'Desire my valet to select rooms for us on the firstétage, if unoccupied. Lady Evelyn, your maid will attend you at once.'
They left thesalletogether, she alone bowing to Chute, who, though swelling with passion, returned it, but with frigid politeness.
'Thank Heaven,' thought he, as he tossed over a bumper of moselle, 'poor Clare knows nothing of a scene like this, and never shall from me!'
He then thought with mad bitterness of the glory that had departed amid the monetary misfortunes of the old general, his father; of all that would have been, and once was, his by right to lay at the feet of the beautiful girl that returned his love so tenderly; and his heart seemed to shrink up within him at the tone assumed by Sir Carnaby.
The dislike of that personage towards the man he had injured in the past years, and openly insulted now, was at this time as great as though the injury and the insult had been received by himself. He was one of whom it might be said that 'he never went out of his way in wrath, but, all the same, he never missed his way to revenge. He had a good deal of ice in his nature; but it was, perhaps, the most dangerous of ice—that which smiles in the sun, and breaks to drop you into the grave.'
Disquietude of any kind, or mental tumult, were usually all unknown to Sir Carnaby, and were, he thought, as unbeseeming as any exhibition of temper; hence he was intensely provoked by the manner in which, through his own fault, the adventures of the day had wound up, as by means of their servants or others—perhaps Trevor Chute himself—the affair might be noised abroad till it assumed the absurd form of some genuine fiasco.
'Could the old man have been inflamed by the bad wine of the railway buffets,' thought Chute. It almost seemed so; and he began to hope that when the morrow came, and with it temper and reflection, some approach to a reconciliation might—especially if Lady Evelyn acted the part of peacemaker—be made by her husband; and if anything like an apology came, Chute felt that he would with joy take the hand of his cold-hearted insulter.
But in the artificial life she had led since girlhood Lady Evelyn had never found much use for a heart, and was not disposed to take upon herself the task of pouring oil upon troubled waters. At first she had been inclined, in her own insipid way, to like Chute very much, as who did not? But afterwards she conceived a pique to him, as the lover of Clare, for she remembered how the latter had called her marriage 'an affaire de fantasie;' and there had been other passages of arms between them, in which such as women, especially well-bred ones, with a singular subtlety of the tongue, can gibe and goad each other to the core; so, perhaps, she was not ill-pleased, after all, that an affront had been put upon Trevor Chute as the known lover of Clare.
Feeling himself galled, insulted, and outraged by the whole affair, he resolved to quit Lubeck—or the hotel, certainly—the next day, if no apology came, but it so happened that he had reason to change his mind.
The treatment he had received at the hands ofherfather was, to a man of Chute's sensitive nature, a source of intense pain.
This sudden and insulting hostility to himself made the love of him and of Clare seem more than ever hopeless, unless—unless what? in revenge he eloped with her, but that Clare would never consent to; and now, despite all that had passed between them at their last interview, the old dull ache of the heart had come back to him again.
From what did the old baronet's indignation spring?
'What were we saying when he came so suddenly upon us?' thought Chute; 'we were speaking of love, but it was mine for Clare. Could he have dreamed for a moment that I meant for Lady—oh, absurd! absurd!'
Yet perhaps it was not so much so as Chute deemed it.
So long after darkness had sunk over Lubeck, he sat at his window thinking, and smoking a favourite pipe given him by Beverley in India, and many times he filled and emptied it without seeing his way very clear in the future, while the clear northern moon flooded the sky with a light against which the taper church spires of the little city stood up in sharp and dark outlines, and the bells of the cathedral tolled the hours in succession, and the sunshine, or at least the grey dawn, began to steal over the woodlands that surround Lubeck; and with it came the odour of peat, as the fires were lighted—an odour as strong as there is in any Irish village, or a Scottish clachan in the wilds of Lorne or Lochabar; and he strove to court sleep, thinking that it would be better were he sleeping as Jack Beverley did, under the shadowy shelter of the Indian palms and the fragrance of the baubul trees.
Jerry Vane did not leave Carnaby Court at the time he intended to do; with ulterior views in her kind heart, Clare pressed him to lengthen his visit, and enjoy a few days' more shooting. She found but little pressing requisite to influence Jerry's actions; yet ere long he had cause greatly to deplore that he had not taken his departure earlier, and he was again doomed to experience a bitter shock concerning his rival—if rival, indeed, he had.
Daily and hourly intercourse afforded him all the facilities he could wish for now; but it seemed as though Ida would never again receive him or accept him as her lover, yet would permit him to be the slave of her fascinations, and without the slightest symptoms of vanity or coquetry. She knew all the simple and single-hearted fellow's love, and yet, apparently, would not yield him hers.
Indeed, she had more than once hinted or said, he scarcely knew which, as he declined to accept the proposition, that she wished his regard for her to die away in silence. If so, why did she permit her sister to urge that she should remain at Carnaby Court, where, in virtue of her widowhood, she yet presided as matron, though some change would assuredly take place on the return of Lady Evelyn to England.
Whatever were her motives, he could not but give himself up blindly and helplessly to the intoxication of the present time, to gaze upon her face, to hear her voice, and conjure up the hope that a time would come when she would love him better than ever. Besides, her society was full of many charms. As in Clare, there was in Ida a wonderful attraction to a companion. She had, though young, travelled much in Europe, and seen all that was worth seeing. She was thus familiar with many countries; and so far as their histories and traditions went, together with a knowledge of literature that was classic, refined, abstruse, and even mystic, as we have shown, she was far beyond an everyday young Englishman like Jerry Vane.
'I am neither a boy nor a madman, yet I dream like both in hanging on here as I do!' he would sometimes say in bitterness; and then he would recall her remarkable words on that evening in town—'It may be that we have only been in our hearts waiting for each other after all.'
From what did these hopeful words spring?—coquetry, mockery, reality, or what?
She was never known to coquet; she was too genuine a creature for mockery; hence, they must have been reality, and, full of this conviction, he resolved once more to put it to the issue on the first opportunity, and one was secured on the very afternoon he made the resolution.
He had not, that day, gone to shoot; the men were all abroad; nearly all the ladies were out driving or riding, save Ida, whom he found in the curtained oriel of the inner drawing-room, where she was standing alone and gazing out on the far-stretching landscape, that was steeped in the evening sunshine; the square spire of the village church, the tossing arms of an old windmill, the yellow-thatched roofs of white-walled cottages stood out strongly against the dark green of the woodlands at the end of a long vista of the chase, and made a charming picture. In the middle distance was some pasture land, where several of Sir Carnaby's fierce little Highland cattle and great fat brindled Alderneys stood knee-deep amid the rich grass.
Perhaps she was thinking of how often she had ridden there with Beverley, and loved to hear him compliment her on the daring grace and ease with which she topped her fences, and the lightness of hand with which she lifted her bay cob's head; and Jerry feared that some such thoughts might be passing through her mind as he paused irresolutely and thought how beautiful was the outline and pose of her darkly dressed figure against the flood of light that poured through the painted oriel.
