"Of what had been and might have been,And who was changed, and who was dead."
"Of what had been and might have been,And who was changed, and who was dead."
The Dowager-Countess of Kirton stood in the sunny breakfast-room at Hartledon, surveying the well-spread table with complacency; for it appeared to be rather more elaborately set out than usual, and no one loved good cheer better than she. When she saw two cups and saucers on the cloth instead of one, it occurred to her that Maude must, by caprice, be coming down, which she had not done of late. The dowager had arrived at midnight from Garchester, in consequence of having missed the earlier train, and found nearly all the house in retirement. She was in a furious humour, and no one had told her of the arrival of her son-in-law; no one ever did tell her any more than they were obliged to do; for she was not held in estimation at Hartledon.
"Potted tongue," she exclaimed, dodging round the table, and lifting various covers. "Raised pie; I wonder what's in it? And what's that stuff in jelly? It looks delicious. This is the result of the blowing-up I gave Hedges the other day; nothing like finding fault. Hot dishes too. I suppose Maude gave out that she should be down this morning. All rubbish, fancying herself ill: she's as well as I am, but gives way like a sim—A-a-a-ah!"
The exclamation was caused by the unexpected vision of Lord Hartledon.
"How are you, Lady Kirton?"
"Where on earth did you spring from?"
"From my room."
"What's the good of your appearing before people like a ghost, Hartledon? When did you arrive?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
"And time you did, I think, with your poor wife fretting herself to death about you. How is she this morning?"
"Very well."
"Ugh!" You must imagine this sound as something between a grunt and a groan, that the estimable lady gave vent to whenever put out. It is not capable of being written. "You might have sent word you were coming. I should think you frightened your wife to death."
"Not quite."
He walked across the room and rang the bell. Hedges appeared. It had been the dowager's pleasure that no one else should serve her at that meal—perhaps on account of her peculiarities of costume.
"Will you be good enough to pour out the coffee in Maude's place to-day, Lady Kirton? She has promised to be down another morning."
It was making her so entirely and intentionally a guest, as she thought, that Lady Kirton did not like it. Not only did she fully intend Hartledon House to be her home, but she meant to be its one ruling power. Keep Maude just now to her invalid fancies, and later to her gay life, and there would be little fear of her asserting very much authority.
"Are you in the habit of serving this sort of breakfast, Hedges?" asked Lord Hartledon; for the board looked almost like an elaborate dinner.
"We have made some difference, my lord, this morning."
"For me, I suppose. You need not do so in future. I have got out of the habit of taking breakfast; and in any case I don't want this unnecessary display. Captain Kirton gets up later, I presume."
"He's hardly ever up before eleven," said Hedges. "But he makes a good breakfast, my lord."
"That's right. Tempt him with any delicacy you can devise. He wants strength."
The dowager was fuming. "Don't you think I'm capable of regulating these things, Hartledon, I'd beg leave to ask?"
"No doubt. I beg you will make yourself at home whilst you stay with us. Some tea, Hedges."
She could have thrown the coffee-pot at him. There was incipient defiance in his every movement; latent war in his tones. He was no longer the puppet he had been; that day had gone by for ever.
Perhaps Val could not himself have explained the feeling that was this morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming—his own miserable weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now—felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling up in his spirit, which he had some trouble to suppress.
He did suppress it, however, though it rendered him less courteous than usual; and the meal proceeded partly in silence; an interchanged word, civil on the surface, passing now and then. The dowager thoroughly entered into her breakfast, and had little leisure for anything else.
"What makes you take nothing?" she asked, perceiving at length that he had only a piece of toast on his plate, and was playing with that.
"I have no appetite."
"Have you left off taking breakfast?"
"To a great extent."
"What's the matter with you?"
Lord Hartledon slightly raised his eyebrows. "One can't eat much in the heat of summer."
"Heat of summer! it's nothing more than autumn now. And you are as thin as a weasel. Try some of that excellent raised pie."
"Pray let my appetite alone, Lady Kirton. If I wanted anything I should take it."
"Let you alone! yes, of course! You don't want it noticed that you are out of sorts," snapped the dowager. "Oh,Iknow the signs. You've been raking about London—that's what you've been at."
The "raking about London" presented so complete a contrast to the lonely life he had really passed, that Hartledon smiled in very bitterness. And the smile incensed the dowager, for she misunderstood it.
