"Oh, Regy," said his mother, holding up her reproving finger.
The boy laughed, and came forward rubbing his arm, and ashamed of his tears. Val caught him up and kissed them away, drawing Maude also to his side.
That letter! The dowager was determined to get it, if there was a possibility of doing so. A suspicion that she would not be tolerated much longer in Lady Hartledon's house was upon her, and she knew not where to go. Kirton had married again; and his new wife had fairly turned her out more unceremoniously than the late one did. By hook or by crook, she meant to obtain the guardianship of her granddaughter, because in giving her Maude, Lord Hartledon would have to allow her an income.
She was a woman to stop at nothing; and upon quitting the dining-room she betook herself to the library—a large, magnificent room—the pride of Hartledon. She had come in search of Val's desk; which she found, and proceeded to devise means of opening it. That accomplished, she sat herself down, like a leisurely housebreaker, to examine it, putting on a pair of spectacles, which she kept surreptitiously in a pocket, and would not have worn before any one for the world. She found the letter she was in search of; and she found something else for her pains, which she had not bargained for.
Not just at first. There were many tempting odds and ends of things to dip into. For one thing, she found Val's banking book, and some old cheque-books; they served her for some time. Next she came upon two packets sealed up in white paper, with Val's own seal. On one was written, "Letters of Lady Maude;" on the other, "Letters of my dear Anne." Peering further into the desk, she came upon an obscure inner slide, which had evidently not been opened for years, and she had difficulty in undoing it. A paper was in it, superscribed, "Concerning A.W.;" on opening which she found a letter addressed to Thomas Carr, of the Temple.
Thomas Carr's letters were no more sacred with her than Lord Hartledon's. No woman living was troubled with scruples so little as she. It proved to have been written by a Dr. Mair, in Scotland, and was dated several years back.
But now—did Lord Hartledon really know he had that dangerous letter by him? If so, what could have possessed him to preserve it? Or, did he not rather believe he had returned it to Mr. Carr at the time? The latter, indeed, proved to be the case; and never, to the end of his life, would he, in one sense, forgive his own carelessness.
Who was A.W.? thought the curious old woman, as she drew the light nearer to her, and began the tempting perusal, making the most of the little time left. They could not be at tea yet, and she had told Lady Hartledon she was going to take her nap in her own room. The gratification of rummaging false Val's desk was an ample compensation; and the countess-dowager hugged herself with delight.
But what was this she had come upon—this paper "concerning A. W."? The dowager's mouth fell as she read; and gradually her little eyes opened as if they would start from their sockets, and her face grew white. Have you ever watched the livid pallor of fear struggling to one of these painted faces? She dashed off her spectacles; she got up and wrung her hands; she executed a frantic war-dance; and finally she tore, with the letter, into the drawing-room, where Val and Anne and Thomas Carr were beginning tea and talking quietly.
They rose in consternation as she danced in amongst them, and held out the letter to Lord Hartledon.
He took it from her, gazing in utter bewilderment as he gathered in its contents. Was it a fresh letter, or—his face became whiter than the dowager's. In her reckless passion she avowed what she had done—the letter was secreted in his desk.
"Have you dared to visit my desk?" he gasped—"break my seals? Are you mad?"
"Hark at him!" she cried. "He calls me to account for just lifting the lid of a desk! But what is he? A villain—a thief—a spy—a murderer—and worse than any of them! Ah, ha, my lady!" nodding her false front at Lady Hartledon, who stood as one petrified, "you stare there at me with your open eyes; but you don't know what you are! Askhim! What was Maude—Heaven help her—my poor Maude? What was she? Andyouin the plot; you vile Carr! I'll have you all hanged together!"
Lord Hartledon caught his wife's hand.
"Carr, stay here with her and tell her all. No good concealing anything now she has read this letter. Tell her for me, for she would never listen to me."
He drew his wife into an adjoining room, the one where the portrait of George Elster looked down on its guests. The time for disclosing the story to his wife had been somewhat forestalled. He would have given half his life that it had never reached that other woman, miserable old sinner though she was.
"You are trembling, Anne; you need not do so. It is not against you that I have sinned."
Yes, she was trembling very much. And Val, in his honourable, his refined, shrinking nature, would have given his life's other half not to have had the tale to tell.
