CHAPTER XX.
“All the spring-time of his loveIs already gone and past.”
“All the spring-time of his loveIs already gone and past.”
“All the spring-time of his loveIs already gone and past.”
“All the spring-time of his love
Is already gone and past.”
Theodore went back to wintry London before the year was a week old. He settled himself by his lonely fireside, in the silence of his old-fashioned rooms. All he had of the beauty of this world was a glimpse of the river athwart the heavy grey mists of a London morning, or the lamps on the Embankment shining like a string of jewels in the evening dusk. There were days of sullen, hopeless fog, when even these things were hidden from him, and when it was hard work to keep that stealthy, penetrating greyness and damp cold out of his rooms.
He had brought a fox-terrier from Dorchester on his return from his holiday, an old favourite that had seen the best days of her youth, and was better able to put up with a sedentary life, varied only by an occasional run, than a younger animal would have been. This faithful friend, an animated little beast even at this mature stage of her existence, lightened the burden of his loneliness, were it only by leaping on to his knees twenty times in five minutes, and only desisting therefrom upon most serious remonstrance. It was pleasant to him to have something that loved him, even this irrepressible Miss Nipper, with her sidelong grin of affectionate greeting, and her unconquerable suspicion of rats behind the wainscot. He felt less like Dr. Faustus on that famous Easter morning, when the emptiness of life and learning came home to the lonely student with such desolating intensity, when even a devil was welcome who could offer escape from that dull burden of existence.
He had come back from his brief holiday dejected and disheartened. It seemed to him that she who was his lode-star was more remote from him than she had ever been—more and more remote—vanishing into a distant world where it was vain for him to follow. He had failed in the task that she had imposed upon him. He was no nearer the solution of that dark mystery which troubled her life than he had been when he first promised to help her. How poor and impotent a creature he must appear in her eyes. His only discoveries had been negative. All that his keen, trained intellect, sharpened by seven years of legal experience, had been able to do was to prove the unsoundness of her own theory. He had started no theory uponhis part. No flash of genius had illumined the obscurity which surrounded Godfrey Carmichael’s death.
He went on with his plodding work, resolutely bent upon doing the utmost that patient labour can do to insure success. Even if it were all vain and futile—that hope of winning favour in her eyes—the mere possibility of standing better with her, of showing her that he was of the stuff which goes to the making of distinguished men—even this was worth working for.
“She may have great offers by-and-by,” he told himself, recalling what Lord Cheriton had said about his daughter’s chances. “With her beauty and her expectations, to say nothing of her present means, she is sure of distinguished admirers; but at the worst she cannot look down upon a man who is on the road to success in her father’s profession.”
This ever-present consideration, joined to his love of his calling, sweetened all that was dry and dull in the initial stages of a barrister’s career. While other men of his age were spending their evenings at the Gaiety Theatre, seeing the same burlesque and laughing at the same jokes night after night, as appetite grew with what it fed on, Theodore was content to sit in chambers and read law. It was not that he was wanting in appreciation of the drama. There was no man in London better able to enjoy the dignity of Hamlet at the Lyceum, or the rollicking fun of the Gaiety Bluebeard. He was no pedantic piece of clay, proud of the dulness that calls itself virtue. He was only an earnest worker, bent upon a given result, and able to put aside every hindrance upon the road that he was travelling.
“They that run in a race run all, but one obtaineth the prize,” he said to himself, recalling a sentence in an epistle that he had learned years ago at his mother’s knee, words that always brought back the cold brightness of early spring, and a period of extra church services, long sermons in the lamp-lit church, and the voices of strange preachers, a time of daffodils and fish dinners, and much talk of High and Low Church. He had never faltered in his religious convictions; yet in the days of his youth that Lenten season in a country town, that recurrent sound of church bells in the chilly March twilight, had weighed heavy upon his soul.
Almost the only recreation which he allowed himself in this winter season was an occasional attendance at Miss Newton’s tea-parties. He had secured acceptance for himself at these entertainments on the strength of his reading, and he was now established as a Shakespearian reader; Miss Newton having taken it into her head that Shakespeare is of all great poets the easiest understood by the people, and having ordered him to read Shakespeare until she should tell him to desist.
“I know what they like and what they dislike,” she said. “They’llnot conceal their feelings from me when we talk you over after you’ve gone. As soon as ever I find them getting tired I’ll let you know.”
