A woman trudged heavily along the firm damp sand just below the bristling tangle of high-water mark, in the direction of Carne. She wore a long cloak, and bent her head and humped her shoulders over a small bundle which she hugged tight to her breast.
She had hoped to reach the big house before it was dark. But a north-east gale was blowing, and it caught up the loose tops of the sand-hills and carried them in streaming clouds along the flats and made walking difficult. The drift rose no higher than her waist; but if she stood for a moment to rest, the flying particles immediately set to work to transform her into a pillar of sand. If she had stumbled and been unable to rise, the sweeping sand would have covered her out of sight in five minutes.
The flats stretched out before her like an empty desert that had no end. The black sky above seemed very close by reason of the wrack of clouds boiling down into the west. Where the sun had set there was still a wan gleam of yellow light. It seemed to the woman, when she glanced round now and again through her narrowed lids to make sure of her whereabouts, as if the sky was slowly closing down on her like the lid of a great black box. On her right hand the sand-hills loomed white and ghostly, and were filled with the whistle of the gale in the wire-grass and the hiss of the flying sand.
Far away on her left, the sea chafed and growled behind its banks.
Her progress was very slow, but she bent doggedly to the gale, stopped now and again and leaned bodily against it, then drew her feet out of the clogs the sand had piled round them and pushed slowly on again. At last she became aware, by instinct or by the instant's break in the roar of the wind on her right, that she had reached her journey's end. She turned up over the crackling tangle, crossed the ankle-deep dry sand of the upper beach, and stopped for breath under the lee of the great house of Carne.
It was all as dark as the grave, but she knew her way, and after a moment's rest she passed round the house to the back. Here in a room on the ground floor a light shone through a window. The window had neither curtain nor shutter, but was protected by stout iron bars. The sill was piled high with drifted sand.
The sight of the light dissipated a fear which had been in the woman's heart, but which she had crushed resolutely out of sight. At the same time it set her heart beating tumultuously, partly in the rebound from its fear and partly in anticipation of the ungracious welcome she looked for. She stood for a moment in the storm outside and looked at the tranquil gleam. Then she slipped under a stone porch, which opened towards the south-west, and knocked on the door. The door opened cautiously on the chain at last, six inches or so, and a section of an old woman's head appeared in the slit and asked gruffly:
"Who's it?"
"It's me, mother--Nance!"
The door slammed suddenly to, as though to deny her admittance. But she heard the trembling fingers inside fumbling with the chain. They got it unsnecked at last, and the door swung open again. The woman with the burden stepped inside and shut out the drifting sand.
The room was a stone-flagged kitchen; but the light of the candle, and the cheery glow of a coal fire, and the homeliness of the white-scrubbed table and dresser, and the great oak linen-press, mellowed its asperities. After the cold north-easter, and the sweeping sand and the darkness, it was like heaven to the traveller, and she sank down on a rush-bottomed chair with a sigh of relief.
"So tha's come whoam at last," was the welcome that greeted her, in a voice that was over-harsh lest it should tremble and break. The old woman's eyes shone like black beads under her white mutch. She sniffed angrily, and dashed her hand across her face as though to assist her sight. She spoke the patois of the district. Beyond the understanding of any but natives even now, it was still more difficult then. It would be a sorry task to attempt to reproduce it.
"Aye, I've come home."
"And brought thy shame with thee!"
"Shame?" said the other quickly. "What shame? He married me, and this is his boy." And as she straightened up, the cloak fell apart and disclosed the child. She spoke boldly, but her eyes and her face were not so brave as her speech.
"Married ye?" said the old woman, with a grim laugh that was half sob and half anger. "I know better. The likes o' him doesna marry the likes o' you."
Holding the sleeping child in her one arm, the girl fumbled in her bodice and plucked out a paper.
"There's my lines," she said angrily.
The old woman made no attempt to read it, but shook her head again, and said bitterly:
"The likes o' him doesna marry the likes o' you, my lass."
"He married me as soon as we got to London."
But the old woman only shook her head, and asked, in the tone of one using an irrefutable argument:
"Where is he?"
At that the girl shook her head also; but she was saved further reply by the baby yawning and stretching and opening his eyes, which fastened vacantly on the old woman's as she bent over to look at him in spite of herself.
"You might ha' killed him and yoreself coming on so soon," she said gruffly.
"I wanted to get here before he came," said the girl, with a choke, "but I couldna manage it. I were took at Runcorn, seven days ago."
"An' yo' walked from there! It's a wonner yo're alive. Well, well, it's a bad job, but I suppose we mun mak' best o' it. Yo're clemmed!"
"Ay, I am, and so is he. I've not had much to give him, and he makes a rare noise when he doesn't get what he wants."
