CHAPTER XVIII.
Through all Rees Pennant’s changes of conduct, of manner, of thought, of appearance, Lady Marion Cenarth had remained unswervingly faithful and devoted, brooding over the short notes Goodhare induced him to write to her, with alternate rapture and anxiety; making appointments to meet him at the house of a convenient friend, bearing with his caprices of temper, proud of his tepid sufferance of her vehement adoration, ready at all times, as she repeatedly hinted, to throw away the dignity of her sex and position, and incur all the humiliation and danger of a private marriage. This step, in spite of Goodhare’s persuasions, Rees was in no hurry to take. Poor Lady Marion’s devotion was perhaps too slavish, too entirely unconcealed, to have been highly valued by any man. It therefore speedily palled upon Rees, who was not only accustomed to feminine adoration, but who had become doubly fastidious since Deborah Audaer’s visit to town.
The appearance of the beautiful country girl, with her modest, straightforward manner, and handsome, yet most innocent, eyes, had been like a draught of fresh, sweet air to a man coming out of a chamber foul with asphyxiating gases—not without a certain chilling effect, but refreshing, invigorating, pure—reminding him of the wholesome joys of the life he had left, and contrasting them with the feverish, soul-deadening pleasures of the life he was leading. So that, dropping out of his mind altogether his own shameful conduct on that occasion, he had allowed himself to brood over Deborah’s image as that of the angel who—but not before he was tired of it—should lead him back from his exhausting London life to recruit his energies in quiet Carstow.
So that this mandate of Amos Goodhare’s to go and marry Lady Marion fell in the midst of his dreams with disconcerting suddenness. Amos had used his craft so well on Rees’s weak nature that not all Sep’s shrewd observations had been able to shake the young man’s confidence in the judgment of the old. Amos thought for him, and Rees acted upon those thoughts with docility, though he constantly protested with a verbal freedom which Goodhare, while permitting, hated him for.
Rees, therefore, did not now stay to ask himself whether Amos had some private motive in this matter of his marriage, but he arrived at the meeting-place in the worst possible temper.
Mrs. Walker, Lady Marion’s accommodating friend, was the wife of a city architect, and one of those persons who are ready, by no matter what means, to attach themselves to people of a rank superior to their own. Although exceedingly small, plain, and vulgar she had, by the attractions of a coarse, easy-going good nature and a somewhat startling freedom of speech, secured the equivocal attentions of a young fellow of no brains but of good social position, and it was through him that she had made the acquaintance of Lady Marion Cenarth, who was his own cousin. Mrs. Walker was therefore just the sort of person to be an accommodating friend, and Lady Marion, while inwardly loathing her unrefined manners, was glad to make use of her.
On this particular evening Mrs. Walker had had an appointment to go to the theatre, but the fog having prevented her keeping it, she gave Lady Marion her undesirable companionship, and the two sat in the drawing-room with Francis Cenarth, the brainless one before mentioned; the hostess trying to talk a jargon of fashionable slip-slop, to which Lady Marion who, whatever her faults might be, was not frivolous, turned rudely inattentive ears.
“He’s not coming, my dear, that is clear, so I should advise you to give up hope, and look pleasant,” whispered Mrs. Walker, as she crossed over to her friend with a cup of tea.
But at that moment a cab stopped at the door, and Lady Marion, with a naïve start and a flushing face, betrayed her hopes. A minute later Rees was in the room.
If Lady Marion was annoyed at the presence of Mrs. Walker, her admirer was unspeakably relieved by it. He drank cup after cup of tea, and bore lightly the chief burden of the conversation, delighted to shorten the inevitable tête-à-tête in which he would have to forswear his liberty and be surfeited with unwelcome caresses. At last, however, the hostess proposed to show her own admirer a picture her husband had just bought, in order to allow the supposed passionate lovers an opportunity of exchanging mutual vows. The two drawing-rooms, which were both furnished with a good taste which seemed at first sight a surprising characteristic of their occupier, ran from the front to the back of the house, and were divided simply by a reed curtain. Mrs. Walker passed through these with Francis Cenarth, and Rees was left to make his proposal. As usual, having let Amos make up his mind for him, Rees was not long in carrying out his instructions when once he and the opportunity stood face to face.
The reed curtain had scarcely ceased to rustle behind his hostess and her companion, when he threw himself into a chair by Lady Marion’s side.
“Well, Marion,” he said in a rather languid, pretty-pretty manner, “have you any idea why I was so anxious to see you to-night?”
The poor girl flushed with surprise and agitation. Indeed, she had not noticed any great degree of anxiety in her lover’s manner. Knowing her own personal disadvantages, with a cankering knowledge that she was lean, high-shouldered, awkward, and altogether without beauty, and regarding Rees with worshipful eyes which even exaggerated his good looks and attractions, she had always been content with very little. Now, therefore, she scarcely dared to think that the goal of her hopes was really reached.