He began with Macbeth, a story which caught them at the very first page. The witches took their breath away; and when he came to the murder scene they were all sitting round him with their hair seemingly on end. He closed his first reading with that awful knocking at the gate; that one supreme stage effect which has never yet been paralleled by mortal dramatist. There were some of the girls who tumbled off their chairs and grovelled on the floor in their excitement. There were others who wanted to know the fate of Macbeth and his wife on the instant.
“I do hope they were both hung, like the Mannings,” said a meek widow.
“Oh, buthewasn’t so much to blame, Mrs. Kirby. That wicked woman drove him to it.”
“So did Mrs. Manning,” argued a Bermondsey lady, “but they hung Manning all the same when they caught him. I was a child when it happened, but I remember hearing about them. He was took in Jersey, and she wore a black satin gown.”
“Oh, don’t talk about your Mannings, Mrs. Hodge,” cried one of the girls, indignantly. “They were low, vulgar people. These were a King and Queen in a palace. It’s all different. It lifts one up out of one’s own life only to hear about them. You may read about murders in the newspapers till your eyes begin to swim, but you won’t feel likethat. I don’t know when I’ve felt so sorry for anybody as I feel for King Macbeth.”
Marian sat silent, and refrained from all part in the chorus of criticism, but she moved to the piano presently and began to play a Scotch air—a grand old march—slow, solemn music that was almost too much for the nerves of the more excitable among Miss Newton’s party. She glided from one melody to another, and she played those wild Scottish airs with such thrilling power that they seemed to sustain and intensify the uncanny effect of the tragic reading.
Theodore went over to the piano and stood beside her as she played.
“I knew you were a musician,” he said, “though I never heard you touch the keys till to-night.”
“How did you know?”
“My cousin Juanita told me. She remembered your playing in her mother’s room when she was a child.”
The woman called Marian lifted her eyes to him with a look of patient reproach, as if she said, “You are cruel to hit any one so helpless as I am,” and then, playing all the time, she answered coldly,—
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
“Don’t you! Oh, but indeed I think you do, and I should be very glad to be of use to you if you would let me, for the sake of those old days. I don’t think it is possible I can be mistaken, though you may have your own reason for refusing to confide in me.”
He was certain now in his own mind that this was Mercy Porter and no other. That fine touch upon the piano implied sustained and careful cultivation. She did not play like a girl who had learnt music as an afterthought.
He left the house when she did, and walked part of the way to Hercules Buildings with her, but did not offer to go out of his way to see her home, being very sure she would refuse.
“I wish you would trust me,” he said gently, as they walked side by side, without looking at each other. “Believe me that every one at Cheriton is sorry for you. If you were to go back to the neighbourhood you would have everybody’s sympathy. There would be no one to cast a stone.”
“I am very sorry I ever mentioned Cheriton to you, Mr. Dalbrook,” she said impatiently. “It was a foolish impulse that made me talk. You insist upon making guesses. You try to force a confession from me. It is hardly generous.”
“My interest in you must be my excuse.”
“You can do me no good by that kind of interest. I shall never see Dorsetshire again—so what can it matter who I was when I lived in that part of the world. There are hundreds of women in London as lonely as I am—hundreds—perhaps thousands—who have broken every link with their past. My life suits me well enough, and I am contented. I shall never try to change it.”
“That is a pity. You are young enough to make a good wife to an honest man, to help in creating a happy home.”
“Am I? I feel a century old; and I have done with every thought of love or marriage. When I woke to consciousness after that dreadful fever, awoke from darkness and oblivion like that of the grave, I entered upon a new life. I came out of that sickness like one who had passed through hell. Passion and hope, and youth and good looks, had been burnt out of me in a fiery furnace. It was a wonder to myself that my body was alive. It was no wonder to me that my heart was dead. From that time I have lived very much as I am living now—after a brief time of struggle and starvation—and the life suits me fairly well. I shall never seek to better it.”
“That is hard, Marian.”
He called her by her Christian name, frankly, in almost paternal friendliness, not knowing any other name by which to call her.
