, although he was by no means prepared to admit that it was hopeless), and in the slight embarrassment which this recollection caused him he hardly regretted the presence of a second visitor, although his identification as a certain Lord Overstock, whom he believed to be opposed to him in more ways than in his political views (he was a notorious Tory), was not made without a jealous pang. He greeted Mary, however, without undue formality, and went over to Lady Garnett.
The old lady glanced up at him rather listlessly. She was growing deaf, or feigned deafness. He said to himself that perhaps she was much older than they knew--was growing tired. Her _persiflage_, which Charles had never much appreciated, was less frequent than of old, and she no longer poured out her witticisms with the placid sweetness of a person offering you _bonbons_. There were sentences in her talk--it was when she spoke of the couple opposite them, who were conveniently out of ear-shot--which the barrister found deliberately malignant.
"You mean that it is settled?" she asked, affecting to misunderstand some trivial remark. "Ah, no, but it will arrange itself--it is coming. You think she will make an admirable duchess? She has sometimes quite the grand air. Have you not found that out? You know his father is very old; he cannot in reason live much longer. And such estates! Personally, too, the nicest of boys, and as proper as if he had something to gain by it. And yet, in England, a Duke can do almost anything and be respected. Ah, Mr. Sylvester, you did not use your opportunity!"
"I want one now," he said rather coldly, "of saying two words to Miss Masters."
She just raised her delicate eyebrows.
"Will it be very useful?"
Charles flushed slightly, then he frowned.
"It has nothing to do with myself. I have some news she should hear. Perhaps you yourself----" She interrupted him with a little mirthless laugh.
"I will not hear anything serious, and you look to me very serious. I am old enough to have promised never again to be serious in my life."
She submitted, however, to listen to him, seeing that his weighty confidences would not be brooked; and when he had finished--he said what he had to say in very few words--she glanced up at him with the same air of impenetrable indifference.
"Come!" she said, "what does it matter to me that you acted in exceedingly bad taste, and repent it? It made no difference to me--I am not the _police des moeurs_. If I were you, I would hold my tongue."
Then she added, as he glanced at her with evident mystification, shrugging her shoulders: "When one is dead, Mr. Sylvester, what does it matter?"
He turned away rather impatiently, his eyes following the fine lines of Mary's face, which he saw in profile.
He noticed that she talked with animation, and that Lord Overstock's expression was frankly admiring. At last the old lady said: "But, yes; you must tell Mary--by all means. To her it will mean much. See, the Marquis is going; if you wish I will leave you alone together."
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"Now, isn't it a pretty dance?" murmured Mrs. Dollond rapturously, as she sank into a low chair in a corner secure from the traffic of the kaleidoscopic crowd which had invaded Mrs. Lightmark's drawing-room, and opened her painted fan with a little sigh intended to express her beatitude.
Colonel Lightmark, to whom Mrs. Dollond addressed this complimentary query (which, after all, was more of an assertion or challenge, in that it took its answer for granted), was arrayed in the brilliant scarlet and silver of the regiment which had once the honour of calling him Colonel; his tunic was so tight that sitting down was almost an impossibility for him, and Mrs. Dollond, who looked charming in her powder and brocade, could not help wondering whether any mortal buttons could stand the strain; and, on the other hand, the dimensions of his patent leather boots were such that standing, for a man of his weight, involved a torture which it was hard to conceal. And yet the veteran was happy--he was positively radiant. He felt that his nephew's success in the world of Art and of Society considerably enhanced his own importance; he was not ashamed to owe a portion of his brilliance to borrowed light--and tonight one could not count the celebrities on the fingers of both hands.
The old hero-worshipper gazed complacently at the little ever-shifting crowd which surrounded his nephew and his niece (so he called her) at their post near the doorway, and he listened to Mrs. Dollond's sparkling sallies with a blissful ignorance of her secret ambition in the direction of a partner who would make her dance, and for whose edification she would be able to liken the Colonel's warlike figure to a newly-boiled lobster, or a ripe tomato.
"Regular flower-show, isn't it?" he suggested, naïvely reinforcing his simile. "I don't know what the dickens they're all meant for, but a good many of them seem to have escaped from the Lyceum--Juliets, and Portias, and Shylocks, and so forth."
"Yes," said Mrs. Dollond. "I think the Shylocks must be picture-dealers, you know. But their conversation isn't very Shakespearian, is it? I heard Hamlet say, just now, that the floor was too perfect for anything, and Ophelia--she was dancing with a Pierrot _incroyable_--told her partner that she adored waltzing to a string band!"
They both laughed, the Colonel shortly and boisterously, Mrs. Dollond in a manner which suggested careful study before a looking-glass, with an effect of dimples and of flashing teeth.
"What wicked things you say, Colonel Lightmark," she added demurely. "Who is that stately person in the dark figured silk, with a cinque-cento ruff? Isn't it Lady Garnett's niece?"
"Yes, that's Miss Masters," said the Colonel, "and I suppose that's Lady Garnett with her. I don't think I've ever met Lady Garnett, though I've often heard of her. What is her dress--whom is she intended to represent? I don't see how the dickens one's expected to know, but you're so clever."
"Oh, she's dressed as--as Lady Garnett! What a lot of people--_real_ people, you know--there are here to-night! Dear me, there's the music again already. I believe I've got to dance this time. I do hope my partner's dress won't clash with mine too awfully. That's the worst of fancy dress balls; they really ought to be stage-managed by a painter, and the period ought to be limited. One's never safe. Our dance, Mr. Copal? Number six? Yes, I think it must be! A polka? Then we'll waltz!"
And the Colonel, who was not a dancing man, was left in not unwelcome solitude to reflect somewhat ponderously on the advantages of possessing a nephew and niece young enough, brilliant enough, and rich enough--though that was partly _his_ affair--to cultivate the very pink and perfection of smart society. He regarded Dick in the light of a profitable investment.
When the young people, so to speak, came to the rescue of the avuncular hulk, it was already beginning to drift into the corner of the harbour devoted to derelicts.
The friends who had developed about his path in such flattering numbers when he came home from India, and retired, with a newly-acquired fortune and a vague halo of military distinction about his person, into the ranks of the half-paid, were beginning to find him rather old and, frankly, a considerable bore; but the timely benevolence which he had extended to his nephew was, it appeared, to have its reward in this world in the shape of a kind of reflected rejuvenescence, a temporary respite from the limbo of (how he hated the word!) fogeydom.
When Dick married, his uncle was already settling down in a narrow groove among the people of yesterday; now he felt that he had once more established his foothold among the people of to-day.
Presently he noticed that Lady Dulminster had arrived, and he made his way across the room to meet her with a quite youthful bashfulness, cannoning apologetically against Romeos and Marguerites, hoping that she would like his uniform.
There was one person, at least, in the room who made no attempt to assure herself that she was enjoying the vivid gaiety of these parti-coloured revels.
Mary Masters, when she had time for solitary thought, found that the atmosphere of the charming room was full of mockery. For her, the passionate vibrations of the strained, incessant strings seemed to breathe the wild complaint of lost souls; the multitudinous tread of gliding feet, the lingering sweep of silken skirts, the faint, sweet perfume of exotic flowers, all had a new and strange significance; the effect of an orchestral fugue wearily repeating the expression of a frenzied heartlessness, a great unrest.
The girl was completely unstrung. Since Charles had brought her news, which, after all, had been merely a corroboration, her nerves had played her false; the balance of her mind was thrown out of poise; and the fact that she was there at all seemed only a part of her failing, an additional proof of her moral collapse.
Seated on a low ottoman, in a little recess among the tall palms and tree-ferns, which lined the passage leading from the ball-room to the studio, she was startled presently from her reverie by Mrs. Lightmark, who confronted her, a dainty figure in the pale rose colour and apple-green of one of Watteau's most unpractical shepherdesses.
"Not dancing, Mary!" she protested, smiling a little languidly. "What does it mean? Why are you sitting in stately solitude with such an evident contempt for our frivolity?"
"Frivolity!" echoed Miss Masters. "I _have_ been dancing, this last waltz, with Lord Overstock. I have sent him to find my fan. I told him exactly where to look, but I suppose he can't discover it. He's not very clever, you know!"
"Poor Lord Overstock! I hope he won't find it just yet and come to turn me out of his seat. I'm _so_ tired of standing, of introducing men whose names I never knew to girls whose names I have forgotten, and of trying to avoid introducing the same people twice over. It's so difficult to recognize people in their powder and patches!"
"Yes," said Mary slowly, with a kind of inward resentment which she could not subdue, although she felt that it was unreasonable, "I almost wonder that you recognised me."
Eve glanced at her, struck by her tone, trying to read her expression in the dim light, a shadow of bewilderment passing over her own face and for a moment lowering the brilliancy of her eyes. Then she smiled again, dismissing her thought with a little laugh which broke off abruptly.
"One so soon forgets!" the other added, with an intention in her voice, an involuntary betrayal which she almost immediately regretted.
"Forgets!"
Eve caught up the word eagerly, almost passionately, her voice falling into a lower key.
"Forget! Forgive and forget!" repeated Mary quickly and recklessly, letting her eyes wander from her own clasped hands to Eve's bouquet of delicate, scentless fritillaries, which lay neglected where it had fallen on the floor between their feet. "How easy it sounds! --is perhaps--and yet--I have not so much to forget--or to be forgiven!"
The last words were almost whispered, but for Eve's imagination, poised on tiptoe like a hunted creature blindly listening for the approach of the Pursuer, they were full of suggestion, of denunciation.
She remembered now, with a swiftly banished pang of jealousy, that this girl had loved him.
Her thought sped back to a summer evening nearly a year ago, when it had seemed to her that she had surprised her friend's secret.
"What do you mean, Mary?" she demanded courageously. "What have I to be forgiven? Don't despise me; don't, for Heaven's sake, don't play with me! I am all in the dark! Are you accusing me? Do you think because I say nothing that I have forgotten--that I can forget? Is it something about--him?"
Mary cast a rapid glance at her.
"Are you afraid of his name, then?"
Eve dropped her hands despairingly.
"Ah, you do! You _are_ playing with me! About Philip Rainham, then! For Heaven's sake speak! Do you know what I only guess--that he was innocent? For God's sake say it!"
It was Mary's turn to look bewildered, to feel penitent. She began to recognise that there were greater depths in Eve's nature than she had suspected, that her indifference might, after all, prove to have been merely a mask.
"You guess--innocent--don't you know, then?"
"Nothing, nothing! I only suspect--believe! I have been groping alone in the darkness--and yet I _do_ know! He was innocent--he played a part?"
"Yes," said Mary gently; "he sacrificed himself, for another!"
"He sacrificed himself--for me. Ah, say it! say it!"
Mary was greatly puzzled and at the same time moved--filled with a supreme compassion for this woman who was yet such a child, so dainty and frail a thing to confront the deadly knowledge that she had made a shipwreck of a life, of lives.
And yet, was there not also a ring of exultation, a challenge in her last words?
At least, her sorrow was ennobled. She was invested with a sombre glory, as one who had inspired a rare and perfect devotion.
And, after all, had she not already been considered enough?
A silence ensued, during which Eve seemed to be wrapped in steadfast thought.
She grew calmer, picking up her bouquet, and sedulously arranging its disordered foliage; while Lord Overstock, who had arrived with Mary's fan, poured forth elaborate apologies, protesting that she must give him another dance--the second extra--to make up for the time he had lost.
Already the music was beginning for the next dance, and people passed in couples, laughing and talking gaily, a motley procession, on their way into the ball-room.
"I thought your brother would have told you," said Mary softly, bending over her programme and gathering her skirts together with a suggestion of departure.
"Charles? He was always prejudiced against him--always his enemy!"
"That is why; he is very just, very conscientious. He told me this afternoon."
Mary's voice sank a little lower. She was standing now. She could see her prospective partner looking for her. She wondered vaguely whether Eve accepted the alternative, whether she realized that, to prove Philip innocent, was to establish her husband's guilt, his original wrong-doing, and subsequent cowardice.
"But--Charles! How did he know? Does he believe it? Who told him?"
Mary had gently disengaged her arm from Eve's restraining hand. She stepped back for an instant, excusing herself to her expectant cavalier.
"One of Philip's friends told him to-day--proved it to him, he says. It was a Mr. Oswyn."
A minute later Mary found herself in the ball-room, making heroic efforts to divide her entire attention impartially between the strains of the band and the remarks of her partner.
She was afraid to pass in review the conduct of those few minutes which had seemed so long. Had it really all occurred in the interval between two waltzes?
For the present she drew a mental curtain over the scene. She lacked the courage to gaze upon her handiwork, although she was not without a hopeful instinct that, when she criticised it in sober daylight, she would even approve of what she had done. Her determination did not, however, carry her further than the middle of the dance.
The room was now crowded to repletion, and she readily fell in with her partner's suggestion that they should take a turn in the cooler atmosphere of the garden; and as she passed the threshold, a rapid, retrospective glance informed her that Eve was once more playing her arduous part of hostess.
Never had actress more anxiously awaited the fall of the curtain upon her scene. Her husband, in the gallant russet of a falconer, was dancing now with Mrs. Dollond: she could hear his frequent laughter, and, though she turned her eyes away, see him bending over his partner to catch the words, trivial enough no doubt, which she seemed to whisper with such an air of confidence. But, though she had heard him address Mrs. Dollond by her Christian name, she did not pay him the compliment of being jealous: the time for that had passed. The account which she had to demand of him related to a matter far more serious than the most flagrant of flirtations--she only longed to confront him, to tear from him a confession, not so much with a view to humiliate him as to enlighten herself, and to force him to make the only reparation in his power.
When the music had ceased, and the measured tread of feet lapsed into the confusion of independent wanderings, Eve turned to find her husband close behind her, and Mrs. Dollond firing off a neat little speech of congratulation, panting a little, and making play with her elaborate fan.
She was quick to seize the opportunity for which she had waited so eagerly; with a few words of smiling apology to Mrs. Dollond and the others who were gathered round her, she intimated to her husband that she wished him to come with her, to attend to something: she assumed a playful air of mystery.
"Oh, you must go!" said Mrs. Dollond, "your wife is planning some delightful surprise for us: I can see it in her eyes! Though, what one could want more----" The music began again, and the couples took their places for the Lancers: there was to be a Shakespearian set, and another of Waverley notabilities.
Under cover of the discussion and confusion which this scheme involved, Eve withdrew, leading the way into the room which they called the library, and which was full of superfluous furniture, removed from the drawing-room to make space for the dancers. Her husband followed, lifting his eyebrows, with a chivalrous but not wholly successful attempt to disguise his impatience.
When he had closed the door, Eve turned suddenly and confronted him, interrupting the question which was on his lips. He noticed, with a quick apprehension, that she was very pale, that the smile which she had worn for her guests had given place to an expression even more ominous than her pallor and the trembling of her lips.
"Why have I brought you here?" she echoed. "I don't know, I might have asked you before them all--perhaps you would have preferred that! But I won't keep you long. The truth! That is all I want!"
He frowned, with a vicious movement of his lips: then meeting her gaze, made an awkward effort to seem at ease.
"My dear child!" he said, stepping back and leaning his back against the door, "what melodrama! The truth! what truth?"
"How often you must have withheld it from me, to ask like that! The truth about Philip Rainham, and that woman: that is what I ask!"
Lightmark exclaimed petulantly at this: "Haven't we discussed it all before? Haven't you questioned me beyond all limits? Haven't you said that you believed me? And what a time----" "Yes, I have asked you before. Is it my fault that you have lied? Is it my fault that you have made it possible for--for someone else to prove to me, to-night, that you have deceived me? The time is not of my making. But now, I must have the truth; it is the only reparation, the last thing I shall ask of you!"
"You must be mad!" he stammered, his self-possession deserting him; "you don't know--you have no right to speak to me like this. You don't understand these things; you must let me judge for you----" "The only thing I understand clearly is that you have blackened another man's--your friend's--memory. Isn't that enough? Can you deny that you have allowed him to bear your shame? I know now that he was innocent; I insist that you shall tell me the rest!"
"The rest!" he repeated impatiently, shifting his attitude. "I won't submit to this cross-examination! I have explained it all before; I decline to say any more!"
"Then you cling to your lie?"
"Lie? Pray, don't be so sensational; you talk like the heroine of a fifth-rate drama! Who has put such a mad idea into your head? Let me warn you that there are limits to my patience!"
"I will tell you, if you will come with me and deny it to his face--if you will refute his proofs."
"Proofs! You have no right to ask such a thing! I tell you, I have acted for the best. Why should you believe the first comer rather than me?"
"Why? You can ask why!" she interposed.
"Let me beg of you to come back with me to our guests; we shall be missed--people will talk!"
Eve shrugged her shoulders defiantly, ironically.
"You prevaricate; you won't, you can't be candid! There is only one other man who can tell me the truth--you make it necessary, I must go to him."
Lightmark clenched his hand viciously upon the handle of the door.
"I decline to discuss this damnable folly any longer; if you won't come with me I shall go alone; I shall say that you are ill--really, I think you must be!"
"Go by all means!" she replied indifferently, "but tell me first, where can I find Mr. Oswyn?"
He paused, gazing at her blankly.
"Oswyn?"
"Yes. The man who is not afraid to denounce you. If you won't enlighten me, if you won't clear your--your friend's memory--it may be at the expense of your own--perhaps he will."
"Oswyn!" he stammered, "Oswyn!"
"His address!" she demanded quickly. "Please understand that for the future I am independent; I will go to him at once! If you won't give me his address, if---- Would you prefer that I should ask my brother for it? That is my alternative!"
Lightmark found something very disconcerting in his wife's steadfast gaze, in the uncompromising calm, the quiet passion of her demeanour; his one desire was to put an end to this scene, which oppressed him as a nightmare, before he should entirely lose all power of self-control.
He felt himself almost incapable of thought, unable to weigh the meaning of her words, her threats; the readiness of resource which served him so deftly in little things had deserted him now, as it invariably did in the face of a real emergency.
If he could temporize, he might be able to arrive at something more like a plan of action, to concentrate his efforts in one direction.
He realized that if his wife fulfilled her threat, which was the more alarming in that it was not an angry one, but had every appearance of being backed by deliberate intention--if she appealed to her brother, whose moral principles he estimated more highly than his tact or worldly wisdom--there appeared to be every prospect of an aggravated scandal. For if Charles Sylvester (who was unfortunately among the revellers) declined to furnish his sister with Oswyn's address, was it not certain that she would apply elsewhere? And, after all, might not Oswyn adhere to the silence which he had so long maintained?
He reasoned quickly and indeterminately, vaguely skimming the surface of many ominous probabilities and finding no hopeful resting-place for conjecture, finally allowing a little desperate gesture to escape him.
The music had stopped amid the desultory clapping of hands, and he could hear people passing outside on their way into the garden. He turned the handle slowly without opening the door.
"Be reasonable!" he appealed. "There is still time; let us go into the ballroom; let us forget this folly!"
"You may go," she replied contemptuously; "I have no wish to detain you--far from it. But if you leave me without giving me Mr. Oswyn's address I shall ask Charles for it, and if Charles----" Her husband interrupted her savagely.
"Oh, if you are bent on making a fool of yourself, I suppose I can't prevent you. The man lives at 61, Frith Street. Now you have it. I wash my hands of the whole affair."
He opened the door, and she passed out gravely before him, holding her bouquet to her down-turned face; and then they parted tacitly, the husband turning towards the door which led into the garden, the wife making her way into the ball-room, and thence towards the studio.
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In the empty studio, from which, for one night, most of her husband's impedimenta had been removed to allow place for the long supper-table, which glistened faintly in the pale electric light, she paused only long enough to wrap her fantastic person in the dark cloak which she had caught up on her way.
Then she let herself out quietly by the private door into the road. And she stood still a moment, blotted against the shadows, hesitating, vaguely considering her next step.
The honey-coloured moon, casting its strange, silken glamour over the white house, over the black outline of the trees in the garden, spangled here and there with Japanese lanterns, gave an air of immense unreality to the scene; and the tremulous notes of the violins, which floated faintly down to her from the half-opened windows of the ball-room, only heightened this effect, seeming just then to be no more than the music of moonbeams to which the fairies dance.
For a moment a sudden weakness and timidity overcame her. In a world so transcendently unreal--had not she just seen her happiness become the very dream of a shadow? --was it not the merest futility to take a step so definite, to be passionate or intense? Better rather to rest for a little in this vague world of half-lights into which she had stepped, under the cooling stars, and then to return and take up one's old place in the masque.
But her fantasy passed. In the distance two glowing orbs of a hansom came slowly towards her, and her purpose grew suddenly very strong.
The man reined in his horse with an inquiring glance at the hooded figure on the pavement, seeking a fare. And it was without hesitation that she engaged him, giving him the number of Oswyn's house in Frith Street, Soho, in her calm, well-bred voice, and bidding him be quick.
But the horse was incapable--tired, perhaps (she recalled the fact long afterwards, and the very shape and colour of the bony, ill-groomed animal, as one remembers trivial details upon occasions of great import); and after a while she resigned herself to a tedious drive.
As they rattled along confusedly through the crowded streets she caught from time to time the reflection of her own face in the two little mirrors at each side, and wondered to find herself the same. For she did not deceive herself, nor undervalue the crushing force of the blow which she had received.
To her husband, when she turned scornfully from his clumsy evasions--for a moment, perhaps, to herself--she had justified the singular course she was taking by an overwhelming necessity of immediately facing the truth, in which, perhaps, there still lurked the dim possibility of explanation whereby her husband's vileness might find the shadow of an excuse.
But with further reflection--and she was reflecting with passionate intensity--this little glow-worm of hope expired. The truth! She knew it already--had known before, almost instinctively--that Philip Rainham's justification could only be the warrant of her husband's guilt; no corroboration of Oswyn's could make that dreary fact any plainer than it was already.
No, it was hardly the truth which she desired so much as an act of tardy expiation which she would make. For with the bitterness of her conviction that, for all her wealth, and her beauty, and her youth, she had, none the less, irretrievably thrown away her life, there mingled an immense contrition at having been so blind and hard, so culpably unjust to the most generous of men, who had deliberately effaced himself for her good.
And the exceeding bitterness of her self-reproach, which alone saved her composure, forbidding the mockery of tears, was only exaggerated when she remembered how vain her remorse must remain. It mattered no jot that she was sorry, since death had sealed their estrangement ironically for all time.
In her passionate recognition of his constant justice and kindness, which of old, vainly striving to perpetuate the fading illusion of her husband's honour (her generosity did not pause to remember how vain these efforts had been), she had discounted for hypocrisy, she felt that no price of personal suffering would have been too heavy if only for one hour, one moment, she could have recalled him from the world of shadows to her side.
She could figure to herself, refining on her misery, his attitude in such a case: the half sad, half jesting reassurance of his gravely pardoning eyes.
They haunted her just then, those eyes of Philip Rainham, which had been to the last so ambiguous and so sad, and were now perpetually closed.
And for the first time a suspicion flashed across her mind, which, while it made her heart flutter like a frightened bird, seemed to her the one drop hitherto lacking in the cup of her unhappiness. Had, then, after all, that gentle indifference of her friend masked an immense hunger, a deeply-felt need of personal tenderness, which she might have supplied--ah, how gladly! --if she had known? Could he have cared more deeply than people knew?
She reminded herself the next moment, as they came to a sudden standstill before a dark-green door, how idle all such questions were--vain beating of the hands against the shut door of death!
She alighted and dismissed her cab, and in the interval which elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant, who gaped visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to realize the strangeness of her course.
Her mother, Charles, her guests--Felicia Dollond and the rest--how would they consider the adventure if ever they should know? It was easy to imagine their attitude of shocked disapproval, and her brother's disgusted repudiation of the whole business as a thing, most emphatically, which one did not do. Ah, no! it was not a departure such as this that a well-bred society Spartan could even decently contemplate! And it was almost with a laugh, devoid, indeed, of merriment, that Eve tossed consideration of these scruples contemptuously away.
At last she was in revolt against their world and the pedantry of its little inflexible laws; and all her old traditions had become odious to her, seeming, for the moment, deeply tainted with dishonour, and partly the cause of her disastrous plight. A great, ruining wave had broken over her life, and in her passionate helplessness she cried only for some firm and absolute shore, else the silence of the engulfing waters, not for the vain ropes of social convention with which they would drag her back into the perilous security from which she had been swept; and she had forgotten everything but her imperative need, which had brought her there, when the lodging-house drudge returned and ushered her clumsily into Oswyn's presence.
It was a sitting-room on the second floor which the artist occupied, by no means an uncomfortable apartment, though Eve's first impression of it was immeasurably sordid, and she realized, with a touch of pity, that the painter's difficult genius had no tact of application to his surroundings.
Had, then, the painter of "Thanatos the Peacebearer"--that incomparable work! --no personal taste, to be violated by the crude wall-paper and the vulgar vases, containing impossible flowers, which jostled against broken tobacco-pipes and a half empty bottle of milk on the mantelpiece?
There was an immense untidiness everywhere; a disorder of children's toys and torn picture-books would have prepared Eve for the discovery of a sleeping child with brilliant hair coiled up in a rug on the sofa, if her eyes had not been arrested by an unframed canvas on an easel, the only picture, save some worthless prints in common gilt frames, which was visible. It was the head of Philip Rainham, immortalized by the brush of his friend, which awaited her--the eyes already closed, the pale lips still smiling with that superbly ironical smile of the dead.
She had not greeted Oswyn on her entrance, and now she had ceased to remember that he was there, as she stood contemplating the portrait with her rapt and sorrowful gaze, while Oswyn, leaning across the table, implicitly accepting the situation, which had to him all the naturalness of the unexpected, considered her in his turn.
He had never before seen her to such advantage, and, remembering that early presentment of her which Lightmark had exhibited in the Grosvenor, he realized how much she had developed. The singular nobility and purity of her beauty amazed him; it shone out like the starry night; and, standing there remote and silent (in her abstraction she had let her cloak slide to the ground, revealing her white arms, her fanciful, incongruous attire), she seemed, indeed, a creature of another world.
When she turned to him at last there was an immense and solemn entreaty in her eyes for candour and directness, an appeal to be spared no bitter knowledge that he might possess--for the whole truth.
"Tell me," she began slowly, calmly, though he was not ignorant that her composure was the result of an immense inward effort. "I can't explain why I have come to you--perhaps you yourself can explain that better than I. I don't know what you may think of me--I am too unhappy to care. I have no claim upon you. I only entreat you to answer me a question which perhaps no one now living can answer but you. Ah!" --she broke off with a gesture of sudden passion--"I have been so cruelly kept in the dark."
Oswyn lowered his eyes for a moment, considering. A curious wave of reminiscence swept over him, giving to this strange juxtaposition the last touch of completion.
He remembered Rainham's long reticence, and his unburdening himself at the last, in a conviction that there would be a season when the truth would be best. And he said to himself that this time had come.
"Mrs. Lightmark," he said at last, in a low, constrained voice, "I promise to answer any question that is within my knowledge."
"It is about my--my husband and Philip Rainham. What passed between them in the autumn of last year? Who was that woman?"
He did not reply for a moment; but unconsciously his eyes met hers full, and in their brief encounter it was possible that many truths were silently told. Presently she continued: "You need not tell me, Mr. Oswyn. I can see your answer as plainly as if you had spoken. It is my husband----" She broke off sharply, let her beautiful head droop with a movement of deep prostration upon her hands.
"What have I done, what have I done," she moaned, "that this dishonour should come to me?"
It was a long time before she looked up at him.
"Why did he do it?" she whispered.
"Have you never guessed?" he asked in his turn. "I will tell you, Mrs. Lightmark. I was with him when he was dying. He wished you to know; he had some such time as this in his mind. It was a sort of message."
"He wished me to know--a sort of message," she repeated blankly. "He spoke of me, then--he forgave me for my hard judgement, for knowing him so ill?"
"It was himself that he did not forgive for not having guarded you better, for having been deceived by your husband. He spoke of you to me very fully at the last when we both saw that his death was merely a question of days. I saw then what I had sometimes suspected before, that you had absorbed his whole life, that his devotion to you was a kind of religion."
"He loved me?" she asked at last, in a hushed, strange voice, white to the lips.
Oswyn bowed his head.
"Ever since you were a child. It was very beautiful, and it was with him at the last as a light. Don't reproach yourself; it was to prevent that that he wished you to be told."
"To prevent it!" she cried, with tragical scorn. "Am I not to reproach myself that I was hard and callous and cold; that I never understood nor cared; that I was not with him? Not reproach myself? Oh, Philip, Philip!" she called, breaking down utterly, laying her face in her hands.
Oswyn averted his eyes, giving her passion time to appease itself. When he glanced at her again, she had gathered her cloak round her, was standing by the picture from which she seemed loath to remove her eyes.
"You gave him great happiness," he suggested gently, "in the only manner in which it was possible. Remember only that. He must in any case have died."
He imagined that she hardly heard him, absorbed in the desolation of her own thought; and when she turned to him again, quite ready for departure now, he saw by the hard light in her eyes that she had recurred to her husband, to the irreparable gulf which must henceforth divide them.
"I can't go back to him," she whispered, as if she communed with herself. "I hate him; yes, I hate him, with my whole soul. He has lied to me too much; he has made me do such a cruel wrong. There are things which one can't forgive. Ah, no! it's not possible."
Oswyn viewed her compassionately, while a somewhat bitter smile played about his mouth.
"No, you will go back, Mrs. Lightmark! Forgive me," he added, raising his hand, interrupting her, as she seemed on the point of speech. "I don't want to intrude on you--on your thoughts, with advice or consolation. They are articles I don't deal in. Only I will tell you--I who know--that in revolt also there is vanity. You are bruised and broken and disillusioned, and you want to hide away from the world and escape into yourself, or from yourself; it's all the same. Ah, Mrs. Lightmark, believe me, in life that is not possible, or where it is most possible is in a crowd. Go back to your guests; I know, you see, whence you come; take up your part in the play, the masque; be ready with your cues. It's all masks and dominoes; what does the form or colour of it matter? Underneath it all you are yourself, with your beautiful sorrow, your memories, your transcendent happiness--nothing can touch that; what does it matter?"
"Happiness!" she ejaculated, rather in wonder than in scorn, for in spite of her great weariness she had been struck by the genuine accent struggling through his half ironical speech.
"Most happy," he said, with a deep inhalation. "Haven't you an ideal which life, with its cruelties, its grossness, can never touch?"
Then he added quickly, in words of Philip Rainham, which had flashed with sudden appositeness across his mind.
"Your misery has its compensation; you have been wronged, but you have also been loved."
"Ah, my friend!" she cried, turning toward the picture with a new and more beautiful illumination in her eyes, "was it for this that you did it?"
Oswyn said nothing, and Eve moved towards the door, discovering for the first time, on her way, the sleeping child. She stopped for a moment, and the other watched her with breathless curiosity, uncertain how far her knowledge might extend.
And as she stood there, wondering, a great wave of colour suffused her white face; the next moment she was gone, but in the light of that pure blush Oswyn seemed to have discovered that her tragical enlightenment was complete.
When she turned once more into the street, she had already set herself gravely, with a strange and factitious composure, to face her life. It stretched itself out before her like a great, gray plain, the arid desolation of the road being rendered only more terrible by the flowers with which it would be strewn. For suddenly, while Oswyn had been speaking, she had recognised that after all she would go back; the other course had been merely the first bitter cry, half hysterical, of her grief.
By her husband's side, with the semblance of amity between them still, utterly apart and estranged as they must in reality henceforth perpetually be, it seemed to her that she could none the less religiously cherish the memory of her friend because she would turn a smiling mask to the world's indifference, wearing mourning in her heart. And deeply as she had suffered, in the midst of her remorse she could still remind herself that in the last half hour she had gained more than she had lost; that life, however tedious it might be, was in a manner consecrated by this great devotion, which death had embalmed, to be a light to her in lonely places and dark hours, a perpetual after-thought against the cynicism or despair to which her imitation of happiness might conduce.
The mask of a smile, and mourning in her heart! Yes, it was in some such phrase as that that the life which began then for her must be expressed--for her, and perhaps, she reflected sadly, for others, for many, the justest and the best.
And in the meantime she would go back to her dancers, resume once more her well-worn _rôle_ of the brilliant and efficient hostess. She wondered if it would be difficult to account for herself, to explain an absence so unprecedented, if, as was doubtless the case, her figure had been missed. But the next moment she smiled a trifle bitterly, for she had reminded herself of her husband's proved facility of prevarication, which she felt certain would already have been usefully employed.
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{
"id": "16703"
}
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1
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BY THE EARLY TRAIN.
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The ascending sun threw its slanting rays abroad on a glorious August morning, and the little world below began to awaken into life--the life of another day of sanguine pleasure or of fretting care.
Not on many fairer scenes did those sunbeams shed their radiance than on one existing in the heart of England; but almost any landscape will look beautiful in the early light of a summer's morning. The county, one of the midlands, was justly celebrated for its scenery; its rich woods and smiling plains, its river and gentler streams. The harvest was nearly gathered in--it had been a late season--but a few fields of golden grain, in process of reaping, gave their warm tints to the landscape. In no part of the country had the beauties of nature been bestowed more lavishly than on this, the village of Calne, situated about seven miles from the county town.
It was an aristocratic village, on the whole. The fine seat of the Earl of Hartledon, rising near it, had caused a few families of note to settle there, and the nest of white villas gave the place a prosperous and picturesque appearance. But it contained a full proportion of the poor or labouring class; and these people were falling very much into the habit of writing the village "Cawn," in accordance with its pronunciation. Phonetic spelling was more in their line than Johnson's Dictionary. Of what may be called the middle class the village held few, if any: there were the gentry, the small shopkeepers, and the poor.
Calne had recently been exalted into importance. A year or two before this bright August morning some good genius had brought a railway to it--a railway and a station, with all its accompanying work and bustle. Many trains passed it in the course of the day; for it was in the direct line of route from the county town, Garchester, to London, and the traffic was increasing. People wondered what travellers had done, and what sort of a round they traversed, before this direct line was made.
The village itself lay somewhat in a hollow, the ground rising to a gentle eminence on either side. On the one eminence, to the west, was situated the station; on the other, eastward, rose the large stone mansion, Hartledon House. The railway took a slight _détour_ outside Calne, and was a conspicuous feature to any who chose to look at it; for the line had been raised above the village hollow to correspond with the height at either end.
Six o'clock was close at hand, and the station began to show signs of life. The station-master came out of his cottage, and opened one or two doors on the platform. He had held the office scarcely a year yet; and had come a stranger to Calne. Sitting down in his little bureau of a place, on the door of which was inscribed "Station-master--Private," he began sorting papers on the desk before him. A few minutes, and the clock struck six; upon which he went out to the platform. It was an open station, as these small stations generally are, the small waiting-rooms and offices on either side scarcely obstructing the view of the country, and the station-master looked far out in the distance, towards the east, beyond the low-lying village houses, shading his eyes with his hand from the dazzling sun.
"Her's late this morning."
The interruption came from the surly porter, who stood by, and referred to the expected train, which ought to have been in some minutes before. According to the precise time, as laid down in the way-bills, it should reach Calne seven minutes before six.
"They have a heavy load, perhaps," remarked the station-master.
The train was chiefly for goods; a slow train, taking no one knew how many hours to travel from London. It would bring passengers also; but very few availed themselves of it. Now and then it happened that the station at Calne was opened for nothing; the train just slackened its speed and went on, leaving neither goods nor anything else behind it. Sometimes it took a few early travellers from Calne to Garchester; especially on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Garchester market-days; but it rarely left passengers at Calne.
"Did you hear the news, Mr. Markham?" asked the porter.
"What news?" returned the station-master.
"I heard it last night. Jim come into the Elster Arms with it, and _he'd_ heard it at Garchester. We are going to have two more sets o' telegraph wires here. I wonder how much more work they'll give us to do?"
"So you were at the Elster Arms again last night, Jones?" remarked the station-master, his tone reproving, whilst he passed over in silence Mr. Jones's item of news.
"I wasn't in above an hour," grumbled the man.
"Well, it is your own look-out, Jones. I have said what I could to you at odd times; but I believe it has only tried your patience; so I'll say no more."
"Has my wife been here again complaining?" asked the man, raising his face in anger.
"No; I have not seen your wife, except at church, these two months. But I know what public-houses are to you, and I was thinking of your little children."
"Ugh!" growled the man, apparently not gratified at the reminder of his flock; "there's a peck o' _them_ surely! Here she comes!"
The last sentence was spoken in a different tone; one of relief, either at getting rid of the subject, or at the arrival of the train. It was about opposite to Hartledon when he caught sight of it, and it came on with a shrill whistle, skirting the village it towered above; a long line of covered waggons with a passenger carriage or two attached to them. Slackening its pace gradually, but not in time, it shot past the station, and had to back into it again.
The guard came out of his box and opened the door of one of the carriages--a dirty-looking second-class compartment; the other was a third-class; and a gentleman leaped out. A tall, slender man of about four-and-twenty; a man evidently of birth and breeding. He wore a light summer overcoat on his well-cut clothes, and had a most attractive face.
"Is there any law against putting on a first-class carriage to this night-train?" he asked the guard in a pleasing voice.
"Well, sir, we never get first-class passengers by it," replied the man; "or hardly any passengers at all, for the matter of that. We are too long on the road for passengers to come by us."
"It might happen, though," returned the traveller, significantly. "At any rate, I suppose there's no law against your carriages being clean, whatever their class. Look at that one."
He pointed to the one he had just left, as he walked up to the station-master. The guard looked cross, and gave the carriage door a slam.
"Was a portmanteau left here last night by the last train from London?" inquired the traveller of the station-master.
"No, sir; nothing was left here. At least, I think not. Any name on it, sir?"
"Elster."
A quick glance from the station-master's eyes met the answer. Elster was the name of the family at Hartledon. He wondered whether this could be one of them, or whether the name was merely a coincidence.
"There was no portmanteau left, was there, Jones?" asked the station-master.
"There couldn't have been," returned the porter, touching his cap to the stranger. "I wasn't on last night; Jim was; but it would have been put in the office for sure; and there's not a ghost of a thing in it this morning."
"It must have been taken on to Garchester," remarked the traveller; and, turning to the guard, he gave him directions to look after it, and despatch it back again by the first train, slipping at the same time a gratuity into his hand.
The guard touched his hat humbly; he now knew who the gentleman was. And he went into inward repentance for slamming the carriage-door, as he got into his box, and the engine and train puffed on.
"You'll send it up as soon as it comes," said the traveller to the station-master.
"Where to, sir?"
The stranger raised his eyes in slight surprise, and pointed to the house in the distance. He had assumed that he was known.
"To Hartledon."
Then he _was_ one of the family! The station-master touched his hat. Mr. Jones, in the background, touched his, and for the first time the traveller's eye fell upon him as he was turning to leave the platform.
"Why, Jones! It's never you?"
"Yes, it is, sir." But Mr. Jones looked abashed as he acknowledged himself. And it may be observed that his language, when addressing this gentleman, was a slight improvement upon the homely phraseology of his everyday life.
"But--you are surely not working here! --a porter!"
"My business fell through, sir," returned the man. "I'm here till I can turn myself round, sir, and get into it again."
"What caused it to fall through?" asked the traveller; a kindly sympathy in his fine blue eyes.
Mr. Jones shuffled upon one foot. He would not have given the true answer--"Drinking"--for the world.
"There's such opposition started up in the place, sir; folks would draw your heart's blood from you if they could. And then I've such a lot of mouths to feed. I can't think what the plague such a tribe of children come for. Nobody wants 'em."
The traveller laughed; but put no further questions. Remembering somewhat of Mr. Jones's propensity in the old days, he thought perhaps something besides children and opposition had had to do with the downfall. He stood for a moment looking at the station which had not been completed when he last saw it--and a very pretty station it was, surrounded by its gay flowerbeds--and then went down the road.
"I suppose he is one of the Hartledon family, Jones?" said the station-master, looking after him.
"He's the earl's brother," replied Mr. Jones, relapsing into sulkiness. "There's only them two left; t'other died. Wonder if they be coming to Hartledon again? Calne haven't seemed the same since they left it."
"Which is this one?"
"He can't be anybody but himself," retorted Mr. Jones, irascibly, deeming the question superfluous. "There be but the two left, I say--the earl and him; everybody knows him for the Honourable Percival Elster. The other son, George, died; leastways, was murdered."
"Murdered!" echoed the station-master aghast.
"I don't see that it could be called much else but murder," was Mr. Jones's answer. "He went out with my lord's gamekeepers one night and got shot in a poaching fray. 'Twas never known for certain who fired the shot, but I think I could put my finger on the man if I tried. Much good _that_ would do, though! There's no proof."
"What are you saying, Jones?" cried the station-master, staring at his subordinate, and perhaps wondering whether he had already that morning paid a visit to the tap of the Elster Arms.
"I'm saying nothing that half the place didn't say at the time, Mr. Markham. _You_ hadn't come here then, Mr. Elster--he was the Honourable George--went out one night with the keepers when warm work was expected, and got shot for his pains. He lived some weeks, but they couldn't cure him. It was in the late lord's time. _He_ died soon after, and the place has been deserted ever since."
"And who do you suppose fired the shot?"
"Don't know that it 'ud be safe to say," rejoined the man. "He might give my neck a twist some dark night if he heard on't. He's the blackest sheep we've got in Calne, sir."
"I suppose you mean Pike," said the station-master. "He has the character for being that, I believe. I've seen no harm in the man myself."
"Well, it was Pike," said the porter. "That is, some of us suspected him. And that's how Mr. George Elster came by his death. And this one, Mr. Percival, shot up into notice, as being the only one left, except Lord Elster."
"And who's Lord Elster?" asked the station-master, not remembering to have heard the title before.
Mr. Jones received the question with proper contempt. Having been familiar with Hartledon and its inmates all his life, he had as little compassion for those who were not so, as he would have had for a man who did not understand that Garchester was in England.
"The present Earl of Hartledon," said he, shortly. "In his father's lifetime--and the old lord lived to see Mr. George buried--he was Lord Elster. Not one of my tribe of brats but could tell that any Lord Elster must be the eldest son of the Earl of Hartledon," he concluded with a fling at his superior.
"Ah, well, I have had other things to do since I came here besides inquiring into titles and folks that don't concern me," remarked the station-master. "What a good-looking man he is!"
The praise applied to Mr. Elster, after whom he was throwing a parting look. Jones gave an ungracious assent, and turned into the shed where the lamps were kept, to begin his morning's work.
All the world would have been ready to echo the station-master's words as to the good looks of Percival Elster, known universally amidst his friends as Val Elster; for these good looks did not lie so much in actual beauty--which one lauds, and another denies, according to its style--as in the singularly pleasant expression of countenance; a gift that finds its weight with all.
He possessed a bright face; his complexion was fair and fresh, his eyes were blue and smiling, his features were good; and as he walked down the road, and momentarily lifted his hat to push his light hair--as much of a golden colour as hair ever is--from his brow, and gave a cordial "good-day" to those who met him on their way to work--few strangers but would have given him a second look of admiration. A physiognomist might have found fault with the face; and, whilst admitting its sweet expression, would have condemned it for its utter want of resolution. What of that? The inability to say "no" to any sort of persuasion, whether for good or ill; in short, a total absence of what may be called moral courage; had been from his childhood Val Elster's besetting sin.
There was a joke against little Val when he was a boy of seven. Some playmates had insisted upon his walking into a pond, and standing there. Poor Val, quite unable to say "no," walked in, and was nearly drowned for his pains. It had been a joke against him then; how many such "jokes" could have been brought against him since he grew up, Val himself could alone tell. As the child had been, so was the man. The scrapes his irresolution brought him into he did not care to glance at; and whilst only too well aware of his one lamentable deficiency, he was equally aware that he was powerless to stand against it.
People, in speaking of this, called it "Elster's Folly." His extreme sensitiveness as to the feelings of other people, whether equals or inferiors, was, in a degree, one of the causes of this yielding nature; and he would almost rather have died than offer any one a personal offence, an insulting word or look. There are such characters in the world; none can deny that they are amiable; but, oh, how unfit to battle with life!
Mr. Elster walked slowly through the village on his way to Hartledon, whose inmates he would presently take by surprise. It was about twenty months since he had been there. He had left Hartledon at the close of the last winter but one; an appointment having been obtained for him as an _attaché_ to the Paris embassy. Ten months of service, and some scrape he fell into caused him (a good deal of private interest was brought to bear in the matter) to be removed to Vienna; but he had not remained there very long. He seemed to have a propensity for getting into trouble, or rather an inability to keep out of it. Latterly he had been staying in London with his brother.
His thoughts wandered to the past as he looked at the chimneys of Hartledon--all he could see of it--from the low-lying ground. He remembered the happy time when they had been children in it; five of them--the three boys and the two girls--he himself the youngest and the pet. His eldest sister, Margaret, had been the first to leave it. She married Sir James Cooper, and went with him to his remote home in Scotland, where she was still. The second to go was Laura, who married Captain Level, and accompanied him to India. Then he, Val, a young man in his teens, went out into the world, and did all sorts of harm in it in an unintentional sort of way; for Percival Elster never did wrong by premeditation. Next came the death of his mother. He was called home from a sojourn in Scotland--where his stay had been prolonged from the result of an accident--to bid her farewell. Then he was at home for a year or more, making love to charming Anne Ashton. The next move was his departure for Paris; close upon which, within a fortnight, occurred the calamity to his brother George. He came back from Paris to see him in London, whither George had been conveyed for medical advice, and there then seemed a chance of his recovery; but it was not borne out, and the ill-fated young man died. Lord Hartledon's death was the next. He had an incurable complaint, and his death followed close upon his son's. Lord Elster became Earl of Hartledon; and he, Val, heir-presumptive. Heir-presumptive! Val Elster was heir to all sorts of follies, but-- "Good morning to your lordship!"
The speaker was a man in a smock-frock, passing with a reaping-hook on his shoulder. Mr. Elster's sunny face and cheery voice gave back the salutation with tenfold heartiness, smiling at the title. Half the peasantry had been used to addressing the brothers so, indiscriminately; they were all lords to them.
The interruption awoke Mr. Elster from his thoughts, and he marched gaily on down the middle of the road, noting its familiar features. The small shops were on his right hand, the line of rails behind them. A few white villas lay scattered on his left, and beyond them, but not to be seen from this village street, wound the river; both running parallel with the village lying between them. Soon the houses ceased; it was a small place at best; and after an open space came the church. It lay on his right, a little way back from the road, and surrounded by a large churchyard. Almost opposite, on the other side of the road, but much further back, was a handsome modern white house; its delightful gardens sloping almost to the river. This was the residence of the Rector, Dr. Ashton, a wealthy man and a church dignitary, prebendary and sub-dean of Garchester Cathedral. Percival Elster looked at it yearningly, if haply he might see there the face of one he loved well; but the blinds were drawn, and the inmates were no doubt steeped in repose.
"If she only knew I was here!" he fondly aspirated.
On again a few steps, and a slight turn in the road brought him to a small red-brick house on the same side as the church, with green shutters attached to its lower windows. It lay in the midst of a garden well stocked with vegetables, fruit, and the more ordinary and brighter garden-flowers. A straight path led to the well-kept house-door, its paint fresh and green, and its brass-plate as bright as rubbing could make it. Mr. Elster could not read the inscription on the plate from where he was, but he knew it by heart: "Jabez Gum, Parish Clerk." And there was a smaller plate indicating other offices held by Jabez Gum.
"I wonder if Jabez is as shadowy as ever?" thought Mr. Elster, as he walked on.
One more feature, and that is the last you shall hear of until Hartledon is reached. Close to the clerk's garden, on a piece of waste land, stood a small wooden building, no better than a shed.
It had once been a stable, but so long as Percival Elster could remember, it was nothing but a receptacle for schoolboys playing at hide-and-seek. Many a time had he hidden there. Something different in this shed now caught his eye; the former doorway had been boarded up, and a long iron tube, like a thin chimney, ascended from its roof.
"Who on earth has been adding that to it?" exclaimed Mr. Elster.
A little way onward, and he came to the lodge-gates of Hartledon. The house was on the same side as the Rectory, its park stretching eastward, its grounds, far more beautiful and extensive than those of the Rectory, descending to the river. As he went in at the smaller side-gate, he turned his gaze on the familiar road he had quitted, and most distinctly saw a wreath of smoke ascending from the pipe above the shed. Could it be a chimney, after all?
The woman of the lodge, hearing footsteps, came to her door with hasty words.
"Now then! What makes you so late this morning? Didn't I--" And there she stopped in horror; transfixed; for she was face to face with Mr. Elster.
"Law, sir! _You! _ Mercy be good to us!"
He laughed. In her consternation she could only suppose he had dropped from the clouds. Giving her a pleasant greeting, he drew her attention to the appearance that was puzzling him. The woman came out and looked at it. " _Is_ it a chimney, Mrs. Capper?"
"Well, yes, sir, it be. Pike have put it in. He come here, nobody knew how or when, he put himself into the old shed, and has never left it again."
"Who is 'Pike'?"
"It's hard to say, sir; a many would give a deal to know. He lay in the shed a bit at first, as it were, all open. Then he boarded up that front doorway, opened a door at the back, cut out a square hole for a window, and stuck that chimney in the roof. And there he's lived ever since, and nobody interferes with him. His name's Pike, and that's all that's known. I should think my lord will see to it when he comes."
"Does he work for his living?"
"Never does a stroke o' work for nobody, sir. And how he lives is just one o' them mysteries that can't be dived into. He's a poacher, a snarer, and a robber of the fishponds--any one of 'em when he gets the chance; leastways it's said so; and he looks just like a wild man o' the woods; wilder than any Robison Crusoe! And he--but you might not like me to mention that, sir."
"Mention anything," replied Mr. Elster. "Go on."
"Well, sir, it's said by some that his was the shot that killed Mr. George," she returned, dropping her voice; and Percival Elster started.
"Who is he?" he exclaimed.
"He is not known to a soul. He came here a stranger."
"But--he was not here when I left home. And I left it, you may remember, only a few days before that night."
"He must have come here at that very time, sir; just as you left."
"But what grounds were there for supposing that he--that he--I think you must be mistaken, Mrs. Capper. Lord Hartledon, I am sure, knows nothing of this suspicion."
"I never heard nothing about grounds, sir," simply replied the woman. "I suppose folks fastened it on him because he's a loose character: and his face is all covered with hair, like a howl."
He almost laughed again as he turned away, dismissing the suspicion she had hinted at as unworthy a moment's credit. The broad gravel-walk through this portion of the park was very short, and the large grey-stone house was soon reached. Not to the stately front entrance did he bend his steps, but to a small side entrance, which he found open. Pursuing his way down sundry passages, he came to what used to be called the "west kitchen;" and there sat three women at breakfast.
"Well, Mirrable! I thought I should find you up."
The two servants seated opposite stared with open mouths; neither knew him: the one he had addressed as Mirrable turned at the salutation, screamed, and dropped the teapot. She was a thin, active woman, of forty years, with dark eyes, a bunch of black drooping ringlets between her cap and her thin cheeks, a ready tongue and a pleasant manner. Mirrable had been upper maid at Hartledon for years and years, and was privileged.
"Mr. Percival! Is it your ghost, sir?"
"I think it's myself, Mirrable."
"My goodness! But, sir, how did you get here?"
"You may well ask. I ought to have been here last night, but got out at some obscure junction to obtain a light for my cigar, and the train went on without me. I sat on a bench for a few hours, and came on by the goods train this morning."
Mirrable awoke from her astonishment, sent the two girls flying, one here, one there, to prepare rooms for Mr. Elster, and busied herself arranging the best breakfast she could extemporise. Val Elster sat on a table whilst he talked to her. In the old days, he and his brothers, little fellows, had used to carry their troubles to Mirrable; and he was just as much at home with her now as he would have been with his mother.
"Did Capper see you as you came by, sir? Wouldn't she be struck!"
"Nearly into stone," he laughed.
Mirrable disappeared for a minute or two, and came back with a silver coffee-pot in her hand. The name of the lodge-keeper had brought to his remembrance the unpleasant hint she mentioned, and he spoke of it impulsively--as he did most things.
"Mirrable, what man is it they call Pike, who has taken possession of that old shed?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir," answered Mirrable, after a pause, which Mr. Elster thought was involuntary; for she was busy at the moment rubbing the coffee-pot with some wash-leather, her head and face bent over it, as she stood with her back to him. He slipped off the table, and went up to her.
"I saw smoke rising from the shed, and asked Capper what it meant, and she told me about this man Pike. Pike! It's a curious name."
Mirrable rubbed away, never answering.
"Capper said he had been suspected of firing the shot that killed my brother," he continued, in low tones. "Did _you_ ever hear of such a hint, Mirrable?"
Mirrable darted off to the fireplace, and began stirring the milk lest it should boil over. Her face was almost buried in the saucepan, or Mr. Elster might have seen the sudden change that came over it; the thin cheeks that had flushed crimson, and now were deadly white. Lifting the saucepan on to the hob, she turned to Mr. Elster.
"Don't you believe any such nonsense, sir," she said, in tones of strange emphasis. "It was no more Pike than it was me. The man keeps himself to himself, and troubles nobody; and for that very reason idle folk carp at him, like the mischief-making idiots they are!"
"I thought there was nothing in it," remarked Mr. Elster.
"I'm _sure_ there isn't," said Mirrable, conclusively. "Would you like some broiled ham, sir?"
"I should like anything good and substantial, for I'm as hungry as a hunter. But, Mirrable, you don't ask what has brought me here so suddenly."
The tone was significant, and Mirrable looked at him. There was a spice of mischief in his laughing blue eyes.
"I come on a mission to you; an avant-courier from his lordship, to charge you to have all things in readiness. To-morrow you will receive a houseful of company; more than Hartledon will hold."
Mirrable looked aghast. "It is one of your jokes, Mr. Val!"
"Indeed, it is the truth. My brother will be down with a trainful; and desires that everything shall be ready for their reception."
"My patience!" gasped Mirrable. "And the servants, sir?"
"Most of them will be here to-night. The Countess-Dowager of Kirton is coming as Hartledon's mistress for the time being."
"Oh!" said Mirrable, who had once had the honour of seeing the Countess-Dowager of Kirton. And the monosyllable was so significant that Val Elster drew down the corners of his mouth.
"I don't like the Countess-Dowager, sir," remarked Mirrable in her freedom.
"I can't bear her," returned Val Elster.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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2
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WILLY GUM.
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Had Percival Elster lingered ever so short a time near the clerk's house that morning he would have met that functionary himself; for in less than a minute after he had passed out of sight Jabez Gum's door opened, and Jabez Gum glided out of it.
It is a term chiefly applied to ghosts; but Mr. Gum was a great deal more like a ghost than like a man. He was remarkably tall and thin; a very shadow; with a white shadow of a face, and a nose that might have served as a model for a mask in a carnival of guys. A sharp nose, twice the length and half the breadth of any ordinary nose--a very ferret of a nose; its sharp tip standing straight out into the air. People said, with such a nose Mr. Gum ought to have a great deal of curiosity. And they were right; he _had_ a great deal in a quiet way.
A most respectable man was Mr. Gum, and he prided himself upon it. Mr. Gum--more often called Clerk Gum in the village--had never done a wrong thing in his life, or fallen into a scrape. He had been altogether a pattern to Calne in general, and to its black sheep in particular. Dr. Ashton himself could not have had less brought against him than Clerk Gum; and it would just have broken Mr. Gum's heart had his good name been tarnished in ever so slight a degree. Perhaps no man living had been born with a larger share of self-esteem than Jabez Gum. Clerk of the parish longer than Dr. Ashton had been its Rector, Jabez Gum had lived at his ease in a pecuniary point of view. It was one of those parishes (I think few of them remain now) where the clerk's emoluments are large. He also held other offices; was an agent for one or two companies, and was looked upon as an exceedingly substantial man for his station in life. Perhaps he was less so than people imagined. The old saying is all too true: "Nobody knows where the shoe pinches but he who wears it."
Jabez Gum had his thorn, as a great many more of us have ours, if the outside world only knew it. And Jabez, at odd moments, when the thorn pierced him very sharply, had been wont to compare his condition to St. Paul's, and to wonder whether the pricks inflicted on that holy man could have bled as his own did. He meant no irreverence when he thought this; neither do I in writing it. We are generally wounded in the most vulnerable spot about us, and Jabez Gum made no exception to the rule. He had been assailed in his cherished respectability, his self-esteem. Assailed and _scarred_. How broad and deep the scar was Jabez never told the world, which as a rule does not sympathise with such scars, but turns aside in its cruel indifference. The world had almost forgotten the scar now, and supposed Clerk Gum had done the same. It was all over and done with years ago.
Jabez Gum's wife--to whom you will shortly have the honour of an introduction, but she is in her bedroom just now--had borne him one child, and only one. How this boy was loved, how tenderly reared, let Calne tell you. Mrs. Gum had to endure no inconsiderable amount of ridicule at the time from her gossiping friends, who gave Willy sundry endearing names, applied in derision. Certainly, if any mother ever was bound up in a child, Mrs. Gum was in hers. The boy was well brought up. A good education was given him; and at the age of sixteen he went to London and to fortune. The one was looked upon as a natural sequence to the other. Some friend of Jabez Gum's had interested himself to procure the lad's admission into one of the great banks as a junior clerk. He might rise in time to be cashier, manager, even partner; who knew? Who knew indeed? And Clerk Gum congratulated himself, and was more respectable than ever.
Better that Willy Gum had remained at Calne! And yet, and again--who knew? When the propensity for ill-doing exists it is sure to come out, no matter where. There were some people in Calne who could have told Clerk Gum, even then, that Willy, for his age, was tolerably fast and forward. Mrs. Gum had heard of one or two things that had caused her hair to rise on end with horror; ay, and with apprehension; but, foolish mother that she was, not a syllable did she breathe to the clerk; and no one else ventured to tell him.
She talked to Willy with many sighs and tears; implored him to be a good boy and enter on good courses, not on bad ones that would break her heart. Willy, the little scapegrace, was willing to promise anything. He laughed and made light of it; it wasn't his fault if folks told stories about him; she couldn't be so foolish as to give ear to them. London? Oh, he should be all right in London! One or two fellows here were rather fast, there was no denying it; and they drew him with them; they were older than he, and ought to have known better. Once away from Calne, they could have no more influence over him, and he should be all right.
She believed him; putting faith in the plausible words. Oh, what trust can be so pure, and at the same time so foolish, as that placed by a mother in a beloved son! Mrs. Gum had never known but one idol on earth; he who now stood before her, lightly laughing at her fears, making his own tale good. She leaned forward and laid her hands upon his shoulders and kissed him with that impassioned fervour that some mothers could tell of, and whispered that she would trust him wholly.
Mr. Willy extricated himself with as little impatience as he could help: these embraces were not to his taste. And yet the boy did love his mother. She was not at all a wise woman, or a clever one; rather silly, indeed, in many things; but she was fond of him. At this period he was young-looking for his age, slight, and rather undersized, with an exceedingly light complexion, a wishy-washy sort of face with no colour in it, unmeaning light eyes, white eyebrows, and ragged-looking light hair with a tawny shade upon it.
Willy Gum departed for London, and entered on his engagement in the great banking-house of Goldsworthy and Co.
How he went on in it Calne could not get to learn, though it was moderately inquisitive upon the point. His father and mother heard from him occasionally; and once the clerk took a sudden and rather mysterious journey to London, where he stayed for a whole week. Rumour said--I wonder where such rumours first have their rise--that Willy Gum had fallen into some trouble, and the clerk had had to buy him out of it at the cost of a mint of money. The clerk, however, did not confirm this; and one thing was indisputable: Willy retained his place in the banking-house. Some people looked on this fact as a complete refutation of the rumour.
Then came a lull. Nothing was heard of Willy; that is, nothing beyond the reports of Mrs. Gum to her gossips when letters arrived: he was well, and getting on well. It was only the lull that precedes a storm; and a storm indeed burst on quiet Calne. Willy Gum had robbed the bank and disappeared.
In the first dreadful moment, perhaps the only one who did _not_ disbelieve it was Clerk Gum. Other people said there must be some mistake: it could not be. Kind old Lord Hartledon came down in his carriage to the clerk's house--he was too ill to walk--and sat with the clerk and the weeping mother, and said he was sure it could not be so bad as was reported. The next morning saw handbills--great, staring, large-typed handbills--offering a reward for the discovery of William Gum, posted all over Calne.
Once more Clerk Gum went to London. What he did there no one knew. One thing only was certain--he did not find Willy or any trace of him. The defalcation was very nearly eight hundred pounds; and even if Mr. Gum could have refunded that large sum, he might not do so, said Calne, for of course the bank would not compound a felony. He came back looking ten years older; his tall, thin form more shadowy, his nose longer and sharper. Not a soul ventured to say a syllable to him, even of condolence. He told Lord Hartledon and his Rector that no tidings whatever could be gleaned of his unhappy son; the boy had disappeared, and might be dead for all they knew to the contrary.
So the handbills wore themselves out on the walls, serving no purpose, until Lord Hartledon ordered them to be removed; and Mrs. Gum lived in tears, and audibly wished herself dead. She had not seen her boy since he quitted Calne, considerably more than two years before, and he was now nearly nineteen. A few days' holiday had been accorded him by the banking-house each Christmas; but the first Christmas Willy wrote word that he had accepted an invitation to go home with a brother-clerk; the second Christmas he said he could not obtain leave of absence--which Mrs. Gum afterwards found was untrue; so that Willy Gum had not been at Calne since he left it. And whenever his mother thought of him--and that was every hour of the day and night--it was always as the fair, young, light-haired boy, who seemed to her little more than a child.
A year or so of uncertainty, of suspense, of wailing, and then came a letter from Willy, cautiously sent. It was not addressed directly to Mrs. Gum, to whom it was written, but to one of Willy's acquaintances in London, who enclosed it in an envelope and forwarded it on.
Such a letter! To read it one might have thought Mr. William Gum had gone out under the most favourable auspices. He was in Australia; had gone up to seek his fortune at the gold-diggings, and was making money rapidly. In a short time he should refund with interest the little sum he had borrowed from Goldsworthy and Co., and which was really not taken with any ill intention, but was more an accident than anything else. After that, he should accumulate money on his own score, and--all things being made straight at home--return and settle down, a rich man for life. And she--his mother--might rely on his keeping his word. At present he was at Melbourne; to which place he and his mates had come to bring their acquired gold, and to take a bit of a spree after their recent hard work. He was very jolly, and after a week's holiday they should go back again. And he hoped his father had overlooked the past; and he remained ever her affectionate son, William Gum.
The effect of this letter upon Mrs. Gum was as though a dense cloud had suddenly lifted from the world, and given place to a flood of sunshine. We estimate things by comparison. Mrs. Gum was by nature disposed to look on the dark side of things, and she had for the whole year past been indulging the most dread pictures of Willy and his fate that any woman's mind ever conceived. To hear that he was in life, and well, and making money rapidly, was the sweetest news, the greatest relief she could ever experience in this world.
Clerk Gum--relieved also, no doubt--received the tidings in a more sober spirit; almost as if he did not dare to believe in them. The man's heart had been well-nigh broken with the blow that fell upon him, and nothing could ever heal it thoroughly again. He read the letter in silence; read it twice over; and when his wife broke out into a series of rapt congratulations, and reproached him mildly for not appearing to think it true, he rather cynically inquired what then, if true, became of her dreams.
For Mrs. Gum was a dreamer. She was one of those who are now and again visited by strange dreams, significant of the future. Poor Mrs. Gum carried these dreams to an excess; that is, she was always having them and always talking about them. It had been no wonder, with her mind in so miserable a state regarding her son, that her dreams in that first twelve-month had generally been of him and generally bad. The above question, put by her husband, somewhat puzzled her. Her dreams _had_ foreshadowed great evil still to Willy; and her dreams had never been wrong yet.
But, in the enjoyment of positive good, who thinks of dreams? No one. And Mrs. Gum's grew a shade brighter, and hope again took possession of her heart.
Two years rolled on, during which they heard twice from Willy; satisfactory letters still, in a way. Both testified to his "jolly" state: he was growing rich, though not quite so rapidly as he had anticipated; a fellow had to spend so much! Every day he expected to pick up a nugget which would crown his fortune. He complained in these letters that he did not hear from home; not once had news reached him; had his father and mother abandoned him?
The question brought forth a gush of tears from Mrs. Gum, and a sharp abuse of the post-office. The clerk took the news philosophically, remarking that the wonder would have been had Willy received the letters, seeing that he seemed to move about incessantly from place to place.
Close upon this came another letter, written apparently in haste. Willy's "fortune" had turned into reality at last; he was coming home with more gold than he could count; had taken his berth in the good ship _Morning Star_, and should come off at once to Calne, when the ship reached Liverpool. There was a line written inside the envelope, as though he had forgotten to include it in the letter: "I have had one from you at last; the first you wrote, it seems. Thank dad for what he has done for me. I'll make it all square with him when I get home."
This had reference to a fact which Calne did not know. In that unhappy second visit of Clerk Gum's to London, he _did_ succeed in appeasing the wrath of Goldsworthy and Co., and paid in every farthing of the money. How far he might have accomplished this but for being backed by the urgent influence of old Lord Hartledon, was a question. One thing was in his favour: the firm had not taken any steps whatever in the matter, and those handbills circulated at Calne were the result of a misapprehension on the part of an officious local police-officer. Things had gone too far for Goldsworthys graciously to condone the offence--and Clerk Gum paid in his savings of years. This was the fact written by Mrs. Gum to her son, which had called forth the line in the envelope.
Alas! those were the last tidings ever received from Willy Gum. Whilst Mrs. Gum lived in a state of ecstacy, showing the letter to her neighbours and making loving preparations for his reception, the time for the arrival of the _Morning Star_ at Liverpool drew on, and passed, and the ship did not arrive.
A time of anxious suspense to all who had relations on board--for it was supposed she had foundered at sea--and tidings came to them. An awful tale; a tale of mutiny and wrong and bloodshed. Some of the loose characters on board the ship--and she was bringing home such--had risen in disorder within a month of their sailing from Melbourne; had killed the captain, the chief officer, and some of the passengers and crew.
The ringleader was a man named Gordon; who had incited the rest to the crime, and killed the captain with his own hand. Obtaining command of the ship, they put her about, and commenced a piratical raid. One vessel they succeeded in disarming, despoiling, and then leaving her to her fate. But the next vessel they attacked proved a more formidable enemy, and there was a hand-to-hand struggle for the mastery, and for life or death. The _Morning Star_ was sunk, with the greater portion of her living freight. A few, only some four or five, were saved by the other ship, and conveyed to England.
It was by them the dark tale was brought. The second officer of the _Morning Star_ was one of them; he had been compelled to dissemble and to appear to serve the mutinous band; the others were innocent passengers, whose lives had not been taken. All agreed in one thing: that Gordon, the ringleader, had in all probability escaped. He had put off from the _Morning Star_, when she was sinking, in one of her best boats; he and some of his lawless helpmates, with a bag of biscuit, a cask of water, and a few bottles that probably contained rum. Whether they succeeded in reaching a port or in getting picked up, was a question; but it was assumed they had done so.
The owners of the _Morning Star_, half paralyzed at the news of so daring and unusual an outrage, offered the large reward of five hundred pounds for the capture of George Gordon; and Government increased the offer by two hundred, making it seven in all.
Overwhelming tidings for Clerk Gum and his wife! A brief season of agonized suspense ensued for the poor mother; of hopes and fears as to whether Willy was amongst the remnant saved; and then hope died away, for he did not come.
Once more, for the last time, Clerk Gum took a journey, not to London, but to Liverpool. He succeeded in seeing the officer who had been saved; but he could give him no information. He knew the names of the first-class passengers, but only a few of the second-class; and in that class Willy had most likely sailed.
The clerk described his son; and the officer thought he remembered him: he had a good deal of gold on board, he said. One of the passengers spoke more positively. Yes, by Clerk Gum's description, he was sure Willy Gum had been his fellow-passenger in the second cabin, though he did not recollect whether he had heard his name. It seemed, looking back, that the passengers had hardly had time to become acquainted with each other's names, he added. He was sure it was the young man; of very light complexion, ready and rather loose (if Mr. Gum would excuse his saying so) in speech. He had made thoroughly good hauls of gold at the last, and was going home to spend it. He was the second killed, poor fellow; had risen up with a volley of oaths (excuses begged again) to defend the captain, and was struck down and killed.
Poor Jabez Gum gasped. _Killed? _ was the gentleman _sure_? Quite sure; and, moreover, he saw his body thrown overboard with the rest of the dead. And the money--the gold? Jabez asked, when he had somewhat recovered himself. The passenger laughed--not at the poor father, but at the worse than useless question; gold and everything else on board the _Morning Star_ had gone down with her to the bottom of the sea.
A species of savage impulse rose in the clerk's mind, replacing his first emotion of grief; an impulse that might almost have led him to murder the villain Gordon, could he have come across him. Was there a chance that the man would be taken? he asked. Every chance, if he dared show his face in England, the passenger answered. A reward of seven hundred pounds was an inducement to the survivors to keep their eyes open; and they'd do it, besides, without any reward. Moreover--if Gordon had escaped, his comrades in the boat had escaped with him. They were lawless men like himself, every one of them, and they would be sure to betray him when they found what a price was set upon his capture.
Clerk Gum returned home, bearing to his wife and Calne the final tidings which crushed out all hope. Mrs. Gum sank into a state of wild despair. At first it almost seemed to threaten loss of reason. Her son had been her sole idol, and the idol was shattered. But to witness unreasonably violent grief in others always has a counteracting effect on our own, and Mr. Gum soothed his sorrow and brought philosophy to his aid.
"Look you," said he, one day, sharply to his wife, when she was crying and moaning, "there's two sides to every calamity,--a bright and a dark 'un;" for Mr. Gum was not in the habit of treating his wife, in the privacy of their domestic circle, to the quality-speech kept for the world. "He is gone, and we can't help it; we'd have welcomed him home if we could, and killed the fatted calf, but it was God's will that it shouldn't be. There may be a blessing in it, after all. Who knows but he might have broke out again, and brought upon us what he did before, or worse? For my part, I should never have been without the fear; night and morning it would always have stood before me; not to be driven away. As it is, I am at rest."
She--the wife--took her apron from her eyes and looked at him with a sort of amazed anger.
"Gum! do you forget that he had left off his evil ways, and was coming home to be a comfort to us?"
"No, I don't forget it," returned Mr. Gum. "But who was to say that the mood would last? He might have got through his gold, however much it was, and then--. As it is, Nance Gum, we can sleep quiet in our beds, free from _that_ fear."
Clerk Gum was not, on the whole, a model of suavity in the domestic fold. The first blow that had fallen upon him seemed to have affected his temper; and his helpmate knew from experience that whenever he called her "Nance" his mood was at its worst.
Suppressing a sob, she spoke reproachfully.
"It's my firm belief, Gum, and has been all along, that you cared more for your good name among men than you did for the boy."
"Perhaps I did," he answered, by way of retort. "At any rate, it might have been better for him in the long-run if we--both you and me--hadn't cared for him quite so foolishly in his childhood; we spared the rod and we spoiled the child. That's over, and--" "It's _all_ over," interrupted Mrs. Gum; "over for ever in this world. Gum, you are very hard-hearted."
"And," he continued, with composure, "we may hope now to live down in time the blow he brought upon us, and hold up our heads again in the face of Calne. We couldn't have done that while he lived."
"We couldn't?"
"No. Just dry up your useless tears, Nancy; and try to think that all's for the best."
But, metaphorically speaking, Mrs. Gum could not dry her tears. Nearly two years had elapsed since the fatal event; and though she no longer openly lamented, filling Calne with her cries and her faint but heartfelt prayers for vengeance on the head of the cruel monster, George Gordon, as she used to do at first, she had sunk into a despairing state of mind that was by no means desirable: a startled, timid, superstitious woman, frightened at every shadow.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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3
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ANNE ASHTON.
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Jabez Gum came out of his house in the bright summer morning, missing Mr. Elster by one minute only. He went round to a small shed at the back of the house and brought forth sundry garden-tools. The whole garden was kept in order by himself, and no one had finer fruit and vegetables than Clerk Gum. Hartledon might have been proud of them, and Dr. Ashton sometimes accepted a dish with pleasure.
In his present attire: dark trousers, and a short close jacket buttoned up round him and generally worn when gardening, the worthy man might decidedly have been taken for an animated lamp-post by any stranger who happened to come that way. He was applying himself this morning, first to the nailing of sundry choice fruit-trees against the wall that ran down one side of his garden--a wall that had been built by the clerk himself in happier days; and next, to plucking some green walnuts for his wife to pickle. As he stood on tip-toe, his long thin body and long thin arms stretched up to the walnut-tree, he might have made the fortune of any travelling caravan that could have hired him. The few people who passed him greeted him with a "Good morning," but he rarely turned his head in answering them. Clerk Gum had grown somewhat taciturn of late years.
The time went on. The clock struck a quarter-past seven, and Jabez Gum, as he heard it, left the walnut-tree, walked to the gate, and leaned over it; his face turned in the direction of the village. It was not the wooden gate generally attached to smaller houses in rustic localities, but a very pretty iron one; everything about the clerk's house being of a superior order. Apparently, he was looking out for some one in displeasure; and, indeed, he had not stood there a minute, when a girl came flying down the road, and pushed the gate and the clerk back together.
Mr. Gum directed her attention to the church clock. "Do you see the time, Rebecca Jones?"
Had the pages of the church-register been visible as well as the clock, Miss Rebecca Jones's age might have been seen to be fifteen; but, in knowledge of the world and in impudence, she was considerably older.
"Just gone seven and a quarter," answered she, making a feint of shading her eyes with her hands, though the sun was behind her.
"And what business have you to come at seven and a quarter? Half-past six is your time; and, if you can't keep it, your missis shall get those that can."
"Why can't my missis let me stop at night and clear up the work?" returned the girl. "She sends me away at six o'clock, as soon as I've washed the tea-things, and oftentimes earlier than that. It stands to reason I can't get through the work of a morning."
"You could do so quite well if you came to time," said the clerk, turning away to his walnut-tree. "Why don't you?"
"I overslept myself this morning. Father never called me afore he went out. No doubt he had a drop too much last night."
She went flying up the gravel-path as she spoke. Her father was the man Jones whom you saw at the railway station; her step-mother (for her own mother was dead) was Mrs. Gum's cousin.
She was a sort of stray sheep, this girl, in the eyes of Calne, not belonging very much to any one; her father habitually neglected her, her step-mother had twice turned her out of doors. Some three or four months ago, when Mrs. Gum was changing her servant, she had consented to try this girl. Jabez Gum knew nothing of the arrangement until it was concluded, and disapproved of it. Altogether, it did not work satisfactorily: Miss Jones was careless, idle, and impudent; her step-mother was dissatisfied because she was not taken into the house; and Clerk Gum threatened every day, and his wife very often, to dismiss her.
It was only within a year or two that they had not kept an indoor servant; and the fact of their not doing so now puzzled the gossips of Calne. The clerk's emoluments were the same as ever; there was no Willy to encroach on them now; and the work of the house required a good servant. However, it pleased Mrs. Gum to have one in only by day; and who was to interfere with her if the clerk did not?
Jabez Gum worked on for some little time after eight o'clock, the breakfast-hour. He rather wondered he was not called to it, and registered a mental vow to discharge Miss Becky. Presently he went indoors, put his head into a small sitting-room on the left, and found the room empty, but the breakfast laid. The kitchen was behind it, and Jabez Gum stalked on down the passage, and went into it. On the other side of the passage was the best sitting-room, and a very small room at the back of it, which Jabez used as an office, and where he kept sundry account-books.
"Where's your missis?" asked he of the maid, who was on her knees toasting bread.
"Not down yet," was the short response.
"Not down yet!" repeated Jabez in surprise, for Mrs. Gum was generally down by seven. "You've got that door open again, Rebecca. How many more times am I to tell you I won't have it?"
"It's the smoke," said Rebecca. "This chimbley always smokes when it's first lighted."
"The chimney doesn't smoke, and you know that you are telling a falsehood. What do you want with it open? You'll have that wild man darting in upon you some morning. How will you like that?"
"I'm not afeard of him," was the answer, as Rebecca got up from her knees. "He couldn't eat me."
"But you know how timid your mistress is," returned the clerk, in a voice of extreme anger. "How dare you, girl, be insolent?"
He shut the door as he spoke--one that opened from the kitchen to the back garden--and bolted it. Washing his hands, and drying them with a round towel, he went upstairs, and found Mrs. Gum--as he had now and then found her of late--in a fit of prostration. She was a little woman, with a light complexion, and insipid, unmeaning face--some such a face as Willy's had been--and her hair, worn in neat bands under her cap, was the colour of tow.
"I couldn't help it, Gum," she began, as she stood before the glass, her trembling fingers trying to fasten her black alpaca gown--for she had never left off mourning for their son. "It's past eight, I know; but I've had such an upset this morning as never was, and I _couldn't_ dress myself. I've had a shocking dream."
"Drat your dreams!" cried Mr. Gum, very much wanting his breakfast.
"Ah, Gum, don't! Those morning dreams, when they're vivid as this was, are not sent for ridicule. Pike was in it; and you know I can't _bear_ him to be in my dreams. They are always bad when he is in them."
"If you wanted your breakfast as much as I want mine, you'd let Pike alone," retorted the clerk.
"I thought he was mixed up in some business with Lord Hartledon. I don't know what it was, but the dream was full of horror. It seemed that Lord Hartledon was dead or dying; whether he'd been killed or not, I can't say; but an awful dread was upon me of seeing him dead. A voice called out, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and in the fright I awoke. I can't remember what part Pike played in the dream," she continued, "only the impression remained that he was in it."
"Perhaps he killed Lord Hartledon?" cried Gum, mockingly.
"No; not in the dream. Pike did not seem to be mixed up in it for ill. The ill was all on Lord Hartledon; but it was not Pike brought it upon him. Who it was, I couldn't see; but it was not Pike."
Clerk Gum looked down at his wife in scornful pity. He wondered sometimes, in his phlegmatic reasoning, why women were created such fools.
"Look here, Mrs. G. I thought those dreams of yours were pretty nearly dreamed out--there have been enough of 'em. How any woman, short of a born idiot, can stand there and confess herself so frightened by a dream as to be unable to get up and go about her duties, is beyond me."
"But, Gum, you don't let me finish. I woke up with the horror, I tell you--" "What horror?" interrupted the clerk, angrily. "What did it consist of? I can't see the horror."
"Nor can I, very clearly," acknowledged Mrs. Gum; "but I know it was there. I woke up with the very words in my ears, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and I started out of bed in terror for Lord Hartledon, lest he _should_ come. We are only half awake, you know, at these moments. I pulled the curtain aside and looked out. Gum, if ever I thought to drop in my life, I thought it then. There was but one person to be seen in the road--and it was Lord Hartledon."
"Oh!" said Mr. Gum, cynically, after a moment of natural surprise. "Come out of his vault for a morning walk past your window, Mrs. G.!"
"Vault! I mean young Lord Hartledon, Gum."
Mr. Gum was a little taken back. They had been so much in the habit of calling the new Lord Hartledon, Lord Elster--who had not lived at Calne since he came into the title--that he had thought of the old lord when his wife was speaking.
"He was up there, just by the turning of the road, going on to Hartledon. Gum, I nearly dropped, I say. The next minute he was out of sight; then I rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was awake."
"And whether you saw a ghost, or whether you didn't," came the mocking retort.
"It was no ghost, Gum; it was Lord Hartledon himself."
"Nonsense! It was just as much one as the other. The fact is, you hadn't quite woke up out of that fine dream of yours, and you saw double. It was just as much young Hartledon as it was me."
"I never saw a ghost yet, and I don't fear I ever shall, Gum. I tell you it was Lord Hartledon. And if harm doesn't befall him at Calne, as shadowed forth in my dream, never believe me again."
"There, that's enough," peremptorily cried the clerk; knowing, if once Mrs. Gum took up any idea with a dream for its basis, how impossible it was to turn her. "Is the key of that kitchen door found yet?"
"No: it never will be, Gum. I've told you so before. My belief is, and always has been, that Rebecca let it drop by accident into the waste bucket." " _My_ belief is, that Rebecca made away with it for her own purposes," said the clerk. "I caught her just now with the door wide open. She's trying to make acquaintance with the man Pike; that's what she's at."
"Oh, Gum!"
"Yes; it's all very well to say 'Oh, Gum!' but if you were below-stairs looking after her, instead of dreaming up here, it might be better for everyone. Let me once be certain about it, and off she goes the next hour. A fine thing 'twould be some day for us to find her head smothered in the kitchen purgatory, and the silver spoons gone; as will be the case if any loose characters get in."
He was descending the stairs as he spoke the last sentence, delivered in loud tones, probably for the benefit of Miss Rebecca Jones. And lest the intelligent Protestant reader should fear he is being introduced to unorthodox regions, it may be as well to mention that the "purgatory" in Mr. Jabez Gum's kitchen consisted of an excavation, two feet square, under the hearth, covered with a grating through which the ashes and the small cinders fell; thereby enabling the economical housewife to throw the larger ones on the fire again. Such wells or "purgatories," as they are called, are common enough in the old-fashioned kitchens of certain English districts.
Mrs. Gum, ready now, had been about to follow her husband; but his suggestion--that the girl was watching an opportunity to make acquaintance with their undesirable neighbour, Pike--struck her motionless.
It seemed that she could never see this man without a shiver, or overcome the fright experienced when she first met him. It was on a dark autumn night. She was coming through the garden when she discerned, or thought she discerned, a light in the abandoned shed. Thinking of fire, she hastily crossed the stile that divided their garden from the waste land, and ran to it. There she was confronted by what she took to be a bear--but a bear that could talk; for he gruffly asked her who she was and what she wanted. A black-haired, black-browed man, with a pipe between his teeth, and one sinewy arm bared to the elbow.
How Mrs. Gum tore away and tumbled over the stile in her terror, and got home again, she never knew. She supposed it to be a tramp, who had taken shelter there for the night; but finding to her dismay that the tramp stayed on, she had never overcome her fright from that hour to this.
Neither did her husband like the proximity of such a gentleman. They caused securer bolts to be put on their doors--for fastenings in small country places are not much thought about, people around being proverbially honest. They also had their shutters altered. The shutters to the windows, back and front, had holes in them in the form of a heart, such as you may have sometimes noticed. Before the wild-looking man--whose name came to be known as Pike--had been in possession of the shed a fortnight, Jabez Gum had the holes in his shutters filled-in and painted over. An additional security, said the neighbours: but poor timid Mrs. Gum could not overcome that first fright, and the very mention of the man set her trembling and quaking.
Nothing more was said of the dream or the apparition, real or fancied, of Lord Hartledon: Clerk Gum did not encourage the familiar handling of such topics in everyday life. He breakfasted, devoted an hour to his own business in the little office, and then put on his coat to go out. It was Friday morning. On that day and on Wednesdays the church was open for baptisms, and it was the clerk's custom to go over at ten o'clock and apprize the Rector of any notices he might have had.
Passing in at the iron gates, the large white house rose before him, beyond the wide lawn. It had been built by Dr. Ashton at his own expense. The old Rectory was a tumbledown, inconvenient place, always in dilapidation, for as soon as one part of it was repaired another fell through; and the Rector opened his heart and his purse, both large and generous, and built a new one. Mr. Gum was making his way unannounced to the Rector's study, according to custom, when a door on the opposite side of the hall opened, and Dr. Ashton came out. He was a pleasant-looking man, with dark hair and eyes, his countenance one of keen intellect; and though only of middle height, there was something stately, grand, imposing in his whole appearance.
"Is that you, Jabez?"
Connected with each other for so many years--a connection which had begun when both were young--the Rector and Mrs. Ashton had never called him anything but Jabez. With other people he was Gum, or Mr. Gum, or Clerk Gum: Jabez with them. He, Jabez, was the older man of the two by six or seven years, for the Rector was not more than forty-five. The clerk crossed the hall, its tessellated flags gleaming under the colours thrown in by the stained windows, and entered the drawing-room, a noble apartment looking on to the lawn in front. Mrs. Ashton, a tall, delicate-looking woman, with a gentle face, was standing before a painting just come home and hung up; to look at which the Rector and his wife had gone into the room.
It was the portrait of a sweet-looking girl with a sunny countenance. The features were of the delicate contour of Mrs. Ashton's; the rich brown hair, the soft brown eyes, and the intellectual expression of the face resembled the doctor's. Altogether, face and portrait were positively charming; one of those faces you must love at first sight, without waiting to question whether or not they are beautiful.
"Is it a good likeness, Jabez?" asked the Rector, whilst Mrs. Ashton made room for him with a smile of greeting.
"As like as two peas, sir," responded Jabez, when he had taken a long look. "What a face it is! Oftentimes it comes across my mind when I am not thinking of anything but business; and I'm always the better for it."
"Why, Jabez, this is the first time you have seen it."
"Ah, ma'am, you know I mean the original. There's two baptisms to-day, sir," he added, turning away; "two, and one churching. Mrs. Luttrell and her child, and the poor little baby whose mother died."
"Mrs. Luttrell!" repeated the Rector. "It's soon for her, is it not?"
"They want to go away to the seaside," replied the clerk. "What about that notice, sir?"
"I'll see to it before Sunday, Jabez. Any news?"
"No, sir; not that I've heard of. My wife wanted to persuade me she saw--" At this moment a white-haired old serving-man entered the room with a note, claiming the Rector's attention. "The man's to take back the answer, sir, if you please."
"Wait then, Simon."
Old Simon stood aside, and the clerk, turning to Mrs. Ashton, continued his unfinished sentence.
"She wanted to persuade me she saw young Lord Hartledon pass at six o'clock this morning. A very likely tale that, ma'am."
"Perhaps she dreamt it, Jabez," said Mrs. Ashton, quietly.
Jabez chuckled; but what he would have answered was interrupted by the old servant.
"It's Mr. Elster that's come; not Lord Hartledon."
"Mr. Elster! How do you know, Simon?" asked Mrs. Ashton.
"The gardener mentioned it, ma'am, when he came in just now," was the servant's reply. "He said he saw Mr. Elster walk past this morning, as if he had just come by the luggage-train. I'm not sure but he spoke to him."
"The answer is 'No,' Simon," interposed the Rector, alluding to the note he had been reading. "But you can send word that I'll come in some time to-day."
"Charles, did you hear what Simon said--that Mr. Elster has come down?" asked Mrs. Ashton.
"Yes, I heard it," replied the doctor; and there was a hard dry tone in his voice, as if the news were not altogether palatable to him. "It must have been Percival Elster your wife saw, Jabez; not Lord Hartledon."
Jabez had been arriving at the same conclusion. "They used to be much alike in height and figure," he observed; "it was easy to mistake the one for the other. Then that's all this morning, sir?"
"There is nothing more, Jabez."
In a room whose large French window opened to flowerbeds on the side of the house, bending over a table on which sundry maps were spread, her face very close to them, sat at this moment a young lady. It was the same face you have just seen in the portrait--that of Dr. and Mrs. Ashton's only daughter. The wondrously sunny expression of countenance, blended with strange sweetness, was even more conspicuous than in the portrait. But what perhaps struck a beholder most, when looking at Miss Ashton for the first time, was a nameless grace and refinement that distinguished her whole appearance. She was of middle height, not more; slender; her head well set upon her shoulders. This was her own room; the schoolroom of her girlhood, the sitting-room she had been allowed to call her own since then. Books, work, music, a drawing-easel, and various other items, presenting a rather untidy collection, met the eye. This morning it was particularly untidy. The charts covered the table; one of them lay on the carpet; and a pot of mignonette had been overturned inside the open window scattering some of the mould. She was very busy; the open sleeves of her lilac-muslin dress were thrown back, and her delicate hands were putting the finishing touches in pencil to a plan she had been copying, from one of the maps. A few minutes more, and the pencil was thrown down in relief.
"I won't colour it this morning; it must be quite an hour and a half since I began; but the worst is done, and that's worth a king's ransom." In the escape from work, the innocent gaiety of her heart, she broke into a song, and began waltzing round the room. Barely had she passed the open window, her back turned to it, when a gentleman came up, looked in, stepped softly over the threshold, and imprisoned her by the waist.
