CHAPTER XIX.
“All the creaturesMade for Heaven’s honours, have their ends, and good ones,All but the cozening crocodiles, false women.”
“All the creaturesMade for Heaven’s honours, have their ends, and good ones,All but the cozening crocodiles, false women.”
“All the creaturesMade for Heaven’s honours, have their ends, and good ones,All but the cozening crocodiles, false women.”
“All the creatures
Made for Heaven’s honours, have their ends, and good ones,
All but the cozening crocodiles, false women.”
February had begun, the frost and snow had disappeared. There were soft breathings of spring in the breezes that blew over the broad grassy downs beyond the Roman encampment, and the sportsmen of the neighbourhood were rejoicing in open weather and lengthening daylight; but Juliet Baldwin was still at Medlow Court, and the heart of Harrington Dalbrook was heavy as he set out in the pleasant morning for some distant meet; and it was heavier as he rode home in the evening, after a day’s sport which had shown him only too distinctly that the black horse was not so young as he had been. He hugged himself with the delusion that those indications of advancing years which were but too obvious towards the close of a trying day across a heavy country, would vanish after a week’s rest, and that the horse would show no signs of staleness at Tattersall’s, where he must inevitably be sold before the end of the month, his owner seeing no other way of meeting the bill that had been given in exchange for a beast whose name should have been, not Mahmud, but White Elephant.
Harrington’s sole motive for buying a hunter—or, rather, his sole excuse for being trapped into the purchase—was the expectation of being able to ride to hounds in Miss Baldwin’s company. She hadsaid to him “You ought to hunt,” and he had straightway hunted, just as, if she had told him to balloon, he would have ballooned. And now Juliet Baldwin was following the hounds in another county while he was in Dorsetshire plodding along dreary roads to inaccessible meets at places which would seem to have been chosen with a special study of everybody’s inconvenience. The whole business was fraught with bitterness. He had never loved hunting for its own sake—had never possessed the single-mindedness of the genuine sportsman, who cares not for weather or country, or companionship, or hunger or thirst, so long as there is a fox at the beginning of the day and blood at the end.
Juliet was out with the hounds three days a week. She wrote rapturous accounts of forty minutes here, and an hour there; and every run which she described was apparently the quickest thing that had ever been known in that country. She let her lover knowen passantthat she had been greatly admired, and that her horsemanship had been talked about. Her letters were very affectionate, but they testified also to a self-love that amounted to adoration. Her frocks, her horses—provided, as the young ravens are fed, by a kindly Providence in the shape of casual acquaintance—her breaks at billiards, her waltzing, were all dilated upon with a charming frankness.
“It seems rather foolish to write all this egotistical twaddle,” she apologized, “but you complain if I send you a short letter, and there is literally nothing to tell here—at least nothing about any one you know, or that would have the faintest interest for you—so I am obliged to scribble about my frocks and my little social triumphs.”
This was kindly meant, no doubt, but it stung him to be reminded that his friends were not her friends, that Belgravia is not further from Islington than her people were from his people.
In one of her letters she wrote casually:—
“Why don’t you put Mahmud into a horse-box and come over for a day with these hounds. It would be capital fun. There is a dear little rustic inn where you and your horse can put up—and Lady B. would ask you to dinner as a matter of course. I dare say your highly respectable hair will stand on end at some of our ways—but that won’t matter. I am sure you would enjoy an evening or two at Medlow. Think about it, like a dear boy.”
Harrington did think about it—indeed, from the first reading of his lady-love’s unceremonious invitation he thought of nothing else. After much puzzling over time-tables, he found that trains—those particular trains which condescend, with an asterisk, to carry horses—could be matched so as to convey the black horse to the immediate vicinity of Medlow Court in something under a day, and this being so, he telegraphed his intention of putting up at the “Medlow Arms”on the following night, taking pains to add “Shall arrive at five p.m.,” so as to secure the promised invitation to dinner. He had been so chary of spending money since his loan to Juliet that he had still a few pounds in hand, enough as he thought to pay travelling expenses and hotel bills. His heart was almost light as he packed his hunting-gear and dress suit, albeit March 10 was written in fiery characters across a spectral bill which haunted him wherever he went.
It was still early in February, he told himself. Some stroke of luck might happen to him. Some rich young fool at Medlow Court might take a fancy to Mahmud and want to buy him. He had heard of men who wanted to buy horses, although it had been his fate to meet only the men who were eager to sell.
