CHAPTER VI.
Five minutes later, Miss Brandon burst into the room in her usual impulsive fashion. Lady Dimsdale was standing at one of the windows. It was quite enough for Elsie to find there was some one to talk to—more especially when that some one was Lady Dimsdale, whom she looked upon as the most charming woman in the world. At once she began to rattle on after her usual fashion. ‘Thank goodness, those hateful exercises are over for to-day. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Arma virumque cano. How I do detest Latin! My grandmother didn’t know a word of it, and she was the most delightful old lady I ever knew. Besides, where’s the use of it? When Charley and I are married, I can’t talk to him in Latin—nor even to the butcher’s boy, nor the fishmonger. Perhaps, if I were to speak to my poodle in dog-Latin, he might understand me.’ Then, with a sudden change of manner, she said: ‘Dear Lady Dimsdale, what is the matter?’ for Laura had turned, and the traces of tears were still visible around her eyes. ‘Why, I do believe you have been’——
‘Yes, crying—that’s the only word for it,’ answered Laura with a smile.
‘Do tell me what it is. Nothing serious?’
‘Nothing more serious than the last chapter of a foolish love-story.’ She had taken up a book instinctively.
‘I’m awfully glad it’s nothing worse. Love-stories that make one cry are delicious. I always feel better after a good cry.’ Her sharp eyes were glancing over the title of the book in Lady Dimsdale’s hand. ‘“Buchan’s Domestic Medicine,”’ she read out aloud. ‘Dear Lady Dimsdale, surely this is not the book that’—— She was suddenly silent. The room had a bow-window, the casement of which stood wide open this sunny morning. Elsie had heard voices on the terrace outside. ‘That’s dear old nunky’s voice,’ she said. ‘And—yes—no—I do believe it is though!’ She crossed to the window and peeped out from behind the curtains.
Stumping slowly along the terrace, assisted by his thick Malacca, came Captain Bowood. By his side marched a dark-bearded military-looking inspector of police, dressed in the regulation blue braided frock-coat and peaked cap. They were engaged in earnest conversation.
‘An inspector of police! What can be the matter? I do believe they are coming here.’ So spoke Elsie; but when she looked round, expecting a response, she found herself alone. Lady Dimsdale had slipped out of the room.
The voices came nearer. Elsie seated herself at the table, opened a book, ruffled her hair, and pretended to be poring over her lessons.
The door opened, and Captain Bowood, followed by the inspector, entered the room. ‘Pheugh! Enough to frizzle a nigger,’ ejaculated the former, as he mopped his forehead with his yellow bandana handkerchief. Then perceiving Elsie, he said, as he pinched one of her ears, ‘Ha, Poppet, you here?’
‘Yes, nunky; and dreadfully puzzled I am. I want to find out in what year the Great Pyramid was built. Do, please, tell me.’
‘Ha, ha!—Listen to that, Mr Inspector.—If you had asked me the distance from here to New York, now. Great Pyramid, eh?’
The inspector, pencil and notebook in hand, was examining the fastenings of the window. ‘Very insecure, Captain Bowood,’ he said; ‘very insecure indeed. A burglar would make short work of them.’
Miss Brandon was eying him furtively. There was a puzzled look on her face. ‘I could almost swear it was Charley’s voice; and yet’——
‘Come, come; you’ll frighten us out of our wits, if you talk like that,’ answered the Captain.
‘Many burglaries in this neighbourhood of late,’ remarked the inspector sententiously.
‘Just so, just so.’ This was said a little uneasily.
‘Best to warn you in time, sir.’
‘O Charley, you naughty, naughty boy!’ remarked Miss Brandon under her breath. ‘Even I did not know him at first.’
‘But if Mr Burglar chooses to pay us a visit, who’s to hinder him?’ asked the Captain.
The inspector shrugged his shoulders and smiled an inscrutable smile.
‘You don’t mean to say that they intend to pay us a visit to-night? Come now.’
‘Every reason to believe so, Captain.’
‘But, confound it! how do you know all this?’
‘Secret information. Know many things. Mrs Bowood keeps her jewel-case in top left-hand drawer in her dressing-room. Know that.’
‘Bless my heart! How did you find that out?’
‘Secret information. Gold chronometer with inscription on it hidden away at the bottom of your writing-desk. Know that.’
‘How the’——
‘Secret information.’
‘O Charley, Charley, you artful darling!’—this sotto voce from Miss Brandon.
The Captain looked bewildered, as well he might. ‘This is really most wonderful,’ he said. ‘But about those rascals who, you say, are going to visit us to-night?’