It is not a pleasant one. You may skip it if you please, and go on to the last page. Val once said he had been more sinned against than sinning: it may be deemed that in that opinion he was too lenient to himself. Anne, his wife, listened with averted face and incredulous ears.
"You have wanted a solution to my conduct, Anne—to the strange preference I seemed to accord the poor boy who is gone; why I could not punish him; why I was more thankful for the boon of his death than I had been for his life. He was my child, but he was not Lord Elster."
She did not understand.
"He had no right to my name; poor little Maude has no right to it. Do you understand me now?"
Not at all; it was as though he were talking Greek to her.
"Their mother, when they were born, was not my wife."
"Their mother was Lady Maude Kirton," she rejoined, in her bewilderment.
"That is exactly where it was," he answered bitterly. "Lady Maude Kirton, not Lady Hartledon."
She could not comprehend the words; her mind was full of consternation and tumult. Back went her thoughts to the past.
"Oh, Val! I remember papa's saying that a marriage in that unused chapel was only three parts legal!"
"It was legal enough, Anne: legal enough. But when that ceremony took place"—his voice dropped to a miserable whisper, "I had—as they tell me—a wife living."
Slowly she admitted the meaning of the words; and would have started from him with a faint cry, but that he held her to him.
"Listen to the whole, Anne, before you judge me. What has been your promise to me, over and over again?—that, if I would tell you my sorrow,youwould never shrink from me, whatever it might be."
She remembered it, and stood still; terribly rebellious, clasping her fingers to pain, one within the other.
"In that respect, at any rate, I did not willingly sin. When I married Maude I had no suspicion that I was not free as air; free to marry her, or any other woman in the world."
"You speak in enigmas," she said faintly.
"Sit down, Anne, whilst I give you the substance of the tale. Not its details until I am more myself, and that voice"—pointing to the next room—"is not sounding in my ears. You shall hear all later; at least, as much as I know myself; I have never quite believed in it, and it has been to me throughout as a horrible dream."
Indeed Mr. Carr seemed to be having no inconsiderable amount of trouble, to judge by the explosions of wrath on the part of the dowager.
She sat down as he told her, her face turned from him, rebellious at having to listen, but curious yet. Lord Hartledon stood by the mantelpiece and shaded his eyes with his hand.
"Send your thoughts into the past, Anne; you may remember that an accident happened to me in Scotland. It was before you and I were engaged, or it would not have happened. Or, let me say, it might not; for young men are reckless, and I was no better than others. Heaven have mercy on their follies!"
"The accident might not have happened?"
"I do not speak of the accident. I mean what followed. When out shooting I nearly blew off my arm. I was carried to the nearest medical man's, a Dr. Mair's, and remained there; for it was not thought safe to move me; they feared inflammation, and they feared locked-jaw. My father was written to, and came; and when he left after the danger was over he made arrangements with Dr. Mair to keep me on, for he was a skilful man, and wished to perfect the cure. I thought the prolonged stay in the strange, quiet house worse than all the rest. That feeling wore off; we grow reconciled to most conditions; and things became more tolerable as I grew better and joined the household. There was a wild, clever, random young man staying there, the doctor's assistant—George Gordon; and there was also a young girl, Agnes Waterlow. I used to wonder what this Agnes did there, and one day asked the old housekeeper; she said the young lady was there partly that the doctor might watch her health, partly because she was a relative of his late wife's, and had no home."
He paused, as if in thought, but soon continued.
"We grew very intimate; I, Gordon, and Miss Waterlow. Neither of them was the person I should have chosen for an intimacy; but there was, in a sense, no help for it, living together. Agnes was a wild, free, rather coarse-natured girl, and Gordon drank. That she fell in love with me there's no doubt—and I grew to like her quite well enough to talk nonsense to her. Whether any plot was laid between her and Gordon to entrap me, or whether what happened arose in the recklessness of the moment, I cannot decide to this hour. It was on my twenty-first birthday; I was almost well again; we had what the doctor called a dinner, Gordon a jollification, and Agnes a supper. It was late when we sat down to it, eight o'clock; and there was a good deal of feasting and plenty of wine. The doctor was called out afterwards to a patient several miles distant, and George Gordon made some punch; which rendered none of our heads the steadier. At least I can answer for mine: I was weak with the long illness, and not much of a drinker at any time. There was a great deal of nonsense going on, and Gordon pretended to marry me to Agnes. He said or read (I can't tell which, and never knew then) some words mockingly out of the prayer-book, and said we were man and wife. Whilst we were all laughing at the joke, the doctor's old housekeeper came in, to see what the noise was about, and I, by way of keeping it up, took Agnes by the hand, and introduced her as Mrs. Elster. I did not understand the woman's look of astonishment then; unfortunately, I have understood it too well since."
