"What that fear has been to me, and what it has grown into during my sad lonely life, I cannot hope to make you understand. Always those terrible words of vengeance ring in my ears as I heard them last. They seem to roll over sea and land, and in the middle of the night, and out in the sunlit street, I seem to hear them still. It is not you I fear, Bernard, so much as him!"
"What that fear has been to me, and what it has grown into during my sad lonely life, I cannot hope to make you understand. Always those terrible words of vengeance ring in my ears as I heard them last. They seem to roll over sea and land, and in the middle of the night, and out in the sunlit street, I seem to hear them still. It is not you I fear, Bernard, so much as him!"
Mr. Levy listened, and nodded approvingly.
"All is plain there, Benjamin, I think. The meaning is quite clear."
Mr. Benjamin laid his finger upon the last sentence.
"What do you make of that, dad?" he asked.
Mr. Levy adjusted his spectacles and read it slowly.
"'It is not for you I fear, Bernard, so much as him.' Tut, tut, that's simple enough," he declared. "This woman, whoever she may be, is afraid of a meeting between Sir Geoffrey Kynaston and Mr. Bernard Maddison, to give him his right name, and she remarks that it is for him she fears, and not for Sir Geoffrey. Quite right, too, considering the affectionate tone of these letters."
"Yes, I suppose that's it," Mr. Benjamin remarked in an absent tone, folding up the letter, and putting it back amongst the rest.
Mr. Levy watched him narrowly, and returned to his desk with a sense of injury. His son—his Benjamin—had discovered something which he was not going to confide to the parental ear. It was a blow.
He was wondering whether it might have the desired effect if he were to produce a scrap of old yellow pocket handkerchief, and affect to be overcome, when they heard a hurried footstep outside. Both looked up anxiously. There was a quick knocking at the door, and a shabby-looking man dressed in black entered.
"Well, Leekson, what news?" Mr. Benjamin asked quickly.
"He's off," was the prompt reply. "Continent. Afternoon train. Waterloo, three o'clock."
Mr. Benjamin's eyes sparkled.
"I knew it!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Job's over, Leekson. Get me a cab, and go to the office for your money."
"You're going to let him go!" cried Mr. Levy piteously.
"Not I. I'm going with him, dad. A fifty-pound note from the safe, quick."
Mr. Levy gave it to him with trembling fingers.
"Now, dad, listen to me," Benjamin said earnestly, reaching down his overcoat from the peg. "Miss Thurwell will be here some time to-day, I'm certain, to try and buy those letters. I've changed my mind about them. Sell."
"Sell," repeated Mr. Levy, surprised. "I thought that that was what we were not to do."
"Never mind, never mind. I'm playing a better game than that now," continued Mr. Benjamin. "I'll leave it to you to make the bargain. There's no one can beat you at that, you know, dad."
Mr. Levy acknowledged his son's compliment with a gratified smile.
"Well, well, Benjamin, we'll say nothing about that. I'll do my best, you may be sure," he declared fervently.
"I may as well just mention that I have ascertained how much money she has got," Mr. Benjamin went on. "She's worth, until her father dies, about fifteen thousand pounds. We won't be hard on her. Suppose we say five thousand the lowest, eh?"
"All right, Benjamin, all right," the old man murmured, rubbing his hands softly together. "Five thousand pounds! My eye! And how long shall you be away?"
"I can't quite tell, dad. Just keep your pecker up, and stick to the biz."
"Yes, Ben, yes. And of course you can't stop to tell me about it now, but won't this five thousand pounds from the young lady about put an end to this little game, eh? And, if so, need you go following this Mr. Maddison all over the country, eh? An expensive journey, Ben. You've got that fifty-pound note, you know."
Mr. Benjamin laughed contemptuously.
"You'll never make a pile, you won't, dad," he exclaimed. "You're so plaguedly narrow minded. Listen here," he added, drawing a little closer to him, and looking round over his shoulder to be sure that no one was listening to him. "When I come back, I'll make you open your eyes. You think this thing played out, do you? Bah! The letters aren't worth twopence to us. When I come back from abroad, I'm going to commence to play this game in a manner that'll rather astonish you, and a certain other person. Ta-ta, guv'nor."
Mr. Benjamin Levy was a smart young man, but he had a narrow escape that afternoon, for as he was sauntering up and down the platform at Waterloo, whom should he see within a dozen yards of him but Mr. Maddison and Miss Thurwell. He had just time to jump into a third-class carriage, and spread a paper out before his face, before they were upon him.
"Jove, that was a shave!" he muttered to himself. "Blest if I thought they were as thick as that. I wonder if she's going with him. No, there's no female luggage, and that's her maid hanging about behind there. Moses, ain't she a slap-up girl, and ain't they just spooney! D—d if he ain't kissed her!" he wound up as the train glided out of the station, leaving Helen Thurwell on the platform waving her handkerchief. "Well, we're off. So far, so good. I feel like winning."
But, unfortunately for Mr. Benjamin, there was a third person in that train whom neither he nor Mr. Maddison knew of, who was very much interested in the latter. Had he only mentioned his name, or referred in the slightest possible way to his business abroad before Mr. Benjamin, that young gentleman would have promptly abandoned his expedition and returned to town. But, as he did not, all three traveled on together in a happy state of ignorance concerning each other; and Mr. Benjamin Levy was very near experiencing the greatest disappointment of his life.
