The wide window of the upper sitting-room at the Maze was thrown open to the night air. Gazing forth from it, stood Sir Adam Andinnian and his wife. He was in his usual evening dress, that he so obstinately continued to persist in assuming in the teeth of remonstrance: she wore a loose white robe and a blue cashmere shawl over it. She looked delicately fragile, very weak and ill still; and this was the first day that she had left her chamber for any length of time. There was no light in the sombre room: before light was allowed to come in, the window would be closed and the shutters shut for the night.
Not a word was being spoken between them. She had not long come into the room. A great terror lay on both their hearts. At least, it did on hers: and Sir Adam had grown to feel anything but easy. The suspicions, that appeared to be attaching themselves to the Maze outside the walls, were producing their effects on the comfort of the inmates within: and perhaps these suspicions were feared all the more because they did not as yet take any tangible or distinct form. That a detective officer was in the neighbourhood looking about, Adam had heard from his brother; and that it was the same man who had been seen by Ann Hopley watching the house in the moonlight and who had boldly presented himself at the gate the next day demanding permission to enter, Sir Adam had no doubt whatever of. Karl, too, was taking to write him notes of caution.
Brave though he was, he could not feel safe. There was not a moment of the day or night but he might see the officers of justice coming in to look for him. His own opinion was, that he should be able to evade them if they did come; to baffle their scrutiny; but he could not feel quite as easy as though he were on a bed of rose-leaves. In consequence of this apprehension, the ears of himself and his wife were ever on the alert, their eyes rarely went off the watch, their conscious hearts never lost the quick beat of fear. It was enough to wear them both out.
Can the reader really realize, I wonder, what the situation was? Can he only imagine one single hour of its terrors, or picture its never-ceasing, prolonged doubt and agony? I think not. It cannot be adequately told of. Behind and before there was the awful vista of that dreadful Portland Island: look which way they would, nothing else presented itself.
A gentle breeze suddenly arose, stirring the trees outside. Never an unexpected sound, however faint, was heard, but it stirred their beating hearts; stirred them to a fast, fluttering, ugly throbbing. It was but the wind; they knew it was only that: and yet the emotion did not subside quickly. Rose had another great anxiety, separate and apart: perhaps he had it also in a degree, but he did not admit it. It was on the score of her husband's health. There could be no doubt that something or other was amiss, for he had occasional attacks of pain that seemed to arise without any explainable cause. Ann Hopley, who considered herself wise in ailments, declared that he ought to see a doctor. She had said it to her master ineffectually; she now began to say it to her mistress. Sir Adam laughed when his wife was present, and ridiculed her advice with mocking words of pleasantry; but Ann Hopley gave nothing but grave looks in return.
The fact was, she knew more than Rose did: more than Sir Adam intended or would allow his wife to know. One day, going to a part of the grounds where she knew she should find her master, she discovered him on the ground amidst the trees in a fainting-fit, his face of a bluish-white. Some acute pain, or spasm, sharper than he had ever felt before, had caused him to lose consciousness, he said, when he recovered; and he threatened the woman with unheard of pains and penalties if she breathed a word to her mistress. Ann Hopley held her tongue accordingly: but when Rose was about again she could see that Adam was not well. And the very impossibility of calling in a medical man to him, without arousing curiosity and comments that might lead to danger, was tormenting her with its own anxiety.
"The baby sleeps well to-night, Rose."
"He has slept better and has been altogether easier since he was baptised," was her answer. "It is just as though he knew he had been made a little Christian, and so feels at rest."
"Goose!" smiled Sir Adam. "Don't you think you are sitting up too late, you young mamma?"
"I am not tired, Adam. I slept well this afternoon."
"It is later than perhaps you are aware of, Rose. Hard upon ten."
"Would you like to have lights!" she asked.
"No. I'd rather be without them."
She also would rather be without them. In this extended cause for fear that was growing up, it seemed safer to be at the open window looking out, than to be shut up in the closed room where the approaches of danger could neither be seen nor heard. Perhaps the same kind of feeling was swaying Sir Adam.
"You are sure you are well wrapped up, Rose?"
"Certain. And I could not take cold in this weather. It is like summer still."
All around was quiet as death. The stars shone in the sky: the gentle breeze, that had ruffled the trees just before, seemed to have died away. Breaking just then upon the stillness, came the sound of the church clock at Foxwood, telling its four quarters and the ten strokes of the hour after it. The same quarters, the same strokes that Miss Blake also heard, emerging from Dame Bell's cottage. The husband and wife, poor banned people, stood on again side by side, they hardly knew how long, hushing the trouble that was making a havoc of their lives, and from which they knew there could be no certain or complete escape so long as time for him should last. Presently he spoke again.
"Rose, if you stay here longer I shall close the window. This night air, calm and warm though it is, cannot be good for you----"
She laid her warning hand upon his arm. The ears of both were quick, but he was speaking at the moment, and so she caught the sound first. A pause of intense silence, their hearts beating almost to be heard; and then the advance of footsteps, whether stealthy ones or not, might be distinctly traced, coming through the maze.