"It's early days to begin! I don't think you ought to have married Maude."
"I don't think I ought."
She did not expect the rejoinder, and dropped her knife and fork. "Whydidyou marry her?"
"Perhaps you can tell that better than I."
The countess-dowager pushed up her hair.
"Are you going to throw off the mask outright, and become a bad husband as well as a neglectful one?"
Val rose from his seat and went to the window, which opened to the ground. He did not wish to quarrel with her if he could help it. Lady Kirton raised her voice.
"Staying away, as you have, in London, and leaving Maude here to pine alone."
"Business kept me in London."
"I dare say it did!" cried the wrathful dowager. "If Maude died of ennui, you wouldn't care. She can't go about much herself just now, poor thing! I do wish Edward had lived."
"I wish he had, with all my heart!" came the answer; and the tone struck surprise on the dowager's ear—it was so full of pain. "Maude's coming to Hartledon without me was her own doing," he remarked. "I wished her not to come."
"I dare say you did, as her heart was set upon it. The fact of her wishing to do a thing would be the signal for your opposing it; I've gathered that much. My advice to Maude is, to assert her own will, irrespective of yours."
"Don't you think, Lady Kirton, that it may be as well if you let me and my wife alone? We shall get along, no doubt, without interference;withinterference we might not do so."
What with one thing and another, the dowager's temper was inflammable that morning; and when it reached that undesirable state she was apt to say pretty free things, even for her.
"Edward would have made her the better husband."
"But she didn't like him, you know!" he returned, his eyes flashing with the remembrance of an old thought; and the countess-dowager took the sentence literally, and not ironically.
"Not like him. If you had had any eyes as Val Elster, you'd have seen whether she liked him or not. She was dying for him—not for you."
He made no reply. It was only what he had suspected, in a half-doubting sort of way, at the time. A little spaniel, belonging to one of the gardeners, ran up and licked his hand.
"The time that I had of it!" continued the dowager. "But for me, Maude never would have been forced into having you. And sheshouldn'thave had you if I'd thought you were going to turn out like this."
He wheeled round and faced her; his pale face working with emotion, but his voice subdued to calmness. Lady Kirton's last words halted, for his look startled even her in its resolute sternness.
"To what end are you saying this, madam? You know perfectly well that you almost moved heaven and earth to get me:you, I say; I prefer to leave my wife's name out of this: and I fell into the snare. I have not complained of my bargain; so far as I know, Maude has not done so: but if it be otherwise—if she and you repent of the union, I am willing to dissolve it, as far as it can be dissolved, and to institute measures for living apart."
Never, never had she suspected it would come to this. She sat staring at him, her eyes round, her mouth open: scarcely believing the calm resolute man before her could be the once vacillating Val Elster.
"Listen whilst I speak a word of truth," he said, his eyes bent on her with a strange fire that, if it told of undisguised earnestness, told also of inward fever. "I married your daughter, and I am ready and willing to do my duty by her in all honour, as I have done it since the day of the marriage. Whatever my follies may have been as a young man, I am at least incapable of wronging my wife as a married one.Shehas had no cause to complain of want of affection, but—"
"Oh, what a hypocrite!" interrupted the dowager, with a shriek. "And all the time you've left her here neglected, while you were taking your amusement in London! You've been dinner-giving and Richmond-going, and theatre-frequenting, and card-playing, and race-horsing—and I shouldn't wonder but you've been cock-fighting, and a hundred other things as disreputable, and have come down here worn to a skeleton!"
"But if she is discontented, if she does not care for me, as you would seem to intimate," he resumed, passing over the attack without notice; "in short, if Maude would be happier without me, I am quite willing, as I have just said, to relieve her of her distasteful husband."
"Of all the wicked plotters, you must be the worst! My darling unoffending Maude! A divorce for her!"
"We are neither of us eligible for a divorce," he coolly rejoined. "A separation alone is open to us, and that an amicable one. Should it come to it, every possible provision can be made for your daughter's comfort; she shall retain this home; she shall have, if she wishes, a town-house; I will deny her nothing."
Lady Kirton rubbed her face carefully with her handkerchief. Not until this moment had she believed him to be in earnest, and the conviction frightened her.
"Why do you wish to separate from her?" she asked, in a subdued tone.
