CHAPTER XV.
“LOVE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTE LOVE.”
Sefton lifted his hat and passed quickly. Vansittart stood mutely watching his retreating figure, till it was lost among other figures moving to and fro along the Embankment. An empty hansom came creeping by the curb while he stood watching.
“Here is a cab which will just do for me, Signorina,” he said. “Good-bye. I’ll see you on one of your maestro’s days, so that I may hear his opinion of your chances.”
“He comes on Tuesdays and Saturdays, from three to four. Who is that gentleman who bowed to you? A friend?”
“No; only an acquaintance. Good-bye.”
“How vexed you look! Are you ashamed of being seen with me?”
“No, child, no; only that man happens to be one of my particular aversions. A rivederci. Stay! I will take you to your door. The cab can follow.”
It had occurred to him in a moment that Sefton was capable of turning and pursuing Lisa if he left her unprotected. He was just the kind of man, Vansittart thought, who, out of sheer devilry, would try to discover the name and antecedents of this lovely stranger. He had a deep-rooted distrust of Wilfred Sefton, which led him to anticipate evil.
He walked with Lisa to Saltero’s Mansion, and saw her vanish under the lofty Queen Anne portico, and then he turned and walked slowly back as far as Tite Street, with the cab following him. So far there was no sign of Sefton, who might, therefore, be supposed to have continued his way Londonwards; but the rencontre had been a shock to Vansittart’s nerves, and had set him thinking seriously upon the danger of his relations with Fiordelisa and her aunt, and more especially of the peril which must always attach to the use of an alias.
Was it well, or wise, or safe that he, Eve Marchant’s promised husband, should be the guardian angel of this wild, impulsive peasant girl—a guardian angel under the borrowed name of Smith, liable at any hour to be confronted with people who knew his real name and surroundings? He considered his position very seriously during the drive to Bruton Street, and he resolved to do all in his power to narrow his relations with the Venetians, while fulfilling every promise and every obligation to the uttermost.
Colonel Marchant was at the family dinner in Charles Street.It had been agreed between Mrs. Vansittart and her son that he should be invited to this one gathering, so that he should not have any ground for considering himself left out in the cold, albeit his future son-in-law’s intention was to hold as little communion with him as possible. Eve’s neglected girlhood had not fostered filial affection. The parental name had been a name of fear in the Marchant household, and the sisters had been happiest when their father was amusing himself in London, careless of whether the angry baker had stopped the daily supply, or the long-suffering butcher had refused to deliver another joint. Such a man had but little claim upon a daughter’s love, and Eve had confessed to Vansittart that her father was not beloved by his children, and that it would not grieve her if in her future life she and that father met but rarely.
“You are going to be so generous to me,” she said, “that I shall be able to help my sisters—in ever so many ways—with their clothes, and with their housekeeping; for I can never spend a third part of the income you are settling upon me.”
“My frugal Eve! Why, there are women with half your charms who would not be able to dress themselves upon such a pittance.”
“I have no patience with such women. They should be condemned to three gowns a year of their own making, as my sisters and I have been ever since we were old enough to handle needles and scissors. I am horrified at the extravagance I have seen at the dressmaker’s—the reckless way some of your sister’s friends spend money.”
“And my sister herself, no doubt. She has a rich husband, and I dare say is one of the worst offenders in this line?”
“Not she! Lady Hartley dresses exquisitely, but she is not extravagant like the others. She is too generous to other people to be lavish upon herself. She is always thinking of doing a kindness to somebody.”
“Poor little Maud! I remember when she was in the schoolroom all her pocket-money used to be spent upon dolls for the hospital children. She used to come and beg of me when she was insolvent.”
Vansittart met Wilfred Sefton at an evening party within a few days of that rencontre at Chelsea; and at the same party Vansittart was disturbed by seeing Sefton and his mother in close confabulation in one of those remote and luxurious corners where people are not obliged to listen to the music that is being performed in the principal room.
He questioned his mother about Sefton at breakfast next morning. “You and he seemed uncommonly thick,” he said. “What were you talking about?”
“About you, and your approaching marriage.”
“I am sure you said nothing that was not kind, but I wish to Heaven you would not discuss my affairs with a stranger,” said Vansittart, with some warmth.