The baby screwed up his face and proved his powers. His mother rocked him to and fro, and the old woman set herself to getting them food. She set on the fire a pannikin of goats' milk diluted with water to her own ideas, and placed bread and cheese and butter on the table. The girl reached for the food and began to eat ravenously. The old woman dipped her finger into the pannikin and put it into the child's mouth. It sucked vigorously and stopped crying. She drew it out of the girl's arms and began to feed it slowly with a spoon.
"If he married yo', why did he leave yo' like this?" she asked presently, as she dropped tiny drops of food into the baby's mouth and watched it swallow and strain up after the spoon for more.
"He was ordered away with his regiment. He left me money and said he'd send more. But he never did. I made it last as long's I could, but it runs away in London. I couldna bear the idea of--of it up there, an' I got wild at him not coming. I tried to find him, and then I set off to walk here. I got a lift on a wagon now and again. But when I got to Runcorn I could go no further. There a a woman there was good to me. Maybe I'd ha' died but for her. Maybe it'd ha' been best if I had. But,"--she said doggedly--"he married me all the same."
The old woman shook her head hopelessly, but said nothing. The baby was falling asleep on her knee. Presently she carried him carefully into the next room and left him on the bed there.
"I nursed him on my knee," she said when she came back, "before you came. If I'd known he'd take you from me I'd ha' choked him where he lay."
The girl felt and looked the better for her meal. She nodded her head slowly, and said again, "All the same he married me." Her persistent harping on that one string--which to her mother was a broken string--angered the old woman.
"Tchah!" she said, like the snapping of a dog, and was about to say a great deal more when a peremptory knocking on the door choked the words in her throat. Her startled eyes turned accusingly on the girl; what faint touch of colour her face had held fled from it, and her lips parted twice in questioning which found no voice. Her whole attitude implied the fear that there was something more behind the girl's story than had been told and that now it was upon them.
The knocking continued, louder and still more peremptory.
The girl strode to the door, loosed the chain and drew back the bolts, and flung it open. A tall man, muffled in a travelling-cloak, strode in with an imprecation, and dusted the sand out of his eyes with a silk handkerchief.
"Nice doings when a man cannot get into his own house," he began. Then, as his blinking eyes fell on the girl's face, he stopped short and said, "The deuce!" and pinched his chin between his thumb and forefinger. He stood regarding her in momentary perplexity, and then went on dusting himself, with his eyes still on her.
He was a man past middle age, but straight and vigorous still. His clean-shaven face, in spite of the stubble of three days' rapid travel on it, and the deep lines of hard living, was undeniably handsome--keen dark eyes, straight nose, level brows, firm hard mouth. An upright furrow in the forehead, and a sloping groove at each corner of the mouth, gave a look of rigid intensity to the face and the impression that its owner was engaged in a business distasteful to him.
"Ah, Mrs. Lee," he said, as his eyes passed from the girl at last and rested on the old woman.
"Yes, Sir Denzil." And Mrs. Lee attempted a curtsey.
"A word in your ear, mistress." And he spoke rapidly to her in low tones, his eyes roving over to the girl now and again, and the old woman's face stiffening as he spoke.
"And now bustle, both of you," he concluded. "Fires first, then something to eat, the other things afterwards. I will bring her ladyship in."
He went to the door, and the old woman turned to her daughter and said grimly:
"There's a lady with him. Yo' mun help wi' the fires."
She closed the door leading to the bedroom where the baby lay sleeping soundly, and then set doggedly about her duties. The two women had left the room carrying armfuls of firing when Sir Denzil came back leading Lady Susan by the hand, muffled like himself in a big travelling-cloak. He drew a chair to the fire, and she sank into it. He left her there and went out again, and as the door opened the rattle of harness on chilling horses came through.
Lady Susan bent shivering over the fire and spread her hands towards it, groping for its cheer like a blind woman. Her face was white and drawn. Her eyes were sunk in dark wells of hopelessness, her lips were pinched in tight repression. Any beauty that might have been hers had left her; only her misery and weariness remained. Her whole attitude expressed extremest suffering both of mind and body.
A piping cry came from the next room, and she straightened up suddenly and looked about her like a startled deer. Then she rose quickly and picked up the candle and answered the call.
The child had cried out in his sleep, and as she stood over him, with the candle uplifted, a strange softening came over her face. Her left hand stole up to her side and pressed it as though to still a pain. A spasmodic smile crumpled the little face as she watched. Then it smoothed out and the child settled to sleep again. Lady Susan went slowly back to her seat before the fire, and almost immediately Sir Denzil came in again, dusting himself from the sand more vigorously than ever.
"How do you feel now, my dear?" he asked.
"Sick to death," she said quietly.
"You will feel better after a night's rest. The journey has been a trying one. Old Mrs. Lee will make you comfortable here, and I will return the moment I am sure of Denzil's safety. You agree with the necessity for my going?"