"I do not wish it. I said I was willing to do so if she wished it. You have been taking pains to convince me that Maude's love was not mine, that she was only forced into the marriage with me. Should this have been the case, I must be distasteful to her still; an encumbrance she may wish to get rid of."
The countess-dowager had overshot her mark, and saw it.
"Oh well! Perhaps I was mistaken about the past," she said, staring at him very hard, and in a sort of defiance. "Maude was always very close. If you said anything about separation now, I dare say it would kill her. My belief is, she does care for you, and a great deal more than you deserve."
"It may be better to ascertain the truth from Maude—"
"You won't say a syllable to her!" cried the dowager, starting up in terror. "She'd never forgive me; she'd turn me out of the house. Hartledon,promiseyou won't say a word to her."
He stood back against the window, never speaking.
"She does love you; but I thought I'd frighten you, for you had no right to send Maude home alone; and it made me very cross, because I saw how she felt it. Separation indeed! What can you be thinking of?"
He was thinking of a great deal, no doubt; and his thoughts were as bitter as they could well be. He did not wish to separate; come what might, he felt his place should be by his wife's side as long as circumstances permitted it.
"Let me give you a word of warning, Lady Kirton. I and my wife will be happy enough together, I daresay, if we are allowed to be; but the style of conversation you have just adopted to me will not conduce to it; it might retaliate on Maude, you see. Do not again attempt it."
"How you have changed!" was her involuntary remark.
"Yes; I am not the yielding boy I was. And now I wish to speak of your son. He seems very ill."
"A troublesome intruding fellow, why can't he keep his ailments to his own barracks?" was the wrathful rejoinder. "I told Maude I wouldn't have him here, and what does she do but write off and tell him to come! I don't like sick folk about me, and never did. What doyouwant?"
The last question was addressed to Hedges, who had come in unsummoned. It was only a letter for his master. Lord Hartledon took it as a welcome interruption, went outside, and sat down on a garden-seat at a distance. How he hated the style of attack just made on him; the style of the dowager altogether! He asked himself in what manner he could avoid this for the future. It was a debasing, lowering occurrence, and he felt sure that it could hardly have taken place in his servants' hall. But he was glad he had said what he did about the separation. It might grieve him to part from his wife, but Mr. Carr had warned him that he ought to do it. Certainly, if she disliked him so very much—if she forced it upon him—why, then, it would be an easier task; but he felt sure she did not dislike him. If she had done so before marriage, she had learnt to like him now; and he believed that the bare mention of parting would shock her; and so—his duty seemed to lie in remaining by her side.
He held the letter in his hand for some minutes before he opened it. The handwriting warned him that it was from Mr. Carr, and he knew that no pleasant news could be in it. In fact, he had placed himself in so unsatisfactory a position as to render anything but bad news next door to an impossibility.
It contained only a few lines—a word of caution Mr. Carr had forgotten to speak when he took leave of Lord Hartledon the previous morning. "Let me advise you not to say anything to those people—Gum, I think the name is—about G.G. It might not be altogether prudent for you to do so. Should you remain any time at Hartledon, I will come down for a few days and question for myself."
"I've done it already," thought Val, as he folded the letter and returned it to his pocket. "As to my staying any time at Hartledon—not if I know it."
Looking up at the sound of footsteps, he saw Hedges approaching. Never free from a certain apprehension when any unexpected interruption occurred—an apprehension that turned his heart sick, and set his pulses beating—he waited, outwardly very calm.
"Floyd has called, my lord, and is asking to see you. He seems rather—rather concerned and put out. I think it's something about—about the death last summer."
Hedges hardly knew how to frame his words, and Lord Hartledon stared at him.
"Floyd can come to me here," he said.
The miller soon made his appearance, carrying a small case half purse, half pocket-book, in his hand, made of Russian leather, with rims of gold. Val knew it in a moment, in spite of its marks of defacement.
"Do you recognize it, my lord?" asked the miller.
"Yes, I do," replied Lord Hartledon. "It belonged to my brother."
"I thought so," returned the miller. "On the very day before that unfortunate race last year, his lordship was talking to me, and had this in his hand. I felt sure it was the same the moment I saw it."
"He had it with him the day of the race," observed Lord Hartledon. "Mr. Carteret said he saw it lying in the boat when they started. We always thought it had been lost in the river. Where did you find it?"
"Well, it's very odd, my lord, but I found it buried."
"Buried!"