“Mr. Sefton is not a stranger. Your father and his father were very good friends. He is your sister’s most influential neighbour, and they are on the friendliest terms. Why should you call him a stranger?”
“Because I don’t like him, mother; and because I wish never to feel myself on any other footing with him.”
“And yet he likes you.”
“Does he? I am a very bad judge of humanity if my dislike of Sefton is not heartily reciprocated by Sefton’s dislike of me. And no doubt the more he dislikes me the more he will assure other people—my kindred especially—that he likes me. You are too straight yourself, mother, in every thought and purpose, to understand the Seftonian mind. It is the kind of intellect which always works crookedly. He admired Eve Marchant, allowed his admiration to be patent to everybody, and yet was not man enough to try to win her for his wife.”
“He had not your courage, Jack, in facing unpleasant surroundings and disagreeable antecedents.”
“He had not manhood enough to marry for love. That is what you mean, mother. He was quite willing to compromise an innocent and pure-minded girl, by attentions which he would not have dared to offer to a girl with a watchful father or mother.”
“My dear Jack, you exaggerate Mr. Sefton’s attentions. He assured me that his chief interest in Eve arose from his old companionship with her brother, with whom he was on very intimate terms until the unhappy young man turned out an irretrievable scamp.”
Vansittart winced at the phrase. It is not an agreeable thing for a man to be told that his future brother-in-law, the brother whom his future wife adores, is irretrievable.
“Mr. Sefton has taken a great deal of trouble to trace Harold Marchant’s career since he was last heard of,” continued Mrs. Vansittart, “and would hold out a friendly hand to him if there were anything to be done.”
“He has no need to hold out a friendly hand. If there is anything to be done for my brother-in-law I can do it.”
“How ready you are to take new burdens!”
“I think nothing a burden which comes to me with the woman I love.”
Mrs. Vansittart sighed, and was silent. The idea of these disreputable connections which her son was to take to himselfin marrying Eve was full of pain for the well-born matron, whose people on every side were of unblemished respectability. Never had there been any doubtful characters in her father’s family, or among that branch of the Vansittarts to which her husband belonged. She had been born in just that upper middle class which feels disgrace most keenly. There is no section of society so self-conscious as your county gentry, so fixed in the idea that the eyes of Europe are upon them. The duke or the millionaire can live down anything—sons convicted of felony, daughters divorced—but the country gentleman who has lived all his life in one place, and knows every face within a radius of twenty miles from the family seat, to him, or still more to his wife or widow, the slightest smirch upon a relative’s character means agony.
Mrs. Vansittart liked and admired Eve Marchant; but she did not let her heart go out to her as it ought to have gone to the girl who was so soon to be to her as a daughter. Colonel Marchant’s existence was a rock of offence which even maternal love could not surmount. She had talked to her family lawyer, an old and trusted ally, and from him she had heard all that was to be said for and against Eve’s father. He was not quite so black, perhaps, as his neighbours in the country had painted him; but his career had been altogether disreputable, and his present associations were among the most disreputable men, calling themselves gentlemen, about town. He was a familiar figure in the card-room at clubs where play was high, and was looked upon with unmitigated terror by the parents and guardians of young men of fortune or expectations. A youth who affected Colonel Marchant’s society was known to be in a bad way.
And now the question was not only of Colonel Marchant, but of his son, who was even a darker character than the father, and whose darkness might at any time overshadow his sister’s name. It was easy enough to say that the sister was blameless, that it was no fault of hers that her father was a Bohemian, and her brother a swindler and a forger. Society does not easily forgive sisters or daughters for such relationships, and now that the pseudo-scientific craze of heredity has taken hold of the English mind, society is less inclined even than of yore to ignore the black sheep in the fold. Every one who heard of Eve Marchant’s antecedents would anticipate evil for her husband. The bad strain would show itself somehow before long. The duskiness in the parental wool would crop up in the fleece of the lamb.
It was hard for the mother who doated on her only son to feel ashamed of his wife’s relations and up-bringing; and Mrs. Vansittart feared that to the end of her life she must needs feel this shame.Already her neighbours at Merewood had tortured her by their keen interest in her son’s betrothed, their eagerness to know every detail, their searching questions about her people, all veiled under that affectionate friendliness which excuses the most tormenting curiosity.
