Marsham reached Felton Hall about six o'clock. The house, a large Georgian erection, belonging to pleasant easy-going people with many friends, was full of guests, and the thought of the large party which he must face at dinner and in the evening had been an additional weight in his burden during the long ride home.
No means of escaping it, or the gossip with regard to himself, which must, he knew, be raging among the guests!
That gossip had not troubled him when he had set forth in the early afternoon. Quite the contrary. It had amused him as he rode to Beechcote, full of confident hope, to think of announcing his engagement. What reason would there be for delay or concealment? He looked forward to the congratulations of old friends; the more the better.
The antithesis between "then" and "now" struck him sharply, as he dismounted. But for that last quarter of an hour with Diana, how jubilantly would he have entered the house! Ten minutes with Lady Felton--a dear, chattering woman!--and all would have been known. He pictured instinctively the joyous flutter in the house--the merry dinner--perhaps the toasts.
As it was, he slipped quietly into the house, hoping that his return might pass unnoticed. He was thankful to find no one about--the hall and drawing-room deserted. The women had gone up to rest before dinner; the men had not long before come back muddy from hunting, and were changing clothes.
Where was Sir James Chide?
He looked into the smoking-room. A solitary figure was sitting by the fire. Sir James had a new novel beside him; but he was not reading, and his cigar lay half smoked on the ash-tray beside him.
He was gazing into the blaze, his head on his hand, and his quick start and turn as the door of the smoking-room opened showed him to be not merely thoughtful but expectant.
He sprang up.
"Is that you, Oliver?"
He came forward eagerly. He had known Marsham from a child, had watched his career, and formed a very shrewd opinion of his character. But how this supreme moment would turn--if, indeed, the supreme moment had arrived--Sir James had no idea.
Marsham closed the door behind him, and in the lamplight the two men looked at each other. Marsham's brow was furrowed, his cheeks pale. His eyes, restless and bright, interrogated his old friend. At the first glance Sir James understood. He thrust his hands into his pockets.
"You know?" he said, under his breath.
Marsham nodded.
"And you--have known it all along?"
"From the first moment, almost, that I set eyes on that poor child. Doessheknow? Have you broken it to her?"
The questions hurried on each other's heels. Marsham shook his head, and Sir James, turning away, made a sound that was almost a groan.
"You have proposed to her?"
"Yes."
"And she has accepted you?"
"Yes." Marsham walked to the mantel-piece, and hung over the fire.
Sir James watched him for a moment, twisting his mouth. Then he walked up to his companion and laid a hand on his arm.
"Stick it out, Oliver!" he said, breathing quick. "Stick it out! You'll have to fight--but she's worth it."
Marsham's hand groped for his. Sir James pressed it, and walked away again, his eyes on the carpet. When he came back, he said, shortly:
"You know your mother will resist it to the last?"
By this, Marsham had collected his forces, and as he turned to the lamplight, Sir James saw a countenance that reassured him.
"I have no hope of persuading her. It will have to be faced."
"No, I fear there is no hope. She sees all such things in a false light. Forgive me--we must both speak plainly. She will shudder at the bare idea of Juliet Sparling's daughter as your wife; she will think it means a serious injury to your career--in reality it does nothing of the sort--and she will regard it as her duty to assert herself."
"You and Ferrier must do all you can for me," said Marsham, slowly.
"We shall do everything we can, but I do not flatter myself it will be of the smallest use. And supposing we make no impression--what then?"
Marsham paused a moment; then looked up.
"You know the terms of my father's will? I am absolutely dependent on my mother. The allowance she makes me at present is quite inadequate for a man in Parliament, and she could stop it to-morrow."
"You might have to give up Parliament?"
"I should very likely have to give up Parliament."
Sir James ruminated, and took up his half-smoked cigar for counsel.
"I can't imagine, Oliver, that your mother would push her opposition to quite that point. But, in any case, you have forgotten Miss Mallory's own fortune."
"It has never entered into my thoughts!" cried Marsham, with an emphasis which Sir James knew to be honest. "But, in any case, I cannot live upon my wife. If I could not find something to do, I should certainly give up politics."
His tone had become a little dry and bitter, his aspect gray.
Sir James surveyed him a moment--pondering.
"You will find plenty of ways out, Oliver--plenty! The sympathy of all the world will be with you. You have won a beautiful and noble creature. She has been brought up under a more than Greek fate. You will rescue her from it. You will show her how to face it--and how to conquer it."
A tremor swept across Marsham's handsome mouth. But the perplexity and depression in the face remained.
Sir James had a slight consciousness of rebuff. But it disappeared in his own emotion. He resumed:
"She ought to be told the story--perhaps with some omissions--at once. Her mother"--he spoke with a slow precision, forcing out the words--"was not a bad woman. If you like, I will break it to Miss Mallory. I am probably more intimately acquainted with the story than any one else now living."
Something in the tone, in the solemnity of the blue eyes, in the carriage of the gray head, touched Marsham to the quick. He laid a hand on his old friend's shoulder--affectionately--in mute thanks.
"Diana mentioned her father's solicitors--"
"I know"--interrupted Sir James--"Riley & Bonner--excellent fellows--both of them still living. They probably have all the records. And I shouldn't wonder if they have a letter--from Sparling. Hemusthave made provision--for the occasion that has now arisen."
"A letter?--for Diana?"
Sir James nodded. "His behavior to her was a piece of moral cowardice, I suppose. I saw a good deal of him during the trial, of course, though it is years now since I lost all trace of him. He was a sensitive, shy fellow, wrapped up in his archæology, and very ignorant of the world--when it all happened. It tore him up by the roots. His life withered in a day."
Marsham flushed.
"He had no right to bring her up in this complete ignorance! He could not have done anything more cruel!--more fatal! No one knows what the effect may be upon her."
And with a sudden rush of passion through the blood, he seemed to hold her once more in his arms, he felt the warmth of her cheek on his; all her fresh and fragrant youth was present to him, the love in her voice, and in her proud eyes. He turned away, threw himself into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.
