THE PART OF A FLIRT.
Quite unconscious of the stab in the back, so to speak, which the cunning Captain Murpoint had delivered him, Leicester spent the evening in entertaining his guests, Lord Fitz and Lady Ethel.
In the morning Leicester and his guests walked over to the Park.
He would have liked to have been alone, but that was impossible under the circumstances, so he contented himself with hoping that he might get an opportunity of speaking to Violet alone.
But Violet had spent the wakeful night in planning for herself a desperate course of action.
She was, as she told herself at breakfast time, prepared to meet "the flirt" on his own ground.
Nothing would do for Mrs. Mildmay but that she insisted that the Cedars' party should remain all day to dinner, and to see the evening out, and a footman was dispatched with the invitation for Mr. and Mrs. Dodson.
"I am so delighted you have come," said the good-natured lady; "for I do think Violet is quite triste and needs a little excitement."
They were standing on the lawn chatting, and Leicester glanced up at the upper windows expecting to see a blind down.
"Miss Mildmay not well?" he asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Mildmay. "But a little low spirited, I think. She will brighten up when she hears that you are here. James," and she called to a footman who was passing, "please ask Miss Violet to come down."
But Violet did not need any information.
She saw the group approach from her window, and as Leicester's long limbs strode across the lawn her heart beat violently.
"He has come for another flirtation, has he?" said the mortified, suffering girl. "Well, he shall not be disappointed. He shall see that two can play at his contemptible game."
So saying she thrust a camellia in her glossy hair, called a smile, perhaps the first artificial one she had ever forced, to her beautiful face, and stole down the stairs, bursting upon the group like a vision of Oriental beauty.
Leicester advanced, but Violet passed him and went to kiss Ethel. Then she shook hands cordially with Bertie, added a blush when repeating the salutation for Lord Fitz, and pretended to have forgotten that Leicester had not received a word.
"I'm so small," he said, with a smile, "that no wonder Miss Mildmay overlooks me."
"Did I not shake hands?" said Violet, looking him full in the face, not with coldness, but with a pleasant, indifferent, painfully frank friendship. "Did I not? How stupid of me! But I was overwhelmed with surprise," and she gave him her hand with a cool, self-composed smile which staggered him.
Before three minutes had passed Lord Fitz plucked up courage to say:
"Miss Mildmay, you said you would show me your flowers."
"Did I?" said Violet. "Then I will redeem my promise," and, with a smile, she led him to the conservatory—that very conservatory in which Leicester had lounged but a few days ago, listening to her frank laughter and drinking in the charm of her youth and beauty.
With a blush of pleasure, Fitz walked off with her, and soon his boyish laugh could be heard from the greenhouses, joined with Violet's musical peal.
What had happened to cause her to treat him so?
Yesterday she was all frank delight in his presence.
To-day she treated him with the haughty insolence and indifference of a sultana.
"Ah!" said Leicester, with a growl. "They are all alike. The best of them cannot resist a lord."
He was not in the best of humors for a collision with the captain, but Captain Murpoint greeted him ardently.
"None the worse for your weather yesterday, I see," he said, in his soft, silky voice. "I was just coming after you. Mr. Fairfax, who is the most inventive genius in the way of pleasure I have ever had the happiness of meeting, has set up a target and we are all shooting at it with arrows which remind me of nothing so much as the arrows which the Brahmins give their children to play with."
"Confound the Brahmins!" thought Leicester, but he walked by the side of the captain to where the clever Bertie had set the arrow pastime going, and then the captain left him to order some sherry and soda water.
Mrs. Mildmay begged him to light a cigar, and Leicester, who really wanted one, gave way.
He seated himself on a bench and watched the party, wondering whether Lord Fitz had finished his second wreath, and what the pair in the conservatory were doing now.
Presently he heard their laughing from the back of him, and it stung him to the quick.
"Confound her!" he muttered. "Why should I let her see her wickedness at flirting is cutting me up so? By Jove, I'll show her two can play at that game. I'll make up to Ethel Boisdale." So saying he drew his legs to the ground, pitched his cigar into the shrubbery and went up to Ethel.
"Now, Lady Boisdale," he said, "I am going to enter the lists, and I bet you a box of Jouvin's best—I have your size—that I hit the bull's-eye three times out of six."
