The morning sun had chased away the dew on the grass, but thehedge-rows were giving out their fragrance, and the lark and blackbird sang in the trees. Miss Blake was returning from early service at St. Jerome's; or, as St. Jerome people called it, Matins.
In spite of the nearly sleepless night she had passed, Miss Blake looked well. Her superabundance of hair, freshly washed up with its cunning cosmetics and adorned to perfection, gleamed as if so many golden particles of dust were shining on it: her morning robe was of light muslin, and becoming as fashion could make it. It was very unusual for Miss Blake to get little sleep: she was of too equable a temperament to lie awake: but the previous night's revelation of iniquity had disturbed her in no common degree, and her head had ached when she rose. The headache was passing now, and she felt quite ready for breakfast. A task lay before her that day: the disclosure to Lady Andinnian. It was all cut and dried: how she should make it and when she should make it: even the very words of it were already framed.
She would not so much as turn her eyes on the gate of the Maze: had she been on that side of the road she would have caught up her flounces as she passed it. Never, willingly, would she soil her shoes with that side of the way again by choice--the place had a brand on it. It was quite refreshing to turn her eyes on Clematis Cottage, sheltering the respectable single bachelor who lived there.
Turning her eyes on the cottage, she turned them on the bachelor as well. Mr. Smith in a light morning coat, and his arm as usual in a black sling, was out of doors amidst the rose trees on the little lawn, gazing at one of them through his green spectacles. Miss Blake stopped as he saluted her, and good mornings were exchanged.
"I am no judge of flowers," he said, "have not lived among them enough for that; but it appears to me that this rose, just come out, is a very rare and beautiful specimen."
Obeying the evident wish--given in manner alone, not in words--that she should go in and look at the rose, Miss Blake entered. It was a tea-rose of exquisite tint and sweetness. Miss Blake was warm in her admiration; she had not noticed any exactly like it at the Court. Before she could stop the sacrilege Mr. Smith had opened his penknife, cut off the rose, and was presenting it to her.
"Oh, how could you!" she exclaimed. "It was so beautiful here, in your garden."
"Madam, it will be more beautiful there," he rejoined, as she began to put it in her waistband.
"I should be very sorry, but that I see other buds will soon be out."
"Yes, by to-morrow. Earth dots not deal out her flowers to us with a niggardly hand."
Accompanying the resolution Miss Blake had come to the previous evening and perfected in the night--in her eyes a very righteous and proper resolution; namely, to disclose what she knew to Lady Andinnian--accompanying this, I say, was an undercurrent of determination to discover as many particulars of the ill-savoured matter as she possibly could discover. Standing at this moment on Mr. Smith's grass-plat, that gentleman beside her and the gates of the Maze in full view opposite, an idea struck Miss Blake that perhaps he knew something of the affair.
She began to question him. Lightly and apparently carelessly, interspersed with observations about the flowers, she turned the conversation on the Maze, asking this, and remarking that.
"Lonely it must be for Mrs. Grey? Oh, yes. How long has she lived there, Mr. Smith?"
"She came--let me see. Shortly, I think, before Mrs. Andinnian's death."
"Ah, yes. At the time Sir Karl was staying here."
"Was Sir Karl staying here? By the way, yes, I think he was."
Miss Blake, toying with a spray of the flourishing clematis, happened to look suddenly at Mr. Smith as he gave the answer, and saw his glance turned covertly on her through his green glasses. "He knows all about it," she thought, "and is screening Sir Karl. That last answer, the pretended non-remembrance, was an evasion. Men invariably hold by one another in matters of this kind. Just for a moment there was a silence.
"Mr. Smith, you may trust me," she then said in a low tone. "I fancy that you and I both know pretty well who it was brought the lady here and why she lives in that seclusion. But I could never have believed it of Sir Karl Andinnian."
Mr. Smith in his surprise--and it looked like very genuinesurprise--took off his glasses and gazed at Miss Blake without them. He had rather fine brown eyes, she noticed. Not a word spoke he.
"You wonder that I should speak of this, Mr. Smith--I see that."
"I don't understand you, ma'am, and that's the truth."
"Oh, well, I suppose you will not understand. Sir Karl ought to be ashamed of himself."
Whether it was her tart tone that suddenly enlightened Mr. Smith, or whether he had but been pretending before, there could be no mistake that he caught her meaning now. He put on his green spectacles with a conscious laugh.
"Hush," said he, making believe playfully to hide his face. "We are content, you know, Miss Blake, to ignore these things."
"Yes, I do know it, dear sir: it is the way of the world. But they cannot be ignored in the sight of Heaven."
The striking of nine o'clock inside the house reminded Miss Blake that the morning was getting on, and that she had best make haste if she wanted any breakfast. Mr. Smith held the gate open for her, and shook her offered hand. She stepped onwards, feeling that a mutual, if silent, understanding had been established between them--that they shared the disgraceful secret.
Had Miss Blake wanted confirmation in her belief, this admission of Mr. Smith's would have established it. But she did not. She was as sure of the fact as though an angel had revealed it to her. The sight of her own good eyes, the hearing of her true ears, and the exercise of her keen common sense had established it too surely.
"My task lies all plain before me," she murmured. "It is a disagreeable one, and may prove a thankless one, but I will not shrink from it. Who am I that I should turn aside from an appointed duty? That ithasbeen appointed me, events show. I have been guided in this by a higher power than my own."
An appointed duty! Perhaps Miss Blake thought she had been "appointed" to watch the Maze gates in the shade of the dark night, to track the private steps of her unsuspicious host, Karl Andinnian! There is no sophistry in this world like self-sophistry; nothing else so deceives the human heart: more especially when it is hidden under a guise of piety.
Miss Blake found her opportunity in the course of the morning. A shade of pity crossed her for the happiness she was about to mar, as she saw the husband and wife out together after breakfast, amid the flowers. Now Lucy's arm entwined fondly in his, now tripping by his side, now calling his attention to some rare or sweet blossom, as Mr. Smith had called Miss Blake's in the morning, went they. In Lucy's bright face, as she glanced perpetually at her lord and husband, there was so much of love, so much of trust: and in his, Sir Karl's, there was a whole depth of apparent tenderness for her.