The dark shadow had been less upon her to-day than usual, and on hearing his footstep on the soft carpet she turned and welcomed him with a bright smile. Would that smile ever change again to coldness and gloom? Would his hand ever again wander lovingly and half fatuously among the richness of her auburn hair, that shone like plaits of golden sheen in the light? Heaven alone knew.
'Dear Ida,' said he, longing, but not venturing to take her hand (he had been on the point of saying 'darling'—had he not been privileged once to do so?), 'I am so glad to find you thus alone, for I have much to say, too, that cannot brook interruption.'
'Say on, then, Jerry,' said she, knowing too surely it would be 'the old, old story,' while his devotion seemed to touch and pain her, for she did honour and pity him, as she had already admitted.
'Ida, save on that night in the conservatory, I have hitherto, from motives that you must be well aware of—motives most pure and honourable—never spoken to you of the love that my heart has never, never ceased to feel for you.'
'Love is no word for me to listen to now, Jerry.'
'Not from—fromme?'
'Even from you, Jerry.'
'I implore you to be mine, Ida. Do not weep—do not turn away—you stand alone now; this recent marriage has made your home a broken one; I, too, am alone, and each needs the love of the other. Do not trifle with me, Ida!'
'Trifle—I—oh, Jerry Vane.'
'You loved me once!' he urged, drawing very near.
'Yes—I loved you once,' she said, vaguely and wearily.
Once!How cruel the speech sounded, though she did not mean it to be so, of course; for as she turned to him, an infinite tenderness filled her sparkling eyes of grey or violet blue—for times there were when they seemed both; and his met them with something wistful and pathetic in their gaze as he said:
'Ida, dearest Ida, time and separation—separation that seemed as if it would be lifelong, have but strengthened the regard I bear you; and now—now——'
'That I am free, you would say?'
'I entreat you to be mine. Your father would wish it, and I know that dear Clare does. All my brightest hopes and associations, all my fondest memories are of you; and all have been bound up now in the hope that we might yet be so happy, beloved Ida.'
'Do not address me thus,' said she, imploringly, as she covered her eyes with her slender fingers tightly interlaced.
'Ah—why?' he asked, entreatingly, and venturing to put a hand lightly on each side of her little waist; but she stepped back, and said in a low and concentrated voice:
'Because—how shall I say it? Each time you speak thus the strange thrill I spoke of passes through me.'
'A thrill?'
'A shudder!' she answered,
'What causes it?'
'I cannot, cannot tell'
'My poor Ida! your nerves are all unstrung, and that absurd book of Reichenbach's has made you worse. Promise to marry me, Ida, and we will go to Switzerland, to Scotland, or anywhere that the breezes of mountains or the sea may restore you to what you once were, even as fate has restored you to me!'
But the lovely head was shaken sadly, and the pale face was turned to the distant landscape. The passion with which he loved her was of a quality certainly very rare in the world of 'society,' she knew that.
'Your wants are very simple, as your tastes are, Ida, and my fortune is more than equal to your own—in worldly matters there can be nothing wanting.'
'I know, Jerry, that a devotion such as yours deserves all the love I could and ought to give it; and yet——'
She paused, and permitted him to retain her hand. Was she, in spite of her asseverations to the contrary, about to love him after all? The heart of Vane beat wildly amid the dawn of fresh hope.
'Many men have loved, Ida,' he urged, in a soft, low, passionate tone; 'but it seems to me that I love you as few men have ever loved before. From the first moment I met you I loved you—and—and—surely circumstances have tested and tried that love to the uttermost.'
'Most true, Jerry.'
'I ask not of what your—your regard has been for another since we parted; I ask you only to love me as you did before that time, if you can.'
The words that Vane spoke came from the depth of the honest fellow's heart, in the full tide of emotion, and Ida could not fail to be touched; and as she gave him one of her profound yet indefinable glances of pity, the light in her beautiful eyes seemed to brighten as her lashes drooped, and Jerry read in them an expression he had not seen there since the happy time that was past.
In fact, Ida seemed to be trembling in her heart to think how dear—was it indeed so?—how dear Jerry Vane was becoming to her again, and how necessary to her his society was daily becoming, and how like the old time it was—more like than, with all her past love for Jack Beverley and her strange dreams and hauntings, she dared to acknowledge to herself!
'Say, Ida, that the gap in my life is to be forgotten—filled up it can never be!'
'Jerry, Jerry,' she urged, 'do not press me so—at present, at least!'
She was yielding after all.
'May I hope that you will accept me yet?' he said, pressing her hand caressingly between both of his.
'A heart is not worth having, Jerry, that accords to pity only what it should accord to love. You have all my esteem, and, perhaps, in time, Jerry——'
She paused and shuddered visibly, and sank back with eyes half closed and a hand pressed on her bosom as if about to faint or fall, but Jerry's arm supported her.
'Good heavens, that sensation again!' he exclaimed.
'I must struggle against it, or it will conquer me,' she said, suddenly regaining her firmness and striving to crush or shake off the nervous emotion that shook her fragile form and gentle spirit.
'My darling, I am to blame; oh, pardon me, if I, at a time when your health—your nervous system, at least—so selfishly urge my claim upon your heart, for a strong and tender claim I have, indeed, Ida.'
There was in this an eloquence greater than more florid phrases could express, as he spoke, for it seemed as if Jerry's very soul was spent in what he said. After a pause, he said, with an arm still round her:
'I will not press you to answer me now, dearest Ida; you are pale and seem so weary. I will go, but ere I do so, give me one kiss in memory of the past, if not to encourage hope for the future.'
She lifted her sweet face to his, and there was infinite tenderness, but no passion in the kiss she accorded him so frankly; and Vane was but too sensible of that; while a sound like a deep sigh fell at the same moment on the ears of both.
'Who sighed?' she asked, startled, in the fear that they were overseen or overheard; 'did you, Jerry?'
'No; yourself, perhaps, darling.'
'Nay—I sigh often enough, but I did not do so now, Jerry.'
'Most strange! We must have deceived ourselves, for here are people coming,' he added, as steps were heard in the outer drawing-room. 'You will give me a final answer, then?' he urged, in a deep, soft whisper.
'Yes.'
'When?'
'This evening.'
'Bless you, darling Ida. Where?
'After dinner—we dine at six—say eight o'clock, in the rhododendron walk.'
And as she left him, on her pouting lip and in her grey-blue eyes—eyes that seemed black at night—Jerry thought that the sadness was gone, and replaced by the beautiful smile of old. Unheard by both, the dressing-bell for dinner had already rung, and several of the sportsmen, Sir John Oriel, Colonel Rakes, and others, entered the room. Among them was Major Desmond, the languid, irrepressible, and imperturbable Desmond—who, en route from town, had turned up for a single day's cover shooting at Carnaby Court.
Overcome by the new tide of his own thoughts, Jerry Vane hurriedly left them to talk over their hits, misses, experiences, and exploits of the day, the results of which had filled a small-sized pony cart.