Sir James looked down upon him. Instead of sympathy, there was a positive lightening in the elder man's face--a gleam of satisfaction.
"Cheer up, old fellow!" he said, in a low voice. "You'll bring her through. You stand by her, and you'll reap your reward. By Gad, there are many men who would envy you the chance!"
Marsham made no reply. Was it his silence that evoked in the mind of Sir James the figure which already held the mind of his companion?--the figure of Lady Lucy? He paced up and down, with the image before him--the spare form, resolutely erect, the delicate resolution of the face, the prim perfection of the dress, judged by the Quakerish standard of its owner. Lady Lucy almost always wore gloves--white or gray. In Sir James's mind the remembrance of them took a symbolic importance. What use in expecting the wearer of them to handle the blood and mire of Juliet Sparling's story with breadth and pity?
"Look here!" he said, coming to a sudden stop. "Let us decide at once on what is to be done. You said nothing to Miss Mallory?"
"Nothing. But she is already in some trouble and misgiving about the past. She is in the mood to inquire; she has been, I think, for some time. And, naturally, she wishes to hide nothing from me."
"She will write to Riley & Bonner," said Sir James, quietly. "She will probably write to-night. They may take steps to acquaint her with her history--or they may not. It depends. Meanwhile, who else is likely to know anything about the engagement?"
"Diana was to tell Mrs. Colwood--her companion; no one else."
"Nice little woman!--all right there! But"--Sir James gave a slight start--"what about the cousin?"
"Miss Merton? Oh no! There is clearly no sympathy between her and Diana. How could there be?"
"Yes--but my dear fellow!--that girl knows--must know--everything there is to know! And she dislikes Diana; she is jealous of her; that I saw quite plainly this afternoon. And, moreover, she is probably quite well informed about you and your intentions. She gossiped half through lunch with that ill-bred fellow Birch. I heard your name once or twice. Oh!--and by-the-way!"--Sir James turned sharply on his heel--"what was she confabulating about with Miss Drake all that time in the garden? Did they know each other before?"
Marsham replied in the negative. But he, too, was disagreeably arrested by the recollection of the two girls walking together, and of the intimacy and animation of their talk. And he could recall what Sir James had not seen--the strangeness of Alicia's manner, and the peremptoriness with which she had endeavored to carry him home with her. Had she--after hearing the story--tried to interrupt or postpone the crucial scene with Diana? That seemed to him the probable explanation, and the idea roused in him a hot and impotent anger. What business was it of hers?
"H'm!" said Sir James. "You may be sure that Miss Drake is now in the secret. She was very discreet on the way home. But she will take sides; and not, I think, with us. She seems to have a good deal of influence with your mother."
Marsham reluctantly admitted it.
"My sister, too, will be hostile. Don't let's forget that."
Sir James shrugged his shoulders, with the smile of one who is determined to keep his spirits up.
"Well, my dear Marsham, you have your battle cut out for you! Don't delay it. Where is Lady Lucy?"
"In town."
"Can't you devise some excuse that will take you back to her early to-morrow morning?"
Marsham thought over it. Easy enough, if only the engagement were announced! But both agreed that silence was imperative. Whatever chance there might be with Lady Lucy would be entirely destroyed were the matter made public before her son had consulted her.
"Everybody here is on the tiptoe of expectation," said Sir James. "But that you know; you must face it somehow. Invent a letter from Ferrier--some partycontretemps--anything!--I'll help you through. And if you see your mother in the morning, I will turn up in the afternoon."
The two men paused. They were standing together--in conference; but each was conscious of a background of hurrying thoughts that had so far been hardly expressed at all.
Marsham suddenly broke out:
"Sir James!--I know you thought there were excuses--almost justification--for what that poor creature did. I was a boy of fifteen at the time you made your famous speech, and I only know it by report. You spoke, of course, as an advocate--but I have heard it said--that you expressed your own personal belief. Wherever the case is discussed, there are still--as you know--two opinions--one more merciful than the other. If the line you took was not merely professional; if you personally believed your own case; can you give me some of the arguments--you were probably unable to state them all in court--that convinced you? Let me have something wherewith to meet my mother. She won't look at this altogether from the worldly point of view. She will have a standard of her own. Merely to belittle the thing, as long past and forgotten, won't help me. But if Icouldawaken her pity!--if you could give me the wherewithal--"
Sir James turned away. He walked to the window and stood there a minute, his face invisible. When he returned, his pallor betrayed what his steady and dignified composure would otherwise have concealed.
"I can tell you what Mrs. Sparling told me--in prison--with the accents of a dying woman--what I believed then--what I believe now.--Moreover, I have some comparatively recent confirmation of this belief.--But this is too public!"--he looked round the library--"we might be disturbed. Come to my room to-night. I shall go up early, on the plea of letters. I always carry with me--certain documents. For her child's sake, I will show them to you."
At the last words the voice of the speaker, rich in every tender and tragic note, no less than in those of irony or invective, wavered for the first time. He stooped abruptly, took up the book he had been reading, and left the room.
Marsham, too, went up-stairs. As he passed along the main corridor to his room, lost in perplexity and foreboding, he heard the sound of a woman's dress, and, looking up, saw Alicia Drake coming toward him.
She started at sight of him, and under the bright electric light of the passage he saw her redden.
"Well, Oliver!--you stayed a good while."
"Not so very long. I have been home nearly an hour. I hope the horses went well!"
"Excellently. Do you know where Sir James is?"
It seemed to him the question was significantly asked. He gave it a cold answer.
"Not at this moment. He was in the smoking-room a little while ago."
He passed her abruptly. Alicia Drake pursued her way to the hall. She was carrying some letters to the post-box near the front door. When she arrived there she dropped two of them in at once, and held the other a moment in her hand, looking at it. It was addressed to "Mrs. Fotheringham, Manningham House, Leeds."
Meanwhile, Diana herself was wrestling with her own fate.
