ON THE THRESHOLD, ... STOOD MR. DUNBOROUGH.
That brought to a pitch the horror without the room, where lights shone on frightened faces and huddled forms. In the height of it the landlord and Sir George appeared. The woman's screams were so violent that it was rather from the attitude of the group about the door than from anything they could hear that the two took in the position. The instant they did so Sir George signed to the servants to stand aside, and drew back to hurl himself against the door. A cry that the poker was come, and that with this they could burst the lock with ease, stayed him just in time--and fortunately; for as they went to adjust the point of the tool between the lock and the jamb the nearest man cried 'Hush!' and raised his hand, the door creaked, and in a moment opened inwards. On the threshold, supporting himself by the door, stood Mr. Dunborough, his face damp and pale, his eyes furtive and full of a strange horror. He looked at Sir George.
'He's got it!' he muttered in a hoarse whisper. 'You had better--get a surgeon. You'll bear me out,' he continued, looking round eagerly, 'he began it. He flung it in my face. By God--it may go near to hanging me!'
Sir George and the landlord pushed by him and went in. The room was lighted by one candle, burning smokily on the high mantelshelf; the other lay overturned and extinguished in the folds of a tablecloth which had been dragged to the floor. On a wooden chair beside the bare table sat Mr. Pomeroy, huddled chin to breast, his left hand pressed to his side, his right still resting on the hilt of his small-sword. His face was the colour of chalk, and a little froth stood on his lips; but his eyes, turned slightly upwards, still followed his rival with a grim fixed stare. Sir George marked the crimson stain on his lips, and raising his hand for silence--for the servants were beginning to crowd in with exclamations of horror--knelt down beside the chair, ready to support him in case of need. "They are fetching a surgeon," he said. "He will be here in a minute."
Mr. Pomeroy's eyes left the door, through which Dunborough had disappeared, and for a few seconds they dwelt unwinking on Sir George: but for a while he said nothing. At length, "Too late," he whispered. "It was my boots--I slipped, or I'd have gone through him. I'm done. Pay Tamplin--five pounds I owe him."
Soane saw that it was only a matter of minutes, and he signed to the landlord, who was beginning to lament, to be silent.
"If you can tell me where the girl is--in two words," he said gently, "will you try to do so?"
The dying man's eyes roved over the ring of faces. "I don't know," he whispered, so faintly that Soane had to bring his ear very near his lips. "The parson--was to have got her to Tamplin's--for me. He put her in the wrong carriage. He's paid. And--I'm paid."
With the last word the small-sword fell clinking to the floor. The dying man drew himself up, and seemed to press his hand more and more tightly to his side. For a brief second a look of horror--as if the consciousness of his position dawned on his brain--awoke in his eyes. Then he beat it down. "Tamplin's staunch," he muttered. "I must stand by Tamplin. I owe--pay him five pounds for--"
A gush of blood stopped his utterance. He gasped and with a groan but no articulate word fell forward in Soane's arms. Bully Pomeroy had lost his last stake!
Not this time the spare thousands the old squire, good saving man, had left on bond and mortgage; not this time the copious thousands he had raised himself for spendthrift uses: nor the old oaks his great-grand-sire had planted to celebrate His Majesty's glorious Restoration: nor the Lelys and Knellers that great-grand-sire's son, shrewd old connoisseur, commissioned: not this time the few hundreds hardly squeezed of late from charge and jointure, or wrung from the unwilling hands of friends--but life; life, and who shall say what besides life!
Mr. Thomasson was mistaken in supposing that it was the jerk, caused by the horses' start, which drew from Julia the scream he heard as the carriage bounded forward and whirled into the night. The girl, indeed, was in no mood to be lightly scared; she had gone through too much. But as, believing herself alone, she sank back on the seat--at the moment that the horses plunged forward--her hand, extended to save herself, touched another hand: and the sudden contact in the dark, conveying to her the certainty that she had a companion, with all the possibilities the fact conjured up, more than excused an involuntary cry.
The answer, as she recoiled, expecting the worst, was a sound between a sigh and a grunt; followed by silence. The coachman had got the horses in hand again, and was driving slowly; perhaps he expected to be stopped. She sat as far into her corner as she could, listening and staring, enraged rather than frightened. The lamps shed no light into the interior of the carriage, she had to trust entirely to her ears; and, gradually, while she sat shuddering, awaiting she knew not what, there stole on her senses, mingling with the roll of the wheels, a sound the least expected in the world--a snore!
Irritated, puzzled, she stretched out a hand and touched a sleeve, a man's sleeve; and at that, remembering how she had sat and wasted fears on Mr. Thomasson before she knew who he was, she gave herself entirely to anger. 'Who is it?' she cried sharply. 'What are you doing here?'
