Lord Hartfield did not arrive at Euston Square until near eleven o’clock at night. A hansom deposited him at the entrance to the Albany just as the clock of St. James’s Church chimed the hour. He found only Maulevrier’s valet. His lordship had waited indoors all the evening, and had only gone out a quarter of an hour ago. He had gone to the Cerberus, and begged that Lord Hartfield would be kind enough to follow him there.
Lord Hartfield was not fond of the Cerberus, and indeed deemed that lively place of rendezvous a very dangerous sphere for his friend Maulevrier; but in the face of Maulevrier’s telegram there was no time to be lost, so he walked across Piccadilly and down St. James’s Street to the fashionable little club, where the men were dropping in after the theatres and dinners, and where sheafs of bank notes were being exchanged for those various coloured counters which represented divers values, from the respectable ‘pony’ to the modest ‘chip.’
Maulevrier was in the first room Hartfield looked into, standing behind some men who were playing.
‘That’s something like friendship,’ he exclaimed, when he saw Lord Hartfield, and then he hooked his arm through his friend’s, and led him off to the dining room.
‘Come and have some supper, old fellow,’ he said, ‘and I can tell you my troubles while you are eating it. James, bring us a grill, and a lobster, and a bottle of Mumms, number 27, you know.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Sorry to find you in this den, Maulevrier,’ said Lord Hartfield.
‘Haven’t touched a card. Haven’t done half an hour’s punting this season. But it’s a kind of habit with me to wander in here now and then. I know so many of the members. One poor devil lost nine thousand one night last week. Bather rough upon him, wasn’t it? All ready money at this shop, don’t you know.’
‘Thank God, I know nothing about it. And now, Maulevrier, what is wrong, and with whom?’
‘Everything is wrong, and with my sister Lesbia.’
‘Good heavens! what do you mean?’
‘Only this, that there is a fellow after her whose very name means ruin to women — a Spanish-American adventurer — reckless, handsome, a gambler, seducer, duellest, dare-devil. The man she is to marry seems to have neither nous nor spunk to defend her. Everybody at Goodwood saw the game that was being played, everybody at Cowes is watching the cards, betting on the result. Yes, great God, the men at the Squadron Club are staking their money upon my sister’s character — even monkeys that she bolts with Montesma — five to three against the marriage with Smithson ever coming off.’
‘Is this true.’
‘It is as true as your marriage with Molly, as true as your loyalty to me. I was told of it all this morning at the Haute Gomme by a man I can rely upon, a really good fellow, who would not leave me in the dark about my sister’s danger when all the smoking-rooms in Pall Mall were sniggering about it. My first impulse was to take the train for Cowes; but then I knew if I went alone I should let my temper get the better of me. I should knock somebody down — throw somebody out of the window — make a devil of a scene. And this would be fatal for Lesbia. I wanted your counsel, your cool head, your steady common-sense. “Not a step forward without Jack,” I said to myself, so I bolted off and sent that telegram. It relieved my feeling a little, but I’ve had a wretched day.’
‘Waiter, bring me a Bradshaw, or an A B C,’ said Lord Hartfield.
He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast, but he was ready to go off at once, supperless, if there were a train to carry him. Unluckily there was no train. The mail had started. Nothing till seven o’clock next morning.
‘Eat your supper, old fellow,’ said Maulevrier. ‘After all, the danger may not be so desperate as I fancied this morning. Slander is the favourite amusement of the age we live in. We must allow a margin for exaggeration.’
‘A very liberal margin,’ answered Hartfield. ‘No doubt the man who warned you meant honestly, but this scandal may have grown out of the merest trifles. The feebleness of the Masher’s brain is only exceeded by the foulness of the Masher’s tongue. I daresay this rumour about Lady Lesbia has its beginning and end among the Masher species.’
‘I hope so, but — I have seen those two together — I met them at Victoria one evening after Goodwood. Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead, carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification about her carriage. Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear. They looked as if they had all the world to themselves. Faust and Marguerite in the garden were not in it for the expression of intense absorbing feeling compared with those two. I’m not an intellectual party, but I know something of human nature, and I know when a man and woman are in love with each other. It is one of the things that never has been, that never can be hidden.’
‘And you say this Montesma is a dangerous man?’
‘Deadly.’
‘Well, we must lose no time. When we are on the spot it will be easy to find out the truth; and it will be your duty, if there be danger, to warn Lesbia and her future husband.
‘I would much rather shoot the Cuban,’ said Maulevrier. ‘I never knew much good come of a warning in such a case: it generally precipitates matters. If I could play écarté with him at the club, find him sporting an extra king, throw my cards in his face, and accept his challenge for an exchange of shots on the sands beyond Cherbourg — there would be something like satisfaction’
‘You say the man is a gambler?’
‘Report says something worse of him. Report says he is a cheat.’
‘We must not be dependent upon society gossip,’ replied Lord Hartfield. ‘I have an idea, Maulevrier. The more we know about this man — Montesma, I think you called him ——’
‘Gomez de Montesma.’
‘The more fully we are acquainted with Don Gomez de Montesma’s antecedents the better we shall be able to cope with him, if we come to handy-grips. It’s too late to start for Cowes, but it is not too late to do something. Fitzpatrick, the political-economist, spent a quarter of a century in South America. He is a very old friend — knew my father — and I can venture to knock at his door after midnight — all the more as I know he is a night-worker. He is very likely to enlighten us about your Cuban hidalgo.’
‘You shall finish your supper before I let you stir. After that you may do what you like. I was always a child in your hands, Jack, whether it was climbing a mountain or crossing the Horse-shoe Fall. I consider the business in your hands now. I’ll go with you wherever you like, and do what you tell me. When you want me to kick anybody, or fight anybody, you can give me the office and I’ll do it. I know that Lesbia’s interests are safe in your hands. You once cared very much for her. You are her brother-in-law now, and, next to me, you are her natural protector, taking into account that her future husband is a cad and doesn’t score.’
‘Meet me at Waterloo at ten minutes to seven to-morrow morning, and we’ll go down to Cowes together. I’m off to find Fitzpatrick. Good night.’
So they parted. Lord Hartfield walked across the Park to Great George Street, where Mr. Fitzpatrick had chambers of a semi-official character, on the first floor of a solemn-looking old house, spacious, gloomy without and within, walls sombre with the subdued colouring of decorations half a century old.
The lighted windows of those first-floor rooms told Lord Hartfield that he was not too late. He rang the bell, which was answered with the briefest delay by a sleepy-looking clerk, who had been taking shorthand notes for Mr. Fitzpatrick’s great book upon ‘Protection versus Free Trade.’ The clerk looked sleepy, but his employer had as brisk an air as if he were just beginning the day; although he had been working without intermission since nine o’clock that evening, and had done a long day’s work before dinner. He was walking up and down the spacious unluxurious room, half office, half library, smoking a cigar. Upon a large table in the centre of the room stood two powerful reading lamps with green shades, illuminating a chaotic mass of books and pamphlets, heaped and scattered all over the table, save just on that spot between the two lamps, which accommodated Mr. Fitzpatrick’s blotting pad and inkpot, a pewter inkpot which held about a pint.
‘How d’ye do, Hartfield? Glad you’ve looked me up at last,’ said the Irishman, as if a midnight call were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Just come from the House?’
‘No; I’ve just come from Westmoreland. I thought I should find you among those everlasting books of yours, late as it is. Can I have a few words alone with you?’
‘Certainly. Morgan, you can go away for a bit.’
‘Home, sir?’
‘Home — well — yes, I suppose it’s late. You look sleepy. I should have been glad to finish the chapter on Beetroot Sugar to-night — but it may stand over for the morning. Be sure you’re early.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the clerk responded with a faint sigh.
He was paid handsomely for late hours, liberally rewarded for his shorthand services; and yet he wished the great Fitzpatrick had not been quite so industrious.
‘Now, my dear Hartfield, what can I do for you?’ asked Fitzpatrick, when the clerk had gone. ‘I can see by your face that you’ve something serious in hand. Can I help you?’
‘You can, I believe, in a very material way. You were five-and-twenty years in Spanish America?’
‘Rather more than less.’
‘Here, there, and everywhere?’
‘Yes; there is not a city in South America that I have not lived in — for something between a day and a year.’
‘You know something about most men of any mark in that part of the world, I conclude?’
‘It was my business to know men of all kinds. I had my mission from the Spanish Government. I was engaged to examine the condition of commerce throughout the colony, the working of protection as against free trade, and so on. Strange, by-the-bye, that Cuba, the last place to foster the slave trade, was of all spots of the earth the first to carry free-trade principles into practical effect, long before they were recognised in any European country.’
