CHAPTER VII.
M
MR COURTNEY was quite as proud as his wife of the grand marriage his daughter was about to make. He was inordinately fond of Maraquita, and would have considered her a fit match for a prince of the blood royal. At the same time, he was only a planter, and it was a great thing to know that his child was going to marry the highest man in the island. He had plenty of money to bestow on her—Sir Russell Johnstone had opened his eyes when his future father-in-lawhad mentioned the dowry he would receive with his bride—and when Maraquita had obtained rank and position, his best wishes for her would be gratified. He was sitting in the room which he called his office, and had just dismissed Monsieur de Courcelles, when his wife entered the apartment. Mr Courtney had had occasion to find fault with the overseer that morning. He had not attended to several important matters during the week, and seemed sluggish and indifferent to his master’s orders. Mr Courtney suspected that he had been drinking also, and accused him of the fact, and De Courcelles’ answers had been too sullen to please him. He was brooding over the change in the young man’s behaviour, when Mrs Courtney came panting into the room. It was not often she honoured her husbandwith her presence during business hours, and he saw at once that she had some communication of importance to make to him.
‘Well, my dear, what is it? Quita not worse this morning, I hope?’
‘Oh, no, Mr Courtney! The dear child grows stronger every hour, under the knowledge of her delightful prospects, and I am most anxious that nothing should occur to mar her recovery, for dear Sir Russell is naturally anxious to have the wedding as soon as possible.’
‘Of course; but that is for you and Quita to decide. You know that I shall spare no money to expedite matters. The sooner the dear girl is Lady Johnstone, the better.’
‘SoIsay, Mr Courtney,’ replied his wife, looking anxiously round. ‘But areyou likely to be undisturbed for a few minutes? Have you dismissed Monsieur de Courcelles for the day?’
‘Yes, and not in the best of humours. He is getting lazy, Nita, and I am not sure that he is keeping as sober as he should be. He gave me something very like insolence this morning. Do you know if anything is wrong with him? Is his engagement with Lizzie Fellows still going on?’
‘Oh, Mr Courtney, this is the very subject on which I wished to see you. De Courcelles has been behaving very badly, in my estimation. You will hardly believe, even when I tell you so, that he has had the presumption to lift his eyes to our Maraquita, and to swear he will be revenged if she marries any other man.’
‘Impossible!’ cried Mr Courtney, starting.He had had his own suspicions respecting the young overseer’s admiration for his daughter and heiress, and, on a former occasion, he had told him so, but he had never had any idea that it had come to an open avowal between them. ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he continued, ‘that De Courcelles has had the audacity to address Maraquita on this subject, and to make her cognisant of his affection?’
‘Oh, Mr Courtney, where can your eyes be? How blind you men are! Why, he has been at the poor child’s feet for twelve months past; and Quita has kept him gently off, fearing to deprive you of a valuable servant; but now it has gone too far, and I feel it is time I spoke.’
‘I thought he admired her, and told him there was no hope for him, some little time back; but he assured me Iwas mistaken. I offered, at the same time, to forward his marriage with Lizzie Fellows, but he declared that there was no engagement between them.’
‘Then he has been deceiving you all round, and is not worthy of your trust and confidence. Hewasengaged to Lizzie. She told Quita so yesterday, only he broke it off on account of this disgraceful affair at the bungalow. But all the while he has been persecuting our poor girl with his addresses, until she is positively afraid of him, or what he may do.’
‘But what can he do? Surely he has not dared to threaten her?’
‘He has said he will kill her at the very altar, sooner than she shall marry Sir Russell, or any other man, and has thrown the poor child into such a state of distress and perturbation, that I feel certain, unless her mind can be set at completerest concerning him, it will greatly retard her recovery.’
‘But itmustbe set at rest. This is quite unbearable!’ exclaimed the planter, striding up and down the room; ‘De Courcelles must leave Beauregard at once. I shall give him his dismissal this afternoon.’