"Buried in the ground, not far from the river, alongside the path that leads from where his lordship was found to Hartledon. I was getting up some dandelion roots for my wife this morning early, and dug up this close to one. There's where the knife touched it. My lord," added the miller, "I beg to say that I have not opened it. I wiped it, wrapped it in paper, and said nothing to anybody, but came here with it as soon as I thought you'd be up. That lad of mine, Ripper, said last night you were at Hartledon."
The miller was quite honest; and Lord Hartledon knew that when he said he had not opened it, he had not done so. It still contained some small memoranda in his brother's writing, but no money; and this was noticeable, since it was quite certain to have had money in it on that day.
"Those who buried it might have taken it out," he observed, following the bent of his thoughts.
"But who did bury it; and where did they find it, to allow of their burying it?" questioned the miller. "How did they come by it?—that's the odd thing. I am certain it was not in the skiff, for I searched that over myself."
Lord Hartledon said little. He could not understand it; and the incident, with the slips of paper, was bringing his brother all too palpably before him. One of them had concerned himself, though in what manner he would never know now. It ran as follows: "Not to forget Val." Poor fellow! Poor Lord Hartledon!
"Would your lordship like to come and see the spot where I found it?" asked the miller.
Lord Hartledon said he should, and would go in the course of the day; and Floyd took his departure. Val sat on for a time where he was, and then went in, locked up the damp case with its tarnished rims, and went on to the presence of his wife.
She was dressed now, but had not left her bedroom. It was evident that she meant to be kind and pleasant with him; different from what she had been, for she smiled, and began a little apology for her tardiness, saying she would get up to breakfast in future.
He motioned her back to her seat on the sofa before the open window, and sat down near her. His face was grave; she thought she had never seen it so much so—grave and firm, and his voice was grave too, but had a kindly tone in it. He took both her hands between his as he spoke; not so much, it seemed in affection, as to impress solemnity upon her.
"Maude, I'm going to ask you a question, and I beg you to answer me as truthfully as you could answer Heaven. Have you any wish that we should live apart from each other?"
"I do not understand you," she answered, after a pause, during which a flush of surprise or emotion spread itself gradually over her face.
"Nay, the question is plain. Have you any wish to separate from me?"
"I never thought of such a thing. Separate from you! What can you mean?"
"Your mother has dropped a hint that you have not been happy with me. I could almost understand her to imply that you have a positive dislike to me. She sought to explain her words away, but certainly spoke them. Is it so, Maude? I fancied something of the sort myself in the earlier days of our marriage."
He turned his head sharply at a sudden sound, but it was only the French clock on the mantelpiece striking eleven.
"Because," he resumed, having waited in vain for an answer, "if such should really be your wish, I will accede to it. I desire your comfort, your happiness beyond any earthly thing; and if living apart from me would promote it, I will sacrifice my own feelings, and you shall not hear a murmur. I would sacrifice my life for you."
She burst into tears. "Are you speaking at all for yourself? Do you wish this?" she murmured.
"No."
"Then how can you be so cruel?"
"I should have thought it unjustifiably cruel, but that it has been suggested to me. Tell me the truth, Maude."
Maude was turning sick with apprehension. She had begun to like her husband during the latter part of their sojourn in London; had missed him terribly during this long period of lonely ennui at Hartledon; and his tender kindness to her for the past few fleeting hours of this their meeting had seemed like heaven as compared with the solitary past. Her whole heart was in her words as she answered:
"When we first married I did not care for you; I almost think I did not like you. Everything was new to me, and I felt as one in an unknown sea. But it wore off; and if you only knew how I have thought of you, and wished for you here, you would never have said anything so cruel. You are my husband, and you cannot put me from you. Percival, promise me that you will never hint at this again!"
He bent and kissed her. His course lay plain before him; and if an ugly mountain rose up before his mind's eye, shadowing forth not voluntary but forced separation, he would not look at it in that moment.
"What could mamma mean?" she asked. "I shall ask her."
"Maude, oblige me by saying nothing about it. I have already warned Lady Kirton that it must not be repeated; and I am sure it will not be. I wish you would also oblige me in another matter."
"In anything," she eagerly said, raising her tearful eyes to his. "Ask me anything."
"I intend to take your brother to the warmest seaside place England can boast of, at once; to-day or to-morrow. The sea-air may do me good also. I want that, or something else," he added; his tone assuming a sad weariness as he remembered how futile any "sea-air" would be for a mind diseased. "Won't you go with us, Maude?"