‘Strange to me that you should speak of Cuba so soon after my coming in,’ answered Lord Hartfield. ‘I am here to ask you to help me to find out the antecedents of a man who hails from that island.’
‘I ought to know something about him, whoever he is,’ replied Mr. Fitzpatrick, briskly. ‘I spent six months in Cuba not very long before my return to England. Cuba is one of my freshest memories; and I have a pretty tight memory for facts, names and figures. Never could remember two lines of poetry in my life.’
‘Did you ever hear of, or meet with, a man called Montesma — Gomez de Montesma?’
‘Couldn’t have stopped a month in Havana without hearing something about that gentleman,’ answered Fitzpatrick, ‘I hope he isn’t a friend of yours, and that you have not lent him money?’
‘Neither; but I want to know all you can tell me about him.’
‘You shall have it in black and white, out of my Cuban note-book,’ replied the other, unlocking a drawer in the official table; ‘I always take notes of anything worth recording, on the spot. A man is a fool who trusts to memory, where personal character is at stake. Montesma is as well known at Havana as the Morro Fort or the Tacon Theatre. I have heard stories enough about him to fill a big volume; but all the facts recorded there’— striking the morocco cover of the note-book —‘have been thoroughly sifted; I can vouch for them.’
He looked at the index, found the page, and handed the book to Lord Hartfield.
‘Read for yourself,’ he said, quietly.
Lord Hartfield read three or four pages of plain statement as to various adventures by sea and land in which Gomez de Montesma had figured, and the reputation which he bore in Cuba and on the Main.
‘You can vouch for this?’ he said at last, after a long silence.
‘For every syllable.’
‘The story of his marriage?’
‘Gospel truth: I knew the lady.’
‘And the rest?’
‘All true.’
‘A thousand thanks. I know now upon what ground I stand. I have to save an innocent, high-bred girl from the clutches of a consummate scoundrel.’
‘Shoot him, and shoot her, too, if there’s no better way of saving her. It will be an act of mercy,’ said Mr. Fitzpatrick, without hesitation.
While Lord Hartfield sat in his friend’s office in Great George Street reading the life story of Gomez de Montesma, told with the cruel precision and the unvarnished language of a criminal indictment, the hero of that history was gliding round the spacious ballroom of the Cowes Club, with Lady Lesbia Haselden’s dark-brown head almost reclining on his shoulder, her violet eyes looking up at his every now and then, shyly, entrancingly, as he bent his head to talk to her.
The Squadron Ball was in full swing between midnight and the first hour of morning. The flowers had not lost their freshness, the odours of dust and feverish human breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere. The windows were open to the purple night, the purple sea. The stars seemed to be close outside the verandah, shining on purpose for the dancers; and these two — the man tall, pale, dark, with flashing eyes and short, sleek raven hair, small head, noble bearing; the girl divinely lovely in her marble purity of complexion, her classical grace of form — these two were, as every one avowed and acknowledged, the handsomest couple in the room.
‘We’re none of us in it compared with them,’ said a young naval commander to his partner, whereupon the young lady looked somewhat sourly, and replied that Lady Lesbia’s features were undeniably regular and her complexion good, but that she was wanting in soul.
‘Is she?’ asked the sailor, incredulously, ‘Look at her now. What do you call that, if it isn’t soul?’
‘I call it simply disgraceful,’ answered his partner, sharply turning away her head.
Lesbia was looking up at the Spaniard, her lips faintly parted, all her face listening eagerly as she caught some whispered word, breathed among the soft ripples of her hair, from lips that almost touched her brow. People cannot go on waltzing for ten minutes in a dead silence, like automatic dancers. There must be conversation. Only it is better that the lips should do most of the talking. When the eyes have so much to say society is apt to be censorious.
Mr. Smithson was smoking a cigarette on the lawn with a sporting peer. A man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia’s feelings Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so watchful. To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her lover’s breast, the strong pulsation of his heart sounding in her ear, like the rhythmical beat of the basses yonder in Waldteufel’s last waltz? Was there still the uncertainty as to the denouement which marks the third act of a good play? or was there the dread foreboding, the sense of impending doom which should stir the spectators with pity and terror as the fourth act hurries to its passionate close? Who could tell? She had been full of life and energy to-day on board the yacht during the racing, in which she seemed to take an ardent interest. The Cayman had followed the racers for three hours through a freshening sea, much to Lady Kirkbank’s disgust, and Lesbia had been the soul of the party. The same yesterday. The yacht had only got back to Cowes in time for the ball, and all had been hurry and excitement while the ladies dressed and crossed to the club, the spray dashing over their opera mantles, poor Lady Kirkbank’s complexion yellow with mal de mer, in spite of a double coating of Blanc de Fedora, the last fashionable cosmetic.
To-night Lesbia was curiously silent, depressed even, as it seemed to those who were interested in observing her; and all the world is interested in a famous beauty. She was very pale, even her lips were colourless, and the large violet eyes and firmly pencilled brows alone gave colour to her face. She looked like a marble statue, the eyes and eyebrows accentuated with touches of colour. Those lovely eyes had a heavy look, as of trouble, weariness; nay, absolute distress.
Never had she looked less brilliant than to-night; never had she looked more beautiful. It was the loveliness of a newly-awakened soul. The wonderful Pandora-casket of life, with its infinite evil, its little good, had given up its secret. She knew what passionate love really means. She knew what such love mostly means — self-sacrifice, surrender of the world’s wealth, severance from friends, the breaking of all old ties. To love as she loved means the crossing of a river more fatal than the Rubicon, the casting of a die more desperate than that which Caesar flung upon the board when he took up arms against the Republic.
The river was not yet crossed, but her feet were on the margin, wet with the ripple of the stream. The fatal die was not yet cast, but the dice-box was in her hand ready for the throw. Lesbia and Montesma danced together — not too often, three waltzes out of sixteen — but when they were so waltzing they were the cynosure of the room. That betting of which Maulevrier had heard was rife to-night, and the odds upon the Cuban had gone up. It was nine to four now that those two would be over the border before the week was out.
Mr. Smithson was not neglectful of his affianced. He took her into the supper-room, where she drank some Moselle cup, but ate nothing. He sat out three or four waltzes with her on the lawn, listening to the murmer of the sea, and talking very little.
‘You are looking wretchedly ill to-night, Lesbia,’ he said, after a dismal silence.
‘I am sorry that I should put you to shame by my bad looks,’ she answered, with that keen acidity of tone which indicates irritated nerves.
‘You know that I don’t mean anything of the kind; you are always lovely, always the loveliest everywhere; but I don’t like to see you so ghastly pale.’
‘I suppose I am over-fatigued: that I have done too much in London and here. Life in Westmoreland was very different,’ she added, with a sigh, and a touch of wonder that the Lesbia Haselden, whose methodical life had never been stirred by a ruffle of passion, could have been the same flesh and blood — yes, verily, the same woman, whose heart throbbed so vehemently to-night, whose brain seemed on fire.
‘Are you sure there is nothing the matter?’ he asked, with a faint quiver in his voice.
‘What should there be the matter?’
‘Who can say? God knows that I know no cause for evil. I am honest enough, and faithful enough, Lesbia. But your face to-night is like a presage of calamity, like the dull, livid sky that goes before a thunderstorm.’
‘I hope there is no thunderbolt coming,’ she answered, lightly. ‘What very tall talk about a headache, for really that is all that ails me. Hark, they have begun “My Queen.” I am engaged for this waltz.’
‘I am sorry for that.’
‘So am I. I would ever so much rather have stayed out here.’
Two hours later, in the steely morning light, when sea and land and sky had a metallic look as if lit by electricity, Lady Lesbia stood with her chaperon and her affianced husband on the landing stage belonging to the club, ready to step into the boat in which six swarthy seamen in red shirts and caps were to row them back to the yacht. Mr. Smithson drew the warm sortie de bal, with its gold-coloured satin lining and white fox border, closer round Lesbia’s slender form.
‘You are shivering,’ he said; ‘you ought to have warmer wraps.
‘This is warm enough for St. Petersburg. I am only tired — very tired.’
‘The Cayman will rock you to sleep.’
Don Gomez was standing close by, waiting for his host. The two men were to walk up the hill to Formosa, a village with a classic portico, delightfully situated above the town.
‘What time are we to come to breakfast? asked Mr. Smithson.
‘Not too early, in mercy’s name. Two o’clock in the afternoon, three, four; — why not make it five — combine breakfast with afternoon tea,’ exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with a tremendous yawn. ‘I never was so thoroughly fagged; I feel as if I had been beaten with sticks, basti — what’s its name.’
