CHAPTER XI.
The first thing that struck Colonel Woodruffe on entering the room of Madame De Vigne was the extreme pallor of her face. She looked like a woman newly restored to the world after a long and dangerous illness. Although the window was wide open, the venetians were lowered, while Mora herself was dressed in black, and in the semi-obscurity of the room, her white, set face, with its sorrow-laden eyes, had an effect that was almost ghostlike to one coming suddenly out of the glaring sunlight. At least so it seemed to Colonel Woodruffe. He felt that at such a time all commonplace questions would seem trivial and out of place, so he went forward without a word, and lifting her hand, pressed it gently to his lips.
‘Read this, please,’ she said as she handed him her husband’s letter. Then they both sat down.
He read the note through slowly and carefully. As he handed it back to her, he said: ‘What do you mean to do?’
‘I shall see him at the hour he specifies, and shall tell him that I have already commissioned you to seek out Sir William Ridsdale and tell him everything.’
‘Everything?’ he asked.
‘Everything,’ she answered in the same hard, dry voice; a slight trembling of her long, thin fingers was the only sign that betrayed the emotion pent up within. ‘Dear friend,’ she went on, ‘I want you at once to find Sir William and tell him everything as I told it to you on Wednesday. It will then be for him to decide whether he can accept the sister of an ex-convict’s wife for his daughter-in-law. If he cannot, then God help my poor Clarice! But nothing must be kept back from him, whatever the result may be.’ Then after a little pause, she said, looking earnestly into his face: ‘Do you not agree with me?’
‘I do,’ he answered. ‘The right thing is always the best thing to do, whatever consequences may follow. Depend upon it, you will lose nothing in the eyes of Sir William by throwing yourself on his generosity in the way you propose doing.—But I have had news. Sir William will be here—at the Palatine—in the course of a few hours.’
‘Ah! So much the better. So will the climax come all the more quickly. But, my poor Clari! Oh, my poor, darling Clari!’ Her lips quivered, a stifled sob broke from her heart, but her eyes were as dry and tearless as before.
The colonel waited a moment, and then he said: ‘What you purpose telling a certain person at your interview this evening will enable you to set him at defiance—will it not?’
‘It will—thoroughly and completely. I shall have taken the initiative out of his hands, and he will be powerless to harm me.’
‘Your fortune?’ he said.
‘Is settled strictly on myself. He cannot touch a penny of it.’ Then, after a pause, she added: ‘Not that I want him to starve; not that I would refuse him a certain share of my money—if I could only feel sure it would keep him from evil courses. But it would never do that—never! In such as he, there is no possibility of change.’
‘I will make a point of seeing Sir William as soon as he arrives,’ said the colonel as he rose and pushed back his chair. ‘I suppose that is what you would like me to do?’
‘The sooner the better,’ answered Mora, also rising. ‘You will come to me the moment you have any news?’
‘I will not fail to do so. For the present, I presume you will say nothing to your sister?’
‘Why trouble her till the time comes? Let her linger in her love-dream while she may. The waking will be a cruel one when it comes.’
‘With all my heart, I hope not!’ answered the colonel fervently. Then, as he took her hand, he added: ‘We shall meet again in a few hours.’
‘How good you are!’ she murmured, with a little break in her voice.
He shook his head, but would not trust himself to speak. He was more moved than he would have cared to own. Once more he lifted her fingers to his lips. Next moment she was alone.
Mr Dulcimer and Miss Wynter went gaily on their way to the lake. To hear them talking and laughing, no one would have thought that they had a care beyond the enjoyment of the passing hour, yet each was secretly conscious that for them that day might perchance prove one of the most momentous in their lives. They found a boat with fishing-tackle awaiting them. Bella shook a little as she bade farewell to terra firma. She felt as an ancient Greek might have felt—that the Fates were against her—that destiny was stronger than she, and urged her forward whether she wished it or not. She who had heretofore been so wilful seemed to have no power of will left in her.
Before long they found themselves at a point near the head of the lake where Dick had been told that he might possibly find some fish. For a quarter of an hour or so he plied his rod industriously, but not even a nibble rewarded his perseverance. ‘Ah,’ said he at last, ‘the fish are evidently off their feed this morning.’
He did not seem in the least put about by his ill-luck, but laying his rod across the thwarts, he proceeded leisurely to light his pipe. Bella watched him nervously. As soon as his pipe was fairly under way, he looked straight into Bella’s eyes and said: ‘I did not so much come out here this morning to fish as to secure an opportunity for a little quiet talk with you.’
