Next day I heard the stranger's story, and it was a sad one. Georgette Franklin--for such was her unmarried name--was the last surviving child of George Franklin, a decayed gentleman, who dwelt in Salop, near the Welsh border--we need not precisely say where, but within view of the green hills of Denbigh; for the swelling undulations of the beautiful Clwydian range formed the background to the prospect from the windows of that quaint old house which was nearly all that survived of his hereditary patrimony. Stoke Franklin--so named as it occupied the site of a timber dwelling of the Saxon times, coeval perhaps with Offa's Dyke--was still surrounded by a defensive ditch or moat, where now no water lay, but where, in the season, the primroses grew in golden sheets on the emerald turf. It was an isolated edifice, built of dark-red brick, with stone corners, stone mullions to its quaint old sunken windows, and ogee pediments or gables above them, also of stone. From foundation to chimneys it was quaint in style, ancient in date, and picturesque in aspect. Long lines of elms, and in some places pollard willows, marked the boundaries of what had been the demesne of the Franklins; but piecemeal it had passed away to more careful neighbours, and now little remained to George Franklin but the ground whereon the old mansion-house stood, and that sombre green patch in God's-acre, the neighbouring churchyard, where his wife and their four children lay, near the ancient yew, the greenery of which had decorated the altar in the yule feasts of centuries ago, and whose sturdy branches had furnished bow-staves for the archers who shot under his ancestors at Bosworth, at Shrewsbury, and Flodden Field.
George Franklin was not a misanthrope; far from it; but he lived very much alone in the old house. His oaken library, so solemnly tranquil, with its heavy dark draperies and book-hidden walls, when the evening sun stole through the deep mullions of the lozenged and painted windows, was his favourite resort. And a cozy room it proved in winter, when the adjacent meres were frozen, and the scalp of Moel Fammau was powdered with snow. There he was wont to sit, with Georgette by his knee, he reading and she working; a bright-faced, brown-haired, and lively girl, whose golden canaries and green love-birds hung in every window; for the house was quite alive with her feathered pets, and was as full of sound as an aviary with their voices in summer. One warm evening in autumn, when Georgette was verging on her eighteenth year, she and her father were seated near the house-door, under a shady chestnut-tree. The sunshine lay bright on the greensward, and on the wilderness of flowers and shrubs that grew close to the massive red walls of the old mansion. Mr. Franklin was idly lingering over a book and sipping a glass of some dark and full-bodied old port--almost the last bottle that remained in his now but ill-replenished cellar. And a very perfect picture the old man made. His thin but stately figure; his features so patrician in profile; his dress somewhat old in fashion; his hands, though faded, so shapely, with a diamond ring on one finger,thediamond ring of which we have heard so much lately; and the handsome girl who hovered about him, attending to his little wants, varying her kind offices with playful caresses, while her white neck and her golden-brown hair glittered in the sunshine--all this seemed to harmonise well with the old house that formed the background to the picture. The evening was quiet and still. The voices of Georgette's birds, her caged canaries and piping bullfinches, came through the open windows; but there were no other sounds, save once or twice when the notes of a distant hunting-horn, prolonged and sad, came on the passing wind, and then the old man would raise his head, and his clear eye would sparkle,
"As he thought of the days that had long since gone by,When his spirit was bold and his courage was high;"
and when he, too, had followed that sound, and ridden across the stiffest country, neck and neck with the best horsemen in Salop and Cheshire.
Suddenly there came a shout, and a huntsman in red, minus his black velvet cap, was seen to clear a beech-hedge on the border of the lawn; and ere an exclamation of annoyance or indignation could escape old George Franklin, that his privacy should be invaded, even by a sportsman, in this unwonted manner, a cry of terror escaped Georgette; for it was evident that the gentleman's horse had become quite unmanageable, as the bridle-rein had given way; and after its terrible leap, it came tearing at a mad pace straight towards the house, and dashing itself head foremost against a tree, hurled the rider senseless on the ground. He rolled to the very feet of Georgette and her father, both of whom were full of pity and compassion, the former all the more so that the stranger was undoubtedly a handsome man, and barely yet in the prime of life. Aid was promptly summoned, and the village doctor, anxious to serve, for a time at least, one whom he deemed a wealthy patient, earnestly seconded, and even enforced, the suggestion of the hospitable George Franklin, that the sufferer, whose head was contused, and whose shoulder-blade had narrowly escaped fracture, should neither be removed nor disturbed. Hence he was at once assigned a room in the old mansion, with Georgette's old Welsh nurse, now the housekeeper, to attend him. He was a man, however, of a strong constitution, "one of those fellows who are hard to kill," as he phrased it; thus, on the third morning after the accident, he was well enough to make his way to the breakfast room.
Georgette, attired in a most becoming muslin dress, and looking fresh, rosy, and innocent, as a young girl can only look who has left her couch after a healthy slumber to greet the sunny morning, was standing on a chair in an oriel, attending to the wants of one of her feathered pets; suddenly the chair slipped, and she was about to fall, when a strong arm, in the sleeve of a scarlet hunting-coat, encircled and supported her. This littlecontretempsmade both parties at once at home, and on easy terms.
"Mr. Guilfoyle!" exclaimed the girl, for it was he.
"Miss Franklin, I presume?"
"Are you well already?" she asked.
"Nearly so," said he, smilingly, as he took in all the girl's beauty at a glance, together with the pleasant view beyond the antique oriel, where the morning sun came down on the shining leaves, covering all the dewy ground, as it were, with drops of golden light; and the quaint old house, he thought, seemed such a pleasant home.
"How happy papa will be!" said the young lady, colouring slightly under his somewhat critical gray--or rather green--eye. "I should have nursed you myself, instead of old nurse Wynne," she added, archly.