She was leaning all her weight upon Mr. Smithson, as he handed her down the steps and into the boat. Her normal weight was not a trifle, and this morning she was heavy with champagne and sleep. Carefully as Smithson supported her she gave a lurch at the bottom of the steps, and plunged ponderously into the boat, which dipped and careened under her, whereat she shrieked, and implored Mr. Smithson to save her.
All this, occupied some minutes, and gave Lesbia and the Cuban just time for a few words that had to be said somehow.
‘Good-night,’ said Montesma, as they clasped hands; ‘good-night;’ and then in a lower voice he said, ‘Well, have you decided at last? Shall it be?’
She looked at him for a moment or so, pale in the starlight, and then murmured an almost inaudible syllable.
‘Yes.’
He bent quickly and pressed his lips upon her gloved hand, and when Mr. Smithson looked round they two were standing apart, Montesma in a listless attitude, as if tired of waiting for his host.
It was Smithson who handed Lesbia into the boat and arranged her wraps, and hung over her tenderly as he performed those small offices.
‘Now really,’ he asked, just before the boat put off, ‘when are we to be with you to-morrow?’
‘Lady Kirkbank says not till afternoon tea, but I think you may come a few hours earlier. I am not at all sleepy.’
‘You look as if you needed sleep badly,’ answered Smithson. ‘I’m afraid you are not half careful enough of yourself. Good-night.’
The boat was gliding off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it shot from his ken, flashing in and out among the yachts, where the lamps were burning dimly in that clear radiance of new-born day.
Montesma gave a tremendous yawn as he took out his cigar-case, and he and Mr. Smithson did not say twenty words between them during the walk to Formosa, where servants were sitting up, lamps burning, a great silver tray, with brandy, soda, liqueurs, coffee, in readiness.
Lady Kirkbank retired to her cabin directly she got on board the Cayman.
‘Good-night, child! I am more than half asleep,’ she said; ‘and I think if there were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it. Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have seen girls look bad after balls before now, but I never saw such a spectre as you look this morning.’
Poor Georgie’s own complexion left something to be desired. The Blanc de Fedora had been a brilliant success for the first two hours: after that the warm room began to tell upon it, and there came a greasiness, then a streakiness, and now all that was left of an alabaster skin was a livid patch of purplish paint here and there, upon a crow’s-foot ground. The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vandyke brown meandered down Lady Kirkbank’s cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year of their age in the ghastly morning light.
Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined, fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.
There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped shirts, with bare arms, of a shining bronze complexion, flashing black eyes, sleek raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were — Mestizoes, Coolies, Yucatekes — she knew not, but she felt that they were something wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear. He, whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best, all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they passed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.
On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind — all things so calm, so perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home — no peril, no temptation, no fever — only peace: and she had grown sick to death of peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.
There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were moving away yonder, majestical, swan-like, white sails shining against the blue.
She closed her eyes, and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. She was always listening — listening for the dip of oars, listening for a snatch of melody from a mellow baritone whose every accent she knew so well.
It came at last, the sound her soul longed for. She lay among her cushions with closed eyes, listening, drinking in those rich ripe notes as they came nearer and nearer, to the measure of dipping oars, ’La donna e mobile —‘
Nearer and nearer, until the little boat ground against the hull. She lifted her heavy eyelids as Montesma leapt over the gunwale, almost into her arms. He was at her side, kneeling by her low chair, kissing the little hands, chill with the freshness of morning.
‘My own, my very own,’ he murmured, passionately.
He cared no more for those copper-faced Helots yonder than if they had been made of wood. He had fate in his own hands now, as it seemed to him. He went to the skipper and gave him some orders in Spanish, and then the sails were unfurled, the Cayman spread her broad white wings, and moved off among those other yachts which were gliding, gliding, gliding out to sea, melting from Cowes Roads like a vision that fadeth with the broad light of morning.
When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side, gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.
They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets. Surrendered were all Lesbia’s ambitious hopes — forgotten — gone; her desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fashion — her thirst to be wealthiest among the wealthy — gone — forgotten. Her dreams now were of the dolce far niente of a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama — with him, with him. It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of life. To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas. A love which was strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along which her lover’s hand was to lead. For him, to be with him, she renounced the world. The rest did not count.
The summer hours glided past them. The Cayman was far out at sea; all the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue, with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon. More than once Lesbia had talked of going below to change her ball gown for the attire of everyday life; but each time her lover had detained her a little longer, had pleaded for a few more words. Lady Kirkbank would be astir presently, and there would be no more solitude for them till they were married, and could shake her off altogether. So Lesbia stayed, and those two drank the cup of bliss, hushed by the monotonous sing-song of the sea, the rhythm of the swinging sails. But now it was broad morning. The hour when society, however late it may keep its revels overnight, is apt to awaken, were it only to call for a cup of strong tea and to turn again on the pillow of lassitude, after that refreshment, like the sluggard of Holy Writ. At ten o’clock the sun sent his golden arrows across the silken coverlet of her berth and awakened Lady Kirkbank, who opened her eyes and looked about languidly. The little cabin was heaving itself up and down in a curious way; Mr. Smithson’s cigar-cases were sloping as if they were going to fall upon Lady Kirkbank’s couch, and the looking-glass, with all its dainty appliances, was making an angle of forty-five degrees. There was more swirling and washing of water against the hull than ever Georgie Kirkbank had heard in Cowes Roads.
‘Mercy on me! this horrid thing must be moving,’ she exclaimed to the empty air. ‘It must have broken loose in the night.’
She had no confidence in those savage-looking sailors, and she had a vision of the yacht drifting at the mercy of winds and waves, drifting for days, weeks, and months; drifting to the German Ocean, drifting to the North Pole. Mr. Smithson and Montesma on shore — no one on board to exercise authority over those fearful men.
Perhaps they had mutinied, and were carrying off the yacht as their booty, with Lesbia and her chaperon, and all their gowns.
‘I am almost glad that harpy Seraphine has my diamonds,’ thought poor Georgie, ‘or I should have had them with me on board this hateful boat.’
And then she rapped vehemently against the panel of the cabin, and screamed for Rilboche, whose den was adjacent.
Rilboche, who detested the sea, made her appearance after some delay, looking even greener than her mistress, who, in rising from her berth, already began to suffer the agonies of sea-sickness.
‘What does this mean?’ exclaimed Lady Kirkbank; ‘and where are we going?’
‘That’s what I should like to know, my lady. But I daresay Lady Lesbia and Mr. Montesma can tell you. They are both on deck.’
‘Montesma! Why, we left him on shore!’
‘Yes, my lady, but he came on board at five o’clock this morning. I looked at my watch when I heard him land, and he and Lady Lesbia have been sitting on deck ever since.’
‘And now it is ten. Five hours on deck — impossible!’
‘Time doesn’t seem long when one is happy, my lady,’ murmured Rilboche, in her own language.
‘Help me to dress this instant,’ screamed her mistress: ‘that dreadful Spaniard is eloping with us.’
Despite the hideous depression of that malady which strikes down Kaiser and beggar with the same rough hand, Lady Kirkbank contrived to get herself dressed decently, and to stagger up the companion to that part of the deck where the Persian carpet was spread, and the bamboo chairs and tables were set out under the striped awning. Lesbia and her lover were sitting together, he giving her a first lesson in the art of smoking a cigarette. He had told her playfully that every man, woman, and child in Cuba was a smoker, and she had besought him to let her begin, and now, with infinite coquetry, was taking her first lesson.
‘You shameless minx!’ exclaimed Georgie, pale with anger.
‘Where is Smithson — my poor, good Smithson?’
‘Fast asleep in his bed at Formosa, I hope, dear Lady Kirkbank,’ the Cuban answered, with perfect sang froid. ‘Smithson is out of it, as you idiomatic English say. I hope, Lady Kirkbank, you will be as kind to me as you have been to Smithson; and depend upon it I shall make Lady Lesbia as good a husband as ever Smithson could have done.’
‘You!’ exclaimed the matron, contemptuously. ‘You! — a foreigner, an adventurer, who may be as poor as Job, for anything I know about you.’
‘Job was once rather comfortably off, Lady Kirkbank; and I can answer for it that Montesma’s wife will know none of the pangs of poverty.’
‘If you were a beggar I would not care,’ said Lesbia, drawing nearer to him.
They had both risen at Lady Kirkbank’s approach, and were standing side by side, confronting her. Lesbia had shrunk from the idea of poverty with John Hammond; yet, for this man’s sake, she was ready to face penury, ruin, disgrace, anything.