Mr. Benjamin Levy's surmise had been an accurate one. Late in the afternoon of that day, Helen Thurwell called at the little office off the Strand, and when she left it an hour later, she had in her pocket a packet of letters, and Mr. Levy had in his safe a check and promissory note for five thousand pounds. Both were very well satisfied—Mr. Levy with his money, and Helen with the consciousness that she had saved her lover from the consequences of what she now regarded as her great folly.
She was to have dined out that evening with her aunt, but when the time to dress came, she pleaded a violent headache, and persuaded Lady Thurwell, who was a good-natured little woman, to take an excuse.
"But, my dear Helen, you don't look one bit ill," she had ventured to protest, "and the Cullhamptons are such nice people. Are you sure that you won't come?"
"If you please, aunt," she had begged, "I really do want to stay at home this evening;" and Lady Thurwell had not been able to withstand her niece's imploring tone, so she had gone alone.
Helen spent the evening as she had planned to. She took her work down into the room where they had been the night before, and where this wonderful thing had happened to her. Then she leaned back in her low chair—the same chair—and gave herself up to the luxury of thought; and when a young woman does that she is very far gone indeed. It was all so strange to her, so bewildering, that she needed time to realize it.
And as she sat there, her eyes, full of a soft dreamy light, fixed upon vacancy, and her lips parted in a happy smile, she felt a sudden longing to be back again upon the moorland cliffs round Thurwell Court, out in the open country with her thoughts. This town season with its monotonous round of gayety was nothing to her now. More than ever, in the enlarged and sweeter life which seemed opening up before her, she saw the littleness and enervating insipidity of it all. She would go down home, and take some books—the books he was fond of—and sit out on the cliffs by the sea and read and dream, and think over all he had said to her, and look forward to his coming; it should be there he would find her. They two alone would stand together under the blue sky, and wander about in the sunshine over the blossoming moors. Would not this be better than meeting him again in a crowded London drawing-room? She knew that he would like it best.
So when Lady Thurwell returned from her party, and was sitting in her room in a very becoming dressing gown, yawning and thinking over the events of the evening, there was a little tap at the door, and Helen entered, similarly attired.
"Please tell me all about it," she begged, drawing up a chair to the fire. "My headache is quite gone."
"So I should imagine," remarked Lady Thurwell. "I never saw you look better. What have you been doing to yourself, child? You look like Aphrodite 'new bathed in Paphian wells.'"
"If you mean to insinuate that I've had a bath," laughed Helen, "I admit it. Now, tell me all about this evening."
Which of course Lady Thurwell did, and found a good deal to say about the dresses and the menu.
"By the bye," she wound up, with a curious look at her niece, "Sir Allan Beaumerville was there, and seemed a good deal disappointed at the absence of a certain young lady."
"Indeed!" answered Helen. "That was very nice of him. And now, aunt, do you know what I came in to say to you?"
Lady Thurwell shook her head.
"Haven't any idea, Helen. Has anyone been making love to you?"
Helen shook her head, but the color gathered in her cheeks, and she took up a screen, as though to protect her face from the fire.
"I want to go home, aunt. Don't look so startled, please. I heard from papa this morning, and he's not very well, and Lord Thurwell comes back to-morrow, so you won't be lonely, and I've really quite made my mind up. Town is very nice, but I like the country best."
"Like the country best in May!" Lady Thurwell gasped. "My dear child, have you taken leave of your senses?"
"Not quite, aunt," Helen answered, smiling. "Only it is as I say. I like the country best, and I would really rather go home."
Lady Thurwell considered for a full minute. Being a very juvenile matron, she had by no means enjoyed herrôleas chaperon to an acknowledged beauty. She had offered it purely out of good nature, and because, although only related by marriage—Lord Thurwell was the elder brother of Mr. Thurwell, of Thurwell Court, and the head of the family—still there was no one else to perform such a service for Helen. But if Helen did really not care for it, and wished to return to her country life, why there was no necessity for her to make a martyr of herself any longer.
"You really mean this, Helen?"
"I do indeed, aunt."
"Then it is settled. Make your own arrangements. I have liked having you, child, and whenever you choose to come to me again you will be welcome. But of course, it is not everyone who cares for town life, and if you do not, you are quite right to detach yourself from it. I'm afraid I know several young men who'll take your sudden flight very much to heart; and one who isn't particularly young."
"Nonsense!" laughed her niece. "There'll be no mourning on my account."
"We shall see," remarked Lady Thurwell, sententiously. "If one person does not find his way down to Thurwell Court after you before long, I shall be surprised."
"Please don't let anyone do anything so stupid, aunt," pleaded Helen with sudden warmth. "It would be—no good."
Lady Thurwell lifted her eyebrows, and looked at her niece with a curious little smile.
"Who is it?" she asked quietly.
But Helen only laughed. Her secret was too precious to part with—yet.
And so Helen had her own way, and went back to her home on the moors, where Mr. Thurwell, who had just finished his hunting season, was very glad to see her, although not a little surprised. But she told him no more than she had told her aunt, that she had no taste for London life. The time would soon come when he would know the whole truth, but until her lover's return the secret was her own.