After no less than three changes of trains he arrived at the Toppleton Road Station—for Medlow and Toppleton—about half-past four, weary, but full of hope. He was to see her again—after three weeks’ severance. He was going at her own express desire. It was her tact and cleverness that had made the visit easy for him. Had he not Lady Burdenshaw’s invitation in his pocket, in a fine open-hearted hand, sprawling over three sides of large note-paper:—
“Dear Mr. Dalbrook,“I hear you are coming over for a day or two with our hounds, and I hope you will contrive to dine with us every evening while you are in the neighbourhood. Your father and Sir Phillimore were old friends. Dinner at eight.“Sincerely yours,“Sarah Burdenshaw.”
“Dear Mr. Dalbrook,
“I hear you are coming over for a day or two with our hounds, and I hope you will contrive to dine with us every evening while you are in the neighbourhood. Your father and Sir Phillimore were old friends. Dinner at eight.
“Sincerely yours,“Sarah Burdenshaw.”
Sir Phillimore had been in the family vault nearly fifteen years. The malicious averred that he had sought that dismal shelter as a refuge and a relief from the life which Lady Burdenshaw imposed upon him—open house, big shoots, hunting breakfasts, fancy balls, and private theatricals in the country; and in London perpetual parties or perpetual gadding about.
Sir Phillimore’s grandfather had come up from Aberdeen, a raw boy without a penny, and had found out something about the manufacture of iron which had eventually made him a millionaire. Sir Phillimore’s fortune had reconciled the beautiful Sally Tempest to a marriage with a man who was her senior by a quarter of a century, and the only license she had allowed herself had been her indulgence in boundless extravagance, and a laxity of manner which had somewhat shocked society in the sober fifties and sixties, though it left her moral character unimpeached.
In the eighties nobody wondered or exclaimed at Lady Burdenshaw’sfreedom of speech and manner, or at the manners she encouraged in her guests. In the eighties Sarah Burdenshaw was generally described as “good fun.”
Harrington found the dear little rustic inn very picturesque externally, but small and stuffy within, and the bedroom into which he was ushered was chiefly occupied by a large old-fashioned, four-post bedstead, with chintz hangings that smelt of mildewed lavender—indeed, the pervading odour of the “Medlow Arms” was mildew. He dressed as well as he could under considerable disadvantages; and a rumbling old landau, which had the local odour, conveyed him to Medlow Court much quicker than he could have supposed possible from his casual survey of the horse. It was ten minutes to eight when he entered Lady Burdenshaw’s drawing-room.
It was a very large room, prettily furnished in a careless style, as if by a person whose heart was not set upon furniture. There were plenty of low luxurious chairs, covered with a rather gaudy chintz, and befrilled with lace and muslin, and there were flowers in abundance; but of human life the room was empty.
Harrington hardly knew whether he was relieved or discomposed at finding himself alone. He had leisure in which to pace the room two or three times, to arrange his tie and inspect his dress suit before one of the long glasses, and then to feel offended at Juliet’s coldness. She knew that he was to be there. She might surely have contrived to be in the drawing-room ten minutes before the dinner hour.
Half a dozen people straggled in, a not too tidy-looking matron in ruby velvet, a sharp-featured girl in black lace, and some men who looked sporting or military. One of these talked to him.
“I think you must be Mr. Dalbrook,” he said, after they had discussed the weather and the state of the roads.
“You are quite right—but how did you guess?”
“Miss Baldwin told me you were coming, and I don’t think there’s any one else expected to-night. Do you know your hostess?”
“I am waiting for that privilege.”
“Ah! that explains your punctuality. Nobody is ever punctual at Medlow. Eight o’clock means half-past, and sometimes a quarter to nine. Lady Burdenshaw has reached her sixtieth year without having arrived at a comprehension of the nature of time, as an inelastic thing which will not stretch to suit feminine convenience. She still believes in the elasticity of an hour, and rushes off to her room to dress when she ought to be sitting down to dinner. Her girl friends follow her example, and seldom leave the billiard-room or the tea-room till dear Lady B. leads the way.”
A whole bevy of ladies entered the room rather noisily at this moment, and among them appeared Juliet, magnificent in a red gown, which set off the milky whiteness of her shoulders.
“Rather a daring combination with red hair,” remarked the young lady in black, who was sitting on a narrowcauseusewith a large man, whose white moustache and padded chest suggested a cavalry regiment.
“You may call the lady a harmony in red,” said the gentleman.