‘Not this afternoon, Mr Courtney. Wait until we are safe on the hill range, and then send him straight away. Maraquita will have no peace until she hears that he is gone.’
‘Fancy the presumption of his aspiring to the hand of our daughter!’ continued Mr Courtney indignantly. ‘A man without a sixpence beyond his weekly stipend, and no chance of increasing that. It is the most barefaced impudence I ever heard of. He shall get the sack before he is a day older.’
‘But you will do it on some other pretence I hope, Mr Courtney. You will not bring in Quita’s name. I should be sorry for it to get known that he dared to fall in love with her. People are so ill-natured; they might say she had given the fellow some encouragement.’
‘They will not dare to say anything againstLady Russell,’ said the father triumphantly. ‘When do you start for the hill range, my dear; and when is the wedding to be?’
‘We go to-morrow morning. I have ordered our palanquins for four o’clock, and Joseph has arranged the coolie service as far as the Government bungalow. Quita wanted to ride up with Sir Russell, but I am afraid of taxing her strength as yet. As for the wedding, they have fixed it between themselves for the fourteenth of next month. Quita’s things cannot allbe ready, but Sir Russell is willing to take her as she is, until the trousseau is complete. I never saw a man more in love in my life. He is quite infatuated with her.’
‘And well he may be, for there is not a prettier nor sweeter girl on all the islands. Well, my dear, De Courcelles must go, there is no doubt of that, unless, indeed, he will marry Lizzie Fellows.Thatwould put a stop to all unpleasantness at once.’
‘Marry Lizzie Fellows!’ echoed Mrs Courtney; ‘what, after he has been in love with our Quita! Well, I should be very much surprised if he could do that.’
‘But he was engaged to her (as you say), or nearly so. Poor Fellows told me as much himself. And it would be but reasonable for De Courcelles to settle down. He can’t have Maraquita, that’squite certain, and he might do worse than fulfil his word to poor Lizzie.’
‘What, after she has disgraced herself?’
‘My dear, are you certain shehasdisgraced herself? She assured me most solemnly that child was not her own, and had nothing to do with her, and I have never known Lizzie tell a lie. It is as incomprehensible to me as it is to you, and I cannot understand my old friend Fellows leaving the poor girl in such a painful position. Still, you must not forget that I have been just as true to him as Lizzie evidently is to some other person; and we should be the last people to disbelieve her word, because she is unable to give us any further explanation of it.’
Mrs Courtney had greatly fidgeted and changed colour under her husband’s kindly pleading.
‘Oh, Mr Courtney, I really have nopatience with you! Do you honestly think any woman would incur such a public disgrace, without making an effort to clear her character? I questioned Lizzie closely myself only yesterday, and she refused to open her lips, even tome, who have known her from a baby. It is quite incredible, and there is only one solution of the mystery—that she pretends to possess this stern sense of honour, in order to hide her want of it.’
‘Is it possible that De Courcelles can be the father of this child?’ said Mr Courtney musingly, hitting the right nail on the head without knowing it.
‘I daresay he is! I shouldn’t be surprised at anything I might hear of Monsieur de Courcelles.’
‘Well, my dear, I suppose he must go,’ returned her husband, with a sigh; ‘and I will speak to him as soon as ever youhave left the White House. I cannot have Maraquita annoyed; and indeed if he has behaved shabbily to poor Lizzie, it is not right he should continue to live in her sight. So you may consider that matter settled.’
Upon which assurance Mrs Courtney returned to her own room, to promise her daughter that she should never again be subjected to her cast-off lover’s appeals or reproaches; and the following morning De Courcelles watched their palanquins leaving Beauregard, from the shelter of the oleander thicket. A few hours after, he walked as usual into the presence of his employer. When the day’s business had been disposed of, the overseer rose to go, but Mr Courtney detained him.