"Oh, I shall bet," said Ethel, "because I am sure I shall win. Why, we have been trying ever so long, and have not hit it once."
"There goes then," said Leicester. "Hit or miss. Hit it is. That's once. Twice, I have missed it. Three times, that's a hit. Four times, missed it. Missed it again, missed it again. That's the sixth time, and I've lost."
Then he rattled on as lively and entertaining as Bertie himself, so startling that honest friend that he did not know what to make of it.
All through the glorious afternoon the plot and counterplot were carried on.
At dinner Leicester devoted himself to Lady Ethel, talked to her with an amount of badinage and excitement that was most unusual.
After dinner Fitz went straight up to Violet, who was sitting talking to Ethel, and seated himself in a chair beside them.
Leicester dropped down beside Mrs. Mildmay and Mrs. Dodson and joined in a discussion upon croquet.
But the captain did not let him rest.
"I think there's a frigate coming across," he said. "It's rather misty, but I fancy I can distinguish the masts."
Leicester rose and walked to the window.
From the place where he stood, he could hear, as the captain had intended that he should, every word Fitz and Violet were saying.
The young lord, excited by the wine to an extraordinary pitch of courage, was making love, hot and furious.
Violet, just a little frightened, was laughingly and rather nervously evading him.
Leicester's cheeks flushed, and, his eyes, hidden by the field glass, flashed passionately.
"Consummate coquette!" he murmured, "she is either fooling the boy or angling for a coronet—she whom I thought the soul of purity and disinterestedness. Which is it? By Heaven, I will know!"
And, much to the captain's amusement, he dropped the field glass and said, with an air almost of command:
"Miss Mildmay, your eyes are better than either mine or Captain Murpoint's; pray lend us their aid."
Violet hesitated a moment, then, with a smile which barely covered a peculiar feeling of nervousness, rose and came forward.
"Step outside," said Leicester, in his deep voice, and before she knew what he was going to do he drew her hand within his arm and led her out. "Do you see," he said, "out yonder? or have you no eyes for anything to-night but Lord Fitz Plantagenet Boisdale?"
"Mr. Leicester!" exclaimed Violet, with dignity, still trembling inwardly.
"Pardon me," he said, in a deep whisper, drawing her farther from the window and speaking in an earnest, almost pleading tone, "pardon me. I was wrong to speak so, but let me plead as an excuse some provocation. I have not wounded you, Miss Mildmay, by those few words one-tenth so much as you have me by one of a thousand you have spoken to-day."
Violet tried to draw her hand away, but his strong, hard hand retained it against her will.
"Wait one moment, I implore you," he said. "Wait while you tell me wherein I have offended you."
"Really," said Violet, with a low ripple of amusement which maddened him. "This is like a charade——"
"Tell me," he said, interrupting her almost sternly, "have you forgotten yesterday? Miss Mildmay, speak to me if you can as an honest woman should speak to an honest man. If the assurance of my devoted——"
"Oh, stop—pray stop!" said Violet, with a laugh which was calculated to madden a less passionate and willful temper than Leicester's. "What a contradiction! In one breath you assert your doubt of my honesty and assure me of your devoted—what? Oh, no! no more, Mr. Leicester! Pray be assured that I am not offended—not with any one! I am quite happy, and I don't understand you in the least. Shall we go in?"
She moved toward the window as she spoke, smiling with maddening wickedness, and fanning herself hurriedly, her heart throbbing all the while like a wild animal within her bosom.
Leicester turned with stern courtesy.
"By all means," he said. "I hope you have not caught cold!"
She dropped him a mocking curtsey and passed through the window.
Leicester stood for a moment looking at her as she glided with her peculiar grace into the chatter of voices and the light dance music which Ethel, with Bertie at her side, was evoking at the piano, then turned and strode out onto the terrace.
He leaned his arms on the coping and stared into the night.
"What is she? a flirt, a heartless coquette, a beautiful falsehood, or what?"
As he asked himself the question he heard the bushes stir beneath him.
It did not attract his attention, and he did not glance down until he saw something dark move from beneath the laurels.
Then, with his usual rapidity of resolve, he lightly vaulted over the terrace and dropped close beside the figure.
It rose from the ground surprised and startled.
