“Chris, what does this mean?”
Wyngham House being so near, Mrs. Abercarne and her daughter had returned on foot. They had not exchanged a single word on the way. It was not until they had reached the Chinese-room, and had sat down before the fire there, that Mrs. Abercarne thus broke the silence portentously.
Chris looked the picture of despair. The colour had again left her pretty cheeks; there were lines brought by anxiety in her fair young face; the tears were gathering in her eyes. And yet there was something comical in the look of resignation with which she deliberately sat down as soon as her mother had done so, determined to brave the matter out, and get her confession and her scolding over and done with.At her mother’s question, therefore, she drew a sigh which sounded like one of relief.
“It means, mother dear,” she began, frankly, “that—oh! dear, I know you’ll be so angry! And it will worry you besides! I wish you wouldn’t ask me. You might take it for granted I haven’t done anything dreadful, nothing more than I used to do when I was twelve, when I used to find love letters from Willie Mansfield behind the scraper, and answer them in the holly-bush so that he might prick his fingers when he got them.”
She ended with another sigh, as she rested her little round chin in her hand, and looked plaintively at the fire.
But Mrs. Abercarne was not to be put off like this.
“Christina,” she said solemnly, drawing herself up another inch, and looking at the fire herself, lest her daughter’s sighs should mollify her too soon, “I insist upon a full explanation. You have given me none. All I know at present is, that my daughter has so far forgotten what is due to herself as a gentlewoman, as to carry on a clandestine correspondence with some unknown person. I insist upon knowing at once who the person is.”
Chris looked at her dolefully.
“Oh, mother, won’t it do if I promise not to write again, and not to receive any more letters?”
“No, Christina, it will not do,” said Mrs. Abercarne, obstinately. “It is a matter of course that you will cease this correspondence. But, in the meantime, I insist on knowing the name of the person who has induced you to jeopardise your own self-respect.”
Whereupon Chris jumped up with a gesture indicating restlessness and despair.
“All right, mother! Now, don’t scream; it’s Mr. Richard—there!”
If a servant had suddenly appeared with the news that an invading army had landed at the pier-head, and was now surrounding the house, or that Lord Llanfyllin had poisoned Lady Llanfyllin and married his cook, poor Mrs. Abercarne would have been less utterly shocked and struck dumb than she was by this intelligence. For a few moments she could only stare at her daughter, who now, that the crisis was over, began to laugh half hysterically.
“Mr.—Richard,” the poor lady at last gasped out. “Mr. Richard—the lu—lu—lunatic? Oh! it isn’t possible! It’s too awful—too appalling! I—I—I shall die if it’s true!”
But Chris was getting better already. She slid down on her knees, and put her arm round her mother’s neck, unable now to restrain a wild inclination to laugh at her mother’s hopeless terror.
“No, you won’t, mother. Of course I couldn’t help knowing you’d be awfully angry, and so I put off telling you. But it’s not half as bad as you think. Dick’s no more mad than you or I.”
“Dick!” cried poor Mrs. Abercarne, with a shriek, which subsided into a moan. “To think of my daughter—my Christina, calling a m—m—madman Dick!”
“But when I tell you that he’s not mad, not mad at all,” insisted Chris, raising her voice a little to emphasise her words.
The words were hardly out of her mouth when she sprang up with a little cry.
Mr. Bradfield was in the room.
Chris became in an instant as red as she had been white before.
“Have you been listening?” she asked, impulsively.
“Sh-sh, Christina,” said her mother’s reproving voice.
But the intruder answered with great meekness:
“Well, I did hear what you were saying when I came in; and what’s more, I’m very glad I did, for you were making a statement which it’s my business to disprove. You were saying that somebody was not mad. Now, of course, you mean my unhappy ward, Richard.”
“Your unhappy ward!” retorted Chris, with spirited emphasis. “Yes, I do mean him.”
“You think he is not mad?”
“Not mad enough to be shut up, at any rate.”
He seemed taken aback by the girl’s boldness and straightforwardness, and he did not immediately answer, but left Mrs. Abercarne time to read her daughter a little lecture on the impropriety of her present behaviour, which, she said, was only the sequel to be expected to her conduct in deceiving her mother. Chris began to look distressed, but, before she could answer this accusation, Mr. Bradfield broke in:
“Never mind what she says, Mrs. Abercarne. She’s only a foolish girl, and it’s lucky we’ve found out this affair before he’s found an opportunity of dashing her silly brains out. He’s been worse than usual the last few days, and I’m expecting some sort of dangerous outbreak every day. Let us be thankful things have gone no further.”
And, affecting to take no further notice of Chris,he shook hands with Mrs. Abercarne, bade her good-night, and left the room with a curious look of sullen determination on his face, which frightened the younger lady so much that she was silent for some minutes.
At last she said, in a frightened whisper:
“Mother, what do you think he’s going to do? I never saw him look like that before.”
But she got no sympathy. Mrs. Abercarne was entirely on John Bradfield’s side, and expressed her opinion that whatever he did would be the proper thing to do. But, on the promise of Chris to cease all correspondence at once with Mr. Richard, a truce was patched up between mother and daughter, and the subject of contention was allowed to drop.
Poor Chris, however, felt that she could not so suddenly break off all communication with the unhappy Dick without one word of explanation. So she contrived to meet Stelfox that very night before she retired to her room, and without hiding the fact that she had been exchanging communications with his charge, begged him to tell Mr. Richard that she had been obliged to promise to do so no longer.
Stelfox, as usual, showed no surprise. He said he would deliver her message, and that was all.
It is not to be wondered at that, after such an exciting evening, Chris was unable to sleep. She now occupied a little bed in the same room with her mother’s large one; and presently, finding her own sad thoughts intolerable, she got up and very quietly crossed the corridor to the Chinese-room in search of a book.