He retired to his room to dress, and threw open the window to admit the autumn breeze, that it might cool his flushed cheeks and throbbing temples. The kiss of that beloved lip—albeit one so coldly given—yet seemed to linger on his, and all nature around him seemed to grow lighter now that hope had swelled in his heart.
Lit by the evening sun, the leaves of the masses of wild roses and other creepers that clambered round the mullioned window of his room, seemed to murmur pleasantly on the passing breeze, that brought also the chimes of the village spire, the voices of the exulting birds, and the pleasant rustle of the old oak trees in the chase. To the ear of Jerry Vane there seemed to be a melody in all the voices of nature now, for his own heart was all aglow with joy.
He could gather from the manner of Ida nothing of what was passing in her mind during dinner. He observed, however, that she wore on this occasion a flower in her auburn hair, the first with which she had appeared since the time of her mourning—a simple white rose. He remembered that he had admired the simple decoration long ago, and that she had been wont to wear it to please him ere she had worn flowers to please another, so hope grew stronger in the heart of Vane.
She chatted away with Desmond and joined in the general conversation with more gaiety than usual, but not without showing a little abstraction at times, as if her thoughts wandered. She accorded little more than an occasional glance to Vane, with a soft smile on her sweet face, though there was the old languor in all her actions and manner, while she gave a programme of the forthcoming Christmas festivities at Carnaby Court, to which he, and some of the others present, were invited.
At last the ladies left the room, and the last glance, as she retired, rested onhim. Jerry's heart beat like lightning. The hands of the clock above the mantel-piece were close upon the hour of eight when—after having to linger over a glass or two of wine—he quitted the table, and the house unperceived, and hastening through the garden, where the few flowers of autumn were lingering yet, he reached the appointed place, the long vista of which he could see in the twilight, bordered by gigantic rhododendron bushes, intermingled with lilac trees and Portugal laurels.
She had not yet come, and with a heart in which much of joyous happiness was blended with hope and anxiety, Jerry walked slowly to and fro, as he knew not at which end of the alley she might appear. The sun had set more than an hour and a half; there was a deep crimson flush in the west, against which the great trees of the chase stood up still, motionless, and dark as bronze, for the night was calm, without a breath of wind, and the garden was so lonely and still, that Jerry thought he could actually hear the beating of his heart.
Time stole on; the twilight passed away, and the shadows and shapes became lost and blended in darkness. The clock in the central gable of the court struck quarter after quarter, till Jerry, peevish with impatience now, and alone, too, found the hour of nine was nigh, and that Ida had not appeared.
Could he have mistaken the place, or she the time? Had sudden illness come upon her, as her health was so uncertain now? Had she been interrupted by some of their numerous guests? To forget, or omit to come, were surely impossible!
A distant step on the ground made his pulses quicken.
'At last, dearest, dearest Ida!' he muttered aloud.
But no; that could not be the step of Ida, hastening lightly and quickly to keep her appointment. It was a slow and heavy one—that of a man; and Major Desmond came sauntering along, in full evening costume, with his hands in his coat-pockets, and the red glowing end of a cigar projecting from his bushy moustache. He was chuckling, laughing to himself, and evidently much amused by something.
Vane would gladly have avoided him and quitted the rhododendron walk, but to do so might be to lose the last chance of seeing whether Ida kept her appointment; while, if she came, it might indicate that one had been made.
He could but hope that the tall guardsman would pass and leave him; but it was not to be so. He had partaken freely of wine, and he was disposed to be jocular, confidential, and particularly friendly, so he passed his arm through Vane's, saying:
'As I passed into the garden a few minutes ago, just to enjoy a soothing weed, I made the funniest discovery in the world—by Jove I did!'
'You discovered what?' asked Vane, intensely annoyed.
'Well—ah—that, with all her grief for our friend Beverley, I don't think the fair Ida is quite beyond being consoled. Do you take?'
'Not in the least,' was the curt response.
'She has an admirer.'
'Many, I should think,' replied Jerry, becoming more and more amazed and nettled by the tone and laughter of the guardsman.
'But she has one in particular, I tell you.'
'Who do you mean?' asked Vane, colouring, as he thought the reference was to himself.
'By Jove, that is more than I can tell you!' said Desmond, with another quiet laugh, as he tossed his cigar away; 'I only know that as I lounged slowly past the arbour where the marble statue stands, about ten minutes ago, I saw her in close proximity—quite a confabulation—with a fellow, though I did not hear their voices; doubtless they were "low and sweet," like that of Annie Laurie.'
Was this assertion a piece of Desmond's impudence, or the result of the baronet's champagne? his idea of wit, fun, or what?
Jerry Vane felt his face first redden and then grow pale with fury in the dark.
'You must be mistaken,' he said, sternly—almost imperiously.
'Not at all, Vane,' replied the other; 'I passed on without affecting to perceive them; but I could make out that the fellow who hung over her as she sat at the table was not one of the guests—very pale, with a black, lanky moustache.'
'Oh, it is impossible!' urged Vane in a very strange voice.
'Not at all, I tell you,' replied Desmond, in a somewhat nettled tone. 'I simply amused myself with the fun of the thing. I heard a sound, and on looking up saw her start up, look at her watch, and then hurry—almost rush——'
'This way?'
'Oh, no!'
'Whither, then?'
'Straight into the house by the back drawing-room window.' And the tall dandy stroked his long moustache, and uttered one of his quiet laughs again.
Vane, past making any comment, remained silent and in utter bewilderment. His heart seemed to stand still; and he felt a more deadly jealousy, a more sickening and permanent pang in it, than he had ever endured before. He remembered what he himself had seen in that bower, and recalled the eavesdropper in the conservatory, who was seen by another, and whose personal appearance tallied exactly with what Desmond had said, and an emotion of heart-sick misery—of bitter, bitter disappointment and hopeless desolation, came upon him.
Great was the mental torture he endured for some moments. While he had been awaiting her in that walk, with such emotions in his soul as were known only to heaven and himself, she had been in dalliance with another—an unknown man—in that accursed boweragain! 'Violent passions,' he knew, 'are formed in solitude. In the bustle of the world no object has time to make deep impression.' So are deep emotions formed in solitude; but where had she learned to love this unknown, if love she did? and if she did not, what was the object of their secret meetings, and whence the power he seemed to have over her?
All these ideas and many more flashed through the mind of Jerry Vane, whose lips became dry as dust. His tongue, though parched, seemed cleaving to the roof of his mouth, whilst a rush of blood seemed mounting to his brain, and a giddiness came upon him. He heard the drawling and 'chaffing' remarks upon the arbour scene, which Desmond had resumed, but knew not a word he said, while arm-and-arm he mechanically promenaded to and fro with him.
He had but one idea—Ida false, andthus!
He knew not what to think, in whom to believe, or in whom to trust now, if it were so. Heaven, could such falsehood be, and within a few brief hours! he thought.