‘Do you mean to tell me that Lord Maulevrier’s sister, a young lady under my charge, answerable to me for her conduct, is capable of jilting the man to whom she has solemnly bound herself, in order to marry you?’ demanded Lady Kirkbank, turning to Montesma.
‘Yes; that is what I am going to do,’ answered Lesbia, boldly. ‘It would be a greater sin to keep my promise than to break it. I never liked that man, and you know it. You badgered me into accepting him, against my own better judgment. You drifted me so deeply into debt that I was willing to marry a man I loathed in order to get my debts paid. This is what you did for the girl placed under your charge. But, thank God, I have released myself from your clutches. I am going far away to a new world, where the memory of my old life cannot follow me. People may be angry or pleased! I do not care. I shall be the wife of the man I have chosen out of all the world for my husband — the man God made to be my master.’
‘You are ——’ gasped Lady Kirkbank. ‘I can’t say what you are. I never in my life felt so tempted to use improper language.’
‘Dear Lady Kirkbank, be reasonable,’ pleaded Montesma; ‘you can have no interest in seeing Lesbia married to a man she dislikes.’
Georgia reddened a little, remembering that she was interested to the amount of some thousands in the Smithson and Haselden alliance; but she took a higher ground than mercenary considerations.
‘I am interested in doing the very best for a young lady who has been entrusted to my care, the granddaughter of an old friend,’ she answered, with dignity. ‘I have no objection to you in the abstract, Don Gomez. You have always been vastly civil, I am sure ——’
‘Stand by us in our day of need, Lady Kirkbank, and you will find me the staunchest friend you ever had.’
‘I am bound in honour to consider Mr. Smithson, Lesbia,’ said Lady Kirkbank. ‘I wonder that a decently-brought up girl can behave so abominably.’
‘It would be more abominable to marry a man I detest. I have made up my mind, Lady Kirkbank. We shall be at Havre to-morrow morning, and we shall be married to-morrow — shall we not, Gomez?’
She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other; this man’s fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind of influence with women which is almost ‘possession.’ It smells of brimstone.
‘Come, my dear good soul,’ said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron, ‘why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker’s book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,’ he added, with his eyes kindling; ‘and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish to occupy.’
‘How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?’ said Lady Kirkbank, piteously. ‘How do I know that you will not bury her alive in your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over there — kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?’
At these words of Lady Kirkbank’s, flung out at random, Montesma blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister look.
‘Yes,’ she cried, hysterically —‘kill her, kill her! You look as if you could do it.’
Lesbia nestled closer to her lover’s heart.
‘How dare you say such things to him,’ she cried, angrily. ‘I trust him, don’t you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.’
‘Very much for evil, I’m afraid,’ said Lady Kirkbank. ‘Perhaps you will be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance, while I get a cup of tea.’
Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking. She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.
Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a well-trained servant.
Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank’s side, and tried to coax her into good humour.
‘Why can’t you take things pleasantly, dear?’ she pleaded. ‘Do now, like a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten, don’t you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder? By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my engagement ring,’ looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling it off her fingers as she talked. ‘I had a kind of presentiment ——’
‘You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.’
‘No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better than what has happened.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.’
‘Don Gomez has arranged all that — everything has been thought of — everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas, and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.’
‘But the marriage — the licence?’
‘I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.’
‘Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.’
‘How dreadfully disagreeable you are,’ said Lesbia, pouting, ‘just because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is frightfully selfish of you.’
Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly, and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not accommodate themselves.
After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily, yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And so, with intervals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and slept in a corner of the saloon.
‘This is the happiest day of my life,’ Lesbia murmured, in a pause of their reading, when they had dropped Endymion’s love to talk of their own.
‘But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.’
‘Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each other?’ she asked, incredulously.
‘Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is easy enough; but when tempest and peril come — that is the test, Lesbia. Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?’
‘You know that I will,’ she answered, with her hand locked in his two hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.
She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a fuss, perhaps — an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying whomsoever she pleased.
‘Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,’ he said, passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.
‘Against all the world,’ she answered, softly.
‘I believe your courage will be tested before long,’ he said; and then he cried to the skipper, ‘Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is chasing us.’
Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that distant spot.
‘It is a steam-yacht,’ he said. ‘They will catch us.’
He was right. Although the Cayman strained every timber so that her keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the Cayman, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr. Smithson’s deck.
‘I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,’ said Maulevrier. ‘I’m not going to make any undue fuss about this little escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once, and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don Gomez de Montesma.’
The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her about himself or his past life was the question which the next few minutes would solve.
‘I am not going back with you,’ answered Lesbia. ‘I am going to Havre with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we arrive.’
‘To be married — at Havre,’ cried Maulevrier. ‘An appropriate place. A sailor has a wife in every port, don’t you know.’
‘We had better go down to the cabin,’ said Hartfield, laying his hand upon his friend’s shoulder. ‘If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.’
Lord Hartfield’s tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.
‘You can talk at your ease here,’ said Montesma, facing the two men with a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. ‘Not one of these fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.’
‘I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Se?or; and I should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.’
‘That you shall not do unless she desires it,’ answered Montesma.
‘No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer you,’ said Lesbia.
Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.
‘As you please,’ he said. ‘It will make the disclosure a little more painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.’
They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord Hartfield and his friend.
‘Did you give your consent to my sister’s elopement with this man, Lady Kirkbank?’ Maulevrier asked, brusquely.
‘I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so much more than with your sister. She knew all about it, I’ve no doubt: but the wretch ran away with me in my sleep.’
‘I am glad, for your own self-respect, that you had no hand in this disgraceful business,’ replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, ‘Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has escaped? Upon my soul, I cannot speak of it.’
‘I recognise no right of Lord Hartfield’s to interfere with my actions, and I will hear nothing that he may have to say,’ said Lesbia, standing by her lover’s side, with head erect and eyes dark with anger.
‘Your sister’s husband has the strongest right to control your actions, Lady Lesbia, when the family honour is at stake,’ answered Hartfield, with grave authority. ‘Accept me at least as a member of your family, if you will not accept me as your disinterested and devoted friend.’
‘Friend!’ echoed Lesbia, scornfully. ‘You might have been my friend once. Your friendship then would have been of some value to me, if you had told me the truth, instead of approaching me with a lie upon your lips. You talk of honour, Lord Hartfield; you, who came to my grandmother’s house as an impostor, under a false name!’
‘I went there as a man standing on his own merits, assuming no rank save that which God gave him among his fellow-men, claiming to be possessed of no fortune except intellect and industry. If I could not win a wife with such credentials, it were better for me never to marry at all, Lady Lesbia. But we have no time to speak of the past. I am here as your brother’s friend, here to save you.’
‘To part me from the man to whom I have given my heart. That you cannot do. Gomez, why do you not speak? Tell him, tell him!’ cried Lesbia, with a voice strangled by sobs; ‘tell him that I am to be your wife to-morrow, at Havre. Your wife!’
‘Dear Lady Lesbia, that cannot be,’ said Lord Hartfield, sorrowfully, pitying her in her helplessness, as he might have pitied a young bird in the fowler’s net. ‘I am assured upon undeniable authority that Se?or Montesma has a wife living at Cuba; and even were this not so — were he free to marry you — his character and antecedents would for ever forbid such a marriage.’
‘A wife! No, no, no!’ shrieked Lesbia, looking wildly from one to the other. ‘It is a lie — a lie, invented by my brother, who always hated me — by you, who fooled and deceived me! It is a lie, an infamous invention! Don Gomez, speak to them: for pity’s sake answer them! Don’t you see that they are driving me mad?’
She flung herself into his arms, she buried her dishevelled head upon his breast; she clung to him with hands that writhed convulsively in her agony.
Maulevrier sprang across the cabin and wrenched her from her lover’s grasp.
‘You shall not pollute her with your touch,’ he cried; ‘you have poisoned her mind already. Scoundrel, seducer, slave-dealer! Do you hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is — what trade he followed yonder, on his native island — this Spanish hidalgo — this all-accomplished gentleman — lineal descendant of the Cid — fine flower of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance, his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in a year — that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar upon the hilalgo’s forehead, Lesbia — a token of knightly prowess, you think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia — the living cargo stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and then — short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten sheep sometimes — bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think, Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this particular dealer in blackamoors is not.’
‘Is this true, this part of their vile story?’ demanded Lesbia, looking at her lover, who stood apart from them all now, his arms folded, his face deadly pale, the lower lip quivering under the grinding of his strong white teeth.
‘There is some truth in it,’ he answered, hoarsely. ‘Everybody in Cuba had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy spoiled it. Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line. It was the foundation of his fortune. And yet he had his misfortunes in running his cargo — a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive. There are some very black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson. He will never go there again.’
