She sat upon her bed for a little while, seemingly without purpose or resolution. The black muslin dress with the exquisite lace and suspicion of Cambridge blue about the neck, a dress in which she always went to the theatre, lay ready for her spread out upon the back of a chair. She used to say that it was the only good dress she had brought to London with her. Her desire had been to deceive herself with the pretty supposition that her own talent must earn luxuries or that they must not be earned at all.
So her riches were few. She could almost number them as she sat upon her bed, reflecting upon this astounding encounter, the threat of it, and its just consequences. When she left Derbyshire she had no thought of discovery, nor imagined it to be possible. Not a soul knew her by sight, she said. She had spent her days in a convent in France, and after that as a very prisoner in her father's house. Why, then, should she fear recognition? None the less did recognition stand upon the threshold. This foreigner she believed to be already in possession of her story. How he had gained knowledge of it, and what use he would make of it, she felt absolutely unable to say. Sufficient that a malign destiny had brought her face to face and called her to decide instantly as difficult an issue as escapade ever put before a woman.
"He knows my name; he knows my father," she argued; "if he does not come to our house, he has some good reason for not doing so. In any case, I must not stop here. Oh, my dear Mr. Izard, what will you say to-night? And poor dear Di Vernon, poor dear Di Vernon, whoever will take care of her?"
She laughed aloud at her own thoughts, and, jumping up impulsively, she gathered her things together as though for a journey, though she had not the remotest idea whither she would go or how she would act. A church clock striking the hour of seven reminded her that the hours were brief and that she must make the best use of them. Had she been a man she might have remembered that if this intruder knew her father's name, he would very quickly discover her father's house, his rank, and the story of his life. But she was not even a woman, scarcely more than a school-girl, in fact, and terror of the present became an immediate impulse without regard to the future. She must flee the house and the mystery without an instant's loss of time. Nothing else must count against the prudence of this course. All the little things she had collected in London, the clothes she had bought there, these must be abandoned. Etta indeed, carried nothing but her light dust-cloak and her purse when she left the house at half-past seven.
"I must write to dear old Mrs. Wegg and make her a present," she said; "she can send my things to St. Pancras Station to be called for. If I don't go to the theatre, Mary Jay will play my part. Perhaps the poor girl will make her fortune. It's an ill wind ... no, a horrid wind, and, oh, I do wish it would blow me home again!"
From which it will be seen that the idea of "home" crept already into her dizzy head and attracted her strangely. There is always an aftermath of jest, however bold that jest may be. Etta realized this dimly, though all the impressions of the theatre, its glamour and its triumphs, were too new to her to permit of any serious rival. She feared discovery simply for her father's sake. To him the theatre stood for a very pit of all that was most evil. He had, from the days of her childhood, dreaded a day which would awaken a mother's instincts in Etta and tell him that she had inherited her mother's genius as an actress. For such a reason, above others, he made a recluse of her. For such a reason, loving her passionately, he sent her to the convent school and guarded her almost as a prisoner of his house. Etta knew that he disliked the theatre greatly; but she never had his reasons, and was unaware of her dead mother's story. Had she known it, this mad escapade would never have taken place.
She left the house in Bedford Square at half-past seven furtively and not a little afraid. She had already determined to keep her own secret, and to that intention she adhered resolutely. Crossing the Square with quick steps, she stood an instant at the corner to make sure that no one followed her. When her suspicions upon this point were at rest, she called the first hansom cab she could see and told the man to drive her to St. Pancras Station.
"And please to stop at a telegraph office on the way," she said.
The journey had been fully determined upon by this time, and she no longer found herself irresolute. It cost her much to send Charles Izard her farewell message; but she did it courageously, as one who knew that it must be done. How or why Count Odin had crossed her path she could not say; but her clever little head grappled instantly with that turn of destiny and determined to defeat it. None could harm her in her home in Derbyshire, she said ... and to Derbyshire she determined to go.
When she entered the post-office and had dispatched her telegrams, she felt as one from whose weak shoulders a great weight had been lifted. What a dream it had all been! The hopes, the fears, the success of it. Her heart was a little heavy when she wrote down the words: "I am leaving London and shall not return—pray, forgive me and forget—Etta Romney." There would be a sensation at the theatre to-night, but what of it if the walls of her home were about her and the gates of it had closed upon her secret. She knew too little of Count Odin's story that her fears of him should be enduring.
"He has learnt something about me somewhere and wanted to satisfy his curiosity," she thought; "perhaps he was going to make love to me," an idea which amused her, but did not appear in quite as repugnant a light as it might have done. Some whisper of personal vanity said that Count Odin was a man of the world and an exceedingly good-looking one at that. She began to see that all her fears might be mere shadows of misunderstanding—none the less, she persisted in her intention to return to Derbyshire. A sense of personal danger had been awakened; she fled from discovery before discovery could do her mischief.
There was a train to Derby at half-past eight. Etta took a seat in the corner of a first-class compartment, which an obliging guard, bidding a porter keep watch upon it, insisted upon reserving for her. The porter, good fellow, drove off the besiegers, among whom were a parson with brown paper parcels and a fussy little man who always travelled in ladies' carriages because he could have the windows up, to say nothing of old maids and their dogs and younger maids without dogs. To these the man of corduroys politely pointed out the red bill upon the window; but when a cloaked foreigner, with a hawk's beak and watery eyes, a man who must have numbered at least ninety years, persisted in an attempt to enter, then was the ancient dragged back by the flap of his coat while the magic words "reserved" were shouted in his ears.