‘I can quite believe it. There is something underhand about most things that you do,’ she answered as she dipped one of her hands carelessly into the water.
Dick smiled amiably. He delighted in a skirmish.
‘Am I to go back to London to-morrow morning, or am I not? That’s the question.’
‘Really, Mr Dulcimer, or Mr Golightly, or whatever your name may be, I am at a loss to know why you should put such a question to me.’
Dick burst into a guffaw.
‘May I ask, sir, what you are laughing at?’
‘At you, of course.’
‘Oh!’ It came out with a sort of snap.
‘You look so comical when you put on that mock-dignified air, that it always sets me off. Of course I know you can’t help it.’
‘Wretch!’ she retorted, half-starting to her feet. Next moment she sat down again in mortal terror. The boat was swaying ominously, or so it seemed to her.
‘Please not to flop about so much,’ he said drily, ‘unless you wish to find yourself in the water. I’m a tolerable swimmer, and I might, perhaps, be able to lug you ashore, but I wouldn’t like to guarantee it.’
Her temper vanished like a flash of summer lightning. ‘Oh, do please take me back!’ she said, looking at him with a pitiful appeal in her eyes. Like many town-bred girls, she had an unconquerable dread of water.
‘You are just as safe here as on shore, so long as you sit still,’ he answered re-assuringly. And with that he changed his seat and went and sat down close in front of her.
The colour began to return to her cheeks. He looked so strong and brave and handsome as he sat there, that she felt ashamed of her fears. What harm could happen to her while he was there to protect her!
‘Look here, Bella,’ he presently began; ‘where’s the use of you and I beating any longer about the bush? I must have a distinct answer from you to-day, Yes or No, whether you will promise to become my wife or whether you won’t. You know that I love you, just as well as if I told you so a thousand times. You know that my love is the genuine article, that there’s nothing sham or pinchbeck about it. Your own heart has told you that before to-day. There’s something else, too, that it has told you.’ He paused.
‘Indeed!’ she said, thrusting out her saucy chin a little way. ‘And what may that be, if you please?’ Her spirit was coming back. She was not inclined to strike her colours without a struggle.
‘It has told you that you love me,’ he answered slowly and deliberately, still looking straight into her eyes.
She was silent for a moment. A little spot of deepest red flashed into each of her cheeks. ‘Indeed, sir, you are mistaken,’ she answered with a sort of supercilious politeness. ‘I am not aware that my heart has told me anything of the kind.’
‘Then it’s high time it did tell you,’ was the cool rejoinder. ‘You love me, Bella, whether you know it or not, and the best of it is that you can’t help yourself.’
‘Oh! this is too much,’ she cried, and again she half-started to her feet. The boat rocked a little.
‘You seem to have made up your mind for a ducking,’ said Dick, although in reality there was not the slightest danger. Next moment she was as still as a mouse.
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe. ‘Yes, ma petite, I’ve got your heart in my safe keeping; and what’s more, I don’t mean to let you have it back at any price. The pretty toy is not for sale.’
His audacity took her breath away, yet it may be that she did not like him less on that account. Certainly Dick’s love-making was of a kind of which she had had no previous experience.
‘You have got me here by a mean and shabby subterfuge,’ she cried. ‘You have made a prisoner of me, and now you think you can say what you like to me.’
‘That’s so,’ he answered equably. ‘Now that I’ve got you here, I mean to say my say. Idiot if I didn’t!’
Bella had never felt so helpless in her life. This man seemed to turn all her weapons against herself. And she was afraid even to stamp her foot!
Richard proceeded to fill his pipe. ‘Don’t you think, carissima, that we have had enough of fencing, you and I?’ he asked as he struck a match. ‘Don’t you think we had better put the foils aside for the present and talk a little quiet common-sense?’ His voice had softened strangely. All his flippancy seemed to have vanished in a moment.
She did not answer. Her eyes were gazing straight over his shoulder at the great solemn hills in the background—not that she saw them in reality. He let his match burn itself out, and laid down his unlighted pipe. Then he leaned forward and took one of her hands in his strong brown palms. His touch thrilled her. All power of resistance seemed taken from her. Her bosom rose and fell more quickly, a tender radiance suffused her eyes, the roses in her cheeks grew larger, and their tints deepened. Love’s sorcery was upon her. She had drunk of the potion, and was lost. Never again could she be quite the same as she had been.
