CHAPTER XX.
In the midst of his anxiety on his brother’s account Lord St. Austell was filled with admiration, but rather puzzled, by the entire change in Deborah’s manner towards him. Being on old man of the world he was able, as soon as he had done for the time all there was to be done, to ease his mind sufficiently of its burden to enjoy the idea of a long tête-à-tête with the beautiful girl. When he asked her if he should have the compartment reserved, she made no objection. When he loaded her with little attentions, and began to assume his most fascinating manner, she thanked him smilingly, but still showed none of the rather distant timidity with which she had formerly treated his advances. He grew more and more anxious to know the reason of this change.
“I did not think, Miss Audaer, at this time yesterday that I should ever have the pleasure of a journey in your society.”
“No indeed, nor did I,” said Deborah simply.
“In fact, at one time I was afraid that I had had the misfortune to come under the ban of your displeasure.”
“Oh no, how could you, when you were so kind to Rees?”
“Yet even your fondness for Rees would never before induce you to come up to London with me to find out how he was getting on.”
Deborah said nothing to this. After a short pause Lord St. Austell went on:
“So that, while I am delighted to find that the—shall we call it—prejudice under which I labored in your eyes has broken down, I am at the same time at a loss to account for the change which has made me so happy.”
“Are you really?” asked Deborah with surprise, turning towards him eyes full of intelligence and sincerity. “I should have thought a man of your experience would have understood it so easily.”
There was no quality of his to which the earl would not rather have heard her allude than to his experience, suggesting, as it did, the years which had brought it. However, he had a great deal too much tact and shrewdness to betray his feeling on the subject.
“I confess,” he said, “that long and varied as my experience has been, your charming sex still has surprises for me. Will you explain the reason of the altered light in which you regard me?”
“There has been no alteration. It is simply this: You asked me to accompany you to London this morning with the definite object of trying to do you a service. In those circumstances, unless I am much mistaken in you, a girl might safely trust herself in your care from here to Japan.”
The girl’s spirit and modesty took the old roué by storm. It was such a deft and graceful appeal to all that was best in the traditions of his not very worthy school, that this particular girl was indeed, after making it, an almost sacred object in his eyes. He leaned back in his seat in the carriage, regarding her with admiration more respectfully than before.
“What a strangely different world this would be,” he said at last, “if only half the women in it possessed your divine attribute of common sense!”
“Perhaps there are some divine attributes lacking in the men, too,” suggested Deborah demurely.
“That is more than likely. But who, that knows anything about him, would expect divinity in such a creature as a man?”
“Not I, for one,” answered Deborah, with simple sincerity which was rather startling.
“And it’s rather hard, isn’t it, that such commonplace, tainted wretches as we are, should expect such moral perfection in our helpmates.”
Deborah paused a few moments, and then answered thoughtfully:
“I don’t think so. Surely it is better that one-half the world should be good than that none should be. And if a man can’t be good himself, it is at least something that he can admire goodness in his wife and wish for a good influence around his children.”
The earl was much interested.
“There,” said he, with excitement, “is the sensible way of looking at it. What a wife you’d make?”
“Yes,” said Deborah, quietly, “to a good husband.”
“But I understood you to say——”
“That a man should choose a good mother for his children. But I think also that a woman should choose a good father for hers.”
“And you would be very hard to please?”
“Very.”
“But don’t you know that most women prefer a man not too utterly immaculate?” suggested the earl, gently.
“That is because they hope to reform him.”
“And—stop me at once if you think I am getting impertinent—but have you never, never entertained any idea of the sort?”
Deborah blushed, but she turned to answer him very frankly.
“Yes, I have. I wanted very badly to reform Rees Pennant. And that set me thinking what sort of a thing such a reform could be. And then I began to doubt my own powers.”
“And you decided to give him up?”
“No, oh no. But I saw that it would need a great deal of love on the man’s side as well as on the woman’s to bring such a reform about.”
“And had you not in the meantime met some one who—well, who insisted on occupying a corner in your thoughts?”
Deborah started.
“Oh, no; at least——.” She hesitated in some confusion.
The earl laughed softly.
“Ah, you are a very woman after all. I was beginning to be afraid you were rather too superior to our poor common clay.”
“But you are quite wrong if you think——”
“I don’t think anything; I never did. I have been a soldier, you know, not a philosopher. I can act, you see; I could run down to Carstow to fetch you; but having done so, I have for the time given up all thought about our errand, and the numerous difficulties this business has thrown me into.”
“Indeed!” said Deborah gravely, “I can’t think about it clearly; it has come upon me like a misfortune which one has dreamed about all night and which happens in the daytime.”
Lord St. Austell shivered, and Deborah saw that his face had turned quite grey, and that his eyes moved restlessly, as if trying to escape the sight of some haunting object. He opened one of the pile of papers he had hastily bought at the station, and asked her opinion upon one of the public topics of the day. But that his mind was more burdened by the object of their journey than he chose to confess was proved by a remark into which he burst quite abruptly after a long silence.
“This young scamp Rees has a wonderful fascination about him. He has bewitched one of my own daughters. I caught them together last night at the house of some miserable little snob.”
“Lady Marion?” said Deborah quietly.
“What? You have heard?”
“Oh, that has been well known for a long time.”
“To every one but me, I suppose?”
“I should think so.”
“Well, your confession that a woman can become disgusted with even a worthless man gives me hope.”
“I did not speak for every woman, remember,” said Deborah warningly.
