This was spoken with extraordinary emphasis, and at a great rate of speed; and when it was done the trouble passed off her face. It settled on his. He pushed his hat from his forehead, thrust his hands into his pockets, confronting her, and said, 'I hoped for this, and intended to carry you off in triumph. Whatever withholds me, I cannot.'
Vacillation is not always the sign of a weak nature. The wind veers round the compass, and then the gale sets in steadily. Frank had never been on such a high sea of moral difficulty before. He had some crew of principles; but they were not able-bodied, having slept for the most part through the plain sailing of his life. When the storm came the drowsy helmsman, Conscience, started up rubbing his blinking eyes; and Will, the captain, had no order to give.
He climbed the wall, and held down his hands to Muriel. She put one foot in a little hole; he pulled her up; and they were again under the elm, Lee barely escaping discovery.
Now, just at the instant Frank gave Muriel his hands, and she clambered up the wall with the grace of a wild thing and the necessary free movements; just when her panting body was in his arms, and her breath upon his face, there came out of the south one long, gentle, trembling, warm sigh, bearing a burden of subtle odour from the half-reaped hay fields, and making the trees shiver with delight through all their happy branches, and the sap swell and trickle to the very tips of the downiest twigs. It was Summer kissing Nature in the night. Frank and Muriel were caught in the contagion. Passion whirled round their hearts that had been held by consciences alike inexperienced, and the poor helmsmen were overset. Their blood rattled along their veins like uncontrolled rudder-chains. He lifted her over; and, taking her in his arms again when he joined her in the road, started to carry her. They would be married that night.
A long shadow thrown suddenly across the road arrested him, and immediately a tall figure stood up in the moonlight. He set Muriel on her feet behind him, and faced Lee.
'Mr. Chartres!' he exclaimed hoarsely.
'You wished,' said Lee, handing him the riding whip, 'for an opportunity to horsewhip me.'
'Villain!' cried Frank savagely, seizing the whip. He raised it to strike. His rage was simply that of a foiled animal.
'Haven't you got over that bad habit of calling names yet?' said Lee with a smile, as he caught the hand that held the descending whip. Frank shifted it to the other hand, which Lee grasped as quickly. Thus Lee held by the wrist a hand of Frank's in each of his.
Muriel uttered a little scream and fell on her knees. She kept her eyes fixed on the whip. It jerked about overhead for a few seconds and fell to the ground. Then she looked at the men. Their arms were locked round each other. They staggered about and knocked against the wall. She heard them breathing hard. She held her own breath. She had scarcely begun to think what would be the upshot when Frank fell with a thud on his back, and Lee stood over him whip in hand.
'You have killed him!' she screamed, starting to her feet, and rushing to her prostrate lover.
'Hardly,' said Lee, throwing the whip away, rather ostentatiously, as he stepped aside to let Frank rise. He got up looking very unheroic; indeed, decidedly sheepish. Lee folded his arms, paler, if anything, than the other, and said, 'I won't ask you to try another fall. I think I am just twice as strong as you. I mean this to be a lesson. If you are wise, you will not attempt to struggle with me in anything.'
Frank stood with his eyes fixed on the ground; his self-esteem had fallen with his body; Muriel had seen him beaten.
Lee, resting a hand on Muriel's shoulder, and forcing her to stand beside him when she shrank away, said gaily, 'She is really a splendid girl, this daughter of mine. How handsome she looks just now! You must be chagrined horribly when you think that you almost had her. My dear boy, I pity you sincerely. I don't know exactly what course you should follow. It would be very striking, certainly, if you were to go off and drown yourself at once; but I don't think you'll do that. For myself I would prefer that you shouldn't. I like you too well, and hope that you will continue to play a part in our story. Perhaps you might take to drink. That's a good idea. Go in for dissipation; there's nothing like it for the cure of romance. Unworldly diseases need worldly remedies. And yet that's too common, especially with lady novelists. I believe you'll hit on some bright course of your own, for you're a capital collaborateur. I must thank you and Muriel for this scene. I've witnessed it all. Oh, you needn't be ashamed!' for Frank shut his eyes tightly, and Muriel hid her face in her hands. 'You're most delightful young people. The way you answered at once to that soft, warm gust charmed me, charmed me. I understand it all perfectly. I also am at one with nature. Well, good night. Come, Muriel.'