Harrington scowled upon these prattlers, and then crossed the room to greet his love. Yes, it was a daring combination, the scarlet gown with the ruddy tints in her auburn hair; but the audacity was justified by success. She looked a magnificent creature, dazzling as Vashti in her Eastern splendour, invincible as Delilah. Who could resist her?
She gave her hand to Harrington, and seemed pleased to see him, but in the next moment he saw her looking beyond him towards the end of the room. He turned, involuntarily following the direction of her eyes, and saw the man who had talked to him, and who was now evidently watching them. He was a middle-aged man, handsome, tall, and upstanding, and with an air which Harrington considered decidedly patrician.
“Who is that man by the piano?” he asked.
“Major Swanwick, Lord Beaulieu’s younger brother.”
“Ah, I thought he was a swell,” said Harrington, innocently. “He was very civil to me just now. You might have been in the drawing-room a little earlier, Juliet. You must have known that I was longing to see you.”
“My dear boy, we were playing skittle-pool till five minutes to eight. I had no idea you were in the house. Ah, here comes Lady B.”
A fat, fair, flaxen-haired lady in a sky-blue tea-gown embroidered with silver palm-leaves came rolling into the room, murmuring apologies for having kept people waiting for their dinner.
“I know you must all be delightfully ravenous,” she said; “and that’s ever so much better than feeling that dinner has come too soon after lunch.”
Juliet introduced her friend, who was most graciously received.
“How is your father?” asked Lady Burdenshaw. “It is ages since I saw him—more than twenty years, I believe. Sir Phillimore bought some land in your county, and Mr. Dalbrook acted for him in the matter, and he still receives the rents. And so you are going out with the hounds to-morrow? They meet quite near—not more than seven or eight miles from your inn. Juliet will show you the way across country. She’s always in the first flight; but if you want to know her particular talent, you should see her play pool. I can assure you she makes all the men sit up.”
Harrington scarcely followed the lady’s meaning. There was no time for explanations, as the butler, who had been waiting for her Ladyship’s appearance, now announced dinner, and Harrington hadthe bliss of going to the dining-room with Juliet Baldwin on his arm. He felt as if he were in the Moslem’s enchanted fields as he sat by her side at the brilliant table, with its almost overpowering perfume of hot-house flowers, which were grouped in great masses of bloom among the old silver and the many-coloured Venetian glass. Yes, it was a Mohammedan paradise, and this was the houri, this lovely creature with the milky shoulders rising out of soft folds of scarlet crape.
“How long are you going to stay here, Juliet?” he asked, as the houri unfolded her napkin.
She gave a little laugh before she answered the question.
“Compare this room and table with our dining-room at the Mount—you can compare the dinner with my mother’s dinners after you have eaten it—and ask yourself if any reasonable creature would be in a hurry to leave this Canaan for that wilderness. I’m afraid I shall stop as long as ever dear old Lady B. asks me; and she is always pressing me to extend my visit.”
“I don’t think dinner can be much of attraction in your mind, Juliet,” said Harrington.
“Of course not—girls don’t care what they eat,” replied Juliet, sipping her clear soup, and most fully appreciating the flavour. “But there are so many advantages at Medlow. There is the hunting, for instance, which is much better than any I can get at home, where I have positively no horse that I can call my own. Here I can always rely upon a good mount.”
“Has Lady Burdenshaw a large stable?”
“Oh, she keeps a good many horses; but most of hers are only fit for leather. There are men who come here with strings of hunters, and have always a young one that they like me to handle for them.”
“Juliet, you will get your neck broken,” cried Harrington, pale with horror, and staring vacantly at the fish that was being offered to him.
“There is no fear of that while I ride young horses, the danger is an old one. My father taught me to ride, and as he was one of the best cross-country riders in Dorset I am not likely to make a mistake. You had better try thatsole Normande; it is one of the Medlow specialities.”
“Juliet, I hate the idea of your staying in this house—or in any house where there is a crowd of fast men. I hate the idea of your riding men’s horses—of your being under an obligation to a stranger——”
“Don’t I tell you that the obligation is all the other way. A young hunter is a more saleable article when he has carried a lady. ‘Will suit a bold horsewoman in a stiff country.’ That sort of thingis worth a great deal in a catalogue, and the men whose horses I ride are not strangers.”
“At the most they are casual acquaintances.”
“Call them that if you like. Why should not one profit by one’s acquaintances?”