"Quite."
"Every moment may be of importance. But the moment he is safe I will hurry back to see to your welfare here. I shall lie at Warrington to-night, and I will tell the doctor at Wynsloe to come over first thing in the morning to see how you are going on. Ah, Mrs. Lee, you are ready for us?"
"Ay. The oak parlour is ready, sir. I'll get you what I con to eat, but you'll have to put up wi' short farin' to-night, sin' you didna let me know you were coming. To-morrow----"
"What you can to-night as quickly as possible. Lady Susan is tired out, and I return as soon as I have eaten. See that the post-boy gets something too."
"Yo're non stopping?" asked the old woman in surprise.
"No, no, I told you so," he said, with the irritation of a tired man. "Come, my dear!" and he offered his arm to Lady Susan, and led her slowly away down the stone passage to a small room in the west front, where the rush of the storm was barely heard.
An hour later Sir Denzil was whirling back before the gale on his way to London, as fast as two tired horses and a none too amiable post-boy could carry him. His usual serene self-complacency was disturbed by many anxieties, and he carried not a little bitterness, on his own account, at the untowardness of the circumstances which had dragged him from the ordered courses of his life and sent him posting down into the wilderness, without even the assistance of his man, upon whom he depended for the minutest details of his bodily comfort.
"A most damnable misfortune!" he allowed himself, now that he was alone, and he added some further unprofitable moments to an already tolerably heavy account in cursing every separate person connected with the matter, including a dead man and the man who killed him, and an unborn babe and the mother who lay shivering at thought of its coming.
In the great house of Carne there was a stillness in strange contrast with the roaring of the gale outside. But the stillness was big with life's vitalities--love and hate and fear; and, compared with them, the powers without were nothing more than whistling winds that played with shifting sands, and senseless waves that sported with men's lives.
It was not till the new-comer was lying in her warm bed in the room above the oak parlour, shivering spasmodically at times in spite of blankets and warming-pans and a roaring fire, that she spoke to the old woman who had assisted her in grim silence.
The silence and the grimness had not troubled her. They suited her state of mind and body better than speech would have done. Life had lost its savour for her. Of what might lie beyond she knew little and feared much at times, and at times cared naught, craving only rest from all the ills of life and the poignant pains that racked her.
It was only when Mrs. Lee had carefully straightened out her discarded robes, and looked round to see what else was to be done, and came to the bedside to ask tersely if there was anything more my lady wanted, that my lady spoke.
"You'll come back and sit with me?" she asked.
"Ay--I'll come."
"Whose baby is that downstairs?"
"It's my girl's," said the old woman, startled somewhat at my lady's knowledge.
"Did she live through it?"
"Ay, she lived." And there was that in her tone which implied that it might have been better if she had not. But my lady's perceptions were blunted by her own sufferings.
"Is she here?"
"Ay, she's here."
"Would she come to me too?"
But the old woman shook her head.
"She's not over strong yet," she said grimly. "I'll come back and sit wi' yo'."
"How old is it?"
"Seven days."
"Seven days! Seven days!" She was wondering vaguely where she would be in seven days.
"It looked very happy," she said presently. "Its father was surely a good man."
"They're none too many," said the old woman, as she turned to go. "I'll get my supper and come back t' yo'."
"Who is she?" asked her daughter, with the vehemence of an aching question, as she entered the kitchen.
Mrs. Lee closed the passage door and looked at her steadily and said, "She's Denzil Carron's wife." And the younger woman sprang to her feet with blazing face and the clatter of a falling chair.
"Denzil's wife! I am Denzil Carron's wife."
"So's she. And I reckon she's the one they'll call his wife," said her mother dourly.
"I'll go to her. I'll tell her----" And she sprang to the door.
"Nay, you wun't," said her mother, leaning back against it. "T' blame's not hers, an' hoo's low enough already."
"And where is he? Where is Denzil?"
"He's in trouble of some kind, but what it is I dunnot know. Sir Denzil's gone back to get him out of it, and he brought her here to be out of it too."
"And he'll come here?"
"Mebbe. Sir Denzil didna say. He said he'd hold me responsible for her. She's near her time, poor thing! An' I doubt if she comes through it."
"Near----!" And the girl blazed out again.
"Ay. I shouldna be surprised if it killed her. There's the look o' it in her face."
"Kill her? Why should it kill her? It didn't kill me," said the girl fiercely.
"Mebbe it would but for yon woman you told me of. Think of your own time, girl, and bate your anger. Fault's not hers if Denzil served you badly."
"He connot have two wives."
"Worse for him if he has. One's enough for most men. But--well-a-day, it's no good talking! I'll take a bite, and back to her. She begged me come. Yo' can sleep i' my bed. There's more milk on th' hob there if th' child's hungry." And carrying her bread-and-cheese she went off down the passage, and the young mother sat bending over the fire with her elbows on her knees.