"In that case I should have been in no hurry to announce my convalescence," said he, rather pointedly; "may I ask your name--the first one, I mean? Somehow, I fancy that I can judge of character by the name."
"Georgette Franklin."
"Georgette!"
"I am called after papa."
"A charming name!" he exclaimed, but in a low tone.
Naturally frank and honest, purely innocent, and assured of her own position, and of that of her father--for though poor now, he was one of England's old untitled aristocracy--the girl felt neither awkwardness nor shyness with her new friend, who, though polished in manner, easy, and not ungraceful, was a thorough man of the world, and selfishly ready to take advantage of every place and person who came in his way; and a very simple one, indeed, was the kind old gentleman who now came to welcome his visitor, to express fears that he had left his couch too soon; and critically and keenly this hawk, who was now in the dove's nest, eyed him, and saw, by the thinness of his hair, his spare figure and wrinkled face, "delicately lined by such characters as a silverstylusmight produce upon a waxen tablet," that his years could not be many now; yet his keen gray eyes were full of bright intelligence still, and were shaded by lashes as long and silky as those of his daughter.
Hunting and breakfast were discussed together. Mr. Guilfoyle seemed, or affected to be, an enthusiast in old English sports, professing that he loved them for themselves and from their associations; and quite won George Franklin's heart by stigmatising the "iron horse" of civilisation, which was now bearing all before it; and his host seemed to grow young again, as he recurred to the field exploits of his earlier years, over the same ground which Mr. Guilfoyle--who had been on a visit to the house of some friend twenty miles distant--had hunted so recently: round beautiful Ellesmere, by Halston and Hordley, by the flat fields of Creamore, by the base of wooded Hawkstone, where he had made many a terrible flying leap, and away by Acton Reynald; all this ground had Guilfoyle gone over but lately, and, as the event proved, almost fatally for his own bones, and more fatally for his future peace of mind, as he pretty plainly indicated to Miss Franklin on every available opportunity, in the softest and most well-chosen language. Though able to leave his room, he was neither permitted to leave the house nor attempt to mount; so he wrote to his friend, had some of his wardrobe sent over to Stoke Franklin, and, encouraged by the hearty hospitality of its owner, took up his quarters there for an indefinite period; at least, until his hunting friend should depart for Madeira, whither he had promised to accompany him; for Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle seemed somewhat of a cosmopolitan, and rather peripatetic in his habits. He had been over one half the world, according to his own accounts, and fully intended to go over the other; so he proved a very agreeable companion to the hitherto lonely father and daughter in that secluded mansion in Salop. Merciful it is, indeed, that none of us can lift the veil that hides the future; thus little could George Franklin foresee the influence this man was to exert over the fate of his daughter and himself, when he listened to his plausible anecdotes, or sat alone and happy in his shady old library, communing pleasantly with his ancient favourites--with Geoffrey Chaucer, the knightly pages of Froissart, Dame Juliana Berners on hunting and hawking, and works, rare as manuscripts, that came from the antique press of Caxton and De Worde. Mr. Guilfoyle found himself in very pleasant quarters, indeed. It was ever his principle to improve the occasion or the shining hour. Georgette was highly accomplished, and knew more than one language; so did he; so week after week stole pleasantly away.
By them the touching airs of Wales, the merrychansonsof Wronger, were played and sung together; and she it was, and no Princess of Catzenelnbogen, who taught him that wild German farewell, with its burden of "Leb'wohl! Leb'wohl!" we had heard at Craigaderyn Court. Even Petrarch was not omitted by them; for he knew, or pretended to know, a smattering of Italian, and translated the tenderest speeches of Laura's lover with apointthat caused the young girl's heart to vibrate with new and strange emotions. And now, ever and anon, there was a heightened flush on her soft cheek, a bright sparkle in her dark gray eye, a lightness in all her motions; she had moments of merry laughter, alternated by others of dreamy sadness--that yet was not all sadness--which showed that Georgette was in love.
And Guilfoyle, in his own fashion, loved her, too; but he had learned that of all George Franklin's once noble estate, the house alone remained, and that at his death even it must inevitably go to the spoiler; so, though to love Georgette was very pleasant and sweet, matrimony with her was not to be thought of. Money was the god of Guilfoyle's idolatry, and he thought of the wonder of his "fast" friends when they asked, "What did he get with his wife?" and how they should laugh if they heard he had married for love. Yet Georgette had become besotted--there is no other word for it, save infatuated--by him; by one who had made flippant love with strange facility to many. By degrees he artfully strove to warp or poison the girl's mind; but finding that instinctively her innocence took the alarm after a time, though she long misunderstood him, he quite as artfully changed his tactics, and spoke sorrowfully of his imperative and approaching departure for Madeira, of the agony such a separation would cause him; "it might be for years, and it might be for ever," and so forth, while, reclining in tears on his breast, the girl heard him. Taking the right time, when she was thoroughly subdued or softened by love, and fear lest she should lose him, he prayed her to elope or consent to a private marriage--he was not without hopes that his hunting friend might officiate as parson. This, he urged, would keep them true to each other until his return and their final reunion; but to this measure she would not consent.
"Come with me, then, to Madeira; we shall be back in a month, at latest."
"But think of dear papa--my poor old papa," replied Georgette, piteously; "worn as he is with years and infirmity, I cannot leave him even for so short a time; for who will soothe his pillow when I am gone?"
"Old moth--Mrs. Wynne can do all that; at least, until we return," said he, almost impatiently.
"But must you really go to Madeira?" pleaded the gentle voice.
"I must, indeed: business of the first importance compels me; in fact, my funds are there," he added, with charming candour, as his hunting friend had promised to frank him to Funchal and back again to London. "We shall be gone but a short time, and when we return this dear old house shall be brighter than ever, and together we shall enliven his old age. We shall kneel at his feet, darling Georgie, and implore--"
"Why not kneelnow," urged Georgette, "and beg his consent and blessing?"
