"You don't look very merry, Miss Janie," he said, smiling at her and achieving a plausible jocularity.
"Why should I, Mr Neeld?" She glanced at him. "Oh, has father told you anything?"
"Yes, that you're engaged. You know how truly I desire your happiness, my dear." With a prettycourtesy the old man took her hand and kissed it, baring his gray hair the while.
"You're very, very kind. Yes, I've promised to marry Harry Tristram. Not yet, you know. And it isn't to be announced. But I've promised."
He stole a glance at her, and then another. She did not look merry indeed. Neeld knew his ignorance of feminine things, and made guesses with proper diffidence; but he certainly fancied she had been crying—or very near it—not so long ago. Yet the daughter of William Iver was sensible and not given to silly tears.
"I think I've done right," she said—as she had said when she wrote to Mina. "Everybody will be pleased. Father's very pleased." Suddenly she put out her hand and took hold of his, giving it a tight grip. "Oh, but, Mr Neeld, I've made somebody so unhappy."
"I dare say, my dear, I dare say. I was a young fellow once. I dare say."
"And he says nothing about it. He wished me joy—and he does wish me joy too. I've no right to talk to you, to tell you, or anything. I don't believe people think girls ever mind making men unhappy; but they do."
"If they like the men?" This suggestion at least was not too difficult for him.
"Yes, when they like them, when they're old friends, you know. I only spoke to him for a moment, I only just met him on the road. I don't suppose I shall ever talk to him about it, or about anything in particular, again." She squeezed Neeld's hand a second time, and then withdrew her own.
This was unknown country again for Mr Neeld; his sense of being lost grew more acute. These were not the sort of problems which had occupied his life; but they seemed now to him no less real, hardly less important. It was only a girl wondering if she had done right. Yet he felt the importance of it.
"You can't help the unhappiness," he said. "You must go to the man you love, my dear."
With a little start she turned and looked at him for an instant. Then she murmured in a perfunctory fashion:
"Yes, I must make the best choice I can, of course." She added after a pause, "But I wish——"
Words or the inclination to speak failed her again, and she relapsed into silence.
As he sat there beside her, silent too, his mind travelled back to what her father had said; and slowly he began to understand. No doubt she liked Harry, even as her father did. No doubt she thought he would be a good husband, as Iver had thought him a good fellow. But it became plain to the searcher after truth that not to her any more than to her father was it nothing that Harry was Tristram of Blent. Her phrases about doing right and making the right choice included a reference to that, even if that were not their whole meaning. She had mentioned her father's pleasure—everybody's pleasure. That pleasure would be found largely in seeing her Lady Tristram. What then would she have to say on the question that so perplexed Mr Neeld? Would she not echo Iver's accusation of fraud against Harry Tristram and (as a consequence) against those who aided and abetted him? Would she understand or accept as an excuse the plea that Neeld had been led away by romance or entrapped into a conspiracy by Mina Zabriska? No. She too would call out "Fraud, fraud!" and he did not blame her. He called himself a fool for having been led away by romance, by unreasoning feeling. Should he blame her because she was not led away? His disposition was to praise her for a choice so wise,and to think that she had done very right in accepting Lord Tristram of Blent. Aye, Lord Tristram of Blent! Precisely! Deep despair settled on Mr Neeld's baffled mind.
Meanwhile, Duplay walked home, the happier for having crossed his Rubicon. He had opened his campaign with all the success he could have expected. Like a wise man, Iver held nothing true till it was proved; but like a wise man also he dubbed nothing a lie merely because it was new or improbable. And on the whole he had done the Major justice. He had smiled for a moment when he hinted that Duplay and Harry were not very cordial; the Major met him by a straightforward recognition that this was true, and by an indirect admission of the reason. As to this latter Iver had dropped no word; but he would give Duplay a hearing. Now it remained only to bring Mina to reason. If she spoke, the case would be so strong as to demand inquiry. The relief in Duplay's mind was so great that he could not explain it, until he realized that his niece's way of treating him had so stuck in his memory that he had been prepared to be turned from Iver's doors with contumely. Such an idea seemed absurd now, and the Major laughed.
Mina was strange, Duplay never ceased to think that. They had parted on impossible terms; but now, as soon as he appeared, she ran at him with apparent pleasure and with the utmost eagerness. She asked nothing about his expedition either, though she could easily have guessed where he had been and for what purpose. She almost danced as she cried:
"I've seen her! I've been talking to her! I met her in the meadow near Matson's cottage, and she asked me the way back to Blent. Uncle, she's wonderful!"
"Who are you talking about?"
"Why, Cecily Gainsborough, of course. I just remember how Lady Tristram spoke. She speaks the same way exactly! I can't describe it, but it's the sort of voice that makes you want to do anything in the world it asks. Don't you know? She told me a lot about herself; then she talked about Blent. She's full of it; she admires it most tremendously——"
"That's all right," interrupted Duplay with a malicious smile. "Because, so far as I can understand, she happens to own it."
"What?" The Imp stood frozen into stillness.
"You've been talking to Lady Tristram of Blent," he added with a nod. "Though I suppose you didn't tell her so?"
To Lady Tristram of Blent! She had never once thought of that while they talked. The shock of the idea was great, so great that Mina forgot to repudiate it, or to show any indignation at Harry's claims being passed by in contemptuous silence. All the while they talked, she had thought of the girl as far removed from Blent, as even more of a visitor to the countryside than she herself was, a wonderful visitor indeed, but no part of their life. And she was—well, at the least she was heir to Blent! How had she forgotten that? The persistent triumph of Duplay's smile marked his sense of the success of his sally.
"Yes, and she'll be installed there before many months are out," he went on. "So I hope you made yourself pleasant, Mina?"
