CHAPTER XVII.
“A mind not to be changed by place or time.”
“A mind not to be changed by place or time.”
“A mind not to be changed by place or time.”
“A mind not to be changed by place or time.”
Christmas at Dorchester was not a period of festivity to which Theodore Dalbrook had hitherto looked forward with ardent expectations, but in this particular December he found himself longing for that holiday season even as a schoolboy might long for release from Latin Grammar and suet pudding, and for the plenteous fare and idle days of home. He longed for the grave old town with its Roman relics and leafless avenues; longed for it, alas! not so much because his father, brother, and sisters dwelt there, as because it was within a possible drive of Milbrook Priory, and once being at Dorchester he had a fair excuse for going to see his cousin. Many and many a time in his chambers at the Temple he had felt the fever-fit so strongly upon him that he was tempted to put on his hat, rush out of those quiet courts and stony quadrangles to the bustle of the Embankment, spring into the first hansom that came within hail, and so to Waterloo, and by any train that would carry him to Wareham Station, and thence to the Priory, only to look upon Juanita’s face for a little while, only to hold her hand in his, once at greeting and once at parting, and then back into the night and the loneliness of his life, and law books and precedents, and Justinian and Chitty, and all that is commonplace and dry-as-dust in man’s existence.
He had refrained from such foolishness, and now Christmas was at hand, his sisters were making the house odious with holly and laurel, the old cook was chopping suet for the traditional puddingwhich he had loathed for the last ten years, and he had a fair excuse for driving along the frosty roads to visit his widowed cousin. He had a pressing invitation from Lord Cheriton to spend two or three days of his holiday time at the Chase, an invitation which he had promptly accepted; but his first visit was to Lady Carmichael.
He found the house in all things unlike what it had been when last he saw it. The dear Grenvilles had been persuaded to spend their Christmas in Dorsetshire, and the Priory was full of children’s voices, and the traces of children’s occupation. Theodore had known Jessica Grenville before her marriage, yet it was not the less a shock to find himself confronted by a portly matron and a brood of children in that room where he had seen Juanita’s sad face bent over her embroidery. There was no trace of Juanita in the spacious drawing-room to-day, and the fact of her absence almost unhinged him, and put him at a disadvantage in his conversation with Mrs. Grenville, who received him with gracious loquacity, and insisted upon his giving an immediate opinion upon the different degrees of family likeness to be seen in her four children there present.
“Those two are decided Carmichaels,” she said, putting forward a rather flabby boy and a pudding-faced girl, “and the other two are thorough Grenvilles,” indicating the latter and younger pair, who were seated on the floor building a Tower of Babel with a lately received present of bricks, and carrying out the idea by their own confusion of tongues.
Theodore felt glad he was not a Grenville if that was the type. He murmured some vague civility about the children, while he shook hands with Lady Jane, who had come forward shyly to welcome him, almost obliterated by her more loquacious daughter.
“Don’t you think Johnnie the very image of his poor dear uncle?” asked Mrs. Grenville urgently, a question which always agonized Lady Jane, who could not see the faintest likeness between her snub-nosed and bilious-looking grandchild and her handsome son.
Theodore was too nervous to be conscious of his own untruthfulness in replying in the affirmative. He was anxious to have done with the children, and to hear about his cousin.
“I hope Juanita is not ill?” he said.
“Oh, no, she is pretty well,” replied Lady Jane, “but we keep her as quiet as we can, and of course the children are rather trying for her——”
“Nobody can say that they are noisy children,” interjected the happy mother.
“So she seldom leaves her own rooms till the evening,” continued Lady Jane. “You would like to see her at once, I dare say, Mr. Dalbrook? And I know she will be pleased to see you.”
She rang, and told the footman to inquire if Lady Carmichael was ready to see Mr. Dalbrook, and Theodore had to occupy the interval until the footman’s return with polite attentions to the four children. He asked Lucy whence she had obtained those delightful bricks, thereby eliciting the information that the bricks were not Lucy’s, but Godolphin’s, only he “let her play with them,” as he observed magnanimously. He was gratified with the further information that the tower now in process of elevation was not a church, but the Tower of Babel; and he was then treated to the history of that remarkable building as related in Holy Writ.
“Youdidn’t know that, did you?” remarked Godolphin, boastfully, when he had finished his narration in a harsh bawl, being one of those coarse brats whom their parents boast of as after the pattern of the infant Hercules.