"Men were deceivers ever," angrily cried Miss Blake, recalling a line of the old ballad. "It's enough to make one sick. But I am sorry for Lucy; it will be a dreadful blow. How I wish it could be inflicted on him instead of her! In a measure it will fall on him--for of course Lucy will take active steps."
Later, when Sir Karl, as it chanced, had gone over to Basham, and Lucy was in her pretty little dressing room, writing to some girl friend, Miss Blake seized on the opportunity. Shutting herself in with Lady Andinnian, she made the communication to her. She told it with as much gentle consideration as possible, very delicately, and, in fact, rather obscurely. At first Lady Andinnian did not understand, could not understand; and when she was made to understand, her burning face flashed forth its indignation, and she utterly refused to believe.
Miss Blake only expected this. She was very soothing and tender.
"Sit down, Lucy," she said. "Listen. On my word of honour, I would not have imparted this miserable tale to inflict on you pain so bitter, but that I saw itmustbe done. For your sake, and in the interests of everything that's right and just and seemly, it would not have done to suffer you to remain in ignorance, a blind victim to the dastardly deceit practised on you by your husband."
"He could not so deceive me, Theresa; he could not deceive any one," she burst forth passionately.
"My dear, I only ask you to listen. You can then judge for yourself. Do not take my word that it is, or must be, so. Hear the facts, and then use your own common sense. Alas, Lucy, there can be no mistake: but for knowing that, should I have spoken, think you? It is, unfortunately, as true as heaven."
From the beginning to the end, Miss Blake told her tale. She spoke out without reticence now. Sitting beside Lucy on the sofa, and holding her hands in hers with a warm and loving clasp, she went over it all. The mystery that appeared to encompass this young lady, living alone at the Maze in strict seclusion with her two old servants, who were man and wife, she spoke of first as an introduction. She said how curiously it had attracted her attention, unaccountably to herself at the time, but thatnowshe knew a divine inspiration had guided her to the instinct. She avowed how she had got in, and that it was done purposely; and that she had seen the girl, who was called Mrs. Grey, and was "beautiful as an angel," and heard her sing the characteristic song (which might well indeed have been written ofher), "When lovely woman stoops to folly." Next, she described Sir Karl's secret visits; the key he let himself in with, taken from his pocket; the familiar and affectionate words interchanged between him and the girl, who on the second occasion had come to the gate to wait for him. She told Lucy that she had afterwards had corroborative evidence from Mr. Smith, the agent: he appeared to know all about it, to take it as a common matter of course, and to be content to ignore it after the custom of the world. She said that Sir Karl had brought Mrs. Grey to the Maze during the time he was staying at Foxwood in attendance on his sick mother: and she asked Lucy to recall the fact of his prolonged sojourn here, of his unwillingness to leave it and rejoin her, his wife; and of the very evident desire he had had to keep her altogether from Foxwood. In short, as Miss Blake put the matter--and every syllable she spoke did she believe to be strictly true and unexaggerated--it was simply impossible for the most unwilling listener not to be convinced.
Lady Andinnian was satisfied: and it was as her death-blow. Truth itself could not have appeared more plain and certain. After the first outburst of indignation, she had sat very calm and quiet, listening silently. Trifles excite the best of us, but in a great calamity heart and self alike shrink into stillness. Save that she had turned pale as death, there was no sign.
"Lucy, my poor Lucy, forgive me! I would have spared you if I could: but I believe the task of telling you waslaidon me."
"Thank you, yes; I suppose it was right to tell me, Theresa," came the mechanical answer from the quivering lips.
"My dear, what will be your course? You cannot remain here, his wife."
"Would you please let me be alone, now, Theresa? I do not seem to be able to think yet collectedly."
The door closed on Miss Blake, and Lady Andinnian bolted it after her. She bolted the other two doors, so as to make sure of being alone. Then the abandonment began. Kneeling on the carpet, her head buried on the sofa pillow, she lay realizing the full sense of the awful shock. It shook her to the centre. Oh, how dreadful it was! She had so loved Karl, so believed in him: she had believed that man rarely loved a maiden and then a wife as Karl had loved her. This, then, must have been the secret trouble that was upon him!--which had all but induced him to break off his marriage! So she reasoned, and supposed she reasoned correctly. All parts of the supposition, had she thought them well out, might not perhaps have fitted-in to one another: but in a distress such as this, no woman--no, nor man either--is capable of working out problems logically. She assumed that the intimacy must have been going on for years: in all probability long before he knew her.
An hour or so of this painful indulgence, and then Lady Andinnian rose from the floor and sat down to think, as well as she could think, what her course should be.Shewas truly religious, though perhaps she knew it not. Theresa Blake was ostensibly so, and very much so in her own belief: but the difference was wide. The one had the real gold, the other but the base coin washed over. She, Lucy, strove to think and to see what would be right and best to do; for herself, for her misguided husband, and in the sight of God.
She sat and thought it out, perhaps for another hour. Aglaé came to the door to say luncheon was served, but Lady Andinnian said Miss Blake was to be told that she had a headache and should not take any. To make a scandal and leave her husband's home--as Theresa seemed to have hinted--would have gone well nigh to kill her with the shame and anguish it would entail. And oh, she hoped, she trusted, that her good father and mother, who had yielded to her love for Karl and so sanctioned the marriage, might never, never know of this. She lifted her imploring eyes and hands to Heaven in prayer that it might be kept from them. She prayed that she might be enabled to do what was right, and tobear: to bear silently and patiently, no living being, save Sir Karl, knowing what she had to endure.
For, while she was praying for the way to be made clear before her and for strength to walk in it, however thorny it might be, an idea had dawned upon her that this matter might possibly be kept from the world,--might be held sacred between herself and Sir Karl.Couldshe? could she continue to live on at the Court, bearing in patient silence--nay, in impatient--the cruel torment, the sense of insult? And yet, if she did not remain, how would it be possible to conceal it all from her father and mother? The very indecision seemed well nigh to kill her.