Taking her hand he moved toward the wall. She looked over her shoulder to catch a glance from Frank, but his eyes were still fixed on the ground, and he stood motionless. Quick as a fawn she leapt from Lee's side, and throwing her arms round Frank's neck, cried out loud in a tone mingled of anguish and pity and passion, 'I love you!' and he, reanimated by that shout, whispered as Lee snatched her away, 'I'll watch here all night.' That gave her new hope too. She would come to him by some means or other; and she felt so contented as Lee helped her over the wall, and led her in silence to the house, that she wondered at herself.
It was nearly eleven o'clock. Lee, Briscoe, Miss Jane, Dempster and Muriel were all in the dining-room, and Dempster was making a speech. It will possibly never be known whether Miss Jane put him up to it or not; if she did she regretted it before he was half done.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, with turgid tongue and desiccated throat, 'you are surprised that I should wish at this late hour to detain you with anything in the shape of a formal speech, however informal it may be.' The introductory sentence had been prepared. 'But,' he continued, staunching a wriggle, 'I—I have something to say. Mr. Chartres, I am neither a Communist nor a Nihilist'—this was to have been a side flourish, but out it came first—'still I would like to remark, in reference to a talk we had this afternoon, that I am of opinion that, if fortunes were things to be inherited by everybody, it might on the whole be better—eh—ah—or worse for society, taking into consideration the fact that wealth produces idleness, and idleness folly, and—eh—ah—sin, it might be better that most people should have to make their fortunes. Eh—ah—I am overwhelmed with a feeling such as one experiences when one gets something one didn't expect. Comfort, Mr. Chartres, is the greatest necessity of existence—I mean that to be comfortable is always of the greatest consequence, indeed, I may say, the very backbone—eh—ah—of comfort.'
Now there is never the remotest necessity for speech-making, at least in private, although it is daily perpetrated, and unfailingly by wholly incompetent parties. It is like singing in this respect; only those who cannot care to perform. Human nature will never get past it; for there is a law which ordains that whatever one is unfit for must be attempted, especially out of season. What one can't do is the all-important thing. So Dempster reeled on, undeterred by the blank looks of his auditors, and an ominous sparkle in Miss Jane's eye—his body a mere thoroughfare of uninterrupted transmigration for the spirits of all things that crawl and squirm and twist and wriggle.
'And I am now, I am happy to say, exceedingly comfortable. After Muriel refused me I was like a ship in a storm, and so I put into the first port—eh—ah—I mean that I have found a comfortable haven, and I am sure Jane will make a very good wife.'
Amazement stared from every eye, including Miss Jane's. She tried to simper in a dignified manner—but what was the man saying?
'She is like old wine—eh—ah'—he felt Miss Jane's eyes scorching him like burning-glasses. 'The difference between our ages—eh—ah——' He was now perspiring freely. 'The disadvantage of marrying a girl like Muriel is, that when she grows old'—he made a little halt here, but he was too far gone to draw back; over he went, head first—'when she grows old one would miss her beauty. The great advantage is that one can never miss what has never been there, and—I'll not be interrupted!' mopping his head, and gyrating fiercely; but not daring to meet again Miss Jane's eye, one full glance of which had been more than enough.
'There's nobody interrupting you, my dear Mr. Dempster,' said Lee.'But is it true that you are going to marry my sister?'
'It is—I am!' defiantly, as if he were challenging himself to take so much as one step in an opposite direction.
'I'm very glad. An episode of this kind is refreshing. So unlikely too! One daren't have introduced it into written fiction; but here it has cropped up most beautifully in our little creation. Really, I am much obliged to you both. Now you must allow me to go upstairs and attend to the matters there.'
As soon as Lee had reached the house with Muriel he had gone straight to the room in which Henry Chartres lay; but when he was about to enter, a swift descending step on the stair caught his ear, and drew him away just in time to intercept Briscoe, who had finally determined that, wherever he might go, he must leave Snell House that night. Lee peremptorily bade him stay, or he would accuse him of robbery, and send in pursuit; and Briscoe was forced to submit. Lee had been about to ascend the stair again, when Dempster importunately demanded his presence in the dining-room. The latter having made his remarkable communication, Lee intended to arrange with Briscoe some definite plan of action; but another delay took place.
On opening the door of the dining-room, Lee was met by Clacher, whom everybody had forgotten.
'Good evening,' said Clacher, doing it 'Englified,' and walking into the room. His face was streaming with perspiration; his eyes were wild with drink and insanity; his hair hung in wisps about his face.
'Ladies and gentlemen, I am Robert Chartres,' he said. He had remembered what he wanted to do 'Englified.'
'I am bonnie Prince Charlie too,' he added, after a pause. 'I don't understand it. I'm afraid I'm mad but I'm not a fool. I am Robert Chartres.'
Everybody looked at Lee.