The snoring ceased, the man turned himself in his corner. 'Are we there?' he murmured drowsily; and, before she could answer, was asleep again.
The absurdity of the position pricked her. Was she always to be travelling in dark carriages beside men who mocked her? In her impatience she shook the man violently. 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' she cried again.
The unseen roused himself. 'Eh?' he exclaimed. 'Who--who spoke? I--oh, dear, dear, I must have been dreaming. I thought I heard--'
'Mr. Fishwick!' she cried; her voice breaking between tears and laughter. 'Mr. Fishwick!' And she stretched out her hands, and found his, and shook and held them in her joy.
The lawyer heard and felt; but, newly roused from sleep, unable to see her, unable to understand how she came to be by his side in the post-chaise, he shrank from her. He was dumbfounded. His mind ran on ghosts and voices; and he was not to be satisfied until he had stopped the carriage, and with trembling fingers brought a lamp, that he might see her with his eyes. That done, the little attorney fairly wept for joy.
'That I should be the one to find you!' he cried. 'That I should be the one to bring you back! Even now I can hardly believe that you are here! Where have you been, child? Lord bless us, we have seen strange things!'
'It was Mr. Dunborough!' she cried with indignation.
'I know, I know,' he said. 'He is behind with Sir George Soane. Sir George and I followed you. We met him, and Sir George compelled him to accompany us.'
'Compelled him?' she said.
'Ay, with a pistol to his head,' the lawyer answered; and chuckled and leapt in his seat--for he had re-entered the carriage--at the remembrance. 'Oh, Lord, I declare I have lived a year in the last two days. And to think that I should be the one to bring you back!' he repeated. 'To bring you back! But there, what happened to you? I know that they set you down in the road. We learned that at Bristol this afternoon from the villains who carried you off.'
She told him how they had found. Mr. Pomeroy's house, and taken shelter there, and--
'You have been there until now?' he said in amazement. 'At a gentleman's house? But did you not think, child, that we should be anxious? Were there no horses? No servants? Didn't you think of sending word to Marlborough?'
'He was a villain,' she answered, shuddering. Brave as she was, Mr. Pomeroy had succeeded in frightening her. 'He would not let me go. And if Mr. Thomasson had not stolen the key of the room and released me, and brought me to the gate to-night, and put me in with you--'
'But how did he know that I was passing?' Mr. Fishwick cried, thrusting back his wig and rubbing his head in perplexity. He could not yet believe that it was chance and only chance had brought them together.
And she was equally ignorant. 'I don't know,' she said. 'He only told me--that he would have a carriage waiting at the gate.'
'And why did he not come with you?'
'He said--I think he said he was under obligations to Mr. Pomeroy.'
'Pomeroy? Pomeroy?' the lawyer repeated slowly. 'But sure, my dear, if he was a villain, still, having the clergyman with you you should have been safe. This Mr. Pomeroy was not in the same case as Mr. Dunborough. He could not have been deep in love after knowing you a dozen hours.'
'I think,' she said, but mechanically, as if her mind ran on something else, 'that he knew who I was, and wished to make me marry him.'
'Who you were!' Mr. Fishwick repeated; and--and he groaned.
The sudden check was strange, and Julia should have remarked it. But she did not; and after a short silence, 'How could he know?' Mr. Fishwick asked faintly.
'I don't know,' she answered, in the same absent manner. Then with an effort which was apparent in her tone, 'Lord Almeric Doyley was there,' she said. 'He was there too.'
'Ah!' the lawyer replied, accepting the fact with remarkable apathy. Perhaps his thoughts also were far away. 'He was there, was he?'
'Yes,' she said. 'He was there, and he--' then, in a changed tone, 'Did you say that Sir George was behind us?'
'He should be,' he answered; and, occupied as she was with her own trouble, she was struck with the gloom of the attorney's tone. 'We settled,' he continued, 'as soon as we learned where the men had left you, that I should start for Calne and make inquiries there, and they should start an hour later for Chippenham and do the same there. Which reminds me that we should be nearing Calne. You would like to rest there?'
'I would rather go forward to Marlborough,' she answered feverishly, 'if you could send to Chippenham to tell them I am safe? I would rather go back at once, and quietly.'
'To be sure,' he said, patting her hand. 'To be sure, to be sure,' he repeated, his voice shaking as if he wrestled with some emotion. 'You'll he glad to be with--with your mother.'