"Oh yes, gladly! I will go with you anywhere."
He left her to proceed to Captain Kirton's room, thinking that he and his wife might have been happy together yet, but for that one awful shadow of the past, which she did not know anything about; and he prayed she never might know.
But after all, it would have been a very moonlight sort of happiness.
The months rolled on, and Lord and Lady Hartledon did not separate. They remained together, and were, so far, happy enough—the moonlight happiness hinted at; and it is as I believe, the best and calmest sort of happiness for married life. Maude's temper was unequal, and he was subject to prolonged hours of sadness. But the time went lightly enough over their heads, for all the world saw, as it goes over the heads of most people.
And Lord Hartledon was a free man still, and stood well with the world. Whatever the mysterious accusation brought against him had been, it produced no noisy effects as yet; in popular phrase, it had come to nothing. As yet; always as yet. Whether he had shot a man, or robbed a bank, or fired a church, the incipient accusation died away. But the fear, let it be of what nature it would, never died away in his mind; and he lived as a man with a sword suspended over his head. Moreover, the sword, in his own imagination, was slipping gradually from its fastenings; his days were restless, his nights sleepless, an inward fever for ever consumed him.
As none knew better than Thomas Carr. There were two witnesses who could bring the facts home to Lord Hartledon; and, so far as was known, only two: the stranger, who had paid him a visit, and the man Gordon, or Gorton. The latter was the more dangerous; and they had not yet been able to trace him. Mr. Carr's friend, Detective Green, had furnished that gentleman with a descriptive bill of Gordon of the mutiny: "a young, slight man, with light eyes and fair hair." This did not answer exactly to the Gorton who had played his part at Calne; but then, in regard to the latter, there remained the suspicion that the red hair was false. Whether it was the same man or whether it was two men—if the phrase may be allowed—neither of them, to use Detective Green's expressive words, turned up. And thus the months had passed on, with nothing special to mark them. Captain Kirton had been conveyed abroad for the winter, and they had good news of him; and the countess-dowager was inflicting a visit upon one of her married daughters in Germany, the baroness with the unpronounceable name.
And the matter had nearly faded from the mind of Lady Hartledon. It would quite have faded, but for certain interviews with Thomas Carr at his chambers, when Hartledon's look of care precluded the idea that they could be visits of mere idleness or pleasure; and for the secret trouble that unmistakably sat on her husband like an incubus. At times he would moan in his sleep as one in pain; but if told of this, had always some laughing answer ready for her—he had dreamed he was fighting a lion or being tossed by a bull.
This was the pleasantest phase of Lady Hartledon's married life. Her health did not allow of her entering into gaiety; and she and her husband passed their time happily together. All her worst qualities seemed to have left her, or to be dormant; she was yielding and gentle; her beauty had never been so great as now that it was subdued; her languor was an attraction, her care to please being genuine; and they were sufficiently happy. They were in their town-house now, not having gone back to Hartledon. A large, handsome house, very different from the hired one they had first occupied.
In January the baby was born; and Maude's eyes glistened with tears of delight because it was a boy: a little heir to the broad lands of Hartledon. She was very well, and it seemed that she could never tire of fondling her child.
But in the first few days succeeding that of the birth a strange fancy took possession of her: she observed, or thought she observed, that her husband did not seem to care for the child. He did not caress it; she once heard him sighing over it; and he never announced it in the newspapers. Other infants, heirs especially, could be made known to the world, but not hers. The omission might never have come to her knowledge, since at first she was not allowed to see newspapers, but for a letter from the countess-dowager. The lady wrote in a high state of wrath from Germany; she had looked every day for ten days in theTimes, and saw no chronicle of the happy event; and she demanded the reason. It afforded a valve for her temper, which had been in an explosive state for some time against Lord Hartledon, that ungracious son-in-law having actually forbidden her his house until Maude's illness should be over; telling her plainly that he would not have his wife worried. Lady Hartledon said nothing for a day or two; she was watching her husband; watching for signs of the fancy which had taken possession of her.
He was in her room one dark afternoon, standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece whilst he talked to her: a room of luxury and comfort it must have been almost a pleasure to be ill in. Lady Hartledon had been allowed to get up, and sit in an easy-chair: she seemed to be growing strong rapidly; and the little red gentleman in the cradle, sleeping quietly, was fifteen days old.