She had one hasty note from him, posted in Paris on his way to Italy, and though there were only a few lines in it, she treasured up the little scrap of paper very tenderly, for, such as it was, it was her first love letter. He had given her an address in the small town to which he was bound, and she noticed, with a slight wonder at the coincidence, that it was the same place where he had first seen her. She had written to him, and now there had come a pause. She had nothing to do but to wait.
But though such waiting is at best but a tedious matter, those few days brought their own peculiar happiness to her. She would have found it impossible to have confided her secret to any human being; she had no bosom friend to whom she could go for sympathy. But her healthy, open-air life, her long solitary walks, and a certain vein of poetry which she undoubtedly possessed, had given her some of that passionate, almost personal, love of nature which is sweeter by far than any human friendship. For her those long stretches of wild moorland, with the dark silent tarns and far-distant line of blue hills, the high cliffs where the sea wind roared with all the bluster and fury of a late March, the sea itself with its ever-changing face, the faint streaks of brilliant color in the evening sky, or the wan glare of a stormy morning—all these things had their own peculiar meaning to her, and awoke always some echo of response in her heart. And it chanced that at that time all the sweet breezy freshness of a late spring was making glad the country which she loved, and the perfect sympathy of the season with her own happiness seemed to her very sweet, for it was springtime too in her heart. A new life glowed in her veins, and sometimes it seemed to her that she could see the vista of her whole future bathed in the warm sunlight of a new-born happiness. The murmuring pine groves, the gay reveling of the birds, the budding flowers and heath—all these things appealed to her with a strange sympathetic force. So she took long walks, and came home with sparkling eyes, and her cheeks full of a rich color, till her father wondered what had come to his proud silent daughter to give this new buoyancy to her frame, and added physical beauty to her face, which had once seemed to him a little toospirituelleand ethereal.
Once more Helen and her father sat at breakfast out on the sheltered balcony of Thurwell Court. Below them the gardens, still slightly coated with the early morning dew, were bathed in the glittering sunshine, and in the distance, and over the tops of the trees in the park, a slight feathery mist was curling upward. The sweet, fresh air, still a little keen, was buoyant with all the joyous exhilaration of spring, and nature, free at last from the saddened grip of winter, was reasserting itself in one glad triumphant chorus. Down in the park the slumberous cawing of the rooks triumphed over the lighter-voiced caroling of innumerable thrushes and blackbirds, and mingled with the faint humming of a few early bees, seemed to fill the air with a sweetly blended strain of glad music. It was one of those mornings typical of its own season, in which the whole atmosphere seems charged with quickening life. Summer with its warm luscious glow, and autumn with its clear calm repose, have their own special charms. But a spring morning, coming after the deep sadness of a hard winter, gains much by the contrast. There is overflowing energy and passionate joy in its newly beating pulses, the warm delight of reawakening life, happy to find the earth so fair a place, which the staider charms of a more developed season altogether lack.
It was in some measure owing to this influence, and also to the fact that she held in her hand a letter from her lover, which her father had handed her without remark, but with a somewhat curious glance, that Helen was feeling very happy that morning. The last year had dealt strangely with her. Tragedy had thrown its startling, gloomy shadow across her life, and had left traces which could never be altogether wiped out. Anxieties of another sort had come, perplexities and strange unhappy doubts, although these last had burned with a fitful, uncertain flame and now seemed stilled for ever. But triumphing over all these was this new-born love, the great deep joy of a woman's life, so vast, so sweet and beautiful, that it transfuses her whole being, and seems to lift her into another world.
And so Helen, leaning back in her chair, with her eyes wandering idly over the pleasant gardens and park below, to where, through a deep gap in the trees, was just visible a faint blue line of sea, was wrapped up very much in her own thoughts, and scarcely doing her duty toward entertaining her father. Indeed, she seemed almost unconscious of his presence until he looked up suddenly from a letter he was reading and asked her a question.
"By the bye, Helen," he said, "I've meant to ask you something every day since you've been home, but I have always forgotten it. Who was that young man who came down here to help Johnson with the auditing, and who went away so suddenly? Aprotégéof yours, I suppose, as he came here on your recommendation?"
"Yes, I was interested in him," she answered, looking steadily away, and with a faint color in her cheeks. "Why do you ask? Did he not do his work properly?"
"Oh, yes, he did his work very well, I believe," Mr. Thurwell said impatiently. "It was what he did after working hours, and which has just come to my notice, which makes me ask you. It seems he spent the whole of his spare time making covert, but I must say ingenious, inquiries respecting Sir Geoffrey's murder, and I am also given to understand that he paid Falcon's Nest an uninvited visit in the middle of the night. What does it all mean? Was it merely curiosity, or had he any object in it?"
"I think—he had an object," she answered slowly.
"Indeed!" Mr. Thurwell raised his eyebrows and waited for an explanation.
"You remember, papa, that awful scene here when Rachel Kynaston died, and what her last words to me were?"
"Yes, I remember perfectly," Mr. Thurwell answered gravely.
"Well, at that time I could not help having just a suspicion that Mr. Brown must be mixed up in it in some way, and it seemed to me that I should not be quite at ease if I let matters go on without doing anything, so I—well, this young man came down here to see whether he could find out anything."
Mr. Thurwell seldom frowned at his daughter, of whom he was secretly a little afraid, but he did so now. He was seriously angry.
