CHAPTER XXXIII. A LOVE SCENE.
Although Mr. Bradfield kept close watch from the study window, and saw Gilbert Wryde’s son safely out of the grounds, he was no more a match than other astute middle-aged persons have been for the wiles of a pair of lovers.
Richard Wryde, although he had let himself be “talked over” by Mr. Bradfield, was not quite so simple as his guardian supposed. Before he was out of the house, therefore, it had occurred to him to doubt whether Mr. Bradfield’s information about Chris were correct. It was, at any rate, worth while, he thought, to make the tour of the eastern end of the grounds, on the outer side of the wall, and then to saunter past the sea-front of the mansion, keeping a careful eye on the windows.
And when he was within sight of the window of the Chinese room, he was rewarded for his perspicacity by the sight of Chris, engaged in her favourite occupation of looking out at the sea.
She saw him in a moment, without his having to exert himself to attract her attention. He saw her spring up, clasping her hands. And he knew that all he had to do was to wait for her to come to him.
He went back, therefore, towards the east end of the house, so that the trees might hide him from the curious eyes within. In a few minutes Mr. Bradfield heard the creaking of the gate again. He got up and looked out; but Chris had gone through like an arrow, and he saw no one.
When she was once outside the gates, however, shyness, excitement, one does not know what, stayed her flying feet, and brought a flutter to her heart. And when she caught sight of Dick, as he came round the angle of the wall to meet her, she stopped altogether.
Dick was timid too. It seemed to him, as it seemed to her, that the happiness at their lips was too great, that the cup must be dashed away before the draught was taken. The man, of course, recovered first from the stupor of joy following weeks of longing.
Chris, with her eyes upon the ground, felt a hand on her shoulder, warm breath upon her face.
“You are glad to see me? Then tell me so.”
She looked up suddenly, saw, in place of the wistful face she remembered, eyes full of the fire of recovered light, of youth renewed. Her lover was no longer the deaf and dumb recluse; he was as other men are, but with a charm of gentleness, of sadness past, but remembered, which made him infinitely more attractive in her eyes than any other man could ever be.
“I am so glad,” she whispered, “that I hardly dare to speak for fear I should cry!”
And, with a sob she tried hard to suppress, she brought out from under her cloak, and held out towards him, the little sketch of the sea seen between the trees of Wyngham House.
“When I saw this,” she said, brokenly, “I knew, oh, I knew that you were alive. But you might have let me know before. For I have been so miserable, I wanted to die.”
Her lover took her in his arms; they were under the trees on one side, and in the shelter of the high wall of Wyngham House on the other; and in words a little old-fashioned, a little more fanciful than the modern lover of every day dares to use, he told her of the light which the sight of her from his prison windows had brought into his life, of the new energy she had unconsciously put into him, of the longing he had felt to stand beside her and to feel the touch of her hand.
“Before you came here,” he said, pouring his words into her willing ears with an impetuosity which, in truth, made him well-nigh unintelligible, “Stelfox did not dare to let me out of the rooms in which I was kept, even for ten minutes. He had tried it once, not long ago, and he had only with great difficulty prevented me from attacking that old rascal Bradfield. But when you came, I became at once a different man. I thought no more of Bradfield, or of anybody but you, always you. I lost the dead, sullen patience that my confinement had taught me; I raged like a wild beast shut up for the first time. When I saw Bradfield touch you, as he did that day under my windows, on purpose, I believe, to provoke me, I lost my self-command, and threw at him the first thing that came to my hand. You remember, I dare say. I smashed the window, and nearly frightened you out of your senses. Then Stelfox gave me a lecture which made me ill, really ill, with misery and want of sleep, for two or three days and nights.
“He told me that I had frightened you so much that you would never come near my windows again; that you thought my savage attack was upon yourself, and that, in all probability, you would not dare to stay at Wyngham afterwards. So that at last I became so wretched that he had to be merciful, and to tell me that you were not going to leave Wyngham, and that he would contrive for me to see you again. In the meantime, however, I overheard something said by the men working in the garden, which told me that Bradfield himself was in love with you. This, indeed, I had already guessed; but to hear it confirmed made me so furious that I contrived to pick the lock of my outer door and to get out, with the fixed intention of braining the brute, or, at least, of doing him some severe injury, if I got the chance. I saw him go out, on foot, across the meadows for a walk. I lost sight of him behind the shrubbery, so I thought I would hide among the farm-buildings until he came back. I found the barn door unlocked, so I hid myself there; and presently you came in, as you know. I can’t tell you how I felt. At first it made me giddy to be near you; it seemed as if my brain would burst, as if I must cry aloud or shout for the very joy of looking into your eyes. When your hand touched mine—it was when you put out your hand to take the lantern, I think—I felt a joy so keen, that it was almost like the pain of a stab. When I put my hand over your mouth so that you should not scream, it was almost more than I could do not to kiss you, as I do now.”