"About his name, Percival; what is it to be?" she asked. "Your own?"
"No, no, not mine," said he, quickly; "I never liked mine. Choose some other, Maude."
"What do you wish it to be?"
"Anything."
The short answer did not please the young mother; neither did the dreamy tone in which it was spoken. "Don't you care what it is?" she asked rather plaintively.
"Not much, for myself. I wish it to be anything you shall choose."
"I thought perhaps you would have liked it named after your brother," she said, very much offended on the baby's account.
"George?"
"George, no. I never knew George; I should not be likely to think of him. Edward."
Lord Hartledon looked at the fire, absently pushing back his hair. "Yes, let it be Edward. It will do as well as anything else."
"Good gracious, Percival, one would think you had been having babies all your life!" she exclaimed resentfully. "'Do as well as anything else!' If he were our tenth son, instead of our first, you could not treat it with more indifference. I have done nothing but deliberate on the name since he was born; and I don't believe you have once given it a thought."
Lord Hartledon turned his face upon her; and when illumined with a smile, as now, it could be as bright as before care came to it. "I don't think we men attach the importance to names in a general way that you do, Maude. I shall like to have it Edward."
"Edward William Algernon—"
"No, no, no," as if the number alarmed him. "Pray don't have a string of names: one's quite enough."
"Oh, very well," she returned, biting her lips. "William was your father's name. Algernon is my eldest brother's: I supposed you might like them. I thought," she added, after a pause, "we might ask Lord Kirton to be its godfather."
"I have decided on the godfathers already. Thomas Carr will be one, and I intend to be the other."
"Thomas Carr! A poor hard-working barrister, that not a soul knows, and of no family or influence whatever, godfather to the future Lord Hartledon!" uttered the offended mother.
"I wish it, Maude. Carr is the most valued friend I have in the world, or ever can have. Oblige me in this."
"Then my brother can be the other."
"No; I myself; and I wish you would be its godmother."
"Well, it's quite reversing the order of things!" she said, tacitly conceding the point.
A silence ensued. The firelight played on the lace curtains of the baby's bed, as it did on Lady Hartledon's face; a thoughtful face just now. Twilight was drawing on, and the fire lighted the room.
"Percival, do you care for the child?"
The tone had a sound of passion in it, breaking upon the silence. Lord Hartledon lifted his bent face and glanced at his wife.
"Do I care for the child, Maude? What a question! I do care for him: more than I allow to appear."
And if her voice had passion in it, his had pain. He crossed the room, and stood looking down on the sleeping baby, touching at length its cheek with his finger. He could have knelt, there and then, and wept over the child, and prayed, oh, how earnestly, that God would take it to Himself, not suffer it to live. Many and many a prayer had ascended from his heart in their earlier married days, that his wife might not bear him children; for he could only entail upon them an inheritance of shame.
"I don't think you have once taken him in your arms, Percival; you never kiss him. It's quite unnatural."
"I give my kisses in the dark," he laughed, as he returned to where she was sitting. And this was in a sense true; for once when he happened to be alone for an instant with the baby, he had clasped it and kissed it in a sort of delirious agony.
"You never had it in theTimes, you know!"
"Never what?"
"Never announced its birth in theTimes. Did you forget it?"
"It must have been very stupid of me," he remarked. "Never mind, Maude; he won't grow the less for the omission. When are you coming downstairs?"
"Mamma is in a rage about it; she says such neglect ought to be punished; and she knows you have done it on purpose."
"She is always in a rage with me, no matter what I do," returned Val, good-humouredly. "She hoped to be here at this time, and sway us all—you and me and the baby; and I stopped it. Ho, ho! young sir!"
The baby had wakened with a cry, and a watchful attendant came gliding in at the sound. Lord Hartledon left the room and went straight down to the Temple to Mr. Carr's chambers. He found him in all the bustle of departure from town. A cab stood at the foot of the stairs, and Mr. Carr's laundress, a queer old body with an inverted black bonnet, was handing the cabman a parcel of books.
"A minute more and you'd have been too late," observed Mr. Carr, as Lord Hartledon met him on the stairs, a coat on his arm.
"I thought you did not start till to-morrow."
"But I found I must go to-day. I can give you three minutes. Is it anything particular?"