Julia wondered a little at his tone, but in the main he had described her feelings. She had gone through so many things that, courageous as she was, she longed for rest and a little time to think. She assented in silence therefore, and, wonderful to relate, he fell silent too, and remained so until they reached Calne. There the inn was roused; a messenger was despatched to Chippenham; and while a relay of horses was prepared he made her enter the house and eat and drink. Had he stayed at that, and preserved when he re-entered the carriage the discreet silence he had maintained before, it is probable that she would have fallen asleep in sheer weariness, and deferred to the calmer hours of the morning the problem that occupied her. But as they settled themselves in their corners, and the carriage rolled out of the town, the attorney muttered that he did not doubt Sir George would be at Marlborough to breakfast. This set the girl's mind running. She moved restlessly, and presently, 'When did you hear what had happened to me?' she asked.
'A few minutes after you were carried off,' he answered; 'but until Sir George appeared, a quarter of an hour later, nothing was done.'
'And he started in pursuit?' To hear it gave her a delicious thrill between pain and pleasure.
'Well, at first, to confess the truth,' Mr. Fishwick answered humbly, 'I thought it was his doing, and--'
'You did?' she cried in surprise.
'Yes, I did; even I did. And until we met Mr. Dunborough, and Sir George got the truth from him--I had no certainty. More shame to me!'
She bit her lips to keep back the confession that rose to them, and for a little while was silent. Then, to his astonishment, 'Will he ever forgive me?' she cried, her voice tremulous. 'How shall I tell him? I was mad--I must have been mad.'
'My dear child,' the attorney answered in alarm, 'compose yourself. What is it? What is the matter?'
'I, too thought it was he! I, even I. I thought that he wanted to rid himself of me,' she cried, pouring forth her confession in shame and abasement. 'There! I can hardly bear to tell you in the dark, and how shall I tell him in the light?'
'Tut-tut!' Mr. Fishwick answered. 'What need to tell any one? Thoughts are free.'
'Oh, but'--she laughed hysterically--'I was not free, and I--what do you think I did?' She was growing more and more excited.
'Tut-tut!' the lawyer said. 'What matter?'
'I promised--to marry some one else.'
'Good Lord!' he said. The words were forced from him.
'Some one else!' she repeated. 'I was asked to be my lady, and it tempted me! Think! It tempted me,' she continued with a second laugh, bitterly contemptuous. 'Oh, what a worm--what a thing I am! It tempted me. To be my lady, and to have my jewels, and to go to Ranelagh and the masquerades! To have my box at the King's House and my frolic in the pit! And my woman as ugly as I liked--if he might have my lips! Think of it, think of it! That anyone should be so low! Or no, no, no!' she cried in a different tone. 'Don't believe me! I am not that! I am not so vile! But I thought he had tricked me, I thought he had cheated me, I thought that this was his work, and I was mad! I think I was mad!'
'Dear, dear,' Mr. Fishwick said rubbing his head. His tone was sympathetic; yet, strange to relate, there was no real smack of sorrow in it. Nay, an acute ear might have caught a note of relief, of hope, almost of eagerness. 'Dear, dear, to be sure!' he continued; 'I suppose--it was Lord Almeric Doyley, the nobleman I saw at Oxford?'
'Yes!'
'And you don't know what to do, child?'
'To do?' she exclaimed.
'Which--I mean which you shall accept. Really,' Mr. Fishwick continued, his brain succumbing to a kind of vertigo as he caught himself balancing the pretensions of Sir George and Lord Almeric, 'it is a very remarkable position for any young lady to enjoy, however born. Such a choice--'
'Choice!' she cried fiercely, out of the darkness. 'There is no choice. Don't you understand? I told him No, no, no, a thousand times No!'
Mr. Fishwick sighed. 'But I understood you to say,' he answered meekly, 'that you did not know what to do.'
'How to tell Sir George! How to tell him.'
Mr. Fishwick was silent a moment. Then he said earnestly, 'I would not tell him. Take my advice, child. No harm has been done. You said No to the other.'
'I said Yes,' she retorted.
'But I thought--'
'And then I said No,' she cried, between tears and foolish laughter. 'Cannot you understand?'
Mr. Fishwick could not; but, 'Anyway, do not tell him,' he said. 'There is no need, and before marriage men think much of that at which they laugh afterwards.'
'And much of a woman of whom they think nothing afterwards,' she answered.
'Yet do not tell him,' he pleaded. From the sound of his voice she knew that he was leaning forward. 'Or at least wait. Take the advice of one older than you, who knows the world, and wait.'
'And talk to him, listen to him, smile on his suit with a lie in my heart? Never?' she cried. Then with a new strange pride, a faint touch of stateliness in her tone, 'You forget who I am, Mr. Fishwick,' she said. 'I am as much a Soane as he is, and it becomes me to--to remember that. Believe me, I would far rather resign all hope of entering his house, though I love him, than enter it with a secret in my heart.'
Mr. Fishwick groaned. He told himself that this would be the last straw. This would give Sir George the handle he needed. She would never enter that house.