Anne was growing painfully interested.
"Well, after that she threw herself upon me in a manner that—that was extraordinary to me, not having the key to it; and I—lost my head. Don't frown, Anne; ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have lost theirs; and you'll say so if ever I give you the details. Of course blame attached to me; to me, and not to her. Though at the time I mentally gave her, I assure you, her full share, somewhat after the manner of the Pharisee condemning the publican. That also has come home to me: she believed herself to be legally my wife; I never gave a thought to that evening's farce, and should have supposed its bearing any meaning a simple impossibility.
"A short time, and letters summoned me home; my mother was dangerously ill. I remember Agnes asked me to take her with me, and I laughed at her. I arranged to write to her, and promised to go back shortly—which, to tell you the truth, I never meant to do. Having been mistaking her, mistaking her still, I really thought her worthy of very little consideration. Before I had been at home a fortnight I received a letter from Dr. Mair, telling me that Agnes was showing symptoms of insanity, and asking what provision I purposed making for her. My sin was finding me out; I wondered howhehad found it out; I did not ask, and did not know for years. I wrote back saying I would willingly take all expenses upon myself; and inquired what sum would be required by the asylum—to which he said she must be sent. He mentioned two hundred a-year, and from that time I paid it regularly."
"And was she really insane?" interrupted Lady Hartledon.
"Yes; she had been so once or twice before—and this was what the housekeeper had meant by saying she was with the doctor that her health might be watched. It appeared that when these symptoms came on, after I left, Gordon took upon himself to disclose to the doctor that Agnes was married to me, telling the circumstances as they had occurred. Dr. Mair got frightened: it was no light matter for the son of an English peer to have been deluded into marriage with an obscure and insane girl; and the quarrel that took place between him and Gordon on the occasion resulted in the latter's leaving. I have never understood Gordon's conduct in the matter: very disagreeable thoughts in regard to it come over me sometimes."
"What thoughts?"
"Oh, never mind; they can never be set at rest now. Let me make short work of this story. I heard no more and thought no more; and the years went on, and then came my marriage with Maude. We went to Paris—youcannot have forgotten any of the details of that period, Anne; and after our return to London I was surprised by a visit from Dr. Mair. That evening, that visit and its details stamped themselves on my memory for ever in characters of living fire."
He paused for a moment, and something like a shiver seized him. Anne said nothing.
"Maude had gone with some friends to a fête at Chiswick, and Thomas Carr was dining with me. Hedges came in and said a gentleman wanted to see me—wouldsee me, and would not be denied. I went to him, and found it was Dr. Mair. In that interview I learnt that by the laws of Scotland Miss Waterlow was my wife."
"And the suspicion that she was so had never occurred to you before?"
"Anne! Should I have been capable of marrying Maude, or any one else, if it had? On my solemn word of honour, before Heaven"—he raised his right hand as if to give effect to his words—"such a thought had never crossed my brain. The evening that the nonsense took place I only regarded it as a jest, a pastime—what you will: had any one told me it was a marriage I should have laughed at them. I knew nothing then of the laws of Scotland, and should have thought it simply impossible that that minute's folly, and my calling her, to keep up the joke, Mrs. Elster, could have constituted a marriage. I think they all played a deep part, even Agnes. Not a soul had so much as hinted at the word 'marriage' to me after that evening; neither Gordon, nor she, nor Dr. Mair in his subsequent correspondence; and in that he always called her 'Agnes.' However—he then told me that she was certainly my legal wife, and that Lady Maude was not.