"Go, Adam," she whispered.
But, before Sir Adam could quit the room, the whistle of a popular melody broke out upon the air, and they knew the intruder was Karl. It was his usual advance signal. Ann Hopley heard it below and opened the heavily barred door to him.
"You are late to-night, sir."
"True. I could not come earlier, Ann: it was not safe."
Poor Karl Andinnian! Had he but known that it was not safe that night, later as well as earlier! That is, that he had not come in unwatched. For, you have understood that it was the night mentioned at the close of the last chapter, when his interview with Mr. Strange had taken place on his return from London, and the detective and Miss Blake had subsequently watched him in.
"Now then, Karl," began Sir Adam, when the room was at length closed and lighted, and Ann Hopley had gone down again, "what was the precise meaning of the cautionary note you sent me to-day?"
"The meaning was to enjoin extra caution upon you," replied Karl, after a moment's hesitation, and an involuntary glance at Rose.
"If you have anything to say and are hesitating because my wife is present, you may speak out freely," cried the veryun-reticent Sir Adam. Rose seconded the words.
"Speak, Karl, speak," she said, leaning towards him with a painful anxiety in her tone. "It will be a relief to me. Nothing that you or any one else can say can be as bad as my own fears."
"Well, I have found out that that man is a London detective," said Karl, deeming it best to tell the whole truth. "He is down here looking after an escaped fugitive. Notyou, Adam: one Salter."
"One Salter?" echoed Sir Adam, testily, while Rose started slightly. "Who's he? What Salter? Is there any Salter at Foxwood?"
"It seems that the police in London have been suspecting that he was here and they sent this detective, who calls himself Strange, to look after him. Salter, however, cannot be found; there's no doubt that the suspicion was altogether a mistake; but, unfortunately, Strange has had his thoughts directed to the Maze, and is looking after it."
"After me?" cried Adam.
"No. I do not believe there exists the smallest suspicion that you are not in the family vault in Foxwood churchyard. He fancies some one is concealed here, and thinks it must be Salter."
"But why on earth should his suspicions be directed to the Maze at all?" demanded Sir Adam, with a touch of his native heat.
"Ah, why! We have to thank Moore for that, and your own incaution, Adam, when you allowed yourself to be seen the night he brought Nurse Chaffen in. It seems the woman has talked of it outside; telling people, and Strange amid the rest, that it was either a real gentleman in dinner attire, or a ghost in the semblance of one. Some have taken unhesitatingly to the ghost theory, believing it to be a remnant of the Throcton times; but detectives are wiser men."
"And so this man is looking after the Maze!"
"Just so. He is after Salter, not after you."
Sir Adam made no immediate observation. Rose, listening eagerly, was gazing at Karl.
"Is itsurethat Salter is not in the place?" she asked in a low tone. "That he has not been here?"
"Quite sure, Rose. The idea was a misapprehension entirely," replied Karl, returning her meaning glance. "Therefore, you see," he added, by way of giving what reassurance he could, "the man you have so dreaded is not on the track of Adam at all; but on the imaginary one of Salter."
"One scent leads to another," broke forth Sir Adam. "While the fellow is tracking out Salter, he may track out me. Who's to know that he has not a photograph of Adam Andinnian in his pocket, or my face in his memory?"
"I should like to ask him the question, whether he knew Sir Adam Andinnian personally; but I fear I dare not," remarked Karl. "A suspicion once awakened would not end. Your greatest security lies in their not knowing you are alive."
"My only security," corrected Sir Adam. "Well, Karl, if that man has his eyes directed to the Maze, it puts an end to all hope of my trying to get away. Little doubt, I suppose, but he is watching the outer walls night and day; perhaps with a dozen comrades to help him."
"For the present, you can only stay where you are," acknowledged Karl. "I have told you all this, Adam, to make you doubly careful. But for your reckless incaution I would have spared you the additional uneasiness it must bring."
"Even though the man does know me, the chances are that he would not find me if he came in," mused Sir Adam aloud. "With my precautions, the task would be somewhat difficult. You know it, Karl."
"Yes, but you are not always using your precautions," returned Karl. "Witness you here, sitting amidst us openly this evening in full dress!Don'tdo in so future, Adam! conceal yourself as you best can--I beseech it of you for the love of Heaven. When this present active trouble shall have subsided--if in God's mercy it does so subside--why then you may resume old habits again. At least, there will not be so much risk: but I have always considered them hazardous."
"I'll see," assented Sir Adam. Which was a concession fromhim.
"Be on your guard day and night. Let not one moment of either season find you off it, or unready for any surprise or emergency. Strange talked about applying for a search-warrant to examine the house. Should he do so, I will warn you of it, if possible. But your safer course is to be looking for the enemy with every ring that the bell gives, every breath that stirs the trees in the labyrinth, every sound that vibrates on the air."
"A pretty state of things!" growled Adam. "I'm sure I wish I never had come here!"
"Oh that you had not!" returned Karl.