Visitors drove up to the house in the course of the afternoon--the county families were beginning to call--and Lady Andinnian had to go down. Miss Blake was off to one of St. Jerome's services--of which the Reverend Guy Cattacomb was establishing several daily. Sir Karl came home while the visitors were there. After their departure, when he came to look round for his wife, he was told she had hastily thrown on bonnet and mantle and gone out. Sir Karl rather wondered.
Not only to avoid her husband, but also because she wanted to see Margaret Sumnor, and perhaps gain from her a crumb of comfort in her utter wretchedness, had Lady Andinnian run forth to gain the vicarage. Margaret was lying as before, on her hard couch, or board; doing, for a wonder, nothing. Her hands were clasped meekly before her on her white wrapper, her eyelids seemed heavy with crying. But the eyes smiled a cheerful greeting to Lady Andinnian.
"Is anything the matter, Margaret?"
It was but the old story, the old grievance; Margaret Sumnor was pained by it, more or less, nearly every day of her life--the home treatment of her father: the contempt shown to him by his second family; ay, and by his wife.
"It is a thing I cannot talk of much, Lucy. I should not speak of it at all, but that it is well known to Foxwood, and commented on openly. Caroline and Martha set papa at naught in all ways: the insolence of their answers to him, both in words and manner, brings the blush of pain and shame to his face. This time the trouble was about that new place of Miss Blake's, St. Jerome's. Papa forbid them to frequent it; but it was just as though he had spoken to a stone--in fact, worse; for they retorted and set him at defiance. They wanted daily service, they said, and should go where it was held. So now papa, I believe, thinks of resuming his daily services here, at Trinity, hoping it may counteract the other. There, that's enough of home and my red eyes, Lucy. You don't look well."
Lady Andinnian drew her chair quite close to the invalid, so that she might let her hand rest in the one held out for her. "I have a trouble too, Margaret," she whispered. "A dreadful, sudden trouble, a blow; and I think it has nearly broken my heart. I cannot tell you what it is; I cannot tell any one in the world----"
"Except your husband," interposed Miss Sumnor. "Never have any concealments from him, Lucy."
Lady Andinnian's face turned red and white with embarrassment. "Yes, him; I shall have to speak to him," she said, in some hesitation: and Miss Sumnor's deep insight into others' hearts enabled her to guess that the trouble had something to do with Sir Karl. She suspected it was that painful thing to a young wife--a first quarrel.
"I am not like you, Margaret--ever patient, ever good," faltered poor Lady Andinnian. "I seem to be nearly torn apart with conflicting thoughts--perhaps I ought to say passions--and I thought I would come to you for a word of advice and comfort. There are two ways in which I can act in this dreadful matter; and indeed that word is no exaggeration, for it is very dreadful. The one would be to make a stir in it, take a high tone, and set forth my wrongs; that would be revenge, just revenge; but I hardly know whether it would be right, or bring right. The other would be to put up with the evil in silence, andbear; and leave the future to God. Which must I do?"
Margaret Sumnor turned as much as she could turn without assistance, and laid both her hands imploringly on Lady Andinnian's.
"Lucy! Lucy! choose the latter. I have seen, oh, so much of this revenge, and of how it has worked. My dear, I believe in my honest heart that this revenge was never yet taken but it was repented of in the end. However grave the justifying cause and cruel the provocation, the time would come when it was heartily and bitterly regretted, when its actor would say, Oh that I had not done as I did, that I had chosen the merciful part!"
There was a brief silence. Miss Sumnor resumed.
"'Vengeance is mine; I will repay;' you know who says that, Lucy: but you cannot know what I have seen and marked so often--that when that vengeance is taken into human hands, it somehow defeats itself. It may inflict confusion and ruin on the adversary; but it never fails to tell in some way on the inflictor. It may be only in mental regret: regret that may not set in until after long years; but, rely upon it, he never fails, in his remorseful heart, to wish the past could be undone. A regret, such as this, we have to carry with us to the grave; for it can never be remedied, the revengeful act cannot be blotted out. It has been done; and it stands with its consequences for ever: consequences, perhaps, that we never could have foreseen."
Lady Andinnian sat listening with drooping face. A softer expression stole over it.
"There is one thing we never can repent of, Lucy; and that is, of choosing the path of mercy--of leniency. It brings a balm with it to the sorely-chafed spirit, and heals in time. Doyouchoose it, my dear. I urge it on you with my whole heart."
"I think I will, Margaret; I think I will," she answered, raising for a moment her wet eyes. "It will mortify my pride and my self-esteem: be always mortifying them; and I shall need a great deal of patience to bear."
"But you will be able to bear; to bear all; you know where to go for help. Do this, Lucy; and see if in the future you do not find your reward. In after years, it may be that your heart will go up with, a great bound of joy and thankfulness. 'I did as Margaret told me,' you will say, 'and bore.' Oh, if men and women did but know the future that they lay up for themselves according as their acts shall be!--the remorse or the peace."
Lucy rose and kissed her. "It shall be so, Margaret," she whispered. And she went away without another word.
She strove to keep the best side uppermost in her mind as she went home. Her resolution was taken; and, perhaps because it was taken, the temptation to act otherwise and to choose revenge, rose up in all manner of attractive colours. She could abandon her ill-doing husband and start, even that night, for her parents' home; reveal the whole, and claim their protection against him. This would be to uphold her pride and her womanly self-respect: but oh, how it would pain them! And they had given their consent to the marriage against their better judgment for her sake; so to say, against their own will. No; she could not, for very shame, tell them, and she prayed again that they might never know it.
"Icantake all the pain upon myself, and bear it without sign for their sakes," she mentally cried. "Oh yes, and for mine, for the exposure would kill me. Icanbear this; I must take it up as my daily and nightly cross; but I could not bear that my own dear father and mother, or the dear friends of my girlhood, should know he is faithless to me--that he never could have loved me. Theresa, the only one cognisant of it, will be silent for my sake."