“No, Rees,” she stammered, looking at him with sudden, most eloquent shyness, and a bright gleam of excitement in her rather dull blue eyes, “I—I didn’t know that you had any particular reason.”
“And if I tell you that I have, can you guess what it is?”
“No—no, Rees.”
She had scarcely uttered these words when a cab drew up so sharply outside that, in the fog, the horse stepped upon the curbstone, and was got off amid much shouting and clatter. Rees jumped up and looked out from behind the blind to see what had happened. He stepped back muttering an exclamation, with a strange look in his eyes.
“It’s the earl,” he said briefly.
Lady Marion started to her feet with a cry, and stood for a few moments staring at him vacantly. Then, whispering quickly:
“Behind the curtain—the other room—papa must not see you!” she met Mrs. Walker, just as the latter, hearing a loud and peremptory ring, ran in from the next room.
“It’s my father,” said Lady Marion.
Mrs. Walker did not notice the girl’s tone of alarm. The honor of having an earl in her house, no matter what his errand might be, out-weighed every other thought in her mind. She had only time to draw one deep breath of gratification before the drawing-room door was opened and Lord St. Austell was announced.
He walked in with a firm step and dignified manner—“every inch a nobleman” was the description Mrs. Walker afterwards gave of him. With a curt bend to the lady, who came forward very ready to overflow with an effusive welcome, he asked shortly:
“My daughter is here, I believe, madam?”
“Yes, papa,” said a tremulous voice behind him.
He turned and saw Lady Marion standing near the door, with a very white face. Then, with only a glance at her, he again addressed the lady of the house.
“Can I have a few words with my daughter alone, madam?”
Nothing could be more courteous than his words and attitude, nothing more contemptuous than his tone and manner. It was impossible to mistake the fact that he took at a glance the measure, social and moral, of the person he was addressing. No upbraidings, no explanations were necessary. Mrs. Walker retired at once with some incoherent words which sounded like an apology, and the earl turned at once again to his daughter.
“Last week you begged of me,” he began at once, without any preface, “two letters from General Wenlock as autographs, you said. Who did you give them to?” No answer. “Was it to Amos Goodhare?”
Another pause.
Then, in a stifled voice, poor Lady Marion answered, “No, papa.”
“Who was it to, then?”
He was perfectly quiet. Rees, who was listening, with bated breath, behind the reed curtain, could only just distinguish the words.
Again Lady Marion made no answer.
The earl spoke again, after a short silence, in very measured tone.
“Your uncle Charles will be a ruined man by this time to-morrow unless we find out into what hands those letters have got. They have been used for purposes of forgery.”
The girl uttered a low cry and hid her face in her hands.
“Will you tell me now?”
“I cannot.”
She lifted a countenance like that of a dead person, staring wildly, blankly, before her.
“Then I know. It was Rees Pennant!”
Lord St. Austell was by no means a dull person when an important occasion arose for the exercise of his wits. He had been told where to find his daughter by a servant who knew better than to say what reason took her to Mrs. Walker’s, and until this moment he had not had the least suspicion of her attachment to Rees and her secret correspondence with him. But he had caught sight of a slight, well-formed figure he recognised behind the reed curtain, for neither Rees nor Lady Marion had remembered that a small lamp was burning at the back of the second room. In an instant the earl understood everything. Connecting Amos with the change in Rees, as he had already known how to connect him with the personation of himself at the Tower that day, he felt that he had now more than a clue, and therefore spoke with certainty.
Marion was in despair. She at once began a denial so energetic that Rees, perceiving that the game was up, stepped through the rustling reeds with a grand air.
“It is unnecessary to say more,” he said, standing in the centre of the room, conscious even at this moment of the effective picture he made. “I admit that the letters were given to me.”
The earl came to the point at once. What were these two, this knave and this fool, that he should spend time and words on them when the honor of his family was at stake?
“Then you know where the jewels are,” he said, still in a low voice, but with perceptibly rising excitement. “Put me in the way of finding them to-night, and you may marry my daughter to-morrow.”
Rees gave him a low bow.
“Thank you,” he said. “You do me too great an honor. For, in the first place, I don’t want to marry your daughter; and in the second, the jewels you speak of have already passed out of my reach and out of my knowledge altogether. I wish your daughter a better husband than I should make, the Crown jewels a better keeper than your brother, and yourself a very good evening.”
With a low but a very rapid bow, Rees darted out of the room, only just evading the grasp which the earl, beside himself with rage, would have laid upon his coat-collar. In another instant the front door slammed behind him with a noise that echoed through the house, and two minutes later still he was as much lost to the earl in the pitchy blackness of the fog as if he had left the regions of earth.