"It was not a matter for you to have concerned yourself in at all," he said, rising from his seat. "At least, I should have been consulted."
"It was all very foolish, I know," she admitted humbly.
"It was worse than foolish; it was wrong and undutiful," he declared. "I am astonished that my daughter should have mixed herself up with such underhand work. And may I ask why I was kept in ignorance?"
"Because you would not have allowed me to do what I did," she said quietly, with downcast eyes. "I thought it was my duty. I have been punished—punished severely."
He softened a little, and resumed his seat. She was certainly very contrite. He was silent for a moment or two, and then asked her a question.
"Did this young man—detective, I suppose he was—find out anything about Mr. Brown?"
She looked up, a little surprised at the curiosity in his tone.
"Why, papa, it was I who found out how stupid I had been," she said. "When I discovered that our mysterious tenant was Bernard Maddison, of course I saw the absurdity of suspecting him at once."
Mr. Thurwell moved a little uneasily in his chair.
"He did not find out anything, then?" he asked.
She was silent. She had not expected this, and she scarcely knew how to answer.
"He found out what Mr. Brown—I mean Mr. Maddison—himself told me, that he had known Sir Geoffrey abroad."
"Nothing more?"
"I did not ask. To tell the truth, I was not interested. The idea of Mr. Maddison being connected with such a crime is simply ridiculous. I was heartily sorry that I had ever taken any steps at all."
Mr. Thurwell lit a cigarette, and drew his remaining letters toward him.
"I must confess," he said slowly, "that when his house was searched in my presence, and all that we discovered was that Mr. Brown was really Bernard Maddison, I felt very much as you feel; and, as you no doubt remember, I went out of my way to be civil to the man, and brought him up here to dine. But since then things have cropped up, and I'm bound to say that it looks a little queer. I hear that young man of yours told several people that he had in his pocket what would bring Mr. Brown to the scaffold any day."
"It is not true," she answered in a low firm tone. "I know that it is not true."
Mr. Thurwell shrugged his shoulders.
"I hope not, I'm sure. Still, I'd rather he did not come back here again. Some one must have done it, you see, and if it was a stranger, he must have been a marvelous sort of fellow to come into this lonely part of the country, and go away again without leaving a single trace."
"Criminals are all clever at disguises," she interposed.
"Doubtless; but they have yet to learn the art of becoming invisible," he went on drily. "I'm afraid it's no use concealing the fact that things look black against Maddison, and there is more than a whisper in the county about it. If he's a wise fellow, he'll keep away from here."
"He will not," she answered. "He will come back. He is innocent!"
Mr. Thurwell saw the rising flush in his daughter's face, but he had no suspicion as to its real cause. He knew that Bernard Maddison was one of her favorite authors, and he put her defence of him down to that fact. He was not a particularly warm advocate on either side, and suddenly remembering his unopened letters, he abandoned the discussion.
Helen, whose calm happiness had been altogether disturbed, rose in a few minutes with the intention of making her escape. But her father, with an open letter in his hand, checked her.
"Have you been seeing much of Sir Allen Beaumerville in town, Helen?" he asked.
"Yes, a great deal. Why?" she asked.
"He's coming down here," Mr. Thurwell said. "He asks whether we can put him up for a night or two, as he wants to do some botanizing. Of course we shall be very pleased. I did give him a general invitation, I remember, but I never thought he'd come. You'll see about having some rooms got ready, Helen!"
"Yes, papa, I'll see to it," she answered, moving slowly away.
What could this visit in the middle of the season mean? she wondered uneasily. It was so unlike Sir Allan to leave town in May. Could it be that what her aunt had once laughingly hinted at was really going to happen? Her cheeks burned at the very thought. She liked Sir Allan, and she had found him a delightful companion, but even to think of any other man now in such a connection seemed unreal and grotesque. After all, it was most improbable. Sir Allan had only shown her the attention he showed every woman who pleased his fastidious taste.
On the following day Sir Allan duly arrived, and in a very short space of time Helen's fears had altogether vanished. His appearance was certainly not that of an anxious wooer. He was pale and haggard and thin, altogether a different person to the brilliant man about town who was such a popular figure in society. Something seemed to have aged him. There were lines and wrinkles in his face which had never appeared there before, and an air of restless depression in his manner and bearing quite foreign to his former self.
On the first evening Mr. Thurwell broached some plans for his entertainment, but Sir Allan stopped him at once.
"If I may be allowed to choose," he said, "I should like to be absolutely quiet for a few days. London life is not the easiest in the world, and I'm afraid I must be getting an old man. At any rate I am knocked up, and I want a rest."
"You have come to the right place for that," Mr. Thurwell laughed. "You could live here for months and never see a soul if you chose. But I'm afraid you'll soon be bored."
"I'm not afraid of that," Sir Allan answered quietly. "Besides, my excuse was not altogether a fiction. I really am an enthusiastic botanist, and I want to take up my researches here just where I was obliged to leave them off so suddenly last year."
Mr. Thurwell nodded.
"I remember," he said; "you were staying at Mallory, weren't you, when that sad affair to poor Kynaston happened?"
"Yes."
Sir Allan moved his chair a little, as though to escape from the warmth of the fire, and sat where the heavily shaded lamp left his face in the shadow.
"Yes, that was a terrible affair," he said in a low tone; "and a very mysterious one. Nothing has ever been heard of the murderer, I suppose?"