The footman returned before Godolphin had wrung a confession of ignorance from the nervous visitor, and Theodore darted up to follow him out of the room.
He found Juanita reclining on a low couch near the fire in a dimly-lighted room, that room which he remembered having entered only once before, on the occasion of an afternoon party at the Priory, when Sir Godfrey had taken him to his den to show him a newly acquired folio copy of Thomson’s “Seasons,” with the famous Bartolozzi mezzotints. It was a good old room, especially at this wintry season, when the dulness of the outlook was of little consequence. The firelight gleamed cheerily on the rich bindings of the books, and on the dark woodwork, and fondly touched Juanita’s reclining figure and the rich folds of her dark plush tea-gown.
“How good of you to come to see me so soon, Theodore!” she said, giving him her hand. “I know you only came to Dorchester yesterday. The girls were here the day before, and told me they expected you.”
“You did not think I should be in the county very long without finding my way here, did you, Juanita?”
“Well, no, perhaps not. I know what a true friend you are. And now tell me, have you made any further discoveries?”
“One more discovery, Juanita, as I told you briefly in my last letter. I have traced the Squire’s daughter to the sad close of a most unhappy life—and so ends the Strangway family as you know of their existence—that is to say, those three Strangways who had some right to feel themselves aggrieved by the loss of the land upon which they were born.”
“Tell me all you heard from Miss Newton. Your letter was brief and vague, but as I knew I was to see you at Christmas I waited for fuller details. Tell me everything, Theodore.”
He obeyed her, and related the bitter, commonplace story of Evelyn Strangway’s life, as told him by her old governess. Therewere no elements of romance in the story. It was as common as the Divorce Court or the daily papers.
“Poor creature! Well, there ends my theory, at least about her,” said Juanita, gloomily. “Her brothers were dead, and she was dead, long before that fatal night. Did they bequeath their vengeance to any one else, I wonder? Who else is there in this world who had reason to hate my father or me? And I know that no creature upon this earth could have cause to hate my husband.”
“In your father’s calling there is always a possibility of a deadly hate, inexplicable, unknown to the subject. Remember the fate of Lord Mayo. A judge who holds the keys of life and death must make many enemies.”
“Yes,” she sighed, “there is that to be thought of. Oh, my dearest and best, why did you ever link your life with that of a Judge’s daughter? I feel as if I had lured him to his doom. I might have foreseen the danger. I ought never to have married. What right had I? Some discharged felon lay in wait for him—some relentless, Godless, hopeless wretch—whom my father had condemned to long imprisonment—whose angry heart my father had scorched with his scathing speech. I have read some of his summings up, and they have seemed cruel, cruel, cruel—so cold, so deliberate, so like a god making light of the sins of men. Some wretch, coming maddened out of his silent cell, and seeing my husband—that white, pure life, that brave, strong youth—prosperous, honoured, happy—seeing what a good man’s life can be—lay in wait like a tiger, to destroy that happy life. If it was not one of the Strangways who killed him, it must have been such a man.”
Her eyes shone, and her cheeks flushed with a feverish red. Theodore took her hand, held it in both his own, and bent to kiss the cold fingers—not with a lover’s ardour, fondly as he loved; but with a calm and brotherly affection which soothed her agitated heart. He loved her well enough to be able to subjugate himself for her sake.
“My dear Juanita, if you would only withdraw your thoughts from this ghastly subject! I will not ask you to forget. That may be impossible. I entreat you only to be patient, to leave the chastisement of crime to Providence, which works in the dark, works silently, inevitably, to the end for which we can only grope in a lame and helpless fashion. Be sure the murderer will stand revealed sooner or later. That cruel murder will not be his last crime, and in his next act of violence he may be less fortunate in escaping every human eye. Or if that act is to be the one solitary crime of his life something will happen to betray him—some oversight of his own, or some irrepressible movement of a guilty conscience will give his life to the net, as a bird flies into a trap. Ibeseech you, dear, let your thoughts dwell upon less painful subjects—for your own sake—for the sake——”
He faltered, and left his sentence unfinished, and Juanita knew that his sisters had told him something. She knew that the one hope of her blighted life, hope which she had hardly recognized as hope yet awhile, was known to him.
“I can never cease to think of that night, or to pray that God will avenge that crime,” she said, firmly. “You think that is an unchristian prayer perhaps, but what does the Scripture say? ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ Christ came to confirm that righteous law. Oh! it is well to be a humanitarian—to sign petitions against capital punishment,—but let your nearest and dearest be murdered, and you will be quick to recognize the justice of that old inexorable law—a life for a life. That is whatIwant, Theodore—the life of the man who killed my husband.”