‘Take a chair for a few minutes, De Courcelles, I have something of importance to say to you. You may remembera brief conversation that took place between us a few weeks back, on the occasion of Miss Courtney’s illness. I warned you that it would be wise to keep your admiration of her within bounds, and you assured me that you had done so. My wife tells me a different story. She says that Maraquita is both distressed and annoyed by your evident predilection for her, and I cannot have my daughter annoyed. Therefore I think it is best that we should part.’
Mr Courtney was an honest man by nature, unused tofinesseor intrigue of any kind, and he had quite forgotten his wife’s caution with respect to introducing Quita’s name as a reason for the overseer’s dismissal. He had gone straight at his fences, and the leap was over. Henri de Courcelles flushed dark crimson as the subject was thus openly mentioned to him.
‘I am quite unaware how I can have annoyed Miss Courtney,’ he replied. ‘I have not even seen her since her recovery.’
‘Is that the case?’ demanded the planter. ‘Then perhaps it was before. But anyway, as she is so shortly to be married to the Governor of San Diego, you must see the propriety of discontinuing any false hopes you may have entertained concerning her.’
‘Miss Courtney’s engagement is, then, a settled thing?’ said De Courcelles bitterly.
‘Certainly, and the wedding-day is fixed for the fourteenth of next month. My daughter will soon rank as the highest lady in the island, and any kindness which, as a young and thoughtless girl, she may have shown you (or any other friend) in the past, must not form any pretension for claiming to be on familiar terms withthe Governor’s wife, or Sir Russell Johnstone might resent it as an insult.’
‘I understand you perfectly, sir, and Lady Johnstone need fear no recognition of any claims I may have had upon Miss Courtney, from me.’
‘Claims!I do not understand the term, De Courcelles. Whatclaimscould you possibly have upon my daughter? You are forgetting yourself. Miss Courtney can never have been anything to you but a gracious young mistress and friend.’
‘That is how it may be, sir. Miss Courtney knows her own secrets best, and doubtless she has chosen wisely in electing to become the wife of the Governor. Rank and position cover a multitude of sins.’
Mr Courtney did not like the style of address adopted by his overseer, but he scarcely knew how to resent it. He washalf afraid to tell him to speak out. What if Maraquita had really been light of conduct, and employed her leisure time in flirting with his overseer? It would be a very embarrassing discovery, but not an unnatural one, when De Courcelles’ extreme beauty and grace of form were taken into consideration. So he thought it prudent to change the topic.
‘Well, well,’ he said testily, ‘we are not here to discuss Miss Courtney’s conduct, but your own. You have not been quite the same as usual lately, De Courcelles. I have observed an unsteadiness, and a disposition to sloth in you, which has grieved me. Come now, let us talk this matter over like two men of the world. We will suppose youhavehad a slight predilection for my daughter. I am not surprised at it, and I do not blame you; but you must have knownit could never be anything more. Well, in a few weeks she will be married, and pass out of your life. What is the use of spoiling the rest of it for her sake? Why not settle down and make a home for yourself? If you were married, all this little unpleasantness would be smoothed away.’
‘That is easy to say, Mr Courtney, but not so easy to do.’
‘I don’t agree with you. There is a nice girl close to your elbow, of whom I spoke to you at the same time I mentioned my daughter. I mean Lizzie Fellows. Ah, you start! You have heard this rumour about her, I suppose, in common with others, and fancy it is true. But I am sure it is not, De Courcelles. I have known Lizzie from a child, and I would stake my life upon her honesty.’
‘You allude to the infant of which she was left in charge, sir?’
‘I am glad to hear you mention it like that. It proves you believe her story. You told me there was no engagement between you, but Mrs Courtney informs me there was, and you broke it off on account of this child. But women jump at conclusions so: perhaps she is mistaken.’
De Courcelles was quite capable of defending himself.
‘Miss Fellows and I werenotregularly engaged at the time you spoke to me, sir, nor have we been since. Only when Lizzie refused to give me any explanation concerning her nurse-child, I said in my haste that want of confidence was the death of friendship, and that we had better not meet again.’
‘And you regret so hasty a decision?’