"What you say—what—what—" the old fellow cried, exerting a surprising amount of strength for a nonagenarian, "not go in here,accidente!"
"Higher up, grandfather," said the merry porter. "Saffron Hill goes forward—no parley Inglesh, eh—well, that's not my fault, is it?"
He took the old fellow by the arm in a kindly way (for of the poor the poor are ever the best friends) and led him to a third-class carriage at the forward end of the train.
"And a wonnerful strong old chap for his years, too, miss," he said to Etta when he returned for his shilling; "give me a shove like a young 'un he did. I shouldn't wonder if he ain't agoing to play in a cricket match by the looks of him. Did you want to send a telegram, perhaps? A surprisin' lot of telegrams I do send from the station. Mostly from gents wot has a fency for a 'oss. They takes a number horf of their tickets and backs the first 'un they sees with the same number in the noospipers. Not as I suppose you've any fency like that, miss—though young ladies nowadays do send telegrams almost as frequent as other people."
Etta laughed at this idea, but, a sudden remembrance coming to her, she asked:
"What time do we arrive at Derby, porter?"
"You should arrive at a quarter to twelve, miss."
"A quarter to twelve—oh, my poor little me, whatever will you do?"
"Not meaning to say that you've forgotten to ask them to meet you, miss?"
"Meaning the very thing—please get me a form, oh, lots of them. I must wire to Griggs. Don't let the train go until I've done it. Whatever should I do if no one met me?"
"I'll stop it if I have to hold the engine myself. Now, miss, you take these 'ere. That's the name of a Spring 'andicap winner on one of them—you scrat it out and write your own telegram. We ain't agoin' to have you out in the cornfields at that time of night, I know. Just write away and don't you flurry yourself."
Etta needed no pressing invitation. She wrote two telegrams as fast as her eager fingers could set down the messages—one to Fletcher, the coachman at the Hall, one to Griggs, the butler, who would be the most astonished man in all Derbyshire that night when he read it. These the porter gathered up together with a liberal monetary provision to frank them, and the train was just about to start when who should appear again but the white-haired nonagenarian, grumbling and shuffling and plainly seeking a carriage, despite the fact that he had been lately seated in it.
"Why, here's old nannygoat broke out again," cried the astonished porter, and running after him he exclaimed: "Here, grandfather, train goin', comprenny, inside oh, chucky walkey—now then, smart, or I'm blowed if I don't put you in the lorst luggage horfiss."
They bundled the old man into a carriage; the engine whistled, the train steamed majestically from the station.
"Good-by, London!" said Etta, sinking back upon the cushions with tears in her eyes.
But the far from docile old gentleman, who had been treated so unceremoniously, did not weep at all.
"She's going to Melbourne Hall," he kept repeating with a chuckle; "if the telegrams mean anything, they mean that."
By which it is clear that the old scoundrel had read Etta's messages which the ever-obliging porter carried to the telegraph office for her.
Mr. Griggs, the butler at Melbourne Hall, had just fallen asleep after a second glass of his master's unimpeachable port, when a footman knocked softly upon the door of his pantry and informed him that he was the proud owner of a telegram.
"For you, sir, and the boy's a-waitin' for a hanswer."
Mr. Griggs, who had been dreaming of a rich uncle in Australia, and of the fortune this worthy had bequeathed to him (by which he would set up a public-house in Moretown and acquire a masterly reputation), murmured softly, "No jugs in the private bar," and awoke immediately in that state of irritable stupor which even a moderate allowance (and Mr. Griggs' glasses were true bumpers) of ancient port may provoke.
"Whatever do you want, comin' creeping in here like a fox with the gout?" he asked angrily; "is the 'ouse on fire or is Partigan took with the hysterics? Whatever is it, James?"
"It's a telegrarf," replied James loftily; "perhaps you're a little 'ard of 'earing after port wine, Mr. Griggs. The boy's a-settin' on the step whistlin' airs. I'll tell him to come in if you like——"
Griggs looked a little sheepishly at the bottle before him, and prudently offered James a glass.
"Them boys is born in a hurry and that's how they'll die, James. Just take a mouthful of that wine. I'm sampling it for the guvner. This'll be from him, no doubt."
To do the excellent man justice, it must be admitted that he had been sampling that particular wine during the last twenty years, and still found it necessary to continue his task before he could give a definite opinion. The telegram was another matter. Mr. Griggs read it by the aid of an immense pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and, having read it, he uttered that exclamation he was wont to employ only upon the very greatest occasions.
"God bless my poor old gray hairs if her ladyship ain't returning this very evening. Whatever can have put it into her wicked little head to do that? Derby station at eleven-forty, and Fletcher gone haymaking to Matlock. I shouldn't wonder if the beast had been drinking," he added pompously.
James, the footman, admitted that it was very embarrassing.
"I've lived in many families, Mr. Griggs," he said, "and a deal of human nater I've learned. But this 'ere family is wholly a masterpiece. Your good health, sir, and I'm sure I wish you blessings."
"It's easier to wish 'em than to bring 'em," replied the philosopher Griggs. "Where's Partigan now and what's she doing?"
"She's a-participatin' in the Floral fête at the Bath-Dianner in a motor-car or something of that sort."
"She went over with Fletcher, no doubt. That's how his lordship's interests are served in his absence. Is Molly in the 'ouse, James?"