'I have not been true to him,' she said. 'But I will be true now.'
'The truth is--is very costly,' Mr. Fishwick murmured almost under his breath. 'I don't know that poor people can always afford it, child.'
'For shame!' she cried hotly. 'For shame! But there,' she continued, 'I know you do not mean it. I know that what you bid me do you would not do yourself. Would you have sold my cause, would you have hidden the truth for thousands? If Sir George had come to you to bribe you, would you have taken anything? Any sum, however large? I know you would not. My life on it, you would not. You are an honest man,' she cried warmly.
The honest man was silent awhile. Presently he looked out of the carriage. The moon had risen over Savernake; by its light he saw that they were passing Manton village. In the vale on the right the tower of Preshute Church, lifting its head from a dark bower of trees, spoke a solemn language, seconding hers. 'God bless you!' he said in a low voice. 'God bless you.'
A minute later the horses swerved to the right, and half a dozen lights keeping vigil in the Castle Inn gleamed out along the dark front. The post-chaise rolled across the open, and drew up before the door. Julia's strange journey was over. Its stages, sombre in the retrospect, rose before her as she stepped from the carriage: yet, had she known all, the memories at which she shuddered would have worn a darker hue. But it was not until a late hour of the following morning that even the lawyer heard what had happened at Chippenham.
The attorney entered the Mastersons' room a little before eleven next morning; Julia was there, and Mrs. Masterson. The latter on seeing him held up her hands in dismay. 'Lord's wakes, Mr. Fishwick!' the good woman cried, 'why, you are the ghost of yourself! Adventuring does not suit you, that's certain. But I don't wonder. I am sure I have not slept a wink these three nights that I have not dreamt of Bessy Canning and that horrid old Squires; which, she did it without a doubt. Don't go to say you've bad news this morning.'
Certain it was that Mr. Fishwick looked woefully depressed. The night's sleep, which had restored the roses to Julia's cheeks and the light to her eyes, had done nothing for him; or perhaps he had not slept. His eyes avoided the girl's look of inquiry. 'I've no news this morning,' he said awkwardly. 'And yet I have news.'
'Bad?' the girl said, nodding her comprehension; and her colour slowly faded.
'Bad,' he said gravely, looking down at the table.
Julia took her fostermother's hand in hers, and patted it; they were sitting side by side. The elder woman, whose face was still furrowed by the tears she had shed in her bereavement, began to tremble. 'Tell us,' the girl said bravely. 'What is it?'
'God help me,' Mr. Fishwick answered, his face quivering. 'I don't know how I shall tell you. I don't indeed. But I must.' Then, in a voice harsh with pain, 'Child, I have made a mistake,' he cried. 'I am wrong, I was wrong, I have been wrong from the beginning. God help me! And God help us all!'
The elder woman broke into frightened weeping. The younger grew pale and paler: grew presently white to the lips. Still her eyes met his, and did not flinch. 'Is it--about our case?' she whispered.
'Yes! Oh, my dear, will you ever forgive me?'
'About my birth?'
He nodded.
'I am not Julia Soane? Is that it?'
He nodded again.
'Not a Soane--at all?'
'No; God forgive me, no!'
She continued to hold the weeping woman's hand in hers, and to look at him; but for a long minute she seemed not even to breathe. Then in a voice that, notwithstanding the effort she made, sounded harsh in his ears, 'Tell me all,' she muttered. 'I suppose--you have found something!'
'I have,' he said. He looked old, and worn, and shabby; and was at once the surest and the saddest corroboration of his own tidings. 'Two days ago I found, by accident, in a church at Bristol, the death certificate of the--of the child.'
'Julia Soane?'
'Yes.'
'But then--who am I?' she asked, her eyes growing wild: the world was turning, turning with her.
'Her husband,' he answered, nodding towards Mrs. Masterson, 'adopted a child in place of the dead one, and said nothing. Whether he intended to pass it off for the child entrusted to him, I don't know. He never made any attempt to do so. Perhaps,' the lawyer continued drearily, 'he had it in his mind, and when the time came his heart failed him.'
'And I am that child?'
Mr. Fishwick looked away guiltily, passing his tongue over his lips. He was the picture of shame and remorse.
'Yes,' he said. 'Your father and mother were French. He was a teacher of French at Bristol, his wife French from Canterbury. No relations are known.'
'My name?' she asked, smiling piteously.
'Paré,' he said, spelling it. And he added, 'They call it Parry.'