Mina gave him one scornful glance, as she passed by him and ran out on to her favorite terrace. There was a new thing to look and to wonder at in Blent. The interest, the sense of concern in Blent and its affairs, which the news of the engagement had blunted and almost destroyed, revived in her now. She forgot the prose of that marriage arrangement and turned eagerly to the poetry of Cecily Gainsborough, of thepoor girl there in the house that was hers, unwitting guest of the man who was——The Imp stopped herself with rude abruptness. What had she been about to say, what had she been about to think? The guest of the man who was robbing her? That had been it. But no, no, no! She did not think that. Confused in her mind by this new idea, none the less she found her sympathy going out to Harry again. He was not a robber; it was his own. The blood, she cried still, and not the law. But what was to be done about Cecily Gainsborough? Was she to go back to the little house in London, was she to go back to ugliness, to work, to short commons? There seemed no way out. Between the old and the new attraction, the old allegiance and the new claim to homage that Cecily made, Mina Zabriska stood bewildered. She had a taste now of the same perplexity that she had done so much to bring on poor Mr Neeld at Fairholme. Yet not quite the same. He did not know what he ought to do; she did not feel sure of what she wanted. Both stood undecided. Mr Cholderton's Journal was still at its work of disturbing people's minds.
But Major Duplay was well content with the day's work. If his niece had a divided mind she would be easier to bend to his will. He did not care who had Blent, if only it passed from Harry. But it was a point gained if Mina could think of its passing from Harry to somebody who would be welcome to her there. Then she would tell the story which she had received from her mother, and the first battle against Harry Tristram would be won. The excitement of fighting was on the Major now. He could neither pity the enemy nor distrust his own cause till the strife was done.
Amongst all the indecision there was about, Duplay had the merit of a clear vision of his own purpose and his own desires.
The man with whom the fighters and the doubters were concerned, in whose defence or attack efforts and hopes were enlisted, round whom hesitation and struggles gathered, was thinking very little about his champions or his enemies. No fresh whispers of danger had come to Harry Tristram's ears. He knew nothing of Neeld and could not think of that quiet old gentleman as a possible menace to his secret. He trusted Mina Zabriska and relied on the influence which he had proved himself to possess over her. He did not believe that Duplay would stick to his game, and was not afraid of him if he did. The engagement was accomplished; the big check, or the prospect of it, lay ready to his hand; his formal proofs, perfect so long as they were unassailed, awaited the hour when formal proofs would be required. To all appearance he was secure in his inheritance and buttressed against any peril. No voice was raised, no murmur was heard, to impugn the right of the new Lord Tristram of Blent. The object of all those long preparations, which had occupied his mother and himself for so many years, was achieved. He sat in Addie Tristram's place, and none said him nay.
His mind was not much on these matters at all. Even his engagement occupied him very little. Janie's letter had arrived and had been read. It came at mid-day, and the evening found it still unacknowledged.It had broken in from outside as it were, intruding like something foreign into the life that he had begun to live on the evening before Addie Tristram was buried, the evening when for an instant he had thought he saw her phantom by the Pool; a life foreshadowed by the new mood which Mina had noticed in him while Lady Tristram still lived, but brought into reality by the presence of another. It seemed a new life coming to one who was almost a new man, so much of the unexpected in him did it reveal to himself. He had struggled against it, saying that the Monday morning would see an end of this unlooked-for episode of feeling and of companionship. Accident stepped in; Gainsborough lay in bed with a chill and could not move. Harry acquiesced in the necessity of his remaining, not exactly with pleasure, rather with a sense that something had begun to happen, not by his will, but affecting him deeply. What would come of it he did not know; that it would end in a day or two, that it would be only an episode and leave no permanent mark seemed now almost impossible; it was fraught with something bigger than that.
But with what? He had no reasoned idea; he was unable to reason. He was passive in the hands of the feelings, the impressions, the fancies that laid hold of him. Addie Tristram's death had moved him strangely; then came that hardly natural, eerily fascinating reminiscence—no, it was more than that—that re-embodiment or resurrection of her in the girl who moved and talked and sat like her, who had her ways though not her face, her eyes set in another frame, her voice renewed in youthful richness, the very turns of her head, even her old trick of sticking out her foot. He scowled sometimes, he was surprised into laughter sometimes; at another moment he would rebel against the malicious Power that seemed to be having a jokewith him; for the most part he looked, and looked, and looked, unwilling to miss a single one of the characteristic touches which had been Addie Tristram's belongings and which he had never expected to see again after her spirit had passed away. And the outcome of all his looking was still the same as the effect of his first impression on the evening before the funeral—a sort of despair. A thing was there which he did not know how to deal with.
And she was so happy, so absurdly happy. She had soon found that he expected no conventional solemnity; he laughed himself at the idea of Addie Tristram wanting people to pull long faces, and keep them long when pulled, because she had laid her burden down and was at peace. Cecily found she might be merry, and merry she was. A new life had come to her too, a life of river and trees and meadows; deeper than that, a life of beauty about her. She absorbed it with a native thirst. There was plenty of it, and she had been starved so long. She seized on Blent and enjoyed it to the full. She enjoyed Harry too, laughing now when he stared at her and making him laugh, yet herself noting all his ways, his pride, his little lordlinesses—these grew dear to her—his air of owning the countryside, and making no secret of her own pleasure in being part of the family and in living in the house that owned the countryside. It is to be feared that Mr Gainsborough and his chill were rather neglected, but he got on very well with Addie Tristram's ancient maid; she had the nobility at her fingers' ends and even knew something about their pedigrees. Cecily was free, or assumed the freedom, to spend her time with Harry, or, if he failed her, at least with and among the things that belonged to him and had belonged to beautiful Addie Tristram who had been like her—so Harry said, and Cecily treasuredthe thought, teasing him now sometimes, as they grew intimate, with a purposed repetition of a pose or trick that she had first displayed unconsciously, and found had power to make him frown or smile. She smiled herself in mischievous triumph when she hit her mark, or she would break into the rich gurgle of delight that he remembered hearing from his young mother when he himself was a child. The life was to her all pure delight; she had no share in the thoughts that often darkened his brow, no knowledge of the thing which again and again filled him with that wondering despair.
On the evening of the day when Major Duplay went to Fairholme, the two sat together in the garden after dinner. It was nine o'clock, a close still night, with dark clouds now and then slowly moving off and on to the face of a moon nearly full. They had been silent for some minutes, sipping coffee. Cecily pointed to the row of windows in the left wing of the house.
"I've never been there," she said. "What's that?"
"The Long Gallery—all one long room, you know," he answered.
"One room! All that! What's in it?"