“If I can help to bring about that end, Juanita, believe me that I will not shrink from the task; but at present I must own that I am off the track, and see no likelihood of succeeding where a trained detective has failed. Could I but find a shred of evidence to put me on the trail, I would pursue that clue to the bitter end; but so far all is dark.”
“Yes, all is dark!” she answered, dejectedly; and then, after a pause, she said, “You are going to stay at Cheriton, I hear?”
“I am to spend three days there at the turn of the year, just before I go back to London. I have chambers in Ferret-court, over the rooms in which your father spent the golden years of his youth, the years that made him a great man. It will be very interesting to me to hear him talk over those years, if I can beguile him into talking of himself, a subject which he so seldom dwells upon.”
“Ask him if he ever made a bitter enemy. Ask him for his experience as a Judge at Assizes—find out, if you can, whether he ever provoked the hatred of a bad vindictive man.”
“I will question your father, Juanita.”
“Do! He will not let me talk to him about the one subject that occupies my mind. He always stops me on the threshold of any inquiries. He might surely help me to find the murderer, with his highly trained intellect, with his experience of the darkest side of human nature. But he will not help me. He would talk more freely to you, no doubt.”
“I will sound him,” answered Theodore, and then he tried to beguile her into talking of other things—her home, her surroundings.
“It must be a comfort to you to have Lady Jane.”
“A comfort! She is all that I have of happiness—all that reminds me of Godfrey. My mother and father are very dear to me—I hope you believe that, Theodore?—but our lives are parted now. Mymother is wrapped up in her husband. Neither of them can sympathize with me ashismother can. Their loss is not the same as ours. We two are one in our grief.”
“And she is a buffer between you and the outer world, I see. She bears the burdens that would weigh you down. Those children, for instance—no doubt they are charming, as children go; but I fancy they would worry you if you had too much of them.”
“They would kill me,” said Juanita, smiling at him for the first time in their interview. “I am not very fond of children. It sounds unwomanly to say so, but I often find myself wishing they could be born grown up. Fortunately, Lady Jane adores them. And I am glad to have the Grenvilles at Christmas time. I want all things to be as they would have been were my dearest here. I lie here and look round this room, which was his, and think and think, and think of him till I almost fancy he is here. Idle fancy! Mocking dream! Oh! if you knew how often I dream that he is living still, and that I am still his happy wife. I dream that he has been dead—or at least that we have all believed that he was dead—but that it was a mistake. He is alive; our own for long years to come. The wild rapture of that dream wakes me, and I know that I am alone. God keep you, Theodore, from such a loss as mine!”
“I must gain something before I can lose it,” he answered, with a shade of bitterness. “I see myself, as the years go on, hardening into a lonely old bachelor, outliving the capacity for human affection.”
“That is nonsense-talk. You think so just now, perhaps. There is no one beyond your own family you care for, and you fancy yourself shut out from the romance of life—but your day will come, very suddenly, perhaps. You will see some one whom you can care for. Love will enter your life unawares, and will fill your heart and mind, and the ambition that absorbs you now will seem a small thing.”
“Never, Juanita. I don’t mean to plague you with any trouble of mine. You have given me your friendship, and I hope to be worthy of it; but pray do not talk to me of the chances of the future. My future is bounded by the hope of getting on at the Bar. If I fail in that I fail in everything.”
“You will not fail. There is no reason you should not prosper in your profession as my father prospered. I often think that you are like him—more like him than you are like your own father.”
Their talk touched on various subjects after this—on the great events of the world, the events that make history—on books and theatres, and then upon Sarah Newton, whose plan of life interested Juanita.
He told her of the girl called Marian, and her inquiries about Cheriton.
“I wonder if you ever knew her among your villagers,” he said.“I should much like to know who she is. She interests me more than I can say. There is a refinement in her manners and appearance that convinces me she must have belonged to superior people. She was never born in a labourer’s cottage, or amidst a small shopkeeper’s shabby surroundings. She was never taught at a National School, or broken into domestic service.”
“And she was once very handsome, you say?”
“Yes, she must have been beautiful, before illness and trouble set their marks upon her face. She is only a wreck now, but there is beauty in the wreck.”
“How old do you suppose her to be?”