Then for the first time there began to creep into the heart of Vane something of that hatred which in the end becomes so fierce, cruel, and bitter—the hate that is born of baffled or unrequited love!
Anon, his heart wavered again; the unwonted emotion began to die away; it seemed too strange and unnatural and the passion he had for Ida vanquished him once more, by suggestions of utter unbelief, or there being an unexplainable, but dreadful, mistake somewhere.
It could not be that all along she had been deceiving him and others by playing a double game of dissimulation, while acting outwardly such gravity and grief! The soft and sad expression of the chaste and sweetly pretty face that seemed before him even then forbade the idea, yet the galling fear, the stinging suspicion, remained behind.
'She refused Jerningham, of ours, who was foolish enough to propose in the first flush of her widowhood, and she refused Jack Rakes of the Coldstreams last month, and sent him off to the Continent to console himself,' Desmond was saying; 'she has vowed, they say, that she would never, never marry, after the death of that fellow in the line—what's his name?—Beverley, don't you know, and here I find her billing and cooing most picturesquely in an arbour! It is right good fun, by Jove! I only wonder who the party is that was receiving "the outpouring of an enamoured heart, secluded in moral widowhood;" and I might have discovered, if I had only pretended to blunder into the arbour; but then I hate to make a scene, and it's deuced bad form to spoil sport.'
Vane felt it in his heart to knock the laughing plunger down, when hearing him run on thus.
It began to seem painfully evident that all this episode could not be falsification. Major Desmond had no particular interest in Ida, though piqued, as much as it was in his lazy nature to be, at Clare, for refusing the lounging offer he had made her.
For the other he had neither liking nor disliking; but, in all he told Vane, he seemed inspired only by that love of gossipy chit-chat in which even men of the best position will indulge by the hour at their club or elsewhere, together, perhaps, with the desire, so invariable, to quiz the grief of a widow, especially if she is young and handsome.
'There is,' says a writer, 'no weakness of which men are so ashamed of being convicted as credulity, and there is none so natural to an honest nature.'
But to the storm that gathered in the honest heart of Jerry were added rage, astonishment, and an overwhelming sense of utter disappointment.
Where had this unknown come from, and whither did he go? Where had she met him, and how long had this mysterious, and, to all appearance, secret intimacy lasted? What manner of man was he, that she was ashamed to have him introduced to her family? He had heard—he had certainlyread—of ladies, even of the highest, most delicate nurture and tender culture, by some madness, inversion of the mind, or by temptation of the devil, taking wild fancies for valets and grooms, and even marrying them in secret, and thus at times all manner of horrible speculations crowded into the now giddy brain of Jerry.
Ida! wildly as he loved her he would rather she were dead than less or not what he supposed and believed her to be; but he thought bitterly, 'Alas! where was there ever man or woman who reached the spiritualised standard of idealistic love?'
So, in spite of himself—it was not in human nature that it could be otherwise—his old jealousy, that barbarous yet just leaven which he had felt in the past time, when she preferred Jack Beverley to himself, grew in his heart again.
He marvelled much how she would look when he joined her among other guests in the drawing-room; but the face he had looked for so anxiously was not there when he and Desmond entered it; and he was actually somewhat relieved when he was informed by Clare that Ida was unable to appear, and had retired to her room 'with a crushing headache.'
He expressed some well-bred sorrow to hear this, very mechanically and quietly, adding that he was the more sorry to hear it as he believed he would have to leave for town early on the morrow.
Clare heard this sudden announcement with surprise, and regarded Jerry's face earnestly.
But one idea or conviction, prevailed in the mind of Jerry Vane:
'She who was so readily false to me before, may easily be so again!'
If he slept at all that night, his sleep was but a succession of nightmares, with dreams such as might spring from a slumber procured by the mandragora; one aching thought ever recurring amid the darkness of the waking hours, and all the more keenly when morning came, and he knew that he must inexorably see and talk with Ida in the usual commonplace way before others, ere he left her for ever, and quitted Carnaby Court to return no more.
The tortures he had endured he resolved never to endure again. It should never be in the power of Ida or any other woman to place her heel upon his heart and crush it, as she had crushed it twice!
Yet when he saw her at the breakfast-table, in all her fresh morning loveliness, and in the most becoming demi-toilette, with her gorgeous hair so skilfully manipulated by her maid, and her grave, chastely beautiful face rippling with a kind—almost fond—smile, as if greeting him and asking his forgiveness too, he knew not what to think, but strove to steel himself against her for the future.
She had a newly gathered white rose—his flower, she was wont to call it—in her bosom; and that rose was not whiter than the slender neck round which the frills of tulle were clasped by a tiny coral brooch.
At times, when he looked on her, and heard the steadiness of her musical voice and sweet silvery little laugh, and beheld the perfect ease of her manner and the candour of her eyes, he could have imagined the affair in the garden to have been a dream, but for the strange and conscious smile that hovered in the face of Desmond when he addressed Ida, while making a hurried breakfast before his departure for London.
'I would take the same train with you, Desmond,' said Vane, 'but that my things are not packed.'
'Do you leave us so soon?' asked Ida, who overheard him.
'I must,' said Vane, for whom there had been no letters that morning, much to his annoyance, as he wished to plead something like a genuine excuse to Clare for taking an abrupt departure. 'I mean to leave England—perhaps even Europe, if I can.'
'For where?' asked Ida, growing very pale.
'Well, I scarcely know,' replied Vane, with a laugh that certainly had no merriment in it.
'Do you really mean this?'
'Yes,' he replied, curtly.
She was silent, but looked at him pleadingly, and even upbraidingly across the table, while Jerry, becoming, as he thought, grim as Ajax, busied himself with a piece of partridge pie.
'No, no,' thought he; 'I shall not again begin that hazardous play with love, which some one truly calls "the deadly gambling of heart and thought and sense, which casts all stakes in faith upon the venture of another's life."'
He had hoped that by the mere force of his own passionate love for her some tenderness might be reawakened in her heart for him; and now—now, after all, she was actually fooling him—vulgarly fooling him!
By a glance that was exchanged between them they tacitly quitted the room when breakfast was over, and passed together—he following with undisguised reluctance—into the garden, through a window which opened like a folding-door on the back terrace of the mansion.
'What is the meaning of this sudden departure, Jerry?' she asked, when they reached a part of the garden near the very bower Desmond had referred to. 'Do you mean it?'
'I do.'
'How strange you are in your manner, Jerry! Look at me! why, you are quite pale!'
He dared not tell her the cause at first; he felt ashamed of his own folly—ashamed of her and of the accusation he had to make.
'I was in the rhododendron walk last night. You did not come, as you promised.'
'I—I could not,' said she, her pallor increasing, as she cast down her eyes.
'My heart was wrung by your absence, Ida; but still more wrung—ay, tortured nigh unto death—by the cause!'
'Cause?' said she, trembling.
'Yes,' he replied, sharply and bitterly.
'Oh, you know not the cause,' she said sadly, as she shook her head.