‘Why do you ask me, sir?’
‘Because if you and Lizzie like each other, I should be pleased to see you married. I am fond of the girl, and consider her a sacred charge; and marriage would silence these cruel slanders against her, sooner than anything else. If you can make up your minds on the subject, De Courcelles, I will do for you what I promised before—raise your salary, furnish the Oleander Bungalow afresh, and settle it on you and your wife, and all these little disagreeables will be forgotten before three months are over our heads.’
‘And if not, sir?’ inquired the overseer hastily.
‘Ifnot, De Courcelles, we must part. I am sorry to say it, but I shall consider your refusal (or Lizzie’s) as a proof that the less you are about the White Housein the future the better. Not the slightest taint—not even the bare suspicion of one—must rest on the fair name of the future Lady Johnstone.’
‘I understand you, Mr Courtney, and I will consider your proposal. How soon do you expect to get my answer?’
‘Not until you are quite prepared to give it me. You have plenty of time before you. My wife and daughter will be away on the hills for a month, and I have no wish to part with an old friend in such a hurry. Think of it well, De Courcelles. I will look over any of the little derelictions of duty to which I have alluded, in consideration of the disappointment which you must have suffered; but my decision is final with regard to Miss Fellows. You must either marry her, or leave my service.’
De Courcelles left the planter’s presence grinding his teeth with rage. He hadburned, while listening to his talk about his daughter’s marriage and future prospects, to tell him to his face that Maraquita was, to all intents and purposes,hiswife, and the mother of the child at the bungalow. But he dared not! He was afraid not only of the planter but of the negro population, if such a story got wind in the plantation. Revenge is sometimes very swift and sure in the West Indies, especially when the natives are in a state of insubordination. Besides, he would gain nothing by such an admission. It would not give him back Maraquita—faithless, perjured Maraquita, who, having slipped from his grasp into the arms of the Governor of San Diego, had instigated her parents, by a tissue of falsehoods, to dismiss him summarily from Beauregard. And it would have robbed him of the hope of revenge—a hope sweeter to a SpanishCreole even than love. As Henri de Courcelles thought of it, his hand tightened over the stiletto he always carried in his belt. Banishment from Beauregard would mean to sit down for the remainder of his life under this bitter wrong, without the satisfaction of feeling he had avenged it. At all hazards he must remain near this false love of his. She should never feel secure from him. He would appear before her in her most triumphant moments, and make her tremble with the fear that he was about to accuse her openly of her secret crime. Maraquita Courtney should never know another peaceful moment, whilst he lived to terrify her. But the opportunity depended on his marrying Lizzie Fellows. Well, if it must be so, it must be so. Henri de Courcelles, strolling down the path between the rows of coffee trees, and caressing his handsomemoustaches as he went, seemed to have no doubt that he had but to ask to obtain. The conceit of men, where women are concerned, knows no bounds. Every woman, according to their creed, is only too ready to fly into their arms. The good old days when knights were not considered worthy to ask for a lady’s hand until they had achieved some doughty deed to make her proud of them, are gone for ever. Yet, if a girl is particular, or indifferent, or hard to please, she is voted to be either a prude or a jilt. The rougher sex require a few hard raps occasionally, to keep them in order, and the woman who puts them in their place, confers a benefit on the whole of her kind. As Monsieur de Courcelles strolled along, his footsteps carried him in the direction of Lizzie’s bungalow, and thinking no time like the present, he halted on the threshold, andcalled her by her name. The recollection of how he had last left her presence made him hesitate to walk boldly into it, but he was quite confident that he had but to ask her forgiveness to obtain it. Lizzie was just about to visit her sick negroes. She was dressed in a white gown, covered with an apron and a high bib of brown holland, and on her head she wore a broad-brimmed hat, tied with a black ribbon. She looked pale and weary, but the look of perplexity was gone from her face, and her general expression was calm. She was filling her basket with such medicines as were necessary, when she heard her name called in the old familiar tones of De Courcelles. As the sound struck on her ear, she turned even whiter than before, but resentment prevented her losing her presence of mind.