She looked round the room in a kind of terror, not unmixed with wonder. To that room they had retired to review their plans on their first arrival at the Castle Inn--when all smiled on them. Thither they had fled for refuge after the brush with Lady Dunborough and the rencontre with Sir George. To that room she had betaken herself in the first flush and triumph of Sir George's suit; and there, surrounded by the same objects on which she now gazed, she had sat, rapt in rosy visions, through the livelong day preceding her abduction. Then she had been a gentlewoman, an heiress, the bride in prospect of a gallant gentleman. Now?
What wonder that, as she looked round in dumb misery, recognising these things, her eyes grew wild again; or that the shrinking lawyer expected an outburst. It came, but from another quarter. The old woman rose and trembling pointed a palsied finger at him. 'Yo' eat your words!' she said. 'Yo' eat your words and seem to like them. But didn't yo' tell me no farther back than this day five weeks that the law was clear? Didn't yo' tell me it was certain? Yo' tell me that!'
'I did! God forgive me,' Mr. Fishwick murmured from the depths of his abasement.
'Didn't yo' tell me fifty times, and fifty times to that, that the case was clear?' the old woman continued relentlessly. 'That there were thousands and thousands to be had for the asking? And her right besides, that no one could cheat her of, no more than me of the things my man left me?'
'I did, God forgive me!' the lawyer said.
'But yo' did cheat me!' she continued with quavering insistence, her withered face faintly pink. 'Where is the home yo' ha' broken up? Where are the things my man left me? Where's the bit that should ha' kept me from the parish? Where's the fifty-two pounds yo' sold all for and ha' spent on us, living where's no place for us, at our betters' table? Yo' ha' broken my heart! Yo' ha' laid up sorrow and suffering for the girl that is dearer to me than my heart. Yo' ha' done all that, and yo' can come to me smoothly, and tell me yo' ha' made a mistake. Yo' are a rogue, and, what maybe is worse, I mistrust me yo' are a fool!'
'Mother! mother!' the girl cried.
'He is a fool!' the old woman repeated, eyeing him with a dreadful sternness. 'Or he would ha' kept his mistake to himself. Who knows of it? Or why should he be telling them? 'Tis for them to find out, not for him! Yo' call yourself a lawyer? Yo' are a fool!' And she sat down in a palsy of senile passion. 'Yo' are a fool! And yo' ha' ruined us!'
Mr. Fishwick groaned, but made no reply. He had not the spirit to defend himself. But Julia, as if all through which she had gone since the day of her reputed father's death had led her to this point, only that she might show the stuff of which she was wrought, rose to the emergency.
'Mother,' she said firmly, her hand resting on the older woman's shoulder, 'you are wrong--you are quite wrong. He would have ruined us indeed, he would have ruined us hopelessly and for ever, if he had kept silence! He has never been so good a friend to us as he has shown himself to-day, and I thank him for his courage. And I honour him!' She held out her hand to Mr. Fishwick, who having pressed it, his face working ominously, retired to the window.
'But, my deary, what will yo' do?' Mrs. Masterson cried peevishly. 'He ha' ruined us!'
'What I should have done if we had never made this mistake,' Julia answered bravely; though her lips trembled and her face was white, and in her heart she knew that hers was but a mockery of courage, that must fail her the moment she was alone. 'We are but fifty pounds worse than we were.'
'Fifty pounds!' the old woman cried aghast. 'Yo' talk easily of fifty pounds. And, Lord knows, it is soon spent here. But where will yo' get another?'
'Well, well,' the girl answered patiently, 'that is true. Yet we must make the best of it. Let us make the best of it,' she continued, appealing to them bravely, yet with tears in her voice. 'We are all losers together. Let us bear it together. I have lost most,' she continued, her voice trembling. Fifty pounds? Oh, God! what was fifty pounds to what she had lost. 'But perhaps I deserve it. I was too ready to leave you, mother. I was too ready to--to take up with new things and--and richer things, and forget those who had been kin to me and kind to me all my life. Perhaps this is my punishment. You have lost your all, but that we will get again. And our friend here--he, too, has lost.'
Mr. Fishwick, standing, dogged and downcast, by the window, did not say what he had lost, but his thoughts went to his old mother at Wallingford and the empty stocking, and the weekly letters he had sent her for a month past, letters full of his golden prospects, and the great case of Soanev. Soane, and the grand things that were to come of it. What a home-coming was now in store for him, his last guinea spent, his hopes wrecked, and Wallingford to be faced!
There was a brief silence. Mrs. Masterson sobbed querulously, or now and again uttered a wailing complaint: the other two stood sank in bitter retrospect. Presently, 'What must we do?' Julia asked in a faint voice.' I mean, what step must we take? Will you let them know?'
'I will see them,' Mr. Fishwick answered, wincing at the note of pain in her voice. 'I--I was sent for this morning, for twelve o'clock. It is a quarter to eleven now.'