"Nothing."
"And there are no rumors, no suspicions?"
Mr. Thurwell looked uneasily around, as though to satisfy himself that there were no servants lingering in the room.
"It is scarcely a thing to be talked about," he said slowly; "but there have been things said."
"About whom?"
"About my tenant at Falcon's Nest—Bernard Maddison, as he turned out to be."
"Ah!"
Mr. Thurwell looked at his guest wonderingly. He could not quite make up his mind whether he was profoundly indifferent or equally interested. His tone sounded a little cold.
"There was a fellow down here in my employ," continued Mr. Thurwell, lighting a fresh cigar, "who turns out to have been a spy or detective of some sort. Of course I knew nothing of it at the time—in fact, I've only just found it out; but it seems he ransacked Falcon's Nest and discovered some papers which he avowed quite openly would hang Mr. Maddison. But what's become of him I don't know."
"I suppose he didn't disclose the nature of the papers?" Sir Allan asked quietly.
"No, he didn't go as far as that. By the bye, you know every one, Beaumerville. Who is this Bernard Maddison? Of course I know all about his writing and that; but what family is he of? He is certainly a gentleman."
Sir Allan threw away his cigarette, and rose.
"I think I have heard once, but I don't remember for the moment. Miss Helen promised us a little music, didn't she?" he added. "If you are ready, shall we go and remind her?"
Sir Allan brought the conversation to an end with a shrug of his shoulders, and during the remainder of his stay Mr. Thurwell noticed that he carefully avoided any reopening of it. Evidently his guest has no taste for horrors.
Sir Allan rose late on the following morning, and until lunch-time begged for the use of the library, where he remained writing letters and reading up the flora of the neighborhood. Early in the afternoon he appeared equipped for his botanizing expedition.
"Helen shall go with you and show you the most likely places," Mr. Thurwell had said at luncheon. But though Sir Allan had bowed courteously, and had expressed himself as charmed, he had not said another word about it, so when the time came he started alone. On the whole Helen, although she was by no means ill-pleased, was not a little puzzled. In London, when it was sometimes difficult to obtain a place by her side at all, Sir Allan had been the most assiduous and attentive of cavaliers; but now that they were quite alone in the country, and her company was even offered to him, he showed himself by no means eager to avail himself of it. On the contrary, he had deliberately preferred doing his botanizing alone. Well, she was quite satisfied, she thought, with a little laugh. It was far better this way than the other. Still she was puzzled.
Later in the afternoon she started for her favorite walk alone. She nearly always chose the same way along the cliffs, through the fir plantation, and sometimes as far as the hill by the side of which was Falcon's Nest. It was a walk full of associations for her, associations which had become so dear a part of her life that she always strove to heighten them even by choosing the same hour of the day for her walk as that well-remembered one when they had stood hand-in-hand for a single moment in the shadows of the darkening plantation. And again, as it had done many times before, her heart beat fast, and sweet memories began to steal back to her as she passed under those black waving branches moaning slightly in the evening breeze, and pressed under foot the brown leaves which in a sodden mass carpeted the winding path. Yes, it was here by that tall slender fir that they had stood for that one moment of intense happiness, when the thunder of the sea filling the air around them had almost forbidden speech, and the strange light had flashed in his dark eyes. She passed the spot with slow, lingering steps and quickening pulses, and opening the little hand-gate, climbed slowly up the cliff.
At the summit she paused and looked around. A low grey mist hung over the moor, and twilight had cast its mantle of half-veiled obscurity over sea and land. A wind too had sprung up, blowing her ulster and skirts around her, and driving the mist across the moor in clouds of small, fine rain. Before her she could just see the dim outline of the opposite hill, with its dark patch of firs, and Falcon's Nest, bare and distinct, close up against its side. The wind and the rain blew against her, but she took no heed. All personal discomforts seemed so little beside these memories tinged with such a peculiar sweetness. It is a fact that a woman is able to extract far more pleasure from memories than a man, for there is in his nature a certain impatience which makes it impossible for him to keep his thought fixed steadfastly upon the past. The vivid flashes of memory which do come to him only incite a great restlessness for its renewal, which, if it be for the time impossible, is only disquieting and discontenting. But for a woman, her love itself, even though it be for the time detached from its object, is a sweet and precious thing. She can yield herself up to its influence, can steep her mind and soul in it, till a glow of intense happiness steals through her whole frame; and hence her patience during separation is so much greater than a man's.
And it was so to a certain extent with Helen. Those few moments of intense abstraction had their own peculiar pleasure for her, and it was only the sound of the far-off clock borne by the wind across the moor from Thurwell Court which recalled her to herself. Then she started, and in a moment more would have been on her way home.
But that lingering farewell glance toward Falcon's Nest suddenly changed into a startled fearful gaze. Her heart beat fast, and she took an involuntary step forward. There was no doubt about it. A dim moving light shone from the lower windows of the cottage.
Her first wild thought was that her lover had himself returned, and a thrill of intense joy passed through her whole being, only to die away before the cold chill of a heart-sickening dread. Was it not far more likely to be an intruder of the type of Benjamin Levy, a spy or emissary of the law, searching amongst his papers as Benjamin Levy had done, for the same hideous reason. Her heart sank with fear, and then leaped up with the fierce defensive instinct of a woman who sees her lover's enemies working for his ruin. She did not hesitate for an instant, but walked swiftly along the cliff-side towards that tremulous light.