Leicester's hand grasped a man's shoulder, and turned him round.
It was Captain Murpoint's servant, Mr. Jem.
In a moment Leicester saw part of the hand.
The fellow was not a burglar on the scout, but a skulking eavesdropper.
"You've been listening, my friend," said Leicester, angrily, and with an ominous gathering light in his eyes.
"That's a falsehood!" shouted Jem, who had been imbibing ale—and some quantity of it—at the "Blue Lion".
"Let that teach you greater caution and respect for the future, my friend," said Leicester, and he struck the daring scoundrel a straight blow full of unmitigated scorn.
Jem started, turned livid with rage, fear and hate, then slunk away like a beaten hound and stole off.
After delivering punishment to Jem for his eavesdropping, Leicester walked round to the stables and ordered the Cedars' carriage.
When the carriage was ready he returned to the drawing-room, and, going up to his mother, whispered:
"I have ordered the carriage for you; do not let them think you are surprised."
Mrs. Dodson nodded and looked up at him inquiringly. She saw that something had gone wrong.
At that moment a peal of silvery laughter proceeded from the corner of the room where Lord Fitz and Violet were seated.
Leicester started and frowned and then Mrs. Dodson knew what ailed him. She knew that he was in love with Violet Mildmay.
When Leicester had left, Violet's smiles disappeared.
She answered Lord Fitz at random, and grew cold and even stately.
Lord Fitz hoped when they were saying good-night that she would relapse into her bright amiability, but he was disappointed.
She wished him good-night with a smile that was the perfection of friendly indifference.
All the guests had gone, and Violet sat alone in the now silent drawing-room.
Her heart was heavy, her eyes and her whole frame weary.
As she reached her room she saw a light making its way from the captain's room, and heard the soft hum of his voice as he murmured his favorite air from "Faust."
"How good-natured he seems!" she thought. "He is really my friend, and yet I cannot quite like him."
So she went to bed thoroughly unhappy, dissatisfied with herself for acting the flirt and dissatisfied with Leicester for being one.
Although the captain was humming so carelessly, he was not idle.
No sooner did the sound of Violet's closing door greet his ear than he ceased the humming and drew his chair to his bureau.
He had prepared his pens, ink, etc., on the table; there was every sign of a hard night's work.
He drew from the bureau his strange purchases, the sheet of parchment and the flour dredger, spreading the parchment upon the desk.
It looked very yellow and old, and anything but a nice material for a document.
But for the captain's purpose it was apparently not at all too passé, for he drew from his pocket a small bottle of cold coffee, and with a paint brush carefully washed the surface of the parchment on both sides.
Then he held it near the candle to dry, and after a close scrutiny nodded with satisfaction.
The ink next underwent manipulation.
It was good black ink, evidently too good, for the captain carefully diluted it with water.
Then he took from his pocket a bundle of letters, and selecting the longest spread it out upon the bureau, lit a cigar and studied the handwriting with the closest attention.
It was the handwriting of John Mildmay, and the letter was one of many he had written to his good and kind friend, Captain Howard Murpoint.
"I can imitate that, I think," muttered the captain; "let me try."
For half an hour he persevered, and at the end of that time he had succeeded in imitating the handwriting of his dear, dead friend so closely that John Mildmay's ghost, if it had risen and peeped over the forger's shoulder, could not have distinguished the forgery from the original.
"There," he muttered. "I'll defy all the lawyers in the world to detect that. Now for the deed."
He drew the parchment toward him, and, proceeding with the greatest care and minuteness, drew up a document, which he signed with the name of John Mildmay.
The deed purported to be witnessed by an old coachman and his wife, both of whom were dead.
Then he took his flour dredger, and poured into it from a box which he had concealed in his dressing-case a quantity of finely powdered dust.
When the box was full he shook a little from the top upon the desk and the table.
Then he unlocked the door and touched the bell which summoned Mr. Starling.
After a few moments the door opened and Jem entered.
The captain looked up and frowned inquiringly.
There was a red mark across Jem's face, an ugly flush which rendered the sullen, ferocious countenance more evil and desperate looking.
"Shut the door and lock it," said the captain.
Jem did so and stood fingering the dressing-gown with shifting eyes and sullen, evil mouth.
"Come here," said the captain. "What's that on your face?"