"Well, everything mostly," he smiled. "All our treasures, and our pictures, and so on."
"Why haven't you taken me there?"
Harry shrugged his shoulders. "You never asked me," he said.
"Well, will you take me there now—when you've finished your cigar?"
There was a pause before he answered, "Yes, if you like." He turned to the servant who had come to take away the coffee. "Light up the Long Gallery at once."
"Yes, my lord." A slight surprise broke through the respectful acceptance of the order.
"It was lighted last for my mother, months ago,"Harry said, as though he were explaining his servant's surprise. "She sat there the last evening before she took to her room."
"Is that why you haven't taken me there?"
"I expect it is." His tone was not very confident.
"And you don't much want to now?"
"No, I don't know that I do." But his reluctance seemed vague and weak.
"Oh, I must go," Cecily decided, "but you needn't come unless you like, you know."
"All right, you go alone," he agreed.
Window after window sprang into light. "Ah!" murmured Cecily in satisfaction; and Mina Zabriska saw the illumination from the terrace of Merrion on the hill. Cecily rose, waved her hand to Harry, and ran off into the house with a laugh. The next moment he saw her figure in the first window; she threw it open, waved her hand again, and again laughed; the moon, clear for a moment, shone on her face and turned it pale.
He sat watching the lighted windows. From time to time she darted into sight; once he heard the big window at the end facing the river flung open, the next instant she was in sight at the other extremity of the Gallery. Evidently she was running about, examining all the things. She came to a window presently and cried, "I wish you'd come and tell me all about it." "I don't think I will," he called back. "Oh, well——!"she laughed impatiently, and disappeared. Minutes passed and he did not see her again; she must have settled down somewhere, he supposed; or perhaps her interest was exhausted and she had gone off to her father's room. No, there she was, flitting past a window again. His reluctance gave way before curiosity and attraction. Flinging away his cigar, he got up and walked slowly into the house.
The passage outside the Gallery was dimly lighted, and the door of the Gallery was open. Harry stood in the shadow unseen, watching intently every movement of the girl's. She was looking at a case of miniatures and medals, memorials of beauties and of warriors. She turned from them to the picture of an Elizabethan countess, splendid in ruff and rich in embroidery. She caught up a candle and held it over her head, up toward the picture. Then setting the candle down she ran to the end window and looked out on the night. Addie Tristram's tall arm-chair still stood by the window. Cecily threw herself into it, sighing and stretching her arms in a delighted weariness. Mina Zabriska could make out a figure in the Long Gallery now.
Slowly and irresolutely Harry Tristram came in; Cecily's face was not turned toward the door, and he stood unnoticed just within the threshold. His eyes ranged round the room but came back to Cecily. She was very quiet, but he saw her breast rise and fall in quick breathing. She was stirred and moved. A strange agitation, an intensity of feeling, came over him as he stood there motionless, everything seeming motionless around him, while his ancestors and hers looked down on them from the walls, down on their successors. The Lords of Blent were about him. Their trophies and their treasures decked the room. And she sat there in Addie Tristram's chair, in Addie Tristram's place, in Addie Tristram's attitude. Did the dead know the secret? Did the pictures share it? Who was to them the Lord of Blent?
He shook off these idle fancies—a man should not give way to them—and walked up the room with a steady assured tread. Even then she did not seem to hear him till he spoke.
"Well, do you like it?" he asked, leaning against atable in the middle of the upper part of the room, a few feet from the chair where she sat. Now Mina Zabriska made out two figures, cast up by the bright light against the darkness, and watched them with an eagerness that had no reason in it.
"Like it!" she cried, springing to her feet, running to him, holding out her hands. "Like it! Oh, Harry! Why, it's better than all the rest. Better, even better!"
"It's rather a jolly room," said Harry. "The pictures and all the things about make it look well."
"Oh, I'm not going to say anything if you talk like that. You don't feel like that!—'Rather a jolly room!' That's what one says if the inn parlor's comfortable. This isn't a room. It's—it's——"
"Shall we call it a temple?" he suggested, smiling.
"I believe it's heaven—the private particular Tristram heaven. They're all here!" She waved toward the pictures. "Here in a heaven of their own."
"And we're allowed to visit it before we die?"
"Yes. At least I am. You let me visit it. It belongs to you—to the dead and you."
"Do you want to stay here any longer?" he asked with a sudden roughness.
"Yes, lots longer," she laughed defiantly, quite undismayed. "You needn't, though. You'll have it all your life. Perhaps I shall never have it again. Father's better! And I don't know if you'll ever ask us here again. You never did before, you know. So I mean to have all of it I can get." She darted away from him and ran back to the miniatures. A richly ornamented sword hung on the wall just above them. This caught her notice; she took it down and unsheathed it.
"Henricus Baro Tristram de Blent," she spelt out from the enamelled steel. "Per Ensem Justitia.Whatdoes that mean? No, I know. Rather a good motto, cousin Harry. 'That he shall take who has the power, and he shall keep who can!' That was his justice, I expect!"
"Do you quarrel with it? If this was all yours, would you give it up?"
"Not without a fight!" she laughed. "Per Ensem Justitia!" She waved the blade.
Harry left her busy with the things that were so great a delight and walked to the window at the other end of the long room. Thence he watched, now her, now the clouds that lounged off and on to the moon's disk. More and more, though, his eyes were caught by her and glued to her; she was the centre of the room; it seemed all made and prepared for her even as it had seemed for Addie Tristram. The motto ran in his head—Per Ensem Justitia. What was the justice and what the sword? He awoke to the cause of the changed mood in him and of the agitation in which he had been living. It was nothing to defy the law, to make light of a dry abstraction, to find right against it in his blood. His opponent now was no more the law, it was no more even some tiresome, unknown, unrealized girl in London, with surroundings most unpicturesque and associations that had no power to touch his heart. Here was the enemy, this creature whose every movement claimed the blood that was hers, whose coming repaired the loss Blent had suffered in losing Addie Tristram, whose presence crowned its charms with a new glory. Nature that fashioned her in the Tristram image—had it not put in her hand the sword by which she should win justice? The thought passed through his mind now without a shock; he seemed to see her mistress of Blent; for the moment he forgot himself as anyone save an onlooker; he did not seem concerned.