Bitter though the decision was, Lucy could but choose it. She had believed Karl Andinnian to be one of the few good men of the earth; she had made him her idol; all had seen it. To let them know that the idol had fallen from his pedestal, andsofallen, would reflect its slighting disgrace on her, and be more than human nature could encounter.
Her interview with Sir Karl took place that evening. She had managed, save at dinner, to avoid his presence until then. It was held in her dressing-room at the dusk hour. He came up to know why she stayed there alone and what she was doing. In truth, she had been schooling herself for this very interview, which had to be got over before she went to rest. The uncertainty of what she could say was troubling her, even the very words she should use caused her perplexity. In her innate purity, her sensitively refined nature, she could not bring herself to speak openly to her husband upon topics of this unpleasant kind. That fact rendered the explanation more incomplete and complicated than it would otherwise have been. He had come up, and she nerved herself to the task. As good enter on it now as an hour later.
"I--I want to speak to you, Sir Karl."
He was standing by the open window, and turned his head quickly. Sir Karl! "What's amiss, Lucy?" he asked.
"I--I--I know all about your secret at the Maze," she said with a great burst of emotion, her chest heaving, her breath coming in gasps.
Sir Karl started as though he had been shot. His very lips turned of an ashy whiteness.
"Lucy! You cannot know it!"
"Heaven knows I do," she answered. "I have learnt it all this day. Oh, how could you so deceive me?"
Sir Karl's first act was to dart to the door that opened on the corridor and bolt it. He then opened the two doors leading to the chambers on either side, looked to see that no one was in either of them, shut the doors again, and bolted them.
"Sir Karl, this has nearly killed me."
"Hush!" he breathed. "Don't talk of it aloud, for the love of God!"
"Why did you marry me?" she asked.
"Why, indeed," he retorted, his voice one of sad pain. "I have reproached myself enough for it since, Lucy."
She was silent. The answer angered her; and she had need of all her best strength, the strength she had so prayed for, to keep her lips from a cruel answer. She sat in her low dressing-chair, gazing at him with reproachful eyes.
He said no more just then. Well-nigh overwhelmed with the blow, he stood back against the window-frame, his arms folded, his face one of pitiful anguish. Lucy, his wife, had got hold of the dreadful secret that was destroying his own peace, and that he had been so cunningly planning to conceal.
"How did you learn it?" he asked.
"I shall never tell you," she answered with quiet firmness, resolved not to make mischief by betraying Theresa. "I know it, and that is enough. Put it down, if you choose, that it was revealed to me by accident--or that I guessed at."
"But, Lucy, it is necessary I should know."
"I have spoken, Sir Karl. I will never tell you." The evening breeze came wafting into that room of pain; cooling, it might be, their fevered brows, though they were not conscious of it. Lady Andinnian resumed.
"The unpardonable deceit you practised on my father and mother----"
Sir Karl's start of something like horror interrupted her. "They must never know it, Lucy. In mercy to us all, you must join with me in concealing it from them."
"It was very wicked in you to have concealed it from them at all. At least, to have married mewithsuch a secret--for I conclude you could not have really dared to tell them. They deserved better at your hands. I was their only daughter: all they had to love."
"Yes, it was wrong. I have reproached myself since worse than you can reproach me. But I did not know the worst then."
She turned from him proudly. "I--I wanted to tell you, Sir Karl, that I for one will never forgive or forget your falsehood and deceit; and, what I am about to say, I say for my father and mother's sake. I will keep it from them, always if I can; I will bury it within my own breast, and remain on here in your home, your ostensible wife. I had thought of leaving your house for theirs, never to return; but the exposure it would bring frightened me; and, in truth, I shrink from the scandal."
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "My 'ostensible' wife?"
"I shall never be your wife again in reality. That can be yourroom"--pointing to the one they had jointly occupied; "this one is mine," indicating the chamber on the other hand. "Aglaé has already taken my things into it."
Sir Karl stood gazing at her, lost in surprise.
"No one but ourselves need know of this," she resumed, her eyes dropping before the tender, pitiful gaze of his. "The arrangements are looked upon by Aglaé as a mere matter of convenience in the hot weather; the servants will understand it as such. I would spare us both gossip. For your sake and for mine I am proposing this medium course--to avoid the scandal that otherwise must ensue. I shall have to bear, Karl--to bear----" her heart nearly failed her in its bitter grief--"but it will be better than a public separation."
"Youcannotmean what you say," he exclaimed. "Live apart from me! The cause cannot justify it."
"It scarcely becomes you to say this. Have you forgotten the sin?" she added, in a whisper.
"The sin? Well, of course it was sin--crime, rather. But that is of the past."
She thought she understood what he wished to imply, and bit her lips to keep down their bitter words.
He was surely treating her as the veriest child, striving to hoodwink her still! That he was agitated almost beyond control, she saw: and did not wonder at.
"The sin is past," he repeated. "No need to recall it or talk of it."
"Be it so," she scornfully said. "Its results remain.This, I presume, was the great secret you spoke of the night before our marriage."
"It was. And you see now, Lucy, why I did not dare to speak more openly. I grant that it would have been enough to prevent our marriage, had you then so willed it: but, being my wife, it is not any sufficient cause for you to separate yourself from me."
And, in answer to a question of mine, he could boast that night of his innocence! ran her indignant thoughts.
"I am the best judge of that," she said aloud, in answer. "Not sufficient cause! I wonder you dare say it. It is an outrage on all the proprieties of life. You must bring--them--to the Maze here, close to your roof, and mine!"
In her shrinking reticence, she would not mention to him the girl in plain words; she would not even say "her," but substituted the term "them," as though speaking of Mrs. Grey and her servants collectively. Sir Karl's answer was a hasty one.
"That was not my doing. The coming to the Maze was the greatest mistake ever made. I was powerless to help it."
Again she believed she understood. That when Sir Karl had wished to shake off certain trammels, he found himself not his own master in the matter, and could not.
"And so you submitted?" she scornfully said.