"Be quiet, Arthur. Pick up that mignonette-pot you threw down, sir."
"My darling!" came in a low, heartfelt whisper. And Miss Ashton, with a faint cry, turned to see her engaged lover, Val Elster.
She stood before him, literally unable to speak in her great astonishment, the red roses going and coming in her delicate cheeks, the rich brown eyes, that might have been too brilliant but for their exceeding sweetness, raised questioningly to his. Mr. Elster folded her in his arms as if he would never release her again, and kissed the shrinking face repeatedly.
"Oh, Percival, Percival! Don't! Let me go."
He did so at last, and held her before him, her eyelids drooping now, to gaze at the face he loved so well--yes, loved fervently and well, in spite of his follies and sins. Her heart was beating wildly with its own rapture: for her the world had suddenly grown brighter.
"But when did you arrive?" she whispered, scarcely knowing how to utter the words in her excessive happiness.
He took her upon his arm and began to pace the room with her while he explained. There was an attempt at excuse for his prolonged absence--for Val Elster had returned from his duties in Vienna in May, and it was now August, and he had lingered through the intervening time in London, enjoying himself--but that was soon glossed over; and he told her how his brother was coming down on the morrow with a houseful of guests, and he, Val, had offered to go before them with the necessary instructions. He did not say _why_ he had offered to do this; that his debts had become so pressing he was afraid to show himself longer in London. Such facts were not for the ear of that fair girl, who trusted him as the truest man she knew under heaven.
"What have you been doing, Anne?"
He pointed to the maps, and Miss Ashton laughed.
"Mrs. Graves was here yesterday; she is very clever, you know; and when something was being said about the course of ships out of England, I made some dreadful mistakes. She took me up sharply, and papa looked at me sharply--and the result is, I have to do a heap of maps. Please tell me if it's right, Percival?"
She held up her pencilled work of the morning. He was laughing.
"What mistakes did you make, Anne?"
"I am not sure but I said something about an Indiaman, leaving the London Docks, having to pass Scarborough," she returned demurely. "It was quite as bad."
"Do you remember, Anne, being punished for persisting, in spite of the slate on the wall and your nursery-governess, that the Mediterranean lay between Scotland and Ireland? Miss Jevons wanted to give you bread and water for three days. How's that prig Graves?" he added rather abruptly.
Anne Ashton laughed, blushing slightly. "He is just as you left him; very painstaking and efficient in the parish, and all that, but, oh, so stupid in some things! Is the map right?"
"Yes, it's right. I'll help you with the rest. If Dr. Ashton--" "Why, Val! Is it you? I heard Lord Hartledon had come down."
Percival Elster turned. A lad of seventeen had come bounding in at the window. It was Dr. Ashton's eldest living son, Arthur. Anne was twenty-one. A son, who would have been nineteen now, had died; and there was another, John, two years younger than Arthur.
"How are you, Arthur, boy?" cried Val. "Edward hasn't come. Who told you he had?"
"Mother Gum. I have just met her."
"She told you wrong. He will be down to-morrow. Is that Dr. Ashton?"
Attracted perhaps by the voices, Dr. and Mrs. Ashton, who were then out on the lawn, came round to the window. Percival Elster grasped a hand of each, and after a minute or two's studied coldness, the doctor thawed. It was next to impossible to resist the genial manner, the winning attractions of the young man to his face. But Dr. Ashton could not approve of his line of conduct; and had sore doubts whether he had done right in allowing him to become the betrothed of his dearly-loved daughter.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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4
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THE COUNTESS-DOWAGER.
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The guests had arrived, and Hartledon was alive with bustle and lights. The first link in the chain, whose fetters were to bind more than one victim, had been forged. Link upon link; a heavy, despairing burden no hand could lift; a burden which would have to be borne for the most part in dread secrecy and silence.
Mirrable had exerted herself to good purpose, and Mirrable was capable of it when occasion needed. Help had been procured from Calne, and on the Friday evening several of the Hartledon servants arrived from the town-house. "None but a young man would have put us to such a rout," quoth Mirrable, in her privileged freedom; "my lord and lady would have sent a week's notice at least." But when Lord Hartledon arrived on the Saturday evening with his guests, Mirrable was ready for them.
She stood at the entrance to receive them, in her black-silk gown and lace cap, its broad white-satin strings falling on either side the bunch of black ringlets that shaded her thin face. Who, to look at her quick, sharp countenance, with its practical sense, her active frame, her ready speech, her general capability, would believe her to be sister to that silly, dreaming Mrs. Gum? But it was so. Lord Hartledon, kind, affable, unaffected as ever was his brother Percival, shook hands with her heartily in the eyes of his guests before he said a word of welcome to them; and one of those guests, a remarkably broad woman, with a red face, a wide snub nose, and a front of light flaxen hair, who had stepped into the house leaning on her host's arm--having, in fact, taken it unasked, and seemed to be assuming a great deal of authority--turned round to stare at Mirrable, and screwed her little light eyes together for a better view.
"Who is she, Hartledon?"
"Mrs. Mirrable," answered his lordship rather shortly. "I think you must have seen her before. She has been Hartledon's mistress since my mother died," he rather pointedly added, for he saw incipient defiance in the old lady's countenance.
"Oh, Hartledon's head servant; the housekeeper, I presume," cried she, as majestically as her harsh voice allowed her to speak. "Perhaps you'll tell her who I am, Hartledon; and that I have undertaken to preside here for a little while."
"I believe Mrs. Mirrable knows you, ma'am," spoke up Percival Elster, for Lord Hartledon had turned away, and was lost amongst his guests. "You have seen the Countess-Dowager of Kirton, Mirrable?"
The countess-dowager faced round upon the speaker sharply.
"Oh, it's _you_, Val Elster? Who asked you to interfere? I'll see the rooms, Mirrable, and the arrangements you have made. Maude, where are you? Come with me."
A tall, stately girl, with handsome features, raven hair and eyes, and a brilliant colour, extricated herself from the crowd. It was Lady Maude Kirton. Mirrable went first; the countess-dowager followed, talking volubly; and Maude brought up the rear. Other servants came forward to see to the rest of the guests.
The most remarkable quality observable in the countess-dowager, apart from her great breadth, was her restlessness. She seemed never still for an instant; her legs had a fidgety, nervous movement in them, and in moments of excitement, which were not infrequent, she was given to executing a sort of war-dance. Old she was not; but her peculiar graces of person, her rotund form, her badly-made front of flaxen curls, which was rarely in its place, made her appear so. A bold, scheming, unscrupulous, vulgar-minded woman, who had never considered other people's feelings in her life, whether equals or inferiors. In her day she must have been rather tall--nearly as tall as that elegant Maude who followed her; but her astounding width caused her now to appear short. She went looking into the different rooms as shown to her by Mirrable, and chose the best for herself and her daughter.
"Three en suite. Yes, that will be the thing, Mirrable. Lady Maude will take the inner one, I will occupy this, and my maid the outer. Very good. Now you may order the luggage up."
"But my lady," objected Mirrable, "these are the best rooms in the house; and each has a separate entrance, as you perceive. With so many guests to provide for, your maid cannot have one of these rooms."
"What?" cried the countess-dowager. "My maid not have one of these rooms? You insolent woman! Do you know that I am come here with my nephew, Lord Hartledon, to be mistress of this house, and of every one in it? You'd better mind _your_ behaviour, for I can tell you that I shall look pretty sharply after it."
"Then," said Mirrable, who never allowed herself to be put out by any earthly thing, and rarely argued against the stream, "as your ladyship has come here as sole mistress, perhaps you will yourself apportion the rooms to the guests."
"Let them apportion them for themselves," cried the countess-dowager. "These three are mine; others manage as they can. It's Hartledon's fault. I told him not to invite a heap of people. You and I shall get on together very well, I've no doubt, Mirrable," she continued in a false, fawning voice; for she was remarkably alive at all times to her own interests. "Am I to understand that you are the housekeeper?"
"I am acting as housekeeper at present," was Mirrable's answer. "When my lord went to town, after my lady's death, the housekeeper went also, and has remained there. I have taken her place. Lord Elster--Lord Hartledon, I mean--has not lived yet at Hartledon, and we have had no establishment."
"Then who are you?"
"I was maid to Lady Hartledon for many years. Her ladyship treated me more as a friend at the last; and the young gentlemen always did so." " _Very_ good," cried the untrue voice. "And, now, Mirrable, you can go down and send up some tea for myself and Lady Maude. What time do we dine?"
"Mr. Elster ordered it for eight o'clock."
"And what business had _he_ to take orders upon himself?" and the pale little eyes flashed with anger. "Who's Val Elster, that he should interfere? I sent word by the servants that we wouldn't dine till nine."
"Mr. Elster is in his own house, madam; and--" "In his own house!" raved Lady Kirton. "It's no house of his; it's his brother's. And I wish I was his brother for a day only; I'd let Mr. Val know what presumption comes to. Can't dinner be delayed?"
"I'm afraid not, my lady."
"Ugh!" snapped the countess-dowager. "Send up tea at once; and let it be strong, with a great deal of green in it. And some rolled bread-and-butter, and a little well-buttered toast."
Mirrable departed with the commands, more inclined to laugh at the selfish old woman than to be angry. She remembered the countess-dowager arriving on an unexpected visit some three or four years before, and finding the old Lord Hartledon away and his wife ill in bed. She remained three days, completely upsetting the house; so completely upsetting the invalid Lady Hartledon, that the latter was glad to lend her a sum of money to get rid of her.
Truth to say, Lady Kirton had never been a welcome guest at Hartledon; had been shunned, in fact, and kept away by all sorts of _ruses_. The only other visit she had paid the family, in Mirrable's remembrance, was to the town-house, when the children were young. Poor little Val had been taught by his nurse to look upon her as a "bogey;" went about in terror of her; and her ladyship detecting the feeling, administered sly pinches whenever they met. Perhaps neither of them had completely overcome the antagonism from that time to this.
A scrambling sort of life had been Lady Kirton's. The wife of a very poor and improvident Irish peer, who had died early, leaving her badly provided for, her days had been one long scramble to make both ends meet and avoid creditors. Now in Ireland, now on the Continent, now coming out for a few brief weeks of fashionable life, and now on the wing to some place of safety, had she dodged about, and become utterly unscrupulous.
There was a whole troop of children, who had been allowed to go to the good or the bad very much in their own way, with little help or hindrance from their mother. All the daughters were married now, excepting Maude, mostly to German barons and French counts. One had espoused a marquis--native country not clearly indicated; one an Italian duke: but the marquis lived somewhere over in Algeria in a small lodging, and the Duke condescended to sing an occasional song on the Italian stage.
It was all one to Lady Kirton. They had taken their own way, and she washed her hands of them as easily as though they had never belonged to her. Had they been able to supply her with an occasional bank-note, or welcome her on a protracted visit, they had been her well-beloved and most estimable daughters.
Of the younger sons, all were dispersed; the dowager neither knew nor cared where. Now and again a piteous begging-letter would come from one or the other, which she railed at and scolded over, and bade Maude answer. Her eldest son, Lord Kirton, had married some four or five years ago, and since then the countess-dowager's lines had been harder than ever. Before that event she could go to the place in Ireland whenever she liked (circumstances permitting), and stay as long as she liked; but that was over now. For the young Lady Kirton, who on her own score spent all the money her husband could scrape together, and more, had taken an inveterate dislike to her mother-in-law, and would not tolerate her.
Never, since she was thus thrown upon her own resources, had the countess-dowager's lucky star been in the ascendant as it had been this season, for she contrived to fasten herself upon the young Lord Hartledon, and secure a firm footing in his town-house. She called him her nephew--"My nephew Hartledon;" but that was a little improvement upon the actual relationship, for she and the late Lady Hartledon had been cousins only. She invited herself for a week's sojourn in May, and had never gone away again; and it was now August. She had come down with him, _sans cérémonie_, to Hartledon; had told him (as a great favour) that she would look after his house and guests during her stay, as his mother would have done. Easy, careless, good-natured Hartledon acquiesced, and took it all as a matter of course. To him she was ever all sweetness and suavity.
None knew better on which side her bread was buttered than the countess-dowager. She liked it buttered on both sides, and generally contrived to get it.
She had come down to Hartledon House with one fixed determination--that she did not quit it until the Lady Maude was its mistress. For a long while Maude had been her sole hope. Her other daughters had married according to their fancy--and what had come of it? --but Maude was different. Maude had great beauty; and Maude, truth to say, was almost as selfishly alive to her own interest as her mother. _She_ should marry well, and so be in a position to shelter the poor, homeless, wandering dowager. Had she chosen from the whole batch of peers, not one could have been found more eligible than he whom fortune seemed to have turned up for her purpose--Lord Hartledon; and before the countess-dowager had been one week his guest in London she began her scheming.
Lady Maude was nothing loth. Young, beautiful, vain, selfish, she yet possessed a woman's susceptible heart; though surrounded with luxury, dress, pomp, show, which are said to deaden the feelings, and in some measure do deaden them, Lady Maude insensibly managed to fall in love, as deeply as ever did an obscure damsel of romance. She had first met him two years before, when he was Viscount Elster; had liked him then. Their relationship sanctioned their being now much together, and the Lady Maude lost her heart to him.
Would it bring forth fruit, this scheming of the countess-dowager's, and Maude's own love? In her wildest hopes the old woman never dreamed of what that fruit would be; or, unscrupulous as she was by habit, unfeeling by nature, she might have carried away Maude from Hartledon within the hour of their arrival.
Of the three parties more immediately concerned, the only innocent one--innocent of any intentions--was Lord Hartledon. He liked Maude very well as a cousin, but otherwise he did not care for her. They might succeed--at least, had circumstances gone on well, they might have succeeded--in winning him at last; but it would not have been from love. His present feeling towards Maude was one of indifference; and of marriage at all he had not begun to think.
Val Elster, on the contrary, regarded Maude with warm admiration. Her beauty had charms for him, and he had been oftener at her side but for the watchful countess-dowager. It would have been horrible had Maude fallen in love with the wrong brother, and the old lady grew to hate him for the fear, as well as on her own score. The feeling of dislike, begun in Val's childhood, had ripened in the last month or two to almost open warfare. He was always in the way. Many a time when Lord Hartledon might have enjoyed a _tête-à-tête_ with Maude, Val Elster was there to spoil it.
But the culminating point had arrived one day, when Val, half laughingly, half seriously, told the dowager, who had been provoking him almost beyond endurance, that she might spare her angling in regard to Maude, for Hartledon would never bite. But that he took his pleasant face beyond her reach, it might have suffered, for her fingers were held out alarmingly.
From that time she took another little scheme into her hands--that of getting Percival Elster out of his brother's favour and his brother's house. Val, on his part, seriously advised his brother _not_ to allow the Kirtons to come to Hartledon; and this reached the ears of the dowager. You may be sure it did not tend to soothe her. Lord Hartledon only laughed at Val, saying they might come if they liked; what did it matter?
But, strange to say, Val Elster was as a very reed in the hands of the old woman. Let her once get hold of him, and she could turn him any way she pleased. He felt afraid of her, and bent to her will. The feeling may have had its rise partly in the fear instilled into his boyhood, partly in the yielding nature of his disposition. However that might be, it was a fact; and Val could no more have openly opposed the resolute, sharp-tongued old woman to her face than he could have changed his nature. He rarely called her anything but "ma'am," as their nurse had taught him and his brothers and sisters to do in those long-past years.
Before eight o'clock the guests had all assembled in the drawing-room, except the countess-dowager and Maude. Lord Hartledon was going about amongst them, talking to one and another of the beauties of this, his late father's place; scarcely yet thought of as his own. He was a tall slender man; in figure very much resembling Percival, but not in face: the one was dark, the other fair. There was also the same indolent sort of movement, a certain languid air discernible in both; proclaiming the undoubted fact, that both were idle in disposition and given to ennui. There the resemblance ended. Lord Hartledon had nothing of the irresolution of Percival Elster, but was sufficiently decisive in character, prompt in action.
A noble room, this they were in, as many of the rooms were in the fine old mansion. Lord Hartledon opened the inner door, and took them into another, to show them the portrait of his brother George--a fine young man also, with a fair, pleasing countenance.
"He is like Elster; not like you, Hartledon," cried a young man, whose name was Carteret. " _Was_, you mean, Carteret," corrected Lord Hartledon, in tones of sad regret. "There was a great family resemblance between us all, I believe."
"He died from an accident, did he not?" said Mr. O'Moore, an Irishman, who liked to be called "The O'Moore."
"Yes."
Percival Elster turned to his brother, and spoke in low tones. "Edward, was any particular person suspected of having fired the shot?"
"None. A set of loose, lawless characters were out that night, and--" "What are you all looking at here?"
The interruption came from Lady Kirton, who was sailing into the room with Maude. A striking contrast the one presented to the other. Maude in pink silk and a pink wreath, her haughty face raised in pride, her dark eyes flashing, radiantly beautiful. The old dowager, broad as she was high, her face rouged, her short snub nose always carried in the air, her light eyes unmeaning, her flaxen eyebrows heavy, her flaxen curls crowned by a pea-green turban. Her choice attire was generally composed, as to-day, of some cheap, flimsy, gauzy material bright in colour. This evening it was orange lace, all flounces and frills, with a lace scarf; and she generally had innumerable ends of quilted net flying about her skirts, not unlike tails. It was certain she did not spend much money upon her own attire; and how she procured the costly dresses for Maude the latter appeared in was ever a mystery. You can hardly fancy the bedecked old figure that she made. The O'Moore nearly laughed out, as he civilly turned to answer her question.
"We were looking at this portrait, Lady Kirton."
"And saying how much he was like Val," put in young Carteret, between whom and the dowager warfare also existed. "Val, which was the elder?"
"George was."
"Then his death made you heir-presumptive," cried the thoughtless young man, speaking impulsively.
"Heir-presumptive to what?" asked the dowager snapping at the words.
"To Hartledon." " _He_ heir to Hartledon! Don't trouble yourself, young man, to imagine that Val Elster's ever likely to come into Hartledon. Do you want to shoot his lordship, as _he_ was shot?"
The uncalled-for retort, the strangely intemperate tones, the quick passionate fling of the hand towards the portrait astonished young Carteret not a little. Others were surprised also; and not one present but stared at the speaker. But she said no more. The pea-green turban and flaxen curls were nodding ominously; and that was all.
The animus to Val Elster was very marked. Lord Hartledon glanced at his brother with a smile, and led the way back to the other drawing-room. At that moment the butler announced dinner; the party filed across the hall to the fine old dining-room, and began finding their seats.
"I shall sit there, Val. You can take a chair at the side."
Val did look surprised at this. He was about to take the foot of his brother's table, as usual; and there was the pea-green turban standing over him, waiting to usurp it. It would have been quite beyond Val Elster, in his sensitiveness, to tell her she should not have it; but he did feel annoyed. He was sweet-tempered, however. Moreover, he was a gentleman, and only waited to make one remark.
"I fear you will not like this place, ma'am. Won't it look odd to see a lady at the bottom of the table?"
"I have promised my dear nephew to act as mistress, and to see after his guests; and I don't choose to sit at the side under those circumstances." But she had looked at Lord Hartledon, and hesitated before she spoke. Perhaps she thought his lordship would resign the head of the table to her, and take the foot himself. If so, she was mistaken.
"You will be more comfortable at the side, Lady Kirton," cried Lord Hartledon, when he discovered what the bustle was about.
"Not at all, Hartledon; not at all."
"But I like my brother to face me, ma'am. It is his accustomed place."
Remonstrance was useless. The dowager nodded her pea-green turban, and firmly seated herself. Val Elster dexterously found a seat next Lady Maude; and a gay gleam of triumph shot out of his deep-blue eyes as he glanced at the dowager. It was not the seat she would have wished him to take; but to interfere again might have imperilled her own place. Maude laughed. She did not care for Val--rather despised him in her heart; but he was the most attractive man present, and she liked admiration.
Another link in the chain! For how many, many days and years, dating from that evening, did that awful old woman take a seat, at intervals, at Lord Hartledon's table, and assume it as a right!
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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5
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JEALOUSY.
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The rain poured down on the Monday morning; and Lord Hartledon stood at the window of the countess-dowager's sitting-room--one she had unceremoniously adopted for her own private use--smoking a cigar, and watching the clouds. Any cigar but his would have been consigned to the other side the door. Mr. Elster had only shown (by mere accident) the end of his cigar-case, and the dowager immediately demanded what he meant by displaying that article in the presence of ladies. A few minutes afterwards Lord Hartledon entered, smoking, and was allowed to enjoy his cigar with impunity. Good-tempered Val's delicate lips broke into a silent smile as he marked the contrast.
He lounged on the sofa, doing nothing, in his idle fashion; Lord Hartledon continued to watch the clouds. On the previous Saturday night the gentlemen had entered into an argument about boating: the result was that a match on the river was arranged, and some bets were pending on it. It had been fixed to come off this day, Monday; but if the rain continued to come down, it must be postponed; for the ladies, who had been promised the treat, would not venture out to see it.
"It has come on purpose," grumbled Lord Hartledon. "Yesterday was as fine and bright as it could be, the glass standing at set fair; and now, just because this boating was to come off, the rain peppers down!"
The rain excepted, it was a fair vision that he looked out upon. The room faced the back of the house, and beyond the lovely grounds green slopes extended to the river, tolerably wide here, winding peacefully in its course. The distant landscape was almost like a scene from fairyland.
The restless dowager--in a nondescript head-dress this morning, adorned with an upright tuft of red feathers and voluminous skirts of brown net, a jacket and flounces to match--betook herself to the side of Lord Hartledon.
"Where d'you get the boats?" she asked.
"They are kept lower down, at the boat-house," he replied, puffing at his cigar. "You can't see it from here; it's beyond Dr. Ashton's; lots of 'em; any number to be had for the hiring. Talking of Dr. Ashton, they will dine here to-day, ma'am."
"Who will?" asked Lady Kirton.
"The doctor, Mrs. Ashton--if she's well enough--and Miss Ashton."
"Who are they, my dear nephew?"
"Why, don't you know? Dr. Ashton preached to you yesterday. He is Rector of Calne; you must have heard of Dr. Ashton. They will be calling this morning, I expect."
"And you have invited them to dinner! Well, one must do the civil to this sort of people."
Lord Hartledon burst into a laugh. "You won't say 'this sort of people' when you see the Ashtons, Lady Kirton. They are quite as good as we are. Dr. Ashton has refused a bishopric, and Anne is the sweetest girl ever created."
Lady Maude, who was drawing, and exchanging a desultory sentence once in a way with Val, suddenly looked up. Her colour had heightened, though it was brilliant at all times.
"Are you speaking of my maid?" she said--and it might be that she had not attended to the conversation, and asked in ignorance, not in scorn. "Her name is Anne."
"I was speaking of Anne Ashton," said Lord Hartledon.
"Allow me to beg Anne Ashton's pardon," returned Lady Maude; her tone this time unmistakably mocking. "Anne is so common a name amongst servants."
"I don't care whether it is common amongst servants or uncommon," spoke Lord Hartledon rather hotly, as though he would resent the covert sneer. "It is Anne Ashton's; and I love the name for her sake. But I think it a pretty name; and should, if she did not bear it; prettier than yours, Maude."
"And pray who _is_ Anne Ashton?" demanded the countess-dowager, with as much hauteur as so queer an old figure and face could put on, whilst Maude bent over her employment with white lips.
"She is Dr. Ashton's daughter," spoke Lord Hartledon, shortly. "My father valued him above all men. He loved Anne too--loved her dearly; and--though I don't know whether it is quite fair to Anne to let this out--the probable future connection between the families was most welcome to him. Next to my father, we boys reverenced the doctor; he was our tutor, in a measure, when we were staying at Hartledon; at least, tutor to poor George and Val; they used to read with him."
"And you would hint at some alliance between you and this Anne Ashton!" cried the countess-dowager, in a fume; for she thought she saw a fear that the great prize might slip through her fingers. "What sort of an alliance, I should like to ask? Be careful what you say, Hartledon; you may injure the young woman."
"I'll take care I don't injure Anne Ashton," returned Lord Hartledon, enjoying her temper. "As to an alliance with her--my earnest wish is, as it was my father's, that time may bring it about. Val there knows I wish it."
Val glanced at his brother by way of answer. He had taken no part in the discussion; his slight lips were drawn down, as he balanced a pair of scissors on his forefinger, and he looked less good-tempered than usual.
"Has she red hair and sky-blue eyes, and a doll's face? Does she sit in the pew under the reading-desk with three other dolls?" asked the foaming dowager.
Lord Hartledon turned and stared at the speaker in wonder--what could be so exciting her?
"She has soft brown hair and eyes, and a sweet gentle face; she is a graceful, elegant, attractive girl," said he, curtly. "She sat alone yesterday; for Arthur was in another part of the church, and Mrs. Ashton was not there. Mrs. Ashton is not in good health, she tells me, and cannot always come. The Rector's pew is the one with green curtains."
"Oh, _that_ vulgar-looking girl!" exclaimed Maude, her unjust words--and she knew them to be unjust--trembling on her lips. "The Grand Sultan might exalt her to be his chief wife, but he could never make a lady of her, or get her to look like one."
"Be quiet, Maude," cried the countess-dowager, who, with all her own mistakes, had the sense to see that this sort of disparagement would only recoil upon them with interest, and who did not like the expression of Lord Hartledon's face. "You talk as if you had seen this Mrs. Ashton, Hartledon, since your return."
"I should not be many hours at Hartledon without seeing Mrs. Ashton," he answered. "That's where I was yesterday afternoon, ma'am, when you were so kindly anxious in your inquiries as to what had become of me. I dare say I was absent an unconscionable time. I never know how it passes, once I am with Anne."
"We represent Love as blind, you know," spoke Maude, in her desperation, unable to steady her pallid lips. "You apparently do not see it, Lord Hartledon, but the young woman is the very essence of vulgarity."
A pause followed the speech. The countess-dowager turned towards her daughter in a blazing rage, and Val Elster quitted the room.
"Maude," said Lord Hartledon, "I am sorry to tell you that you have put your foot in it."
"Thank you," panted Lady Maude, in her agitation. "For giving my opinion of your Anne Ashton?"
"Precisely. You have driven Val away in suppressed indignation."
"Is Val of the Anne Ashton faction, that the truth should tell upon him, as well as upon you?" she returned, striving to maintain an assumption of sarcastic coldness.
"It is upon him that the words will tell. Anne is engaged to him."
"Is it true? Is Val really engaged to her?" cried the countess-dowager in an ecstacy of relief, lifting her snub nose and painted cheeks, whilst a glad light came into Maude's eyes again. "I did hear he was engaged to some girl; but such reports of younger sons go for nothing."
"Val was engaged to her before he went abroad. Whether he will get her or not, is another thing."
"To hear you talk, Hartledon, one might have supposed you cared for the girl yourself," cried Lady Kirton; but her brow was smooth again, and her tone soft as honey. "You should be more cautious."
"Cautious! Why so? I love and respect Anne beyond any girl on earth. But that Val hastened to make hay when the sun shone, whilst I fell asleep under the hedge, I don't know but I might have proposed to her myself," he added, with a laugh. "However, it shall not be my fault if Val does not win her."
The countess-dowager said no more. She was worldly-wise in her way, and thought it best to leave well alone. Sailing out of the room she left them alone together: as she was fond of doing.
"Is it not rather--rather beneath an Elster to marry an obscure country clergyman's daughter?" began Lady Maude, a strange bitterness filling her heart.
"I tell you, Maude, the Ashtons are our equals in all ways. He is a proud old doctor of divinity--not old, however--of irreproachable family and large private fortune."
"You spoke of him as a tutor?"
"A tutor! Oh, I said he was in a measure our tutor when we were young. I meant in training us--in training us to good; and he allowed George and Val to read with him, and directed their studies: all for love, and out of the friendship he and my father bore each other. Dr. Ashton a paid tutor!" ejaculated Lord Hartledon, laughing at the notion. "Dr. Ashton an obscure country clergyman! And even if he were, who is Val, that he should set himself up?"
"He is the Honourable Val Elster."
"Very honourable! Val is an unlucky dog of a spendthrift; that's what Val is. See how many times he has been set up on his legs! --and has always come down again. He had that place in the Government my father got him. He was attaché in Paris; subsequently in Vienna; he has had ever so many chances, and drops through all. One can't help loving Val; he is an attractive, sweet-tempered, good-natured fellow; but he was certainly born under an unlucky star. Elster's folly!"
"Val will drop through more chances yet," remarked Lady Maude. "I pity Miss Ashton, if she means to wait for him."
"Means to! She loves him passionately--devotedly. She would wait for him all her life, and think it happiness only to see him once in a way."
"As an astronomer looks at a star through a telescope," laughed Maude; "and Val is not worth the devotion."
"Val is not a bad fellow in the main; quite the contrary, Maude. Of course we all know his besetting sin--irresolution. A child might sway him, either for good or ill. The very best thing that could happen to Val would be his marriage with Anne. She is sensible and judicious; and I think Val could not fail to keep straight under her influence. If Dr. Ashton could only be brought to see the matter in this light!"
"Can he not?"
"He thinks--and I don't say he has not reason--that Val should show some proof of stability before his marriage, instead of waiting until after it. The doctor has not gone to the extent of parting them, or of suspending the engagement; but he is prepared to be strict and exacting as to Mr. Val's line of conduct; and I fancy the suspicion that it would be so has kept Val away from Calne."
"What will be done?"
"I hardly know. Val does not make a confidant of me, and I can't get to the bottom of how he is situated. Debts I am sure he has; but whether--" "Val always had plenty of those," interrupted Maude.
"True. When my father died, three parts of Val's inheritance went to pay off debts nobody knew he had contracted. The worst is, he glides into these difficulties unwittingly, led and swayed by others. We don't say Elster's sin, or Elster's crimes; we say Elster's folly. I don't believe Val ever in his life did a bad thing of deliberate intention. Designing people get hold of him--fast fellows who are going headlong down-hill themselves--and Val, unable to say 'No,' is drawn here and drawn there, and tumbles with them into a quagmire, and perhaps has to pay his friends' costs, as well as his own, before he can get out of it. Do you believe in luck, Maude?"
"In luck?" answered Maude, raising her eyes at the abrupt question. "I don't know."
"I believe in it. I believe that some are born under a lucky star, and others under an unlucky one. Val is one of the latter. He is always unlucky. Set him up, and down he comes again. I don't think I ever knew Val lucky in my life. Look at his nearly blowing his arm off that time in Scotland! You will laugh at me, I dare say; but a thought crosses me at odd moments that his ill-luck will prevail still, in the matter of Miss Ashton. Not if I can help it, however; I'll do my best, for Anne's sake."
"You seem to think very much of her yourself," cried Lady Maude, her cheeks crimsoning with an angry flush.
"I do--as Val's future wife. I love Anne Ashton better than any one else in the world. We all loved her. So would you if you knew her. In my mother's last illness Anne was a greater comfort to her than Laura."
"Should you ever think of a wife on your own score, she may not like this warm praise of Miss Anne Ashton," said Lady Maude, assiduously drawing, her hot face bent down to within an inch of the cardboard.
"Not like it? She wouldn't be such an idiot, I hope, as to dislike it. Is not Anne going to be my brother's wife? Did you suppose I spoke of Anne in that way? --you must have been dreaming, Maude."
Maude hoped she had been. The young man took his cigar from his mouth, ran a penknife through the end, and began smoking again.
"That time is far enough off, Maude. _I_ am not going to tie myself up with a wife, or to think of one either, for many a long year to come."
Her heart beat with a painful throbbing. "Why not?"
"No danger. My wild oats are not sown yet, any more than Val's; only you don't hear of them, because I have money to back me, and he has not. I must find a girl I should like to make my wife before that event comes off, Maude; and I have not found her yet."
Lady Maude damaged her landscape. She sketched in a tree where a chimney ought to have been, and laid the fault upon her pencil.
"It has been real sport, Maude, ever since I came home from knocking about abroad, to hear and see the old ladies. They think I am to be caught with a bait; and that bait is each one's own enchanting daughter. Let them angle, an they please--it does no harm. They are amused, and I am none the worse. I enjoy a laugh sometimes, while I take care of myself; as I have need to do, or I might find myself the victim of some detestable breach-of-promise affair, and have to stand damages. But for Anne Ashton, Val would have had his head in that Westminster-noose a score of times; and the wonder is that he has kept out of it. No, thank you, my ladies; I am not a marrying man."
"Why do you tell me this?" asked Lady Maude, a sick faintness stealing over her face and heart.
"You are one of ourselves, and I tell you anything. It will be fun for you, Maude, if you'll open your eyes and look on. There are some in the house now who--" He stopped and laughed.
"I would rather not hear this!" she cried passionately. "Don't tell me."
Lord Hartledon looked at her, begged her pardon, and quitted the room with his cigar. Lady Maude, black as night, dashed her pencil on to the cardboard, and scored her sketch all over with ugly black lines. Her face itself looked ugly then.
"Why did he say this to me?" she asked of her fevered heart. "Was it said with a purpose? Has he found out that I _love_ him? that my shallow old mother is one of the subtlest of the anglers? and that--" "What on earth are you at with your drawing, Maude?"
"Oh, I have grown sick of the sketch. I am not in a drawing mood to-day, mamma."
"And how fierce you were looking," pursued the countess-dowager, who had darted in at rather an inopportune moment for Maude--darting in on people at such moments being her habit. "And that was the sketch Hartledon asked you to do for him from the old painting!"
"He may do it himself, if he wants it done."
"Where is Hartledon?"
"I don't know. Gone out somewhere."
"Has he offended you, or vexed you?"
"Well, he did vex me. He has just been assuring me with the coolest air that he should never marry; or, at least, not for years and years to come. He told me to notice what a heap of girls were after him--or their mothers for them--and the fun he had over it, not being a marrying man."
"Is that all? You need not have put yourself in a fatigue, and spoilt your drawing. Lord Hartledon shall be your husband before six months are over--or reproach me ever afterwards with being a false prophetess and a bungling manager."
Maude's brow cleared. She had almost childlike confidence in the tact of her unscrupulous mother.
But how the morning's conversation altogether rankled in her heart, none save herself could tell: ay, and in that of the dowager. Although Anne Ashton was the betrothed of Percival Elster, and Lord Hartledon's freely-avowed love for her was evidently that of a brother, and he had said he should do all he could to promote the marriage, the strongest jealousy had taken possession of Lady Maude's heart. She already hated Anne Ashton with a fierce and bitter hatred. She turned sick with envy when, in the morning visit that was that day paid by the Ashtons, she saw that Anne was really what Lord Hartledon had described her--one of the sweetest, most lovable, most charming of girls; almost without her equal in the world for grace and goodness and beauty. She turned more sick with envy when, at dinner afterwards, to which the Ashtons came, Lord Hartledon devoted himself to them, almost to the neglect of his other guests, lingering much with Anne.
The countess-dowager marked it also, and was furious. Nothing could be urged against them; they were unexceptionable. The doctor, a chatty, straightforward, energetic man, of great intellect and learning, and emphatically a gentleman; his wife attracting by her unobtrusive gentleness; his daughter by her grace and modest self-possession. Whatever Maude Kirton might do, she could never, for very shame, again attempt to disparage them. Surely there was no just reason for the hatred which took possession of Maude's heart; a hatred that could never be plucked out again.
But Maude knew how to dissemble. It pleased her to affect a sudden and violent friendship for Anne.
"Hartledon told me how much I should like you," she whispered, as they sat together on the sofa after dinner, to which Maude had drawn her. "He said I should find you the dearest girl I ever met; and I do so. May I call you 'Anne'?"
Not for a moment did Miss Ashton answer. Truth to say, far from reciprocating the sudden fancy boasted of by Maude, she had taken an unaccountable dislike to her. Something of falsity in the tone, of sudden _hardiesse_ in the handsome black eyes, acted upon Anne as an instinctive warning.
"As you please, Lady Maude."
"Thank you so much. Hartledon whispered to me the secret about you and Val--Percival, I mean. Shall you accomplish the task, think you?"
"What task?"
"That of turning him from his evil ways."
"His evil ways?" repeated Anne, in a surprised indignation she did not care to check. "I do not understand you, Lady Maude."
"Pardon me, my dear Anne: it was hazardous so to speak _to you_. I ought to have said his thoughtless ways. Quant à moi, je ne vois pas la différence. Do you understand French?"
Miss Ashton looked at her, really not knowing what this style of conversation might mean. Maude continued; she had a habit of putting forth a sting on occasion, or what she hoped might be a sting.
"You are staring at the superfluous question. Of course it is one in these _French_ days, when everyone speaks it. What was I saying? Oh, about Percival. Should he ever have the luck to marry, meaning the income, he will make a docile husband; but his wife will have to keep him under her finger and thumb; she must be master as well as mistress, for his own sake."
"I think Mr. Elster would not care to be so spoken of," said Miss Ashton, her face beginning to glow.
"You devoted girl! It is you who don't care to hear it. Take care, Anne; too much love is not good for gaining the mastership; and I have heard that you are--shall I say it? --_éperdue_."
Anne, in spite of her calm good sense, was actually provoked to a retort in kind, and felt terribly vexed with herself for it afterwards. "A rumour of the same sort has been breathed as to the Lady Maude Kirton's regard for Lord Hartledon."
"Has it?" returned Lady Maude, with a cool tone and a glowing face. "You are angry with me without reason. Have I not offered to swear to you an eternal friendship?"
Anne shook her head, and her lips parted with a curious expression. "I do not swear so lightly, Lady Maude."
"What if I were to avow to you that it is true? --that I do love Lord Hartledon, deeply as it is known you love his brother," she added, dropping her voice--"would you believe me?"
Anne looked at the speaker's face, but could read nothing. Was she in jest or earnest?
"No, I would not believe you," she said, with a smile. "If you did love him, you would not proclaim it."
"Exactly. I was jesting. What is Lord Hartledon to me? --save that we are cousins, and passably good friends. I must avow one thing, that I like him better than I do his brother."
"For that no avowal is necessary," said Anne; "the fact is sufficiently evident."
"You are right, Anne;" and for once Maude spoke earnestly. "I do _not_ like Percival Elster. But I will always be civil to him for your sweet sake."
"Why do you dislike him? --if I may ask it. Have you any particular reason for doing so?"
"I have no reason in the world. He is a good-natured, gentlemanly fellow; and I know no ill of him, except that he is always getting into scrapes, and dropping, as I hear, a lot of money. But if he got out of his last guinea, and went almost in rags, it would be nothing to me; so _that's_ not it. One does take antipathies; I dare say you do, Miss Ashton. What a blessing Hartledon did not die in that fever he caught last year! Val would have inherited. What a mercy!"
"That he lived? or that Val is not Lord Hartledon?"
"Both. But I believe I meant that Val is not reigning."
"You think he would not have made a worthy inheritor?"
"A worthy inheritor? Oh, I was not glancing at that phase of the question. Here he comes! I will give up my seat to him."
It is possible Lady Maude expected some pretty phrases of affection; begging her to keep it. If so, she was mistaken. Anne Ashton was one of those essentially quiet, self-possessed girls in society, whose manners seem almost to border on apathy. She did not say "Do go," or "Don't go." She was perfectly passive; and Maude moved away half ashamed of herself, and feeling, in spite of her jealousy and her prejudice, that if ever there was a ladylike girl upon earth, it was Anne Ashton.
"How do you like her, Anne?" asked Val Elster, dropping into the vacant place.
"Not much."
"Don't you? She is very handsome."
"Very handsome indeed. Quite beautiful. But still I don't like her."
"You would like her if you knew her. She has a rare spirit, only the old dowager keeps it down."
"I don't think she much likes you, Val."
"She is welcome to dislike me," returned Val Elster.
|
{
"id": "16798"
}
|
6
|
AT THE BRIDGE.
|
The famous boat-race was postponed. Some of the competitors had discovered they should be the better for a few days' training, and the contest was fixed for the following Monday.
Not a day of the intervening week but sundry small cockle-shells--things the ladies had already begun to designate as the "wager-boats," each containing a gentleman occupant, exercising his arms on a pair of sculls--might be seen any hour passing and repassing on the water; and the green slopes of Hartledon, which here formed the bank of the river, grew to be tenanted with fair occupants. Of course they had their favourites, these ladies, and their little bets of gloves on them.
As the day for the contest drew near the interest became really exciting; and on the Saturday morning there was quite a crowd on the banks. The whole week, since Monday, had been most beautiful--calm, warm, lovely. Percival Elster, in his rather idle fashion, was not going to join in the contest: there were enough without him, he said.
He was standing now, talking to Anne. His face wore a sad expression, as she glanced up at him from beneath the white feather of her rather large-brimmed straw hat. Anne had been a great deal at Hartledon that week, and was as interested in the race as any of them, wearing Lord Hartledon's colours.
"How did you hear it, Anne?" he was asking.
"Mamma told me. She came into my room just now, and said there had been words."
"Well, it's true. The doctor took me to task exactly as he used to do when I was a boy. He said my course of life was sinful; and I rather fired up at that. Idle and useless it may be, but sinful it is not: and I said so. He explained that he meant that, and persisted in his assertion--that an idle, aimless, profitless life was a sinful one. Do you know the rest?"
"No," she faltered.
"He said he would give me to the end of the year. And if I were then still pursuing my present frivolous course of life, doing no good to myself or to anyone else, he should cancel the engagement. My darling, I see how this pains you."
She was suppressing her tears with difficulty. "Papa will be sure to keep his word, Percival. He is so resolute when he thinks he is right."
"The worst is, it's true. I do fall into all sorts of scrapes, and I have got out of money, and I do idle my time away," acknowledged the young man in his candour. "And all the while, Anne, I am thinking and hoping to do right. If ever I get set on my legs again, _won't_ I keep on them!"
"But how many times have you said so before!" she whispered.
"Half the follies for which I am now paying were committed when I was but a boy," he said. "One of the men now visiting here, Dawkes, persuaded me to put my name to a bill for him for fifteen hundred pounds, and I had to pay it. It hampered me for years; and in the end I know I must have paid it twice over. I might have pleaded that I was under age when he got my signature, but it would have been scarcely honourable to do so."
"And you never profited by the transaction?"
"Never by a sixpence. It was done for Dawkes's accommodation, not mine. He ought to have paid it, you say? My dear, he is a man of straw, and never had fifteen hundred pounds of his own in his life."
"Does Lord Hartledon know of this? I wonder he has him here."
"I did not mention it at the time; and the thing's past and done with. I only tell you now to give you an idea of the nature of my embarrassments and scrapes. Not one in ten has really been incurred for myself: they only fall upon me. One must buy experience."
Terribly vexed was that sweet face, an almost painful sadness upon the generally sunny features.
"I will never give you up, Anne," he continued, with emotion. "I told the doctor so. I would rather give up life. And you know that your love is mine."
"But my duty is theirs. And if it came to a contest--Oh, Percival! you know, you know which would have to give place. Papa is so resolute in right."
"It's a shame that fortune should be so unequally divided!" cried the young man, resentfully. "Here's Edward with an income of thirty thousand a year, and I, his own brother, only a year or two younger, can't boast a fourth part as many hundreds!"
"Oh, Val! your father left you better off than that!"
"But so much of it went, Anne," was the gloomy answer. "I never understood the claims that came in against me, for my part. Edward had no debts to speak of; but then look at his allowance."
"He was the eldest son," she gently said.
"I know that. I am not wishing myself in Edward's place, or he out of it. I heartily wish him health and a long life to wear his honours; it is no fault of his that he should be rolling in riches, and I a martyr to poverty. Still, one can't help feeling at odd moments, when the shoe's pinching awfully, that the system is not altogether a just one."
"Was that a sincere wish, Val Elster?"
Val wheeled round on Lady Maude, from whom the question came. She had stolen up to them unperceived, and stood there in her radiant beauty, her magnificent dark eyes and her glowing cheeks set off by a little coquettish black-velvet hat.
"A sincere wish--that my brother should live long to enjoy his honours!" echoed Val, in a surprised tone. "Indeed it is. I hope he will live to a green old age, and leave goodly sons to succeed him."
Maude laughed. A brighter hue stole into her face, a softer shade to her eyes: she saw herself, as in a vision, the goodly mother of those goodly sons.
"Are you going to wear _that_?" she asked, touching the knot of ribbon in Miss Ashton's hands with her petulant fingers. "They are Lord Hartledon's colours."
"I shall wear it on Monday. Lord Hartledon gave it to me."
A rash avowal. The competitors, in a sort of joke, had each given away one knot of his own colours. Lady Maude had had three given to her; but she was looking for another worth them all--from Lord Hartledon. And now--it was given, it appeared, to Anne Ashton! For her very life she could not have helped the passionate taunt that escaped from her, not in words, but in tone: "To _you_!"
"Kissing goes by favour," broke from the delicate lips of Val Elster, and Lady Maude could have struck him for the significant, saucy expression of his violet-blue eyes. "Edward loves Anne better than he ever loved his sisters; and for any other love--_that's_ still far enough from his heart, Maude."
She had recovered herself instantly; cried out "Yes" to those in the distance, as if she heard a call, and went away humming a tune.
"Val, she loves your brother," whispered Anne.
"Do you think so? I do sometimes; and again I'm puzzled. She acts well if she does. The other day I told Edward she was in love with him: he laughed at me, and said I was dreaming; that if she had any love for him, it was cousin's love. What's more, Anne, he would prefer not to receive any other; so Maude need not look after him: it will be labour lost. Here comes that restless old dowager down upon us! I shall leave you to her, Anne. I never dare say my soul's my own in the presence of that woman."
Val strolled away as he spoke. He was not at ease that day, and the sharp, meddling old woman would have been intolerable. It was all very well to put a good face on matters to Anne, but he was in more perplexity than he cared to confess to. It seemed to him that he would rather die than give up Anne: and yet--in the straightforward, practical good sense of Dr. Ashton, he had a formidable adversary to deal with.
He suddenly found an arm inserted within his own, and saw it was his brother. Walking together thus, there was a great resemblance between them.
They were of the same height, much the same build; both were very good-looking men, but Percival had the nicer features; and he was fair, and his brother dark.
"What is this, Val, about a dispute with the doctor?" began Lord Hartledon.
"It was not a dispute," returned Val. "There were a few words, and I was hasty. However, I begged his pardon, and we parted good friends."
"Under a flag of truce, eh?"
"Something of that sort."
"Something of that sort!" repeated Lord Hartledon. "Don't you think, Val, it would be to your advantage if you trusted me more thoroughly than you do? Tell me the whole truth of your position, and let me see what can be done for you."
"There's not much to tell," returned Val, in his stupidity. Even with his brother his ultra-sensitiveness clung to him; and he could no more have confessed the extent of his troubles than he could have taken wing that moment and soared away into the air. Val Elster was one of those who trust to things "coming right" with time.
"I have been talking to the doctor, Val. I called in just now to see Mrs. Ashton, and he spoke to me about you."
"Very kind of him, I'm sure!" retorted Val. "It is just this, Edward. He is vexed at what he calls my idle ways, and waste of time: as if I need plod on, like a city clerk, six days a week and no holidays! I know I must do something before I can win Anne; and I will do it: but the doctor need not begin to cry out about cancelling the engagement."
"How much do you owe, Val?"
"I can't tell."
Lord Hartledon thought this an evasion. But it was true. Val Elster knew he owed a great deal more than he could pay; but how much it might be on the whole, he had but a very faint idea.
"Well, Val, I have told the doctor I shall look into matters, and I hope to do it efficiently, for Anne's sake. I suppose the best thing will be to try and get you an appointment again."
"Oh, Edward, if you would! And you know you have the ear of the ministry."
"I dare say it can be managed. But this will be of little use if you are still to remain an embarrassed man. I hear you were afraid of arrest in London."
"Who told you that?"
"Dawkes."
"Dawkes! Then, Edward--" Val Elster stopped. In his vexation, he was about to retaliate on Captain Dawkes by a little revelation on the score of _his_ affairs, certain things that might not have redounded to that gallant officer's credit. But he arrested the words in time: he was of a kindly nature, not fond of returning ill for ill. With all his follies, Val Elster could not remember to have committed an evil act in all his life, save one. And that one he had still the pleasure of paying for pretty deeply.
"Dawkes knows nothing of my affairs except from hearsay, Edward. I was once intimate with the man; but he served me a shabby trick, and that ended the friendship. I don't like him."
"I dare say what he said was not true," said Lord Hartledon kindly. "You might as well make a confidant of me. However, I have not time to talk to-day. We will go into the matter, Val, after Monday, when this race has come off, and see what arrangement can be made for you. There's only one thing bothers me."
"What's that?"
"The danger that it may be a wasted arrangement. If you are only set up on your legs to come down again, as you have before, it will be so much waste of time and money; so much loss, to me, of temper. Don't you see, Val?"
Percival Elster stopped in his walk, and withdrew his arm from his brother's; his face and voice full of emotion.
"Edward, I have learnt a lesson. What it has cost me I hardly yet know: but it is _learnt_. On my sacred word of honour, in the solemn presence of Heaven, I assert it, that I will never put my hand to another bill, whatever may be the temptation. I have overcome, in this respect at least, my sin."
"Your sin?"
"My nature's great sin; the besetting sin that has clung to me through life; the unfortunate sin that is my bane to this hour--cowardly irresolution."
"All right, Val; I see you mean well now. We'll talk of these matters next week. Instead of Elster's Folly, let it become Elster's Wisdom."
Lord Hartledon wrung his brother's hand and turned away. His eyes fell on Miss Ashton, and he went straight up to her. Putting the young lady's arm within his own, without word or ceremony, he took her off to a distance: and old Lady Kirton's skirts went round in a dance as she saw it.
"I am about to take him in hand, Anne, and set him going again: I have promised Dr. Ashton. We must get him a snug berth; one that even the doctor won't object to, and set him straight in other matters. If he has mortgaged his patrimony, it shall be redeemed. And, Anne, I think--I do think--he may be trusted to keep straight for the future."
Her soft sweet eyes sparkled with pleasure, and her lips parted with a sunny smile. Lord Hartledon took her hand within his own as it lay on his arm, and the furious old dowager saw it all from the distance.
"Don't say as much as this to him, Anne: I only tell you. Val is so sanguine, that it may be better not to tell him all beforehand. And I want, of course, first of all, to get a true list of--that is, a true statement of facts," he broke off, not caring to speak the word "debts" to that delicate girl before him. "He is my only brother; my father left him to me, for he knew what Val was; and I'll do my best for him. I'd do it for Val's own sake, apart from the charge. And, Anne, once Val is on his legs with an income, snug and comfortable, I shall recommend him to marry without delay; for, after all, you will be his greatest safeguard."
A blush suffused her face, and Lord Hartledon smiled.
Down came the countess-dowager.
"Here's that old dowager calling to me. She never lets me alone. Val sent me into a fit of laughter yesterday, saying she had designs on me for Maude. Poor deluded woman! Yes, ma'am, I hear. What is it?"
Mr. Elster went strolling along on the banks of the river, towards Calne; not with any particular purpose, but in his restless uneasiness. He had a tender conscience, and his past follies were pressing on it heavily. Of one thing he felt sure--that he was more deeply involved than Hartledon or anyone else suspected, perhaps even himself. The way was charming in fine weather, though less pleasant in winter. It was by no means a frequented road, and belonged of right to Lord Hartledon only; but it was open to all. Few chose it when they could traverse the more ordinary way. The narrow path on the green plain, sheltered by trees, wound in and out, now on the banks of the river, now hidden amidst a portion of the wood. Altogether it was a wild and lonely pathway; not one that a timid nature would choose on a dark night. You might sit in the wood, which lay to the left, a whole day through, and never see a soul.
One part of the walk was especially beautiful. A green hollow, where the turf was soft as moss; open to the river on the right, with a glimpse of the lovely scenery beyond; and on the left, the clustering trees of the wood. Yet further, through a break in the trees, might be seen a view of the houses of Calne. A little stream, or rivulet, trickled from the wood, and a rustic bridge--more for ornament than use, for a man with long legs could stride the stream well--was thrown over it. Val had reached thus far, when he saw someone standing on the bridge, his arms on the parapet, apparently in a brown study.
A dark, wild-looking man, whose face, at the first glimpse, seemed all hair. There was certainly a profusion of it; eyebrows, beard, whiskers, all heavy, and black as night. He was attired in loose fustian clothes with a red handkerchief wound round his throat, and a low slouching hat--one of those called wide-awake--partially concealed his features. By his side stood another man in plain, dark, rather seedy clothes, the coat outrageously long. He wore a cloth hat, whose brim hid his face, and he was smoking a cigar. Both men were slightly built and under middle height. This one was adorned with red whiskers.
The moment Mr. Elster set eyes on the dark one, he felt that he saw the man Pike before him. It happened that he had not met him during these few days of his sojourn; but some of the men staying at Hartledon had, and had said what a loose specimen he appeared to be. The other was a stranger, and did not look like a countryman at all.
Mr. Elster saw them both give a sharp look at him as he approached; and then they spoke together. Both stepped off the bridge, as though deferring to him, and stood aside as they watched him cross over, Pike touching his wide-awake.
"Good-day, my lord."
Val nodded by way of answer, and continued his stroll onwards. In the look he had taken at Pike, it struck him he had seen the face before: something in the countenance seemed familiar to his memory. And to his surprise he saw that the man was young.
The supposed reminiscence did not trouble him: he was too pre-occupied with thoughts of his own affairs to have leisure for Mr. Pike's. A short bit of road, and this rude, sheltered part of the way terminated in more open ground, where three paths diverged: one to the front of Hartledon; one to some cottages, and on through the wood to the high-road; and one towards the Rectory and Calne. Rural paths still, all of them; and the last was provided with a bench or two. Val Elster strolled on almost to the Rectory, and then turned back: he had no errand at Calne, and the Rectory he would rather keep out of just now. When he reached the little bridge Pike was on it alone; the other had disappeared. As before, he stepped off to make way for Mr. Elster.
"I beg pardon, sir, for addressing you just now as Lord Hartledon."
The salutation took Val by surprise; and though the voice seemed muffled, as though the man purposely mouthed his words, the accent and language were superior to anything he might have expected from one of Mr. Pike's appearance and reputed character.
"No matter," said Val, courteous even to Pike, in his kindly nature. "You mistook me for my brother. Many do."
"Not I," returned the man, assuming a freedom and a roughness at variance with his evident intelligence. "I know you for the Honourable Percival Elster."
"Ah," said Mr. Elster, a slight curiosity stirring his mind, but not sufficient to induce him to follow it up.
"But I like to do a good turn if I can," pursued Pike; "and I think, sir, I did one to you in calling you Lord Hartledon."
Val Elster had been passing on. He turned and looked at the man.
"Are you in any little temporary difficulty, might I ask?" continued Pike. "No offense, sir; princes have been in such before now."
Val Elster was so supremely conscious, especially in that reflective hour, of being in a "little difficulty" that might prove more than temporary, that he could only stare at the questioner and wait for more.
"No offence again, if I'm wrong," resumed Pike; "but if that man you saw here on the bridge is not looking after the Honourable Mr. Elster, I'm a fool."
"Why do you think this?" inquired Val, too fully aware that the fact was a likely one to attempt any reproof or disavowal.
"I'll tell you," said Pike; "I've said I don't mind doing a good turn when I can. The man arrived here this morning by the slow six train from London. He went into the Stag and had his breakfast, and has been covertly dodging about ever since. He inquired his way to Hartledon. The landlord of the Stag asked him what he wanted there, and got for answer that his brother was one of the grooms in my lord's service. Bosh! He went up, sneaking under the hedges and along by-ways, and took a view of the house, standing a good hour behind a tree while he did it. I was watching him."
It instantly struck Percival Elster, by one of those flashes of conviction that are no less sure than subtle, that Mr. Pike's interest in this watching arose from a fear that the stranger might have been looking after _him_. Pike continued: "After he had taken his fill of waiting, he came dodging down this way, and I got into conversation with him. He wanted to know who I was. A poor devil out of work, I told him; a soldier once, but maimed and good for little now. We got chatty. I let him think he might trust me, and he began asking no end of questions about Mr. Elster: whether he went out much, what were his hours for going out, which road he mostly took in his walks, and how he could know him from his brother the earl; he had heard they were alike. The hound was puzzled; he had seen a dozen swells come out of Hartledon, any one of which might be Mr. Elster; but I found he had the description pretty accurate. Whilst we were talking, who should come into view but yourself! 'This is him!' cried he. 'Not a bit of it,' said I, carelessly; 'that's my lord.' Now you know, sir, why I saluted you as Lord Hartledon."
"Where is he now?" asked Percival Elster, feeling that he owed his present state of liberty to this lawless man.
Pike pointed to the narrow path in the wood, leading to the high-road. "I filled him up with the belief that the way beyond this bridge up to Hartledon was private, and he might be taken up for trespassing if he attempted to follow it; so he went off that way to watch the front. If the fellow hasn't a writ in his pocket, or something worse, call me a simpleton. You are all right, sir, as long as he takes you for Lord Hartledon."
But there was little chance the fellow could long take him for Lord Hartledon, and Percival Elster felt himself attacked with a shiver. He knew it to be worse than a writ; it was an arrest. An arrest is not a pleasant affair for any one; but a strong opinion--a certainty--seized upon Val's mind that this would bring forth Dr. Ashton's veto of separation from Anne.
"I thank you for what you have done," frankly spoke Mr. Elster.
"It's nothing, sir. He'll be dodging about after his prey; but I'll dodge about too, and thwart his game if I can, though I have to swear that Lord Hartledon's not himself. What's an oath, more or less, to me?"
"Where have I seen you before?" asked Val.
"Hard to say," returned Pike. "I have knocked about in many parts in my time."
"Are you from this neighbourhood?"
"Never was in these parts at all till a year or so ago. It's not two years yet."
"What are you doing here?"
"What I can. A bit of work when I can get it given to me. I went tramping the country after I left the regiment--" "Then you have been a soldier?" interrupted Mr. Elster.
"Yes, sir. In tramping the country I came upon this place: I crept into a shed, and was there for some days; rheumatism took hold of me, and I couldn't move. It was something to find I had a roof of any sort over my head, and was let lie in it unmolested: and when I got better I stayed on."
"And have adopted it as your own, putting a window and a chimney into it! But do you know that Lord Hartledon may not choose to retain you as a tenant?"
"If Lord Hartledon should think of ousting me, I would ask Mr. Elster to intercede, in requital for the good turn I've done him this day," was the bold answer.
Mr. Elster laughed. "What is your name?"
"Tom Pike."
"I hear a great deal said of you, Pike, that's not pleasant; that you are a poacher, and a--" "Let them that say so prove it," interrupted Pike, his dark brows contracting.
"But how do you manage to live?"
"That's my business, and not Calne's. At any rate, Mr. Elster, I don't steal."
"I heard a worse hint dropped of you than any I have mentioned," continued Val, after a pause.
"Tell it out, sir. Let's have the whole catalogue at once."
"That the night my brother, Mr. Elster, was shot, you were out with the poachers."
"I dare say you heard that I shot him, for I know it has been said," fiercely cried the man. "It's a black lie! --and the time may come when I shall ram it down Calne's throat. I swear that I never fired a shot that night; I swear that I no more had a hand in Mr. Elster's death than you had. Will you believe me, sir?"
The accents of truth are rarely to be mistaken, and Val was certain he heard them now. So far, he believed the man; and from that moment dismissed the doubt from his mind, if indeed he had not dismissed it before.
"Do you know who did fire the shot?"
"I do not; I was not out at all that night. Calne pitched upon me, because there was no one else in particular to pitch upon. A dozen poachers were in the fray, most of them with guns; little wonder the random shot from one should have found a mark. I know nothing more certain than that, so help--" "That will do," interrupted Mr. Elster, arresting what might be coming; for he disliked strong language. "I believe you fully, Pike. What part of the country were you born in?"
"London. Born and bred in it."
"That I do not believe," he said frankly. "Your accent is not that of a Londoner."
"As you will, sir," returned Pike. "My mother was from Devonshire; but I was born and bred in London. I recognized that one with the writ for a fellow cockney at once; and for what he was, too--a sheriffs officer. Shouldn't be surprised but I knew him for one years ago."
Val Elster dropped a coin into the man's hand, and bade him good morning. Pike touched his wide-awake, and reiterated his intention of "dodging the enemy." But, as Mr. Elster cautiously pursued his way, the face he had just quitted continued to haunt him. It was not like any face he had ever seen, as far as he could remember; nevertheless ever and anon some reminiscence seemed to start out of it and vibrate upon a chord in his memory.
|
{
"id": "16798"
}
|
7
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LISTENERS.
|
It was a somewhat singular coincidence, noted after the terrible event, now looming in the distance, had taken place, and when people began to weigh the various circumstances surrounding it, that Monday, the second day fixed for the boat-race, should be another day of rain. As though Heaven would have interposed to prevent it! said the thoughtful and romantic.
A steady, pouring rain; putting a stop again to the race for that day. The competitors might have been willing to face the elements themselves, but could not subject the fair spectators to the infliction. There was some inward discontent, and a great deal of outward grumbling; it did no good, and the race was put off until the next day.
Val Elster still retained his liberty. Very chary indeed had he been of showing himself outside the door on Saturday, once he was safely within it. Neither had any misfortune befallen Lord Hartledon. That unconscious victim must have contrived, in all innocence, to "dodge" the gentleman who was looking out for him, for they did not meet.
On the Sunday it happened that neither of the brothers went to church. Lord Hartledon, on awaking in the morning, found he had a sore throat, and would not get up. Val did not dare show himself out of doors. Not from fear of arrest that day, but lest any officious meddler should point him out as the real Simon Pure, Percival Elster. But for these circumstances, the man with the writ could hardly have remained under the delusion, as he appeared at church himself.
"Which is Lord Hartledon?" he whispered to his neighbour on the free benches, when the party from the great house had entered, and settled themselves in their pews.
"I don't see him. He has not come to-day."
"Which is Mr. Elster?"
"He has not come, either." So for that day recognition was escaped.
It was not to be so on the next. The rain, as I have said, came down, putting off the boat-race, and keeping Hartledon's guests indoors all the morning; but late in the afternoon some unlucky star put it into Lord Hartledon's head to go down to the Rectory. His throat was better--almost well again; and he was not a man to coddle himself unnecessarily.
He paid his visit, stayed talking a considerable time with Mrs. Ashton, whose company he liked, and took his departure about six o'clock. "You and Anne might almost walk up with me," he remarked to the doctor as he shook hands; for the Rector and Miss Ashton were to dine at Hartledon that day. It was to have been the crowning festival to the boat-race--the race which now had not taken place.
Lord Hartledon looked up at the skies, and found he had no occasion to open his umbrella, for the rain had ceased. Sundry bright rays in the west seemed to give hope that the morrow would be fair; and, rejoicing in this cheering prospect, he crossed the broad Rectory lawn. As he went through the gate some one laid a hand upon his shoulder.
"The Honourable Percival Elster, I believe?"
Lord Hartledon looked at the intruder. A seedy man, with a long coat and red whiskers, who held out something to him.
"Who are you?" he asked, releasing his shoulder by a sharp movement.
"I'm sorry to do it, sir; but you know we are only the agent of others in these affairs. You are my prisoner, sir."
"Indeed!" said Lord Hartledon, taking the matter coolly. "You have got hold of the wrong man for once. I am not Mr. Percival Elster."
The capturer laughed: a very civil laugh. "It won't do, sir; we often have that trick tried on us."
"But I tell you I am _not_ Mr. Elster," he reiterated, speaking this time with some anger. "I am Lord Hartledon."
He of the loose coat shook his head. He had his hand again on the supposed Mr. Elster's arm, and told him he must go with him.
"You cannot take me; you cannot arrest a peer. This is simply ridiculous," continued Lord Hartledon, almost laughing at the real absurdity of the thing. "Any child in Calne could tell you who I am."
"As well make no words over it, sir. It's only waste of time."
"You have a warrant--as I understand--to arrest Mr. Percival Elster?"
"Yes, sir, I have. The man that was looking for you in London got taken ill, and couldn't come down, so our folks sent me. 'You'll know him by his good looks,' said they; 'an aristocrat every inch of him.' Don't give me trouble, sir."
"Well now--I am not Percival Elster: I am his brother, Lord Hartledon. You cannot take one brother for another; and, what's more, you had better not try to do it. Stay! Look here."
He pulled out his card-case, and showed his cards--"Earl of Hartledon." He exhibited a couple of letters that happened to be about him--"The Right Honble. the Earl of Hartledon." It was of no use.
"I've known that dodge tried before too," said his obstinate capturer.
Lord Hartledon was growing more angry. He saw some proof must be tendered before he could regain his liberty. Jabez Gum happened to be standing at his gate opposite, and he called to him.
"Will you be so kind as to tell this man who I am, Mr. Gum. He is mistaking me for some one else."
"This is the Earl of Hartledon," said Jabez, promptly.
A moment's hesitation on the officer's part; but he felt too sure of his man to believe this. "I'll take the risk," said he, stolidly. "Where's the good of your holding out, Mr. Elster?"
"Come this way, then!" cried Lord Hartledon, beginning to lose his temper. "And if you carry this too far, my man, I'll have you punished."
He went striding up to the Rectory. Had he taken a moment for consideration, he might have turned away, rather than expose this misfortune of Val's there. The doctor came into the hall, and was recognized as the Rector, and there was some little commotion; Anne's white face looking on from a distance. The man was convinced, and took his departure, considerably crestfallen.
"What is the amount?" called the doctor, sternly.
"Not very much, _this_, sir. It's under three hundred."
Which was as much as to say there was more behind it. Dr. Ashton mentally washed his hands of Percival Elster as a future son-in-law.
The first intimation that ill-starred gentleman received of the untoward turn affairs were taking was from the Rector himself.
Mr. Percival Elster had been chuckling over that opportune sore throat, as a means of keeping his brother indoors; and it never occurred to him that Lord Hartledon would venture out at all on the Monday. Being a man with his wits about him, it had not failed to occur to his mind that there was a possibility of Lord Hartledon's being arrested in place of himself; but so long as Hartledon kept indoors the danger was averted. Had Percival Elster seen his brother go out he might have plucked up courage to tell him the state of affairs.
But he did not see him. Lounging idly--what else had he, a poor prisoner, to do? --in the sunny society of Maude Kirton and other attractive girls, Mr. Elster was unconscious of the movements of the household in general. He was in his own room dressing for dinner when the truth burst upon him.
Dr. Ashton was a straightforward; practical man--it has been already stated--who went direct to the point at once in any matters of difficulty. He arrived at Hartledon a few minutes before the dinner-hour, found Mr. Elster was yet in his dressing-room, and went there to him.
The news, the cool, scornful anger of the Rector, the keen question--"Was he mad?" burst upon the unhappy Val like a clap of thunder. He was standing in his shirt-sleeves, ready to go down, all but his coat and waistcoat, his hair-brushes in the uplifted hands. Hands and brushes had been arrested midway in the shock. The calm clerical man; all the more terrible then because of his calmness; standing there with his cold stinging words, and his unhappy culprit facing him, conscious of his heinous sins--the worst sin of all: that of being found out.
"Others have done so much before me, sir, and have not made the less good men," spoke Val, in his desperation.
Dr. Ashton could not help admiring the man, as he stood there in his physical beauty. In spite of his inward anger, his condemnation, his disappointment--and they were all very great--the good looks of Percival Elster struck him forcibly with a sort of annoyance: why should these men be so outwardly fair, so inwardly frail? Those good looks had told upon his daughter's heart; and they all loved _her_, and could not bear to cause her pain. Tall, supple, graceful, strong, towering nearly a head above the doctor, he stood, his pleasing features full of the best sort of attraction, his violet eyes rather wider open than usual, the waves of his silken hair smooth and bright. "If he were only half as fair in conduct as in looks!" muttered the grieved divine.
But those violet eyes, usually beaming with kindness, suddenly changed their present expression of depreciation to one of rage. Dr. Ashton gave a pretty accurate description of how the crisis had been brought to his knowledge--that Lord Hartledon had come to the Rectory, with his mistaken assailant, to be identified; and Percival Elster's anger was turned against his brother. Never in all his life had he been in so great a passion; and having to suppress its signs in the presence of the Rector only made the fuel burn more fiercely. To ruin him with the doctor by going _there_ with the news! Anywhere else--anywhere but the Rectory!
Hedges, the butler, interrupted the conference. Dinner was waiting. Lord Hartledon looked at Val as the two entered the room, and was rather surprised at the furious gaze of reproach that was cast back on him.
Miss Ashton was not there. No, of course not! It needed not Val's glance around to be assured of that. Of course they were to be separated from that hour; the fiat was already gone forth. And Mr. Val Elster felt so savage that he could have struck his brother. He heard Dr. Ashton's reply to an inquiry--that Mrs. Ashton was feeling unusually poorly, and Anne remained at home with her--but he looked upon it as an evasion. Not a word did he speak during dinner: not a word, save what was forced from him by common courtesy, spoke he after the ladies had left the room; he only drank a great deal of wine.
A very unusual circumstance for Val Elster. With all his weak resolution, his yielding nature, drinking was a fault he was scarcely ever seduced into. Not above two or three times in his life could he remember to have exceeded the bounds of strict, temperate sobriety. The fact was, he was in wrath with himself: all his past follies were pressing upon him with bitter condemnation. He was just in that frame of mind when an object to vent our fury upon becomes a sort of necessity; and Mr. Elster's was vented on his brother.
He was waiting at boiling-point for the opportunity to "have it out" with him: and it soon came. As the gentlemen left the dining-room--and in these present days they do not, as a rule, sit long, especially when the host is a young man--Percival Elster touched his brother to detain him, and shut the door on the heels of the rest.
Lord Hartledon was surprised. Val's attack was so savage. He was talking off his superfluous wrath, and the wine he had taken did not tend to cool his heat. Lord Hartledon, vexed at the injustice, lost his temper; and for once there was a quarrel, sharp and loud, between the brothers. It did not last long; in its very midst they parted; throwing cutting words one at the other. Lord Hartledon quitted the room, to join his guests; Val Elster strode outside the window to cool his brain.
But now, look at the obstinate pride of those two foolish men! They were angry with each other in temper, but not in heart. In Percival Elster's conscience there was an underlying conviction that his brother had acted only in thoughtless impulse when he carried the misfortune to the Rectory; whilst Lord Hartledon was even then full of plans for serving Val, and considered he had more need to help him than ever. A day or two given to the indulgence of their anger, and they would be firmer friends than ever.
The large French window of the dining-room, opening to the ground, was flung back by Val Elster; and he stepped forth into the cool night, which was beautifully fine. The room looked towards the river. The velvet lawn, wet with the day's rain, lay calm and silent under the bright stars; the flowers, clustering around far and wide, gave out their sweet and heavy night perfume. Not an instant had he been outside when he became conscious that some figure was gliding towards him--was almost close to him; and he recognised Mr. Pike. Yes, that worthy gentleman appeared to be only then arriving on his evening visit: in point of fact, he had been glued ear and eye to the window during the quarrel.
"What do you want?" demanded Mr. Elster.
"Well, I came up here hoping to get a word with you, sir," replied the man in his rough, abrupt manner, more in character with his appearance and lawless reputation than with his accent and unmistakable intelligence. "There was a nasty accident a few hours ago: that shark came across his lordship."
"I know he did," savagely spoke Val. "The result of your informing him that I was Lord Hartledon."
"I did it for the best, Mr. Elster. He'd have nabbed you that very time, but for my putting him off the scent as I did."
"Yes, yes, I am aware you did it for the best, and I suppose it turned out to be so," quickly replied Val, some of his native kindliness resuming its sway. "It's an unfortunate affair altogether, and that's the best that can be said of it."
"What I came up here for was to tell you he was gone."
"Who is gone?"
"The shark."
"Gone!"
"He went off by the seven train. Lord Hartledon told him he'd communicate with his principals and see that the affair was arranged. It satisfied the man, and he went away by the next train--which happened to be the seven-o'clock one."
"How do you know this?" asked Mr. Elster.
"This way," was the answer. "I was hovering about outside that shed of mine, and I saw the encounter at the parson's gate--for that's where it took place. The first thing the fellow did when it was all over was to bolt across the road, and accuse me of purposely misleading him. 'Not a bit of it,' said I; 'if I did mislead you, it was unintentional, for I took the one who came over the bridge on Saturday to be Lord Hartledon, safe as eggs. But they have been down here only a week,' I went on, 'and I suppose I don't know 'em apart yet.' I can't say whether he believed me; I think he did; he's a soft sort of chap. It was all right, he said: the earl had passed his word to him that it should be made so without his arresting Mr. Elster, and he was off to London at once."
"And he has gone?"
Mr. Pike nodded significantly. "I watched him go; dodged him up to the station and saw him off."
Then this one danger was over! Val might breathe freely again.
"And I thought you would like to know the coast was clear; so I came up to tell you," concluded Pike.
"Thank you for your trouble," said Mr. Elster. "I shall not forget it."
"You'll remember it, perhaps, if a question arises touching that shed," spoke the man. "I may need a word sometime with Lord Hartledon."
"I'll remember it, Pike. Here, wait a moment. Is Thomas Pike your real name?"
"Well, I conclude it is. Pike was the name of my father and mother. As to Thomas--not knowing where I was christened, I can't go and look at the register; but they never called me anything but Tom. Did you wish to know particularly?"
There was a tone of mockery in the man's answer, not altogether acceptable to his hearer; and he let him go without further hindrance. But the man turned back in an instant of his own accord.
"I dare say you are wanting to know why I did you this little turn, Mr. Elster. I have been caught in corners myself before now; and if I can help anybody to get out of them without trouble to myself, I'm willing to do it. And to circumvent these law-sharks comes home to my spirit as wholesome refreshment."
Mr. Pike finally departed. He took the lonely way, and only struck into the high-road opposite his own domicile, the shed. Passing round it, he hovered at its rude door--the one he had himself made, along with the ruder window--and then, treading softly, he stepped to the low stile in the hedge, which had for years made the boundary between the waste land on which the shed stood and Clerk Gum's garden. Here he halted a minute, looking all ways. Then he stepped over the stile, crouched down amongst Mr. Gum's cabbages, got under shelter of the hedge, and so stole onwards, until he came to an anchor at the kitchen-window, and laid his ear to the shutter, just as it had recently been laid against the glass in the dining-room of my Lord Hartledon.
That he had a propensity for prying into the private affairs of his neighbours near and distant, there could be little doubt about. Mr. Pike, however, was not destined on this one occasion to reap any substantial reward. The kitchen appeared to be wrapped in perfect silence. Satisfying himself as to this, he next took off his heavy shoes, stole past the back door, and so round the clerk's house to the front. Very softly indeed went he, creeping by the wall, and emerging at last round the angle, by the window of the best parlour. Here, most excessively to Mr. Pike's consternation, he came upon a lady doing exactly what he had come to do--namely, stealthily listening at the window to anything there might be to hear inside.
The shrill scream she gave when she found her face in contact with the wild intruder, might have been heard over at Dr. Ashton's. Clerk Gum, who had been quietly writing in his office, came out in haste, and recognized Mrs. Jones, the wife of the surly porter at the station, and step-mother to the troublesome young servant, Rebecca. Pike had totally disappeared.
Mrs. Jones, partly through fright, partly in anger arising from a long-standing grievance, avowed the truth boldly: she had been listening at the parlour-shutters ever since she went out of the house ten minutes ago, and had been set upon by that wolf Pike.
"Set upon!" exclaimed the clerk, looking swiftly in all directions for the offender.
"I don't know what else you can call it, when a highway robber--a murderer, if all tales be true--steals round upon you without warning, and glares his eyes into yours," shrieked Mrs. Jones wrathfully. "And if he wasn't barefoot, Gum, my eyes strangely deceived me. I'd have you and Nancy take care of your throats."
She turned into the house, to the best parlour, where the clerk's wife was sitting with a visitor, Mirrable. Mrs. Gum, when she found what the commotion had been about, gave a sharp cry of terror, and shook from head to foot.
"On our premises! Close to our house! That dreadful man! Oh, Lydia, don't you think you were mistaken?"
"Mistaken!" retorted Mrs. Jones. "That wild face isn't one to be mistaken: I should like to see its fellow in Calne. Why Lord Hartledon don't have him taken up on suspicion of that murder, is odd to me."
"You'd better hold your tongue about that suspicion," interposed Mirrable. "I have cautioned you before, _I_ shouldn't like to breathe a word against a desperate man; I should go about in fear that he might hear of it, and revenge himself."
In came the clerk. "I don't see a sign of any one about," he said; "and I'm sure whoever it was could not have had time to get away. You must have been mistaken, Mrs. Jones."
"Mistaken in what, pray?"
"That any man was there. You got confused, and fancied it, perhaps. As to Pike, he'd never dare come on my premises, whether by night or day. What were you doing at the window?"
"Listening," defiantly replied Mrs. Jones. "And now I'll just tell out what I've had in my head this long while, Mr. Gum, and know the reason of Nancy's slighting me in the way she does. What secret has she and Mary Mirrable got between them?"
"Secret?" repeated the clerk, whilst his wife gave a faint cry, and Mirrable turned her calm face on Mrs. Jones. "Have they a secret?"
"Yes, they have," raved Mrs. Jones, giving vent to her long pent-up emotion. "If they haven't, I'm blind and deaf. If I have come into your house once during the past year and found Mrs. Mirrable in it, and the two sitting and whispering, I've come ten times. This evening I came in at dusk; I turned the handle of the door and peeped into the best parlour, and there they were, nose and knees together, starting away from each other as soon as they saw me, Nance giving one of her faint cries, and the two making believe to have been talking of the weather. It's always so. And I want to know what secret they have got hold of, and whether I'm poison, that I can't be trusted with it."
Jabez Gum slowly turned his eyes on the two in question. His wife lifted her hands in deprecation at the idea that she should have a secret: Mirrable was laughing.
"Nancy's secret to-night, when you interrupted us, was telling me of a dream she had regarding Lord Hartledon, and of how she mistook Mr. Elster for him the morning he came down," cried the latter. "And if you have really been listening at the shutters since you went out, Mrs. Jones, you should by this time know how to pickle walnuts in the new way: for I declare that is all our conversation has been about since. You always were suspicious, you know, and you always will be."
"Look here, Mrs. Jones," said the clerk, decisively; "I don't choose to have my shutters listened at: it might give the house a bad name, for quarrelling, or something of that sort. So I'll trouble you not to repeat what you have done to-night, or I shall forbid your coming here. A secret, indeed!"
"Yes, a secret!" persisted Mrs. Jones. "And if I don't come at what it is one of these days, my name's not Lydia Jones. And I'll tell you why. It strikes me--I may be wrong--but it strikes me it concerns me and my husband and my household, which some folks are ever ready to interfere with. I'll take myself off now; and I would recommend you, as a parting warning, to denounce Pike to the police for an attempt at housebreaking, before you're both murdered in your bed. That'll be the end on't."
She went away, and Clerk Gum wished he could denounce _her_ to the police. Mirrable laughed again; and Mrs. Gum, cowardly and timid, fell back in her chair as one seized with ague.
Beyond giving an occasional dole to Mrs. Jones for her children--and to tell the truth, she clothed them all, or they would have gone in rags--Mirrable had shaken her cousin off long ago: which of course did not tend to soothe the naturally jealous spirit of Mrs. Jones. At Hartledon House she was not welcomed, and could not go there; but she watched for the visits of Mirrable at the clerk's, and was certain to intrude on those occasions.
"I'll find it out!" she repeated to herself, as she went storming through the garden-gate; "I'll find it out. And as to that poacher, he'd better bring his black face near mine again!"
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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8
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THE WAGER BOATS.
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Tuesday morning rose, bright and propitious: a contrast to the two previous days arranged for the boat-race. All was pleasure, bustle, excitement at Hartledon: but the coolness that had arisen between the brothers was noticed by some of the guests. Neither of them was disposed to take the first step towards reconciliation: and, indeed, a little incident that occurred that morning led to another ill word between them. An account that had been standing for more than two years was sent in to Lord Hartledon's steward; it was for some harness, a saddle, a silver-mounted whip, and a few trifles of that sort, supplied by a small tradesman in the village. Lord Hartledon protested there was nothing of the sort owing; but upon inquiry the debtor proved to be Mr. Percival Elster. Lord Hartledon, vexed that any one in the neighbourhood should have waited so long for his money, said a sharp word on the score to Percival; and the latter retorted as sharply that it was no business of his. Again Val was angry with himself, and thus gave vent to his temper. The fact was, he had completely forgotten the trifling debt, and was as vexed as Hartledon that it should have been allowed to remain unpaid: but the man had not sent him any reminder whilst he was away.
"Pay it to-day, Marris," cried Lord Hartledon to his steward. "I won't have this sort of thing at Calne."
His tone was one of irritation--or it sounded so to the ears of his conscious brother, and Val bit his lips. After that, throughout the morning, they maintained a studied silence towards each other; and this was observed, but was not commented on. Val was unusually quiet altogether: he was saying to himself that he was sullen.
The starting-hour for the race was three o'clock; but long before that time the scene was sufficiently animated, not to say exciting. It was a most lovely afternoon. Not a trace remained of the previous day's rain; and the river--wide just there, as it took the sweeping curve of the point--was dotted with these little wager boats. Their owners for the time being, in their white boating-costume, each displaying his colours, were in highest spirits; and the fair gazers gathered on the banks were anxious as to the result. The favourite was Lord Hartledon--by long odds, as Mr. Shute grumbled. Had his lordship been known not to possess the smallest chance, nine of those fair girls out of ten would, nevertheless, have betted upon him. Some of them were hoping to play for a deeper stake than a pair of gloves. A staff, from which fluttered a gay little flag, had been driven into the ground, exactly opposite the house; it was the starting and the winning point. At a certain distance up the river, near to the mill, a boat was moored in mid-stream: this they would row round, and come back again.
At three o'clock they were to take the boats; and, allowing for time being wasted in the start, might be in again and the race won in three-quarters-of-an-hour. But, as is often the case, the time was not adhered to; one hindrance after another occurred; there was a great deal of laughing and joking, forgetting of things, and of getting into order; and at a quarter to four they were not off. But all were ready at last, and most of the rowers were each in his little cockle-shell. Lord Hartledon lingered yet in the midst of the group of ladies, all clustered together at one spot, who were keeping him with their many comments and questions. Each wore the colours of her favourite: the crimson and purple predominating, for they were those of their host. Lady Kirton displayed her loyalty in a conspicuous manner. She had an old crimson gauze skirt on, once a ball-dress, with ends of purple ribbon floating from it and fluttering in the wind; and a purple head-dress with a crimson feather. Maude, in a spirit of perversity, displayed a blue shoulder-knot, timidly offered to her by a young Oxford man who was staying there, Mr. Shute; and Anne Ashton wore the colours given her by Lord Hartledon.
"I can't stay; you'd keep me here all day: don't you see they are waiting for me?" he laughingly cried, extricating himself from the throng. "Why, Anne, my dear, is it you? How is it I did not see you before? Are you here alone?"
She had not long joined the crowd, having come up late from the Rectory, and had been standing outside, for she never put herself forward anywhere. Lord Hartledon drew her arm within his own for a moment and took her apart.
"Arthur came up with me: I don't know where he is now. Mamma was afraid to venture, fearing the grass might be damp."
"And the Rector _of course_ would not countenance us by coming," said Lord Hartledon, with a laugh. "I remember his prejudices against boating of old."
"He is coming to dinner."
"As you all are; Arthur also to-day. I made the doctor promise that. A jolly banquet we'll have, too, and toast the winner. Anne, I just wanted to say this to you; Val is in an awful rage with me for letting that matter get to the ears of your father, and I am not pleased with him; so altogether we are just now treating each other to a dose of sullenness, and when we do speak it's to growl like two amiable bears; but it shall make no difference to what I said last week. All shall be made smooth, even to the satisfaction of your father. You may trust me."
He ran off from her, stepped into the skiff, and was taking the sculls, when he uttered a sudden exclamation, leaped out again, and began to run with all speed towards the house.
"What is it? Where are you going?" asked the O'Moore, who was the appointed steward.
"I have forgotten--" _What_, they did not catch; the word was lost on the air.
"It is bad luck to turn back," called out Maude. "You won't win."
He was already half-way to the house. A couple of minutes after entering it he reappeared again, and came flying down the slopes at full speed. Suddenly his foot slipped, and he fell to the ground. The only one who saw the accident was Mr. O'Moore; the general attention at that moment being concentrated upon the river. He hastened back. Hartledon was then gathering himself up, but slowly.
"No damage," said he; "only a bit of a wrench to the foot. Give me your arm for a minute, O'Moore. This ground must be slippery from yesterday's rain."
Mr. O'Moore held out his arm, and Hartledon took it. "The ground is not slippery, Hart; it's as dry as a bone."
"Then what caused me to slip?"
"The rate you were coming at. Had you not better give up the contest, and rest?"
"Nonsense! My foot will be all right in the skiff. Let us get on; they'll all be out of patience."
When it was seen that something was amiss with him, that he leaned rather heavily on the O'Moore, eager steps pressed round him. Lord Hartledon laughed, making light of it; he had been so clumsy as to stumble, and had twisted his ankle a little. It was nothing.
"Stay on shore and give it a rest," cried one, as he stepped once more into the little boat. "I am sure you are hurt."
"Not I. It will have rest in the boat. Anne," he said, looking up at her with his pleasant smile, "do you wear my colours still?"
She touched the knot on her bosom, and smiled back to him, her tone full of earnestness. "I would wear them always."
And the countess-dowager, in her bedecked flounces and crimson feather, looked as if she would like to throw the knot and its wearer into the river, in the wake of the wager boats. After one or two false starts, they got off at last.
"Do you think it seemly, this flirtation of yours with Lord Hartledon?"
Anne turned in amazement. The face of the old dowager was close to her; the snub nose and rouged cheeks and false flaxen front looked ready to eat her up.
"I have no flirtation with Lord Hartledon, Lady Kirton; or he with me. When I was a child, and he a great boy, years older, he loved me and petted me as a little sister: I think he does the same still."
"My daughter tells me you are counting upon one of the two. If I say to you, do not be too sanguine of either, I speak as a friend; as your mother might speak. Lord Hartledon is already appropriated; and Val Elster is not worth appropriating."
Was she mad? Anne Ashton looked at her, really doubting it. No, she was only vulgar-minded, and selfish, and utterly impervious to all sense of shame in her scheming. Instinctively Anne moved a pace further off.
"I do not think Lord Hartledon is appropriated yet," spoke Anne, in a little spirit of mischievous retaliation. "That some amongst his present guests would be glad to appropriate him may be likely enough; but what if he is not willing to be appropriated? He said to Mr. Elster, last week, that they were wasting their time."
"Who's Mr. Elster?" cried the angry dowager. "What right has he to be at Hartledon, poking his nose into everything that does not concern him? --what right has he, I ask?"
"The right of being Lord Hartledon's brother," carelessly replied Anne.
"It is a right he had best not presume upon," rejoined Lady Kirton. "Brothers are brothers as children; but the tie widens as they grow up and launch out into their different spheres. There's not a man of all Hartledon's guests but has more right to be here than Val Elster."
"Yet they are brothers still."
"Brothers! I'll take care that Val Elster presumes no more upon the tie when Maude reigns at--" For once the countess-dowager caught up her words. She had said more than she had meant to say. Anne Ashton's calm sweet eyes were bent upon her, waiting for more.
"It is true," she said, giving a shake to the purple tails, and taking a sudden resolution, "Maude is to be his wife; but I ought not to have let it slip out. It was unintentional; and I throw myself on your honour, Miss Ashton."
"But it is not true?" asked Anne, somewhat perplexed.
"It _is_ true. Hartledon has his own reasons for keeping it quiet at present; but--you'll see when the time comes. Should I take upon myself so much rule here, but that it is to be Maude's future home?"
"I don't believe it," cried Anne, as the old story-teller sailed off. "That she loves him, and that her mother is anxious to secure him, is evident; but he is truthful and open, and would never conceal it. No, no, Lady Maude! you are cherishing a false hope. You are very beautiful, but you are not worthy of him; and I should not like you for my sister-in-law at all. That dreadful old countess-dowager! How she dislikes Val, and how rude she is! I'll try not to come in her way again after to-day, as long as they are at Hartledon."
"What are you thinking of, Anne?"