He said, 'I don't remember being so intensely interested in my life. How can you possibly hope to succeed in this imposture, Clacher?'
'You're an imposture,' cried Clacher fiercely, staggering a little. 'I'm mad, but I'm no jist a fule, an' naebody daur harm me. Ach!' he hissed, grinding his teeth and shaking his wild hair, enraged at himself for failing to do it 'Englified.' 'I am Robert Chartres,' he shouted, throwing back his head. 'The estate's entailed, and it's mine. I'm bonnie Prince Charlie, too,' he added, more quietly.
'Take a seat,' said Lee. 'Let us all sit down again.'
Clacher stumbled into a chair. Miss Jane forgave Dempster with her eyes, and they sat on a couch together. Muriel stood beside a window with one hand wrapped in the curtain. Briscoe sat opposite Lee, who threw himself back on a large chair on one side of the fireplace. Clacher's chair was against the wall, not far from the door.
'Jane,' said Lee, 'I find no resemblance between this gentleman and Robert. Do you?'
'Not the slightest,' said Miss Jane.
'Do yon, Muriel?'
'None.'
'Well, friend,' said Lee, turning to Clacher. 'What have you to say, now?'
'I am Robert Chartres.'
'But none of us recognise you. Recall yourself to our memories in some way.'
'Oh, I'm bonnie Prince Charlie too.'
'That only indicates that you are mad; and a very ordinary madness it is. I am sure there are two or three bonnie Prince Charlies in every lunatic asylum in Scotland.'
'I'm mad, an' naebody daur harm me,' growled Clacher.
'You remember Robert's escapade when he was a boy, Henry?' saidMiss Jane.
'To which do you refer? There were so many,' said Lee.
'Oh, not so very many,' said Miss Jane. 'I mean the Inverkip Glen affair.'
'I can't say I do remember it.'
'Oh, you must. You weren't here at the time; but you knew all about it.'
Lee sat up, and swiftly changed his look of anxiety into a far-reaching glance at the past.
'Ah, yes!' he said, dropping back in his chair again.
'Clacher must have heard about it,' said Miss Jane.
'I shouldn't wonder,' said Lee. 'Clacher, do you know about theInverkip Glen affair?'
'Of course. I'm Robert Chartres. I'm Clacher too, and BonniePrince Charlie. I don't know how.'
'Then,' said Lee, 'just tell us about it. Your acquaintance with it may be evidence of your identity.'
'The Inverkip Glen business?' said Clacher. 'A'body kens that.Damn!' he growled at the Scotch.
'Let us see, now,' said Lee. 'Have you any details that could only be known to Robert and his family?'
'Inverkip Glen,' said Clacher. 'When I was fourteen or thereabouts, I went away wi' a wheen laddies an' hid in it for twa-three days. I ca'ed mysel' Prince Charlie, an' the ithers wis cheeftans—Lochiel an' Glengarry, ye ken. We fought the servants that wis sent tae bring us hame, an' they had tae send the polis tae fetch us.'
This was spoken very haltingly, and ended with a savage oath at his own inability to speak correctly.
'He could have learned all that in the village,' said Miss Jane.
Lee rose, leant gracefully against the mantelpiece, and addressedClacher.
'Clacher,' he said, 'you have unwittingly undertaken a work of art, and for that you deserve high commendation. You have aspired; you have done your best. That is sufficient. Success is the only failure. A compassable aim is an inferior one. Ideals cease to be when realised. Better succeed in a constant endeavour after the highest, than fail in aspiration to achieve a result as splendid as any which history records. These platitudes are not by any means beside the question, although you don't understand them.'
Here Lee shifted from his easy pose, and stood firmly on his feet.
'Whatever besides madness,' he continued, 'may have led you to attempt this imposture, is no concern of mine. I am only sorry for your sake and my own that you cannot continue it further. Variety, if not the soul, is certainly the body of fiction. I hope that, although you must go out of our story shortly, at least in your present capacity, you, or some one else in your sphere of life, may be enmeshed in this web of circumstance which I help fate to weave. My brother Robert is at present upstairs. He arrived here this evening.'
Lee looked at all his auditors severally, thoroughly enjoying the effect of this extraordinary news.
'O dear! dear!' cried Clacher weakly, tedding his hair and fidgeting on his seat. 'Naebody daur harm me, I'm mad.'
'Set your mind at rest, Clacher. Nobody will attempt to harm you.'
'Jane,' he continued, 'it was our unfortunate brother whom we carried upstairs this evening. The woman was his wife.'
Briscoe gasped; but the practical novelist proceeded, smiling, and proud of his ingenuity.