"Nay, that would be inopportune, absurd, melodramatic, and all that sort of thing. Returning, we shall be linked in the fondest affection; returning, he will be unable to resist our united supplications. Come, darling, come with me. Let us despise the silly rules of society, and the cold conventionalities of this heartless world! Let us live but for each other, Georgie; and O, how happy we shall be, when we have passed, through the medium of romance, into the prose of wedded life; though that life, my darling, shall not be altogether without romance to us!"
Overcome by the intensity of her affection for this man, her first and only lover, the poor girl never analysed the inflated sophistries he poured into her too willing ear, but sank, half fainting with delight, upon his shoulder. Guilfoyle clasped her fondly in his arms; he covered her brow, her eyes--and handsome eyes they were--her lips, and braided hair, with kisses, and in his forcible but somewhat fatuous language, poured forth his raptures, his love, and his vows of attachment.
Suddenly a terror came over her, and starting from his arm, she half repulsed him, with a sudden and sorrowful expression of alarm in her eye.
"Leave me, Hawkesby," said she, "leave me, I implore you; I cannot desert papa, now especially, when most he needs my aid. O, I feel faint, very faint and ill! I doubt not your love, O, doubt not mine; but--but--'
"I must and do doubt it," said he, sadly and gloomily. "But enough of this; to-morrow I sail from Liverpool, andthenall shall be at an end."
"O God, how lonely I shall be!" wailed the girl; "I would, dear Hawkesby, that you had never come here."
"Or had broken my neck when my horse cleared yonder hedge," said he, as his arm again went round her, and the strong deep love with which he had so artfully succeeded in inspiring her, triumphed over every sentiment of filial regard, of reason, and humanity. She forgot the old parent who doted on her; the stately old ancestral home, that was incrusted with the heraldic honours of the past; she forgot her position in the world, and fled with theparvenuGuilfoyle.
That night the swift express from Shrewsbury to Birkenhead, as it swept through the beautiful scenery by Chirk and Oswestry, while the wooded Wrekin sank flat and far behind, bore her irrevocably from her home; but her father's pale, white, and wondering face was ever and always upbraidingly before her. As Guilfoyle had foreseen, no proper marriage could be celebrated at Liverpool ere the ship sailed from the Mersey. He hurried her on board, and his hunting friend--a dissipated man of the world, ordered to Madeira for the benefit of his health--received the pale, shrinking, and already conscience-stricken girl in the noisy cabin of the great steamer with a critical eye and remarkably knowing smile, while his manner, that for the time was veiled by well-bred courtesy, might have taught the poor dove that she was in the snares of an unscrupulous fowler.
But ere the great ship had made the half of her voyage--about six days--in her sickness of body and soul, the girl had made a friend and confidant of the captain, a jolly and good-hearted man, who had girls of his own at home; and he, summoning a clergyman who chanced to be on board, under some very decided threats compelled Guilfoyle to perform the part he had promised; so he and Georgette were duly wedded in the cabin, while, under sail and steam, the vessel cleft the blue waves of the western ocean, and her ensign was displayed in honour of the event. But there the pleasure and the honour ended, too; and Guilfoyle soon showed himself in his true colours, as a selfish and infamousroué.
"Alas!" said she, weeping, "he no longer called me the pet names I loved so well; or made a fuss with me, and caressed me, as he was wont to do among the pleasant woods of Stoke Franklin. I felt that, though he was my husband, he was a lover no longer! We had not been a fortnight at Madeira when we heard that the vessel, on board of which we were married, had perished at sea with all on board, including her temporary chaplain. Then it was that Mr. Guilfoyle tore from me the sole evidence of that solemn ceremony given to me by the clergyman, and cast it in the flames before my face, declaring that then he was free! Of our past love I had no relic but a gold locket containing his likeness and bearing a date, the 1st of September, the day on which we were married, with our initials, H. H. and G., and even that he rent from me yesterday. Alas for the treachery of which some human hearts are capable! We wereoneno longer now, as the old song has it:
"'That time!--'tis now "long, long ago!"Its hopes and joys all passed away!On life's calm tide three bubbles glow;And pleasure, youth, and love are they,Hope paints them bright as bright can be,Or did, when he and I werewe!'
"'That time!--'tis now "long, long ago!"Its hopes and joys all passed away!
On life's calm tide three bubbles glow;And pleasure, youth, and love are they,
Hope paints them bright as bright can be,Or did, when he and I werewe!'
As a finishing stroke to his cruelty and perfidy, he suddenly quitted Madeira, after some gambling transaction which brought the alcalde of Funchal and other authorities upon him. He effected his escape disguised as a vendor of sombreros and canary birds, and got clear off, leaving a note by the tenor of which he bequeathed me to his friend, with whom he left me at a solitaryquintaamong the mountains."
Though dissipated and "fast" by nature and habit, the latter was at heart an English gentleman; and pitying the forlorn girl abandoned in a foreign colony under circumstances so terrible, he sent her home; and one day, some six months after her flight, saw her once more standing irresolutely at the closed gate of the old manor-house of Stoke Franklin.