'I do know, and so do others; but I have no right to question your actions or control your movements—no warrant for—God help me, Ida, I scarcely know what I say.'
'So it seems,' said she, a little haughtily.
'Oh, Ida, what is this man to you?' he asked, huskily.
'To me—who—what man?' she asked, with a bewildered air.
'He who is always hanging about you—he who detained you in that arbour last night, when you promised to meet me, and give me the answer I prayed for in yonder oriel.'
Astonishment, alarm, and anxiety pervaded the delicate coldness of her pure, pale face, and then a flush—the hectic of unwonted anger—crossed it.
'Jerry—Mr. Vane—are you mad?' she exclaimed. 'How dare you address me thus?'
'Mad—I fear so; but for the love of pity, Ida——'
'Well, sir.'
'Tell me, what am I to think?'
'Enough,' said she coldly; 'the words we have exchanged are most painful to us both.'
'They are agony to me, Ida. But say, were you in that arbour last night?'
'On the way to meet you,I was,' she replied, but with hesitation in her manner.
'And there you remained?'
'Oh, thrice I endeavoured to leave the arbour and keep my appointment with you, and then—then——'
She paused, and her voice died away upon her quivering lip.
'What? Speak, dearest Ida.'
'That strange magnetic influence, which I told you impels my actions and controls my movements, came over me like a species of drowsy sleep, and I remained till the time to meet you was long since past.'
'Andhewho had this influence over you—he who detained you,' said Vane, bitterly and incredulously.
'Jerry! this tome!' she exclaimed, her eyes expressive now of sad reproach. 'Think of me as you will, I can explain no more.'
Her eyes closed, her little white hands were clenched and pressed upon her bosom, and again, as yesterday in the oriel, she seemed on the point of sinking. She had suddenly become bewildered and confused, and this bewilderment and confusion were but too painfully apparent to the sorrowing and exasperated Vane.
Was she thinking it possible thatthatof which she had spoken in a moment of confidence to Trevor Chute—the thing or being unseen, but which she felt conscious of being near her—could have been by her side in that dark arbour then, or what caused her emotion? Did a memory of the icy and irrepressible shudder she felt at times, when that dread pang occurred to her, come over her then?
Perhaps so, for the nameless dread that paralysed her tongue made her more tolerant to Jerry. Anon she recovered herself, and pride of heart, dignity of position, and a sense of insult came to her rescue and restored her strength, and she looked Vane steadily, even haughtily, in the face.
'You put my faith to a hard test, Ida,' said he; 'God alone knows how hard.'
'If I could spare you a pang, Mr. Vane, He knows I would,' she replied; 'but when last you spoke to me about a strange gentleman being with me in the arbour, I thought your manner odd and unwarrantable, and now I think it more so. I trust this is the last time the subject will be referred to—and, and—now I wish you good-morning.'
And bowing with gravity and grace, not unmingled with hauteur, she swept away towards the house and left him. Great was the shock this event, and this most unanticipated interview or explanation, gave the heart of Vane, who made not the slightest attempt to detain her, or soothe the indignation he had apparently kindled; but he stood rooted to the spot, motionless as the marble Psyche on its pedestal close by.
If perfidy rendered her unworthy of him, why regret her? Yet it was so hard, so bitter, and so unnatural to deem her so. With all his pride, we have said that Jerry had none with Ida, and the moment the accusation against her escaped him, he repented of it. With all her tenderness and gentleness, he knew how dignified and resolute Ida could be. He recalled all the varying expressions he had seen in her sweet face, great amazement, pain, alarm, and sorrow, culminating in indignation and pride; and though she left him in undisguised anger, he still seemed to hear the pathos of her voice, which seemed filled with unshed tears.
Was he yielding her up in anger now, and not in sorrow as before, to another who would revel in all the spells of her beauty and sweetness, and thus ruining all for himself again?
Then he said through his clenched teeth:
'What matters it? If she is so perfidious, let her go. But I have been too long here playing the moonstruck fool.'
Yet with a pitiful desperation he clung to the faint hope that ere he left, some explanation, other than he had received, might be given him; that another interview might pass between them which would change the present gloomy aspect of their affairs, and place them even on their former vague and unsatisfactory basis. But Major Desmond had taken his departure during the interview in the garden; thus Vane had no opportunity of recurring to what he had related overnight in the garden; and Ida remained studiously aloof, sequestered in her own room, and he saw no more till the moment of his departure, and even then not a word passed between them.
Clare Collingwood heard with genuine concern the announcement of Vane's sudden departure that day; he was the sole link between her and Trevor Chute, and the medium through which she heard of all the wanderer's movements.
It was long past mid-day ere he could leave the Court, and as he passed through the hall he saw the ladies taking their afternoon tea in the morning room, and amid that brilliant group, with their shining silks and rich laces, their perfumed hair and glittering ornaments, he saw only the bright Aurora tresses and sombre dress of Ida, her jet ear-rings and necklet contrasting so powerfully with the paleness of her blonde beauty—the wondrous whiteness of her skin. She was smiling lightly now at Violet, who was coquetting with, or quizzing, old Colonel Rakes.
Why should not Ida smile when the eyes of 'Society' were upon her?
It fretted Vane, however, that she should be doing so on the eve of his departure, and added fuel to the fire that consumed him. He was just in the humour to quarrel with trifles. He simply bade her adieu as he did all the rest, and bowed himself out; but he could not resist making some explanation to Clare, who followed him to the porch, and whose expressive eyes seemed to ask it, for she had detected in a moment that something unusual had passed between him and Ida.
She heard him with pain and bewilderment.
'All this must, and shall, be fully explained,' said Clare, with her dark eyes swimming in tears.
'I doubt it.'
'Doubt not!' said she, firmly, 'and, dear Jerry, promise me that you will forget your quarrel with Ida, and visit us again at Christmas; papa and—and Lady Evelyn will be home long before that. Do you promise?'
'I promise you, Clare—dear Clare, you were ever my friend,' said he, in a broken voice, as he kissed her hand, and would have kissed her cheek, perhaps, but for the servants who stood by; and in half an hour afterwards the train was sweeping him onward to London.
'I had hoped, Ida, that Jerry Vane's visit would have had a different termination than this,' said Clare, the moment she got her sister alone. 'Why, you have actually quarrelled.'
'No, not quarrelled,' urged Ida.
'What then?'
'Parted coldly, certainly.'
'Why did you not keep your appointment with him?'
Again the expression that Vane had seen on her face—pain and embarrassment, sorrow and bewilderment, were all visible to Clare, who had to repeat the question three times; then Ida said:
'As he himself has told you, he accused me—me—of meeting another, and I was almost bluntly accused thus, Clare, when—when I was certainly beginning to feel that I might love him with the emotion that I deemed dead in my heart and impossible to resuscitate.'
'All this seems most inexplicable to me!' said Clare, with the smallest expression of irritation in her tone. 'Poor Jerry! he loves you very truly, Ida, and sorely indeed has that love been tested.'