Once more he roused himself. He had fallen into a fear of the fancies that threatened to carry him he did not know where. He wanted to get away from this room with its suggestions, and from the presence that gave them such force.
"Aren't you ready yet?" he called to her. "It's getting late."
"Are you still there?" she cried back in a gay affectation of surprise. "I'd forgotten all about you, I thought I had it to myself. I was trying to think it was all mine."
"Shall we go downstairs?" His voice was hard and constrained.
"No, I won't," she said squarely. "I can't go. It's barely ten o'clock. Come, we'll talk here. You smoke—or is that high treason?—and I'll sit here." She threw herself into Addie Tristram's great chair. There was a triumphant gayety in her air that spoke of her joy in all about her, of her sense of the boundless satisfaction that her surroundings gave. "I love it all so much," she murmured, half perhaps to herself, yet still as a plea to him that he would not seek to hurry her from the place.
Harry turned away, again with that despair on him. She gave him permission to go, but he could not leave her—neither her nor now the room. Yet he was afraid that he could not answer for himself if he stayed. It was too strange that every association, and every tradition, and every emotion which had through all the years seemed to justify and even to sanctify his own position and the means he was taking to preserve it, should in two or three days begin to desert him, and should now in this hour openly range themselves against him and on her side; so that all he invoked to aid him pleaded for her, all that he had prayed to bless him and his enterprise blessed her and cursed the work to which he had put his hand.
Which of them could best face the world without Blent? Which of them could best look the world in the face having Blent? These were the questions that rose in his mind with tempestuous insistence.
"I could sit here forever," she murmured, a lazy enjoyment succeeding to the agile movements of her body and the delighted agitation of her nerves. "It just suits me to sit here, cousin Harry. Looking like a great lady!" Her eyes challenged him to deny that she looked the part to perfection. She glanced through the window. "I met that funny little Madame Zabriska who lives up at Merrion Lodge to-day. She seems very anxious to know all about us."
"Madame Zabriska has a healthy—or unhealthy—curiosity." The mention of Mina was a fresh prick. Mina knew; suddenly he hated that she should know.
"Is she in love with you?" asked Cecily, mockingly yet languidly, indeed as a great lady might inquire about the less exalted, condescending to be amused.
"Nobody's in love with me, not even the girl who's going to marry me."
"To marry you?" She sat up, looking at him. "Are you engaged?"
"Yes, to Janie Iver. You know who I mean?"
"Yes, I know. You're going to be married to her?"
"I asked her a week ago. To-day she wrote to say she'd have me." He was on his feet even as he spoke. "To marry me and to marry all this, you know."
She was too sympathetic to waste breath on civil pretences.
"To be mistress here? To own this? To be Lady Tristram of Blent?"
"Yes. To have what—what I'm supposed to have," said he.
Cecily regarded him intently for another moment.Then she sank back into Addie Tristram's great arm-chair, asking, "Will she do it well?"
"No," said Harry. "She's a good sort, but she won't do it well."
Cecily sighed and turned her head toward the window.
"Why do you do it? Do you care for her?"
"I like her. And I want money. She's very rich. Money might be useful to me."
"You seem very rich. Why do you want money?"
"I might want it."
There was silence for a moment. "Well, I hope you'll be happy," she said presently.
She herself was the reason—the embodied reason (was reason ever more fairly embodied?), why he was going to marry Janie Iver. The monstrousness of it rose before his mind. When he told of his engagement, there had been for an instant a look in her eyes. Wonder it was at least. Was it disappointment? Was it at all near to consternation? She sat very still now; her gayety was gone. She was like Addie Tristram still, but like Addie when the hard world used her ill, when there were aches to be borne and sins to be reckoned with. As he watched her, yet another new thing came upon him, or a thing that seemed to be as new as the last quarter chimed by the old French clock on the mantel-piece, and yet might date back so long as three days ago. Even now it hardly reached consciousness, certainly did not attain explicitness. It was still rather than Janie was no mistress for Blent and that this girl was the ideal. It was Blent still rather than himself, Blent's mistress rather than his. But it was enough to set a new edge on his questioning. Was he to be the man—he who looked on her now and saw how fair she was—was he to be the man to deny her her own, to rob her of herright, to parade before the world in the trappings which were hers? It was all so strange, so overwhelming. He dropped into a chair by him and pressed his hand across his brow. A low murmur, almost a groan, escaped him in the tumult of his soul. "My God!" he whispered, in a whisper that seemed to echo through the room.
"Harry! Are you unhappy?" In an instant she was by him. "What is it? I don't understand. You tell me you're engaged, and you look so unhappy. Why do you marry her if you don't love her? Are you giving her all this—and yourself—you yourself—without loving her? Dear Harry—yes, you've been very good to me—dear Harry, why?"
"Go back," he said. "Go back to your chair. Go and sit there."
With wonder in her eyes and a smile fresh-born on her lips she obeyed him.
"Well?" she said. "You're very odd. But—why?"
"I'm marrying her for Blent's sake—and I think she's marrying me for Blent's sake."
"I call that horrible."
"No." He sprang to his feet. "If Blent was yours, what would you do to keep it?"
"Everything," she answered. "Everything—except sell myself, Harry."
She was superb. By a natural instinct, all affectation forgotten, she had thrown herself into Addie Tristram's attitude. There was the head on the bend of the arm, there was the dainty foot stuck out. There was all the defiance of a world insensate to love, greedy to find sin, dull to see grace and beauty, blind to a woman's self while it cavilled at a woman's deeds.
"Everything except sell yourself?" he repeated, his eyes set on her face.
"Yes—Per Ensem Justitia!" she laughed. "But not lies, and not buying and selling, Harry."
"My word is given. I must marry her now."
"Better fling Blent away!" she flashed out in a brilliant indignation.
"And if I did that?"
"A woman would love you for yourself," she cried, leaning forward to him with hands clasped.