“Eight or nine and twenty. It is difficult to guess a woman’s age within two or three years, and this woman’s face is evidently aged by trouble; but I don’t think she can be thirty.”
“There is only one person I can think of who would in any manner answer your description,” said Juanita, thoughtfully.
“Who is that?”
“Mercy Porter. You must have heard about Mercy Porter, the daughter of the woman at the West Lodge.”
“Yes, yes, I remember. She ran away with a middle-aged man—an army man—one of your father’s visitors.”
“I was a child at the time, and of course I heard very little about it. I only knew that Mercy Porter who used to come to tea with mother, and who played the piano better than my governess, suddenly vanished out of our lives, and that I never saw her again. My mother was quite fond of her, and I remember hearing of her beauty, though I was too young myself to know what beauty meant. I could not think any one pretty who wore such plain frocks, and such stout useful boots as Mercy wore. Her mother certainly did nothing to set off her good looks, or to instil vanity. Years after, my mother told me how the girl disappeared one summer evening, and how Mrs. Porter came distracted to the house, and saw my father, and stormed and raved at him in her agony, saying it washisfriend who had blighted her daughter’s youth—hiswork that she had gone to her ruin. He was very patient and forbearing with her, my mother said, for he pitied her despair, and he felt that he was in some wise to blame for having brought such an unprincipled man as Colonel Tremaine to Cheriton, a man who had carried ruin into many homes. Mercy had been seen to leave Wareham Station with him by the night mail. He had a yacht at Weymouth. She wrote to her mother from London a fortnight afterwards, and Mrs. Porter brought the letter to my mother and father one morning, as they sat at breakfast. It was a heart-broken letter—the letter of a poor foolish girl who flings away her good name and her hope of Heaven, with her eyes open, and knows the cost of her sacrifice, and yet can’t help making it. I was engaged to Godfrey when I first heardMercy’s story, and I felt so sorry for her, so sorry, in the midst of my happy love. What had I done to deserve happiness more than she, that life should be so bright for me and so dark for her. I did not know that my day of agony was to come.”
“Did you ever hear how Colonel Tremaine treated her?”
“No; I believe my father wrote him a very severe letter, and called upon him to repair the wrong he had done; but I don’t think he even took so much trouble as to answer that letter. His regiment was ordered off to India two or three years afterwards, and he was killed in Afghanistan about six years ago.”
“And has nothing been heard of Mercy since her flight?”
“Nothing.”
“I wonder her mother has sat at home quietly all these years instead of making strenuous efforts to find her lost lamb,” said Theodore.
“Ah, that is almost exactly what Godfrey said of her. He seemed to think her heartless for taking things so quietly. She is a curious woman—self-contained, and silent. I sometimes fancy she was more angry than grieved at Mercy’s fate. Mother says she turns to ice at the slightest mention of the girl’s name. Don’t you think love would show itself differently?”
“One can never be sure about other people’s sentiments. Love has many languages.”
Their talk drifted to more commonplace subjects. And then Theodore rose to take leave.
“You must dine at the Priory before your holiday is over, Theo,” said his cousin, as they shook hands. “Let me see—to-morrow will be Christmas Day—will you come the day after, and bring the sisters? It is too long a drive for a winter night, so you must stay; there is plenty of room.”
“Are you sure we shall not bore you?”
“I am sure you will cheer me. My sister-in-law is very good—but Lady Jane is the only person in this house of whom I do not get desperately tired, including myself,” she added, with a sigh. “Please say you will come, and I will order your rooms.”
“We will come then. Good night, Juanita.”
The shadows were falling as he drove away, after refusing tea in the drawing-room and a further acquaintance with the wonderful children.
He looked forward to that evening at the Priory with an eager expectancy that he knew to be supreme foolishness, and when the evening came, it brought some measure of disappointment with it. Juanita was not so well as she had been upon Christmas Eve. She was not able to dine downstairs, and the family dinner, at which the Etonian Tom, Johnnie, and Lucy were allowed to take their places in virtue of Christmas time, was a dull business for Theodore. Hisonly pleasure was in the fact that he sat on Lady Jane’s right hand, and was able to talk with her of Juanita. Even that pleasure was alloyed with keenest pain; for Lady Jane’s talk was of that dead love which cast its shadow over Juanita’s youth, or of that dim and dawning hope which might brighten the coming days—and neither in the love of the past nor in the love of the future had Theodore any part. Juanita was on her sofa by the drawing-room fire when he and Mr. Grenville left the dining-room, after a single glass of claret, and a brief review of the political situation. Theodore’s sisters were established on each side of her. There was no chance for him while they were absorbing her attention, and he retired disconsolately to the group in the middle of the room, where Mrs. Grenville and Lady Jane were seated on a capacious ottoman with the children about them.