Mrs. Vansittart was a good woman and a devoted mother, but she had the temperament which easily yields to worrying ideas, to apprehensions of potential evils, and her love of her son had just that alloy of jealousy which is apt to cause trouble. While Vansittart was going about with his betrothed from one scene of amusement to another, utterly happy in her company, enchanted to show her places and people which were as new to her as if they had been in fairyland, his mother was brooding over her fears and fostering her forebodings, and affording Wilfred Sefton every opportunity of improving his acquaintance with her. It was a shock to Vansittart to find that Sefton had established himself on the most familiar footing in Charles Street, a privileged dropper-in, who might call six days out of the seven if he chose, since Mrs. Vansittart had no allotted day for receiving, but was always at home to her friends between four and five during the summer season, when the pleasantest hour for driving was after five.
Sefton was clever, lived entirely in society and for society, during the brief London season, frequented the studios of artists and the tea-parties of litterateurs, knew, or pretended to know, everything that was going to happen in the world of art and letters, and would have been welcome on his own merits in the circles of the frivolous. He contrived to amuse Mrs. Vansittart, and to impress her with an exaggerated idea of his talent and versatility.
“He can talk well upon every subject,” she told her son.
“My dear mother, you mean that he is an adept in the season’s jargon, and can talk of those subjects which came into fashion last month; like the new cut of our coat collars, and the new colour of our neckties. A man of that kind always impresses people with his cleverness in May and the first half of June. Talk with him later, and you’ll find him flat, stale, and unprofitable. By July he will have emptied his bag.”
It was scarcely a surprise to Vansittart, knowing his mother’s liking for Mr. Sefton, to find that gentleman seated in her drawing-room one Saturday evening when he returned rather late from a polo match at Hurlingham. It was to be Eve’s last Saturday in London. June was at hand, and she was to go back to Fernhurst on the first of the month, to spend the small remnant of her single life with her sisters. She was to be married on St. John’s Day.
They had lingered at the tea-table on the lawn, sighing sentimentally over the idea that this was positively the last Saturday:that not again for nearly a year could they sit together drinking tea out of the homely little brown teapot, and watching the careless crowd come and go in the sunshine and the summery air.
In Charles Street, the cups and saucers had not been cleared away, although it was past seven. A side window in the front drawing-room looked westward, up the old-fashioned street, towards the Park, and the low sunlight was pouring in through the Madras-muslin curtain, shining on the jardinière of golden lilies and over the glittering toys on the silver table.
Vansittart opened the drawing-room door, but changed his mind about going in when he saw Sefton established on the sofa, half hidden in a sea of pillows.
“I’m very late,” he said. “How do you do, Sefton?” with a curt nod. “I’m to dine in Bruton Street, mother. Good night, if I don’t see you again.”
“Pray come in, Jack. I have something very serious to tell you—or at least Mr. Sefton has. He has been waiting for you ever since five o’clock. I wanted him to tell you at once. It is too serious for delay.”
“If I hadn’t left Miss Marchant and my sister five minutes ago I should think, by your solemnity, that one of them had been killed,” exclaimed Vansittart, scornfully, crossing the room with leisurely step, and seating himself with his back to the yellow brightness of that western window. “And now, my dear mother, may I inquire the nature of the mountain which you and Mr. Sefton have conjured out of some innocent molehill? Please don’t be very slow and solemn, as I have only half an hour to dress and get to Bruton Street. Boïto’sMephistopheleswill begin at half-past eight.”
“This is no trivial matter, Jack. Perhaps when you have heard what Mr. Sefton has to tell you may hardly care about the opera—or about seeing Miss Marchant, before you have had time for serious thought.”
“There is nothing that Mr. Sefton—or the four Evangelists—could tell me that would alter my feelings about Miss Marchant by one jot or one tittle,” cried Vansittart, furiously, his angry feeling about this man leaping out of him like a sudden flame.
“Wait,” said the mother, gravely—“wait till you have heard.”
“Begin, Mr. Sefton. My mother’s preamble is eminently calculated to give importance to your communication.”
“I am hardly surprised that you should take the matter somewhat angrily, Vansittart,” said Sefton, in his smooth, persuasive voice. “I dare say I shall appear an officious beast in this business—and, had it not been for Mrs. Vansittart’s express desire, I should not be here to tell you the facts which have come to my knowledgewithin the last two days. I considered it my duty to tell your mother, because in our previous conversations she has been good enough to allude to old ties of friendship between your father and my father—and this made a claim upon me.”