He was with Miss Newton earlier than usual on the occasion of her next tea-drinking, so early as to be before anybody else, and he talked to his hostess about Marian—Marian Gray, Miss Newton called her,—confiding to her his conviction that this young womanwas no other than Mrs. Porter’s missing daughter. He told her of his interview with Mrs. Porter, and of the mother’s angry repudiation of her child.
“I can but think that her hardness was assumed,” he said, “and that the ice would melt at a touch if the mother and daughter could be brought together. I should like to try the experiment.”
“It is hardly wise to try experiments with human hearts,” said Miss Newton. “Marian is contented and at peace, if not happy. To force her back upon a mother who might be hard and bitter to her—do you think that would be true kindness?”
“What if the mother’s heart has been yearning for her lost lamb in all these years, and by bringing her back I might make two lives happy?”
“Let the mother come to the child. Let her who has something to forgive be the one to make the advance. It is so hard for the sinner to go back. She must be helped back. If the mother were a woman with a motherly heart, she would have been searching for her lost child in all those years, instead of wrapping herself up in her sorrow at home.”
“I own I have thought that.”
“Of course you have. You can’t think otherwise as a sensible man. I have no patience with such a mother. As for Marian, I think she may get on very well as she is. I am fond of her, and I believe she is fond of me. She earns from twelve to fourteen shillings a week. She pays five shillings for her room, and she lives upon eightpence a day. I needn’t tell you that the teapot is herpièce de résistance. Her most substantial meal on some days consists of a couple of scones from the Scotch baker’s, or a penny loaf and a hard-boiled egg; but when I go to see her she gives me an admirable cup of tea, and positively delicious bread and butter. Her room is the very pink and pattern of neatness. All the instincts of a lady show themselves in that poor little two-pair back. She has curtained the iron bedstead and the window with white dimity, which is always clean and fresh, for she washes and irons it with her own hands. She generally contrives to have a bunch of flowers upon her work-table, and, hard as she works, her room is always free from litter. She has about half a dozen books of her own upon the mantelshelf, her Bible, Milton, Shakespeare, Charles Lamb’s Essays, Goldsmith’s Poems, and the ‘Idyls of the King’—well-worn volumes, which have been her companions for years. She borrows other books from the Free Library, and her mind is always being cultivated. I really believe she is happy. She is one of those rare individuals who can afford to live alone. Do not disturb her lightly.”
“You are right perhaps. The mother struck me as by no means a pleasant character, always supposing that Mrs. Porter is her mother, of which I myself have very little doubt.”
Theodore made no further effort to bring mother and daughter together, but he met Marian from time to time at Miss Newton’s tea-parties, and acquaintance ripened into friendship. Her refinement and her musical talent sustained his interest in her. He talked to her of books sometimes when they happened to be sitting side by side at the tea-table, and he was surprised at the extent of her reading. She confessed, when he questioned her, that she was in the habit of stealing two or three hours from the night for her books.
“I find that I can do with a few hours’ sleep,” she said, “if I lie down happy in my mind after being absorbed in a delightful book. My books are my life. They give me the whole universe for my world, though I have to live in one room, and to follow a very monotonous calling.”
He admired the refinement of that purely intellectual nature, but he admired still more that admirable tact which regulated her intercourse with Miss Newton’s homelier friends. Never by word or tone or half-involuntary glance did Marian betray any consciousness of superiority to the uncultivated herd. She shared their interests, she sympathized with their vexations, she neither smiled nor shuddered at Cockney twang or missing aspirate.
Winter brightened into spring, with all its varieties of good and evil; east winds rushing round street-corners, and cutting into the pedestrian like a knife; west winds enfolding him like a balmy caress, and bringing the perfume of violets, the vivid yellow of daffodils into the wilderness of brick and stone; rainy days, grey, monotonous, dismal, hanging on the soul like a curtain of gloom and hopelessness. These made up the sum of Theodore’s outer life. Within he had his books, his ambition, and his faithful love. He told himself that it was a hopeless love; but there are many things which a man tells himself, and tries to believe, and yet does not believe. The very human longing for blessedness is too strong for human wisdom. Where there is love, there is always hope.