The twilight was fast deepening, and the cold grey tint of the dull afternoon was gradually becoming blotted out into darkness. As she drew nearer to her destination, the low moaning of the sea below became mingled with the melancholy sighing of the wind amongst the thick fir trees which overhung the cottage. The misty rain blew in her face and penetrated her thick ulster. Everything around was as dreary and lonely as it could be. The only sign of any human life was that faint glimmering light now stationary, as though the searcher whoever he might be, had found what he wanted, and had settled down in one of the rooms.
As she drew nearer she saw which it was, and trembled. All the rest of the cottage was in black darkness. The light shone only from the window of that little inner study on the ground floor.
She had passed through the gate, and with beating heart approached the window. A few yards away she paused and looked in.
A candle was burning on a small bracket, and, though its light was but dim, it showed her everything. The cabinet was open, and papers were strewn about, as though thrown right and left in a desperate search; and, with his back to her, a man was seated before it, his bared head resting upon his arms, and his whole attitude full of the passionate abandonment of a great despair. She had but one thought. It was her lover returned, and he needed her consolation. With a new light in her face she turned and moved softly toward the front door. As she reached the threshold she paused and drew back. There was the sound of footsteps inside.
She stepped behind a bush and waited. In a moment the door of the cottage was thrown suddenly open, and the tall figure of a man stood in the entrance. For one moment he hesitated. Then with a sudden passionate gesture he raised his hands high above his head, and she heard a long deep moan burst from his quivering lips.
The pity which swelled up in her heart she kept back with a strong hand. A strange bewilderment was creeping over her. She had seen only the dark outline of the figure, but surely it was not the figure of her lover. And then she held her breath, and walking swiftly away, passing so close to her that she could look into his white, strained face, Sir Allan Beaumerville strode down the garden, and disappeared in the shadows of the plantation.
The midday sun had risen into a sky of deep cloudless blue, and a silence almost as intense as the silence of night rested upon the earth. No one was abroad, no one seemed to have anything particular to do. Far away on the vine-covered slopes a few peasants were lazily bending over their work, the bright garments of their picturesque attire standing out like little specks of brilliant coloring against the dun-colored background. But in the quaint old-fashioned town itself no one was astir. One solitary Englishman made his way alone and almost unnoticed through the queer zig-zag streets, up the worn grey steps by the famous statute of Minerva, and on to the terraced walk, fronting which were the aristocratic villas of the little Italian town.
It was a solitude which was pleasing to him, for it was very evident that he was no curious tourist, or casual visitor of any sort. His eyes were full of that eager half-abstracted look which so clearly denotes the awakening of old associations, quickened into life by familiar surroundings; and, indeed, it was so. To Bernard Maddison, every stone in that quietly sleeping, picturesque old town spoke with a language of its own. The very atmosphere, laden with the sultry languorous heat of a southern sun, seemed charged with memories. Their influence was strong upon him, and he walked like a man in a dream, until he reached what seemed to be his destination, and here he paused.
He had come to the end of the terraced walk, the evening promenade of the whole town. Before him was a small orange grove, whose aromatic odor, faintly penetrating the still air, added one more to his stock of memories. On his right hand was a grey stone wall, worn and tottering with age, and overhung with green creepers and shrubs, reaching over and hanging down from the other side, and let into it, close to him, was a low nail-studded door of monastic shape, half hidden by a luxurious drooping shrub, from amongst the foliage of which peeped out star-like clusters of soft scarlet flowers.
For many moments he stood before that door, with his hand resting upon the rusty latch, lingering in a sort of apathy, as though he were unwilling to disturb some particular train of thought. Then a mellow-sounding bell from a convent in the valley below startled him, and immediately he lifted the latch before him. There was no other fastening, and the door opened. He stepped inside, and carefully reclosed it.
He was in a garden, a garden of desolation, which nature seemed to have claimed for her own and made beautiful. It was a picture of luxuriant overgrowth. The grass on the lawns had become almost a jungle. It had grown up over the base of the deep grey stone basins of exquisite shape and carving, the tiny statuettes tottering into ruin, and the worn old sun-dial, across which the slanting rays of the sun still glanced. Weeds, too, had crept up around them in picturesque toils, weeds which had started to destroy, but remained to adorn with all the sweet abandon of unrestrained growth. Some of them had put forth brilliant blossoms of many hues, little spots of exquisite coloring against the sombre hue of the stonework and the deep green of the leaves. Everywhere nature had triumphed over science and skill. Everything was changed, and nature had shown herself a more perfect gardener than man. The gravel paths were embedded with soft green moss, studded with clumps of white and purple violets, whose faint fragrance, mingled with the more exotic scent of other plants, filled the warm air with a peculiar dreamy perfume. Nowhere had the hand of man sought to restrain or to develop. Nature had had her own way, and had made for herself a fair garden.
A little overcome by the heat, and a little, too, by swiftly stirring memories, Bernard Maddison sank down upon a low iron seat, under the shade of a little clump of almond trees, and covered his face with his hands. And there came to him, as he sat there, something more vivid than an ordinary day-dream, something so real and minutely played out, that afterwards it possessed for him all the freshness and significance of a veritable trance. It seemed, indeed, as if some mysterious force had drawn aside the curtain of the past in his mind, and had bidden him look out once more upon the moving figures in a living drama.