Johnnie and Lucy, who had over-eaten themselves, were disposed to be quiet, the little girl leaning her fair curls and fat shining cheek against her grandmother’s shoulder with an air that looked touching, but which really indicated repletion; Johnnie sprawling on the carpet at his mother’s feet, and wishing he had not eatenthatmince-pie, telling himself that, on the whole, he hated mince-pie, and envying his brother Tom, who had stolen off to the saddle-room to talk to the grooms. Godolphin and Mabel having dined early, were full of exuberance, waiting to be “jumped,” which entertainment Theodore had to provide without intermission for nearly half an hour, upheaving first one and then another towards the ceiling, first a rosy bundle in ruby velvet, and then a rosy bundle in white muslin, laughing, screaming, enraptured, to be caught in his arms, and set carefully on the ground, there to await the next turn. Theodore slaved at this recreation until his arms ached, casting a furtive glance every now and then at the corner by the fireplace where his sisters were treating Juanita to the result of their latest heavy reading.
At last, to his delight, Lucy recovered from her comatose condition, and began to thirst for amusement.
“Let’s have magic music,” she said; “we can all play at that, Granny and all. You know you love magic music, Granny. Who’ll play the piano? Not mother, she plays so badly,” added the darling, with childlike candour.
“Sophy shall play for you,” cried Theodore; “she’s a capital hand at it.”
He went over to his sister.
“Go and play for the children, Sophy,” he said. “I’ve been doing my duty. Go and do yours.”
Sophy looked agonized, but complied; and he slipped into her vacant seat.
He sat by his cousin’s side for nearly an hour, while the children,mother, and grandmother played their nursery game to the sound of dance-music, now low, now loud, neatly executed by Sophy’s accurate fingers. Their talk was of indifferent subjects, and the lion’s share of the conversation was enjoyed by Janet; but to Theodore it was bliss to be there, by his cousin’s side, within sound of her low melodious voice, within touch of her tapering hand. Just to sit there, and watch her face, and drink in the tones of her voice, was enough. He asked no more from Fate, yet awhile.
He had a long talk with her in her own room next morning, before he went back to Dorchester, and the talk was of that old subject which absorbed her thoughts.
“Be sure you find out all you can from my father,” she said at parting.
Life at Cheriton Chase bore no impress of the tragedy that had blighted Juanita’s honeymoon. There were no festivities this winter; there was no large house-party. There had been a few quiet elderly or middle-aged visitors during the shooting season, and there had been some slaughter of those pheasants which were wont to sit, ponderous and sleepy as barn-door fowls, upon the five-barred gates, and post-and-rail fences of the Chase. But even those sober guests—old friends of husband and wife—had all departed, and the house was empty of strangers when Theodore arrived there, in time for dinner on New Year’s Eve. Nothing could have suited him better than this. He wanted to betête-à-têtewith Lord Cheriton; to glean all in the way of counsel or reminiscence that might fall from those wise lips.
“If there is a man living who can teach me how to get on in my profession it is James Dalbrook,” he said to himself, thinking of his cousin by that name which he had so often heard his father use when talking of old days.
Lady Cheriton greeted him affectionately, made him sit by her in the library, where a richly embroidered Japanese screen made a cosy corner by the fireplace, during the twenty minutes before dinner. She was a handsome woman still, with that grand-looking Spanish beauty which does not fade with youth, and she was dressed to perfection in lustreless black silk, relieved by the glitter of jet here and there, and by the soft white crape kerchief, wornà laMarie-Antoinette. There was not one thread of grey in the rich black hair, piled in massive plaits upon the prettily shaped head. Theodore contemplated her with an almost worshipping admiration. It was Juanita’s face he saw in those classic lines.
“I want to have a good talk with you, Theo,” she said; “there is no one else to whom I can talk so freely now my poor Godfrey is gone. We sit here of an evening, now, you see. The drawing-room is only used when there are people in the house, and eventhen I feel miserable there. I cannot get his image out of my mind. Cheriton insists that the room shall be used, that it shall not be made a haunted room—and no doubt it is best so,—but one cannot forget such a tragedy as that.”
“I hope Juanita will forget some day.”