He had grown accustomed to his life in chambers; and albeit he was much attached to his father, and was amiably tolerant of his brother and sisters, he could but feel that this solitary existence better suited his temper than residence in a family circle. At Dorchester it had been very difficult for him to be alone. Out of business hours his sisters considered that they had a claim upon him, a right to waste his life in the most trivial amusements and engagements. If he withdrew himself from their society, and that of their numerous dearest friends, they accused him of grumpiness, and thought themselves ill-treated. He had chafed against the waste of life, the utter futility of those engagements which prevented his keeping level with the intellectual growth of the age. He feltthat his youth was slipping from under him, leaving him stationary, when every pulse of his being beat impatiently for progress. And now it was pleasant to him to be his own master, free to make the best possible use of his days. He found a few friends in London whose society suited him, and only a few. Among these the man of whom he saw most was Cuthbert Ramsay, a young Scotchman, who had been his chief companion at Cambridge, who had studied medicine for three years in Leipsic and Paris with Ludwig and Pasteur, and who was now at St. Thomas’s. The two young men ran up against each other in that main artery of London life, the Strand, in the January twilight, and renewed the friendly intimacy of that bygone time when Ramsay had been at Trinity and Dalbrook at Trinity Hall. They dined together at a restaurant on the evening of that first meeting, and after dinner Theodore took his friend to his chambers, where the two sat late into the night talking over college reminiscences of hall and river.
Cuthbert Ramsay had been one of the most remarkable undergraduates of those days, notable alike for mental and physical gifts which lifted him out of the ruck. He was six feet two—with the form of an athlete and as handsome a face as was ever seen within the gates of Trinity,—and these advantages of person, which would have been noteworthy in any man, were the more remarkable in him, because of his utter indifference to them, or, perhaps, it may be said, complete unconsciousness of them. He knew that he was a big man, because his tailor told him as much; but he had never taken into consideration the question as to whether he was or was not a handsome man; indeed, except when he had his hair cut, an operation which he always submitted to unwillingly and of dire necessity, it is doubtful if he ever looked into a glass long enough to know what manner of man he was—certainly not at his morning toilet, when he moved restlessly about the room, hairbrushes in hand, belabouring his handsome head, and exercising his extraordinary memory by the repetition of some scientific formula acquired during the previous night’s reading.
His own estimate of his appearance was comprised in the idea that he was “very Scotch.” That milky whiteness of complexion, touched with just enough ruddy colour to give life to the face, those brilliant blue eyes, the straight nose, clear-cut nostrils, firm lips and firmer chin, the high broad brow, and crisp auburn hair, constituted to his mind nothing more than his brevet of nationality.
“No one would ever take me for anything but a Scotchman,” he would say lightly, if any acquaintance ventured to hint at his good looks. “There’s no mistake about me. Albion is written on my brow.”
From his childhood upwards he had cared only for large things—intent upon investigation and discovery from the time he couldcrawl—asking the most searching questions of mother and of nurse—prying into those abstract mysteries which perplex philosophers before he could speak plain. The thirst for knowledge had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength. His hardy boyhood had been spent for the most part in the windy streets of Aberdeen, marching with swinging stride along that granite pavement, his shabby red gown flapping in the north-easter; faring anyhow, as indifferent to what he ate as he was to what he wore; ahead of his fellows in all things intellectual, and abreast with the best athletes of his year in the sports they valued,—a king among men; and of such a happy disposition that nothing in life came amiss to him, and what would have been hardship to another seemed sport to him.
Some one, a wealthy member of his extensive family, found out that this Cuthbert was no common youth, and that with a little encouragement he might do honour to the clan. This distant kinsman, one of the heads of the great house of Ramsay, sent him to Cambridge; where he entered as a scholar of his college, and at the end of a year gained a University scholarship, which made him independent. This hardy youth from the city of Bon Accord was able to live upon so little—could not for the life of him have been extravagant, having none of thatmollesse, or soft self-indulgence, which is at the root of most men’s squanderings. He was nine and twenty years of age, and he had never worn a gardenia, and had only had one suit of dress clothes since he grew to man’s estate. Needless to say that albeit he went out very seldom that suit was now somewhat shabby; but Cuthbert’s superb appearance neutralized the shabbiness, and he looked the finest man in any assembly. His parents were in their graves before he left the University. He had no ties. He was free as Adam would have been if Eve had never been created. There was no one near or dear to him to feel proud of his honours, though his name was high in the list of Wranglers, and he had taken a first-class in science. And now, after that interval of serious scientific work in Leipsic and Paris, he was plodding at St. Thomas’s with a view to a London degree, and thus the two hard-working young men—very intimate in the old days when Cuthbert’s rooms in the Bishop’s Hostel were conveniently adjacent to Theodore’s ground floor in Trinity Hall—were thrown together again upon their life-journey, and were honestly glad to renew the old friendship.