The warm sunlight faded from the sky, the summer heat died out of the air, the soft velvety mantle of a southern night lay upon the brooding land. Many stars were burning in the deep-blue heavens, and the horned moon, golden and luminous, hung low down in the west.
Pale, and with the fever of a great anger burning in his dry eyes, a man sat at the open window of the villa yonder, watching. Around him were scattered all the signs of arduous brain labor, books, manuscripts, classical dictionaries, and works of reference. But his pen had fallen from his hand, and he was doing nothing. He sat there idle, gazing out upon the fantastic shapes and half-veiled gloom of this fair garden. Its rich balmy odors, and the fainter perfume of rarer plants which floated languidly in through the open window, were nothing to him. He was barely conscious of the sweet delights of the voluptuous summer night. He was watching with his eyes fixed upon the east, where morning would soon be breaking.
It came at last—what he was waiting for. There was a slight click of the latch from the old postern door in the wall, and the low murmur of voices—a man's, pleading and passionate, and a woman's, half gay, half mocking. Then the door opened and shut, and a tall fair lady walked leisurely up toward the villa.
She wore no hat, but a hooded opera-cloak was thrown loosely over her shoulders, and as she strolled up the path, pausing every now and then to carelessly gather a handful of the drooping lilies, whose perfume made faint the heavy night air, its folds parted, and revealed brief glimpses of soft white drapery and flashing jewels on her bosom and in her hair. Her feet, too, were cased in tiny white satin slippers, which seemed scarcely to press the ground, so lightly and gracefully she walked. Altogether she was very fair to look upon—the fairest sight in all that lovely garden.
Not so seemed to think the man who stood back in the shadow of the window, waiting for her. His white face was ghastly with passion, and his fingers were nervously interlaced in the curtains. It was only with a supreme effort that he at last flung them from him, and moved forward as though to meet her.
She saw him standing there, pale and rigid, like a carved statue, save for the passion which burned in his eyes, and for a moment she hesitated. Then, with the resigned air of one who makes up her mind to face something disagreeable, she shrugged her shoulders, and throwing away the handful of lilies she had gathered, advanced toward him.
They neither of them spoke until they stood face to face. Then, as his motionless form prevented her stepping through the window, and barred her further progress, she came to a standstill, and addressed him lightly.
"Yours is a strange welcome home,mon ami," she said. "Why do you stand there looking so fierce?"
He pointed with shaking fingers away toward the east, where a faint gleam of daylight was lightening the sky.
"Where have you been?" he asked harshly. "Can you not see that it is morning? All night long I have sat here watching for you. Where have you been?"
"You know very well where I have been," she answered carelessly. "To the ball at the Leon d'Or. I told you that I was going."
"Told me! You told me! Did I not forbid it? Did I not tell you that I would not have you go?"
"Nevertheless, I have been," she answered lightly. "It was an engagement, and I never break engagements."
"An engagement? You, with no chaperon, to go to a common ball at a public room! An engagement. Yes, with your lover, I presume."
She looked at him steadily, and yawned in his face.
"You are in a bad temper, I fear," she said. "At least, you are very rude. Let me pass, will you? I am tired of standing here."
He was beside himself with passion, and for a second or two he did not speak. But when at last the words came, they were clear and distinct enough.
"Into this house you shall never pass again," he said. "You have disregarded my wishes, you have disobeyed my orders, and now you are deceiving me. You are trifling with my honor. You are bringing shame upon my name. Go and keep your assignations from another roof. Mine has sheltered your intrigues long enough!"
The hand which had kept together her opera-cloak relinquished its grasp, and it fell back upon her shoulders. The whole beauty of her sinuous figure, in its garb of dazzling white, stood revealed. The moonlight gleamed in her fair hair, bound up with one glittering gem, shone softly upon her white swelling throat and bare arms, and flashed in her dark eyes, suddenly full of passion. Her right hand was nervously clasped around a little morsel of lace handkerchief which she had drawn from the folds of her corsage, and which seemed to make the air around heavy with a sweet perfume.
"You are angry, and you do not know what you are saying," she said. "It is true that you forbade me to go to-night—but you forbid everything. I cannot live your life. It is too dull, tootriste. It is cruel of you to expect it. Let me go in now. If you want to scold, you can do so to-morrow."
She stepped forward, but he laid his hands upon her dainty shoulders and pushed her roughly back.
"Never!" he cried savagely. "Go and live what life you choose. This is no home for you. Go, I say!"
She looked at him, her lovely eyes turned pleadingly upwards, and her lips trembling.
"You are mad!" she said. "Am I not your wife? You have no right to keep me here. And my boy, too. Let me pass."
He did not move, nor did he show any sign of yielding. He stood there with his hand stretched out in a threatening gesture toward her, his face pale and mute as marble, but with the blind rage still burning in his dark eyes.
"What is the boy, or what am I to you?" he cried hoarsely. "Begone, woman!"
Still she did not seem to understand.
"Where would you have me go?" she asked. "Is not this my home? What have I——"
"Go to your lover!" he interrupted fiercely. "Tell him that your husband is no longer your tool. He will take you in."