She had no thought of sleep. Her limbs were still weary from her long tramp, but the food and rest had given her strength, and the coming of this other woman, who called herself Denzil Carron's wife, had fired her with a sense of revolt.
The blood was boiling through her veins at thought of it all--at thought of Denzil, at thought of the boy in the next room, and this other woman upstairs. Her heart felt like molten lead kicking in a cauldron.
She got up and began to pace the floor with the savage grace born of a life of unrestricted freedom. Once she stopped and flung up her hands as though demanding--what?--a blessing--a curse--the righting of a wrong? The quivering hands looked capable at the moment of righting their own wrongs, or of wreaking vengeance on the wrongdoer if they closed upon him.
Then, as the movement of her body quieted in some measure the turmoil of her brain, her pace grew slower, and she began to think connectedly. And at last she dropped into the chair again, leaned her elbows on her kneel and sat gazing into the fire. When it burned low she piled on wood mechanically, and sat there thinking, thinking. Outside, the storm raged furiously, and the flying sand hit the window like hailstones. And inside, the woman sat gazing into the fire and thinking.
She sat long into the night, thinking, thinking--unconscious of the passage of time;--thinking, thinking. Twice her child woke crying to be fed, and each time she fed him from the pannikin as mechanically almost as she had fed the fire with wood. For her thoughts were strange long thoughts, and she could not see the end of them.
They were all sent flying by the sudden entrance of her mother in a state of extreme agitation, her face all crumpled, her hands shaking.
"She's took," she said, with a break in her voice. "Yo' mun go for th' doctor quick. I connot leave her. Nay!"--as the other sat bolt upright and stared back at her--"yo'mungo. We connot have her die on our hands. Think o' yore own time, lass, and go quick for sake o' Heaven."
"I'll go." And she snatched up her cloak. "See to the child." And she was out in the night, drifting before the gale like an autumn leaf.
The old woman went in to look at the child, filled the kettle and put it on the fire, and hurried back to the chamber of sorrows.
The gale broke at sunrise, and the flats lay shimmering like sheets of burnished gold, when Dr. Yool turned at last from the bedside and looked out of the window upon the freshness of the morning.
He was in a bitter humour. When Nance Lee thumped on his door at midnight he was engaged in the congenial occupation of mixing a final and unusually stiff glass of rum and water. It was in the nature of a soporific--a nightcap. It was to be the very last glass for that night, and he had compounded it with the tenderest care and the most businesslike intention.
"If that won't give me a night's rest," he said to himself, "nothing will."
But there was no rest for him that night. He had been on the go since daybreak, and was fairly fagged out. He greeted Nance's imperative knock with bad language. But when he heard her errand he swallowed his nightcap without a wink, though it nearly made his hair curl, ran round with her to the stable, harnessed his second cob to the little black gig with the yellow wheels, threw Nance into it, and in less than five minutes was wrestling with the north-easter once more, and spitting out the sand as he had been doing off and on all day long.
"There's one advantage in being an old bachelor, Miss Nancy," he had growled, as he flung the harness on the disgusted little mare; "your worries are your own. Take my advice and never you get married----" And then he felt like biting his tongue off when he remembered the rumours he had heard concerning the girl. She was too busy with her own long thoughts to be troubled by his words, however, and once they were on the road speech was impossible by reason of the gale.
When they arrived at Carne she scrambled down and led the mare into the great empty coach-house, where the post-horses had previously found shelter that night. She flung the knee-rug over the shaking beast, still snorting with disgust and eyeing her askance as the cause of all the trouble. Then she followed the doctor into the house. He was already upstairs, however, and, after a look at her sleeping boy, she sat down in her chair before the fire again to await the event, and fell again to her long, long thoughts.
And once more her thoughts were sent flying by the entrance of her mother. She carried a tiny bundle carefully wrapped in flannel and a shawl, and on her sour old face there was an expression of relief and exultation--the exultation of one who has won in a close fight with death.
"He were but just in time," she said, as she sat down before the fire. "I'm all of a shake yet. But th' child's safe anyway." And she began to unfold the bundle tenderly. "Git me t' basin and some warm water. Now, my mannie, we'll soon have you comfortable. . . . So . . . Poor little chap! . . . I doubt if she'll pull through. . . . T' doctor's cursing high and low below his breath at state she's in . . . travelling in that condition . . . 'nough to have killed a stronger one than ever she was. . . . I knew as soon as ivver I set eyes on her . . . A fine little lad!"--as she turned the new-comer carefully over on her knee--"and nothing a-wanting 's far as I can see, though he's come a month before he should."