“There is one of your benefactors looking at you at this moment, and looking as if he objected to my talking to you.”
“How dare you talk about my benefactors? Do you suppose I had you invited to Medlow in order that you might insult me?”
This little dialogue was conducted in subdued tones, but with a good deal of acrimony upon either side. Harrington was bursting with jealousy.
The house, the men, the very atmosphere awakened distrust. He detested those men for their square shoulders and soldierly bearing, for the suggestion of cavalry or household brigade which seemed to him to pervade the masculine portion of the assembly. He had always hated military men. Their chief mission in life seemed to be to make civilians look insignificant.
Miss Baldwin ate the nextentréein stony silence, and it was not till he had abjectly apologized for his offensive speech that her lover was again taken into favour. She relented at last, however, and favoured him with a good deal of information about the house party which made such a brilliant show at Lady Burdenshaw’s luxurious board.
The men were for the most part military—the greater number bachelors, or at any rate unencumbered with wives. Two had been divorced, one was a widower, another was separated in the friendliest way from a wife who found she could live in better style unfettered by matrimonial supervision.
Major Swanwick was one of the two who had profited by Sir James Hannen’s jurisdiction.
“His wife was Lady Flora Thurles, one of the Tantallans. All the Tantallan girls went wrong, don’t you know. It was in the blood.”
“You and he seem to be great friends,” said Harrington, still suspicious.
“Oh, we have met very often; he is quite an old chum of mine. He is a good old thing.”
Seeing that the good old thing looked as if he were well under forty, Harrington was not altogether reassured, even by this comfortable tone. He watched his betrothed and the Major all through the long evening in the billiard-room, where pool was again the chief amusement of a very noisy party, of which Juliet and Major Swanwick seemed to him the ringleaders and master-spirits. It was with difficulty that he, the affianced, got speech with his betrothed.
There were just a few minutes, while the old family tankards were being carried round with mulled claret and other cunning drinks, in which Juliet vouchsafed to give her attention to her lover, he having in a manner cornered her into a draped recess at the end of the room, where he held her prisoner while he bade her good night.
“I shall see you at the meet to-morrow,” he said.
“I won’t promise to be at the meet, but I shall find you and the hounds in plenty of time. I know every inch of this country.”
“Whose horse are you going to ride to-morrow?”
“A fine upstanding chestnut; I’m sure you’ll admire him?”
“Yes, yes, but whose?”
“Whose?” echoed Juliet, as if she scarcely understood the word. “Oh,”—with a sudden flash of intelligence,—“you mean whose property is he? As if that mattered! He belongs to Major Swanwick.”
“Good night!” said Harrington; and he went off to take leave of Lady Burdenshaw, who was sitting in the capacious ingle nook, with a circle of men about her telling her anecdotes in Parisian French, and from whom every now and then there burst peals of jovial laughter.
“At my age one understands everything, and one may hear everything,” said her Ladyship.
Harrington went back to the “Medlow Arms” more depressed than he had felt during any period of his courtship. Instinct had warned him of the dangers that must lurk in such a house as Medlow Court for such a girl as Juliet Baldwin; but neither instinct nor imagination had prepared him for the horrible reality. To see the woman who was to be his wife smoking cigarettes, playing shilling pool, and bandying doubtful jokes with men who had obviously the very poorest opinion of the opposite sex, was an agony which he had never thought to suffer; and for the first time since his engagement he asked himself whether it would not have been better to have trusted his future happiness to the most insipid and colourless of the girls with whom he played tennis than to this magnificent specimen of emancipated smartness. The image of Juliet sprawling over the billiard-table, with her eyes on fire and her shoulders half out of her gown as she took a difficult “life,” pursued him like a bacchanalian nightmare all through his troubled snatches of sleep. The stony straw mattress and lumpy feather bed would not have been conducive to slumber under the happiest circumstances, but for a mind disturbed by care they were a bed of torture. He rose at seven, unrefreshed, heavy-hearted, detesting chanticleer, cloudy skies, and all the old-fashioned fuss about a hunting morning, and wishing himself in his comfortable room in the good old house in Cornhill, where he had ample space and all things needful to aluxurious toilet. He got himself dressed somehow. He was in the saddle at nine o’clock, after a breakfast for which he had no appetite.
It was a long, dreary ride to the little roadside inn at which the hounds met, and Harrington being particularly punctual, had to jog along companionless till the last mile, when Major Swanwick and another man from Medlow overtook him and regaled him with their talk for the rest of the way.