‘Give ’em a warm reception, Captain. Leave that to me.’
‘Yes, yes. Warm reception. Good. Have some of your men in hiding, eh, Mr Inspector?’
‘Half a dozen of ’em, Captain.’
‘Just so, just so. And I’ll be in hiding too. I’ve a horse-pistol up-stairs nearly as long as my arm.’
‘Shan’t need that, sir.’
‘No good having a horse-pistol if one doesn’t make use of it now and then.’
‘Half-a-dozen men—three inside the house, and three out,’ remarked the inspector as he wrote down the particulars in his book.
‘And I’ll make the seventh—don’t forget that!’ cried the Captain, looking as fierce as some buccaneer of bygone days. ‘If there’s one among the burglars more savage than the rest, leave him for me to tackle.’
‘My poor, dear nunky, if you only knew!’ murmured Elsie under her breath.
‘Perhaps I had better lend you a pair of these, Captain; they might prove useful in a scuffle,’ remarked the inspector as he produced a pair of handcuffs from the tail-pocket of his coat. ‘The simplest bracelets in the world. The easiest to get on, and the most difficult to get off—till you know how. Allow me. This is how it’s done. What could be more simple?’
Nothing apparently could be more simple, seeing that, before Captain Bowood knew what had happened, he found himself securely handcuffed.
‘Ha, ha—just so. Queer sensation—very,’ he exclaimed, turning redder in the face than usual. ‘But I don’t care how soon you take them off, Mr Inspector.’
‘No hurry, Captain, no hurry.’
‘Confound you! what do you mean by no hurry? What’—— But here the Captain came to a sudden stop.
The inspector’s black wig and whiskers had vanished, and the laughingly impudent features of his peccant nephew were revealed to his astonished gaze.
‘Good-afternoon, my dear uncle. This is the second time to-day that I have had the pleasure of seeing you.’ Then he called: ‘Elsie, dear!’
‘Here I am, Charley,’ came in immediate response.
‘Come and kiss me.’
‘Yes, Charley.’ And with that Miss Brandon rose from her chair, and with a slightly heightened colour and the demurest air possible, came down the room and allowed her lover to lightly touch her lips with his. It was a pretty picture.
‘What—what! Why—why,’ spluttered the Captain. For a little while words seemed to desert him.
‘My dear uncle, pray, pray, do not allow yourself to get quite so red in the face; at your time of life you really alarm me.’
‘You—you vile young jackanapes! You—you cockatrice!—And you, miss, you shall smart for this. I’ll—I’ll—— Oh!’
‘Patience, good uncle; prithee, patience.’
‘Patience! O for a good horsewhip!’
‘When I called upon you this morning, sir,’ resumed Charles the imperturbable, ‘I left unsaid the most important part of that which I had come to say; it therefore became needful that I should see you again.’
‘O for a horsewhip! Are you going to take these things off me, or are you not?’
‘The object of my second visit, sir, is to inform you that Miss Brandon and I are engaged to be married, and to beg of you to give us your consent and blessing, and make two simple young creatures happy.’
‘Handcuffed like a common poacher on his way to jail! Oh, when once I get free!’
‘We have made up our minds to get married; haven’t we, Elsie?’
‘We have—or else to die together,’ replied Miss Brandon, as she struck a little tragic attitude.
‘Think over what I have said, my dear uncle, and accord us your consent.’
‘Or our deaths will lie at your door.’
‘Every night as the clock struck twelve, you would see us by your side.’
‘You would never more enjoy your rum-and-water and your pipe.’
‘I should tickle your ear with a ghostly feather, and wake you in the middle of your first sleep.’
‘I shall go crazy—crazy!’ spluttered the Captain. He would have stamped his foot, only he was afraid of the gout.
‘Not quite, sir, I hope,’ replied young Summers, with a sudden change of manner; and next moment, and without any action of his own in the matter, the Captain found himself a free man. The first thing he did was to make a sudden grasp at his cane; but Elsie was too quick for him, or it might have fared ill with her sweetheart.
Master Charley laughed. ‘I am sorry, my dear uncle, to have to leave you now; but time is pressing. You will not forget what I have said, I feel sure. I shall look for your answer to my request in the course of three or four days; or would you prefer, sir, that I should wait upon you for it in person?’
‘If you ever dare to set foot inside my door again, I’ll—I’ll spiflicate you—yes, sir, spiflicate you!’
‘To what a terrible fate you doom me, good my lord!—Come, Elsie, you may as well walk with me through the shrubbery.’