"Oh, not much," she answered, with a soft blush, for the questioner was Mr. Elster. "Do you think your brother has hurt himself much, Val?"
"I didn't know he had hurt himself at all," returned Val rather coolly, who had been on the river at the time in somebody's skiff, and saw nothing of the occurrence. "What has he done?"
"He slipped down on the slopes and twisted his ankle. I suppose they will be coming back soon."
"I suppose they will," was the answer. Val seemed in an ungracious mood. He and Mr. O'Moore and young Carteret were the only three who had remained behind. Anne asked Val why he did not go and look on; and he answered, because he didn't want to.
It was getting on for five o'clock when the boats were discerned returning. How they clustered on the banks, watching the excited rowers, some pale with their exertions, others in a white heat! Captain Dawkes was first, and was doing all he could to keep so; but when only a boat's length from the winning-post another shot past him, and won by half a length. It was the young Oxonian, Mr. Shute--though indeed it does not much matter who it was, save that it was not Lord Hartledon.
"Strike your colours, ladies, you that sport the crimson and purple!" called out a laughing voice from one of the skiffs. "Oxford blue wins."
Lord Hartledon arrived last. He did not get up for some minutes after the rest were in. In short, he was distanced.
"Hart has hurt his arm as well as his foot," observed one of the others, as he came alongside. "That's why he got distanced."
"No, it was not," dissented Lord Hartledon, looking up from his skiff at the crowd of fair faces bent down upon him. "My arm is all right; it only gave me a few twinges when I first started. My oar fouled, and I could not get right again; so, finding I had lost too much ground, I gave up the contest. Anne, had I known I should disgrace my colours, I would not have given them to _you_."
"Miss Ashton loses, and Maude wins!" cried the countess-dowager, executing a little dance of triumph. "Maude is the only one who wears the Oxford blue."
It was true. The young Oxonian was a retiring and timid man, and none had voluntarily assumed his colours. But no one heeded the countess-dowager.
"You are like a child, Hartledon, denying that your arm's damaged!" exclaimed Captain Dawkes. "I know it is: I could see it by the way you struck your oar all along."
What feeling is it in man that prompts him to disclaim physical pain? --make light of personal injury? Lord Hartledon's ankle was swelling, at the bottom of the boat; and without the slightest doubt his arm _was_ paining him, although perhaps at the moment not very considerably. But he maintained his own assertions, and protested his arm was as sound as the best arm present. "I could go over the work again with pleasure," cried he.
"Nonsense, Hart! You could not."
"And I _will_ go over it," he added, warming with the opposition. "Who'll try his strength with me? There's plenty of time before dinner."
"I will," eagerly spoke young Carteret, who had been, as was remarked, one of those on land, and was wild to be handling the oars. "If Dawkes will let me have his skiff, I'll bet you ten to five you are distanced again, Hartledon."
Perhaps Lord Hartledon had not thought his challenge would be taken seriously. But when he saw the eager, joyous look of the boy Carteret--he was not yet nineteen--the flushed pleasure of the beardless face, he would not have retracted it for the world. He was just as good-natured as Percival Elster.
"Dawkes will let you have his skiff, Carteret."
Captain Dawkes was exceedingly glad to be rid of it. Good boatman though he was, he rarely cared to spend his strength superfluously, when nothing was to be gained by it, and had no fancy to row his skiff back to its moorings, as most of the others were already doing with theirs. He leaped out.
"Any one but you, Hartledon, would be glad to come out of that tilting thing, and enjoy a rest, and get your face cool," cried the countess-dowager.
"I dare say they might, ma'am. I'm afraid I am given to obstinacy; always was. Be quick, Carteret."
Mr. Carteret was hastily stripping himself of his coat, and any odds and ends of attire he deemed superfluous. "One moment, Hartledon; only one moment," came the joyous response.
"And you'll come home with your arm and your ankle like your colours, Hartledon--crimson and purple," screamed the dowager. "And you'll be laid up, and go on perhaps to locked jaw; and then you'll expect me to nurse you!"
"I shall expect nothing of the sort, ma'am, I pledge you my word; I'll nurse myself. All ready, Carteret?"
"All ready. Same point as before, Hart?"
"Same point: round the boat and home again."
"And it's ten sovs. to five, Hart?"
"All right. You'll lose, Carteret."
Carteret laughed. He saw the five sovereigns as surely in his possession as he saw the sculls in his hands. There was no trouble with the start this time, and they were off at once.
Lord Hartledon took the lead. He was spurring his strength to the uttermost: perhaps out of bravado; that he might show them nothing was the matter with his arm. But Mr. Carteret gained on him; and as they turned the point and went out of sight, the young man's boat was the foremost.
The race had been kept--as the sporting men amongst them styled it--dark. Not an inkling of it had been suffered to get abroad, or, as Lord Hartledon had observed, they should have the banks swarming. The consequence was, that not more than half-a-dozen curious idlers had assembled: those were on the opposite side, and had now gone down with the boats to Calne. No spectators, either on the river or the shore, attended this lesser contest: Lord Hartledon and Mr. Carteret had it all to themselves.
And meanwhile, during the time Lord Hartledon had remained at rest in his skiff under the winning flag, Percival Elster never addressed one word to him. There he stood, on the edge of the bank; but not a syllable spoke he, good, bad, or indifferent.
Miss Ashton was looking for her brother, and might just as well have looked for a needle in a bottle of hay. Arthur was off somewhere.
"You need not go home yet, Anne," said Val.
"I must. I have to dress for dinner. It is all to be very smart to-night, you know," she said, with a merry laugh.
"With Shute in the post of honour. Who'd have thought that awkward, quiet fellow would win? I will see you home, Anne, if you must go."
Miss Ashton coloured vividly with embarrassment. In the present state of affairs, she did not know whether that might be permitted: poor Val was out of favour at the Rectory. He detected the feeling, and it tended to vex him more and more.
"Nonsense, Anne! The veto has not yet been interposed, and they can't kill you for allowing my escort. Stay here if you like: if you go, I shall see you home."
It was quite imperative that she should go, for dinner at Hartledon was that evening fixed for seven o'clock, and there would be little enough time to dress and return again. They set out, walking side by side. Anne told him of what Lord Hartledon had said to her that day; and Val coloured with shame at the sullenness he had displayed, and his heart went into a glow of repentance. Had he met his brother then, he had clasped his hand, and poured forth his contrition.
He met some one else instead, almost immediately. It was Dr. Ashton, coming for Anne. Percival was not wanted now: was not invited to continue his escort. A cold, civil word or two passed, and Val struck across the grove into the high-road, and returned to Hartledon.
He was about to turn in at the lodge-gates with his usual greeting to Mrs. Capper when his attention was caught by a figure coming down the avenue. A man in a long coat, his face ornamented with red whiskers. It required no second glance for recognition. Whiskers and coat proclaimed their owner at once; and if ever Val Elster's heart leaped into his mouth, it certainly leaped then.
He went on, instead of turning in; quietly, as if he were only a stranger enjoying an evening stroll up the road; but the moment he was past the gates he set off at breakneck speed, not heeding where. That the man was there to arrest him, he felt as sure as he had ever felt of anything in this world; and in his perplexity he began accusing every one of treachery, Lord Hartledon and Pike in particular.
The river at the back in this part took a sweeping curve, the road kept straight; so that to arrive at a given point, the one would be more quickly traversed than the other. On and on went Val Elster; and as soon as an opening allowed, he struck into the brushwood on the right, intending to make his way back by the river to Hartledon.
But not yet. Not until the shades of night should fall on the earth: he would have a better chance of getting away from that shark in the darkness than by daylight. He propped his back against a tree and waited, hating himself all the time for his cowardice. With all his scrapes and dilemmas, he had never been reduced to this sort of hiding.
And his pursuer had struck into the wood after him, passed straight through it, though with some little doubt and difficulty, and was already by the river-side, getting there just as Lord Hartledon was passing in his skiff. Long as this may have seemed in telling, it took only a short time to accomplish; still Lord Hartledon had not made quick way, or he would have been further on his course in the race.
Would the sun ever set? --daylight ever pass? Val thought _not_, in his impatience; and he ventured out of his shelter very soon, and saw for his reward--the long coat and red whiskers by the river-side, their owner conversing with a man. Val went further away, keeping the direction of the stream: the brushwood might no longer be safe. He did not think they had seen him: the man he dreaded had his back to him, the other his face. And that other was Pike.
|
{
"id": "16798"
}
|
9
|
WAITING FOR DINNER.
|
Dinner at Hartledon had been ordered for seven o'clock. It was beyond that hour when Dr. Ashton arrived, for he had been detained--a clergyman's time is not always under his own control. Anne and Arthur were with him, but not Mrs. Ashton. He came in, ready with an apology for his tardiness, but found he need not offer it; neither Lord Hartledon nor his brother having yet appeared.
"Hartledon and that boy Carteret have not returned home yet," said the countess-dowager, in her fiercest tones, for she liked her dinner more than any other earthly thing, and could not brook being kept waiting for it. "And when they do come, they'll keep us another half-hour dressing."
"I beg your ladyship's pardon--they have come," interposed Captain Dawkes. "Carteret was going into his room as I came out of mine."
"Time they were," grumbled the dowager. "They were not in five minutes ago, for I sent to ask."
"Which of the two won the race?" inquired Lady Maude of Captain Dawkes.
"I don't think Carteret did," he replied, laughing. "He seemed as sulky as a bear, and growled out that there had been no race, for Hartledon had played him a trick."
"What did he mean?"
"Goodness knows."
"I hope Hartledon upset him," charitably interrupted the dowager. "A ducking would do that boy good; he is too forward by half."
There was more waiting. The countess-dowager flounced about in her pink satin gown; but it did not bring the loiterers any the sooner. Lady Maude--perverse still, but beautiful--talked in whispers to the hero of the day, Mr. Shute; wearing a blue-silk robe and a blue wreath in her hair. Anne, adhering to the colours of Lord Hartledon, though he had been defeated, was in a rich, glistening white silk, with natural flowers, red and purple, on its body, and the same in her hair. Her sweet face was sunny again, her eyes were sparkling: a word dropped by Dr. Ashton had given her a hope that, perhaps, Percival Elster might be forgiven sometime.
He was the first of the culprits to make his appearance. The dowager attacked him of course. What did he mean by keeping dinner waiting?
Val replied that he was late in coming home; he had been out. As to keeping dinner waiting, it seemed that Lord Hartledon was doing that: he didn't suppose they'd have waited for him.
He spoke tartly, as if not on good terms with himself or the world. Anne Ashton, near to whom he had drawn, looked up at him with a charming smile.
"Things may brighten, Percival," she softly breathed.
"It's to be hoped they will," gloomily returned Val. "They look dark enough just now."
"What have you done to your face?" she whispered.
"To my face? Nothing that I know of."
"The forehead is red, as if it had been bruised, or slightly grazed."
Val put his hand up to his forehead. "I did feel something when I washed just now," he remarked slowly, as though doubting whether anything was wrong or not. "It must have been done--when I--struck against that tree," he added, apparently taxing his recollection.
"How was that?"
"I was running in the dusk, and did not notice the branch of a tree in my way. It's nothing, Anne, and will soon go off."
Mr. Carteret came in, looking just as Val Elster had done--out of sorts. Questions were showered upon him as to the fate of the race; but the dowager's voice was heard above all.
"This is a pretty time to make your appearance, sir! Where's Lord Hartledon?"
"In his room, I suppose. Hartledon never came," he added in sulky tones, as he turned from her to the rest. "I rowed on, and on, thinking how nicely I was distancing him, and got down, the mischief knows where. Miles, nearly, I must have gone."
"But why did you pass the turning-point?" asked one.
"There was no turning-point," returned Mr. Carteret; "some confounded meddler must have unmoored the boat as soon as the first race was over, and I, like an idiot, rowed on, looking for it. All at once it came into my mind what a way I must have gone, and I turned and waited. And might have waited till now," he added, "for Hart never came."
"Then his arm must have failed him," exclaimed Captain Dawkes. "I thought it was all wrong."
"It wasn't right, for I soon shot past him," returned young Carteret. "But Hart knew the spot where the boat ought to have been, though I didn't; what he did, I suppose, was to clear round it just as though it had been there, and come in home again. It will be an awful shame if he takes an unfair advantage of it, and claims the race."
"Hartledon never took an unfair advantage in his life," spoke up Val Elster, in clear, decisive tones. "You need not be afraid, Carteret. I dare say his arm failed him."
"Well, he might have hallooed when he found it failing, and not have suffered me to row all that way for nothing," retorted young Carteret. "Not a trace could I see of him as I came back; he had hastened home, I expect, to shut himself up in his room with his damaged arm and foot."
"I'll see what he's doing there," said Val.
He went out; but returned immediately.
"We are all under a mistake," was his greeting. "Hartledon has not returned yet. His servant is in his room waiting for him."
"Then what do you mean by telling stories?" demanded the countess-dowager, turning sharply on Mr. Carteret.
"Good Heavens, ma'am! you need not begin upon me!" returned young Carteret. "I have told no stories. I said Hart let me go on, and never came on himself; if that's a story, I'll swallow Dawkes's skiff and the sculls too."
"You said he was in his room. You know you did."
"I said I supposed so. It's usual for a man to go there, I believe, to get ready for dinner," added young Carteret, always ripe for a wordy war, in his antipathy to the countess-dowager. " _You_ said he had come in;" and the angry woman faced round on Captain Dawkes. "You saw them going into their rooms, you said. Which was it--you did, or you didn't?"
"I did see Carteret make his appearance; and assumed that Lord Hartledon had gone on to his room," replied the captain, suppressing a laugh. "I am sorry to have misled your ladyship. I dare say Hart is about the house somewhere."
"Then why doesn't he appear?" stormed the dowager. "Pretty behaviour this, to keep us all waiting dinner. I shall tell him so. Val Elster, ring for Hedges."
Val rang the bell. "Has Lord Hartledon come in?" he asked, when the butler appeared.
"No, sir."
"And dinner's spoiling, isn't it, Hedges?" broke in the dowager.
"It won't be any the better for waiting, my lady."
"No. I must exercise my privilege and order it served. At once, Hedges, do you hear? If Hartledon grumbles, I shall tell him it serves him right."
"But where can Hartledon be?" cried Captain Dawkes.
"That's what I am wondering," said Val. "He can't be on the river all this time; Carteret would have seen him in coming home."
A strangely grave shade, looking almost like a prevision of evil, arose to Dr. Ashton's face. "I trust nothing has happened to him," he exclaimed. "Where did you part company with him, Mr. Carteret?"
"That's more than I can tell you, sir. You must have seen--at least--no, you were not there; but those looking on must have seen me get ahead of him within view of the starting-point; soon after that I lost sight of him. The river winds, you know; and of course I thought he was coming on behind me. Very daft of me, not to divine that the boat had been removed!"
"Do you think he passed the mill?"
"The mill?"
"That place where the river forms what might almost be called a miniature harbour. A mill is built there which the stream serves. You could not fail to see it."
"I remember now. Yes, I saw the mill. What of it?"
"Did Lord Hartledon pass it?"
"How should I know!" cried the boy. "I had lost sight of him ages before that."
"The current is extremely rapid there," observed Dr. Ashton. "If he found his arm failing, he might strike down to the mill and land there; and his ankle may be keeping him a prisoner."
"And that's what it is!" exclaimed Val.
They were crossing the hall to the dining-room. Without the slightest ceremony, the countess-dowager pushed herself foremost and advanced to the head of the table.
"I shall occupy this seat in my nephew's absence," said she. "Dr. Ashton, will you be so good as to take the foot? There's no one else."
"Nay, madam; though Lord Hartledon may not be here, Mr. Elster is."
She had actually forgotten Val; and would have liked to ignore him now that he was recalled to remembrance; but that might not be. As much contempt as could be expressed in her face was there, as she turned her snub nose and small round eyes defiantly upon that unoffending younger brother.
"I was going to request you to take it, sir," said Percival, in low tones, to Dr. Ashton. "I shall go off in the pony-carriage for Edward. He must think we are neglecting him."
"Very well. I hate these rowing matches," heartily added the Rector.
"What a curious old fish that parson must be!" ejaculated young Carteret to his next neighbour. "He says he doesn't like boating."
It happened to be Arthur Ashton, and the lad's brow lowered. "You are speaking of my father," he said. "But I'll tell you why he does not like it. He had a brother once, a good deal older than himself; they had no father, and Arthur--that was the elder--was very fond of him: there were only those two. He took him out in a boat one day, and there was an accident: the eldest was drowned, the little one saved. Do you wonder that my father has dreaded boating ever since? He seems to have the same sort of dread of it that a child who has been frightened by its nurse has of the dark."
"By Jove! that was a go, though!" was the sympathising comment of Mr. Carteret.
The doctor said grace, and dinner proceeded. It was not half over when Mr. Elster came in, in his light overcoat. Walking straight up to the table, he stood by it, his face wearing a blank, perplexed look. A momentary silence of expectation, and then many tongues spoke together.
"Where's your brother? Where's Lord Hartledon? Has he not come?"
"I don't know where he is," answered Val. "I was in hopes he had reached home before me, but I find he has not. I can't make it out at all."
"Did he land at the mill?" asked Dr. Ashton.
"Yes, he must have done so, for the skiff is moored there."
"Then he's all right," cried the doctor; and there was a strangely-marked sound of relief in his tones.
"Oh, he is all right," confidently asserted Percival. "The only question is, where he can be. The miller was out this afternoon, and left his place locked up; so that Hartledon could not get in, and had nothing for it but to start home with his lameness, or sit down on the bank until some one found him."
"He must have set off to walk."
"I should think so. But where has he walked to?" added Val. "I drove slowly home, looking on either side of the road, but could see nothing of him."
"What should bring him on the side of the road?" demanded the dowager. "Do you think he would turn tramp, and take his seat on a heap of stones? Where do you get your ideas from?"
"From common sense, ma'am. If he set out to walk, and his foot failed him half-way, there'd be nothing for it but to sit down and wait. But he is _not_ on the road: that is the curious part of the business."
"Would he come the other way?"
"Hardly. It is so much further by the river than by the road."
"You may depend upon it that is what he has done," said Dr. Ashton. "He might think he should meet some of you that way, and get an arm to help him."
"I declare I never thought of that," exclaimed Val, his face brightening. "There he is, no doubt; perched somewhere between this and the mill, like patience on a monument, unable to put foot to the ground."
He turned away. Some of the men offered to accompany him: but he declined their help, and begged them to go on with their dinner, saying he would take sufficient servants with him, even though they had to carry Hartledon.
So Mr. Elster went, taking servants and lanterns; for in some parts of this road the trees overhung, and rendered it dark. But they could not find Lord Hartledon. They searched, and shouted, and waved their lanterns: all in vain. Very much perplexed indeed did Val Elster look when he got back again.
"Where in the world can he have gone to?" angrily questioned the countess-dowager; and she glared from her seat at the head of the table on the offender Val, as she asked it. "I must say all this is most unseemly, and Hartledon ought to be brought to his senses for causing it. I suppose he has taken himself off to a surgeon's."
It was possible, but unlikely, as none knew better than Val Elster. To get to the surgeon's he would have to pass his own house, and would be more likely to go in, and send for Mr. Hillary, than walk on with a disabled foot. Besides, if he had gone to the surgeon's, he would not stay there all this time. "I don't know what to do," said Percival Elster; and there was the same blank, perplexed look on his face that was observed the first time he came in. "I don't much like the appearance of things."
"Why, you don't think anything's wrong with him!" exclaimed young Carteret, starting-up with an alarmed face. "He's safe to turn up, isn't he?"
"Of course he will turn up," answered Val, in a dreamy tone. "Only this uncertainty, as to where to look for him, is not pleasant."
Dr. Ashton motioned Val to his side. "Are you fearing an accident?" he asked in low tones.
"No, sir."
"I am. That current by the mill is so fearfully strong; and if your brother had not the use of his one arm--and the boat was drawn onwards, beyond his control--and upset--" Dr. Ashton paused. Val Elster looked rather surprised.
"How could it upset, sir? The skiffs are as safe as this floor. I don't fear that in the least: what I do fear is that Edward may be in some out-of-the-way nook, insensible from pain, and won't be found until daylight. Fancy, a whole night out of doors, in that state! He might be half-dead with cold by the morning."
Dr. Ashton shook his head in dissent. His dislike of boating seemed just now to be rising into horror.
"What are you going to do now, Elster?" inquired Captain Dawkes.
"Go to the mill again, I think, and find out if any one saw Hartledon leave the skiff, and which way he took. One of the servants can run down to Hillary's the while."
Dr. Ashton rose, bowing for permission to Lady Kirton; and the gentlemen with one accord rose with him, the same purpose in the mind of all--that of more effectually scouring the ground between the mill and Hartledon. The countess-dowager felt that she should like to box the ears of every one of them. The idea of danger in connection with Lord Hartledon had not yet penetrated to her brain.
At this moment, before they had left the room, there arose a strange wild sound from without--almost an unearthly sound--that seemed to come from several voices, and to be bearing round the house from the river-path. Mrs. O'Moore put down her knife and fork, and rose up with a startled cry.
"There's nothing to be alarmed at," said the dowager. "It is those Irish harvesters. I know their horrid voices, and dare say they are riotously drunk. Hartledon ought to put them in prison for it."
The sounds died away into silence. Mrs. O'Moore took her hands from her eyes, where they had been pressed. "Don't you know what it is, Lady Kirton? It is the Irish death-wail!"
It rose again, louder than before, for those from whom it came were nearing the house--a horribly wailing sound, ringing out in the silence of the night. Mrs. O'Moore crouched into her chair again, and hid her terrified face. She was not Irish, and had never heard that sound but once, and that was when her child died.
"She is right," cried her husband, the O'Moore; "that is the death-wail. Hark! it is for a chieftain; they mourn the loss of one high in the land. And--they are coming here! Oh, Elster! can DEATH have overtaken your brother?"
The gentlemen had stood spell-bound, listening to the sound, their faces a mixture of surprise and credulity. At the words they rushed out with one accord, and the women stole after them with trembling steps and blanched lips.
"If ever I saw such behaviour in all my existence!" irascibly spoke the countess-dowager, who was left alone in her glory. "The death-wail, indeed! The woman's a fool. I'll get those Irishmen transported, if I can."
In the hall the servants were gathered, cowering almost as the ladies did. Their master had flown down the hall-steps, and the labourers were coming steadily up to it, bearing something in procession. Dr. Ashton came back as quickly as he had gone out, extending his arms before him.
"Ladies, I pray you go in," he urged, in strange agitation. "You must not meet these--these Irishmen. Go back to the dining-room, I entreat you, and remain in it."
But the curiosity of women--who can suppress it? They were as though they heard not, and were pressing on to the door, when Val Elster dashed in with a white face.
"Back, all of you! You must not stay here. This is no place or sight for you. Anne," he added, seizing Miss Ashton's hand in peremptory entreaty, "you at least know how to be calm. Get them away, and keep them out of the hall."
"Tell me the worst," she implored. "I will indeed try to be calm. Who is it those men are bringing here?"
"My dear brother--my dead brother. Madam," he continued to the countess-dowager, who had now come out, dinner-napkin in hand, her curls all awry, "you must not come here. Go back to the dining-room, all of you."
"Not come here! Go back to the dining-room!" echoed the outraged dowager. "Don't take quite so much upon yourself, Val Elster. The house is Lord Hartledon's, and I am a free agent in it."
A shriek--an agonized shriek--broke from Lady Maude. In her suspense she had stolen out unperceived, and lifted the covering of the rude bier, now resting on the steps. The rays of the hall-lamp fell on the face, and Maude, in her anguish, with a succession of hysterical sobs, came shivering back to sink down at her mother's feet.
"Oh, my love--my love! Dead! dead!"
The only one who heard the words was Anne Ashton. The countess-dowager caught the last.
"Who is dead? What is this mystery?" she asked, unceremoniously lifting her satin dress, with the intention of going out to see, and her head began to nod--perhaps with apprehension--as if she had the palsy. "You want to force us away. No, thank you; not until I've come to the bottom of this."
"Let us tell them," cried young Carteret, in his boyish impulse, "and then perhaps they will go. An accident has happened to Lord Hartledon, ma'am, and these men have brought him home."
"He--_he's_ not dead?" asked the old woman, in changed tones.
Alas! poor Lord Hartledon was indeed dead. The Irish labourers, in passing near the mill, had detected the body in the water; rescued it, and brought it home.
The countess-dowager's grief commenced rather turbulently. She talked and shrieked, and danced round, exactly as if she had been a wild Indian. It was so intensely ludicrous, that the occupants of the hall gazed in silence.
"Here to-day, and gone to-morrow!" she sobbed. "Oh--o--o--o--o--o--oh!"
"Nay," cried young Carteret, "here to-day, and gone _now_. Poor fellow! it is awful."
"And you have done it!" she cried, turning her grief upon the astonished boy. "You! What business had you to allure him off again in that miserable boat, once he had got home?"
"Don't trample me down, please," he indignantly returned; "I am as cut up as you can be. Hedges, hadn't you better get Lady Kirton's maid here? I think she is going mad."
"And now the house is without a master," she bemoaned, returning to her own griefs and troubles, "and I have all the arrangements thrown upon myself."
"The house is not without a master," said young Carteret, who seemed inclined to have the last word. "If one master has gone from it, poor fellow! there's another to replace him; and he is at your elbow now."
He at her elbow was Val Elster. Lady Kirton gathered in the sense of the words, and gave a cry; a prolonged cry of absolute dismay. " _He_ can't be its master."
"I should say he _is_, ma'am. At any rate he is now Lord Hartledon."
She looked from one to the other in helpless doubt. It was a contingency that had never so much as occurred to her. Had she wanted confirmation, the next moment brought it to her from the lips of the butler.
"Hedges," called out Percival sternly, in his embarrassment and grief, "open the dining-room door. We _must_ get the hall cleared."
"The door is open, my lord." " _He_ Lord Hartledon!" shrieked the countess-dowager, "why, I was going to recommend his brother to ship him off to Canada for life."
It was altogether an unseemly scene at such a time. But almost everything the Countess-Dowager of Kirton did was unseemly.
|
{
"id": "16798"
}
|
10
|
MR. PIKE'S VISIT.
|
Percival Elster was in truth Earl of Hartledon. By one of those unexpected calamities, which are often inexplicable--and which most certainly was so as yet in the present instance--a promising young life had been snapped asunder, and another reigned in his place. In one short hour Val Elster, who had scarcely cross or coin to call his own, had been going in danger of arrest from one moment to another, had become a peer of the realm and a man of wealth.
As they laid the body down in a small room opening from the hall, and his late companions and guests crowded around in awe-struck silence, there was one amidst them who could not control his grief and emotion. It was poor Val. Pushing aside the others, never heeding them in his bitter sorrow, he burst into passionate sobs as he leaned over the corpse. And none of them thought the worse of Val for it.
"Oh, Percival! how did it happen?"
The speaker was Dr. Ashton. Little less affected himself, he clasped the young man's hand in token of heartfelt sympathy.
"I cannot think _how_ it could have happened," replied Percival, when able to control his feelings sufficiently to speak. "It seems awfully strange to me--mysteriously so."
"If he found himself going wrong, why didn't he shout out?" asked young Carteret, with a rueful face. "I couldn't have helped hearing him."
It was a question that was passing through the minds of all; was being whispered about. How could it have happened? The body presented the usual appearance of death from drowning; but close to the left temple was a wound, and the face was otherwise disfigured. It must have been done, they thought, by coming into contact with something or other in the water; perhaps the skiff itself. Arm and ankle were both much swollen.
Nothing was certainly known as yet of Lord Hartledon from the time Mr. Carteret parted company with him, to the time when the body was found. It appeared that these Irish labourers were going home from their work, singing as they went, their road lying past the mill, when they were spoken to by the miller's boy. He stood on the species of estrade which the miller had placed there for his own convenience, bending down as far as his young head and shoulders could reach, and peering into the water attentively. "I think I see some'at in the stream," quoth he, and the men stopped; and after a short time, proceeded to search. It proved to be the dead body of Lord Hartledon, caught amongst the reeds.
It was rather a curious coincidence that Percival Elster and his servants in the last search should have heard the voices of the labourers singing in the distance. But they were too far off on their return to Hartledon to be within hearing when the men found the body.
The news spread; people came up from far and near, and Hartledon was besieged. Mr. Hillary, the surgeon, gave it as his opinion that the wound on the temple, no doubt caused before death, had rendered Lord Hartledon insensible, and unable to extricate himself from the water. The mill and cottage were built on what might be called an arm of the river. Lord Hartledon had no business there at all; but the current was very strong; and if, as was too probable, he had become almost disabled, he might have drifted to it without being able to help himself; or he might have been making for it, intending to land and rest in the cottage until help could be summoned to convey him home. How he got into the water was not known. Once in the water, the blow was easy enough to receive; he might have struck against the estrade.
There is almost sure to be some miserable coincidence in these cases to render them doubly unfortunate. For three weeks past, as the miller testified--a respectable man named Floyd--his mill had not been deserted; some one, man, boy, or woman, had always been there. On this afternoon it was closed, mill and cottage too, and all were away. What might have been simply a slight accident, had help been at hand, had terminated in an awful death for the want of it.
It was eleven o'clock before anything like order was restored at Hartledon, and the house left in quiet. The last person to quit it was Dr. Ashton. Hedges, the butler, had been showing him out, and was standing for a minute on the steps looking after him, and perhaps to cool, with a little fresh air, his perplexed brow--for the man was a faithful retainer, and the affair had shocked him in no common degree--when he was accosted by Pike, who emerged stealthily from behind one of the outer pillars, where he seemed to have been sheltering.
"Why, what have you been doing there?" exclaimed the butler.
"Mr. Hedges, I've been waiting here--hiding, if you like to call it so," was the answer; and it should be observed that the man's manner, quite unlike his usual rough, devil-may-care tone, was characterized by singular respect and earnestness. To hear him, and not see him, you might think you were listening to some staid and respectable friend of the family. "I have been standing there this hour past, keeping behind the pillar while other folk went in and out, and waiting my time to speak to you."
"To me?" repeated Hedges.
"Yes, sir. I want you to grant me a favour; and I hope you'll pardon my boldness in asking it."
Hedges did not know what to make of this. It was the first time he had enjoyed the honour of a personal interview with Mr. Pike; and the contrast between that gentleman's popular reputation and his present tone and manner struck the butler as exceedingly singular. But that the butler was in a very softened mood, feeling full of subdued charity towards all the world, he might not have condescended to parley with the man.
"What is the favour?" he inquired.
"I want you to let me in to see the poor young earl--what's left of him."
"Let you in to see the earl!" echoed Hedges in surprise. "I never heard such a bold request."
"It is bold. I've already said so, and asked you to pardon it."
"What can you want that for? It can't be for nothing but curiosity; and--" "It's not curiosity," interrupted Pike, with an emphasis that told upon his hearer. "I have a different motive, sir; and a good motive. If I were at liberty to tell it--which I'm not--you'd let me in without another word. Lots of people have been seeing him, I suppose."
"Indeed they have not. Why should they? It is a bold thing for _you_ to come and ask it."
"Did he come by his death fairly?" whispered the man.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed the butler, stepping back aghast. "I don't think you know what you are talking about. Who would harm Lord Hartledon?"
"Let me see him," implored the man. "It can't hurt him or anybody else. Only just for a minute, sir, in your presence. And if it's ever in my power to do you a good turn, Mr. Hedges, I'll do it. It doesn't seem likely now; but the mouse gnawed the lion's net, you know, and set him free."
Whether it was the strange impressiveness with which the request was proffered, or that the softened mood of Hedges rendered him incapable of contention, certain it was that he granted it; and most likely would wonder at himself for it all his after-life. Crossing the hall with silent tread, and taking up a candle as he went, he led the way to the room; Mr. Pike stepping after him with a tread equally silent.
"Take your hat off," peremptorily whispered the butler; for that worthy had entered the room with it on. "Is that the way to--" "Hedges!"
Hedges was struck with consternation at the call, for it was that of his new master. He had not bargained for this; supposing that he had gone to his room for the night. However he might have been foolishly won over to accede to the man's strange request, it was not to be supposed it would be approved of by Lord Hartledon. The butler hesitated. He did not care to betray Pike, neither did he care to leave Pike alone.
"Hedges!" came the call again, louder and quicker.
"Yes, sir--my lord?" and Hedges squeezed out at the door without opening it much--which was rather a difficulty, for he was a portly man, with a red, honest sort of face--leaving Pike and the light inside. Lord Hartledon--as we must unfortunately call him now--was standing in the hall.
"Has Dr. Ashton gone?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Did he leave that address?"
Hedges knew to what his master alluded: an address that was wanted in connection with certain official proceedings that must now take place. Hedges replied that Dr. Ashton had not left it with him.
"Then he must have forgotten it. He said he would write it down in pencil. Send over to the Rectory the first thing in the morning. And, Hedges--" At this moment a slight noise was heard within the room like the sound of an extinguisher falling; as, in fact, it was. Lord Hartledon turned towards it.
"Who is there, Hedges?"
"I--it's no one in particular, sir--my lord."
What with the butler's bewilderment on the sudden change of masters, and what with his consciousness of the presence of his visitor, he was unusually confused. Lord Hartledon noticed it. It instantly occurred to him that one of the ladies, or perhaps one of the women-servants, had been admitted to the room; and he did not consider it a proper sight for any of them.
"Who is it?" he demanded, somewhat peremptorily.
So Hedges had to confess what had taken place, and that he had allowed the man to enter.
"Pike! Why, what can he want?" exclaimed Lord Hartledon in surprise. And he turned to the room.
The moment the butler left him alone Mr. Pike's first proceeding had been to cover his head again with his wide-awake, which he had evidently removed with reluctance, and might have refused to remove at all had it been consistent with policy; his second was to snatch up the candle, bend over the dead face, and examine it minutely both with eye and hand.
"There _is_ a wound, then, and it's true what they are saying. I thought it might have been gossip," he muttered, as he pushed the soft dark hair from the temple. "Any more suspicious marks?" he resumed, taking a rapid view of the hands and head. "No; nothing but what he'd be likely to get in the water: but--I'll swear _that_ might have been the blow of a human hand. 'Twould stun, if it wouldn't kill; and then, held under the water--" At this moment Mr. Pike and his comments were interrupted, and he drew back from the table on which the body was lying; but not before Lord Hartledon had seen him touching the face of the dead.
"What are you doing?" came the stern demand.
"I wasn't harming him," was the answer; and Mr. Pike seemed to have suddenly returned to his roughness. "It's a nasty accident to have happened; and I don't like _this_."
He pointed to the temple as he spoke. Lord Hartledon's usually good-natured brow--at present a brow of deep sorrow--contracted with displeasure.
"It is an awful accident," he replied. "But I asked what you were doing here?"
"I thought I'd like to look upon him, sir; and the butler let me in. I wish I'd been a bit nearer the place at the time: I'd have saved him, or got drowned myself. Not much fear of that, though. I'm a rat for the water. Was that done fairly?" pointing again to the temple.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Val.
"Well--it might be, or it might not. One who has led the roving life I have, and been in all sorts of scenes, bred in the slums of London too, looks on the suspicious side of these things. And there mostly is one in all of 'em."
Val was moved to anger. "How dare you hint at so infamous a suspicion, Pike? If--" "No offence, my lord," interrupted Pike--"and it's my lord that you are now. Thoughts may be free in this room; but I am not going to spread suspicion outside. I say, though that _might_ have been an accident, it might have been done by an enemy."
"Did you do it?" retorted Lord Hartledon in his displeasure.
Pike gave a short laugh.
"I did not. I had no cause to harm him. What I'm thinking was, whether anybody else had. He was mistaken for another yesterday," continued Pike, dropping his voice. "Some men in his lordship's place might have showed fight then: even blows."
Percival made no immediate rejoinder. He was gazing at Pike just as fixedly as the latter gazed at him. Did the man wish to insinuate that the unwelcome visitor had again mistaken the one brother for the other, and the result had been a struggle between them, ending in this? The idea rushed into his mind, and a dark flush overspread his face.
"You have no grounds for thinking that man--you know who I mean--attacked my brother a second time?"
"No, I have no grounds for it," shortly answered Pike.
"He was near to the spot at the time; I saw him there," continued Lord Hartledon, speaking apparently to himself; whilst the flush, painfully red and dark, was increasing rather than diminishing.
"I know you did," returned Pike.
The tone grated on Lord Hartledon's ear. It implied that the man might become familiar, if not checked; and, with all his good-natured affability, he was not one to permit it; besides, his position was changed, and he could not help feeling that it was. "Necessity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows," says the very true proverb; and what might have been borne yesterday would not be borne to-day.
"Let me understand you," he said, and there was a stern decision in his tone and manner that surprised Pike. "Have you any reason whatever to suspect that man of having injured, or attempted to injure my brother?" " _I_'ve not," answered Pike. "I never saw him nearer to the mill yesterday than he was when he looked at us. I don't think he went nearer. My lord, if I knew anything against the man, I'd tell it out, and be glad. I hate the whole tribe. _He_ wouldn't make the mistake again," added Pike, half-contemptuously. "He knew which was his lordship fast enough to-day, and which wasn't."
"Then what did you mean by insinuating that the blow on the temple was the result of violence?"
"I didn't say it was: I said it might have been. I don't know a thing, as connected with this business, against a mortal soul. It's true, my lord."
"Perhaps, then, you will leave this room," said Lord Hartledon.
"I'm going. And many thanks to your lordship for not having turned me from it before, and for letting me have my say. Thanks to _you_, sir," he added, as he went out of the room and passed Hedges, who was waiting in the hall.
Hedges closed the door after him, and turned to receive a reprimand from his new master.
"Before you admit such men as that into the most sacred chamber the house at present contains, you will ask my permission, Hedges."
Hedges attempted to excuse himself. "He was so very earnest, my lord; he declared to me he had a good motive in wanting to come in. At these times, when one's heart is almost broken with a sudden blow, one is apt to be soft and yielding. What with that feeling upon me, and what with the fright he gave me--" "What fright did he give you?" interrupted Val.
"Well, my lord, he--he asked me whether his lordship had come fairly by his death."
"How dare you repeat the insinuation?" broke forth Lord Hartledon, with more temper than Hedges had ever seen him display. "The very idea is absurd; it is wicked; it is unpardonable. My brother had not an enemy in the world. Take care not to repeat it again. Do you hear?"
He turned away from the astonished man, went into the room he had called sacred, and closed the door. Hedges wondered whether the hitherto sweet-tempered, easy-mannered younger brother had changed his nature with his inheritance.
As the days went on, few, if any, further particulars were elicited as to the cause of accident. That the unfortunate Lord Hartledon had become partly, if not wholly, disabled, so as to be incapable of managing even the little skiff, had been drifted by the current towards the mills, and there upset, was assumed by all to have been the true history of the case. There appeared no reason to doubt that it was so. The inquest was held on the Thursday.
And on that same morning the new Lord Hartledon received a proof of the kindness of his brother. A letter arrived from Messrs. Kedge and Reck, addressed to Edward Earl of Hartledon. By it Percival found--there was no one else to open it now--that his brother had written to them early on the Tuesday morning, taking the debt upon himself; and they now wrote to say they accepted his responsibility, and had withdrawn the officer from Calne. Alas! Val Elster could have dismissed him himself now.
He sat with bent head and drooping eyelids. None, save himself, knew how bitter were the feelings within him, or the remorse that was his portion for having behaved unkindly to his brother within the last few hours of life. He had rebelled at his state of debt becoming known to Dr. Ashton; he had feared to lose Anne: it seemed to him now, that he would live under the doctor's displeasure for ever, would never see Anne again, could he recall his brother. Oh, these unavailing regrets! Will they rise up to face us at the Last Day?
With a suppressed ejaculation that was like a cry of pain, as if he would throw from him these reflections and could not, Lord Hartledon drew a sheet of paper before him and wrote a note to the lawyers. He briefly stated what had taken place; that his brother was dead from an accident, and he had inherited, and should take speedy measures for the discharge of any liabilities there might be against him: and he requested, as a favour, that the letter written to them by his brother might be preserved and returned to him: he should wish to keep it as the last lines his hand had traced.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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11
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THE INQUEST.
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On this day, Thursday, the inquest was held. Most of the gay crowd staying at Hartledon had taken flight; Mr. Carteret, and one or two more, whose testimony might be wished for, remaining. The coroner and jury assembled in the afternoon, in a large boarded apartment called the steward's room. Lord Hartledon was present with Dr. Ashton and other friends: they were naturally anxious to hear the evidence that could be collected, and gather any light that might be thrown upon the accident. The doors were not closed to the public, and a crowd, gentle and simple, pressed in.
The surgeon spoke to the supposed cause of death--drowning: the miller spoke to his house and mill having been that afternoon shut up. He and his wife went over in their spring-cart to Garchester, and left the place locked up, he said. The coroner asked whether it was his custom to lock up his place when he went out; he replied that it was, when they went out together; but that event rarely happened. Upon his return at dusk, he found the little skiff loose in the stream, and secured it. It was his servant-boy, David Ripper, who called his attention to it first of all. He saw nothing of Lord Hartledon, and had not very long secured the skiff when Mr. Percival Elster came up in the pony-carriage, asking if his brother was there. He looked at the skiff, and said it was the one his lordship had been in. Mr. Elster said he supposed his brother was walking home, and he should drive slowly back and look out for him. Later Mr. Elster returned: he had several servants with him then and lanterns; they had come out to look for Lord Hartledon, but could not find him. It was only just after they had gone away again that the Irish harvest-men came up and found the body.
This was the substance of the miller's evidence; it was all he knew: and the next witness called was the boy David Ripper, popularly styled in the neighbourhood young Rip, in contradistinction to his father, a day-labourer. He was an urchin of ten or twelve, with a red, round face; quite ludicrous from its present expression of terrified consternation. The coroner sharply inquired what he was frightened at; and the boy burst into a roar by way of answer. He didn't know nothing, and hadn't seen nothing, and it wasn't him that drowned his lordship; and he couldn't tell more if they hanged him for it.
The miller interposed. The boy was one of the idlest young vagabonds he had ever had the luck to be troubled with; and he thought it exceedingly likely he had been off that afternoon and not near the mill at all. He had ordered him to take two sacks into Calne; but when he reached home he found the sacks untouched, lying where he had placed them outside. Mr. Ripper had no doubt been playing truant on his own account.
"Where did you pass Tuesday afternoon during your master's absence?" sternly demanded the coroner. "Take your hands from your face and answer me, boy."
David Ripper obeyed in the best manner he was capable of, considering his agitation. "I dun know now where I was," he said. "I was about."
"About where?"
Mr. Ripper apparently could not say where. He thought he was "setting his bird-trap" in the stubble-field; and he see a partridge, and watched where it scudded to; but he wasn't nigh the mill the whole time.
"Did you see anything of Lord Hartledon when he was in the skiff?"
"I never saw him," he sobbed. "I wasn't nigh the mill at all, and never saw him nor the skiff."
"What time did you get back to the mill?" asked the coroner.
He didn't know what time it was; his master and missis had come home.
This was true, Mr. Floyd said. They had been back some little time before Ripper showed himself. The first intimation he received of that truant's presence was when he drew his attention to the loose skiff.
"How came you to see the skiff?" sharply asked the coroner.
Ripper spoke up with trembling lips. He was waiting outside after he came up, and afraid to go in lest his master should beat him for not taking the sacks, which went clean out of his mind, they did, and then he saw the little boat; upon which he called out and told his master.
"And it was also you who first saw the body in the water," observed the coroner, regarding the reluctant witness curiously. "How came you to see that? Were you looking for something of the sort?"
The witness shivered. He didn't know how he come to see it. He was on the strade, not looking for nothing, when he saw some'at dark among the reeds, and told the harvesters when they come by. They said it was a man, got him out, and then found it was his lordship.
There was only one peculiarity about the boy's evidence--his manner. All he said was feasible enough; indeed, what would be most likely to happen under the circumstances. But whence arose his terror? Had he been of a timid temperament, it might have been natural; but the miller had spoken the truth--he was audacious and hardy. Only upon one or two, however, did the manner leave any impression. Pike, who made one of the crowd in the inquest-room, was one of these. His experience of human nature was tolerably keen, and he felt sure the boy was keeping something behind that he did not dare to tell. The coroner and jury were not so clear-sighted, and dismissed him with the remark that he was a "little fool."
"Call George Gorton," said the coroner, looking at his notes.
Very much to Lord Hartledon's surprise--perhaps somewhat to his annoyance--the man answering to this name was the one who had originally come to Calne on a special mission to himself. Some feeling caused him to turn from the man whilst he gave his evidence, a thing easily done in the crowded room.
It appeared that amidst the stirring excitement in the neighbourhood on the Tuesday night when the death became known, this stranger happened to avow in the public-house which he made his quarters that he had seen Lord Hartledon in his skiff just before the event must have happened. The information was reported, and the man received a summons to appear before the coroner.
And it may be as well to remark now, that his second appearance was owing to a little cowardice on his own part. He had felt perfectly satisfied at the time with the promise given him by Lord Hartledon to see the debt paid--given also in the presence of the Rector--and took his departure in the train, just as Pike had subsequently told Mr. Elster. But ere he had gone two stages on his journey, he began to think he might have been too precipitate, and to ask himself whether his employers would not tell him so when he appeared before them, unbacked by any guarantee from Lord Hartledon; for this, by a strange oversight, he had omitted to ask for. He halted at once, and went back by the next return train. The following day, Tuesday, he spent looking after Lord Hartledon, but, as it happened, did not meet him.
The man--a dissipated young man, now that his hat was off--came forward in his long coat, his red hair and whiskers. But it seemed that he had really very little information to give. He was on the banks of the river when Lord Hartledon passed in the skiff, and noticed how strangely he was rowing, one arm apparently lying useless. What part of the river was this, the coroner asked; and the witness avowed that he could not describe it. He was a stranger, never there but that once; all he knew was, that it was higher up, beyond Hartledon House. What might he have been doing there, demanded the coroner. Only strolling about, was the answer. What was his business at Calne? came the next question; and as it was put, the witness caught the eye of the new Lord Hartledon through an opening in the crowd. His business, the witness replied to the coroner, was his own business, and did not concern the public, and he respectfully declined to state it. He presumed Calne was a free place like other places, where a stranger might spend a few days without question, if he pleased.
Pike chuckled at this: incipient resistance to authority cheered that lawless man's heart. He had stood throughout, in the shadow of the crowd, just within the door, attentively watching the witnesses as they gave their evidence: but he was not prepared for what was to come next.
Did the witness see any other spectators on the bank? continued the coroner. Only one, was the answer: a man called Pike, or some such name. Pike was watching the little boat on the river when he got up to him; he remarked to Pike that his lordship's arm seemed tired; and he and Pike had walked back to Calne together.
Pike would have got away had he been able, but the coroner whispered to an officer. For one single moment Mr. Pike seemed inclined to show fight; he began struggling, not gently, to reach the door; the next he gave it up, and resigned himself to his fate. There was a little hubbub, in the midst of which a slip of paper with a pencilled line from Lord Hartledon, was handed to the coroner. " _Press this point, whether they returned to Calne at once and together. _" "George Gorton," cried the coroner, as he crushed the paper in his hand, "at what hour did you return to Calne?"
"I went at once. As soon as the little boat was out of sight."
"Went alone?"
"No, sir. I and the man Pike walked together. I've said so already."
"What made you go together?"
"Nothing in particular. We were both going back, I suppose, and strolled along talking."
It appeared to be all that the witness had to tell, and Mr. Pike came forward perforce. As he stood there, his elegant wide-awake bent in his hand, he looked more like the wild man of the woods he had been compared to, than a civilized being. Rough, rude, and abrupt were his tones as he spoke, and he bent his face and eyes downwards whilst he answered. It was in those eyes that lay the look which had struck Mr. Elster as being familiar to him. He persisted in giving his name as Tom, not Thomas.
But if the stranger in the long coat had little evidence to give, Pike had even less. He had been in the woods that afternoon and sauntered to the bank of the river just as Lord Hartledon passed in the skiff; but he had taken very little notice of him. It was only when the last witness, who came up at the moment, remarked upon the queer manner in which his lordship held his arm, that he saw it was lying idle.
Not a thing more could he or would he tell. It was all he knew, he said, and would swear it was all. He went back to Calne with the last witness, and never saw his lordship again alive.
It did appear to be all, just as it did in the matter of the other man. The coroner inquired whether he had seen any one else on the banks or near them, and Pike replied that he had not set eyes on another soul, which Percival knew to be false, for he had seen _him_. He was told to put his signature to his evidence, which the clerk had taken down, and affixed a cross.
"Can't you write?" asked the coroner.
Pike shook his head negatively. "Never learnt," he curtly said. And Percival believed that to be an untruth equally with the other. He could not help thinking that the avowal of their immediate return might also be false: it was just as possible that one or other, or both, had followed the course of the boat.
Mr. Carteret was examined. He could tell no more than he had already told. They started together, but he had soon got beyond his lordship, and had never seen him again alive. There was nothing more to be gleaned or gathered. Not the smallest suspicion of foul play, or of its being anything but a most unfortunate accident, was entertained for a moment by any one who heard the evidence, and the verdict of the jury was to that effect: Accidental Death.
As the crowd pressed out of the inquest-room, jostling one another in the gloom of the evening, and went their several ways, Lord Hartledon found himself close to Gorton, his coat flapping as he walked. The man was looking round for Pike: but Mr. Pike, the instant his forced evidence was given, had slunk away from the gaze of his fellow-men to ensconce himself in his solitary shed. To all appearance Lord Hartledon had overtaken Gorton by accident: the man turned aside in obedience to a signal, and halted. They could not see much of each other's faces in the twilight.
"I wish to ask you a question," said Percival in low, impressive, and not unkindly tones. "Did you speak with my brother, Lord Hartledon, at all on Tuesday?"
"No, my lord, I did not," was the ready answer. "I was trying to get to see his lordship, but did not."
"What did you want with him? What brought you back to Calne?"
"I wanted to get from him a guarantee for--for what your lordship knows of; which he had omitted to give, and I had not thought to ask for," civilly replied the man. "I was looking about for his lordship on the Tuesday morning, but did not get to see him. In the afternoon, when the boat-race was over, I made bold to call at Hartledon, but the servants said his lordship wasn't in. As I came away, I saw him, as I thought, pass the lodge and go up the road, and I cut after him, but couldn't overtake him, and at last lost sight of him. I struck into a tangled sort of pathway through the gorse, or whatever it's called down here, and it brought me out near the river. His lordship was just sculling down, and then I knew it was some one else had gone by the lodge, and not him. Perhaps it was your lordship?"
"You knew it was Lord Hartledon in the boat? I mean, you recognized him? You did not mistake him for me?"
"I knew him, my lord. If I'd been a bit nearer the lodge, I shouldn't have been likely to mistake even your lordship for him."
Lord Hartledon was gazing into the man's face still; never once had his eyes been removed from it.
"You did not see Lord Hartledon later?"
"I never saw him all day but that once when he passed in the skiff."
"You did not follow him, then?"
"Of what use?" debated the man. "I couldn't call out my business from the banks, and didn't know his lordship was going to land lower down. I went straight back to Calne, my lord, walking with that man Pike--who is a rum fellow, and has a history behind him, unless I'm mistaken; but it's no business of mine. I made my mind up to another night of it in Calne, thinking I'd get to Hartledon early next morning before his lordship had time to go out; and I was sitting comfortably with a pipe and a glass of beer, when news came of the accident."
Lord Hartledon believed the man to be telling the truth; and a weight--the source of which he did not stay to analyse--was lifted from his mind. But he asked another question.
"Why are you still in Calne?"
"I waited for orders. After his lordship died I couldn't go away without them--carrying with me nothing but the word of a dead man. The orders came this morning, safe enough; but I had the summons served on me then to attend the inquest, and had to stay for it. I'm going away now, my lord, by the first train."
Lord Hartledon was satisfied, and nodded his head. As he turned back he met Dr. Ashton.
"I was looking for you, Lord Hartledon. If you require any assistance or information in the various arrangements that now devolve upon you, I shall be happy to render both. There will be a good deal to do one way or another; more, I dare say, than your inexperience has the least idea of. You will have your solicitor at hand, of course; but if you want me, you know where to find me."
The Rector's words were courteous, but the tone was not warm, and the title "Lord Hartledon" grated on Val's ear. In his impulse he grasped the speaker's hand, pouring forth a heartfelt prayer.
"Oh, Dr. Ashton, will you not forgive me? The horrible trouble I brought upon myself is over now. I don't rejoice in it under the circumstances, Heaven knows; I only speak of the fact. Let me come to your house again! Forgive me for the past."
"In one sense the trouble is over, because the debts that were a formidable embarrassment to Mr. Elster are as nothing to Lord Hartledon," was the reply. "But let me assure you of one thing: that your being Lord Hartledon will not make the slightest difference to my decision not to give you my daughter, unless your line of conduct shall change."
"It is changed. Dr. Ashton, on my word of honour, I will never be guilty of carelessness again. One thing will be my safeguard, though all else should fail--the fact that I passed my word for this to my dear brother not many hours before his death. For my sake, for Anne's sake, you will forgive me!"
Was it possible to resist the persuasive tones, the earnestness of the honest, dark-blue eyes? If ever Percival Elster was to make an effort for good, and succeed, it must be now. The doctor knew it; and he knew that Anne's happiness was at stake. But he did not thaw immediately.
"You know, Lord Hartledon--" "Call me Val, as you used to do," came the pleading interruption; and Dr. Ashton smiled in spite of himself.
"Percival, you know it is against my nature to be harsh or unforgiving; just as I believe it contrary to your nature to be guilty of deliberate wrong. If you will only be true to yourself, I would rather have you for my son-in-law than any other man in England; as I would have had when you were Val Elster. Do you note my words? _true to yourself_."
"As I will be from henceforth," whispered Val, earnest tears rising to his eyes.
And as he would have been but for his besetting sin.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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12
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LATER IN THE DAY.
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It happened that Clerk Gum had business on hand the day of the inquest, which obliged him to go to Garchester. He reached home after dark; and the first thing he saw was his wife, in what he was pleased to call a state of semi-idiocy. The tea-things were laid on the table, and substantial refreshment in the shape of cold meat, and a plate of muffins ready for toasting, all for the clerk's regalement. But Mrs. Gum herself sat on a low chair by the fire, her eyes swollen with crying.
"What's the matter now?" was the clerk's first question.
"Oh, Gum, I told you you ought not to have gone off to-day. You might have stayed for the inquest."
"Much good I should do the inquest, or the inquest do me," retorted the clerk. "Has Becky gone?"
"Long ago. Gum, that dream's coming round. I said it would. I _told_ you there was ill in store for Lord Hartledon; and that Pike was mixed up in it, and Mr. Elster also in some way. If you'd only listen to me--" The clerk, who had been brushing his hat and shaking the dust from his outer coat--for he was a careful man with his clothes, and always well-dressed--brought down his hand upon the table with some temper.
"Just stop that. I've heard enough of that dream, and of all your dreams. Confounded folly! Haven't I trouble and worry enough upon my mind, without your worrying me every time I come in about your idiotic dreams?"
"Well," returned Mrs. Gum, "if the dream's nothing, I'd like to ask why they had Pike up to-day before them all?"
"Who had him up?" asked the clerk, after a pause. "Had him up where?"
"Before the people sitting on the body of Lord Hartledon. Lydia Jones brought me the news just now. 'They had Pike the poacher up,' says she. 'He was up before the jury, and had to confess to it.' 'Confess to what,' said I. 'Why, that he was about in the woods when my lord met his end,' said she; 'and it's to know how my lord did meet it, and whether the poacher mightn't have dealt that blow on his temple and robbed him after it.' Gum--" "There's no suspicion of foul play, is there?" interrupted the clerk, in strangely subdued tones.
"Not that I know of, except in Lydia's temper," answered Mrs. Gum. "But I don't like to hear he was up there at all."
"Lydia Jones is a foul-tongued woman, capable of swearing away any man's life. Is Pike in custody?"
"Not yet. They've let him off for the present. Oh, Gum, often and often do I wish my days were ended!"
"Often and often do I wish I'd a quiet house to come to, and not be bothered with dreams," was the scornful retort. "Suppose you toast the muffins."
She gave a sigh or two, put her cap straight, smoothed her ragged hair, and meekly rose to obey. The clerk was carefully folding up the outer coat, for it was one he wore only on high-days, when he felt something in the pocket--a small parcel.
"I'd almost forgotten this," he exclaimed, taking it out. "Thanks to you, Nance! What with your dreams and other worryings I can't think of my proper business."
"What is it?" she asked.
"A deed Dr. Ashton's lawyer got me to bring and save his clerk a journey--if you must know. I'll take it over at once, while the tea's brewing."
As Jabez Gum passed through his own gate he looked towards Mr. Pike's dwelling; it was only natural he should do so after the recent conversation; and he saw that worthy gentleman come stealing across the waste ground, with his usual cautious step. Although not given to exchanging courtesies with his neighbour, the clerk walked briskly towards him now, and waited at the hurdles which divided the waste ground from the road.
"I hear you were prowling about the mill when Lord Hartledon met with his accident," began the clerk, in low, condemning tones.
"And what if I was," asked Pike, leaning his arms on the hurdles and facing the clerk. "Near the mill I wasn't; about the woods and river I was; and I saw him pass down in the sculling boat with his disabled arm. What of it, I ask?"
Pike's tone, though short, was civil enough. The forced appearance before the coroner and public had disturbed his equanimity in no slight degree, and taken for the present all insolence out of him.
"Should any doubt get afloat that his lordship's death might not have been accidental, your presence at the spot would tell against you."
"No, it wouldn't. I left the spot before the accident could have happened; and I came back to Calne with a witness. As to the death having been something worse than accident, not a soul in the place has dreamt of such a thing except me."
"Except you! What do you mean?"
Pike leaned more over the hurdles, so as to bring his disreputable face closer to Mr. Gum, who slightly recoiled as he caught the low whisper.
"I don't think the death was accidental. I believe his lordship was just put out of the way quietly."
"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the shocked clerk. "By whom? By you?" he added, in his bewilderment.
"No," returned the man. "If I'd done it, I shouldn't talk about it."
"What do you mean?" cried Mr. Gum.
"I mean that I have my suspicions; and good suspicions they are. Many a man has been hung on less. I am not going to tell them; perhaps not ever. I shall wait and keep my eyes open, and bring them, if I can, to certainties. Time enough to talk then, or keep silent, as circumstances may dictate."
"And you tell me you were not near the place at the time of the accident?" " _I_ wasn't," replied Mr. Pike, with emphasis.
"Who was?"
"That's my secret. And as I've a little matter of business on hand to-night, I don't care to be further delayed, if it's all the same to you, neighbour. And instead of your accusing me of prowling about the mill again, perhaps you'll just give a thought occasionally to what I have now said, keeping it to yourself. I'm not afraid of your spreading it in Calne; for it might bring a hornets' nest about your head, and about some other heads that you wouldn't like to injure."
With the last words Mr. Pike crossed the hurdles and went off in the direction of Hartledon. It was a light night, and the clerk stood and stared after him. To say that Jabez Gum in his astonishment was uncertain whether he stood on his head or his heels, would be saying little; and how much of these assertions he might believe, and what mischief Mr. Pike might be going after to-night, he knew not. Drawing a long sigh, which did not sound very much like a sigh of relief, he at length turned off to Dr. Ashton's, and the man disappeared.
We must follow Pike. He went stealthily up the road past Hartledon, keeping in the shade of the hedge, and shrinking into it when he saw any one coming. Striking off when he neared the mill, he approached it cautiously, and halted amidst some trees, whence he had a view of the mill-door.
He was waiting for the boy, David Ripper. Fully convinced by the lad's manner at the inquest that he had not told all he knew, but was keeping something back in fear, Mr. Pike, for reasons of his own, resolved to come at it if he could. He knew that the boy would be at work later than usual that night, having been hindered in the afternoon.
Imagine yourself standing with your back to the river, reader, and take a view of the premises as they face you. The cottage is a square building, and has four good rooms on the ground floor. The miller's thrifty wife generally locked all these rooms up if she went out, and carried the keys away in her pocket. The parlour window was an ordinary sash-window, with outside shutters; the kitchen window a small casement, protected by a fixed net-work of strong wire. No one could get in or out, even when the casement was open, without tearing this wire away, which would not be a difficult matter to accomplish. On the left of the cottage, but to your right as you face it, stands the mill, to which you ascend by steps. It communicates inside with the upper floor of the cottage, which is used as a store-room for corn; and from this store-room a flight of stairs descends to the kitchen below. Another flight of stairs from this store-room communicated with the open passage leading from the back-door to the stable. This is all that need be said: and you may think it superfluous to have described it at all: but it is not so.
The boy Ripper at length came forth. With a shuddering avoidance of the water he came tearing along as one running from a ghost, and was darting past the trees, when he found himself detained by an arm of great strength. Mr. Pike clapped his other hand upon the boy's mouth, stifling a howl of terror.
"Do you see this, Rip?" cried he.
Rip did see it. It was a pistol held rather inconveniently close to the boy's breast. Rip dearly loved his life; but it nearly went out of him then with fear.
"Now," said Pike, "I've come up to know about this business of Lord Hartledon's, and I will know it, or leave you as dead as he is. And I'll have you took up for murder, into the bargain," he rather illogically continued, "as an accessory to the fact."
David Ripper was in a state of horror; all idea of concealment gone out of him. "I couldn't help it," he gasped. "I couldn't get out to him; I was locked up in the mill. Don't shoot me."
"I'll spare you on one condition," decided Pike. "Disclose the whole of this from first to last, and then we may part friends. But try to palm off one lie upon me, and I'll riddle you through. To begin with: what brought you locked up in the mill?"
It was a wicked tale of a wicked young jail-bird, as Mr. Pike (probably the worse jail-bird by far of the two) phrased it. Master Ripper had purposely caused himself to be locked in the mill, his object being to supply himself with as much corn as he could carry about him for the benefit of his rabbits and pigeons and other live stock at home. He had done it twice before, he avowed, in dread of the pistol, and had got away safe through the square hole in the passage at the foot of the back staircase, whence he had dropped to the ground. To his consternation on this occasion, however, he had found the door at the foot of the stairs bolted, as it never had been before, and he could not get to the passage. So he was a prisoner all the afternoon, and had exercised his legs between the store-room and kitchen, both of which were open to him.
If ever a man showed virtuous indignation at a sinner's confession, Mr. Pike showed it now. "That's how you were about in the stubble-field setting your traps, you young villain! I saw the coroner look at you. And now about Lord Hartledon. What did you see?"
Master Ripper rubbed the perspiration from his face as he went on with his tale. Pike listened with all the ears he possessed and said not a word, beyond sundry rough exclamations, until the tale was done.
"You awful young dog! You saw all that from the kitchen-window, and never tried to get out of it!"
"I _couldn't_ get out of it," pleaded the boy. "It's got a wire-net before it, and I couldn't break that."
"You are strong enough to break it ten times over," retorted Pike.
"But then master would ha' known I'd been in the mill!" cried the boy, a gleam of cunning in his eyes.
"Ugh," grunted Pike. "And you saw exactly what you've told me?"
"I saw it and heard the cries."
"Did he see you?"
"No; I was afeard to show myself. When master come home, the first thing he did was t' unlock that there staircase door, and I got out without his seeing me--" "Where did you hide the grain you were loaded with?" demanded Pike.
"I'd emptied it out again in the store-room," returned the boy. "I told master there were a loose skiff out there, and he come out and secured it. Them harvesters come up next and got him out of the water."
"Yes, you could see fast enough what you were looking for! Well, young Rip," continued Mr. Pike, consolingly, "you stand about as rich a chance of being hanged as ever you'll stand in all your born days. If you'd jumped through that wire you'd have saved my lord, and he'd have made it right for you with old Floyd. I'd advise you to keep a silent tongue in your head, if you want to save your neck."
"I was keeping it, till you come and made me tell with that there pistol," howled the boy. "You won't go and split on me?" he asked, with trembling lips.
"I won't split on you about the grain," graciously promised Pike. "It's no business of mine. As to the other matter--well, I'll not say anything about that; at any rate, yet awhile. You keep it a secret; so will I." Without another word, Pike extended his hand as a signal that the culprit was at liberty to depart; and he did so as fast as his legs would carry him. Pike then returned the pistol to his pocket and took his way back to Calne in a thoughtful and particularly ungenial mood. There was a doubt within him whether the boy had disclosed the truth, even to him.
Perhaps on no one--with the exception of Percival--did the death of Lord Hartledon leave its effects as it did on Lady Kirton and her daughter Maude. To the one it brought embarrassment; to the other, what seemed very like a broken heart. The countess-dowager's tactics must change as by magic. She had to transfer the affection and consideration evinced for Edward Lord Hartledon to his brother; and to do it easily and naturally. She had to obliterate from the mind of the latter her overbearing dislike to him, cause her insults to be remembered no more. A difficult task, even for her, wily woman as she was.
How was it to be done? For three long hours the night after Lord Hartledon's death, she lay awake, thinking out her plans; perhaps for the first time in her life, for obtuse natures do not lie awake. The death had affected her only as regarded her own interests; she could feel for none and regret none in her utter selfishness. One was fallen, but another had risen up. "Le roi est mort: vive le roi!"
On the day following the death she had sought an interview with Percival. Never a woman evinced better tact than she. There was no violent change in her manner, no apologies for the past, or display of sudden affection. She spoke quietly and sensibly of passing topics: the death, and what could have led to it; the immediate business on hand, some of the changes it entailed in the future. "I'll stay with you still, Percival," she said, "and look after things a bit for you, as I have been doing for your brother. It is an awful shock, and we must all have time to get over it. If I had only foreseen this, how I might have spared my temper and poor Maude's feelings!"
She looked out of the corner of her eye at the young man; but he betrayed no curiosity to hear more, and she went on unasked.
"You know, Val, for a portionless girl, as Maude is, it was a great blow to me when I found her fixing her heart upon a younger son. How cross and unjust it made me I couldn't conceal: mothers are mothers. I wanted her to take a fancy to Hartledon, dear fellow, and I suppose she could not, and it rendered me cross; and I know I worried her and worried my own temper, till at times I was not conscious of what I said. Poor Maude! she did not rebel openly, but I could see her struggles. Only a week ago, when Hartledon was talking about his marrying sometime, and hinting that she might care fox him if she tried, she scored her beautiful drawing all over with ugly marks; ran the pencil through it--" "But why do you tell me this now?" asked Val.
"Hartledon--dear me! I wonder how long I shall be getting accustomed to your name? --there's only you and me and Maude left now of the family," cried the dowager; "and if I speak of such things, it is in fulness of heart. And now about these letters: do you care how they are worded?"
"I don't seem to care about anything," listlessly answered the young man. "As to the letters, I think I'd rather write them myself, Lady Kirton."
"Indeed you shall not have any trouble of that sort to-day. _I'll_ write the letters, and you may indulge yourself in doing nothing."
He yielded in his unstable nature. She spoke of business letters, and it was better that he should write them; he wished to write them; but she carried her point, and his will yielded to hers. Would it be a type of the future? --would he yield to her in other things in defiance of his better judgment? Alas! alas!
She picked up her skirts and left him, and went sailing upstairs to her daughter's room. Maude was sitting shivering in a shawl, though the day was hot.
"I've paved the way," nodded the old woman, in meaning tones. "And there's one fortunate thing about Val: he is so truthful himself, one may take him in with his eyes open."
Maude turned _her_ eyes upon her mother: very languid and unspeculative eyes just then.
"I gave him a hint, Maude, that you had been unable to bring yourself to like Hartledon, but had fixed your mind on a younger son. Later, we'll let him suspect who the younger son was."
The words aroused Maude; she started up and stood staring at her mother, her eyes dilating with a sort of horror; her pale cheeks slowly turning crimson.
"I don't understand," she gasped; "I _hope_ I don't understand. You--you do not mean that I am to try to like Val Elster?"
"Now, Maude, no heroics. I'll not see _you_ make a fool of yourself as your sisters have done. He's not Val Elster any longer; he is Lord Hartledon: better-looking than ever his brother was, and will make a better husband, for he'll be more easily led."
"I would not marry Val for the whole world," she said, with strong emotion. "I dislike him; I hate him; I never could be a wife to Val Elster."
"We'll see," said the dowager, pushing up her front, of which she had just caught sight in a glass.
"Thank Heaven, there's no fear of it!" resumed Maude, collecting her senses, and sitting down again with a relieved sigh; "he is to marry Anne Ashton. Thank Heaven that he loves her!"
"Anne Ashton!" scornfully returned the countess-dowager. "She might have been tolerated when he was Val Elster, not now he is Lord Hartledon. What notions you have, Maude!"
Maude burst into tears. "Mamma, I think it is fearfully indecent for you to begin upon these things already! It only happened last night, and--and it sounds quite horrible."
"When one has to live as I do, one has to do many things decent and indecent," retorted the countess-dowager sharply. "He has had his hint, and you've got yours: and you are no true girl if you suffer yourself now to be triumphed over by Anne Ashton."
Maude cried on silently, thinking how cruel fate was to have taken one brother and spared the other. Who--save Anne Ashton--would have missed Val Elster; while Lord Hartledon--at least he had made the life of one heart. A poor bruised heart now; never, never to be made quite whole again.
Thus the dowager, in her blindness, began her plans. In her blindness! If we could only foresee the ending of some of the unholy schemes that many of us are apt to weave, we might be more willing to leave them humbly in a higher Hand than ours. Do they ever bring forth good, these plans, born of our evil passions--hatred, malice, utter selfishness? I think not. They may seem to succeed triumphantly, but--watch the triumph to the end.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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13
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FEVER.
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The dews of an October evening were falling upon Calne, as Lord Hartledon walked from the railway-station. Just as unexpectedly as he had arrived the morning you first saw him, when he was only Val Elster, had he arrived now. By the merest accident one of the Hartledon servants happened to be at the station when the train arrived, and took charge of his master's luggage.
"All well at home, James?"
"All quite well, my lord."
Several weeks had elapsed since his brother's death, and Lord Hartledon had spent them in London. He went up on business the week after the funeral, and did not return again. In one respect he had no inducement to return; for the Ashtons, including Anne, were on a visit in Wales. They were at home now, as he knew well; and perhaps that had brought him down.
He went in unannounced, finding his way to the inner drawing-room. A large fire blazed in the grate, and Lady Maude sat by it so intent in thought as not to observe his entrance. She wore a black crêpe dress, with a little white trimming on its low body and sleeves. The firelight played on her beautiful features; and her eyelashes glistened as if with tears: she was thinner and paler; he saw it at once. The countess-dowager kept to Hartledon and showed no intention of moving from it: she and her daughter had been there alone all these weeks.
"How are you, Maude?"
She looked round and started up, backing from him with a face of alarm. Ah, was it _instinct_ caused her so to receive him? What, or who, was she thinking of; holding her hands before her with that face of horror?
"Maude, have I so startled you?"
"Percival! I beg your pardon. I believe I was thinking of--of your brother, and I really did not know you in the uncertain light. We don't have the rooms lighted early," she added, with a little laugh.
He took her hands in his. Now that she knew him, and the alarm was over, she seemed really pleased to see him: the dark eyes were raised to his with a frank smile.
"May I take a cousin's greeting, Maude?"
Without waiting for yes or no, he stooped and took the kiss. Maude flung his hands away. He should have left out the "cousin," or not have taken the kiss.
He went and stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece, soberly, as if he had only kissed a sister. Maude sat down again.
"Why did you not send us word you were coming?" she asked.
"There was no necessity for it. And I only made my mind up this morning."
"What a long time you have been away! I thought you went for a week."
"I did not get my business over very quickly; and waited afterwards to see Thomas Carr, who was out of town. The Ashtons were away, you know; so I had no inducement to hurry back again."
"Very complimentary to _her_. Who's Thomas Carr?" asked Maude.
"A barrister; the greatest friend I possess in this world. We were at college together, and he used to keep me straight."
"Keep you straight! Val!"
"It's quite true. I went to him in all my scrapes and troubles. He is the most honourable, upright, straightforward man I know; and, as such, possesses a talent for serving--" "Hartledon! Is it _you_?"
The interruption came from the dowager. She and the butler came in together, both looking equally astonished at the appearance of Lord Hartledon. The former said dinner was served.
"Will you let me sit down in this coat?" asked Val.
The countess-dowager would willingly have allowed him to sit down without any. Her welcome was demonstrative; her display of affection quite warm, and she called him "Val," tenderly. He escaped for a minute to his room, washed his hands, brushed his hair, and was down again, and taking the head of his own table.
It was pleasant to have him there--a welcome change from Hartledon's recent monotony; and even Maude, with her boasted dislike, felt prejudice melting away. Boasted dislike, not real, it had been. None could dislike Percival. He was not Edward, and it was him Maude had loved. Percival she never would love, but she might learn to like him. As he sat near her, in his plain black morning attire, courteous, genuinely sweet-tempered, his good looks conspicuous, a smile on his delicate, refined, but vacillating lips, and his honest dark-blue eyes bent upon her in kindness, Maude for the first time admitted a vision of the possible future, together with a dim consciousness that it might not be intolerable. Half the world, of her age and sex, would have deemed it indeed a triumph to be made the wife of that attractive man.
He had cautiously stood aside for Lady Kirton to take the head of the table; but the dowager had positively refused, and subsided into the chair at the foot. She did not fill it in dear Edward's time, she said; neither should she in dear Val's; he had come home to occupy his own place. And oh, thank goodness he was come! She and Maude had been so lonely and miserable, growing thinner daily from sheer _ennui_. So she faced Lord Hartledon at the end of the table, her flaxen curls surmounted by an array of black plumes, and looking very like a substantial female mute.
"What an awful thing that is about the Rectory!" exclaimed she, when they were more than half through dinner.
Lord Hartledon looked up quietly. "What is the matter at the Rectory?"
"Fever has broken out."
"Is that all!" he exclaimed, some amusement on his face. "I thought it must have taken fire."
"A fever's worse than a fire."
"Do you think so?" " _Think so! _" echoed the dowager. "You can run away from a fire; but a fever may take you before you are aware of it. Every soul in the Rectory may die; it may spread to the parish; it may spread here. I have kept tar burning outside the house the last two days."
"You are not serious, Lady Kirton!"
"I am serious. I wouldn't catch a fever for the whole world. I should die of fright before it had time to kill me. Besides--I have Maude to guard. You were forgetting her."
"There's no danger at all. One of the servants became ill after they returned home, and it proved to be fever. I don't suppose it will spread."
"How did _you_ hear about it?"
"From Miss Ashton. She mentioned it in her last letter to me."
"I didn't know you corresponded with her," cried the dowager, her tones rather shrill.
"Not correspond with Miss Ashton!" he repeated. "Of course I do."
The old dowager had a fit of choking: something had gone the wrong way, she said. Lord Hartledon resumed.
"It is an awful shame of those seaside lodging-house people! Did you hear the particulars, Maude? After the Ashtons concluded their visit in Wales, they went for a fortnight to the seaside, on their way home, taking lodgings. Some days after they had been settled in the rooms they discovered that some fever was in the house; a family who occupied another set of apartments being ill with it, and had been ill before the Ashtons went in. Dr. Ashton told the landlady what he thought of her conduct, and then they left the house for home. But Mrs. Ashton's maid, Matilda, had already taken it."
"Did Miss Ashton give you these particulars?" asked Maude, toying with a late rose that lay beside her plate.
"Yes. I should feel inclined to prosecute the woman, were I Dr. Ashton, for having been so wickedly inconsiderate. But I hope Matilda is better, and that the alarm will end with her. It is four days since I had Anne's letter."
"Then, Lord Hartledon, I can tell you the alarm's worse, and another has taken it, and the parish is up in arms," said the countess-dowager, tartly. "It has proved to be fever of a most malignant type, and not a soul but Hillary the surgeon goes near the Rectory, You must not venture within half-a-mile of it. Dr. Ashton was so careless as to occupy his pulpit on Sunday; but, thank goodness, I did not venture to church, or allow Maude to go. Your Miss Ashton will be having it next."
"Of course they have advice from Garchester?" he exclaimed.
"How should I know? My opinion is that the parson himself might be prosecuted for bringing the fever into a healthy neighbourhood. Port, Hedges! One has need of a double portion of tonics in a time like this."
The countess-dowager's alarms were not feigned--no, nor exaggerated. She had an intense, selfish fear of any sort of illness; she had a worse fear of death. In any time of public epidemic her terrors would have been almost ludicrous in their absurdity but that they were so real. And she "fortified" herself against infection by eating and drinking more than ever.
Nothing else was said: she shunned allusion to it when she could: and presently she and Maude left the dining-room. "You won't be long, Hartledon?" she observed, sweetly, as she passed him. Val only bowed in answer, closed the door upon them, and rang for Hedges.
"Is there much alarm regarding this fever at the Rectory?" he asked of the butler.
"Not very much, I think, my lord. A few are timid about it; as is always the case. One of the other servants has taken it; but Mr. Hillary told me when he was here this morning that he hoped it would not spread beyond the Rectory."
"Was Hillary here this morning? Nobody's ill?" asked Lord Hartledon, quickly.
"No one at all, my lord. The countess-dowager sent for him, to ask what her diet had better be, and how she could guard against infection more effectually than she was doing. She did not allow him to come in, but spoke to him from one of the upper windows, with a cloak and respirator on."
Lord Hartledon looked at his butler; the man was suppressing a grim smile.
"Nonsense, Hedges!"
"It's quite true, my lord. Mrs. Mirrable says she has five bowls of disinfectant in their rooms."
Lord Hartledon broke into a laugh, not suppressed.
"And in the courtyard, looking towards the Rectory, as may be said, there's several pitch-pots alight night and day," added Hedges. "We have had a host of people up, wanting to know if the place is on fire."
"What a joke!" cried Val--who was not yet beyond the age to enjoy such jokes. "Hedges," he resumed, in a more confidential tone, "no strangers have been here inquiring for me, I suppose?"
He alluded to creditors, or people acting for them. To a careless man, as Val had been, it was a difficult matter to know whether all his debts were paid or not. He had settled what he remembered; but there might be others. Hedges understood; and his voice fell to the same low tone: he had been pretty cognizant of the embarrassments of Mr. Percival Elster.
"Nobody at all, my lord. They wouldn't have got much information out of me, if they had come."
Lord Hartledon laughed. "Things are changed now, Hedges, and they may have as much information as they choose. Bring me coffee here; make haste."
Coffee was brought, and he went out as soon as he had taken it, following the road to the Rectory. It was a calm, still night, the moon tolerably bright; not a breath of wind stirred the air, warm and oppressive for October; not by any means the sort of night doctors covet when fever is in the atmosphere.
He turned in at the Rectory-gates, and was crossing to the house, when a rustling of leaves in a shrubbery path caused him to look over the dwarf laurels, and there stood Anne. He was at her side in an instant. She had nothing on her head, as though she had just come forth from the rooms for a breath of air. As indeed was the case.
"My darling!"
"I heard you had come," she whispered, as he held both her hands in his, and her heart bounded with an exquisite flutter of delight.
"How did you hear that?" he said, placing her hand within his arm, that he might pace the walk with her.
"Papa heard it. Some one had seen you walking home from the train: I think it was Mr. Hillary. But, Percival, ought you to have come here?" she added in alarm. "This is infected ground, you know."
"Not for me. I have no more fear of fever than I have of moonstroke. Anne, I hope _you_ will not take it," he gravely added.
"I hope not, either. Like you, I have no fear of it. I am so glad Arthur is away. Was it not wrong of that landlady to let her rooms to us when she had fever in them?"
"Infamously wrong," said Lord Hartledon warmly.
"She excused herself afterwards by saying, that as the people who had the fever were in quite a different part of the house from ours, she thought there could be no danger. Papa was so angry. He told her he was sorry the law did not take cognizance of such an offence. We had been a week in the house before we knew of it."
"How did you find it out?"
"The lady who was ill with it died, and Matilda saw the coffin going up the back stairs. She questioned the servants of the house, and one of them told her all about it then, bit by bit. Another lady was lying ill, and a third was recovering. The landlady, by way of excuse, said the greatest wrong had been done to herself, for these ladies had brought the fever into her house, and brought it deliberately. Fever had broken out in their own home, some long way off, and they ran away from it, and took her apartments, saying nothing; which was true, we found."
"Two wrongs don't make a right," observed Lord Hartledon. "Their bringing the fever into her house was no justification for receiving you into it when it was there. It's the way of the world, Anne: one wrong leading to others. Is Matilda getting over it?"
"I hardly know. She is not out of danger; but Mr. Hillary has hopes of her. One of the other servants has taken it, and is worse than Matilda. Mr. Hillary has been with her three times to-day, and is coming again. She was ill when I last wrote to you, Val; but we did not know it."
"Which of them is it?" he asked.
"The dairymaid; a stout girl, who has never had a day's illness before. I don't suppose you know her. There was some trouble with her. She would not take any medicine; would not do anything she ought to have done, and the consequence is that the fever has got dangerously ahead. I am sure she is very ill."
"I hope it will not spread beyond the Rectory."
"Oh, Val, that is our one great hope," she said, turning her earnest face to him in the moonlight. "We are taking all possible precautions. None of us are going beyond the grounds, except papa, and we do not receive any one here. I don't know what papa will say to your coming."
He smiled. "But you can't keep all the world away!"
"We do--very nearly. Mr. Hillary comes, and Dr. Beamish from Garchester, and one or two people have been here on business. If any one calls at the gate, they are not asked in; and I don't suppose they would come in if asked. Jabez Gum's the most obstinate. He comes in just as usual."
"Lady Kirton is in an awful fright," said Val, in an amused tone.
"Oh, I have heard of it," cried Anne, clasping her hands in laughter. "She is burning tar outside the house; and she spoke to Mr. Hillary this morning through the window muffled up in a cloak and respirator. What a strange old thing she is!"
Val shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think she means badly _au fond_; and she has no home, poor creature."
"Is that why she remains at Hartledon?"
"I suppose so. Reigning at Hartledon must be something like a glimpse of Paradise to her. She won't quit it in a hurry."
"I wonder you like to have her there."
"I know I shall never have courage to tell her to go," was the candid and characteristic answer. "I was afraid of her as a boy, and I'm not sure but I'm afraid of her still."
"I don't like her--I don't like either of them," said Anne in a low tone.
"Don't you like Maude?"
"No. I am sure she is not true. To my mind there is something very false about them both."
"I think you are wrong, Anne; certainly as regards Maude."
Miss Ashton did not press her opinion: they were his relatives. "But I should have pitied poor Edward had he lived and married her," she said, following out her thoughts.
"I was mistaken when I thought Maude cared for Edward," observed Lord Hartledon. "I'm sure I did think it. I used to tell Edward so; but a day or two after he died I found I was wrong. The dowager had been urging Maude to like him, and she could not, and it made her miserable."
"Did Maude tell you this?" inquired Anne; her radiant eyes full of surprise.
"Not Maude: she never said a word to me upon the subject. It was the dowager."
"Then, Val, she must have said it with an object in view. I am sure Maude did love him. I know she did."
He shook his head. "You are wrong, Anne, depend upon it. She did not like him, and she and her mother were at variance upon the point. However, it is of no moment to discuss it now: and it might never have come to an issue had Edward lived, for he did not care for her; and I dare say never would have cared for her."
Anne said no more. It was of no moment as he observed; but she retained her own opinion. They strolled to the end of the short walk in silence, and Anne said she must go in.
"Am I quite forgiven?" whispered Lord Hartledon, bending his head down to her.
"I never thought I had very much to forgive," she rejoined, after a pause.
"My darling! I mean by your father."
"Ah, I don't know. You must talk to him. He knows we have been writing to each other. I think he means to trust you."
"The best plan will be for you to come soon to Hartledon, Anne. I shall never go wrong when once you are my wife."
"Do you go so very wrong now?" she asked.
"On my honour, no! You need not doubt me, Anne; now or ever. I have paid up what I owed, and will take very good care to keep out of trouble for the future. I incurred debts for others, more than for myself, and have bought experience dearly. My darling, surely you can trust me now?"
"I always did trust you," she murmured.
He took a long, fervent kiss from her lips, and then led her to the open lawn and across to the house.
"Ought you to come in, Percival?"
"Certainly. One word, Anne; because I may be speaking to the Rector--I don't mean to-night. You will make no objection to coming soon to Hartledon?"
"I can't come, you know, as long as Lady Kirton is its mistress," she said, half seriously, half jestingly.
He laughed at the notion. Lady Kirton must be going soon of her own accord; if not, he should have to pluck up courage and give her a hint, was his answer. At any rate, she'd surely take herself off before Christmas. The old dowager at Hartledon after he had Anne there! Not if he knew it, he added, as he went on with her into the presence of Dr. and Mrs. Ashton. The Rector started from his seat, at once telling him that he ought not to have come in. Which Val did not see at all, and decidedly refused to go out again.
Meanwhile the countess-dowager and Maude were wondering what had become of him. They supposed he was still sitting in the dining-room. The old dowager fidgeted about, her fingers ominously near the bell. She was burning to send to him, but hardly knew how he might take the message: it might be that he would object to leading strings, and her attempt to put them on would ruin all. But the time went on; grew late; and she was dying for her tea, which she had chosen should wait also. Maude sat before the fire in a large chair; her eyes, her hands, her whole air supremely listless.
"Don't you want tea, Maude?" suddenly cried her mother, who had cast innumerable glances at her from time to time.
"I have wanted it for hours--as it seems to me."
"It's a horrid custom for young men, this sitting long after dinner. If he gets into it--But you must see to that, and stop it, if ever you reign at Hartledon. I dare say he's smoking."
"If ever I reign at Hartledon--which I am not likely to do--I'll take care not to wait tea for any one, as you have made me wait for it this evening," was Maude's rejoinder, spoken with apathy.
"I'll send a message to him," decided Lady Kirton, ringing rather fiercely.
A servant appeared.
"Tell Lord Hartledon we are waiting tea for him."
"His lordship's not in, my lady."
"Not in!"
"He went out directly after dinner, as soon as he had taken coffee."
"Oh," said the countess-dowager. And she began to make the tea with vehemence--for it did not please her to have it brought in made--and knocked down and broke one of the delicate china cups.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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14
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ANOTHER PATIENT.
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It was eleven o'clock when Lord Hartledon entered. Lady Kirton was fanning herself vehemently. Maude had gone upstairs for the night.
"Where have you been?" she asked, laying down her fan. "We waited tea for you until poor Maude got quite exhausted."
"Did you? I am sorry for that. Never wait for me, pray, Lady Kirton. I took tea at the Rectory."
"Took--tea--where?"
"At the Rectory."
With a shriek the countess-dowager darted to the far end of the room, turning up her gown as she went, and muffling it over her head and face, so that only the little eyes, round now with horror, were seen. Lord Hartledon gazed in amazement.
"You have been at the Rectory, when I warned you not to go! You have been inside that house of infection, and come home--here--to me--to my darling Maude! May heaven forgive you, Hartledon!"
"Why, what have I done? What harm will it do?" exclaimed the astonished man. He would have approached her, but she warned him from her piteously with her hands. She was at the upper end of the room, and he near the door, so that she could not leave it without passing him. Hedges came in, and stood staring in the same wondering astonishment as his master.
"For mercy's sake, take off every shred of your clothes!" she cried. "You may have brought home death in them. They shall be thrown into the burning tar. Do you want to kill us? What has Maude done to you that you behave in this way?"
"I do think you must be going mad!" cried Lord Hartledon, in bewilderment; "and I hope you'll forgive me for saying so. I--" "Go and change your clothes!" was all she could reiterate. "Every minute you stand in them is fraught with danger. If you choose to die yourself, it's downright wicked to bring death to us. Oh, go, that I may get out of here."
Lord Hartledon, to pacify her, left the room, and the countess-dowager rushed forth and bolted herself into her own apartments.
Was she mad, or making a display of affectation, or genuinely afraid? wondered Lord Hartledon aloud, as he went up to his chamber. Hedges gave it as his opinion that she was really afraid, because she had been as bad as this when she first heard of the illness, before his lordship arrived. Val retired to rest laughing: it was a good joke to him.
But it was no joke to the countess-dowager, as he found to his cost when the morning came. She got him out of his chamber betimes, and commenced a "fumigating" process. The clothes he had worn she insisted should be burnt; pleading so piteously that he yielded in his good nature.