"At first," continued Val, "I did not believe it; but Dr. Mair persisted he was right, and the horror of the situation grew upon me. I told all to Carr, and took him up to Dr. Mair. They discussed Scottish law and consulted law-books; and the truth, so far, became apparent. Dr. Mair was sorry for me; he saw I had not erred knowingly in marrying Maude. As to myself, I was helpless, prostrated. I asked the doctor, if it were really true, why the fact had been kept from me: he replied that he supposed I knew it, and that delicacy alone had caused him to abstain from alluding to it in his letters. He had been very angry when Gordon told him, he said; grew half frightened as to consequences; feared he should get into trouble for allowing me to be so entrapped in his house; and he and Gordon parted at once. And then Dr. Mair asked a question which I could not very well answer, why, if I did not know she was my wife, I had paid so large a sum for Agnes. He had been burying the affair in silence, as he had assumed I was doing; and it was only the announcement of my marriage with Maude in the newspapers that aroused him. He had thought I was acting this bad part deliberately; and he went off at once to Hartledon in anger; found I had gone abroad; and now came to me on my return, still in anger, saying at first that he should proceed against me, and obtain justice for Agnes. When he found how utterly ignorant of wrong I had been, his tone changed; he was truly grieved and concerned for me. Nothing was decided: except that Dr. Mair, in his compassion towards Lady Maude, promised not to be the first to take legal steps. It seemed that there was only him to fear: George Gordon was reported to have gone to Australia; the old housekeeper was dead; Agnes was deranged. Dr. Mair left, and Carr and I sat on till midnight. Carr took what I thought a harsh view of the matter; he urged me to separate from Maude—"
"I think you should have done so for her sake," came the gentle interruption.
"For her sake! the words Carr used. But, Anne, surely there were two sides to the question. If I disclosed the facts, and put her away from me, what was she? Besides, the law might be against me—Scotland's iniquitous law; but in Heaven's sightMaudewas my wife, not the other. So I temporized, hoping that time might bring about a relief, for Dr. Mair told me that Miss Waterlow's health was failing. However, she lived on, and—"
Lady Hartledon started up, her face blanching.
"Is she not dead now? Was she living when you married me? AmIyour wife?"
He could hardly help smiling. His calm touch reassured her.
"Do you think you need ask, Anne? The next year Dr. Mair called upon me again—it was the evening before the boy was christened; he had come to London on business of his own. To my dismay, he told me that a change for the better was appearing in Miss Waterlow's mental condition; and he thought it likely she might be restored to health. Of course, it increased the perplexities and my horror, had that been needed; but the hope or fear, or what you like to call it, was not borne out. Three years later, the doctor came to me for the third and final time, to bring me the news that Agnes was dead."
As the relief had been to him then, so did it almost seem now to Anne. A sigh of infinite pain broke from her. She had not seen where all this was tending.
"Imagine, if you can, what it was for me all those years with the knowledge daily and nightly upon me that the disgraceful truth might at any moment come out to Maude—to her children, to the world! Living in the dread of arrest myself, should the man Gordon show himself on the scene! And now you see what it is that has marred my peace, and broken the happiness of our married life. How could I bear to cross those two deeply-injured children, who were ever rising up in judgment against me? How take our children's part against them, little unconscious things? It seemed that I had always, daily, hourly, some wrong to make up to them. The poor boy was heir to Hartledon in the eyes of the world; but, Anne, your boy was the true heir."
"Why did you not tell me?—all this time!"
"I could not. I dared not. You might not have liked to put Reginald out of his rights."
"Oh, Percival; how can you so misjudge me?" she asked, in tones of pain. "I would have guarded the secret as jealously as you. I must still do it for Maude."
"Poor Maude!" he sighed. "Her mother forgave me before she died—"
"She knew it, then?"
"Yes. She learned—"
Sounds of drumming on the door, and the countess-dowager's voice, stopped Lord Hartledon.
"I had better face her," he said, as he unlocked it. "She will arouse the household."
Wild, intemperate, she met him with a volley of abuse that startled Lady Hartledon. He got her to a sofa, and gently held her down there.
"It's what I've been obliged to do all along," said Thomas Carr; "I don't believe she has heard ten words of my explanation."
"Pray be calm, Lady Kirton," said Hartledon, soothingly; "be calm, as you value your daughter's memory. We shall have the servants at the doors."
"I won't be calm; I will know the worst."
"I wish you to know it; but not others."
"Was Maude your wife?"