“Proem the second,” cried Vansittart, impatiently. “When are we coming to facts?”
“The facts are so uncommonly disagreeable that I may be pardoned for approaching them diffidently. You know, I believe, that Miss Marchant has a brother——”
“Who disappeared some years ago, and about whose fate you have busied yourself,” interrupted Vansittart, with ever-growing impatience.
“All my efforts to trace Harold Marchant’s movements after his departure from Mashonaland resulted in failure, until the day before yesterday, when one of the two men whom I employed to make inquiries turned up at my house in Tite Street as suddenly as if he had dropped from the moon. This man is a courier and jack-of-all-trades, as clever and handy a dog as ever lived, a man who has travelled in all the quarters of the globe, a Venetian. When I began the search for Miss Marchant’s brother, I put the business in the first place into the hands of a highly respectable private detective; but as a second string to my bow it occurred to me to send a full statement of the circumstances, and a careful description of the missing man, to my old acquaintance, Ferrari, the courier, who travelled with my poor father on the sea-board of Italy for several months, and who helped to nurse him on his sick-bed.”
Vansittart bridled his tongue, but could not keep himself from drumming with his fingers on the dainty silver table and setting all the toy harpsichords, and sofas, and bird-cages, and watering-pots, and tiny tables rattling.
“I had half forgotten that I had employed this man in Harold Marchant’s business when the fellow turned up in Tite Street, irrepressibly cheerful, with the most unpleasant information.”
“What information? For God’s sake, come to the point!”
“He had traced Marchant’s career—from Mashonaland to the diamond fields, where he picked up a good bit of money; from the diamond fields to New York, from New York to Venice. For God’s sake, leave those bibelots alone,” as the silver toys leapt and rattled on the fragile table. “Do you think no one has nerves except yourself?”
“Your man traced Marchant to Venice,” said Vansittart, the restless hand suddenly motionless; “and what of him at Venice?”
“At Venice Marchant lived with a girl whom he had taken out of a factory. Pardon me, Mrs. Vansittart, for repeating these unpleasant facts—lived, gambled, drank, and enjoyed life after his owninclination, which always leaned to low company even when he was an undergraduate. From Venice he vanished suddenly, more than three years ago.”
Vansittart fancied they must needs hear that heavily beating heart of his thumping against his ribs. He fancied that, even in that dimly lighted room, they must needs see the ashen hue of his face, the beads of sweat upon his forehead. All he could do was to hold his tongue, and wait for that which was to come.
“Do you happen to remember a murder, or, I will rather say, a scuffle ending in homicide, which occurred at Venice three years ago in Carnival time—an English tourist stabbed to death by another Englishman, who got away so cleverly that he was never brought to book for what he had done? The row was about a woman, and the woman was Harold Marchant’s mistress. Marchant was jealous of the stranger’s attentions to the lady—he had lived long enough in Italy to have learnt the use of the knife—and after a free fight of a few moments he stabbed his man to the heart. Ferrari heard the story from a Venetian, who was present in the Caffè Florian when the thing happened.”
“Did the Venetian know Marchant?”
The words came slowly from dry lips, the voice was husky; but neither Mrs. Vansittart nor Mr. Sefton wondered that Eve Marchant’s lover should be deeply moved.
“I don’t know; but there were people in Venice who knew him, and from whom Ferrari heard his mode of life.”
“But you said that Marchant was living under an assumed name.”
“Did I?” asked Sefton, surprised. “I don’t remember saying it, but it is the fact all the same. At Venice Harold Marchant called himself Smith; and Smith was the name he gave on board the P. and O. steamer which took him to Alexandria.”
“Why did he go to Alexandria?”
“Why? To get away from Venice in the quickest and completest manner he could. When he saw that the knife had been fatal, he grasped the situation in an instant, made a dash for the door, ran through the crowd along the Piazzetta, jumped into the water, and swam to the steamer, which was getting up steam for departure. No one guessed that he would make for the steamer. It was a longish swim; and while his pursuers were groping about among the gondolas the steamer was moving off with Harold on board her. Just like him—always quick at expedients; ready at every point where his own interests were at stake; tricky, shifty, dishonest to the core; but a devil for pluck, and as strong as a young lion.”