"She was takin' her singin' lesson from the horganist of Moretown half an hour ago."
"Let her sing upstairs with the warmin' pan, and quick about it too. I suppose the shuffer's not in?"
"Gone to Derby to see Mr. Wilson Barrett eat up by lions——"
"Then we'll have to send Williams, the groom, and make a tale. Lord, what a 'ouse to look after. I feel sometimes as such responsibulness will break me up into small coal, James. Just ring that bell and send Molly here. I'll give her a singin' lesson as she won't soon forget."
There never was such a ringing of bells, certainly never such a scampering of overfed menials as the next hour witnessed at the Manor. Hither and thither they went: Molly up the stairs to look out the sheets, Williams, the groom, to get the single brougham ready, James to set the boudoir straight ("with me own 'ands I done it," he said to Partigan, the lady's maid, afterwards, as though ordinary he did it with other people's hands, which was a true word), Griggs to put away his decanter and enter the kitchen in mighty splendor. Not only this, but stable-boys upon bicycles went flying off to Matlock and Derby to bear the tidings to the absentees.
"Her ladyship a-comin' home," said Partigan when she heard it; "well, that do beat the best!"
"I've always said," Griggs remarked to James, when the first moments of agitation had passed, "I've always said the Lady Evelyn isn't ordinary. Just look at the antics she'd be a-doin' by herself when she thought no one was lookin' at her in the park. Carrying on like a play actress, she was, and me hidin' behind a tree, mortal feared of her throwin' of herself into my arms by mistake. What his lordship would say if I told him of this 'ere, the cherubims above us only knows, James."
"You surely ain't goin' to tell him, Mr. Griggs?"
Griggs tapped his breast with a heavy fist that seemed to make a drum of it.
"A lady's secret—they'd have to cut it out of my bussum, James."
"Then you don't think, perhaps, as she's been staying with Miss Forrester at all?"
This, however, was the beginning of a suggestion which the worthy Griggs would not tolerate at all from one he styled a menial.
"What I think is my own affair. Take my advice and hold your tongue, James. When you get to my time of life you'll know that the less you say about the ladies the better for your good health. Go and get the dining-room ready. She'll be in a rare tantrum when she comes back. They always are when they've been up in London enjoyin' of theirselves. His lordship himself is good cayenne after a week on the Continent. It's enough to make a man take to drink almost."
The reservation was wise, for certainly Mr. Griggs had "almost" taken to drink on many occasions, stopping at the second bottle on a benevolent plea of moderation. This particular occasion, however, was not to prove one for extreme remedies as subsequent events quickly demonstrated. Having seen that all had been prepared, both within and without the house, he composed himself to a comfortable nap in his arm-chair and again had begun to dream of a rich uncle in Australia (whose continued good health he found most provoking), when a loud ringing of bells and a sound of voices in the quadrangle instantly brought him to a state of recollection, and he sat bolt upright and stared wildly at the grandfather's clock in the corner of his pantry as though its fingers reproached his tardiness.
"A quarter to two o'clock. God bless my poor old head. It must be her ladyship. A quarter to two o'clock. What would her father say to it?"
It was her ladyship, as he said—very tired, very pale, strangely quiet, and with frightened eyes, such as neither Griggs nor anyone in that house had looked upon before. Amazed to see her, dressed in no way for travelling, carrying no other luggage than the purse in her hand, the old butler simply stared as he would have stared at any bogey of Melbourne come suddenly upon him in the witching hours.
"I welcome your ladyship home," he stammered, looking anything but a welcome from his inquiring eyes, and then, most inaptly, he continued: "The trains is very late for the time of year, I must say, my lady."
Lady Evelyn merely said:
"Yes, I am dreadfully late, Griggs. Don't let anyone be disturbed. I could not touch anything to-night. My luggage is to be forwarded from London. Please see that everything is locked up. I am going straight to my room, and shall not want anything at all."
Griggs did not really know what to make of it.
"She was as white as a sheet," he told the kitchen afterwards, "and she asked me to lock up the 'ouse. Now, am I in the 'abit of leavin' the doors open or do I see 'em shut regular? Mark my words, Partigan, there's something more than her luggage she's left in London, and the sooner his lordship takes it out of the cloakroom the better."
Here was something to set the servants' hall by the ears beyond possibility of discretion. Williams, the groom, who had driven her ladyship home, added an ingredient to the sauce of their curiosity which proved appetizing beyond measure.
"There was a young man at the station wot kept hopping about us just like a 'oss about a hayrick," said he. "I could see she didn't want to take much notice on him, but what was I to do? If he'd have opened his lips, I could have given him something for hisself. But he didn't say nothing to nobody and all she says was, 'Drive on at once, Williams, and don't stop for anyone.' Be sure I made the old 'oss slip it. He come along for all the world as though he were riding to 'ounds and me in the first flight."
Williams, be it observed, had not exaggerated at all. There had been a young man at the station and Lady Evelyn had been very frightened by him. What is more remarkable is the fact that she was perfectly well aware of his identity and knew him beyond a shadow of doubt for the apparent nonagenarian who had been so persistent at St. Pancras. That white-haired old man and the youth who appeared before her suddenly at her journey's end were certainly one and the same person. The only conclusion possible was this, that she had been watched closely in London and followed thence.