But there was to be a battle on another score. She forbade him, in the most positive terms, to go again to the Rectory--to approach within half-a-mile of it. Lord Hartledon civilly told her he could not comply; he hinted that if her alarms were so great, she had better leave the place until all danger was over, and thereby nearly entailed on himself another war-dance.
News that came up that morning from the Rectory did not tend to assuage her fears. The poor dairymaid had died in the night, and another servant, one of the men, was sickening. Even Lord Hartledon looked grave: and the countess-dowager wormed a half promise from him, in the softened feelings of the moment, that he would not visit the infected house.
Before an hour was over he came to her to retract it. "I cannot be so unfeeling, so unneighbourly, as not to call," he said. "Even were my relations not what they are with Miss Ashton, I could not do it. It's of no use talking, ma'am; I am too restless to stay away."
A little skirmish of words ensued. Lady Kirton accused him of wishing to sacrifice them to his own selfish gratification. Lord Hartledon felt uncomfortable at the accusation. One of the best-hearted men living, he did nothing in his vacillation. He would go in the evening, he said to himself, when they could not watch him from the house.
But she was clever at carrying out her own will, that countess-dowager; more than a match for the single-minded young man. She wrote an urgent letter to Dr. Ashton, setting forth her own and her daughter's danger if her nephew, as she styled him, was received at the Rectory; and she despatched it privately.
It brought forth a letter from Dr. Ashton to Lord Hartledon; a kind but peremptory mandate, forbidding him to show himself at the Rectory until the illness was over. Dr. Ashton reminded his future son-in-law that it was not particularly on his own account he interposed this veto, but for the sake of the neighbourhood generally. If they were to prevent the fever from spreading, it was absolutely necessary that no chance visitors should be running into the Rectory and out of it again, to carry possible infection to the parish.
Lord Hartledon could only acquiesce. The note was written in terms so positive as rather to surprise him; but he never suspected the undercurrent that had been at work. In his straightforwardness he showed the letter to the dowager, who nodded her head approvingly, but told no tales.
And so his days went on in the society of the two women at Hartledon; and if he found himself oppressed with _ennui_ at first, he subsided into a flirtation with Maude, and forgot care. Elster's folly! He was not hearing from Anne, for it was thought better that even notes should not pass out of the Rectory.
Curiously to relate, the first person beyond the Rectory to take the illness was the man Pike. How he could have caught it was a marvel to Calne. And yet, if Lady Kirton's theory were correct, that infection was conveyed by clothes, it might be accounted for, and Clerk Gum be deemed the culprit. One evening after the clerk had been for some little time at the Rectory with Dr. Ashton, he met Pike in going out; had brushed close to him in passing, as he well remembered. However it might have been, in a few days after that Pike was found to be suffering from the fever.
Whether he would have died, lying alone in that shed, Calne did not decide; and some thought he would, making no sign; some thought not, but would have called in assistance. Mr. Hillary, an observant man, as perhaps it was requisite he should be in time of public danger, halted one morning to speak to Clerk Gum, who was standing at his own gate.
"Have you seen anything lately of that neighbour of yours, Gum?"
"Which neighbour?" asked the clerk, in tones that seemed to resent the question.
Mr. Hillary pointed his umbrella in the direction of the shed. "Pike."
"No, I've seen nothing of him, that I remember."
"Neither have I. What's more, I've seen no smoke coming out of the chimney these two days. It strikes me he's ill. It may be the fever."
"Gone away, possibly," remarked the clerk, after a moment's pause; "in the same unceremonious manner that he came."
"I think somebody ought to see. He may be lying there helpless."
"Little matter if he is," growled the clerk, who seemed put out about something or other.
"It's not like you to say so, Gum. You might step over the stile and see; you're nearest to him. Nobody knows what the man is, or what he may have been; but humanity does not let even the worst die unaided."
"What makes you think he has the fever?" asked the clerk.
"I only say he may have it; having seen neither him nor his smoke these two days. Never mind; if it annoys you to do this, I'll look in myself some time to-day."
"You wouldn't get admitted; he keeps his door fastened," returned Gum. "The only way to get at him is to shout out to him through that glazed aperture he calls his window."
"Will you do it--or shall I?"
"I'll do it," said the clerk; "and tell you if your services are wanted."
Mr. Hillary walked off at a quick pace. There was a good deal of illness in Calne at that season, though the fever had not spread.
Whether Clerk Gum kept his word, or whether he did not, certain it was that Mr. Hillary heard nothing from him that day. In the evening the clerk was sitting in his office in a thoughtful mood, busy over some accounts connected with an insurance company for which he was agent, when he heard a quick sharp knock at the front-door.
"I wonder if it's Hillary?" he muttered, as he took the candle and rose to open it.
Instead of the surgeon, there entered a lady, with much energy. It was the _bête noire_ of Clerk Gum's life, Mrs. Jones.
"What's the house shut up for at this early hour?" she began. "The door locked, the shutters up, and the blinds down, just as if everybody was dead or asleep. Where's Nance?"
"She's out," said the clerk. "I suppose she shut up before she went, and I've been in my office all the afternoon. Do you want anything?"
"Do I want anything!" retorted Mrs. Jones. "I've come in to shelter from the rain. It's been threatening all the evening, and it's coming down now like cats and dogs."
The clerk was leading the way to the little parlour; but she ignored the movement, and went on to the kitchen. He could only follow her. "It's a pity you came out when it threatened rain," said he.
"Business took me out," replied Mrs. Jones. "I've been up to the mill. I heard young Rip was ill, and going to leave; so I went up to ask if they'd try our Jim. But young Rip isn't going to leave, and isn't ill, mother Floyd says, though it's certain he's not well. She can't think what's the matter with the boy; he's always fancying he sees ghosts in the river. I've had my trapes for nothing."
She had given her gown a good shake from the rain-drops in the middle of the kitchen, and was now seated before the fire. The clerk stood by the table, occasionally snuffing the candle, and wishing she'd take herself off again.
"Where's Nancy gone?" asked she.
"I didn't hear her say."
"And she'll be gone a month of Sundays, I suppose. I shan't wait for her, if the rain gives over."
"You'd be more comfortable in the small parlour," said the clerk, who seemed rather fidgety; "there's a nice bit of fire there."
"I'm more comfortable here," contradicted Mrs. Jones. "Where's the good of a bit of fire for a gown as wet as mine?"
Jabez Gum made no response. There was the lady, a fixture; and he could only resign himself to the situation.
"How's your friend at the next house--Pike?" she began again sarcastically.
"He's no friend of mine," said the clerk.
"It looks like it, at all events; or you'd have given him into custody long ago. _I_ wouldn't let a man harbour himself so close to me. He's taken to a new dodge now: going about with a pistol to shoot people."
"Who says so?" asked the clerk.
"I say so. He frighted that boy Ripper pretty near to death. The boy tore home one night in a state of terror, and all they could get out of him was that he'd met Pike with a pistol. It's weeks ago, and he hasn't got over it yet."
"Did Pike level it at him?"
"I tell you that's all they could get out of the boy. He's a nice jail-bird too, that young Rip, unless I'm mistaken. They might as well send him away, and make room for our Jim."
"I think you are about the most fanciful, unjust, selfish woman in Calne!" exclaimed the clerk, unable to keep down his anger any longer. "You'd take young Ripper's character away without scruple, just because his place might suit your Jim!"
"I'm what?" shrieked Mrs. Jones. "I'm unjust, am I--" An interruption occurred, and Mrs. Jones subsided into silence. The back-door suddenly opened, not a couple of yards from that lady's head, and in came Mrs. Gum in her ordinary indoor dress, two basins in her hand. The sight of her visitor appeared to occasion her surprise; she uttered a faint scream, and nearly dropped the basins.
"Lawk a mercy! Is it Lydia Jones?"
Mrs. Jones had been drawing a quiet deduction--the clerk had said his wife was out only to deceive her. She rose from her chair, and faced him.
"I thought you told me she was gone out?"
The clerk coughed. He looked at his wife, as if asking an explanation. The meeker of the two women hastily put her basins down, and stood looking from one to the other, apparently recovering breath.
"Didn't you go out?" asked the clerk.
"I was going, Gum, but stepped out first to collect my basins, and then the rain came down. I had to shelter under the wood-shed, it was peppering so."
"Collect your basins!" interjected Mrs. Jones. "Where from?"
"I put them out with scraps for the cats."
"The cats must be well off in your quarter; better than some children in others," was the rejoinder, delivered with an unnecessary amount of spite. "What makes you so out of breath?" she tartly asked.
"I had a bit of a fright," said the woman, simply. "My breath seems to get affected at nothing of late, Lydia."
"A pity but you'd your hands full of work, as mine are: that's the best remedy for fright," said Mrs. Jones sarcastically. "What might your fright have been, pray?"
"I was standing, waiting to dart over here, when I saw a man come across the waste land and make for Pike's shed," said Mrs. Gum, looking at her husband. "It gave me a turn. We've never seen a soul go near the place of an evening since Pike has been there."
"Why should it give you a turn?" asked Mrs. Jones, who was in a mood to contradict everything. "You've seen Pike often enough not to be frightened at him when he keeps his distance."
"It wasn't Pike, Lydia. The man had an umbrella over him, and he looked like a gentleman. Fancy Pike with an umbrella!"
"Was it Mr. Hillary?" interposed the clerk.
She shook her head. "I don't think so; but it was getting too dark to see. Any way, it gave me a turn; and he's gone right up to Pike's shed."
"Gave you a turn, indeed!" scornfully repeated Mrs. Jones. "I think you're getting more of an idiot every day, Nance. It's to be hoped somebody's gone to take him up; that's what is to be hoped."
But Mr. Hillary it was. Hearing nothing from Jabez Gum all day, he had come to the conclusion that that respectable man had ignored his promise, and, unable to divest himself of the idea that Pike was ill, in the evening, having a minute to spare, he went forth to see for himself.
The shed-door was closed, but not fastened, and Mr. Hillary went in at once without ceremony. A lighted candle shed its rays around the rude dwelling-room: and the first thing he saw was a young man, who did not look in the least like Pike, stretched upon a mattress; the second was a bushy black wig and appurtenances lying on a chair; and the third was a formidable-looking pistol, conveniently close to the prostrate invalid.
Quick as thought, the surgeon laid his hand upon the pistol and removed it to a safe distance. He then bent over the sick man, examining him with his penetrating eyes; and what he saw struck him with consternation so great, that he sat down on a chair to recover himself, albeit not liable to be overcome by emotion.
When he left the shed--which was not for nearly half-an-hour after he had entered it--he heard voices at Clerk Gum's front-door. The storm was over, and their visitor was departing. Mr. Hillary took a moment's counsel with himself, then crossed the stile and appeared amongst them. Nodding to the three collectively, he gravely addressed the clerk and his wife.
"I have come here to ask, in the name of our common humanity, whether you will put aside your prejudices, and be Christians in a case of need," he began. "I don't forget that once, when an epidemic was raging in Calne, you"--turning to the wife--"were active and fearless, going about and nursing the sick when almost all others held aloof. Will you do the same now by a helpless man?"
The woman trembled all over. Clerk Gum looked questioningly at the doctor. Mrs. Jones was taking in everything with eyes and ears.
"This neighbour of yours has caught the fever. Some one must attend to him, or he will lie there and die. I thought perhaps you'd do it, Mrs. Gum, for our Saviour's sake--if from no other motive."
She trembled excessively. "I always was terribly afraid of that man, sir, since he came," said she, with marked hesitation.
"But he cannot harm you now. I don't ask you to go in to him one day after he is well again--if he recovers. Neither need you be with him as a regular nurse: only step in now and then to give him his physic, or change the wet cloths on his burning head."
Mrs. Jones found her voice. The enormous impudence of the surgeon's request had caused its temporary extinction.
"I'd see Pike in his coffin before I'd go a-nigh him as a nurse! What on earth will you be asking next, Mr. Hillary?"
"I didn't ask you, Mrs. Jones: you have your children to attend to; full employment for one pair of arms. Mrs. Gum has nothing to do with her time; and is near at hand besides. Gum, you stand in your place by Dr. Ashton every Sunday, and read out to us of the loving mercy of God: will you urge your wife to this little work of charity for His sake?"
Jabez Gum evidently did not know what to answer. On the one hand, he could hardly go against the precepts he had to respond to as clerk; on the other, there was his scorn and hatred of the disreputable Arab.
"He's such a loose character, sir," he debated at length.
"Possibly: when he is well. But he is ill now, and could not be loose if he tried. Some one _must_ go in now and then to see after him: it struck me that perhaps your wife would do it, for humanity's sake; and I thought I'd ask her before going further."
"She can do as she likes," said Jabez.
Mrs. Gum--as unresisting in her nature as ever was Percival Elster--yielded to the prayer of the surgeon, and said she would do what she could. But she had never shown more nervousness over anything than she was showing as she gave her answer.
"Then I will step indoors and give you a few plain directions," said the surgeon. "Mrs. Jones has taken her departure, I perceive."
Mrs. Gum was as good as her word, and went in with dire trepidation. Calne's sentiments, on the whole, resembled Mrs. Jones's, and the woman was blamed for her yielding nature. But she contrived, with the help of Mr. Hillary's skill, to bring the man through the fever; and it was very singular that no other person out of the Rectory took it.
The last one to take it at the Rectory was Mrs. Ashton. Of the three servants who had it, one had died; the other two recovered. Mrs. Ashton did not take it until the rest were well, and she had it lightly. Anne nursed her and would do so; and it was an additional reason for prolonging the veto against Lord Hartledon.
One morning in December, Val, in passing down the road, saw the Rectory turned, as he called it, inside out. Every window was thrown open; curtains were taken down; altogether there seemed to be a comprehensive cleaning going on. At that moment Mr. Hillary passed, and Val arrested him, pointing to the Rectory.
"Yes, they are having a cleansing and purification. The family went away this morning."
"Went where?" exclaimed Hartledon, in amazement.
"Dr. Ashton has taken a cottage near Ventnor."
"Had Mrs. Ashton quite recovered?"
"Quite: or they would not have gone. The Rectory has had a clean bill of health for some time past."
"Then why did they not let me know it?" exclaimed Val, in his astonishment and anger.
"Perhaps you didn't ask," said the surgeon. "But no visitors were sought. Time enough for that when the house shall have been fumigated."
"They might have sent to me," he cried, in resentment. "To go away and never let me know it!"
"They may have thought you were too agreeably engaged to care to be disturbed," remarked the surgeon.
"What do you mean?" demanded Val, hotly.
Mr. Hillary laughed. "People will talk, you know; and rumour has it that Lord Hartledon has found attractions in his own home, whilst the Rectory was debarred to him."
Val wheeled round on his heel, and walked away in displeasure. Home truths are never palatable. But the kindly disposition of the man resumed its sway immediately: he turned back, and pointed to the shed.
"Is that interesting patient of yours on his legs again?"
"He is getting better. The disease attacked him fiercely and was unusually prolonged. It's strange he should have been the only one to take it."
"Gum's wife has been nursing him, I hear?"
"She has gone in and out to do such necessary offices as the sick require. I put it to her from a Christian point of view, you see, and on the score of humanity. She was at hand; and that's a great thing where the nurse is only a visiting one."
"Look here, Hillary; don't let the man want for anything; see that he has all he needs. He is a black sheep, no doubt; but illness levels us all to one standard. Good day."
"Good day, Lord Hartledon."
And when the surgeon had got to a distance with his quick step, Lord Hartledon turned back to the Rectory.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
|
15
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VAL'S DILEMMA.
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It was a mild day in spring. The air was balmy, but the skies were grey and lowering; and as a gentleman strolled across a field adjoining Hartledon Park he looked up at them more than once, as if asking whether they threatened rain.
Not that he had any great personal interest in the question. Whether the skies gave forth sunshine or rain is of little moment to a mind not at rest. He had only looked up in listlessness. A stranger might have taken him at a distance for a gamekeeper: his coat was of velveteen; his boots were muddy: but a nearer inspection would have removed the impression.
It was Lord Hartledon; but changed since you last saw him. For some time past there had been a worn, weary look upon his face, bespeaking a mind ill at ease; the truth is, his conscience was not at rest, and in time that tells on the countenance.
He had been by the fish-pond for an hour. But the fish had not shown themselves inclined to bite, and he grew too impatient to remain. Not altogether impatient at the wary fish, but in his own mental restlessness. The fishing-rod was carried in his hand in pieces; and he splashed along, in a brown study, on the wet ground, flinging himself over the ha-ha with an ungracious movement. Some one was approaching across the park from the house, and Lord Hartledon walked on to a gate, and waited there for him to come up. He began beating the bars with the thin end of the rod, and--broke it!
"That's the way you use your fishing-rods," cried the free, pleasant voice of the new-comer. "I shouldn't mind being appointed purveyor of tackle to your lordship."
The stranger was an active little man, older than Hartledon; his features were thin, his eyes dark and luminous. I think you have heard his name--Thomas Carr. Lord Hartledon once called him the greatest friend he possessed on earth. He had been wont to fly to him in his past dilemmas, and the habit was strong upon him still. A mandate that would have been peremptory, but for the beseeching terms in which it was couched, had reached Mr. Carr on circuit; and he had hastened across country to obey it, reaching Hartledon the previous evening. That something was wrong, Mr. Carr of course was aware; but what, he did not yet know. Lord Hartledon, with his natural vacillation, his usual shrinking from the discussion of unpleasant topics relating to himself, had not entered upon it at all on the previous night; and when breakfast was over that morning, Mr. Carr had craved an hour alone for letter-writing. It was the first time Mr. Carr had visited his friend at his new inheritance; indeed the first time he had been at all at Hartledon. Lord Hartledon seated himself on the gate; the barrister leaned his arms on the top bar whilst he talked to him.
"What is the matter?" asked the latter.
"Not much."
"I have finished my letters, so I came out to look for you. You are not changed, Elster."
"What should change me in so short a time? --it's only six months since you last saw me," retorted Hartledon, curtly.
"I alluded to your nature. I had to worm the troubles out of you in the old days, each one as it arose. I see I shall have to do the same now. Don't say there's not much the matter, for I am sure there is."
Lord Hartledon jerked his handkerchief out of his pocket, passed it over his face, and put it back again.
"What fresh folly have you got into? --as I used to ask you at Oxford. You are in some mess."
"I suppose it's of no use denying that I am in one. An awful mess, too."
"Well, I have pulled you out of many a one in my time. Let me hear it."
"There are some things one does not like to talk about, Carr. I sent for you in my perplexity; but I believe you can be of no use to me."
"So you have said before now. But it generally turned out that I was of use to you, and cleared you from your nightmare."
"All those were minor difficulties; this is different."
"I cannot understand your 'not liking' to speak of things to me. Why don't you begin?"
"Because I shall prove myself worse than a fool. You'll despise me to your heart's core. Carr, I think I shall go mad!"
"Tell me the cause first, and go mad afterwards. Come, Val; I am your true friend."
"I have made an offer of marriage to two women," said Hartledon, desperately plunging into the revelation. "Never was such a born idiot in the world as I have been. I can't marry both."
"I imagine not," quietly replied Mr. Carr.
"You knew I was engaged to Miss Ashton?"
"Yes."
"And I'm sure I loved her with all my"--he seemed to hesitate for a strong term--"might and main; and do still. But I have managed to get into mischief elsewhere."
"Elster's folly, as usual. What sort of mischief?"
"The worst sort, for there can be no slipping out of it. When that fever broke out at Doctor Ashton's--you heard us talking of it last night, Carr--I went to the Rectory just as usual. What did I care for fever? --it was not likely to attack me. But the countess-dowager found it out--" "Why do they stay here so long?" interrupted Thomas Carr. "They have been here ever since your brother died."
"And before it. The old woman likes her quarters, and has no settled home. She makes a merit of stopping, and says I ought to feel under eternal obligation to her and Maude for sacrificing themselves to a solitary man and his household. But you should have heard the uproar she made upon discovering I had been to the Rectory. She had my room fumigated and my clothes burnt."
"Foolish old creature!"
"The best of it was, I pointed out by mistake the wrong coat, and the offending one is upstairs now. I shall show it her some day. She reproached me with holding her life and her daughter's dirt-cheap, and wormed a promise out of me not to visit the Rectory as long as fever was in it."
"Which you gave?"
"She wormed it out of me, I tell you. I don't know that I should have kept it, but Dr. Ashton put in his veto also; and between the two I was kept away. For many weeks afterwards I never saw or spoke to Anne. She did not come out at all, even to church; they were so anxious the fever should not spread."
"Well? Go on, Val."
"Well: how does that proverb run, about idleness being the root of all evil? During those weeks I was an idle man, wretchedly bored; and I fell into a flirtation with Maude. She began it, Carr, on my solemn word of honour--though it's a shame to tell these tales of a woman; and I joined in from sheer weariness, to kill time. But you know how one gets led on in such things--or I do, if you, you cautious fellow, don't--and we both went in pretty deep."
"Elster's folly again! How deep?"
"As deep as I well could, short of committing myself to a proposal. You see the ill-luck of it was, those two and I being alone in the house. I may as well say Maude and I alone; for the old woman kept her room very much; she had a cold, she said, and was afraid of the fever."
"Tush!" cried Thomas Carr angrily. "And you made love to the young lady?"
"As fast as I could make it. What a fool I was! But I protest I only did it in amusement; I never thought of her supplanting Anne Ashton. Now, Carr, you are looking as you used to look at Oxford; get your brow smooth again. You just shut up yourself for weeks with a fascinating girl, and see if you wouldn't find yourself in some horrible entanglement, proof against such as you think you are."
"As I am obliged to be. I should take care not to lay myself open to the temptation. Neither need you have done it."
"I don't see how I was to help myself. Often and often I wished to have visitors in the house, but the old woman met me with reproaches that I was forgetting the recent death of my brother. She won't have any one now if she knows it, and I had to send for you quietly. Did you see how she stared last night when you came in?"
Mr. Carr drew down his lips. "You might have gone away yourself, Elster."
"Of course I might," was the testy reply. "But I was a fool, and didn't. Carr, I swear to you I fell into the trap unconsciously; I did not foresee danger. Maude is a charming girl, there's no denying it; but as to love, I never glanced at it."
"Was it not suspected in town last year that Lady Maude had a liking for your brother?"
"It was suspected there and here; I thought it myself. We were mistaken. One day lately Maude offended me, and I hinted at something of the sort: she turned red and white with indignation, saying she wished he could rise from his grave to refute it. I only wish he could!" added the unhappy man.
"Have you told me all?"
"All! I wish I had. In December I was passing the Rectory, and saw it dismantled. Hillary, whom I met, said the family had gone to Ventnor. I went in, but could not learn any particulars, or get the address. I chanced a letter, written I confess in anger, directing it Ventnor only, and it found them. Anne's answer was cool: mischief-making tongues had been talking about me and Maude; I learned so much from Hillary; and Anne no doubt resented it. I resented that--can you follow me, Carr? --and I said to myself I wouldn't write again for some time to come. Before that time came the climax had occurred."
"And while you were waiting for your temper to come round in regard to Miss Ashton, you continued to make love to the Lady Maude?" remarked Mr. Carr. "On the face of things, I should say your love had been transferred to her."
"Indeed it hadn't. Next to Anne, she's the most charming girl I know; that's all. Between the two it will be awful work for me."
"So I should think," returned Mr. Carr. "The ass between two bundles of hay was nothing to it."
"He was not an ass at all, compared with what I am," assented Val, gloomily.
"Well, if a man behaves like an ass--" "Don't moralize," interrupted Hartledon; "but rather advise me how to get out of my dilemma. The morning's drawing on, and I have promised to ride with Maude."
"You had better ride alone. All the advice I can give you is to draw back by degrees, and so let the flirtation subside. If there is no actual entanglement--" "Stop a bit, Carr; I had not come to it," interrupted Lord Hartledon, who in point of fact had been holding back what he called the climax, in his usual vacillating manner. "One ill-starred day, when it was pouring cats and dogs, and I could not get out, I challenged Maude to a game at billiards. Maude lost. I said she should pay me, and put my arm round her waist and snatched a kiss. Just at that moment in came the dowager, who I believe must have been listening--" "Not improbably," interrupted Mr. Carr, significantly. " 'Oh, you two dear turtle-doves,' cried she, 'Hartledon, you have made me so happy! I have seen for some weeks what you were thinking of. There's nobody living I'd confide that dear child to but yourself: you shall have her, and my blessing shall be upon you both.'
"Carr," continued poor Val, "I was struck dumb. All the absurdity of the thing rose up before me. In my confusion I could not utter a word. A man with more moral courage might have spoken out; acknowledged the shame and folly of his conduct and apologized. I could not."
"Elster's folly! Elster's folly!" thought the barrister. "You never had the slightest spark of moral courage," he observed aloud, in pained tones. "What did you say?"
"Nothing. There's the worst of it. I neither denied the dowager's assumption, nor confirmed it. Of course I cannot now."
"When was this?"
"In December."
"And how have things gone on since? How do you stand with them?"
"Things have gone on as they went on before; and I stand engaged to Maude, in her mother's opinion; perhaps in hers: never having said myself one word to support the engagement."
"Only continued to 'make love,' and 'snatch a kiss,'" sarcastically rejoined Mr. Carr.
"Once in a way. What is a man to do, exposed to the witchery of a pretty girl?"
"Oh, Percival! You are worse than I thought for. Where is Miss Ashton?"
"Coming home next Friday," groaned Val. "And the dowager asked me yesterday whether Maude and I had arranged the time for our marriage. What on earth I shall do, I don't know. I might sail for some remote land and convert myself into a savage, where I should never be found or recognized; there's no other escape for me."
"How much does Miss Ashton know of this?"
"Nothing. I had a letter from her this morning, more kindly than her letters have been of late."
"Lord Hartledon!" exclaimed Mr. Carr, in startled tones. "Is it possible that you are carrying on a correspondence with Miss Ashton, and your love-making with Lady Maude?"
Val nodded assent, looking really ashamed of himself.
"And you call yourself a man of honour! Why, you are the greatest humbug--" "That's enough; no need to sum it up. I see all I've been."
"I understood you to imply that your correspondence with Miss Ashton had ceased."
"It was renewed. Dr. Ashton came up to preach one Sunday, just before Christmas, and he and I got friendly again; you know I never can be unfriendly with any one long. The next day I wrote to Anne, and we have corresponded since; more coolly though than we used to do. Circumstances have been really against me. Had they continued at Ventnor, I should have gone down and spent my Christmas with them, and nothing of this would have happened; but they must needs go to Dr. Ashton's sister's in Yorkshire for Christmas; and there they are still. It was in that miserable Christmas week that the mischief occurred. And now you have the whole, Carr. I know I've been a fool; but what is to be done?"
"Lord Hartledon," was the grave rejoinder, "I am unable to give you advice in this. Your conduct is indefensible."
"Don't 'Lord Hartledon' me: I won't stand it. Carr?"
"Well?"
"If you bring up against me a string of reproaches lasting until night will that mend matters? I am conscious of possessing but one true friend in the world, and that's yourself. You must stand by me."
"I was your friend; never a truer. But I believed you to be a man of honour."
Hartledon lifted his hat from his brow; as though the brow alone were heavy enough just then. At least the thought struck Mr. Carr.
"I have been drawn unwittingly into this, as I have into other things. I never meant to do wrong. As to dishonour, Heaven knows my nature shrinks from it."
"If your nature does, you don't," came the severe answer. "I should feel ashamed to put forth the same plea always of 'falling unwittingly' into disgrace. You have done it ever since you were a schoolboy. Talk of the Elster folly! this has gone beyond it. This is dishonour. Engaged to one girl, and corresponding with her; making hourly love for weeks to another! May I inquire which of the two you really care for?"
"Anne--I suppose."
"You suppose!"
"You make me wild, talking like this. Of course it's Anne. Maude has managed to creep into my regard, though, in no common degree. She is very lovely, very fascinating and amiable."
"May I ask which of the two you intend to marry!" continued the barrister, neither suppressing nor attempting to soften his indignant tones. "As this country's laws are against a plurality of wives, you will be unable, I imagine, to espouse them both."
Hartledon looked at him, beseechingly, and a sudden compassion came over Mr. Carr. He asked himself whether it was quite the way to treat a perplexed man who was very dear to him.
"If I am severe, it is for your sake. I assure you I scarcely know what advice to give. It is Miss Ashton, of course, whom you intend to make Lady Hartledon?"
"Of course it is. The difficulty in the matter is getting clear of Maude."
"And the formidable countess-dowager. You must tell Maude the truth."
"Impossible, Carr. I might have done it once; but the thing has gone on so long. The dowager would devour me."
"Let her try to. I should speak to Maude alone, and put her upon her generosity to release you. Tell her you presumed upon your cousinship; and confess that you have long been engaged to marry Miss Ashton."
"She knows that: they have both known it all along. My brother was the first to tell them, before he died."
"They knew it?" inquired Mr. Carr, believing he had not heard correctly.
"Certainly. There has been no secret made of my engagement to Anne. All the world knows of that."
"Then--though I do not in the least defend or excuse you--your breaking with Lady Maude may be more pardonable. They are poor, are they not, this Dowager Kirton and Lady Maude?"
"Poor as Job. Hard up, I think."
"Then they are angling for the broad lands of Hartledon. I see it all. You have been a victim to fortune-hunting."
"There you are wrong, Carr. I can't answer for the dowager one way or the other; but Maude is the most disinterested--" "Of course: girls on the look-out for establishments always are. Have it as you like."
He spoke in tones of ridicule; and Hartledon jumped off the stile and led the way home.
That Lord Hartledon had got himself into a very serious predicament, Mr. Carr plainly saw. His good nature, his sensitive regard for the feelings of others, rendering it so impossible for him to say no, and above all his vacillating disposition, were his paramount characteristics still: in a degree they ever would be. Easily led as ever, he was as a very reed in the hands of the crafty old woman of the world, located with him. She had determined that he should become the husband of her daughter; and was as certain of accomplishing her end as if she had foreseen the future. Lord Hartledon himself afterwards, in his bitter repentance, said, over and over again, that circumstances were against him; and they certainly were so, as you will find.
Lord Hartledon thought he was making headway against it now, in sending for his old friend, and resolving to be guided by his advice.
"I will take an opportunity of speaking to Maude, Carr," he resumed. "I would rather not do it, of course; but I see there's no help for it."
"Make the opportunity," said Mr. Carr, with emphasis. "Don't delay a day; I shall expect you to write me a letter to-morrow saying you've done it."
"But you won't leave to-day," said Hartledon, entreatingly, feeling an instant prevision that with the departure of Thomas Carr all his courage would ignominiously desert him.
"I must go. You know I told you last night that my stay could only be four-and-twenty hours. You can accomplish it whilst I am here, if you like, and get it over; the longer a nauseous medicine is held to the lips the more difficult it is to swallow it. You say you are going to ride with Lady Maude presently; let that be your opportunity."
And get it over! Words that sounded as emancipation in Val's ear. But somehow he did not accomplish it in that ride. Excuses were on his lips five hundred times, but his hesitating lips never formed them. He really was on the point of speaking; at least he said so to himself; when Mr. Hillary overtook them on horseback, and rode with them some distance. After that, Maude put her horse to a canter, and so they reached home.
"Well?" said Mr. Carr.
"Not yet," answered Hartledon; "there was no opportunity."
"My suggestion was to make your opportunity."
"And so I will. I'll speak to her either to-night or to-morrow. She chose to ride fast to-day; and Hillary joined us part of the way. Don't look as if you doubted me, Carr: I shall be sure to speak."
"Will he?" thought Thomas Carr, as he took his departure by the evening train, having promised to run down the following Saturday for a few hours. "It is an even bet, I think. Poor Val!"
Poor Val indeed! Vacillating, attractive, handsome Val! shrinking, sensitive Val! The nauseous medicine was never taken. And when the Ashtons returned to the Rectory on the Friday night he had not spoken.
And the very day of their return a rumour reached his ear that Mrs. Ashton's health was seriously if not fatally shattered, and she was departing immediately for the South of France.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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16
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BETWEEN THE TWO.
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Not in the Rectory drawing-room, but in a pretty little sitting-room attached to her bed-chamber, where the temperature was regulated, and no draughts could penetrate, reclined Mrs. Ashton. Her invalid gown sat loosely upon her shrunken form, her delicate, lace cap shaded a fading face. Anne sat by her side in all her loveliness, ostensibly working; but her fingers trembled, and her face looked flushed and pained.
It was the morning after their return, and Mrs. Graves had called in to see Mrs. Ashton--gossiping Mrs. Graves, who knew all that took place in the parish, and a great deal of what never did take place. She had just been telling it all unreservedly in her hard way; things that might be said, and things that might as well have been left unsaid. She went out leaving a whirr and a buzz behind her and an awful sickness of desolation upon one heart.
"Give me my little writing-case, Anne," said Mrs. Ashton, waking up from a reverie and sitting forward on her sofa.
Anne took the pretty toy from the side-table, opened it, and laid it on the table before her mother.
"Is it nothing I can write for you, mamma?"
"No, child."
Anne bent her hot face over her work again. It had not occurred to her that it could concern herself; and Mrs. Ashton wrote a few rapid lines: "My Dear Percival, "Can you spare me a five-minutes' visit? I wish to speak with you. We go away again on Monday.
"Ever sincerely yours, "Catherine Ashton."
She folded it, enclosed it in an envelope, and addressed it to the Earl of Hartledon. Pushing away the writing-table, she held out the note to her daughter.
"Seal it for me, Anne. I am tired. Let it go at once."
"Mamma!" exclaimed Anne, as her eye caught the address. "Surely you are not writing to him! You are not asking him to come here?"
"You see that I am writing to him, Anne. And it is to ask him to come here. My dear, you may safely leave me to act according to my own judgment. But as to what Mrs. Graves has said, I don't believe a word of it."
"I scarcely think I do," murmured Anne; a smile hovering on her troubled countenance, like sunshine after rain.
Anne had the taper alight, and the wax held to it, the note ready in her hand, when the room-door was thrown open by Mrs. Ashton's maid.
"Lord Hartledon."
He came in in a hurried manner, talking fast, making too much fuss; it was unlike his usual quiet movements, and Mrs. Ashton noticed it. As he shook hands with her, she held the note before him.
"See, Percival! I was writing to ask you to call upon me."
Anne had put out the light, and her hand was in Lord Hartledon's before she well knew anything, save that her heart was beating tumultuously. Mrs. Ashton made a place for him on the sofa, and Anne quietly left the room.
"I should have been here earlier," he began, "but I had the steward with me on business; it is little enough I have attended to since my brother's death. Dear Mrs. Ashton! I grieve to hear this poor account of you. You are indeed looking ill."
"I am so ill, Percival, that I doubt whether I shall ever be better in this world. It is my last chance, this going away to a warmer place until winter has passed."
He was bending towards her in earnest sympathy, all himself again; his dark blue eyes very tender, his pleasant features full of concern as he gazed on her face. And somehow, looking at that attractive countenance, Mrs. Ashton's doubts went from her.
"But what I have said is to you alone," she resumed. "My husband and children do not see the worst, and I refrain from telling them. A little word of confidence between us, Val."
"I hope and trust you may come back cured!" he said, very fervently. "Is it the fever that has so shattered you?"
"It is the result of it. I have never since been able to recover strength, but have become weaker and more weak. And you know I was in ill health before. We leave on Monday morning for Cannes."
"For Cannes?" he exclaimed.
"Yes. A place not so warm as some I might have gone to; but the doctors say that will be all the better. It is not heat I need; only shelter from our cold northern winds until I can get a little strength into me. There's nothing the matter with my lungs; indeed, I don't know that anything is the matter with me except this terrible weakness."
"I suppose Anne goes with you?"
"Oh yes. I could not go without Anne. The doctor will see us settled there, and then he returns."
A thought crossed Lord Hartledon: how pleasant if he and Anne could have been married, and have made this their wedding tour. He did not speak it: Mrs. Ashton would have laughed at his haste.
"How long shall you remain away?" he asked.
"Ah, I cannot tell you. I may not live to return. If all goes well--that is, if there should be a speedy change for the better, as the medical men who have been attending me think there may be--I shall be back perhaps in April or May. Val--I cannot forget the old familiar name, you see--" "I hope you never will forget it," he warmly interposed.
"I wanted very particularly to see you. A strange report was brought here this morning and I determined to mention it to you. You know what an old-fashioned, direct way I have of doing things; never choosing a roundabout road if I can take a straight one. This note was a line asking you to call upon me," she added, taking it from her lap, where it had been lying, and tossing it on to the table, whilst her hearer, his conscience rising up, began to feel a very little uncomfortable. "We heard you had proposed marriage to Lady Maude Kirton."
Lord Hartledon's face became crimson. "Who on earth could have invented that?" cried he, having no better answer at hand.
"Mrs. Graves mentioned it to me. She was dining at Hartledon last week, and the countess-dowager spoke about it openly."
Mrs. Ashton looked at him; and he, confused and taken aback, looked down on the carpet, devoutly wishing himself in the remote regions he had spoken of to Mr. Carr. Anywhere, so that he should never be seen or recognized again.
"What am I to do?" thought he. "I wish Mother Graves was hanged!"
"You do not speak, Percival!"
"Well, I--I was wondering what could have given rise to this," he stammered. "I believe the old dowager would like to see her daughter mistress of Hartledon: and suppose she gave utterance to her thoughts."
"Very strange that she should!" observed Mrs. Ashton.
"I think she's a little cracked sometimes," coughed Val; and, in truth, he now and then did think so. "I hope you have not told Anne?"
"I have told no one. And had I not felt sure it had no foundation, I should have told the doctor, not you. But Anne was in the room when Mrs. Graves mentioned it."
"What a blessing it would be if Mrs. Graves were out of the parish!" exclaimed Val, hotly. "I wonder Dr. Ashton keeps Graves on, with such a mother! No one ever had such a mischief-making tongue as hers."
"Percival, may I say something to you?" asked Mrs. Ashton, who was devouring him with her eyes. "Your manner would almost lead me to believe that there _is_ something in it. Tell me the truth; I can never be anything but your friend."
"Believe one thing, dear Mrs. Ashton--that I have no intention of marrying anyone but Anne; and I wish with all my heart and soul you'd give her to me to-day. Shut up with those two women, the one pretty, the other watching any chance word to turn it to her own use, I dare say the Mrs. Graveses of the place have talked, forgetting that Maude is my cousin. I believe I paid some attention to Maude because I was angry at being kept out of the Rectory; but my attentions meant nothing, upon my honour."
"Elster's folly, Val! Lady Maude may have thought they did."
"At any rate she knew of my engagement to Anne."
"Then there is nothing in it?"
"There shall be nothing in it," was the emphatic answer. "Anne was my first love, and she will be my last. You must promise to give her to me as soon as you return from Cannes."
"About that you must ask her father. I dare say he will do so."
Lord Hartledon rose from his seat; held Mrs. Ashton's hand between his whilst he said his adieu, and stooped to kiss her with a son's affection. She was a little surprised to find it was his final farewell. They were not going to start until Monday. But Hartledon could not have risked that cross-questioning again; rather would he have sailed away for the savage territories at once. He went downstairs searching for Anne, and found her in the room where you first saw her--her own. She looked up with quite an affectation of surprise when he entered, although she had probably gone there to await him. The best of girls are human.
"You ran away, Anne, whilst mamma and I held our conference?"
"I hope it has been satisfactory," she answered demurely, not looking up, and wondering whether he suspected how violently her heart was beating.
"Partly so. The end was all right. Shall I tell it you?"
"The end! Yes, if you will," she replied unsuspectingly.
"The decision come to is, that a certain young friend of ours is to be converted, with as little delay as circumstances may permit, into Lady Hartledon."
Of course there came no answer except a succession of blushes. Anne's work, which she had carried with her, took all her attention just then.
"Can you guess her name, Anne?"
"I don't know. Is it Maude Kirton?"
He winced. "If you have been told that abominable rubbish, Anne, it is not necessary to repeat it. It's not so pleasant a theme that you need make a joke of it."
"Is it rubbish?" asked Anne, lifting her eyes.
"I think you ought to know that if any one does. But had anything happened, Anne, recollect it would have been your fault. You have been very cool to me of late. You forbid me the house for weeks and weeks; you went away for an indefinite period without letting me know, or giving me the chance of seeing you; and when the correspondence was at length renewed, your letters were cold and formal--quite different from what they used to be. It almost looks as if you wished to part from me."
Repentance was stealing over her: why had she ever doubted him?
"And now you are going away again! And although this interview may be our last for months, you scarcely deign to give me a word or a look of farewell."
Anne had already been terribly tried by Mrs. Graves: this was the climax: she lost her self-control and burst into tears. Lord Hartledon was softened at once. He took her two hands in his; he clasped her to his heart, half devouring her face with passionate kisses. Ah, Lady Maude! this impassioned love was never felt for you.
"You don't love her?" whispered Anne.
"Love her! I never loved but you, my best and dearest. I never shall, or can, love another."
He spoke in all good faith; fully believing what he said; and it was indeed true. And Anne? As though a prevision had been upon her of the future, she remained passively in his arms sobbing hysterically, and suffering his kisses; not drawing away from him in maiden modesty, as was her wont. She had never clung to him like this.
"You will write to me often?" he whispered.
"Yes. Won't you come to Cannes?"
"I don't know that it will be possible, unless you remain beyond the spring. And should that be the case, Anne, I shall pray your father and mother that the marriage may take place there. I am going up to town next month to take my seat in the House. It will be a busy session; and I want to see if I can't become a useful public man. I think it would please the doctor to find I've some stuff in me; and a man must have a laudable object in life."
"I would rather die," murmured Anne, passionately in her turn, "than hear again what Mrs. Graves said."
"My darling, we cannot stop people's gossip. Believe in me; I will not fail you. Oh, Anne, I wish you were already my wife!" he aspirated fervently, his perplexities again presenting themselves to his mind.
"The time will come," she whispered.
Lord Hartledon walked home full of loyal thought, saying to himself what an utter idiot he had been in regard to Maude, and determined to lose no time in getting clear of the entanglement. He sought an opportunity of speaking to her that afternoon; he really did; but could not find it. The dowager had taken her out to pay a visit.
Mr. Carr was as good as his word, and got down in time for dinner. One glance at Lord Hartledon's face told him what he half expected to see--that the word of emancipation had not yet been spoken.
"Don't blame me, Carr. I shall speak to-night before I sleep, on my word of honour. Things have come to a crisis now; and if I wished to hold back I could not. I would say what a fool I have been not to speak before; only you know I'm one already."
Thomas Carr laughed.
"Mrs. Ashton has heard some tattle about Maude, and spoke to me this afternoon. Of course I could only deny it, my face feeling on fire with its sense of dishonour, for I don't think I ever told a deliberate lie in my life; and--and, in short, I should like my marriage with Anne to take place as soon as possible."
"Well, there's only one course to pursue, as I told you when I was down before. Tell Lady Maude the candid truth, and take shame and blame to yourself, as you deserve. Her having known of the engagement to Miss Ashton renders your task the easier."
Very restless was Lord Hartledon until the moment came. He knew the best time to speak to Maude would be immediately after dinner, whilst the countess-dowager took her usual nap. There was no hesitation now; and he speedily followed them upstairs, leaving his friend at the dinner-table.
He went up, feeling a desperate man. To those of his temperament having to make a disagreeable communication such as this is almost as cruel as parting with life.
No one was in the drawing-room but Lady Kirton--stretched upon a sofa and apparently fast asleep. Val crossed the carpet with softened tread to the adjoining rooms: small, comfortable rooms, used by the dowager in preference to the more stately rooms below. Maude had drawn aside the curtain and was peering out into the frosty night.
"Why, how soon you are up!" she cried, turning at his entrance.
"I came on purpose, Maude. I want to speak to you."
"Are you well?" she asked, coming forward to the fire, and taking her seat on a sofa. In truth, he did not look very well just then. "What is it?"
"Maude," he answered, his fair face flushing a dark red as he plunged into it blindfold: "I am a rogue and a fool!"
Lady Maude laughed. "Elster's folly!"
"Yes. You know all this time that we--that I--" (Val thought he should never flounder through this first moment, and did not remain an instant in one place as he talked)--"have been going on so foolishly, I was--almost as good as a married man."
"Were you?" said she, quietly. "Married to whom?"
"I said as good as married, Maude. You know I have been engaged for years to Miss Ashton; otherwise I would have _knelt_ to ask you to become my wife, so earnestly should I desire it."
Her calm imperturbability presented a curious contrast to his agitation. She was regarding him with an amused smile.
"And, Maude, I have come now to ask you to release me. Indeed, I--" "What's all this about?" broke in the countess-dowager, darting upon the conference, her face flushed and her head-dress awry. "Are you two quarrelling?"
"Val was attempting to explain something about Miss Ashton," answered Maude, rising from the sofa, and drawing herself up to her stately height. "He had better do it to you instead, mamma; I don't understand it."
She stood up by the mantelpiece, in the ray of the lustres. They fell across her dark, smooth hair, her flushed cheeks, her exquisite features. Her dress was of flowing white crêpe, with jet ornaments; and Lord Hartledon, even in the midst of his perplexity, thought how beautiful she was, and what a sad thing it was to lose her. The truth was, his senses had been caught by the girl's beauty although his heart was elsewhere. It is a very common case.
"The fact is, ma'am," he stammered, turning to the dowager in his desperation, "I have been behaving very foolishly of late, and am asking your daughter's pardon. I should have remembered my engagement to Miss Ashton."
"Remembered your engagement to Miss Ashton!" echoed the dowager, her voice becoming a little shrill. "What engagement?"
Lord Hartledon began to recover himself, though he looked foolish still. With these nervous men it is the first plunge that tells; get that over and they are brave as their fellows.
"I cannot marry two women, Lady Kirton, and I am bound to Anne."
The old dowager's voice toned down, and she pulled her black feathers straight upon her head.
"My dear Hartledon, I don't think you know what you are talking about. You engaged yourself to Maude some weeks ago."
"Well--but--whatever may have passed, engagement or no engagement, I could not legally do it," returned the unhappy young man, too considerate to say the engagement was hers, not his. "You knew I was bound to Anne, Lady Kirton."
"Bound to a fiddlestick!" said the dowager. "Excuse my plainness, Hartledon. When you engaged yourself to the young woman you were poor and a nobody, and the step was perhaps excusable. Lord Hartledon is not bound by the promises of Val Elster. All the young women in the kingdom, who have parsons for fathers, could not oblige him to be so."
"I am bound to her in honour; and"--in love he was going to say, but let the words die away unspoken.
"Hartledon, you are bound in honour to my daughter; you have sought her affections, and gained them. Ah, Percival, don't you know that it is you she has loved all along? In the days when I was worrying her about your brother, she cared only for you. You cannot be so infamous as to desert her."
"I wish to Heaven she had never seen me!" cried the unfortunate man, beginning to wonder whether he could break through these trammels. "I'd sacrifice myself willingly, if that would put things straight."
"You cannot sacrifice Maude. Look at her!" and the crafty old dowager flourished her hand towards the fireplace, where Maude stood in all her beauty. "A daughter of the house of Kirton cannot be taken up and cast aside at will. What would the world say of her?"
"The world need never know."
"Not know!" shrieked the dowager; "not know! Why, her trousseau is ordered, and some of the things have arrived. Good Heavens, Hartledon, you dare not trifle with Maude in this way. You could never show your face amongst men again."
"But neither dare I trifle with Anne Ashton," said Lord Hartledon, completely broken down by the gratuitous information. He saw that the situation was worse than even he had bargained for, and all his irresolution began to return upon him. "If I knew what was right to be done, I'm sure I'd do it."
"Right, did you say? Right? There cannot be a question about that. Which is the more fitting to grace your coronet: Maude, or a country parson's daughter?"
"I'm sure if this goes on I shall shoot myself," cried Val. "Taken to task at the Rectory, taken to task here--shooting would be bliss to it."
"No doubt," returned the dowager. "It can't be a very pleasant position for you. Any one but you would get out of it, and set the matter at rest."
"I should like to know how."
"So long as you are a single man they naturally remain on the high ropes at the Rectory, with their fine visions for Anne--" "I wish you would understand once for all, Lady Kirton, that the Ashtons are our equals in every way," he interrupted: "and," he added, "in worth and goodness infinitely our superiors."
The dowager gave a sniff. "You think so, I know, Hart. Well, the only plan to bring you peace is this: make Maude your wife. At once; without delay."
The proposition took away Val's breath. "I could not do it, Lady Kirton. To begin with, they'd bring an action against me for breach of promise."
"Breach of nonsense!" wrathfully returned the dowager. "Was ever such a thing heard of yet, as a doctor of divinity bringing an action of that nature? He'd lose his gown."
"I wish I was at the bottom of a deep well, never to come up again!" mentally aspirated the unfortunate man.
"Will--you--marry--Maude?" demanded the dowager, with a fixed denunciation in every word, which was as so much slow torture to her victim.
"I wish I could. You must see for yourself, Lady Kirton, that I cannot. Maude must see it."
"I see nothing of the sort. You are bound to her in honour."
"All I can do is to remain single to the end of my days," said Val, after a pause. "I have been a great villain to both, and I cannot repair it to either. The one stands in the way of the other."
"But--" "I beg your pardon, ma'am," he interrupted, so peremptorily that the old woman trembled for her power. "This is my final decision, and I will not hear another word. I feel ready to hang myself, as it is. You tell me I cannot marry any other than Maude without being a scoundrel; the same thing precisely applies to Anne. I shall remain single."
"You will give me one promise--for Maude's sake. Not, after this, to marry Anne Ashton."
"Why, how can I do it?" asked he, in tones of exasperation. "Don't you see that it is impossible? I shall not see the Ashtons again, ma'am; I would rather go a hundred miles the other way than face them."
The countess-dowager probably deemed she had said sufficient for safety; for she went out and shut the door after her. Lord Hartledon dashed his hair from his brow with a hasty hand, and was about to leave the room by the other door, when Maude came up to him.
"Is this to be the end of it, Percival?"
She spoke in tones of pain, of tremulous tenderness; all her pride gone out of her. Lord Hartledon laid his hand upon her shoulder, meeting the dark eyes that were raised to his through tears.
"Do you indeed love me like this, Maude? Somehow I never thought it."
"I love you better than the whole world. I love you enough to give up everything for you."
The emphasis conveyed a reproach--that he did not "give up everything" for her. But Lord Hartledon kept his head for once.
"Heaven knows my bitter repentance. If I could repair this folly of mine by any sacrifice on my own part, I would gladly do it. Let me go, Maude! I have been here long enough, unless I were more worthy. I would ask you to forgive me if I knew how to frame the petition."
She released the hand of which she had made a prisoner--released it with a movement of petulance; and Lord Hartledon quitted the room, the words she had just spoken beating their refrain on his brain. It did not occur to him in his gratified vanity to remember that Anne Ashton, about whose love there could be no doubt, never avowed it in those pretty speeches.
"Well?" said Mr. Carr, when he got back to the dining-room.
"It is not well, Carr; it is ill. There can be no release. The old dowager won't have it."
"But surely you will not resign Miss Ashton for Lady Maude!" cried the barrister, after a pause of amazement.
"I resign both; I see that I cannot do anything else in honour. Excuse me, Carr, but I'd rather not say any more about it just now; I feel half maddened."
"Elster's folly," mentally spoke Thomas Carr.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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17
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AN AGREEABLE WEDDING.
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That circumstances, combined with the countess-dowager, worked terribly against Lord Hartledon, events proved. Had the Ashtons remained at the Rectory all might have been well; but they went away, and he was left to any influence that might be brought to bear upon him.
How the climax was accomplished the world never knew. Lord Hartledon himself did not know the whole of it for a long while. As if unwilling to trust himself longer in dangerous companionship, he went up to town with Thomas Carr. Whilst there he received a letter from Cannes, written by Dr. Ashton; a letter that angered him.
It was a cool letter, a vein of contemptuous anger running through it; meant to be hidden, but nevertheless perceptible to Lord Hartledon. Its purport was to forbid all correspondence between him and Miss Ashton: things had better "remain in abeyance" until they met, ran the words, "if indeed any relations were ever renewed between them again."
It might have angered Lord Hartledon more than it did, but for the hopelessness which had taken up its abode within him. Nevertheless he resented it. He did not suppose it possible that the Ashtons could have heard of the dilemma he was in, or that he should be unable to fulfil his engagement with Anne, having with his usual vacillation put off any explanation with them; which of course must come sometime. He had taken an idea into his head long before, that Dr. Ashton wished to part them, and he looked upon the letter as resulting from that. Hartledon was feeling weary of the world.
How little did he divine that the letter of the doctor was called forth by a communication from the countess-dowager. An artful communication, with a charming candour lying on its surface. She asked--she actually asked that Dr. Ashton would allow "fair play;" she said the "deepest affection" had grown up between Lord Hartledon and Lady Maude; and she only craved that the young man might not be coerced either way, but might be allowed to choose between them. The field after Miss Ashton's return would be open to the two, and ought to be left so.
You may imagine the effect this missive produced upon the proud, high-minded doctor of divinity. He took a sheet of paper and wrote a stinging letter to Lord Hartledon, forbidding him to think again of Anne. But when he was in the act of sealing it a sudden doubt like an instinct rushed over him, whether it might not be a ruse, and nothing else, of the crafty old dowager's. The doubt was sufficiently strong to cause him to tear up the letter. But he was not satisfied with Lord Hartledon's own behaviour; had not been for some few months; and he then wrote a second letter, suspending matters until they should meet again. It was in effect what was asked for by the countess-dowager; and he wrote a cold proud letter to that lady, stating what he had done. Of course any honourable woman--any woman with a spark of justice in her heart--would have also forbidden all intercourse with Lady Maude. The countess-dowager's policy lay in the opposite direction.
But Lord Hartledon remained in London, utterly oblivious to the hints and baits held out for his return to Calne. He chiefly divided his time between the House of Lords and sitting at home, lamenting over his own ill-starred existence. He was living quite en garçon, with only one man, his house having been let for the season. We always want what we cannot obtain, and because marriage was denied him, he fell into the habit of dwelling upon it as the only boon in life. Thomas Carr was on circuit, so that Hartledon was alone.
Easter was early that year, the latter end of March. On the Monday in Passion-week there arrived a telegram for Lord Hartledon sent apparently by the butler, Hedges. It was vaguely worded; spoke of a railway accident and somebody dying. Who he could not make out, except that it was a Kirton: and it prayed him to hasten down immediately. All his goodness of heart aroused, Val lost not a moment. He had been engaged to spend Easter with some people in Essex, but dispatched a line of apology, and hastened down to Calne, wondering whether it was the dowager or Maude, and whether death would have taken place before his arrival.
"What accident has there been?" he demanded, leaping out of the carriage at Calne Station; and the man he addressed happened to be the porter, Jones.
"Accident?" returned Jones, touching his cap.
"An accident on the line; somewhere about here, I conclude. People wounded; dying."
"There has been no accident here," said Jones, in his sulky way. "Maybe your lordship's thinking of the one on the branch line, the bridge that fell in?"
"Nonsense," said Lord Hartledon, "that took place a fortnight ago. I received a telegram this morning from my butler, saying some one was dying at Hartledon from a railway accident," he impatiently added. "I took it to be either Lady Kirton or her daughter."
Mr. Jones swung round a large iron key he held in his hand, and light dawned upon him.
"I know now," he said. "There was a private accident at the station here last night; your lordship must mean that. A gentleman got out of a carriage before it stopped, and fell between the rail and the platform. His name was Kirton. I saw it on his portmanteau."
"Lord Kirton?"
"No, my lord. Captain Kirton."
"Was he seriously hurt?"
"Well, it was thought so. Mr. Hillary feared the leg would have to come off. He was carried to Hartledon."
Very much relieved, Lord Hartledon jumped into a fly and was driven home. The countess-dowager embraced him and fell into hysterics.
The crafty old dowager, whose displayed emotion was as genuine as she was! She had sent for this son of hers, hoping he might be a decoy-duck to draw Hartledon home again, for she was losing heart; and the accident, which she had not bargained for, was a very god-send to her.
"Why don't you word your telegrams more clearly, Hedges?" asked Lord Hartledon of his butler.
"It wasn't me worded it at all, my lord. Lady Kirton went to the station herself. She informed me she had sent it in my name."
"Has Hillary told you privately what the surgeons think of the case?"
"Better of it than they did at first, my lord. They are trying to save the leg."
This Captain Kirton was really the best of the Kirton bunch: a quiet, unassuming young man, somewhat delicate in health. Lord Hartledon was grieved for his accident, and helped to nurse him with the best heart in the world.
And now what devilry (there were people in Calne who called it nothing less) the old countess-dowager set afloat to secure her ends I am unable to tell you. She was a perfectly unscrupulous woman--poverty had rendered her wits keen; and her captured lion was only feebly struggling to escape from the net. He was to blame also. Thrown again into the society of Maude and her beauty, Val basked in its sunshine, and went drifting down the stream, never heeding where the current led him. One day the countess-dowager put it upon his honour--he must marry Maude. He might have held out longer but for a letter that came from some friend of the dowager's opportunely located at Cannes; a letter that spoke of the approaching marriage of Miss Ashton to Colonel Barnaby, eldest son of a wealthy old baronet, who was sojourning there with his mother. No doubt was implied or expressed; the marriage was set forth as an assured fact.
"And I believe you meant to wait for her?" said the countess-dowager, as she put the letter into his hand, with a little laugh. "You are free now for my darling Maude."
"This may not be true," observed Lord Hartledon, with compressed lips. "Every one knows what this sort of gossip is worth."
"I happen to know that it is true," spoke Lady Kirton, in a whisper. "I have known of it for some time past, but would not vex you with it."
Well, she convinced him; and from that moment had it all her own way, and carried out her plots and plans according to her own crafty fancy. Lord Hartledon yielded; for the ascendency of Maude was strong upon him. And yet--and yet--whilst he gave all sorts of hard names to Anne Ashton's perfidy, lying down deep in his heart was a suspicion that the news was not true. How he hated himself for his wicked assumption of belief in after-years!
"You will be free as air," said the dowager, joyously. "You and Maude shall get ahead of Miss Ashton and her colonel, and have the laugh at them. The marriage shall be on Saturday, and you can go away together for months if you like, and get up your spirits again; I'm sure you have both been dull enough."
Lord Hartledon was certainly caught by the words "free as air;" as he had been once before. But he stared at the early day mentioned.
"Marriages can't be got up as soon as that."
"They can be got up in a day if people choose, with a special license; which, of course, you will have," said the dowager. "I'll arrange things, my dear Val; leave it all to me. I intend Maude to be married in the little chapel."
"What little chapel?"
"Your own private chapel."
Lord Hartledon stared with all his eyes. The private chapel, built out from the house on the side next Calne, had not been used for years and years.
"Why, it's all dust and rust inside; its cushions moth-eaten and fallen to pieces."
"Is it all dust and rust!" returned the dowager. "That shows how observant you are. I had it put in order whilst you were in London; it was a shame to let a sacred place remain in such a state. I should like it to be used for Maude; and mind, I'll see to everything; you need not give yourself any trouble at all. There's only one thing I must enjoin on you."
"What's that?" " _Secrecy. _ Don't let a hint of your intentions get abroad. Whatever you do, don't write a word to that Carr friend of yours; he's as sharp as a two-edged sword. As well let things be done privately; it is Maude's wish."
"I shall not write to him," cried Hartledon, feeling a sudden heat upon his face, "or to any one else."
"Here's Maude. Step this way, Maude. Hartledon wants the ceremony to take place on Saturday, and I have promised for you."
Lady Maude advanced; she had really come in by accident; her head was bent, her eyelashes rested on her flushed cheeks. A fair prize; very, very fair! The old dowager put her hand into Lord Hartledon's.
"You will love her and cherish her, Percival?"
What was the young man to do? He murmured some unintelligible assent, and bent forward to kiss her. But not until that moment had he positively realized the fact that there would be any marriage.
Time went on swimmingly until the Saturday, and everything was in progress. The old dowager deserved to be made commander of a garrison for her comprehensive strategy, the readiness and skill she displayed in carrying out her arrangements. For what reason, perhaps she could not have explained to herself; but an instinct was upon her that secrecy in all ways was necessary; at any rate, she felt surer of success whilst it was maintained. Hence her decision in regard to the unused little chapel; and that this one particular portion of the project had been long floating in her mind was proved by the fact that she had previously caused the chapel to be renovated. But that it was to serve her own turn, she would have let it remain choked up with dust for ever.
The special license had arrived; the young clergyman who was to perform the service was located at Hartledon. Seven o'clock was the hour fixed for the marriage: it would be twilight then, and dinner over. Immediately afterwards the bride and bridegroom were to depart. So far, so good. But Lady Kirton was not to have it quite her own way on this same Saturday, although she had enjoyed it hitherto.
A rumour reached her ears in the afternoon that Dr. Ashton was at the Rectory. The doctor had been spending Easter at Cannes, and the dowager had devoutly prayed that he might not yet return. The news turned her cheeks blue and yellow; a prevision rushing over her that if he and Lord Hartledon met there might be no wedding after all. She did her best to keep Lord Hartledon indoors, and the fact of the Rector's return from him.
Now who is going to defend Lord Hartledon? Not you or I. More foolish, more culpable weakness was never shown than in thus yielding to these schemes. Though ensnared by Maude's beauty, that was no excuse for him.
An accident--or what may be called one--delayed dinner. Two county friends of Hartledon's, jolly fox-hunters in the season, had come riding a long way across country, and looked in to beg some refreshment. The dowager fumed, and was not decently civil; but she did not see her way to turning them out.
They talked and laughed and ate; and dinner was indefinitely prolonged. When the dowager and Lady Maude rose from table the former cast a meaning look at Lord Hartledon. "Get rid of them as soon as you can," it plainly said.
But the fox-hunters liked good drinking as well as good eating, and sat on, enjoying their wine; their host, one of the most courteous of living men, giving no sign, by word or look, that he wished for their departure. He was rather silent, they observed; but the young clergyman, who made the fourth at the table, was voluble by nature. Captain Kirton had not yet left his sick bed.
Lady Maude sat alone in her room; the white robes upon her, the orthodox veil, meant to shade her fair face thrown back from it. She had sent away her attendants, bolted the door against her mother, and sat waiting her summons. Waiting and thinking. Her cheek rested on her hand, and her eyes were dreamy.
Is it true that whenever we are about to do an ill or unjust deed a shadow of the fruits it will bring comes over us as a warning? Some people will tell you so. A vision of the future seemed to rest on Maude Kirton as she sat there; and for the first time all the injustice of the approaching act rose in her mind as a solemn omen. The true facts were terribly distinct. Her own dislike (it was indeed no less than dislike) of the living lord, her lasting love for the dead one. All the miserable stratagems they had been guilty of to win him; the dishonest plotting and planning. What was she about to do? For her own advancement, to secure herself a position in the great world, and not for love, she was about to separate two hearts, which but for her would have been united in this world and the next. She was thrusting herself upon Lord Hartledon, knowing that in his true heart it was another that he loved, not her. Yes, she knew that full well. He admired her beauty, and was marrying her; marrying partly in pique against Anne Ashton; partly in blindfold submission to the deep schemes of her mother, brought to bear on his yielding nature. All the injustice done to Anne Ashton was in that moment beating its refrain upon her heart; and a thought crossed her--would God not avenge it? Another time she might have smiled at the thought as fanciful: it seemed awfully real now. "I might give Val up yet," she murmured; "there's just time."
She did not act upon the suggestion. Whether it was her warning, or whether it was not, she allowed it to slip from her. Hartledon's broad lands and coronet resumed their fascination over her soul; and when her door was tried, Lady Maude had lost herself in that famous Spanish château we have all occupied on occasion, touching the alterations she had mentally planned in their town-house.
"Goodness, Maude, what do you lock yourself in for?"
Maude opened the door, and the countess-dowager floundered in. She was resplendent in one of her old yellow satin gowns, a white turban with a silver feather, and a pink scarf thrown on for ornament. The colours would no doubt blend well by candlelight.
"Come, Maude. There's no time to be lost."
"Are the men gone?"
"Yes, they are gone; no thanks to Hartledon, though. He sat mooning on, never giving them the least hint to depart. Priddon told me so. I'll tell you what it is, Maude, you'll have to shake your husband out of no end of ridiculous habits."
"It is growing dark," exclaimed Maude, as she stepped into the corridor.
"Dark! of course it's dark," was the irascible answer; "and they have had to light up the chapel, or Priddon couldn't have seen to read his book. And all through those confounded fox-hunters!"
Lord Hartledon was not in the drawing-room, where Lady Kirton had left him only a minute before; and she looked round sharply.
"Has he gone on to the chapel?" she asked of the young clergyman.
"No, I think not," replied Mr. Priddon, who was already in his canonicals. "Hedges came in and said something to him, and they went out together."
A minute or two of impatience--she was in no mood to wait long--and then she rang the bell. It should be remarked that the old lady, either from excitement or some apprehension of failure, was shaking and jumping as if she had St. Vitus's dance. Hedges came in.
"Where's your master?" she tartly asked.
"With Mr. Carr, my lady."
"With Mr.--What did you say?"
"My lord is with Mr. Carr. He has just arrived."
A moment given to startled consternation and then the fury broke forth. The young parson had never had the pleasure of seeing one of these war-dances before, and backed against the wall in his starched surplice.
"What brings him here? How dare he come uninvited?"
"I heard him say, my lady, that finding he had a Sunday to spare, he thought he would come and pass it at Hartledon," said the well-trained Hedges.
Ere the words had left his lips Lord Hartledon and Mr. Carr were present; the latter in a state of utter amazement and in his travelling dress, having only removed his overcoat.
"You'll be my groomsman, Carr," said Hartledon. "We have no adherents; this is a strictly private affair."
"Did you send for Mr. Carr?" whispered the countess-dowager, looking white through her rouge.
"No; his coming has taken me by surprise," replied Hartledon, with a nervousness he could not wholly conceal.
They passed rapidly through the passages, marshalled by Hedges. Lord Hartledon led his bride, the countess-dowager walked with the clergyman, and Mr. Carr brought up the rear. The latter gentleman was wondering whether he had fallen into a dream that he should wake up from in the morning. The mode of procession was a little out of the common order of such affairs; but so was the marriage.
Now it happened, not very long before this, that Dr. Ashton was on his way home from a visit to a sick parishioner--a poor man, who said he believed life had been prolonged in him that his many years' minister should be at his deathbed. Dr. Ashton's road lay beyond Hartledon, and in returning he crossed the road, which brought him out near the river, between Hartledon and the Rectory. Happening to cast his eyes that way, he saw a light where he had never seen one before--in the little unused chapel. Peering through the trees at the two low diamond-paned windows, to make sure he was not mistaken, Dr. Ashton quickened his pace: his thoughts glancing at fire.
He was well acquainted with Hartledon; and making his way in by the nearest entrance, he dashed along the passages to the chapel, meeting at length one of the servants.
"John," he panted, quite out of breath with hurrying, "there's a light in the chapel. I fear it is on fire."
"Not at all, sir," replied the man. "We have been lighting it up for my lord's marriage. They have just gone in."
"Lighting it up for what?" exclaimed Dr. Ashton.
"For my lord's marriage, sir. He's marrying Lady Maude. It's the old dowager, sir, who has got it up in this queer way," continued the man, venturing on a little confidential gossip with his Rector.
Dr. Ashton paused to collect his wits ere he walked into the chapel. The few wax-candles the servants had been able to put about only served to make the gloom visible. The party were taking their places, the young clergyman directing them where to stand. He opened his book and was commencing, when a hand was laid upon Hartledon's shoulder.
"Lord Hartledon, what is the meaning of this?"
Lord Hartledon recognised the voice, and broke into a cold perspiration. He gave no answer; but the countess-dowager made up for his silence. Her temper, none of the mildest, had been considerably exasperated by the visit of the fox-hunters; it was made worse by the arrival of Mr. Carr. When she turned and saw what _this_ formidable interruption was, she lost it altogether, as few, calling themselves gentlewomen, can lose it. As she peered into the face of Dr. Ashton, her own was scarlet and yellow, and her voice rose to a shriek.
"You prying parson, where did you spring from? Are you not ashamed to dodge Lord Hartledon in his own house? You might be taken up and imprisoned for it."
"Lord Hartledon," said Dr. Ashton, "I--" "How dare you persist, I ask you?" shrieked the old woman, whilst the young clergyman stood aghast, and Mr. Carr folded his arms, and resolutely fixed his eyes on the floor. "Because Hartledon once had a flirtation with your daughter, does that give you leave to haunt him as if you were his double?"
"Madam," said Dr. Ashton, contriving still to subdue his anger, "I must, I will speak to Lord Hartledon. Allow me to do so without disturbance. Lord Hartledon, I wait for an answer: Are you about to marry this young lady?"
"Yes, he is," foamed the dowager; "I tell you so. Now then?"
"Then, madam," proceeded the doctor, "this marriage owes its rise to you. You will do well to consider whether you are doing them a kindness or an injury in permitting it. You have deliberately set yourself to frustrate the hopes of Lord Hartledon and my daughter: will a marriage, thus treacherously entered into, bring happiness with it?"
"Oh, you wicked man!" cried the dowager. "You would like to call a curse upon them."
"No," shuddered Dr. Ashton; "if a curse ever attends them, it will not be through any wish of mine. Lord Hartledon, I knew you as a boy; I have loved you as a son; and if I speak now, it is as your pastor, and for your own sake. This marriage looks very like a clandestine one, as though you were ashamed of the step you are taking, and dared not enter on it in the clear face of day. I would have you consider that this sort of proceeding does not usually bring a blessing with it."
If ever Val felt convicted of utter cowardice, he felt so then. All the wretched sophistry by which he had been beguiled into the step, by which he had beguiled himself; all the iniquity of his past conduct to Miss Ashton, rose up before his mind in its naked truth. He dared not reply to the doctor for very shame. A sorry figure he cut, standing there, Lady Maude beside him.
"The last time you entered my house, Lord Hartledon, it was to speak of your coming marriage with Anne--" "And you would like him to go there again and arrange it," interrupted the incensed dowager, whose head had begun to nod so vehemently that she could not stop it. "Oh yes, I dare say!"
"By what right have you thus trifled with her?" continued the Rector, ignoring the nodding woman and her words, and confronting Lord Hartledon. "Is it a light matter, think you, to gain a maiden's best love, and then to desert her for a fresh face? You have been playing fast-and-loose for some little time: and I gave you more than one opportunity of retiring, if you so willed it--of openly retiring, you understand; not of doing so in this secret, disreputable manner. Your conscience will prick you in after-life, unless I am mistaken."
Val opened his lips, but the Rector put up his hand.
"A moment yet. That I am not endeavouring to recall Anne's claims on you in saying this, I am sure you are perfectly aware, knowing me as you do. I never deemed you worthy of her--you know that, Lord Hartledon; and you never were so. Were you a free man at this moment, and went down on your knees to implore me to give you Anne, I would not do it. You have forfeited her; you have forfeited the esteem of all good men. But that I am a Christian minister, I should visit your dishonour upon you as you deserve."
"Will you cease?" raved the dowager; and Dr. Ashton wheeled round upon her.
"There is less excuse for your past conduct, madam, than for his. You have played on Lord Hartledon's known irresolution to mould him to your will. I see now the aim of the letter you favoured me with at Cannes, when you requested, with so much candour, that he might be left for a time unfettered by any correspondence with Miss Ashton. Well, you have obtained your ends. Your covetous wish that you and your daughter should reign at Hartledon is on the point of being gratified. The honour of marrying Lady Maude was intended both by you and her for the late Lord Hartledon. Failing him, you transferred your hopes to the present one, regardless of who suffered, or what hearts or honour might be broken in the process."
"Will nobody put this disreputable parson outside?" raved the dowager.
"I do not seek to bring reproach home to you; let that, ladies, lie between yourselves and conscience. I only draw your attention to the facts; which have been sufficiently patent to the world, whatever Lord Hartledon may think. And now I have said my say, and leave you; but I declare that were I performing this burlesque of a marriage, as that young clergyman is about to do, I should feel my prayers for the divine blessing to attend it were but a vain mockery."
He turned to leave the chapel with quick steps, when Lord Hartledon, shaking off Maude, darted forward and caught his arm.
"You will tell me one thing at least: Is Anne _not_ going to marry Colonel Barnaby?"
"Sir!" thundered the doctor. "Going to marry _whom_?"
"I heard it," he faltered. "I believed it to be the truth."
"You may have heard it, but you did not believe it, Lord Hartledon. You knew Anne better. Do not add this false excuse to the rest."
Pleasant! Infinitely so for the bridegroom's tingling ears. Dr. Ashton walked out of the chapel, and Val stood for a few moments where he was, looking up and down in the dim light. It might be that in his mental confusion he was deliberating what his course should be; but thought and common sense came to him, and he knew he could not desert Lady Maude, having brought matters so far to an end.
"Proceed," he said to the young clergyman, stalking back to the altar. "Get--it--over quickly."
Mr. Carr unfolded his arms and approached Lord Hartledon. He was the only one who had caught the expression of the bride's face when Hartledon dropped her arm. It spoke of bitter malice; it spoke, now that he had returned to her, of an evil triumph; and it occurred to Thomas Carr to think that he should not like a wife of his to be seen with that expression on her bridal face.
"Lord Hartledon, you must excuse me if I do not remain to countenance this wedding," he said in low but distinct tones. "Before hearing what I have heard from that good man, I had hesitated about it; but I was lost in surprise. Fare you well. I shall have left by the time you quit the chapel."
He held out his hand, and Val mechanically shook it. The retreating steps of Mr. Carr, following in the wake of Dr. Ashton, were heard, as Lord Hartledon spoke again to the clergyman with irritable sharpness: "Why don't you begin?"
And the countess-dowager fanned herself complacently, and neither she nor Maude cared for the absence of a groomsman. But Maude was not quite hardened yet; and the shame of her situation was tingeing her eyelids.
|
{
"id": "16798"
}
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18
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THE STRANGER.
|
Lord Hartledon was leading his bride through the chapel at the conclusion of the ceremony, when his attention was caught by something outside one of the windows. At first he thought it was a black cat curled up in some impossible fashion, but soon saw it was a dark human face. And that face he discovered to be Mr. Pike's, peering earnestly in.
"Hedges, send that man away. How dare he intrude himself in this manner? How has he got up to the window?"
For these windows were high beyond the ordinary height of man. Hedges went out, a sharp reprimand on his tongue, and found that Mr. Pike had been at the trouble of carrying a heap of stones from a distance and piling them up to stand upon.
"Well, you must have a curiosity!" he exclaimed, in his surprise. "Just put those stones back in their places, and take yourself away."
"You are right," said the man. "I have a curiosity in all that concerns the new lord. But I am going away now."
He leaped down as he spoke, and began to replace the stones. Hedges went in again.
The carriage, waiting to convey them away, was already at the door, the impatient horses pawing the ground. Maude changed her dress with all speed; and in driving down the road by starlight they overtook Thomas Carr, carrying his own portmanteau. Lord Hartledon let down the window impulsively, as if he would have spoken, but seemed to recollect himself, and drew it up again.
"What is it?" asked Maude.
"Mr. Carr."
It was the first word he had spoken to her since the ceremony. His silence had frightened her: what if he should resent on _her_ the cruel words spoken by Dr. Ashton? Sick, trembling, her beautiful face humble and tearful enough now, she bent it on his shoulder in a shower of bitter tears.
"Oh, Percival, Percival! surely you are not going to punish me for what has passed?"
A moment's struggle with himself, and he turned and took both her hands in his.
"It may be that neither of us is free from blame, Maude, in regard to the past. All we can now do, as it seems to me, is to forget it together, and make the best of the future."
"And you will forget Anne Ashton?" she whispered.
"Of course I shall forget her. I ask nothing better than to forget her from this moment. I have made _you_ my wife; and I will try to make your happiness."
He bent and kissed her face. Maude, in some restlessness, as it seemed, withdrew to her own corner of the carriage and cried softly; and Lord Hartledon let down the glass again to look back after Thomas Carr and his portmanteau in the starlight.
The only perfectly satisfied person was the countess-dowager. All the little annoying hindrances went for nothing now that the desired end was accomplished, and she was in high feather when she bade adieu to the amiable young clergyman, who had to depart that night for his curacy, ten miles away, to be in readiness for the morrow's services.
"If you please, my lady, Captain Kirton has been asking for you once or twice," said Hedges, entering the dowager's private sitting-room.
"Then Captain Kirton must ask," retorted the dowager, who was sitting down to her letters, which she had left unopened since their arrival in the morning, in her anxiety for other interests. "Hedges, I should like some supper: I had only a scrambling sort of dinner. You can bring it up here. Something nice; and a bottle of champagne."
Hedges withdrew with the order, and Lady Kirton applied herself to her letters. The first she opened was from the daughter who had married the French count. It told a pitiful tale of distress, and humbly craved to be permitted to come over on a fortnight's visit, she and her two sickly children, "for a little change."
"I dare say!" emphatically cried the dowager. "What next? No, thank you, my lady; now that I have at least a firm footing in this house--as that blessed parson said--I am not going to risk it by filling it with every bothering child I possess. Bob departs as soon as his leg's well. Why what's this?"
She had come upon a concluding line as she was returning the letter to the envelope. "P.S. If I don't hear from you _very_ decisively to the contrary, I shall come, and trust to your good nature to forgive it. I want to see Bob."
"Oh, that's it, is it!" said the dowager. "She means to come, whether I will or no. That girl always had enough impudence for a dozen."
Drawing a sheet of paper out of her desk, she wrote a few rapid lines.
"Dear Jane, "For _mercy's_ sake keep those _poor_ children and yourself _away_! We have had an _aweful infectious fever_ rageing in the place, which it was thought to be _cured_, but it's on the break _out_ again-several _deaths_, Hartledon and Maude (_married_ of course) have gone out of its reach and I'm thinking of it if _Bob's_ leg which is _better_ permits. You'd not like I dare say to see the children in a _coffin apiece_ and yourself in a _third_, as might be the end. _Small-pox_ is raging at _Garchester_ a neighbouring town, that _will_ be awful if it gets to _us_ and I _hear_ it's on the _road_ and with kind love _believe_ me your affectionate_ "MOTHER.
"P.S. I am sorry for _what_ you tell me about _Ugo_ and the _state_ of affairs chey vous. But you know you _would marry_ him so there's _nobody_ to blame. Ah! _Maude_ has gone by _my_ advice and done as _I_ said and the consequence is _she's_ a peeress for life and got a handsome young husband _without_ a _will_ of his own."
The countess-dowager was not very adroit at spelling and composition, whether French or English, as you observe. She made an end of her correspondence, and sat down to a delicious little supper alone; as she best liked to enjoy these treats. The champagne was excellent, and she poured out a full tumbler of it at once, by way of wishing good luck to Maude's triumphant wedding.
"And it _is_ a triumph!" she said, as she put down the empty glass. "I hope it will bring Jane and the rest to a sense of _their_ folly."
A triumph? If you could only have looked into the future, Lady Kirton! A triumph!
The above was not the only letter written that evening. At the hotel where Lord and Lady Hartledon halted for the night, when she had retired under convoy of her maid, then Val's restrained remorse broke out. He paced the room in a sort of mad restlessness; in the midst of which he suddenly sat down to a table on which lay pens, ink, and paper, and poured forth hasty sentences in his mind's wretched tumult.
"My Dear Mrs. Ashton, "I cannot address you in any more formal words, although you will have reason to fling down the letter at my presuming to use these now--for dear, most dear, you will ever be to me.
"What can I say? Why do I write to you? Indeed to the latter question I can only answer I do not know, save that some instinct of good feeling, not utterly dead within me, is urging me to it.
"Will you let me for a moment throw conventionality aside; will you for that brief space of time let me speak truly and freely to you, as one might speak who has passed the confines of this world?
"When a man behaves to a woman as I, to my eternal shame, have this day behaved to Anne, it is, I think, a common custom to regard the false man as having achieved a sort of triumph; to attribute somewhat of humiliation to the other.
"Dear Mrs. Ashton, I cannot sleep until I have said to you that in my case the very contrary is the fact. A more abject, humiliated man than I stand at this hour in my own eyes never yet took his sins upon his soul. Even you might be appeased if you could look into mine and see its sense of degradation.
"That my punishment has already come home to me is only just; that I shall have to conceal it from all the world, including my wife, will not lessen its sting.
"I have this evening married Maude Kirton. I might tell you of unfair play brought to bear upon me, of a positive assurance, apparently well grounded, that Anne had entered into an engagement to wed another, could I admit that these facts were any excuse for me. They are no excuse; not the slightest palliation. My own yielding folly alone is to blame, and I shall take shame to myself for ever.
"I write this to you as I might have written it to my own mother, were she living; not as an expiation; only to tell of my pain; that I am not utterly hardened; that I would sue on my knees for pardon, were it not shut out from me by my own act. There is no pardon for such as I. When you have torn it in pieces, you will, I trust, forget the writer.
"God bless you, dear Mrs. Ashton! God bless and comfort another who is dear to you! --and believe me with true undying remorse your once attached friend, "Hartledon."
It was a curious letter to write; but men of Lord Hartledon's sensitive temperament in regard to others' feelings often do strange things; things the world at large would stare at in their inability to understand them. The remorse might not have come home to him quite so soon as this, his wedding-day, but for the inopportune appearance of Dr. Ashton in the chapel, speaking those words that told home so forcibly. Such reproach on these vacillating men inflicts a torture that burns into the heart like living fire.
He sealed the letter, addressing it to Cannes; called a waiter, late as it was, and desired him to post it. And then he walked about the room, reflecting on the curse of his life--his besetting sin--irresolution. It seemed almost an anomaly for _him_ to make resolves; but he did make one then; that he would, with the help of Heaven, be a MAN from henceforth, however it might crucify his sensitive feelings. And for the future, the obligation he had that day taken upon himself he determined to fulfil to his uttermost in all honour and love; to cherish his wife as he would have cherished Anne Ashton. For the past--but Lord Hartledon rose up now with a start. There was one item of that past he dared not glance at, which did not, however, relate to Miss Ashton: and it appeared inclined to thrust itself prominently forward to-night.
Could Lord Hartledon have borrowed somewhat of the easy indifference of the countess-dowager, he had been a happier man. That lady would have made a female Nero, enjoying herself while Rome was burning. She remained on in her snug quarters at Hartledon, and lived in clover.
One evening, rather more than a week after the marriage, Hedges had been on an errand to Calne, and was hastening home. In the lonely part of the road near Hartledon, upon turning a sharp corner, he came upon Mirrable, who was standing talking to Pike, very much to the butler's surprise. Pike walked away at once; and the butler spoke.
"He is not an acquaintance of yours, that man, Mrs. Mirrable?"
"Indeed no," she answered, tossing her head. "It was like his impudence to stop me. Rather flurried me too," she continued: and indeed Hedges noticed that she seemed flurried.
"What did he stop you for? To beg?"
"Not that. I've never heard that he does beg. He accosted me with a cool question as to when his lordship was coming back to Hartledon. I answered that it could not be any business of his. And then you came up."
"He is uncommon curious as to my lord. I can't make it out. I've seen him prowling about the grounds: and the night of the marriage he was mounted up at the chapel window. Lord Hartledon saw him, too. I should like to know what he wants."
"By a half-word he let drop, I fancy he has a crotchet in his head that his lordship will find him some work when he comes home. But I must go on my way," added Mirrable. "Mrs. Gum's not well, and I sent word I'd look in for half-an-hour this evening."
Hedges had to go on his way also, for it was close upon the countess-dowager's dinner-hour, at which ceremony he must attend. Putting his best foot forward, he walked at more than an ordinary pace, and overtook a gentleman almost at the very door of Hartledon. The stranger was approaching the front entrance, Hedges was wheeling off to the back; but the former turned and spoke. A tall, broad-shouldered, grey-haired man, with high cheek-bones. Hedges took him for a clergyman from his attire; black, with a white neckcloth.
"This is Hartledon House, I believe," he said, speaking with a Scotch accent.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you belong to it?"
"I am Lord Hartledon's butler."
"Is Lord Hartledon at home?"
"No, sir. He is in France."
"I read a notice of his marriage in the public papers," continued the stranger, whose eyes were fixed on Hedges. "It was, I suppose, a correct one?"
"My lord was married the week before last: about ten or eleven days ago."
"Ay; April the fourteenth, the paper said. She is one of the Kirton family. When do you expect him home?"
"I don't know at all, sir. I've not heard anything about it."
"He is in France, you say, Paris, I suppose. Can you furnish me with his address?"
Up to this point the colloquy had proceeded smoothly on both sides: but it suddenly flashed into the mind of Hedges that the stranger's manner was somewhat mysterious, though in what the mystery lay he could not have defined. The communicative man, true to the interests of his master, became cautious at once: he supposed some of Lord Hartledon's worries, contracted when he was Mr. Elster, were returning upon him.
"I cannot give his address, sir. And for the matter of that, it might not be of use if I could. Lord and Lady Hartledon did not intend remaining any length of time in one place."
The stranger had dug the point of his umbrella into the level greensward that bounded the gravel, and swayed the handle about with his hand, pausing in thought.
"I have come a long way to see Lord Hartledon," he observed. "It might be less trouble and cost for me to go on to Paris and see him there, than to start back for home, and come here again when he returns to England. Are you sure you can't give me his address?"
"I'm very sorry I can't, sir. There was a talk of their going on to Switzerland," continued Hedges, improvising the journey, "and so coming back through Germany; and there _was_ a talk of their making Italy before the heat came on, and stopping there. Any way, sir, I dare say they are already away from Paris."
The stranger regarded Hedges attentively, rather to the discomfiture of that functionary, who thought he was doubted. He then asked a great many questions, some about Lord Hartledon's personal habits, some about Lady Maude: the butler answered them freely or cautiously, as he thought he might, feeling inclined all the while to chase the intruder off the premises. Presently he turned his attention on the house.
"A fine old place, this, Mr. Butler."
"Yes, sir."
"I suppose I could look over it, if I wished?"
Hedges hesitated. He was privately asking himself whether the law would allow the stranger, if he had come after any debt of Lord Hartledon's, to refuse to leave the house, once he got into it.
"I could ask Lady Kirton, sir, if you particularly wished it."
"Lady Kirton? You have some one in the house, then!"
"The Dowager Lady Kirton's here, sir. One of her sons also--Captain Kirton; but he is confined to his room."
"Then I would rather not go in," said the stranger quickly. "I'm very disappointed to have come all this way and not find Lord Hartledon."
"Can I forward any letter for you, sir? If you'd like to intrust one to me, I'll send it as soon as we know of any certain address."
"No--no, I think not," said the stranger, musingly. "There might be danger," he muttered to himself, but Hedges caught the words.
He stood swaying the umbrella-handle about, looking down at it, as if that would assist his decision. Then he looked at Hedges.
"My business with Lord Hartledon is quite private, and I would rather not write. I'll wait until he is back in England: and see him then."
"What name, sir?" asked Hedges, as the stranger turned away.
"I would prefer not to leave my name," was the candid answer. "Good evening."
He walked briskly down the avenue, and Hedges stood looking after him, slightly puzzled in his mind.
"I don't believe it's a creditor; that I don't. He looks like a parson to me. But it's some trouble though, if it's not debt. 'Danger' was the word: 'there might be danger.' Danger in writing, he meant. Any way, I'm glad he didn't go in to that ferreting old dowager. And whatever it may be, his lordship's able to pay it now."
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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19
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A CHANCE MEETING.
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Some few weeks went by. On a fine June morning Lord and Lady Hartledon were breakfasting at their hotel in the Rue Rivoli. She was listlessly playing with her cup; he was glancing over _Galignani's_.
"Maude," he suddenly exclaimed, "the fountains are to play on Sunday at Versailles. Will you go to see them?"
"I am tired of sight-seeing, and tired of Paris too," was Lady Hartledon's answer, spoken with apathy.
"Are you?" he returned, with animation, as though not sorry to hear the avowal. "Then we won't stay in Paris any longer. When shall we leave?"
"Are the letters not late this morning?" she asked, allowing the question to pass.
Lord Hartledon glanced at the clock. "Very late: and we are late also. Are you expecting any in particular?"