She looked at him, startled, a spot of red in each cheek. 'We must go away,' she said hurriedly, 'while we have money. Can we do better than return to Oxford?'
The attorney felt sure that at the worst Sir George would do something for her: that Mrs. Masterson need not lament for her fifty pounds. But he had the delicacy to ignore this. 'I don't know,' he said mournfully. 'I dare not advise. You'd be sorry, Miss Julia--any one would be sorry who knew what I have gone through. I've suffered--I can't tell you what I have suffered--the last twenty-four hours! I shall never have any opinion of myself again. Never!'
Julia sighed. 'We must cut a month out of our lives,' she murmured. But it was something else she meant--a month out of her heart!
If Julia's return in the middle of the night balked the curiosity of some who would fain have had her set down at the door that they might enjoy her confusion as she passed through the portico, it had the advantage, appreciated by others, of leaving room for conjecture. Before breakfast her return was known from, one end of the Castle Inn to the other; within half an hour a score had private information. Sir George had brought her back, after marrying her at Salisbury. The attorney had brought her back, and both were in custody, charged with stealing Sir George's title-deeds. Mr. Thomasson had brought her back; he had wedded her at Calne, the reverend gentleman himself performing the ceremony with a curtain-ring at a quarter before midnight, in the presence of two chambermaids, in a room hung with drab moreen. Sir George's servant had brought her back; he was the rogue in the play; it was Lady Harriet Wentworth and footman Sturgeon over again. She had come back in a Flemish hat and a white cloth Joseph with black facings; she had come back in her night-rail; she had come back in a tabby gauze, with a lace head and lappets. Nor were there wanting other rumours, of an after-dinner Wilkes-and-Lord-Sandwich flavour, which we refrain from detailing; but which the Castle Inn, after the mode of the eighteenth century, discussed with freedom in a mixed company.
Of all these reports and the excitement which they created in an assemblage weary of waiting on the great man's recovery and in straits for entertainment, the attorney knew nothing until he set forth to keep the appointment in Lord Chatham's apartments; which, long the object of desire, now set his teeth on edge. Nor need he have learned much of them then; for he had only to cross the lobby of the east wing, and was in view of the hall barely three seconds. But, unluckily, Lady Dunborough, cackling shrewishly with a kindred dowager, caught sight of him as he passed; and in a trice her old limbs bore her in pursuit. Mr. Fishwick heard his name called, had the weakness to turn, and too late found that he had fallen into the clutches of his ancient enemy.
The absence of her son's name from the current rumours had relieved the Viscountess of her worst fears, and left her free to enjoy herself. Seeing his dismay, 'La, man! I am not going to eat you!' she cried; for the lawyer, nervous and profoundly dispirited, really shrank before her. 'So you have brought back your fine madam, I hear? And made an honest woman of her!'
Mr. Fishwick glared at her, but did not answer.
'I knew what would come of pushing out of your place, my lad!' she continued, nodding complacently. 'It wasn't likely she'd behave herself. When the master is away the man will play, and the maid too. I mind me perfectly of the groom. A saucy fellow and a match for her; 'tis to be hoped he'll beat some sense into her. Was she tied up at Calne?'
'No!' Mr. Fishwick blurted, wincing under her words; which hurt him a hundred times more sharply than if the girl had been what he had thought her. Then he might have laughed at the sneer and the spite that dictated it. Now--something like this all the world would say.
The Viscountess eyed him cunningly, her head on one side. 'Was it at Salisbury, then?' she cried. 'Wherever 'twas. I hear she had need of haste. Or was it at Bristol? D'you hear me speak to you, man?' she continued impatiently. 'Out with it.'
'At neither,' he cried.
My lady's eyes sparkled with rage. 'Hoity-toity!' she answered. 'D'you say No to me in that fashion? I'll thank you to mend your manners, Fishwick, and remember to whom you are speaking. Hark ye, sirrah, is she Sir George's cousin or is she not?'
'She is not, my lady,' the attorney muttered miserably.
'But she is married?'
'No,' he said; and with that, unable to bear more, he turned to fly.
She caught him by the sleeve. 'Not married?' she cried, grinning with ill-natured glee. 'Not married? And been of three days with a man! Lord, 'tis a story as bald as Granby! She ought to be whipped, the hussy! Do you hear? She ought to the Roundhouse, and you with her, sirrah, for passing her of on us!'
But that was more than the attorney, his awe of the peerage notwithstanding, could put up with. 'God forgive you!' he cried. 'God forgive you, ma'am, your hard heart!'
She was astonished. 'You impudent fellow!' she exclaimed. 'What do you know of God? And how dare you name Him in the same breath with me? D'you think He'd have people of quality be Methodists and live as the like of you? God, indeed! Hang your impudence! I say, she should to the Roundhouse--and you, too, for a vagabond! And so you shall!'