"It's my proper place, though. It is. My dear little son, heir to all, ought to be brought up on his own property. Karlo, old fellow, that remark must have a cruel ring on your ear: but I cannot put the child out of his birthright."
"I should never wish you to do it, Adam."
"Some arrangement shall be made for the far-off future; rest assured of that, and tell your wife so. In any case, Foxwood will be yours for one-and-twenty years to come, and the income you now enjoy, to keep it up with. After the boy shall be of age----"
"Let us leave those considerations for the present," interrupted Karl. "All of us may be dead and buried before then. As for me, I seem not to see a single step before me, let alone a series of years."
"Right, Karl. These dreams lay hold of me sometimes, but it is worse than silly to speak of them. Are you going?"
"Yes. It is late. I should not have come in to-night, but for wishing to warn you. You will try and take care of yourself, Adam?" he affectionately added, holding out his hand.
"I'll take care of myself; never fear," was Sir Adam's light answer as he grasped it. "Look here, brother mine," he resumed, after a slight pause, and his voice took a deeper tone. "God knows that I have suffered too heavily for what I did; He knows that my whole life, from the rising up of the sun to its going down, from the first falling shade of night's dark curtain to its lifting, is one long, unbroken penance: and I believe in my heart that He will in His compassion shield me from further danger. There! take that to comfort you, and go in peace. In your care for me, you have needed comfort throughout more than I, Karl."
Retaining his brother's hand in his while Karl said good night to Rose, Adam went down stairs with him, and beyond the door after Ann Hopley had unbarred it. It was only since the advent of the new fears that these extra precautions of barring up at sunset had been taken.
"Don't come out," urged Karl.
"Just a step or two."
Karl submitted: he felt secure enough against active danger to-night. But it was in these trifles that Adam's natural incaution betrayed itself.
"Karl, did you tell all you knew?" he began as they plunged into the maze. "Was there more behind that you would not speak before the wife?"
"I told you all, Adam. It is bad enough."
"It might be worse. Suppose they were looking after me, for instance, instead of this fellow Salter! I shall baffle them; I don't fear."
"Adam, you shallnotcome farther. If the man got in one night, he may get in another. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, dear old anxious fellow!"
"Go in, and get the door barred."
"All right. A last good night to you!"
Karl walked on, through the intricacies of the maze. Adam stood listening for a moment, and, then turned to retrace his steps. As he did so, the sharp dart of pain he was growing accustomed to went through him, turning him sick and faint. He seized hold of a tree for support, and leaned against it.
"What on earth can be the matter with me?" ran his thoughts after it had subsided, and he was getting out his handkerchief, to wipe from his brow the cold drops of agony that had gathered there. "As Ann Hopley says, I ought to see a doctor: but it is not to be thought of; and less than ever now, with this new bother hanging over the house. Hark! Oh, it's only the wind rustling the leaves again."
He stayed listening to it. Listening in a dreamy kind of way, his thoughts still on his malady.
"I wonder what it is? If the pain were in a different direction I might think it was the heart. But it is notthat. When my father was first taken ill of his fatal illness, he spoke of some such queer attacks of agony. I am over young for his complaint, though. Does disease ever grow out of anxiety, I wonder? If so----"
A whirl and a rustle just over his head, and Sir Adam started as though a blow had struck him. It was but a night owl, flying away from the tree above with her dreary note and beating the air with her wings; but it had served to startle him to terror, and he felt as sick and faint again as he did just before from the physical pain. What nerves he possessed were on the extreme tension to-night. That Adam Andinnian, the cool-natured equable man, who was the very opposite of his sensitive brother Karl, and who had been unable to understand what nerves were, and to laugh at those who had them--that he could be thus shaken by merely the noise of a night bird, will serve to show the reader what his later life had been, and how it had told upon him. He did not let this appear, even to those about him; he kept up his old rôle of cool carelessness--and in a degree he was careless still, and in ordinary moments most incautious from sheer want of thought--but there could be no doubt that he was experiencing to the full all the bitter mockery, the never ceasing dread and hazard of his position. In the early days, when the attempted escape from Portland Island was only in contemplation, Karl had foreseen what the life must be if he did escape. An existence of miserable concealment; of playing at hide and seek with the law; a world-wide apprehension, lying on him always, of being retaken. In short, a hunted man who must not dare to approach the haunts of his fellowmen, and of whom every other man must be the necessary enemy. Even so had it turned out: Adam Andinnian was realizing it to the full. A great horror lay upon him of being recaptured: but it may be questioned whether, had the choice been given him, he would not rather have remained a prisoner than have escaped to this. Even as he stood there now, in the damp still night, with all the nameless, weird surroundings of fancy that night sometimes brings when the spirit is in tune for it, he was realizing it unto his soul.
The glitter of the stars, twinkling in their dusky canopy, shone down upon him through the interstices of the trees, already somewhat thinning their leaves with the approach of autumn; and he remained on, amid the gloom, lost in reflection.