Just as she reached the door, a noise, which seemed to come from the east wing at the opposite end of thehouse, caused her to turn her head quickly. There was no light in the corridor, so that she could see nothing. Her first idea was that burglars had got into the house, and she was on the point of running back to rouse her mother, and give the alarm, when she heard the unlocking of a door. It then flashed into her mind that it was, perhaps, Stelfox coming out of the east wing that had attracted her attention. Being determined to find out which of these two surmises was correct, and not wishing to alarm the household without cause, she went to the end of the corridor, without, however, venturing too near the spot whence the noise came. Chris was not particularly courageous, and the fear of meeting a real live burglar, caused her to tremble from head to foot. The noise went on all the time, until she reached the railing which surrounded the well of the staircase, and from here she could see a dark mass, which might have been anything, but which must, she supposed, be a human being, disappearing out of her sight from the bottom of the staircase into the hall. That was all she could see; and as she still leaned over the railing, the last sound died away, without her being able to tell whether the figure she had seen had left the house or not.
For a few moments she was absolutely paralysed with terror, and remained quite still in the cold, not daring to move, or to cry out, afraid even to turn round, lest she should find the hand of a burglar laid upon her mouth. At last, however, as she heard nothing more, she began slowly to recover her wits, and to wonder what it was she had seen, what she should do, and whether she was not making a great fuss about nothing.
Then followed shame at her own alarm, until at last she went back along the corridor, telling herself that the cause of her fright must have been a visit paid by Stelfox to his charge in the east wing. Of course, it might have been a burglar that she had seen, but then, on the other hand, it seemed more likely that it was not, for burglars usually find out, before entering a house, in what part of it the most valuable portable property is kept, and it was certainly not kept in the east wing.
So Chris, reassured, went into the Chinese-room, though not without a feeling that this was an exceedingly daring thing for her to do, after the fright she had had.
She had chosen her book, and was opening the door, when, her ears being more on the alert than usual, she heard another unusual noise, proceeding this time from the outside of the house. Kneeling upon the ottoman under the window at the west end of the corridor, she looked out, and saw to her horror a man staggering along across the grass in the direction of the sea, with a shapeless mass hanging over his shoulder; and as this shapeless mass defined itself, when her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she saw that it was the body of a man.
It is sad, in these days of strong-minded girls with nerves of iron, to have to relate of poor Chris Abercarne that she fainted. No sooner had she convinced herself that it was really the body of another man that the living man in the garden below was carrying across his shoulder than her hands relaxed their hold of the window-sill, and she fell in a heap on the ottoman.
When she opened her eyes again she knew nothing but that she felt very cold, so that for the first moment she supposed that she was in bed, and that the bed-clothes had slid off on to the floor. Raising herself, and looking about her, she soon remembered what had happened, and with a cry got on to her feet. So stiff and benumbed was she, that she staggered on her way back to her own and her mother’s room, and fumbled with the handle.
While she was thus occupied, another occurrence, almost as startling as the previous one, attracted her attention. There was a flash of light at the other end of the corridor, and by it Chris saw, with perfect distinctness, Mr. Bradfield coming out of the door of the east wing. Before Chris had had time to make out where the light came from, Mr. Bradfield reclosed the door softly, and he and the light disappeared at the same time.
Chris felt as if she was losing her wits. Hastily rousing her mother from sleep, she told her all that had happened in such an hysterical fashion, with such wild eyes, and such a pale face, that at first Mrs. Abercarne was disposed to think that the girl had been dreaming. Chris herself seemed to incline to the same opinion. Nevertheless, she begged her mother just to come into the corridor with her for one moment.
“Perhaps,” went on Chris, her teeth chattering with the cold, “perhaps you’ll see something or hear something to show you that it was really true. But, oh! how I hope you won’t.”
Mrs. Abercarne drew on her dressing-gown, and mother and daughter went out into the corridor together. They had scarcely done so before they began to cough and to choke, as a volume of blinding smoke came rushing towards them from the east end of the house.
“Fire! fire! The house is on fire!” cried Mrs. Abercarne.
And as she rushed along the corridor, she ran against Mr. Bradfield as he came out of his room.
“What—what do you say?” cried he, as if in amazement and alarm.
But Chris noticed that he had had time to dress; and as a multitude of ghastly suspicions forced themselves into her mind, she burst out, passionately:
“Dick! What have you done to Dick?”
Mr. Bradfield did not turn to look at her, nor did he answer; but she saw him shiver.
By this time the whole household had taken the alarm. The servants came running from above and from below, among the latter being Stelfox, whomChris detained for a moment as soon as he reached the top of the stairs.
“Mr. Richard! Mr. Richard!” she cried, in tones of agony. “Save him, save him—if he is there!”
As she uttered these words, prompted thereto by a sudden suspicion that it was Stelfox himself whom she had seen carrying the lifeless body, and that the body was that of the unhappy Dick, she saw a look exchanged between the man-servant and Mr. Bradfield, who had come up to hear what she was saying. Chris put her hands up to her head, covered her eyes and shrank back with a great sob. The horror of the situation, and the fears of her heart, were too much for her. She let her mother lead her to a seat, where she sat shivering and weeping silently during the tumult which followed. But unnerved and disorganised as she was, Chris had sense enough left to notice that Stelfox did not rush forward and attempt to force an entrance into the burning wing. He tried the handle of the door indeed, but finding it locked, he did not even produce his own key. He turned instead towards his master, and looked at him for a moment steadfastly before suggesting that the fire-extinguishers, which were kept ready in cupboards all over the house, should be brought and used at once.
Mr. Bradfield at once gave an order to that effect, and as in the meantime the stablemen had been at work on the outside with ladders and with apparatus which was kept in the stable-yard for the purpose, before very long the fire was got under, and it was possible to enter the rooms of the east wing.
In the meanwhile Mr. Richard had not been forgotten. The outer door leading to his apartmentshad been burst open; but the rush of black, blinding smoke which followed, made it absolutely impossible to penetrate further than the passage within. The stablemen, who tried from outside to rescue the unfortunate man, fared no better. By the time they had forced the windows the rooms were all alight and they found it impossible to enter.