“I begin to remember the story, now you recall the details,” said Vansittart, who had by this time mastered every sign of agitation,and was firm as iron. “But in all that you have said I see nothing to fix Harold Marchant as the homicide. He might as easily have been the man who was killed.”
“No, no; the man who was killed was a stranger—a Cook’s tourist, a nobody, about whose fate there were no inquiries. It was Marchant who was the Venetian girl’s protector. It was Marchant who was jealous. The whole story is in perfect accord with Marchant’s character. I have seen his temper in a row—seen him when, if he had had a knife handy, by Heaven! he would have used it.”
“But where is the link between Marchant—Marchant at the diamond fields, Marchant at New York—and the man at Venice calling himself Smith? You don’t even pretend to show me that.”
“Ferrari shall show you that. The story is a long one, but there is no solution of continuity. Ferrari shall take you over the ground, step by step, till he brings you from Marchant in Mashonaland to Marchant landing at Alexandria.”
“And after the landing at Alexandria? What then? The thing happened more than three years ago, you say. Did the earth open and swallow Harold Marchant after he landed at Alexandria? Or, if not, what has he been doing since? Why has not your Ferrari—this courier-guide who is so clever at tracing people—traced him a little further? Why should the last link of the chain be the landing at Alexandria?”
“Because, as I have been telling you, Harold Marchant is an uncommonly clever fellow; and having got off with a whole skin—escaping the penalty of a crime which at the least was manslaughter—he would take very good care to sink his identity ever afterwards, and in all probability would bid a long farewell to the old world.”
“But your genius—your heaven-born detective—would track him down in the new world. My dear Sefton, the whole story is a farrago of nonsense; and I wonder that you, as a man of the world, can be taken in by so vulgar a trickster as your incomparable Ferrari.”
“He is not a trickster. I have the strongest reasons, from past experience, for believing in his honesty. Will you see him, Vansittart? Will you hear his story, calmly and dispassionately?”
“I will not see him. I will not hear his story. I will see no man who trumps up a sensational charge against my future wife’s brother. I can quite understand that you believe in this man—that you have brought this absurd story to my mother and me in all good faith.”
“Why absurd? You admit that there was such a catastrophe—an English traveller killed by an English resident in a Venetian caffè in Carnival time.”
“Yes; but plain fact degenerates into nonsense when your courier tries to fasten the crime upon Eve Marchant’s brother.”
“Hear his statement before you pronounce judgment. He had his facts from people who knew this young man in New York as Harold Marchant, who met him afterwards in Venice, and visited him at his Venetian lodgings, and played cards with him, when he was calling himself Smith—respectable American citizens, whose names and addresses are set down in Ferrari’s note-book. I am not utterly wanting in logic, Mr. Vansittart, and if the circumstantial evidence in this matter had been obviously weak I should never have troubled Mrs. Vansittart or you with the story.”
The mother spoke now for the first time since Sefton had begun his revelation. Her voice was low and sympathetic. Her son might doubt her wisdom, but he could not doubt her love.
“I am deeply sorry for you, Jack,” she said, “deeply sorry for poor Eve, who is a blameless victim of evil surroundings, but I cannot think that you will obstinately adhere to your engagement in the face of these dreadful facts. It would have been bad enough to be Colonel Marchant’s son-in-law; but you cannot seriously mean to marry a girl whose brother has committed murder.”
“It was not murder,” cried Vansittart, furiously. “Even Mr. Sefton acknowledges that the crime at worst was manslaughter—a fatal blow, struck in a moment of blind passion.”
“With a dagger against an unarmed man,” interjected Sefton. “You are inclined to minimize the crime when you call it manslaughter at the worst. I said that at the least—taking the most indulgent view of the case—the crime was manslaughter; and I doubt if an Italian tribunal would have dealt very leniently with that kind of manslaughter. I take it that rapid run and long swim of his saved Harold Marchant some years of captivity in an Italian prison.”
“It is too horrible,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “My dear, dear son, for God’s sake don’t underrate the horror of it all because of your love for this poor girl. You cannot marry a girl whose brother is an unconvicted murderer.”