"I had no other choice, Lucy."
"And you pay your visits there!"
"Occasionally. I cannot do otherwise."
"Does it never occur to you to see that public exposure may come? she continued, in the same contemptuous tone. For the time, Lucy Andinnian's sweet nature seemed wholly changed. Every feeling she possessed had risen up against the bitter insult thrust upon her--and Sir Karl seemed to be meeting it in a coolly insulting spirit.
"The fear of exposure is killing me, Lucy," he breathed, his chest heaving with its painful emotion. "I have been less to blame than you imagine. Let me tell you the story from the beginning, and you will see that----"
"I will not hear a word of it," burst forth Lucy. "It is not a thing that should be told to me. At any rate, I will not hear it."
"As you please, of course; I cannot force it on you. My life was thorny enough before: I never thought that, even if the matter came to your knowledge, you would take it up in this cruel manner, and add to my pain and perplexity."
"It is for the Maze that we have to be economical here!" she rejoined, partly as a question, her hand laid on her rebellious bosom.
"Yes, yes. You see, Lucy, in point of fact----"
"I see nothing but what I do see. I wish to see no further."
Sir Karl looked searchingly at her, as though he could not understand. Could this be his own loving, gentle Lucy? It was indeed difficult to think so.
"In a day or two when you shall have had time to recover from the blow, Lucy--and a blow I acknowledge it to be--you will, I hope, judge me more leniently. You are my wife and I will not give you up: there is no real cause for it. When you shall be calmer you may feel sorry for some things you have said now."
"Sir Karl, listen: and take your choice. I will stay on in your home on the terms I have mentioned, and they shall be perfectly understood and agreed to by both of us; or I will leave it for the protection of my father's home. In the latter case I shall have to tell him why. It is for you to choose."`"Have you well weighed what your telling would involve?"
"Yes; exposure: and it is that I wish to avoid. If it has to come, it will be your fault. The choice lies with you. My decision is unalterable."
Sir Karl Andinnian wiped his brow of the fever-drops gathered there. It was a bitter moment: and he considered that his wife was acting with most bitter harshness. But no alternative was left him, for he dared not risk exposure and its awful consequences.
And so, that was the decision. They were to live on, enemies, under the same roof-top: or at best, not friends. The interview lasted longer; but no more explicit explanation took place between them: and when they parted they parted under a mutual and total misapprehension which neither of the two knew or suspected. Misapprehension had existed throughout the interview--and was to exist. It was one of those miserable cases that now and then occur in the world--a mutual misunderstanding, for which no one is to blame. Sometimes it is never set right on this side the grave.
Her heart was aching just as much as his. She loved him passionately, and she was calming down from her anger to a softer mood, such as parting always brings. "Will you not send the--the people away?" she whispered in a last word, and with a burst of grief.
"If I can I will," was his answer. "I am hemmed in, Lucy, by all kinds of untoward perplexities, and I cannot do as I would. Goodnight. I never could have believed you would take it up like this."
They shook hands and parted. The affair had been at last amicably arranged, so to say: and the separation was begun.
And so Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian were henceforth divided, and the household knew it not.
Miss Blake did not suspect a word of it. She saw no signs of any change--for outwardly Karl and his wife were civil and courteous to each other as usual; meeting at meals, present together in daily intercourse. After a few days Miss Blake questioned Lady Andinnian.
"Surely you have not been so foolishly soft as to condone that matter, Lucy?"
But Lucy wholly refused to satisfy her. Nay, she smiled, and as good as tacitly let Miss Blake suppose that she might have been soft and foolish. Not even to her, or to any other living being, would Lucy betray what was sacred between herself and her husband.
"I am content to let it rest, Theresa: and I must request that you will do the same. Sir Karl and I both wish it."
Miss Blake caught the smile and the gently evasive words, and was struck mute at Lucy's sin and folly. She quite thought she ought to have an atonement offered up for her at St. Jerome's. Surely Eve was not half so frail and foolish when she took the apple!
The Maze was an old-fashioned, curious house inside, full of angles and passages and nooks and corners. Its rooms were small, and not many in number, the principal ones being fitted up with dark mahogany wainscoting. The windows were all casement windows with the exception of two: into those, modern sashes of good size had been placed by the late owner and occupant, Mr. Throcton. At Mr. Throcton's death the property was put up for sale and was bought by Sir Joseph Andinnian, furniture and all, just as it stood. Or, it may rather be said, was bought by Lady Andinnian; for the whim to buy it was hers. Just after the purchase had been entirely completed Lady Andinnian sickened and died. Sir Joseph, ill at the time, did nothing whatever with the new place; so that on his death it came into the possession of his heirs in exactly the same state as when it was purchased. They let it be also, and it remained shut up. According to what Mr. Smith informed Miss Blake--and he was in the main correct, though not quite--Mrs. Grey had come to it and taken possession while Mrs. Andinnian lay ill at Foxwood and her son Karl was in attendance on her. But the little fable the agent had made use of--that he had gone over to the Maze to receive the premium from Mrs. Grey on taking possession--had no foundation in fact. He had certainly gone to the Maze and seen the lady called Mrs. Grey, but not to receive a premium, for she paid none.
The two rooms into which sash windows had been placed were--the one that faced Miss Blake when she had penetrated to the confines of the Maze on that unlucky day, and within which she had seen the unconscious Mrs. Grey; and the one above it. They were at the end of the house, looking towards the entrance gates. Into this upper room the reader must pay a night visit. It was used as a sitting-room. The same dark mahogany wainscoting lined the walls as in the room below, the furniture was dark and heavy-looking; and, in spite of the sultry heat of the night, the shutters were closed before the window and dull crimson curtains of damask wool were drawn across them. There was nothing bright in the appendages of the room, save the lighted lamp on the table and a crystal vase of hothouse flowers.
Seated at the table at work--the making of an infant's frock--wasMrs. Grey. Opposite to her, in the space between the table and the fire-place, sat Sir Karl; and by her side, facing him--Adam Andinnian.