Exclamations of pity and distress on account of the unlucky young fellow passed from lip to lip among the women of the household, whose sobs and cries added to the tumult. The one woman whom a mixed assembly generally produces who is the equal of any man, was duly forthcoming in the person of a young housemaid, who, at the risk of her life, penetrated as far as Mr. Richard’s sleeping apartment, which was by that time all in flames. She was rescued herself just in time, being dragged out in an insensible condition. But as soon as she revived, she declared that she had been in time to discover that Mr. Richard was not in the bed at all. This statement, which she made in presence of most of the household, was little regarded except by Chris, on whose ears this piece of intelligence fell with sinister import. She fell back again into her mother’s arms, her eyes closed, in a state bordering on insensibility. It having been by this time ascertained that the fire would not spread beyond the wing in which it had originated, Mr. Bradfield had leisure to think of the girl. He drew near to where she sat leaning against her mother’s shoulder, and asked if she was better. But at the first sound of his voice, Chris started up, her eyes wide open, her face lined with horror.
“I shall never be better, never,” she said, tremulously, “until I am out of this dreadful house.”
And she would not look at him, she would not listen to him; but nestling against her mother like a pert and frightened child, she turned her head away with a shudder.
“Don’t speak to her now,” said Mrs. Abercarne, anxiously. “I am afraid the poor child is going to be ill.”
She led her daughter back to her room, but, even as they went along the corridor, there came to their ears a rumour, a cry which had passed from one to the other of the servants until it reached them.
Mr. Richard could not be found; this was the burden of the cry. Chris stopped short.
“No,” she said, in a low voice, staring in front of her. “He was murdered first, and the place was set on fire as a blind.”
And then she laughed hysterically, so that her mother began to tremble for her sanity.
When the morning came, Chris was too ill to get up, and a doctor was sent for, who ordered her to remain in bed, and keep very quiet. Before night she had become worse, and on hearing that she had been suffering from worry and shock, the doctor gave it as his opinion that she was suffering from brain fever. It was either that or typhoid, although at the present stage he could not definitely pronounce which it was.
In the meantime rumour was busy, and it said, starting from the gossip among the servants of the household, that the fire had not been an accident. The place was not insured, so there was no official investigation into its origin. But gossip spoke of the smell of paraffin, and the story was soon current that Mr. Richard had conceived a hopeless passionfor Miss Abercarne, that he had set fire to the place in order to effect his escape, and that he had then committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea.
Chris knew nothing of all this. She lay for many days unconscious, hanging at one time between life and death. Mr. Bradfield’s despair at any apparent change for the worse in her condition was quite as great as that of her own mother. His haggard face, his anxious eyes, the change from brusque abruptness to an almost timorous vacillation in his manner, excited the comment of the entire neighbourhood. Some put the change in him down to anxiety as to the fate of his ward, of whom no inquiries could find a trace; some to his despair on the young lady’s account. When Chris began to get better, her mother’s anxieties about the girl were as deep as ever. For the melancholy in the girl’s eyes was touching in the extreme; a shadow seemed to have been cast upon her whole nature. Her frivolity had gone, but it seemed to have taken the freshness of her youth with it. Mrs. Abercarne longed for, at the same time that she dreaded, an explanation.
It came one day when Chris had been carried, for the first time, into the Chinese-room, and laid upon the sofa. Mrs. Abercarne was watching her daughter anxiously, when Chris said:
“Mother, has anything been found out—about the fire?”
Mrs. Abercarne flushed slightly; she had heard a good many rumours, but had shut her ears as much as possible.
“Found out!” she echoed, as if surprised by the question. “Why, no, of course not.”
“I mean—doesn’t anybody think it strange?”
“That there should be a fire? No. It is always dangerous to use lamps. And Mr. Richard, poor young man, was evidently not to be trusted with one.”
Chris moved impatiently. But she only asked:
“Do they think he was burnt alive, then?”
Mrs. Abercarne hesitated. She wished with all her heart, poor dear lady, that she could honestly say “yes.” But truth (and the certainty that she would be found out if she told a falsehood) prevailed.
“It is impossible to say,” she answered, shortly. “But—but I believe they did not succeed in finding any traces of the body.”
“Ah!” said Chris, as if this had been just what she expected.
She asked no more questions, but sat for a long time looking thoughtfully out at the sea. At last her mother ventured to say:
“Mr. Bradfield wants to know, my darling, what flowers you would like best for him to send you. He is very anxious for the time to come when he may see you, though he does not wish to intrude too soon.”
Mrs. Abercarne had thought it wiser not to look at her daughter while she said this, so she did not see the cloud which darkened on the girl’s face at the mention of the name.
When Chris next spoke, however, there was a difference in her tone.
“Mother, I want to speak to Stelfox.”
Mrs. Abercarne flushed again, and frowned slightly with perplexity. She wished her daughter would notmake such awkward requests. After a moment’s hesitation she asked:
“Why, my dear? What have you got to say to him? I am quite sure,” she went on, hurriedly, “that the doctor would not allow you to see anybody just yet.”
Chris turned slowly and looked at her mother.
“Has he been sent away?” she asked abruptly.
“Well, my dear, I don’t know whether he has been sent away for good or not, but he is certainly away at present.”
The girl’s face fell again, and her mother in vain tried to rouse her from the depression into which she had sunk.
The hopelessness which had fallen upon the girl like a pall retarded her convalescence. She took no interest in anything; the only way in which her mother could rouse any emotion in her was by an allusion to Mr. Bradfield; and then the feeling shown by the girl was one of the utmost abhorrence.
Poor Mrs. Abercarne, therefore, soon began to find herself in a very awkward position between her employer on the one hand, eagerly anxious to see the girl, or even to minister to her pleasure, unseen, in any way that might be suggested; and her daughter on the other, who had conceived such a strong aversion for the man that she would not even look at the books and papers her mother brought her, because she knew that they were supplied by him. Her dislike, indeed, to the very sound of his name was becoming almost a mania, so that Mrs. Abercarne feared she would have to leave Wyngham on account of it.
It need scarcely be said that Mrs. Abercarne, whohad been completely won by John Bradfield’s passion for her daughter, not only acquitted him of the crime her daughter chose to suggest in the matter of the fire, but looked upon the disappearance of the lunatic, either by suicide or by misadventure, as a very fortunate circumstance.
The doctor was troubled by the slowness of the girl’s convalescence, and by her own lack of a strong desire to get well again. He recommended change for one thing, and cheerful society. Now the one was as difficult to get as the other. Change could only be got by sacrificing a situation to the disadvantages of which Mrs. Abercarne had grown accustomed, while its advantages she appreciated more every day. Cheerful society seemed more out of the question still.