'He loved me because he believed in me; that regard will cease when he ceases to believe, as he has done, through some insulting suspicion, the source or cause of which is utterly beyond my conception,' said Ida, wearily and sadly. Then she threw an arm round the waist of Clare, and lying on her sister's breast, said in a low voice, 'Another seems to hold me by bonds that will never be unloosed, Clare.'
'Another, Ida!'
'Beverley.'
'What madness is this?' asked Clare, regarding her sister's face with great and deep anxiety.
'I loved Beverley as I never loved Jerry; it was, indeed, the passion which Scott describes as given by God alone:
'"It is the secret sympathy,The silver link, the silken tie,Which heart to heart and mind to mindIn body and in soul can bind."
Beverley's last words were that we should meet again; and we have met again—nay, seem to be always meeting in my thoughts by day and dreams by night; but always the memory of him was most vivid when Jerry Vane was near me or in my mind.'
'How will all this end?' said Clare, in a voice of sorrow. 'I would that papa were here.'
'He had never much sympathy with, or toleration for, my grief, and now that it is passing away, he would have still less with these secret thoughts or strange impressions I have told to you, dear Clare, and even hinted at to Trevor Chute.'
'It is a disease of the mind, Ida; but all this seems so incomprehensible to me. Surely we have power and will over our own acts, and even in these days, when so much is said, thought, written—yes, and practised too, about spiritualism, mysticism, etc., there is the danger of adopting that as aninevitable lawto which we must conform, but which we should with all our power resist as the vilest of superstition.'
Ida only shook her head mournfully, and poor Clare's motherly and sisterly heart was stirred within her. She knew not what to think; but she clung to the hope that ultimately a marriage with Jerry Vane would dissipate these morbid impressions with which the mind of Ida had become so singularly and so strongly imbued.
But now, after this, rumours began to spread—though the strange man, if man he was, had disappeared, and was seen no more, but seemed to have taken his departure with Jerry Vane—rumours born of chance, remarks overheard by listening servants, and taken to the still-room, the kitchen, the stable court and gamekeeper's lodge, of spectral appearances in the rhododendron walk, in the arbour where the Psyche stood, and elsewhere about the ancient mansion, till at last, through Major Desmond, they actually reached the ears of Sir Carnaby Collingwood abroad, and though they excited the merriment and languid curiosity of Lady Evelyn, they caused him anger and annoyance, and not a little contempt: 'Such stories are such deuced bad form—get into the local papers, and all that sort of thing, don't you know.'
One fact became pleasantly apparent to Clare ere long, that though Ida regretted the departure of Vane, and still more the inexplicable cause of their mutual coldness, her health for a time improved rapidly: the colour came back to her cheek, and the brightness to her eyes; she loved as of old to take her share in pleasures and amusements; and the chill shiver she had been wont to experience affected her less and less—but for a time only.
At the Stadt Hamburg Sir Carnaby and his bride probably secluded themselves in their own apartments on the day after the unpleasant rencontre related in Chapter XIV.; at least Trevor Chute saw nothing of them at thetable d'hôte, which was filled by its usual frequenters, officers of the garrison, German Jews and Jewesses, and those whose names inevitably figure on the board in the hall as 'Grafs, Herrs, Rentiers, and Privatiers.'
Avoiding the hotel—on consideration, Chute saw no reason whyheshould change his quarters—he had 'done' all Lubeck, seen the Dom or Cathedral, a huge red-brick edifice of the twelfth century, with its wonderful screen, stone pulpit, and brass font; the Marien Kirche, with its astronomical clock, where daily the figures of the seven Electors pass in review, and bow before the Emperor; the wonderful old Rathhaus; and the stone in the marketplace whereon 'the Byng' of Lubeck, Admiral Mark Meyer, was judicially murdered for not fighting a Danish fleet; the wood carvings in the Schusselbuden Strasse; and the famous letter of Sir William Wallace to the Hans cities—the first 'free trade' document the world ever saw; and when evening was come again he found himself seated, somewhat weary and almost alone, at the long board of thetable d'hôtein the great dining-room.
A tempestuous sun was setting in the west, against the crimson glow of which the black kites, like flies amid wine, seemed to float above the trees of the Linden Platz; and the waters of the Trave and the Wakenitz were reddened, as they flowed past the timber-clothed ramparts, the copse woods and turfy moors, towards the sea.
Something portentous seemed in the air, the sky, and even in the manner of the people of Lubeck that evening. Trevor Chute observed that the Prussian officers who were at the table, or smoking under the verandah outside the windows, all talked confidentially of something that was expected—he could not make out what, and the military eye of Chute observed that, since noon, double sentinels had been posted at the Burg Thor, the Rathhaus, and elsewhere.
The thoughts of Trevor Chute went back over the many stirring events of his past life since he had known Clare and been rent from her—events full of sporting excitement, of military peril, and Indian adventures, of rapid change by land and sea, of aimless wanderings like the present, of wet night marches and wild gallops, amid the scorching heats of the Punjaub, when men fell by the wayside, stricken and foaming at the mouth with sunstroke, or writhing with the deadlier cholera, and he knew not why all this retrospect occurred to him. Was he on the eve of any great danger? It almost seemed so.
The evening closed in dark and gloomy, and though the atmosphere was stifling, Chute perceived that the lower windows of the hotel were being all closed and barricaded. He was then informed by theOber Kellnerthat a serious riot was expected by 'His High Wisdom, the Senior Burgomaster,' among the tradesmen and working population, who were all 'on strike,' and hence the doubling of the guards on the town house and at the city gates.
Sounds of alarm from time to time, shouts and other noises, were heard in the echoing streets, then followed the tolling of an alarm bell, and the beating of the Prussian drums, while flames began to redden the sky in one quarter, thus indicating that the houses of some persons obnoxious to the rabble had been set on fire outside the Holstein Thor.
Despite the advice of the landlord and the waiters, Trevor Chute remained on the steps at the hotel door, enjoying a cigar, and determined to see what was going on, though but little was visible, as in the streets the rioters had turned off the gas. Ere long he could make out something like the head of a great column debouching over the open space before the hotel.
For a moment nothing could be distinguished but that it was a crowd, shadows moving in the shade, but accompanied by a roar of sounds, cheers, hoarse hurrahs, oaths and imprecations in German, with the patois of Schleswig and of Holstein. The rabble, consisting of many thousands, were in readiness to commit outrage on anyone or anything that came in their way, and were now in fierce pursuit of an open droski that was brought at a gallop up to the door of the hotel, and out of which there sprang, looking very pale and bewildered, Sir Carnaby Collingwood and Lady Evelyn, whom the crowd had overtaken when returning from a visit to one of the three Syndics. Above the heads of the grimy rabble seven or eight torches were shaking like tufts of flame, and by their uncertain glare added much to the terror of the scene, for a madly infuriated mob has terrors that are peculiarly its own, and the simple circumstance that Sir Carnaby and Lady Evelyn were the occupants of a hired vehicle was sufficient to make all these half-starved and tipsified boors—tipsy with beer and fiery corn-brandy—turn their vengeance on them.