He pressed his lips again and again to hers with a passionate vehemence which almost frightened Chris, accustomed as she was to the utmost gentleness on his part. She tried to draw herself out of his arms, but with a sudden change from passion to wistful tenderness, he partly released her, and drew her hands against his breast with a melancholy smile.
“I am a savage!” he exclaimed. “I have frightened you. Let me at least hold your hands; I will not hurt them. I will hold them like this!”
He relaxed the grasp in which he had held her fingers, and she let her hands lie lightly in his as he went on:
“You must civilise me. And don’t be afraid. The block is very rough, but your skill is very great.”
As he bent his head to kiss her hands very gently, Chris felt that he was trembling.
“I want to ask you something,” said Chris timidly. “Those cries, those strange cries you gave—that evening in the barn! And your strange silence, too! I don’t understand. Why didn’t you speak to me!”
“I was stone deaf, you know; I had been so ever since I was a small child, when I had scarlet fever badly. It left me absolutely without hearing, so that I could not hear the sound of my own voice.”
“Yes, yes, but you could speak?”
“I had learnt to talk when I was a child, but under the treatment of the brute who calls himself my guardian, I had forgotten how. I had got into the way of making cries and noises like a person deaf and dumb from birth.”
“But you could speak, for you spoke to me on Christmas Day?”
“Yes; but that is a long story. It was Stelfox who found out, four or five years ago, that I was neither dumb nor insane, and with great patience he taught me what I had almost forgotten, how to speak again. But I did not dare to speak to you, because, as I told you, I could not hear myself; I had only spoken to Stelfox for years; I distrusted my own powers. When I made the strange cries which frightened you, I was not conscious of it myself. You see, it is true that I am a savage.”
Chris, seeing that the avowals he had been making caused him pain and bitter mortification, took his hands, and raising them to her face, laid them tenderly against her cheek.
“That is a trouble you will have no more,” she said, softly. “And you can hear now, can you not?”
“I can hear fairly well on one side now,” he answered. “I can hear some days better than others. I am under treatment by one of the great London aurists. He says that if I had been brought to him sooner he could have cured me completely; as it is, the hearing in the right ear is completely gone, and in the left it is permanently impaired.”
Chris began to sob, and Dick had to comfort her.
“Don’t, don’t cry, my darling; I shall make you as melancholy as myself if I don’t take care—you, who used to be all life and brightness.”
“I haven’t been very lively since you went away,” answered Chris. “I have been very ill. I thought you were de—ead!” And she shuddered. “I thought I saw you carried out—dead—over the grass—hanging over a man’s shoulder!”
“I was carried over a man’s shoulder, I believe, only I wasn’t dead,” answered Dick simply. “It was Stelfox’s doing.”
Chris looked puzzled.
“It was in the evening of the day that they found out I had been writing to you,” said she. “Had that anything to do with it?”
Dick listened with interest.
“Everything, I should think,” he answered drily. “Stelfox’s account is, that he found me lying on the sofa insensible, when he came in to clear away the dessert on that evening. He examined the decanters on the table, and finding that I had drunk very little wine, came to the conclusion that what little I had taken had been tampered with. He succeeded in rousing me, but left me for the night in such a drowsy condition that he came back again after I was in bed, to find out if I was all right. His suspicions were then aroused by finding that someone had been in the room, so he woke me with difficulty, told me to dress, and made me go downstairs.”
“Ah!” interrupted Chris quickly, “that was what I heard, what I almost saw. Well, what then?”