It was therefore with a feeling almost of gratitude that Mrs. Abercarne, while sitting by her daughter’s sofa one morning, heard that Miss Lilith Graham-Shute was downstairs, and that she wanted to know if she could see Miss Abercarne.
“Show her up, Corbett,” said Mrs. Abercarne. And turning to Chris, she said: “You would like to see her, my dear, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Chris.
The two girls, indeed, had felt a mutual attraction, and had only been prevented by the fierce enmitywhich raged between their respective mothers from becoming very good friends indeed.
When Lilith came in, smiling, bright-eyed, cheery, and suffering from a valiant attempt to subdue her usual exuberance of voice and manner, her entrance was like a ray of sunshine. She came to the side of the sofa on tip-toe, which was quite unnecessary, and caused her to be so unsteady of gait that she knocked over a basket of flowers which had been placed on a little stand beside the sofa.
“Oh, look what I’ve done!” she cried, as she stooped down in haste to repair the mischief.
“Oh, you needn’t trouble about those things!” cried Chris, ungratefully, with a little look which girls’ freemasonry enabled Lilith to understand.
Miss Graham-Shute’s big brown eyes grew round with delight at the prospect of a little bit of interesting gossip, if they should get a chance to be alone together. She nodded discreetly, as she went down on her knees to rearrange the scattered daffodils and lilies of the valley.
“I’m such a clumsy creature!” cried she, in feigned distress. “Donald always says I’m like a bull in a china shop. Oh!” she cried, as she buried her littleretroussénose in a bunch of Parma violets, “I should like to be ill if I could get such attentions bestowed upon me! Youarea lucky girl, Chris! And an ungrateful one too!” she added in a lower voice, with a glance at Mrs. Abercarne, whose back was for the moment turned.
“You can have the flowers, if you like,” said Chris quickly. “Yes, do take them,” she added, eagerly as Lilith made a gesture of refusal, “I shall be so glad if you will. They—they are too strongly scented,”she added, as an excuse, as she noticed a look of pain and annoyance on her mother’s face.
“Oh, well, they are not too strongly scented for me,” said Lilith, drily. “Thank you awfully, dear. I’ll be sure to remember to bring back the basket.”
“No, don’t; keep it, I don’t want to see any of it again.”
She spoke petulantly, for the handsome gift had been accompanied by a message from Mr. Bradfield, almost demanding permission to see her.
Then Mrs. Abercarne, moved to wrath, spoke:
“I think you are very ungrateful, Chris. Those flowers were sent from Covent Garden expressly for you, and at great expense.”
She was not unwilling to annoy the Graham-Shutes, by proving in what high estimation “the Abercarnes” were held at Wyngham House.
“Chris, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, you really ought,” said Lilith, gaily, as she got up from her knees. “Now, don’t let me knock anything else over. You haven’t any silver tables, or anything of that sort, luckily.”
She glanced merrily round her, in all innocence; but Mrs. Abercarne, always rather too ready to feel insulted, chose to consider this speech as a barbed one.
“No; unfortunately we are not rich enough to buy unnecessary things,” she said acidly; “and we are not refined enough to look upon silver tables as necessaries.”
“You needn’t talk at me as if I were mamma, Mrs. Abercarne,” cried Lilith, brightly. “I know we buy unnecessary things, and leave the necessary onesunbought. I know we spend money on toys which are supposed to be ancient silver, when in reality they are modern pewter, and have to darn our gloves. I know we do lots of things which are foolish, and get us laughed at, but, after all, youcanlaugh at us, and you ought to be grateful for that!”
The girl’s sense of fun was infectious, and Chris laughed aloud. Lilith went on:
“The latest—no, not the very latest craze, but the latest but one, is for me to blossom out into a great dramatic writer, and to buy a house for us all in Kensington Palace Gardens. Mamma says I am brimming over with talent (and perhaps I am, but it hadn’t troubled me much till it was pointed out to me), and there is a dearth of dramatists, and I am to ‘supply a long-felt want,’ as the advertisements say. And all on the strength of my little play the other day, which, by-the-bye, I have sent up to a London manager to read. Of course, I’m hoping he’ll take it, but it seems almost too good to be possible, doesn’t it?”
The girl spoke playfully, but with just enough wistfulness in her tone for the other ladies to see that she was full of the most forlorn of all forlorn hopes. Mrs. Abercarne began to perceive that even Graham-Shutes may be human, moved with like passions to our own. And when Corbett appeared again, asking if she could speak to Mrs. Abercarne for a minute, that lady left the room with the pleasant consciousness that the visit of the lively girl was doing Chris good.
No sooner were they alone, than Lilith drew near to her companion mysteriously.
“Chris, tell me, is it true that you don’t like Mr.Bradfield, and don’t mean to marry him if he asks you?”
“Indeed it is,” answered Chris hotly, with more energy than she had shown since the beginning of her illness. “I wouldn’t marry him if he were the richest and the most charming person in the world!”
“Then I think you’re very silly.”
Chris laughed a little.
“It’s lucky Mrs. Graham-Shute can’t hear you say so.”
Lilith burst into a laugh of delightful merriment.
“Yes, indeed it is,” she admitted heartily. “It’s the greatest dread of her life that you should become Mrs. John Bradfield, of Wyngham House. And nothing will induce her to believe that you are not trying to bring it about. For my own part,” she went on, prosaically, as Chris shook her head, “I should think much better of you if you were.”
Chris looked at her in amazement.
“What? This fromyou!” cried she. “They do say, you know, that you are always in love, and always with somebody who hasn’t any money at all.”
“Well, I suppose they’re right. Men who have moneyarealways horrid, aren’t they? Still, if one of the horrid creatures were to ask me, I should have to have him, I suppose,” she went on with a sigh. “And as no girl can ever fall in love with a rich man, I may just as well be in love with a poor man first, and know something of the sentiment.”
“Who is it now?” asked Chris, smiling, and rather interested.
“Oh, it’s still the same one, the mysterious strangerI saw in the barn on the evening of thetableaux vivants.”