It is more than probable that this will be no surprise; that the reader has already divined the truth of the secret, and all the miserable complication it had brought and was bringing in its train. It was not Adam Andinnian who had died in that fatal scuffle off Portland Island--or more strictly speaking, off Weymouth--but one of the others who had been concerned in it.
Yes, there he sat, in life and in health; his speech as free, his white and beautiful teeth not less conspicuous than of yore--Sir Adam Andinnian. Karl, sitting opposite with his grave, sad face, was not in reality Sir Karl and never had been.
But Adam Andinnian was altered. The once fine black hair, which it had used to please him to wear long in the neck, was now short, scanty, and turned to grey; his once fine fresh colour had given place to pallor, and he was growing a beard that looked grey and stubbly. Decidedly old-looking now, as compared with the past, was Adam Andinnian. He wore evening dress: just as though he had been attired for a dinner party--say--at Foxwood Court. Mrs. Grey--as she was called, though she was in reality Lady Andinnian wore a summer dress of clear white muslin, through which might be seen her white neck and arms. It was the pleasure of her husband, Sir Adam, that in the evening, when only he dared to come out of his hiding-shell, they should keep up, in attire at least, some semblance of the state that ought to have been theirs.
"I can tell you, Karl, that I don't approve of it," Sir Adam was saying, with all his old haughty bearing and manner. "It's a regular scandal. What business has any one to set up such a thing on my land?"
"It's Truefit's land for the time being, you know, Adam. He gave the consent."
"A parcel of foolish people--be-vanitied boys of self-called priests, and be-fooled girls, running and racing to the place four or five times a day under pretence of worship!" continued Sir Adam, getting up to pace the room in his excitement, as though he would have burst through its small confines. "I won't permit it, Karl."
He seemed to have got somewhat shorter, and his walk had a limp in it. But he was the same hasty, fiery, Adam Andinnian. A man cannot well change his nature.
"I do not see how it is to be prevented," was Karl's answer. "It will not do in our position, to raise a stir over anything, or to make enemies. I daresay it will bring itself to an end some way or other."
"The whole parish is making fun of it, I find: Ann hears it talked of when she goes on errands. And it is a downright insult on Mr. Sumnor. What a curious-minded person that Miss Blake must be! Rose"--Sir Adam halted close to his wife--"if ever you put your foot inside this St. Jerome's I'll not forgive you."
She lifted her eyes to his from the baby's frock. "I am not likely to go to it, Adam."
"The empty-headed creatures that girls are, now-a-days! Ifbull-baiting came up, they'd run off to it, just as readily as the good girls of former days would run from any approach of evil to take shelter under their mother's wing. Does your wife frequent St. Jerome's, Karl?"
"Oh no."
"She shows her sense."
Karl Andinnian smiled. "You have not lost the old habit, Adam--the putting yourself into a heat for nothing. I came over this evening to have some serious talk with you. Do sit down."
"Yes do, Adam," added his wife, turning to him; "you will get the pain in your hip again. Do you wish me to go away?" she added to Karl, as she prepared to gather up her working materials.
"No, no, Rose: it's only the old story, I know--the wanting to get rid of me," interposed Sir Adam, sitting down himself. "Stay where you are, wife. Now for it, Karl.--Wait a moment, though" he added, ringing the bell.
It was answered by the same staid, respectable-looking servant seen by Miss Blake; the same confidential woman who had lived with Mrs. Andinnian at Weymouth--Ann Hopley.
"Ann, I am as thirsty as a fish," said her master. "Bring up a bottle of soda-water and a dash of brandy."
"Yes, sir," she replied--not daring now or at any other time to give him his title.
He opened the soda-water himself when it was brought, put in the brandy, drank it, and sat down again. Karl Andinnian began to speak, feeling an innate certainty that his words would be wasted ones.
But some explanation of the past is necessary, and it may as well be given here.
When Karl Andinnian went down from London to Weymouth upon the news of his brother's attempted escape and death, he found his mother in a dreadful state of distress--as already related. This distress was not put on: indeed such distress it would not be possible to assume: for Mrs. Andinnian believed the public accounts--that Adam was dead.Aftershe had despatched Karl to Foxwood to make arrangements for the interment, the truth was disclosed to her, Sir Adam had escaped with life, and was lying concealed in Weymouth; but he had been terribly knocked about in the scuffle, and in fact had been considered dead. By the careless stupidity of one of the warders, or else by his connivance, Mrs. Andinnian never entirely knew which, he was reported at the prison as being dead--and perhaps the prison thought itself well rid of so obstreperous an inmate. The warders had said one to another from the time he was first put there, that that Andinnian gentleman had "mischief" in him. Further explanation may be given later on in the story: at present it is enough to say that Adam Andinnian escaped.
When Mrs. Andinnian arrived with the body (supposed to be her son's) at Foxwood, she then knew the truth. Adam was not dead. He was lying somewhere in great danger; they would not, from motives Of prudence, allow her to know where; but, dead he was not. Not a hint did she disclose of this to Karl; and he stood by her side over the grave, believing it was his brother that was placed in it. She called him Sir Karl; she never gave him a hint that his succession to the title and estates was but a pseudo one; she suffered him to depart in the false belief. Perhaps she did not dare to speak of it, even to him. Karl went abroad, re-met Lucy Cleeve, and became engaged to her. He caused the marriage settlements to be drawn up and signed, still never dreaming that he had no legal right to settle, that the revenues were not his. Only when he went down to Foxwood, a day or two before his marriage, did he become acquainted with the truth.
That was the dread secret disclosed to him by his mother; that, in her fear, she had made him take an oath to keep--"Adam is not dead." Just at the first moment Karl thought her intellects must be wandering: but as she proceeded in a few rapid words to tell of his escape, of his dangerous illness, of his lying even then, hidden away from the terrors of the law, all the dreadful position of his ill-fated brother rushed over Karl as in one long agony. He saw in vivid colours the hazard Adam was running--and must ever run, until either death or recapture should overtake him; he saw as if portrayed in a mirror the miserable future that lay before him, the lonely fugitive he must be.