"I should be better offthere," he murmured, gazing upwards in thought at the Heaven that was beyond; "and it may be that Thou, O my God, knowest that, in Thy pitiful mercy. As Thou wilt. Life has become but a weary one here, full of pains and penalties."
"Master!" came to him in a hushed, doubtful voice at this juncture. "Master, are you within hearing? My mistress is feeling anxious, and wants the door bolted."
"Ay, bolt and bar it well, Ann," he said, going forward. "But barred doors will not keep out all the foes of man."
Meanwhile Karl had got through the maze; and cautiously, after listening, let himself out at the gate. No human being, that he could discern, was within sight or hearing; and he crossed the road at once. Then, but not before, he became aware that his agent, Mr. Smith, was in that favourite spot and attitude of his, leaning his arms on the little garden gate, his green glasses discarded--as they generally were after sunset.
"Goodnight," said Karl in passing. But some words of the agent's served to arrest his progress.
"Would you mind stepping in for one moment, Sir Karl? I wanted to say just a word to you, and have been watching for you to come out."
"Is it anything particular?" asked Karl, turning in at the gate at once, which Mr. Smith held open.
"I'll get a light, sir, if you will wait an instant."
Karl heard the striking of a match indoors, and Mr. Smith reappeared in the passage with a candle. He ushered Karl into the room on the left-hand; the best room, that was rarely used.
"This one has got its shutters closed," was the explanatory remark. "I generally keep the others open until I go to bed."
"Tell me at once what it is you want," said Karl. "It is late, and I shall have my household wondering where I am."
"Well, Sir Karl, first of all, I wish to ask if you are aware that you were watched into the Maze tonight?" He spoke in the lowest whisper; scarcely above his breath. The agent's one servant had been in bed at the top of the house long before: but he was a cautious man.
"No. Who watched me?"
"Two people, sir. One was Miss Blake, the lady staying with you at the Court; the other was a confounded fellow who is at Foxwood for no good, I guess, and is pushing his prying nose on the sly into everything."
"Do you mean Mr. Strange?"
"That's the name: a lodger at Mother Jinks's. He and the lady watched you in, Sir Karl; they stood close by the gate among the trees; and then they walked off down the road together."
Karl's pulses beat a shade more quickly. "Why should they have been watching me? What could be their motive?"
"Miss Blake did not intend to watch--as I take it. I saw her coming along with a sharpish step from the direction of that blessed St. Jerome's, late as it was--Cattacomb may have been treating his flock to a nocturnal service. When she was close upon the Maze she must have heard your footsteps, for she drew suddenly behind the trees to hide herself. After you were in, she came out of her shelter, and another with her--the man Strange. So he must have been hidden there beforehand, Sir Karl: and, I should say, to watch."
Karl was silent. He did not like to hear this. It seemed to menace further danger.
"I went in to warn Sir Adam against this man," he observed; "to tell him never to be off his guard, day or night. He is a London detective!"
"What--Strange is?" exclaimed the agent, with as much astonishment as his low tones allowed him to express. "A London detective, Sir Karl?"
"Yes, he is."
Mr. Smith's face fell considerably. "But--what is he doing down here?" he inquired. "Who's he after?Surelynot Sir Adam?"
"No, not Sir Adam. He is after some criminal who--who does not exist in the place at all," added Karl, not choosing to be more explicit, considering that it was the man before him whom he had suspected of being the said criminal, and feeling ashamed of his suspicions now that they were dispelled, and he had to speak of it with him face to face. "The danger is, that in looking after one man the police may come upon the track of another."
The agent nodded his head. "But surely they do not suspect the Maze?"
"They do suspect the Maze," replied Karl. "Owing to the tattling of the woman Mr. Moore took there--Nurse Chaffen--they suspect it."
Mr. Smith allowed a very unorthodox word to issue through his closed teeth, applied not only to the lady in question, but to ladies in general.
"The man Strange has been down here looking after some one whom he can't find; who no doubt is not in the neighbourhood at all, and never has been," resumed Karl. "Strange's opinion, however, was--and is--that the man is here, concealed. When he heard Chaffen's tale of the gentleman she saw in evening dress at the Maze, but whom she never saw again and therefore concluded he was hidden somewhere about the house not to show himself to her, he caught up the notion that it was the man he was after. Hence his suspicions of the Maze, and his watchings."
"It's a very unfortunate thing!" breathed the agent.
"You see now, Mr. Smith, how much better it would have been if Sir Adam had never come here. Or, being here, if he had been allowed to go away again."
"He can't attempt it now," was the quiet retort of the agent. "With a detective's eyes about, it would be only to walk straight into the lion's mouth."
"Just so. We all know that."
"I wish to heaven Icouldget him away!" spoke the agent impulsively, and it was evident that his heart was in his words. "Until now I believed he was as safe here as he could be elsewhere--or safer. What the devil brings a confounded detective in this quiet place? The malignant fiend, or some implacable fate must have sent him. Sir Karl, the danger is great. We must not shut our eyes to it."