“What!” said Chris, turning suddenly crimson, while the tears rushed into her eyes. “It is more than two months since then. This is constancy indeed.”
“It’s so easy to be constant down here,” sighed Lilith. “And I admit that I might have wavered a little before now in my devotion if I hadn’t seen, or thought I had seen, my handsome stranger in town the other day, when I went up with mamma to do some shopping.”
To her astonishment, Chris sprang up from her sofa in great excitement.
“You saw him? You saw him?” cried she, all her old animation in her face, the old ring in her voice.
Lilith looked at her in amazement.
“Why, Chris, who was he? You pretended you didn’t know.”
But the light had already died out of her companion’s eyes. Sighing heavily she answered:
“Indeed it was true that I did not then know whom you meant. And if you did really see him yesterday, why, then he was not the person I have since supposed him to have been.”
Lilith, who had heard rumours of the flirtation, or attachment between Chris and the alleged lunatic, was full of interest and curiosity.
“Why, Chris,” said she, “was that the person they called Mr. Richard? If so, I don’t wonder you liked him better than cousin John.”
But Chris would confess nothing, and rather irritated Lilith by her reticence.
“What do people say about him? How do they account for his having disappeared?”
“Well,” said Lilith, lowering her voice, “they say that he set the place on fire in order to escape, and that he’ll come back some day and murder cousin John!”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Chris, sharply. “A lunatic might do that, but not Dick.”
“Dick, oh!” said Lilith, raising her eyebrows. “You have confessed something at any rate, now, haven’t you?”
But for answer Chris burst into tears, so that Mrs. Abercarne, returning, looked at Lilith with stern reproach.
“I’m so sorry,” said Lilith, penitently; “but, Mrs. Abercarne, it’s really better for her to cry than to lie all day looking as if she wanted to! And oh! I’d nearly forgotten what I came for; mamma sent me to borrow a box of sardines.”
Mrs. Abercarne suppressed a smile at this characteristic errand.
“I’m afraid we haven’t such a thing in the house,” she said. “A friend of Mr. Bradfield’s has just arrived from town unexpectedly, so we have been running our eyes over the stores to see what we could give him to eat to stave off his hunger until Mr. Bradfield comes home to luncheon.”
“Who is it, mother?” asked Chris, in whom Mrs. Abercarne noted this curiosity as a sign that Lilith’s visit had done her good.
“Oh, the unfortunate person who sprained his ankle on Christmas day.”
“Mr. Marrable!” Chris clasped her hands with a fresh access of excitement. “Mother, let me see him at once. Do let me.”
Both the other ladies were a good deal surprised atthis demand, and the vehemence with which it was expressed. But there was no resisting her importunity; and therefore, as soon as Lilith had reluctantly taken her departure, Mr. Marrable, as shy and nervous as ever, was shown up into the Chinese-room.
He expressed his delight at the honour Miss Abercarne had done him by admitting him, and was proceeding to utter some old-fashioned compliments which he had been preparing on the way upstairs, when Chris, by a look at her mother, induced that lady to leave the room. Then the girl turned to Mr. Marrable, and exhibited a sudden energy which startled that rather flaccid gentleman.
“Mr. Marrable,” she said imperiously, “I have heard you talk of an old friend of yours and Mr. Bradfield’s, named Gilbert Wryde.”
At the mention of the name, Mr. Marrable started violently.
“Yes, yes, er—er—I may have mentioned him; I say I may have mentioned him,” he answered feebly, looking round as if he hoped to find a way of escape.
“This Gilbert Wryde had a son, I think you said?”
“Oh, my goodness!” murmured poor Mr. Marrable; and then, seeing that she was determined, he admitted that he might have mentioned that too.
“Tell me, and tell me the truth, mind,” continued the young girl, earnestly, “when you knew that son, years ago that was, of course, when he was a child, was there anything the matter with him?”
Mr. Marrable stared at her piteously, as iffeeling he could hope for no mercy from this excited female.
“Nothing,” murmured he feebly, “nothing of any consequence, that is to say, beyond, of course, being deaf and dumb.”
To his horror, the young lady sprang up with a wild cry, clasping her hands as if she had received a revelation.
“Deaf—and—dumb!”
And, uttering these words, she sank back fainting on the sofa.
Poor Mr. Marrable was very much frightened by the effect of his words upon Chris. He rushed to the door of the room, and summoned Mrs. Abercarne with frantic cries.
But before her mother could reach the room, Chris had entirely recovered her self-command under the influence of a strong feeling of relief, and when Mr. Marrable went downstairs to await John Bradfield’s return, she was brighter and less listless than she had been since her illness.
In the first place, the hope, weak as it was, which Lilith’s words had woke in her, was enough to live upon for a day or two at least; and in the second place, the fact she had learnt from Alfred Marrable had relieved her from the last trace of suspicion that she had given her love to a maniac. Now that she knew that Mr. Richard had been deaf and dumb, sheunderstood much that had appeared strange in his conduct towards her. It was clear that when he had left her questions unanswered, it was because he could not hear them; and she now remembered that he had watched her lips as often as possible when she spoke, and had evidently understood her words by these means. This, then, was the infirmity to which he had alluded in his letter; and now the only thing which puzzled her was the fact that on the last two occasions when she had met him he had spoken to her. When and how had he recovered or obtained the power of speech?
It is a curious fact that this interview with Mr. Marrable, and the information he had given her, increased, without her being able to account for it, her new belief that her lover might be still alive. She moved about with new cheerfulness, nourishing the hope that her mother would either take her, or send her to London, where, as she knew, all those people go who for any reason wish to remain for a time in concealment.
On the other hand, what reason could Dick have for wishing to remain in hiding? Would he not rather, if he had escaped the dangers of the night of the fire, return either to see her, or to bring Mr. Bradfield to book for his long incarceration? And what had been the object of that incarceration? What, also, had been the meaning of the scene she witnessed on the night of the fire?
With these and similar questions the young girl’s brain seemed to reel as she sat at her window looking out at the grey sea.
Meanwhile Mr. Bradfield had returned from his morning’s ride, and had been greeted, on dismountingfrom his horse, with the information that Mr. Marrable was waiting to see him.