What was the ‘quiet common-sense’ he was going to talk? she wondered. She had her doubts already as to the accuracy of his definition.
‘There comes a time in the lives of most of us,’ he began with unwonted seriousness and still holding one of her hands, ‘when we are confronted by two diverging paths, and are called upon to make our choice between them. At such a crisis you, my dearest, have now arrived. Before you lie two widely diverging paths, one only of which you can take, and from which there can be no return. With one of these paths you are already familiar; you have trodden it for two years; you know whither it leads, or fancy that you know. If you believe that you will find your happiness at the end of it, for heaven’s sake, keep to it still! But if you don’t so believe—why, then, the other path is open to you.’
He paused. She withdrew her hand. He at once began to feel for his match-box. She regretted that she had not allowed him to retain her fingers.
‘And that other path leads—whither?’ she asked softly, and with her eyes still fixed vaguely on the hills behind him.
‘To love in a cottage—or, say, in a semi-detached villa at Camden Town or Peckham Rye, with one small servant, not overclean.’ Evidently he had not forgotten what she had said to him on Wednesday. Their eyes met, and they both broke into a laugh. He put the match-box back in his pocket and took possession of her hand again.
‘You know that all I can offer you is a warm heart and a slender purse,’ he said. ‘Not much, I grant, from a worldly point of view; still, I believe cases have been known where two people have been venturesome enough to start in life together on a capital as ridiculously insignificant as that just named, and have not been unhappy afterwards. On the other hand, you know the brilliant future which your aunt predicts for you, if you will only be an obedient girl and do as she wants you to do; that is to say, if you will only marry the first rich man who proposes to you, whether you care for him or whether you don’t. Well, there are many young ladies nowadays who seem to find their happiness in that direction. Why shouldn’t you? As you said yourself the other day, you are a piece of human bric-à-brac to be knocked down to the highest bidder.’
‘Don’t, don’t!’ she cried with quivering lips.
‘Be mine, then!’ exclaimed Dick passionately. ‘Become the wife of the man who loves you, and save yourself from further degradation. At present you are a slave—a chattel. Break your fetters, cast them behind you for ever, and come to my arms: there is your proper home!’
‘O Dick, what would my aunt say—what would she do?’ she asked in an uncertain, tremulous voice.
‘There! now you’ve done it!’ he exclaimed with a laugh, that yet sounded as if there were a tear in it.
‘Done—what?’ she asked in amaze.
‘Told me all that I want to know!’ he cried in triumph. ‘If your aunt is the only obstacle—I don’t care for ten thousand aunts! You are mine—my own—and all the she-dragons in the world shall not tear you from me!’
Bella saw the uselessness of further resistance, and, like a sensible girl, she capitulated without another word.
When Friday morning broke clear and sunny, Lady Renshaw’s good temper, which seemed somehow to have evaporated in the rain and fog of the previous day, came back to her in a lump as it were. She spent an extra half-hour over the mysteries of her toilet, donned one of her most becoming costumes, and descended to the breakfast-room, on conquest bent. But, alas, when she reached the room she found no one there to conquer; the enemy was nowhere to be seen. She had the salle almost to herself. Then it began to dawn upon her that there was just a possibility that both Dr Mac and the vicar might have ‘made tracks’ thus early in the day on purpose to escape her. And yet such an idea was almost too preposterous for belief. Had they not both been unmistakably infatuated on Wednesday, each in his own peculiar way? Had they not both been palpably jealous of each other? Why, then, should they try to shun her on Friday? Why should forty-eight hours make such a vast difference in their feelings? But, perhaps, there was something in the background of which she knew nothing. Perhaps some one had been prejudicing the two gentlemen against her. If such were the case, she could only set it down as the handiwork of that obnoxious Miss Gaisford. She had felt from the first that she could never like the vicar’s sister; and besides, was it not just possible that Miss Gaisford herself might be setting her cap at the doctor? If so, poor thing, it evidently would be labour in vain.
This thought put her ladyship into a somewhat better humour. Matters should be altered on the morrow. She would make an heroic effort, and rise with the lark, or at least early enough to breakfast at the same time that the gentlemen partook of that meal. It would be her own fault, then, if she allowed them to slip through her fingers. The poor dear vicar might go as soon as he had served her purpose in keeping alive the doctor’s jealousy; but the latter individual she meant to bring, metaphorically, to his knees before he was many days older, and she never for a moment doubted her ability to do so. Miss Gaisford, indeed! Ah ha! let those laugh who win.