Alas, Karl Andinnian felt that, in a more cruel degree than the agent could. It washiswork; it was he who had brought this hornet's nest about his unfortunate brother's head. The consciousness of it lay heavily upon him in that moment; throat and tongue and lips were alike parched with the fever of remorse.
"May I ask you for a glass of water, Mr. Smith?" broke next from the said dry lips.
"I'll get it for you in a moment, sir," said the agent, rising with alacrity.
Karl heard another match struck outside, and then the steps of the agent retreating in the direction of the pump. In his restlessness of mind he could not sit still, but rose to pace the room. A small set of ornamental book-shelves, hanging against the wall, caught his attention: he halted before it and took down a volume, mechanically, rather than with any motive.
"Philip Salter. From his loving mother."
The words met Karl's eyes as he opened the book.
Just for a moment he questioned whether his sight was deceiving him. But no. There they were, in a lady's hand, the ink dry and faded with time. It was Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."
"Isit Salter, after all?" mentally breathed Karl.
Mr. Smith came in again with the glass of water as the doubt was running through Karl's mind. Thanking his agent for the water, he drank it at a draught, and sat down with the book in his hand.
"I have been amongst your books, you see, Mr. Smith. A sound old volume, this."
"So it is, Sir Karl. I dip into it myself now and then."
"Did you know this--this Mr. Philip Salter?"--holding the book open at the words.
For answer the agent threw his eyes straight into Karl's face, and paused. "Didyouknow him, Sir Karl?"
"I never knew him. I have heard somewhat about him."
"Ay, few persons but have, I expect," returned the agent, with a kind of groan. "He was my cousin, sir."
"Your cousin!" echoed Karl.
"My own cousin: we were sisters' sons. He was Philip Salter; I am Philip Smith."
Karl's eyes were opened. In more senses than one.
"The fool that Philip Salter showed himself!" ejaculated Philip Smith--and it was evident by the bitter tone that the subject was a sore one. "I was in his office, Sir Karl, a clerk under him; but he was some years younger than I. He might have done so well: none of us had the smallest idea but what he was doing well. It was all through private and illegitimate speculation. He got into a hole where the mire was deep, and he used dangerous means when at his wits' end to get himself out of it. It did for him what you know, and it ruined me; for, being his cousin, men thought I must have known of it, and my place was taken from me."
"Where is he now?" asked Karl.
"I don't know. Sometimes we think he is dead. After his escape, we had reason to believe that he got off to Canada, but we were never made certain of it, and have never heard from him in any way. He may be in some of the backwoods there, afraid to write."
"And this was his book?"
"Yes. Most of his small belongings came into my hands. The affair killed his mother: broke her heart. He was all she had, save one daughter. Sir Karl, do you know what I'd do if I had the power?" fiercely continued Smith. "I would put down by penal laws all these cursed speculators who, men of straw themselves, issue their plausible schemes only to deceive and defraud a confiding, credulous public; all these betting and gambling rogues who lay hold of honest natures to lure them to their destruction. But for them, Philip Salter had been holding up his untarnished head yet."
"Ay," assented Karl. "But that will never be, so long as the greed of gold shall last. It is a state of affairs that can belong only to a Utopian world; not to this."
He put out his hand to Philip Smith when he left--a thing he had never done voluntarily before--in his sensitive regret for having wronged the man in his heart: and went home with his increased burden of perplexity and pain.
Life was to the last degree dreary for Lucy Andinnian. But for the excitement imparted to her mind from that mysterious building, the Maze, and the trouble connected with it, she could scarcely have continued to go on, and bear. It was not a healthy excitement: no emotion can be that, which has either jealousy or anger for its origin. Let us take one day of her existence, and see what it was: the day following the one last told of.
A mellow, bright morning. The pleasant sun, so prolific of his bounties that year, was making the earth glad with his renewed light, and many a heart with it. Not so Lucy's: it seemed to her that never a gleam of gladness could illumine hers again. She sat in her room, partly dressed, after a night of much sleeplessness. What sleep she had was disturbed, as usual, by dreams tinged with the unpleasantness of her waking thoughts. A white wrapper enfolded her, and Aglaé was doing her hair. The woman saw how weary and spiritless her mistress was becoming; but not a suspicion of the true cause suggested itself, for Lucy and her husband took care to keep up appearances, and guarded their secret well. Aglaé attempted to say a word now and again, but received no encouragement: Lucy was buried in a reverie.
"We are growing more estranged day by day," ran her thoughts. "He went to London yesterday, and never said why; never gave me the least explanation. After he came home at night, and had taken something to eat, he went out again. To the Maze, of course."
"Will my lady please to have her hair in rolls or in plats this morning?"
"As you please, Aglaé." And, the weary answer given, her thoughts ran on again.