‘Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad specimen in that line,’ said Lord Hartfield. ‘But I doubt if there is any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your marriage, and the events that went before it. I have been told the story of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich planter’s heiress — the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your return to her native island.’
‘She will wait a long time,’ said Montesma, ‘or fare ill if I go back to her. Lesbia, his lordship’s story of the Octoroon is a fable — an invention of my Cuban enemies, who hate us old Spaniards with a poisonous hatred. But this much is true. I am a married man — bound, fettered by a tie which I abhor. Our Havre marriage would have been bigamy on my part, a delusion on yours. I could not have taken you to Cuba. I had planned our life in a fairer, more civilised world. I am rich enough to have surrounded you with all that makes life worth living. I would have given you love as true and as deep as ever man gave to woman. All that would have been wanting would have been the legality of the tie: and as law never yet made a marriage happy which lacked the elements of bliss, our lawless union need not have missed happiness. Lesbia, you said that you would hold by me, come what might. The worst has come, love; but it leaves me not the less your true lover.’
She looked at him with wild despairing eyes, and then, with a hoarse strange cry, rushed from the cabin, and up the companion, with a desperate swiftness which seemed like the flight of a bird. Montesma, Hartfield, Maulevrier, all followed her, heedless of everything except the dire necessity of arresting her flight. Each in his own mind had divined her purpose.
They were not too late. It was Hartfield’s strong arm that caught her, held her as in a vice, dragged her away from the edge of the deck, just where there was a space open to the waves. Another instant and she would have flung herself overboard. She fell back into Lord Hartfield’s arms, with a wild choking cry: ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ Another moment, and a flood of crimson stained his shirt-front, as she lay upon his breast, with closed eyelids and blood-bedabbled lips, in blessed unconsciousness.
They carried her on to the steam-yacht, and down to the cabin, where there was ample accommodation and some luxury, although not the elegance of Bond Street upholstery. Rilboche, Lady Kirkbank, Kibble, luggage of all kinds were transferred from one yacht to the other, even to the vellum bound Keats which lay face downwards on the deck, just where Lesbia had flung it when the Cayman was boarded. The crew of the steam-yacht Philomel helped in the transfer: there were plenty of hands, and the work was done quickly; while the Meztizoes, Yucatekes, Caribs, or whatever they were, looked on and grinned; and while Montesma stood leaning against the mast, with folded arms and sombre brow, a cigarette between his lips.
When the women and all their belongings were on board the Philomel, Lord Hartfield addressed himself to Montesma.
‘If you consider yourself entitled to call me to account for this evening’s work you know where to find me,’ he said.
Montesma shrugged his shoulders, and threw away his cigarette with a contemptuous gesture.
’Ce n’est pas la peine,‘ he said; ‘I am a dead shot, and should be pretty sure to send a bullet through you if you gave me the chance; but I should not be any nearer winning her if I killed you: and it is she and she only that I want. You may think me an adventurer — swindler — gambler — slave-dealer — what you will — but I love her as I never thought to love a woman, and I should have been true as steel, if she had been plucky enough to trust me. But, as I told her an hour ago, women have not lion hearts. They can talk tall while the sky is clear and the sun shines, but at the first crack of thunder —va te promener.’
‘If you have killed her —’ began Hartfield.
‘Killed her! No. Some small bloodvessel burst in the agitation of that terrible scene. She will be well in a week, and she will forget me. But I shall not forget her. She is the one flower that has sprung on the barren plain of my life. She was my Picciola.’
He turned his back on Lord Hartfield and walked to the other end of the deck. Something in his face, in the vibration of his deep voice, convinced Hartfield of his truth. A bad man undoubtedly — steeped to the lips in evil — and yet so far true that he had passionately, deeply, devotedly loved this one woman.
It was the dead of night when Lesbia recovered consciousness, and even then she lay silent, taking no heed of those around her, in a state of utter prostration. Kibble nursed her carefully, tenderly, all through the night; Maulevrier hardly left the cabin, and Lady Kirkbank, always more or less a victim to the agonies of sea-sickness, still found time to utter lamentations and wailings over the ruin of her protégée’s fortune.
‘Never had a girl such a chance,’ she moaned. ‘Quite the best match in society. The house in Park Lane alone cost a fortune. Her diamonds would have been the finest in London.’
‘They would have been stained with the blood of the niggers he traded in out yonder,’ answered Maulevrier. ‘Do you think I would have let my sister marry a slave-dealer?’
‘I don’t believe a syllable of it,’ protested Lady Kirkbank, dabbing her brow with a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. ‘A vile fabrication of Montesma’s, who wanted to blacken poor Smithson’s character in order to extenuate his own crimes.’
‘Well, we won’t go into that question,’ said Maulevrier wearily. ‘The Smithson match is off, anyhow; and it matters very little to us whether he made most money out of niggers or bubble companies, or lotteries or gaming hells.’
‘I am convinced that Smithson made his fortune in a thoroughly gentlemanlike manner,’ argued Lady Kirkbank. ‘Look at the people who visit him, and the houses he goes to. And I don’t see why the match need be off. I’m sure, if Lesbia plays her cards properly, he will look over this — this — little escapade.’
Maulevrier contemplated the worldly old face with infinite scorn.
‘Does she look like a girl who will play her cards in your fashion?’ he asked, pointing to his sister, whose white face upon the pillow seemed like a mask cut out of marble. ‘Upon my soul, Lady Kirkbank, I consider my sister’s elopement with this Spanish adventurer, with whom she was over head and ears in love, a far more respectable act than her engagement to Smithson, for whom she cared not a straw.’
‘Well, I hope if you so approve of her conduct you will help her to pay her dressmaker, and the rest of them,’ retorted Lady Kirkbank. ‘She has been plunging rather deeply, I believe, under the impression that Smithson would pay all her bills when she was married. Your grandmother may not quite like the budget.’
‘I will do all I can for her,’ answered Maulevrier. ‘I would do a great deal to save her from the degradation to which your teaching has brought her.’
Lady Kirkbank looked at him for a moment or so with reproachful eyes, and then shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
‘If I ever expected gratitude from people I might feel the injustice — the insolence — of your last remark,’ she said; ‘but as I never do expect gratitude, I am not disappointed in this case. And now I think if there is a cabin which I can have to myself I should like to retire to it,’ she added. ‘My cares are thrown away here.’
There was a cabin at Lady Kirkbank’s disposal. It had been already appropriated by Rilboche, and smelt of cognac; but Rilboche resigned her berth to her mistress, and laid herself meekly on the floor for the rest of the voyage.
They were in Cowes Roads at eight o’clock next morning, and Lord Hartfield went on shore for a doctor, whom he brought back before nine, and who pronounced Lady Lesbia to be in a very weak and prostrate condition, and forbade her being moved within the next two days. Happily Lord Hartfield had borrowed the Philomel and her crew from a friend who had given him carte blanche as to the use he made of her, and who freely left her at his disposal so long as he and his party should need the accommodation. Lesbia could nowhere be better off than on the yacht, where she was away from the gossip and tittle-tattle of the town.
The roadstead was quiet enough now. All the racing yachts had melted away like a dream, and most of the pleasure yachts were off to Ryde. Lady Lesbia lay in her curtained cabin, with Kibble keeping watch beside her bed, while Maulevrier came in every half-hour to see how she was — sitting by her a little now and then, and talking of indifferent things in a low kind voice, which was full of comfort.
She seemed grateful for his kindness, and smiled at him once in a way, with a piteous little smile; but she had the air of one in whom the mainspring of life is broken. The pallid face and heavy violet eyes, the semi-transparent hands which lay so listlessly upon the crimson coverlet, conveyed an impression of supreme despair. Hartfield, looking down at her for the last time when he came to say good-bye before leaving for London, was reminded of the story of one whose life had been thus rudely broken, who had loved as foolishly and even more fondly, and for whom the world held nothing when that tie was severed.
‘She looked on many a face with vacant eye,
On many a token without knowing what;
She saw them watch her, without asking why,
And recked not who around her pillow sat.’
But Lesbia Haselden belonged to a wider and more sophisticated world than that of the daughter of the Grecian Isle, and for her existence offered wider horizons. It might be prophesied that for her the dark ending of a girlish dream would not be a life-long despair. The passionate love had been at fever point; the passionate grief must have its fever too, and burn itself out.
‘Do all you can to cheer her,’ said Lord Hartfield to Maulevrier, ‘and bring her to Fellside as soon as ever she is strong enough to bear the journey. You and Kibble, with your own man, will be able to do all that is necessary.’