How she harped upon the word murder! Vansittart ground his nails into the palms of his clasped hands, as he stood up, frowning darkly, in an agony of indignant feeling. His mother to be so womanish, so illogical, so foolish in her exaggeration of evil.
“I say again, the man who struck that unlucky blow was no murderer. The word is a lying word applied to him,” he protested. “The story you have told me—the crime you try to fix upon Harold Marchant—can make no shadow of difference in my love for Harold Marchant’s sister. Had she ten brothers, and every one of the ten were a felon, I would marry her. It is she whom I love, mother—not her surroundings. And as for your modern fad of heredity, I believe in it no more than I do in table-turning. God made my Eve—as pure, and single, and primitive a being as that other Eve in HisGarden of Eden; and over the morning of her fair life no act of her kindred can cast a shadow.”
There was a silence. Sefton had risen when Vansittart rose. He took up his hat, and came through the flickering lights and shadows towards Mrs. Vansittart, who sat with drooping head and clasped hands, betwixt sorrow and anger—sorrow for her son’s suffering, anger at his obstinate adherence to the girl he loved. She gave Sefton her hand mechanically, without looking up.
“Good night, Vansittart,” said Sefton, as he moved towards the door. “I can only admire your loyalty to Miss Marchant, though I may question your wisdom. She is a very charming person, I grant you; but, after all”—with a little laugh—“she is not the only woman in the world.”
“She is the only woman in my world.”
“Really?”
The intonation of this one word, the slight shrug of the shoulders, were full of meaning. Vansittart perceived the covert sneer in that parting speech, and saw in it an allusion to that lovely foreigner whom Sefton had seen hanging affectionately upon his arm a few days ago on the Chelsea Embankment.
“One word, Mr. Sefton,” said Vansittart, in a peremptory tone. “I take it that your employment of detectives and couriers—that all you have done in this business—has been done out of regard for a college chum, who was once your friend, and from a kindly desire to relieve Miss Marchant’s anxiety about a brother whom—whom she appears to have dearly loved. I think, under these circumstances, I need not suggest the wisdom of keeping this unhappy business to yourself—so far as she is concerned.”
“You are right. I shall say nothing to Miss Marchant.”
“Remember that, clever as your courier may be, he is not infallible. The case is only a case of suspicion. The Smith, of Venice, may be anybody. One missing link in your amateur detective’s chain of evidence, and the whole fabrication would drop to pieces. Don’t let Miss Marchant be tortured needlessly. Promise me that you will never tell her this story.”
“On my honour, I will not.”
“I thank you for that promise, and I beg you to forgive any undue vehemence upon my part just now.”
“There is nothing to forgive—I can sympathize with your feelings. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Vansittart dined in Bruton Street, as he had promised, sat by his betrothed, and listened to her happy talk of the things they had seen and the people they had met, sat behind her chair all through Boïto’s opera, unhearing, unseeing, his mind for ever and for ever travellingover the same ground, acting over and over again the same scene—the row at Florian’s, the scuffle, the fall—his own fall—the knife; and then that fatal fall of his adversary, that one gasping, surprised cry of the unarmed man, slain unawares.
Her brother! His victim, and her brother. The nearest, dearest kin of this girl on whose milk-white shoulder his breath came and went, as he sat with bent head in the shadow of the velvet curtain, and heard the strange harmonies of Pandemonium, almost as if voices and orchestra had been interpreting his own dark thoughts.
Charmed as she was with the music, Eve Marchant was far too sensitive to be unconscious of her lover’s altered spirits. Once during the applause that followed that lovely duet at the beginning of the last act, and while Lady Hartley’s attention was fixed upon the stage, Eve’s hand crept stealthily into the hand of her lover, while she whispered, “What has happened, Jack? I know there is something wrong. Why won’t you trust me?”
Trust her? Trust her with a secret that must part them for ever—let her suffer the agony of knowing that this strong right hand which her slim fingers were caressing had stabbed her brother to the heart?
“There can be nothing wrong, dearest, while I have you,” he answered, grasping her hand as if he would never let it go.
“But outside me, you have been worried about something. You have quite changed from your gay spirits at Hurlingham.”
“My love, I exhausted myself at Hurlingham. You and I were laughing like children. That can’t last. But for me there is no outside world. Be sure of that. My world begins and ends where you are.”
“My own dear love,” she whispered softly.