"What's what?" said Jem, without raising his eyes.
"You know well enough," said the captain, eying him closely. "Are you sober enough to tell me how you came by that blow? If so, out with it. Who gave it to you?"
"It was Mr. Leicester, curse him!" burst out Jem, and with an oath. "He caught me a-listening by the terrace."
"Ah!" exclaimed the captain, with a gleam of malicious delight in his eyes. "My young lad, Leicester, was it? Oh, you must bear it, my dear Jem, grin and bear it. I think it will be black and blue. Never mind, Jem, it will make him laugh in the morning, and he'll ask you how it is."
"Don't, don't!" groaned the infuriated man, hoarsely. "Don't work me up, captain. Don't! I shall go mad! I'll be even with him! I'll make him rue the night he struck me, dog as I am!"
"Do you want revenge, Jem?"
Jem looked up from the floor with savage eyes.
"You do? Then I'll show you how to get so sweet, so rich a one that you'll bless me, Jem. But first I've got a word with you, Mr. Starling. You are getting careless. You'll never make a good servant. You are idle. Look at the dust on that table!"
Jem looked and stared.
"That's a pretty state for a gentleman's writing-desk to be in! You have not dusted that for a week!"
"I dusted it this morning, sir," said Jem, looking round with bewilderment.
Then the captain took up the dredger from beneath the table and held it up with a smile.
"Conjuring, Jem—magic! By this simple contrivance we get the dust of years in one moment. Put it in your pocket and light the lantern."
Jem stared in silence profound and amazed for a minute.
"But," he said, with a troubled face, "you ain't going into that beastly room, captain?"
"I am, and so are you," said the captain. "No words; remember your blow and your revenge. You work for it to-night while you obey me."
Jem caught up the lantern with desperate bravado and lit it.
Meanwhile the captain exchanged his coat for a pea-jacket, and drew a thick pair of stockings over his boots.
Jem, following his instructions, did likewise, and then waited for further orders.
"You could pick locks," said the captain, "one time, Jem; have you forgotten the art?"
Jem grinned.
"Not quite. I dare say I could manage it."
"Good," said the captain. "Have you got the tools?"
"I never goes without 'em," said Jem, "they're very simple, and they don't take up much room, and no gentleman should be without 'em." And as he spoke he drew from his pocket a small piece of steel and a stout piece of wire bent at the end in the form of a hook.
The captain nodded approvingly.
"Quite right, Jem," he said, "and now for the deed. If you feel nervous take a sip of this," and he poured out a glass of brandy.
Jem tossed the dram down eagerly, but, fiery as the liquid was, it did not dispel his dislike and horror of the task before him, and when the captain in his stealthy way opened the window the strong ruffian shuddered.
But spurred on by his new motive—the thirst for revenge—he obeyed the signal from his master and lowered himself from the window without hesitation.
When Jem had reached the broad window ledge he loosened the rope from his waist, and the captain, feeling it slacken, prepared to descend by it in his turn.
It was a perilous attempt, no doubt. Every step had to be taken with the greatest nicety.
At last, after what seemed a terrible time and amount of exertion, he heard the short, spasmodic breathing of his accomplice, and stretching out one hand he felt about until he touched something.
It was Jem's leg, and so suddenly had the captain clutched it that Jem, whose nerves were strained to their utmost pitch, uttered a sharp cry of alarm.
"Hush," said the captain, sternly. "Quiet, you idiot. It is only I! One such another cry and we are lost. Utter a word and I'll drag you down!"
Then, exerting all his strength, he drew himself up to the ledge, and, panting for breath, seated himself beside his accomplice.
"Phew!" he said. "But that was tough work! Turn on the light."
"It is exactly as I imagined it," muttered the captain; "and made for my purpose." Then, after glancing through into the dusty window for a few minutes, he tried to push the lower sash up.
But the window was locked.
Without a moment's hesitation the captain tied his handkerchief round his hand, quickly broke the pane nearest the fastening, then he inserted his hand and pushed the catch back.
"Now, Jem," said the captain, "drop in carefully, and when you reach the floor remain motionless until I am by your side. Remember not to move a step until you get the word from me. It is of the greatest importance, as you will see."
Very sullenly, and with compressed lips as if he were keeping back his fear and horror with great difficulty, Jem dropped into the room, remaining on the spot which his feet had first touched.