The lawyer shook with rage. 'The less your ladyship talks of the Roundhouse,' he answered, his voice trembling, 'the better! There's one is in it now who may go farther and fare worse--to your sorrow, my lady!'
You rogue!' she cried. 'Do you threaten me?'
'I threaten no one,' he answered. 'But your son, Mr. Dunborough, killed a man last night, and lies in custody at Chippenham at this very time! I say no more, my lady!'
He had said enough. My lady glared; then began to shake in her turn. Yet her spirit was not easily quelled; 'You lie!' she cried shrilly, the stick, with which she vainly strove to steady herself, rattling on the floor.' Who dares to say that my son has killed a man?'
'It is known,' the attorney answered.
'Who--who is it?'
'Mr. Pomeroy of Bastwick, a gentleman living near Calne.'
'In a duel! 'Twas in a duel, you lying fool!' she retorted hoarsely. 'You are trying to scare me! Say 'twas in a duel and I--I'll forgive you.'
'They shut themselves up in a room, and there were no seconds,' the lawyer answered, beginning to pity her. 'I believe that Mr. Pomeroy gave the provocation, and that may bring your ladyship's son off. But, on the other hand--'
'On the other hand, what? What?' she muttered.
'Mr. Dunborough had horsewhipped a man that was in the other's company.'
'A man?'
'It was Mr. Thomasson.'
Her ladyship's hands went up. Perhaps she remembered that but for her the tutor would not have been there. Then 'Sink you! I wish he had flogged you all!' she shrieked, and, turning stiffly, she went mumbling and cursing down the stairs, the lace lappets of her head trembling, and her gold-headed cane now thumping the floor, now waving uncertainly in the air.
A quarter of an hour earlier, in the apartments for which Mr. Fishwick was bound when her ladyship intercepted him, two men stood talking at a window. The room was the best in the Castle Inn--a lofty panelled chamber with a southern aspect looking upon the smooth sward and sweet-briar hedges of Lady Hertford's terrace, and commanding beyond these a distant view of the wooded slopes of Savernake. The men spoke in subdued tones, and more than once looked towards the door of an adjacent room, as if they feared to disturb some one.
'My dear Sir George,' the elder said, after he had listened patiently to a lengthy relation, in the course of which he took snuff a dozen times, 'your mind is quite made up, I suppose?'
'Absolutely.'
'Well, it is a remarkable series of events; a--most remarkable series,' Dr. Addington answered with professional gravity. 'And certainly, if the lady is all you paint her--and she seems to set you young bloods on fire--no ending could well be more satisfactory. With the addition of a comfortable place in the Stamps or the Pipe Office, if we can take his lordship the right way--it should do. It should do handsomely. But', with a keen glance at his companion, 'even without that--you know that he is still far from well?'
'I know that all the world is of one of two opinions,' Sir George answered, smiling. 'The first, that his lordship ails nothing save politically; the other, that he is at death's door and will not have it known.'
The physician shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. 'Neither is true,' he said. 'The simple fact is, he has the gout; and the gout is an odd thing, Sir George, as you'll know one of these days,' with another sharp glance at his companion. 'It flies here and there, and everywhere.'
'And where is it now?' Soane asked innocently.
'It has gone to his head,' Addington answered, in a tone so studiously jejune that Sir George glanced at him. The doctor, however, appeared unaware of the look, and merely continued: 'So, if he does not take things quite as you wish, Sir George, you'll--but here his lordship comes!'
The doctor thought that he had sufficiently prepared Soane for a change in his patron's appearance. Nevertheless, the younger man was greatly shocked when through the door, obsequiously opened--and held open while a man might count fifty, so that eye and mind grew expectant--the great statesman, the People's Minister at length appeared. For the stooping figure that moved to a chair only by virtue of a servant's arm, and seemed the taller for its feebleness, for dragging legs and shrunken, frame and features sharpened by illness and darkened by the great peruke it was the Earl's fashion to wear, he was in a degree prepared. But for the languid expression of the face that had been so eloquent, for the lacklustre eyes and the dulness of mind that noticed little and heeded less, he was not prepared; and these were so marked and so unlike the great minister--
'A daring pilot in extremityPleased with the danger when the waves went high'
--so unlike the man whose eagle gaze had fluttered Courts and imposed the law on Senates, that it was only the presence of Lady Chatham, who followed her lord, a book and cushion in her hands, that repressed the exclamation which rose to Sir George's lips. So complete was the change indeed that, as far as the Earl was concerned, he might have uttered it! His lordship, led to the head of the table, sank without a word into the chair placed for him, and propping his elbow on the table and his head on his hand, groaned aloud.