Even while rushing alongside the fast-flying wheels—for the driver lashed his horses to a gallop—they could see that Sir Carnaby was an aristocrat, anhochgeboren, or well-born man; that was enough to ensure insult and ridicule, or worse, and all the more when they discovered that he was an Englishman—and, like a true Englishman, the baronet, with all his folly and shortcomings in many ways, did not want a proper amount of pluck.
All that passed now seemed to do so with the quickness of lightning.
Sir Carnaby, highly exasperated by what he had undergone, and the terror of Lady Evelyn, instead of retiring at once into the hotel, unwisely turned and struck the foremost man in the crowd a sharp blow across the face with his cane.
The voices of the crowd now burst into one united roar of senseless rage, and a piercing and agonising shriek escaped Lady Evelyn, as she saw him seized by many hands, torn from her side, and dragged violently along the streets, amid shouts of 'To the Trave!—to the Trave!'
She did not and could not love this old man—she was, perhaps, incapable of loving anyone—but she loved well the position her marriage gave her, though a viscount's daughter, with the luxury and splendour in which she was cradled when at home. She had been used since childhood to obedience; to be followed and caressed; to have every wish gratified, every caprice supplied; to see every doubt and difficulty cleared away; to feel neither pain nor illness, not even the least excitement about anything; and now—now, the man with whom she had linked her fate was at the mercy of an infamous and brutal foreign mob; and with her shriek there came a cry to Chute to save him; but Trevor never heard her, for the moment hands were laid on Sir Carnaby, followed by Tom Travers, his servant, he had plunged into the moving and shouting mass, which went surging down the street; then Lady Evelyn saw the three disappear in the obscurity; out of which there came the roar of mingling shouts, the gleam of cutlasses as the night-watch attacked the rioters; and then followed the red flashes and the report of musketry, as the Prussian guard at the Rathhaus opened fire upon them; and Lady Evelyn, unused, as we have said, to any excitement, especially the sudden and unwonted horrors of an episode like this, fainted, and was borne senseless into the hotel.
Meanwhile, amid the wild whirl of that seething mob, how fared it with Trevor Chute and him whom he sought to save or rescue?
In all his service in India—service so different from the silk and velvet dawdling tenor of life in the Guards—dread of death had been unknown to Trevor Chute, and never felt by him, even when he knew that he was supposed to be dying of fever or a wound, or when he lay in the dark jungle, where the thick and rank vegetation ran riot, as it were; where the Brahminese cobra had its lair, the tiger and the cheetah, too; where, heavy, hot, and oppressive, the vapour rose like steamy clouds about the stems of the trees, while his life-blood ebbed away, and he had the knowledge that, if undiscovered, he might die of thirst, of weakness, under the kuttack dagger of a mountain robber, or by the feet of a wild elephant, for oblivion thus clouded the end of many a comrade who was reported 'missing,' and no more was known; so Chute was not to recoil before a German rabble now.
He knocked down by main strength of arm and sheer weight of hand the two who had hold of Sir Carnaby, and were dragging him helplessly along the street; and then, with the aid of Travers, he assisted him towards an archway which opened off the street, while the rabble closed in upon them, showering blows and execrations, but impeding each other in their mad efforts; thus man after man of them, uttering groans and shouts, went down before the regular facers, dealt straight out from the shoulder by Chute and Travers into the eyes and jaws of their assailants, who had a wholesome Continental terror of 'the art de box,' as the French name it, while breathless, bewildered, and certainly appalled to find himself so suddenly become the sole victim of a dreadful mob, Sir Carnaby stood between his two defenders, his polite and deprecatory gestures (for voice he had none), and the elegance of his delicate white hands, as seen in the torchlight, exciting only the ridicule of the unwashed rabble.
Through the archway, which was narrow, they conveyed Sir Carnaby, and by their united strength succeeded in closing the door, and by an iron bar that was behind it completely excluding the crowd, who continued to shout and rave without as they surged against it and beat upon it with sticks and stones. Anon the crash of glass was heard, and then the cries of women, as the house itself was assailed.
Infuriated to find that their victim or victims, whom many of them now supposed to be some of their wealthy and oppressive monopolists, had escaped them, the blows upon the door were redoubled, but its strength baffled them.
'It is me they want, Chute, because I struck that rascal at the hotel,' said Sir Carnaby: 'leave me—they will tear you to pieces to get at me, the German brutes!'
'Leave you, Sir Carnaby! Never! If, even were you a stranger, I should stand by you, how much more am I bound to do so when you are the father of Clare Collingwood! And if I cannot by main strength save, I shall die with you—game, an Englishman to the last!'
They were in a court which had no outlet. From it an open stair led to a species of ancient gallery overlooking the street; it was a species of balcony, with pillars and arches carved of stone, like those in front of the wonderfully quaint Rathhaus, which was not far from it, and was built in the middle of the fifteenth century.
Their appearance in this place elicited a roar from the mob some fifteen feet below them, and hundreds of dirty hands were shaken clenched towards them, and hundreds of excited and upturned faces were visible in the red, uncertain glare of the torches that were held still by five or six of the rioters. But matters now began to look very serious; for the crowd was seen to part like the waves of the sea as a ladder was borne through it and planted against the wall. Then five or six men began to mount at once, while others pressed forward to follow, determined to visit the fugitives by escalade.
Travers looked bewildered, and Sir Carnaby still more so; but Trevor Chute, by habit, profession, and nature, had all that coolness in front of immediate peril, and utter indifference of personal risk, which made him renowned in his regiment and the idol of the soldiers, and he had been in many critical situations, where caution and decision had to be combined with instant action.
The head and shoulders of the uppermost man on the ladder had barely appeared above the front of the balcony when Chute seized the former by its two uprights, and thrust it fairly outward from the wall. For a moment it oscillated, or seemed to balance itself, and then, describing a radius of about thirty feet or more, fell back among the crowd with its load of ruffians.
Then shrieks and the rattle of musketry were heard, as the Prussian guard arrived from the Rathhaus, and by orders of a burgomaster poured in a volley of some twenty muskets or so, on which the mob took to flight, and dispersed in all directions, leaving behind two or three dead men and the maimed wretches who had been on the upper portion of the ladder.
So ended this episode of excitement and peril, after which the three Englishmen, to whom every species of apology was tendered—after due explanation given—were conducted by the armed night watch back to their hotel, and once more quietness settled over the little city of Lubeck.
Save that he had got a terrible shaking, a few blows, and considerable fright, Sir Carnaby Collingwood, thanks to Trevor Chute and his servant, was not much the worse and between his draughts of iced seltzer and brandy, he sputtered and threatened the whole city of Lubeck with our ambassador at Berlin, and to have the outrage of the night brought 'before the House' as soon as he returned to town; while Lady Evelyn, filled with genuine admiration of the pluck shown by Chute, his manly and generous bearing, and with gratitude for the manner in which he had assuredly saved the life of hercaro sposo, became his most ardent ally; but as he and Sir Carnaby lingered over their wine that night he felt—and still more next day—the weight of the many blows and buffets of which he had been quite unconscious at the time they were so freely bestowed upon him.