The captain followed his example.
"Now," he said, in a low, firm whisper, "attend to me and pay particular attention. Walk to that bureau in as few steps as possible. You can stride it in three steps. When you reach the bureau stand with your face toward the lock without moving."
Jem nodded, and, lighted by the lantern which the captain held, he strode to the bureau.
The captain followed him, taking care to tread in the same footprints.
"Now," he said, "I will hold the lantern while you try the lock with this bunch of keys. If you can't manage it, it must be picked."
Jem took the bunch and, selecting a skeleton key of the size required, tried it. But the lock was a good one and defied all his efforts.
Then he went on his knees and in a workmanlike manner picked the lock.
Then the captain commenced searching within the bureau.
"I am looking for a secret drawer," he said.
"Why didn't you say so, then?" said Jem. "There it is," and he touched a spring concealed in a part of the beading. "I knows where they are, right enough. All these old-fashioned 'uns is much alike. Why, dang it!" he added, with deep disgust, "it's empty!"
But the captain's smile was anything but one of disappointment.
"So it is, Jem, and suppose we put something in it?"
And as he spoke he took the parchment from his pocket and laid it carefully in the drawer.
Jem stared.
"This is a rum go, capt'n," he said, "to go and take all this 'ere trouble, in risking our necks and a running the chance o' meeting all sorts o' nasty things for the sake of putting a piece of paper in this old concern."
"My good Jem, don't worry yourself about what you cannot understand," retorted the captain. "Now go back, step by step, in the same footprints. Mind, go as slowly as you like, but make no more marks."
Jem obeyed, grumbling and wondering, but he was a little easier when he saw the next step in the captain's movements.
Carefully guarding against stepping into fresh places, he stooped down and shook from his dredger a regular and equal quantity of dust on to the handmarks and footprints which they had made.
Then Jem understood the use of the flour dredger.
Spot by spot the captain pursued his task until he had reached the window, against which Jem leaned, stolidly watching him.
"There," whispered the captain, pointing to the polished floor, which presented an unbroken surface of dust. "If you were obliged to swear that the room had not been entered—that the floor had not been walked across for five years, would you have any objection to say so?"
"Not I, capt'n," retorted Jem, quickly. "Not that that signifies, because I'd swear to anything, but it's right enough. Anybody 'ud say this room hadn't been looked at for years. At least," he added, with a shudder, and in a lower voice, "not by human critturs. There's other sort I have heard don't make no footprints nor no noise, so they don't count."
The captain smiled.
"All right," he said, "I don't care for ghosts, Jem, they only frighten such fools as you. Get up on the sill and shake the dust down on these bare parts."
Jem laid his hand upon the sill and was about to draw himself on to it when he was conscious of a sudden stream of soft blue light in the room.
Without turning round he whispered, warningly:
"Don't turn the light on so full, captain. Somebody might be about and see it at the window."
"What light?" said the captain, who was bending down with his face to the window, powdering the spots from which their feet had removed the dust. "I have turned no light—hah!"
The exclamation which broke the sentence caused Jem to turn his head with a vague sense of alarm.
No sooner had he done so than he fell to the ground in a paroxysm of fear.
There, on his knees, motionless as a statue, and his dark face upturned, was the captain, staring at a misty blue light which seemed growing out of the side of the room.
Jem uttered a groan of dismay and horror as there slipped, or rather floated into the room the dreadful figure which he had seen at the oriel window.
It was the White Nun!
Slowly, and with a floating, gliding motion, the figure advanced.
Then it seemed to see them, for it moved its skull slightly in the direction of the men and stopped.
The captain, shaking off the horrible influence of dread, sprang to his feet.
He was about to advance to the horrid thing, but the blue light suddenly disappeared, the figure glided out of the stream of light flowing from the lantern, and all the captain saw was the fiery eyes and the dull gleam of the white, ghostly drapery.
"Ghost or no ghost," he hissed, "you shall not escape me!" and he sprang forward.
But before he could clutch the apparition it drew back with a gliding motion, and seemed to vanish through the wall.
With a bewildered and daunted air the captain glared around.
The two human beings were once more alone.
White and trembling, the guilty schemer turned to the window and grasped Jem's arm.