And so hand in hand they listened to the last act, while Lady Hartley amused herself now with the stage, and now with the audience, and left these plighted lovers alone in their fool’s paradise.
Sunday was given up to church and church parade, looking at people and gowns and bonnets in Hyde Park. Vansittart had to be observant and ready, amusing and amused, as he walked beside his sister and his betrothed. He had to say smart things about the people and the bonnets, to give brief biographies of the men whom he saluted, or with whom he spoke. He had to do this, and to be gay and light-hearted in the drive to Richmond, and at the late luncheon in the pretty upstairs room at the Star and Garter, where the balcony hung high over the smiling valley, over the river that meanders in gracious curves through wooded meadows and past the townlet of “Twicks.” Happiness is the dominant in the scale of prosperous love. Why or how should he fail to be happy, adored by this sweet girl, who in less than six weeks was to be his, to have and to hold till death?
He played his part admirably, was really happy during some of those frivolous hours, telling himself that the thing which had happened at Venice was a casualty for which Fate would not too cruelly punish him.
“Even Œdipus Rex had a good time of it after he killed his father at the cross roads,” he told himself mockingly. “It was not till his daughters were grown up that troubles began. He had a long run of prosperity. And so, Dame Fortune, give me my darling, and let her not know for the next twenty years that this right hand is red with her kindred’s blood. Let her not know! And after twenty years of bliss—well, let the volcano explode, and bury me in the ashes. I shall have lived my life.”
He parted with Eve in Bruton Street after tea. She was going to an evening service with Lady Hartley. They were to hear a famous preacher, while the mundane Sir Hubert dined at Greenwich with some men. Eve was to leave Waterloo Station early next morning, and as Lady Hartley was sending her maid to see the young lady and her luggage safely lodged at the Homestead, Vansittart was told he would not be wanted.
“This is a free country,” he said. “You will find me at the station to say good-bye.”
He went home to dine with his mother, a very melancholy dinner. Mrs. Vansittart’s pale cheeks bore traces of tears, and she was obviously unhappy, although she struggled to keep up appearances, talked about the weather, the sermon she had heard in the morning, the dinner, anything to make conversation while the servants were in the room.
Vansittart followed her to the drawing-room directly after dinner, and seated himself by her side in the lamplight, and laid his hand on hers as it turned the pages of the book upon her knee.
“Canon Liddon is a delightful writer, mother; logical, clear-headed, and eloquent, and you could hardly have a better book than his Bampton Lectures for Sunday evening; but you might spare a few minutes for your son.”
“As many minutes or as many hours as you like, Jack,” answered his mother, as she closed the book. “My thoughts are too full of you to give themselves to any book that was ever written. My dear son, what can I say to you? Do you really mean to persist in this miserable alliance?”
“Oh, mother, how cruel you are even in your kindness! How cruel a mother’s love can be! It is not a miserable alliance—it is the marriage of true minds. Remember what your Shakespeare says, ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’ Will you, mother, admit impediments here, where practically there is none?”
“Jack, Jack, love has made you blind. Is the existence of that wicked young man no impediment—a man who may at any day be tried for his life as a murderer?”
“Again, mother, I say he was no murderer. The utmost that can be urged against this wicked young man is that he was a hot-tempered athlete who killed a man in a scuffle. Let us forget his existence, if we can. There is nothing in this life more unlikely than that we shall ever hear of him again. From that night in the Venetian caffè he ceased to exist—at any rate for England and his kindred. Be sure, mother, that Harold Marchant will never be heard of again.”
“You believe what you wish to believe, Jack, and you forget the French proverb that nothing is so likely to happen as the unexpected.”
“No, I don’t, mother. That useful adage has been borne in upon me of late. But now, dearest and best, let us be at peace for ever upon this question. I mean to marry my beloved, and I mean you to love her, second only to Maud and me. She is ready to love you with all her heart—with all the stored-up feeling of those motherless years in which she has grown from child to woman, without the help of a mother’s love. You are not going to shut your heart against her, are you, mother?”
“No, Jack, not if she is to be your wife. I love you too well to withhold my love from your wife.”
“That’s my own true mother.”
On this mother and son, between whom there had hung a faint cloud of displeasure, kissed, not without tears; and it was agreed that for these two henceforward the name of Harold Marchant should be a dead letter.