John Bradfield entered the dining-room, into which the discriminating footman had shown the visitor as a person not quite smart enough for the drawing-room, with a frown on his face.
“Oh, so you’re here again, are you?” was his abrupt greeting.
Alfred, who felt better after the glass of beer and crust of bread and cheese which he had modestly chosen as his refreshment, came towards his old friend smiling, and trying to look cheerful.
“Yes,” he answered mildly, “as you say, I’m here again.”
His cheerfulness did not please Mr. Bradfield, who frowned still more as he asked shortly:
“Well, and what do you want?”
Now this Mr. Marrable did not quite like to confess. So he went on smiling, until he perceived by an ominous motion of his friend’s boot, that that gentleman’s endurance was about to give way.
“Well, John, it’s no use beating about the bush. The fact is, I’m down on my luck; there’s nothing doing up in town, and things don’t seem to get any better, and——”
“And you want some money, I suppose; your next quarter’s allowance advanced you, in fact?”
“Well, no; not exactly that, though I don’t say it wouldn’t be a convenience.”
John looked at him incredulously.
“What do you want, then?”
He wasn’t exactly afraid of Marrable, who seemed too flabby a sort of person to inspire one with much fear of what he might do; at the sametime there was no denying that the weak vessel before him contained some perilous stuff in the way of undesirable knowledge. The man’s audacity in coming down again so soon gave him food for reflection.
“The fact is,” answered Marrable, softly, “that my wife and I were talking things over last night, and she said things were so bad that it would be better for us to part, and she said she was sure you wouldn’t mind giving an old friend like me a shelter for a time.”
“The d——l she did!” exclaimed Mr. Bradfield, in amazement. “And hadn’t you the sense to tell her that the suggestion was like her cheek?”
“Why, no, John,” returned Marrable, just as gently as ever. “I didn’t tell her that, for I thought myself it wasn’t a bad idea.”
There was a pause, during which John Bradfield, considered the downcast, hang-dog face of the other, while his own grew perceptibly paler.
“Why?” he presently asked.
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t want to make myself unpleasant in any way, John, but it seemed so odd to find Gilbert Wryde’s son here, shut up as a lunatic——”
John Bradfield shivered. And the look he cast at the other was not pleasant to see.
“Do you mean to suggest that you had any reason for thinking that he was not a lunatic?”
Marrable’s answer came quickly. He was evidently anxious to get it out before he got afraid to say it:
“Well, I should like to see him, that’s all.”
“You haven’t heard, then, about the fire downhere? He overturned his lamp, set fire to the place, and was burnt alive.”
“Dear me! Was there an inquest?”
These direct questions, put timorously, had the effect of making John Bradfield so furious that he stammered as he spoke:
“There was no inquest. The body could not be found!”
“Perhaps,” suggested Marrable, “he wasn’t burnt at all. Perhaps he escaped, or perhaps——”
Although he paused, significantly, John Bradfield did not urge him to go on. There was a silence before Alfred said, in the same infantile manner as before:
“And what became of all his money, John?”
“He never had any.”
“But he ought to have had plenty,” rejoined Marrable, in the same sing-song voice. “Now, I’ll make a clean breast of it, John. Not that I wish to make myself unpleasant, as I said before, but when I was down here at Christmas I thought things looked fishy (I don’t want to be unkind, but they really did); so when I got back to town I got a friend to cable over to Melbourne for me, and find out the particulars of Gilbert Wryde’s will.”
Then there was a pause. John Bradfield looked, not at his old chum, but out at the sea, which lay a bright blue grey in the sunshine. To think that he should have escaped detection all these years, to be brought to book at last by such a paltry creature—that was the thought that was surging in his mind as he stood digging his nails into his own flesh and not listening very eagerly for the next words, for he knew so well what they would be.
“I only got the letter yesterday which gave me all particulars. I know that Gilbert Wryde left all his money to you in trust for his son. So,” pursued Alfred, slowly, and apparently without vindictiveness, “you never really made any money at all yourself, John, any more than I? But you’ve lived like a fighting-cock on Gilbert Wryde’s. That’s about the size of it, isn’t it, old chap?”
Although he was trying to give a playful turn to his conversation, Marrable did not speak cheerfully.
There was a long pause. John Bradfield, being hopelessly cornered, saw that there was nothing for it but to find out the lowest price at which Alfred would be bought. His methods were always blunt, so that Marrable was not surprised when his old chum simply planted himself on the carpet in front of him, jingling some money in his pockets, and asked briefly:
“How much do you want?”
Marrable, who never looked up at his friend if he could help it, bleated out, quite plaintively:
“Well, John, for myself, I should be sorry to stoop so low as to take anything; but I should like to send home a ten-pound note, if you could spare it, and all I ask of you is to put me up here for a bit, and let me make myself at home as we used to do in the old days together.”
John Bradfield was so much amazed at this request, that for a few moments he could give no answer whatever. The thought of having always in the house with him this flabby, weak-kneed creature, who was, nevertheless, his master, by virtue of his knowledge, was so galling, that he would rather have given up the half of his ill-gotten property than have supportedthe infliction. He laughed shortly, therefore, and said, in a jeering tone:
“What, believing me to be capable of what you accuse me of, you are willing to trust yourself under the same roof with me? It wouldn’t be very hard to makeyoupass for a lunatic with all the medical men in the county, you know!”
But Marrable bore the jibe placidly.
“If anything were to happen to me, John, while I was down here,” he answered, composedly, “my wife, who put me up to coming down, would come down after me; and if onceshegot hold of you, John, oh! wouldn’t you wish me back again, that’s all!”
John Bradfield was silent. The net was closing round him. Already the fatal knowledge was in the power of more persons than he knew; he felt the strong walls of his citadel, in which he had been secure for seventeen years, crumbling. He was man enough, however, to be able to keep his feelings to himself.
“All right,” said he, shortly, “you can stay if you like, of course. And when you like to go, you can take what you want with you.”
But Marrable, who had a conscience, was not quite satisfied.