‘Quite able.’
‘That’s right. I must be in the House for the expected division to-night, and I shall go back to Grasmere to-morrow morning. Poor Mary is horribly lonely.’
Lord Hartfield went off in the boat to catch the Southampton steamer; and Maulevrier was now sole custodian of the yacht and of his sister. He and the doctor had agreed to keep her on board, in the fresh sea air, till she was equal to the fatigue of the journey to Grasmere. There was nothing to be gained by taking her on to the island or by carrying her to London. The yacht was well found, provided with all things needful for comfort, and Lesbia could be nowhere better off until she was safe in her old home:— that home she had left so gaily, in the freshness of her youthful inexperience, nearly a year ago, and to which she would return so battered and broken, so deeply degraded by the knowledge of evil.
Lady Kirkbank had started for London on the previous day.
‘I am evidently not wanted here,’ she said, with an offended air; ‘and I must have everything at Kirkbank ready for a house full of people before the twelfth of August, so the sooner I get to Scotland the better. I shall make a détour in order to go and see Lady Maulevrier on my way down. It is due to myself that I should let her know that I am entirely blameless in this most uncomfortable business.’
‘You can tell her ladyship what you please,’ answered Maulevrier, bluntly. ‘I shall not gainsay you, so long as you do not slander my sister; but as long as I live I shall regret that I, knowing something of London society, did not interfere to prevent Lesbia being given over to your keeping.’
‘If I had known the kind of girl she is I would have had nothing to do with her,’ retorted Lady Kirkbank with exasperation; and so they parted.
The Philomel had been lying off Cowes three days before Mr. Smithson appeared upon the scene. He had got wind somehow from a sailor, who had talked with one of the foreign crew, of the destination of the Cayman, and he had crossed from Southampton to Havre on the steamer Wolf during that night in which Lesbia had been carried back to Cowes on the Philomel.
He was at Havre when the Cayman arrived, with Montesma and his tawny-visaged crew on board, no one else.
‘You may examine every corner of your ship,’ Montesma cried, scornfully, when Smithson came on board and swore that Lesbia must be hidden somewhere in the vessel. ‘The bird has flown: she will shelter in neither your nest nor in mine, Smithson. You have lost her — and so have I. We may as well be friends in misfortune.’
He was haggard, livid with grief and anger. He looked ten years older than he had looked the other night at the ball, when his dash and swagger, and handsome Spanish head had been the admiration of the room.
Smithson was very angry, but he was not a fighting man. He had enjoyed various opportunities for distinguishing himself in that line in the island of Cuba; but he had always avoided such opportunities. So now, after a good deal of bluster and violent language, which Montesma took as lightly as if it had been the whistling of the wind in the shrouds, poor Smithson calmed down, and allowed Gomez de Montesma to leave the yacht, with his portmanteaux, unharmed. He meant to take the first steamer for the Spanish Main, he told Smithson. He had had quite enough of Europe.
‘I daresay it will end in your marrying her,’ he said, at the last moment. ‘If you do, be kind to her.’
His voice faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry, and to be rather hard hit at the last.
Horace Smithson sailed his yacht back to Cowes without loss of time, and sent his card to Lord Maulevrier on board the Philomel. His lordship replied that he would wait upon Mr. Smithson that afternoon at four o’clock, and at that hour Maulevrier again boarded the Cayman; but this time very quietly, as an expected guest.
The interview that followed was very painful. Mr. Smithson was willing that this unhappy episode in the life of his betrothed, this folly into which she had been beguiled by a man of infinite treachery, a man of all other men fatal to women, should be forgotten, should be as if it had never been.
‘It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,’ said Smithson, ‘her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank’s folly. But I love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.’
‘She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,’ answered Maulevrier, gravely. ‘She has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend’s addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you as her husband without one spark of love for you. She and you are both happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless union. I am glad — yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with Montesma — though it has dragged her good name through the gutter — glad of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage. You are very generous in your willingness to forget my sister’s folly. Let your forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.’
‘That cannot be, Lord Maulevrier. She has ruined my life.’
‘Not at all. An affair of a season,’ answered Maulevrier, lightly. ‘Next year I shall hear of you as the accepted husband of some new beauty. A man of Mr. Smithson’s wealth — and good nature — need not languish in single blessedness.’
With this civil speech Lord Maulevrier went back to the Philomel’s gig, and this was his last meeting with Mr. Smithson, until they met a year later in the beaten tracks of society.
It was the beginning of August before Lesbia was pronounced equal to the fatigue of a long journey; and even then it was but the shadow of her former self which returned to Fellside, the pale spectre of joys departed, of trust deceived.
Maulevrier had been very good to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in his ministering to the broken-hearted girl. That broken heart would be whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and aimlessness in life were very real in the present. If the picturesque seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone by, it was much duller to her now. She was shocked at the change in her grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her intercourse with the invalid; but once out of her presence Lady Maulevrier was forgotten, and Lesbia’s thoughts drifted back into the old current. They dwelt obstinately, unceasingly upon Montesma, the man whose influence had awakened the slumbering soul from its torpor, had stirred the deeps of a passionate nature.
Slave-dealer, gambler, adventurer, liar — his name blackened by the suspicion of a still darker crime. She shuddered at the thought of the villain from whose snare she had been rescued: and yet, his image as he had been to her in the brief golden time when she believed him noble, and chivalrous, and true, haunted her lonely days, mixed itself with her troubled dreams, came between her and every other thought.
Everybody was good to her. That pale and joyless face, that look of patient, hopeless suffering which she tried to disguise every now and then with a faint forced smile; and silvery little ripple of society laughter, seemed unconsciously to implore pity and pardon. Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of reproach. ‘My dearest, Fate has not been kind to you,’ she said, gently, after telling Lesbia of Lady Kirkbank’s visit. ‘The handsomest women are seldom the happiest. Destiny seems to have a grudge against them. And if things have gone amiss it is I who am most to blame. I ought never to have entrusted you with such a woman as Georgina Kirkbank. But you will be happier next season, I hope, dearest. You can live with Mary and Hartfield. They will take care of you.’
Lesbia shuddered.
‘Do you think I am going back to the society treadmill?’ she exclaimed. ‘No, I have done with the world. I shall end my days here, or in a convent.’
‘You think so now, dear, but you will change your mind by-and-by. A fancy that has lasted only a few weeks cannot alter your life. It will pass as other dreams have passed. At your age you have the future before you.’
‘No, it is the past that is always before me,’ answered Lesbia. ‘My future is a blank.’
The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker, tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier’s blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence, of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word. She took upon her shoulders the chief burden of Lesbia’s wrongdoing. It was her indulgence, her weak preference which had fostered her granddaughter’s selfishness, trained her to vanity and worldly pride. The result was ignominious, humiliating, bitter beyond all common bitterness; but the cup was of her own brewing, and she drank it without a murmur.
Parliament was prorogued; the season was over; and Lord Hartfield was established at Fellside for the autumn — he and his wife utterly happy in their affection for each other, but not without care as to their surroundings, which were full of trouble. First there was Lesbia’s sorrow. Granted that it was a grief which would inevitably wear itself out, as other such griefs have done from time immemorial; but still the sorrow was there, at their doors. Next, there was the state of Lady Maulevrier’s health, which gave her old medical adviser the gravest fears. At Lord Hartfield’s earnest desire a famous doctor was summoned from London; but the great man could only confirm Mr. Horton’s verdict. The thread of life was wearing thinner every day. It might snap at any hour. In the meantime the only regime was repose of body and mind, an all-pervading calm, the avoidance of all exciting topics. One moment of violent agitation might prove fatal.
Knowing this, how could Lord Hartfield call her ladyship to account for the presence of that mysterious old man under Steadman’s charge? — how venture to touch upon a topic which, by Mary’s showing, had exercised a most disturbing influence upon her ladyship’s mind on that solitary occasion when the girl ventured to approach the subject?
He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier’s end by prying into her secrets. Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his portion in that shame — must be content to leave the dark riddle unsolved.
He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery, a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later — since all such secrets are known at last — known, sifted, and bandied about from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and cried aloud in the streets — the sense of such a secret, the dread of such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.
Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.
‘I should only be in your way if I stopped,’ he said, ‘for you and Molly have hardly got over the honeymoon stage yet, though you put on the airs of Darby and Joan. I shall be back in a week or ten days.’
‘In Lady Maulevrier’s state of health I don’t think you ought to stay away very long,’ said Hartfield.
‘Poor Lady Maulevrier! She never cared much for me, don’t you know. But I suppose it would seem unkind if I were to be out of the way when the end comes. The end! Good heavens! how coolly I talk of it; and a year ago I thought she was as immortal as Fairfield yonder.’