She rambled on in the rebound from her fears, but the girl uttered no word in reply. She stood watching abstractedly, and handing whatever the old woman called for. Her thoughts were in that other room, where the grim fight was still waging. Her heart was sick to know how it was going. Her thoughts were very shadowy still, but the sight of the boy on the old woman's knee showed her her possible way, like a signpost on a dark night. She would see things clearer when she knew how things had gone upstairs.
She must know. She could not wait. She turned towards the passage.
"I will go and see," she said.
"Ay, go," said the old woman. "But go soft."
The doctor was sitting at the bedside. He raised his hand when she entered the room, but did not turn. She stood and watched, and suddenly all her weariness came on her and she felt like falling. She leaned against the wall and waited.
Once and again the doctor spoke to the woman on the bed. But there was no answer. He sat with furrowed face watching her, and the girl leaned against the wall and watched them both.
And at last the one on the bed answered--not the doctor, but a greater healer still. One long sigh, just as the sun began to touch the rippled flats with gold, and it was over. The stormy night was over and peace had come with the morning.
The doctor gat up with something very like a scowl on his face and went to the window. Even in the Presence he had to close his mouth firmly lest the lava should break out.
He hated to be beaten in the fight--the endless fight to which his whole life was given, year in, year out. But this had been no fair fight. The battle was lost before he came on the field, and his resentment was hot against whoever was to blame.
He opened the casement and leaned out to cool his head. The sweet morning air was like a kiss. He drank in a big breath or two, and, after another pained look at the white face on the pillow, he turned and left the room. The girl had already gone, and as she went down the passage there was a gleam in her eyes.
Her mother saw it as soon as she entered the kitchen. "Well?" asked the old woman.
"She's gone."
"And yo're glad of it. Shame on yo', girl! And yo' but just safe through it yoreself!"
The girl made no reply, and a moment later the doctor came in.
"Now, Mrs. Lee, explain things to me. Whose infernal folly brought that poor thing rattling over the country in that condition? And get me a cup of coffee, will you? Child all right?"
"He's all right, doctor. He's sleeping quiet there"--pointing to a heap of shawls on the hearth. "It were Sir Denzil himself brought her last night."
"And why didn't he stop to see the result of his damned stupidity? It's sheer murder, nothing less. Make it as strong as you can,"--referring to the coffee--"my head's buzzing. I haven't had a minute's rest for twenty-four hours. Where is Sir Denzil? He left word at my house to come over here first thing this morning. I expected to find him here."
"He went back wi the carriage that brought 'em. There's trouble afoot about Mr. Denzil as I understond. He said it were life and death, and he were off again inside an hour."
"Ah!" said the doctor, nodding his head knowingly. "That's it, is it? And you don't know what the trouble was?"
"'Life and death,' he said. That's all I know."
"Well, if he bungles the other business as he has done this it'll not need much telling which it'll be." And he blew on his coffee to cool it.
"I must send him word at once," he said presently, "and I'll tell him what I think about it. I've got his town address. You can see to the child all right, I suppose? Another piece of that bread, if you please. Any more coffee there? This kind of thing makes me feel empty."
"I'll see to t' child aw reet."
"Send me word if you need me, not otherwise. There's typhus down Wyvveloe way, and I'm run off my legs. A dog's life, dame--little thanks and less pay!" And he buttoned up his coat fiercely and strode out to his gig. "I'll send John Braddle out," he called back over his shoulder. "But I doubt if we can wait to hear from Sir Denzil. However----" And he drove away, through the slanting morning sunshine.
The white sand-hills smiled happily, the wide flats blazed like a rippled mirror, the sky was brightest blue, and very far away the sea slept quietly behind its banks of yellow sand.
The days passed and brought no word from Sir Denzil in reply to Dr. Yool's post letter. And, having waited as long as they could, they buried Lady Susan in the little green churchyard at Wyvveloe, where half a dozen Carrons, who happened to have died at Carne, already rested. Dr. Yool and Braddle had had to arrange everything between them, and, as might have been expected under the circumstances, the funeral was as simple as funeral well could be, and as regards attendance--well, the doctor was the only mourner, and he still boiled over when he thought of the useless way in which this poor life had been sacrificed.
Braddle was there with his men, of course, but the doctor only just managed it between two visits, and his manner showed that he grudged the time given to the dead which was all too short for the requirements of the living. Yet it went against the grain to think of that poor lady going to her last resting-place unattended, and he made a point of being there. But his gig stood waiting outside the churchyard gate, and he was whirling down the lane while the first spadefuls were drumming on the coffin.
He thought momentarily of the child as he drove along. But, since no call for his services had come from Mrs. Lee, he supposed it was going on all right, and he had enough sick people on his hands to leave him little time for any who could get along without him.