When Marsham rode away from her, and she had watched his tall figure disappear into the dusk, she turned back toward the house, and saw it and the world round it with new eyes. The moon shone on the old front, mellowing it to a brownish ivory; the shadows of the trees lay clear on the whitened grass; and in the luminous air colors of sunrise and of moonrise blended, tints of pearl, of gold, and purple. A consecrating beauty lay on all visible things, and spoke to the girl's tender and passionate heart. In the shadow of the trees she stood a moment, her hands clasped on her breast, recalling Marsham's words of love and comfort, resting on him, reaching out through him to the Power behind the world, which spoke surely through this loveliness of the night, this joy in the soul!
And yet, her mood, her outlook--like Marsham's--was no longer what it had been on the hill-side. No ugly light of revelation had broken upon her, as upon him. But the conversation in the lime-walk had sobered the first young exaltation of love; it had somehow divided them from the happy lovers of every day; it had also divided them--she hardly knew how or why--from that moment on the hill when Oliver had spoken of immediate announcement and immediate marriage. Nothing was to be said--except to Muriel--till Lady Lucy knew. She was glad. It made her bliss, in this intervening moment, more fully her own. She thought with yearning of Oliver's interview with his mother. A filial, though a trembling love sprang up in her. And the sense of having come to shelter and to haven seemed to give her strength for what she had never yet dared to face. The past was now to be probed, interrogated. She was firmly resolved to write to Riley & Bonner, to examine any papers there might be; not because she was afraid that anything might come between her and Oliver; rather because now, with his love to support her, she could bear whatever there might be to bear.
She stepped into the house. Some one was strumming in the drawing-room--with intervals between the strummings--as though the player stopped to listen for something or some one. Diana shrank into herself. She ran up-stairs noiselessly to her sitting-room, and opened the door as quietly as possible.
"Muriel!"
The voice was almost a whisper. Mrs. Colwood did not hear it. She was bending over the fire, with her back to the door, and a reading-lamp beside her. To her amazement, Diana heard a sob, a sound of stifled grief, which struck a sudden chill through her own excitement. She paused a moment, and repeated her friend's name. Mrs. Colwood started. She hastily rose, turning her face from Diana.
"Is that you? I thought you were still out."
Diana crossed the floor, and put her arm round the little gentle woman, whose breath was still shaken by the quiet sobs she was trying desperately to repress.
"Muriel, dear!--what is it?"
Mrs. Colwood found her voice, and her composure.
"Nothing! I was foolish--it doesn't matter."
Diana was sure she understood. She was suddenly ashamed to bring her own happiness into this desolate and widowed presence, and the kisses with which, mutely, she tried to comfort her friend, were almost a plea to be forgiven.
But Muriel drew herself away. She looked searchingly, with recovered self-command, into Diana's face.
"Has Mr. Marsham gone?"
"Yes," said Diana, looking at her.
Then the smile within broke out, flooding eyes and lips. Under the influence of it, Mrs. Colwood's small tear-stained face passed through a quick instinctive change. She, too, smiled as though she could not help it; then she bent forward and kissed Diana.
"Is it all right?"
The peculiar eagerness in the tone struck Diana. She returned the kiss, a little wistfully.
"Were you so anxious about me? Wasn't it--rather plain?"
Mrs. Colwood laughed.
"Sit down there, and tell me all about it."
She pushed Diana into a chair and sat down at her feet. Diana, with some difficulty, her hand over her eyes, told all that could be told of a moment the heart of which no true lover betrays. Muriel Colwood listened with her face against the girl's dress, sometimes pressing her lips to the hand beside her.
"Is he going to see Lady Lucy to-morrow?" she asked, when Diana paused.
"Yes. He goes up by the first train."
Both were silent awhile. Diana, in the midst of all the natural flutter of blood and pulse, was conscious of a strong yearning to tell her friend more--to say: "And he has brought me comfort and courage--as well as love! I shall dare now to look into the past--to take up my father's burden. If it hurts, Oliver will help me."
But she had been brought up in a school of reticence, and her loyalty to her father and mother sealed her lips. That anxiety, that burden, nobody must share with her but Oliver--and perhaps his mother; his mother, so soon to be hers.
Muriel Colwood, watching her face, could hardly restrain herself. But the moment for which her whole being was waiting in a tension scarcely to be borne had not yet come. She chastened and rebuked her own dread.
They talked a little of the future. Diana, in a blessed fatigue, threw herself back in her chair, and chattered softly, listening now and then for the sounds of the piano in the room below, and evidently relieved whenever, after a silence, fresh fragments from some comic opera of the day, much belied in the playing, penetrated to the upper floor. Meanwhile, neither of them spoke of Fanny Merton. Diana, with a laugh, repeated Marsham's proposal for a six weeks' engagement. That was absurd! But, after all, it could not be very long. She hoped Oliver would be content to keep Beechcote. They could, of course, always spend a good deal of time with Lady Lucy.
And in mentioning that name she showed not the smallest misgiving, not a trace of uneasiness, while every time it was uttered it pricked the shrinking sense of her companion. Mrs. Colwood had not watched and listened during her Tallyn visit for nothing.
At last a clock struck down-stairs, and a door opened. Diana sprang up.
"Time to dress! And I've left Fanny alone all this while!"
She hurried toward the door; then turned back.
"Please!--I'm not going to tell Fanny just yet. Neither Fanny nor any one--till Lady Lucy knows. What happened after we went away? Was Fanny amused?"
"Very much, I should say."
"She made friends with Miss Drake?"
"They were inseparable, till Miss Drake departed."
Diana laughed.
"How odd! That I should never have prophesied. And Mr. Birch? I needn't have him to lunch again, need I?"
"Miss Merton invited him to tea--on Saturday."
Diana reddened.
"Must I--!" she said, impetuously; then stopped herself, and opened the door.
Outside, Fanny Merton was just mounting the stairs, a candle in her hand. She stopped in astonishment at the sight of Diana.