Ramsay was delighted with his friend’s chambers.
“I was afraid there was nothing so good as this left in the Temple,” he said, rapturously contemplating the blackened old wainscot, and the low ceiling with its heavy cross-beam. “I thought smartness and brand-new stone had superseded all that was historical and interesting within the precincts of the Lamb. But these rooms ofyours have the true smack. Why, I really believe now, Dalbrook, you must have rats behind that wainscot?”
“Perhaps I had, till Miss Nipper came to keep me company,” answered Theodore, patting the terrier, whose neat little head and intelligent ears were lifted at the sound of her name.
“And Nipper has made them emigrate to the next house, no doubt?”
“I’m glad you like my rooms, Cuthbert.”
“Like them! I envy you the ownership more than I can say. If anything can make me sorry that I am not a lawyer it would be the fact that I can’t live in the Temple. We doctors have no distinctive abode, nothing associated with the past.”
“Perhaps that is because medicine is essentially a progressive science.”
“Is it? Sometimes I begin to doubt if it has made any progress since Galen—or Albertus Magnus. I will admit that there was progress of some kind up tohistime.”
“This house has an interest for me that it would have for no one else,” said Theodore, presently, while his friend filled his briar-wood. “My kinsman, Lord Cheriton, occupied the rooms underneath these for about a dozen years; and it is a fancy of mine to keep his image before me as I sit here alone with my books. It reminds me of what a man can do in the profession which so many of my friends declare to be hopeless.”
“No one knows anything about it, Theodore. If you went into statistics you would find that the chances of success in the learned professions are pretty nearly equal. So many men will get on, and so many will fail, at every trade, in every calling. The faculty of success lies in the man himself. I always thought you were the kind of man to do well in whatever line you hit upon. A calm, clear brain and a resolute will are the first factors in the sum of life. And so Lord Cheriton lived in this house, did he? I have heard people talk of him as a very distinguished man, as well as a very lucky one. By-the-by, it was in his house that strange murder occurred last year.”
“Yes, it was in his house, and it was his daughter’s husband who was murdered.”
“Tell me the story, Theodore,” said Ramsay, leaning back his handsome head, and half closing his eyes, with the air of a man who liked hearing about murders. “I read the account in the papers at the time, but I’ve very nearly forgotten all about it.”
Theodore complied, and gave his friend the history of the case, and the failure of every attempt to find the murderer.
“And there has been nothing discovered since last summer?”
“Nothing!”
“That is rather hard upon Lord Cheriton—bearing in mind yourdetective’s suggestion of a vendetta. The vendetta would not be likely to close with the death of Sir Godfrey Carmichael. Hatred would demand further victims—Lord Cheriton himself perhaps—or this lovely young widow,—but there could hardly be such a vindictive feeling without a strong cause. Enmity so deadly must have had a beginning in a profound sense of wrong.”
“I have studied the case from that point of view, but can discover no cause for such malignity. I have almost given up all hope of unravelling the mystery.”
“And your kinsman is to live under the sword of Damocles for the rest of his life? Upon my soul I pity him. I can imagine nothing in Ireland worse than the murder of Sir Godfrey Carmichael—a man seated peacefully in his own drawing-room; and a high-principled, amiable young man, you tell me, who never was known to wrong his fellow-man.”
Theodore Dalbrook did not spend his Easter holidays in Dorsetshire. He had heard from his sisters that Juanita was staying at Swanage with Lady Jane Carmichael. He was unwilling to intrude upon her there, and he had nothing to communicate upon the subject which was at present his only claim upon her interest. Under these circumstances he was easily persuaded to spend his vacation in a ten days’ trip to Holland with Cuthbert Ramsay, who was keenly interested in the result of some experiments which had lately been made at Leyden; and thus it happened that Theodore let some time go by without seeing any member of his family except his father, who came to London occasionally upon business, and whom his son was delighted to entertain and make much of in his chambers or at his club, the serviceable Constitutional.
Towards the end of April he read an announcement in the papers which had touched him almost to tears.