‘What do you want with me?’ she demanded sharply.
‘Only a few words of explanation and apology. May I come in, Lizzie? I have been longing to do so ever since we parted.’
‘You can enter if you wish it, monsieur, but I cannot imagine what you can possibly have to say to me. I have looked upon our last meeting as a final one.’
‘But may you not change your opinion of it, and of me?’ replied the overseer, as he entered the room, and advanced to her side. ‘I know I sinned against you grossly, almost beyond forgiveness, but you must make allowance for the whirlwind of passion I was in,—for the awful doubt that had assailed me.’
‘I cannot admit that as any excuse for your conduct, monsieur. You had my word that I was innocent, and you were supposed to be my friend. There is no friendship without trust and confidence.’
‘Do not say “supposed,” Lizzie. Iwasyour friend, as I am now, and ever will be, if you will forgive my hasty words, and reinstate me in my old position.’
‘That can never be,’ she rejoined hastily. ‘You weresupposedto be much more than my friend, but you deceived me all along.’
‘How can you speak so? How did I deceive you, Lizzie?’
‘I would rather not discuss the subject, monsieur,’ said Lizzie, taking up her basket. ‘This is my time for visiting my patients, and they will be expecting me. I must wish you good-morning.’
‘No, no; I cannot let you go until we have arrived at some explanation!’ exclaimed De Courcelles, detaining her by the folds of her dress. ‘You accuse me of deceiving you, and yet I thought my fault lay in being too outspoken. I knowI shouldn’t have said what I did. I regret it deeply, from the bottom of my heart, and I humbly ask your pardon for the implied affront. Is not that sufficient?’
‘It is more than sufficient,’ replied Lizzie coolly, as she disengaged her gown from his grasp, ‘and more than I wished you to say. However, I accept your apology, and we will say no more about it. Now, will you please to let me go?’
‘No, you must stay! Put off your visits till this afternoon, and hear me out. I have not told you half my story. Have you quite forgotten that we are engaged to be married, Lizzie?’
‘I have not forgotten it, but I have ceased to believe in it. You ruptured our engagement of your own free will.’
‘But that was in my anger, and a few angry words, Lizzie, are powerless toundo the tie which had existed for a twelvemonth. I did not mean what I said. I have regretted it ever since, and I am here this morning to ask you to forgive it, and let our engagement stand as it did before.’
He was drawing closer to her, confident in his powers of fascination, but she pushed him from her.
‘Monsieur de Courcelles, I am surprised at you! I am surprised now to think that I should ever have believed in you, or thought the engagement you entered into with me anything but a blind for your more serious intentions in another quarter.’
He started backward with astonishment, little dreaming that she knew the whole of Maraquita’s sad history.
‘I don’t understand you,’ he gasped. ‘I have never been engaged to anywoman but yourself. I don’t desire to marry any other woman. I came here to-day with the express purpose of asking you to condone the past, and marry me as soon as may be convenient to you.’
A few weeks before, how her heart would have beat at such a proposal, how her cheek would have flamed assent, and her humid eyes have sought his with grateful love. But now she sprang aside as if he had insulted her, and flashed defiance on him to repeat the offence.
‘Howdareyou?’ she panted. ‘How dare you speak to me of marriage—you, who have treated me with scorn and contumely?’
‘But I have acknowledged my error, Lizzie. Surely you are not a woman to resent a fault for ever. Youusedto love me, I am sure of that.’
‘Don’t betoosure,’ she interposed hastily. ‘I lovedsomething, I know,—some creature conjured up by my imagination, but not the man of flesh and blood I see before me. For I did not know you then, and no one can love an unknown person.’
‘Lizzie, you are very hard upon me! I am not perfect, any more than other men, but I don’t know what I can have done to merit such bitter taunts from you. At all events, try and know me now as the man who loves you, and entreats you to marry him. Lizzie, be my wife! Mr Courtney is aware of our attachment, and has made a very generous offer of assistance, if we marry each other. If your affection for me was ever true, you will not refuse me now.’