The latter was empty now; the windows were closed, the bird-cages hung there no more; the golden and purple crocuses she had planted were peeping up from the fragrant earth, untended now; the pathways were already covered with grass and mosses; untrimmed ivy nearly hid the now unopened door; the old vanes creaked mournfully in the wind; and save the drowsy hum of the bees, all spoke to her hopeless, despairing, and remorseful heart of the silence and desolation that follow death. The odour of last year's dead leaves was heavy on the air. After a time she learned how rapidly her father had changed in aspect, and how he had sunk after her disappearance--her desertion of him; and how there came a time when the fine old gentleman, whose thin figure half stooping, with his head bent forward musingly, his scant white hair floating over the collar of his somewhat faded coat, his kindly but wrinkled face, his tasselled cane trailing behind him from his folded hands, whilom so familiar in the green lanes about Stoke Franklin, and who was always welcomed by the children that gambolled on the village green or around the old stone cross, and the decayed wooden stocks that stood thereby, appeared no more. A sudden illness carried him off, or he passed away in his sleep, none knew precisely which; and then another mound under the old yew-tree was all that remained to mark where the last of the Franklins, the last of an old, old Saxon line, was laid.
I promised to assist her if I could, though without the advice of a legal friend I knew not very clearly what to do; besides, knowing what lawyers usually are, I had never included one in the circle even of my acquaintances. Estelle's long silence, and the late episode in the lane, chiefly occupied my thoughts while riding back to the barracks, where somewhat of a shock awaited me.
Though the dower-house of Walcot Park dated from the days of Dutch William, when taste was declining fast in England, internally it had all the comforts of modern life, and its large double drawing-room was replete with every elegance that art could furnish or luxury require--gilt china, and buhl cabinets, and console mirrors which reproduced again and again, in far and shadowy perspectives, the winged lions of St. Mark inverde antique; Laocoon and his sons writhing in the coils of the serpents; Majolica vases, where tritons, nymphs, and dolphins were entwined; Titian's cavaliers sallow and sombre in ruffs and half-armour, with pointed moustachios and imperious eyes; or red-haired Venetian dames with long stomachers, long fingers, and Bologna spaniels; or Rubens' blowsy belles, all flesh and bone, with sturdy limbs, and ruddy cheeks and elbows; but the mirrors reflected more about the very time that I was lingering at Whitchurch; to wit, a group, a trio composed of Lady Naseby, her daughter, and Mr. Guilfoyle; and within that room, so elegant and luxurious, was being fought by Estelle, silently and bitterly, one of those struggles of the heart, or battles of life, which, as poor Georgette Franklin said truly, were harder than those which were fought in the field by armed men. Guilfoyle was smiling, and looking very bland and pleased, indeed, to all appearance; Lady Naseby's usually calm and unimpressionable face, so handsome and noble in its contour, wore an expression of profound disdain and contempt; while that of Lady Estelle was as pale as marble. She seemed to be icy cold; her pink nostrils were dilated, her lips and eyelids were quivering; but with hands folded before her, lest she should clench them and betray herself, she listened to what passed between her mother and their visitor.
"It was, as you say, a strange scene, of course, Mr. Guilfoyle, the woman fainting--"
"Reclining."
"Well, yes, reclining in the arms of Mr. Hardinge in that lonely lane," said the Countess; "but we need refer to it no more. He must be a very reckless person, as Pompon saw him take leave of this creature with great tenderness, she says, at the door of that obscure inn at Whitchurch; so that explains all."
"Not quite," replied Guilfoyle.
"Perhaps not; but then it is no affair of ours, at all events, I must own that I always wondered what the Lloyds--Sir Madoc especially--saw in that young man, a mere subaltern of the line!"
"Precisely my view of the matter, Lady Naseby."
"Besides, your little baronet people are great sticklers for rank and dignity, and often affect a greater exclusiveness than those who rank above them."
"But as for this unfortunate woman," resumed Guilfoyle, who was loth to quit the subject.
"We have heard of her in our neighbourhood before," said Lady Naseby; "at least, Pompon has. She is good to all, especially the poor."
"Ah, doesn't care to hide her candle under a bushel, eh?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Guilfoyle?"
"Simply that vanity is often mistaken for generosity, profusion for benevolence."
"You are somewhat of a cynic, I know."
"Nay, pardon me, I hope not."
"She is too poorly clad in general, Pompon says, to be able to indulge in profusion," continued Lady Naseby, while Lady Estelle glanced at the speakers alternately, in silence and with apparent calmness.
But Guilfoyle, who read her eyes and heart, and knew her secret thoughts, gloated on the pain she was enduring.
"No doubt the unfortunate creature is much to be pitied," said he; "but when a woman has lost respect for herself, she cannot expect much of it from others. The poor little soiled love-bird has probably left some pretty semi-detached villa at Chertsey or St. John's Wood to follow its faithless redcoat to Hampshire, and hence the touching tableau in the lane," he added, with his mocking and strangely unreal laugh.
"Mr. Guilfoyle!" said the Countess, in a tone of expostulation, while her daughter darted a glance of inexpressible scorn at him. But he continued coolly, "Well, perhaps I should not speak so slightingly of her, after what she has given herself out to be."
"And what is that?" asked Lady Naseby.
"Only--his wife."
"His wife!" exclaimed Estelle, starting in spite of herself. "Yes, Lady Estelle; but it may not be, nay, I hope is not, the case."
"You should rather hope that it is so."
"But we all know what military men are--never particular to a shade; and though excuses must be made for the temptations that surround them, and also for youth, I approve of the continental system, which generally excludes subaltern officers from society."
"Wife!" repeated Estelle; "O, it cannot be!"
"What is it toyou--to us?" asked mamma, with a slight asperity of tone.
"Well, wife or not, she certainly wears a wedding-ring, and he has been more than once to visit her in that inn at Whitchurch. Of one visit our mutual friend Mr. Sharpus is cognisant. If you doubt this, ask him, and he will not contradictme."
"I have not said that I doubt you, Mr. Guilfoyle," said Estelle, with intense hauteur, while for a moment--but a moment only--her eyes flashed, her breast heaved, her hands were clenched, a burning colour suffused her face, and her feet were firmly planted on the carpet; yet she asked quietly, "Why do we hear this scandalous story at all? What is it to mamma--what to me?"