She found herself in the sitting-room by the time she arrived at this triumphant peroration. It was empty. Lady Renshaw, in accordance with her usual tactics when no one was about, began to pry and peer here and there, opening such drawers in the writing-table as did not happen to be locked, turning over the paper and envelopes, and even submitting the blotting-pad to a careful examination; she had heard that strange secrets had sometimes been revealed by the agency of a sheet of blotting-paper. Nothing, however, rewarded her perquisition. She next crossed to the chimney-piece. Careless people occasionally left envelopes, and even letters, on that convenient shelf. Here, too, her search was without success. She felt somewhat aggrieved.
Suddenly her eye was caught by a gleam of something white just inside the scroll-work of the fender. She had pounced upon it in an instant. It proved to be merely a scrap of half-charred paper; but when she had opened it, which she did very carefully, she found it to be covered with writing. It was, in fact, a fragment of the letter given by Madame De Vigne to Colonel Woodruffe. The colonel had watched the flames devour the letter, till it was all gone except the small portion held between his thumb and finger. This he had dropped without thought into the fender, where it had till now remained, untouched by the housemaid’s brush. Lady Renshaw went to the window, and having first satisfied herself that no one was watching her, she put on her glasses, and tenderly straightening out the paper on the palm of one hand, she proceeded to decipher it. The fire had left nothing save a few brief sentences, which lacked both beginning and end. Such as they were, however, they seemed pregnant with a sinister significance. Her ladyship’s colour changed as she read. She was nearly certain that the writing was that of Madame De Vigne; but in order to make herself certain on the point, she turned to an album belonging to Clarice which lay on the table, in which were some verses written by her sister and signed with her name. Yes—the writing was indisputably that of Madame De Vigne!
Once more she turned to the scrap of paper and read the words. She wanted to fix them in her memory. They ran as follows:
‘My husband ... five years ago ... sentenced to penal servitude.... You now know all.’
‘The key of the mystery, as I live!’ cried Lady Renshaw triumphantly. ‘The widow of a convict! Well might she not care to speak about her past life. Ah ha! my fine madam, your reign is nearly at an end. I wonder what Mr Etheridge will say to this. He may be back by now. I will go in search of him at once. But for whom can the letter have been intended? In any case, she seems to have repented writing it, and to have burnt it rather than send it.’
She took a book off the table and placed the fragment carefully between the leaves, so as to preserve it intact. She then went in search of Mr Etheridge. That gentleman and Clarice had just returned from their excursion. Their first care was to examine the letter-rack in the hall. There they each found a telegram. Clarice tore hers open with a fluttering heart. This is what it said:
‘Nothing seen here of governor. Telegram from him to Blatchett. Am to return to Windermere by first train. Hurrah! Governor will meet me at Palatine to night. Queer, very. No matter. Shall see you as well.’
Clarice turned first red and then white. The terrible Sir William coming to the Palatine—and to-night! It was enough to flutter any girl’s nerves. She turned to Mr Etheridge and put the message into his hands. ‘Read it,’ was all she could say.
He had just finished reading his own message, which seemed to be a very brief one.
‘Well, what do you think?’ she asked nervously, as he returned the paper to her with a smile.
‘I think it’s about the wisest thing Sir William could do. He ought to come and see with his own eyes, instead of sending other people. Of course, the fact of his summoning Mr Archie to London, and then declining to see him, can only be put down to the score of eccentricity—though I have no doubt the boy has enjoyed his little trip to town.’
Clarice looked at him a little reproachfully. As if Archie could enjoy being anywhere where she was not!
‘I must go and tell Mora the news,’ she said. ‘But oh! Mr Etheridge, do you think Sir William will want to see me?’
‘I think it very likely indeed.’
‘I was never so frightened in my life. I wish I could hide myself somewhere till to-morrow.’
‘Pooh, pooh, my dear young lady; Sir William is not an ogre. He is only a man, like the rest of us.’
‘But he is Archie’s papa.’
‘Is that any reason why you should be frightened at him?’
She nodded her head with considerable emphasis. But at this juncture Lady Renshaw was seen approaching, and Clarice fled.
‘Can you favour me with a few minutes’ private conversation, Mr Etheridge?’ said her ladyship.
‘Willingly, madam. Shall we take a stroll on the lawn, as we did before? There seems to be no one about.’