Again he rose and paced the length of the Long Gallery. The moment was come. There was a great alliance against him. He fought still. At every step he took he came to something that still was his, that he prized, that he loved, that meant much to him, that typified his position as Tristram of Blent. A separate pang waited on every step, a great agony rose in him with the thought that he might be walking this room as its master for the last time. Yes, it had come to that. For against all, threatening to conquer all, was the girl who sat in his mother's chair, her very body asserting the claim that her thoughts did not know and her mouth could not utter. And yet his mood had affected her. The upturned eyes were full of excitement, the parted lips waited for a word from him. Mina Zabriska had left her terrace and gone to bed, declaring that she was still on Harry's side; but she was not with him in this fight.
He returned to Cecily and stood by her. The sympathy between them kept her still; she watched, she waited. For minutes he was silent; all thought of time was gone. Now she knew that he had something great to say. Was it that he would and could have no more to do with Janie Iver, that another had come, that his word must go, and that he loved her? She could hardly believe that. It was so short a time since he had seen her. Yet why could it not be true of him, if it were true of her? And was it not? Else why didshe hang on his words and keep her eyes on his? Else why was it so still in the room, as though the world too waited for speech from his lips?
"I can't do it!" burst from him suddenly. "By God, I can't do it!"
"What, Harry?" The words were no more than breathed. He came right up to her and caught her by the arm.
"You see all that—everything here? You love it?"
"Yes."
"As much as I do? As much as I do?" His self-control was gone. She made no answer; she could not understand.
With an effort he mastered himself.
"Yes, you love it," he said, and a smile came on his face. "I'm glad you love it. As God lives, unless you'd loved it, I'd have spoken not a word of this. But you're one of us, you're a Tristram. I don't know the real rights of it, but I'll run no risk of cheating a Tristram. You love it all?"
"Yes, yes, Harry. But why, dear Harry, why?"
"Why? Because it's yours."
He let go her hand and reeled back a step.
"Mine? What do you mean?" she cried. Still the idea, the wild idea, that he offered it with himself was in her mind.
"It's yours, not mine—it's never been mine. You're the owner of it. You're Tristram of Blent."
"I—I Tristram of Blent?" She was utterly bewildered. For he was not a lover—no lover ever spoke like that.
"Yes, I say, yes." His voice rose imperiously as it pronounced the words that threw away his rule. "You're Lady Tristram of Blent."
She did not understand; yet she believed. He spoke so that he must be believed.
"This is all yours—yours—yours. You're Tristram of Blent."
She rose to her height, and stood facing him.
"And you? And you?"
"I? I'm—Harry."
"Harry? Harry? Harry what?"
He smiled as he looked at her; as his eyes met hers he smiled.
"Harry what? Harry Nothing," he said. "Harry Nothing-at-all."
He turned and left her alone in the room. She sank back into the great arm-chair where Addie Tristram had been wont to sit.
"Shall I wait up, my lord? Miss Gainsborough has gone to her room. I've turned out the lights and shut up the house."
Harry looked at the clock in the study. It was one o'clock.
"I thought you'd gone to bed long ago, Mason." He rose and stretched himself. "I'm going to town early in the morning. I shan't want any breakfast and I shan't take anybody with me. Tell Fisher to pack my portmanteau—things for a few days—and send it to Paddington. I'll have it fetched from there. Tell him to be ready to follow me, if I send for him."
"Yes, my lord."
"Give that letter to Miss Gainsborough in the morning." He handed Mason a thick letter. Two others lay on the table. After a moment's apparent hesitation Harry put them in his pocket. "I'll post them myself," he said. "When did Miss Gainsborough go to her room?"
"About an hour back, my lord."
"Did she stay in the Long Gallery till then?"
"Yes, my lord."
"I may be away a little while, Mason. I hope Miss Gainsborough—and Mr Gainsborough too—will be staying on some time. Make them comfortable."
Not a sign of curiosity or surprise escaped Mason. His "Yes, my lord," was just the same as though Harry had ordered an egg for breakfast. Sudden comings and goings had always been the fashion of the house.
"All right. Good-night, Mason."
"Good-night, my lord." Mason looked round for something to carry off—the force of habit—found nothing, and retired noiselessly.
"One o'clock!" sighed Harry. "Ah, I'm tired. I won't go to bed though, I couldn't sleep."
He moved restlessly about the room. His flood of feeling had gone by; for the time the power of thought too seemed to have deserted him. He had told Cecily everything; he had told Janie enough; he had yielded to an impulse to write a line to Mina Zabriska—because she had been so mixed up in it all. The documents that were to have proved his claim made a little heap of ashes in the grate.
All this had been two hours' hard work. But after all two hours is not long to spend in getting rid of an old life and entering on a new. He found himself rather surprised at the simplicity of the process. What was there left to do? He had only to go to London and see his lawyer—an interview easy enough for him, though startling no doubt to the lawyer. Cecily would be put into possession of her own. There was nothing sensational. He would travel a bit perhaps, or just stay in town. He had money enough to live on quietly or to use in making more; for his mother's savings were indubitably his, left to him by a will in which he, the real Harry, was so expressly designated by his own full name—even more than that—as "Henry Austen Fitzhubert Tristram, otherwise Henry Austen Fitzhubert, my son by the late Captain Austen Fitzhubert"—that no question of his right could arise. That money would not go with the title. Only Blent and all the realty passed with that; the money was not affected by the date of his birth; that must be explained to Cecily by his lawyer or perhaps she would expect to get it. For the moment there was nothing to do but to go to London—and then perhaps travel a bit. He smiled for an instant; it certainly struck him as rather an anti-climax. He threw himself on a sofa and, in spite of his conviction that he could not sleep, dozed off almost directly.
It was three when he awoke; he went up to his room, had a bath, shaved, and put on a tweed suit. Coming down to the study again, he opened the shutters and looked out. It would be light soon, and he could go away. He was fretfully impatient of staying. He drank some whiskey and soda-water, and smoked a cigar as he walked up and down. Yes, there were signs of dawn now; the darkness lifted over the hill on which Merrion stood.
Merrion! Yes, Merrion. And the Major? Well, Duplay had not frightened him, Duplay had not turned him out. He was going of his own will—of his own act anyhow, for he could not feel so sure about the will. But for the first time it struck him that his abdication might accrue to the Major's benefit, that he had won for Duplay the prize which he was sure the gallant officer could not have achieved for himself. "I'll be hanged if I do that," he muttered. "Yes, I know what I'll do," he added, smiling.