Her caution was justified. At Paddington, waiting for the train from Carstow, stood poor Lady Marion, leaner, more hatchet-faced than ever, in a long cloak and a shabby black hat, looking old enough for her own mother. Deborah saw her first, and jumping quickly out of the carriage, went up to her. The poor thing looked at the handsome girl before her with angry eyes, and would have turned her back and walked on. Deborah was not to be daunted.
“We have come to try and save Rees,” she whispered, following her.
Lady Marion turned quickly.
“To save him! Ah, yes, you,” she added immediately, in a bitterly envious tone. “He loves you.”
“Well, if you care for him, surely the great thing is that he should be saved,” urged the other persuasively.
Lady Marion had stopped reluctantly, and she now looked everywhere but at Deborah’s beautiful face.
“But papa, what does he say?”
Before her companion could answer, Lord St. Austell was beside them. He looked coldly and sternly at his daughter.
“Come down here, out of the crowd,” said he. “I wish to speak to you.”
He took her arm and led her down the platform to the almost deserted end, which is, morning and evening, piled with huge milk cans going and returning between the London dairies and the country. Deborah followed them at a long distance, and waited. The earl addressed his daughter very coldly.
“What is the meaning of this exhibition. You promised me, when I took you home last night, that you would remain there.”
“I couldn’t papa, I couldn’t,” sobbed the girl.
“What have you come here for?”
“To tell you that I love him, and that if you don’t let him off I shall kill myself and let everybody know why. You don’t believe me!” the poor distracted creature continued passionately.
“I do. I could believe anything of such an idiot,” said her father contemptuously. “You have seen him, I suppose, this morning?”
“No. I don’t know where he lives.”
“Ah, he was afraid of your worrying him even at his rooms, evidently.” And he uttered an exclamation of disgust. “Now go home. Nothing is further from my thoughts than punishing Rees. I would not even give him a fool for a wife.”
He led her, without too much gentleness, through the station, put her in a hansom, and gave the driver the address of his home.
Then, with a laconic caution that she had better remain at home and keep quiet, he turned his back upon her and went in search of Deborah, whom he found just inside the doors, wearing a rather sad face.
“I wish that foolish girl of mine had a little of your sense,” said he, as he helped Deborah into a hansom and got in after her.
“She is the ideal faithful woman, though.”
“Yes, because she has no beauty.”
They drove on in silence to the lodgings in St. Martin’s-lane, where, in answer to their inquiries, they were told that Mr. Pennant still lived; then they were ushered into the little back room, which Deborah remembered, and, finding that Rees was not there, they said they would wait. Mr. Pennant’s hours were very uncertain, the old landlady, who opened the door herself, said; and as he scarcely ever had a meal at home, and always let himself in with a latch-key, she could give very little information about his movements. Both Mr. Pennant and Mr. Jocelyn, she mentioned, as if it was no uncommon occurrence, had slept out last night.
“Jocelyn!” repeated Lord Austell, turning to Deborah.
“It must be Sep, Mrs. Kemp’s nephew,” answered she.
“We will wait,” repeated he. “If you should meet either of them on their way in, don’t tell them any one is here. We want to surprise them.”
“Very well, sir,” said Mrs. Williamson. Then she continued, with a smile, “If Mr. Goodhare should call, sir, I suppose you would wish him told that his brother is inside?”
Lord St. Austell started.
“Brother!” he repeated sharply.
“Lor’, yes, sir, I saw the likeness in a minute!”
The earl glanced in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and laughed with an effort.
“No,” he said. “Let him in, but don’t let him know I’m here.”
“Very well, sir.”
She left the room, and the earl turned to Deborah in great agitation.
“Now do you know who is the prime mover in all this?” he asked, almost fiercely, when the door closed.
“Amos Goodhare,” she answered quietly. “He has been Rees’s evil genius for the last eighteen months.”
“And mine for a much longer time than that. But,” he added gloomily, after a pause, “I would have avoided meeting him if I could. It can do no good. He is a rascal, but I cannot charge him, and he knows it.”
He was silent for some time, pacing up and down the little room, listening intently to every sound, glancing from time to time at his watch impatiently, while the gloom upon his face constantly increased.
“Perhaps none of them will come,” suggested Deborah.
“Yes, they will; at any rate he will,” said the earl. “When I am highly strung, as I am to-night, I can feel a misfortune approaching. And this man has always brought misfortune to me. Don’t smile, my dear girl. When you have reached my age, you will believe, at any rate somewhat, in portents.”
But Deborah was not smiling. There was something more of solemnity, something more of a kindly dignity, in the earl’s manner, as the afternoon wore slowly on. She began to believe, as she watched the change which was creeping over him, and turning him, as it were, from the genial carpet knight into the soldier ready for battle, that they were, indeed, as his presentiment told him, on the eve of some great calamity, which would overshadow even the anxieties from which they were suffering.
The dark afternoon was merging into evening, and the fire had been allowed to sink very low, when, at last, there was a sound of turning of a latch-key in the outer door. The earl, who had been resting for a moment in a chair by the dying fire, with his head in his hands, sat up and signed to Deborah to keep still on the little sofa where she was sitting.
Before she could guess his purpose they both heard a very light tread in the hall outside, the door opened noiselessly, and a man, not at first distinguishable in the darkness, crept into the room like a shadow.
Then by his height, and his stealthy movements, they knew him to be Amos Goodhare.