He went away, his spirits dashed by that awful thought of death, and Lord and Lady Hartfield had the house to themselves, since Lesbia hardly counted. She seldom left her own rooms, except to sit with her grandmother for an hour. She lay on her sofa — or sat in a low arm-chair by the window, reading Keats or Shelley — or only dreaming — dreaming over the brief golden time of her life, with its fond delusions, its false brightness. Mr. Horton went to see her every day — felt the feeble little pulse which seemed hardly to have force enough to beat — urged her to struggle against apathy and inertia, to walk a little, to go for a long drive every day, to live in the open air — to which instructions she paid not the slightest attention. The desire for life was gone. Disappointed in her ambition, betrayed in her love, humiliated, duped, degraded — a social failure. What had she to live for? She felt as if it would have been a good thing, quite the best thing that could happen, if she could turn her face to the wall and die. All that past season, its triumphs, its pleasures, its varieties, was like a garish dream, a horror to look back upon, hateful to remember.
In vain did Mary and Hartfield urge Lesbia to join in their simple pleasures, their walks and rides and drives, and boating excursions. She always refused.
‘You know I never cared much for roaming about these everlasting hills,’ she told Mary. ‘I never had your passion for Lakeland. It is very good of you to wish to have me, but it is quite impossible. I have hardly strength enough for a little walk in the garden.’
‘You would have more strength if you went out more,’ pleaded Mary, almost with tears. ‘Mr. Horton says sun and wind are the best doctors for you. Lesbia, you frighten me sometimes. You are just letting yourself fade away.’
‘If you knew how I hate the world and the sky, Mary, you wouldn’t urge me to go out of doors,’ Lesbia answered, moodily. ‘Indoors I can read, and get away from my own thoughts somehow, for a little while. But out yonder, face to face with the hills and the lake — the scenes I have known all my life — I feel a heart-sickness that is worse than death. It maddens me to see that old, old picture of mountain and water, the same for ever and ever, no matter what hearts are breaking.’
Mary crept close beside her sister’s couch, put her arm round her neck, laid her cheek — rich in the ruddy bloom of health — against Lesbia’s pallid and sunken cheek, and comforted her as much as she could with tender murmurs and loving kisses. Other comfort, she could give none. All the wisdom in the world will not cure a girl’s heart-sickness when she has flung away the treasures of her love upon a worthless object.
And so the days went by, peacefully, but sadly; for the shadow of doom hung heavily over the house upon the Fell. Nobody who looked upon Lady Maulevrier could doubt that her days were numbered, that the oil was waxing low in the lamp of life. The end, the awful, mysterious end, was drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she meant to die — an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic’s cynical smile, the materialist’s barren creed.
‘My dearest, we know nothing except the immutable laws of material life. All the rest is a dream — a beautiful dream, if you like — a consolation to that kind of temperament which can take comfort from dreams; but for anyone who has read much, and thought much, and kept as far as possible on a level with the scientific intellect of the age — for such an one, Mary, these old fables are too idle. I shall die as I have lived, the victim of an inscrutable destiny, working blindly, evil to some, good to others. Ah! love, life has begun very fairly for you. May the fates be kind always to my gentle and loving girl!’
There was more talk between them on this dark mystery of life and death. Mary brought out her poor little arguments, glorified by the light of perfect faith; but they were of no avail against opinions which had been the gradual growth of a long and joyless life. Time had attuned Lady Maulevrier’s mind to the gospel of Schopenhauer and the Pessimists, and she was contented to see the mystery of life as they had seen it. She had no fear, but she had some anxiety as to the things that were to happen after she was gone. She had taken upon herself a heavy burden, and she had not yet come to the end of the road where her burden might be laid quietly down, her task accomplished. If she fell by the wayside under her load the consequences for the survivors might be full of trouble.
Her anxieties were increased by the fact that her faithful servant and adviser, James Steadman, was no longer the man he had been. The change in him was painfully evident — memory failing, energy gone. He came to his mistress’s room every morning, received her orders, answered her questions; but Lady Maulevrier felt that he went through the old duties in a mechanical way, and that his dull brain but half understood their importance.
One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady Maulevrier’s room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the house — a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in the summer midnight just a year ago. But this time the sound came from the old part of the house.
‘Something has happened,’ exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of communication.
It was bolted inside. He knocked vehemently; but there was no answer. He ran downstairs, followed by Mary, breathless, in an agony of fear. Just as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was flung open, and Steadman’s wife stood before them pale with terror.
‘The doctor,’ she cried; ‘send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God’s sake. Oh, my lord,’ with a sudden burst of sobbing, ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’
‘Mary, despatch some one for Horton,’ said Lord Hartfield. Keeping his wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband’s sitting-room.
James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.
One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over. The faithful servant had died at his post. Whatever his charge had been, his term of service was ended. There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier’s household.
Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay. He had always been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a good man. And she had obeyed him without a question. Whatever he did or said she had counted right.
‘We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us her ladyship’s favour,’ she said in the midst of her lamentations. ‘No one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it. Poor James! Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship’s interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her. Always on the watch always on the listen. That’s what wore him out, poor fellow!’
‘My good soul, your husband was an old man,’ argued Lord Hartfield, in a consolatory tone, ‘and the end must come to all of us somehow.’
‘He might have lived to be a much older man if he had had less worry,’ said the wife, bending her face to kiss the cold dead brow. ‘His days were full of care. We should have been happier in the poorest cottage in Grasmere than we ever were in this big grand house.’
Thus, in broken fragments of speech, Mrs. Steadman lamented over her dead, while the heavy pendulum of the eight-day clock in the hall sounded the slowly-passing moments, until the coming of the doctor broke upon the quiet of the house, with the noise of opening doors and approaching footsteps.
James Steadman was dead. Medicine could do nothing for that lifeless clay, lying on the hearth by which he had sat on so many winter nights, for so many years of faithful unquestioning service. There was nothing to be done for that stiffening form, save the last offices for the dead; and Lord Hartfield left Mr. Horton to arrange with the weeping woman as to the doing of these. He was anxious to go to Lady Maulevrier, to break to her, as gently as might be, the news of her servant’s death.
And what of that strange old man in the upper rooms? Who was to attend upon him, now that the caretaker was laid low?
While Lord Hartfield lingered on the threshold of the door that led from the old house to the new, pondering this question, there came the sound of wheels on the carriage drive, and then a loud ring at the hall door.
It was Maulevrier, just arrived from Scotland, smelling of autumn rain and cool fresh air.
‘Dreadfully bored on the moors,’ he said, as they shook hands. ‘No birds — nobody to talk to — couldn’t stand it any longer. How are the sisters? Lesbia better? Why, man alive, how queer you look! Nothing amiss, I hope?’
‘Yes, there is something very much amiss. Steadman is dead.’
‘Steadman! Her ladyship’s right hand. That’s rather bad. But you will drop into his stewardship. She’ll trust your long head, I know. Much better that she should look to her granddaughter’s husband for advice in all business matters than to a servant When did it happen?’
‘Half an hour ago. I was just going to Lady Maulevrier’s room when you rang the bell. Take off your Inverness, and come with me.’
‘The poor grandmother,’ muttered Maulevrier. ‘I’m afraid it will be a blow.’
He had much less cause for fear than Lord Hartfield, who knew of deep and secret reasons why Steadman’s death should be a calamity of dire import for his mistress, Maulevrier had been told nothing of that scene with the strange old man — the hidden treasures — the Anglo-Indian phrases — which had filled Lord Hartfield’s mind with the darkest doubts.
If that half-lunatic old man, described by Lady Maulevrier as a kinsman of Steadman’s, were verily the person Lord Hartfield believed, his presence under that roof, unguarded by a trust-worthy attendant, was fraught with danger. It would be for Lady Maulevrier, helpless, a prisoner to her sofa, at death’s door, to face that danger. The very thought of it might kill her. And yet it was imperative that the truth should be told her without delay.
The two young men went to her ladyship’s sitting room. She was alone, a volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of the shaded reading-lamp. Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!
Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow. Hartfield seated himself nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.
‘Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news —’
‘Lesbia?’ exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.
‘No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia. It is about your old servant Steadman.’
‘Dead?’ faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the lamplight.
He bent his head affirmatively.
‘Yes. He was seized with apoplexy — fell from his chair to the hearth, and never spoke or stirred again.’
Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise. She lay, looking straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as if they had been marble. What was to be done — what must be told — whom could she trust? Those were the questions repeating themselves in her mind as she stared into space. And no answer came to them.