"I don't know. This chocolate is cold."
"That is easily remedied," said he, rising to ring the bell. "They can bring in some fresh."
"And keep us waiting half-an-hour!" she grumbled.
"The hotel is crammed up to the mansarde," said good-natured Lord Hartledon, who was easily pleased, and rather tolerant of neglect in French hotels. "Is not that the right word, Maude? You took me to task yesterday for saying garret. The servants are run off their legs."
"Then the hotel should keep more servants. I am quite sick of having to ring twice. A week ago I wished I was out of the place."
"My dear Maude, why did you not say so? If you'd like to go on at once to Germany--" "Lettres et journal pour monsieur," interrupted a waiter, entering with two letters and the _Times_.
"One for you, Maude," handing a letter to his wife. "Don't go," he continued to the waiter; "we want some more chocolate; this is cold. Tell him in French, Maude."
But Lady Hartledon did not hear; or if she heard, did not heed; she was already absorbed in the contents of her letter.
"Ici," said Hartledon, pushing the chocolate-pot towards the man, and rallying the best French he could command, "encore du chocolat. Toute froide, _this_. Et puis dépêchez vous; il est tarde, et nous avons besoin de sortir."
The man was accustomed to the French of Englishmen, and withdrew without moving a muscle of his face. But Lady Hartledon's ears had been set on edge. " _Don't_ attempt French again, Val. They'll understand you if you speak in English."
"Did I make any mistake?" he asked good-humouredly. "I could speak French once; but am out of practice. It's the genders bother one."
"Fine French it must have been!" thought her ladyship. "Who is your letter from?"
"My bankers, I think. About Germany, Maude--would you like to go there?"
"Yes. Later. After we have been to London."
"To London!"
"We will go to London at once, Percival; stay there for the rest of the season, and then--" "My dear," he interrupted, his face overcast, "the season is nearly over. It will be of no use going there now."
"Plenty of use. We shall have quite six weeks of it. Don't look cross, Val; I have set my heart upon it."
"But have you considered the difficulties? In the first place, we have no house in town; in the second--" "Oh yes we have: a very good house."
Lord Hartledon paused, and looked at her; he thought she was joking. "Where is it?" he asked in merry tones; "at the top of the Monument?"
"It is in Piccadilly," she coolly replied. "Do you remember, some days ago, I read out an advertisement of a house that was to be let there for the remainder of the season, and remarked that it would suit us?"
"That it might suit us, had we wanted one," put in Val.
"I wrote off at once to mamma, and begged her to see after it and engage it for us," she continued, disregarding her husband's amendment. "She now tells me she has done so, and ordered servants up from Hartledon. By the time this letter reaches me she says it will be in readiness."
Lord Hartledon in his astonishment could scarcely find words to reply. "You wrote--yourself--and ordered the house to be taken?"
"Yes. You are difficult to convince, Val."
"Then I think it was your duty to have first consulted me, Lady Maude," he said, feeling deeply mortified.
"Thank you," she laughed. "I have not been Lady Maude this two months."
"I beg your pardon, Lady Hartledon."
"Now don't pretend to be offended, Val. I have only saved you trouble."
"Maude," he said, rallying his good humour, "it was not right. Let us--for Heaven's sake let us begin as we mean to go on: our interests must be _one_, not separate. Why did you not tell me you wished to return to London, and allow me to see after an abode for us? It would have been the proper way."
"Well, the truth is, I saw you did not want to go; you kept holding back from it; and if I _had_ spoken you would have shillyshallied over it until the season was over. Every one I know is in London now."
The waiter entered with the fresh chocolate, and retired again. Lord Hartledon was standing at the window then. His wife went up to him, and stole her hand within his arm.
"I'm sorry if I have offended you, Val. It's no great matter to have done."
"I think it was, Maude. However--don't act for yourself in future; let me know your wishes. I do not think you have expressed a wish, or half a wish, since our marriage, but I have felt a pleasure in gratifying it."
"You good old fellow! But I am given to having a will of my own, and to act independently. I'm like mamma in that. Val, we will start to-morrow: have you any orders for the servants? I can transmit them through mamma."
"I have no orders. This is your expedition, Maude, not mine; and, I assure you, I feel like a man in utter darkness in regard to it. Allow me to see your mother's letter."
Lady Hartledon had put the letter safely into her pocket.
"I would rather not, Percival: it contains a few private words to myself, and mamma has always an objection to her letters being shown. I'll read you all necessary particulars. You must let me have some money to-day."
"How much?" asked he, from between his compressed lips.
"Oceans. I owe for millinery and things. And, Val, I'll go to Versailles this afternoon, if you like. I want to see some of the rooms again."
"Very well," he answered.
She poured out some chocolate, took it hurriedly, and quitted the room, leaving her husband in a disheartening reverie. That Lady Hartledon and Maude Kirton were two very distinct persons he had discovered already; the one had been all gentleness and childlike suavity, the other was positive, extravagant, and self-willed; the one had made a pretence of loving him beyond all other things in life, the other was making very little show of loving him at all, or of concealing her indifference. Lord Hartledon was not the only husband who has been disagreeably astonished by a similar metamorphosis.
The following was the letter of the countess-dowager: "Darling Maude, "I have _secured_ the _house_ you write about and send by this _post_ for Hedges and a few of the rest from _Hartledon_. It won't accommodate a large _establishment_ I can tell you and you'll be _disappointed_ when you come over to take _possession_ which you can do when you _choose_. Val was a _fool_ for letting his town house in the spring but of course we know he is _one_ and must put up with it. Whatever you _do_, don't _consult_ him about _any earthly thing_ take _your own way_, he never did have _much_ of a will and you must let him _have none_ for the future. You've got a splendid _chance_ can spend _what you like_ and rule in _society_ and he'll subside into a _tame spaniel_.
"Maude if you are such an idiot I'll _shake_ you. Find you've made a _dredful_ mistake? --can't bear your husband? --keep thinking always of _Edward_? A child might write such utter _rubish_ but not you, what does it matter whether one's husband is _liked_ or _disliked_, provided he gives one _position_ and _wealth_? Go to Amiens and stop with _Jane_ for a _week_ and see her _plight_ and then grumble at your own, you _are_ an idiot.
"I'm quite _glad_ about your taking this town-_house_, and shall enter into _posession_ myself as soon as the servants are up, and await you. _Bob's_ quite _well_ and joins to-day and of course _gives up_ his lodgings, which have been _wretchedly confined_ and uncomfortable and where I should have gone to but for this _move_ of yours I don't know. Mind you bring me over a Parisian _bonnet_ or two or some articles of that _sort_. I'm nearly in _rags_, Kirton's as undutiful as he _can_ be but it's that _wife_ of his.
"Your affectionate mother, "C. Kirton."
The letter will give you some guide to the policy of Maude Hartledon since her marriage. She did find she had made a mistake. She cared no more for her husband now than she had cared for him before; and it was a positive fact that she despised him for walking so tamely into the snare laid for him by herself and her mother. Nevertheless she triumphed; he had made her a peeress, and she did care for that; she cared also for the broad lands of Hartledon. That she was unwise in assuming her own will so promptly, with little regard to consulting his, she might yet discover.
At Versailles that day--to which place they went in accordance with Maude's wish--there occurred a rencontre which Lord Hartledon would willingly have gone to the very ends of the earth to avoid. It happened to be rather full for Versailles; many of the visitors in Paris apparently having taken it into their minds to go; indeed, Maude's wish was induced by the fact that some of her acquaintances in the gay capital were going also.
You may possibly remember a very small room in the galleries, exceedingly small as compared with the rest, chiefly hung with English portraits. They were in this room, amidst the little crowd that filled it, when Lord Hartledon became aware that his wife had encountered some long-lost friend. There was much greeting and shaking of hands. He caught the name--Kattle; and being a somewhat singular name, he recognised it for that of the lady who had been sojourning at Cannes, and had sent the news of Miss Ashton's supposed engagement to the countess-dowager. There was the usual babble on both sides--where each was staying, had been staying, would be staying; and then Lord Hartledon heard the following words from Mrs. Kattle.
"How strange I should have seen you! I have met you, the Fords, and the Ashtons here, and did not know that any of you were in Paris. It's true I only arrived yesterday. Such a long illness, my dear, I had at Turin!"
"The Ashtons!" involuntarily repeated Maude. "Are they here? --in the château?" And it instantly occurred to her how she should like to meet them, and parade her triumph. If ever a spark of feeling for her husband arose within Maude's heart, it was when she thought of Anne Ashton. She was bitterly jealous of her still.
"Yes, here; I saw them not three minutes ago. They are only now on their road home from Cannes. Fancy their making so long a stay!"
"You wrote mamma word that Miss Ashton was about to marry some Colonel Barnaby."
Mrs. Kattle laughed. It is possible that written news might have been _asked for_ by the countess-dowager.
"Well, my dear, and so I did; but it turned out to be a mistake. He did admire her; there was no mistake about that; and I dare say she might have had him if she liked. How's your brother and his poor leg?"
"Oh, he is well," answered Maude. "Au revoir; I can't stand this crush any longer."
It was really a crush just then in the room; and though Maude escaped from it dexterously, Lord Hartledon did not. He was wedged in behind some stout women, and had the pleasure of hearing another word or two from Mrs. Kattle.
"Who was that?" asked a lady, who appeared to be her companion.
"Lady Hartledon. He was only the younger brother until a few months ago, but the elder one got drowned in some inexplicable manner on his own estate, and this one came into the title. The old dowager began at once to angle for him, and succeeded in hooking him. She used to write me word how it progressed."
"She is very beautiful."
"Very."
Lord Hartledon made his escape, and found his wife looking round for him. She was struck by the aspect of his face.
"Are you ill, Percival?"
"Ill? No. But I don't care how soon we get out of these rooms. I can't think what brings so many people in them to-day."
"He has heard that _she's_ here, and would like to avoid her," thought Maude as she took the arm he held out. "The large rooms are empty enough, I'm sure," she remarked. "Shall we have time to go to the Trianon?"
"If you like. Yes."
He began to hurry through the rooms. Maude, however, was in no mood to be hurried, but stopped here and stopped there. All at once they met a large party of friends; those she had originally expected to meet. Quitting her husband's arm, she became lost amongst them.
There was no help for it; and Lord Hartledon, resigning himself to the detention, took up his standing before the pictures and stared at them, his back to the room. He saw a good deal to interest him, in spite of his rather tumultuous state of mind, and remained there until he found himself surrounded by other spectators. Turning hastily with a view to escaping, he trod upon a lady's dress. She looked up at his word of apology, and they stood face to face--himself and Miss Ashton!
That both utterly lost their presence of mind would have been conclusive to the spectators, had any regarded them; but none did so. They were strangers amidst the crowd. For the space of a moment each gazed on the other, spell-bound. Lord Hartledon's honest blue eyes were riveted on her face with a strangely yearning expression of repentance--her sweet face, which had turned as white as ashes. He wore mourning still for his brother, and was the most distinguished-looking man in the château that day. Anne was in a trailing lilac silk, with a white gossamer-bonnet. That the heart of each went out to the other, as it had perhaps never gone out before, it may be no sin to say. Sin or no sin, it was the truth. The real value of a thing, as you know, is never felt until it is lost. For two months each had been dutifully striving to forget the other, and believed they were succeeding; and this first accidental meeting roused up the past in all its fever of passion.
No more conscious of what he did than if he had been in a dream, Lord Hartledon held out his hand; and she, quite as unconscious, mechanically met it with hers. What confused words of greeting went forth from his lips he never knew; she as little; but this state of bewildered feeling lasted only a minute; recollection came to both, and she strove to withdraw her hand to retreat.
"God bless you, Anne!" was all he whispered, his fervent words marred by their tone of pain; and he wrung her hand as he released it.
Turning away he caught the eyes of his wife riveted on them; she had evidently seen the meeting, and her colour was high. Lord Hartledon walked straight into the next room, and Maude went up to Anne.
"How do you do, Miss Ashton? I am so glad to meet you. I have just heard you were here from Mrs. Kattle. You have been speaking to my husband."
Anne bowed; she did not lose her presence of mind at _this_ encounter. A few civil words of reply given with courteous dignity, and she moved away with a bright flush on her cheek, towards Dr. and Mrs. Ashton, who were standing arm-in-arm enraptured before a remote picture, cognizant of nothing else.
"How thin she looks!" exclaimed Maude, as she rejoined her husband, and took his arm.
"Who looks thin?"
"Miss Ashton. I wonder she did not fling your hand away, instead of putting her own into it!"
"Do you wish to see the Trianon? We shall be late."
"Yes, I do wish to see it. But you need not speak in that tone: it was not my fault that we met her."
He answered never a syllable. His lips were compressed to pain, and his face was hectic; but he would not be drawn into reproaching his wife by so much as a word, for the sort of taste she was displaying. The manner in which he had treated Miss Ashton and her family was ever in his mind, more or less, in all its bitter, humiliating disgrace. The worst part of it to Val was, that there could be no reparation.
The following day Lord Hartledon and his wife took their departure from Paris; and if anything could have imparted especial gratification on his arriving in London at the hired house, it was to find that his wife's mother was not in it. Val had come home against his will; he had not wished to be in London that season; rather would he have buried himself and his haunting sense of shame on the tolerant Continent; and he certainly had not wished his wife to make her debut in a small hired house. When he let his own, nothing could have been further from his thoughts than marriage. As to this house--Lady Kirton had told her daughter she would be disappointed in it; but when Maude saw its dimensions, its shabby entrance, its want of style altogether, she was dismayed. "And after that glowing advertisement!" she breathed resentfully. It was one of the smallest houses facing the Green Park.
Hedges came forward with an apology from the countess-dowager. An apology for not invading their house and inflicting her presence upon them uninvited! A telegraphic despatch from Lord Kirton had summoned her to Ireland on the previous day; and Val's face grew bright as he heard it.
"What was the matter, Hedges?" inquired his mistress. "I'm sure my brother would not telegraph unless it was something."
"The message didn't say, my lady. It was just a few words, asking her ladyship to go off by the first train, but giving no reason."
"I wonder she went, then," observed Val to his wife, as they looked into the different rooms. But Maude did not wonder: she knew how anxious her mother was to be on good terms with her eldest son, from whom she received occasional supplies. Rather would she quarrel with the whole world than with him.
"I think it a good thing she has gone, Maude," said he. "There certainly would not have been room for her and for us in this house."
"And so do I," answered Maude, looking round her bed-chamber. "If mamma fancies she's going to inflict herself upon us for good she's mistaken. She and I might quarrel, perhaps; for I know she'd try to control me. Val, what are we to do in this small house?"
"The best we can. We have made the bargain, you know, and taken possession now."
"You are laughing. I declare I think you are glad it has turned out what it is!"
"I am not sorry," he avowed. "You'll let me cater for you another time, Maude."
She put up her face to be kissed. "Don't be angry with me. It is our home-coming."
"Angry!" he repeated. "I have never shown anger to you yet, Maude. Never a woman had a more indulgent husband than you shall have in me."
"You don't say a loving one, Val!"
"And a loving one also: if you will only let me be so."
"What do you mean?"
"Love requires love in return. We shall be happy, I am sure, if you so will it. Only let us pull together; one mind, one interest. Here's your maid. I wonder where my dressing room is?"
And thus they entered on what remained of the London season. The newspapers announced the arrival of Lord and Lady Hartledon, and Maude read it aloud to her husband. She might have retained peace longer, however, had that announcement not gone forth to the four corners of the land.
"Only let us pull together!" A very few days indeed sufficed to dissipate that illusion. Lady Hartledon plunged madly into all the gaieties of the dying season, as though to make up for lost time; Lord Hartledon never felt less inclined to plunge into anything, unless it was the waters of oblivion. He held back from some places, but she did not appear to care, going her way in a very positive, off-hand manner, according to her own will, and paying not the slightest deference to his.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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20
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THE STRANGER AGAIN.
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On a burning day at the end of June, Lord Hartledon was walking towards the Temple. He had not yet sought out his friend Thomas Carr; a sense of shame held him back; but he was on his way to do so now.
Turning down Essex Street and so to the left, he traversed the courts and windings, and mounted the stairs to the barrister's rooms. Many a merry hour had he passed in those three small rooms, dignified with the name of "Mr. Carr's chambers," but which were in fact also Mr. Carr's dwelling-place--and some sad ones.
Lord Hartledon knocked at the outer door with his stick--a somewhat faint, doubtful knock; not with the free hand of one at ease with himself and the world. For one thing, he was uncertain as to the reception he should meet with.
Mr. Carr came to the door himself; his clerk was out. When he saw who was his visitor he stood in comic surprise. Val stepped in, extending his hand; and it was heartily taken.
"You are not offended with me, then, Carr?"
"Nay," said Mr. Carr, "I have no reason to be offended. Your sin was not against me."
"That's a strong word, 'sin.'"
"It is spoken," was the answer; "but I need not speak it again. I don't intend to quarrel with you. I was not, I repeat, the injured party."
"Yet you took yourself off in dudgeon, as though you were, leaving me without a groomsman."
"I would not remain to witness a marriage that--that you ought not to have entered upon."
"Well, it's done and over, and need not be brought up again," returned Hartledon, a shade of annoyance in his tones.
"Certainly not. I have no wish or right to bring it up. How is Lady Hartledon?"
"She is very well. And now what has kept you away, Carr? We have been in London nearly a fortnight, and you've never been near me. I thought you _were_ going to quarrel."
"I did not know you had returned."
"Not know it! Why all the newspapers had it in amongst the 'fashionable intelligence.'"
"I have more to do with my time than to look at the fashionable portion of the papers. Not being fashionable myself, it doesn't interest me."
"Yes, it's about a fortnight since we came back to this hateful place," returned Hartledon, his light tone subsiding into seriousness. "I am out of conceit with England just now; and would far rather have gone to the Antipodes."
"Then why did you come back to it?" inquired the barrister, in surprise.
"My wife gave me no choice. She possesses a will of her own. It is the ordinary thing, perhaps, for wives to do so."
"Some do, and some don't," observed Thomas Carr, who never flattered at the expense of truth. "Are you going down to Hartledon?"
"Hartledon!" with a perceptible shiver. "In the mind I am in, I shall never visit Hartledon again; there are some in its vicinity I would rather not insult by my presence. Why do you bring up disagreeable subjects?"
"You will have to get over that feeling," observed Mr. Carr, disregarding the hint, and taking out his probing-knife. "And the sooner it is got over the better for all parties. You cannot become an exile from your own place. Are they at Calne now?"
"Yes. They were in Paris just before we left it, and there was an encounter at Versailles. I wished myself dead; I declare I did. A day or two after we came to England they crossed over, and went straight down to Calne. There--don't say any more."
"The longer you keep away from Hartledon the greater effort it will cost you to go down to it; and--" "I won't go to Hartledon," he interrupted, in a sort of fury; "neither perhaps would you, in my place."
"Sir," cried Mr. Carr's clerk, bustling in and addressing his master, "you are waited for at the chambers of Serjeant Gale. The consultation is on."
Lord Hartledon rose.
"I will not detain you, Carr; business must be attended to. Will you come and dine with us this evening? Only me and my wife. Here's where we are staying--Piccadilly. My own house is let, you know."
"I have no engagement, and will come with pleasure," said Mr. Carr, taking the card. "What hour?"
"Ah, that's just what I can't tell you. Lady Hartledon orders dinner to suit her engagements--any time between six and nine! I never know. We are a fashionable couple, don't you see?"
"Stay, though, Hartledon; I forget. I have a business appointment for half-past eight. Perhaps I can put it off."
"Come up at six. You'll be all right, then, in any case."
Lord Hartledon left the Temple, and sauntered towards home. He had no engagement on hand--nothing to kill time. He and his wife were falling naturally into the way of--as he had just cynically styled it--fashionable people. She went her way and he went his.
Many a cabman held up his hand or his whip; but in his present mood walking was agreeable to him: why should he hurry home, when he had nothing on earth to do there? So he stared here, and gazed there, and stopped to speak to this acquaintance, and walked a few steps with that, went into his club for ten minutes, and arrived home at last.
His wife's carriage was at the door waiting for her. She was bound on an expedition to Chiswick: Lord Hartledon had declined it. He met her hastening out as he entered, and she was looking very cross.
"How late you are going, Maude!"
"Yes, there has been a mistake," she said peevishly, turning in with him to a small room they used as a breakfast-room. "I have been waiting all this time for Lady Langton, and she, I find, has been waiting for me. I'm now going round to take her up. Oh, I have secured that opera-box, Val, but at an extravagant price, considering the little time that remains of the season."
"What opera-box?"
"Didn't I tell you? It's one I heard of yesterday. I was not going again to put up with the wretched little box they palmed you off with. I did tell you that."
"It was the only one I could get, Maude: there was no other choice."
"Yes, I know. Well, I have secured another for the rest of the season, and you must not talk about extravagance, please."
"Very well," said Val, with a smile. "For what hour have you ordered dinner?"
"Nine o'clock."
"Nine o'clock! That's awkward--and late."
"Why awkward? You may have to wait for me even then. It is impossible to say when we shall get home from Chiswick. All the world will be there."
"I have just asked Carr to dine with us, and told him to come at six. I don't fancy these hard-working men care to wait so long for their dinner. And he has an appointment for half-past eight."
The colour came flushing into Lady Hartledon's face, an angry light into her eyes.
"You have asked Carr to dinner! How dared you?"
Val looked up in quiet amazement.
"Dared!"
"Well--yes. Dared!"
"I do not understand you, Maude. I suppose I may exercise the right of inviting a friend to dinner."
"Not when it is objectionable to me. I dislike that man Carr, and will not receive him."
"You can have no grounds for disliking him," returned Lord Hartledon warmly. "He has been a good and true friend to me ever since I knew what friendship meant; and he is a good and true man."
"Too much of a friend," she sarcastically retorted. "You don't need him now, and can drop him."
"Maude," said Lord Hartledon, very quietly, "I have fancied several times lately that you are a little mistaking me. I am not to have a will of my own; I am to bend in all things to yours; you are to be mistress and master, I a nonentity: is it not so? This is a mistake. No woman ever had a better or more indulgent husband than you shall find in me: but in all necessary things, where it is needful and expedient that I should exercise my own judgment, and act as master, I shall do it."
She paused in very astonishment: the tone was so calmly decisive.
"My dear, let us have no more of this; something must have vexed you to-day."
"We will have no more of it," she passionately retorted; "and I'll have no more of your Thomas Carrs. It is not right that you should bring a man here who has deliberately insulted me. Be quiet, Lord Hartledon; he has. What else was it but an insult--his going out of the chapel in the manner he did, when we were before the altar? It was a direct intimation that he did not countenance the marriage. He would have preferred, I suppose, that you should marry your country sweetheart, Anne Ashton."
A hot flush rose to Lord Hartledon's brow, but his tone was strangely temperate. "I have already warned you, Maude, that we shall do well to discard that name from our discussions, and if possible from our thoughts; it may prove better for both of us."
"Better for you, perhaps; but you are _not_ going to exercise any control over my will, or words, or action; and so I tell you at once. I'm quite old enough to be out of leading-strings, and I'll be mistress in my own house. You will do well to send a note to your amiable friend Carr; it may save him a useless journey; for at my table he shall not sit. Now you know, Val."
She spoke impatiently, haughtily, and swept out to her carriage. Val did not follow to place her in; he positively did not, but left her to the servants. Never in his whole life perhaps had he felt so nettled, never so resolute: the once vacillating, easily-persuaded man, when face to face with people, was speedily finding the will he had only exercised behind their backs. He rang the bell for Hedges.
"Her ladyship has ordered dinner for nine o'clock," he said, when the butler appeared.
"I believe so, my lord."
"It will be inconvenient to me to wait so long to-day. I shall dine at seven. You can serve it in this room, leaving the dining-room for Lady Hartledon. Mr. Carr dines with me."
So Hedges gave the necessary orders, and dinner was laid in the breakfast-room. Thomas Carr came in, bringing the news that he had succeeded in putting off his appointment. Lord Hartledon received him in the same room, fearing possibly the drawing-room might be invaded by his wife. She was just as likely to be home early from Chiswick as late.
"We have it to ourselves, Carr, and I am not sorry. There was no certainty about my wife's return, so I thought we'd dine alone."
They very much enjoyed their tête-à-tête dinner; as they had enjoyed many a one in Hartledon's bachelor days. Thomas Carr--one of the quiet, good men in a fast world--was an admirable companion, full of intelligence and conversation. Hedges left them alone after the cloth was removed, but in a very few minutes returned; his step rather more subdued than usual, as if he came upon some secret mission.
"Here's that stranger come again, sir," he began, in low tones; and it may as well be remarked that in moments of forgetfulness he often did address his master as he used to address him in the past. "He asked if--" "What stranger?" rather testily interposed Lord Hartledon. "I am at dinner, and can't see any stranger now. What are you thinking about, Hedges?"
"It is what I said," returned Hedges; "but he would not take the answer. He said he had come a long way to see your lordship, and he would see you; his business was very important. My lady asked him--" "Has Lady Hartledon returned?"
"She came in now, my lord, while I was denying you to him. Her ladyship heard him say he would see you, and she inquired what his business was; but he did not tell her. It was private business, he remarked, and could only be entered into with your lordship."
"Who is it, Hedges? Do you know him?"
Lord Hartledon had dropped his voice to confidential tones. Hedges was faithful, and had been privy to some of his embarrassments in the old days. The man looked at the barrister, and seemed to hesitate.
"Speak out. You can say anything before Mr. Carr."
"I don't know him," answered Hedges. "It is the gentleman who came to Hartledon the week after your lordship's marriage, asking five hundred questions, and wanting--" "He, is it?" interrupted Val. "You told me about him when I came home, I remember. Go on, Hedges."
"That's all, my lord. Except that he is here now"--and Hedges nodded his head towards the room-door. "He seems very inquisitive. When my lady went upstairs, he asked whether that was the countess, and followed her to the foot of the stairs to look after her. I never saw any gentleman stare so."
Val played with his wine-glass, and pondered. "I don't believe I owe a shilling in the world," quoth he--betraying the bent of his thoughts, and speaking to no one in particular. "I have squared-up every debt, as far as I know."
"He does not look like a creditor," observed Hedges, with a fatherly air. "Quite superior to that: more like a parson. It's his manner that makes one doubt. There was a mystery about it at Hartledon that I didn't like; and he refused to give his name. His insisting on seeing your lordship now, at dinner or not at dinner, is odd too; his voice is quiet, just as if he possessed the right to do this. I didn't know what to do, and as I say, he's in the hall."
"Show him in somewhere, Hedges. Lady Hartledon is in the drawing-room, I suppose: let him go into the dining-room."
"Her ladyship's dinner is being laid there, my lord," dissented the cautious retainer. "She said it was to be served as soon as it was ready, having come home earlier than she expected."
"Deuce take it!" testily responded Val, "one can't swing a cat in these cramped hired houses. Show him into my smoking-den upstairs."
"Let me go there," said Mr. Carr, "and you can see him in this room."
"No; keep to your wine, Carr. Take him up there, Hedges."
The butler retired, and Lord Hartledon turned to his guest. "Carr, can you give a guess at the fellow's business?"
"It's nothing to trouble you. If you have overlooked any old debt, you are able to give a cheque for it. But I should rather suspect your persevering friend to be some clergyman or missionary, bent on drawing a good subscription from you."
Val did not raise his eyes. He was playing again with his empty wine-glass, his face grave and perplexed.
"Do they serve writs in these cases?" he suddenly asked.
Mr. Carr laughed. "Is the time so long gone by that you have forgotten yours? You have had some in your day."
"I am not thinking of debt, Carr: that is over for me. But there's no denying that I behaved disgracefully to--you know--and Dr. Ashton has good reason to be incensed. Can he be bringing an action against me, and is this visit in any way connected with it?"
"Nonsense," said Mr. Carr.
"Is it nonsense! I'm sure I've heard of their dressing-up these serving-officers as clergymen, to entrap the unwary. Well, call it nonsense, if you like. What of my suggestion in regard to Dr. Ashton?"
Thomas Carr paused to consider. That it was most improbable in all respects, he felt sure; next door to impossible.
"The doctor is too respectable a man to do anything of the sort," he answered. "He is high-minded, honourable, wealthy: there's no inducement whatever. _No. _" "Yes, there may be one: that of punishing me by bringing my disgrace before the world."
"You forget that he would bring his daughter's name before it at the same time. It is quite out of the range of possibility. The Ashtons are not people to seek legal reparation for injury of this sort. But that your fears are blinding you, you would never suspect them of being capable of it."
"The stranger is upstairs, my lord," interrupted Hedges, coming back to the room. "I asked him what name, and he said your lordship would know him when you saw him, and there was no need to give it."
Lord Hartledon went upstairs, marshalled by the butler. Hedges was resenting the mystery; very much on his master's account, a little on his own, for it cannot be denied that he was given to curiosity. He threw open the door of the little smoking-den, and in his loftiest, loudest, most uncompromising voice, announced: "The gentleman, my lord."
Then retired, and shut them in.
Thomas Carr remained alone. He was not fond of wine, and did not help himself during his host's absence. Five minutes, ten minutes, half-an-hour, an hour; and still he was alone. At the end of the first half-hour he began to think Val a long time; at the end of the hour he feared something must have happened. Could he be quarrelling with the mysterious stranger? Could he have forgotten him and gone out? Could he-- The door softly opened, and Lord Hartledon came in. Was it Lord Hartledon? Thomas Carr rose from his chair in amazement and dread. It was like him, but with some awful terror upon him. His face was of an ashy whiteness; the veins of his brow stood out; his dry lips were drawn.
"Good Heavens, Hartledon!" uttered Thomas Carr. "What is it? You look as if you had been accused of murder."
"I have been accused of it," gasped the unhappy man, "of worse than murder. Ay, and I have done it."
The words called up a strange confusion of ideas in the mind of Thomas Carr. Worse than murder!
"What is it?" cried he, aloud. "I am beginning to dream."
"Will you stand by me?" rejoined Hartledon, his voice seeming to have changed into something curiously hollow. "I have asked you before for trifles; I ask you now in the extremity of need. Will you stand by me, and aid me with your advice?"
"Y--es," answered Mr. Carr, his excessive astonishment causing a hesitation. "Where is your visitor?"
"Upstairs. He holds a fearful secret, and has me in his power. Do you come back with me, and combat with him against its betrayal."
"A fearful secret!" was Thomas Carr's exclamation. "What brings you with one?"
Lord Hartledon only groaned. "You will stand by me, Carr? Will you come upstairs and do what you can for me?"
"I am quite ready," replied Thomas Carr, quickly. "I will stand by you now, as ever. But--I seem to be in a maze. Is it a true charge?"
"Yes, in so far as that--But I had better tell you the story," he broke off, wiping his brow. "I must tell it you before you go upstairs."
He linked his arm within his friend's, and drew him to the window. It was broad daylight still, but gloomy there: the window had the pleasure of reposing under the leads, and was gloomy at noon. Lord Hartledon hesitated still. "Elster's folly!" were the words mechanically floating in the mind of Thomas Carr.
"It is an awful story, Carr; bad and wicked."
"Let me hear it at once," replied Thomas Carr.
"I am in danger of--of--in short, that person upstairs could have me apprehended to-night. I would not tell you but that I must do so. I must have advice, assistance; but you'll start from me when you hear it."
"I will stand by you, whatever it may be. If a man has ever need of a friend, it must be in his extremity."
Lord Hartledon stood, and whispered a strange tale. It was anything but coherent to the clear-minded barrister; nevertheless, as he gathered one or two of its points he did start back, as Hartledon had foretold, and an exclamation of dismay burst from his lips.
"And you could _marry_--with this hanging over your head!"
"Carr--" The butler came in with an interruption.
"My lady wishes to know whether your lordship is going out with her to-night."
"Not to-night," answered Lord Hartledon, pointing to the door for the man to make his exit. "It is of her I think, not of myself," he murmured to Mr. Carr.
"And he"--the barrister pointed above to indicate the stranger--"threatens to have you apprehended on the charge?"
"I hardly know what he threatens. _You_ must deal with him, Carr; I cannot. Let us go; we are wasting time."
As they left the room to go upstairs Lady Hartledon came out of the dining-room and crossed their path. She was deeply mortified at her husband's bringing Mr. Carr to the house after what she had said; and most probably came out at the moment to confront them with her haughty and disapproving face. However that might have been, all other emotions gave place to surprise, when she saw _their_ faces, each bearing a livid look of fear.
"I hope you are well, Lady Hartledon," said Mr. Carr.
She would not see the offered hand, but swept onwards with a cold curtsey, stopping just a moment to speak to her husband.
"You are not going out with me, Lord Hartledon?"
"I cannot to-night, Maude. Business detains me."
She passed up the stairs, vouchsafing no other word. They lingered a minute to let her get into the drawing-room.
"Poor Maude! What will become of her if this is brought home to me?"
"And if it is not brought home to you--the fact remains the same," said Mr. Carr, in his merciless truth.
"And our children, our children!" groaned Hartledon, a hot flush of dread arising in his white face.
They shut themselves in with the stranger, and the conference was renewed. Presently lights were rung for; Hedges brought them himself, but gained nothing by the movement; for Mr. Carr heard him coming, rose unbidden, and took them from him at the door.
Lady Hartledon's curiosity was excited. It had been aroused a little by the stranger himself; secondly by their scared faces; thirdly by this close conference.
"Who is that strange gentleman, Hedges?" she asked, from the drawing-room, as the butler descended.
"I don't know, my lady."
"What is his name?"
"I have not heard it, my lady."
"He looks like a clergyman."
"He does, my lady."
Apparently Hedges was impenetrable, and she allowed him to go down. Her curiosity was very much excited; it may be said, uneasily excited; there is no accounting for these instincts that come over us, shadowing forth a vague sense of dread. Although engaged out that night to more than one place, Lady Hartledon lingered on in the drawing-room.
They came out of the room at last and passed the drawing-room door. She pushed it to, only peeping out when they had gone by. There was nothing to hear; they were talking of ordinary matters. The stranger, in his strong Scotch accent, remarked what a hot day it had been. In travelling, no doubt very, responded Mr. Carr. Lady Hartledon condescended to cautiously put her head over the balustrades. There was no bell rung; Lord Hartledon showed his visitor out himself.
"And now for these criminal law books, Carr, that bear upon the case," he said, returning from the front-door.
"I must go down to my chambers for them."
"I know they can't bring it home to me; I know they can't!" he exclaimed, in tones so painfully eager as to prove to Lady Hartledon's ears that he thought they could, whatever the matter might be. "I'll go with you, Carr; this uncertainty is killing me."
"There's little uncertainty about it, I fear," was the grave reply. "You had better look the worst in the face."
They went out, intending to hail the first cab. Very much to Lord Hartledon's surprise he saw his wife's carriage waiting at the door, the impatient horses chafing at their delay. What could have detained her? "Wait for me one moment, Carr," he said. "Stop a cab if you see one."
He dashed up to the drawing-room; his wife was coming forth then, her cloak and gloves on, her fan in her hand. "Maude, my darling," he exclaimed, "what has kept you? Surely you have not waited for me? --you did not misunderstand me?"
"I hardly know what has kept me," she evasively answered. "It is late, but I'm going now."
It never occurred to Lord Hartledon that she had been watching or listening. Incapable of any meanness of the sort, he could not suspect it in another. Lady Hartledon's fertile brain had been suggesting a solution of this mystery. It was rather curious, perhaps, that her suspicions should take the same bent that her husband's did at first--that of instituting law proceedings by Dr. Ashton.
She said nothing. Her husband led her out, placed her in the carriage, and saw it drive away. Then he and the barrister got into a cab and went to the Temple.
"We'll take the books home with us, Carr," he said, feverishly. "You often have fellows dropping in to your chambers at night; at my house we shall be secure from interruption."
It was midnight when Lady Hartledon returned home. She asked after her husband, and heard that he was in the breakfast-room with Mr. Carr.
She went towards it with a stealthy step, and opened the door very softly. Had Lord Hartledon not been talking, they might, however, have heard her. The table was strewed with thick musty folios; but they appeared to be done with, and Mr. Carr was leaning back in his chair with folded arms.
"I have had nothing but worry all my life," Val was saying; "but compared with this, whatever has gone before was as nothing. When I think of Maude, I feel as if I should go mad."
"You must quietly separate from her," said Mr. Carr.
A slight movement. Mr. Carr stopped, and Lord Hartledon looked round. Lady Hartledon was close behind him.
"Percival, what is the matter?" she asked, turning her back on Mr. Carr, as if ignoring his presence. "What bad news did that parson bring you? --a friend, I presume, of Dr. Ashton's."
They had both risen. Lord Hartledon glanced at Mr. Carr, the perspiration breaking out on his brow. "It--it was not a parson," he said, in his innate adherence to truth.
"I ask _you_, Lord Hartledon," she resumed, having noted the silent appeal to Mr. Carr. "It requires no third person to step between man and wife. Will you come upstairs with me?"
Words and manner were too pointed, and Mr. Carr hastily stacked the books, and carried them to a side-table.
"Allow these to remain here until to-morrow," he said to Lord Hartledon; "I'll send my clerk for them. I'm off now; it's later than I thought. Good-night, Lady Hartledon."
He went out unmolested; Lady Hartledon did not answer him; Val nodded his good-night.
"Are you not ashamed to face me, Lord Hartledon?" she then demanded. "I overheard what you were saying."
"Overheard what we were saying?" he repeated, gazing at her with a scared look.
"I heard that insidious man give you strange advice--'_you must quietly separate from her_,' he said; meaning from me. And you listened patiently, and did not knock him down!"
"Maude! Maude! was that all you heard?" " _All! _ I should think it was enough."
"Yes, but--" He broke off, so agitated as scarcely to know what he was saying. Rallying himself somewhat, he laid his hand upon the white cloak covering her shoulders.
"Do not judge him harshly, Maude. Indeed he is a true friend to you and to me. And I have need of one just now."
"A true friend! --to advise that! I never heard of anything so monstrous. You must be out of your mind."
"No, I am not, Maude. Should--disgrace"--he seemed to hesitate for a word--"fall upon me, it must touch you as connected with me. I _know_, Maude, that he was thinking of your best and truest interests."
"But to talk of separating husband and wife!"
"Yes--well--I suppose he spoke strongly in the heat of the moment."
There was a pause. Lord Hartledon had his hand still on his wife's shoulder, but his eyes were bent on the table near which they stood. She was waiting for him to speak.
"Won't you tell me what has happened?"
"I can't tell you, Maude, to-night," he answered, great drops coming out again on his brow at the question, and knowing all the time that he should never tell her. "I--I must learn more first."
"You spoke of disgrace," she observed gently, swaying her fan before her by its silken cord. "An ugly word."
"It is. Heaven help me!"
"Val, I do think you are the greatest simpleton under the skies!" she exclaimed out of all patience, and flinging his hand off. "It's time you got rid of this foolish sensitiveness. I know what is the matter quite well; and it's not so very much of a disgrace after all! Those Ashtons are going to make you pay publicly for your folly. Let them do it."
He had opened his lips to undeceive her, but stopped in time. As a drowning man catches at a straw, so did he catch at this suggestion in his hopeless despair; and he suffered her to remain in it. Anything to stave off the real, dreadful truth.
"Maude," he rejoined, "it is for your sake. If I am sensitive as to any--any disgrace being brought home to me, I declare that I think of you more than of myself."
"Then don't think of it. It will be fun for me, rather than anything else. I did not imagine the Ashtons would have done it, though. I wonder what damages they'll go in for. Oh, Val, I should like to see you in the witness-box!"
He did not answer.
"And it was not a parson?" she continued. "I'm sure he looked as much like one as old Ashton himself. A professional man, then, I suppose, Val?"
"Yes, a professional man." But even that little answer was given with some hesitation, as though it had evasion in it.
Maude broke into a laugh. "Your friend, Pleader Carr--or whatever he calls himself--must be as thin-skinned as you are, Val, to fancy that a rubbishing action of that sort, brought against a husband, can reflect disgrace on the wife! Separate, indeed! Has he lived in a wood all his life? Well, I am going upstairs."
"A moment yet, Maude! You will take a caution from me, won't you? Don't speak of this; don't allude to it, even to me. It may be arranged yet, you know."
"So it may," acquiesced Maude. "Let your friend Carr see the doctor, and offer to pay the damages down."
He might have resented this speech for Dr. Ashton's sake, in a happier moment, but resentment had been beaten out of him now. And Lady Hartledon decided that her husband was a simpleton, for instead of going to sleep like a reasonable man, he tossed and turned by her side until daybreak.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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21
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SECRET CARE.
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From that hour Lord Hartledon was a changed man. He went about as one who has some awful fear upon him, starting at shadows. That his manner was inexplicable, even allowing that he had some great crime on his conscience, a looker-on had not failed to observe. He was very tender with his wife; far more so than he had been at all; anxious, as it seemed, to indulge her every fancy, gratify her every whim. But when it came to going into society with her, then he hesitated; he would and he wouldn't, reminding Maude of his old vacillation, which indeed had seemed to have been laid aside for ever. It was as though he appeared not to know what to do; what he ought to do; his own wish or inclination having no part in it.
"Why _won't_ you go with me?" she said to him angrily one day that he had retracted his assent at the last moment. "Is it that you care so much for Anne Ashton, that you don't care to be seen with me?"
"Oh, Maude! If you knew how little Anne Ashton is in my thoughts now! When by chance I do think of her, it is to be thankful I did not marry her," he added, in a tone of self-communing.
Maude laughed a light laugh. "This movement of theirs is putting you out of conceit of your old love, Val."
"What movement?" he rejoined; and he would not have asked the question had his thoughts not gone wool-gathering.
"You are dreaming, Val. The action."
"Ah, yes, to be sure."
"Have you heard yet what damages they claim?"
He shook his head. "You promised not to speak of this, Maude; even to me."
"Who is to help speaking of it, when you allow it to take your ease away? I never in my life saw any one so changed as you are. I wish the thing were over and done with, though it left you a few thousand pounds the poorer. _Will_ you accompany me to this dinner to-day? I am sick of appearing alone and making excuses for you."
"I wish I knew what to do for the best--what my course ought to be!" thought Hartledon within his conscience. "I can't bear to be seen with her in public. When I face people with her on my arm, it seems as if they must know what sort of man she, in her unconsciousness, is leaning upon."
"I'll go with you to-day, Maude, as you press it. I was to have seen Mr. Carr, but can send down to him."
"Then don't be five minutes dressing: it is time we went."
She heard him despatch a footman to the Temple with a message that he should not be at Mr. Carr's chambers that evening; and she lay back in her chair, waiting for him in her dinner-dress of black and white. They were in mourning still for his brother. Lord Hartledon had not left it off, and Maude had loved him too well to grumble at the delay.
She had grown tolerant in regard to the intimacy with Mr. Carr. That her husband should escape as soon and as favourably as possible out of the dilemma in which he was plunged, she naturally wished; that he should require legal advice and assistance to accomplish it, was only reasonable, and therefore she tolerated the visits of Mr. Carr. She had even gone so far one evening as to send tea in to them when he and Val were closeted together.
But still Lady Hartledon was not quite prepared to find Mr. Carr at their house when they returned. She and Lord Hartledon went forth to the dinner; the latter behaving as though his wits were in some far-off hemisphere rather than in this one, so absent-minded was he. From the dinner they proceeded to another place or two; and on getting home, towards one in the morning, there was the barrister.
"Mr. Carr is waiting to see you, my lord," said Hedges, meeting them in the passage. "He is in the dining-room."
"Mr. Carr! Now!"
The hall-lamp shone full on his face as he spoke. He had been momentarily forgetting care; was speaking gaily to his wife as they entered. She saw the change that came over it; the look of fear, of apprehension, that replaced its smile. He went into the dining-room, and she followed him.
"Why, Carr!" he exclaimed. "Is it you?"
Mr. Carr, bowing to Lady Hartledon, made a joke of the matter. "Having waited so long, I thought I'd wait it out, Hartledon. As good be hung for a sheep as a lamb, you know, and I have no wife sitting up for me at home."
"You had my message?"
"Yes, and that brought me here. I wanted just to say a word to you, as I am going out of town to-morrow."
"What will you take?"
"Nothing at all. Hedges has been making me munificent offers, but I declined them. I never take anything after dinner, except a cup of tea or so, as you may remember, keeping a clear head for work in the morning."
There was a slight pause. Lady Hartledon saw of course that she was _de trop_ in the conference; that Mr. Carr would not speak his "word" whilst she was present. She had never understood why the matter should be kept apart from her; and in her heart resented it.
"You won't say to my husband before me what you have come to say, Mr. Carr."
It was strictly the truth, but the abrupt manner of bringing it home to him momentarily took away Mr. Carr's power of repartee, although he was apt enough in general, as became a special pleader.
"You have had news from the Ashtons; that is, of their cause, and you have come to tell it. I don't see why you and Lord Hartledon should so cautiously keep everything from me."
There was an eager look on Lord Hartledon's face as he stood behind his wife. It was directed to Mr. Carr, and said as plainly as look could say, "Don't undeceive her; keep up the delusion." But Thomas Carr was not so apt at keeping up delusions at the expense of truth, and he only smiled in reply.
"What damages are they suing for?"
"Oh," said Mr. Carr, with a laugh, and ready enough now: "ten thousand pounds will cover it."
"Ten thousand pounds!" she echoed. "Of course they won't get half of it. In this sort of action--breach of promise--parties never get so much as they ask for, do they?"
"Not often."
She laughed a little as she quitted the room. It was difficult to remain longer, and it never occurred to her to suspect that any graver matter than this action was in question.
"Now, Carr?" began Lord Hartledon, seating himself near the table as he closed the door after her, and speaking in low tones.
"I received this letter by the afternoon mail," said Mr. Carr, taking one from the safe enclosure of his pocket-book. "It is satisfactory, so far as it goes."
"I call it very satisfactory," returned Hartledon, glancing through it. "I thought he'd listen to reason. What is done cannot be undone, and exposure will answer no end. I wrote him an urgent letter the other day, begging him to be silent for Maude's sake. Were I to expiate the past with my life, it could not undo it. If he brought me to the bar of my country to plead guilty or not guilty, the past would remain the same."
"And I put the matter to him in my letter somewhat in the same light, though in a more business-like point of view," returned Mr. Carr. "There was no entreaty in mine. I left compassion, whether for you or others, out of the argument; and said to him, what will you gain by exposure, and how will you reconcile it to your conscience to inflict on innocent persons the torture exposure must bring?"
"I shall breathe freely now," said Hartledon, with a sigh of relief." If that man gives his word not to stir in the matter, not to take proceedings against me; in short, to bury what he knows in secrecy and silence, as he has hitherto done; it will be all I can hope for."
Mr. Carr lifted his eyebrows.
"I perceive what you think: that the fact remains. Carr, I know it as well as you; I know that _nothing_ can alter it. Don't you see that remorse is ever present with me? driving me mad? killing me by inches with its pain?"
"Do you know what I should be tempted to do, were the case mine?"
"Well?"
"Tell my wife."
"Carr!"
"I almost think I should; I am not quite sure. Should the truth ever come to her--" "But I trust it never will come to her," interrupted Hartledon, his face growing hot.
"It's a delicate point to argue," acknowledged Mr. Carr, "and I cannot hope to bring you into my way of looking at it. Had you married Miss Ashton, it appears to me that you would have no resource but to tell her: the very fact of being bound to you would kill a religious, high-principled woman."
"Not if she remained in ignorance."
"There it is. Ought she to remain in ignorance?"
Lord Hartledon leaned his head on his hand as one faint and weary. "Carr, it is of no use to go over all this ground again. If I disclose the whole to Maude, how would it make it better for her? Would it not render it a hundred times worse? She could not inform against me; it would be contrary to human nature to suppose it; and all the result would be, that she must go through life with the awful secret upon her, rendering her days a hell upon earth, as it is rendering mine. It's true she might separate from me; I dare say she would; but what satisfaction would that bring her? No; the kinder course is to allow her to remain in ignorance. Good Heavens! tell my wife! I should never dare do it!"
Mr. Carr made no reply, and a pause ensued. In truth, the matter was encompassed with difficulties on all sides; and the barrister could but acknowledge that Val's argument had some sort of reason in it. Having bound her to himself by marriage, it might be right that he should study her happiness above all things.
"It has put new life into me," Val resumed, pointing to the letter. "Now that he has promised to keep the secret, there's little to fear; and I know that he will keep his word. I must bear the burden as I best can, and keep a smiling face to the world."
"Did you read the postscript?" asked Mr. Carr; a feeling coming over him that Val had not read it.
"The postscript?"
"There's a line or two over the leaf."
Lord Hartledon glanced at it, and found it ran thus: "You must be aware that another person knows of this besides myself. He who was a witness at the time, and from whom _I_ heard the particulars. Of course for him I cannot answer, and I think he is in England. I allude to G.G. Lord H. will know."
"Lord H." apparently did know. He gazed down at the words with a knitted brow, in which some surprise was mingled.
"I declare that I understood him that night to say the fellow had died. Did not you?"
"I did," acquiesced Mr. Carr. "I certainly assumed it as a fact, until this letter came to-day. Gordon was the name, I think?"
"George Gordon."
"Since reading the letter I have been endeavouring to recollect exactly what he did say; and the impression on my mind is, that he spoke of Gordon as being _probably_ dead; not that he knew it for a certainty. How I could overlook the point so as not to have inquired into it more fully, I cannot imagine. But, you see, we were not discussing details that night, or questioning facts: we were trying to disarm him--get him not to proceed against you; and for myself, I confess I was so utterly stunned that half my wits had left me."
"What is to be done?"
"We must endeavour to ascertain where Gordon is," replied Mr. Carr, as he re-enclosed the letter in his pocket-book. "I'll write and inquire what _his_ grounds are for thinking he is in England; and then trace him out--if he is to be traced. You give me carte-blanche to act?"
"You know I do, Carr."
"All right."
"And when you have traced him--what then?"
"That's an after-question, and I must be guided by circumstances. And now I'll wish you good-night," continued the barrister, rising. "It's a shame to have kept you up; but the letter contains some consolation, and I knew I could not bring it you to-morrow."
The drawing-room was lighted when Lord Hartledon went upstairs; and his wife sat there with a book, as if she meant to remain up all night. She put it down as he entered.
"Are you here still, Maude! I thought you were tired when you came home."
"I felt tired because I met no one I cared for," she answered, in rather fractious tones. "Every one we know is leaving town, or has left."
"Yes, that's true."
"I shall leave too. I don't mind if we go to-morrow."
"To-morrow!" he echoed. "Why, we have the house for three weeks longer."
"And if we have? We are not obliged to remain in it."
Lord Hartledon put back the curtain, and stood leaning out at the open window, seeking a breath of air that hot summer's night, though indeed there was none to be found; and if there had been, it could not have cooled the brow's inward fever. The Park lay before him, dark and misty; the lights of the few vehicles passing gleamed now and again; the hum of life was dying out in the streets, men's free steps, careless voices. He looked down, and wondered whether any one of those men knew what care meant as _he_ knew it; whether the awful skeleton, that never quitted him night or day, could hold such place with another. He was Earl of Hartledon; wealthy, young, handsome; he had no bad habits to hamper him; and yet he would willingly have changed lots at hazard with any one of those passers-by, could his breast, by so doing, have been eased of its burden.
"What are you looking at, Val?"
His wife had come up and stolen her arm within his, as she asked the question, looking out too.
"Not at anything in particular," he replied, making a prisoner of her hand. "The night's hot, Maude."
"Oh, I am getting tired of London!" she exclaimed. "It is always hot now; and I believe I ought to be away from it."
"Yes."
"That letter I had this morning was from Ireland, from mamma. I told her, when I wrote last, how I felt; and you never read such a lecture as she gave me in return. She asked me whether I was mad, that I should be going galvanizing about when I ought rather to be resting three parts of my time."
"Galvanizing?" said Lord Hartledon.
"So she wrote: she never waits to choose her words--you know mamma! I suppose she meant to imply that I was always on the move."
"Do you feel ill, Maude?"
"Not exactly ill; but--I think I ought to be careful. Percival," she breathed, "mamma asked me whether I was trying to destroy the hope of an heir to Hartledon."
An ice-bolt shot through him at the reminder. Better an heir should never be born, if it must call him father!
"I fainted to-day, Val," she continued to whisper.
He passed his arm round his wife's waist, and drew her closer to him. Not upon her ought he to visit his sin: she might have enough to bear, without coldness from him; rather should he be doubly tender.
"You did not tell me about it, love. Why have you gone out this evening?" he asked reproachfully.
"It has not harmed me. Indeed I will take care, for your sake. I should never forgive myself."
"I have thought since we married, Maude, that you did not much care for me."
Maude made no immediate answer. She was looking out straight before her, her head on his shoulder, and Lord Hartledon saw that tears were glistening in her eyes.
"Yes, I do," she said at length; and as she spoke she felt very conscious that she _was_ caring for him. His gentle kindness, his many attractions were beginning to tell upon her heart; and a vision of the possible future, when she should love him, crossed her then and there as she stood. Lord Hartledon bent his face, and let it rest on hers.
"We shall be happy yet, Val; and I will be as good as gold. To begin with, we will leave London at once. I ought not to remain, and I know you have not liked it all along. It would have been better to wait until next year, when we could have had our own house; only I was impatient. I felt proud of being married; of being your wife--I did indeed, Val--and I was in a fever to be amidst my world of friends. And there's a real confession!" she concluded, laughing.
"Any more?" he asked, laughing with her.
"I don't remember any more just now. Which day shall we go? You shall manage things for me now: I won't be wilful again. Shall the servants go on first to Hartledon, or with us?"
"To Hartledon!" exclaimed Val. "Is it to Hartledon you think of going?"
"Of course it is," she said, standing up and looking at him in surprise. "Where else should I go?"
"I thought you wished to go to Germany!"
"And so I did; but that would not do now."
"Then let us go to the seaside," he rather eagerly said. "Somewhere in England."
"No, I would rather go to Hartledon. In one's own home rest and comfort can be insured; and I believe I require them. Don't you wish to go there?" she added, watching his perplexed face.
"No, I don't. The truth is, I cannot go to Hartledon."
"Is it because you do not care to face the Ashtons? I see! You would like to have this business settled first."
Lord Hartledon hardly heard the words, as he stood leaning against the open casement, gazing into the dark and misty past. No man ever shrank from a prison as he shrank from Hartledon.
"I cannot leave London at all just yet. Thomas Carr is remaining here for me, when he ought to be on circuit, and I must stay with him. I wish you would go anywhere else, rather than to Hartledon."
The tone was so painfully earnest, that a momentary suspicion crossed her of his having some other motive. It passed away almost as it arose, and she accused him of being unreasonable.
Unreasonable it did appear to be. "If you have any real reason to urge against Hartledon, tell it me," she said. But he mentioned none--save that it was his "wish" not to go.
And Lady Hartledon, rather piqued, gave the necessary orders on the following day for the removal. No further confidential converse, or approach to it, took place between her and her husband; but up to the last moment she thought he would relent and accompany her. Nothing of the sort. He was anxious for her every comfort on the journey, and saw her off himself: nothing more.
"I never thought you would allow me to go alone," she resentfully whispered, as he held her hand after she was seated in the train.
He shook his head. "It is your fault, Maude. I told you I could not go to Hartledon."
And so she went down in rather an angry frame of mind. Many a time and oft had she pictured to herself the triumph of their first visit to Calne, the place where she had taken so much pains to win him: but the arrival was certainly shorn of its glory.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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22
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ASKING THE RECTOR.
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Perhaps Lady Hartledon had never in all her life been so much astonished as when she reached Hartledon, for the first person she saw there was her mother: her mother, whom she had believed to be in some remote district of Ireland. For the moment she almost wondered whether it was really herself or her ghost. The countess-dowager came flying down the steps--if that term may be applied to one of her age and size--with rather demonstrative affection; which, however, was not cordially received.
"What's the matter, Maude? How you stare!" " _Is_ it you, mamma? How _can_ it be you?"
"How can it be me?" returned the dowager, giving Maude's bonnet a few kisses. "It _is_ me, and that's enough. My goodness, Maude, how thin you look! I see what it is! you've been killing yourself in that racketing London. It's well I've come to take care of you."
Maude went in, feeling that she could have taken care of herself, and listening to the off-hand explanations of the countess-dowager. "Kirton offended me," she said. "He and his wife are like two bears; and so I packed up my things and came away at once, and got here straight from Liverpool. And now you know."
"And is Lady Kirton quite well again?" asked Maude, helplessly, knowing she could not turn her mother out.
"She'd be well enough but for temper. She _was_ ill, though, when they telegraphed for me; her life for three days and nights hanging on a shred. I told that fool of a Kirton before he married her that she had no constitution. I suppose you and Hart were finely disappointed to find I was not in London when you got there."
"Agreeably disappointed, I think," said Maude, languidly.
"Indeed! It's civil of you to say so."
"On account of the smallness of the house," added Maude, endeavouring to be polite. "We hardly knew how to manage in it ourselves."
"You wrote me word to take it. As to me, I can accommodate myself to any space. Where there's plenty of room, I take plenty; where there's not, I can put up with a closet. I have made Mirrable give me my old rooms here: you of course take Hart's now."
"I am very tired," said Maude. "I think I will have some tea, and go to bed."
"Tea!" shrieked the dowager. "I have not yet had dinner. And it's waiting; that's more."
"You can dine without me, mamma," she said, walking upstairs to the new rooms. The dowager stared, and followed her. There was an indescribable something in Maude's manner that she did not like; it spoke of incipient rebellion, of an influence that had been, but was now thrown off. If she lost caste once, with Maude, she knew that she lost it for ever.
"You could surely take a little dinner, Maude. You must keep up your strength, you know."
"Not any dinner, thank you. I shall be all right to-morrow, when I've slept off my fatigue."
"Well, I know I should like mine," grumbled the countess-dowager, feeling her position in the house already altered from what it had been during her former sojourn, when she assumed full authority, and ordered things as she pleased, completely ignoring the new lord.
"You can have it," said Maude.
"They won't serve it until Hartledon arrives," was the aggrieved answer. "I suppose he's walking up from the station. He always had a queer habit of doing that."
Maude lifted her eyes in slight surprise. Her solitary arrival was a matter of fact so established to herself, that it sounded strange for any one else to be in ignorance of it.
"Lord Hartledon has not come down. He is remaining in London."
The old dowager peered at Maude through her little eyes. "What's that for?"
"Business, I believe."
"Don't tell me an untruth, Maude. You have quarrelled."
"We have not quarrelled. We are perfectly good friends."
"And do you mean to tell me that he sent you down alone?"
"He sent the servants with me."
"Don't be insolent, Maude. You know what I mean."
"Why, mamma, I do not wish to be insolent. I can't tell you more, or tell it differently. Lord Hartledon did not come down with me, and the servants did."
She spoke sharply. In her tired condition the petty conversation was wearying her; and underlying everything else in her heart, was the mortifying consciousness that he had _not_ come down with her, chafing her temper almost beyond repression. Considering that Maude did not profess to love her husband very much, it was astonishing how keenly she felt this.
"Are you and Hartledon upon good terms?" asked the countess-dowager after a pause, during which she had never taken her eyes from her daughter's face.
"It would be early days to be on any other."
"Oh," said the dowager. "And you did not write me word from Paris that you found you had made a mistake, that you could not bear your husband! Eh, Maude?"
A tinge came into Maude's cheeks. "And you, mamma, told me that I was to rule my husband with an iron hand, never allowing him to have a will of his own, never consulting him! Both you and I were wrong," she continued quietly. "I wrote that letter in a moment of irritation; and you were assuming what has not proved to be a fact. I like my husband now quite well enough to keep friends with him; his kindness to me is excessive; but I find, with all my wish to rule him, if I had the wish, I could not do it. He has a will of his own, and he exerts it in spite of me; and I am quite sure he will continue to exert it, whenever he fancies he is in the right. You never saw any one so changed from what he used to be."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean in asserting his own will. But he is changed in other ways. It seems to me that he has never been quite the same man since that night in the chapel. He has been more thoughtful; and all the old vacillation is gone."
The countess-dowager could not understand at all; neither did she believe; and she only stared at Maude.
"His _not_ coming down with me is a proof that he exercises his own will now. I wished him to come very much, and he knew it; but you see he has not done so."
"And what do you say is keeping him?" repeated the countess-dowager.
"Business--" "Ah," interrupted the dowager, before Maude could finish, "that's the general excuse. Always suspect it, my dear."
"Suspect what?" asked Maude.
"When a man says that, and gets his wife out of the way with it, rely upon it he is pursuing some nice little interests of his own."
Lady Hartledon understood the implication; she felt nettled, and a flush rose to her face. In her husband's loyalty (always excepting his feeling towards Miss Ashton) she rested fully assured.
"You did not allow me to finish," was the cold rejoinder. "Business _is_ keeping him in town, for one thing; for another, I think he cannot get over his dislike to face the Ashtons."
"Rubbish!" cried the wrathful dowager. "He does not tell you what the business is, does he?" she cynically added.
"I happen to know," answered Maude. "The Ashtons are bringing an action against him for breach of promise; and he and Mr. Carr the barrister are trying to arrange it without its coming to a trial."
The old lady opened her eyes and her mouth.
"It is true. They lay the damages at ten thousand pounds!"
With a shriek the countess-dowager began to dance. Ten thousand pounds! Ten thousand pounds would keep her for ever, invested at good interest. She called the parson some unworthy names.
"I cannot give you any of the details," said Maude, in answer to the questions pressed upon her. "Percival will never speak of it, or allow me to do so. I learnt it--I can hardly tell you how I learnt it--by implication, I think; for it was never expressly told me. We had a mysterious visit one night from some old parson--parson or lawyer; and Percival and Mr. Carr, who happened to be at our house, were closeted with him for an hour or two. I saw they were agitated, and guessed what it was; Dr. Ashton was bringing an action. They could not deny it."
"The vile old hypocrite!" cried the incensed dowager. "Ten thousand pounds! Are you sure it is as much as that, Maude?"
"Quite. Mr. Carr told me the amount."
"I wonder you encourage that man to your house."
"It was one of the things I stood out against--fruitlessly," was the quiet answer. "But I believe he means well to me; and I am sure he is doing what he can to serve my husband. They are often together about this business." " _Of course_ Hartledon resists the claim?"
"I don't know. I think they are trying to compromise it, so that it shall not come into court."
"What does Hartledon think of it?"
"It is worrying his life out. No, mamma, it is not too strong an expression. He says nothing; but I can see that it is half killing him. I don't believe he has slept properly since the news was brought to him."
"What a simpleton he must be! And that man will stand up in the pulpit to-morrow and preach of charity!" continued the dowager, turning her animadversions upon Dr. Ashton. "You are a hypocrite too, Maude, for trying to deceive me. You and Hartledon are _not_ on good terms; don't tell me! He would never have let you come down alone."
Lady Hartledon would not reply. She felt vexed with her mother, vexed with her husband, vexed on all sides; and she took refuge in her fatigue and was silent.
The dowager went to church on the following day. Maude would not go. The hot anger flushed into her face at the thought of showing herself there for the first time, unaccompanied by her husband: to Maude's mind it seemed that she must look to others so very much like a deserted wife. She comes home alone; he stays in London! "Ah, why did he not come down only for this one Sunday, and go back again--if he must have gone?" she thought.
A month or two ago Maude had not cared enough for him to reason like this. The countess-dowager ensconced herself in a corner of the Hartledon state-pew, and from her blinking eyes looked out upon the Ashtons. Anne, with her once bright face looking rather wan, her modest demeanour; Mrs. Ashton, so essentially a gentlewoman; the doctor, sensible, clever, charitable, beyond all doubt a good man--a feeling came over the mind of the sometimes obtuse woman that of all the people before her they looked the least likely to enter on the sort of lawsuit spoken of by Maude. But never a doubt occurred to her that they _had_ entered on it.
Lady Hartledon remained at home, her prayer-book in her hand. She was thinking she could steal out to the evening service; it might not be so much noticed then, her being alone. Listlessly enough she sat, toying with her prayer-book rather than reading it. She had never pretended to be religious, had not been trained to be so; and reading a prayer-book, when not in church, was quite unusual to her. But there are seasons in a woman's life, times when peril is looked forward to, that bring thought even to the most careless nature. Maude was trying to play at "being good," and was reading the psalms for the day in an absent fashion, her thoughts elsewhere; and the morning passed on. The quiet apathy of her present state, compared with the restless fever which had stirred her during her last sojourn at Hartledon, was remarkable.
Suddenly there burst in upon her the countess-dowager: that estimable lady's bonnet awry, her face scarlet, herself in a commotion.
"I didn't suppose you'd have done it, Maude! You might play tricks upon other people, I think, but not upon your own mother."
The interlude was rather welcome to Maude, rousing her from her apathy. Not for some few moments, however, could she understand the cause of complaint.
It appeared that the countess-dowager, with that absence of all sense of the fitness of things which so eminently characterized her, had joined the Ashtons after service, inquiring with quite motherly solicitude after Mrs. Ashton's health, complimenting Anne upon her charming looks; making herself, in short, as agreeable as she knew how, and completely ignoring the past in regard to her son-in-law. Gentlewomen in mind and manners, they did not repulse her, were even courteously civil; and she graciously accompanied them across the road to the Rectory-gate, and there took a cordial leave, saying she would look in on the morrow.
In returning she met Dr. Ashton. He was passing her with nothing but a bow; but he little knew the countess-dowager. She grasped his hand; said how grieved she was not to have had an opportunity of explaining away her part in the past; hoped he would let bygones be bygones; and finally, whilst the clergyman was scheming how to get away from her without absolute rudeness, she astonished him with a communication touching the action-at-law. There ensued a little mutual misapprehension, followed by a few emphatic words of denial from Dr. Ashton; and the countess-dowager walked away with a scarlet face, and an explosion of anger against her daughter.
Lady Hartledon was not yet callous to the proprieties of life; and the intrusion on the Ashtons, which her mother confessed to, half frightened, half shamed her. But the dowager's wrath at having been misled bore down everything. Dr. Ashton had entered no action whatever against Lord Hartledon; had never thought of doing it.
"And you, you wicked, ungrateful girl, to come home to me with such an invention, and cause me to start off on a fool's errand! Do you suppose I should have gone and humbled myself to those people, but for hoping to bring the parson to a sense of what he was doing in going-in for those enormous damages?"
"I have not come home to you with any invention, mamma. Dr. Ashton has entered the action."
"He has not," raved the dowager. "It is an infamous hoax you have played off upon me. You couldn't find any excuse for your husband's staying in London, and so invented this. What with you, and what with Kirton's ingratitude, I shall be driven out of house and home!"
"I won't say another word until you are calm and can talk common sense," said Maude, leaning back in her chair, and putting down her prayer-book.
"Common sense! What am I talking but common sense? When a child begins to mislead her own mother, the world ought to come to an end."
Maude took no notice.
There happened to be some water standing on a table, and the dowager poured out a tumblerful and drank it, though not accustomed to the beverage. Untying her bonnet-strings she sat down, a little calmer.
"Perhaps you'll explain this at your convenience, Maude."
"There is nothing to explain," was the answer. "What I told you was the truth. The action _has_ been entered by the Ashtons."
"And I tell you that the action has not."
"I assure you that it has," returned Maude. "I told you of the evening we first had notice of it, and the damages claimed; do you think I invented that, or went to sleep and dreamt it? If Val has gone down once to that Temple about it, he has gone fifty times. He would not go for pleasure."
The countess-dowager sat fanning herself quietly: for her daughter's words were gaining ground.
"There's a mistake somewhere, Maude, and it is on your side and not mine. I'll lay my life that no action has been entered by Dr. Ashton. The man spoke the truth; I can read the truth when I see it as well as anyone: his face flushed with pain and anger at such a thing being said of him. It may not be difficult to explain this contradiction."
"Do you think not?" returned Maude, her indifference exciting the listener to anger. " _I_ should say Hartledon is deceiving you. If any action is entered against him at all, it isn't that sort of action; or perhaps the young lady is not Miss Ashton, but some other; he's just the kind of man to be drawn into promising marriage to a dozen or two. Very clever of him to palm you off with this tale: a man may get into five hundred troubles not convenient to disclose to his wife."
Except that Lady Hartledon's cheek flushed a little, she made no answer; she held firmly--at least she thought she held firmly--to her own side of the case. Her mother, on the contrary, adopted the new view, and dismissed it from her thoughts accordingly.
Maude went to church in the evening, sitting alone in the great pew, pale and quiet. Anne Ashton was also alone; and the two whilom rivals, the triumphant and the rejected, could survey each other to their heart's content.
Not very triumphant was Maude's feeling. Strange perhaps to say, the suggestion of the old dowager, like instilled poison, was making its way into her very veins. Her thoughts had been busy with the matter ever since. One positive conviction lay in her heart--that Dr. Ashton, now reading the first lesson before her, for he was taking the whole of the service that evening, could not, under any circumstance, be guilty of a false assertion or subterfuge. One solution of the difficulty presented itself to her--that her mother, in her irascibility, had misunderstood the Rector; and yet that was improbable. As Maude half sat, half lay back in the pew, for the faint feeling was especially upon her that evening, she thought she would give a great deal to set the matter at rest.
When the service was over she took the more secluded way home; those of the servants who had attended returning as usual by the road. On reaching the turning where the three paths diverged, the faintness which had been hovering over her all the evening suddenly grew worse; and but for a friendly tree, she might have fallen. It grew better in a few moments, but she did not yet quit her support.
Very surprised was the Rector of Calne to come up and see Lady Hartledon in this position. Every Sunday evening, after service, he went to visit a man in one of the cottages, who was dying of consumption, and he was on his way there now. He would have preferred to pass without speaking: but Lady Hartledon looked in need of assistance; and in common Christian kindness he could not pass her by.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Hartledon. Are you ill?"
She took his offered arm with her disengaged hand, as an additional support; and her white face turned a shade whiter.
"A sudden faintness overtook me. I am better now," she said, when able to speak.
"Will you allow me to walk on with you?"
"Thank you; just a little way. If you will not mind it."
That he must have understood the feeling which prompted the concluding words was undoubted: and perhaps had Lady Hartledon been in possession of her keenest senses, she might never have spoken them. Pride and health go out of us together. Dr. Ashton took her on his arm, and they walked slowly in the direction of the little bridge. Colour was returning to her face, strength to her frame.
"The heat of the day has affected you, possibly?"
"Yes, perhaps; I have felt faint at times lately. The church was very hot to-night."
Nothing more was said until the bridge was gained, and then Maude released his arm.
"Dr. Ashton, I thank you very much. You have been a friend in need."
"But are you sure you are strong enough to go on alone? I will escort you to the house if you are not."
"Quite strong enough now. Thank you once again."
As he was bowing his farewell, a sudden impulse to speak, and set the matter that was troubling her at rest, came over her. Without a moment's deliberation, without weighing her words, she rushed upon it; the ostensible plea an apology for her mother's having spoken to him.
"Yes, I told Lady Kirton she was labouring under some misapprehension," he quietly answered.
"Will you forgive _me_ also for speaking of it?" she murmured. "Since my mother came home with the news of what you said, I have been lost in a sea of conjecture: I could not attend to the service for dwelling upon it, and might as well not have been in church--a curious confession to make to you, Dr. Ashton. Is it indeed true that you know nothing of the matter?"
"Lady Kirton told me in so many words that I had entered an action against Lord Hartledon for breach of promise, and laid the damages at ten thousand pounds," returned Dr. Ashton, with a plainness of speech and a cynical manner that made her blush. And she saw at once that he had done nothing of the sort; saw it without any more decisive denial.
"But the action has been entered," said Lady Hartledon.
"I beg your pardon, madam. Lord Hartledon is, I should imagine, the only man living who could suppose me capable of such a thing."
"And you have _not_ entered on it!" she reiterated, half bewildered by the denial.
"Most certainly not. When I parted with Lord Hartledon on a certain evening, which probably your ladyship remembers, I washed my hands of him for good, desiring never to approach him in any way whatever, never hear of him, never see him again. Your husband, madam, is safe for me: I desire nothing better than to forget that such a man is in existence."
Lifting his hat, he walked away. And Lady Hartledon stood and gazed after him as one in a dream.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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23
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MR. CARR AT WORK.
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Thomas Carr was threading his way through the mazy precincts of Gray's Inn, with that quick step and absorbed manner known only, I think, to the busy man of our busy metropolis. He was on his way to make some inquiries of a firm of solicitors, Messrs. Kedge and Reck, strangers to him in all but name.
Up some dark and dingy stairs, he knocked at a dark and dingy door: which, after a minute, opened of itself by some ingenious contrivance, and let him into a passage, whence he turned into a room, where two clerks were writing at a desk.
"Can I see Mr. Kedge?"
"Not in," said one of the clerks, without looking up.
"Mr. Reck, then?"
"Not in."
"When will either of them be in?" continued the barrister; thinking that if he were Messrs. Kedge and Reck the clerk would get his discharge for incivility.
"Can't say. What's your business?"
"My business is with them: not with you."
"You can see the managing clerk."
"I wish to see one of the partners."
"Could you give your name?" continued the gentleman, equably.
Mr. Carr handed in his card. The clerk glanced at it, and surreptitiously showed it to his companion; and both of them looked up at him. Mr. Carr of the Temple was known by reputation, and they condescended to become civil.
"Take a seat for a moment, sir," said the one. "I'll inquire how long Mr. Kedge will be; but Mr. Reek's not in town to-day."
A few minutes, and Thomas Carr found himself in a small square room with the head of the firm, a youngish man and somewhat of a dandy, especially genial in manner, as though in contrast to his clerk. He welcomed the rising barrister.
"There's as much difficulty in getting to see you as if you were Pope of Rome," cried Mr. Carr, good humouredly.
The lawyer laughed. "Hopkins did not know you: and strangers are generally introduced to Mr. Reck, or to our managing clerk. What can I do for you, Mr. Carr?"
"I don't know that you can do anything for me," said Mr. Carr, seating himself; "but I hope you can. At the present moment I am engaged in sifting a piece of complicated business for a friend; a private matter entirely, which it is necessary to keep private. I am greatly interested in it myself, as you may readily believe, when it is keeping me from circuit. Indeed it may almost be called my own affair," he added, observing the eyes of the lawyer fixed upon him, and not caring they should see into his business too clearly. "I fancy you have a clerk, or had a clerk, who is cognizant of one or two points in regard to it: can you put me in the way of finding out where he is? His name is Gordon."
"Gordon! We have no clerk of that name. Never had one, that I remember. How came you to fancy it?"
"I heard it from my own clerk, Taylor. One day last week I happened to say before him that I'd give a five-pound note out of my pocket to get at the present whereabouts of this man Gordon. Taylor is a shrewd fellow; full of useful bits of information, and knows, I really believe, three-fourths of London by name. He immediately said a young man of that name was with Messrs. Kedge and Reck, of Gray's Inn, either as clerk, or in some other capacity; and when he described this clerk of yours, I felt nearly sure that it was the man I am looking for. I got Taylor to make inquiries, and he did, I believe, of one of your clerks; but he could learn nothing, except that no one of that name was connected with you now. Taylor persists that he is or was connected with you; and so I thought the shortest plan to settle the matter was to ask yourselves."
"We have no clerk of that name," repeated Mr. Kedge, pushing back some papers on the table. "Never had one."
"Understand," said Mr. Carr, thinking it just possible the lawyer might be mistaking his motives, "I have nothing to allege against the man, and do not seek to injure him. The real fact is, that I do not want to see him or to be brought into personal contact with him; I only want to know whether he is in London, and, if so, where?"
"I assure you he is not connected with us," repeated Mr. Kedge. "I would tell you so in a moment if he were."
"Then I can only apologise for having troubled you," said the barrister, rising. "Taylor must have been mistaken. And yet I would have backed his word, when he positively asserts a thing, against the world. I hardly ever knew him wrong."
Mr. Kedge was playing with the locket on his watch-chain, his head bent in thought.
"Wait a moment, Mr. Carr. I remember now that we took a clerk temporarily into the office in the latter part of last year. His writing did not suit, and we kept him only a week or two. I don't know what his name was, but it might have been Gordon."
"Do you remember what sort of a man he was?" asked Mr. Carr, somewhat eagerly.
"I really do not. You see, I don't come much into contact with our clerks. Reck does; but he's not here to-day. I fancy he had red hair."
"Gordon had reddish hair."
"You had better see Kimberly," said the solicitor, ringing a bell. "He is our managing clerk, and knows everything."
A grey-haired, silent-looking man came in with stooping shoulders. Mr. Kedge, without any circumlocution, asked whether he remembered any clerk of the name of Gordon having been in the house. Mr. Kimberly responded by saying that they never had one in the house of the name.
"Well, I thought not," observed the principal. "There was one had in for a short time, you know, while Hopkins was ill. I forget his name."
"His name was Druitt, sir. We employed a man of the name of Gorton to do some outdoor business for us at times," continued the managing clerk, turning his eyes on the barrister; "but not lately."
"What sort of business?"
"Serving writs."
"Gorton is not Gordon," remarked Mr. Kedge, with legal acumen. "By the way, Kimberly, I have heard nothing of Gorton lately. What has become of him?"
"I have not the least idea, sir. We parted in a huff, so he wouldn't perhaps be likely to come in my way again. Some business that he mismanaged, if you remember, sir, down at Calne."
"When he arrested one man for another," laughed the lawyer, "and got entangled in a coroner's inquest, and I don't know what all."
Mr. Carr had pricked up his ears, scarcely daring to breathe. But his manner was careless to a degree.
"The man he arrested being Lord Hartledon; the man he ought to have arrested being the Honourable Percival Elster," he interposed, laughing.
"What! do you know about it?" cried the lawyer.
"I remember hearing of it; I was intimate with Mr. Elster at the time."
"He has since become Lord Hartledon."
"Yes. But about this Gorton! I should not be in the least surprised if he is the man I am inquiring for. Can you describe him to me, Mr. Kimberly?"
"He is a short, slight man, under thirty, with red hair and whiskers."
Mr. Carr nodded.
"Light hair with a reddish tinge it has been described to me. Do you happen to be at all acquainted with his antecedents?"
"Not I; I know nothing about, the man," said Mr. Kedge. "Kimberly does, perhaps."
"No, sir," dissented Kimberly. "He had been to Australia, I believe; and that's all I know about him."
"It is the same man," said Mr. Carr, quietly. "And if you can tell me anything about him," he continued, turning to the older man, "I shall be exceedingly obliged to you. To begin with--when did you first know him?"
But at this juncture an interruption occurred. Hopkins the discourteous came in with a card, which he presented to his principal. The gentleman was waiting to see Mr. Kedge. Two more clients were also waiting, he added, Thomas Carr rose, and the end of it was that he went with Mr. Kimberly to his own room.
"It's Carr of the Inner Temple," whispered Mr. Kedge in his clerk's ear.
"Oh, I know him, sir."
"All right. If you can help him, do so."
"I first knew Gorton about fifteen months ago," observed the clerk, when they were shut in together. "A friend of mine, now dead, spoke of him to me as a respectable young fellow who had fallen in the world, and asked if I could help him to some employment. I think he told me somewhat of his history; but I quite forget it. I know he was very low down then, with scarcely bread to eat."
"Did this friend of yours call him Gorton or Gordon?" interrupted Mr. Carr.
"Gorton. I never heard him called Gordon at all. I remember seeing a book of his that he seemed to set some store by. It was printed in old English, and had his name on the title-page: 'George Gorton. From his affectionate father, W. Gorton.' I employed him in some outdoor work. He knew London perfectly well, and seemed to know people too."
"And he had been to Australia?"
"He had been to Australia, I feel sure. One day he accidentally let slip some words about Melbourne, which he could not well have done unless he had seen the place. I taxed him with it, and he shuffled out of it with some excuse; but in such a manner as to convince me he had been there."
"And now, Mr. Kimberly, I am going to ask you another question. You spoke of his having been at Calne; I infer that you sent him to the place on the errand to Mr. Elster. Try to recollect whether his going there was your own spontaneous act, or whether he was the original mover in the journey?"
The grey-haired clerk looked up as though not understanding.
"You don't quite take me, I see."
"Yes I do, sir; but I was thinking. So far as I can recollect, it was our own spontaneous act. I am sure I had no reason to think otherwise at the time. We had had a deal of trouble with the Honourable Mr. Elster; and when it was found that he had left town for the family seat, we came to the resolution to arrest him."
Thomas Carr paused. "Do you know anything of Gordon's--or Gorton's doings in Calne? Did you ever hear him speak of them afterwards?"
"I don't know that I did particularly. The excuse he made to us for arresting Lord Hartledon was, that the brothers were so much alike he mistook the one for the other."
"Which would infer that he knew Mr. Elster by sight."
"It might; yes. It was not for the mistake that we discharged him; indeed, not for anything at all connected with Calne. He did seem to have gone about his business there in a very loose way, and to have paid less attention to our interests than to the gossip of the place; of which there was a tolerable amount just then, on account of Lord Hartledon's unfortunate death. Gorton was set upon another job or two when he returned; and one of those he contrived to mismanage so woefully, that I would give him no more to do. It struck me that he must drink, or else was accessible to a bribe."
Mr. Carr nodded his head, thinking the latter more than probable. His fingers were playing with a newspaper which happened to lie on the clerk's desk; and he put the next question with a very well-assumed air of carelessness, as if it were but the passing thought of the moment.
"Did he ever talk about Mr. Elster?"
"Never but once. He came to my house one evening to tell me he had discovered the hiding-place of a gentleman we were looking for. I was taking my solitary glass of gin and water after supper, the only stimulant I ever touch--and that by the doctor's orders--and I could not do less than ask him to help himself. You see, sir, we did not look upon him as a common sheriff's man: and he helped himself pretty freely. That made him talkative. I fancy his head cannot stand much; and he began rambling upon recent affairs at Calne; he had not been back above a week then--" "And he spoke of Mr. Elster?"
"He spoke a good deal of him as the new Lord Hartledon, all in a rambling sort of way. He hinted that it might be in his power to bring home to him some great crime."
"The man must have been drunk indeed!" remarked Mr. Carr, with the most perfect assumption of indifference; a very contrast to the fear that shot through his heart. "What crime, pray? I hope he particularized it."
"What he seemed to hint at was some unfair play in connection with his brother's death," said the old clerk, lowering his voice. " 'A man at his wits' end for money would do many queer things,' he remarked."
Mr. Carr's eyes flashed. "What a dangerous fool he must be! You surely did not listen to him!"
"I, sir! I stopped him pretty quickly, and bade him sew up his mouth until he came to his sober senses again. Oh, they make great simpletons of themselves, some of these young fellows, when they get a little drink into them."
"They do," said the barrister. "Did he ever allude to the matter again?"
"Never; and when I saw him the next day, he seemed ashamed of himself, and asked if he had not been talking a lot of nonsense. About a fortnight after that we parted, and I have never seen him since."
"And you really do not know what has become of him?"
"Not at all. I should think he has left London."
"Why?"
"Because had he remained in it he'd be sure to have come bothering me to employ him again; unless, indeed, he has found some one else to do it."
"Well," said Mr. Carr, rising, "will you do me this favour? If you come across the man again, or learn tidings of him in any way, let me know it at once. I do not want him to hear of me, or that I have made inquiries about him. I only wish to ascertain _where_ he is, if that be possible. Any one bringing me this information privately will find it well worth his while."
He went forth into the busy streets again, sick at heart; and upon reaching his chambers wrote a note for a detective officer, and put some business into his hands.
Meanwhile Lord Hartledon remained in London. When the term for which they had engaged the furnished house was expired he took lodgings in Grafton Street; and there he stayed, his frame of mind restless and unsatisfactory. Lady Hartledon wrote to him sometimes, and he answered her. She said not a word about the discovery she had made in regard to the alleged action-at-law; but she never failed in every letter to ask what he was doing, and when he was coming home--meaning to Hartledon. He put her off in the best way he could: he and Carr were very busy together, he said: as to home, he could not mention any particular time. And Lady Hartledon bottled up her curiosity and her wrath, and waited with what patience she possessed.
The truth was--and, perhaps, the reader may have divined it--that graver motives than the sensitive feeling of not liking to face the Ashtons were keeping Lord Hartledon from his wife and home. He had once, in his bachelor days, wished himself a savage in some remote desert, where his civilized acquaintance could not come near him; he had a thousand times more reason to wish himself one now.
One dusty day, when the excessive heat of summer was on the wane, he went down to Mr. Carr's chambers, and found that gentleman out. Not out for long, the clerk thought; and sat down and waited. The room he was in looked out on the cool garden, the quiet river; in the one there was not a soul except Mr. Broom himself, who had gone in to watch the progress of his chrysanthemums, and was stooping lovingly over the beds; on the other a steamer, freighted with a straggling few, was paddling up the river against the tide, and a barge with its brown sail was coming down in all its picturesque charm. The contrast between this quiet scene and the bustling, dusty, jostling world he had come in from, was grateful even to his disturbed heart; and he felt half inclined to go round to the garden and fling himself on the lawn as a man might do who was free from care.
Mr. Carr indulged in the costly luxury of three rooms in the Temple; his sitting-room, which was his work-room, a bedroom, and a little outer room, the sanctum of his clerk. Lord Hartledon was in the sitting-room, but he could hear the clerk moving about in the ante-room, as if he had no writing on hand that morning. When tired of waiting, he called him in.
"Mr. Taylor, how long do you think he will be? I've been dozing, I think."
"Well, I thought he'd have been here before now, my lord. He generally tells me if he is going out for any length of time; but he said nothing to-day."
"A newspaper would be something to while away one's time, or a book," grumbled Hartledon. "Not those," glancing at a book-case full of ponderous law-volumes.
"Your lordship has taken the cream out of them already," remarked the clerk, with a laugh; and Hartledon's brow knitted at the words. He had "taken the cream" out of those old law-books, if studying them could do it, for he had been at them pretty often of late.
But Mr. Taylor's remarks had no ulterior meaning. Being a shrewd man, he could not fail to suspect that Lord Hartledon was in a scrape of some sort; but from a word dropped by his master he supposed it to involve nothing more than a question of debt; and he never suspected that the word had been dropped purposely. "Scamps would claim money twice over when they could," said Mr. Carr; and Elster was a careless man, always losing his receipts. He was a short, slight man, this clerk--in build something like his master--with an intelligent, silent face, a small, sharp nose, and fair hair. He had been born a gentleman, he was wont to say; and indeed he looked one; but he had not received an education commensurate with that fact, and had to make his own way in the world. He might do it yet, perhaps, he remarked one day to Lord Hartledon; and certainly, if steady perseverance could effect it, he would: all his spare time was spent in study.
"He has not gone to one of those blessed consultations in somebody's chambers, has he?" cried Val. "I have known them last three hours."
"I have known them last longer than that," said the clerk equably. "But there are none on just now."
"I can't think what has become of him. He made an appointment with me for this morning. And where's his _Times_?"
Mr. Taylor could not tell where; he had been looking for the newspaper on his own account. It was not to be found; and they could only come to the conclusion that the barrister had taken it out with him.
"I wish you'd go out and buy me one," said Val.
"I'll go with pleasure, my lord. But suppose any one comes to the door?"
"Oh, I'll answer it. They'll think Carr has taken on a new clerk."
Mr. Taylor laughed, and went out. Hartledon, tired of sitting, began to pace the room and the ante-room. Most men would have taken their departure; but he had nothing to do; he had latterly shunned that portion of the world called society; and was as well in Mr. Carr's chambers as in his own lodgings, or in strolling about with his troubled heart. While thus occupied, there came a soft tap to the outer door--as was sure to be the case, the clerk being absent--and Val opened it. A middle-aged, quiet-looking man stood there, who had nothing specially noticeable in his appearance, except a pair of deep-set dark eyes, under bushy eyebrows that were turning grey.
"Mr. Carr within?"
"Mr. Carr's not in," replied the temporary clerk. "I dare say you can wait."
"Likely to be long?"
"I should think not. I have been waiting for him these two hours."
The applicant entered, and sat down in the clerk's room. Lord Hartledon went into the other, and stood drumming on the window-pane, as he gazed out upon the Temple garden.
"I'd go, but for that note of Carr's," he said to himself. "If--Halloa! that's his voice at last."
Mr. Carr and his clerk had returned together. The former, after a few moments, came in to Lord Hartledon.