Miss Brandon going up suddenly to Captain Bowood, flung her arms round his neck and kissed him impulsively. ‘You dear, crusty, cantankerous, kind-hearted old thing, I can’t help loving you!’ she cried.
‘Go along, you baggage. As bad as he is—every bit. Go along.’
‘Au revoir, uncle,’ said Mr Summers with his most courtly stage bow. ‘We shall meet again—at Philippi.’
A moment later, Captain Bowood found himself alone. ‘There’s impudence!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s worse than that; it’s cheek—downright cheek. Never bamboozled like it before. Handcuffed! What an old nincompoop I must have looked! Good thing Sir Frederick or any of the others didn’t see me. I should never have heard the last of it.’ With that, the last trace of ill-humour vanished, and he burst into a hearty, sailor-like guffaw. ‘Just the sort of trick I should have gloried in when I was a young spark!’ He rose from his chair, took his cane in his hand, and limped as far as the window, his gout being rather troublesome this afternoon. ‘So, so. There they go, arm in arm. Who would have thought of Don Carlos falling in love with Miss Saucebox? But I don’t know that he could do better. She’s a good girl—a little flighty just now; but that will cure itself by-and-by—and she will have a nice little property when she comes of age. Must pretend to set my face against it, though, and that will be sure to make them fonder of one another. Ha, ha! we old sea-dogs know a thing or two.’ And with that the Captain winked confidentially to himself two or three times and went about his business.
When Sir Frederick Pinkerton followed Mrs Bowood and Mrs Boyd out of the room where the interview had taken place, and left Lady Dimsdale sitting there alone, he quitted the house at once, and sauntered in his usual gingerly fashion through the flower-garden to an unfrequented part of the grounds known as the Holly Walk, where there was not much likelihood of his being interrupted. Like Lady Dimsdale, he wanted to be alone. Just then, he had much to occupy his thoughts. To and fro he paced the walk slowly and musingly, his hands behind his back, his eyes bent on the ground.
‘What tempts me to do this thing?’ he asked himself, not once, but several times. ‘That I dislike the man is quite certain; why, then, take upon myself to interfere between this woman and him? Certainly I have nothing to thank Oscar Boyd for; why, then, mix myself up in a matter that concerns me no more than it concerns the man in the moon? If he had not appeared on the scene just when he did, I might perhaps have won Lady Dimsdale for my wife. But now? Too late—too late! Even when he and this woman shall have gone their way, he will live in my lady’s memory, never probably to be forgotten. He is her hero of romance. That he made love to her in years gone by, when they were young together, there is little doubt; that he made love to her again this morning, and met with no such rebuff as I did, seems equally clear; and though she knows now that he can never become her husband, yet she on her side will never forget him. In what way, then, am I called upon to interfere in his affairs? Should I not be a fool for my pains? And yet to let that woman claim him as her own, when a word from me would—— No! Noblesse oblige. What should I think of myself in years to come, if I were to permit this man’s life to be blasted by so cruel a fraud? The thought would hardly be a pleasant one on one’s deathbed.’ He shrugged his shoulders, and went on slowly pacing the Holly Walk. At length he raised his head and said half aloud: ‘I will do it, and at once; but it shall be on my own conditions, Lady Dimsdale—on my own conditions.’
There was a gardener at work some distance away. He called the man to him, and sent him with a message to the house. Ten minutes later, Lady Dimsdale entered the Holly Walk.
Sir Frederick approached her with one of his most elaborate bows.
‘You wish to see me, Sir Frederick?’ she said inquiringly, but a little doubtfully. She hoped that he was not about to re-open the subject that had been discussed between them earlier in the day.
‘I have taken the liberty of asking you to favour me with your company for a few minutes—here, where we shall be safe from interruption. The matter I am desirous of consulting you upon admits of no delay.’
She bowed, but said nothing. His words reassured her on one point, while filling her with a vague uneasiness. The sunshade she held over her head was lined with pink; it served its purpose in preventing the Baronet from detecting how pale and wan was the face under it.
They began to pace the walk slowly side by side.
‘Equally with others, Lady Dimsdale, you are aware that, by a strange turn of fortune, Mr Boyd’s wife, whom he believed to have been dead for several years, has this morning reappeared?’
‘You were in the parlour, Sir Frederick, when I was introduced to Mrs Boyd only half an hour ago.’ She answered him coldly and composedly enough; but he could not tell how her heart was beating.
‘Strangely enough, I happened to be in New Orleans about the time of Mr Boyd’s marriage, and I know more about the facts of that unhappy affair than he has probably told to any one in England. It is enough to say that the reappearance of this woman is the greatest misfortune that could have happened to him. Oscar Boyd was a miserable man before he parted from her—he will be ten times more miserable in years to come.’