Lord Hartledon drew him into his room. "I have come to crave a favour, Carr. It has been on my lips to ask you before, but they would not frame the words. This child of mine: will you be its godfather with myself?"
One moment's hesitation, quite perceptible to the sensitive mind of Lord Hartledon, and then Mr. Carr spoke out bravely and cheerily.
"Of course I will."
"I see you hesitate: but I do not like to ask any one else."
"If I hesitated, it was at the thought of the grave responsibility attaching to the office. I believe I look upon it in a more serious light than most people do, and have never accepted the charge yet. I will be sponsor to this one with all my heart."
Lord Hartledon clasped his hand in reply, and they began to descend the stairs. "Poor Maude was dreaming of making a grand thing of the christening," he said; "she wanted to ask Lord Kirton to come to it. It will take place in about a fortnight."
"Very well; I must run up for it, unless you let me stand by proxy. I wish, Hartledon, you would hear me on another point," added the barrister, halting on the stairs, and dropping his voice to a whisper.
"Well?"
"If you are to go away at all, now's the time. Can't you be seized with an exploring fit, and sail to Africa, or some other place, where your travels would occupy years?"
Lord Hartledon shook his head. "How can I leave Maude to battle alone with the exposure, should it come?"
"It is a great deal less likely to come if you are a few thousand miles away."
"I question it. Should Gorton turn up he is just the one to frighten a defenceless woman, and purchase his own silence. No; my place is beside Maude."
"As you please. I have spoken for the last time. By the way, any letters bearing a certain postmark, that come addressed to me during my absence, Taylor has orders to send to you. Fare you well, Hartledon; I wish I could help you to peace."
Hartledon watched the cab rattle away, and then turned homewards. Peace! There was no peace for him.
Lady Hartledon was not to be thwarted on all points, and she insisted on a ceremonious christening. The countess-dowager would come over for it, and did so; Lord Hartledon could not be discourteous enough to deny this; Lord and Lady Kirton came from Ireland; and for the first time since their marriage they found themselves entertaining guests. Lord Hartledon had made a faint opposition, but Maude had her own way. The countess-dowager was furiously indignant when she heard of the intended sponsors—its father and mother, and that cynical wretch, Thomas Carr! Val played the hospitable host; but there was a shadow on his face that his wife did not fail to see.
It was the evening before the christening, and a very snowy evening too. Val was dressing for dinner, and Maude, herself ready, sat by him, her baby on her knee. The child was attired for the first time in a splendidly-worked robe with looped-up sleeves; and she had brought it in to challenge admiration for its pretty arms, with all the pardonable pride of a young mother.
"Won't you kiss it for once, Val?"
He took the child in his arms; it had its mother's fine dark eyes, and looked straight up from them into his. Lord Hartledon suddenly bent his own face down upon that little one with what seemed like a gesture of agony; and when he raised it his own eyes were wet with tears. Maude felt startled with a sort of terror: love was love; but she did not understand love so painful as this.
She sat down with the baby on her knee, saying nothing; he did not intend her to see the signs of emotion. And this brings us to where we were. Lord Hartledon went on with his toilette, and presently someone knocked at the door.
Two letters: they had come by the afternoon post, very much delayed on account of the snow. He came back to the gaslight, opening one. A full letter, written closely; but he had barely glanced at it when he hastily folded it again, and crammed it into his pocket. If ever a movement expressed something to be concealed, that did. And Lady Hartledon was gazing at him with her questioning eyes.
"Wasn't that letter from Thomas Carr?"
"Yes."
"Is he coming up? Or is Kirton to be proxy?"
"He is—coming, I think," said Val, evidently knowing nothing one way or the other. "He'll be here, I daresay, to-morrow morning."
Opening the other letter as he spoke—a foreign-looking letter this one—he put it up in the same hasty manner, with barely a glance; and then went on slowly with his dressing.
"Why don't you read your letters, Percival?"
"I haven't time. Dinner will be waiting."
She knew that he had plenty of time, and that dinner would not be waiting; she knew quite certainly that there was something in both letters she must not see. Rising from her seat in silence, she went out of the room with her baby; resentment and an unhealthy curiosity doing battle in her heart.
Lord Hartledon slipped the bolt of the door and read the letters at once; the foreign one first, over which he seemed to take an instant's counsel with himself. Before going down he locked them up in a small ebony cabinet which stood against the wall. The room was his own exclusively; his wife had nothing to do with it.