"Diana! where have you been all this time?"
"Only talking to Muriel. We heard you playing; so we thought you weren't dull," said Diana, rather penitently.
"I was only playing till you came in," was the sharp reply. "When did Mr. Marsham go?"
Diana by this time was crossing the landing to the door of her room, with Fanny behind her.
"Oh, quite an hour ago. Hadn't we better dress? Dinner will be ready directly."
Fanny took no notice. She entered her cousin's room, in Diana's wake.
"Well?" she said, interrogatively. She leaned her back against the wardrobe, and folded her arms.
Diana turned. She met Fanny's black eyes, sparkling with excitement.
"I'll give you my news at dinner," said Diana, flushing against her will. "And I want to know how you liked Miss Drake."
Fanny's eyes shot fire.
"That's all very fine! That means, of course, that you're not going to tell me anything!"
"Fanny!" cried Diana, helplessly. She was held spellbound by the passion, the menace in the girl's look. But the touch of shrinking in her attitude roused brutal violence in Fanny.
"Yes, it does!" she said, fiercely. "I understand!--don't I! I am not good enough for you, and you'll make me feel it. You're going to make a smart marriage, and you won't care whether you ever set eyes on any of us again. Oh! I know you've given us money--or you say you will. If I knew which side my bread was buttered, I suppose I should hold my tongue.--But when you treat me like the dirt under your feet--when you tell everything to that woman Mrs. Colwood, who's no relation, and nothing in the world to you--and leave me kicking my heels all alone, because I'm not the kind you want, and you wish to goodness I'd never come--when you show as plain as you can that I'm a common creature--not fit to pick up your gloves!--I tell you I just won't stand it. No one would--who knew what I know!"
The last words were flung in Diana's teeth with all the force that wounded pride and envious wrath could give them. Diana tottered a little. Her hand clung to the dressing-table behind her.
"What do you know?" she said. "Tell me at once--what you mean."
Fanny contemptuously shook her head. She walked to the door, and before Diana could stop her, she had rushed across to her own room and locked herself in.
There she walked up and down panting. She hardly understood her own rage, and she was quite conscious that, for her own interests, she had acted during the whole afternoon like a fool. First, stung by the pique excited in her by the talk of the luncheon-table, she had let herself be exploited and explored by Alicia Drake. She had not meant to tell her secret, but somehow she had told it, simply to give herself importance with this smart lady, and to feel her power over Diana. Then, it was no sooner told than she was quickly conscious that she had given away an advantage, which from a tactical point of view she had infinitely better have kept; and that the command of the situation might have passed from her to this girl whom Diana had supplanted. Furious with herself, she had tried to swear Miss Drake to silence, only to be politely but rather scornfully put aside.
Then the party had broken up. Mr. Birch had been offended by the absence of the hostess, and had vouchsafed but a careless good-bye to Miss Merton. The Roughsedges went off without asking her to visit them; and as for the Captain, he was an odious young man. Since their departure, Mrs. Colwood had neglected her, and now Diana's secret return, her long talk with Mrs. Colwood, had filled the girl's cup of bitterness. She had secured that day a thousand pounds for her family and herself; and at the end of it, she merely felt that the day had been an abject and intolerable failure! Did the fact that she so felt it bear strange witness to the truth that at the bottom of her anger and her cruelty there was a masked and distorted something which was not wholly vile--which was, in fact, the nature's tribute to something nobler than itself? That Diana shivered at and repulsed her was the hot-iron that burned and seared. And that she richly deserved it--and knew it--made its smart not a whit the less.
Fanny did not appear at dinner. Mrs. Colwood and Diana dined alone--Diana very white and silent. After dinner, Diana began slowly to climb the shallow old staircase. Mrs. Colwood followed her.
"Where are you going?" she said, trying to hold her back.
Diana looked at her. In the girl's eyes there was a sudden and tragic indignation.
"Do you all know?" she said, under her breath--"all--all of you?" And again she began to mount, with a resolute step.
Mrs. Colwood dared not follow her any farther. Diana went quickly up and along the gallery; she knocked at Fanny's door. After a moment Mrs. Colwood heard it opened, and a parley of voices--Fanny's short and sullen, Diana's very low. Then the door closed, and Mrs. Colwood knew that the cousins were together.
How the next twenty minutes passed, Mrs. Colwood could never remember. At the end of them she heard steps slowly coming down the stairs, and a cry--her own name--not in Diana's voice. She ran out into the hall.
At the top of the stairs, stood Fanny Merton, not daring to move farther. Her eyes were starting out of her head, her face flushed and distorted.
"You go to her!" She stooped, panting, over the balusters, addressing Mrs. Colwood. "She won't let me touch her."
Diana descended, groping. At the foot of the stairs she caught at Mrs. Colwood's hand, went swaying across the hall and into the drawing-room. There she closed the door, and looked into Mrs. Colwood's eyes. Muriel saw a face in which bloom and first youth were forever dead, though in its delicate features horror was still beautiful. She threw her arms round the girl, weeping. But Diana put her aside. She walked to a chair, and sat down. "My mother--" she said, looking up.
Her voice dropped. She moistened her dry lips, and began once more: "My mother--"
But the brain could maintain its flickering strength no longer. There was a low cry of "Oliver!" that stabbed the heart; then, suddenly, her limbs were loosened, and she sank back, unconscious, out of her friend's grasp and ken.
"Her ladyship will be here directly, sir." Lady Lucy's immaculate butler opened the door of her drawing-room in Eaton Square, ushered in Sir James Chide, noiselessly crossed the room to see to the fire, and then as noiselessly withdrew.
"Impossible that any one should be as respectable as that man looks!" thought Sir James, impatiently. He walked forward to the fire, warmed hands and feet chilled by a nipping east wind, and then, with his back to the warmth, he examined the room.