The days ran into weeks, and still no word from Sir Denzil. It looked as though the little stranger at Carne might remain a stranger for the rest of his days. And yet it was past thinking that those specially interested should make no inquiry concerning the welfare of so important a member of the family.
"Summat's happened," was old Mrs. Lee's terse summing-up, with a gloomy shake of the head whenever she and Nance discussed the matter, which was many times a day.
Other matters too they discussed, and to more purpose, since the forwarding of them was entirely in their own hands. And when they spoke of these other matters, sitting over the fire in the long evenings, each with a child on her knee, hushing it or feeding it, their talk was broken, interjectional even at times, and so low that the very walls could have made little of it.
It was fierce-eyed Nance who started that strain of talk, and at first her mother received it open-mouthed. But by degrees, and as time played for them, she came round to it, and ended by being the more determined of the two. So they were of one mind on the matter, and the matter was of moment, and all that happened afterwards grew out of it.
Both the children throve exceedingly. No care was lacking them, and no distinction was made between them. What one had the other had, and Nance, with recovered strength, played foster-mother to them both.
Just two months after Lady Susan's death the two women were sitting talking over the fire one night, the children being asleep side by side in the cot in the adjacent bedroom, when the sound of hoofs and wheels outside brought them to their feet together.
"It's him," said Mrs. Lee; and they looked for a moment into one another's faces as though each sought sign of flinching in the other. Then both their faces tightened, and they seemed to brace themselves for the event.
An impatient knock on the kitchen door, the old woman hastened to answer it, and Sir Denzil limped in. He was thinner and whiter than the last time he came. He leaned heavily on a stick and looked frail and worn.
"Well, Mrs. Lee," he said, as he came over to the fire and bent over it and chafed his hands, "you'd given up all fears of ever seeing me again, I suppose?"
"Ay, a'most we had," said the old woman, as she lifted the kettle off the bob and set it in the blaze.
"Well, it wasn't far off it. I had a bad smash returning to London that last time. That fool of a post-boy drove into a tree that had fallen across the road, and killed himself and did his best to kill me. Now light the biggest fire you can make in the oak room, and another in my bedroom, and get me something to eat. Kennet"--as his man came in dragging a travelling-trunk--"get out a bottle of brandy, and, as soon as you've got the things in, brew me the stiffest glass of grog you ever made. My bones are frozen."
He dragged up a chair and sat down before the fire, thumping the coals with his stick to quicken the blaze. The rest sped to his bidding.
Kennet, when he had got in the trunks, brewed the grog in a big jug, with the air of one who knew what he was about.
"Shall I give the boy some, sir?" he asked, when Sir Denzil had swallowed a glass and was wiping his eyes from the effects of it.
"Yes, yes. Give him a glass, but tone it down, or he'll be breaking his neck like the last one."
So Kennet watered a glass to what he considered reasonable encouragement for a frozen post-boy, and presently the jingling of harness died away in the distance, and Kennet came in and fastened the door.
Sir Denzil had filled and emptied his glass twice more before Mrs. Lee came to tell him the room was ready. Then he went slowly off down the passage, steadying himself with his stick, for a superfluity of hot grog on an empty stomach on a cold night is not unapt to mount to the head of even a seasoned toper.
Kennet, when he came back to the room, after seeing his master comfortably installed before the fire, brewed a fresh supply of grog, placed on one side what he considered would satisfy his own requirements, and carried the rest to the oak room.
It was when the girl Nance carried in the hastily prepared meal that Sir Denzil, after peering heavily at her from under his bushy brows, asked suddenly, "And the child? It's alive?"
"Alive and well, sir."
"Bring it to me in the morning."
The girl looked at him once or twice as if she wanted to ask him a question.
He caught her at it, and asked abruptly, "What the devil are you staring at, and what the deuce keeps you hanging round here?" Upon which she quitted the room.
There was much talk, intense and murmurous, between the two women that night, when they had made up a bed for Kennet and induced him at last to go to it. From Kennet and the grog, after Sir Denzil had retired for the night, Nance learned all Kennet could tell her about Mr. Denzil.
According to that veracious historian it was only through Mr. Kennet's supreme discretion and steadfastness of purpose that the young man got safely across to Brussels, and, when he tired of Brussels, which he very soon did, to Paris.
"Ah!" said Mr. Kennet. "Now, thatisa place. Gay?--I believe you! Lively?--I believe you! Heels in the air kind of place?--I believe you! And Mr. Denzil he took to it like a duck to the water. London ain't in it with Paris, I tell you." And so on and so on, until, through close attention to the grog, his words began to tumble over one another. Then he bade them good night, with solemn and insistent emphasis, as though it was doubtful if they would ever meet again, and cautiously followed Nance and his candle to his room.
The flats were gleaming like silver under a frosty sun next morning, and there was a crackling sharpness in the air, when Sir Denzil, having breakfasted, stood at the window of the oak room awaiting his grandson.