"More, perhaps, than you care to admit," said he, in a low voice, as the Countess rose to place Tiny in his mother-of-pearl basket.
Guilfoyle at Craigaderyn had acted as eavesdropper, and on more than one occasion had watched and followed, overseen and overheard us, and knew perfectly all about our secret engagement, her mother's views and opposition to any alliance save a noble or at least a moneyed one; and of all the stories he had the unblushing effrontery to tell, the present was perhaps the most daring. He had contrived, during the short visit he had paid to Walcot Park, under the wing of Mr. Sharpus, to let Estelle know by covert hints and remarks all he knew, and all he might yet disclose to her mother, to the young Earl of Naseby, to Lord Pottersleigh, Sir Madoc, and others; and feeling herself in his power, with all her lofty spirit the poor girl cowered before him, and he felt this instinctively, as he turned his green eyes exultingly upon her. But for a delicate, proud, and sensitive girl to have the secrets of her heart laid bare, and at the mercy of a man like this, was beyond all measure exasperating. And this strange narrative of his, coming after what she had seen, and all that Pompon with French exaggeration had related, crushed her completely for the time.
"I have another little item to add to our Hardinge romance," said he, with his strange, hard, dry, crackling laugh, and a smile of positive delight in his shifty green eyes, while he toyed with the long ears of Tiny the shock, which had resumed its place in Lady Naseby's lap. "You remember the locket with the initials 'H. H. G.' and the date 1st September which Miss Dora Lloyd mentioned when we were at Craigaderyn?"
"I have some recollection of it," replied Lady Naseby, languidly.
"Curiously enough, as I rode past the spot where you saw that touching and interesting interview--the lane, I mean--I perceived something glittering among the grass. Dismounting, I picked up that identical locket, which doubtless the lady had dropped, thus losing it within a few days of its bestowal, if we are to judge by the date."
"And you have it?"
"Here."
Opening his leather portemonnaie, he drew from it a gold locket, to which a black-velvet ribbon was attached, and said with the utmost deliberation, "The initials represent those of Henry Hardinge and his inamorata, and behold!"
Pressing a spring, the secret of which he knew very well, the locket flew open, and within it were seen the photograph of the pale woman whom they saw in Craigaderyn church, and opposite to it one ofme, inserted by himself, pilfered from the album of Winifred Lloyd, as we afterwards ascertained.
"Aha! the moral Mr. Henry Hardinge with hispetite femme entretenue, as the French so happily term it."
Lady Estelle was quite calm now in her demeanour, and she surveyed the locket with a contemptuous smile; but her face was as white as marble. She felt conscious that it was so, and hence sat with her back to the nearest window, lest her mother should perceive that she was affected.
Guilfoyle, smilingly, stood by her, stroking his dyed moustache.
"This must be restored to its owner," said he.
"Permit me to do so," said Lady Estelle.
"You, Estelle--you!" exclaimed her usually placid mother, becoming almost excited now; "why should you touch the wretched creature's ornament?"
"As an act of charity it should be restored to her, or tohim," she added, through her clenched teeth; and taking the locket, she left the room for her own, ere her mother could reply; and there she gave way to a paroxysm of tears, that sprang from sorrow, rage, and shame that she had for a moment permitted herself to have been deluded by me, and thus be placed in the power of Guilfoyle. Her lips, usually of a rosy tint, were colourless now; her upper one quivered from time to time, as she shuddered with emotions she strove in vain to repress; and her proud hot blood flowed furiously under her transparent skin, as she threw open her desk, and sought to apply herself to the task of writing me that which was to be her first, her last, and only letter. For her heart swelled with thoughts of love and disappointment, pride, reproach, disdain, and hate, as she spoiled and tore up sheet after sheet of note-paper in her confusion and perplexity, and at last relinquished the idea of writing at all.
Thus, while I was scheming how to expose Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle, and have him cast forth from that circle in which he was an intruder, he turned the tables with a vengeance, and provided me with a wife to boot. But finding, or suspecting, that he was beginning to be viewed with doubt, that very day, after having done all possible mischief, he quitted Walcot Park with Lady Naseby's solicitor, who, strange to say, seemed to be his most particular friend. He had made no impression favourable to himself on the heart of Estelle; but he hoped that he had succeeded in ruining me, as I could neither write nor clear myself of an allegation of which I was then, of course, ignorant. She was unjust to me; but she certainly--whatever came to pass in the gloomy and stormy future--loved methen.
As yet I knew nothing of all that has been detailed in the foregoing chapter, consequently the entire measure of my vengeance against Guilfoyle was not quite full. I had, however, a revival of my old doubts, anxiety, and perplexity, in not hearing from Walcot Park in some fashion, by an invitation, or otherwise privately from Estelle herself, as, by our prearrangement, there was nothing to prevent her writing to me; and to these were added now a dread of what they had seen on that unlucky evening, and the reasonable misconstructions to which the scene was liable. More than one of my mess-room friends had received cards of invitation from Lady Naseby; why then was I, whom she had met so recently, apparently forgotten?
After the relation of her story, I left Mrs. Guilfoyle in such a state of mental prostration and distress, that I was not without well-founded fears that she might commit some rash act, perhaps suicide, to add to the vile complication of our affairs. Next day I was detailed for guard, and could not leave the barracks, either to consult with my new unhappy acquaintance, or for my accustomed canter in the vicinity of Walcot Park. A presentiment that something unpleasant would happen ere long hung over me, and a day and a night of irritation and hot impatience had to be endured, varied only by the exceedingly monotonous duties that usually occupy the attention of the officer who commands a guard, such as explaining all the standing orders to the soldiers composing it, inspecting the reliefs going out to their posts and those returning from them, and going the round of those posts by night; but on this occasion, the routine was varied by a fire near Winchester, so we were kept under arms for some hours in a torrent of rain, with the gates barricaded, till the barrack engines returned. On the following morning, just when dismissing my old guard after being relieved by the new one, I perceived a servant in the well-known Naseby livery--light-blue and silver--ride out of the barracks; and with a fluttering in my heart, that was born of hope and apprehension, I hastened to my room.