“On the 23rd inst., at Milbrook Priory, the widow of Sir Godfrey Carmichael, of a posthumous son.”
He was thankful for her sake that this new interest had been given to her days—that a new and fair horizon was open to her in this young life, with all its possibilities of love and gladness. It might be that the coming of this child would change the current of her thoughts, that the stern desire for retribution would grow less keen, that the agonizing sense of loss would be softened almost to forgetfulness. He remembered those lovely lines of the poet philosopher’s—
“A child, more than all other gifts,Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
“A child, more than all other gifts,Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
“A child, more than all other gifts,Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
“A child, more than all other gifts,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
This child came, he hoped, freighted with healing and comfort,came like the glad spring-time itself, like Adonis or Persephone, with his arms full of flowers.
He wrote to his cousin, in tenderest congratulation, a letter breathing a generous affection, without one selfish thought lurking between the lines.
Her answer came after nearly a month’s delay, but, although tardy, it was most delightful to him. Juanita asked him to be godfather to her boy; and he could easily imagine that this was the highest honour she could offer him.
“In London half the young men I used to meet took a pride in avowing their unbelief,” she wrote, “but I know that you are not ashamed to acknowledge your faith in Christ and His Church. I shall feel secure that what you promise for my child will be fulfilled, so far as it is in your power to bring about its fulfilment. I know that if you stand beside the font and take those vows in His name you will not remember that ceremony as an empty form, a mere concession to usage and respectability. Those promises will appeal to you for my fatherless child in the days to come. They will make you his friend and protector.”
He accepted the trust with greater gladness than he had felt about anything that had happened to him for a long time; and on a balmy morning in the last week of May he found himself standing by the font of the old Saxon church at Milbrook where he had heard the solemn words of the Burial Service read above Sir Godfrey Carmichael’s coffin less than a year before. He took upon himself the custody of the infant’s conscience in all good faith, and he felt that this trust which his cousin had given to him made a new link between them.
The Grenvilles had come down from town to be present at the ceremony, though neither husband nor wife was officially concerned in it. Mrs. Grenville had seized the opportunity to bring Johnnie and Godolphin to Dorsetshire for change of air. She had an idea that the Purbeck air had a particularly revivifying effect upon them—like unto no other air.
“I suppose that is because it is my native air,” she explained.
Mr. Grenville submitted to his nephew’s existence as a mysterious dispensation of Providence, which it became him to endure with gentleman-like fortitude, but he did not cease to regard a posthumous infant as a solecism in nature and society.
“Your sister-in-law actually seems pleased with her baby,” he told his wife, grumblingly, as he put on a frock coat in honour of the approaching ceremony; “but it appears to me that a woman of refined feeling would be impressed with a sense of incongruity—of indelicacy even—in the idea of a child born such ages after the father’s death—a sort of no-man’s-baby. And upon my word it is uncommonly hard upon Thomas. With such a familyas ours—five and the possibilities of the future—it would have been a grand thing to have one well provided for. As things stand now they mustallbe paupers.”
Lord Cheriton was Theodore’s fellow-sponsor, and Lady Jane was godmother, an office which filled the dear soul with rapture. She held her grandchild throughout the service, except when she delivered him gingerly to the priest, who, at one stage of the ceremony, carried the new-made Christian half-way up the aisle, and, as it were, flaunted him in the face of the scanty congregation.
Juanita stood like a statue while these rites were being celebrated, and in her pale set face there was none of the tender interest which a mother might be expected to show upon such an occasion. There was a deep pathos in that marble face and those black garments in an hour which has generally something of a festal aspect. Strangers thought her cold, a proud, hard young woman, thinking more of her own importance, perhaps, than of her baby; yet could they have read beneath the surface they would have pitied the girl-widow in her desolation on this day which should have been blessed to her. She could but think of him who was not there; of the father who had been fated never to look upon his son’s face; of the son who was to grow from infancy to manhood without the knowledge of a father’s love.
Theodore watched that pale and lovely face, full of sympathy, but not without wonder. How would this new tie affect her? Would it soften all that was hard and vindictive in her mind—would it be strong enough to bring about resignation to the will of Heaven—a patient waiting upon Providence, instead of that feverish eagerness to exact a life for a life?