It was very characteristic of its mistress. At Tallyn Henry Marsham had worked his will; here, in this house taken since his death, it was the will and taste of his widow which had prevailed. A gray paper with a small gold sprig upon it, sofas and chairs not too luxurious, a Brussels carpet, dark and unobtrusive, and chintz curtains; on the walls, drawings by David Cox, Copley Fielding, and De Wint; a few books with Mudie labels; costly photographs of friends and relations, especially of the relations' babies; on one table, and under a glass case, a model in pith of Lincoln Cathedral, made by Lady Lucy's uncle, who had been a Canon of Lincoln; on another, a set of fine carved chessmen; such was the furniture of the room. It expressed--and with emphasis--the tastes and likings of that section of English society in which, firmly based as it is upon an ample supply of all material goods, a seemly and intelligent interest in things ideal and spiritual is also to be found. Everything in the room was in its place, and had been in its place for years. Sir James got no help from the contemplation of it.
The door opened, and Lady Lucy came quietly in. Sir James looked at her sharply as they shook hands. She had more color than usual; but the result was to make the face look older, and certain lines in it disagreeably prominent. Very likely she had been crying. He hoped she had.
"Oliver told you to expect me?"
She assented. Then, still standing, she looked at him steadily.
"This is a very terrible affair, Sir James."
"Yes. It must have been a great shock to you."
"Oh! that does not matter," she said, impatiently. "I must not think of myself. I must think of Oliver. Will you sit down?"
She motioned him, in her stately way, to a seat. He realized, as he faced her, that he beheld her in a new aspect. She was no longer the gracious and smiling hostess, as her familiar friends knew her, both at Tallyn and in London. Her manner threw a sudden light on certain features in her history: Marsham's continued dependence on his mother and inadequate allowance, the autocratic ability shown in the management of the Tallyn household and estates, management in which Marsham was allowed practically no share at all, and other traits and facts long known to him. The gentle, scrupulous, composed woman of every day had vanished in something far more vigorously drawn; he felt himself confronted by a personality as strong as, and probably more stubborn than his own.
Lady Lucy seated herself. She quietly arranged the folds of her black satin dress; she drew forward a stool, and rested her feet upon it. Sir James watched her, uncertain how to begin. But she saved him the decision.
"I have had a painful interview with my son" she said, quietly. "It could not be otherwise, and I can only hope that in a little while he will do me justice. Oliver will join us presently. And now--first, Sir James, let me ask you--you really believe that Miss Mallory has been till now in ignorance of her mother's history?"
Sir James started.
"Good Heavens, Lady Lucy! Can you--do you--suppose anything else?"
Lady Lucy paused before replying.
"I cannot suppose it--since both you and my son--and Mr. Ferrier--have so high an opinion of her. But it is a strange and mysterious thing that she should have remained in this complete ignorance all these years--and a cruel thing, of course--to everybody concerned."
Sir James nodded.
"I agree. It was a cruel thing, though it was done, no doubt, from the tenderest motives. The suffering was bound to be not less but more, sooner or later."
"Miss Mallory is very greatly to be pitied. But it is, of course, clear that my son proposed to her, not knowing what it was essential that he should know."
Sir James paused.
"We are old friends, Lady Lucy--you and I," he said at last, with deliberation; and as he spoke he bent forward and took her hand. "I am sure you will let me ask you a few questions."
Lady Lucy made no reply. Her hand--without any movement of withdrawal or rebuff--gently dropped from his.
"You have been, I think, much attracted by Miss Mallory herself?"
"Very much attracted. Up to this morning I thought that she would make an excellent wife for Oliver. But I have been acting, of course, throughout under a false impression."
"Is it your feeling that to marry her would injure Oliver's career?"
"Certainly. But that is not what weighs with me most heavily."
"I did not for a moment believe that it would. However, let us take the career first. This is how I look at it. If the marriage went forward, there would no doubt be some scandal and excitement at first, when the truth was known. But Oliver's personality and the girl's charm would soon live it down. In this strange world I am not at all sure it might not in the end help their future. Oliver would be thought to have done a generous and romantic thing, and his wife's goodness and beauty would be all the more appreciated for the background of tragedy."
Lady Lucy moved impatiently.
"Sir James--I am a plain person, with plain ideas. The case would present itself to me very differently; and I believe that my view would be that of the ordinary man and woman. However, I repeat, that is not what I think of first--by any means."
"You think of the criminal taint?--the risk to Oliver--and to Oliver's children?"
She made a sign of assent.
"Character--and the protection of character--is not that what we have to think of--above all--in this world of temptation? We can none of us afford to throw away the ordinary helps and safeguards. How can I possibly aid and abet Oliver's marriage with the daughter of a woman who first robbed her own young sister, in a peculiarly mean and cruel way, and then committed a deliberate and treacherous murder?"
"Wait a moment!" exclaimed Sir James, holding up his hand. "Those adjectives, believe me, are unjust."
"I know that you think so," was the animated reply. "But I remember the case; I have my own opinion."
"They are unjust," repeated Sir James, with emphasis. "Then it is really the horror of the thing itself--not so much its possible effect on social position and opinion, which decides you?"
"I ask myself--I must ask myself," said his companion, with equal emphasis, forcing the words: "can I help Oliver to marry the daughter--of a convicted murderess--and adulteress?"
"No!" said Sir James, holding up his hand again--"No!"
Lady Lucy fell back in her chair. Her unwonted color had disappeared, and the old hand lying in her lap--a hand thin to emaciation--shook a little.
"Is not this too painful for us both, Sir James?--can we continue it? I have my duty to think of; and yet--I cannot, naturally, speak to you with entire frankness. Nor can I possibly regard your view as an impartial one. Forgive me. I should not have dreamed of referring to the matter in any other circumstances."
"Certainly, I am not impartial," said Sir James, looking up. "You know that, of course, well enough."
He spoke in a strong full voice. Lady Lucy encountered a singular vivacity in the gray eyes, as though the whole power of the man's personality backed the words.
"Believe me," she said, with dignity, and not without kindness, "it is not I who would revive such memories."
Sir James nodded quietly.