'Egad, Chute,' chuckled Sir Carnaby, 'didn't think you and I should ever figure like two heroes in a melodrama; by Jove—absurd, don't you know—but those Germansarebeastly fellows. The moselle stands with you. We have had nothing here,' he continued, laughing with more genuine heartiness than was usual to him, for his feelings had undergone a revulsion—'we have had nothing here but mistakes and scenes—actually scenes. I refused you Clare, and you make off, per train, with Lady Evelyn. I was most unkind to you, and you act generously by returning good for exceeding evil.'
Trevor was so unused to this tone from Sir Carnaby that his heart swelled with mingled hope and anticipation, joy and sadness, as he said:
'I am only thankful to Heaven that I was here to-night, and able to be of service to you.'
'Service—egad, my dear fellow, you have saved my life!'
'The consciousness of that rewards me for more than one past misfortune.'
'Ah, you mean those which caused you to leave the Guards?'
'To leave England, and—lost me Clare!' said Chute, falteringly.
'Ah, well, it was all no fault of yours. It was a thousand pities that your father, the old General—an extravagant dog he was—could touch the entail. That is all over now; and believe me, Trevor Chute, if you forgive me the past, you shall not go without yourreward.'
And the two shook hands in silence. The heart of the younger man beat tumultuously, for well did he know the glorious 'reward' that was referred to. He knew that Sir Carnaby would keep to his word, and he had, we have said, an ardent admirer and adherent in Lady Evelyn.
'Captain Chute,' said she, 'do give up this peregrimania of yours, and spend Christmas with us at Carnaby Court. Promise me,' she added, taking his hands in hers; 'I will take no denial, and am always used to have my way in everything.'
So Chute, without much difficulty, accepted an invitation in which kindness was perhaps mingled with some desire to get Clare off her hands.
Chute, with Sir Carnaby's permission, wrote to Clare next day, saying that he had been so happy as to be of service to her father, and had saved him—'saved his life, in fact'—during a row among the Germans; that they were the best of friends now that all barriers were removed, and how happy he and she would yet be in the time to come.
Poor Clare was extremely bewildered by all this, till the letter was supplemented by a more descriptive and effusive epistle from the, sometime to her, obnoxious Lady Evelyn, describing in glowing colours the terrors of the affair at Lubeck, Chute's bravery, and Sir Carnaby's rescue, and the heart of the girl leaped in her breast with gratitude to Heaven for this sudden change in the feelings of her father, and gratitude to Trevor for saving the selfish old man from injury, insult, and, too probably, a sudden and dreadful death; and amid this new-born happiness grew a longing to behold that of her sister and Jerry Vane.
The latter, when in London, more than once, when with Desmond; contrived to draw on the subject of the male figure he had seen in the arbour with Ida, and found that he still adhered to it in all its somewhat vague details.
On the other hand, he had a long private letter from Clare, impressing upon him that it must have been a delusion; that no such person had been seen by Ida; and dwelling delicately on the health of the latter, and the strange fancies which haunted her. Perplexed, he knew not what to think, and would mutter:
'Delusion! Were Colonel Rakes, Desmond, and I all deluded alike? It is an impossibility!'
He actually doubted her, and bitter as the doubt must be of that one loves, deep must be the love that struggles against it, and his was of that kind. Clare reminded him of his promised visit at Christmas-time.
'Shall I go, to be snared again by the witchery of Ida's violet eyes and the golden gleam of her auburn hair?'
The most rankling and bitter wounds are those of the heart; because they are unseen, and, too often, untellable; so Vane, amid the bitterness of his doubt, consoled, or strove to console himself with the remark of a Scottish writer, who says, 'How humbling it is to think that the strongest affections which have perplexed, or agitated, or delighted us from our birth, will, in a few years, cease to have an existence on the earth; and that all the ardour which they have kindled will be as completely extinguished and forgotten as if they had never been!'
Love for him certainly seemed to have been dawning in her heart again; else whence that kiss—somewhat too sisterly, perhaps—which she accorded to him so frankly in the oriel window, filling his bosom with the old joy? Across the sunshine that was brightening his path why should this marring shadow have fallen, giving a pain that was only equalled in intensity by his love? hence it was simply horrid to hear a man like Desmond say, mockingly:
'You ask me about that fellow in the arbour so often that, by Jove, Vane, you are becoming spoony on her again—heard you were so once, don't you know—threw you over for Beverley, and all that sort of thing. Fact is, my dear fellow, women always betray those who love them too much. Never throw your heart further away than just so far that you can easily recover it.'
And with his thoughts elsewhere, Jerry, spoiled as women of the world will spoil a drawing-room pet, lingered on amid a gay circle in London, endowed with a vague flirting commission, and coquetted a little with the languid, the soft, and the lovely, to hide or heal the wound that Ida had inflicted; while it was with regret, and a sense of as much irritation and hauteur as her gentle nature was capable of feeling, Ida heard that Vane was to accompany Chute (after all that had passed between them, and his suspicions) to Carnaby Court, where now the beeches and elms were all yellow or brown with the last tints of autumn, and the tall trees in the chase showed flushes of crimson, purple, and orange when the sun was sinking beyond the uplands in the west.
On very different terms were Clare andherlover; and in their letters they wrote freely and confidently of their future—a happy time that seemed certain now—the future that had once been but as the mirage that Chute had often beheld on the march in the sandy deserts of Aijmere.
'Clare—I shall see her again!' he muttered to himself; it was a great thought, a bright conviction, that to him she was no longer a dream but a reality; thus in his heart he felt 'that riot of hope, joy, and belief which is too tumultuous and impatient for happiness, but yetishappy beyond all that the world holds.'
Objectless till he saw her again, after Sir Carnaby and Lady Evelyn had left him for England, he lingered in Northern Germany; but Jerry Vane had accepted Lady Evelyn's written and actually reiterated invitation for Christmas with very mingled feelings indeed.
Since the day he had left Carnaby Court so abruptly he had never exchanged a word, verbally or in writing, with Ida.
In going there now he would do so with a deadened sense of sorrow, disappointment, and bitterness in his heart and the wretched doubt as to whether he was wise to throw himself into the lure—was it snare?—of her society again; even with the intention of showing, as he thought, poor goose, how bravely he could resist it, and seek to convince her that he had effaced the past and forgotten to view her amid the halo in which he had once enshrined her. Were they, then, to meet in a state of antagonism?
Trevor Chute's brave rescue of Sir Carnaby Collingwood had, as a story, preceded his return to town, with many exaggerations; the clubs rang with it, and it actually stirred the blood in what 'Ouida' calls 'the languid,nil admirari, egotistic, listless pulses of high-bred society.'
But time was creeping on now, and the Christmas of the year drew near at hand.