'He has been going by the name of Lee, Maxwell Lee,' he said, staring down Briscoe; 'and makes a scanty living by his pen. His wife is a noble woman, and will not admit his madness; but that he is mad no one else can have any doubt, because the poor fellow imagines that he is me. I will tell you his whole history tomorrow, as far as I know it. I hadn't the remotest idea he was in Scotland until he appeared to-night——'
The droning of a bagpipe not far off, a strange sound at that time of night and in the neighbourhood, interrupted him. A very unskilful attempt at a pibroch succeeded, and as the playing grew more distinct it was evident that the performer approached the house. Muriel raised the window-sash, and the tuneless screaming ceased. Hesitating steps on the gravel were then heard. They stopped opposite the window, and a high, cracked male voice quavered out the first verse of Glen's pathetic ballad, 'Wae's me for Prince Charlie':—
'A wee bird cam tae oor ha' door,He warbl't sweet an' clearly;An' aye the o'ercome o' his sangWas "Wae's me for Prince Charlie."O! when I heard the bonnie, bonnie bird,The tears came drappin' rarely;I took my bonnet off my head,For well I lo'ed Prince Charlie!'
The voice broke entirely at the last line. Said Lee, 'We'll bring this minstrel in,' and left the room. In a few seconds he returned accompanied by a strange figure. It was that of an old man dressed in a ragged Highland costume. His kilt was of the Stuart tartan. His black jacket had been garnished with brass buttons; but of them only a few hung here and there, withered and mouldy; and numerous little tufts of thread on pocket-lids and cuffs and breast showed whence their companions had been shed. His sporran was half-denuded of hair. His hose were holed, and the uppers were parting company with the soles of his shoes. A black feather adorned in a very broken-backed manner his Glengarry bonnet. His pipes he had left in the hall.
There was nothing remarkable in the dress. Such are to be seen any day in the Trongate of Glasgow, the Canongate of Edinburgh, at fairs, or wherever the wandering piper may turn a penny. It was the bearing of the wearer and the cast of his countenance which commanded attention. As he entered the room he threw back his head, inclining it a little to the left side; his dim grey eyes lightened fitfully, and his gait had something of majesty. He advanced slowly, but without hesitation, and took the seat Lee had vacated.
Of all those in the room Clacher's face indicated the greatest interest.
'Friends,' said the newcomer, keeping on his bonnet, and shaking back his long grey hair, which hung almost to his shoulders, 'I can trust you. "Nowhere beats the heart so kindly as beneath the tartan plaid." You haven't the tartans on, and that is right, for they might betray you. There's a law against the tartan. I wear it in defiance of the law.'
'Wha are ye, man?' cried Clacher, his face undergoing a sudden illumination.
'Do you not know me?' said the stranger. 'You will be true. It is a great sum. Ten thousand pounds. All my own friends have forgotten me. It is strange, strange. I am changed, I know. I am Bonnie Prince Charlie.'
'Ha, ha!' screamed Clacher, 'ha, ha, ha!'
'Two of them,' whispered Dempster to himself, rigid with amazement.
'You astonish me,' said Lee with perfect composure.
'It is sad, I know. I sleep in the woods, and visit the towns at night. My home is in the bracken. I remember I lived here in 'forty-five. I thought I would revisit the old place to-night. Is not this Scone Palace?'
'No; this is Snell House.'
'Ah! I lived there too, once. But can you tell me this. Why do they accuse me of unfaithfulness? "Flora, when thou wert beside me!" Oh, her eyes were warm and mild like the summer, and her voice made me weep. It is shameful what they say about me. I never loved another.'
Clacher, looking absolutely hideous in his excitement, rushed from his chair, oversetting a small table, and planting himself firmly before the wondering piper, shouted, 'You are Bonnie Prince Charlie?'
'I am. Do me no harm.'
'Then you are Robert Chartres, and you did not commit suicide.'
'I am hungry,' said the Prince.
Clacher pulled from his breast-pocket the crumpled letter he had studied so devoutly in the library, and handing it to Miss Jane, cried: 'It's a' up noo'. I took that letter frae Maister Willum Chartres's pooch whan I fand his corp'. Read it, an' ye'll ken my plot. Gosh, it was a mad yin! Oh, I'm no jist a fule! Naebody daur harm me. An' you, ye scoon'erel,' he screamed, springing behind Lee, and pinning his arms to his body with a hug like a bear's, 'ye're mad, ye're mad. I've turn't the tables on ye, I'm thinking.'
Lee struggled strongly; but Briscoe came to Clacher's help.
'Peter!' exclaimed Lee.