"It must be Count Odin," she said to herself, and upon this she tried to reason out a secret of which the key lay far from her possession. Why should the man have been at such pains to follow her if he knew her father's name, as he pretended he did? It never occurred to her untrained mind that a foreigner recently arrived from Bukharest might be quite unaware of the identity of Robert Forrester and altogether ignorant of the fact that he was Robert Forrester no longer, but had become, by a strange accident of fortune, the third Earl of Melbourne, Baron Norton, and heaven and Burke know what besides. Here had been the Count's difficulty. He had searched every directory in vain for the whereabouts of a man he had now made it his life's purpose to discover. Knowing scarcely anyone in London, and having no particular desire to declare his presence to the Roumanianchargé d'affaires, his quest had been profitless until chance brought him face to face with the Lady Evelyn in the Strand. Instantly he had resolved never to lose sight of her until he had discovered Robert Forrester's house, and had asked of him that question the answer to which should tell him if his own father were alive or dead.
The Lady Evelyn, upon her part, had no share of the story, save that which her own eyes and the Count's brief words had told her. He had spoken in London of her father, it is true; but there had been no betrayal of a warm anxiety to meet him, nor had he mentioned the name except as a passport to Evelyn's confidence. The fact that she had been followed from town to Derbyshire disquieted her exceedingly by the very pains which had been taken to conceal it. No longer could she believe that Count Odin had been fascinated by her acting and had foolishly fallen in love with her. Something lay beyond, and her clever brain divined it to be a thing dangerous both to her father and to herself.
So it was not Etta Romney but my Lady Evelyn, grave and stately, and dreadfully afraid of her own secret and of another's, who returned to Melbourne Hall, and, declining the attentions of her servants, went straight up to her bedroom, but not to sleep. Whatever danger threatened her must speedily declare itself, she thought. It was even possible that the morrow would bring it to her doors.
And if it came, her father would know that Etta Romney had been "presented" by Mr. Charles Izard at a London theatre and that she was his daughter.
He would never forgive her, she thought. It might even be that he would call her his daughter no more.
There is hardly a pleasanter room in all England than the old Chamber of the Tapestries they use as a breakfast room at Melbourne Hall. Situated in the west wing of the great quadrangle, and giving off immediately from the famous long gallery, its tiny latticed casements permit a view which reveals at once all the cultivated beauty of the gardens and the wild woodland scenery of the park beyond, in a vista which never fails to win the admiration of the stranger, as it has won the love of many generations who have inhabited that historic mansion.
It is not a large room, but it tells much of the story of the house, its triumphs, its misfortunes, and its glories. Here you have the time-stained arms of John, the first baron, whose cinquefoil azure upon a crimson banner had been carried high at Agincourt; here were the crosslets fitchée of the House of Mar, whose feminine representative had come south to wed the third baron in the days of good King Hal. Fair fingers had worked these tapestries long ago, waiting, perchance, for news of husband or lover whom the wars had claimed, or fighting for a King whose son would laugh at their story of fidelity. It had been my lady's bower then, and knights and squires had doffed their caps as they passed its doors. To-day they gave it no nobler name than breakfast room, and therein, at half-past eight every morning, the Earl of Melbourne, more punctual than the clock itself, sat down to breakfast.
Now, here was a man who had been an adventurer all his life, a man of the field, the forest, and the sea; a bluff bearded man, not unrefined in face and feature, but utterly unsuited by the disposition of his will to the dignity which accident had thrust upon him, and resenting it every hour that he lived.
"What are we but slaves of our birth?" he would ask his daughter passionately. "Why am I cooped up in this old house when I might be on the deck of a good ship or under canvas in the Alleghany Mountains? You say that nothing forbids my doing it. You know it isn't true. The world would cry out on me if I cut myself adrift. And you yourself would be the first to complain of it. We owe it to society, Evelyn, to make ourselves miserable for the rest of our lives. They call it 'station' in the prayer-book, but the man who wrote that had never shot big game on the Zambesi or he'd have sung to a different tune."
Sometimes when Evelyn protested that society would really remain indifferent whatever they did, he would reply, a little brutally, that when she had found a husband it would be another matter.
"There will be two of you then to stand for the cinquefoil," he observed cynically. "I shall shake the handcuffs off and get back to the East. A man lives in the sunshine. Here he scarcely vegetates. When they inquire, in ten years' time, where the Earl of Melbourne is, you'll send them to the Himalayas to begin with, and there they can ask again. Don't lose time about it, Evelyn. You know that young John Hall is head over ears in love with you."
Evelyn's face would flush at this; and there had been an occasion when she answered him with the amazing intimation that she would sooner marry Williams, the groom, than the young baronet he spoke of. This frightened the old Earl exceedingly.
"Her mother's blood runs in her veins," he said to himself. "By heaven, she'd marry a stable-boy if I thwarted her."
Here was the spectre which haunted him continually. He feared to read the story of his own youth and marriage in the youth and marriage of his daughter. Notwithstanding his jests, his love for her was passionate and dominated every other instinct of his life. "You are all that I have in the world, my little Evelyn," he would confess in gentler moods. He desired her affection in like measure, but had never wholly won it. Perhaps instinctively she understood that some barrier of the past interposed itself between them. Her father's defects of character could not be absolutely hidden from her. She feared she knew not what.