"Packet for you, sir," said my man Evans, "just left by a flunkey in red breeches."
"You mean a servant of Lady Naseby's."
"I mean, sir," persisted Evans, "a flunky who eyed me very superciliously, and seemed to think a private soldier as low and pitiful as himself," added the Welshman, whom the pompous bearing of the knight of the shoulder-knot had ruffled.
"You were not rude to him, I hope."
"O no, sir. I only said that, though the Queen didn't like bad bargains, I'd give him a shilling in her name to play the triangles."
"That will do; you may go," said I, taking from his hand a small packet sealed in pink paper, and addressed to me by Lady Estelle; and my heart beat more painfully than ever with hope and fear as I tore it open.
A locket dropped out--thelocket just described--in which I was bewildered to find a likeness of myself, and with it the ring I had placed on the hand of Estelle in Rhuddlan's cottage--the emerald encircled by diamonds--on the morning after our escape from a terrible fate! I have said that a shock awaited me at the barrack; but that the locket should come to me, accompanied by Estelle's ring, so astonished and perplexed me, that some time elapsed before I perceived there was a little note in the box which contained them.
It ran thus:
"Lady E. Cressingham begs that Mr. Hardinge will return the accompanying locket and ring to the lady to whom they properly belong--she whom he meets in the lane near Walcot Park, and whom he should lose no time in presenting to the world in her own character. Farther communications are unnecessary, as Mr. Guilfoyle has explained all, and Lady E. Cressingham leaves to-day for London."
The handwriting was very tremulous, as if she had written when under no ordinary excitement; and now, as the use to which the two episodes, at the lane and the inn-door, had been put by the artful Guilfoyle became plain to me, I was filled by a dangerous fury at the false position in which they placed me with her I loved and with whom I had been so successful. For a minute the room seemed to swim round me, each corner in pursuit of the other. We had both been wronged--myself chiefly; and though I knew that Guilfoyle had been at work, I could not precisely know how; but I thought the Spartan was right when, on being asked if his sword was sharp, he replied, "Yes, sharper even than calumny!" This wretched fellow had daringly calumniated me, and to clear that calumny, to have an instant interview with Estelle, became the immediate and burning desire of my heart. I rushed to my desk, and opened it with such impulsive fury that I severely injured my arm, so recently broken--broken in her service--and as yet but scarcely well. I spread paper before me, but my fingers were powerless; if able to hold the pen, I was now unable to write, and the whole limb was alternately benumbed and full of acute agony; and though Hugh Price of ours was a very good fellow, I had no friend--at least, none like Phil Caradoc--in the dépôt battalion in whom I could confide or with whom consult, in this emergency.
I despatched Evans for the senior surgeon, who alleged that the original setting, dressing, and so forth of my fractured limb had been most unsatisfactory; that if I was not careful, inflammation might set in, and if so, that instant amputation alone could save my life. Being almost in a fever, he placed me on the sick-list, with orders not to leave my room for some days, and reduced me to claret-and-water.
"A pleasant predicament this!" thought I, grinding my teeth.
Estelle, through whom all this came to pass, lost to me, apparently through no fault of my own, and I unable to communicate with her or explain anything; for now she was in London, where I feared she might, in pique or rage, take Pottersleigh, Naseby, or even, for all I knew, accept Guilfoyle, a terrible compromise of her name. But she had plenty of other admirers, and disappointed women marry every day in disgust of some one. Next I thought of the regiment abroad wondering "when that fellow Hardinge would join"--promotion, honour, profession, and love in the balance against health, and all likely to be lost!
"Rest, rest," said the battalion Sangrado, whom my condition rather perplexed; "don't worry yourself about anything. Rest, mental and bodily, alone can cure you."
"It is a fine thing to talk," I muttered, while tossing on my pillow; for I was confined to bed in my dull little room, and for three days was left entirely to my own corroding thoughts.
I had but one crumb of comfort, one lingering hope. She had not asked me to returnherring, nor did I mean to do so, if possible. Once again my arm was slung in a black-silk scarf, which Estelle had insisted on making for me at Craigaderyn. Alas! would the joys of that time ever return to us again? I sent Evans, in uniform and not in my livery, to Whitchurch with the locket, after extracting my likeness therefrom; but he returned with it, saying that the lady had left the inn for London, having no doubt followed her husband. I knew not exactly of what I was accused--aliaisonof some kind apparently, of which the strongest proofs had been put before the Cressinghams. If, when able, I wrote to explain that the two meetings with Mrs. Guilfoyle were quite fortuitous, would Estelle believe me? Without inquiry or explanation, she had coldly and abruptly cast me off; and it was terrible that one I loved so well should think evil or with scorn of me. What would honest old Sir Madoc's view of the matter be, and what the kind and noble-hearted Winifred's, who loved me as a sister, if they heard of this story, whatever it was?
Vengeance--swift, sudden, and sure--was what I panted for; and moments there were when I writhed under the laws that prevented me from discovering and beating to a jelly this fellow Guilfoyle, or even shooting him down like a mad dog, though I would gladly have risked my own life to punish him in the mode that was no longer approved of now in England; and I pictured to myself views of having him over in France, in the Bois de Boulogne, or on the level sands of Dunkirk, the spire of St. Eloi in the distance, the gray sky above us, the sea for a background, no sound in our ears but its chafing on the long strip of beach, and his villainous face covered by my levelled pistol at ten paces, or less--yea, even after I had let him have the first shot, by tossing or otherwise. And as these fierce thoughts burned within me, all the deeper and fiercer that they were futile and found no utterance, I glanced longingly at my sword, which hung on the wall, or handled my pistols with grim anticipative joy; and reflected on how many there are in this world who, in the wild sense of justice, or the longing for a just revenge on felons whom the laws protect, fear the police while they have no fear of God, even in this boasted age of civilisation; and I remembered a terribleduel à la mortin which I had once borne a part in Germany.