"I fancy Theresa had seen him go there. I can't help fancying it. She had all her severe manner on when she came in last night, but was so pityingly kind to me. And I could bear all so much better if she would not be pitiful. It was past ten. That poor Mrs. Bell is likely to die, and Theresa had been to read to her. I kept hoping she would go to bed, and she did not. Is it wrong ofmeto sit up, I wonder, to see what time he comes in--would Margaret say it was? She got her silks and her work about, and I had mine. He has hardly ever been so late as last night. It was half-past eleven. What right has she to keep him, or he to stay? He said, in a light, indifferent kind of tone, by way of excuse, that he had been talking with Smith, and the time slipped by unheeded. Theresa drew in her lips till she seemed to have none at all, and gave him just one scornful glance. Yes: she had certainly seen him go in elsewhere, and she knew that the excuse was not true. I took my candle, and came up here--and have had one of my most wretched nights again--and neither I nor Aglaé could find that book that comforts me. It was very cruel of Karl to marry me: and yet--and yet--would I be unmarried if I could? Would I break even from this distressing life, if it involved a separation for ever? I fear not. The not seeing him day by day would be a worse fate even than this is."
"Did my lady think to ask Sir Karl whether he had put away that book that is missing?" interposed Aglaé, quite unconscious that her lady had not seen Sir Karl since the book was missed, any more than she herself had: and moreover that he was not likely to see it.
"I have not asked him yet. Perhaps I took it downstairs yesterday."
"Which robe, my lady?"
"The Swiss muslin."
Aglaé left her when she was ready, and Lucy took her Bible for a few minutes, and said her prayers. Never did prayers ascend from a more wrung or troubled heart. The book she had mislaid was one of those little gems of consolation that can only be estimated inneed. It had been given to Lucy by Miss Sumnor.
She stood a few minutes at the open window, gazing at the sunny morning. The variegated leaves of the changing trees--getting, alas! bare as Lucy's heart felt--the smooth lawn, which Maclean was rolling, the still bright flowers, the sunlight glittering on the lodge. All these fair things were hers; and yet, she could enjoy them not.
She went down: putting away all the sadness from her face that she could put, and looking in her pretty dress as fair as the sunshine. Hewitt came in with the coffee, and Lucy took her place at table. They never waited for Miss Blake. St. Jerome's was exacting, and Mr. Cattacomb somewhat uncertain as to the precise time at which he let out his flock. Hewitt went across the lawn to tell his master, who was talking to Maclean, that the breakfast was ready.
Karl came in through the open doors of the window. She glanced up and hid her eyes again: the more attractive he looked--and he always did look attractive--the greater her sense of pain. The fresh air was sweet and pleasant, and a good fire burnt in the grate.
"Good morning, Lucy."
She put down the sugar-tongs to give him her hand, and wished him good morning in a tone that no eavesdropper could have found fault with. They were quite civil to each other; nay, courteous; their intercourse much like that of true friends, or a brother and sister. After playing so long at this for the sake of keeping up appearances to their household and the world, it had become quite easy--a thing of habit.
"What shall I give you?" he asked.
"An egg, please."
"Maclean thinks that fir-tree is dying."
"Which fir-tree?"
"The large one by the ferns. He wants to root it up and make a bed there. What do you think?"
"I don't mind how it it. Is your coffee sweet enough?"
"Yes."
Hewitt appeared with the letters. Two for Miss Blake, one for Lady Andinnian, none for Sir Karl. Lucy read hers; glad of the help it afforded to occupation: for she did but toy with her breakfast, having little appetite now.
"It is from mamma," said Lucy. "She is going to stay with my aunt in London. I suppose you did not call on Lady Southal yesterday?"
"I? No."
"You have promised to do so for some time past."
"But I have not been able. When the mind is harassed with worry and business, social calls get put aside. Is Mrs. Cleeve well?"
"Yes, and papa better. He is going to stay at home himself. They desire to be remembered to you."
Karl bent his head in acknowledgment. And thus, talking indifferently of this and that, the meal came to an end. Karl asked his wife if she would go out to look at the fir-tree, and hear what Maclean said--he was always scrupulous in consulting her wishes as the Court's mistress. She brought her parasol at once.
Karl held out his arm, and she took it. As they went down the steps, Miss Blake appeared. They waited to greet her, and to shake hands.
"You must want your breakfast, Theresa. There are two letters for you on the table. Oh, and I have heard from mamma. She is going to stay with Aunt Southal in London."
Lucy took Karl's arm again, and they went off with the gardener. Miss Blake probably did want her breakfast; but she spared a minute or two to look after them.
"I wonder if anyone was ever so great a hypocrite?" ran her comment. "And to think that I once believed him to be the most noble and best of men. He dared to speak disparagingly of that pure saint, Mr. Cattacomb, the other day. Good patience! what contrasts there are in the world! And the same Heaven made them both, and permits both! One cannot understand it here. As to Lucy--but I wash my hands ofher."
Lucy was soon back again. Miss Blake had but read her letters, and begun her breakfast. Karl had passed into his own room.
The morning wore on. Theresa went out again; Karl was shut up and then he went out; Lucy was left in the house alone. It was usually so. She had given her orders, and no earthly thing else remained to do--save let her heart prey upon itself. When she had gone pretty nearly out of her mind, she put her bonnet on, and betook herself to Mrs. Whittle, the widow of the man who had died suddenly at the station in the summer. Passing out at the extreme gate of the Court, Lucy had but to skirt the wood, and in three minutes was at the cottage: one of a row.