“Ah, that is what I try to hope. She is so young, at the very beginning of life, and it does seem hard that all those hopes for which other women live should be over and done with for her. I wish I could believe in the power of Time to cure her. I wish I could believe that she will be able to love somebody else as she loved Godfrey. If she does, I dare say it will be some new person who has had nothing to do with her past life. I had been in and out of love before I met James Dalbrook, but the sight of him seemed like the beginning of a new life. I felt as if it had been preordained that I was to love him, and only him—that nothing else had been real. Yes, Theodore,”—with a sigh,—“you may depend, if ever she should care for anybody, it will be a new person.”
“Very lucky for the new person, and rather hard upon any one who happens to have loved her all his life.”
“Is there any one—like that?”
“I think you know there is, Lady Cheriton.”
“Yes, yes, my dear boy, I know,” she answered kindly, laying her soft hand upon his. “I won’t pretend not to know. I wish, with all my heart, you could make her care for you, Theodore, a year or two hence. You would be a good and true husband to her, a kind father to Godfrey’s child—that fatherless child. Oh, Theodore, is it not sad to think of the child who will never—not for one brief hour—feel the touch of a father’s hand, or know the blessing of a father’s love? Such a dead blank where there should be warmth and life and joy! We must wait, Theo. Who can dispose of the future? I shall be a happy woman if ever you can tell me you have won the reward of a life’s devotion.”
“God bless you for your goodness to me,” he faltered, kissing the soft white hand, so like in form and outline to Juanita’s hand, only plumper and more matronly.
They dined snugly, a cosy trio, in a small room hung with genuine old Cordovan leather, and adorned with Moorish crockery, a room which was called her Ladyship’s parlour, and which had been one of Lord Cheriton’s birthday gifts to his wife, furnished and decorated during her absence at a German spa. When Lady Cheriton left them, the two men turned their chairs towards the fire, lighted their cigars, and settled themselves for an evening’s talk.
The great lawyer was in one of his pleasantest moods. He gave Theodore the benefit of his experience as a stuff-gown, and did all that the advice of a wise senior can do towards putting a tyre on the right track.
“You will have to bide your time,” he said in conclusion; “it is a tedious business. You must just sit in your chambers and read till your chance comes. Always be there, that’s the grand point. Don’t be out when Fortune knocks at your door. She will come in a very insignificant shape on her earlier visits—with a shabby little two-guinea brief in her hand; but don’t you let that shabby little brief be carried to somebody else just because you are out of the way. I suppose you are really fond of the law.”
“Yes, I am very fond of my profession. It is meat and drink to me.”
“Then you will get on. Any man of moderate abilities is bound to succeed in any profession which he loves with a heart-whole love; and your abilities are much better than moderate.”
There was a little pause in the talk while Lord Cheriton threw on a fresh log and lighted a second cigar.
“I have been meditating a good deal upon Sir Godfrey’s murder,” said Theodore, “and I am perplexed by the utter darkness which surrounds the murderer and his motive. No doubt you have some theory upon the subject.”
“No, I have no theory. There is really nothing upon which to build a theory. Churton, the detective, talked about a vendetta—suggested poacher, tenant, tramp, gipsy, any member of the dangerous classes who might happen to consider himself aggrieved by poor Godfrey. He even went so far as to make a very unpleasant suggestion, and urged that there might be a woman at the bottom of the business, speculated upon some youthful intrigue of Godfrey’s. Now, from all I know of that young man, I believe his life had been blameless. He was the soul of honour. He would never have dealt cruelly with any woman.”
“And you, Lord Cheriton,” said Theodore, hardly following the latter part of his cousin’s speech in his self-absorption.
His kinsman started and looked at him indignantly.
“And you—in your capacity of judge, for instance—have you never made a deadly foe?”
“Well, I suppose the men and women I have sentenced have hardly loved me; but I doubt if the worst of them ever had any strong personal feeling about me. They have taken me as a part of the machinery of the law—of no more account than the iron door of a cell or a beam of the scaffold.”
“Yet there have been instances of active malignity—the assassination of Lord Mayo, for instance.”
“Oh, the assassin in that case was an Indian, and a maniac. We live in a different latitude. Besides, it is rather too far-fetched an idea to suppose that a man would shoot my son-in-law in order to avenge himself upon me.”
“The shot may have been fired under a misapprehension. Thefigure seated reading in the lamplight may have been mistaken for you.”