And if this were her normal mood, what of the Evelyn who had gone to London at the bidding of a mad desire; who had become Etta Romney there; who had returned at the dead of night and awaited her father's home-coming with that tremulous expectation which at once could dread exposure and yet delight in the peril of it? When her first alarm had passed and quiet days had led her to believe that she dreamed the story of espionage, Evelyn could await the issue with no little confidence. After all, why should Count Odin betray her, even if he had her secret? He was a man of the world and had nothing to gain by dealing treacherously with a woman. Her father went to London so rarely that she might well deride the danger of his visits. Nothing but a clumsy accident could write that story so that the Earl might read it, she thought. And so she welcomed him home with all her habitual composure, and upon the morning of the second day of July she found herself seated opposite to him in my lady's bower, listening to his stories of Italy and his plans for the summer and the autumn months to come.
"We ought to give some parties, I suppose," he said; "the servants expect it, and we must not disappoint them. Ask all the people who don't want to come and get rid of them as quickly as you can. I have written to Colchester about the yacht and we ought to get her in commission in August. You always loved the sea, Evelyn, and this will be a change for you. We can put into Trouville and Étretat and see what the Frenchwomen are wearing. I shall steam down to the Mediterranean later on; but that won't be until December. We have the birds to kill first and plenty of them. Of course, I know you wanted to be in London this Spring, and it is not my fault if you did not go. This copper mine in Tuscany is going to make me as rich as Vanderbilt. I could not neglect it just because a lot of fools were driving mail phaetons in Bond Street."
Evelyn smiled a little coldly.
"Men do not drive mail phaetons nowadays," she said, "they drive motor-cars. Of course, it is very necessary for us to keep the wolf from the door—we are so poor, father."
The Earl had grown accustomed to remarks such as these, and had become skilful in evading them. He understood perfectly well that Evelyn expressed her own disappointment and that she meant to remind him of his broken promises to take a house in Mayfair for the season and to sacrifice his own pleasures at least for a few brief weeks.
"I am poor enough," he said, "to want all the money I can get. This old place costs a fortune to keep up. I mean to do big things here by and by, and twenty thousand won't be too much when they are done. Besides, it is not money that we men run after, but the gratification of our own vanity in getting it. The claims on this estate are heavy and they have to be met quickly if it is to be cleared. I backed my own opinion about this mine against the biggest house in Germany and I am coming out top all the time. If it put fifty thousand a year into my pocket, who'll benefit by it but you? Think of that when you talk about the little crowd of paupers you want to see in London. Money's money. And precious glad some of them would be to see the color of it."
Evelyn did not contradict him. She was too weary of the subject to wish to revive it. Imitating others, whose youth had been one of far from splendid poverty, the Earl permitted money to become the guiding principle of his life in the exact ratio of its acquisition. An exceedingly rich man when he inherited the bankrupt estates of the Melbournes, each year found a waning of his natural generosity, a growth of unaccustomed meanness, and a diligence in the quest of fortune which the circumstances made almost pathetic. On her part, Evelyn was perfectly well aware that he would give no parties at the Hall this year, would not take her to Trouville, nor visit the Mediterranean in the winter. Each season found its own excuses for delay. The wretched mine in Tuscany was a very godsend when postponements of any kind troubled the Earl for a good excuse.
"I am glad you are going to do something to the Hall," she said evasively; "at least there will be the painters' society to enjoy. After that I suppose I may go to Dieppe, as Aunt Anne wishes. It will be quite a dissipation—under the circumstances."
He looked at her rather sharply.
"So you went to London after all?" he said. "I thought you meant to put it off?"
"To put it off! That would have been a familiar task. I live to put things off. There is no one in all Derbyshire who has so many excuses to make as I have."
"My dear Evelyn, you know perfectly well why I dislike all this kind of thing."
"Indeed, I know nothing, except that you dislike it. This is the third year that you promised to take me to London and have disappointed me. If there is any reason that keeps us prisoners when others are free, would you not wish me to know of it? I am your daughter, and surely, father, you can speak to me of this."
"My dear little Evelyn," he said, hiding his embarrassment as well as might be, "you are talking the greatest nonsense in the world. If you want to go to London, you shall go to-morrow. Take a house, a flat, an hotel, anything you like—only don't ask me to go with you. I am past all that sort of thing. A city stifles me; the fools I find in it make me angry. If you like them, go and see them. I have been alone enough in my life not to mind very much being alone again."
This quasi-appeal to her pity was his invariable argument. He would have been embarrassed had she accepted his proposals; but he knew full well that she would not accept them. And so he made them with a generosity which cost him nothing but a momentary tremor of doubt lest her answer should disappoint him.
"Oh," she said, rising from the table and going to the window to look across the park, "I am satiated with gayety—and Aunt Anne is a very paragon of giddiness. We went to bed every night at half-past nine and got up at six; and, of course, Richmond is quite Mayfair when you learn to know it."
The Earl, rising also, would have laughed it off, despite the ridiculous nature of the effort.
"Poor old Anne is not as young as she was," he exclaimed lightly. "I dare say you found her a little tiresome. Well, I suppose you came home when you were tired of it?"
"Yes," said Evelyn, without turning round, "I came home when I was tired of it."
He could not see the deep blush upon her cheeks, nor would he have understood it had he done so. Indeed, she was truthful so far as the letter of the truth went. A visit to Richmond had been the excuse which carried her from Melbourne Hall. Three dreary days she had spent in a prim house overlooking the Thames. The home of the skittish Aunt Anne, whose sixty years did not forbid her still to look out, like Sister Mary, for an heroic "Him" upon her horizon. From Richmond, Evelyn had gone to the Carlton Theatre; and now, for an instant, even here in her own home, the Etta Romney could return to delight in her adventure.