She had taken to come here when she was very particularly miserable--as she felt this day. For the lesson it read to her was most salutary, acting as a kind of tonic. That this poor woman was slowly dying, there could not be much doubt of. She had been in ill health before her husband's death, and the blow struck too severely on the weakened frame. But for Karl and his wife the family must have taken refuge in the workhouse. Lucy went in and sat down on a low wooden stool. Mrs. Whittle, about to-day, was in the easy-chair, sent to her from the Court, her three little girls around her, the eldest eight years of age. Two younger children, boys, played on the floor.
"I am teaching them to sew, ma'am," she said to Lucy. "Bessy has got her hand pretty well into it; but the other two haven't. When I lie awake at nights, my lady, and think how little it is they know of any sort of labour yet, and how soon I may be taken from them, and be able to teach no more, my heart fails me. I can only set on to cry, and to pray God to forgive me all my short-comings."
The tears had come into her eyes, and were falling down her hectic cheeks. She had been very pretty once, but the face was wasted now. Lucy's eyelashes were wet.
"But I think you look better, Mrs. Whittle. And as to short-comings--we all might own to those."
"It seems to me that I could have brought them on better if I'd known what was coming, ma'am. Until that night when my husband was carried home on a shutter, I had not had a thought of death, as being likely to concern any of us at home here. And now the time seems to be coming to an end, and I'm leaving them, and they know nothing."
"I hope you will get better yet," said Lucy.
"I don't think so, ma'am. I should like to if I could. The very distress that is upon me about my children seems as if it kept me back. Nobody can know what it is to leave a family of young children to the world, till they come to it themselves. There's a dreadful yearning upon me always, my lady, an aching like, at the thought of it. Mr. Sumnor, he is very good and kind, and he comes here, and tells me about heaven, and how free from care I shall be, once I get to it. But oh, ma'am, when I must leave these little ones here, with nobody to say a word to keep them from the world's bad ways, how do I know thattheywill ever get to heaven?"
The woman had never spoken out as she was speaking to-day. Generally she had seemed calm and resigned--to get well, or to die. Lucy was intensely sorry for her. She would take-herself to task for being so miserable with this real distress close at hand, and for at least the rest of the day allow it to read her a salutary lesson.
Passing in at the small gate again, she made her way to the acacia tree and sat down under it, letting her parasol fall to the ground. Karl, who was at home again, could see her from his window, but he did not attempt to go to her. And so she idled away the morning in weariness.
Theresa appeared at luncheon; but Sir Karl did not. Lucy remembered that a parcel she was expecting from London ought to be at the station (only an autumn mantle) and thought she would go in the pony-chaise for it. Anything for a change for a break in her monotonous life. So the chaise was ordered, and the groom to drive it. It came round, and she was getting in when Karl approached.
"Are you going to drive yourself, Lucy?"
"Oh no. Robert is coming."
"I will go, then. We shall not want you, Robert."
"But I was only going to the station," she said.
"To the station?"
"I think my new mantle may be there."
He drove off, turning towards the station. The mantle was not there: and Karl continued his drive as far as Basham. They said very little to one another. Just a remark on the scenery, or on any object passing: nothing more. Karl pulled up at the saddler's shop, to give some direction about a set of harness they were making for him. Just as he got into the chaise again, somebody passed and took off his hat, with a "Good afternoon, Sir Karl."
It was Mr. Tatton. Karl wondered what he was doing in Basham. Of course, the detective might be there for fifty things, totally unconnected with his profession: but nevertheless the sight of him awoke uneasiness in Karl's mind. When a heavy dread lies upon us, the most trifling event will serve to stir up suspicion and augment fear.
Karl drove home again, and Lucy went up to her little sitting-room. She was owing a letter to Mrs. Cleeve, but held back from writing it. Great though her affection was for her mother, she hated now to write. It was so impossible to fill up a letter--as it seemed to Lucy--and yet guard her secret. She could not say "Karl and I are doing this;" or "Karl and I are doing the other:" and yet if she did not say something of this kind of their home life, or mention his name, her fancy suggested that it would look strange, and might arouse doubt. Conscience makes us cowards. She might have sent a letter that day, saying, "I have just got home from a drive with Karl;" and "Karl and I decided this morning to have that old fir-tree by the rocks dug up;" and it would be quite true: but Lucy in her strict integrity so disliked the deceit the words would imply, that she shrank from writing them.
Footsteps on the gravel below:hisfootsteps: and she went to the window to glance out. Yes, he was going straight down the gravel walk, and through the large gates. Going where? Her heart beat a little quicker as the question crept in. To the Maze? The query was always suggesting itself now.