“The assassin must have been uncommonly short-sighted to make such a mistake. I won’t say such a thing would be impossible, for experience has taught me that there is nothing in this life too strange to be true; but it is too unlikely a notion to dwell upon. Indeed, I think, Theodore, we must dismiss this painful business from our minds. If the mystery is ever to be cleared up, it will be by a fluke; but even that seems to me a very remote contingency. Have you not observed that if a murderer is not caught within three months of his crime he is hardly ever caught at all? I might almost say if he is not caught within one month. Once let the scent cool and the chances are a hundred to one in his favour.”
“Yet Juanita has set her heart upon seeing her husband avenged.”
“Ah, that is where her Spanish blood shows itself. An Englishwoman, pure and simple, would think only of her sorrow. My poor girl hungers for revenge. Providence may favour her, perhaps, but I doubt it. The best thing that can happen to her will be to forget her first husband, fine young fellow as he was, and choose a second. It is horrible to think that the rest of her life is to be a blank. With her beauty and position she may look high. I am obliged to be ambitious for my daughter, you see, Theodore, since Heaven has not spared me a son.”
Theodore saw only too plainly that, whatever favour his hopes might have from soft-hearted Lady Cheriton, his own kinsman, James Dalbrook, would be against him. This mattered very little to him at present, in the face of the lady’s indifference. One gleam of hope from Juanita herself would have seemed more to him than all the favour of parents or kindred. It was her hand that held his fate: it was she alone who could make his life blessed.
New Year’s Day was fine but frosty, a sharp, clear day on which Cheriton Park looked loveliest, the trees made fairy-like by the light rime, the long stretches of turf touched with a silvery whiteness, the distant copses and boundary of pine-trees half hidden in a pale grey mist.
Theodore walked across the park with Lady Cheriton to the eleven o’clock service in the church at the end of Cheriton village. It was nearly a mile from the great house to the fine old fifteenth-century church, but Lady Cheriton always walked to church in decent weather, albeit her servants were conveyed there luxuriously in a capacious omnibus specially retained for their use. On the way along the silent avenue Theodore told her of his meeting with Miss Newton’sprotégée, and of Juanita’s idea that the woman called Marian might be no other than Mercy Porter.
“I certainly remember no other case of a girl about here leaving her home under disgraceful circumstances—that is to say, any girlof refinement and education,” said Lady Cheriton. “There have been cases among the villagers, no doubt; but if this girl of yours is really a superior person, and really comes from Cheriton, I think Juanita is right, and that you must have stumbled upon Mercy Porter. Her mother ought to be told about it, without delay.”
“Will you tell her, or will you put me in the way of doing so?”
“Would you like to see Mrs. Porter?”
“Yes. I feel interested in her, chiefly because she may be Marian’s mother. I shall have to go to work very carefully, so as not to cause her too keen a disappointment in the event of Juanita’s guess being wrong.”
“I do not know that you will find her very soft-hearted where her daughter is concerned,” replied Lady Cheriton, thoughtfully. “I sometimes fear that she has hardened herself against that unhappy girl. The troubles of her own early life may have hardened her, perhaps. It is not easy to bear a long series of troubles with patience and gentleness.”
“Do you know much of her history?”
“Only that she lost her husband when she was still a young woman, and that she was left to face the world penniless with her young daughter. If my husband had not happened to hear of her circumstances, Heaven knows what would have become of her. He had been intimate with her husband when he was a young man in London, and it seemed to him a duty to do what he could for her; so he pensioned off an old gardener who used to live in that pretty cottage, and he had the cottage thoroughly renovated for Mrs. Porter. She had a little furniture of a rather superior kind warehoused in London, and with this she was able to make a snug and pretty home for herself, as you will see, if you call upon her after the service. You are sure to see her at church.”
“Was she very fond of her little girl in those days?”
“I hardly know. People have different ways of showing affection. She was very strict with poor Mercy. She educated her at home, and never allowed her to associate with any of the village children. She kept the child entirely under her own wing, so that the poor little thing had actually no companion but her mother, a middle-aged woman, saddened by trouble. I felt very sorry for the child, and I used to have her up at the house for an afternoon now and then, just to introduce some variety into her life. When she grew up into a beautiful young woman, her mother seemed to dislike these visits, and stipulated that Mercy should only come to see me when there were no visitors in the house. She did not want her head turned by any of those foolish compliments which frivolous people are so fond of paying to a girl of that age, never thinking of the mischief they may do. I told her that I thought she wasover-careful, and that as Mercy must discover that she was handsome sooner or later, it was just as well she should gain some experience of life at once. Her instinctive self-respect would teach her how to take care of herself; and if she could be safe anywhere, she would be safe with me. Mrs. Porter is a rather obstinate person, and she took her own way. She kept Mercy as close as if she had been an Oriental slave; and yet, somehow, Colonel Tremaine contrived to make love to her, and tempted her away from her home. Perhaps, if that home had been a little less dismal, the girl might not have been so easily tempted.”