What a sensation had attended her disappearance from London? Safely guarded in her jewel-case upstairs were cuttings from the newspapers of the days succeeding that mad flight. Be sure that the great Charles Izard made the most of his misfortune. He had believed that Etta Romney left him at the bidding of caprice and at the voice of caprice would return to him again. His shrewd mind instantly perceived that the truth would best serve him on this occasion; and though he was not on very good terms with truth, the quarrel was soon patched up. To all the reporters he told the full story of this captivating romance.
"The girl came to me from nowhere," he said frankly, "and where she has gone God knows. I gave her a hearing because she wrote me the cleverest letter I have read for many a long day. Her home was in Derbyshire, and this was a Derbyshire play. I saw her act one scene in my theatre and said that she was 'bully.' She had the best send off I can remember. Then comes the night when I am strung up on my own hook. She expresses her trunks and quits. About that I know as much as you do. Her traps were left at St. Pancras station, and a letter says that she has given up the theatre. Well, I don't believe it. A girl who can act like that will never give up the theatre. In one month or six she'll be starring in my plays. She cannot help herself; she's got to do it."
Nothing whets the public's appetite so surely as curiosity; and all London had grown curious about Etta Romney. Discerning men, who had but half-praised her when she first appeared, hastened to declare that her loss was irreparable. Less responsible journals gave coherent accounts of the whole business, written in the back office by gentlemen who knew nothing whatever about it. The affair, at first but a nine days' wonder, became a standing headline when the editor of a popular newspaper boldly offered a hundred guineas for the discovery of Etta Romney's whereabouts.
Etta read all about this in the brief days that intervened between her own return and her father's. While the woman in her rejoiced at the success they spoke of, the child failed to perceive the danger of this undue publicity or to guard in any way against it. It is true that she had been very much alarmed upon the night she fled from London; but as the weeks went by and neither word nor message reached her from Count Odin, or indeed from any of the friends she had made at the theatre, a new sense of security came to her and compelled her to delight in what appeared to be the final success of her escapade. Surely now her father would remain in ignorance of it to the end, she argued. She believed that it would be so, though whether the Etta Romney within her were really dead, she did not dare to say.
The spirit of her mad desire; the passionate longing for liberty and triumph before the world; the knowledge of the rare gifts she possessed and of the future they might win for her, were these to be forever shut behind the gates of her silent house, however beautiful that house might be? She knew not. The future alone could tell her whither the voice of her destiny would call her.
Was Etta Romney dead or would the months recreate her?
Evelyn believed that they would. The intolerableennuiof her life at Melbourne festered the atmosphere in which such dreams as hers were born and reared. She had that in her blood which no make-believe could prison. Had the whole truth been told, it would have set her down for a gypsy of gypsies—a true child of the roadside and the caves. But the truth was just the one thing her father hid from her.
"I met your mother at Vienna," he had told her once when an illness had moved him to that affectionate confidence which weakness is apt to provoke. "She was Dora d'Istran, the most beautiful woman in the city and one most run after. You are like her sometimes, Evelyn; you have her eyes and hair, and just such a manner. She understood me as no one else in the world has ever done, not even my little daughter. I married her in the face of my family and never regretted the day. She died when you were eleven months old. I live again through that hour which took her from me every day of my life."
Here was no weak confession. Throughout his life this man had been seeking a good woman's love. Knowing in his heart that he had done things unworthy of it, he sought it yet more ardently for that very reason. One woman, his wife, had understood him and given him of her whole soul generously. Her death left him a vagrant once more. In vain he, a miser to others, lavished generous gifts upon Evelyn, his child. "She would love me if she could," he told himself, "but there is a chord in her nature I cannot strike." A keen observer of intuitive faculty would have said that the man's nature, not the woman's, in Evelyn Forrester forbade her to respond to his affection.
Of this Evelyn herself remained quite unconscious. Fret as she might against her father's unjust and inexplicable treatment of her, she would have resented hotly the suggestion that she had not a daughter's love for him. Her very obedience, she thought, must be sufficient witness to that. Though he made a prisoner of her, she rarely uttered a complaint. His varying moods, now of doting affection, now of irritation and temper, found her patient and silent. When he did a mean thing she shuddered, but rarely spoke of it, because she knew that words would not help her. Her own life had been lived so far apart from his. She wished with all her heart that it had not been so; but she could not justly blame herself for circumstances she was in no way able to control.
This had been her attitude before her great escapade in London; it remained her attitude upon her return to Derbyshire. She met her father each morning at the breakfast table; dined with him in solemn state at night—occasionally received visits from their neighbors, and was some times the guest of the vicar of the parish, a pleasant old Cambridge Don, by name Harry Fillimore. But in the main Evelyn lived alone, in the wild glades of the beautiful park, down by the silent pool of the river—just as she had lived and dreamed in the old days of the longing for the world, its glamour and its glories. And now she had a great secret to take to the green woods with her. Day by day, as some sylph of the thickets, the true Romany child reacted the thrilling scenes of the brief weeks of triumph in London. Her hair wild about her shoulders, her eyes reflecting the dreams, she would crouch by the river's bank and play Narcissus to the reeds.
"It was I, Etta ... yes, yes ... just the little Etta looking up from the waters—I went to London—I played at the theatre—they said I was a success—they offered me money—to Etta Romney, just little Etta Romney. And now it's all over. Etta is dead, and Evelyn has come back. I shall never go to London again—I shall die, perhaps, down there among the reeds in the river. Oh, if some one only would love me, some one understand me. And it's for ever in this lonely place—for ever—for ever."