"Tell Mrs. Lee to bring in the child," he had said to Kennet, and now a tap on the door told him that the child was there.
"Come in," he said sharply, and turned and stood amazed at sight of the two women each with a child on her arm. "The deuce!" he said, and fumbled for his snuff-box.
He found it at last, a very elegant little gold box, bearing a miniature set with diamonds--a present from his friend George, in the days before the slice of orange, and most probably never paid for. He slowly extracted a pinch without removing his eyes from the women and children. He snuffed, still staring at them, and then said quietly, "What the deuce is the meaning of this?"
"Yo' asked to see t' child, sir," said Mrs. Lee.
"Well?"
"Here 'tis, sir."
"Which?"
"Both!"
"Ah!"--with a pregnant nod. Then, with a wave of the hand. "Take them away." And the women withdrew.
Sir Denzil remained standing exactly as he was for many minutes. Then he began to pace the room slowly with his stick, to and fro, to and fro, with his eyes on the polished floor, and his thoughts hard at work.
He saw the game, and recognized at a glance that no cards had been dealt him. The two women held the whole pack, and he was out of it.
He thought keenly and savagely, but saw no way out. The more he thought, the tighter seemed the cleft of the stick in which the women held him.
The law? The law was powerless in the matter. Not all the law in the land could make a woman speak when all her interests bade her keep silence, any more than it could make her keep silence if she wanted to speak.
Besides, even if these women swore till they were blue in the face as to the identity of either child, he would never believe one word of their swearing. Their own interests would guide them, and no other earthly consideration.
He could turn them out. To what purpose? One of those two children was Denzil Carron of Carne. Which?
The other--ah yes! The other was equally of his blood. He did not doubt that for one moment. He had known of Denzil's entanglement with Nance Lee, and it had not troubled him for a moment. But who, in the name of Heaven, could have foreseen so perplexing a result?
When he glanced out of the window, the crystalline morning, the white sunshine, the clear blue sky, the hard yellow flats, the distant blue sea with its crisp white fringe, all seemed to mock him with the brightness of their beauty.
How to solve the puzzle? Already, in his own mind, he doubted if it ever would be solved. And he cursed the brightness of the morning, and the women--which was more to the point, but equally futile,--and Denzil, and poor Lady Susan, who lay past curses in Wyvveloe churchyard. And his face, while that fit was on him, was not pleasant to look upon.
Presently, with a twitching of the corners of the mouth, like a dog about to bare his fangs, he rang the bell very gently, and Kennet came in.
"Kennet," he said, as quietly as if he were ordering his boots, "put on your hat and go for Dr. Yool. Bring him with you without fail. If he is out, go after him. If he says he'll see me further first, say I apologise, and I want him here at once. Tell him I've burst a blood-vessel."
He had had words with the doctor the night before. He had stopped his post-chaise at his house and gone in for a minute to explain his long absence, and the doctor, who feared no man, had rated him soundly for the thoughtlessness which had caused Lady Susan's death.
He did not for a moment believe that the doctor or any one else could help him in this blind alley. But discuss the matter with some one he must, or burst, and he did not care to discuss it with Kennet. Kennet knew very much better than to disagree with his master on any subject whatever, and discussion with him never advanced matters one iota. Discussion of the matter with Dr. Yool would probably have the same result, but it could do no harm, and it offered possibilities of a disputation for which he felt a distinct craving.
Whether doctors could reasonably be expected to identify infants at whose births they had officiated, after a lapse of two months, he did not know. But he was quite prepared to uphold that view of the case with all the venom that was in him, and he awaited the doctor's arrival with impatience.
Dr. Yool drove up at last with Kennet beside him, and presently stood in the room with Sir Denzil.
"Hello!" cried the doctor, with disappointment in his face. "Where's that blood-vessel?"
"Listen to me, Yool. You were present at the birth of Lady Susan's children----"
"Eh? What? Lady Susan's child? Yes!"
"Children!"
"What the deuce! Children? A boy, sir--one!"
"You'd know him again, I suppose?"
"Well, in a general kind of way possibly. What's amiss with him?"
"According to these women here, there are two of him now."
"Good Lord, Sir Denzil! What do you mean? Two? How can there be two?"
"Ah, now you have me. I thought that you, as a doctor--as the doctor, in fact--could probably explain the matter." The doctor's red face reddened still more.
"Send for the women here--and the children," he said angrily.
Sir Denzil rang the bell, gave his instructions to the impassive Kennet, who had not yet fathomed the full intention of the matter, and in a few minutes Mrs. Lee and Nance, each with a child on her arm, stood before them.
"Now then, what's the meaning of all this?" asked Dr. Yool. "Which of these babies is Lady Susan's child?"