“I think I know that black horse,” said the Major, who looked provokingly well in his red coat, chimney pot, and cream-coloured tops, thereby making Harrington ashamed of his neat dark grey coat, Bedford cords, and bowler hat. “Wasn’t he in Baldwin’s stud nine years ago?”
“I bought him off Sir Henry Baldwin.”
“Thought so. Good hand at selling a horse, Baldwin! However, I suppose there’s some work in the black horse yet.”
“I hope so, for I mean to hunt him to the end of the season,” answered Harrington, ignoring that awful necessity of selling before the end of the month.
Hope glowed faintly in his breast as he saw the Major’s keen eye going over his mount, as if studying the condition of every limb and every muscle.
“Wears well,” he said, after this deliberate survey, “but I’m afraid you’ll find him like the wonderful one-horse shay. He’ll go to pieces all at once. Did Baldwin tell you his age?”
“He said something about rising eight—but I didn’t inquire very particularly, as I know the horse is a good one.”
“And it was a good one of Baldwin to talk about rising eight. He would have been within the mark if he had said rising eighteen. I’ve bought a horse of Sir Henry myself, and,”—after a brief pause—“I’ve sold him one.”
“And I dare say that made you even,” said Harrington, with acidity. He would have liked to call the Major out for his insolence, and almost regretted that he was a Briton, and not a Frenchman and a professed duellist.
“Faith, I don’t think he had altogether the best of me—for when he rode that hunter of mine he was like the little old woman in the nursery rhyme, of whom it was said that she should have music wherever she went. He had music, and to spare.”
And so with jovial laughter they rode up to the open space in front of the “Red Cow,” where the hounds were grouped about a duck-pond, while the master chatted with his friends.
It was an hour later before Juliet appeared, cropping up suddenly on a windy common, with three other girls and two men, while the hounds were drawing the furze.
“You see I could make a pretty good guess where to find you,”she said to Harrington. “How well the black looks! You have been saving him up, I suppose?”
“No, I’ve hunted as often as I could. I had no other distraction during your absence.”
“How sweet of you to say that—with all the gaieties of Dorchester to allure you! Hark! they’ve found, and we shall be off in a minute. Yes, there he goes!”—pointing with her whip to the spot where the fox had flashed across the short level sward, vanishing next moment in the withered heather. “Now you’ll see what this horse can do, and you can tell me what you think of him when we meet at dinner.”
There was the usual minute or so of flutter and expectation, and then the business-like calm—an almost awful calm—every man settling down to his work, intent upon himself, steering carefully for a good place.
Harrington was a nervous rider, and if fortune helped him to get a good place he rarely kept it. To-day he was more than usually nervous, fancying that Juliet’s eye was upon him, which it wasn’t, and, indeed, could not have been, unless it had been situated in the back of her head, since she was already ever so far in front.
In time, however, he, too, contrived to settle down, and the black horse took the business into his own hands, and kept his rider fairly close to the hounds. For the first twenty minutes there was a good deal of jumping, but of a mildish order, and Harrington felt that he was distinguishing himself, inasmuch as he was able to stick to his horse, though not always to his saddle.
They lost their first fox, after a very fair run, and they waited about for nearly two hours before they started a second, which they did eventually in a scrubby copse on the skirts of a great stretch of ploughed land.
The plough took a great deal out of Mahmud, and after the plough came a series of small fields, with some stiffish fences, which had to be taken by any man who wanted to keep with the hounds. Here Juliet was in her glory, for the chestnut on which she was mounted was a fine fencer, and she knew how to handle him, or, perhaps it may be said, how to let him alone.
Mahmud had been almost as fine a fencer as the fiery young chestnut, and he was a horse of a great heart, always ready to attempt more than he could do. The livery stable people had told Harrington that if his legs were only as good as his heart he would be one of the best hunters in the county. And now, with some quavering of spirit on his own part, Harrington trusted that heart would stand instead of legs, and get him and the black over the fences somehow. Just at this crucial point in the run, Juliet was in front of him, and Major Swanwick was pressinghim behind. He was near the hounds, and altogether in a place of honour, could he but keep it, and to keep it he felt was worth a struggle.