To Karl Andinnian's mind, no fate in this world could be so miserable. Even death on the scaffold would to himself have been preferable to this lifetime of living dread. He had loved his brother with a keen love; and he felt this almost as a death-blow: he could have died in his love and pity, if by that means his brother might be saved. Mingling with this regret had come the thought of his own changed position, and that he ought not to marry.
This he said. But Mrs. Andinnian pointed out to him that his position would not be so very materially altered. Such was her conviction. That she herself, by connivance with one of the warders, had mainly contributed to the step Adam had taken, that she had been the first to put it into his head, and set him on to attempt it, she was all too remorsefully conscious of. Now that he had escaped, and was entered in the prison rolls as dead, and lay hidden away in some hole or corner, not daring to come out of it, or to let into it the light of day, she saw what she had done. Not even to her might his hiding-place be disclosed. She saw that his future life must be, at the very best, that of a nameless exile--if, by good fortune, he could make his escape from his own land. If? His person was rather a remarkable one, and well known to his enemies the police force. Not one, perhaps, but had his photograph. A fugitive in some barren desert, unfrequented by man, where he must drag on a solitary life of expatriation! Not much of his income would be needed for this.
"You will have to occupy Foxwood as its master; you must be Sir Karl to the world as you are now," spoke Mrs. Andinnian; "and it is your children who will inherit after you. There is no reason whatever for breaking off your marriage, or for altering any of the arrangements. You will have to pay a certain sum yearly to Adam out of the estate. He will not need it long, poor fellow; a man's life, banned to the extent his will be, eats itself away soon."
Hemmed in by perplexities of all kinds, Karl's interview with his mother ended, and he went forth with his care and trouble. His own trouble would have been enough, but it was as nothing to that felt for his brother. He dared not tell the truth to Colonel Cleeve or to Lucy, or impart the slightest hint that his brother was alive; he almost as little dared, for Lucy's sake, to break off the marriage. And so it took place.
After that, he heard no more until he was again at Foxwood, summoned thither by his mother's illness. Mrs. Andinnian had fretted herself sick. Night and day, night and day was the fear of her son's discovery ever before her mind; she would see the recapture in her dreams: remorse wore her out, and fever supervened. She would have given all she possessed in the world could he be safely back at Portland Island without having attempted to quit it. Karl, on his arrival, found her in this sad state: and it was then she disclosed to him a further complication in the case, which she had but recently learnt herself. Sir Adam Andinnian was married.
It may be remembered that he was for a few days absent from his home in Northamptonshire, returning to it only on the eve of the day that news came of Sir Joseph's death, the fatal day when he killed Martin Scott. He had left home for the purpose of marrying Rose Turner, who was staying in Birmingham, a measure which had previously been planned between them. But for his mother's prejudices--as he called them--he would have married the young lady in the face of day; but he knew she would never consent, and he did not care openly to set her at naught. "We will be married in private, Rose," he decided, "and I will feel my way afterwards to disclose it to my mother." And Miss Rose Turner cared for him too much to make any objection. Alas, the time never came for him to disclose it. On the very day after his return to his home, the young lady returning to hers, to her unsuspicious friends, he was thrown into prison on the charge of murder. It was not a time to speak; he wished to spare comment and annoyance to her; and she gave evidence at the trial--which she could 'not have done had she been his acknowledged wife. All this had been disclosed to Mrs. Andinnian the day after Karl left to celebrate his marriage. The stranger, Mr. Smith, spoken of by Hewitt as presenting himself again that day at Foxwood, and demanding an interview with its mistress, told her of it then. It was another bitter blow for Mrs. Andinnian, and the distress of mind it induced no doubt helped to bring on the fever. This, in her turn, she disclosed to Karl later from hersick-bed; and for him it made the complication ten times worse. Had he known his brother had a wife, nothing would have induced him to marry Lucy. Mrs. Andinnian told him more; that Adam had escaped safely to London, where he then lay hidden, and where his wife had joined him; and that they were coming to inhabit the Maze at Foxwood. The last bit of news nearly struck Karl dumb.
"Is Adam mad?" he asked.
"No, very sane," replied Mrs. Andinnian. "He wants to be at least on his own grounds: and we all think--he and I and--no matter--that he may be safer here than anywhere. Even were there a suspicion abroad that he is alive--which there is not, and I trust never will be,--his own place is the very last place that people would look into for him. Besides, there will be precautions used--and the Maze is favourable for concealment."
"It will be utter madness," spoke Karl. "It will be putting himself into the lion's mouth.'
"It will be nothing of the sort--or Mr. Smith would not approve of it," retorted Mrs. Andinnian. "I must see my son, Karl: and how else am I to see him? I may not go to him where he is: it might bring suspicion on him; but I can go over to the Maze."
"Who is Mr. Smith?--and what has he to do with Adam?--and how comes he in the secret?" reiterated Karl.
But to this he could get no answer. Whether Mrs. Andinnian knew, or whether she did not know, she would not say. The one fact--that Mr. Smith held the dangerous secret, and must be conciliated, was quite enough, she said, for Karl Mr. Smith had Adam's safety and interest at heart, she went on to state; he wished to be near the Maze to watch over him; and she had given him the pretty cottage opposite the Maze gates to live in, calling him Sir Karl's agent, and appointing him to collect a few rents, so as to give a colouring of ostensibility to the neighbourhood. In vain Karl remonstrated. It was useless. The ground seemed slipping from under all their feet, but he could do nothing.
After all, poor Mrs. Andinnian did not live to see her most beloved son. Anxiety, torment, restlessness, proved too much for her, and brought on the crisis sooner than was expected. On the very day after she died, the tenants came to the Maze--at least, all the tenants who would be seen openly, or be suspected of inhabiting it. They arrived by the last evening train; Mrs. Grey and her attendants, the Hopleys; and took two flies, which were waiting in readiness, on to the Maze; the lady occupying one, Hopley and his wife the other. How Adam Andinnian reached the place, it is not convenient yet to state.