"Come," he said, hoarsely. "We've been dreaming."
Without a word, and trembling in every limb, the pair descended one after the other, the captain remaining last, and shudderingly expecting to feel the ghostly hand of bone upon his throat.
But the vision did not appear again, and, exhausted with exertion and horror, the two men stood in their own room staring at each other's white faces.
Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour at which he had retired to rest, the captain was up early in the morning and, with his cheroot in his mouth, strolling round the Park.
Whistling his favorite air, he leaped the old fence which divided the neatly kept rosary of the modern garden from the cold, waste little courtyard of the ruined chapel, and with cautious feet and watchful eyes, entered the broken and crumbling cloisters in the search for more evidence of the apparition which had so startled him on the preceding evening.
Next the cloisters was the chapel, or what remained of it.
The captain stumbled to the middle of it and looked up through its roofless height to the sky above.
In the center of the façade was the large oriel window.
A portion of the old organ-loft clung to it, and was lost on either side in a mass of ruined, moss-covered stone, which was the remains of a flight of stone steps.
"No one but a ghost," muttered the captain, "could walk along there."
With an emphatic exclamation he turned his attention to the wall next the house.
He fancied that he could distinguish the dark outline of a door, but, by the aid of a small opera-glass which he had brought with him, he made out that the ivy had grown over it to such an extent that egress or exit by it was impossible.
He did not believe in ghosts, and yet if the figure he had seen were a human and alive how did it reach the deserted room?
While he pondered a footstep sounded behind him—so suddenly that he turned face to face with Leicester Dodson.
The meeting was so unexpected that both men were, so to speak, off their guard.
For a moment only was the captain's face naked, the next he had resumed his mask, and held out his hand.
"Good-morning; you startled me! This is a place for ghostly meetings, and though the hour is inappropriate, a little surprise is allowable."
All this with a genial smile.
Leicester just touched the hand and nodded.
"I am glad I met you this morning, and so early, Captain Murpoint," he said, in his grave, clear voice, "for I have some unpleasant information for you."
"Indeed!" said the captain, glancing up at his face for a moment, then raising the opera-glass to his eyes. "Indeed, I am sorry for that. Of what nature?"
"It concerns your man," said Leicester. "I found him eavesdropping near the laurels by the terrace last night."
"No!" exclaimed the captain, with a look of shocked indignation. "The villain! I hope you thrashed him."
"Well," said Leicester, "I am sorry to say that I did strike him. I regret it, though I think it may prove a salutary chastisement."
"The villain," said the captain, with grave displeasure. "I will discharge him this morning! I'll pack him off! Drunk or not, he shall go. I could not have a fellow about me whom I could not implicitly trust."
"Well," said Leicester, "you must do as you think fit; yet I hope you will let the man plead his defence. There are two sides to everything."
The captain shook his head angrily.
"No; he shall go, the rogue," he said, and as he spoke he rose, with a light in his eyes which would have proclaimed to any one who knew him that he had scored a point in his game. "No; he shall go, rest assured. I would not keep him for the world after what you have told me. Are you going on to the Park?"
"No," said Leicester, "if you will make my excuses. Good-morning."
"Good-morning," said the captain, and he shook hands impressively, looking after Leicester's tall, stalwart figure as it passed under the ruined arches, with a pleasant smile.
"Oh, yes, he shall go, Mr. Dodson, and all the world shall know that Captain Murpoint discharged his man Jem at the instigation of Mr. Leicester Dodson!"
After breakfast he caught Jem as he was slowly mounting the stairs.
"Go into my room," he whispered.
Jem obeyed, and the captain, following, closed the door.
"Jem," he said, "don't be surprised at anything that happens and remember that I have promised not to throw you over. I am going to discharge you this morning."
Jem started and turned pale.
"Not really, you stupid fellow! only in pretense. Leicester Dodson"—at that name Jem scowled—"Leicester Dodson has made formal complaint and I cannot do anything else but get rid of you. I shall blackguard you well and pack you off before all the servants. Of course you won't leave the village and equally of course I will continue you your salary to enable you to keep there. What you must do is to take a room at the inn—say you are going to enjoy yourself on the savings of your salary."
Half an hour afterward every soul in the village knew that Leicester Dodson had got Mr. Starling discharged from his situation.