‘You have not asked me to meet you here, Sir Frederick, in order to tell me this?’
‘This, and something more, Lady Dimsdale. Listen!’ He laid one finger lightly on the sleeve of his companion’s dress, as if to emphasise her attention. ‘I happen to be acquainted with a certain secret—it matters not how it came into my possession—the telling of which—and it could be told in half-a-dozen words—would relieve Mr Boyd of this woman at once and for ever, would make a free man of him, as free to marry as in those old days when he used to haunt that vicarage garden which I too remember so well!’
Lady Dimsdale stopped in her walk and stared at him with wide-open eyes. ‘You—possess—a secret that could do all this!’
‘I have stated no more than the simple truth.’
‘Then Mr Boyd is not this woman’s husband?’ The question burst from her lips swiftly, impetuously. Next moment her eyes fell and a tell-tale blush suffused her cheeks. But here again the pink-lined sunshade came to her rescue.
‘Mr Boyd is the husband of no other woman,’ answered the Baronet drily.
‘With what object have you made me the recipient of this confidence, Sir Frederick?’
‘That I will presently explain. You are probably aware that Mr Boyd leaves for London by the next train?’
Lady Dimsdale bowed.
‘So that if my information is to be made available at all, no time must be lost.’
‘I still fail to see why—— But that does not matter. As you say, there is no time to lose. You will send for Mr Boyd at once, Sir Frederick. You are a generous-minded man, and you will not fail to reveal to him a secret which so nearly affects the happiness of his life.’ She spoke to him appealingly, almost imploringly.
He smiled a coldly disagreeable smile. ‘Pardon me, Lady Dimsdale, but generosity is one of those virtues which I have never greatly cared to cultivate. Had I endeavoured to do so, the soil would probably have proved barren, and the results not worth the trouble. In any case, I have never tried. I am a man of the world, that, and nothing more.’
‘But this secret, Sir Frederick—as between man and man, as between one gentleman and another—you will not keep it to yourself? You will not. No! I cannot believe that of you.’
He lifted his hat for a moment. ‘Lady Dimsdale flatters me.’ Then he glanced at his watch. ‘Later even than I thought. This question must be decided at once, or not at all. Lady Dimsdale, I am willing to reveal my secret to Mr Boyd on one condition—and on one only.’
For a moment she hesitated, being still utterly at a loss to imagine why the Baronet had taken her so strangely into his confidence. Then she said: ‘May I ask what the condition in question is, Sir Frederick?’
‘It was to tell it to you that I asked you to favour me with your presence here. Lady Dimsdale, my one condition is this: That when this man—this Mr Oscar Boyd—shall be free to marry again, as he certainly will be when my secret becomes known to him—you shall never consent to become his wife, and that you shall never reveal to him the reason why you decline to do so.’
‘Oh! This to me! Sir Frederick Pinkerton, you have no right to assume—— Nothing, nothing can justify this language!’
He thought he had never seen her look so beautiful as she looked at that moment, with flashing eyes, heaving bosom, and burning cheeks.
He bowed and spread out his hands deprecatingly. ‘Pardon me, but I have assumed nothing—nothing whatever. I have specified a certain condition as the price of my secret. Call that condition a whim—the whim of an eccentric elderly gentleman, who, having no wife to keep him within the narrow grooves of common-sense, originates many strange ideas at times. Call it by what name you will, Lady Dimsdale, it still remains what it was. To apply a big word to a very small affair—you have heard my ultimatum.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘I shall be in the library for the next quarter of an hour. One word from you—Yes or No—and I shall know how to act. On that one word hangs the future of your friend, Mr Oscar Boyd.’ He saluted her with one of his most ceremonious bows, and then turned and walked slowly away.
There was a garden-seat close by, and to this Lady Dimsdale made her way. She was torn by conflicting emotions. Indignation, grief, wonder, curiosity, each and all held possession of her. ‘Was ever a woman forced into such a cruel position before?’ she asked herself. ‘What can this secret be? Is that woman not his wife? Yet Oscar recognised her as such the moment he set eyes on her. Can it be possible that she had a husband living when he married her, and that Sir Frederick is aware of the fact? It is all a mystery. Oh, how cruel, how cruel of Sir Frederick to force me into this position! What right has he to assume that even if Oscar were free to-morrow, he would—— And yet—— Oh, it is hard—hard! Why has this task been laid upon me? He will be free, and yet he must never know by what means. But whose happiness ought I to think of first—his or my own? His—a thousand times his! There is but one answer possible, and Sir Frederick knows it. He understands a woman’s heart. I must decide at once—now. There is not a moment to lose. But one answer.’ Her eyes were dry, although her heart was full of anguish. Tears would find their way later on.