Had they been alone he might have observed her coolness to him; but, with guests to entertain, he neither saw nor suspected it. She sat opposite him at dinner richly dressed, her jewels and smiles alike dazzling: but the smiles were not turned on him.
"Is that chosen sponsor of yours coming up for the christening; lawyer Carr?" tartly inquired the dowager from her seat, bringing her face and her turban, all scarlet together, to bear on Hartledon.
"He comes up by this evening's train; will be in London late to-night, if the snow allows him, and stay with us until Sunday night," replied Val.
"Oh!That'sno doubt the reason why you settled the christening for Saturday: that your friend might have the benefit of Sunday?"
"Just so, madam."
And Lady Hartledon knew, by this, that her husband must have read the letters. "I wonder what he has done with them?" came the mental thought, shadowing forth a dim wish that she could read them too.
In the drawing-room, after dinner, someone proposed a carpet quadrille, but Lord Hartledon seemed averse to it. In his wife's present mood, his opposition was, of course, the signal for her approval, and she began pushing the chairs aside with her own hands. He approached her quietly.
"Maude, do not let them dance to-night."
"Why not?"
"I have a reason. My dear, won't you oblige me in this?"
"Tell me the reason, and perhaps I will; not otherwise."
"I will tell it you another time. Trust me, I have a good one. What is it, Hedges?"
The butler had come up to his master in the unobtrusive manner of a well-trained servant, and was waiting an opportunity to speak. He said a word in Lord Hartledon's ear, and Lady Hartledon saw a shiver of surprise run through her husband. He looked here, looked there, as one perplexed with fear, and finally went out of the room with a calm face, but one that was turning livid.
Lady Hartledon followed in an impulse of curiosity. She looked after him over the balustrades, and saw him turn into the library below. Hedges was standing near the drawing-room door.
"Does any one want Lord Hartledon?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know, my lady. Some gentleman."
She ran lightly down the stairs, pausing at the foot, as if ashamed of her persistent curiosity. The well-lighted hall was before her; the dining-room on one side; the library and a small room communicating on the other. Throwing back her head, as in defiance, she boldly crossed the hall and opened the library door.
Now what Lady Hartledon had really thought was that the visitor was Mr. Carr; her husband was going to steal a quiet half-hour with him; and Hedges was in the plot. She had not lived with Hartledon the best part of a year without learning that Hedges was devoted heart and soul to his master.
She opened the library-door. Her husband's back was towards her; and facing him, his arms raised as if in anger or remonstrance, was the same stranger who had caused some commotion in the other house. She knew him in a moment: there he was, with his staid face, his black clothes, and his white neckcloth, looking so like a clergyman. Lord Hartledon turned his head.
"I am engaged, Maude; you can't come in," he peremptorily said; and closed the door upon her.
She went slowly up the stairs again, not choosing to meet the butler's eyes, past the drawing-rooms, and up to her own. The sight of the stranger, coupled with her husband's signs of emotion, had renewed all her old suspicions, she knew not, she never had known, of what. Jumping to the conclusion that those letters must be in some way connected with the mystery, perhaps an advent of the visit, it set her thinking, and rebellion arose in her heart.
"I wonder if he put them in the ebony cabinet?" she exclaimed. "I have a key that will fit that."
Yes, she had a key to fit it. A few weeks before, Lord Hartledon mislaid his keys; he wanted something out of this cabinet, in which he did not, as a rule, keep anything of consequence, and tried hers. One was found to unlock it, and he jokingly told her she had a key to his treasures. But himself strictly honourable, he could not suspect dishonour in another; and Lord Hartledon supposed it simply impossible that she should attempt to open it of her own accord.
They were of different natures; and they had been reared in different schools. Poor Maude Kirton had learnt to be anything but scrupulous, and really thought it a very slight thing she was about to do, almost justifiable under the circumstances. Almost, if not quite. Nevertheless she would not have liked to be caught at it.
She took her bunch of keys and went into her husband's dressing-room, which opened from their bedroom: but she went on tip-toe, as one who knows she is doing wrong. It took some little time to try the keys, for there were several on the ring, and she did not know the right one: but the lid flew open at last, and disclosed the two letters lying there.
She snatched at one, either that came first, and opened it. It happened to be the one from Mr. Carr, and she began to read it, her heart beating.