A July evening was closing in Altona, when I found myself in the garden of Rainville's Hotel, which overlooks the Elbe. The windows of the house, an edifice of quaint aspect, occupied successively in years past by General Dumourier and gossiping old Bourienne, were open, and lights and music, the din of many voices--Germans are always loud and noisy--and the odour of many cigars and meerschaums, came forth, to mingle with the fragrance of the summer flowers that decked the tea-garden, the trees of which were hung with garlands of coloured lanterns. A golden haze from the quarter where the sun had set enveloped all the lazy Elbe, and strings of orange-tinted lights showed here and there the gas-lamps of Hamburg reflected in its bosom.
In dark outline against that western flush were seen the masts and hulls of the countless vessels that covered the basin of the river and the Brandenburger Hafen. Waiters were hurrying about with coffee, ices, and confectionery, lager-beer in tankards, and cognac in crystal cruets; pretty Vierlander girls, in their grotesque costume, the bodice a mass of golden embroidery, were tripping about coyly, offering their bouquets for sale; and to the music of a fine German band, the dancing had begun on a prepared platform. There were mingling lovely Jewesses of half-Teutonic blood, covered with jewels; spruce clerks from the Admiralit-strasse, and stout citizens from the Neuer-wall; officers and soldiers from the Prussian garrison; girls of good style from the fashionable streets about the Alsterdamm, and others that were questionable from the quarter about the Grosse Theater Strasse.
I was seated in an arbour with a young Russian officer named Paulovitch Count Volhonski, who was travelling like myself, and whom I had met at the table-d'hôte of the Rolandsburg, in the Breitestrasse. As an Englishman, apt at all times to undervalue the Russian character, I was agreeably surprised to find that this young captain of the Imperial Guard could speak several European, and at least two of the dead, languages with equal facility. He was a good musician, sang well, and was moreover remarkably handsome, though his keen dark eyes and strongly marked brows, with a most decided aquiline nose, required all the softness that a mouth well curved and as delicately cut as that of a woman could be, to relieve them, and something of pride and hauteur, if not of sternness, that formed the normal expression of his face. His complexion was remarkably pure and clear, his hair was dark and shorn very short, and he had a handsome moustache, well pointed up. We had frequented several places of amusement together, and had agreed to travel in company so far as Berlin, and this was to be our last night in Altona. The waiter had barely placed our wine upon the table and poured it out, when there entered our arbour, and seated himself uninvited beside us, a great burly German officer in undress uniform, and who in a stentorian voice ordered a bottle of lager-beer, and lighting his huge meerschaum without a word or glance of courtesy or apology, surveyed us boldly with a cool defiant stare. This was so offensive, that Volhonski's usually pale face flushed crimson, and we instinctively looked at each other inquiringly.
The German next lay back in his seat, coughed loudly, expectorated in all directions in that abominable manner peculiar to his country, placed his heavy military boots with a thundering crash upon two vacant chairs, drank his beer, and threw down the metal flagon roughly on the table, eyeing us from time to time with a sneering glance that was alike insulting and unwarrantable. But this man, whom we afterwards learned to be a noted bully and duellist, Captain Ludwig Schwartz, of the Prussian 95th or Thuringians, evidently wished to provoke a quarrel with either or both of us, as some Prussian officers and Hamburg girls, who were watching his proceedings from an alley of the garden, seemed to think, and to enjoy the situation. But for their presence and mocking bearing, Volhonski and I would probably, for the sake of peace, have retired and gone elsewhere; however, their laughter and remarks rendered the intrusive insolence of their friend the more intolerable. It chanced that a little puff of wind blew the ashes of Volhonski's cigar all over the face and big brown beard of the German, who, while eyeing him fiercely, slowly extricated the pipe from his heavy dense moustache, and striking his clenched hand on the table so as to make everything thereon dance, he said, imperiously, "The Herr Graf will apologise?"
"For what?" asked Volhonski, haughtily.
"For what!--der Teufel!--do you ask for what?"
"Ja, Herr Captain."
"For permitting those cigar ashes to go over all my person."
"In the first place, your precious person had no right to be there; in the second, appeal to the wind, and fight with it."
"I shall not fight withit!" thundered the German; "and I demand an instant apology."
"Absurd!" replied Volhonski, coolly; "I have no apology to make, fellow. Apologise to another I might; but certainly not to such as you."
"You dare to jest--to--to--to trifle with me?" spluttered the German, gasping and swelling with rage.
"I never jest or trifle with strangers; do you wish to quarrel?"
"No, Herr Graf," sneered the German; "do you?"
"Then how am I to construe your conduct and words?"
"As you please. But know this, Herr Graf: that though I ever avoid quarrelling, I instantly crush or repel the slightest appearance of insult, and you haveinsultedme."
"Ja, ja!" muttered the German officers, in blue surtouts and brass shoulder-scales, who now crowded about us.
Volhonski smiled disdainfully, and drew from his pocket a richly-inlaid card-case; then taking from it an enamelled card, with a bow that was marked and formal, yet haughty, he presented it to Captain Ludwig Schwartz, who deliberately tore it in two, and said, in a low fierce voice,
"Bah! I challenge you, Schelm, to meet me with pistols, or hand to hand without masks, and without seconds, if you choose."
"Agreed," replied Volhonski, now pale with passion, knowing well that after such a defiance as that, and before such company, it would be a duel without cessation, a combatà la mort. "Where?" he asked, briefly.