A burning color streamed into her delicate cheeks, and a sudden passion blazed in her eyes. She drew herself up to her full height and turned upon him with the dignity of an empress.
"Listen to me one moment," she said. "Ask yourself whether you have ever tried to make my life a happy one. Did I ever pretend to care for books and solitude? Before I married you I told you that I was fond of change and gaiety and life, and you promised me that I should have it. Ask yourself how you have kept that promise. You deny me every pleasure, and drive me to seek them alone. I am weary of your jealous furies, and your evil temper. As God looks down upon us at this moment, I have been a faithful wife to you; but if you will add to all your cruelties this cowardly, miserable indignity, then I will never willingly look upon your face again, and what sin I do will be on your head, not mine. Will you stand aside and let me pass?"
"Never!" he answered. "Never!"
She drew her mantle round her shoulders, and turned her back upon him with a contemptuous gesture.
"You have made me what I shall be," she said. "The sin be with you. For several weary years you have made me miserable. Now you have made me wicked."
She walked away into the perfumed darkness, and presently he heard the gate close behind her. He listened frantically, hoping to hear her returning steps. It was in vain. All was silent. Then he felt his limbs totter, and he sank back on a couch, and buried his face amongst the cushions.
The slumberous afternoon wore slowly away. A slight breeze rustled amongst the cypresses and the olive trees, and the air grew clearer. The sun was low in the heavens, and long shadows lay across the brilliant patches of flowers, half wild, half cultivated, and on the moss-grown walks.
Still Bernard Maddison made no movement. It may have been that he shrunk from what was before him, or it may have been that he had some special purpose in thus calling up those broken visions of the past into his mind. For, as he sat there, they still thronged in upon him, disjointed and confused, yet all tinged with that peculiar sadness which seemed to have lain heavy upon his life.
Again the memory of those long lonely days of his boyhood stole in upon him. He thought of that terrible day when his father stood by his bedside, and had bidden him in an awful voice ask no more for his mother, and think of her only as dead; and he remembered well the chill of cold despair with which he had realized that that fair, sweet woman, who had called him her little son, and who had accepted his devoted boyish affection with a sort of amused pleasure, was gone from him for ever. Henceforth life would indeed be a dreary thing, alone with that cold, silent student, with whom he was almost afraid to speak, and whom he scarcely ever addressed by the name of father.
A dreary time it had indeed been. His memory glanced lightly over the long monotonous years with a sort of shuddering recoil. He thought of his father's frequent absences, and of his return from one of them in the middle of a winter's night, propped up in an invalid carriage, with a surgeon in attendance, and blood-stained bandages around his leg. And he thought of a night when he had sat up with him while the nurse rested, and one name had ceaselessly burst from those white feverish lips, laden with fierce curses and deep vindictive hate, a name which had since been written into his memory with letters of fire. Further and further on his memory dragged him, until he himself, a boy no longer, had stood upon the threshold of man-hood, and on one awful night had heard from his father's lips that story which had cast its shadow across his life. Then for the first time had sprung up of some sort of sympathy between them, sympathy which had for its foundation a common hatred, a common sense of deep, unpardonable wrong. The oath which his father had sworn with trembling lips the son had echoed, and in dread of the vengeance of these two, the man against whom they had sworn it cut himself off from his fellows, and skulked in every out-of-the-way corner of Europe, a hunted being in peril of his life. There had come a great change over their lives, and they had drifted farther apart again. He himself had gone out into the world something of a scholar and something of a pedant, and he had found that all his ideas of life had lain rusting in his country home, and that he had almost as much to unlearn as to learn. With ample means, and an eager thirst for knowledge, he had passed from one to another of the great seats of learning of the world. But his lesson was not taught him at one of them. He learned it not amongst the keen conflict of intellect at the universities, not in the toils of the great vague disquiet which was throbbing amongst all cultured and artistic society, but in the eternal silence of Mont Blanc and her snow-capped Alps, and the whisperings of the night winds which blew across the valleys. At Heidelberg he had been a philosopher, in Italy he had been a scholar, and in Switzerland he became a poet. When once again he returned to the more feverish life of cities he was a changed man. He looked out upon life now with different eyes and enlarged vision. Passion had given place to a certain studied calm, a sort of inward contemplativeness which is ever inseparable from the true artist. Life became for him almost too impersonal, too little human. Soon it threatened to become one long abstraction, accompanied necessarily with a weakened hold on all sensuous things, and a corresponding decline in taste and appreciation. One thing had saved him from relapsing into the nervous dreamer, and the weaver of bright but aimless fancies. He had loved, and he had become a man again, linked to the world and the things of the world by the pulsations of his passion and his strong deep love. Was it well for him or ill, he wondered. Well, it might have been save for the deadly peril in which he lived, and which seemed closing fast around him. Well, it surely would have been....
Lower and lower the sun had sunk, till now its rim touched the horizon. The evening breeze stealing down from the hills had gathered strength until now it was almost cold. The distant sound of footsteps, and the gay laughing voices of the promenaders from the awakening town broke the deep stillness which had hung over the garden and recalled Bernard Maddison from thoughtland. He rose to his feet, a little stiff, and walked slowly along the path towards the villa. At that same moment, Mr. Benjamin Levy, tired and angry with his long waiting, stole into the garden by the postern-gate.