He got his hat and stick and went out into the garden. The windows of the Long Gallery were all dark. Harry smiled again and shook his fist at them. There was no light in Cecily's window. He was glad to think that the girl slept; if he were tired she must be terribly tired too. He was quite alone—alone with the old place for the last time. He walked to where he had sat with Cecily, where his mother used to sit. He was easy in his mind about his mother. When she had wanted him to keep the house and the name, shehad no idea of the true state of the case. And in fact she herself had done it all by requesting him to invite the Gainsboroughs to her funeral. That was proof enough that he had not wronged her; in the mood he was in it seemed quite proof enough. Realities were still a little dim to him, and fancies rather real. His outward calmness of manner had returned, but his mind was not in a normal state. Still he was awake enough to the every-day world and to his ordinary feelings to remain very eager that his sacrifice should not turn to the Major's good.
He started at a brisk walk to the little bridge, reached the middle of it, and stopped short. The talk he had had with Mina Zabriska at this very spot came back into his mind. "The blood, not the law!" he had said. Well, it was to the blood he had bowed and not to the law. He was strong about not having been frightened by the law. Nor had he been dispossessed, he insisted on that too. He had given; he had chosen to give. He made a movement as though to walk on, but for a moment he could not. When it came to going, for an instant he could not go. The parting was difficult. He had no discontent with what he had done; on the whole it seemed far easier than he could ever have imagined. But it was hard to go, to leave Blent just as the slowly growing day brought into sight every outline that he knew so well, and began to warm the gardens into life. "I should rather like to stay a day," was his thought, as he lingered still. But the next moment he was across the bridge, slamming the gate behind him and beginning to mount the road up the valley. He had heard a shutter thrown open and a window raised; the sound came from the wing where Cecily slept. He did not want to see her now; he did not wish her to see him. She was to awake to undivided possession, free from any reminder of him. That was his fancy, his idea of making his gift to her of what was hers more splendid and more complete. But she did see him; she watched him from her window as he walked away up the valley. He did not know; true to his fancy, he never turned his head.
Bob Broadley was an early riser, as his business in life demanded. At six o'clock he was breakfasting in a bright little room opening on his garden. He was in the middle of his rasher when a shadow fell across his plate. Looking up, he started to see Harry Tristram at the doorway.
"Lord Tristram!" he exclaimed.
"You've called me Tristram all your life. I should think you might still," observed Harry.
"Oh, all right. But what brings you here? These aren't generally your hours, are they?"
"Perhaps not. May I have some breakfast?"
The maid was summoned and brought him what he asked. She nearly dropped the cup and saucer when she realized that the Great Man was there—at six in the morning!
"I'm on my way to London," said Harry. "Going to take the train at Fillingford instead of Blentmouth, because I wanted to drop in on you. I've something to say."
"I expect I've heard. It's very kind of you to come, but I saw Janie Iver in Blentmouth yesterday."
"I dare say; but she didn't tell you what I'm going to."
Harry, having made but a pretence of breakfasting, pushed away his plate. "I'll smoke if you don't mind. You go on eating," he said. "Do you remember a little talk we had about our friend Duplay? We agreed that we should both like to put a spoke in his wheel."
"And you've done it," said Bob, reaching for his pipe from the mantel-piece.
"I did do it. I can't do it any more. You know there were certain reasons which made a marriage between Janie Iver and me seem desirable? I'm saying nothing against her, and I don't intend to say a word against myself. Well, those reasons no longer exist. I have written to her to say so. She'll get that letter this afternoon."
"You've written to break off the engagement?" Bob spoke slowly and thoughtfully, but with no great surprise.
"Yes. She accepted me under a serious misapprehension. When I asked her I was in a position to which I had no——"He interrupted himself, frowning a little. Not even now was he ready to say that. "In a position which I no longer occupy," he amended, recovering his placidity. "All the world will know that very soon. I am no longer owner of Blent."
"What?" cried Bob, jumping up and looking hard at Harry. The surprise came now.
"And I am no longer what you called me just now—Lord Tristram. You know the law about succeeding to peerages and entailed lands? Very well. My birth has been discovered [he smiled for an instant] not to satisfy that law—the merits of which, Bob, we won't discuss. Consequently not I, but Miss Gainsborough succeeds my mother in the title and the property. I have informed Miss Gainsborough—I ought to say Lady Tristram—of these facts, and I'm on my way to London to see the lawyers and get everything done in proper order."
"Good God, do you mean what you say?"
"Oh, of course I do. Do you take me for an idiot, to come up here at six in the morning to talk balderdash?" Harry was obviously irritated. "Everybody will know soon. I came to tell you because I fancy you've some concern in it, and, as I say, I still want that spoke put in the Major's wheel."
Bob sat down and was silent for many moments, smoking hard.
"But Janie won't do that," he broke out at last. "She's too straight, too loyal. If she's accepted you——"
"A beautiful idea, Bob, if she was in love with me. But she isn't. Can you tell me you think she is?"
Bob grunted inarticulately—an obvious, though not a skilful, evasion of the question.
"And anyhow," Harry pursued, "the thing's at an end. I shan't marry her. Now if that suggests any action on your part I—well, I shall be glad I came to breakfast." He got up and went to the window, looking out on the neat little garden and to the paddock beyond.
In a moment Bob Broadley's hand was laid on his shoulder. He turned and faced him.
"What a thing for you! You—you lose it all?"
"I have given it all up."
"I can't realize it, you know. The change——"
"Perhaps I can't either. I don't know that I want to, Bob."
"Who made the discovery? How did it come out? Nobody ever had any suspicion of it!"
Harry looked at him long and thoughtfully, but in the end he only shook his head, saying, "Well, it's true anyhow."
"It beats me. I see what you mean about myself and—Still I give you my word I hate its happening. Who's this girl? Why is she to come here? Who knows anything about her?"
"You don't, of course," Harry conceded with a smile. "No more did I a week ago."
"Couldn't you have made a fight for it?"
"Yes, a deuced good fight. But I chose to let it go. Now don't go on looking as if you didn't understand the thing. It's simple enough."