‘My affection for youwastrue,’ replied Lizzie, looking him full in the face;‘and all the more does that make me say I will never marry you now.Never!Not if there was not another man in the world.’
‘Butwhy? Surely you will give me a reason for your refusal, Lizzie.’
‘My reason is soon given, monsieur. Maraquita—my earliest friend and my adopted sister—was here last night. She came to ask permission to see the child, of whom both of you have accused me of being the mother, and I refused her. I told her since I had to bear the blame, I would also maintain the authority over it. And then—in a moment of passion, I suppose—somewhat like that moment which influenced you basely to get out of your engagement to me by means of a lie—she told me the name of the child’s father.Now, do you wonder that I say that henceforth there never can be anycommunion between you and me, except of the most ordinary kind. The man who could take advantage of his own sin to ruin the character of an innocent woman, will never make a good husband to any one, and I have done with you for ever!’
Henri de Courcelles turned his face away to the open window, the dark blood mantling for very shame into his cheeks.
‘I have nothing to say for myself,’ he muttered presently. ‘I am only a man, and men are very open to temptations such as these. But if I have sinned, I have also suffered. I was led on by a heartless woman, who has deserted her child, and thrown me over for the first suitor who presents himself with money and position in his hands. I would have married her willingly, but she refused to marry me. She is an infernal jilt, with as false a heart andtongue as ever woman had; and she has been my ruin. She is nothing to me now, and she never will be. If you took compassion on me, Lizzie, and healed my sore heart with your pure affection, you should never have reason to complain of even my thoughts straying that way. I hate the very name of her.’
‘That is no palliation of your fault, in my eyes, monsieur. I should feel for you more if you told me her desertion had made you miserable. But why do you not appeal to Mr Courtney to stop this unnatural marriage? Did he know the truth, he would surely never allow his daughter so to prostitute herself.’
‘What good should I effect by that, Lizzie? Mr Courtney would only banish me at once from Beauregard. Do you suppose he would give up the prospect of Maraquita becoming the Governor’swife, for the sake of an overseer? Besides, he already suspects that I admire her, and has told me as much, with the adjoinder that the only condition on which I can retain my situation is to fulfil my engagement with you, and settle down at the Oleander Bungalow as a married man. In that case, he has promised to refurnish the house, and raise my salary. So, you see, we should be very comfortable; and, if you wished it, you could retain your medical appointment over the plantation.’
‘And soIam to be made the scapegoat to bear your sins into the wilderness, and to patch up your injured character at Beauregard! You have mistaken me altogether. I am capable, I think, of making great sacrifices for a man who loves me, but not for one who rightly belongs to another woman. You will not retain your position at Beauregard throughmymeans.’
‘Then I am ruined,’ returned the overseer fiercely, ‘and I owe my downfall to you two women! You have destroyed my life between you. I shall be turned off the plantation, without a prospect of employment. And if I become desperate, it will be laid at your door.’
‘At Maraquita’s, if you please, monsieur, but not at mine. I would have clung to you through good and evil report, had you been true to me. But I cannot forget the cruel infamy you put upon me, knowing it to be false. It is a crime past a woman’s forgiveness,—a calumny that will cling to me through life, even though you married me in church to-morrow. Yet I would rather go down to the grave enduring it, than become your wife.’
‘It is finished then!’ exclaimed De Courcelles, seizing his hat and rushing from the apartment, ‘and I will troubleyou no more on the subject, now or ever,’—and the next moment he was striding hurriedly towards his home.
Lizzie trembled as he left her, but she did not weep. Her stock of tears was exhausted. And had they not been, a cry from the infant in the next room would have dried them at their fount. She summoned Rosa, who was basking asleep in the verandah, to its assistance, and with a deep, deep sigh for her dead past, lifted her basket, and took her way to the coolie quarters.