"No," he answered, in low tones. "Not—"
"And you are not ashamed to confess it?" she interrupted, not allowing him to continue. But she was a little calmer in manner; and Val stood upright before her with folded arms.
"I am ashamed and grieved to confess it; but I did not knowingly inflict the injury. In Scotland—"
"Don't repeat the shameful tale," she cried; "I have heard from your confederate, Carr, as much as I want to hear. What do you deserve for your treachery to Maude?"
"All I have reaped—and more. But it was not intentional treachery; and Maude forgave me before she died."
"She knew it! You told her? Oh, you cruel monster!"
"I did not tell her. She did as you have just done—interfered in what did not concern her, in direct disobedience to my desire; and she found it out for herself, as you, ma'am, have found it out."
"When?"
"The winter before her death."
"Then the knowledge killed her!"
"No. Something else killed her, as you know. It preyed upon her spirits."
"Lord Hartledon, I can have you up for fraud and forgery, and I'll do it. It will be the consideration of Maude's fame against your punishment, and I'll make a sacrifice to revenge, and prosecute you."
"There is no fraud where an offence is committed unwittingly," returned Lord Hartledon; "and forgery is certainly not amongst my catalogue of sins."
"You are liable for both," suddenly retorted the dowager; "you have stuck up 'Maude, Countess of Hartledon,' on her monument in the church; and what's that but fraud and forgery?"
"It is neither. If Maude did not live Countess of Hartledon, she at least so went to her grave. We were remarried, privately, before she died. Mr. Carr can tell you so."
"It's false!" raved the dowager.
"I arranged it, ma'am," interposed Mr. Carr. "Lord Hartledon and your daughter confided the management to me, and the ceremony was performed in secrecy in London"
The dowager looked from one to the other, as if she were bewildered.
"Married her again! why, that was making bad worse. Two false marriages! Did you do it to impose upon her?"
"I see you do not understand," said Lord Hartledon. "The—my—the person in Scotland was dead then. She was dead, I am thankful to say, before Maude knew anything of the affair."
Up started the dowager. "Then is the woman dead now? was she dead when you marriedher?" laying her hand upon Lady Hartledon's arm. "Are her children different from Maude's?"
"They are. It could not be otherwise."
"Her boy is really Lord Elster?"
She flung Lady Hartledon's arm from her. Her voice rose to a shriek.
"Maude is not Lady Maude?"
Val shook his head sadly.
"And your children are lords and ladies and honourables," darting a look of consternation at Anne, "whilst my daughter's—"
"Peace, Lady Kirton!" sternly interrupted Val. "Let the child, Maude, be Lady Maude still to the world; let your daughter's memory be held sacred. The facts need never come out: I do not fear now that they ever will. I and my wife and Thomas Carr, will guard the secret safely: take you care to do so."
"I wish you had been hung before you married Maude!" responded the aggrieved dowager.
"I wish I had," said he.
"Ugh!" she grunted wrathfully, the ready assent not pleasing her.
"With my poor boy's death the chief difficulty has passed away. How things would have turned out, or what would have been done, had he lived, it has well-nigh worn away my brain to dwell upon. Carr knows that it has nearly killed me: my wife knows it."
"Yes, you could tell her things, and keep the diabolical secret from poor Maude and from me," she returned, rather inconsistently. "I don't doubt you and your wife have exulted enough over it."
"I never knew it until to-night," said Anne, gently turning to the dowager. "It has grieved me deeply. I shall never cease to feel for your daughter's wrongs; and it will only make me more tender and loving to her child. The world will never know that she is not Lady Maude."
"And the other name—Elster—because you know she has no right to it," was the spiteful retort. "I wish to my heart you had been drowned in your brother's place, Lord Hartledon; I wished it at the time."
"I know you did."
"You could not then have made fools of me and my dear daughter; and the darling little cherub in the churchyard would have been the real heir. There'd have been a good riddance of you."
"It might have been better for me in the long run," said he, quietly, passing over the inconsistencies of her speech. "Little peace or happiness have I had in living. Do not let us recriminate, Lady Kirton, or on some scores I might reproach you. Maude loved my brother, and you knew it; I loved Miss Ashton, and you knew that; yet from the very hour the breath was out of my brother's body you laid your plans and began your schemes upon me. I was weak as water in your hands, and fell into the snare. The marriage was your work entirely; and in the fruits it has brought forth there might arise a nice question, Lady Kirton, which of us is most to blame: I, who erred unwittingly, or you who—"
"Will you have done?" she cried.