Such regrets were neither hysterical nor unusual. She knew that there was some great void in her life, some desire ungratified, which must haunt her to the end; and this knowledge drove her day by day along those paths of solitude which her father wished her to tread, though never would he have confessed as much. His lavish gifts to her scarcely won a word of thanks. When she rode a horse, it was madly, defying convention, helter-skelter across the grass lands like a Mexican flying over the prairie. She bathed in the deepest, most dangerous pools; went shooting but shot little, because her will revolted from the purposes of slaughter; would picnic in the darkest thickets and had even set up a tent and slept in it, far from house or cottage, at the height of the summer glory.
"A little madcap," the bland vicar said when he heard of it, "a regular brick of a girl, though who'd believe it when he saw her at her father's dinner table. Why, last night, sir, she sat in the drawing-room just for all the world a paragon of propriety with ten generations of grand dames to her name. I didn't dare to take a second glass of port for fear I should be jocular. And to-day I saw her flying toward Derby in the new car at thirty miles an hour. Away went my straw hat just like a cricket ball. Now, what are you to make of a young lady like that?"
Doctor Philips, the person addressed upon this occasion, confessed that you might make many things of her.
"She could earn a good living at steeplechasing, and I would pay her five pounds a week to be mychauffeur," he said quite seriously, "and please don't forget the ball she drives at golf. Why, vicar, she'd give the pair of us a half. It's no ordinary woman could do that."
They agreed that it could not be, and having discussed the Lady Evelyn at great length were about to sit down to lunch together, individuals aware of their own humility in the face of a superior intellect, when Williams, the groom, came flying over from the Hall and demanded to see the Doctor instantly.
"There's bin a haccident on the road, sir," he cried breathlessly, "please come over at once—the gentleman's up at the house and the Earl away."
The doctor, wasting no words, set out with a sigh and a backward glance at the inviting table.
The Vicar said:
"Thank God—I thought thatshehad come to grief."
The Vicar declared that he met Evelyn upon the road to Derby, "going like a volcano at thirty miles an hour;" but this was a mere figure of speech, for her little car, being of no more than ten horse-power could not possibly accomplish such speeds; nor would the winding roads about the Hall have permitted them to a larger motor. A reckless driver, if recklessness were love of the delight of fast travel, Evelyn loved horses too well to frighten them; and rarely did a coachman complain or such wayfarers as she met upon her journey do anything but applaud her. Indeed, Derbyshire had no more enchanting picture than that of this dark-haired girl, superbly gowned, as she sat at the wheel of her crimson car; while Bates, the proudchauffeur, gazed disdainfully, from the dicky behind, upon all the world, as though to say, "You can't beat her." And this was the more noble on Bates' part because Evelyn had twice deposited him in the ditch since the car came home. "The horrid thing will go round the corners so fast" had been her lament after these mishaps. Bates added the pious prayer that he might go round with the car on the next occasion.
Sometimes, of course, it would be Etta Romney who drove and not my Lady Evelyn at all. These were mad, wild moods and came mostly at twilight when the gloom of day crept upon the fields and the sun went down in crimson splendor. Then the wild, mad dash down tempting hills would scare the loiterers and send the jogging laborer to the shelter of the hedges. Then a cloud of dust enveloped the flying car, and the figure at the wheel might have stood for Melpomene with vine leaves in her hair. "A rare 'un she be," the countrymen would say; "went by me like a railway engine, dang 'un, her did."
Evelyn had been into Derby on the day the Vicar narrated the misfortunes of his straw hat. Having done a little shopping, she set out for the Hall a few minutes after the hour of twelve, by which time the day had turned gloriously fine with a light wind from the east and a bank of white clouds high beneath the azure, which promised welcome interludes of shade. She had a journey of twenty-three miles before her (for Melbourne Hall lies far from the little town of that name and knows it not), and leisure enough in which to do it. Business, she knew not of what nature, had carried her father to London nearly a week ago. She would be alone until to-morrow, her own jailer, she said with a pout, the mistress of hours by which she could profit so little. Her mood, indeed, had become one of cynical indifference, tempered by the reflection that this was the first visit the Earl had paid to London since her escapade. What, she asked, if a word of that story came to his ears even now? The weeks of safety inspired a sense of security which circumstance hardly justified. She paled and trembled when she asked herself what such a passionate man as her father would do if the truth were discovered by him.
Here, truly, was no impulse to the delights of speed or to that recklessness which the Vicar chided. Evelyn drove slowly, her thoughts vagrant and wayward, her attitude that of one who has not pleasure awaiting her at her journey's end. She had traversed over twenty miles of the distance and was just looking out for that well-known landmark, the spire of the village church, when a startled cry from the usually phlegmatic Bates aroused her attention and called upon a self-possession which rarely failed her.
"A horse and carriage—bolting behind us, your ladyship—put her on the fourth—my God, he's coming right on top of us—quick, your ladyship—a horse bolting——"
He stood up in the dicky and waved his arms and continued to cry, "A horse bolting!" as though by repetition alone he would bring her to a sense of danger. Evelyn, upon her part, cast one startled glance behind her and instantly became aware of the situation. For down the road, which sloped slightly toward them, a horse bolted madly in their direction, swinging a light brougham from footpath to footpath and leaving a dense cloud of dust to bear witness to the speed. So mad was the gallop that the frightened beast, seen first at a distance perhaps of six hundred yards, was no more than three hundred yards from them when Evelyn opened the throttle of her car to the full and sent it racing down the incline as it had never raced before. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five miles an hour the speed indicator registered, and still the car appeared to be gaining speed. Behind, as though in vain pursuit, the thundering sound of hoofs waxed louder; and once or twice in the interludes of sounds, a man's voice could be heard crying to the horse and to those in the car incoherent words in an unknown tongue.