"A nice fellow you are, Carr! Sending me word to be here at eleven o'clock, and then walking off for two mortal hours!"
"I sent you word to wait for me at your own home!"
"Well, that's good!" returned Val. "It said, 'Be here at eleven,' as plainly as writing could say it."
"And there was a postscript over the leaf telling you, on second thought, _not_ to be here, but to wait at home for me," said Mr. Carr. "I remembered a matter of business that would take me up your way this morning, and thought I'd go on to you. It's just your careless fashion, Hartledon, reading only half your letters! You should have turned it over."
"Who was to think there was anything on the other side? Folk don't turn their letters over from curiosity when they are concluded on the first page."
"I never had a letter in my life but I turned it over to make sure," observed the more careful barrister. "I have had my walk for nothing."
"And I have been cooling my heels here! And you took the newspaper with you!"
"No, I did not. Churton sent in from his rooms to borrow it."
"Well, let the misunderstanding go, and forgive me for being cross. Do you know, Carr, I think I am growing ill-tempered from trouble. What news have you for me?"
"I'll tell you by-and-by. Do you know who that is in the other room?"
"Not I. He seemed to stare me inside-out in a quiet way as I let him in."
"Ay. It's Green, the detective. At times a question occurs to me whether that's his real name, or one assumed in his profession. He has come to report at last. Had you better remain?"
"Why not?"
Mr. Carr looked dubious.
"You can make some excuse for my presence."
"It's not that. I'm thinking if you let slip a word--" "Is it likely?"
"Inadvertently, I mean."
"There's no fear. You have not mentioned my name to him?"
"I retort in your own words--Is it likely? He does not know why he is being employed or what I want with the man I wish traced. At present he is working, as far as that goes, in the dark. I might have put him on a false scent, just as cleverly and unsuspiciously as I dare say he could put me; but I've not done it. What's the matter with you to-day, Hartledon? You look ill."
"I only look what I am, then," was the answer. "But I'm no worse than usual. I'd rather be transported--I'd rather be hanged, for that matter--than lead the life of misery I am leading. At times I feel inclined to give in, but then comes the thought of Maude."
|
{
"id": "16798"
}
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24
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SOMEBODY ELSE AT WORK.
|
They were shut in together: the detective officer, Mr. Carr, and Lord Hartledon. "You may speak freely before this gentleman," observed Mr. Carr, as if in apology for a third being present. "He knows the parties, and is almost as much interested in the affair as I am."
The detective glanced at Lord Hartledon with his deep eyes, but he did not know him, and took out a note-book, on which some words and figures were dotted down, hieroglyphics to any one's eyes but his own. Squaring his elbows on the table, he begun abruptly; and appeared to have a habit of cutting short his words and sentences.
"Haven't succeeded yet as could wish, Mr. Carr; at least not altogether: have had to be longer over it, too, than thought for. George Gordon: Scotch birth, so far as can learn; left an orphan; lived mostly in London. Served time to medical practitioner, locality Paddington. Idle, visionary, loose in conduct, good-natured, fond of roving. Surgeon wouldn't keep him as assistant; might have done it, he says, had G.G. been of settled disposition: saw him in drink three times. Next turns up in Scotland, assistant to a doctor there; name Mair, locality Kirkcudbrightshire. Remained less than a year; left, saying was going to Australia. So far," broke off the speaker, raising his eyes to Mr. Carr's, "particulars tally with the information supplied by you."
"Just so."
"Then my further work began," continued Mr. Green. "Afraid what I've got together won't be satisfactory; differ from you in opinion, at any rate. G.G. went to Australia; no doubt of that; friend of his got a letter or two from him while there: last one enclosed two ten-pound notes, borrowed by G.G. before he went out. Last letter said been up to the diggings; very successful; coming home with his money, mentioned ship he meant to sail in. Hadn't been in Australia twelve months."
"Who was the friend?" asked Mr. Carr.
"Respectable man; gentleman; former fellow-pupil with Gordon in London; in good practice for himself now; locality Kensington. After last letter, friend perpetually looking out for G.G. G.G. did not make his appearance; conclusion friend draws is he did not come back. Feels sure Gordon, whether rich or poor, in ill-report or good-report, would have come direct to him."
"I happen to know that he did come back," said Mr. Carr.
"Don't think it," was the unceremonious rejoinder.
"I know it positively. And that he was in London."
The detective looked over his notes, as if completely ignoring Mr. Carr's words.
"You heard, gentlemen, of that mutiny on board the ship _Morning Star_, some three years ago? Made a noise at the time."
"Well?"
"Ringleader was this same man, George Gordon."
"No!" exclaimed Mr. Carr.
"No reasonable doubt about it. Friend of his feels none: can't understand how G.G. could have turned suddenly cruel; never was that. Pooh! when men have been leading lawless lives in the bush, perhaps taken regularly to drinking--which G.G. was inclined to before--they're ready for any crime under the sun."
"But how do you connect Gordon with the ringleader of that diabolical mutiny?"
"Easy enough. Same name, George Gordon: wrote to a friend the ship he was coming home in--_Morning Star_. It _was_ the same; price on G.G.'s head to this day: shouldn't mind getting it. Needn't pother over it, sir; 'twas Gordon: but he'd never put his foot in London."
"If true, it would account for his not showing himself to his friend--assuming that he did come back," observed Mr. Carr.
"Friend says not. Sure that G.G., whatever he might have been guilty of, would go to him direct; knew he might depend on him in any trouble. A proof, he argues, that G.G. never came back."
"But I tell you he did come back," repeated the barrister. "Strange the similarity of name never struck me," he added, turning to Lord Hartledon. "I took some interest in that mutiny at the time; but it never occurred to me to connect this man or his name with it. A noted name, at any rate, if not a very common one."
Lord Hartledon nodded. He had sat silent throughout, a little apart, his face somewhat turned from them, as though the business did not concern him.
"And now I will relate to you what more I know of Gordon," resumed Mr. Carr, moving his chair nearer the detective, and so partially screening Lord Hartledon. "He was in London last year, employed by Kedge and Reck, of Gray's Inn, to serve writs. What he had done with himself from the time of the mutiny--allowing that he was identical with the Gordon of that business--I dare say no one living could tell, himself excepted. He was calling himself Gorton last autumn. Not much of a change from his own name."
"George Gorton," assented the detective.
"Yes, George Gorton. I knew this much when I first applied to you. I did not mention it because I preferred to let you go to work without it. Understand me; that it is the same man, I _know_; but there are nevertheless discrepancies in the case that I cannot reconcile; and I thought you might possibly arrive at some knowledge of the man without this clue better than with it."
"Sorry to differ from you, Mr. Carr; must hold to the belief that George Gorton, employed at Kedge and Reck's, was not the same man at all," came the cool and obstinate rejoinder. "Have sifted the apparent similarity between the two, and drawn conclusions accordingly."
The remark implied that the detective was wiser on the subject of George Gorton than Mr. Carr had bargained for, and a shadow of apprehension stole over him. It was by no means his wish that the sharp detective and the man should come into contact with each other; all he wanted was to find out where he was at present, _not_ that he should be meddled with. This he had fully explained in the first instance, and the other had acquiesced in his curt way.
"You are thinking me uncommon clever, getting on the track of George Gorton, when nothing on the surface connects him with the man wanted," remarked the detective, with professional vanity. "Came upon it accidentally; as well confess it; don't want to assume more credit than's due. It was in this way. Evening following your instructions, had to see managing clerk of Kedge and Reck; was engaged on a little matter for them. Business over, he asked me if I knew anything of a man named George Gorton, or Gordon--as I seemed to know something of pretty well everybody. Having just been asked here about George Gordon, I naturally connected the two questions together. Inquired of Kimberly _why_ he suspected his clerk Gorton should be Gordon; Kimberly replied he did not suspect him, but a gentleman did, who had been there that day. This put me on Gorton's track."
"And you followed it up?"
"Of course; keeping my own counsel. Took it up in haste, though; no deliberation; went off to Calne, without first comparing notes with Gordon's friend the surgeon."
"To Calne!" explained Mr. Carr, while Lord Hartledon turned his head and took a sharp look at the speaker.
A nod was the only answer. "Got down; thought at first as you do, Mr. Carr, that man was the same, and was on right track. Went to work in my own way; was a countryman just come into a snug bit of inheritance, looking out for a corner of land. Wormed out a bit here and a bit there; heard this from one, that from another; nearly got an interview with my Lord Hartledon himself, as candidate for one of his farms."
"Lord Hartledon was not at Calne, I think," interrupted Mr. Carr, speaking impulsively.
"Know it now; didn't then; and wanted, for own purposes, to get a sight of him and a word with him. Went to his place: saw a queer old creature in yellow gauze; saw my lord's wife, too, at a distance; fine woman; got intimate with butler, named Hedges; got intimate with two or three more; altogether turned the recent doings of Mr. Gorton inside out."
"Well?" said Mr. Carr, in his surprise.
"Care to hear 'em?" continued the detective, after a moment's pause; and a feeling crossed Mr. Carr, that if ever he had a deep man to deal with it was this one, in spite of his apparent simplicity. "Gorton went down on his errand for Kedge and Reck, writ in pocket for Mr. Elster; had boasted he knew him. Can't quite make out whether he did or not; any rate, served writ on Lord Hartledon by mistake. Lordship made a joke of it; took up the matter as a brother ought; wrote himself to Kedge and Reck to get it settled. Brothers quarrelled; day or two, and elder was drowned, nobody seems to know how. Gorton stopped on, against orders from Kimberly; said afterwards, by way of excuse, had been served with summons to attend inquest. Couldn't say much at inquest, or _didn't_; was asked if he witnessed accident; said 'No,' but some still think he did. Showed himself at Hartledon afterwards trying to get interview with new lord; new lord wouldn't see him, and butler turned him out. Gorton in a rage, went back to inn, got some drink, said he might be able to _make_ his lordship see him yet; hinted at some secret, but too far gone to know what he said; began boasting of adventures in Australia. Loose man there, one Pike, took him in charge, and saw him off by rail for London."
"Yes?" said Mr. Carr, for the speaker had stopped.
"That's pretty near all as far as Gorton goes. Got a clue to an address in London, where he might be heard of: got it oddly, too; but that's no matter. Came up again and went to address; could learn nothing; tracked here, tracked there, both for Gordon and Gorton; found Gorton disappeared close upon time he was cast adrift by Kimberly. Not in London as far as can be traced; where gone, can't tell yet. So much done, summed up my experiences and came here to-day to state them."
"Proceed," said Mr. Carr.
The detective put his note-book in his pocket, and with his elbows still on the table, pressed his fingers together alternately as he stated his points, speaking less abruptly than before.
"My conclusion is--the Gordon you spoke to me about was the Gordon who led the mutiny on board the _Morning Star_; that he never, after that, came back to England; has never been heard of, in short, by any living soul in it. That the Gorton employed by Kedge and Reck was another man altogether. Neither is to be traced; the one may have found his grave in the sea years ago; the other has disappeared out of London life since last October, and I can't trace how or where."
Mr. Carr listened in silence. To reiterate that the two men were identical, would have been waste of time, since he could not avow how he knew it, or give the faintest clue. The detective himself had unconsciously furnished a proof.
"Will you tell me your grounds for believing them to be different men?" he asked.
"Nay," said the keen detective, "the shortest way would be for you to give me your grounds for thinking them to be the same."
"I cannot do it," said Mr. Carr. "It might involve--no, I cannot do it."
"Well, I suspected so. I don't mind mentioning one or two on my side. The description of Gorton, as I had it from Kimberly, does not accord with that of Gordon as given me by his friend the surgeon. I wrote out the description of Gorton, and took it to him. 'Is this Gordon?' I asked. 'No, it is not,' said he; and I'm sure he spoke the truth."
"Gordon, on his return from Australia, might be a different-looking man from the Gordon who went to it."
"And would be, no doubt. But see here: Gorton was not disguised; Gordon would not dare to be in London without being so; his head's not worth a day's purchase. Fancy his walking about with only one letter in his name altered! Rely upon it, Mr. Carr, you are mistaken; Gordon would no more dare come back and put his head into the lion's mouth than you'd jump into a fiery furnace. He couldn't land without being dropped upon: the man was no common offender, and we've kept our eyes open. And that's all," added the detective, after a pause. "Not very satisfactory, is it, Mr. Carr? But, such as it is, I think you may rely upon it, in spite of your own opinion. Meanwhile, I'll keep on the look-out for Gorton, and tell you if he turns up."
The conference was over, and Mr. Green took his departure. Thomas Carr saw him out himself, returned and sat down in a reverie.
"It's a curious tale," said Lord Hartledon.
"I'm thinking how the fact, now disclosed, of Gordon's being Gordon of the mutiny, affects you," remarked Mr. Carr.
"You believe him to be the same?"
"I see no reason to doubt it. It's not probable that two George Gordons should take their passage home in the _Morning Star_. Besides, it explains points that seemed incomprehensible. I could not understand why you were not troubled by this man, but rely upon it he has found it expedient to go into effectual hiding, and dare not yet come out of it. This fact is a very great hold upon him; and if he turns round on you, you may keep him in check with it. Only let me alight on him; I'll so frighten him as to cause him to ship himself off for life."
"I don't like that detective's having gone down to Calne," remarked Lord Hartledon.
Neither did Mr. Carr, especially if Gordon, or Gorton, should have become talkative, as there was reason to believe he had.
"Gordon is in England, and in hiding; probably in London, for there's no place where you may hide so effectually. One thing I am astonished at: that he should show himself openly as George Gorton."
"Look here, Carr," said Lord Hartledon, leaning forward; "I don't believe, in spite of you and the detective, that Gordon, our Gordon, was the one connected with the mutiny. I might possibly get a description of that man from Gum of Calne; for his son was coming home in the same ship--was one of those killed."
"Who's Gum of Calne?"
"The parish clerk, and a very respectable man. Mirrable, our housekeeper whom you have seen, is related to them. Gum went to Liverpool at the time, I know, and saw the remnant of the passengers those pirates had spared; he was sure to hear a full description of Gordon. If ever I visit Hartledon again I'll ask him."
"If ever you visit Hartledon again!" echoed Mr. Carr. "Unless you leave the country--as I advise you to do--you cannot help visiting Hartledon."
"Well, I would almost as soon be hanged!" cried Val. "And now, what do you want me for, and why have you kept me here?"
Mr. Carr drew his chair nearer to Lord Hartledon. They alone knew their own troubles, and sat talking long after the afternoon was over. Mr. Taylor came to the room; it was past his usual hour of departure.
"I suppose I can go, sir?"
"Not just yet," replied Mr. Carr.
Hartledon took out his watch, and wondered whether it had been galloping, when he saw how late it was. "You'll come home and dine with me, Carr?"
"I'll follow you, if you like," was the reply. "I have a matter or two to attend to first."
A few minutes more, and Lord Hartledon and his care went out. Mr. Carr called in his clerk.
"I want to know how you came to learn that the man I asked you about, Gordon, was employed by Kedge and Reck?"
"I heard it through a man named Druitt," was the ready answer. "Happening to ask him--as I did several people--whether he knew any George Gordon, he at once said that a man of that name was at Kedge and Reck's, where Druitt himself had been temporarily employed."
"Ah," said Mr. Carr, remembering this same Druitt had been mentioned to him. "But the man was called Gorton, not Gordon. You must have caught up the wrong name, Taylor. Or perhaps he misunderstood you. That's all; you may go now."
The clerk departed. Mr. Carr took his hat and followed him down; but before joining Lord Hartledon he turned into the Temple Gardens, and strolled towards the river; a few moments of fresh air--fresh to those hard-worked denizens of close and crowded London--seemed absolutely necessary to the barrister's heated brain.
He sat down on a bench facing the water, and bared his brow to the breeze. A cool head, his; never a cooler brought thought to bear upon perplexity; nevertheless it was not feeling very collected now. He could not reconcile sundry discrepancies in the trouble he was engaged in fathoming, and he saw no release whatever for Lord Hartledon.
"It has only complicated the affair," he said, as he watched the steamers up and down, "this calling in Green the detective, and the news he brings. Gordon the Gordon of the mutiny! I don't like it: the other Gordon, simple enough and not bad-hearted, was easy to deal with in comparison; this man, pirate, robber, murderer, will stand at nothing. We should have a hold on him, it's true, in his own crime; but what's to prevent his keeping himself out of the way, and selling Hartledon to another? Why he has not sold him yet, I can't think. Unless for some reason he is waiting his time."
He put on his hat and began to count the barges on the other side, to banish thought. But it would not be banished, and he fell into the train again.
"Mair's behaving well; with Christian kindness; but it's bad enough to be even in _his_ power. There's something in Lord Hartledon he 'can't help loving,' he writes. Who can? Here am I, giving up circuit--such a thing as never was heard of--calling him friend still, and losing my rest at night for him! Poor Val! better he had been the one to die!"
"Please, sir, could you tell us the time?"
The spell was broken, and Mr. Carr took out his watch as he turned his eyes on a ragged urchin who had called to him from below.
The tide was down; and sundry Arabs were regaling their naked feet in the mud, sporting and shouting. The evening drew in earlier than they did, and the sun had already set.
Quitting the garden, Mr. Carr stepped into a hansom, and was conveyed to Grafton Street. He found Lord Hartledon knitting his brow over a letter.
"Maude is growing vexed in earnest," he began, looking up at Mr. Carr. "She insists upon knowing the reason that I do not go home to her."
"I don't wonder at it. You ought to do one of two things: go, or--" "Or what, Carr?"
"You know. Never go home again."
"I wish I was out of the world!" cried the unhappy man.
|
{
"id": "16798"
}
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25
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AT HARTLEDON.
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"Hartledon, "I wonder what you _think_ of yourself, Galloping about _Rotten Row_ with women when your wife's _dying_. Of _course_ it's not your fault that reports of your goings-on _reach_ her here oh dear no. You are a moddel husband you are, sending her down here _out of the way_ that you may take your pleasure. Why did you _marry her_, nobody wanted you to she sits and _mopes_ and _weeps_ and she's going into the same way that her father _went_, you'll be glad no doubt to hear it it's what you're _aiming_ at, once she is in _Calne churchyard_ the _field_ will be open for your Anne Ashton. I can tell you that if you've a spark of _proper feeling_ you'll come _down_ for its killing her, "Your wicked mother, "C. Kirton."
Lord Hartledon turned this letter about in his hand. He scarcely noticed the mistake at the conclusion: the dowager had doubtless intended to imply that _he_ was wicked, and the slip of the pen in her temper went for nothing.
Galloping about Rotten Row with women!
Hartledon sent his thoughts back, endeavouring to recollect what could have given rise to this charge. One morning, after a sleepless night, when he had tossed and turned on his uneasy bed, and risen unrefreshed, he hired a horse, for he had none in town, and went for a long ride. Coming back he turned into Rotten Row. He could not tell why he did so, for such places, affected by the gay, empty-headed votaries of fashion, were little consonant to his present state. He was barely in it when a lady's horse took fright: she was riding alone, with a groom following; Lord Hartledon gave her his assistance, led her horse until the animal was calm, and rode side by side with her to the end of the Row. He knew not who she was; scarcely noticed whether she was young or old; and had not given a remembrance to it since.
When your wife's dying! Accustomed to the strong expressions of the countess-dowager, he passed that over. But, "going the same way that her father went;" he paused there, and tried to remember how her father did "go." All he could recollect now, indeed all he knew at the time, was, that Lord Kirton's last illness was reported to have been a lingering one.
Such missives as these--and the countess-dowager favoured him with more than one--coupled with his own consciousness that he was not behaving to his wife as he ought, took him at length down to Hartledon. That his presence at the place so soon after his marriage was little short of an insult to Dr. Ashton's family, his sensitive feelings told him; but his duty to his wife was paramount, and he could not visit his sin upon her.
She was looking very ill; was low-spirited and hysterical; and when she caught sight of him she forgot her anger, and fell sobbing into his arms. The countess-dowager had gone over to Garchester, and they had a few hours' peace together.
"You are not looking well, Maude!"
"I know I am not. Why do you stay away from me?"
"I could not help myself. Business has kept me in London."
"Have _you_ been ill also? You look thin and worn."
"One does grow to look thin in heated London," he replied evasively, as he walked to the window, and stood there. "How is your brother, Maude--Bob?"
"I don't want to talk about Bob yet; I have to talk to you," she said. "Percival, why did you practise that deceit upon me?"
"What deceit?"
"It was a downright falsehood; and made me look awfully foolish when I came here and spoke of it as a fact. That action."
Lord Hartledon made no reply. Here was one cause of his disinclination to meet his wife--having to keep up the farce of Dr. Ashton's action. It seemed, however, that there would no longer be any farce to keep up. Had it exploded? He said nothing. Maude gazing at him from the sofa on which she sat, her dark eyes looking larger than of yore, with hollow circles round them, waited for his answer.
"I do not know what you mean, Maude."
"You _do_ know. You sent me down here with a tale that the Ashtons had entered an action against you for breach of promise--damages, ten thousand pounds--" "Stay an instant, Maude. I did not 'send you down' with the tale. I particularly requested you to keep it private."
"Well, mamma drew it out of me unawares. She vexed me with her comments about your staying on in London, and it made me tell her why you had stayed. She ascertained from Dr. Ashton that there was not a word of truth in the story. Val, I betrayed it in your defence."
He stood at the window in silence, his lips compressed.
"I looked so foolish in the eyes of Dr. Ashton! The Sunday evening after I came down here I had a sort of half-fainting-fit, coming home from church. He overtook me, and was very kind, and gave me his arm. I said a word to him; I could not help it; mamma had worried me on so; and I learned that no such action had ever been thought of. You had no right to subject me to the chance of such mortification. Why did you do so?"
Lord Hartledon came from the window and sat down near his wife, his elbow on the table. All he could do now was to make the best of it, and explain as near to the truth as he could.
"Maude, you must not expect full confidence on this subject, for I cannot give it you. When I found I had reason to believe that some--some legal proceedings were about to be instituted against me, just at the first intimation of the trouble, I thought it must emanate from Dr. Ashton. You took up the same idea yourself, and I did not contradict it, simply because I could not tell you the real truth--" "Yes," she interrupted. "It was the night that stranger called at our house, when you and Mr. Carr were closeted with him so long."
He could not deny it; but he had been thankful that she should forget the stranger and his visit. Maude waited.
"Then it was an action, but not brought by the Ashtons?" she resumed, finding he did not speak. "Mamma remarked that you were just the one to propose to half-a-dozen girls."
"It was not an action at all of that description; and I never proposed to any girl except Miss Ashton," he returned, nettled at the remark.
"Is it over?"
"Not quite;" and there was some hesitation in his tone. "Carr is settling it for me. I trust, Maude, you will never hear of it again--that it will never trouble you."
She sat looking at him with her wistful eyes.
"Won't you tell me its nature?"
"I cannot tell you, Maude, believe me. I am as candid with you as it is possible to be; but there are some things best--best not spoken of. Maude," he repeated, rising impulsively and taking both her hands in his, "do you wish to earn my love--my everlasting gratitude? Then you may do it by nevermore alluding to this."
It was a mistaken request; an altogether unwise emotion. Better that he had remained at the window, and drawled out a nonchalant denial. But he was apt to be as earnestly genuine on the surface as he was in reality. It set Lady Hartledon wondering; and she resolved to "bide her time."
"As you please, of course, Val. But why should it agitate you?"
"Many a little thing seems to agitate me now," he answered. "I have not felt well of late; perhaps that's the reason."
"I think you might have satisfied me a little better. I expect it is some enormous debt risen up against you."
Better she should think so! "I shall tide it over," he said aloud. "But indeed, Maude, I cannot bear for you delicate women to be brought into contact with these things; they are fit for us only. Think no more about it, and rely on me to keep trouble from you if it can be kept. Where's Bob? He is here, I suppose?"
"Bob's in his room. He is going into a way, I think. When he wrote and asked me if I would allow him to come here for a little change, the medical men saying he must have it, mamma sent a refusal by return of post; she had had enough of Bob, she said, when he was here before. But I quietly wrote a note myself, and Bob came. He looked ill, and gets worse instead of better."
"What do you mean by saying he is going into a way?" asked Lord Hartledon.
"Consumption, or something of that sort. Papa died of it. You are not angry with me for having Bob?"
"Angry! My dear Maude, the house is yours; and if poor Bob stayed with us for ever, I should welcome him as a brother. Every one likes Bob."
"Except mamma. She does not like invalids in the house, and has been saying you don't like it; that it was helping to keep you away. Poor Bob had out his portmanteau and began to pack; but I told him not to mind her; he was my guest, not hers."
"And mine also, you might have added."
He left the room, and went to the chamber Captain Kirton had occupied when he was at Hartledon in the spring. It was empty, evidently not being used; and Hartledon sent for Mirrable. She came, looking just as usual, wearing a dark-green silk gown; for the twelve-month had expired, and their mourning was over.
"Captain Kirton is in the small blue rooms facing south, my lord. They were warmer for him than these."
"Is he very ill, Mirrable?"
"Very, I think," was the answer. "Of course he may get better; but it does not look like it."
He was a tall, thin, handsome man, this young officer--a year or two older than Maude, whom he greatly resembled. Seated before a table, he was playing at that delectable game "solitaire;" and his eyes looked large and wild with surprise, and his cheeks became hectic, when Lord Hartledon entered.
"Bob, my dear fellow, I am glad to see you."
He took his hands and sat down, his face full of the concern he did not care to speak. Lady Hartledon had said he was going into a way; it was evidently the way of the grave.
He pushed the balls and the board from him, half ashamed of his employment. "To think you should catch me at this!" he exclaimed. "Maude brought it to me yesterday, thinking I was dull up here."
"As good that as anything else. I often think what a miserably restless invalid _I_ should make. But now, what's wrong with you?"
"Well, I suppose it's the heart."
"The heart?"
"The doctors say so. No doubt they are right; those complaints are hereditary, and my father had it. I got quite unfit for duty, and they told me I must go away for change; so I wrote to Maude, and she took me in."
"Yes, yes; we are glad to have you, and must try and get you well, Bob."
"Ah, I can't tell about that. He died of it, you know."
"Who?"
"My father. He was ill for some time, and it wore him to a skeleton, so that people thought he was in a decline. If I could only get sufficiently well to go back to duty, I should not mind; it is so sad to give trouble in a strange house."
"In a strange house it might be, but it would be ungrateful to call this one strange," returned Lord Hartledon, smiling on him from his pleasant blue eyes. "We must get you to town and have good advice for you. I suppose Hillary comes up?"
"Every-day."
"Does _he_ say it's heart-disease?"
"I believe he thinks it. It might be as much as his reputation is worth to say it in this house."
"How do you mean?"
"My mother won't have it said. She ignores the disease altogether, and will not allow it to be mentioned, or hinted at. It's bronchitis, she tells everyone; and of course bronchitis it must be. I did have a cough when I came here: my chest is not strong."
"But why should she ignore heart-disease?"
"There was a fear that Maude would be subject to it when she was a child. Should it be disclosed to her that it is my complaint, and were I to die of it, she might grow so alarmed for herself as to bring it on; and agitation, as we know, is often fatal in such cases."
Lord Hartledon sat in a sort of horror. Maude subject to heart-disease! when at any moment a certain fearful tale, of which he was the guilty centre, might be disclosed to her! Day by day, hour by hour, he lived in dread of this story's being brought to light. This little unexpected communication increased that dread fourfold.
"Have I shocked you?" asked Captain Kirton. "I may yet get the better of it."
"I believe I was thinking of Maude," answered Hartledon, slowly recovering from his stupor. "I never heard--I had no idea that Maude's heart was not perfectly sound."
"And I don't know but that it is sound; it was only a fancy when she was a child, and there might have been no real grounds for it. My mother is full of crotchets on the subject of illness; and says she won't have anything about heart-disease put into Maude's head. She is right, of course, so far, in using precaution; so please remember that I am suffering from any disorder but that," concluded the young officer with a smile.
"How did yours first show itself?"
"I hardly know. I used to be subject to sudden attacks of faintness; but I am not sure that they had anything to do with the disease itself."
Just what Maude was becoming subject to! She had told him of a fainting-fit in London; had told him of another now.
"I suppose the doctors warn you against sudden shocks, Bob?"
"More than against anything. I am not to agitate myself in the least; am not to run or jump, or fly into a temper. They would put me in a glass case, if they could."
"Well, we'll see what skill can do for you," said Hartledon, rousing himself. "I wonder if a warmer climate would be of service? You might have that without exertion, travelling slowly."
"Couldn't afford it," was the ingenuous answer. "I have forestalled my pay as it is."
Lord Hartledon smiled. Never a more generous disposition than his; and if money could save this poor Bob Kirton, he should not want it.
Walking forth, he strolled down the road towards Calne, intending to ask a question or two of the surgeon. Mr. Hillary was at home. His house was at this end of Calne, just past the Rectory and opposite the church, with a side view of Clerk Gum's. The door was open, and Lord Hartledon strolled into the surgery unannounced, to the surprise of Mr. Hillary, who did not know he was at Calne.
The surgeon's opinion was not favourable. Captain Kirton had heart-disease beyond any doubt. His chest was weak also, the lungs not over-sound; altogether, the Honourable Robert Kirton's might be called a bad life.
"Would a warmer climate do anything for him?" asked Lord Hartledon.
The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. "He would be better there for some things than here. On the whole it might temporarily benefit him."
"Then he shall go. And now, Hillary, I want to ask you something else--and you must answer me, mind. Captain Kirton tells me the fact of his having heart-disease is not mentioned in the house lest it should alarm Lady Hartledon, and develop the same in her. Is there any fear of this?"
"It is true that it's not spoken of; but I don't think there's any foundation for the fear."
"The old dowager's very fanciful!" cried Lord Hartledon, resentfully.
"A queer old--girl," remarked the surgeon. "Can't help saying it, though she is your mother-in-law."
"I wish she was any one else's! She's as likely as not to let out something of this to Maude in her tantrums. But I don't believe a word of it; I never saw the least symptom of heart-disease in my wife."
"Nor I," said the doctor. "Of course I have not examined her; neither have I had much opportunity for ordinary observation."
"I wish you would contrive to get the latter. Come up and call often; make some excuse for seeing Lady Hartledon professionally, and watch her symptoms."
"I am seeing her professionally now; once or twice a week. She had one or two fainting-fits after she came down, and called me in."
"Kirton says he used to have those fainting-fits. Are they a symptom of heart-disease?"
"In Lady Hartledon I attribute them entirely to her present state of health. I assure you, I don't see the slightest cause for fear as regards your wife's heart. She is of a calm temperament too; as far as I can observe."
They stood talking for a minute at the door, when Lord Hartledon went out. Pike happened to pass on the other side of the road.
"He is here still, I see," remarked Hartledon.
"Oh dear, yes; and likely to be."
"I wonder how the fellow picks up a living?"
The surgeon did not answer. "Are you going to make a long stay with us?" he asked.
"A very short one. I suppose you have had no return of the fever?"
"Not any. Calne never was more healthy than it is now. As I said to Dr. Ashton yesterday, but for his own house I might put up my shutters and take a lengthened holiday."
"Who is ill at the Rectory? Mrs. Ashton?"
"Mrs. Ashton is not strong, but she's better than she was last year. I have been more concerned for Anne than for her."
"Is _she_ ill?" cried Lord Hartledon, a spasm seizing his throat.
"Ailing. But it's an ailing I do not like."
"What's the cause?" he rejoined, feeling as if some other crime were about to be brought home to him.
"That's a question I never inquire into. I put it upon the air of the Rectory," added the surgeon in jesting tones, "and tell them they ought to go away for a time, but they have been away too much of late, they say. She's getting over it somewhat, and I take care that she goes out and takes exercise. What has it been? Well, a sort of inward fever, with flushed cheeks and unequal spirits. It takes time for these things to be got over, you know. The Rector has been anything but well, too; he is not the strong, healthy man he was."
"And all _my_ work; my work!" cried Hartledon to himself, almost gnashing his teeth as he went back down the street. "What _right_ had I to upset the happiness of that family? I wish it had pleased God to take me first! My father used to say that some men seem born into the world only to be a blight to it; it's what I have been, Heaven knows."
He knew only too well that Anne Ashton was suffering from the shock caused by his conduct. The love of these quiet, sensitive, refined natures, once awakened, is not given for a day, but for all time; it becomes a part of existence; and cannot be riven except by an effort that brings destruction to even future hope of happiness. Not even Mr. Hillary, not even Dr. and Mrs. Ashton, could discern the utter misery that was Anne's daily portion. She strove to conceal it all. She went about the house cheerfully, wore a smiling face when people were present, dressed well, laughed with their guests, went about the parish to rich and poor, and was altogether gay. Ah, do you know what it is, this assumption of gaiety when the heart is breaking? --this dread fear lest those about you should detect the truth? Have _you_ ever lived with this mask upon your face? --which can only be thrown off at night in the privacy of your own chamber, when you may abandon yourself to your desolation, and pray heaven to take you or give you increased strength to _live_ and _bear_? It may seem a light thing, this state of heart that I am telling you about; but it has killed both men and women, for all that; and killed them in silence.
Anne Ashton had never complained. She did everything she had been used to doing, was particular about all her duties; but a nervous cough attacked her, and her frame wasted, and her cheek grew hectic. Try as she would she could not eat: all she confessed to, when questioned by Mrs. Ashton, was "a pain in her throat;" and Mr. Hillary was called in. Anne laughed: there was nothing the matter with her, she said, and her throat was better; she had strained it perhaps. The doctor was a wise doctor; his professional visits were spent in gossip; and as to medicine, he sent her a tonic, and told her to take it or not as she pleased. Only time, he said to Mrs. Ashton--she would be all right in time; the summer heat was making her languid.
The summer heat had nearly passed now, and perhaps some of the battle was passing with it. None knew--let me repeat it--what that battle had been; none ever can know, unless they go through it themselves. In Miss Ashton's case there was a feature some are spared--her love had been known--and it increased the anguish tenfold. She would overcome it if she could only forget him; but it would take time; and she would come out of it an altogether different woman, her best hope in life gone, her heart dead.
"What brought him down here?" mentally questioned Mr. Hillary, in an explosion of wrath, as he watched his visitor down the street. "It will undo all I have been doing. He, and his wife too, might have had the grace to keep away for this year at least. I loved him once, with all his faults; but I should like to see him in the pillory now. It has told on him also, if I'm any reader of looks. And now, Miss Anne, you go off from Calne to-morrow an I can prevail. I only hope you won't come across him in the meantime."
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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26
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UNDER THE TREES.
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It was the same noble-looking man Calne had ever known, as he went down the road, throwing a greeting to one and another. Lord Hartledon was not a whit less attractive than Val Elster, who had won golden opinions from all. None would have believed that the cowardly monster Fear was for ever feasting upon his heart.
He came to a standstill opposite the clerk's house, looked at it for a moment, as if deliberating whether he should enter, and crossed the road. The shades of evening had begun to fall whilst he talked with the surgeon. As he advanced up the clerk's garden, some one came out of the house with a rush and ran against him.
"Take care," he lazily said.
The girl--it was no other than Miss Rebecca Jones--shrank away when she recognized her antagonist. Flying through the gate she rapidly disappeared up the street. Lord Hartledon reached the house, and made his way in without ceremony. At a table in the little parlour sat the clerk's wife, presiding at a solitary tea-table by the light of a candle.
"How are you, Mrs. Gum?"
She had not heard him enter, and started at the salutation. Lord Hartledon laughed.
"Don't take me for a housebreaker. Your front-door was open, and I came in without knocking. Is your husband at home?"
What with shaking and curtseying, Mrs. Gum could scarcely answer. It was surprising how a little shock of this sort, or indeed of any sort, would upset her. Gum was away on some business or other, she replied--which caused their tea-hour to be delayed--but she expected him in every moment. Would his lordship please to wait in the best parlour, she asked, taking the candle to marshal him into the state sitting-room.
No; his lordship would not go into the best parlour; he would wait two or three minutes where he was, provided she did not disturb herself, and went on with her tea.
Mrs. Gum dusted a large old-fashioned oak chair with her apron; but he perched himself on one of its elbows.
"And now go on with your tea, Mrs. Gum, and I'll look on with all the envy of a thirsty man."
Mrs. Gum glanced up tremblingly. Might she dare offer his lordship a cup? She wouldn't make so bold but tea _was_ refreshing to a parched throat.
"And mine's always parched," he returned. "I'll drink some with you, and thank you for it. It won't be the first time, will it?"
"Always parched!" remarked Mrs. Gum. "Maybe you've a touch of fever, my lord. Many folk get it at the close of summer."
Lord Hartledon sat on, and drank his tea. He said well that he was always thirsty, though Mrs. Gum's expression was the better one. That timid matron, overcome by the honour accorded her, sat on the edge of her chair, cup in hand.
"I want to ask your husband if he can give me a description of the man who was concerned in that wretched mutiny on board the _Morning Star_," said Lord Hartledon, somewhat abruptly. "I mean the ringleader, Gordon. Why--What's the matter?"
Mrs. Gum had jumped up from her chair and began looking about the room. The cat, or something else, had "rubbed against her legs."
No cat could be found, and she sat down again, her teeth chattering. Lord Hartledon came to the conclusion that she was only fit for a lunatic asylum. Why did she keep a cat, if its fancied caresses were to terrify her like that?
"It was said, you know--at least it has been always assumed--that Gordon did not come back to England," he continued, speaking openly of his business, where a more prudent man would have kept his lips closed. "But I have reason to believe that he did come back, Mrs. Gum; and I want to find him."
Mrs. Gum wiped her face, covered with drops of emotion.
"Gordon never did come back, I am sure, sir," she said, forgetting all about titles in her trepidation.
"You don't know that he did not. You may think it; the public may think it; what's of more moment to Gordon, the police may think it: but you can't _know_ it. I know he did."
"My lord, he did not; I could--I almost think I could be upon my oath he did not," she answered, gazing at Lord Hartledon with frightened eyes and white lips, which, to say the truth, rather puzzled him as he gazed back from his perch.
"Will you tell me why you assert so confidently that Gordon did not come back?"
She could not tell, and she knew she could not.
"I can't bear to hear him spoken of, my lord," she said. "He--we look upon him as my poor boy's murderer," she broke off, with a sob; "and it is not likely that I could."
Not very logical; but Lord Hartledon allowed for confusion of ideas following on distress of mind.
"I don't like to speak about him any more than you can like to hear," he said kindly. "Indeed I am sorry to have grieved you; but if the man is in London, and can be traced--" "In London!" she interrupted.
"He was in London last autumn, as I believe--living there."
An expression of relief passed over her features that was quite perceptible to Lord Hartledon.
"I should not like to hear of his coming near us," she sighed, dropping her voice to a whisper. "London: that's pretty far off."
"I suppose you are anxious to bring him to justice, Mrs. Gum?"
"No, sir, not now; neither me nor Gum," shaking her head. "Time was, sir--my lord--that I'd have walked barefoot to see him hanged; but the years have gone by; and if sorrow's not dead, it's less keen, and we'd be thankful to let the past rest in peace. Oh, my lord, _don't_ rake him up again!"
The wild, imploring accents quite startled Lord Hartledon.
"You need not fear," he said, after a pause. "I do not care to see Gordon hanged either; and though I want to trace his present abode--if it can be traced--it is not with a view to injuring him."
"But we don't know his abode, my lord," she rejoined in faint remonstrance.
"I did not suppose you knew it. All I want to ask your husband is, to give me a description of Gordon. I wish to see if it tallies with--with some one I once knew," he cautiously concluded. "Perhaps you remember what the man was said to be like?"
She put her fingers up to her brow, leaning her elbow on the table. He could not help observing how the hand shook.
"I think it was said that he had red hair," she began, after a long pause; "and was--tall, was it? --either tall or short; one of the two. And his eyes--his eyes were dark eyes, either brown or blue."
Lord Hartledon could not avoid a smile. "That's no description at all."
"My memory is not over-good, my lord: I read his description in the handbills offering the reward; and that's some time ago now."
"The handbills! --to be sure!" interrupted Lord Hartledon, springing from his perch. "I never thought of them; they'll give me the best description possible. Do you know where--" The conference was interrupted by the clerk. He came in with a large book in his hand; and a large dog, which belonged to a friend, and had followed him home. For a minute or two there was only commotion, for the dog was leaping and making friends with every one. Lord Hartledon then said a few words of explanation, and the quiet demeanour of the clerk, as he calmly listened, was in marked contrast to his wife's nervous agitation.
"Might I inquire your lordship's reasons for thinking that Gordon came back?" he quietly asked, when Lord Hartledon had ceased.
"I cannot give them in detail, Gum. That he did come back, there is no doubt about whatever, though how he succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the police, who were watching for him, is curious. His coming back, however, is not the question: I thought you might be able to give me a close description of him. You went to Liverpool when the unfortunate passengers arrived there."
But Clerk Gum was unable to give any satisfactory response. No doubt he had heard enough of what Gordon was like at the time, he observed, but it had passed out of his memory. A fair man, he thought he was described, with light hair. He had heard nothing of Gordon since; didn't want to, if his lordship would excuse his saying it; firmly believed he was at the bottom of the sea.
Patient, respectful, apparently candid, he spoke, attending his guest, hat in hand, to the outer gate, when it pleased him to depart. But, take it for all in all, there remained a certain doubtful feeling in Lord Hartledon's mind regarding the interview; for some subtle discernment had whispered to him that both Gum and his wife could have given him the description of Gordon, and would not do so.
He turned slowly towards home, thinking of this. As he passed the waste ground and Pike's shed, he cast his eyes towards it; a curl of smoke was ascending from the extemporized chimney, still discernible in the twilight. It occurred to Lord Hartledon that this man, who had the character of being so lawless, had been rather suspiciously intimate with the man Gorton. Not that the intimacy in itself was suspicious; birds of a feather flocked together; but the most simple and natural thing connected with Gorton would have borne suspicion to Hartledon's mind now.
He had barely passed the gate when some shouting arose in the road behind him. A man, driving a cart recklessly, had almost come in contact with another cart, and some hard language ensued. Lord Hartledon turned his head quickly, and just caught Mr. Pike's head, thrust a little over the top of the gate, watching him. Pike must have crouched down when Lord Hartledon passed. He went back at once; and Pike put a bold face on the matter, and stood up.
"So you occupy your palace still, Pike?"
"Such as it is. Yes."
"I half-expected to find that Mr. Marris had turned you from it," continued Lord Hartledon, alluding to his steward.
"He wouldn't do it, I expect, without your lordship's orders; and I don't fancy you'll give 'em," was the free answer.
"I think my brother would have given them, had he lived."
"But he didn't live," rejoined Pike. "He wasn't let live."
"What do you mean?" asked Lord Hartledon, mystified by the words.
Pike ignored the question. " 'Twas nearly a smash," he said, looking at the two carts now proceeding on their different ways. "That cart of Floyd's is always in hot water; the man drinks; Floyd turned him off once."
The miller's cart was jogging up the road towards home, under convoy of the offending driver; the boy, David Ripper, sitting inside on some empty sacks, and looking over the board behind: looking very hard indeed, as it seemed, in their direction. Mr. Pike appropriated the gaze.
"Yes, you may stare, young Rip!" he apostrophized, as if the boy could hear him; "but you won't stare yourself out of my hands. You're the biggest liar in Calne, but you don't mislead me."
"Pike, when you made acquaintance with that man Gorton--you remember him?" broke off Lord Hartledon.
"Yes, I do," said Pike emphatically.
"Did he make you acquainted with any of his private affairs? --his past history?"
"Not a word," answered Pike, looking still after the cart and the boy.
"Were those fine whiskers of his false? that red hair?"
Pike turned his head quickly. The question had aroused him.
"False hair and whiskers! I never knew it was the fashion to wear them."
"It may be convenient sometimes, even if not the fashion," observed Lord Hartledon, his tone full of cynical meaning; and Mr. Pike surreptitiously peered at him with his small light eyes.
"If Gorton's hair was false, I never noticed it, that's all; I never saw him without a hat, that I remember, except in that inquest-room."
"Had he been to Australia?"
Pike paused to take another surreptitious gaze.
"Can't say, my lord. Never heard."
"Was his name Gorton, or Gordon? Come, Pike," continued Lord Hartledon, good-humouredly, "there's a sort of mutual alliance between you and me; you did me a service once unasked, and I allow you to live free and undisturbed on my ground. I think you _do_ know something of this man; it is a fancy I have taken up."
"I never knew his name was anything but Gorton," said Pike carelessly; "never heard it nor thought it."
"Did you happen to hear him ever speak of that mutiny on board the Australian ship _Morning Star_? You have heard of it, I daresay: a George Gordon was the ringleader."
If ever the cool impudence was suddenly taken out of a man, this question seemed to take it out of Pike. He did not reply for some time; and when he did, it was in low and humble tones.
"My lord, I hope you'll pardon my rough thoughts and ways, which haven't been used to such as you--and the sight of that boy put me up, for reasons of my own. As to Gorton--I never did hear him speak of the thing you mention. His name's Gorton, and nothing else, as far as I know; and his hair's his own, for all I ever saw."
"He did not give you his confidence, then?"
"No, never. Not about himself nor anything else, past or present."
"And did not let a word slip? As to--for instance, as to his having been a passenger on board the _Morning Star_ at the time of the mutiny?"
Pike had moved away a step, and stood with his arms on the hurdles, his head bent on them, his face turned from Lord Hartledon.
"Gorton said nothing to me. As to that mutiny--I think I read something about it in the newspapers, but I forget what. I was just getting up from some weeks of rheumatic fever at the time; I'd caught it working in the fields; and news don't leave much impression in illness. Gorton never spoke of it to me. I never heard him say who or what he was; and I couldn't speak more truly if your lordship offered to give me the shed as a bribe."
"Do you know where Gorton might be found at present?"
"I swear before Heaven that I know nothing of the man, and have never heard of him since he went away," cried Pike, with a burst of either fear or passion. "He was a stranger to me when he came, and he was a stranger when he left. I found out the little game he had come about, and saved your lordship from his clutches, which he doesn't know to this day. I know nothing else about him at all."
"Well, good evening, Pike. You need not put yourself out for nothing."
He walked away, taking leave of the man as civilly as though he had been a respectable member of society. It was not in Val's nature to show discourtesy to any living being. Why Pike should have shrunk from the questions he could not tell; but that he did shrink was evident; perhaps from a surly dislike to being questioned at all; but on the whole Lord Hartledon thought he had spoken the truth as to knowing nothing about Gorton.
Crossing the road, he turned into the field-path near the Rectory; it was a little nearer than the road-way, and he was in a hurry, for he had not thought to ask at what hour his wife dined, and might be keeping her waiting.
Who was this Pike, he wondered as he went along; as he had wondered before now. When the man was off his guard, the roughness of his speech and demeanour was not so conspicuous; and the tone assumed a certain refinement that seemed to say he had some time been in civilized society. Again, how did he live? A tale was told in Calne of Pike's having been disturbed at supper one night by a parcel of rude boys, who had seen him seated at a luxurious table; hot steak and pudding before him. They were not believed, certainly; but still Pike must live; and how did he find the means to do so? Why did he live there at all? what had caused him to come to Calne? Who-- These reflections might have lasted all the way home but for an interruption that drove every thought out of Lord Hartledon's mind, and sent the heart's blood coursing swiftly through his veins. Turning a corner of the dark winding path, he came suddenly upon a lady seated on a bench, so close to the narrow path that he almost touched her in passing. She seemed to have sat down for a moment to do something to her hat, which was lying in her lap, her hands busied with it.
A faint cry escaped her, and she rose up. It was caused partly by emotion, partly by surprise at seeing him, for she did not know he was within a hundred miles of the place. And very probably she would have liked to box her own ears for showing any. The hat fell from her knees as she rose, and both stooped for it.
"Forgive me," he said. "I fear I have startled you."
"I am waiting for papa," she answered, in hasty apology for being found there. And Lord Hartledon, casting his eyes some considerable distance ahead, discerned the indistinct forms of two persons talking together. He understood the situation at once. Dr. Ashton and his daughter had been to the cottages; and the doctor had halted on their return to speak to a day-labourer going home from his work, Anne walking slowly on.
And there they stood face to face, Anne Ashton and her deceitful lover! How their hearts beat to pain, how utterly oblivious they were of everything in life save each other's presence, how tumultuously confused were mind and manner, both might remember afterwards, but certainly were not conscious of then. It was a little glimpse of Eden. A corner of the dark curtain thrown between them had been raised, and so unexpectedly that for the moment nothing else was discernible in the dazzling light.
Forget! Not in that instant of sweet confusion, during which nothing seemed more real than a dream. He was the husband of another; she was parted from him for ever; and neither was capable of deliberate thought or act that could intrench on the position, or tend to return, even momentarily, to the past. And yet there they stood with beating hearts, and eyes that betrayed their own tale--that the marriage and the parting were in one sense but a hollow mockery, and their love was indelible as of old.
Each had been "forgetting" to the utmost of the poor power within, in accordance with the high principles enshrined in either heart. Yet what a mockery that forgetting seemed, now that it was laid before them naked and bare! The heart turning sick to faintness at the mere sight of each other, the hands trembling at the mutual touch, the wistful eyes shining with a glance that too surely spoke of undying love!
But not a word of this was spoken. However true their hearts might be, there was no fear of the tongue following up the error. Lord Hartledon would no more have allowed himself to speak than she to listen. Neither had the hands met in ordinary salutation; it was only when he resigned the hat to her that the fingers touched: a touch light, transient, almost imperceptible; nevertheless it sent a thrill through the whole frame. Not exactly knowing what to do in her confusion, Miss Ashton sat down on the bench again and put her hat on.
"I must say a word to you before I go on my way," said Lord Hartledon. "I have been wishing for such a meeting as this ever since I saw you at Versailles; and indeed I think I wished for nothing else before it. When you think of me as one utterly heartless--" "Stay, Lord Hartledon," she interrupted, with white lips. "I cannot listen to you. You must be aware that I cannot, and ought not. What are you thinking about?"
"I know that I have forfeited all right to ask you; that it is an unpardonable intrusion my presuming even to address you. Well, perhaps, you are right," he added, after a moment's pause; "it may be better that I should not say what I was hoping to say. It cannot mend existing things; it cannot undo the past. I dare not ask your forgiveness: it would seem too much like an insult; nevertheless, I would rather have it than any earthly gift. Fare you well, Anne! I shall sometimes hear of your happiness."
"Have you been ill?" she asked in a kindly impulse, noticing his altered looks in that first calm moment.
"No--not as the world counts illness. If remorse and shame and repentance can be called illness, I have my share. Ill deeds of more kinds than one are coming home to me. Anne," he added in a hoarse whisper; his face telling of emotion, "if there is one illumined corner in my heart, where all else is very dark, it is caused by thankfulness to Heaven that you were spared."
"Spared!" she echoed, in wonder, so completely awed by his strange manner as to forget her reserve.
"Spared the linking of your name with mine. I thank God for it, for your sake, night and day. Had trouble fallen on you through me, I don't think I could have survived it. May you be shielded from all such for ever!"
He turned abruptly away, and she looked after him, her heart beating a great deal faster than it ought to have done.
That she was his best and dearest love, in spite of his marriage, it was impossible not to see; and she strove to think him very wicked for it, and her cheek was red with a feeling that seemed akin to shame. But--trouble? --thankful for her sake, night and day, that her name was not linked with his? He must allude to debt, she supposed: some of those old embarrassments had augmented themselves into burdens too heavy to be safely borne.
The Rector was coming on now at a swift pace. He looked keenly at Lord Hartledon; looked twice, as if in surprise. A flush rose to Val's sensitive face as he passed, and lifted his hat. The Rector, dark and proud, condescended to return the courtesy: and the meeting was over.
Toiling across Lord Hartledon's path was the labourer to whom the Rector had been speaking. He had an empty bottle slung over his shoulder, and carried a sickle. The man's day's work was over, and had left fatigue behind it.
"Good-night to your lordship!"
"Is it you, Ripper?"
He was the father of the young gentleman in the cart, whom Mr. Pike had not long before treated to his opinion: young David Ripper, the miller's boy. Old Ripper, a talkative, discontented man, stopped and ventured to enter on his grievances. His wife had been pledging things to pay for a fine gown she had bought; his two girls were down with measles; his son, young Rip, plagued his life out.
"How does he plague your life out?" asked Lord Hartledon, when he had listened patiently.
"Saying he'll go off and enlist for a soldier, my lord; he's saying it always: and means it too, only he's over-young for't." "Over-young for it; I should think so. Why, he's not much more than a child. Our sergeants don't enlist little boys."
"Sometimes he says he'll drown himself by way of a change," returned old Ripper.
"Oh, does he? Folk who say it never do it. I should whip it out of him."
"He's never been the same since the lord's death that time. He's always frightened: gets fancying things, and saying sometimes he sees his shadder."
"Whose shadow?"
"His'n: the late lord's."
"Why does he fancy that?" came the question, after a perceptible pause.
Old Ripper shook his head. It was beyond his ken, he said. "There be only two things he's afeared of in life," continued the man, who, though generally called old Ripper, was not above five-and-thirty. "The one's that wild man Pike; t'other's the shadder. He'd run ten mile sooner than see either."
"Does Pike annoy the boy?"
"Never spoke to him, as I knows on, my lord. Afore that drowning of his lordship last year, Davy was the boldest rip going," added the man, who had long since fallen into the epithet popularly applied to his son. "Since then he don't dare say his soul's his own. We had him laid up before the winter, and I know 'twas nothing but fear."
Lord Hartledon could not make much of the story, and had no time to linger. Administering a word of general encouragement, he continued his way, his thoughts going back to the interview with Anne Ashton, a line or two of Longfellow's "Fire of Driftwood" rising up in his mind-- "Of what had been and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead."
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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27
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A [UNK]-À-[UNK] BREAKFAST.
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The Dowager-Countess of Kirton stood in the sunny breakfast-room at Hartledon, surveying the well-spread table with complacency; for it appeared to be rather more elaborately set out than usual, and no one loved good cheer better than she. When she saw two cups and saucers on the cloth instead of one, it occurred to her that Maude must, by caprice, be coming down, which she had not done of late. The dowager had arrived at midnight from Garchester, in consequence of having missed the earlier train, and found nearly all the house in retirement. She was in a furious humour, and no one had told her of the arrival of her son-in-law; no one ever did tell her any more than they were obliged to do; for she was not held in estimation at Hartledon.
"Potted tongue," she exclaimed, dodging round the table, and lifting various covers. "Raised pie; I wonder what's in it? And what's that stuff in jelly? It looks delicious. This is the result of the blowing-up I gave Hedges the other day; nothing like finding fault. Hot dishes too. I suppose Maude gave out that she should be down this morning. All rubbish, fancying herself ill: she's as well as I am, but gives way like a sim--A-a-a-ah!"
The exclamation was caused by the unexpected vision of Lord Hartledon.
"How are you, Lady Kirton?"
"Where on earth did you spring from?"
"From my room."
"What's the good of your appearing before people like a ghost, Hartledon? When did you arrive?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
"And time you did, I think, with your poor wife fretting herself to death about you. How is she this morning?"
"Very well."
"Ugh!" You must imagine this sound as something between a grunt and a groan, that the estimable lady gave vent to whenever put out. It is not capable of being written. "You might have sent word you were coming. I should think you frightened your wife to death."
"Not quite."
He walked across the room and rang the bell. Hedges appeared. It had been the dowager's pleasure that no one else should serve her at that meal--perhaps on account of her peculiarities of costume.
"Will you be good enough to pour out the coffee in Maude's place to-day, Lady Kirton? She has promised to be down another morning."
It was making her so entirely and intentionally a guest, as she thought, that Lady Kirton did not like it. Not only did she fully intend Hartledon House to be her home, but she meant to be its one ruling power. Keep Maude just now to her invalid fancies, and later to her gay life, and there would be little fear of her asserting very much authority.
"Are you in the habit of serving this sort of breakfast, Hedges?" asked Lord Hartledon; for the board looked almost like an elaborate dinner.
"We have made some difference, my lord, this morning."
"For me, I suppose. You need not do so in future. I have got out of the habit of taking breakfast; and in any case I don't want this unnecessary display. Captain Kirton gets up later, I presume."
"He's hardly ever up before eleven," said Hedges. "But he makes a good breakfast, my lord."
"That's right. Tempt him with any delicacy you can devise. He wants strength."
The dowager was fuming. "Don't you think I'm capable of regulating these things, Hartledon, I'd beg leave to ask?"
"No doubt. I beg you will make yourself at home whilst you stay with us. Some tea, Hedges."
She could have thrown the coffee-pot at him. There was incipient defiance in his every movement; latent war in his tones. He was no longer the puppet he had been; that day had gone by for ever.
Perhaps Val could not himself have explained the feeling that was this morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming--his own miserable weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now--felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling up in his spirit, which he had some trouble to suppress.
He did suppress it, however, though it rendered him less courteous than usual; and the meal proceeded partly in silence; an interchanged word, civil on the surface, passing now and then. The dowager thoroughly entered into her breakfast, and had little leisure for anything else.
"What makes you take nothing?" she asked, perceiving at length that he had only a piece of toast on his plate, and was playing with that.
"I have no appetite."
"Have you left off taking breakfast?"
"To a great extent."
"What's the matter with you?"
Lord Hartledon slightly raised his eyebrows. "One can't eat much in the heat of summer."
"Heat of summer! it's nothing more than autumn now. And you are as thin as a weasel. Try some of that excellent raised pie."
"Pray let my appetite alone, Lady Kirton. If I wanted anything I should take it."
"Let you alone! yes, of course! You don't want it noticed that you are out of sorts," snapped the dowager. "Oh, _I_ know the signs. You've been raking about London--that's what you've been at."
The "raking about London" presented so complete a contrast to the lonely life he had really passed, that Hartledon smiled in very bitterness. And the smile incensed the dowager, for she misunderstood it.
"It's early days to begin! I don't think you ought to have married Maude."
"I don't think I ought."
She did not expect the rejoinder, and dropped her knife and fork. "Why _did_ you marry her?"
"Perhaps you can tell that better than I." The countess-dowager pushed up her hair.
"Are you going to throw off the mask outright, and become a bad husband as well as a neglectful one?"
Val rose from his seat and went to the window, which opened to the ground. He did not wish to quarrel with her if he could help it. Lady Kirton raised her voice.
"Staying away, as you have, in London, and leaving Maude here to pine alone."
"Business kept me in London."
"I dare say it did!" cried the wrathful dowager. "If Maude died of ennui, you wouldn't care. She can't go about much herself just now, poor thing! I do wish Edward had lived."
"I wish he had, with all my heart!" came the answer; and the tone struck surprise on the dowager's ear--it was so full of pain. "Maude's coming to Hartledon without me was her own doing," he remarked. "I wished her not to come."
"I dare say you did, as her heart was set upon it. The fact of her wishing to do a thing would be the signal for your opposing it; I've gathered that much. My advice to Maude is, to assert her own will, irrespective of yours."
"Don't you think, Lady Kirton, that it may be as well if you let me and my wife alone? We shall get along, no doubt, without interference; _with_ interference we might not do so."
What with one thing and another, the dowager's temper was inflammable that morning; and when it reached that undesirable state she was apt to say pretty free things, even for her.
"Edward would have made her the better husband."
"But she didn't like him, you know!" he returned, his eyes flashing with the remembrance of an old thought; and the countess-dowager took the sentence literally, and not ironically.
"Not like him. If you had had any eyes as Val Elster, you'd have seen whether she liked him or not. She was dying for him--not for you."
He made no reply. It was only what he had suspected, in a half-doubting sort of way, at the time. A little spaniel, belonging to one of the gardeners, ran up and licked his hand.
"The time that I had of it!" continued the dowager. "But for me, Maude never would have been forced into having you. And she _shouldn't_ have had you if I'd thought you were going to turn out like this."
He wheeled round and faced her; his pale face working with emotion, but his voice subdued to calmness. Lady Kirton's last words halted, for his look startled even her in its resolute sternness.
"To what end are you saying this, madam? You know perfectly well that you almost moved heaven and earth to get me: _you_, I say; I prefer to leave my wife's name out of this: and I fell into the snare. I have not complained of my bargain; so far as I know, Maude has not done so: but if it be otherwise--if she and you repent of the union, I am willing to dissolve it, as far as it can be dissolved, and to institute measures for living apart."
Never, never had she suspected it would come to this. She sat staring at him, her eyes round, her mouth open: scarcely believing the calm resolute man before her could be the once vacillating Val Elster.
"Listen whilst I speak a word of truth," he said, his eyes bent on her with a strange fire that, if it told of undisguised earnestness, told also of inward fever. "I married your daughter, and I am ready and willing to do my duty by her in all honour, as I have done it since the day of the marriage. Whatever my follies may have been as a young man, I am at least incapable of wronging my wife as a married one. _She_ has had no cause to complain of want of affection, but--" "Oh, what a hypocrite!" interrupted the dowager, with a shriek. "And all the time you've left her here neglected, while you were taking your amusement in London! You've been dinner-giving and Richmond-going, and theatre-frequenting, and card-playing, and race-horsing--and I shouldn't wonder but you've been cock-fighting, and a hundred other things as disreputable, and have come down here worn to a skeleton!"
"But if she is discontented, if she does not care for me, as you would seem to intimate," he resumed, passing over the attack without notice; "in short, if Maude would be happier without me, I am quite willing, as I have just said, to relieve her of her distasteful husband."
"Of all the wicked plotters, you must be the worst! My darling unoffending Maude! A divorce for her!"
"We are neither of us eligible for a divorce," he coolly rejoined. "A separation alone is open to us, and that an amicable one. Should it come to it, every possible provision can be made for your daughter's comfort; she shall retain this home; she shall have, if she wishes, a town-house; I will deny her nothing."
Lady Kirton rubbed her face carefully with her handkerchief. Not until this moment had she believed him to be in earnest, and the conviction frightened her.
"Why do you wish to separate from her?" she asked, in a subdued tone.
"I do not wish it. I said I was willing to do so if she wished it. You have been taking pains to convince me that Maude's love was not mine, that she was only forced into the marriage with me. Should this have been the case, I must be distasteful to her still; an encumbrance she may wish to get rid of."
The countess-dowager had overshot her mark, and saw it.
"Oh well! Perhaps I was mistaken about the past," she said, staring at him very hard, and in a sort of defiance. "Maude was always very close. If you said anything about separation now, I dare say it would kill her. My belief is, she does care for you, and a great deal more than you deserve."
"It may be better to ascertain the truth from Maude--" "You won't say a syllable to her!" cried the dowager, starting up in terror. "She'd never forgive me; she'd turn me out of the house. Hartledon, _promise_ you won't say a word to her."
He stood back against the window, never speaking.
"She does love you; but I thought I'd frighten you, for you had no right to send Maude home alone; and it made me very cross, because I saw how she felt it. Separation indeed! What can you be thinking of?"
He was thinking of a great deal, no doubt; and his thoughts were as bitter as they could well be. He did not wish to separate; come what might, he felt his place should be by his wife's side as long as circumstances permitted it.
"Let me give you a word of warning, Lady Kirton. I and my wife will be happy enough together, I daresay, if we are allowed to be; but the style of conversation you have just adopted to me will not conduce to it; it might retaliate on Maude, you see. Do not again attempt it."
"How you have changed!" was her involuntary remark.
"Yes; I am not the yielding boy I was. And now I wish to speak of your son. He seems very ill."
"A troublesome intruding fellow, why can't he keep his ailments to his own barracks?" was the wrathful rejoinder. "I told Maude I wouldn't have him here, and what does she do but write off and tell him to come! I don't like sick folk about me, and never did. What do _you_ want?"
The last question was addressed to Hedges, who had come in unsummoned. It was only a letter for his master. Lord Hartledon took it as a welcome interruption, went outside, and sat down on a garden-seat at a distance. How he hated the style of attack just made on him; the style of the dowager altogether! He asked himself in what manner he could avoid this for the future. It was a debasing, lowering occurrence, and he felt sure that it could hardly have taken place in his servants' hall. But he was glad he had said what he did about the separation. It might grieve him to part from his wife, but Mr. Carr had warned him that he ought to do it. Certainly, if she disliked him so very much--if she forced it upon him--why, then, it would be an easier task; but he felt sure she did not dislike him. If she had done so before marriage, she had learnt to like him now; and he believed that the bare mention of parting would shock her; and so--his duty seemed to lie in remaining by her side.
He held the letter in his hand for some minutes before he opened it. The handwriting warned him that it was from Mr. Carr, and he knew that no pleasant news could be in it. In fact, he had placed himself in so unsatisfactory a position as to render anything but bad news next door to an impossibility.
It contained only a few lines--a word of caution Mr. Carr had forgotten to speak when he took leave of Lord Hartledon the previous morning. "Let me advise you not to say anything to those people--Gum, I think the name is--about G.G. It might not be altogether prudent for you to do so. Should you remain any time at Hartledon, I will come down for a few days and question for myself."
"I've done it already," thought Val, as he folded the letter and returned it to his pocket. "As to my staying any time at Hartledon--not if I know it."
Looking up at the sound of footsteps, he saw Hedges approaching. Never free from a certain apprehension when any unexpected interruption occurred--an apprehension that turned his heart sick, and set his pulses beating--he waited, outwardly very calm.
"Floyd has called, my lord, and is asking to see you. He seems rather--rather concerned and put out. I think it's something about--about the death last summer."
Hedges hardly knew how to frame his words, and Lord Hartledon stared at him.
"Floyd can come to me here," he said.
The miller soon made his appearance, carrying a small case half purse, half pocket-book, in his hand, made of Russian leather, with rims of gold. Val knew it in a moment, in spite of its marks of defacement.
"Do you recognize it, my lord?" asked the miller.
"Yes, I do," replied Lord Hartledon. "It belonged to my brother."
"I thought so," returned the miller. "On the very day before that unfortunate race last year, his lordship was talking to me, and had this in his hand. I felt sure it was the same the moment I saw it."
"He had it with him the day of the race," observed Lord Hartledon. "Mr. Carteret said he saw it lying in the boat when they started. We always thought it had been lost in the river. Where did you find it?"
"Well, it's very odd, my lord, but I found it buried."
"Buried!"
"Buried in the ground, not far from the river, alongside the path that leads from where his lordship was found to Hartledon. I was getting up some dandelion roots for my wife this morning early, and dug up this close to one. There's where the knife touched it. My lord," added the miller, "I beg to say that I have not opened it. I wiped it, wrapped it in paper, and said nothing to anybody, but came here with it as soon as I thought you'd be up. That lad of mine, Ripper, said last night you were at Hartledon."
The miller was quite honest; and Lord Hartledon knew that when he said he had not opened it, he had not done so. It still contained some small memoranda in his brother's writing, but no money; and this was noticeable, since it was quite certain to have had money in it on that day.
"Those who buried it might have taken it out," he observed, following the bent of his thoughts.
"But who did bury it; and where did they find it, to allow of their burying it?" questioned the miller. "How did they come by it? --that's the odd thing. I am certain it was not in the skiff, for I searched that over myself."
Lord Hartledon said little. He could not understand it; and the incident, with the slips of paper, was bringing his brother all too palpably before him. One of them had concerned himself, though in what manner he would never know now. It ran as follows: "Not to forget Val." Poor fellow! Poor Lord Hartledon!
"Would your lordship like to come and see the spot where I found it?" asked the miller.
Lord Hartledon said he should, and would go in the course of the day; and Floyd took his departure. Val sat on for a time where he was, and then went in, locked up the damp case with its tarnished rims, and went on to the presence of his wife.
She was dressed now, but had not left her bedroom. It was evident that she meant to be kind and pleasant with him; different from what she had been, for she smiled, and began a little apology for her tardiness, saying she would get up to breakfast in future.
He motioned her back to her seat on the sofa before the open window, and sat down near her. His face was grave; she thought she had never seen it so much so--grave and firm, and his voice was grave too, but had a kindly tone in it. He took both her hands between his as he spoke; not so much, it seemed in affection, as to impress solemnity upon her.
"Maude, I'm going to ask you a question, and I beg you to answer me as truthfully as you could answer Heaven. Have you any wish that we should live apart from each other?"
"I do not understand you," she answered, after a pause, during which a flush of surprise or emotion spread itself gradually over her face.
"Nay, the question is plain. Have you any wish to separate from me?"
"I never thought of such a thing. Separate from you! What can you mean?"
"Your mother has dropped a hint that you have not been happy with me. I could almost understand her to imply that you have a positive dislike to me. She sought to explain her words away, but certainly spoke them. Is it so, Maude? I fancied something of the sort myself in the earlier days of our marriage."
He turned his head sharply at a sudden sound, but it was only the French clock on the mantelpiece striking eleven.
"Because," he resumed, having waited in vain for an answer, "if such should really be your wish, I will accede to it. I desire your comfort, your happiness beyond any earthly thing; and if living apart from me would promote it, I will sacrifice my own feelings, and you shall not hear a murmur. I would sacrifice my life for you."
She burst into tears. "Are you speaking at all for yourself? Do you wish this?" she murmured.
"No."
"Then how can you be so cruel?"
"I should have thought it unjustifiably cruel, but that it has been suggested to me. Tell me the truth, Maude."
Maude was turning sick with apprehension. She had begun to like her husband during the latter part of their sojourn in London; had missed him terribly during this long period of lonely ennui at Hartledon; and his tender kindness to her for the past few fleeting hours of this their meeting had seemed like heaven as compared with the solitary past. Her whole heart was in her words as she answered: "When we first married I did not care for you; I almost think I did not like you. Everything was new to me, and I felt as one in an unknown sea. But it wore off; and if you only knew how I have thought of you, and wished for you here, you would never have said anything so cruel. You are my husband, and you cannot put me from you. Percival, promise me that you will never hint at this again!"
He bent and kissed her. His course lay plain before him; and if an ugly mountain rose up before his mind's eye, shadowing forth not voluntary but forced separation, he would not look at it in that moment.
"What could mamma mean?" she asked. "I shall ask her."
"Maude, oblige me by saying nothing about it. I have already warned Lady Kirton that it must not be repeated; and I am sure it will not be. I wish you would also oblige me in another matter."
"In anything," she eagerly said, raising her tearful eyes to his. "Ask me anything."
"I intend to take your brother to the warmest seaside place England can boast of, at once; to-day or to-morrow. The sea-air may do me good also. I want that, or something else," he added; his tone assuming a sad weariness as he remembered how futile any "sea-air" would be for a mind diseased. "Won't you go with us, Maude?"
"Oh yes, gladly! I will go with you anywhere."
He left her to proceed to Captain Kirton's room, thinking that he and his wife might have been happy together yet, but for that one awful shadow of the past, which she did not know anything about; and he prayed she never might know.
But after all, it would have been a very moonlight sort of happiness.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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28
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ONCE MORE.
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The months rolled on, and Lord and Lady Hartledon did not separate. They remained together, and were, so far, happy enough--the moonlight happiness hinted at; and it is as I believe, the best and calmest sort of happiness for married life. Maude's temper was unequal, and he was subject to prolonged hours of sadness. But the time went lightly enough over their heads, for all the world saw, as it goes over the heads of most people.
And Lord Hartledon was a free man still, and stood well with the world. Whatever the mysterious accusation brought against him had been, it produced no noisy effects as yet; in popular phrase, it had come to nothing. As yet; always as yet. Whether he had shot a man, or robbed a bank, or fired a church, the incipient accusation died away. But the fear, let it be of what nature it would, never died away in his mind; and he lived as a man with a sword suspended over his head. Moreover, the sword, in his own imagination, was slipping gradually from its fastenings; his days were restless, his nights sleepless, an inward fever for ever consumed him.
As none knew better than Thomas Carr. There were two witnesses who could bring the facts home to Lord Hartledon; and, so far as was known, only two: the stranger, who had paid him a visit, and the man Gordon, or Gorton. The latter was the more dangerous; and they had not yet been able to trace him. Mr. Carr's friend, Detective Green, had furnished that gentleman with a descriptive bill of Gordon of the mutiny: "a young, slight man, with light eyes and fair hair." This did not answer exactly to the Gorton who had played his part at Calne; but then, in regard to the latter, there remained the suspicion that the red hair was false. Whether it was the same man or whether it was two men--if the phrase may be allowed--neither of them, to use Detective Green's expressive words, turned up. And thus the months had passed on, with nothing special to mark them. Captain Kirton had been conveyed abroad for the winter, and they had good news of him; and the countess-dowager was inflicting a visit upon one of her married daughters in Germany, the baroness with the unpronounceable name.
And the matter had nearly faded from the mind of Lady Hartledon. It would quite have faded, but for certain interviews with Thomas Carr at his chambers, when Hartledon's look of care precluded the idea that they could be visits of mere idleness or pleasure; and for the secret trouble that unmistakably sat on her husband like an incubus. At times he would moan in his sleep as one in pain; but if told of this, had always some laughing answer ready for her--he had dreamed he was fighting a lion or being tossed by a bull.
This was the pleasantest phase of Lady Hartledon's married life. Her health did not allow of her entering into gaiety; and she and her husband passed their time happily together. All her worst qualities seemed to have left her, or to be dormant; she was yielding and gentle; her beauty had never been so great as now that it was subdued; her languor was an attraction, her care to please being genuine; and they were sufficiently happy. They were in their town-house now, not having gone back to Hartledon. A large, handsome house, very different from the hired one they had first occupied.
In January the baby was born; and Maude's eyes glistened with tears of delight because it was a boy: a little heir to the broad lands of Hartledon. She was very well, and it seemed that she could never tire of fondling her child.
But in the first few days succeeding that of the birth a strange fancy took possession of her: she observed, or thought she observed, that her husband did not seem to care for the child. He did not caress it; she once heard him sighing over it; and he never announced it in the newspapers. Other infants, heirs especially, could be made known to the world, but not hers. The omission might never have come to her knowledge, since at first she was not allowed to see newspapers, but for a letter from the countess-dowager. The lady wrote in a high state of wrath from Germany; she had looked every day for ten days in the _Times_, and saw no chronicle of the happy event; and she demanded the reason. It afforded a valve for her temper, which had been in an explosive state for some time against Lord Hartledon, that ungracious son-in-law having actually forbidden her his house until Maude's illness should be over; telling her plainly that he would not have his wife worried. Lady Hartledon said nothing for a day or two; she was watching her husband; watching for signs of the fancy which had taken possession of her.
He was in her room one dark afternoon, standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece whilst he talked to her: a room of luxury and comfort it must have been almost a pleasure to be ill in. Lady Hartledon had been allowed to get up, and sit in an easy-chair: she seemed to be growing strong rapidly; and the little red gentleman in the cradle, sleeping quietly, was fifteen days old.
"About his name, Percival; what is it to be?" she asked. "Your own?"
"No, no, not mine," said he, quickly; "I never liked mine. Choose some other, Maude."
"What do you wish it to be?"
"Anything."
The short answer did not please the young mother; neither did the dreamy tone in which it was spoken. "Don't you care what it is?" she asked rather plaintively.
"Not much, for myself. I wish it to be anything you shall choose."
"I thought perhaps you would have liked it named after your brother," she said, very much offended on the baby's account.
"George?"
"George, no. I never knew George; I should not be likely to think of him. Edward."
Lord Hartledon looked at the fire, absently pushing back his hair. "Yes, let it be Edward. It will do as well as anything else."
"Good gracious, Percival, one would think you had been having babies all your life!" she exclaimed resentfully. " 'Do as well as anything else!' If he were our tenth son, instead of our first, you could not treat it with more indifference. I have done nothing but deliberate on the name since he was born; and I don't believe you have once given it a thought."
Lord Hartledon turned his face upon her; and when illumined with a smile, as now, it could be as bright as before care came to it. "I don't think we men attach the importance to names in a general way that you do, Maude. I shall like to have it Edward."
"Edward William Algernon--" "No, no, no," as if the number alarmed him. "Pray don't have a string of names: one's quite enough."
"Oh, very well," she returned, biting her lips. "William was your father's name. Algernon is my eldest brother's: I supposed you might like them. I thought," she added, after a pause, "we might ask Lord Kirton to be its godfather."
"I have decided on the godfathers already. Thomas Carr will be one, and I intend to be the other."
"Thomas Carr! A poor hard-working barrister, that not a soul knows, and of no family or influence whatever, godfather to the future Lord Hartledon!" uttered the offended mother.
"I wish it, Maude. Carr is the most valued friend I have in the world, or ever can have. Oblige me in this."
"Then my brother can be the other."
"No; I myself; and I wish you would be its godmother."
"Well, it's quite reversing the order of things!" she said, tacitly conceding the point.
A silence ensued. The firelight played on the lace curtains of the baby's bed, as it did on Lady Hartledon's face; a thoughtful face just now. Twilight was drawing on, and the fire lighted the room.
"Percival, do you care for the child?"
The tone had a sound of passion in it, breaking upon the silence. Lord Hartledon lifted his bent face and glanced at his wife.
"Do I care for the child, Maude? What a question! I do care for him: more than I allow to appear."
And if her voice had passion in it, his had pain. He crossed the room, and stood looking down on the sleeping baby, touching at length its cheek with his finger. He could have knelt, there and then, and wept over the child, and prayed, oh, how earnestly, that God would take it to Himself, not suffer it to live. Many and many a prayer had ascended from his heart in their earlier married days, that his wife might not bear him children; for he could only entail upon them an inheritance of shame.
"I don't think you have once taken him in your arms, Percival; you never kiss him. It's quite unnatural."
"I give my kisses in the dark," he laughed, as he returned to where she was sitting. And this was in a sense true; for once when he happened to be alone for an instant with the baby, he had clasped it and kissed it in a sort of delirious agony.
"You never had it in the _Times_, you know!"
"Never what?"
"Never announced its birth in the _Times_. Did you forget it?"
"It must have been very stupid of me," he remarked. "Never mind, Maude; he won't grow the less for the omission. When are you coming downstairs?"
"Mamma is in a rage about it; she says such neglect ought to be punished; and she knows you have done it on purpose."
"She is always in a rage with me, no matter what I do," returned Val, good-humouredly. "She hoped to be here at this time, and sway us all--you and me and the baby; and I stopped it. Ho, ho! young sir!"
The baby had wakened with a cry, and a watchful attendant came gliding in at the sound. Lord Hartledon left the room and went straight down to the Temple to Mr. Carr's chambers. He found him in all the bustle of departure from town. A cab stood at the foot of the stairs, and Mr. Carr's laundress, a queer old body with an inverted black bonnet, was handing the cabman a parcel of books.
"A minute more and you'd have been too late," observed Mr. Carr, as Lord Hartledon met him on the stairs, a coat on his arm.
"I thought you did not start till to-morrow."
"But I found I must go to-day. I can give you three minutes. Is it anything particular?"
Lord Hartledon drew him into his room. "I have come to crave a favour, Carr. It has been on my lips to ask you before, but they would not frame the words. This child of mine: will you be its godfather with myself?"
One moment's hesitation, quite perceptible to the sensitive mind of Lord Hartledon, and then Mr. Carr spoke out bravely and cheerily.
"Of course I will."
"I see you hesitate: but I do not like to ask any one else."
"If I hesitated, it was at the thought of the grave responsibility attaching to the office. I believe I look upon it in a more serious light than most people do, and have never accepted the charge yet. I will be sponsor to this one with all my heart."
Lord Hartledon clasped his hand in reply, and they began to descend the stairs. "Poor Maude was dreaming of making a grand thing of the christening," he said; "she wanted to ask Lord Kirton to come to it. It will take place in about a fortnight."
"Very well; I must run up for it, unless you let me stand by proxy. I wish, Hartledon, you would hear me on another point," added the barrister, halting on the stairs, and dropping his voice to a whisper.
"Well?"
"If you are to go away at all, now's the time. Can't you be seized with an exploring fit, and sail to Africa, or some other place, where your travels would occupy years?"
Lord Hartledon shook his head. "How can I leave Maude to battle alone with the exposure, should it come?"
"It is a great deal less likely to come if you are a few thousand miles away."
"I question it. Should Gorton turn up he is just the one to frighten a defenceless woman, and purchase his own silence. No; my place is beside Maude."
"As you please. I have spoken for the last time. By the way, any letters bearing a certain postmark, that come addressed to me during my absence, Taylor has orders to send to you. Fare you well, Hartledon; I wish I could help you to peace."
Hartledon watched the cab rattle away, and then turned homewards. Peace! There was no peace for him.
Lady Hartledon was not to be thwarted on all points, and she insisted on a ceremonious christening. The countess-dowager would come over for it, and did so; Lord Hartledon could not be discourteous enough to deny this; Lord and Lady Kirton came from Ireland; and for the first time since their marriage they found themselves entertaining guests. Lord Hartledon had made a faint opposition, but Maude had her own way. The countess-dowager was furiously indignant when she heard of the intended sponsors--its father and mother, and that cynical wretch, Thomas Carr! Val played the hospitable host; but there was a shadow on his face that his wife did not fail to see.
It was the evening before the christening, and a very snowy evening too. Val was dressing for dinner, and Maude, herself ready, sat by him, her baby on her knee. The child was attired for the first time in a splendidly-worked robe with looped-up sleeves; and she had brought it in to challenge admiration for its pretty arms, with all the pardonable pride of a young mother.
"Won't you kiss it for once, Val?"
He took the child in his arms; it had its mother's fine dark eyes, and looked straight up from them into his. Lord Hartledon suddenly bent his own face down upon that little one with what seemed like a gesture of agony; and when he raised it his own eyes were wet with tears. Maude felt startled with a sort of terror: love was love; but she did not understand love so painful as this.
She sat down with the baby on her knee, saying nothing; he did not intend her to see the signs of emotion. And this brings us to where we were. Lord Hartledon went on with his toilette, and presently someone knocked at the door.
Two letters: they had come by the afternoon post, very much delayed on account of the snow. He came back to the gaslight, opening one. A full letter, written closely; but he had barely glanced at it when he hastily folded it again, and crammed it into his pocket. If ever a movement expressed something to be concealed, that did. And Lady Hartledon was gazing at him with her questioning eyes.
"Wasn't that letter from Thomas Carr?"
"Yes."
"Is he coming up? Or is Kirton to be proxy?"
"He is--coming, I think," said Val, evidently knowing nothing one way or the other. "He'll be here, I daresay, to-morrow morning."
Opening the other letter as he spoke--a foreign-looking letter this one--he put it up in the same hasty manner, with barely a glance; and then went on slowly with his dressing.
"Why don't you read your letters, Percival?"
"I haven't time. Dinner will be waiting."
She knew that he had plenty of time, and that dinner would not be waiting; she knew quite certainly that there was something in both letters she must not see. Rising from her seat in silence, she went out of the room with her baby; resentment and an unhealthy curiosity doing battle in her heart.
Lord Hartledon slipped the bolt of the door and read the letters at once; the foreign one first, over which he seemed to take an instant's counsel with himself. Before going down he locked them up in a small ebony cabinet which stood against the wall. The room was his own exclusively; his wife had nothing to do with it.
Had they been alone he might have observed her coolness to him; but, with guests to entertain, he neither saw nor suspected it. She sat opposite him at dinner richly dressed, her jewels and smiles alike dazzling: but the smiles were not turned on him.
"Is that chosen sponsor of yours coming up for the christening; lawyer Carr?" tartly inquired the dowager from her seat, bringing her face and her turban, all scarlet together, to bear on Hartledon.
"He comes up by this evening's train; will be in London late to-night, if the snow allows him, and stay with us until Sunday night," replied Val.
"Oh! _That's_ no doubt the reason why you settled the christening for Saturday: that your friend might have the benefit of Sunday?"
"Just so, madam."
And Lady Hartledon knew, by this, that her husband must have read the letters. "I wonder what he has done with them?" came the mental thought, shadowing forth a dim wish that she could read them too.
In the drawing-room, after dinner, someone proposed a carpet quadrille, but Lord Hartledon seemed averse to it. In his wife's present mood, his opposition was, of course, the signal for her approval, and she began pushing the chairs aside with her own hands. He approached her quietly.
"Maude, do not let them dance to-night."
"Why not?"
"I have a reason. My dear, won't you oblige me in this?"
"Tell me the reason, and perhaps I will; not otherwise."
"I will tell it you another time. Trust me, I have a good one. What is it, Hedges?"
The butler had come up to his master in the unobtrusive manner of a well-trained servant, and was waiting an opportunity to speak. He said a word in Lord Hartledon's ear, and Lady Hartledon saw a shiver of surprise run through her husband. He looked here, looked there, as one perplexed with fear, and finally went out of the room with a calm face, but one that was turning livid.
Lady Hartledon followed in an impulse of curiosity. She looked after him over the balustrades, and saw him turn into the library below. Hedges was standing near the drawing-room door.
"Does any one want Lord Hartledon?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know, my lady. Some gentleman."
She ran lightly down the stairs, pausing at the foot, as if ashamed of her persistent curiosity. The well-lighted hall was before her; the dining-room on one side; the library and a small room communicating on the other. Throwing back her head, as in defiance, she boldly crossed the hall and opened the library door.
Now what Lady Hartledon had really thought was that the visitor was Mr. Carr; her husband was going to steal a quiet half-hour with him; and Hedges was in the plot. She had not lived with Hartledon the best part of a year without learning that Hedges was devoted heart and soul to his master.
She opened the library-door. Her husband's back was towards her; and facing him, his arms raised as if in anger or remonstrance, was the same stranger who had caused some commotion in the other house. She knew him in a moment: there he was, with his staid face, his black clothes, and his white neckcloth, looking so like a clergyman. Lord Hartledon turned his head.
"I am engaged, Maude; you can't come in," he peremptorily said; and closed the door upon her.
She went slowly up the stairs again, not choosing to meet the butler's eyes, past the drawing-rooms, and up to her own. The sight of the stranger, coupled with her husband's signs of emotion, had renewed all her old suspicions, she knew not, she never had known, of what. Jumping to the conclusion that those letters must be in some way connected with the mystery, perhaps an advent of the visit, it set her thinking, and rebellion arose in her heart.
"I wonder if he put them in the ebony cabinet?" she exclaimed. "I have a key that will fit that."
Yes, she had a key to fit it. A few weeks before, Lord Hartledon mislaid his keys; he wanted something out of this cabinet, in which he did not, as a rule, keep anything of consequence, and tried hers. One was found to unlock it, and he jokingly told her she had a key to his treasures. But himself strictly honourable, he could not suspect dishonour in another; and Lord Hartledon supposed it simply impossible that she should attempt to open it of her own accord.
They were of different natures; and they had been reared in different schools. Poor Maude Kirton had learnt to be anything but scrupulous, and really thought it a very slight thing she was about to do, almost justifiable under the circumstances. Almost, if not quite. Nevertheless she would not have liked to be caught at it.
She took her bunch of keys and went into her husband's dressing-room, which opened from their bedroom: but she went on tip-toe, as one who knows she is doing wrong. It took some little time to try the keys, for there were several on the ring, and she did not know the right one: but the lid flew open at last, and disclosed the two letters lying there.
She snatched at one, either that came first, and opened it. It happened to be the one from Mr. Carr, and she began to read it, her heart beating.
"Dear Hartledon, "I think I have at last found some trace of Gorton. There's a man of that name in the criminal calendar here, down for trial to-morrow; I shall see then whether it is the same, but the description tallies. Should it be our Gorton, I think the better plan will be to leave him entirely alone: a man undergoing a criminal sentence--and this man is sure of a long period of it--has neither the means nor the motive to be dangerous. He cannot molest you whilst he is working on Portland Island; and, so far, you may live a little eased from fear. I wish--" Mr. Carr's was a close handwriting, and this concluded the first page. She was turning it over, when Lord Hartledon's voice on the stairs caught her ear. He seemed to be coming up.
Ay, and he would have caught her at her work but for the accidental circumstance of the old dowager's happening to look out of the drawing-room and detaining him, as he was hastening onwards up the stairs. She did her daughter good service that moment, if she had never done it before. Maude had time to fold the letter, put it back, lock the cabinet, and escape. Had she been a nervous woman, given to being flurried and to losing her presence of mind, she might not have succeeded; but she was cool and quick in emergency, her brain and fingers steady.
Nevertheless her heart beat a little as she stood within the other room, the door not latched behind her. She did not stir, lest he should hear her; and she hoped to remain unseen until he went down again. A ready excuse was on her lips, if he happened to look in, which was not probable: that she fancied she heard baby cry, and was listening.