"But Lady Tristram—your mother—must have known——"
"The question didn't arise as long as my mother lived," said Harry quickly. "Her title was all right, of course."
There was another question on the tip of Bob's tongue, but after a glance at Harry's face he did not put it; he could not ask Harry if he had known.
"I'm hanged!" he muttered.
"Yes, but you understand why I came here?"
"Yes. That was kind."
"Oh, no. I want to spike the Major's guns, you know." He laughed a little. "And—well, yes, I think I'm promoting the general happiness too, if you must know. Now I'm off, Bob."
He held out his hand and Bob grasped it. "We'll meet again some day, when things have settled down. Beat Duplay for me, Bob. Good-by."
"That's grit, real grit," muttered Bob, as he returned to the house after seeing Harry Tristram on his way.
It was that—or else the intoxication of some influence whose power had not passed away. Whatever it was, it had a marked effect on Bob Broadley. There was an appearance of strength and resolution about it—as of a man knowing what he meant to do and doing it. As he inspected his pigs an hour later, Bob came to the conclusion that he himself was a poor sort of fellow. People who waited for the fruit to fall into their mouths were apt to find that a hand intervenedand plucked it. That had happened to him once, and probably he could not have helped it; but he meant to try to prevent its happening again. He was in a ferment all the morning, partly on his own account, as much about the revolution which had suddenly occurred in the little kingdom on the banks of the Blent.
In the afternoon he had his gig brought round and set out for Blentmouth. As he passed Blent Hall, he saw a girl on the bridge—a girl in black looking down at the water. Lady Tristram? It was strange to call her by the title that had been another's. But he supposed it must be Lady Tristram. She did not look up as he passed; he retained a vision of the slack dreariness of her pose. Going on, he met the Iver carriage; Iver and Neeld sat in it, side by side; they waved their hands in careless greeting and went on talking earnestly. On the outskirts of the town he came on Miss Swinkerton and Mrs Trumbler walking together. As he raised his hat, a dim and wholly inadequate idea occurred to him of the excitement into which these good ladies would soon be thrown, a foreshadowing of the wonder, the consternation, the questionings, the bubbling emotions which were soon to stir the quiet backwaters of the villas of Blentmouth. For himself, what was he going to do? He could not tell. He put up his gig at the inn and sauntered out into the street; still he could not tell. But he wandered out to Fairholme, up to the gate, and past it, and back to it, and past it again.
Now would Harry Tristram do that? No; either he would never have come or he would have been inside before this. Bob's new love of boldness did not let him consider whether this was the happiest moment for its display. Those learned in the lore of such matters would probably have advised him to let her alonefor a few days, or weeks, or months, according to the subtilty of their knowledge or their views. Bob rang the bell.
Janie was not denied to him, but only because no chance was given to her of denying herself. A footman, unconscious of convulsions external or internal, showed him into the morning-room. But Janie's own attitude was plain enough in her reception of him.
"Oh, Bob, why in the world do you come here to-day? Indeed I can't talk to you to-day." Her dismay was evident. "If there's nothing very particular——"
"Well, you know there is," Bob interrupted.
She turned her head quickly toward him. "I know there is? What do you mean?"
"You've got Harry Tristram's letter, I suppose?"
"What do you know of Harry Tristram's letter?"
"I haven't seen it, but I know what's in it all the same."
"How do you know?"
"He came up to Mingham to-day and told me." Bob sat down by her, uninvited; certainly the belief in boldness was carrying him far. But he did not quite anticipate the next development. She sprang up, sprang away from his neighborhood, crying,
"Then how dare you come here to-day? Yes, I've got the letter—just an hour ago. Have you come to—to triumph over me?"
"What an extraordinary idea!" remarked Bob in the slow tones of a genuine astonishment.
"You'd call it to condole, I suppose! That's rather worse."
Bob confined himself to a long look at her. It brought him no enlightenment.
"You must see that you're the very——"She broke off abruptly, and, turning away, began to walk up and down.
"The very what?" asked Bob.
She turned and looked at him; she broke into a peevishly nervous laugh. Anybody but Bob—really anybody but Bob—would have known! The laugh encouraged him a little, which again it had no right to do.
"I thought you'd be in trouble, and like a bit of cheering up," he said with a diplomatic air that was ludicrously obvious.
She considered a moment, taking another turn about the room to do it.
"What did Harry Tristram say to you?"
"Oh, he told me the whole thing. That—that he's chucked it up, you know."
"I mean about me."
"He didn't say much about you. Just that it was all ended, you know."
"Did he think I should accept his withdrawal?"
"Yes, he seemed quite sure of it," answered Bob. "I had my doubts, but he seemed quite sure of it." Apparently Bob considered his statement reassuring and comforting.
"You had your doubts?"
"Yes. I thought perhaps——"
"You were wrong then, and Harry Tristram was right." She flung the words at him in a fierce hostility. "Now he's not Lord Tristram any longer, I don't want to marry him." She paused. "You believe he isn't, don't you? There's no doubt?"
"I believe him all right. He's a fellow you can rely on."
"But it's all so strange. Why has he done it? Well, that doesn't matter. At any rate he's right about me."
Bob sat stolidly in his chair. He did not know at all what to say, but he did not mean to go. He had putno spoke in the Major's wheel yet, and to do that was his contract with Harry Tristram, as well as his own strong desire.
"Have you sympathized—or condoled—or triumphed—enough?" she asked; she was fierce still.
"I don't know that I've had a chance of saying anything much," he observed with some justice.
"I really don't see what you can have to say. What is there to say?"
"Well, there's just this to say—that I'm jolly glad of it."
She was startled by his blunt sincerity, so startled that she passed the obvious chance of accusing him of cruelty toward Harry Tristram, and thought only of how his words touched herself.
"Glad of it! Oh, if you knew how it makes me feel about myself! But you don't, or you'd never be here now."
"Why shouldn't I be here now?" He spoke slowly, as though he were himself searching for any sound reason.
"Oh, it's——"The power of explanation failed her. People who will not see obvious things sometimes hold a very strong position. Janie began to feel rather helpless. "Do go. I don't want anybody to come and find you here." She had turned from command to entreaty.