"I have nearly done. I only wish you to remember that others may have been wrong, as well as myself. Dr. Ashton warned us that night that the marriage might not bring a blessing. Anne, it was a cruel wrong upon you," he added, impulsively turning to her; "you felt it bitterly, I shamefully; but, my dear wife, you have lived to see that it was in reality a mercy in disguise."
The countess-dowager, not finding words strong enough to express her feelings at this, made a grimace at him.
"Let us be friends, Lady Kirton! Let us join together silently in guarding Maude's good name, and in burying the past. In time perhaps even I may live it down. Not a human being knows of it except we who are here and Dr. Mair, who will for his own sake guard the secret. Maude was my wife always in the eyes of the world; and Maude certainly died so: all peace and respect to her memory! As for my share, retribution has held its heavy hand upon me; it is upon me still, Heaven knows. It was for Maude I suffered; for Maude I felt; and if my life could have repaired the wrong upon her, I would willingly have sacrificed it. Let us be friends: it may be to the interest of both."
He held out his hand, and the dowager did not repulse it. She had caught the word "interest."
"Nowyou might allow me Maude and that income!"
"I think I had better allow you the income without Maude."
"Eh? what?" cried the dowager, briskly. "Do you mean it?"
"Indeed I do. I have been thinking for some little time that you would be more comfortable in a home of your own, and I am willing to help you to one. I'll pay the rent of a nice little place in Ireland, and give you six hundred a-year, paid quarterly, and—yes—make you a yearly present of ten dozen of port wine."
Ah, the crafty man! The last item had a golden sound in it.
"Honour bright, Hartledon?"
"Honour bright! You shall never want for anything as long as you live. But you must not"—he seemed to search for his words—"you must undertake not to come here, upsetting and indulging the children."
"I'll undertake it. Good vintage, mind."
"The same that you have here."
The countess-dowager beamed. In the midst of her happiness—and it was what she had not felt for many a long day, for really the poor old creature had been put about sadly—she bethought herself of propriety. Melting into tears, she presently bewailed her exhaustion, and said she should like some tea: perhaps good Mr. Carr would bring her a teaspoonful of brandy to put into it.
They brought her hot tea, and Mr. Carr put the brandy into it, and Anne took it to her on the sofa, and administered it, her own tears overflowing. She was thinking what an awful blow this would have been to her own mother.
"Little Maude shall be very dear to me always, Val," she whispered. "This knowledge will make me doubly tender with her."
He laid his hand fondly upon her, giving her one of his sweet sad smiles in answer. She could at length understand what feelings, in regard to the children, had actuated him. But from henceforth he would be just to all alike; and Maude would receive her share of correction for her own good.
"I always said you did not give me back the letter," observed Mr. Carr, when they were alone together later, and Val sat tearing up the letter into innumerable bits.
"And I said I did, simply because I could not find it. You were right, Carr, as you always are."
"Not always. But I am sorry it came to light in this way."
"Sorry! it is the greatest boon that could have fallen on me. The secret is, so to say, off my mind now, and I can breathe as I have not breathed for years. If ever a heartfelt thanksgiving went up to Heaven one from me will ascend to-night. And the dowager does not feel the past a bit. She cared no more for Maude than for any one else. She can't care for any one. Don't think me harsh, Carr, in saying so."
"I am sure she does not feel it," emphatically assented Mr. Carr. "Had she felt it she would have been less noisy. Thank heaven for your sake, Hartledon, that the miserable past is over."
"And over more happily than I deserved."
A silence ensued, and Lord Hartledon flung the bits of paper carefully into the fire. Presently he looked up, a strange earnestness in his face.
"It is the custom of some of our cottagers here to hang up embossed cards at the foot of their bed, with texts of Scripture written on them. There is one verse I should like to hang before every son of mine, though I had ten of them, that it might meet their eyes last ere the evening's sleeping, in the morning's first awakening. The ninth verse of the eleventh chapter of Ecclesiastes."
"I don't remember," observed Thomas Carr, after a pause of thought.
"'Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth: and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.'"
THE END