"We don't know, sir," said Mrs. Lee, with a curtsey.
"Don't know! Don't know! What the deuce do you mean by that, Mrs. Lee? Whose is the other child?"
"My daughter's, sir. It were born a day or two before the other, and we got 'em mixed and don't know which is which."
"Nonsense! Bring them both to me."
He flung down some cushions in front of the fire, rapidly undressed the children, and laid them wriggling and squirming in the blaze among their wraps. He bent and examined them with minutest care. He turned them over and over, noticed all their points with a keenly critical eye, but could make nothing of it. They were as like as two peas. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, plump, clear-skinned, healthy youngsters both. The seven days between them, which in the very beginning might have been apparent, was now, after the lapse of two months, absolutely undiscoverable.
Sir Denzil came across and looked down on the jerking little arms and legs and twisting faces, and snuffed again as though he thought they might be infectious. For all the expression that showed in his face, they might have been a litter of pups.
"Well, I am ----!" said Dr. Yool, at last, straightening up from the inspection with his hands on his hips. "Now"--fixing the two women with a blazing eye--"what's the meaning of it all? Who is the father of this other child?"
"Denzil Carron," said Nance boldly, speaking for the first time. "He married me before he married her, and here are my lines," and she plucked them out of her bosom.
Dr. Yool's eyebrows went up half an inch. Sir Denzil took snuff very deliberately.
The doctor held out his hand for the paper, and after a moment's hesitation Nance handed it to him.
He read it carefully, and his good-humoured mouth twisted doubtfully. The matter looked serious.
"Dress the children and take them away," he said at last. When they were dressed, however, Nance stood waiting for her lines.
Dr. Yool understood. "I will be answerable for them," he said; and she turned and went.
"A troublesome business, Sir Denzil," he said, when they were alone. "A troublesome business, whichever way you look at it. This"--and he flicked Nance's cherished lines--"may, of course, be make-believe, though it looks genuine enough on the face of it. That must be carefully looked into. But as to the children--you are in these women's hands absolutely and completely, and they know it."
"It looks deucedly like it."
"They know which is which well enough; but nothing on earth will make them speak--except their own interests, and that," he said thoughtfully, "won't be for another twenty years."
"It's too late to make away with them both, I suppose," said Sir Denzil cynically.
"Tchutt! It's bad enough as it is, but there's no noose in it at present. Besides, they are both undoubtedly your grandsons----"
"And which succeeds?" asked the baronet grimly.
"There's the rub. Deucedly awkward, if they both live--most deucedly awkward! There's always the chance, of course, that one may die."
"Not a chance," said Sir Denzil. "They'll both live to be a hundred. They can toss for the title when the time comes. I'd sooner trust a coin than those women's oaths."
The doctor nodded. He felt the same.
"What about this?" he asked, reading Nance's lines again. "Will you look into it?" He pulled out a pencil and noted places and dates in his pocket-book.
"What good? It alters nothing."
"As regards your son?"
Sir Denzil shrugged lightly.
"He has shown himself a fool, but he is hardly such a fool as that. If he comes to the title, and she claims on him, he must fight his own battle. As to the whelps----" Another shrug shelved them for future consideration.
Nevertheless, when Dr. Yool had driven away in the gig with the yellow wheels, Sir Denzil paced his room by the hour in deep thought, and none of it pleasant, if his face was anything to go by.
He travelled along every possible avenue, and found each a blind alley.
He could send the girl about her business, and the old woman too. But to what purpose? If they took one of the children with them, which would it be? Most likely Lady Susan's. But he would never be certain of it. That would be so obviously the thing to do that they would probably do the opposite. If they left both children, he would have to get some one else to attend to them, and no one in the world had the interest in their welfare that these two had.
If both children died, then Denzil might marry again, and have an heir about whom there was no possible doubt. That is, if this other alleged marriage of his was, as he suspected, only a sham one. He would have to look into that matter, after all.
If, by any mischance, the marriage, however intended, proved legal, then that hope was barred, and it would be better to have the children, or at all events one of them, live. Otherwise the succession would vest in the Solway Carrons, whom he detested. Better even Nance Lee's boy than a Solway Carron.
The conclusion of the matter was, that he could not better matters at the moment by lifting a finger. Not lightly nor readily did he bring his mind to this. He spent bitter days and nights brooding over it all, and at the end he found himself where he was at the beginning. Time might possibly develop, in one or other of the boys, characteristics which might tell their own tale. But that chance, he recognised, was a small one. Both boys took after their father, and were as like Denzil, when he was a baby, as they possibly could be.
In the spring he would look into that marriage matter. Till then, things must go on as they were.
Not a word did he say to the women. Not the slightest interest did he show in the children. He rarely saw them, and then only by chance. And in the women's care the children throve and prospered, since it was entirely to their interest that they should do so.