"I'm jolly glad," he resumed, settling himself back in his chair, "that the business between you and Harry Tristram's all over. It ought never to have gone so far, you know."
"Are you out of your mind to-day, Bob?"
"And now, what about the Major, Miss Janie?"
She flushed red in indignation, perhaps in guilt too. "How dare you? You've no business to——"
"I don't know the right way to say things, I daresay," he admitted, but with an abominable tranquillity. "Still I expect you know what I mean all the same."
"Do you accuse me of having encouraged Major Duplay?"
"I should say you'd been pretty pleasant to him. But it's not my business to worry myself about Duplay."
"I wish you always understood as well what isn't your business."
"And it isn't what you have done but what you're going to do that I'm interested in." He paused several moments and then went on very slowly, "I tell you what it is. I'm not very proud of myself. So if you happen to be feeling the same, why that's all right, Miss Janie. The fact is, I let Harry Tristram put me in a funk, you know. He was a swell, and he's got a sort of way about him too. But I'm hanged if I'm going to be in a funk of Duplay." He seemed to ask her approval of the proposed firmness of his attitude. "I've been a bit of an ass about it all, I think," he concluded with an air of thoughtful inquiry.
The opening was irresistible. Janie seized it with impetuous carelessness. "Yes, you have, you have indeed. Only I don't see why you think it's over, I'm sure."
"Well, I'm glad you agree with me," said he. But he seemed now rather uncertain how he ought to go on. "That's what I wanted to say," he added, and looked at her as if he thought she might give him a lead.
The whole thing was preposterous; Janie was bewildered. He had outraged all decency in coming at such a moment and in talking like this. Then having got (by such utter disregard of all decency) to a point at which he could not possibly stop, he stopped!He even appeared to ask her to go on for him! She stood still in the middle of the room, looking at him as he sat squarely in his chair.
"Since you've said what you wanted to say, I should think you might go."
"Yes, I suppose I might, but——"He was puzzled. He had said what he wanted to say, or thought he had, but it had failed to produce the situation he had anticipated from it. If he went now, leaving matters just as they stood, could he be confident that the spoke was in the wheel? Up to now nothing was really agreed upon except that he himself had been an ass. No doubt this was a pregnant conclusion, but Bob was not quite clear exactly how much it involved; while it encouraged him, it left him still doubtful. "But don't you think you might tell me what you think about it?" he asked in the end.
"I think I'm not fit to live," cried Janie. "That's what I think about it, Bob." Her voice trembled; she was afraid she might cry soon if something did not happen to relieve the strain of this interview. "And you saw what Harry thought by his sending me that letter. The very moment it happened, he sent me that letter!"
"I saw what he thought pretty well, anyhow," said Bob, smiling reflectively again.
"Oh, yes, if that makes it any better for me!"
"Well, if he's not miserable, I don't see why you need be."
"The things you don't see would fill an encyclopædia!"
Bob looked at his watch; the action seemed in the nature of an ultimatum; his glance from the watch to Janie heightened the impression.
"You've nothing more to say?" he asked her.
"No. I agreed with what you said—that you'dbeen—an ass. I don't know that you've said anything else."
"All right." He got up and came to her, holding out his hand. "Good-by for the present, then."
She took his hand—and she held it. She could not let it go. Bob allowed it to lie in hers.
"Oh, dear old Bob, I'm so miserable; I hate myself for having done it, and I hate myself worse for being so glad it's undone. It did seem best till I did it. No, I suppose I really wanted the title and—and all that. I do hate myself! And now—the very same day—I let you——"
"You haven't let me do much," he suggested consolingly.
"Yes, I have. At least——"She came a little nearer to him. He took hold of her other hand. He drew her to him and held her in his arms.
"That's all right," he remarked, still in tones of consolation.
"If anybody knew this! You won't say a word, will you, Bob? Not for ever so long? You will pretend it was ever so long before I—I mean, between——?"
"I'll tell any lie," said Bob very cheerfully.
She laughed hysterically. "Because I should never be able to look people in the face if anybody knew that on the very same day——"
"I should think a—a week would be about right?"
"A week! No, no. Six months."
"Oh, six months be——"
"Well then, three? Do agree to three."
"We'll think about three. Still miserable, Janie?"
"Yes, still—rather. Now you must go. Fancy if anybody came!"
"All right, I'll go. But, I say, you might just drop a hint to the Major."
"I can't send him another message that I'm—that I've done it again!"
She drew a little away from him. Bob's hearty laugh rang out; his latent sense of humor was touched at the idea of this second communication to the Major. For a moment Janie looked angry, for a moment deeply hurt. Bob laughed still. There was nothing for it but to join in. Her own laugh rang out gayly as he caught her in his arms again and kissed her.
"Oh, if anybody knew!" sighed Janie.
But Bob was full of triumph. The task was done, the spoke was in the wheel. There was an end of the Major as well as of Harry—and an end to his own long and not very hopeful waiting. He kissed his love again.
There was a sudden end to the scene too—startling and sudden. The door of the room opened abruptly, and in the doorway stood Mrs Iver. Little need to dilate on the situation as it appeared to Mrs Iver! Had she known the truth, the thing was bad enough. But she knew nothing of Harry Tristram's letter. After a moment of consternation Janie ran to her, crying,
"I'm not engaged any more to Harry Tristram, mother!"
Mrs Iver said nothing. She stood by the open door. There was no mistaking her meaning. With a shame-faced bow, struggling with an unruly smile, Bob Broadley got through it somehow. Janie was left alone with Mrs Iver.
Such occurrences as these are very deplorable. Almost of necessity they impair a daughter's proper position of superiority and put her in a relation toward her mother which no self-respecting young woman would desire to occupy. It might be weeks before Janie Iver could really assert her dignity again. It was strongproof of her affection for Bob Broadley that, considering the matter in her own room (she had not been exactly sent there, but a retreat had seemed advisable) she came to the conclusion that, taking good and bad together, she was on the whole glad that he had called.
But to Bob, with the selfishness of man, Mrs Iver's sudden appearance wore rather an amusing aspect. It certainly could not spoil his triumph or impair his happiness.