Lady Chatham compressed her lips with evident annoyance as she took her stand behind her husband's chair; it was plain from the glance she cast at Soane that she resented the presence of a witness. Even Dr. Addington, with his professionalsang-froidand his knowledge of the invalid's actual state, was put out of countenance for a moment. Then he signed to Sir George to be silent, and to the servant to withdraw.
At last Lord Chatham spoke. 'This business?' he said in a hollow voice and without uncovering his eyes, 'is it to be settled now?'
'If your lordship pleases,' the doctor answered in a subdued tone.
'Sir George Soane is there?'
'Yes.'
'Sir George,' the Earl said with an evident effort, 'I am sorry I cannot receive you better.'
'My lord, as it is I am deeply indebted to your kindness.'
'Dagge finds no flaw in their case,' Lord Chatham continued apathetically. 'Her ladyship has read his report to me. If Sir George likes to contest the claim, it is his right.'
'I do not propose to do so.'
Sir George had not this time subdued his voice to the doctor's pitch; and the Earl, whose nerves seemed alive to the slightest sound, winced visibly. 'That is your affair,' he answered querulously. 'At any rate the trustees do not propose to do so.'
Sir George, speaking with more caution, replied that he acquiesced; and then for a few seconds there was silence in the room, his lordship continuing to sit in the same attitude of profound melancholy, and the others to look at him with compassion, which they vainly strove to dissemble. At last, in a voice little above a whisper, the Earl asked if the man was there.
'He waits your lordship's pleasure,' Dr. Addington answered. 'But before he is admitted,' the physician continued diffidently and with a manifest effort, 'may I say a word, my lord, as to the position in which this places Sir George Soane?'
'I was told this morning,' Lord Chatham answered, in the same muffled tone, 'that a match had been arranged between the parties, and that things would remain as they were. It seemed to me, sir, a prudent arrangement.'
Sir George was about to answer, but Dr. Addington made a sign to him to be silent. 'That is so,' the physician replied smoothly. 'But your lordship is versed in Sir George Soane's affairs, and knows that he must now go to his wife almost empty-handed. In these circumstances it has occurred rather to his friends than to himself, and indeed I speak against his will and by sufferance only, that--that, in a word, my lord--'
Lord Chatham lowered his hand as Dr. Addington paused. A faint flush darkened his lean aquiline features, set a moment before in the mould of hopeless depression. 'What?' he said. And he raised himself sharply in his chair. 'What has occurred to his friends?'
'That some provision might be made for him, my lord.'
'From the public purse?' the Earl cried in a startling tone. 'Is that your meaning, sir?' And, with the look in his eyes which had been more dreaded by the Rigbys and Dodingtons of his party than the most scathing rebuke from the lips of another, he fixed the unlucky doctor where he stood. 'Is that your proposal, sir?' he repeated.
The physician saw too late that he had ventured farther than his interest would support him; and he quailed. On the other hand, it is possible he had been neither so confident before, nor was so entirely crushed now, as appeared. 'Well, my lord, it did occur to me,' he stammered, 'as not inconsistent with the public welfare.'
'The public welfare!' the minister cried in biting accents. 'The public plunder, sir, you mean! It were not inconsistent with that to quarter on the nation as many ruined gentlemen as you please! But you mistake if you bring the business to me to do--you mistake. I have dispersed thirteen millions of His Majesty's money in a year, and would have spent as much again and as much to that, had the affairs of this nation required it; but the gentleman is wrong if he thinks it has gone to my friends. My hands are clean,' his lordship continued with an expressive gesture. 'I have said, in another place, none of it sticks to them.Virtute me involvo!' And then, in a lower tone, but still with a note of austerity in his voice, M rejoice to think,' he continued, 'that the gentleman was not himself the author of this application. I rejoice to think that it did not come from him. These things have been done freely; it concerns me not to deny it; but since I had to do with His Majesty's exchequer, less freely. And that only concerns me!'
Sir George Soane bit his lip. He felt keenly the humiliation of his position. But it was so evident that the Earl was not himself--so evident that the tirade to which he had just listened was one of those outbursts, noble in sentiment, but verging on the impracticable and the ostentatious, in which Lord Chatham was prone to indulge in his weaker moments, that he felt little inclination to resent it. Yet to let it pass unnoticed was impossible.
'My lord,' he said firmly, but with respect, 'it is permitted to all to make an application which the custom of the time has sanctioned. That is the extent of my action--at the highest. The propriety of granting such requests is another matter and rests with your lordship. I have nothing to do with that.'
The Earl appeared to be as easily disarmed as he had been lightly aroused. 'Good lad! good lad!' he muttered. 'Addington is a fool!' Then drowsily, as his head sunk on his hand again, 'The man may enter. I will tell him!'