No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch. The handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.
It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his treasury of gold and jewels — the man whom Maulevrier had never seen — whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until Mary found her way into the old garden.
He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier’s couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy light.
‘Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,’ he said in a mocking voice. ‘I shouldn’t have known you if we had met anywhere else. I think, of the two of us, you are more changed than I.’
She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head drawn back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too fascinated to fly. Her eyes met his with a look of unutterable horror. For some moments she was speechless, and then, looking at Lord Hartfield, she said, piteously —
‘Why did you let him come here? He ought to be taken care of — shut up. It is Steadman’s old uncle — a lunatic — I sheltered. Why is he allowed to come to my room?’
‘I am Lord Maulevrier,’ said the old man, drawing himself up and planting his crutch stick upon the floor; ‘I am Lord Maulevrier, and this woman is my wife. Yes, I am mad sometimes, but not always, I have my bad fits, but not often. But I never forget who and what I am, Algernon, Earl of Maulevrier, Governor of Madras.’
‘Lady Maulevrier, is this horrible thing true?’ cried her grandson, vehemently.
‘He is mad, Maulevrier. Don’t you see that he is mad?’ she exclaimed, looking from Hartfield to her grandson, and then with a look of loathing and horror at her accuser.
‘I tell you, young man, I am Maulevrier,’ said the accuser; ‘there is no one else who has a right to be called by that name, while I live. They have shut me up — she and her accomplice — denied my name — hidden me from the world. He is dead, and she lies there — stricken for her sins.’
‘My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.
‘Your grandfather was brought to this house — ill — out of his wits. All cloud and darkness here,’ said the old man, touching his forehead. ‘How long has it been? Who can tell? A weary time — long, dark nights, full of ghosts. Yes, I have seen him — the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel, seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for the traitor’s carcass. She too — yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me to give up her treasure, to restore her son.’
‘Yes,’ cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve strained to its utmost tension; ‘yes, this is Lord Maulevrier. You have heard the truth, and from his own lips. You, his only son’s only son. You his granddaughter’s husband. You hear him avow himself the instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his paramour’s husband was strangled at his false wife’s bidding, in his own palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches. You hear how he inherited the Rajah’s treasures from a mistress who died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her, and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are done in the East — dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate’s passion, or pay for a spendthrift’s extravagances. Such things were done when that man was Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices — he was more Mussulman than the Mussulmen themselves — a deeper, darker traitor. And it was to hide such crimes as these — to interpose the great peacemaker Death between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him — to save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless until he defiled it — it was for this great end I took steps to hide that feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of one of England’s oldest earls. I screened him from his enemies — I saved him from the ignominy of a public trial — from the execration of his countrymen. His only punishment was to eat his heart under this roof, in luxurious seclusion, his comfort studied, his whims gratified so far as they could be by the most faithful of servants. A light penance for the dark infamies of his life in India, I think. His mind was all but gone when he came here, but he had his rational intervals, and in these the burden of his lonely life may have weighed heavily upon him. But it was not such a heavy burden as I have borne — I, his gaoler, I who have devoted my existence to the one task of guarding the family honour.’
He, whom she thus acknowledged as her husband, had sunk exhausted into a chair near her. He took out his gold snuff-box, and refreshed himself with a leisurely pinch of snuff, looking about him curiously all the while, with a senile grin. That flash of passion which for a few minutes had restored him to the full possession of his reason had burnt itself out, and his mind had relapsed into the condition in which it had been when he talked to Mary in the garden.
‘My pipe, Steadman,’ he said, looking towards the door; ‘bring me my pipe,’ and then, impatiently, ‘What has become of Steadman? He has been getting inattentive — very inattentive.’
He got up, and moved slowly to the door, leaning on his crutch-stick, his head sunk upon his breast, muttering to himself as he went; and thus he vanished from them, like the spectre of some terrible ancestor which had returned from the grave to announce the coming of calamity to a doomed race. His grandson looked after him, with an expression of intense displeasure.
‘And so, Lady Maulevrier,’ he exclaimed, turning to his grandmother, ‘I have borne a title that never belonged to me, and enjoyed the possession of another man’s estates all this time, thanks to your pretty little plot. A very respectable position for your grandson to occupy, upon my life!’
Lord Hartfield lifted his hand with a warning gesture.
‘Spare her,’ he said. ‘She is in no condition to endure your reproaches.’
Spare her — yes. Fate had not spared her. The beautiful face — beautiful even in age and decay — changed suddenly as she looked at them — the mouth became distorted, the eyes fixed: and then the heavy head fell back upon the pillow — the paralysed form, wholly paralysed now, lay like a thing of stone. It never moved again. Consciousness was blotted out for ever in that moment. The feeble pulses of heart and brain throbbed with gradually diminishing power for a night and a day; and in the twilight of that dreadful day of nothingness the last glimmer of the light died in the lamp, and Lady Maulevrier and the burden of her sin were beyond the veil.
Viscount Haselden, alias Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother’s death, as to what steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier’s secret ought to be kept faithfully to the end. Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier’s existence. A half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights and possessions which he had most justly forfeited. All that justice demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and Haselden took immediate steps to this end. But their first act was to send the old earl’s treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House, with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a lumber-room at Lady Maulevrier’s country house. The money so delivered up might possibly have formed part of his lordship’s private fortune; but, in the absence of any knowledge as to its origin, his grandson, the present Lord Maulevrier, preferred to deliver it up to the authorities of the India House, to be dealt with as they might think fit.
The old earl made no further attempt to assert himself. He seemed content to remain in his own rooms as of old, to potter about the garden, where his solitude was as complete as that of a hermit’s cell. The only moan be made was for James Steadman, whose services he missed sorely. Lord Hartfield replaced that devoted servant by a clever Austrian valet, a new importation from Vienna, who understood very little English, a trained attendant upon mental invalids, and who was quite capable of dealing with old Lord Maulevrier.
Lord Hartfield went a step farther; and within a week of those two funerals of servant and mistress, which cast a gloom over the peaceful valley of Grasmere, he brought down a famous mad-doctor to diagnose his lordship’s case. There was but little risk in so doing, he argued with his friend, and it was their duty so to do. If the old man should assert himself to the doctor as Lord Maulevrier, the declaration would pass as a symptom of his lunacy. But it happened that the physician arrived at Fellside on one of Lord Maulevrier’s bad days, and the patient never emerged from the feeblest phase of imbecility.
‘Brain quite gone,’ pronounced the doctor, ‘bodily health very poor. Take him to the South of France for the winter — Hyères, or any quiet place. He can’t last long.’
To Hyères the old man was taken, with Mrs. Steadman as nurse, and the Austrian valet as body-servant and keeper. Mary, for whom, in his brighter hours he showed a warm affection, went with him under her husband’s wing.
Lord Hartfield rented a chateau on the slope of an olive-clad hill, where he and his young wife, whose health was somewhat delicate at this time, spent a winter in peaceful seclusion; while Lesbia and her brother travelled together in Italy. The old man’s strength improved in that lovely climate. He lived to see the roses and orange blossoms of the early spring, and died in his arm-chair suddenly, without a pang, while Mary sat at his feet reading to him: a quiet end of an evil and troubled life. And now he whom the world had known as Lord Maulevrier was verily the earl, and could hear himself called by his title once more without a touch of shame.
The secret of Lady Maulevrier’s sin had been so faithfully kept by the two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman’s uncle. She and Lesbia both knew that there were painful circumstances of some kind connected with this man’s existence, his hidden life in the old house at Fellside; but they were both content to learn no more. Respect for their grandmother’s memory, sorrowful affection for the dead, prevailed over natural curiosity.
Early in February Maulevrier sent decorators and upholsterers into the old house in Curzon Street, which was ready before the middle of May to receive his lordship and his young wife, the girlish daughter of a Florentine nobleman, a gazelle-eyed Italian, with a voice whose every tone was music, and with the gentlest, shyest, most engaging manners of any girl in Florence. Lady Lesbia, strangely subdued and changed by the griefs and humiliations of her last campaign, had been her brother’s counsellor and confidante throughout his wooing of his fair Italian bride. She was to spend the season under her brother’s roof, to help to initiate young Lady Maulevrier in the mysterious rites of London society, and to warn her of those rocks and shoals which had wrecked her own fortunes.
The month of May brought a son and heir to Lord Hartfield; and it was not till after his birth that Mary, Countess of Hartfield, was presented to her sovereign, and began her career as a matron of rank and standing, very much overpowered by the weight of her honours, and looking forward with delight to the end of the season and a flight to Argyleshire with her husband and baby.
The End