‘That will do very nicely. I will just fetch my sunshade and then join you.’ Which she accordingly did. ‘You may recollect, Mr Etheridge, that one portion of our conversation this morning had reference to Madame De Vigne?’ began her ladyship in her most confidential manner.
‘I have not forgotten, madam.’
‘Since that time I have made a most surprising discovery—a discovery I feel bound to say which only tends to confirm the opinion I then ventured to express. Will you be good enough, my dear sir, to look at this, and then tell me what you think?’
She opened the book at the page where she had inserted the scrap of paper, and placed it in his hands.
He stopped in his walk while he read it; but his face was inscrutable, and Lady Renshaw could gather nothing from it. Presently he lifted his eyes from the paper and stared at her for a moment or two, his bushy eyebrows meeting across the deep furrow in his forehead.
‘Where did you obtain this from, may I ask? And what is the meaning of it?’
‘As you will have observed, it is evidently a fragment of a burnt letter. I picked it up quite by accident on the floor of the sitting-room. The writing I know for a fact to be that of Madame De Vigne. As for the meaning of it—your penetration, my dear sir, is surely not at fault as regards that?’
‘It is a curious document, certainly—a very curious document,’ remarked the old man drily.
‘It is more than that, Mr Etheridge,’ remarked her ladyship in her most tragic tones—‘it is a revelation! Who is this husband of whom mention is made? Who is this convict who is so openly alluded to? Are they, or are they not, one and the same man, and if so, is he alive or dead? Those are points, I should imagine, on which Sir William will require to be fully enlightened; for, of course, Mr Etheridge, you will see how imperative it is that the paper should at once be laid before him. What a very, very fortunate thing that I happened to find it in the way I did!’
‘Yes, madam, Sir William shall see the paper, undoubtedly. A very fortunate thing, as you say, that your ladyship happened to find it, and not any one else, for you, madam, I am quite sure, are discretion itself.’
‘Just so—just so,’ responded her ladyship uneasily.—‘What a strange old man!’ she said to herself. ‘I don’t know what to make of him this morning.’
‘Permit me to whisper a secret in your ladyship’s ear,’ resumed Mr Etheridge with his odd little smile. ‘I have had a message. Sir William will be here—here at the Palatine—in the course of a few hours.’
Her ladyship could not repress a start. Here was news indeed!
‘But not a word to any one at present, I beg,’ continued the old gentleman. ‘I want Sir William’s arrival to be a surprise.’
‘Ah, just so,’ answered her ladyship with a complacent nod.—‘It will be like a bombshell thrown into their midst,’ she added to herself. Then aloud: ‘Not a word shall pass my lips, Mr Etheridge. By-the-bye, do you think it at all likely that Sir William will require to see me—I mean with regard to the scrap of paper?’
‘I think it very likely indeed, madam.’
‘In that case, I will hold myself in readiness. I have long desired the pleasure of Sir William’s acquaintance. We could scarcely meet under more agreeable auspices.’ Then suddenly grasping Mr Etheridge by the sleeve, she said in her deepest tones: ‘I felt sure from the first moment I set eyes on her that this Madame De Vigne was an impostor!’
‘Dear me!’ ejaculated the old gentleman with uplifted hands. ‘What acumen—what acumen!’
Her ladyship smiled a superior smile. ‘For the present I will say Ta-ta. You will not forget that I shall be in readiness to see Sir William at any moment?’
‘I will be sure not to forget. Au revoir, madam—au revoir.’
Lady Renshaw walked back to the hotel with the serene consciousness of having performed a meritorious action. Through her instrumentality an impostor would be unmasked, and in so far, Society would owe her a debt of gratitude. The service, too, was such a one as Sir William would not be likely to forget. Suddenly, a great, an overwhelming thought flashed across her mind. Sir William was a widower, but by no means a very old man—at least, so she had been given to understand; and in any case, he was not too old to marry again, if the whim were to take him. What if he were to—— The mere idea of such a thing made her heart go pit-a-pat. There was a mirror in the corridor. She simpered at herself in it as she passed and gave a tug at one or two of her ribbons. Undeniably, she was still a fine-looking woman. Far more unlikely things had happened than that which her thoughts had barely hinted at. What was it that the parrot in its gilded cage at the top of the stairs said to her as she passed? Did her ears deceive her, or was it a fact that it screamed after her, ‘Lady—Lady—La-dy Ridsdale?’