Lord Hartledon was walking about his dressing-room, pacing it restlessly, and she very distinctly heard suppressed groans of mortal anguish breaking from his lips. How he had got rid of his visitor, and what the visitor came for, she knew not. He seemed to halt before the washhand-stand, pour out some water, and dash his face into it.
"God help me! God help Maude!" he ejaculated, as he went down again to the drawing-room.
And Lady Hartledon went down also, for the interruption had frightened her, and she did not attempt to open the cabinet again. She never knew more of the contents of Mr. Carr's letter; and only the substance of the other, as communicated to her by her husband.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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29
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CROSS-QUESTIONING MR. CARR.
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Not until the Sunday morning did Lady Hartledon speak to her husband of the stranger's visit. There seemed to have been no previous opportunity. Mr. Carr had arrived late on the Friday night; indeed it was Saturday morning, for the trains were all detained; and he and Hartledon sat up together to an unconscionable hour. For this short visit he was Lord Hartledon's guest. Saturday seemed to have been given to preparation, to gaiety, and to nothing else. Perhaps also Lady Hartledon did not wish to mar that day by an unpleasant word. The little child was christened; the names given him being Edward Kirton: the countess-dowager, who was in a chronic state of dissatisfaction with everything and every one, angrily exclaimed at the last moment, that she thought at least her family name might have been given to the child; and Lord Hartledon interposed, and said, give it. Lord and Lady Hartledon, and Mr. Carr, were the sponsors: and it would afford food for weeks of grumbling to the old dowager. Hilarity reigned, and toasts were given to the new heir of Hartledon; and the only one who seemed not to enter into the spirit of the thing, but on the contrary to be subdued, absent, nervous, was the heir's father.
And so it went on to the Sunday morning. A cold, bleak, bitter morning, the wind howling, the snow flying in drifts. Mr. Carr went to church, and he was the only one of the party in the house who did go. The countess-dowager the previous night had proclaimed the fact that _she_ meant to go--as a sort of reproach to any who meant to keep away. However, when the church-bells began, she was turning round in her warm bed for another nap.
Maude did not go down early; had not yet taken to doing so. She breakfasted in her room, remained toying with her baby for some time, and then went into her own sitting-room; a small cosy apartment on the drawing-room floor, into which visitors did not intrude. It looked on to Hyde Park, and a very white and dreary park it was on that particular day.
Drawing a chair to the window, she sat looking out. That is, her eyes were given to the outer world, but she was so deep in thought as to see nothing of it. For two nights and a day, burning with curiosity, she had been putting this and that together in her own mind, and drawing conclusions according to her own light. First, there was the advent of the visitor; secondly, there was the letter she had dipped into. She connected the two with each other and wondered WHAT the secret care could be that had such telling effect upon her husband.
Gorton. The name had struck upon her memory, even whilst she read it, as one associated with that terrible time--the late Lord Hartledon's death. Gradually the floodgates of recollection opened, and she knew him for the witness at the inquest about whom some speculation had arisen as to who he was, and what his business at Calne might have been with Lord Hartledon and his brother, Val Elster.
Why should her husband be afraid of this man? --as it seemed he _was_ afraid, by Mr. Carr's letter. What power had he of injuring Lord Hartledon? --what secret did he possess of his, that might be used against him? Turning it about in her mind, and turning it again, searching her imagination for a solution, Lady Hartledon at length arrived at one, in default of others. She thought this man must know some untoward fact by which the present Lord Hartledon's succession was imperilled. Possibly the late Lord Hartledon had made some covert and degrading marriage; leaving an obscure child who possessed legal rights, and might yet claim them. A romantic, far-fetched idea, you will say; but she could think of no other that was in the least feasible. And she remembered some faint idea having arisen in her mind at the time, that the visit of the man Gorton was in some way connected with trouble, though she did not know with which brother.
Val came in and shut the door. He stirred the fire into a blaze, making some remark about the snow, and wondering how Carr would get down to the country again. Maude gave a slight answer, and then there was silence. Each was considering how best to say something to the other. She was the quicker.
"Lord Hartledon, what did that man want on Friday?"
"What man?" he rejoined, rather wincing--for he knew well enough to what she alluded.
"The man--gentleman, or whatever he is--who had you called down to him in the library."
"By the way, Maude--yes--you should not dart in when I am engaged with visitors on business."
"Well, I thought it was Mr. Carr," she replied, glancing at his heightened colour. "What did he want?"
"Only to say a word to me on a matter of business."
"It was the same person who upset you so when he called last autumn. You have never been the same man since."
"Don't take fancies into your head, Maude."
"Fancies! you know quite well there is no fancy about it. That man holds some unpleasant secret of yours, I am certain."
"Maude!"
"Will you tell it me?"
"I have nothing to tell."
"Ah, well; I expected you wouldn't speak," she answered, with subdued bitterness; as much as to say, that she made a merit of resigning herself to an injustice she could not help. "You have been keeping things from me a long time."
"I have kept nothing from you it would give you pleasure to know. It is not--Maude, pray hear me--it is not always expedient for a man to make known to his wife the jars and rubs he has himself to encounter. A hundred trifles may arise that are best spared to her. That gentleman's business concerned others as well as myself, and I am not at liberty to speak of it."
"You refuse, then, to admit me to your confidence?"
"In this I do. I am the best judge--and you must allow me to be so--of what ought, and what ought not, to be spoken of to you. You may always rely upon my acting for your best happiness, as far as lies in my power."
He had been pacing the room whilst he spoke. Lady Hartledon was in too resentful a mood to answer. Glancing at her, he stood by the mantelpiece and leaned his elbow upon it.
"I want to make known to you another matter, Maude. If I have kept it from you--" "Does it concern this secret business of yours?" she interrupted.
"No."
"Then let us have done with this first, if you please. Who is Gorton?"
"Who is--Gorton?" he repeated, after a dumbfounded pause. "What Gorton?"
"Well, I don't know; unless it's that man who gave evidence at the inquest on your brother."
Lord Hartledon stared at her, as well he might; and gulped down his breath, which seemed choking him. "But what about Gorton? Why do you ask me the question?"
"Because I fancy he is connected with this trouble. I--I thought I heard you and Mr. Carr mention the name yesterday when you were whispering together. I'm sure I did--there!"
As far as Lord Hartledon remembered, he and Mr. Carr had not been whispering together yesterday; had not mentioned the name of Gorton. They had done with the subject at that late sitting, the night of the barrister's arrival; who had brought news that the Gorton, that morning tried for a great crime, was _not_ the Gorton of whom they were in search. Lord Hartledon gazed at his wife with questioning eyes, but she persisted in her assertion. It was sinfully untrue; but how else could she account for knowing the name?
"Do you suppose I dreamed it, Lord Hartledon?"
"I don't know whether you dreamed it or not, Maude. Mr. Carr has certainly spoken to me since he came of a man of that name; but as certainly not in your hearing. One Gorton was tried for his life on Friday--or almost for his life--and he mentioned to me the circumstances of the case: housebreaking, accompanied by violence, which ended in death. I cannot understand you, Maude, or the fancies you seem to be taking up."
She saw how it was--he would admit nothing: and she looked straight out across the dreary park, a certain obstinate defiance veiled in her eyes. By the help of Heaven or earth, she would find out this secret that he refused to disclose to her.
"Almost every action of your life bespeaks concealment," she resumed. "Look at those letters you received in your dressing-room on Friday night: you just opened them and thrust them unread into your pocket, because I happened to be there. And yet you talk of caring for me! I know those letters contained some secret or other you dare not tell me."
She rose in some temper, and gave the fire a fierce stir.
Lord Hartledon kept her by him.
"One of those letters was from Mr. Carr; and I presume you can make no objection to my hearing from him. The other--Maude, I have waited until now to disclose its contents to you; I would not mar your happiness yesterday."
She looked up at him. Something in his voice, a sad pitying tenderness, caused her heart to beat a shade quicker. "It was a foreign letter, Maude. I think you observed that. It bore the French postmark."
A light broke upon her. "Oh, Percival, it is about Robert! Surely he is not worse!"
He drew her closer to him: not speaking.
"He is not dead?" she said, with a rush of tears. "Ah, you need not tell me; I see it. Robert! Robert!"
"It has been a happy death, Maude, and he is better off. He was quite ready to go. I wish we were as ready!"
Lord Hartledon took out the letter and read the chief portion of it to her. One little part he dexterously omitted, describing the cause of death--disease of the heart.
"But I thought he was getting so much better. What has killed him in this sudden manner?"
"Well, there was no great hope from the first. I confess I have entertained none. Mr. Hillary, you know, warned us it might end either way."
"Was it decline?" she asked, her tears falling.
"He has been declining gradually, no doubt."
"Oh, Percival! Why did you not tell me at once? It seems so cruel to have had all that entertainment yesterday! This is why you did not wish us to dance!"
"And if I had told you, and stopped the entertainment, allowing the poor little fellow to be christened in gloom and sorrow, you would have been the first to reproach me; you might have said it augured ill-luck for the child."
"Well, perhaps I should; yes, I am sure I should. You have acted rightly, after all, Val." And it was a candid admission, considering what she had been previously saying. He bent towards her with a smile, his voice quite unsteady with its earnestness.
"You see now with what motive I kept the letter from you. Maude! cannot this be an earnest that you should trust me for the rest? In all I do, as Heaven is my witness, I place your comfort first and foremost."
"Don't be angry with me," she cried, softening at the words.
He laid his hand on his wife's bent head, thinking how far he was from anger. Anger? He would have died for her then, at that moment, if it might have saved her from the sin and shame that she must share with him.
"Have you told mamma, Percival?"
"Not yet. It would not have been kept from you long had she known it. She is not up yet, I think."
"Who has written?"
"The doctor who attended him."
"You'll let me read the letter?"
"I have written to desire that full particulars may be sent to you: you shall read that one."
The tacit refusal did not strike her. She only supposed the future letter would be more explanatory. He was always anxious for her; and he had written off on the Friday night to ask for a letter giving fuller particulars, whilst avoiding mention of the cause of death.
Thus harmony for the hour was restored between them; and Lord Hartledon stood the dowager's loud reproaches with equanimity. In possession of the news of that darling angel's death ever since Friday night, and to have bottled it up within him till Sunday! She wondered what he thought of himself!
After all, Val had not quite "bottled it up." He had made it known to his brother-in-law, Lord Kirton, and also to Mr. Carr. Both had agreed that nothing had better be said until the christening-day was over.
But there came a reaction. When Lady Hartledon had got over her first grief, the other annoyance returned to her, and she fell again to brooding over it in a very disturbing fashion. She merited blame for this in a degree; but not so much as appears on the surface. If that idea, which she was taking up very seriously, were correct--that her husband's succession was imperilled--it would be the greatest misfortune that could happen to her in life. What had she married for but position? --rank, wealth, her title? any earthly misfortune would be less keen than this. Any earthly misfortune! Poor Maude!
It was a sombre dinner that evening; the news of Captain Kirton's death making it so. Besides relatives, very few guests were staying in the house; and the large and elaborate dinner-party of the previous day was reduced to a small one on this. The first to come into the drawing-room afterwards, following pretty closely on the ladies, was Mr. Carr. The dowager, who rarely paid attention to appearances, or to anything else, except her own comfort, had her feet up on a sofa, and was fast asleep; two ladies were standing in front of the fire, talking in undertones; Lady Hartledon sat on a sofa a little apart, her baby on her knee; and her sister-in-law, Lady Kirton, a fragile and rather cross-looking young woman, who looked as if a breath would blow her away, was standing over her, studying the infant's face. The latter lady moved away and joined the group at the fire as Mr. Carr approached Lady Hartledon.
"You have your little charge here, I see!"
"Please excuse it; I meant to have sent him away before any of you came up," she said, quite pleadingly. "Sarah took upon herself to proclaim aloud that his eyes were not straight, and I could not help having him brought down to refute her words. Not straight, indeed! She's only envious of him."
Sarah was Lady Kirton. Mr. Carr smiled.
"She has no children herself. I think you might be proud of your godson, Mr. Carr. But he ought not to have been here to receive you, for all that."
"I have come up soon to say good-bye, Lady Hartledon. In ten minutes I must be gone."
"In all this snow! What a night to travel in!"
"Necessity has no law. So, sir, you'd imprison my finger, would you!"
He had touched the child's hand, and in a moment it was clasped round his finger. Lady Hartledon laughed.
"Lady Kirton--the most superstitious woman in the world--would say that was an omen: you are destined to be his friend through life."
"As I will be," said the barrister, his tone more earnest than the occasion seemed to call for.
Lady Hartledon, with a graciousness she was little in the habit of showing to Mr. Carr, made room for him beside her, and he sat down. The baby lay on his back, his wide-open eyes looking upwards, good as gold.
"How quiet he is! How he stares!" reiterated the barrister, who did not understand much about babies, except for a shadowy idea that they lived in a state of crying for the first six months.
"He is the best child in the world; every one says so," she returned. "He is not the least--Hey-day! what do you mean by contradicting mamma like that? Behave yourself, sir."
For the infant, as if to deny his goodness, set up a sudden cry. Mr. Carr laughed. He put down his finger again, and the little fingers clasped round it, and the cry ceased.
"He does not like to lose his friend, you see, Lady Hartledon."
"I wish you would be my friend as well as his," she rejoined; and the low meaning tones struck on Mr. Carr's ear.
"I trust I am your friend," he answered.
She was still for a few moments; her pale beautiful face inclining towards the child's; her large dark eyes bent upon him. She turned them on Mr. Carr.
"This has been a sad day."
"Yes, for you. It is grievous to lose a brother."
"And to lose him without the opportunity of a last look, a last farewell. Robert was my best and favourite brother. But the day has been marked as unhappy for other causes than that."
Was it an uncomfortable prevision of what was coming that caused Mr. Carr not to answer her? He talked to the unconscious baby, and played with its cheeks.
"What secret is this that you and my husband have between you, Mr. Carr?" she asked abruptly.
He ceased his laughing with the baby, said something about its soft face, was altogether easy and careless in his manner, and then answered in half-jesting tones: "Which one, Lady Hartledon?"
"Which one! Have you more than one?" she continued, taking the words literally.
"We might count up half-a-dozen, I daresay. I cannot tell you how many things I have not confided to him. We are quite--" "I mean the secret that affects _him_" she interrupted, in aggrieved tones, feeling that Mr. Carr was playing with her.
"There is some dread upon him that's wearing him to a shadow, poisoning his happiness, making his days and nights one long restlessness. Do you think it right to keep it from me, Mr. Carr? Is it what you and he are both doing--and are in league with each other to do?" " _I_ am not keeping any secret from you, Lady Hartledon."
"You know you are. Nonsense! Do you think I have forgotten that evening that was the beginning of it, when a tall strange man dressed as a clergyman, came here, and you both were shut up with him for I can't tell how long, and Lord Hartledon came out from it looking like a ghost? You and he both misled me, causing me to believe that the Ashtons were entering an action against him for breach of promise; laying the damages at ten thousand pounds. I mean _that_ secret, Mr. Carr," she added with emphasis. "The same man was here on Friday night again; and when you came to the house afterwards, you and Lord Hartledon sat up until nearly daylight."
Mr. Carr, who had his eyes on the exacting baby, shook his head, and intimated that he was really unable to understand her.
"When you are in town he is always at your chambers; when you are away he receives long letters from you that I may not read."
"Yes, we have been on terms of close friendship for years. And Lord Hartledon is an idle man, you know, and looks me up."
"He said you were arranging some business for him last autumn."
"Last autumn? Let me see. Yes, I think I was."
"Mr. Carr, is it of any use playing with me? Do you think it right or kind to do so?"
His manner changed at once; he turned to her with eyes as earnest as her own.
"Lady Hartledon, I would tell you anything that I could and ought to tell you. That your husband has been engaged in some complicated business, which I have been--which I have taken upon myself to arrange for him, is very true. I know that he does not wish it mentioned, and therefore my lips are sealed: but it is as well you did not know it, for it would give you no satisfaction."
"Does it involve anything very frightful?"
"It might involve the--the loss of a large sum of money," he answered, making the best reply he could.
Lady Hartledon sank her voice to a whisper. "Does it involve the possible loss of his title? --of Hartledon?"
"No," said Mr. Carr, looking at her with surprise.
"You are sure?"
"Certain. I give you my word. What can have got into your head, Lady Hartledon?"
She gave a sigh of relief. "I thought it just possible--but I will not tell you why I thought it--that some claimant might be springing up to the title and property."
Mr. Carr laughed. "That would be a calamity. Hartledon is as surely your husband's as this watch"--taking it out to look at the time--"is mine. When his brother died, he succeeded to him of indisputable right. And now I must go, for my time is up; and when next I see you, young gentleman, I shall expect a good account of your behaviour. Why, sir, the finger's mine, not yours. Good-bye, Lady Hartledon."
She gave him her hand coolly, for she was not pleased. The baby began to cry, and was sent away with its nurse.
And then Lady Hartledon sat on alone, feeling that if she were ever to arrive at the solution of the mystery, it would not be by the help of Mr. Carr. Other questions had been upon her lips--who the stranger was--what he wanted--five hundred of them: but she saw that she might as well have put them to the moon.
And Lord Hartledon went out with Mr. Carr in the inclement night, and saw him off by a Great-Western train.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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30
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MAUDE'S DISOBEDIENCE.
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Again the months went on, it may almost be said the years, and little took place worthy of record. Time obliterates as well as soothes; and Lady Hartledon had almost forgotten the circumstances which had perplexed and troubled her, for nothing more had come of them.
And Lord Hartledon? But for a certain restlessness, a hectic flush and a worn frame, betraying that the inward fever was not quenched, a startled movement if approached or spoken to unexpectedly, it might be thought that he also was at rest. There were no more anxious visits to Thomas Carr's chambers; he went about his ordinary duties, sat out his hours in the House of Lords, and did as other men. There was nothing very obvious to betray mental apprehension; and Maude had certainly dismissed the past, so far, from her mind.
Not again had Val gone down to Hartledon. With the exception of that short visit of a day or two, already recorded, he had not been there since his marriage. He would not go: his wife, though she had her way in most things, could not induce him to go. She went once or twice, in a spirit of defiance, it may be said, and meanwhile he remained in London, or took a short trip to the Continent, as the whim prompted him. Once they had gone abroad together, and remained for some months; taking servants and the children, for there were two children now; and the little fellow who had clasped the finger of Mr. Carr was a sturdy boy of three years old.
Lady Hartledon's health was beginning to fail. The doctors told her she must be more quiet; she went out a great deal, and seemed to live only in the world. Her husband remonstrated with her on the score of health; but she laughed, and said she was not going to give up pleasure just yet. Of course these gay habits are more easily acquired than relinquished. Lady Hartledon had fainting-fits; she felt occasional pain and palpitation in the region of the heart; and she grew thin without apparent cause. She said nothing about it, lest it should be made a plea for living more quietly; never dreaming of danger. Had she known what caused her brother's death her fears might possibly have been awakened. Lord Hartledon suspected mischief might be arising, and cautiously questioned her; she denied that anything was the matter, and he felt reassured. His chief care was to keep her free from excitement; and in this hope he gave way to her more than he would otherwise have done. But alas! the moment was approaching when all his care would be in vain; when the built-up security of years was destroyed by a single act of wilful disobedience to him. The sword so long suspended over his head, was to fall on hers at last.
One spring afternoon, in London, he was in his wife's sitting-room; the little room where you have seen her before, looking upon the Park. The children were playing on the carpet--two pretty little things; the girl eighteen months old.
"Take care!" suddenly called out Lady Hartledon.
Some one was opening the door, and the little Maude was too near to it. She ran and picked up the child, and Hedges came in with a card for his master, saying at the same time that the gentleman was waiting. Lord Hartledon held it to the fire to read the name.
"Who is it?" asked Lady Hartledon, putting the little girl down by the window, and approaching her husband. But there came no answer.
Whether the silence aroused her suspicions--whether any look in her husband's face recalled that evening of terror long ago--or whether some malicious instinct whispered the truth, can never be known. Certain it was that the past rose up as in a mirror before Lady Hartledon's imagination, and she connected this visitor with the former. She bent over his shoulder to peep at the card; and her husband, startled out of his presence of mind, tore it in two and threw the pieces into the fire.
"Oh, very well!" she exclaimed, mortally offended. "But you cannot blind me: it is your mysterious visitor again."
"I don't know what you mean, Maude. It is only someone on business."
"Then I will go and ask him his business," she said, moving to the door with angry resolve.
Val was too quick for her. He placed his back against the door, and lifted his hands in agitation. It was a great fault of his, or perhaps a misfortune--for he could not help it--this want of self-control in moments of emergency.
"Maude, I forbid you to interfere in this; you must not. For Heaven's sake, sit down and remain quiet."
"I'll see your visitor, and know, at last, what this strange trouble is. I will, Lord Hartledon."
"You must not: do you hear me?" he reiterated with deep emotion, for she was trying to force her way out of the room. "Maude--listen--I do not mean to be harsh, but for your own good I conjure you to be still. I forbid you, by the obedience you promised me before God, to inquire into or stir in this matter. It is a private affair of my own, and not yours. Stay here until I return."
Maude drew back, as if in compliance; and Lord Hartledon, supposing he had prevailed, quitted the room and closed the door. He was quite mistaken. Never had her solemn vows of obedience been so utterly despised; never had the temptation to evil been so rife in her heart.
She unlatched the door and listened. Lord Hartledon went downstairs and into the library, just as he had done the evening before the christening. And Lady Hartledon was certain the same man awaited him there. Ringing the nursery-bell, she took off her slippers, unseen, and hid them under a chair.
"Remain here with the children," was her order to the nurse who appeared, as she shut the woman into the room.
Creeping down softly she opened the door of the room behind the library, and glided in. It was a small room, used exclusively by Lord Hartledon, where he kept a heterogeneous collection of things--papers, books, cigars, pipes, guns, scientific models, anything--and which no one but himself ever attempted to enter. The intervening door between that and the library was not quite closed; and Lady Hartledon, cautiously pushed it a little further open. Wilful, unpardonable disobedience! when he had so strongly forbidden her! It was the same tall stranger. He was speaking in low tones, and Lord Hartledon leaned against the wall with a blank expression of face.
She saw; and heard. But how she controlled her feelings, how she remained and made no sign, she never knew. But that the instinct of self-esteem was one of her strongest passions, the dread of detection in proportion to it, she never had remained. There she was, and she could not get away again. The subtle dexterity which had served her in coming might desert her in returning. Had their senses been on the alert they might have heard her poor heart beating.
The interview did not last long--about twenty minutes; and whilst Lord Hartledon was attending his visitor to the door she escaped upstairs again, motioned away the nurse, and resumed her shoes. But what did she look like? Not like Maude Hartledon. Her face was as that of one upon whom some awful doom has fallen; her breath was coming painfully; and she kneeled down on the carpet and clasped her children to her beating heart with an action of wild despair.
"Oh, my boy! my boy! Oh, my little Maude!"
Suddenly she heard her husband's step approaching, and pushing them from her, rose and stood at the window, apparently looking out on the darkening world.
Lord Hartledon came in, gaily and cheerily, his manner lighter than it had been for years.
"Well, Maude, I have not been long, you see. Why don't you have lights?"
She did not answer: only stared straight out. Her husband approached her. "What are you looking at, Maude?"
"Nothing," she answered: "my head aches. I think I shall lie down until dinner-time. Eddie, open the door, and call Nurse, as loud as you can call."
The little boy obeyed, and the nurse returned, and was ordered to take the children. Lady Hartledon was following them to go to her own room, when she fell into a chair and went off in a dead faint.
"It's that excitement," said Val. "I do wish Maude would be reasonable!"
The illness, however, appeared to be more serious than an ordinary fainting-fit; and Lord Hartledon, remembering the suspicion of heart-disease, sent for the family doctor Sir Alexander Pepps, an oracle in the fashionable world.
A different result showed itself--equally caused by excitement--and the countess-dowager arrived in a day or two in hot haste. Lady Hartledon lay in bed, and did not attempt to get up or to get better. She lay almost as one without life, taking no notice of any one, turning her head from her husband when he entered, refusing to answer her mother, keeping the children away from the room.
"Why doesn't she get up, Pepps?" demanded the dowager, wrathfully, pouncing upon the physician one day, when he was leaving the house.
Sir Alexander, who might have been supposed to have received his baronetcy for his skill, but that titles, like kissing, go by favour, stopped short, took off his hat, and presumed that Lady Hartledon felt more comfortable in bed.
"Rubbish! We might all lie in bed if we studied comfort. Is there any earthly reason why she should stay there, Pepps?"
"Not any, except weakness."
"Except idleness, you mean. Why don't you order her to get up?"
"I have advised Lady Hartledon to do so, and she does not attend to me," replied Sir Alexander.
"Oh," said the dowager. "She was always wilful. What about her heart?"
"Her heart!" echoed Sir Alexander, looking up now as if a little aroused.
"Dear me, yes; her heart; I didn't say her liver. Is it sound, Pepps?"
"It's sound, for anything I know to the contrary. I never suspected anything the matter with her heart."
"Then you are a fool!" retorted the complimentary dowager.
Sir Alexander's temperament was remarkably calm. Nothing could rouse him out of his tame civility, which had been taken more than once for obsequiousness. The countess-dowager had patronized him in earlier years, when he was not a great man, or had begun to dream of becoming one.
"Don't you recollect I once consulted you on the subject--what's your memory good for? She was a girl then, of fourteen or so; and you were worth fifty of what you are now, in point of discernment."
The oracle carried his thoughts back, and really could not recollect it. "Ahem! yes; and the result was--was--" "The result was that you said the heart had nothing the matter with it, and I said it had," broke in the impatient dowager.
"Ah, yes, madam, I remember. Pray, have you reason to suspect anything wrong now?"
"That's what you ought to have ascertained, Pepps, not me. What d'you mean by your neglect? What, I ask, does she lie in bed for? If her heart's right, there's nothing more the matter with her than there is with you."
"Perhaps your ladyship can persuade Lady Hartledon to exert herself," suggested the bland doctor. "I can't; and I confess I think that she only wants rousing."
With a flourish of his hat and his small gold-headed black cane the doctor bowed himself out from the formidable dowager. That lady turned her back upon him, and betook herself on the spur of the moment to Maude's room, determined to "have it out."
Curious sounds greeted her, as of some one in hysterical pain. On the bed, clasped to his mother in nervous agony, was the wondering child, little Lord Elster: words of distress, nay, of despair, breaking from her. It seemed, the little boy, who was rather self-willed and rebellious on occasion, had escaped from the nursery, and stolen to his mother's room. The dowager halted at the door, and looked out from her astonished eyes.
"Oh, Edward, if we were but dead! Oh, my darling, if it would only please Heaven to take us both! I couldn't send for you, child; I couldn't see you; the sight of you kills me. You don't know; my babies, you don't know!"
"What on earth does all this mean?" interrupted the dowager, stepping forward. And Lady Hartledon dropped the boy, and fell back on the bed, exhausted.
"What have you done to your mamma, sir?"
The child, conscious that he had not done anything, but frightened on the whole, repented of his disobedience, and escaped from the chamber more quickly than he had entered it. The dowager hated to be puzzled, and went wrathfully up to her daughter.
"Perhaps you'll tell me what's the matter, Maude."
Lady Hartledon grew calm. The countess-dowager pressed the question.
"There's nothing the matter," came the tardy and rather sullen reply.
"Why do you wish yourself dead, then?"
"Because I do."
"How dare you answer me so?"
"It's the truth. I should be spared suffering."
The countess-dowager paused. "Spared suffering!" she mentally repeated; and being a woman given to arriving at rapid conclusions without rhyme or reason, she bethought herself that Maude must have become acquainted with the suspicion regarding her heart.
"Who told you that?" shrieked the dowager. "It was that fool Hartledon."
"He has told me nothing," said Maude, in an access of resentment, all too visible. "Told me what?"
"Why, about your heart. That's what I suppose it is."
Maude raised herself upon her elbow, her wan face fixed on her mother's. "Is there anything the matter with my heart?" she calmly asked.
And then the old woman found that she had made a grievous mistake, and hastened to repair it.
"I thought there might be, and asked Pepps. I've just asked him now; and he's says there's nothing the matter with it."
"I wish there were!" said Maude.
"You wish there were! That's a pretty wish for a reasonable Christian," cried the tart dowager. "You want your husband to lecture you; saying such things."
"I wish he were hanged!" cried Maude, showing her glistening teeth.
"My gracious!" exclaimed the wondering old lady, after a pause. "What has he done?"
"Why did you urge me to marry him? Oh, mother, can't you see that I am dying--dying of horror--and shame--and grief? You had better have buried me instead."
For once in her selfish and vulgar mind the countess-dowager felt a feeling akin to fear. In her astonishment she thought Maude must be going mad.
"You'd do well to get some sleep, dear," she said in a subdued tone; "and to-morrow you must get up; Pepps says so; he thinks you want rousing."
"I have not slept since; it's not sleep, it's a dead stupor, in which I dream things as horrible as the reality," murmured Maude, unconscious perhaps that she spoke aloud. "I shall never sleep again."
"Not slept since when?"
"I don't know."
"Can't you say what you mean?" cried the puzzled dowager. "If you've any grievance, tell it out; if you've not, don't talk nonsense."
But Lady Hartledon, though thus sweetly allured to confession, held her tongue. Her half-scattered senses came back to her, and with them a reticence she would not break. The countess-dowager hardly knew whether she deserved pitying or shaking, and went off in a fit of exasperation, breaking in upon her son-in-law as he was busy looking over some accounts in the library.
"I want to know what is the matter with Maude."
He turned round in his chair, and met the dowager's flaxen wig and crimson face. Val did not know what was the matter with his wife any more than the questioner did. He supposed she would be all right when she grew stronger.
"She says it's _you_" said the gentle dowager, improving upon her information. "She has just been wishing you were hanged."
"Ah, you have been teasing her," he returned, with composure. "Maude says all sorts of things when she's put out."
"Perhaps she does," was the retort; "but she meant this, for she showed her teeth when she said it. You can't blind me; and I have seen ever since I came here that there was something wrong between you and Maude."
For that matter, Val had seen it too. Since the night of his wife's fainting-fit she had scarcely spoken a word to him; had appeared as if she could not tolerate his presence for an instant in her room. Lord Hartledon felt persuaded that it arose from resentment at his having refused to allow her to see the stranger. He rose from his seat.
"There's nothing wrong between me and Maude, Lady Kirton. If there were, you must pardon me for saying that I could not suffer any interference in it. But there is not."
"Something's wrong somewhere. I found her just now sobbing and moaning over Eddie, wishing they were both dead, and all the rest of it. If she goes on like this for nothing, she's losing her senses, that's all."
"She'll be all right when she's stronger. Pray don't worry her. She'll be well soon, I daresay. And now I shall be glad if you'll leave me, for I am very busy."
She did not leave him any the quicker for the request, but stayed to worry him, as it was in her nature to worry every one. Getting rid of her at last, he turned the key of the door, and wished her a hundred miles away.
The wish bore fruit. In a few days some news she heard regarding her eldest son--who was a widower now--took the dowager to Ireland, and Lord Hartledon wished he could as easily turn the key of the house upon her as he had turned that of the room.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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31
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THE SWORD SLIPPED.
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Summer dust was in the London streets, summer weather in the air, and the carriage of that fashionable practitioner, Sir Alexander Pepps, still waited before Lord Hartledon's house. It had waited there more frequently in these later weeks than of old.
The great world--_her_ world--wondered what was the matter with her: Sir Alexander wondered also. Perhaps had he been a less courtly man he might have rapped out "obstinacy," if questioned upon the point; as it was, he murmured of "weakness." Weak she undoubtedly was; and she did not seem to try in the least to grow strong again. She did not go into society now; she dressed as usual, and sat in her drawing-room, and received visitors if the whim took her; but she was usually denied to all; and said she was not well enough to go out. From her husband she remained bitterly estranged. If he attempted to be friendly with her, to ask what was ailing her, she either sharply refused to say, or maintained a persistent silence. Lord Hartledon could not account for her behaviour, and was growing tired of it.
Poor Maude! That some grievous blow had fallen upon her was all too evident. Resentment, anguish, bitter despair alternated within her breast, and she seemed really not to care whether she lived or died. Was it for _this_ that she had schemed, and so successfully, to wrest Lord Hartledon from his promised bride Anne Ashton? She would lie back in her chair and ask it. No labour of hers could by any possibility have brought forth a result by which Miss Ashton could be so well avenged. Heaven is true to itself, and Dr. Ashton had left vengeance with it. Lady Hartledon looked back on her fleeting triumph; a triumph at the time certainly, but a short one. It had not fulfilled its golden promises: that sort of triumph perhaps never does. It had been followed by ennui, repentance, dissatisfaction with her husband, and it had resulted in a very moonlight sort of happiness, which had at length centred only in the children. The children! Maude gave a cry of anguish as she thought of them. No; take it altogether, the play from the first had not been worth the candle. And now? She clasped her thin hands in a frenzy of impotent rage--with Anne Ashton had lain the real triumph, with herself the sacrifice. Too well Maude understood a remark her husband once made in answer to a reproach of hers in the first year of their marriage--that he was thankful not to have wedded Anne.
One morning Sir Alexander Pepps, on his way from the drawing-room to his chariot--a very old-fashioned chariot that all the world knew well--paused midway in the hall, with his cane to his nose, and condescended to address the man with the powdered wig who was escorting him.
"Is his lordship at home?"
"Yes, sir."
"I wish to see him."
So the wig changed its course, and Sir Alexander was bowed into the presence. His lordship rose with what the French would call _empressement_, to receive the great man.
"Thank you, I have not time to sit," said he, declining the offered chair and standing, cane in hand. "I have three consultations to-day, and some urgent cases. I grieve to have a painful duty to fulfil; but I must inform you that Lady Hartledon's health gives me uneasiness."
Lord Hartledon did not immediately reply; but it was not from want of genuine concern.
"What is really the matter with her?"
"Debility; nothing else," replied Sir Alexander. "But these cases of extreme debility cause so much perplexity. Where there is no particular disease to treat, and the patient does not rally, why--" He understood the doctor's pause to mean something ominous. "What can be done?" he asked. "I have remarked, with pain, that she does not gain strength. Change of air? The seaside--" "She says she won't go," interrupted the physician. "In fact, her ladyship objects to everything I can suggest or propose."
"It's very strange," said Lord Hartledon.
"At times it has occurred to me that she has something on her mind," continued Sir Alexander. "Upon my delicately hinting this opinion to Lady Hartledon, she denied it with a vehemence which caused me to suspect that I was correct. Does your lordship know of anything likely to--to torment her?"
"Not anything," replied Lord Hartledon, confidently. "I think I can assure you that there is nothing of the sort."
And he spoke according to his belief; for he knew of nothing. He would have supposed it simply impossible that Lady Hartledon had been made privy to the dreadful secret which had weighed on him; and he never gave that a thought.
Sir Alexander nodded, reassured on the point.
"I should wish for a consultation, if your lordship has no objection."
"Then pray call it without delay. Have anything, do anything, that may conduce to Lady Hartledon's recovery. You do not suspect heart-disease?"
"The symptoms are not those of any heart-disease known to me. Lady Kirton spoke to me of this; but I see nothing to apprehend at present on that score. If there's any latent affection, it has not yet shown itself. Then we'll arrange the consultation for to-morrow."
Sir Alexander Pepps was bowed out; and the consultation took place; which left the matter just where it was before. The wise doctors thought there was nothing radically wrong; but strongly recommended change of air. Sir Alexander confidently mentioned Torbay; he had great faith in Torbay; perhaps his lordship could induce Lady Hartledon to try it? She had flatly told the consultation that she would _not_ try it.
Lady Hartledon was seated in the drawing-room when he went in, willing to do what he could; any urging of his had not gone far with her of late. A white silk shawl covered her dress of green check silk; she wore a shawl constantly now, having a perpetual tendency to shiver; her handsome features were white and attenuated, but her eyes were brilliant still, and her dark hair was dressed in elaborate braids.
"So you have had the doctors here, Maude," he remarked, cheerfully.
She nodded a reply, and began to fidget with the body of her gown. It seemed that she had to do something or other always to her attire whenever he spoke to her--which partially took away her attention.
"Sir Alexander tells me they have been recommending you Torbay."
"I am not going to Torbay."
"Oh yes, you are, Maude," he soothingly said. "It will be a change for us all. The children will benefit by it as much as you, and so shall I." "I tell you I shall not go to Torbay."
"Would you prefer any other place?"
"I will not go anywhere; I have told them so."
"Then I declare that I'll carry you off by force!" he cried, rather sharply. "Why do you vex me like this? You know you must go?"
She made no reply. He drew a chair close to her and sat down.
"Maude," he said, speaking all the more gently for his recent outbreak, "you must be aware that you do not recover as quickly as we could wish--" "I do not recover at all," she interrupted. "I don't want to recover."
"My dear, how can you talk so? There is nothing the matter with you but weakness, and that will soon be overcome if you exert yourself."
"No, it won't. I shall not leave home."
"Somewhere you must go, for the workmen are coming into the house; and for the next two months it will not be habitable."
"Who is bringing them in?" she asked, with flashing eyes.
"You know it was decided long ago that the house should be done up this summer. It wants it badly enough. Torbay--" "I will not go to Torbay, Lord Hartledon. If I am to be turned out of this house, I'll go to the other."
"What other?"
"Hartledon."
"Not to Hartledon," said he, quickly, for his dislike to the place had grown with time, and the word grated on his ear.
"Then I remain where I am."
"Maude," he resumed in quiet tones, "I will not urge you to try sea-air for my sake, because you do what you can to show me I am of little moment to you; but I will say try it for the sake of the children. Surely, they are dear to you!"
A subdued sound of pain broke from her lips, as if she could not bear to hear them named.
"It's of no use prolonging this discussion," she said. "An invalid's fancies may generally be trusted, and mine point to Hartledon--if I am to be disturbed at all. I should not so much mind going there."
A pause ensued. Lord Hartledon had taken her hand, and was mechanically turning round her wedding-ring, his thoughts far away; it hung sufficiently loosely now on the wasted finger. She lay back in her chair, looking on with apathy, too indifferent to withdraw her hand.
"Why did you put it on?" she asked, abruptly.
"Why indeed?" returned his lordship, deep in his abstraction. "What did you say, Maude?" he added, awaking in a flurry. "Put what on?"
"My wedding-ring."
"My dear! But about Hartledon--if you fancy that, and nowhere else, I suppose we must go there."
"You also?"
"Of course."
"Ah! when your wife's chord of life is loosening what model husbands you men become!" she uttered. "You have never gone to Hartledon with me; you have suffered me to be there alone, through a ridiculous reminiscence; but now that you are about to lose me you will go!"
"Why do you encourage these gloomy thoughts about yourself, Maude?" he asked, passing over the Hartledon question. "One would think you wished to die."
"I do not know," she replied in tones of deliberation. "Of course, no one, at my age, can be tired of the world, and for some things I wish to live; but for others, I shall be glad to die."
"Maude! Maude! It is wrong to say this. You are not likely to die."
"I can't tell. All I say is, I shall be glad for some things, if I do."
"What is all this?" he exclaimed, after a bewildered pause. "Is there anything on your mind, Maude? Are you grieving after that little infant?"
"No," she answered, "not for him. I grieve for the two who remain."
Lord Hartledon looked at her. A dread, which he strove to throw from him, struggling to his conscience.
"I think you are deceived in my state of health. And if I object to going to the seaside, it is chiefly because I would not die in a strange place. If I am to die, I should like to die at Hartledon."
His hair seemed to rise up in horror at the words. "Maude! have you any disease you are concealing from me?"
"Not any. But the belief has been upon me for some time that I should not get over this. You must have seen how I appear to be sinking."
"And with no disease upon you! I don't understand it."
"No particular physical disease."
"You are weak, dispirited--I cannot pursue these questions," he broke off. "Tell me in a word: is there any cause for this?"
"Yes."
Percival gathered up his breath. "What is it?"
"What is it!" her eyes ablaze with sudden light. "What has weighed _you_ down, not to the grave, for men are strong, but to terror, and shame, and sin? What secret is it, Lord Hartledon?"
His lips were whitening. "But it--even allowing that I have a secret--need not weigh you down."
"Not weigh me down! --to terror deeper than yours; to shame more abject? Suppose I know the secret?"
"You cannot know it," he gasped. "It would have killed you."
"And what _has_ it done? Look at me."
"Oh, Maude!" he wailed, "what is it that you do, or do not know? How did you learn anything about it?"
"I learnt it through my own folly. I am sorry for it now. My knowing it can make the fact neither better nor worse; and perhaps I might have been spared the knowledge to the end."
"But what is it that you know?" he asked, rather wishing at the moment he was dead himself. " _All. _" "It is impossible."
"It is true."
And he felt that it was true; here was the solution to the conduct which had puzzled him, puzzled the doctors, puzzled the household and the countess-dowager.
"And how--and how?" he gasped.
"When that stranger was here last, I heard what he said to you," she replied, avowing the fact without shame in the moment's terrible anguish. "I made the third at the interview."
He looked at her in utter disbelief.
"You refused to let me go down. I followed you, and stood at the little door of the library. It was open, and I--heard--every word."
The last words were spoken with an hysterical sobbing. "Oh, Maude!" broke from the lips of Lord Hartledon.
"You will reproach me for disobedience, of course; for meanness, perhaps; but I _knew_ there was some awful secret, and you would not tell me. I earned my punishment, if that will be any satisfaction to you; I have never since enjoyed an instant's peace, night or day."
He hid his face in his pain. This was the moment he had dreaded for years; anything, so that it might be kept from her, he had prayed in his never-ceasing fear.
"Forgive, forgive me! Oh, Maude, forgive me!"
She did not respond; she did not attempt to soothe him; if ever looks expressed reproach and aversion, hers did then.
"Have compassion upon me, Maude! I was more sinned against than sinning."
"What compassion had you for me? How dared you marry me? you, bound with crime?"
"The worst is over, Maude; the worst is over."
"It can never be over: you are guilty of wilful sophistry. The crime remains; and--Lord Hartledon--its fruits remain."
He interrupted her excited words by voice and gesture; he took her hands in his. She snatched them from him, and burst into a fit of hysterical crying, which ended in a faintness almost as of death. He did not dare to call assistance; an unguarded word might have slipped out unawares.
Shut them in; shut them in! they had need to be alone in a scene such as that.
Lord and Lady Hartledon went down to Calne, as she wished. But not immediately; some two or three weeks elapsed, and during that time Mr. Carr was a good deal with both of them. Their sole friend: the only man cognizant of the trouble they had yet to battle with; who alone might whisper a word of something like consolation.
Lady Hartledon seemed to improve. Whether it was the country, or the sort of patched-up peace that reigned between her and her husband, she grew stronger and better, and began to go out again and enjoy life as usual. But in saying life, it must not be thought that gaiety is implied; none could shun that as Lady Hartledon now seemed to shun it. And he, for the first time since his marriage, began to take some interest in his native place, and in his own home. The old sensitive feeling in regard to meeting the Ashtons lingered still; was almost as strong as ever; and he had the good sense to see that this must be overcome, if possible, if he made Hartledon his home for the future, as his wife now talked of doing.
As a preliminary step to it, he appeared at church; one, two, three Sundays. On the second Sunday his wife went with him. Anne was in her pew, with her younger brother, but not Mrs. Ashton: she, as Lord Hartledon knew by report, was too ill now to go out. Each day Dr. Ashton did the whole duty; his curate, Mr. Graves, was taking a holiday. Lord Hartledon heard another report, that the curate had been wanting to press his attentions on Miss Ashton. The truth was, as none had known better than Val Elster, Mr. Graves had wanted to press them years and years ago. He had at length made her an offer, and she had angrily refused him. A foolish girl! said indignant Mrs. Graves, reproachfully. Her son was a model son, and would make a model husband; and he would be a wealthy man, as Anne knew, for he must sooner or later come into the entailed property of his uncle. It was not at all pleasant to Lord Hartledon to stand there in his pew, with recollection upon him, and the gaze of the Ashtons studiously turned from him, and Jabez Gum looking out at him from the corners of his eyes as he made his sonorous responses. A wish for reconciliation took strong possession of Lord Hartledon, and he wondered whether he could not bring himself to sue for it. He wanted besides to stay for the after-service, which he had not done since he was a young man--never since his marriage. Maude had stayed occasionally, as was the fashion; but he never. I beg you not to quarrel with me for the word; some of the partakers in that after-service remain from no higher motive. Certainly poor Maude had not.
On the third Sunday, Lord Hartledon went to church in the evening--alone; and when service was over he waited until the church had emptied itself, and then made his way into the vestry. Jabez was passing out of it, and the Rector was coming out behind him. Lord Hartledon stopped the latter, and craved a minute's conversation. Dr. Ashton bowed rather stiffly, put his hat down, and Jabez shut them in.
"Is there any service you require of me?" inquired the Rector, coldly.
It was the impulsive Val Elster of old days who answered; his hand held out pleadingly, his ingenuous soul shining forth from his blue eyes.
"Yes, there is, Doctor Ashton; I have come to pray for it--your forgiveness."
"My Christian forgiveness you have had already," returned the clergyman, after a pause.
"But I want something else. I want your pardon as a man; I want you to look at me and speak to me as you used to do. I want to hear you call me 'Val' again; to take my hand in yours, and not coldly; in short, I want you to help me to forgive myself."
In that moment--and Dr. Ashton, minister of the gospel though he was, could not have explained it--all the old love for Val Elster rose bubbling in his heart. A stubborn heart withal, as all hearts are since Adam sinned; he did not respond to the offered hand, nor did his features relax their sternness in spite of the pleading look.
"You must be aware, Lord Hartledon, that your conduct does not merit pardon. As to friendship--which is what you ask for--it would be incompatible with the distance you and I must observe towards each other."
"Why need we observe it--if you accord me your true forgiveness?"
The question was one not easy to respond to candidly. The doctor could not say, Your intercourse with us might still be dangerous to the peace of one heart; and in his inner conviction he believed that it might be. He only looked at Val; the yearning face, the tearful eyes; and in that moment it occurred to the doctor that something more than the ordinary wear and tear of life had worn the once smooth brow, brought streaks of silver to the still luxuriant hair.
"Do you know that you nearly killed her?" he asked, his voice softening.
"I have known that it might be so. Had _any_ atonement lain in my power; any means by which her grief might have been soothed; I would have gone to the ends of the earth to accomplish it. I would even have died if it could have done good. But, of all the world, I alone might attempt nothing. For myself I have spent the years in misery; not on that score," he hastened to add in his truth, and a thought crossed Dr. Ashton that he must allude to unhappiness with his wife--"on another. If it will be any consolation to know it--if you might accept it as even the faintest shadow of atonement--I can truly say that few have gone through the care that I have, and lived. Anne has been amply avenged."
The Rector laid his hand on the slender fingers, hot with fever, whiter than they ought to be, betraying life's inward care. He forgave him from that moment; and forgiveness with Dr. Ashton meant the full meaning of the word.
"You were always your own enemy, Val."
"Ay. Heaven alone knows the extent of my folly; and of my punishment."
From that hour Lord Hartledon and the Rectory were not total strangers to each other. He called there once in a way, rarely seeing any one but the doctor; now and then Mrs. Ashton; by chance, Anne. Times and again was it on Val's lips to confide to Dr. Ashton the nature of the sin upon his conscience; but his innate sensitiveness, the shame it would reflect upon him, stepped in and sealed the secret.
Meanwhile, perhaps he and his wife had never lived on terms of truer cordiality. _There were no secrets between them_: and let me tell you that is one of the keys to happiness in married life. Whatever the past had been, Lady Hartledon appeared to condone it; at least she no longer openly resented it to her husband. It is just possible that a shadow of the future, a prevision of the severing of the tie, very near now, might have been unconsciously upon her, guiding her spirit to meekness, if not yet quite to peace. Lord Hartledon thought she was growing strong; and, save that she would rather often go into a passion of hysterical tears as she clasped her children to her, particularly the boy, her days passed calmly enough. She indulged the children beyond all reason, and it was of no use for their father to interfere. Once when he stepped in to prevent it, she flew out almost like a tigress, asking what business it was of his, that he should dare to come between her and them. The lesson was an effectual one; and he never interfered again. But the indulgence was telling on the boy's naturally haughty disposition; and not for good.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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32
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IN THE PARK.
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As the days and weeks went on, and Lord and Lady Hartledon continued at Calne, there was one circumstance that began to impress itself on the mind of the former in a careless sort of way--that he was constantly meeting Pike. Go out when he would, he was sure to see Pike in some out-of-the-way spot; at a sudden turning, or peering forth from under a group of trees, or watching him from a roadside bank. One special day impressed itself on Lord Hartledon's memory. He was walking slowly along the road with Dr. Ashton, and found Pike keeping pace with them softly on the other side the hedge, listening no doubt to what he could hear. On one of these occasions Val stopped and confronted him.
"What is it you want, Mr. Pike?"
Perhaps Mr. Pike was about the last man in the world to be, as the saying runs, "taken aback," and he stood his ground, and boldly answered "Nothing."
"It seems as though you did," said Val. "Go where I will, you are sure to spring up before me, or to be peeping from some ambush as I walk along. It will not do: do you understand?"
"I was just thinking the same thing yesterday--that your lordship was always meeting _me_," said Pike. "No offence on either side, I dare say."
Val walked on, throwing the man a significant look of warning, but vouchsafing no other reply. After that Pike was a little more cautious, and kept aloof for a time; but Val knew that he was still watched on occasion.
One fine October day, when the grain had been gathered in and the fields were bare with stubble, Hartledon, alone in one of the front rooms, heard a contest going on outside. Throwing up the window, he saw his young son attempting to mount the groom's pony: the latter objecting. At the door stood a low basket carriage, harnessed with the fellow pony. They belonged to Lady Hartledon; sometimes she drove only one; and the groom, a young lad of fourteen, light and slim, rode the other: sometimes both ponies were in the carriage; and on those occasions the boy sat by her side, and drove.
"What's the matter, Edward?" called out Lord Hartledon to his son.
"Young lordship wants to ride the pony, my lord," said the groom. "My lady ordered me to ride it."
At this juncture Lady Hartledon appeared on the scene, ready for her drive. She had intended to take her little son with her--as she generally did--but the child boisterously demanded that he should ride the pony for once, and she weakly yielded. Lord Hartledon's private opinion, looking on, was that she was literally incapable of denying him any earthly thing he chose to demand. He went out.
"He had better go with you in the carriage, Maude."
"Not at all. He sits very well now, and the pony's perfectly quiet."
"But he is too young to ride by the side of any vehicle. It is not safe. Let him sit with you as usual."
"Nonsense! Edward, you shall ride the pony. Help him up, Ralph."
"No, Maude. He--" "Be quiet!" said Lady Hartledon, bending towards her husband and speaking in low tones. "It is not for you to interfere. Would you deny him everything?"
A strangely bitter expression sat on Val's lips. Not of anger; not even mortification, but sad, cruel pain. He said no more.
And the cavalcade started. Lady Hartledon driving, the boy-groom sitting beside her, and Eddie's short legs striding the pony. They were keeping to the Park, she called to her husband, and she should drive slowly.
There was no real danger, as Val believed; only he did not like the child's wilful temper given way to. With a deep sigh he turned indoors for his hat, and went strolling down the avenue. Mrs. Capper dropped a curtsey as he passed the lodge.
"Have you heard from your son yet?" he asked.
"Yes, my lord, many thanks to you. The school suits him bravely."
Turning out of the gates, he saw Floyd, the miller, walking slowly along. The man had been confined to his bed for weeks in the summer, with an attack of acute rheumatism, and to the house afterwards. It was the first time they had met since that morning long ago, when the miller brought up the purse. Lord Hartledon did not know him at first, he was so altered; pale and reduced.
"Is it really you, Floyd?"
"What's left of me, my lord."
"And that's not much; but I am glad to see you so far well," said Hartledon, in his usual kindly tone. "I have heard reports of you from Mr. Hillary."
"Your lordship's altered too."
"Am I?"
"Well, it seems so to me. But it's some few years now since I saw you. Nothing has ever come to light about that pocket-book, my lord."
"I conclude not, or I should have heard of it."
"And your lordship never came down to see the place!"
"No. I left Hartledon the same day, I think, or the next. After all, Floyd, I don't see that it is of any use looking into these painful things: it cannot bring the dead to life again."
"That's, true," said the miller.
He was walking into Calne. Lord Hartledon kept by his side, talking to him. He promised to be as popular a man as his father had been; and that was saying a great deal. When they came opposite the Rectory, Lord Hartledon wished him good day and more strength, in his genial manner, and turned in at the Rectory gates.
About once a week he was in the habit of calling upon Mrs. Ashton. Peace was between them; and these visits to her sick-chamber were strangely welcome to her heart. She had loved Val Elster all her life, and she loved him still, in spite of the past. For Val was curiously subdued; and his present mood, sad, quiet, thoughtful, was more endearing than his gayer one had been. Mrs. Ashton did not fail to read that he was a disappointed man, one with some constant care upon him.
Anne was in the hall when he entered, talking to a poor applicant who was waiting to see the Rector. Lord Hartledon lifted his hat to her, but did not offer to shake hands. He had never presumed to touch her hand since the reconciliation; in fact, he scarcely ever saw her.
"How is Mrs. Ashton to-day?"
"A little better, I think. She will be glad to see you."
He followed the servant upstairs, and Anne turned to the woman again. Mrs. Ashton was in an easy-chair near the window; he drew one close to her.
"You are looking wonderful to-day, do you know?" he began in tones almost as gay as those of the light-hearted Val Elster. "What is it? That very becoming cap?"
"The cap, of course. Don't you see its pink ribbons? Your favourite colour used to be pink, Val. Do you remember?"
"I remember everything. But indeed and in truth you look better, dear Mrs. Ashton."
"Yes, better to-day," she said, with a sigh. "I shall fluctuate to the end, I suppose; one day better, the next worse. Val, I think sometimes it is not far off now."
Very far off he knew it could not be. But he spoke of hope still: it was in his nature to do so. In the depths of his heart, so hidden from the world, there seemed to be hope for the whole living creation, himself excepted.
"How is your wife to-day?"
"Quite well. She and Edward are out with the ponies and carriage."
"She never comes to see me."
"She does not go to see anyone. Though well, she's not very strong yet."
"But she's young, and will grow strong. I shall only grow weaker. I am brave to-day; but you should have seen me last night. So prostrate! I almost doubted whether I should rise from my bed again. I do not think you will have to come here many more times."
"Oh, Mrs. Ashton!"
"A little sooner or a little later, what does it matter, I try to ask myself; but parting is parting, and my heart aches sometimes. One of my aches will be leaving you."
"A very minor one then," he said, with deprecation; but tears shone in his dark blue eyes.
"Not a minor one. I have loved you as a son. I never loved you more, Percival, than when that letter of yours came to me at Cannes."
It was the first time she had alluded to it: the letter written the evening of his marriage. Val's face turned red, for his perfidy rose up before him in its full extent of shame.
"I don't care to speak of that," he whispered. "If you only knew what my humiliation has been!"
"Not of that, no; I don't know why I mentioned it. But I want you to speak of something else, Val. Over and over again has it been on my lips to ask it. What secret trouble is weighing you down?"
A far greater change, than the one called up by recollection and its shame, came over his face now. He did not speak; and Mrs. Ashton continued. She held his hands as he bent towards her.
"I have seen it all along. At first--I don't mind confessing it--I took it for granted that you were on bad terms with yourself on account of the past. I feared there was something wrong between you and your wife, and that you were regretting Anne. But I soon put that idea from me, to replace it with a graver one."
"What graver one?" he asked.
"Nay, I know not. I want you to tell me. Will you do so?"
He shook his head with an unmistakable gesture, unconsciously pressing her hands to pain.
"Why not?"
"You have just said I am dear to you," he whispered; "I believe I am so."
"As dear, almost, as my own children."
"Then do not even wish to know it. It is an awful secret; and I must bear it without sympathy of any sort, alone and in silence. It has been upon me for some years now, taking the sweetness out of my daily bread; and it will, I suppose, go with me to my grave. Not scarcely to lift it off my shoulders, would I impart it to _you_."
She sighed deeply; and thought it must be connected with some of his youthful follies. But she loved him still; she had faith in him; she believed that he went wrong from misfortune more than from fault.
"Courage, Val," she whispered. "There is a better world than this, where sorrow and sighing cannot enter. Patience--and hope--and trust in God! --always bearing onwards. In time we shall attain to it."
Lord Hartledon gently drew his hands away, and turned to the window for a moment's respite. His eyes were greeted with the sight of one of his own servants, approaching the Rectory at full speed, some half-dozen idlers behind him.
With a prevision that something was wrong, he said a word of adieu to Mrs. Ashton, went down, and met the man outside. Dr. Ashton, who had seen the approach, also hurried out.
There had been some accident in the Park, the man said. The pony had swerved and thrown little Lord Elster: thrown him right under the other pony's feet, as it seemed. The servant made rather a bungle over his news, but this was its substance.
"And the result? Is he much hurt?" asked Lord Hartledon, constraining his voice to calmness.
"Well, no; not hurt at all, my lord. He was up again soon, saying he'd lash the pony for throwing him. He don't seem hurt a bit."
"Then why need you have alarmed us so?" interrupted Dr. Ashton, reprovingly.
"Well, sir, it's her ladyship seems hurt--or something," cried the man.
Lord Hartledon looked at him.
"What have you come to tell, Richard? Speak out."
Apparently Richard could not speak out. His lady had been frightened and fainted, and did not come to again. And Lord Hartledon waited to hear no more.
The people, standing about in the park here and there--for even this slight accident had gathered its idlers together--seemed to look at Lord Hartledon curiously as he passed them. Close to the house he met Ralph the groom. The boy was crying. " 'Twasn't no fault of anybody's, my lord; and there ain't any damage to the ponies," he began, hastening to excuse himself. "The little lord only slid off, and they stood as quiet as quiet. There wasn't no cause for my lady's fear."
"Is she fainting still?"
"They say she's--dead."
Lord Hartledon pressed onwards, and met Mr. Hillary at the hall-door. The surgeon took his arm and drew him into an empty room.
"Hillary! is it true?"
"I'm afraid it is."
Lord Hartledon felt his sight failing. For a moment he was a man groping in the dark. Steadying himself against the wall, he learned the details.
The child's pony had swerved. Ralph could not tell at what, and Lady Hartledon did not survive to tell. She was looking at him at the time, and saw him flung under the feet of the other pony, and she rose up in the carriage with a scream, and then fell back into the seat again. Ralph jumped out and picked up the child, who was not hurt at all; but when he hastened to tell her this, he saw that she seemed to have no life in her. One of the servants, Richard, happened to be going through the Park, within sight; others soon came up; and whilst Lady Hartledon was being driven home Richard ran for Mr. Hillary, and then sought his master, whom he found at the Rectory. The surgeon had found her dead.
"It must have been instantaneous," he observed in low tones as he concluded these particulars. "One great consolation is, that she was spared all suffering."
"And its cause?" breathed Lord Hartledon.
"The heart. I don't entertain the least doubt about it."
"You said she had no heart disease. Others said it."
"I said, if she had it, it was not developed. Sudden death from it is not at all uncommon where disease has never been suspected."
And this was all the conclusion come to in the case of Lady Hartledon. Examination proved the surgeon's surmise to be correct; and in answer to a certain question put by Lord Hartledon, he said the death was entirely irrespective of any trouble, or care, or annoyance she might have had in the past; irrespective even of any shock, except the shock at the moment of death, caused by seeing the child thrown. That, and that alone, had been the fatal cause. Lord Hartledon listened to this, and went away to his lonely chamber and fell on his knees in devout thankfulness to Heaven that he was so far innocent.
"If she had not given way to the child!" he bitterly aspirated in the first moments of sorrow.
That the countess-dowager should come down post-haste and invade Hartledon, was of course only natural; and Lord Hartledon strove not to rebel against it. But she made herself so intensely and disagreeably officious that his patience was sorely tried. Her first act was to insist on a stately funeral. He had given orders for one plain and quiet in every way; but she would have her wish carried out, and raved about the house, abusing him for his meanness and want of respect to his dead wife. For peace' sake, he was fain to give her her way; and the funeral was made as costly as she pleased. Thomas Carr came down to it; and the countess-dowager was barely civil to him.
Her next care was to assume the entire management of the two children, putting Lord Hartledon's authority over them at virtual, if not actual, defiance. The death of her daughter was in truth a severe blow to the dowager; not from love, for she really possessed no natural affection at all, but from fear that she should lose her footing in the house which was so desirable a refuge. As a preliminary step against this, she began to endeavour to make it more firm and secure. Altogether she was rendering Hartledon unbearable; and Val would often escape from it, his boy in his hand, and take refuge with Mrs. Ashton.
That Lord Hartledon's love for his children was intense there could be no question about; but it was nevertheless of a peculiarly reticent nature. He had rarely, if ever, been seen to caress them. The boy told tales of how papa would kiss him, even weep over him, in solitude; but he would not give him so much as an endearing name in the presence of others. Poor Maude had called him all the pet names in a fond mother's vocabulary; Lord Hartledon always called him Edward, and nothing more.
A few evenings after the funeral had taken place, Mirrable, who had been into Calne, was hurrying back in the twilight. As she passed Jabez Gum's gate, the clerk's wife was standing at it, talking to Mrs. Jones. The two were laughing: Mrs. Gum seemed in a less depressed state than usual, and the other less snappish.
"Is it you!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones, as Mirrable stopped. "I was just saying I'd not set eyes on you in your new mourning."
"And laughing over it," returned Mirrable.
"No!" was Mrs. Jones's retort. "I'd been telling of a trick I served Jones, and Nance was laughing at that. Silk and crêpe! It's fine to be you, Mrs. Mirrable!"
"How's Jabez, Nancy?" asked Mirrable, passing over Mrs. Jones's criticism.
"He's gone to Garchester," replied Mrs. Gum, who was given to indirect answers. "I thought I was never going to see you again, Mary."
"You could not expect to see me whilst the house was in its recent state," answered Mirrable. "We have been in a bustle, as you may suppose."
"You've not had many staying there."
"Only Mr. Carr; and he left to-day. We've got the old countess-dowager still."
"And likely to have her, if all's true that's said," put in Mrs. Jones.
Mirrable tacitly admitted the probability. Her private opinion was that nothing short of a miracle could ever remove the Dowager Kirton from the house again. Had any one told Mirrable, as she stood there, that her ladyship would be leaving of her own accord that night, she had simply said it was impossible.
"Mary," cried the weak voice of poor timid Mrs. Gum, "how was it none of the brothers came to the funeral? Jabez was wondering. She had a lot, I've heard."
"It was not convenient to them, I suppose," replied Mirrable. "The one in the Isle of Wight had gone cruising in somebody's yacht, or he'd have come with the dowager; and Lord Kirton telegraphed from Ireland that he was prevented coming. I know nothing about the rest."
"It was an awful death!" shivered Mrs. Gum. "And without cause too; for the child was not hurt after all. Isn't my lord dreadfully cut up, Mary?"
"I think so; he's very quiet and subdued. But he has seemed full of sorrow for a long while, as if he had some dreadful care upon him. I don't think he and his wife were very happy together," added Mirrable. "My lord's likely to make Hartledon his chief residence now, I fancy, for--My gracious! what's that?"
A crash as if a whole battery of crockery had come down inside the house. A moment of staring consternation ensued, and nervous Mrs. Gum looked ready to faint. The two women disappeared indoors, and Mirrable turned homewards at a brisk pace. But she was not to go on without an interruption. Pike's head suddenly appeared above the hurdles, and he began inquiring after her health. "Toothache gone?" asked he.
"Yes," she said, answering straightforwardly in her surprise. "How did you know I had toothache?" It was not the first time by several he had thus accosted her; and to give her her due, she was always civil to him. Perhaps she feared to be otherwise.
"I heard of it. And so my Lord Hartledon's like a man with some dreadful care upon him!" he went on. "What is the care?"
"You have been eavesdropping!" she angrily exclaimed.
"Not a bit of it. I was seated under the hedge with my pipe, and you three women began talking. I didn't tell you to. Well, what's his lordship's care?"
"Just mind your own business, and his lordship will mind his," she retorted. "You'll get interfered with in a way you won't like, Pike, one of these days, unless you mend your manners."
"A great care on him," nodded Pike to himself, looking after her, as she walked off in her anger. "A great care! _I_ know. One of these fine days, my lord, I may be asking you questions about it on my own score. I might long before this, but for--" The sentence broke off abruptly, and ended with a growl at things in general. Mr. Pike was evidently not in a genial mood.
Mirrable reached home to find the countess-dowager in a state more easily imagined than described. Some sprite, favourable to the peace of Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton and his doings. That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager, dancing her war-dance and uttering reproaches, was repacking her boxes in haste. Those boxes, which she had fondly hoped would never again leave Hartledon, unless it might be for sojourns in Park Lane! She was going back to Ireland to mount guard, and prevent any such escapade. Only in September had she quitted him--and then had been as nearly ejected as a son could eject his mother with any decency--and had taken the Isle of Wight on her way to Hartledon. The son who lived in the Isle of Wight had espoused a widow twice his own age, with eleven hundred a year, and a house and carriage; so that he had a home: which the countess-dowager sometimes remembered.
Lord Hartledon was liberal. He gave her a handsome sum for her journey, and a cheque besides; most devoutly praying that she might keep guard over Kirton for ever. He escorted her to the station himself in a closed carriage, an omnibus having gone before them with a mountain of boxes, at which all Calne came out to stare.
And the same week, confiding his children to the joint care of Mirrable and their nurse--an efficient, kind, and judicious woman--Lord Hartledon departed from home and England for a sojourn on the Continent, long or short, as inclination might lead him, feeling as a bird released from its cage.
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{
"id": "16798"
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33
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COMING HOME.
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Some eighteen months after the event recorded in the last chapter, a travelling carriage dashed up to a house in Park Lane one wet evening in spring. It contained Lord Hartledon and his second wife. They were expected, and the servants were assembled in the hall.
Lord Hartledon led her into their midst, proudly, affectionately; as he had never in his life led any other. Ah, you need not ask who she was; he had contrived to win her, to win over Dr. Ashton; and his heart had at length found rest. Her fair countenance, her thoughtful eyes and sweet smile were turned on the servants, thanking them for their greeting.
"All well, Hedges?" asked Lord Hartledon.
"Quite well, my lord. But we are not alone."
"No!" said Val, stopping in his progress. "Who's here?"
"The Countess-Dowager of Kirton, my lord," replied Hedges, glancing at Lady Hartledon in momentary hesitation.
"Oh, indeed!" said Val, as if not enjoying the information. "Just see, Hedges, that the things inside the carriage are all taken out. Don't come up, Mrs. Ball; I will take Lady Hartledon to her rooms."
It was the light-hearted Val of the old, old days; his face free from care, his voice gay. He did not turn into any of the reception-rooms, but led his wife at once to her chamber. It was nearly dinner-time, and he knew she was tired.
"Welcome home, my darling!" he whispered tenderly ere releasing her. "A thousand welcomes to you, my dear, dear wife!"
Tears rose to his eyes with the fervour of the wish. Heaven alone knew what the past had been; the contrast between that time and this.
"I will dress at once, Percival," she said, after a few moments' pause. "I must see your children before dinner. Heaven helping me, I shall love them and always act by them as if they were my own."
"I am so sorry she is here, Anne--that terrible old woman. You heard Hedges say Lady Kirton had arrived. Her visit is ill-timed."
"I shall be glad to welcome her, Val."
"It is more than I shall be," replied Val, as his wife's maid came into the room, and he quitted it. "I'll bring the children to you, Anne."
They had been married nearly five weeks. Anne had not seen the children for several months. The little child, Edward, had shown symptoms of delicacy, and for nearly a year the children had sojourned at the seaside, having been brought to the town-house just before their father's marriage.
The nursery was empty, and Lord Hartledon went down. In the passage outside the drawing-room was Hedges, evidently waiting for his master, and with a budget to unfold.
"When did she come, Hedges?"
"My lord, it was only a few days after your marriage," replied Hedges. "She arrived in the most outrageous tantrum--if I shall not offend your lordship by saying so--and has been here ever since, completely upsetting everything."
"What was her tantrum about?"
"On account of your having married again, my lord. She stood in the hall for five minutes when she got here, saying the most audacious things against your lordship and Miss Ashton--I mean my lady," corrected Hedges.
"The old hag!" muttered Lord Hartledon.
"I think she's insane at times, my lord; I really do. The fits of passion she flies into are quite bad enough for insanity. The housekeeper told me this morning she feared she would be capable of striking my lady, when she first saw her. I'm afraid, too, she has been schooling the children."
Lord Hartledon strode into the drawing-room. There, as large as life--and a great deal larger than most lives--was the dowager-countess. Fortunately she had not heard the arrival: in fact, she had dropped into a doze whilst waiting for it; and she started up when Val entered.
"How are you, ma'am?" asked he. "You have taken me by surprise."
"Not half as much as your wicked letter took me," screamed the old dowager. "Oh, you vile man! to marry again in this haste! You--you--I can't find words that I should not be ashamed of; but Hamlet's mother, in the play, was nothing to it."
"It is some time since I read the play," returned Hartledon, controlling his temper under an assumption of indifference. "If my memory serves me, the 'funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.' _My_ late wife has been dead eighteen months, Lady Kirton."
"Eighteen months! for such a wife as Maude was to you!" raved the dowager. "You ought to have mourned her eighteen years. Anybody else would. I wish I had never let you have her."
Lord Hartledon wished it likewise, with all his heart and soul; had wished it in his wife's lifetime.
"Lady Kirton, listen to me! Let us understand each other. Your visit here is ill-timed; you ought to feel it so; nevertheless, if you stay it out, you must observe good manners. I shall be compelled to request you to terminate it if you fail one iota in the respect due to this house's mistress, my beloved and honoured wife."
"Your _beloved_ wife! Do you dare to say it to me?"
"Ay; beloved, honoured and respected as no woman has ever been by me yet, or ever will be again," he replied, speaking too plainly in his warmth.
"What a false-hearted monster!" cried the dowager, shrilly, apostrophizing the walls and the mirrors. "What then was Maude?"
"Maude is gone, and I counsel you not to bring up her name to me," said Val, sternly. "Your treachery forced Maude upon me; and let me tell you now, Lady Kirton, if I have never told you before, that it wrought upon her the most bitter wrong possible to be inflicted; which she lived to learn. I was a vacillating simpleton, and you held me in your trammels. The less we rake up old matters the better. Things have altered. I am altered. The moral courage I once lacked does not fail me now; and I have at least sufficient to hold my own against the world, and protect from insult the lady I have made my wife. I beg your pardon if my words seem harsh; they are true; and I am sorry you have forced them from me."
She was standing still for a moment, staring at him, not altogether certain of her ground.
"Where are the children?" he asked.
"Where you can't get at them," she rejoined hotly. "You have your beloved wife; you don't want them."
He rang the bell, more loudly than he need have done; but his usually sweet temper was provoked. A footman came in.
"Tell the nurse to bring down the children."
"They are not at home, my lord."
"Not at home! Surely they are not out in this rain! --and so late!"
"They went out this afternoon, my lord: and have not come in, I believe."
"There, that will do," tartly interposed the dowager. "You don't know anything about it, and you may go."
"Lady Kirton, where are the children?"
"Where you can't get at them, I say," was Lady Kirton's response. "You don't think I am going to suffer Maude's children to be domineered over by a wretch of a step-mother--perhaps poisoned."
He confronted her in his wrath, his eyes flashing.
"Madam!"
"Oh, you need not 'Madam' me. Maude's gone, and I shall act for her."
"I ask you where my children are?"
"I have sent them away; you may make the most of the information. And when I have remained here as long as I choose, I shall take them with me, and keep them, and bring them up. You can at once decide what sum you will allow me for their education and maintenance: two maids, a tutor, a governess, clothes, toys, and pocket-money. It must be a handsome sum, paid quarterly in advance. And I mean to take a house in London for their accommodation, and shall expect you to pay the rent."
The coolness with which this was delivered turned Val's angry feelings into amusement. He could not help laughing as he looked at her.
"You cannot have my children, Lady Kirton."
"They are Maude's children," snapped the dowager.
"But I presume you admit that they are likewise mine. And I shall certainly not part with them."
"If you oppose me in this, I'll put them into Chancery," cried the dowager. "I am their nearest relative, and have a right to them."
"Nearest relative!" he repeated. "You must have lost your senses. I am their father."
"And have you lived to see thirty, and never learnt that men don't count for anything in the bringing up of infants?" shrilly asked the dowager. "If they had ten fathers, what's that to the Lord Chancellor? No more than ten blocks of wood. What they want is a mother."
"And I have now given them one."
Without another word, with the red flush of emotion on his cheek, he went up to his wife's room. She was alone then, dressed, and just coming out of it. He put his arm round her to draw her in again, as he shortly explained the annoyance their visitor was causing him.
"You must stay here, my dearest, until I can go down with you," he added. "She is in a vile humour, and I do not choose that you should encounter her, unprotected by me."
"But where are you going, Val?"
"Well, I really think I shall get a policeman in, and frighten her into saying what she has done with the children. She'll never tell unless forced into it."
Anne laughed, and Hartledon went down. He had in good truth a great mind to see what the effect would be. The old woman was not a reasonable being, and he felt disposed to show her very little consideration. As he stood at the hall-door gazing forth, who should arrive but Thomas Carr. Not altogether by accident; he had come up exploring, to see if there were any signs of Val's return.
"Ah! home at last, Hartledon!"
"Carr, what happy wind blew you hither?" cried Val, as he grasped the hands of his trusty friend. "You can terrify this woman with the thunders of the law if she persists in kidnapping children that don't belong to her." And he forthwith explained the state of affairs.
Mr. Carr laughed.
"She will not keep them away long. She is no fool, that countess-dowager. It is a ruse, no doubt, to induce you to give them up to her."
"Give them up to her, indeed!" Val was beginning, when Hedges advanced to him.
"Mrs. Ball says the children have only gone to Madame Tussaud's, my lord," quoth he. "The nurse told her so when she went out."
"I wish she was herself one of Madame Tussaud's figure-heads!" cried Val. "Mr. Carr dines here, Hedges. Nonsense, Carr; you can't refuse. Never mind your coat; Anne won't mind. I want you to make acquaintance with her."
"How did you contrive to win over Dr. Ashton?" asked Thomas Carr, as he went in.
"I put the matter before him in its true light," answered Val, "asking him whether, if Anne forgave me, he would condemn us to live out our lives apart from each other: or whether he would not act the part of a good Christian, and give her to me, that I might strive to atone for the past."
"And he did so?"
"After a great deal of trouble. There's no time to give you details. I had a powerful advocate in Anne's heart. She had never forgotten me, for all my misconduct."
"You have been a lucky man at last, taking one thing with another."
"You may well say so," was the answer, in tones of deep feeling. "Moments come over me when I fear I am about to awake and find the present a dream. I am only now beginning to _live_. The past few years have been--you know what, Carr."
He sent the barrister into the drawing room, went upstairs for Anne, and brought her in on his arm. The dowager was in her chamber, attiring herself in haste.
"My wife, Carr," said Hartledon, with a loving emphasis on the word. She was in an evening dress of white and black, not having yet put off mourning for Mrs. Ashton, and looked very lovely; far more lovely in Thomas Carr's eyes than Lady Maude, with her dark beauty, had ever looked. She held out her hand to him with a frank smile.
"I have heard so much of you, Mr. Carr, that we seem like old friends. I am glad you have come to see me so soon."
"My being here this evening is an accident, Lady Hartledon, as you may see by my dress," he returned. "I ought rather to apologize for intruding on you in the hour of your arrival."
"Don't talk about intrusion," said Val. "You will never be an intruder in my house--and Anne's smile is telling you the same--" "Who's that, pray?"
The interruption came from the countess-dowager. There she stood, near the door, in a yellow gown and green turban. Val drew himself up and approached her, his wife still on his arm. "Madam," said he, in reply to her question, "this is my wife, Lady Hartledon."
The dowager's gauzes made acquaintance with the carpet in so elaborate a curtsey as to savour of mockery, but her eyes were turned up to the ceiling; not a word or look gave she to the young lady.
"The other one, I meant," cried she, nodding towards Thomas Carr.
"It is my friend Mr. Carr. You appear to have forgotten him."
"I hope you are well, ma'am," said he, advancing towards her.
Another curtsey, and the countess-dowager fanned herself, and sailed towards the fireplace.
Meanwhile the children came home in a cab from Madame Tussaud's, and dinner was announced. Lord Hartledon was obliged to take down the countess-dowager, resigning his wife to Mr. Carr. Dinner passed off pretty well, the dowager being too fully occupied to be annoying; also the good cheer caused her temper to thaw a little. Afterwards, the children came in; Edward, a bold, free boy of five, who walked straight up to his grandmother, saluting no one; and Maude, a timid, delicate little child, who stood still in the middle of the carpet where the maid placed her.
The dowager was just then too busy to pay attention to the children, but Anne held out her hand with a smile. Upon which the child drew up to her father, and hid her face in his coat.
He took her up, and carried her to his wife, placing her upon her knee. "Maude," he whispered, "this is your mamma, and you must love her very much, for she loves you."
Anne's arms fondly encircled the child; but she began to struggle to get down.
"Bad manners, Maude," said her father.
"She's afraid of her," spoke up the boy, who had the dark eyes and beautiful features of his late mother. "We are afraid of bad people."
The observation passed momentarily unnoticed, for Maude, whom Lady Hartledon had been obliged to release, would not be pacified. But when calmness ensued, Lord Hartledon turned to the boy, just then assisting himself to some pineapple.
"What did I hear you say about bad people, Edward?"
"She," answered the boy, pointing towards Lady Hartledon. "She shan't touch Maude. She's come here to beat us, and I'll kick if she touches me."
Lord Hartledon, with an unmistakable look at the countess-dowager, rose from his seat in silence and rang the bell. There could be no correction in the presence of the dowager; he and Anne must undo her work alone. Carrying the little girl in one arm, he took the boy's hand, and met the servant at the door.
"Take these children back to the nursery."
"I want some strawberries," the boy called out rebelliously.
"Not to-day," said his father. "You know quite well that you have behaved badly."
His wife's face was painfully flushed. Mr. Carr was critically examining the painted landscape on his plate; and the turban was enjoying some fruit with perfect unconcern. Lord Hartledon stood an instant ere he resumed his seat.
"Anne," he said in a voice that trembled in spite of its displeased tones, "allow me to beg your pardon, and I do it with shame that this gratuitous insult should have been offered you in your own house. A day or two will, I hope, put matters on their right footing; the poor children, as you see, have been tutored."
"Are you going to keep the port by you all night, Hartledon?"
Need you ask from whom came the interruption? Mr. Carr passed it across to her, leaving her to help herself; and Lord Hartledon sat down, biting his delicate lips.
When the dowager seemed to have finished, Anne rose. Mr. Carr rose too as soon as they had retired.
"I have an engagement, Hartledon, and am obliged to run away. Make my adieu to your wife."
"Carr, is it not a crying shame? --enough to incense any man?"
"It is. The sooner you get rid of her the better."
"That's easier said than done."
When Lord Hartledon reached the drawing-room, the dowager was sleeping comfortably. Looking about for his wife, he found her in the small room Maude used to make exclusively her own, which was not lighted up. She was standing at the window, and her tears were quietly falling. He drew her face to his own.
"My darling, don't let it grieve you! We shall soon right it all."
"Oh, Percival, if the mischief should have gone too far! --if they should never look upon me except as a step-mother! You don't know how sick and troubled this has made me feel! I wanted to go to them in the nursery when I came up, and did not dare! Perhaps the nurse has also been prejudiced against me!"
"Come up with me now, love," he whispered.
They went silently upstairs, and found the children were then in bed and asleep. They were tired with sight-seeing, the nurse said apologetically, curtseying to her new mistress.
The nurse withdrew, and they stood over the nursery fire, talking. Anne could scarcely account for the extreme depression the event seemed to have thrown upon her. Lord Hartledon quickly recovered his spirits, vowing he should like to "serve out" the dowager.
"I was thankful for one thing, Val; that you did not betray anger to them, poor little things. It would have made it worse."
"I was on the point of betraying something more than anger to Edward; but the thought that I should be punishing him for another's fault checked me. I wonder how we can get rid of her?"
"We must strive to please her while she stays."
"Please her!" he echoed. "Anne, my dear, that is stretching Christian charity rather too far."
Anne smiled. "I am a clergyman's daughter, you know, Val."
"If she is wise, she'll abstain from offending you in my presence. I'm not sure but I should lose command of myself, and send her off there and then."
"I don't fear that. She was quite civil when we came up from dinner, and--" "As she generally is then. She takes her share of wine."
"And asked me if I would excuse her falling into a doze, for she never felt well without it."
Anne was right. The cunning old woman changed her tactics, finding those she had started would not answer. It has been remarked before, if you remember, that she knew particularly well on which side her bread was buttered. Nothing could exceed her graciousness from that evening. The past scene might have been a dream, for all traces that remained of it. Out of the house she was determined not to go in anger; it was too desirable a refuge for that. And on the following day, upon hearing Edward attempt some impudent speech to his new mother, she put him across her knee, pulled off an old slipper she was wearing, and gave him a whipping. Anne interposed, the boy roared; but the good woman had her way.
"Don't put yourself out, dear Lady Hartledon. There's nothing so good for them as a wholesome whipping. I used to try it on my own children at times."
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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34
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MR. PIKE ON THE WING.
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The time went on. It may have been some twelve or thirteen months later that Mr. Carr, sitting alone in his chambers, one evening, was surprised by the entrance of his clerk--who possessed a latch-key as well as himself.
"Why, Taylor! what brings you here?"
"I thought you would most likely be in, sir," replied the clerk. "Do you remember some few years ago making inquiries about a man named Gorton--and you could not find him?"
"And never have found him," was Mr. Carr's comment. "Well?"
"I have seen him this evening. He is back in London."
Thomas Carr was not a man to be startlingly affected by any communication; nevertheless he felt the importance of this, for Lord Hartledon's sake.
"I met him by chance, in a place where I sometimes go of an evening to smoke a cigar, and learned his name by accident," continued Mr. Taylor. "It's the same man that was at Kedge and Reck's, George Gorton; he acknowledged it at once, quite readily."
"And where has he been hiding himself?"
"He has been in Australia for several years, he says; went there directly after he left Kedge and Reck's that autumn."
"Could you get him here, Taylor? I must see him. Tell me: what coloured hair has he?"
"Red, sir; and plenty of it. He says he's doing very well over there, and has only come home for a short change. He does not seem to be in concealment, and gave me his address when I asked him for it."
According to Mr. Carr's wish, the man Gorton was brought to his chambers the following morning by Taylor. To the barrister's surprise, a well-dressed and really rather gentlemanly man entered. He had been accustomed to picturing this Gorton as an Arab of London life. Casting a keen glance at the red hair, he saw it was indisputably his own.
A few rapid questions, which Gorton answered without the slightest demur, and Mr. Carr leaned back in his chair, knowing that all the trouble he had been at to find this man might have been spared: for he was not the George Gordon they had suspected. But Mr. Carr was cautious, and betrayed nothing.
"I am sorry to have troubled you," he said. "When I inquired for you of Kedge and Reck some years ago, it was under the impression that you were some one else. You had left; and they did not know where to find you."
"Yes, I had displeased them through arresting a wrong man, and other things. I was down in the world then, and glad to do anything for a living, even to serving writs."
"You arrested the late Lord Hartledon for his brother," observed Mr. Carr, with a careless smile. "I heard of it. I suppose you did not know them apart."
"I had never set eyes on either of them before," returned Gorton; unconsciously confirming a point in the barrister's mind; which, however, was already sufficiently obvious.
"The man I wanted to find was named Gordon. I thought it just possible that you might have changed your name temporarily: some of us finding it convenient to do so on occasion."
"I never changed mine in my life."
"And if you had, I don't suppose you'd have changed it to one so notorious as George Gordon."
"Notorious?"
"It was a George Gordon who was the hero of that piratical affair; that mutiny on board the _Morning Star_."
"Ah, to be sure. And an awful villain too! A man I met in Australia knew Gordon well. But he tells a curious tale, though. He was a doctor, that Gordon; had come last from somewhere in Kirkcudbrightshire."
"He did," said Thomas Carr, quietly. "What curious tale does your friend tell?"
"Well, sir, he says--or rather said, for I've not seen him since my first visit there--that George Gordon did not sail in the _Morning Star_. He was killed in a drunken brawl the night before he ought to have sailed: this man was present and saw him buried."
"But there's pretty good proof that Gordon did sail. He was the ringleader of the mutiny."
"Well, yes. I don't know how it could have been. The man was positive. I never knew Gordon; so that the affair did not interest me much."
"You are doing well over there?"
"Very well. I might retire now, if I chose to live in a small way, but I mean to take a few more years of it, and go on to riches. Ah! and it was just the turn of a pin whether I went over there that second time, or whether I stopped in London to serve writs and starve."
"Val was right," thought the barrister.
On the following Saturday Mr. Carr took a return-ticket, and went down to Hartledon: as he had done once or twice before in the old days. The Hartledons had not come to town this season; did not intend to come: Anne was too happy in the birth of her baby-boy to care for London; and Val liked Hartledon better than any other place now.
In one single respect the past year had failed to bring Anne happiness--there was not entire confidence between herself and her husband. He had something on his mind, and she could not fail to see that he had. It was not that awful dread that seemed to possess him in his first wife's time; nevertheless it was a weight which told more or less on his spirits at all times. To Anne it appeared like remorse; yet she might never have thought this, but for a word or two he let slip occasionally. Was it connected with his children? She could almost have fancied so: and yet in what manner could it be? His behaviour was peculiar. He rather avoided them than not; but when with them was almost passionately demonstrative, exactingly jealous that due attention should be paid to them: and he seemed half afraid of caressing Anne's baby, lest it should be thought he cared for it more than for the others. Altogether Lady Hartledon puzzled her brains in vain: she could not make him out. When she questioned him he would deny that there was anything the matter, and said it was her fancy.
They were at Hartledon alone: that is, without the countess-dowager. That respected lady, though not actually domiciled with them during the past twelve-month, had paid them three long visits. She was determined to retain her right in the household--if right it could be called. The dowager was by far too wary to do otherwise; and her behaviour to Anne was exceedingly mild. But somehow she contrived to retain, or continually renew, her evil influence over the children; though so insidiously, that Lady Hartledon could never detect how or when it was done, or openly meet it. Neither could she effectually counteract it. So surely as the dowager came, so surely did the young boy and his sister become unruly with their step-mother; ill-natured and rude. Lady Hartledon was kind, judicious, and good; and things would so far be remedied during the crafty dowager's absences, as to promise a complete cure; but whenever she returned the evil broke out again. Anne was sorely perplexed. She did not like to deny the children to their grandmother, who was more nearly related to them than she herself; and she could only pray that time would bring about some remedy. The dowager passed her time pretty equally between their house and her son's. Lord Kirton had not married again, owing, perhaps, to the watch and ward kept over him. But as soon as he started off to the Continent, or elsewhere, where she could not follow him, then off she came, without notice, to England and Lord Hartledon's. And Val, in his good-nature, bore the infliction passively so long as she kept civil and peaceable.
In this also her husband's behaviour puzzled Anne. Disliking the dowager beyond every other created being, he yet suffered her to indulge his children; and if any little passage-at-arms supervened, took her part rather than his wife's.
"I cannot understand you, Val," Anne said to him one day, in tones of pain. "You are not as you used to be." And his only answer was to strain his wife to his bosom with an impassioned gesture of love.
But these were only episodes in their generally happy life. Never more happy, more free from any external influence, than when Thomas Carr arrived there on this identical Saturday. He went in unexpectedly: and Val's violet eyes, beautiful as ever, shone out their welcome; and Anne, who happened to have her baby on her lap, blushed and smiled, as she held it out for the barrister's inspection.
"I dare not take it," said he. "You would be up in arms if it were dropped. What is its name?"
"Reginald."
A little while, and she carried the child away, leaving them alone. Mr. Carr declined refreshment for the present; and he and Val strolled out arm-in-arm.