“Thank you, John,” he answered, rather dismally. “I thought you wouldn’t mind giving a shelter to an old chum down on his luck. But, mind you,” he went on, shaking a slow, fat forefinger impressively as he spoke, “I don’t mind taking a crust from you as a friend, seeing that, after all, it’s not your money at all, but Gilbert Wryde’s, and that he’d have helped me like a prince without my asking. But you understand that I wouldn’t be so mean as totake a bribe to hold my tongue if Gilbert’s son were still alive.”
Blunt as John Bradfield habitually was, his bluntness was as nothing to the terribly tactless and blundering plain-speaking of Alfred, who thought he was conducting the interview with equal amiability and cleverness, while, in reality, every speech he uttered made John Bradfield wince, and filled him with an ever-growing wish that he dared kick his meek master.
And so Alfred Marrable became a permanent guest at Wyngham House.
Encouraged by her condescension on his first arrival, Alfred Marrable looked forward to finding daily pleasure in the society of the beautiful Miss Abercarne. Great was his disappointment then to find that she took advantage of her position as a convalescent to remain entirely in her own rooms; so that, at the end of his first fortnight at Wyngham, he had seen no more of her than on his first day there.
At the end of that time Chris, having obtained her mother’s leave to go away for a change, left for town one day by the morning express, to spend a few weeks with some friends of her mother’s in town.
Her sole objects were, in the first place, to avoid for a little longer the inevitable meeting with Mr. Bradfield, and in the next to indulge a wild hope that she had formed of finding that Dick was still alive.
Her first object was gained, of course; her second remained a vision for the first two months of her stay in London.
Then a very strange incident recalled with great vividness all the associations which linked Wyngham House and Dick together in her memory.
She was looking in the window of a picture dealer in one of the side streets of the West end when a little water-colour drawing attracted her attention.
It was a picture of the sea seen through the branches of trees with one little white sail in the distance. The blood rushed to her cheeks, and her heart began to beat violently; it was, she thought, just such a view of the sea as could be got from the windows of the east wing at Wyngham House, between the bushy boughs of the American oaks and the ragged trunks of the fir trees. So much attracted was she that on the following day she came by herself to look at the sketch; and on the third day, being again by herself, she entered the shop and asked the name of the artist and the price of the picture. The price was a modest half-guinea, which Chris, resolved to do without a new summer hat, promptly paid. As for the artist’s name, there was a difficulty. The man in the shop did not know it. All he could tell was that the picture was the work of a young man who often brought them sketches, some of which they bought, some of which they rejected. He would probably turn up again in the course of a day or two, with some more work; and if the young lady wished to see any more of his drawings, they would no doubt have some to show her shortly.
Chris, full of vague imaginings, called again at theend of a week. They showed her some more sketches which they said were the work of the same artist, and again she was struck with a certain sentiment in the pictures which seemed to her fanciful young mind to express her own feelings about the objects they represented. But the subjects, chiefly of sea and sky, did not arouse in her the same feeling of recognition as the first one had done.
“Perhaps you don’t care so much about the sea-pieces without a peep of landscape,” suggested the dealer, noticing a slight look of disappointment on his customer’s face. “But we shall have some more attractive ones in a day or two, I dare say. The young fellow has gone down to the country, and I’ve given him a commission.”
“What part of the country?” asked Chris, feeling that she was blushing.
“A place called Wyngham, on the south coast, not far from Dover.”
Chris felt giddy with a shock which was not all a surprise. She hardly knew how she got out of the shop, nor how she reached the house of her friends. But she told them that she must go back to her mother the very next day; and the two ladies with whom she was staying, not without a little mischievous laughter at the girl’s expense, and some malicious suggestions which showed them to be not without penetration, let her go.
As the train bore her back to Wyngham, Chris seemed to be in a dream. The hope which had so long lain dormant in her heart had now sprung up into vivid life. She knew that her lover was alive.
Much to her disgust, it was Mr. Bradfield who mether at the station. However, circumstances had now cleared him from the worst of the charges of which she had secretly accused him; if Dick was alive, as she believed, it was certain that John Bradfield had not murdered him. So John, who was as gruff as ever, but rather shy, got a more civil greeting than he had ventured to hope.
“I’ve got the phæton outside,” said he. “Your mother was afraid of the dog-cart; she said you would be. But she was wrong, I know. You don’t look like an invalid; you’ve come back cured.”
“Yes,” she answered, drawing a quick breath. “I—I am quite well now, thank you.”
“Any more disposed to be kind than you were, eh?”
“That depends,” answered Chris, whose emotion was by this time too strong for her to conceal.
John Bradfield looked at her with curiosity.
“Depends on what?”
But Chris waited a moment, and then she gave no direct answer.
“Tell me,” said she, in a voice which trembled with eagerness, “have you had any visitors to-day?”
John Bradfield’s face grew suddenly livid.
“What visitors?” asked he, harshly, after a pause.
“Ah! Then you have not—yet.”
“Why,” cried he, in harsher tones than before, “what do you mean? Have you seen anybody?”
He did not pretend not to know whom she meant. Chris looked up into his face with eyes full of eloquent appeal.
“Mr. Bradfield, you know whom I mean. If you have not seen him yet, you will see him soon, I am sure of it.”
“You have got up a little scene between you?” asked he in the same disagreeable tones.
“I haven’t even seen him. But I know that he is coming. Mr. Bradfield, many things have happened which I don’t understand. I don’t know how it was that you could ever think him insane. Didn’t you know that he was deaf and dumb?”
John Bradfield affected to start violently. He had had his cue.
“Deaf and dumb!” he exclaimed. “Are you sure? Surely Stelfox would have found it out. Unless, indeed, the cunning old rascal deceived me for fear of losing his place.”
And he affected to fall into a paroxysm of rage against the cunning man-servant.
“You do believe, do you not,” he went on, earnestly, “that I would have cut off my hand rather than commit such a shocking injustice as I seem to have done in all good faith?”
Chris was at first puzzled, and at last deceived by his vehemence. For the last argument he put forward was unanswerable.
“What,” said he, “had I to gain by it? He was the son of one of my oldest friends, and I should have liked nothing better than to treat him as my own. Now I understand the hatred the poor lad seemed to have for me. Of course I always took it for one of the signs of insanity in him.”
Insensibly Chris had allowed herself to be softened towards her companion, who had indeed succeeded in proving to her that she had most cruelly misjudged him.