Dick went on:
“By the time we got downstairs I had grown so drowsy that when he left me for a minute I tumbled off to sleep again. He had no idea, he said, at that time of going further with me than the garden, where he thought the fresh air would revive me, while he went upstairs again to make investigations. But my continued drowsiness alarmed him so much that he thought it best to take me first at once into the open air. When we had got outside, however, he found that I was again in a state of stupor, so he lifted me up and carried me bodily across the garden towards the beach, where he thought that he could revive me effectually by splashing the sea-water in my face. In the meantime he saw smoke and flames coming from the east wing, and at once made up his mind that I could not go back. He left me, therefore, having brought me to myself, while he borrowed a horse and cart from a man he knew; driving slowly, and resting frequently, so as to spin out the time, we went towards Ashford, where we arrived in plenty of time for him to put me into the first morning train for London. He telegraphed to a brother of his to meet me, and he returned himself to Wyngham in time to escape awkward questions; for in the commotion caused by the fire he had not been missed.”
“I don’t understand Stelfox,” said Chris, doubtfully. “I have never been able to make out whether he was a good man who was sorry for you, and was kind to you, or a bad one who found it to his interest to serve Mr. Bradfield in his wicked treatment of you.”
“You’d better ask him,” said Dick, smiling. “But he says he doesn’t know himself. Anyhow, he’s been a good friend to me. There is no piece of good fortune, from my recovery of speech down to my escape, that I do not owe to him. So when he tells me not to look too closely into his motives, I take care to humour him.”
“But I should like to understand,” persisted Chris. “He could have let you out long ago if he had liked then?”
“He says it would not have paid either him nor me. He wanted me to remain here until he had succeeded in finding out who I was, and what that rascal Bradfield’s motive was in keeping me shut up. But he hasn’t been able to find out yet, and beyond the fact that I now know my surname, a piece of information which I owe to you, I am as much in the dark as I was when he first shut me up.”
Chris mused for a few minutes without speaking. Then she said, half to herself:
“I wonder whether Mr. Marrable could help us?” Then in a different tone, “Won’t you see Mr. Bradfield? Won’t you ask him for an explanation? He has been kind to mamma and me. I don’t want to think he is so wicked as to have known that you were sane! And yet——”
She thought of the drugged wine, of the fire, and she shuddered.
Dick interrupted her.
“I have seen him,” he said, shortly. “I have asked for an explanation. But he will give none, at least none to satisfy me.”
“And you are going to rest satisfied not to be satisfied?” cried Chris, almost with indignation.
“I don’t know what I shall do. At present I am going back to town. I had some work to do here.” He touched the little sketch which she still held in her hand. “My pastime in the days of captivity has become something more than a pastime now. I had undertaken to make a series of sketches of the sea and shore down here for a dealer——”
“Yes, yes, I know. I found that out,” said Chris, blushing at his look of tender surprise.
He kissed her again as he went on:
“But I have found that I must see my cunning old Stelfox first, and tell him what Bradfield has said. Knowing the man better than I do, he may understand better than I Bradfield’s motive for behaving generously.”
“Behaving generously?” echoed Chris, interrogatively.
“Yes, he will pay my passage out to Melbourne to make enquiries about some property which he believes has been left to me.”
“Then don’t go,” cried Chris, impulsively. “You have had no reason for trusting him before; why should you trust him now?”
Dick hesitated.
“It does seem rather a slender chance of fortune, doesn’t it?” he said at last. “But it’s the only one I have. Remember, I not only have to live, but I want to keep a wife too.” She bent her head, but he heard a little sigh which had no sorrow in it. “Now I can just keep myself by my sketches; I can do nothing else, and I shouldn’t like to see you in anything but pretty frocks.”
“I believe,” said Chris, solemnly, jumping to a conclusion, “that Mr. Bradfield has got some money belonging to you, for they say that your father was a rich man.”
Dick looked thoughtful, but not hopeful. Little opportunity as he had had of knowing the world, he guessed that it would require superhuman energy to set the law in motion to make a rich man disgorge for the benefit of a poor one. For he was too ignorant to know that he could attack Capital in the person of Mr. Bradfield, by invoking the great god Labour. It did not occur to him, therefore, that a smart solicitor could have made a fortune both for himself and his client by bringing an action against John Bradfield, the rich man who had oppressed the poor one.
“I couldn’t prove it, even if it were true. And I know nothing of the kind,” said he.
Then Chris had another inspiration.
“You ought to consult a lawyer,” said she promptly.
The suggestion was so obviously a good one, that Dick agreed to this. And then their talk began to drift from the realms of fact to the pleasanter paths of feeling and fancy, and was carried on chiefly in whispers, and in sentences which had no beginnings and no endings.