He got over or through the first fence somehow; not gloriously, but without too much loss of time; and galloped gaily towards the second, which looked a stiffer and more complicated affair. Juliet’s horse went over like a bird, and Juliet sat him like a butterfly, no more discomposed by the shock than if she had been some winged insect that had lighted on his haunches. Mahmud followed close, excited by the horse in front of him, and rose to his work gallantly; but this time it was timber and not quick-set that had to be cleared, and that stiff rail was just too much for the old hunter’s legs. He blundered, hit himself with the sharp edge of the rail, and fell heavily forward, sending his rider flying into the next field, and sinking in a struggling mass into the ditch. Major Swanwick dismounted in an instant, scrambled over the hedge, and ran to help Harrington up.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not much,” answered the fallen man, staggering to his feet, hatless, and with a dazed look. “I’m afraid my horse is done for, though, poor old chap.”
In that moment his only thought was of the beast he had been fond of, which had been to him as a friend, albeit often an unmanageable one. He had no thought just then of the money value of that doubled-up mass lying in the ditch.
Mahmud had finished his course. His forearm was broken, and the most merciful thing was to make a swift end of him with a bullet from a gun which one of the whips fetched from the nearest farmhouse. His owner stood by him and waited for the end, while Juliet and the rest of the hunt galloped away out of sight. When the shot had been fired the black horse was left to be carted off to the kennels, and Harrington turned to walk slowly and sorrowfully to the farmhouse, where he was promised a trap to convey him to the “Medlow Arms.”
Then and then only did he discover that he had dislocated his shoulder, and was suffering acute agony, and then and then only did he remember the acceptance which he had given for the black horse.
Where now were the fifty pounds which he had reckoned upon getting for the animal at Tattersall’s, trusting to Providence, or old Hayfield, to make up the balance of thirty. He saw himself now with that horrible acceptance falling due and no assets.
He got back to the rustic inn, with great suffering, and laid himself down upon the stony-hearted four-poster instead of dressing to go and dine at Medlow. The village surgeon came and attended to his shoulder, a painful business, though not unskilfully done; andthen he was told he must keep himself as quiet as possible for a few days, and must not think of travelling till the inflammation was reduced. It was his right shoulder on which he had fallen, and he was utterly helpless. The handy young man of the “Medlow Arms” had to valet him and assist him to eat the tough mutton chop which was served to him in lieu of all the delicacies of Medlow Court.
A messenger came from that hospitable mansion at ten o’clock with a little note from Juliet.
“Why did you not turn up at dinner-time? Major Swanwick said you were all right. I waited till I saw you get up, safe and sound. So sorry for poor old Mahmud. Come to breakfast to-morrow and tell us all about it. We killed in a quarter of an hour.—Yours,Juliet.”
Harrington sent his best regards to Miss Baldwin and his apologies to Lady Burdenshaw, and begged to inform them that he had dislocated his shoulder, and was unable to write.
He had a miserable night—sleepless and in pain—haunted by the ghost of Mahmud, whose miserable end afflicted him sorely, and troubled by the perplexities of his financial position. Should he tell his father the whole truth? Alas, it seemed only yesterday that he had told his father the whole truth about his college debts; and though truthfulness is a great virtue, a second burst of candour coming on the heels of the first might be too much for Mr. Dalbrook’s patience.
Should he borrow the money from Juanita? No, too humiliating. He had always felt a restraining pride in all his intercourse with his grand relations at Cheriton Chase. They were of his own blood; but they were above him in social status, and he was sensitively alive to the difference in position.
Could he apply to his brother? Again the answer was in the negative. He doubted whether Theodore possessed eighty guineas in the world.
And so he went on revolving the same considerations through his fevered brain all through the long winter night. There were moments of exasperation and semi-delirium, when he thought he would go over to Medlow Court as soon as he was able to move, and appeal to the beneficence of Lady Burdenshaw for the temporary accommodation of a cheque for eighty guineas.
And thus the night wore on till the morning sounds of the inn brought the sense of stern reality across his feverish dreams; and then, amidst the crowing of cocks, and the bumping of pails, and tramping of horses in the stable yard, he contrived to fall asleep, after having failed in that endeavour all through the quiet of the night.
It was about half-past eleven, and the handy-man had helped himto make a decent toilet and to establish himself upon a sofa that was a little harder than the bed, when a pony-carriage drove up to the door, and the chamber-maid came in with an awe-stricken face to announce Lady Burdenshaw and another lady, and would he please to see them, as they wanted to come upstairs.
The room was tidy, and he was dressed as well as a helpless man could be, so he said yes, they might come up, which was almost unnecessary, as they were already on the stairs, and were in the room a minute afterwards.