He would have liked to prolong the drive, in order to enjoy as long as possible the sight of her prettyface, growing prettier under the influence of the gentle feeling of self-reproach for her treatment of him; but there was work too important to be done at home for him to dally with the precious moments.
On reaching Wyngham House, while Chris ran upstairs to her mother, Mr. Bradfield first informed himself of the whereabouts of the incubus, Marrable. On being informed that that gentleman had retired to his room to rest, as he generally did in the afternoon to digest a very heavy luncheon in slumber, the master of the house went upstairs, peeped in to see that his friend was really asleep, and then noiselessly locked him in, and went downstairs again. He knew that, if Gilbert Wryde’s son were really about, the young man would lose no time in making himself known to him. Then he went to his study, from the window of which, as it was in front of the house, he could keep watch.
As he had expected, it was not long before the swinging of the iron gates at the entrance of the drive informed him of the approach of the visitor. John took out the key of the cellarette he kept in his study, and helped himself to a wineglass of brandy.
“And now to bluff it!” said he to himself.
In a few minutes a servant knocked at the door.
“Come in!” cried his master.
The man’s face was white, and his manner full of alarm.
“There’s a gentleman who wishes to see you, sir. I showed him into the drawing-room. I think, sir, it’s—it’s Mr. Richard,” he ended, in a lower voice, as if announcing a visitor from the other world.
To his astonishment, his master sprang up with anappearance of the greatest eagerness; and echoing the name as if it filled him with joy, he hastened through the hall to the drawing-room, and entered with outstretched hands.
Before the west window, in the full stream of light from the declining sun, stood the man who for seventeen years had been the victim of his cruelty and greed. It is not in human nature, even in the springtime of youth, to recover in a few months from the effects of the confinement of years. Gilbert Wryde’s son showed in his prematurely grey hair, in the sharpened outlines of his face, in a certain indefinable look of weariness and waiting in his grey eyes, as well as in the deep lines about his mouth, the effects of his cruel imprisonment.
He turned immediately when the door opened, and confronted John Bradfield with such a look that the latter instantly changed his intention of seizing his visitor by both hands. John felt indefinably that it would be like shaking hands with a marble statue, and he did not want any more chilling. He was sufficiently master of himself, however, to affect a boisterous delight at the meeting.
“Come here, come here; sit down,” said he. “Let us understand—let us know each other. I have heard to-day such things about you that if you had not come of your own accord, I would have hunted over the world until I had found you.”
But the visitor remained standing.
“I should hardly have thought,” answered the young man, coldly, “that you would have been in such a hurry.”
Mr. Bradfield thought it better for the moment to ignore this speech.
“But what is this?” exclaimed he, with apparent solicitude. “You have recovered your speech, your hearing! It is miraculous!”
“Not quite,” answered the visitor, in the same tone as before. “I hear, as I speak, with difficulty. But I am under treatment which, they tell me, would have cured me altogether, if it had been applied earlier. I was not dumb from my birth, as you, no doubt, know.”
“Richard,” said Mr. Bradfield, earnestly, “don’t take this tone with me. You would not, if you knew what I have suffered since it was first suggested to me, a few weeks ago, that you were not really insane, as I supposed.”
“But what reason,” asked the young man, his voice betraying excitement for the first time, “had you for thinking any such thing? Why, if you had got such an idea into your head, did you not consult some specialist on mental cases? Isn’t a man’s whole life, his whole happiness, worth a guinea fee?”
Now Mr. Bradfield, luckily for himself, had had time to prepare himself for these questions. He knew exactly what line to take in answering them.
“Of course,” said he, “you can’t really believe what you suggest, that it was meanness which prevented my doing so. When you hear all my reasons for thinking as I did, you will agree with me that I had some ground to go upon. In the meantime, it is more to the point to tell you what I have been doing since Miss Abercarne (for it was she) expressed to me her belief you were sane.”
The mention of the girl’s name had, of course, the desired effect of making the young man listen. It seemed to argue good faith on Mr. Bradfield’s part.
John went on:
“I caused inquiries to be set on foot, right and left, for you. I decided what I should do if I were lucky enough to find you.”
The young man interrupted him:
“In the first place, you will tell me something about myself.”
“That,” answered John, readily, “was what I was going to do. In the first place, you are the son of an old friend of mine, who died in Melbourne in poor circumstances, but who left relations there whom you ought to find out, for I have reason to believe, from something I have since heard, that you might establish your claim to some property held in trust for you over there. Of course, under the impression that you would never be able to use it, I have not troubled about it. I am a rich man, and I was able to do all I could for the son of my old friend.”
“Gilbert Wryde!” assented the young man. Seeing the look of surprise on John Bradfield’s face, he added, “I learnt that from Miss Abercarne.”
“Well,” pursued Mr. Bradfield, “there’s only one thing for you to do now; you must make your way to Melbourne—I will supply the funds—and prosecute your inquiries there. In the meantime, I will draw up a will, which you shall see, making you all the reparation in my power.”
“Thank you,” said the young man, still coldly. “I want justice, not benevolence. I can earn enough for myself.”
“But you might marry,” suggested John.
A softer look came over the young man’s face. After a pause of some minutes’ duration, he said:
“I will consider what you have said, Mr. Bradfield.In the meantime, I will not intrude upon you any longer. But I should like, before I go, to see Miss Abercarne for a few minutes if,” he added in a gentle tone, “she will see me.”
“Unluckily,” said John, “she’s still in London, where she has been staying with some friends of her mother’s for the last three months. But if you’ll give me your address, I will get Mrs. Abercarne’s permission to send you her daughter’s.”
The young man moved at once towards the door.
“Thank you,” said he. “I will send you my address then. And I will let you hear from me again.”
“You won’t stay—to dinner?” asked Mr. Bradfield, feeling tolerably secure of his answer.
“No, thank you. There is a train back to town in about an hour. Good afternoon.”
And he left the room without another word.
Mr. Bradfield followed him out, and saw him go through the iron gate at the end of the drive, then he went back into the study, and passed his hand with a gesture of relief across his forehead.
“Saved!” muttered he. “Safe for a few hours. What must be the next move?”