They had left the park by this time and were nearing the church. A scanty congregation came slowly in after Lady Cheriton and her companion had taken their seats in the chancel pew. The congregation was chiefly feminine. Middle-aged women in every-day bonnets and fur-trimmed cloaks, with their shoulders up to their ears. Girls in felt hats and smart, tight-fitting jackets. A few pious villagers of advanced years, spectacled, feeble, with wrinkled faces half hidden under poke bonnets: two representative old men with long white hair and quavering voices, whose shrill treble was distinguishable above the rustic choir.
Amidst this sparse congregation Theodore had no difficulty in discovering Mrs. Porter.
She sat in one of the front benches on the left side of the aisle, which side was reserved for the tradespeople and humbler inhabitants of Cheriton; while the benches on the right were occupied by the county people, and some small fry who ranked with those elect of the earth—with them, but not of them—a retired banker and his wife, the village doctor, the village lawyer, and two or three female annuitants of good family.
A noticeable woman, this Mrs. Porter, anywhere. She was tall and thin, straight as a dart, with strongly marked features and white hair. Her complexion was pale and sallow, the kind of skin which is generally described as sickly. If she had ever been handsome, all traces of that former beauty had disappeared. It was a hard face, without womanly charm, yet with an unmistakable air of refinement. She wore her neat little black straw bonnet and black cloth mantle like a lady, and she walked like a lady, as Theodore saw presently, when that portion of the little band of worshippers which did not remain for the celebration dribbled slowly out of church.
He left Lady Cheriton kneeling in her pew, and followed Mrs. Porter out of the porch and along the village street, and thence into that rustic lane which led to the West Lodge. He had spoken to her only once in his life, on a summer morning, when he had happened to find her standing at her garden gate, and when it had been impossible for her to avoid him. He knew that she must have seen him going in and out of the park gates often enough forhis appearance to be familiar to her, so he had no scruple in introducing himself.
“Good morning, Mrs. Porter,” he said, overtaking her in the deeply sunk lane, between those rocky banks where hart’s-tongue and polypodium grew so luxuriantly in summer, and where even in this wintry season the lichens and mosses spread their rich colouring over grey stone and brown earth, and above which the snow-laden boughs showed white against the blue brightness of the sky.
She turned and bowed stiffly.
“Good morning, sir.”
“You haven’t forgotten me, I hope. I am Theodore Dalbrook, of Dorchester. I think you must have seen me pass your window too often to forget me easily?”
“I am not much given to watching the people who pass in and out, sir. When his Lordship gave me the cottage, he was good enough to allow me a servant to open the park gate, as he knew that I was not strong enough to bear exposure to all kinds of weather. I am free to live my own life therefore, without thinking of his Lordship’s visitors.”
“I am sorry to intrude myself upon your notice, Mrs. Porter, but I want to speak to you upon a very delicate subject, and I must ask your forgiveness in advance if I should touch upon an old wound.”
She looked at him curiously, shrinkingly even, with a latent anger in her pale eyes, eyes that had been lovely once, perhaps, but which time or tears had faded to a glassy dulness.
“I have no desire to discuss old wounds with any one,” she said coldly. “My troubles at least are my own.”
“Not altogether your own, Mrs. Porter. The sorrow of which I am thinking involves another life—the life of one who has been dear to you.”
“I have nothing to do with any other life.”
“Not even with the life of your only child?”
“Not even with the life of my only child,” she answered doggedly. “She left me of her own accord, and I have done with her for ever. I stand utterly alone in this world—utterly alone,” she repeated.
“And if I tell you that I think and believe I have found your daughter in London—very poor—working for her living, very sad and lonely, her beauty faded, her life joyless—would you not wish to know more—would not your heart yearn towards her?”
“No! I tell you I have done with her. She has passed out of my life. I stand alone.”
There was a tone of finality in these words which left no room for argument.
Theodore lifted his hat, and walked on.