Juliet expressed herself deeply concerned at her lover’s misfortune, though she did not attempt to conceal from him that she considered his riding in fault. Lady Burdenshaw was more sympathetic, and was horrified at the discomfort of his surroundings.
“You cannot possibly endure that cruel-looking sofa till your shoulder is well,” she said, “and such a small room, too, poor fellow; and a horrid low ceiling; and the house smells damp. I wonder if we could venture to move him to the Court, Ju?”
Ju was of opinion that such a proceeding would be to the last degree dangerous.
“The only chance for his shoulder is to keep quiet,” she said.
Unfortunately, the surgeon had said the same thing, and there could be no doubt about it.
“Perhaps you could send him a sofa?” suggested Juliet.
“Of course I could; and I can send him soups and jellies and things—but that isn’t like having him at Medlow, where he could have a large airy room, and where you and I could take it in turns to amuse him.”
“Dear Lady Burdenshaw, you are too good to an almost stranger,” murmured Harrington, moved to the verge of tears by her geniality.
“Stranger! fiddlesticks. Don’t I know your cousin, Lord Cheriton; and has not your father done business for me? Besides, I like young men, when they’re modest and pleasant, as you are. Indeed I sometimes like them when they’re impertinent. I like young faces and young voices about me. I like to be amused, and to see people happy. I can’t endure the idea of your lying for ever so many days and nights in this dog-kennel, when you came to Medlow to enjoy yourself.”
“It mustn’t be many days and nights. I must get home somehow by the end of the week, if I post all the way.”
“Oh, you needn’t post. When you are able to be moved, my carriage shall take you to the station; and I’ll get the railroad people to take an invalid carriage through to Dorchester for you.”
“Indeed, you must not be impatient, Harry,” said Juliet. “I shall come to see you every day, except on the hunting days,and even then I can walk over in the evening, if Lady B. will let me.”
“Of course I shall let you. All my sympathies are with lovers, and when you are married I shall give Mr. Dalbrook as much of my business as I possibly can venture to take away from those dear old fossils at Salisbury, who have been the family lawyers for the best part of a century.”
Juliet had confided her engagement to Lady B. at the beginning of her visit, and she and Lady B. had talked over the young man’s chances of doing well in the world, and the wisdom or the foolishness of such an alliance. Lady B. had seen a good deal of smart young men and women, and she had discovered that the smart young men were very keen in the furtherance of their own interests, and that the smart young women had considerable difficulty in getting themselves permanently established in the smart world by smart marriages. Some were beautiful, and many were admired; but they had to wait for eligible suitors, and one false step in the early stages of their career would sometimes blight their chances of success. Juliet had taken many false steps, and had got herself a good deal talked about, and Lady Burdenshaw felt that her chance of making an advantageous match had been lessening year by year until it had come to be almost nil.
“If this young fellow is sensible and good-looking, and has a little money, I really think, Ju, you ought to marry him,” concluded Lady B., talking the matter over with herprotégéebefore she had seen Harrington.
She fancied that Juliet had cooled somewhat in her feelings towards her youthful lover within the last week or ten days. It might be, Lady B. thought, that she began to perceive that he was too young, that the difference in their ages, which was not much, and the difference in their worldly experience, which was enormous, unfitted them to be happy together.
“No doubt the young man is apis aller,” reflected Lady Burdenshaw, after Harrington’s appearance at Medlow, “but he is a very good-looking fellow, and by no means bad—as apis aller. Of course, he is too young for Juliet, and much too fresh and innocent to understand her; but if he knew more he wouldn’t be so eager to marry her—so she ought to be satisfied.”
Lady Burdenshaw sent a delightful sofa, and a lot of books, flowers, pillows, foot-rests, and other luxuries in one of her own waggons, within an hour of her return to Medlow, and Harrington’s comfort was considerably increased by her kindness. Still the thought of that wretched acceptance was like a thorn in every cushion, a scorpion under every pillow, a wasp in every flower. Nor was he altogether at ease about Juliet. He thought that he haddetected a constraint in her manner, a shiftiness in her eyes. It had wounded him that she had so promptly opposed his being conveyed to Medlow. It might be that she was influenced only by concern for his safety; yet it would have been natural for his betrothed to wish to have him under the same roof with her, where she might tend and comfort him in his helplessness. Pain and anguish were wringing his brow, and she who should have been his ministering angel was content to limit her ministrations to half an hour of somewhat disjointed conversation, and to the polite attention of bringing him the morning papers, when everybody at Medlow had looked at them.