"I am not impartial; but I am well informed. It was my view which affected the judge, and ultimately the Home Office. And since the trial--in quite recent years--I have received a strange confirmation of it which has never been made public. Did Oliver report this to you?"
"He told me certain facts," said Lady Lucy, unwillingly; "but I did not see that they made much difference."
"Perhaps he did not give them the right emphasis," said Sir James, calmly. "Will you allowmeto tell you the whole story?--as it appears to me."
Lady Lucy looked distressed.
"Is it worth while," she said, earnestly, "to give yourself so much pain? I cannot imagine that it could alter the view I take of my duty."
Sir James flushed, and sternly straightened himself. It was a well-known gesture, and ominous to many a prisoner in the dock.
"Worth while!" he said. "Worth while!--when your son's future may depend on the judgment you form."
The sharpness of his tone called the red also to Lady Lucy's cheek.
"Can anything that may be said now alter the irrevocable?" she asked, in protest.
"It cannot bring the dead to life; but if you are really more influenced in this matter by the heinousness of the crime itself, by the moral infection, so to speak--that may spring from any kinship with Juliet Sparling or inheritance from her--than by any dread of social disgrace or disadvantage--if that be true!--then for Oliver's sake--for that poor child's sake--yououghtto listen to me! There, I can meet you--there, I have much to say."
He looked at her earnestly. The slight, involuntary changes of expression in Lady Lucy, as he was speaking, made him say to himself: "She isnotindifferent to the social stigma--she deceives herself!" But he made no sign of his perception; he held her to her word.
She paused, in evident hesitation, saying at last, with some coldness:
"If you wish it, Sir James, of course I am quite ready to listen. I desire to do nothing harshly."
"I will not keep you long."
Bending forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes upon the ground, he thought a moment. When he began to speak, it was in a quiet and perfectly colorless tone.
"I knew Juliet Wentworth first--when she was seventeen. I was on the Midland Circuit, and went down to the Milchester Assizes. Her father was High Sheriff, and asked me, with other barristers of the Circuit, not only to his official dinner in the county town, but to luncheon at his house, a mile or two away. There I saw Miss Wentworth. She made a deep impression on me. After the Assizes were over, I stayed at her father's house and in the neighborhood. Within a month I proposed to her. She refused me. I merely mention these circumstances for the sake of reporting my first impressions of her character. She was very young, and of an extraordinarily nervous and sensitive organization. She used to remind me of Horace's image of the young fawn trembling and starting in the mountain paths at the rustling of a leaf or the movement of a lizard. I felt then that her life might very well be a tragedy, and I passionately desired to be able to protect and help her. However, she would have nothing to do with me, and after a little while I lost sight of her. I did happen to hear that her father, having lost his first wife, had married again, that the girl was not happy at home, and had gone off on a long visit to some friends in the United States. Then for years I heard nothing. One evening, about ten years after my first meeting with her, I read in the evening papers the accounts of a 'Supposed Murder at Brighton.' Next morning Riley & Bonner retained me for the defence. Mr. Riley came to see me, with Mr. Sparling, the husband of the incriminated lady, and it was in the course of my consultation with them that I learned who Mrs. Sparling was. I had to consider whether to take up the case or not; I saw at once it would be a fight for her life, and I accepted it."
"What a terrible--terrible--position!" murmured Lady Lucy, who was shading her eyes with her hand.
Sir James took no notice. His trained mind and sense were now wholly concerned with the presentation of his story.
"The main facts, as I see them, were these. Juliet Wentworth had married--four years before this date--a scholar and archæologist whom she had met at Harvard during her American stay. Mr. Sparling was an Englishman, and a man of some means who was devoting himself to exploration in Asia Minor. The marriage was not really happy, though they were in love with each other. In both there was a temperament touched with melancholy, and a curious incapacity to accept the common facts of life. Both hated routine, and were always restless for new experience. Mrs. Sparling was brilliant in society. She was wonderfully handsome, in a small slight way; her face was not unlike Miss Curran's picture of Shelley--the same wildness and splendor in the eyes, the same delicacy of feature, the same slight excess of breadth across the cheek-bones, and curly mass of hair. She was odd, wayward, eccentric--yet always lovable and full of charm. He was a fine creature in many ways, but utterly unfit for practical life. His mind was always dreaming of buried treasure--the treasure of the archæologist: tombs, vases, gold ornaments, papyri; he had the passion of the excavator and explorer.
"They came back to England from America shortly after their marriage, and their child was born. The little girl was three years old when Sparling went off to dig in a remote part of Asia Minor. His wife resented his going; but there is no doubt that she was still deeply in love with him. She herself took a little house at Brighton for the child's sake. Her small startling beauty soon made her remarked, and her acquaintances rapidly increased. She was too independent and unconventional to ask many questions about the people that amused her; she took them as they came--"
"Sir James!--dear Sir James." Lady Lucy raised a pair of imploring hands. "What good can it do that you should tell me all this? It shows that this poor creature had a wild, undisciplined character. Could any one ever doubt it?"
"Wild? undisciplined?" repeated Sir James. "Well, if you think that you have disposed of the mystery of it by those adjectives! For me--looking back--she was what life and temperament and heredity had made her. Up to this point it was an innocent wildness. She could lose herself in art or music; she did often the most romantic and generous things; she adored her child; and but for some strange kink in the tie that bound them, she would have adored her husband. Well!"--he shrugged his shoulders mournfully--"there it is: she was alone--she was beautiful--she had no doubt a sense of being neglected--she was thirsting for some deeper draught of life than had yet been hers--and by the hideous irony of fate she found it--in gambling!--and in the friendship which ruined her!"
Sir James paused. Rising from his chair, he began to pace the large room. The immaculate butler came in, made up the fire, and placed the tea: domestic and comfortable rites, in grim contrast with the story that held the minds of Lady Lucy and her guest. She sat motionless meanwhile; the butler withdrew, and the tea remained untouched.