"The Heiligengeist Feld."
"When?"
"To-morrow at daybreak"
"Agreed; till then adieu, Herr Captain;" and touching their caps to each other in salute, they separated.
Next morning, when the dense mists, as yet unexhaled by the sun, lay heavy and frouzy about the margin of the Elbe, and were curling up from the deep moats and wooded ramparts of the Holstein Thor of Hamburg, we met on the plain which lies between that city and Altona; it is open, grassy, interspersed with trees, and is named the Field of the Holy Ghost. A sequestered place was chosen; Volhonski was attended by me, Captain Schwartz by another captain of his regiment; but several of his brother officers were present as spectators, and all these wore the tight blue surtout, buttoned to the throat, with the shoulder-scales, adopted by the Prussians before Waterloo; and they wore through their left skirt a sword of the same straight and spring shell-hilted fashion, used in the British service at Fontenoy and Culloden, and retained by the Prussians still. The morning was chill, and above the gray wreaths of mists enveloping the plain rose, on one side, the red brick towers and green coppered spires of St. Michael, St. Nicolai, and other churches. Opposite were the pointed roofs of Altona, and many a tall poplar tree. Volhonski, being brave, polite, and scrupulous in all his transactions, was naturally exasperated on finding himself in this dangerous and unsought-for predicament, after being so grossly and unwarrantably insulted on the preceding night. He was pale, but assumed a smiling expression, as if he thought it as good a joke as any one else to be paraded thus at daybreak, when we quitted our hackney droski at the corner of the great cemetery and traversed the field, luckily reaching the appointed spot the same moment as our antagonists.
We gravely saluted each other. While I was examining and preparing the pistols, Volhonski gave me a sealed letter, saying, quite calmly, "I have but one relation in the world--my little sister Valérie, now at St. Petersburg. See," he added, giving me the miniature of a beautiful young girl, golden-haired and dark-eyed; "if I am butchered by this beer-bloated Teuton, you will write to her, enclosing this miniature, my letter, and all my rings."
I pressed his hand in silence, and handed our pistols for inspection to the other second, a captain, named Leopold Döpke, of the Thuringian Infantry.
"Now, Herr Graf, we fight till one, at least, is killed," said Schwartz, grimly.
Volhonski bowed in assent.
"Be quick, gentlemen," said the German officers; "already the rising sun is gilding the vane of St. Michael's."
Volhonski glanced at it earnestly, and his fine dark eyes clouded for a moment. Perhaps he was thinking of his sister, or of how and where he might be lying when the sun's rays were lower down that lofty brick spire, which is a hundred feet higher than the cross of St. Paul's in London. In the German fashion a circle was drawn upon the greensward, on which the diamond dew of a lovely summer morning glittered. Volhonski and Schwartz were placed within that circle, from which they were not permitted to retire; neither were they to fire until the signal was given.
"Mein Herren," said Captain Döpke, who seemed to think no more of the affair than if it had been a pigeon match, "when I give the signal by throwing up my glove and uttering the word you may fire at discretion, or as soon as you have your aim, and at what distance you please; but it must bewithinthe circumference of this ring. The first who steps beyond it falls by my hand, as a violation of the laws of the duel."
"Be quick," growled Schwartz; "for the night watch in St. Michael's tower have telescopes, and the Burgher Guard are already under arms at the Holstein Thor."
Twelve paces apart within that deadly ring stood Volhonski and Schwartz, facing each other. The former wore a black surtout buttoned up to the throat; the latter his uniform and spike helmet. He untied and cast aside his silver gorget, lest it might afford a mark for his adversary's pistol. His face was flushed with cruelty, triumph, and the lust of blood, that came from past successful duels. Volhonski looked calm; but his eyes and heart were glowing with hatred and a longing for a just revenge.
"Fire!" cried Captain Döpke, as if commanding a platoon, and tossing up his pipe-clayed glove.
Both pistols exploded at the same instant, and Schwartz uttered a cruel and insulting laugh as Volhonski wheeled round and staggered wildly; his left arm was broken by a ball.
"Fresh pistols!" cried Schwartz.
"Is not this enough for honour?" said I, starting forward. "No--stand back!" exclaimed Captain Döpke.
"Ach Gott! Herr Englander, your turn will come next," thundered Schwartz, as we gave them other pistols and proceeded deliberately to reload the first brace, yet warm after being discharged.
No word of command was expected now; both duellists aimed steadily. Schwartz fired first and a terrible curse, hoarse and guttural, escaped him, as his ball whistled harmlessly past the left ear of Volhonski, whose face was now ghastly with pain, rage, and hatred. Drawing nearer and nearer, till the muzzle of his pistol was barely two feet from the forehead of Schwartz, he gave a grim and terrible smile for a moment. We were rooted to the spot; no one stirred; no one spoke, or seemed to breathe; and just as a cold perspiration flowed in beadlike drops over the face of the merciless Schwartz; it seemed to vanish with his spike helmet in smoke, as Volhonski fired and--blew his brains out! We sprang into the droski, and I felt as if a terrible crime had been committed when we drove at full speed across the neutral ground, called the Hamburgerburg, which lies between the city and the river gate of Altona, along a street of low taverns and dancing-rooms; and there, when past the sentinels in Danish uniform, the Lion of Denmark and the red-striped sentry boxes indicated that we were safe within the frontier of Holstein. So intense were our feelingsthen, that the few short fleeting moments crowded into that short compass of time seemed as an age, so full were they of fierce, exciting, and revolting thoughts; but these were past and gone; andnow, as I recalled this merciless episode, times there were when I felt in my heart that I could freely risk my life in the same fashion to kill Guilfoyle, even as Volhonski killed the remorseless German bully Schwartz.