In the course of the next evening, Karl Andinnian went over to the Maze and saw his brother. Adam was much altered. In the fever, which had supervened on his injuries received at the escape, he had lost his hair and become pale and thin. But his spirits were undaunted. He should soon "pick up" now he was in the free open country air and on his own grounds, he said. As to danger, he seemed not to see it, and declared there was less risk of discovery there than anywhere else. Karl could play the grand man and the baronet for him at Foxwood--but he meant, for all that, to have a voice in the ruling of his own estate. Poor Karl Andinnian, on the contrary, saw the very greatest danger in the position of affairs. He would have preferred to shut up Foxwood, leaving only Hewitt to take care of it, that no chance of discovery should arise from either servants or other inhabitants there. But Sir Adam ruled it otherwise; saying he'd not have the Court left to stagnate. Hewitt was in the secret. It might have been neither expedient nor practicable to keep it from him: but the question was decided of itself. One evening just before Mrs. Andinnian's death, when Hewitt had gone to her sick-room on some errand at the dusk hour, she mistook him for Karl; and spoke words which betrayed all. Karl was glad of it: it seemed a protection to Adam, rather than not, that his tried old servant should be cognizant of the truth. So Karl went abroad again with his wife, and stayed until his keeping aloof from Foxwood began to excite comment in his wife's family; when he deemed it more expedient to return to it.
And now does the reader perceive all the difficulties of Karl Andinnian? There he was, in a false position: making believe to be a baronet of the realm, and a wealthy man, and the owner of Foxwood: and obliged to make believe. A hint to the contrary, a word that he was not in his right place, might have set suspicion afloat--and Heaven alone knew what would then be the ending. For Adam's sake he must be wary and cunning; he must play, so to say, the knave's part and deceive the world. But the dread of his brother's discovery lay upon him night and day, with a very-present awful dread: it was as a burning brand eating away his heart.
And again--you, my reader, can now understand the complication between Karl and his wife. He believed she had discovered the fact that Adam was alive and living concealed at the Maze;she, relying on Miss Blake's information, put down the Maze mystery to something of a very different nature. How could he suppose she meant anything but the dangerous truth? How could she imagine that the secret was any other than Miss Blake had so clearly and convincingly disclosed to her? In Lucy's still almost maidenly sensitiveness, she could not bring her lips to allude openly to the nature of her charge: and there was no necessity: she assumed that Karl knew it even better than she did. In his reluctance to pronounce his brother's name or hint at the secret, lest even the very air should be treacherous and carry it abroad, he was perhaps less open than he might have been. When he offered to relate to her the whole story, she stopped him and refused to listen: and so closed up the explanation that would have set the cruel doubt right and her heart at rest.
Sitting there with Adam to-night, in that closely curtained room, Karl entered upon the matter he had come to urge--that his brother should get away from the Maze into some safer place. It was, as Sir Adam expressed it, but the old story--for Karl had never ceased to urge it from the first--and he wholly refused to listen. There was no risk, he said, no fear of discovery, and he should not go away from his own land. Either from this little particular spot of land which was individually his, or from the land of his birth. It was waste of words in Karl to speak further. Adam had always been of the most obstinate possible temperament. But the (supposed) discovery of his wife had frightened Karl worse than ever. He did not mention it to them, since he was not able to say how Lucy had made it.
"As sure as you are living, Adam, you will some day find the place entered by the officers of justice!" he exclaimed in pain.
"Let them enter it," recklessly answered Sir Adam. "They'll not find me."
"Oh, Adam, you don't know. They are lynx-eyed and crafty men."
"No doubt. I am all safe, Karl."
Karl had been there longer than usual, and he rose to say good night. Mrs. Grey--for convenience sake we must continue to call her by that name, and Lucy Lady Andinnian--folded up her work and went downstairs with him. She was changed too; but for the better. The very pretty, blooming-faced Rose Turner had come in for her share of the world's bitter trouble, and it had spiritualized her. The once round face was oval now, the lovely features were refined, the damask cheeks were a shade more delicate, the soft blue eyes had a sad light in them. Miss Blake's words were not misapplied to her--"beautiful as an angel."
"Karl," she whispered, "the dread of discovery is wearing me out. If we could but get away from England!"
"I am sure it will wear out me," was Karl's answer.
"Adam is afraid of Mr. Smith, I am sure. He thinks Smith would stop his going. Karl, I fully believe, as truly as I ever believed any great truth in my life, that Mr. Smith is keeping us here and will not let us go. Mr. Smith may appear to be a friend outwardly, but I fear he is an inward enemy. Oh, dear! it is altogether a dreadful situation."
Karl went on home, his brain active, his heart sinking. The manner in which his wife had taken up the matter, distressed him greatly. He supposed she was resenting it chiefly on the score of her father and mother. The colonel had told him that they would rather have followed Lucy to the grave than see her his wife had Sir Adam lived.
"I wonder how she discovered it?" ran his thoughts--but in truth the fact did not excite so much speculation in his mind, because he was hourly living in the apprehension that people must suspect it. When we hold a dangerous secret, this is sure to be the case. "Perhaps Hewitt let drop an incautious word," he went on musing, "and Lucy caught it up, and guessed the rest. Or--perhaps I dropped one in my sleep."
Crossing the lawn of the Court, he entered by the little smoking-room, his hand pressed upon his aching brow. No wonder that people found fault with the looks of Sir Karl Andinnian! He was wearing to a skeleton. Just as his mother, when she was dying, used to see therecapture of Adam in her dreams, so did Karl see it in his. Night after night would he wake up from one of the dreadful visions. Adam, the retaken convict, held fast by a heap of scowling, threatening warders, and a frightful scaffold conspicuous in the distance. He would start up in bed in horror, believing it all real, his heart quivering, and once or twice he knew that he had cried out aloud.
"Yes, yes, that's how it must have been," he said, the mystery becoming apparently clear to his eyes as the light of day. "Hewitt is too cautious and true. I have betrayed it in my sleep. Oh, my brother! May Heaven help and save him!"