"Sir Francis and Lady Wing--the two fiends who got possession of her--had been settled at Brighton for about a year. Their debts had obliged them to leave London, and they had not yet piled up a sufficient mountain of fresh ones to drive them out of Brighton. The man was the disreputable son of a rich and hard-working father who, in the usual way, had damned his son by removing all incentives to work, and turning him loose with a pile of money. He had married an adventuress--a girl with a music-hall history, some beauty, plenty of vicious ability, and no more conscience than a stone. They were the centre of a gambling and racing set; but Lady Wing was also a very fine musician, and it was through this talent of hers that she and Juliet Sparling became acquainted. They met, first, at a charity concert! Mrs. Sparling had a fine voice, Lady Wing accompanied her. The Wings flattered her, and professed to adore her. Her absent whimsical character prevented her from understanding what kind of people they were; and in her great ignorance of the world, combined with her love of the romantic and the extreme, she took the persons who haunted their house for Bohemians, when she should have known them--the majority of them--for scoundrels. You will remember that baccarat was then the rage. The Wings played it incessantly, and were very skilful in the decoying and plunder of young men. Juliet Sparling was soon seized by the excitement of the game, and her beauty, her evident good breeding and good faith, were of considerable use to the Wings'ménage. Very soon she had lost all the money that her husband had left to her credit, and her bankers wrote to notify her that she was overdrawn. A sudden terror of Sparling's displeasure seized her; she sold a bracelet, and tried to win back what she had lost. The result was only fresh loss, and in a panic she played on and on, till one disastrous night she got up from the baccarat-table heavily in debt to one or two persons, including Sir Francis Wing. With the morning came a letter from her husband, remonstrating in a rather sharp tone on what her own letters--and probably an account from some other source--had told him of her life at Brighton; insisting on the need for economy, owing to his own heavy expenses in the great excavation he was engaged upon; and expressing the peremptory hope that she would make the money he had left her last for another two months--"
Sir James lingered in his walk. He stared out of window at the square garden for a few moments, then turned to look frowning at his companion.
"Then came her temptation. Her father had died a year before, leaving her the trustee of her only sister, who was not yet of age. It had taken some little time to wind up his affairs; but on the day after she received her husband's letter of remonstrance, six thousand pounds out of her father's estate was paid into her banking account. By this time she was in one of those states of excitement and unreasoning terror to which she had been liable from her childhood. She took the trust money in order to pay the debts, and then gambled again in order to replace the trust money. Her motive throughout was the motive of the hunted creature. She was afraid of confessing to her husband, especially by letter. She believed he would cast her off--and in her despair and remorse she clung to his affection, and to the hope of his coming home, as she had never yet done.
"In less than a month--in spite of ups and downs of fortune, probably skilfully contrived by Francis Wing and his accomplices--for there can be no question that the play was fraudulent--she had lost four thousand out of the six; and it is clear that more than once she thought of suicide as the only way out, and nothing but the remembrance of the child restrained her. By this time Francis Wing, who was a most handsome, well-bred, and plausible villain, was desperately in love with her--if one can use the word love for such a passion. He began to lend her money in small sums. She was induced to look upon him as her only friend, and forced by the mere terror of the situation in which she found herself to propitiate and play him as best she might. One day, in an unguarded moment of remorse, she let him guess what had happened about the trust money. Thenceforward she was wholly in his power. He pressed his attentions upon her; and she, alternately civil and repellent, as her mood went, was regarded by some of the guests in the house as not unlikely to respond to them in the end. Meanwhile he had told his wife the secret of the trust money for his own purposes. Lady Wing, who was an extremely jealous woman, believed at this time that he was merely pretending a passion for Mrs. Sparling in order the more securely to plunder what still remained of the six thousand pounds. She therefore aided and abetted him; andherplan, no doubt, was to wait till they and their accomplices had absorbed the last of Mrs. Sparling's money, and then to make a midnight flitting, leaving their victim to her fate.
"Thedénouement, however, came with frightful rapidity. The Wings had taken an old house at the back of the downs for the summer, no doubt to escape from some of the notoriety they had gained in Brighton. There--to her final ruin--Juliet Sparling was induced to join them, and gambling began again; she still desperately hoping to replace the trust money, and salving her conscience, as to her sister, by drawing for the time on the sums lent her by Francis Wing.--Here at last Lady Wing's suspicion was aroused, and Mrs. Sparling found herself between the hatred of the wife and the dishonorable passion of the husband. Yet to leave them would be the signal for exposure. For some time the presence of other guests protected her. Then the guests left, and one August night after dinner, Francis Wing, who had drunk a great deal of champagne, made frantic love to her. She escaped from him with difficulty, in a passion of loathing and terror, and rushed in-doors, where she found Lady Wing in the gallery of the old house, on the first floor, walking up and down in a jealous fury. Juliet Sparling burst in upon her with the reproaches of a woman driven to bay, threatening to go at once to her husband and make a clean breast of the whole history of their miserable acquaintance. She was practically beside herself--already, as the sequel showed, mortally ill, worn out by remorse and sleeplessness, and quivering under the insult which had been offered her. Lady Wing recovered her own self-possession under the stimulus of Juliet's breakdown. She taunted her in the cruelest way, accused her of being the temptress in the case of Sir Francis, and of simulating a hypocritical indignation in order to save herself with her husband, and finally charged her with the robbery of her sister's money, declaring that as soon as daylight came she would take steps to set the criminal law in motion, and so protect both herself and her husband from any charge such a woman might bring against them. The threat, of course, was mere bluff. But Mrs. Sparling, in her frenzy and her ignorance, took it for truth. Finally, the fierce creature came up to her, snatching at a brooch in the bosom of her dress, and crying out in the vilest language that it was Sir Francis's gift. Juliet, pushed up against the panelling of the gallery, caught at a dagger belonging to a trophy of Eastern arms displayed on the wall, close to her hand, and struck wildly at her tormentor. The dagger pierced Lady Wing's left breast--she was in evening dress anddécolletée; it penetrated to the heart, and she fell dead at Juliet's feet as her husband entered the gallery. Juliet dropped the dagger; and as Sir Francis rushed to his wife, she fled shrieking up the stairs--her white dress covered with blood--to her own room, falling unconscious before she reached it. She was carried to her room by the servants--the police were sent for--and the rest--or most of the rest--you know."