She quitted her seat, and near the end of the walk she found the same gardener that the Baronet had made use of. She beckoned the man to her, and as she slipped a coin into his hand, said to him: ‘Go to Sir Frederick Pinkerton, whom you will find in the library, and say to him that Lady Dimsdale’s answer is “Yes.”’
The man scratched his head and stared at her open-mouthed; so, for safety’s sake, she gave him the message a second time. Then he seemed to comprehend, and touching his cap, set off at a rapid pace in the direction of the house.
Lady Dimsdale took the same way slowly, immersed in bitter thoughts. ‘Farewell, Oscar, farewell!’ her heart kept repeating to itself. ‘Not even when you are free, must you ever learn the truth.’
Meanwhile, Mrs Boyd, after lunching heartily with kind, chatty Mrs Bowood to keep her company, and after arranging her toilet, had gone back to the room in which her husband had left her, and from which he had forbidden her to stir till his return. She was somewhat surprised not to find him there, but quite content to wait till he should think it well to appear. There was a comfortable-looking couch in the room, and after a hearty luncheon on a warm day, forty winks seem to follow as a natural corollary; at least that was Estelle’s view of the present state of affairs. But before settling down among the soft cushions of the couch, she went up to the glass over the chimney-piece, and taking a tiny box from her pocket, opened it, and, with the swan’s-down puff which she found therein, just dashed her cheeks with the faintest possible soupçon of Circassian Bloom, and then half rubbed it off with her handkerchief.
‘A couple of glasses of champagne would have saved me the need of doing this; but your cold thin claret has neither soul nor fire in it,’ she remarked to herself. ‘How comfortable these English country-houses are. I should like to stay here for a month. Only the people are so very good and, oh! so very stupid, that I know I should tire of them in a day or two, and say or do something that would make them fling up their hands in horror.’ She yawned, gave a last glance at herself, and then went and sat down on the couch. As she was re-arranging the pillows, she found a handkerchief under one of them. She pounced on it in a moment. In one corner was a monogram. She read the letters, ‘L. D.,’ aloud. ‘My Lady Dimsdale’s, without a doubt,’ she said. ‘Damp, too. She has been crying for the loss of her darling Oscar.’ She dropped the handkerchief with a sneer and set her foot on it. ‘How sweet it is to have one’s rival under one’s feet—sweeter still, when you know that she loves him and you don’t! Lady Dimsdale will hardly care to let Monsieur Oscar kiss her again. He is going away on a long journey with his wife—with his wife, ha, ha! Fools! If they only knew!’ The echo of her harsh, unwomanly laugh had scarcely died away, when the door opened, and the man of whom she had been speaking stood before her.
After bidding farewell to Lady Dimsdale, Mr Boyd had plunged at once into a lonely part of the grounds, where he would be able to recover himself in some measure, unseen by any one. Of a truth, he was very wretched. It seemed almost impossible to believe that one short hour—nay, even far less than that—should have sufficed to plunge him from the heights of felicity into the lowest depths of misery. Yet, so it was; and thus, alas, it is but too often in this world of unstable things. But the necessity for action was imminent upon him; there would be time enough hereafter for thinking and suffering. A few minutes sufficed to enable him to lock down his feelings beyond the guess or ken of others, and then he went in search of Captain Bowood. He found his host and Mrs Bowood together. The latter was telling her husband all about her recent interview with Mrs Boyd. The mistress of Rosemount had never had a bird of such strange plumage under her roof before, and had rarely been so puzzled as she was to-day. That this woman was a lady, Mrs Bowood’s instincts declined to let her believe; but the fact that she was Mr Boyd’s wife seemed to prove that she must be something better than an adventuress. The one certain fact was, that she was a guest at Rosemount, and as such must be made welcome.
When Mr Boyd entered the room, Mrs Bowood was at once struck by the change in his appearance. She felt instinctively that some great calamity had overtaken this man, and her motherly heart was touched. Accordingly, when Mr Boyd intimated to her and the Captain that it was imperatively necessary that he and his wife should start for London by the five o’clock train, she gave expression to her regret that such a necessity should have arisen, but otherwise offered no opposition to the proposed step, as, under ordinary circumstances, she would have been sure to do. In matters such as these, the Captain always followed his wife’s lead. Five minutes later, Oscar Boyd went in search of his wife.