He turned that way--and that was all she could tell, for the trees hid the road from her view. He might be going to his agent's; he might be going to some part or other of his estate; but to Lucy's jealous mind the probability seemed perfectly clear that his destination was that shut-in house, which she had already begun to hate so much. And yet--she believed that he did not go in by day-time. Lucy wondered whether Fair Rosamund, who had disturbed the peace of her queen, was half as fair as this Rosamund, now turning her own poor heart to sickness.
More footsteps on the gravel: merry tongues, light laughter. Lucy looked out again. Some of the young ladies from the village had called for Theresa, and they were now going on to St. Jerome's. For laughter such as that, for the real lightness of heart that must be its inevitable accompaniment, Lucy thought she would have bartered a portion of her remaining life.
Aglaé came in, her hands and arms full of clouds of tulle and blue ribbon.
"Look here, my lady--these English modistes have no taste at all. They can't judge. They send this heavy satin ribbon, saying it is the fashion, and they put it in every part of the beautiful light robe, so that you cannot tell which is robe, the tulle, or the ribbon. My lady is not going to wear that, say I; an English modiste might wear it, but my young lady never. So I take the ribbons off."
Lucy looked round listlessly. What did all these adornments matter to her? Karl never seemed to see now what she was dressed in: and if he had seen, he would not have cared.
"But what is it you are asking me, Aglaé?"
"I would ask my lady to let me put just a quarter of as much ribbon on: and silk ribbon, not satin. I have some silk in the house, and this satin will come in for a heavier robe."
"Do whatever you like, Aglaé."
"That's well," said Aglaé. "But I wish my lady would not show herself quite so indifferent," added the woman to herself as she withdrew. "She could not care less if she were the old grandmother."
The afternoon passed to its close, Lucy reading a bit and working a bit to beguile the time. Whether the book or the work lay before her, her mind was alike far away, brooding over the trouble that could never leave it. Then she went down to dinner in her evening dress of silk. No stranger was present: only herself, Karl, and Theresa. It was generally thus: neither she nor he had spirits to bring guests about them often. Theresa told them of a slight accident that had happened at the station that afternoon, and it served for a topic of conversation. Dinner was barely over when Miss Diana Moore called in. She was not given to time her visits ceremoniously; but she was always welcome, for Karl and Lucy both liked her. Miss Diana generally gave them the news of the place, and she began now. In some inexplicable manner the conversation turned on the Maze. At least, something was said that caused the place to be incidentally mentioned, and it served to draw Miss Diana's thoughts to what they might otherwise not have reverted to.
"The senseless geese that people are!" she cried. "Did you hear of that ghost story that arose about the Maze?"
Karl bit his lip. Lucy looked at Miss Diana: she had heard nothing.
"Mother Jinks told me to my face the other day that there could not be a doubt it was Mr. Throcton's son haunting it. My brother--Mr. Moore--had seen it, she said, as well as Nurse Chaffen: a gentleman in evening dress, who appeared to them and vanished away again. She believed it, too."
"I fancy it has been rather more materially accounted for," put in Miss Blake, not at all sorry of the opportunity to give a side fling at Sir Karl.
"Well, what I hear people have found out now is, that the ghost was only Sir Karl Andinnian, who had called in there after or before his dinner," said Miss Diana, laughing. "What do you say to it, Sir Karl?"
Sir Karl did not know what to say. On the one hand it was most essential to do away, if possible, With the impression that any strange gentleman had been at the Maze; on the other, he did not care to admit that he paid evening visits there. Of the two evils, however, the last was the least.
"It may have been myself, Miss Diana. I cannot say, I'm sure. I remember I went over one evening, and stayed a few minutes."
"But it was while Mrs. Grey was ill with fever."
"Just so. I went to enquire after her."
"Well, I suppose it was you, then: I asked William about it, but he is as close as wax when he likes, and professed not to know what I was talking of. One thing is clear, that he could not have recognised you, Sir Karl. It was nearly dark, I believe. That little baby at the Maze is very delicate."
"By the way, Miss Diana, talking of such people, what does Mr. Moore think of poor Whittle's widow?" asked Sir Karl. "My wife says she is very ill."
The conversation was turned--Sir Karl's object in speaking. Miss Diana talked of Mrs. Whittle, and then went on to other subjects.
But it will be readily seen how cruelly these and similar incidents tried Lucy Andinnian. Had an angel come down from heaven to assure her the gentleman in evening attire wasnotSir Karl, she would have refused to believe it. Nay, he had, so to say, confessed it--in her presence.
Miss Diana departed. Karl went out with her, and did not come in again. Lucy knew he had gone to the Maze. She went up to her room, and stood there in the dark watching for his return. It was nearly ten when he appeared: he had been spending all that time with her rival!
Even so. Sir Karl had spent it at the Maze. As the autumn evenings grew darker, he could go over earlier and come away earlier. Lucy wondered whether this state of things was to last for ever, and how much longer she could continue to bear and make no sign.
To her weary bed again went she. To the anguish of her outraged heart; to her miserable, sleepless hours, and her still more miserable dreams. Jealousy as utterly mistaken and foundationless has too often inflicted torment lively as this.
It is a "green-eyed monster, which doth make the food it feeds on."