Sir James ceased speaking. A heavy silence possessed the room.
Sir James walked quickly up to his companion.
"Now I ask you to notice two points in the story as I have told it. My cross-examination of Wing served its purpose as an exposure of the man--except in one direction. He swore that Mrs. Sparling had made dishonorable advances to him, and had finally become his mistress, in order to buy his silence on the trust money and the continuance of his financial help. On the other hand, the case for the defence was that--as I have stated--it was in the maddened state of feeling, provoked by his attack upon her honor, and made intolerable by the wife's taunts and threats, that Juliet Sparling struck the fatal blow. At the trial the judge believed me; the jury--and a large part of the public--you, I have no doubt among them--believed Wing. The jury were probably influenced by some of the evidence given by the fellow-guests in the house, which seemed to me simply to amount to this--that a woman in the strait in which Juliet Sparling was will endeavor, out of mortal fear, to keep the ruffian who has her in his power in a good-humor."
"However, I have now confirmatory evidence for my theory of the matter--evidence which has never been produced--and which I tell you now simply because the happiness of her child--and of your son--is at stake."
Lady Lucy moved a little. The color returned to her cheeks. Sir James, however, gave her no time to interrupt. He stood before her, smiting one hand against another, to emphasize his words, as he continued:
"Francis Wing lived for some eighteen years after Mrs. Sparling's death. Then, just as the police were at last on his track as the avengers of a long series of frauds, he died at Antwerp in extreme poverty and degradation. The day before he died he dictated a letter to me, which reached me, through a priest, twenty-four hours after his death. For his son's sake, he invited me to regard it as confidential. If Mrs. Sparling had been alive I should, of course, have taken no notice of the request. But she had been dead for eighteen years; I had lost sight completely of Sparling and the child, and, curiously enough, I knew something of Wing's son. He was about ten years old at the death of his mother, and was then rescued from his father by the Wing kindred and decently brought up. At the time the letter reached me he was a promising young man of eight-and-twenty, he had just been called to the Bar, and he was in the chambers of a friend of mine. By publishing Wing's confession I could do no good to the dead, and I might harm the living. So I held my tongue. Whether, now, I should still hold it is, no doubt, a question.
"However, to go back to the statement. Wing declared to me in this letter that Juliet Sparling's relation to him had been absolutely innocent, that he had persecuted her with his suit, and she had never given him a friendly word, except out of fear. On the fatal evening he had driven her out of her mind, he said, by his behavior in the garden; she was not answerable for her actions; and his evidence at the trial was merely dictated either by the desire to make his own case look less black or by the fiendish wish to punish Juliet Sparling for her loathing of him.
"But he confessed something else!--more important still. I must go back a little. You will remember my version of the dagger incident? I represented Mrs. Sparling as finding the dagger on the wall as she was pushed or dragged up against the panelling by her antagonist--as it were, under her hand. Wing swore at the trial that the dagger was not there, and had never been there. The house belonged to an old traveller and sportsman who had brought home arms of different sorts from all parts of the world. The house was full of them. There were two collections of them on the wall of the dining-room, one in the hall, and one or two in the gallery. Wing declared that the dagger used was taken by Juliet Sparling from the hall trophy, and must have been carried up-stairs with a deliberate purpose of murder. According to him, their quarrel in the garden had been a quarrel about money matters, and Mrs. Sparling had left him, in great excitement, convinced that the chief obstacle in the way of her complete control of Wing and his money lay in the wife. There again--as to the weapon--I had no means of refuting him. As far as the appearance--after the murder--of the racks holding the arms was concerned, the weapon might have been taken from either place. And again--on the whole--the jury believed Wing. The robbery of the sister's money--the incredible rapidity of Juliet Sparling's deterioration--had set them against her. Her wild beauty, her proud and dumb misery in the dock, were of a kind rather to alienate the plain man than to move him. They believed her capable of anything--and it was natural enough.
"But Wing confessed to me that he knew perfectly well that the dagger belonged to the stand in the gallery. He had often examined the arms there, and was quite certain of the fact. He swore this to the priest. Here, again, you can only explain his evidence by a desire for revenge."
Sir James paused. As he moved a little away from his companion his expression altered. It was as though he put from him the external incidents and considerations with which he had been dealing, and the vivacity of manner which fitted them. Feelings and forces of another kind emerged, clothing themselves in the beauty of an incomparable voice, and in an aspect of humane and melancholy dignity.
He turned to Lady Lucy.
"Now then," he said, gently, "I am in a position to put the matter to you finally, as--before God--it appears to me. Juliet Sparling--as I said to Oliver last night--was not a bad woman! She sinned deeply, but she was never false to her husband in thought or deed; none of her wrong-doing was deliberate; she was tortured by remorse; and her murderous act was the impulse of a moment, and partly in self-defence. It was wholly unpremeditated; and it killed her no less than her victim. When, next day, she was removed by the police, she was already a dying woman. I have in my possession a letter--written to me by her--after her release, in view of her impending death, by the order of the Home Office--a few days before she died. It is humble--it is heart-rending--it breathes the sincerity of one who had turned all her thoughts from earth; but it thanked me for having read her aright; and if ever I could have felt a doubt of my own interpretation of the case--but, thank God, I never did!--that letter would have shamed it out of me! Poor soul, poor soul! She sinned, and she suffered--agonies, beyond any penalty of man's inflicting. Will you prolong her punishment in her child?"
Lady Lucy had covered her face with her hand. He saw her breath flutter in her breast. And sitting down beside her, blanched by the effort he had made, and by the emotion he had at last permitted himself, yet fixing his eyes steadily on the woman before him, he waited for her reply.