"I have brought you an item of news, Hartledon. Gorton has turned up."
"Not Gordon?"
"No. And what's more, Gorton never was Gordon. You were right, and I was wrong. I would have bet a ten-pound note--a great venture for a barrister--that the men were the same; never, in point of fact, had a doubt of it."
"You would not listen to me," said Val. "I told you I was sure I could not have failed to recognize Gordon, had he been the one who was down at Calne with the writ."
"But you acknowledged that it might have been he, nevertheless; that his red hair might have been false; that you never had a distinct view of the man's face; and that the only time you spoke to him was in the gloaming," reiterated Thomas Carr. "Well, as it turns out, we might have spared half our pains and anxiety, for Gorton was never any one but himself: an innocent sheriff's officer, as far as you are concerned, who had never, in his life set eyes on Val Elster until he went after him to Calne."
"Didn't I say so?" reiterated Val. "Gordon would have known me too well to arrest Edward for me."
"But you admitted the general likeness between you and your brother; and Gordon had not seen you for three years or more."
"Yes; I admitted all you say, and perhaps was a little doubtful myself. But I soon shook off the doubt, and of late years have been sure that Gordon was really dead. It has been more than a conviction. I always said there were no grounds for connecting the two together."
"I had my grounds for doing it," remarked the barrister. "Gorton, it seems, has been in Australia ever since. No wonder Green could not unearth him in London. He's back again on a visit, looking like a gentleman; and really I can't discover that there was ever anything against him, except that he was down in the world. Taylor met him the other day, and I had him brought to my chambers; and have told you the result."
"You do not now feel any doubt that Gordon's dead?"
"None at all. Your friend, Gordon of Kircudbright, was the one who embarked, or ought to have embarked, on the _Morning Star_, homeward bound," said Mr. Carr. And he forthwith told Lord Hartledon what the man had said.
A silence ensued. Lord Hartledon was in deep and evidently not pleasant thought; and the barrister stole a glance at him.
"Hartledon, take comfort. I am as cautious by nature as I believe it is possible for any one to be; and I am sure the man is dead, and can never rise up to trouble you."
"I have been sure of that for years," replied Hartledon quietly. "I have just said so."
"Then what is disturbing you?"
"Oh, Carr, how can you ask it?" came the rejoinder. "What is it lies on my mind day and night; is wearing me out before my time? Discovery may be avoided; but when I look at the children--at the boy especially--it would have turned some men mad," he more quietly added, passing his hand across his brow. "As long as he lives, I cannot have rest from pain. The sins of the fathers--" "Yes, yes," interposed Mr. Carr, hastily. "Still the case is light, compared with what we once dreaded."
"Light for me, heavy for him."
Mr. Carr remained with them until the Monday: he then went back to London and work; and time glided on again. An event occurred the following winter which shall be related at once; more especially as nothing of moment took place in those intervening months needing special record.
The man Pike, who still occupied his shed undisturbed, had been ailing for some time. An attack of rheumatic fever in the summer had left him little better than a cripple. He crawled abroad still when he was able, and _would_ do so, in spite of what Mr. Hillary said; would lie about the damp ground in a lawless, gipsying sort of manner; but by the time winter came all that was over, and Mr. Pike's career, as foretold by the surgeon, was drawing rapidly to a close. Mrs. Gum was his good Samaritan, as she had been in the fever some years before, going in and out and attending to him; and in a reasonable way Pike wanted for nothing.
"How long can I last?" he abruptly asked the doctor one morning. "Needn't fear to say. _She_'s the only one that will take on; I shan't."
He alluded to Mrs. Gum, who had just gone out. The surgeon considered.
"Two or three days."
"As much as that?"
"I think so."
"Oh!" said Pike. "When it comes to the last day I should like to see Lord Hartledon."
"Why the last day?"
The man's pinched features broke into a smile; pleasant and fair features once, with a gentle look upon them. The black wig and whiskers lay near him; but the real hair, light and scanty, was pushed back from the damp brow.
"No use, then, to think of giving me up: no time left for it."
"I question if Lord Hartledon would give you up were you in rude health. I'm sure he would not," added Mr. Hillary, endorsing his opinion rather emphatically. "If ever there was a kindly nature in the world, it's his. What do you want with him?"
"I should like to say a word to him in private," responded Pike.
"Then you'd better not wait to say it. I'll tell him of your wish. It's all safe. Why, Pike, if the police themselves came they wouldn't trouble to touch you now."
"I shouldn't much care if they did," said the man. " _I_ haven't cared for a long while; but there were the others, you know."
"Yes," said Mr. Hillary.
"Look here," said Pike; "no need to tell him particulars; leave them till I'm gone. I don't know that I'd like _him_ to look me in the face, knowing them."
"As you will," said Mr. Hillary, falling in with the wish more readily than he might have done for anyone but a dying man.
He had patients out of Calne, beyond Hartledon, and called in returning. It was a snowy day; and as the surgeon was winding towards the house, past the lodge, with a quick step, he saw a white figure marching across the park. It was Lord Hartledon. He had been caught in the storm, and came up laughing.
"Umbrellas are at a premium," observed Mr. Hillary, with the freedom long intimacy had sanctioned.
"It didn't snow when I came out," said Hartledon, shaking himself, and making light of the matter. "Were you coming to honour me with a morning call?"
"I was and I wasn't," returned the surgeon. "I've no time for morning calls, unless they are professional ones; but I wanted to say a word to you. Have you a mind for a further walk in the snow?"
"As far as you like."
"There's a patient of mine drawing very near the time when doctors can do no more for him. He has expressed a wish to see you, and I undertook to convey the request."
"I'll go, of course," said Val, all his kindliness on the alert. "Who is it?"
"A black sheep," answered the surgeon. "I don't know whether that will make any difference?"
"It ought not," said Val rather warmly. "Black sheep have more need of help than white ones, when it comes to the last. I suppose it's a poacher wanting to clear his conscience."
"It's Pike," said Hillary.
"Pike! What can he want with me? Is he no better?"
"He'll never be better in this world; and to speak the truth, I think it's time he left it. He'll be happier, poor fellow, let's hope, in another than he has been in this. Has it ever struck you, Lord Hartledon, that there was something strange about Pike, and his manner of coming here?"
"Very strange indeed."
"Well, Pike is not Pike, but another man--which I suppose you will say is Irish. But that he is so ill, and it would not be worth while for the law to take him, he might be in mortal fear of your seeing him, lest you betrayed him. He wanted you not to be informed until the last hour. I told him there was no fear."
"I would not betray any living man, whatever his crime, for the whole world," returned Lord Hartledon; his voice so earnest as to amount to pain. And the surgeon looked at him; but there rose up in his remembrance how _he_ had been avoiding betrayal for years. "Who is he?"
"Willy Gum."
Lord Hartledon turned his head sharply under cover of the surgeon's umbrella, for they were walking along together. A thought crossed him that the words might be a jest.
"Yes, Pike is Willy Gum," continued Mr. Hillary. "And there you have the explanation of the poor mother's nervous terrors. I do pity her. The clerk has taken it more philosophically, and seemed only to care lest the fact should become known. Ah, poor thing! what a life hers has been! Her fears of the wild neighbour, her basins for cats, are all explained now. She dreaded lest Calne should suspect that she occasionally stole into the shed under cover of the night with the basins containing food for its inmate. There the man has lived--if you can call such an existence living; Willy Gum, concealed by his borrowed black hair and whiskers. But that he was only a boy when he went away, Calne would have recognized him in spite of them."
"And he is not a poacher and a snarer, and I don't know what all, leading a lawless life, and thieving for his living?" exclaimed Lord Hartledon, the first question that rose to the surface, amidst the many that were struggling in his mind.
"I don't believe the man has touched the worth of a pin belonging to any one since he came here, even on your preserves. People took up the notion from his wild appearance, and because he had no ostensible means of living. It would not have done to let them know that he had his supplies--sometimes money, sometimes food--from respectable clerk Gum's."
"But why should he be in concealment at all? That bank affair was made all right at the time."
"There are other things he feared, it seems. I've not time to enter into details now; you'll know them later. There he is--Pike: and there he'll die--Pike always."
"How long have you known it?"
"Since that fever he caught from the Rectory some years ago. I recollect your telling me not to let him want for anything;" and Lord Hartledon winced at the remembrance brought before him, as he always did wince at the unhappy past. "I never shall forget it. I went in, thinking Pike was ill, and that he, wild and disreputable though he had the character of being, might want physic as well as his neighbours. Instead of the black-haired bear I expected to see, there lay a young, light, delicate fellow, with a white brow, and cheeks pink with fever. The features seemed familiar to me; little by little recognition came to me, and I saw it was Willy Gum, whom every one had been mourning as dead. He said a pleading word or two, that I would keep his secret, and not give him up to justice. I did not understand what there was to give him up for then. However, I promised. He was too ill to say much; and I went to the next door, and put it to Gum's wife that she should go and nurse Pike for humanity's sake. Of course it was what she wanted to do. Poor thing! she fell on her knees later, beseeching me not to betray him."
"And you have kept counsel all this time?"
"Yes," said the surgeon, laconically. "Would your lordship have done otherwise, even though it had been a question of hanging?" " _I! _ I wouldn't give a man a month at the treadmill if I could help it. One gets into offences so easily," he dreamily added.
They crossed over the waste land, and Mr. Hillary opened the door of the shed with a pass-key. A lock had been put on when Pike was lying in rheumatic fever, lest intruders might enter unawares, and see him without his disguise.
"Pike, I have brought you my lord. He won't betray you."
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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35
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THE SHED RAZED.
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Closing the door upon them, the surgeon went off on other business, and Lord Hartledon entered and bent over the bed; a more comfortable bed than it once had been. It was the Willy Gum of other days; the boy he had played with when they were boys together. White, wan, wasted, with the dying hectic on his cheek, the glitter already in his eye, he lay there; and Val's eyelashes shone as he took the worn hand.
"I am so sorry, Willy. I had no suspicion it was you. Why did you not confide in me?"
The invalid shook his head. "There might have been danger in it."
"Never from me," was the emphatic answer.
"Ah, my lord, you don't know. I haven't dared to make myself known to a soul. Mr. Hillary found it out, and I couldn't help myself."
Lord Hartledon glanced round at the strange place: the rafters, the rude walls. A fire was burning on the hearth, and the appliances brought to bear were more comfortable than might have been imagined; but still-- "Surely you will allow yourself to be removed to a better place, Willy?" he said.
"Call me Pike," came the feverish interruption. "Never that other name again, my lord; I've done with it for ever. As to a better place--I shall have that soon enough."
"You wanted to say something to me, Mr. Hillary said."
"I've wanted to say it some time now, and to beg your lordship's pardon. It's about the late earl's death."
"My brother's?"
"Yes. I was on the wrong scent a long time. And I can tell you what nobody else will."
Lord Hartledon lifted his head quickly; thoughts were crowding impulsively into his mind, and he spoke in the moment's haste.
"Surely you had not anything to do with that!"
"No; but I thought your lordship had."
"What do you mean?" asked Lord Hartledon, quietly.
"It's for my foolish and wicked and mistaken thought that I would crave pardon before I go. I thought your lordship had killed the late lord, either by accident or maliciously."
"You must be dreaming, Pike!"
"No; but I was no better than dreaming then. I had been living amidst lawless scenes, over the seas and on the seas, where a life's not of much account, and the fancy was easy enough. I happened to overhear a quarrel between you and the earl just before his death; I saw you going towards the spot at the time the accident happened, as you may remember--" "I did not go so far," interrupted Hartledon, wondering still whether this might not be the wanderings of a dying man. "I turned back into the trees at once, and walked slowly home. Many a time have I wished I had gone on!"
"Yes, yes; I was on the wrong scent. And there was that blow on his temple to keep up the error, which I know now must have been done against the estrade. I did suspect at the time, and your lordship will perhaps not forgive me for it. I let drop a word that I suspected something before that man Gorton, and he asked me what I meant; and I explained it away, and said I was chaffing him. And I have been all this time, up to a few weeks ago, learning the true particulars of how his lordship died."
Lord Hartledon decided that the man's mind was undoubtedly wandering.
But Pike was not wandering. And he told the story of the boy Ripper having been locked up in the mill. Mr. Ripper was almost a match for Pike himself in deceit; and Pike had only learned the facts by dint of long patience and perseverance and many threats. The boy had seen the whole accident; had watched it from the window where he was enclosed, unable to get out, unless he had torn away the grating. Lord Hartledon had lost all command of the little skiff, his arm being utterly disabled; and it came drifting down towards the mill, and struck against the estrade. The skiff righted itself at once, but not its owner: there was a slight struggle, a few cries, and he lay motionless, drifting later to the place where he was found. Mr. Ripper's opinion was that he had lost his senses with the blow on the temple, and fell an easy prey to death. Had that gentleman only sacrificed the grating and his own reputation, he might have saved him easily; and that fact had since been upon his conscience, making him fear all sorts of things, not the least of which was that he might be hanged as a murderer.
This story he had told Pike at the time, with one reserve--he persisted that he had not _seen_, only heard. Pike saw that the boy was still not telling the whole truth, and suspected he was screening Lord Hartledon--he who now stood before him. Mr. Ripper's logic tended to the belief that he could not be punished if he stuck to the avowal of having seen nothing. He had only heard the cries; and when Pike asked if they were cries as if he were being assaulted, the boy evasively answered "happen they were." Another little item he suppressed: that he found the purse at the bottom of the skiff, after he got out of the mill, and appropriated it to himself; and when he had fairly done that, he grew more afraid of having done it than of all the rest. The money he secreted, using it when he dared, a sixpence at a time; the case, with its papers, he buried in the spot where his master afterwards found it. With all this upon the young man's conscience, no wonder he was a little confused and contradictory in his statements to Pike: no wonder he fancied the ghost of the man he could have saved and did not, might now and then be hovering about him. Pike learned the real truth at last; and a compunction had come over him, now that he was dying, for having doubted Lord Hartledon.
"My lord, I can only ask you to forgive me. I ought to have known you better. But things seemed to corroborate it so: I've heard people say the new lord was as a man who had some great care upon him. Oh, I was a fool!"
"At any rate it was not _that_ care, Pike; I would have saved my brother's life with my own, had I been at hand to do it. As to Ripper--I shall never bear to look upon him again."
"He's gone away," said Pike.
"Where has he gone?"
"The miller turned him off for idleness, and he's gone away, nobody knows where, to get work: I don't suppose he'll ever come back again. This is the real truth of the matter as it occurred, my lord; and there's no more behind it. Ripper has now told all he knows, just as fully as if he had been put to torture."
Lord Hartledon remained with Pike some time longer, soothing the man as much as it was in his power and kindly nature to soothe. He whispered a word of the clergyman, Dr. Ashton.
"Father says he shall bring him to-night," was the answer. "It's all a farce."
"I am sorry to hear you say that," returned Lord Hartledon, gravely.
"If I had never said a worse thing than that, my lord, I shouldn't hurt. Unless the accounts are made up beforehand, parsons can't avail much at the twelfth hour. Mother's lessons to me when a child, and her reading the Bible as she sits here in the night, are worth more than Dr. Ashton could do. But for those old lessons' having come home to me now, I might not have cared to ask your forgiveness. Dr. Ashton! what is he? For an awful sinner--and it's what I've been--there's only Christ. At times I think I've been too bad even for Him. I've only my sins to take to Him: never were worse in this world."
Lord Hartledon went out rather bewildered with the occurrences of the morning. Thinking it might be only kind to step into the clerk's, he crossed the stile and went in without ceremony by the open back-door. Mrs. Gum was alone in the kitchen, crying bitterly. She dried her eyes in confusion, as she curtsied to her visitor.
"I know all," he interrupted, in low, considerate tones, to the poor suffering woman. "I have been to see him. Never mind explanations: let us think what we can best do to lighten his last hours."
Mrs. Gum burst into deeper tears. It was a relief, no doubt: but she wondered how much Lord Hartledon knew.
"I say that he ought to be got away from that place, Mrs. Gum. It's not fit for a man to die in. You might have him here. Calne! Surely my protection will sufficiently screen him against tattling Calne!"
She shook her head, saying it was of no use talking to Willy about removal; he wouldn't have it; and she thought herself it might be better not. Jabez, too; if this ever came out in Calne, it would just kill him; his lordship knew what he was, and how he had cared for appearances all his life. No; it would not be for many more hours now, and Willy must die in the shed where he had lived.
Lord Hartledon sat down on the ironing-board, the white table underneath the window, in the old familiar manner of former days; many and many a time had he perched himself there to talk to her when he was young Val Elster.
"Only fancy what my life has been, my lord," she said. "People have called me nervous and timid; but look at the cause I've had! I was just beginning to get over the grief for his death, when he came here; and to the last hour of my life I shan't get the night out of my mind! I and Jabez were together in this very kitchen. I had come in to wash up the tea-things, and Jabez followed me. It was a cold, dark evening, and the parlour fire had got low. By token, my lord, we were talking of you; you had just gone away to be an ambassador, or something, and then we spoke of the wild, strange, black man who had crept into the shed; and Jabez, I remember, said he should acquaint Mr. Marris, if the fellow did not take himself off. I had seen him that very evening, at dusk, for the first time, when his great black face rose up against mine, nearly frightening me to death. Jabez was angry at such a man's being there, and said he should go up to Hartledon in the morning and see the steward. Just then there came a tap at the kitchen door, and Jabez went to it. It was the man; he had watched the servant out, and knew we were alone; and he came into the kitchen, and asked if we did not know him. Jabez did; he had seen Willy later than I had, and he recognized him; and the man took off his black hair and great black whiskers, and I saw it was Willy, and nearly fainted dead away."
There was a pause. Lord Hartledon did not speak, and she resumed, after a little indulgence in her grief.
"And since then all our aim has been to hide the truth, to screen him, and keep up the tale that we were afraid of the wild man. How it has been done I know not: but I do know that it has nearly killed me. What a night it was! When Jabez heard his story and forced him to answer all questions, I thought he would have given Willy up to the law there and then. My lord, we have just lived since with a sword over our heads!"
Lord Hartledon remembered the sword that had been over his own head, and sympathized with them from the depths of his heart.
"Tell me all," he said. "You are quite safe with me, Mrs. Gum."
"I don't know that there's much more to tell," she sighed. "We took the best precautions we could, in a quiet way, having the holes in the shutters filled up, and new locks put on the doors, lest people might look in or step in, while he sat here of a night, which he took to do. Jabez didn't like it, but I'm afraid I encouraged it. It was so lonely for him, that shed, and so unhealthy! We sent away the regular servant, and engaged one by day, so as to have the house to ourselves at night. If a knock came to the door, Willy would slip out to the wood-house before we opened it, lest it might be anybody coming in. He did not come in every night--two or three times a-week; and it never was pleasant; for Jabez would hardly open his mouth, unless it was to reproach him. Heaven alone knows what I've had to bear!"
"But, Mrs. Gum, I cannot understand. Why could not Willy have declared himself openly to the world?"
It was evidently a most painful question. Her eyes fell; the crimson of shame flushed into her cheeks; and he felt sorry to have asked it.
"Spare me, my lord, for I _cannot_ tell you. Perhaps Jabez will: or Mr. Hillary; he knows. It doesn't much matter, now death's so near; but I think it would kill me to have to tell it."
"And no one except the doctor has ever known that it was Willy?"
"One more, my lord: Mirrable. We told her at once. I have had to hear all sorts of cruel things said of him," continued Mrs. Gum. "That he thieved and poached, and did I know not what; and we could only encourage the fancy, for it put people off the truth as to how he really lived."
"Amidst other things, they said, I believe, that he was out with the poachers the night my brother George was shot!"
"And that night, my lord, he sat over this kitchen fire, and never stirred from it. He was ill: it was rheumatism, caught in Australia, that took such a hold upon him; and I had him here by the fire till near daylight in the morning, so as to keep him out of the damp shed. What with fearing one thing and another, I grew into a state of perpetual terror."
"Then you will not have him in here now," said Lord Hartledon, rising.
"I cannot," she said, her tears falling silently.
"Well, Mrs. Gum, I came in just to say a word of true sympathy. You have it heartily, and my services also, if necessary. Tell Jabez so."
He quitted the house by the front-door, as if he had been honouring the clerk's wife with a morning-call, should any curious person happen to be passing, and went across through the snow to the surgeon's. Mr. Hillary, an old bachelor, was at his early dinner, and Lord Hartledon sat down and talked to him.
"It's only rump steak; but few cooks can beat mine, and it's very good. Won't your lordship take a mouthful by way of luncheon?"
"My curiosity is too strong for luncheon just now," said Val. "I have come over to know the rights and wrongs of this story. What has Willy Gum been doing in the past years that it cannot be told?"
"I am not sure that it would be safe to say while he's living."
"Not safe! with me! Was it safe with you?"
"But I don't consider myself obliged to give up to justice any poor criminal who comes in my way," said the surgeon; and Val felt a little vexed, although he saw that he was joking.
"Come, Hillary!"
"Well, then, Willy Gum was coming home in the _Morning Star_; and a mutiny broke out--mutiny and murder, and everything else that's bad; and one George Gordon was the ringleader."
"Yes. Well?"
"Willy Gum was George Gordon."
"What!" exclaimed Hartledon, not knowing how to accept the words. "How could he be George Gordon?"
"Because the real George Gordon never sailed at all; and this fellow Gum went on board in his name, calling himself Gordon."
Lord Hartledon leaned back in his chair and listened to the explanation. A very simple one, after all. Gum, one of the wildest and most careless characters possible when in Australia, gambled away, before sailing, the money he had acquired. Accident made him acquainted with George Gordon, also going home in the same ship and with money. Gordon was killed the night before sailing--(Mr. Carr had well described it as a drunken brawl)--killed accidentally. Gum was present; he saw his opportunity, went on board as Gordon, and claimed the luggage--some of it gold--already on board. How the mutiny broke out was less clear; but one of the other passengers knew Gum, and threatened to expose him; and perhaps this led to it. Gum, at any rate, was the ringleader, and this passenger was one of the first killed. Gum--Gordon as he was called--contrived to escape in the open boat, and found his way to land; thence, disguised, to England and to Calne; and at Calne he had since lived, with the price offered for George Gordon on his head.
It was a strange and awful story: and Lord Hartledon felt a shiver run through him as he listened. In truth, that shed was the safest and fittest place for him to die in!
As die he did ere the third day was over. And was buried as Pike, the wild man, without a mourner. Clerk Gum stood over the grave in his official capacity; and Dr. Ashton, who had visited the sick man, himself read the service, which caused some wonder in Calne.
And the following week Lord Hartledon caused the shed to be cleared away, and the waste land ploughed; saying he would have no more tramps encamping next door to Mr. and Mrs. Gum.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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36
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THE DOWAGER'S ALARM.
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Again the years went on, bringing not altogether comfort to the house of Hartledon. As Anne's children were born--there were three now--a sort of jealous rivalry seemed to arise between them and the two elder children; and this in spite of Anne's efforts to the contrary. The moving spring was the countess-dowager, who in secret excited the elder children against their little brothers and sister; but so craftily that Anne could produce nothing tangible to remonstrate against. Things would grow tolerably smooth during the old woman's absences; but she took good care not to make those absences lengthened, and then all the ill-nature and rebellion reigned triumphant.
Once only Anne spoke of this, and that was to her father. She hinted at the state of things, and asked his advice. Why did not Val interpose his authority, and forbid the dowager the house, if she could not keep herself from making mischief in it, sensibly asked the Rector. But Anne said neither she nor Val liked to do this. And then the Rector fancied there was some constraint in his daughter's voice, and she was not telling him the whole case unreservedly. He inquired no further, only gave her the best advice in his power: to be watchful, and counteract the dowager's influence, as far as she could; and trust to time; doing her own duty religiously by the children.
What Anne had not mentioned to Dr. Ashton was her husband's conduct in the matter. In that one respect she could read him no better than of old. Devoted to her as he was, as she knew him to be, in the children's petty disputes he invariably took the part of his first wife's--to the glowing satisfaction of the countess-dowager. No matter how glaringly wrong they might be, how tyrannical, Hartledon screened the elder, and--to use the expression of the nurses--snubbed the younger. Kind and good though Lady Hartledon was, she felt it acutely; and, to say the truth, was sorely puzzled and perplexed.
Lord Elster was an ailing child, and Mr. Brook, the apothecary, was always in attendance when they were in London. Lady Hartledon thought the boy's health might have been better left more to nature, but she would not have said so for the world. The dowager, on the contrary, would have preferred that half the metropolitan faculty should see him daily. She had a jealous dread of anything happening to the boy, and Anne's son becoming the heir.
Lord Hartledon was a busy man now, and had a place in the Government--though not as yet in the Cabinet. Whatever his secret care might have been, it was now passive; he was a general favourite, and courted in society. He was still young; the face as genial, the manners as free, the dark-blue eyes as kindly as of yore; eminently attractive in earlier days, he was so still; and his love for his wife amounted to a passion.
At the close of a sharp winter, when they had come up to town in January, that Lord Hartledon might be at his post, and the countess-dowager was inflicting upon them one of her long visits, it happened that Lord Elster seemed very poorly. Mr. Brook was called in, and said he would send a powder. He was called in so often to the boy as to take it quite as a matter of course; and, truth to say, thought the present indisposition nothing but a slight cold.
Late in the evening the two boys happened to be alone in the nursery, the nurse being temporarily absent from it. Edward was now a tall, slender, handsome boy in knickerbockers; Reginald a timid little fellow, several years younger--rendered timid by Edward's perpetual tyranny, which he might not resent. Edward was quiet enough this evening; he felt ill and shivery, and sat close to the fire. Casting his eyes upwards, he espied Mr. Brook's powder on the mantelpiece, with the stereotyped direction--"To be taken at bedtime." It was lying close to the jam-pot, which the head-nurse had put ready. Of course he had the greatest possible horror of medicine, and his busy thoughts began to run upon how he might avoid that detestable powder. The little fellow was sitting on the carpet playing with his bricks. Edward turned his eyes on his brother, and a bright thought occurred to him.
"Regy," said he, taking down the pot, "come here. Look at this jam: isn't it nice? It's raspberry and currant."
The child left his bricks to bend over the tempting compound.
"I'll give it you every bit to eat before nurse comes back," continued the boy, "if you'll eat this first."
Reginald cast a look upon the powder his brother exhibited. "What is it?" he lisped; "something good?"
"Delicious. It's just come in from the sweet-stuff shop. Open your mouth--wide."
Reginald did as he was bid: opened his mouth to its utmost width, and the boy shot in the powder.
It happened to be a preparation of that nauseous drug familiarly known as "Dover's powder." The child found it so, and set up a succession of shrieks, which aroused the house. The nurse rushed in; and Lord and Lady Hartledon, both of whom were dressing for dinner, appeared on the scene. There stood Reginald, coughing, choking, and roaring; and there sat the culprit, equably devouring the jam. With time and difficulty the facts were elicited from the younger child, and the elder scorned to deny them.
"What a wicked, greedy Turk you must be!" ejaculated the nurse, who was often in hot water with the elder boy.
"But Reginald need not have screamed so," testily interposed Lord Hartledon. "I thought one of them must be on fire. You naughty child, why did you scream?" he continued, giving Reginald a slight tap on the ear.
"Any child would scream at being so taken by surprise," said Lady Hartledon. "It is Edward who is in fault, not Reginald; and it is he who deserves punishment."
"And he should have it, if he were my son," boldly declared the nurse, as she picked up the unhappy Reginald. "A great greedy boy, to swallow down every bit of the jam, and never give his brother a taste, after poisoning him with that nasty powder!"
Edward rose, and gave the nurse a look of scorn. "The powder's good enough for him: he is nothing but a young brat, and I am Lord Elster."
Lady Hartledon felt provoked. "What is that you say, Edward?" she asked, laying her hand upon his shoulder in reproval.
"Let me alone, mamma. He'll never be anything but Regy Elster. _I_ shall be Lord Hartledon, and jam's proper for me, and it's fair I should put upon him."
The nurse flounced off with Reginald, and Lady Hartledon turned to her husband. "Is this to be suffered? Will you allow it to pass without correction?"
"He means nothing," said Val. "Do you, Edward, my boy?"
"Yes, I do; I mean what I say. I shall stand up for myself and Maude."
Hartledon made no remonstrance: only drew the boy to him, with a hasty gesture, as though he would shield him from anger and the world.
Anne, hurt almost to tears, quitted the room. But she had scarcely reached her own when she remembered that she had left a diamond brooch in the nursery, which she had just been about to put into her dress when alarmed by the cries. She went back for it, and stood almost confounded by what she saw. Lord Hartledon, sitting down, had clasped his boy in his arms, and was sobbing over him; emotion such as man rarely betrays.
"Papa, Regy and the other two are not going to put me and Maude out of our places, are they? They can't, you know. We come first."
"Yes, yes, my boy; no one shall put you out," was the answer, as he pressed passionate kisses on the boy's face. "I will stand by you for ever."
Very judicious indeed! the once sensible man seemed to ignore the evident fact that the boy had been tutored. Lady Hartledon, a fear creeping over her, she knew not of what, left her brooch where it was, and stole back to her dressing-room.
Presently Val came in, all traces of emotion removed from his features. Lady Hartledon had dismissed her maid, and stood leaning against the arm of the sofa, indulging in bitter rumination.
"Silly children!" cried he; "it's hard work to manage them. And Edward has lost his pow--" He broke off; stopped by the look of angry reproach from his wife, cast on him for the first time in their married life. He took her hand and bent down to her: fervent love, if ever she read it, in his eyes and tones.
"Forgive me, Anne; you are feeling this."
"Why do you throw these slights on my children? Why are you not more just?"
"I do not intend to slight our children, Anne, Heaven knows. But I--I cannot punish Edward."
"Why did you ever make me your wife?" sighed Lady Hartledon, drawing her hand away.
His poor assumption of unconcern was leaving him quickly; his face was changing to one of bitter sorrow.
"When I married you," she resumed, "I had reason to hope that should children be born to us, you would love them equally with your first; I had a right to hope it. What have I done that--" "Stay, Anne! I can bear anything better than reproach from you."
"What have I and my children done to you, I was about to ask, that you take this aversion to them? lavishing all your love on the others and upon them only injustice?"
Val bent down, agitation in his face and voice.
"Hush, Anne! you don't know. The danger is that I should love your children better, far better than Maude's. It might be so if I did not guard against it."
"I cannot understand you," she exclaimed.
"Unfortunately, I understand myself only too well. I have a heavy burden to bear; do not you--my best and dearest--increase it."
She looked at him keenly; laid her hands upon him, tears gathering in her eyes. "Tell me what the burden is; tell me, Val! Let me share it."
But Val drew in again at once, alarmed at the request: and contradicted himself in the most absurd manner.
"There's nothing to share, Anne; nothing to tell."
Certainly this change was not propitiatory. Lady Hartledon, chilled and mortified, disdained to pursue the theme. Drawing herself up, she turned to go down to dinner, remarking that he might at least treat the children with more _apparent_ justice.
"I am just; at least, I wish to be just," he broke forth in impassioned tones. "But I cannot be severe with Edward and Maude."
Another powder was procured, and, amidst much fighting and resistance, was administered. Lady Hartledon was in the boy's room the first thing in the morning. One grand quality in her was, that she never visited her vexation on the children; and Edward, in spite of his unamiable behaviour, did at heart love her, whilst he despised his grandmother; one of his sources of amusement being to take off that estimable old lady's peculiarities behind her back, and send the servants into convulsions.
"You look very hot, Edward," exclaimed Lady Hartledon, as she kissed him. "How do you feel?"
"My throat's sore, mamma, and my legs could not find a cold place all night. Feel my hand."
It was a child's answer, sufficiently expressive. An anxious look rose to her countenance.
"Are you sure your throat is sore?"
"It's very sore. I am so thirsty."
Lady Hartledon gave him some weak tea, and sent for Mr. Brook to come round as soon as possible. At breakfast she met the dowager, who had been out the previous evening during the powder episode. Lady Hartledon mentioned to her husband that she had sent a message to the doctor, not much liking Edward's symptoms.
"What's the matter with him?" asked the dowager, quickly. "What are his symptoms?"
"Nay, I may be wrong," said Lady Hartledon, with a smile. "I won't infect you with my fears, when there may be no reason for them."
The countess-dowager caught at the one word, and applied it in a manner never anticipated. She was the same foolish old woman she had ever been; indeed, her dread of catching any disorder had only grown with the years. And it happened, unfortunately for her peace, that the disorder which leaves its cruel traces on the most beautiful face was just then prevalent in London. Of all maladies the human frame is subject to, the vain old creature most dreaded that one. She rose up from her seat; her face turned pale, and her teeth began to chatter.
"It's small-pox! If I have a horror of one thing more than another, it's that dreadful, disfiguring malady. I wouldn't stay in a house where it was for a hundred thousand pounds. I might catch it and be marked for life!"
Lady Hartledon begged her to be composed, and Val smothered a laugh. The symptoms were not those of small-pox.
"How should you know?" retorted the dowager, drowning the reassuring words. "How should any one know? Get Pepps here directly. Have you sent for him?"
"No," said Anne. "I have more confidence in Mr. Brook where children are concerned."
"Confidence in Brook!" shrieked the dowager, pushing up her flaxen front. "A common, overworked apothecary! Confidence in him, Lady Hartledon! Elster's life may be in danger; he is my grandchild, and I insist on Pepps being fetched to him."
Anne sat down at once and wrote a brief note to Sir Alexander. It happened that the message sent to Mr. Brook had found that gentleman away from home, and the greater man arrived first. He looked at the child, asked a few bland questions, and wrote a prescription. He did not say what the illness might be: for he never hazarded a premature opinion. As he was leaving the chamber, a servant accosted him.
"Lady Kirton wishes to see you, sir."
"Well, Pepps," cried she, as he advanced, having loaded herself with camphor, "what is it?"
"I do not take upon myself to pronounce an opinion, Lady Kirton," rejoined the doctor, who had grown to feel irritated lately at the dowager's want of ceremony towards him. "In the early stage of a disorder it can rarely be done with certainty."
"Now don't let's have any of that professional humbug, Pepps," rejoined her ladyship. "You doctors know a common disorder as soon as you see it, only you think it looks wise not to say. Is it small-pox?"
"It's not impossible," said the doctor, in his wrath.
The dowager gasped.
"But I do not observe any symptoms of that malady developing themselves at present," added the doctor. "I think I may say it is not small-pox."
"Good patience, Pepps! you'll frighten me into it. It is and it isn't--what do you mean? What is it, if it's not that?"
"I may be able to tell after a second visit. Good morning, Lady Kirton," said he, backing out. "Take care you don't do yourself an injury with too much of that camphor. It is exciting."
In a short time Mr. Brook arrived. When he had seen the child and was alone with Lady Hartledon, she explained that the countess-dowager had wished Sir Alexander Pepps called in, and showed him the prescription just written. He read it and laid it down.
"Lady Hartledon," said he, "I must venture to disagree with that prescription. Lord Elster's symptoms are those of scarlet-fever, and it would be unwise to administer it. Sir Alexander stands of course much higher in the profession than I do, but my practice with children is larger than his."
"I feared it was scarlet-fever," answered Lady Hartledon. "What is to be done? I have every confidence in you, Mr. Brook; and were Edward my own child, I should know how to act. Do you think it would be dangerous to give him this prescription? You may speak confidentially."
"Not dangerous; it is a prescription that will do neither harm nor good. I suspect Sir Alexander could not detect the nature of the illness, and wrote this merely to gain time. It is not an infrequent custom to do so. In my opinion, not an hour should be lost in giving him a more efficacious medicine; early treatment is everything in scarlet-fever."
Lady Hartledon had been rapidly making up her mind. "Send in what you think right to be taken, immediately," she said, "and meet Sir Alexander in consultation later on."
Scarlet-fever it proved to be; not a mild form of it; and in a very few hours Lord Elster was in great danger, the throat being chiefly affected. The house was in commotion; the dowager worse than any one in it. A complication of fears beset her: first, terror for her own safety, and next, the less abject dread that death might remove _her_ grandchild. In this latter fear she partly lost her personal fears, so far at any rate as to remain in the house; for it seemed to her that the child would inevitably die if she left it. Late in the afternoon she rushed into the presence of the doctors, who had just been holding a second consultation.
Sir Alexander Pepps recommended leeches to the throat: Mr. Brook disapproved of them. "It is the one chance for his life," said Sir Alexander.
"It is removing nearly all chance," said Mr. Brook.
Sir Alexander prevailed; and when they came forth it was understood that leeches were to be applied. But here Lady Hartledon stepped in.
"I dread leeches to the throat, Sir Alexander, if you will forgive me for saying so. I have twice seen them applied in scarlet-fever; and the patients--one a young lady, the other a child--in both cases died."
"Madam, I have given my opinion," curtly returned the physician. "They are necessary in Lord Elster's case."
"Do you approve of leeches?" cried Lady Hartledon, turning to Mr. Brook.
"Not altogether," was the cautious answer.
"Answer me one question, Mr. Brook," said Lady Hartledon, in her earnestness. "Would you apply these leeches were you treating the case alone?"
"No, madam, I would not."
Anne appealed to her husband. When the medical men differed, she thought the decision lay with him.
"I'm sure I don't know," returned Val, who felt perfectly helpless to advise. "Can't you decide, Anne? You know more about children and illness than I do."
"I would do so without hesitating a moment were it my own child," she replied. "I would not allow them to be put on."
"No, you would rather see him die," interrupted the dowager, who overheard the words, and most intemperately and unjustifiably answered them.
Anne coloured with shame for the old woman, but the words silenced her: how was it possible to press her own opinion after that? Sir Alexander had it all his own way, and the leeches were applied on either side the throat, Mr. Brook emphatically asserting in Lady Hartledon's private ear that he "washed his hands" of the measure. Before they came off the consequences were apparent; the throat was swollen outwardly, on both sides; within, it appeared to be closing.
The dowager, rather beside herself on the whole, had insisted on the leeches. Any one, seeing her conduct now, might have thought the invalid boy was really dear to her. Nothing of the sort. A hazy idea had been looming through her mind for years that Val was not strong; she had been mistaking mental disease for bodily illness; and a project to have full control of her grandchild, should he come into the succession prematurely, had coloured her dreams. This charming prospect would be ignominiously cut short if the boy went first.
Sir Alexander saw his error. There must be something peculiar in Lord Elster's constitution, he blandly said; it would not have happened in another. Of course, anything that turns out a mistake always is in the constitution--never in the treatment. Whether he lived or died now was just the turn of a straw: the chances were that he would die. All that could be done now was to endeavour to counteract the mischief by external applications.
"I wish you would let me try a remedy," said Lady Hartledon, wistfully. "A compress of cold water round the throat with oilsilk over it. I have seen it do so much good in cases of inward inflammation."
Mr. Brook smiled: if anything would do good that might, he said, speaking as if he had little faith in remedies now. Sir Alexander intimated that her ladyship might try it; graciously observing that it would do no harm.
The application was used, and the evening went on. The child had fallen into a sort of stupor, and Mr. Brook came in again before he had been away an hour, and leaned anxiously over the patient. He lay with his eyes half-closed, and breathed with difficulty.
"I think," he exclaimed softly, "there's the slightest shade of improvement."
"In the fever, or the throat?" whispered Lady Hartledon, who had not quitted the boy's bedside.
"In the throat. If so, it is due to your remedy, Lady Hartledon."
"Is he in danger?"
"In great danger. Still, I see a gleam of hope."
After the surgeon's departure, she went down to her husband, meeting Hedges on the stairs, who was coming to inquire after the patient for his master, for about the fiftieth time. Hartledon was in the library, pacing about incessantly in the darkness, for the room was only lighted by the fire. Anne closed the door and approached him.
"Percival, I do not bring you very good tidings," she said; "and yet they might be worse. Mr. Brook tells me he is in great danger, but thinks he sees a gleam of hope."
Lord Hartledon took her hand within his arm and resumed his pacing; his eyes were fixed on the carpet, and he said nothing.
"Don't grieve as those without hope," she continued, her eyes filling with tears. "He may yet recover. I have been praying that it may be so."
"Don't pray for it," he cried, his tone one of painful entreaty. "I have been daring to pray that it might please God to take him."
"Percival!" she exclaimed, starting away from him.
"I am not mad, Anne. Death would be a more merciful fate for my boy than life. Death now, whilst he is innocent, safe in Christ's love! --death, in Heaven's mercy!"
And Anne crept back to the upper chamber, sick with terror; for she did think that the trouble of his child's state was affecting her husband's brain.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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37
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A PAINFUL SCENE.
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Lord and Lady Hartledon were entertaining a family group. The everlasting dowager kept to them unpleasantly; making things unbearable, and wearing out her welcome in no slight degree, if she had only been wise enough to see it. She had escaped scarlet-fever and other dreaded ills; and was alive still. For that matter, the little Lord Elster had come out of it also: _not_ unscathed; for the boy remained a sickly wreck, and there was very little hope that he would really recover. The final close might be delayed, but it was not to be averted. Before Easter they had left London for Hartledon, that he might have country air. Lord Hartledon's eldest sister, Lady Margaret Cooper, came there with her husband; and on this day the other sister, Lady Laura Level, had arrived from India. Lady Margaret was an invalid, and not an agreeable woman besides; but to Laura and Anne the meeting, after so many years' separation, was one of intense pleasure. They had been close friends from childhood.
They were all gathered together in the large drawing-room after luncheon. The day was a wet one, and no one had ventured out except Sir James Cooper. Accustomed to the Scotch mists, this rain seemed a genial shower, and Sir James was enjoying it accordingly. It was a warm, close day, in spite of the rain; and the large fire in the grate made the room oppressive, so that they were glad to throw the windows open.
Lying on a sofa near the fire was the invalid boy. By merely looking at him you might see that he would never rally, though he fluctuated much. To-day he was, comparatively speaking, well. Little Maude was threading beads; and the two others, much younger, stood looking on--Reginald and Anne. Lady Margaret Cooper, having a fellow-feeling for an invalid, sat near the sick boy. Lord Hartledon sat apart at a table reading, and making occasional notes. The dowager, more cumbersome than ever, dozed on the other side of the hearth. She was falling into the habit of taking a nap after luncheon as well as after dinner. Lady Laura was in danger of convulsions every time she looked at the dowager. Never in all her life had she seen so queer an old figure. She and Anne stood together at an open window, the one eagerly asking questions, the other answering, all in undertones. Lady Laura had been away from her own home and kindred some twelve years, and it seemed to her half a lifetime.
"Anne, how _was_ it?" she exclaimed. "It was a thing that always puzzled me, and I never came to the bottom of it. My husband said at the time I used to talk of it in my sleep."
"What do you mean?"
"About you and Val. You were engaged to each other; you loved him, and he loved you. How came that other marriage about?"
"Well, I can hardly tell you. I was at Cannes with mamma, and he fell into the meshes. We knew nothing about it until they were married. Never mind all that now; I don't care to recall it, and it is a very sore point with Val. The blame, I believe, lay chiefly with _her_."
Anne glanced at the dowager, to indicate whom she meant. Lady Laura's eyes followed the same direction, and she laughed.
"A painted old guy! She looks like one who would do it. Why doesn't some one put her under a glass case and take her to the British Museum? When news of the marriage came out to India I was thunderstruck. I wrote off at once to Val, asking all sorts of questions, and received quite a savage reply, telling me to mind my own business. That letter alone would have told me how Val repented; it was so unlike him. Do you know what I did?"
"What did you do?"
"Sent him another letter by return mail with only two words in it--'Elster's Folly.' Poor Val! She died of heart-disease, did she not?"
"Yes. But she seemed to have been ailing for some time. She was greatly changed."
"Val is changed. There are threads of silver in his hair; and he is so much quieter than I thought he ever would be. I wonder you took him, Anne, after all; and I wonder still more that Dr. Ashton allowed it."
A blush tinged Lady Hartledon's face as she looked out at the soft rain, and a half-smile parted her lips.
"I see, Anne. Love once, love ever; and I suppose it was the same with Val, in spite of his folly. I should have taken out my revenge by marrying the first eligible man that offered himself. Talking of that--is poor Mr. Graves married yet?"
"Yes, at last," said Anne, laughing. "A grand match too for him, poor timid man: his wife's a lord's daughter, and as tall as a house."
"If ever man worshipped woman he worshipped you, though you were only a girl."
"Nonsense, Laura."
"Anne, you knew it quite well; and so did Val. Did he ever screw his courage up to the point of proposing?"
Anne laughed. "If he ever did, I was too vexed to answer him. He will be very happy, Laura. His wife is a meek, amiable woman, in spite of her formidable height."
"And now I want you to tell me one thing--How was it that Edward could not be saved?"
For a moment Lady Hartledon did not understand, and turned her eyes on the boy.
"I mean my brother, Anne. When news came out to India that he had died in that shocking manner, following upon poor George--I don't care now to recall how I felt. Was there _no_ one at hand to save him?"
"No one. A sad fatality seemed to attend it altogether. Val regrets his brother bitterly to this day."
"And that poor Willy Gum was killed at sea, after all!"
"Yes," said Anne, shortly. "When you spoke of Edward," returning to the other subject, "I thought you meant the boy."
Lady Laura shook her head. "He will never get well, Anne. Death is written on his face."
"You would say so, if you saw him some days. He is excitable, and your coming has roused him. I never saw any one fluctuate so; one day dying, the next better again. For myself I have very little hope, and Mr. Hillary has none; but I dare not say so to Margaret and the dowager."
"Why not?"
"It makes them angry. They cannot bear to hear there's a possibility of his death. Margaret may see the danger, but I don't believe the dowager does."
"Their wishes must blind them," observed Lady Laura. "The dowager seems all fury and folly. She scarcely gave herself time to welcome me this morning, or to inquire how I was after my long voyage; but began descanting on a host of evils, the chief being that her grandson should have had fever."
"She would like him to bear a charmed life. Not for love of him, Laura."
"What then?"
"I do not believe she has a particle of love for him. Don't think me uncharitable; it is the truth; Val will tell you the same. She is not capable of experiencing common affection for any one; every feeling of her nature is merged in self-interest. Had her daughter left another boy she would not be dismayed at the prospect of this one's death; whether he lived or died, it would be all one to her. The grievance is that Reginald should have the chance of succeeding."
"Because he is your son. I understand. A vain, puffed-up old thing! the idea of her still painting her face and wearing false curls! I wonder you tolerate her in your house, Anne! She's always here."
"How can I help myself? She considers, I believe, that she has more right in this house than I have."
"Does she make things uncomfortable?"
"More so than I have ever confessed, even to my husband. From the hour of my marriage she set the two children against me, and against my children when they came; and she never ceases to do so still."
"Why do you submit to it?"
"She is their grandmother, and I cannot well deny her the house. Val might do so, but he does not. Perhaps I should have had courage to attempt it, for the children's own sake, it is so shocking to train them to ill-nature, but that he appears to think as she does. The petty disputes between the children are frequent--for my two elder ones are getting of an age to turn again when put upon--but their father never corrects Edward and Maude, or allows them to be corrected; let them do what wrong they will, he takes their part. I believe that if Edward _killed_ one of my children, he would only caress him."
Lady Laura turned her eyes on the speaker's face, on its flush of pain and mortification.
"And Val loved you: and did _not_ love Maude! What does it mean, Anne?"
"I cannot tell you. Things altogether are growing more than I can bear."
"Margaret has been with you some time; has she not interfered, or tried to put things upon a right footing?"
Anne shook her head. "She espouses the dowager's side; upholds the two children in their petty tyranny. No one in the house takes my part, or my children's."
"That is just like Margaret. Do you remember how you and I used to dread her domineering spirit when we were girls? It's time I came, I think, to set things right."
"Laura, neither you nor any one else can set things right. They have been wrong too long. The worst is, I cannot see what the evil is, as regards Val. If I ask him he repels me, or laughs at me, and tells me I am fanciful. That he has some secret trouble I have long known: his days are unhappy, his nights restless; often when he thinks me asleep I am listening to his sighs. I am glad you have come home; I have wanted a true friend to confide these troubles to, and I could only speak of them to one of the family."
"It sounds like a romance," cried Laura. "Some secret grief! What can it be?"
They were interrupted by a commotion. Maude had been threading a splendid ring all the colours of the rainbow, and now exhibited it for the benefit of admiring beholders.
"Papa--Aunt Margaret--look at my ring."
Lord Hartledon nodded pleasantly at the child from his distant seat; Lady Margaret appeared not to have heard; and Maude caught up a soft ball and threw it at her aunt.
Unfortunately, it took a wrong direction, and struck the nodding dowager on the nose. She rose up in a fury and some commotion ensued.
"Make me a ring, Maude," little Anne lisped when the dowager had subsided into her chair again. Maude took no notice; her finger was still lifted with the precious ornament.
"Can you see it from your sofa, Edward?"
The boy rose and stretched himself. "Pretty well. You have put it on the wrong finger, Maude. Ladies don't wear rings on the little finger."
"But it won't go on the others," said Maude dolefully: "it's too small."
"Make a larger one."
"Make one for me, Maude," again broke in Anne's little voice.
"No, I won't!" returned Maude. "You are big enough to thread beads for yourself."
"No, she's not," said Reginald. "Make her one, Maude."
"No, don't, Maude," said Edward. "Let them do things for themselves."
"You hear!" whispered Lady Hartledon.
"I do hear. And Val sits there and never reproves them; and the old dowager's head and eyes are nodding and twinkling approval."
Lady Laura was an energetic little woman, thin, and pale, and excessively active, with a propensity for setting the world straight, and a tongue as unceremoniously free as the dowager's. In the cause of justice she would have stood up to battle with a giant. Lady Hartledon was about to make some response, but she bade her wait; her attention was absorbed by the children. Perhaps the truth was that she was burning to have a say in the matter herself.
"Maude," she called out, "if that ring is too small for you, it would do for Anne, and be kind of you to give it her."
Maude looked dubious. Left to herself, the child would have been generous enough. She glanced at the dowager.
"May I give it her, grand'ma?"
Grand'ma was conveniently deaf. She would rather have cut the ring in two than it should be given to the hated child: but, on the other hand, she did not care to offend Laura Level, who possessed inconveniently independent opinions, and did not shrink from proclaiming them. Seizing the poker, she stirred the fire, and created a divertissement.
In the midst of it, Edward left his sofa and walked up to the group and their beads. He was very weak, and tottered unintentionally against Anne. The touch destroyed her equilibrium, and she fell into Maude's lap. There was no damage done, but the box of beads was upset on to the carpet. Maude screamed at the loss of her treasures, rose up with anger, and slapped Anne. The child cried out.
"Why d'you hit her?" cried Reginald. "It was Edward's fault; he pushed her."
"What's that!" exclaimed Edward. "My fault! I'll teach you to say that," and he struck Reginald a tingling slap on the cheek.
Of course there was loud crying. The dowager looked on with a red face. Lady Margaret Cooper, who had no children of her own, stopped her ears. Lady Laura laid her hand on her sister-in law's wrist.
"And you can witness these scenes, and not check them! You are changed, indeed, Anne!"
"If I interfere to protect my children, I am checked and prevented," replied Lady Hartledon, with quivering lips. "This scene is nothing to what we have sometimes."
"Who checks you--Val?"
"The dowager. But he does not interpose for me. Where the children are concerned, he tacitly lets her have sway. It is not often anything of this sort takes place in his presence."
The noise continued: all the children seemed to be fighting together. Anne went forward and drew her own two out of the fray.
"Pray send those two screamers to the nursery, Lady Hartledon," cried the dowager.
"I cannot think why they are allowed in the drawing-room at all," said Lady Margaret, addressing no one in particular, unless it was the ceiling. "Edward and Maude would be quiet enough without them."
Anne did not retort: she only glanced at her husband, silent reproach on her pale face, and took up Anne in her arms to carry her from the room. But Lady Laura, impulsive and warm, came forward and stopped the exit.
"Lady Kirton, I am ashamed of you! Margaret, I am ashamed of you! I am ashamed of you all. You are doing the children a lasting injury, and you are guilty of cruel insult to Lady Hartledon. This is the second scene I have been a witness to, when the elder children were encouraged to behave badly to the younger; the first was in the nursery this morning; and I have been here only a few hours. And you, Lord Hartledon, their head and father, responsible for your children's welfare, can tamely sit by, and suffer it, and see your wife insulted! Is this what you married Anne Ashton for?"
Lord Hartledon rose: a strange look of pain on his features. "You are mistaken, Laura. I wish every respect to be shown to my wife; respect from all. Anne knows it."
"Respect!" scornfully retorted Lady Laura. "When you do not give her so much as a voice in her own house; when you allow her children to be trampled on, and beaten--_beaten_, sir--and she dare not interfere! I blush for you, and could never have believed you would so behave to your wife. Who are you, madam," turning again, in her anger, on the countess-dowager, "and who are you, Margaret, that you should dare to encourage Edward and Maude in rebellion against their present mother?"
Taken by surprise, the dowager made no answer. Lady Margaret looked defiance.
"You and Anne have invited me to your house on a lengthened visit, Lord Hartledon," continued Laura; "but I promise you that if this is to continue I will not remain in it; I will not witness insult to my early friend; and I will not see children incited to evil passions. Undress that child, sir," she sharply added, directing Val's attention to Reginald, "and you will see bruises on his back and shoulder. I saw them this morning, and asked the nurse what caused them and was told Lord Elster kicked him."
"It was the little beggar's own fault," interposed Edward, who was standing his ground with equanimity, and seemed to enjoy the scene.
Lady Laura caught him sharply by the arm. "Of whom are you speaking! Who's a little beggar?"
"Regy is."
"Who taught you to call him one?"
"Grand'ma."
"There, go away; go away all of you," cried Lady Laura, turning the two elder ones from the room imperatively, after Anne and her children. "Oh, so you are going also, Val! No wonder you are ashamed to stay here."
He was crossing the room; a curious expression on his drawn lips. Laura watched him from it; then went and stood before the dowager; her back to her sister.
"Has it ever struck you, Lady Kirton, that you may one day have to account for this?"
"It strikes me that you are making a vast deal of unnecessary noise, Madame Laura!"
"If your daughter could look on, from the other world, at earth and its scenes--and some hold a theory that such a state of things is not impossible--what would be her anguish, think you, at the evil you are inculcating in her children? One of them will very soon be with her--" The dowager interrupted with a sort of howl.
"He will; there is no mistaking it. You who see him constantly may not detect it; but it is evident to a stranger. Were it not beneath me, I might ask on what grounds you tutor him to call Reginald a beggar, considering that your daughter brought my brother nothing but a few debts; whilst Miss Ashton brought him a large fortune?"
"I wouldn't condescend to be mean, Laura," put in Lady Margaret, whilst the dowager fanned her hot face.
They were interrupted by Hedges, showing in visitors. How much more Lady Laura might have said must remain unknown: she was in a mood to say a great deal.
"Mr. and Mrs. Graves."
It was the curate; and the tall, meek woman spoken of by Anne. Laura laughed as she shook hands with the former; whom she had known when a girl, and been given to ridiculing more than was quite polite.
Lord Hartledon had left the room after his wife. She sent the children to the nursery; and he found her alone in her chamber sobbing bitterly.
Certainly he was a contradiction. He fondly took her in his arms, beseeching her to pardon him, if he had unwittingly slighted her, as Laura implied; and his blue eyes were beaming with affection, his voice was low with persuasive tenderness.
"There are times," she sobbed, "when I am tempted to wish myself back in my father's house!"
"I cannot think whence all this discomfort arises!" he weakly exclaimed. "Of one thing, Anne, rest assured: as soon as Edward changes for the better or the worse--and one it must inevitably be--that mischief-making old woman shall quit my house for ever."
"Edward will never change for the better," she said. "For the worse, he may soon: for the better, never."
"I know: Hillary has told me. Bear with things a little longer, and believe that I will remedy them the moment remedy is possible. I am your husband."
Lady Hartledon lifted her eyes to his. "We cannot go on as we are going on now. Tell me what it is you have to bear. You remind me that you are my husband; I now remind you that I am your wife: confide in me. I will be true and loving to you, whatever it may be."
"Not yet; in a little time, perhaps. Bear with me still, my dear wife."
His look was haggard; his voice bore a sound of anguish; he clasped her hand to pain as he left her. Whatever might be his care, Anne could not doubt his love.
And as he went into the drawing-room, a smile on his face, chatting with the curate, laughing with his newly-married wife, both those unsuspicious visitors could have protested when they went forth, that never was a man more free from trouble than that affable servant of her Majesty's the Earl of Hartledon.
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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38
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EXPLANATIONS.
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A change for the worse occurred in the child, Lord Elster; and after two or three weeks' sinking he died, and was buried at Hartledon by the side of his mother. Hartledon's sister quitted Hartledon House for a change; but the countess-dowager was there still, and disturbed its silence with moans and impromptu lamentations, especially when going up and down the staircase and along the corridors.
Mr. Carr, who had come for the funeral, also remained. On the day following it he and Lord Hartledon were taking a quiet walk together, when they met Mrs. Gum. Hartledon stopped and spoke to her in his kindly manner. She was less nervous than she used to be; and she and her husband were once more at peace in their house.
"I would not presume to say a word of sympathy, my lord," she said, curtseying, "but we felt it indeed. Jabez was cut up like anything when he came in yesterday from the funeral."
Val looked at her, a meaning she understood in his earnest eyes. "Yes, it is hard to part with our children: but when grief is over, we live in the consolation that they have only gone before us to a better place, where sin and sorrow are not. We shall join them later."
She went away, tears of joy filling her eyes. _She_ had a son up there, waiting for _her_; and she knew Lord Hartledon meant her to think of him when he had so spoken.
"Carr," said Val, "I never told you the finale of that tragedy. George Gordon of the mutiny, did turn up: he lived and died in England."
"No!"
"He died at Calne. It was that poor woman's son."
Mr. Carr looked round for an explanation. He knew her as the wife of clerk Gum, and sister to Hartledon's housekeeper. Val told him all, as the facts had come out to him.
"Pike always puzzled me," he said. "Disguised as he was with his black hair, his face stained with some dark juice, there was a look in him that used to strike some chord in my memory. It lay in the eyes, I think. You'll keep these facts sacred, Carr, for the parents' sake. They are known only to four of us."
"Have you told your wife yet?" questioned Mr. Carr, recurring to a different subject.
"No. I could not, somehow, whilst the child lay dead in the house. She shall know it shortly."
"And what about dismissing the countess-dowager? You will do it?"
"I shall be only too thankful to do it. All my courage has come back to me, thank Heaven!"
The Countess-Dowager of Kirton's reign was indeed over; never would he allow her to disturb the peace of his house again. He might have to pension her off, but that was a light matter. His intention was to speak to her in a few days' time, allowing an interval to elapse after the boy's death; but she forestalled the time herself, as Val was soon to find.
Dinner that evening was a sad meal--sad and silent. The only one who did justice to it was the countess-dowager--in a black gauze dress and white crêpe turban. Let what would betide, Lady Kirton never failed to enjoy her dinner. She had a scheme in her head; it had been working there since the day of her grandson's death; and when the servants withdrew, she judged it expedient to disclose it to Hartledon, hoping to gain her point, now that he was softened by sorrow.
"Hartledon, I want to talk to you," she began, critically tasting her wine; "and I must request that you'll attend to me."
Anne looked up, wondering what was coming. She wore an evening dress of black crêpe, a jet necklace on her fair neck, jet bracelets on her arms: mourning far deeper than the dowager's.
"Are you listening to me, Val?"
"I am quite ready," answered Val.
"I asked you, once before, to let me have Maude's children, and to allow me a fair income with them. Had you done so, this dreadful misfortune would not have overtaken your house: for it stands to reason that if Lord Elster had been living somewhere else with me, he could not have caught scarlet-fever in London."
"We never thought he did catch it," returned Hartledon. "It was not prevalent at the time; and, strange to say, none of the other children took it, nor any one else in the house."
"Then what gave it him?" sharply uttered the dowager.
What Val answered was spoken in a low tone, and she caught one word only, Providence. She gave a growl, and continued.
"At any rate, he's gone; and you have now no pretext for refusing me Maude. I shall take her, and bring her up, and you must make me a liberal allowance for her."
"I shall not part with Maude," said Val, in quiet tones of decision.
"You can't refuse her to me, I say," rejoined the dowager, nodding her head defiantly; "she's my own grandchild."
"And my child. The argument on this point years ago was unsatisfactory, Lady Kirton; I do not feel disposed to renew it. Maude will remain in her own home."
"You are a vile man!" cried the dowager, with an inflamed face. "Pass me the wine."
He filled her glass, and left the decanter with her. She resumed.
"One day, when I was with Maude, in that last illness of hers in London, when we couldn't find out what was the matter with her, poor dear, she wrote you a letter; and I know what was in it, for I read it. You had gone dancing off somewhere for a week."
"To the Isle of Wight, on your account," put in Lord Hartledon, quietly; "on that unhappy business connected with your son who lives there. Well, ma'am?"
"In that letter Maude said she wished me to have charge of her children, if she died; and begged you to take notice that she said it," continued the dowager. "Perhaps you'll say you never had that letter?"
"On the contrary, madam, I admit receiving it," he replied. "I daresay I have it still. Most of Maude's letters lie in my desk undisturbed."
"And, admitting that, you refuse to act up to it?"
"Maude wrote in a moment of pique, when she was angry with me. But--" "And I have no doubt she had good cause for anger!"
"She had great cause," was his answer, spoken with a strange sadness that surprised both the dowager and Lady Hartledon. Thomas Carr was twirling his wine-glass gently round on the white cloth, neither speaking nor looking.
"Later, my wife fully retracted what she said in that letter," continued Val. "She confessed that she had written it partly at your dictation, Lady Kirton, and said--but I had better not tell you that, perhaps."
"Then you shall tell me, Lord Hartledon; and you are a two-faced man, if you shuffle out of it."
"Very well. Maude said that she would not for the whole world allow her children to be brought up by you; she warned me also not to allow you to obtain too much influence over them."
"It's false!" said the dowager, in no way disconcerted.
"It is perfectly true: and Maude told me you knew what her sentiments were upon the point. Her real wish, as expressed to me, was, that the children should remain with me in any case, in their proper home."
"You say you have that other letter still?" cried the dowager, who was not always very clear in her conversation.
"No doubt."
"Then perhaps you'll look for it: and read over her wishes in black and white."
"To what end? It would make no difference in my decision. I tell you, ma'am, I am consulting Maude's wishes in keeping her child at home."
"I know better," retorted the dowager, completely losing her temper. "I wish your poor dear wife could rise from her grave and confute you. It's all stinginess; because you won't part with a paltry bit of money."
"No," said Val, "it's because I won't part with my child. Understand me, Lady Kirton--had Maude's wishes even been with you in this, I should not carry them out. As to money--I may have something to say to you on that score; but suppose we postpone it to a more fitting opportunity."
"You wouldn't carry them out!" she cried. "But you might be forced to, you mean man! That letter may be as good as a will in the eyes of the law. You daren't produce it; that's what it is."
"I'll give it you with pleasure," said Val, with a smile. "That is, if I have kept it. I am not sure."
She caught up her fan, and sat fanning herself. The reservation had suggested a meaning never intended to her crafty mind; her rebellious son-in-law meant to destroy the letter; and she began wondering how she could outwit him.
A sharp cry outside the door interrupted them. The children were only coming in to dessert now; and Reginald, taking a flying leap down the stairs, took rather too long a one, and came to grief at the bottom. Truth to say, the young gentleman, no longer kept down by poor Edward, was getting high-spirited and venturesome.
"What's that?" asked Anne, as the nurse came in with them, scolding.
"Lord Elster fell down, my lady. He's getting as tiresome as can be. Only to-day, I caught him astride the kitchen banisters, going to slide down them."
"Oh, Regy," said his mother, holding up her reproving finger.
The boy laughed, and came forward rubbing his arm, and ashamed of his tears. Val caught him up and kissed them away, drawing Maude also to his side.
That letter! The dowager was determined to get it, if there was a possibility of doing so. A suspicion that she would not be tolerated much longer in Lady Hartledon's house was upon her, and she knew not where to go. Kirton had married again; and his new wife had fairly turned her out more unceremoniously than the late one did. By hook or by crook, she meant to obtain the guardianship of her granddaughter, because in giving her Maude, Lord Hartledon would have to allow her an income.
She was a woman to stop at nothing; and upon quitting the dining-room she betook herself to the library--a large, magnificent room--the pride of Hartledon. She had come in search of Val's desk; which she found, and proceeded to devise means of opening it. That accomplished, she sat herself down, like a leisurely housebreaker, to examine it, putting on a pair of spectacles, which she kept surreptitiously in a pocket, and would not have worn before any one for the world. She found the letter she was in search of; and she found something else for her pains, which she had not bargained for.
Not just at first. There were many tempting odds and ends of things to dip into. For one thing, she found Val's banking book, and some old cheque-books; they served her for some time. Next she came upon two packets sealed up in white paper, with Val's own seal. On one was written, "Letters of Lady Maude;" on the other, "Letters of my dear Anne." Peering further into the desk, she came upon an obscure inner slide, which had evidently not been opened for years, and she had difficulty in undoing it. A paper was in it, superscribed, "Concerning A.W.;" on opening which she found a letter addressed to Thomas Carr, of the Temple.
Thomas Carr's letters were no more sacred with her than Lord Hartledon's. No woman living was troubled with scruples so little as she. It proved to have been written by a Dr. Mair, in Scotland, and was dated several years back.
But now--did Lord Hartledon really know he had that dangerous letter by him? If so, what could have possessed him to preserve it? Or, did he not rather believe he had returned it to Mr. Carr at the time? The latter, indeed, proved to be the case; and never, to the end of his life, would he, in one sense, forgive his own carelessness.
Who was A.W.? thought the curious old woman, as she drew the light nearer to her, and began the tempting perusal, making the most of the little time left. They could not be at tea yet, and she had told Lady Hartledon she was going to take her nap in her own room. The gratification of rummaging false Val's desk was an ample compensation; and the countess-dowager hugged herself with delight.
But what was this she had come upon--this paper "concerning A. W."? The dowager's mouth fell as she read; and gradually her little eyes opened as if they would start from their sockets, and her face grew white. Have you ever watched the livid pallor of fear struggling to one of these painted faces? She dashed off her spectacles; she got up and wrung her hands; she executed a frantic war-dance; and finally she tore, with the letter, into the drawing-room, where Val and Anne and Thomas Carr were beginning tea and talking quietly.
They rose in consternation as she danced in amongst them, and held out the letter to Lord Hartledon.
He took it from her, gazing in utter bewilderment as he gathered in its contents. Was it a fresh letter, or--his face became whiter than the dowager's. In her reckless passion she avowed what she had done--the letter was secreted in his desk.
"Have you dared to visit my desk?" he gasped--"break my seals? Are you mad?"
"Hark at him!" she cried. "He calls me to account for just lifting the lid of a desk! But what is he? A villain--a thief--a spy--a murderer--and worse than any of them! Ah, ha, my lady!" nodding her false front at Lady Hartledon, who stood as one petrified, "you stare there at me with your open eyes; but you don't know what you are! Ask _him_! What was Maude--Heaven help her--my poor Maude? What was she? And _you_ in the plot; you vile Carr! I'll have you all hanged together!"
Lord Hartledon caught his wife's hand.
"Carr, stay here with her and tell her all. No good concealing anything now she has read this letter. Tell her for me, for she would never listen to me."
He drew his wife into an adjoining room, the one where the portrait of George Elster looked down on its guests. The time for disclosing the story to his wife had been somewhat forestalled. He would have given half his life that it had never reached that other woman, miserable old sinner though she was.
"You are trembling, Anne; you need not do so. It is not against you that I have sinned."
Yes, she was trembling very much. And Val, in his honourable, his refined, shrinking nature, would have given his life's other half not to have had the tale to tell.
It is not a pleasant one. You may skip it if you please, and go on to the last page. Val once said he had been more sinned against than sinning: it may be deemed that in that opinion he was too lenient to himself. Anne, his wife, listened with averted face and incredulous ears.
"You have wanted a solution to my conduct, Anne--to the strange preference I seemed to accord the poor boy who is gone; why I could not punish him; why I was more thankful for the boon of his death than I had been for his life. He was my child, but he was not Lord Elster."
She did not understand.
"He had no right to my name; poor little Maude has no right to it. Do you understand me now?"
Not at all; it was as though he were talking Greek to her.
"Their mother, when they were born, was not my wife."
"Their mother was Lady Maude Kirton," she rejoined, in her bewilderment.
"That is exactly where it was," he answered bitterly. "Lady Maude Kirton, not Lady Hartledon."
She could not comprehend the words; her mind was full of consternation and tumult. Back went her thoughts to the past.
"Oh, Val! I remember papa's saying that a marriage in that unused chapel was only three parts legal!"
"It was legal enough, Anne: legal enough. But when that ceremony took place"--his voice dropped to a miserable whisper, "I had--as they tell me--a wife living."
Slowly she admitted the meaning of the words; and would have started from him with a faint cry, but that he held her to him.
"Listen to the whole, Anne, before you judge me. What has been your promise to me, over and over again? --that, if I would tell you my sorrow, _you_ would never shrink from me, whatever it might be."
She remembered it, and stood still; terribly rebellious, clasping her fingers to pain, one within the other.
"In that respect, at any rate, I did not willingly sin. When I married Maude I had no suspicion that I was not free as air; free to marry her, or any other woman in the world."
"You speak in enigmas," she said faintly.
"Sit down, Anne, whilst I give you the substance of the tale. Not its details until I am more myself, and that voice"--pointing to the next room--"is not sounding in my ears. You shall hear all later; at least, as much as I know myself; I have never quite believed in it, and it has been to me throughout as a horrible dream."
Indeed Mr. Carr seemed to be having no inconsiderable amount of trouble, to judge by the explosions of wrath on the part of the dowager.
She sat down as he told her, her face turned from him, rebellious at having to listen, but curious yet. Lord Hartledon stood by the mantelpiece and shaded his eyes with his hand.
"Send your thoughts into the past, Anne; you may remember that an accident happened to me in Scotland. It was before you and I were engaged, or it would not have happened. Or, let me say, it might not; for young men are reckless, and I was no better than others. Heaven have mercy on their follies!"
"The accident might not have happened?"
"I do not speak of the accident. I mean what followed. When out shooting I nearly blew off my arm. I was carried to the nearest medical man's, a Dr. Mair's, and remained there; for it was not thought safe to move me; they feared inflammation, and they feared locked-jaw. My father was written to, and came; and when he left after the danger was over he made arrangements with Dr. Mair to keep me on, for he was a skilful man, and wished to perfect the cure. I thought the prolonged stay in the strange, quiet house worse than all the rest. That feeling wore off; we grow reconciled to most conditions; and things became more tolerable as I grew better and joined the household. There was a wild, clever, random young man staying there, the doctor's assistant--George Gordon; and there was also a young girl, Agnes Waterlow. I used to wonder what this Agnes did there, and one day asked the old housekeeper; she said the young lady was there partly that the doctor might watch her health, partly because she was a relative of his late wife's, and had no home."
He paused, as if in thought, but soon continued.
"We grew very intimate; I, Gordon, and Miss Waterlow. Neither of them was the person I should have chosen for an intimacy; but there was, in a sense, no help for it, living together. Agnes was a wild, free, rather coarse-natured girl, and Gordon drank. That she fell in love with me there's no doubt--and I grew to like her quite well enough to talk nonsense to her. Whether any plot was laid between her and Gordon to entrap me, or whether what happened arose in the recklessness of the moment, I cannot decide to this hour. It was on my twenty-first birthday; I was almost well again; we had what the doctor called a dinner, Gordon a jollification, and Agnes a supper. It was late when we sat down to it, eight o'clock; and there was a good deal of feasting and plenty of wine. The doctor was called out afterwards to a patient several miles distant, and George Gordon made some punch; which rendered none of our heads the steadier. At least I can answer for mine: I was weak with the long illness, and not much of a drinker at any time. There was a great deal of nonsense going on, and Gordon pretended to marry me to Agnes. He said or read (I can't tell which, and never knew then) some words mockingly out of the prayer-book, and said we were man and wife. Whilst we were all laughing at the joke, the doctor's old housekeeper came in, to see what the noise was about, and I, by way of keeping it up, took Agnes by the hand, and introduced her as Mrs. Elster. I did not understand the woman's look of astonishment then; unfortunately, I have understood it too well since."
Anne was growing painfully interested.
"Well, after that she threw herself upon me in a manner that--that was extraordinary to me, not having the key to it; and I--lost my head. Don't frown, Anne; ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have lost theirs; and you'll say so if ever I give you the details. Of course blame attached to me; to me, and not to her. Though at the time I mentally gave her, I assure you, her full share, somewhat after the manner of the Pharisee condemning the publican. That also has come home to me: she believed herself to be legally my wife; I never gave a thought to that evening's farce, and should have supposed its bearing any meaning a simple impossibility.
"A short time, and letters summoned me home; my mother was dangerously ill. I remember Agnes asked me to take her with me, and I laughed at her. I arranged to write to her, and promised to go back shortly--which, to tell you the truth, I never meant to do. Having been mistaking her, mistaking her still, I really thought her worthy of very little consideration. Before I had been at home a fortnight I received a letter from Dr. Mair, telling me that Agnes was showing symptoms of insanity, and asking what provision I purposed making for her. My sin was finding me out; I wondered how _he_ had found it out; I did not ask, and did not know for years. I wrote back saying I would willingly take all expenses upon myself; and inquired what sum would be required by the asylum--to which he said she must be sent. He mentioned two hundred a-year, and from that time I paid it regularly."
"And was she really insane?" interrupted Lady Hartledon.
"Yes; she had been so once or twice before--and this was what the housekeeper had meant by saying she was with the doctor that her health might be watched. It appeared that when these symptoms came on, after I left, Gordon took upon himself to disclose to the doctor that Agnes was married to me, telling the circumstances as they had occurred. Dr. Mair got frightened: it was no light matter for the son of an English peer to have been deluded into marriage with an obscure and insane girl; and the quarrel that took place between him and Gordon on the occasion resulted in the latter's leaving. I have never understood Gordon's conduct in the matter: very disagreeable thoughts in regard to it come over me sometimes."
"What thoughts?"
"Oh, never mind; they can never be set at rest now. Let me make short work of this story. I heard no more and thought no more; and the years went on, and then came my marriage with Maude. We went to Paris--_you_ cannot have forgotten any of the details of that period, Anne; and after our return to London I was surprised by a visit from Dr. Mair. That evening, that visit and its details stamped themselves on my memory for ever in characters of living fire."
He paused for a moment, and something like a shiver seized him. Anne said nothing.
"Maude had gone with some friends to a fête at Chiswick, and Thomas Carr was dining with me. Hedges came in and said a gentleman wanted to see me--_would_ see me, and would not be denied. I went to him, and found it was Dr. Mair. In that interview I learnt that by the laws of Scotland Miss Waterlow was my wife."
"And the suspicion that she was so had never occurred to you before?"
"Anne! Should I have been capable of marrying Maude, or any one else, if it had? On my solemn word of honour, before Heaven"--he raised his right hand as if to give effect to his words--"such a thought had never crossed my brain. The evening that the nonsense took place I only regarded it as a jest, a pastime--what you will: had any one told me it was a marriage I should have laughed at them. I knew nothing then of the laws of Scotland, and should have thought it simply impossible that that minute's folly, and my calling her, to keep up the joke, Mrs. Elster, could have constituted a marriage. I think they all played a deep part, even Agnes. Not a soul had so much as hinted at the word 'marriage' to me after that evening; neither Gordon, nor she, nor Dr. Mair in his subsequent correspondence; and in that he always called her 'Agnes.' However--he then told me that she was certainly my legal wife, and that Lady Maude was not.
"At first," continued Val, "I did not believe it; but Dr. Mair persisted he was right, and the horror of the situation grew upon me. I told all to Carr, and took him up to Dr. Mair. They discussed Scottish law and consulted law-books; and the truth, so far, became apparent. Dr. Mair was sorry for me; he saw I had not erred knowingly in marrying Maude. As to myself, I was helpless, prostrated. I asked the doctor, if it were really true, why the fact had been kept from me: he replied that he supposed I knew it, and that delicacy alone had caused him to abstain from alluding to it in his letters. He had been very angry when Gordon told him, he said; grew half frightened as to consequences; feared he should get into trouble for allowing me to be so entrapped in his house; and he and Gordon parted at once. And then Dr. Mair asked a question which I could not very well answer, why, if I did not know she was my wife, I had paid so large a sum for Agnes. He had been burying the affair in silence, as he had assumed I was doing; and it was only the announcement of my marriage with Maude in the newspapers that aroused him. He had thought I was acting this bad part deliberately; and he went off at once to Hartledon in anger; found I had gone abroad; and now came to me on my return, still in anger, saying at first that he should proceed against me, and obtain justice for Agnes. When he found how utterly ignorant of wrong I had been, his tone changed; he was truly grieved and concerned for me. Nothing was decided: except that Dr. Mair, in his compassion towards Lady Maude, promised not to be the first to take legal steps. It seemed that there was only him to fear: George Gordon was reported to have gone to Australia; the old housekeeper was dead; Agnes was deranged. Dr. Mair left, and Carr and I sat on till midnight. Carr took what I thought a harsh view of the matter; he urged me to separate from Maude--" "I think you should have done so for her sake," came the gentle interruption.
"For her sake! the words Carr used. But, Anne, surely there were two sides to the question. If I disclosed the facts, and put her away from me, what was she? Besides, the law might be against me--Scotland's iniquitous law; but in Heaven's sight _Maude_ was my wife, not the other. So I temporized, hoping that time might bring about a relief, for Dr. Mair told me that Miss Waterlow's health was failing. However, she lived on, and--" Lady Hartledon started up, her face blanching.
"Is she not dead now? Was she living when you married me? Am _I_ your wife?"
He could hardly help smiling. His calm touch reassured her.
"Do you think you need ask, Anne? The next year Dr. Mair called upon me again--it was the evening before the boy was christened; he had come to London on business of his own. To my dismay, he told me that a change for the better was appearing in Miss Waterlow's mental condition; and he thought it likely she might be restored to health. Of course, it increased the perplexities and my horror, had that been needed; but the hope or fear, or what you like to call it, was not borne out. Three years later, the doctor came to me for the third and final time, to bring me the news that Agnes was dead."
As the relief had been to him then, so did it almost seem now to Anne. A sigh of infinite pain broke from her. She had not seen where all this was tending.
"Imagine, if you can, what it was for me all those years with the knowledge daily and nightly upon me that the disgraceful truth might at any moment come out to Maude--to her children, to the world! Living in the dread of arrest myself, should the man Gordon show himself on the scene! And now you see what it is that has marred my peace, and broken the happiness of our married life. How could I bear to cross those two deeply-injured children, who were ever rising up in judgment against me? How take our children's part against them, little unconscious things? It seemed that I had always, daily, hourly, some wrong to make up to them. The poor boy was heir to Hartledon in the eyes of the world; but, Anne, your boy was the true heir."
"Why did you not tell me? --all this time!"
"I could not. I dared not. You might not have liked to put Reginald out of his rights."
"Oh, Percival; how can you so misjudge me?" she asked, in tones of pain. "I would have guarded the secret as jealously as you. I must still do it for Maude."
"Poor Maude!" he sighed. "Her mother forgave me before she died--" "She knew it, then?"
"Yes. She learned--" Sounds of drumming on the door, and the countess-dowager's voice, stopped Lord Hartledon.
"I had better face her," he said, as he unlocked it. "She will arouse the household."
Wild, intemperate, she met him with a volley of abuse that startled Lady Hartledon. He got her to a sofa, and gently held her down there.
"It's what I've been obliged to do all along," said Thomas Carr; "I don't believe she has heard ten words of my explanation."
"Pray be calm, Lady Kirton," said Hartledon, soothingly; "be calm, as you value your daughter's memory. We shall have the servants at the doors."
"I won't be calm; I will know the worst."
"I wish you to know it; but not others."
"Was Maude your wife?"
"No," he answered, in low tones. "Not--" "And you are not ashamed to confess it?" she interrupted, not allowing him to continue. But she was a little calmer in manner; and Val stood upright before her with folded arms.
"I am ashamed and grieved to confess it; but I did not knowingly inflict the injury. In Scotland--" "Don't repeat the shameful tale," she cried; "I have heard from your confederate, Carr, as much as I want to hear. What do you deserve for your treachery to Maude?"
"All I have reaped--and more. But it was not intentional treachery; and Maude forgave me before she died."
"She knew it! You told her? Oh, you cruel monster!"
"I did not tell her. She did as you have just done--interfered in what did not concern her, in direct disobedience to my desire; and she found it out for herself, as you, ma'am, have found it out."
"When?"
"The winter before her death."
"Then the knowledge killed her!"
"No. Something else killed her, as you know. It preyed upon her spirits."
"Lord Hartledon, I can have you up for fraud and forgery, and I'll do it. It will be the consideration of Maude's fame against your punishment, and I'll make a sacrifice to revenge, and prosecute you."
"There is no fraud where an offence is committed unwittingly," returned Lord Hartledon; "and forgery is certainly not amongst my catalogue of sins."
"You are liable for both," suddenly retorted the dowager; "you have stuck up 'Maude, Countess of Hartledon,' on her monument in the church; and what's that but fraud and forgery?"
"It is neither. If Maude did not live Countess of Hartledon, she at least so went to her grave. We were remarried, privately, before she died. Mr. Carr can tell you so."
"It's false!" raved the dowager.
"I arranged it, ma'am," interposed Mr. Carr. "Lord Hartledon and your daughter confided the management to me, and the ceremony was performed in secrecy in London" The dowager looked from one to the other, as if she were bewildered.
"Married her again! why, that was making bad worse. Two false marriages! Did you do it to impose upon her?"
"I see you do not understand," said Lord Hartledon. "The--my--the person in Scotland was dead then. She was dead, I am thankful to say, before Maude knew anything of the affair."
Up started the dowager. "Then is the woman dead now? was she dead when you married _her_?" laying her hand upon Lady Hartledon's arm. "Are her children different from Maude's?"
"They are. It could not be otherwise."
"Her boy is really Lord Elster?"
She flung Lady Hartledon's arm from her. Her voice rose to a shriek.
"Maude is not Lady Maude?"
Val shook his head sadly.
"And your children are lords and ladies and honourables," darting a look of consternation at Anne, "whilst my daughter's--" "Peace, Lady Kirton!" sternly interrupted Val. "Let the child, Maude, be Lady Maude still to the world; let your daughter's memory be held sacred. The facts need never come out: I do not fear now that they ever will. I and my wife and Thomas Carr, will guard the secret safely: take you care to do so."
"I wish you had been hung before you married Maude!" responded the aggrieved dowager.
"I wish I had," said he.
"Ugh!" she grunted wrathfully, the ready assent not pleasing her.
"With my poor boy's death the chief difficulty has passed away. How things would have turned out, or what would have been done, had he lived, it has well-nigh worn away my brain to dwell upon. Carr knows that it has nearly killed me: my wife knows it."
"Yes, you could tell her things, and keep the diabolical secret from poor Maude and from me," she returned, rather inconsistently. "I don't doubt you and your wife have exulted enough over it."
"I never knew it until to-night," said Anne, gently turning to the dowager. "It has grieved me deeply. I shall never cease to feel for your daughter's wrongs; and it will only make me more tender and loving to her child. The world will never know that she is not Lady Maude."
"And the other name--Elster--because you know she has no right to it," was the spiteful retort. "I wish to my heart you had been drowned in your brother's place, Lord Hartledon; I wished it at the time."
"I know you did."
"You could not then have made fools of me and my dear daughter; and the darling little cherub in the churchyard would have been the real heir. There'd have been a good riddance of you."
"It might have been better for me in the long run," said he, quietly, passing over the inconsistencies of her speech. "Little peace or happiness have I had in living. Do not let us recriminate, Lady Kirton, or on some scores I might reproach you. Maude loved my brother, and you knew it; I loved Miss Ashton, and you knew that; yet from the very hour the breath was out of my brother's body you laid your plans and began your schemes upon me. I was weak as water in your hands, and fell into the snare. The marriage was your work entirely; and in the fruits it has brought forth there might arise a nice question, Lady Kirton, which of us is most to blame: I, who erred unwittingly, or you who--" "Will you have done?" she cried.
"I have nearly done. I only wish you to remember that others may have been wrong, as well as myself. Dr. Ashton warned us that night that the marriage might not bring a blessing. Anne, it was a cruel wrong upon you," he added, impulsively turning to her; "you felt it bitterly, I shamefully; but, my dear wife, you have lived to see that it was in reality a mercy in disguise."
The countess-dowager, not finding words strong enough to express her feelings at this, made a grimace at him.
"Let us be friends, Lady Kirton! Let us join together silently in guarding Maude's good name, and in burying the past. In time perhaps even I may live it down. Not a human being knows of it except we who are here and Dr. Mair, who will for his own sake guard the secret. Maude was my wife always in the eyes of the world; and Maude certainly died so: all peace and respect to her memory! As for my share, retribution has held its heavy hand upon me; it is upon me still, Heaven knows. It was for Maude I suffered; for Maude I felt; and if my life could have repaired the wrong upon her, I would willingly have sacrificed it. Let us be friends: it may be to the interest of both."
He held out his hand, and the dowager did not repulse it. She had caught the word "interest." " _Now_ you might allow me Maude and that income!"
"I think I had better allow you the income without Maude."
"Eh? what?" cried the dowager, briskly. "Do you mean it?"
"Indeed I do. I have been thinking for some little time that you would be more comfortable in a home of your own, and I am willing to help you to one. I'll pay the rent of a nice little place in Ireland, and give you six hundred a-year, paid quarterly, and--yes--make you a yearly present of ten dozen of port wine."
Ah, the crafty man! The last item had a golden sound in it.
"Honour bright, Hartledon?"
"Honour bright! You shall never want for anything as long as you live. But you must not"--he seemed to search for his words--"you must undertake not to come here, upsetting and indulging the children."
"I'll undertake it. Good vintage, mind."
"The same that you have here."
The countess-dowager beamed. In the midst of her happiness--and it was what she had not felt for many a long day, for really the poor old creature had been put about sadly--she bethought herself of propriety. Melting into tears, she presently bewailed her exhaustion, and said she should like some tea: perhaps good Mr. Carr would bring her a teaspoonful of brandy to put into it.
They brought her hot tea, and Mr. Carr put the brandy into it, and Anne took it to her on the sofa, and administered it, her own tears overflowing. She was thinking what an awful blow this would have been to her own mother.
"Little Maude shall be very dear to me always, Val," she whispered. "This knowledge will make me doubly tender with her."
He laid his hand fondly upon her, giving her one of his sweet sad smiles in answer. She could at length understand what feelings, in regard to the children, had actuated him. But from henceforth he would be just to all alike; and Maude would receive her share of correction for her own good.
"I always said you did not give me back the letter," observed Mr. Carr, when they were alone together later, and Val sat tearing up the letter into innumerable bits.
"And I said I did, simply because I could not find it. You were right, Carr, as you always are."
"Not always. But I am sorry it came to light in this way."
"Sorry! it is the greatest boon that could have fallen on me. The secret is, so to say, off my mind now, and I can breathe as I have not breathed for years. If ever a heartfelt thanksgiving went up to Heaven one from me will ascend to-night. And the dowager does not feel the past a bit. She cared no more for Maude than for any one else. She can't care for any one. Don't think me harsh, Carr, in saying so."
"I am sure she does not feel it," emphatically assented Mr. Carr. "Had she felt it she would have been less noisy. Thank heaven for your sake, Hartledon, that the miserable past is over."
"And over more happily than I deserved."
A silence ensued, and Lord Hartledon flung the bits of paper carefully into the fire. Presently he looked up, a strange earnestness in his face.
"It is the custom of some of our cottagers here to hang up embossed cards at the foot of their bed, with texts of Scripture written on them. There is one verse I should like to hang before every son of mine, though I had ten of them, that it might meet their eyes last ere the evening's sleeping, in the morning's first awakening. The ninth verse of the eleventh chapter of Ecclesiastes."
"I don't remember," observed Thomas Carr, after a pause of thought. " 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth: and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.'"
THE END
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{
"id": "16798"
}
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