Lady Burdenshaw had very kindly taken upon herself to write to Matthew Dalbrook, explaining his son’s prolonged absence, and making light of his accident as a matter only involving a few days’ rest.
The few days had gone on till the fourth day after his fall, and in spite of all that Lady Burdenshaw had done to ameliorate his captivity the hours of the day and the night seemed to grow longer and longer, till he began to think of Silvio Pellico and the Man in the Iron Mask. Juliet’s visits were very short, and she was obviously absent-minded and bored even during that scanty half-hour which she gave to her betrothed.
“I’m afraid you are like Colonel Enderby’s wife,” he said, “and that the sight of sickness or suffering is more than you can bear.”
“Who was Colonel Enderby’s wife?”
“Don’t you know? She is the heroine of a very clever novel—an original, strange, and, I fear, not unnatural character.”
“Don’t remember her,” answered Juliet, carelessly. “I don’t read many English novels. They are too slow for me.”
On the hunting day he missed even that brief visit, and was expectant of her coming all the evening, as she had promised to make up for the day’s absence. But the night was wet, and she told him next day that she did not like to take out Lady Burdenshaw’s horse and man in such weather.
“The stable people would have resented it, and I am obliged to stand well with the stable,” she said.
He thought she had a troubled look that day. It seemed to him that it cost her an effort to keep her attention upon any subject, and she lapsed into silence every now and then, looking dreamily out of the window to the thatched roofs and ploughed fields in the distance.
“I’m afraid you have something on your mind,” he said.
“What nonsense! What put such an idea into your head?”
“You are so thoughtful, and so much more silent than usual.”
“There is so little to talk about in a sick room. If I were to tell you about our doings at Medlow I should only bore you.”
“Not at all. I should be very pleased to hear how you amuse yourself. Is Major Swanwick still there?”
“Yes; he is still there.”
He saw that her cheeks crimsoned as she answered his question, and he wondered whether she really had anypenchantfor the Major, or whether she suspected his jealous apprehensions upon that subject. She got up to go before he could question her further.
“I shall be late for luncheon,” she said, “and Lady B. hates any of us to be absent!”
“I thought there was no such thing as punctuality at Medlow.”
“Oh, we are pretty punctual at luncheon. It’s the hungry hour, and we are all ravenous. Good-bye.”
“Au revoir.You will come to-morrow, love; and come earlier, I hope.”
“Pas possible.I shall be out with the hounds.”
“Another blank day for me. But don’t disappoint me in the evening, whatever the weather may be.”
She was gone, leaving him doubtful of her fidelity, though far from suspecting the extent of her falsehood.
He endured the long, dull day as best he might, and improved his mind by skimming all the books which Lady Burdenshaw had sent him, which were really the cream of Mudie’s last supply—travels, memoirs, gossip, magazines—books chosen with a view to the masculine mind, which was supposed to be indifferent to fiction. Evening came at last. His lamp was lighted, his fire swept and garnished. The hunting party would be jogging homeward in the wintry darkness, he thought. There were three hours to wait before half-past nine, which was the earliest time at which he could expect his beloved.
It was a little after the half-hour, when his heart began to beat faster at the sound of carriage wheels. This time she was not going to disappoint him. He listened for her step upon the stair—the firm, quick tread he knew so well; but it was another step which he heard, a slower and heavier tread, with much rustling of silken draperies. It must be Lady Burdenshaw come to chaperon her.
It was Lady Burdenshaw, but alone. She came in and drew near his sofa with a serious countenance.
“Great God!” he cried, starting up from his reclining position; “is anything the matter? An accident in the hunting field! Is she hurt?”
“No, my poor fellow.She’snot hurt. It would take a great deal to hurt her. She’s too hard. But she has done her best to hurt you.”
“What do you mean?”
“She has gone off with that audacious scamp.”
“Major Swanwick?”
“Yes. Did you suspect anything?”
“I thought there was an understanding between them.”
“They went off together early this morning; walked five miles to the station, leaving their luggage to be looked after by the Major’s servant, who had received his instructions and who got everything packed and off by the one o’clock train for London. I got this telegram late in the afternoon from Salisbury.”
She handed him a telegram, which he read slowly, word by word, and then he slowly folded it and restored it to his visitor, in heart-stricken silence.
The telegram was in these words:—