"Let her go for God's sake, your ladyship—let her go—he's coming up—keep to the right—don't mind the corner—we'll do it yet—" These and many another exclamation fell from Bates' volcanic lips as he clung to the dicky for dear life and tried to drive the mad horse into the hedge by the wild waving of a spasmodic arm. His appeal to her to keep to the right showed that he, at any rate, had not lost his head. Instinctive habit sent the animal flying to the left-hand side of the road as he would naturally be sent by any coachman. Though the brougham lurched wildly, the terrified horse returned to his accustomed place again and again, taking the corners in wide sweeps and increasing his speed with his terror. A great raw bony brute that had been ridden to hounds the previous winter, his gallop was that of a thoroughbred over good grass lands. Even the ten horse-power car could not keep its lead. Evelyn knew that he was overtaking her. The shadow of catastrophe seemed to creep over her very shoulders. "Is he far off now?" she would ask Bates despairingly.
The answer, many times repeated, began to be monotonous.
"Keep to the right, milady—don't mind the corner—I'll blow the horn for you—now you're gaining a bit—oh, that's fine—let her go—we'll do it yet, milady."
Evelyn, it may be, realized her own peril less than that of those in the brougham. A man's cry, whatever reading of character might be placed upon it, seemed to her an evidence of grave danger and piteous fear. But for this, her own courage would have almost delighted in the rare sensations of speed and flight and all the doubt of the ultimate issue. Guiding her car with a brave hand, she was conscious of a rushing wind upon her face; of hedges, fields, trees approaching, disappearing, during that ominous race; of a voice speaking to her; of a question many times repeated—"How will it end? Will they be killed?" And yet the speed of it both excited and sustained her. She swung round the corners as an arm upon a pivot; hugged a difficult path with the skill of an oldmécanicien, nursed her engine perfectly, was never flurried, never hesitating, never fearful. That which she dreaded was the long incline leading up to the gates of Melbourne Hall. The mad horse would beat the car upon that, she thought. The threatened thunder of his hoofs seemed so near to her now. She could hear the man's voice plainly, and the tongue he spoke had a more familiar sound.
The moment was critical enough. A gentle hill lay before her. She knew that a horse galloping blindly would make nothing of it, but that the little car must be slowed down sufficiently to render escape out of the question. Had there been a footpath, she would have mounted it and dared the consequences; but of path there was none. A man in her place might have bethought him of slacking speed gradually and blocking the road to the flying carriage. But Bates, herchauffeur, had never been upon a horse in his life. He thought only of himself and the car.
"I could feel his nose down my back," he told the Servants' Hall afterwards—to which the cook replied "Lor', Mr. Bates, how you must have suffered!" He admitted that he had done so.
"She turned into the field better than Théry himself could have done," he declared, speaking of the driver of the Gordon Bennet car. "Just when I was asking myself who'd come in for my Sunday clothes, round she goes like a top and the carriage went flying by us at a jiffy."
The kitchen listened in awe.
"I always said as she was a thoroughbred," Williams, the groom, remarked; and this opinion appeared to be general.
Evelyn had saved her car just as the excellent Bates described it. Losing ground steadily upon the hill, the end of it all seemed at hand, when she espied the open gate of a hay-field upon her right hand; and taking her courage and the wheel in both her hands, she just touched the car with the foot-brake and then swung it boldly through the opening. A terrible lurch, a great bump over wagon-ruts and they were at a standstill in grass growing to the height of their axles. The bolting horse meanwhile went by like a shot from a bow, straight up the hill which leads to the Hall. A turn of the road hid him from their sight. They heard a loud crash and then all was still.
Evelyn sat, very pale and frightened, and trembling visibly at the thought of that which must have happened on the hillside above them. The engine of her car had stopped as they ran into the field and the imperturbable Bates immediately leaped down from the dicky and made a wild attempt to restart it.
"There wasn't a driver on the box, milady," he said, as though it were the most natural remark in the world to make.
Evelyn answered by ordering him, almost angrily, to start the engine.
"We must go to them," she said, her heart beating fast as she spoke. "I am sure there has been a dreadful accident. Be quick, Bates! Why are you so foolish? Please start the engine at once."
"I was thinking of you, milady," the man said a little sullenly. "There was two gents in the carriage. You mightn't like to see what somebody will see when they go up there."
"Don't talk nonsense," she said firmly. "I am not a child, Bates. You would make a coward of me. Let us go at once!"
Bates said no more but started the engine at once. Evelyn backed the car from the field and drove slowly up the hill. She was greatly excited and afraid, but her resolution to proceed remained unshaken.
Who had been in the carriage? What harm had befallen him or them? The turn of the road answered her immediately. For there, white and insensible by the side of the shattered brougham, lay Count Odin, the Roumanian, and by him there knelt young Felix Horowitz, his friend, ready to tell everyone that the Count was dead. Evelyn, however, knew that he was not dead.
And tragedy, she said, had followed her even to the gates of Melbourne Hall.