They two were alone together for only a few minutes after luncheon, strolling along the broad gravel walk in front of the dining-room windows, in the afternoon sunshine, while Lord Cheriton and Mr. Grenville lingered over coffee and cigars, and Lady Jane and her daughter made a domestic group with children and nurses under a gigantic Japanese umbrella. Short as thattête-à-têtewas it convinced Theodore that the child had not brought oblivion of the father’s fate.
“You have heard nothing more—made no new discovery, I suppose?” Juanita said, nervously.
“Nothing. Indeed, Juanita, I fear I have no talent as an amateur detective. I am not likely to succeed where Mr. Churton failed. It was easy enough for me to complete the record of the Strangways—to set your suspicions at rest with regard to them.Thatwas plain sailing. But it seems to me I shall never go any further.”
“I’m afraid you will not,” she said, wearily; “and yet I had suchhope in your cleverness—your determination to help me. As a lawyer you would know how to set about it. The London detective has many cases—his mind travels from one to another. He has no leisure to think deeply about anything—but you who have had so much leisure of late—you would, I know, be glad to help me.”
“Glad! Good God, Juanita, you must know that I would cut off my hand to give you ease or comfort—respite even from a passing trouble. And if you are really set upon this thing—if your peace is really dependent upon the discovery of your husband’s murderer——”
“It is, it is, Theodore. I cannot know rest or comfort while his death remains unpunished. I cannot lie down in peace at night while I know that the wretch who killed him is walking about, rejoicing in his wickedness, glad to have destroyed that blameless life, laughing at our feeble love which can let our dead go unavenged.”
“If cudgelling these poor brains of mine could bring me any nearer to the truth, Juanita,” Theodore said, with a troubled sigh, “I should have helped you better; but so far I can see no ray of light in the thick darkness. I do not think any efforts of ours will solve the mystery. Only some accident, some inconceivable imprudence on the part of the murderer can put us on his track.”
And then he thought with horror of Ramsay’s idea that a hatred so malignant as that which had killed Godfrey Carmichael might reveal itself in some new crime. He thought of the young mother bending over her infant’s cradle in some unguarded room—calm in the fancied safety of her English home. He thought of her wandering alone in park or wood, while that rabid hatred lurked in the shadow, waiting and watching for the moment of attack. The horror of the idea chilled him to the heart, but he was careful not to hint at that horror to Juanita. He seized the first opportunity of being alone with Lady Jane, and imparted his fears, founded upon that suggestion of Cuthbert Ramsay’s to her. The kind creature was quick to take alarm, and promised to see that Juanita was guarded at all hours by all precautions that could be taken without alarming her.
“She is surrounded with old and faithful servants,” said Lady Jane; “a hint to them will put them on their guard; but if you thought it wiser I would take her away from this place—take her away from England, if necessary. It is horrible to think of living at the mercy of an unknown foe.”
“My friend’s notion may be groundless. The crime of last year may have been an isolated act—the inspiration of madness. In our efforts to account for the unaccountable we may invent theorieswhich torture us, and which may yet have no ground in fact. Only it is as well to think of possibilities, however hideous.”
He spent one night at the Priory, and before departure next morning presented his offering of a fine George the Second mug to his godson, Godfrey James Dalbrook—who in his present stage of existence seemed to his godfather a scarcely distinguishable morsel of humanity smothered in overmuch cambric and Valenciennes.
“I’m afraid if I were to meet my godson in the arms of a strange nurse I should not know him,” he said, deprecatingly, after he had kissed the rosebud mouth, “but, please God, the time will come when he and I will be firm friends. As soon as he is old enough to declinemensaI shall feel that we can converse upon a common footing, and when he goes to Eton I shall renew my youth every time I run down to waste an hour in the playing fields watching him at cricket, or to drive him to the ‘White Hart.’”
Although he put on an air of cheerfulness in his leave-taking, he left the Priory with a sense of deepest anxiety; and it was almost a relief to him when he received a letter from Lady Jane a week afterwards.
“I could not get over the uneasy feeling which your suggestion awakened,” she wrote, “so I am going to carry off mother and child to Switzerland the day after to-morrow. Interlaken and Grindelwald are delightful at this season. We shall return to Dorsetshire as soon as the tourists begin to invade our retreat, and I trust in God that some discovery may be made in the meantime, so that all our minds may be more at ease.”