'It's all up, as Clacher says. Every man for himself,' mutteredBriscoe. But he wouldn't look Lee in the face.
'You've spoiled a great scene, Peter,' was all Lee said.
'And who is the man upstairs?' asked Muriel, advancing from the window.
'You'll get the key of the bedroom in which he is in this pocket,' said Briscoe, indicating by an uncouth gesture a pocket in his coat, as he did not wish to release his hold on Lee.
Muriel took the key and left the room.
Miss Jane read and re-read the letter given her by Clacher, and was still considering it when Muriel returned with her father. He was not long awake, and had to be supported by his daughter. Miss Jane recognised him at once and kissed his cheek. There was no exclaiming. When they came out of it they would know from their exhaustion how excited they had been. The tears stood in Muriel's eyes, and her face was very pale, but serenity marked every lineament.
'Where is Mrs. Lee?' asked Henry Chartres when he had got seated.
At that moment Caroline entered the room. She had remained in the bedroom Lee had appropriated, afraid lest her interference might precipitate some rash act on the part of her husband or her brother; but the bagpipes, the singing, the opening and shutting of doors, and the loud voices downstairs intimated a crisis of some kind, and she had concluded at last to have a share in it, hoping to prevent disaster to her husband, as she judged from the noise that his control of circumstances had come to an end. As Caroline entered, the two gardeners and the coachman appeared at the door, Muriel having sent for them at her father's request.
Muriel looked at Mrs. Lee for a second or two as if debating some question with herself, and then noiselessly left the room. She couldn't keep Frank waiting any longer.
'Maxwell Lee,' said Henry Chartres, 'for your wife's sake you go scot free. She has told me all about you. As for you, Peter Briscoe, your present action shows what you are. Take him and duck him well in the horse-pond.'
The coachman and the gardeners, nothing loath, approached Briscoe; but Lee, having regained his liberty, put himself before his brother-in-law in an attitude of defence.
'I beg you, sir, not to insist on this,' he said in a passion of intercession; 'it is mere revenge. I entreat you.'
'But he betrayed you,' said Chartres.
'Well, I suppose the world puts it that way. But he merely acted independently and without due consideration. That has been the fault of this work all along: the principal collaborateurs have been too frequently out of harmony. Since he has chosen to bring our story to a sudden end in this way, I have no right to complain. Do not damage your character for magnanimity which these events have developed so remarkably—a result very gratifying to me—by a petty revenge on my brother-in-law.'
Chartres signed to the servants to retire. 'You are a strange man,' he said.
'Miss Chartres,' said Lee, 'in token that you cherish no deep-rooted feeling against me, will you oblige me by reading that letter?'
Miss Jane looked at her brother; he assented, and she read:—
'My dear William,—You will be astonished, not very agreeably, I am afraid, to learn that I am still in the land of the living. I have been in a state of abject poverty for years. I will not trouble you with the particulars of my wretched career. I have burnt up my stomach with drink. Insanity has addled my brain. I am a beggar, and go about the country—I am ashamed to say it for your sake—playing the bagpipes. In my mad fits I have repeatedly tried to commit suicide. At present I am quite sane; the only difficulty I have is to reconcile my being Robert Chartres with the fact that I am also Bonnie Prince Charlie. I write this in London; and I am going to start at once and at last to try and come to you. It would be better to kill myself; but I am too great a coward when I am sane. I want to enjoy comfort once more before I die. If I do not reach you within a month after this letter, I think you may conclude that I am dead.
'I am, your brother,
'Robert Chartres.'
All eyes turned on the writer of the letter. He was fast asleep in his chair, smiling like a child.
'Briscoe,' said Lee, you recognised and submitted to thedeus ex machinaat once. I would have fought longer, and might yet have conquered. I am sorry the conclusion is so inartistic, so improbable. There is nothing more absurd than reality. Clacher, my fine fellow, you played a bold game; as the attempt of a mad rascal it was very fair. What a lot of mad people there are! How small the world is! Ah!' he cried, as Frank and Muriel entered, 'my good lovers! I believe you are even now thanking me for my opposition.'
'Who is this young gentleman?' asked Mr. Chartres.
'Oh! I found him at the north wall; I knew he would be there,' said Muriel, radiant, and scarcely knowing what she said.
'Do you frequently find young gentlemen and bring them here in this way?'
'Oh, papa! His name is Frank Hay, and we are going to be married.'
'I have never seen your like, Muriel,' said Lee, leaving the room.Briscoe followed him, bestowing a surly nod on Dempster. ButCaroline before she went timidly kissed the hand of the injuredman.