CHAPTER XXXVIII.
And now I had before me the task of telling the dear boy what must modify, and might completely alter, the course and complexion of his life. No light duty this, or small responsibility. It was, I felt, a great crisis, a great turning-point. In what spirit would he meet it, and how should I acquit myself? I was glad to have a little leisure in which to shake off the terrible impressions of yesterday and get my mind into a more normal attitude before delivering my news.
No account of what had happened could be in the papers under a couple of days; so I had every reason to suppose Hartover would not receive any hint of it before we met. I arranged with Lavender, moreover, that, as his connection with Fédore had no direct bearing on the case, Hartover’s name was to be carefully kept out of such reports as appeared. This done, I tried to occupy myself with the books, pictures, and other treasures the house contained; assiduously waited on by William, meanwhile, who, from his readiness to linger and to talk, suspected more, as I judged, than he dared ask or than I very certainly intended to tell him.
But my leisure suffered interruption sooner than I anticipated, and in a manner calculated to set William’s curiosity more than ever on edge.
On the second day—it was a Sunday—Lavender called about ten o’clock, bringing me news of which more hereafter; suffice it that a great burden was lifted off my mind. Having been prevented attending morning service by the detective’s visit, I went to church in the evening; but returned little the better, spiritually, I fear, for an hour’s sermon in which the preacher—a portly, well-nourished personage just then very popular in the fashionable world—dilated with much unction upon the terrors of hell, and the extreme difficulty of avoiding them, the impossibility of so doing, in fact, for ninety-nine hundredths of even ‘professing Christians’—so called—let alone the not inconsiderable remainder of the human race. What a gospel to set forth! What a Moloch to offer as supreme object of adoration! Yet this congregation, so representative of rank and wealth, listened quite complacently, without the smallest evidence of criticism or of revolt. Had they no heart to feel with? No brains with which to think? I walked homeward disturbed and sad.
Before the portico of Lord Longmoor’s house stood a travelling carriage, off which the men-servants were loading down a mighty array of boxes and trunks. And it was Lady Longmoor herself, surely—I could not mistake the buoyant step, the gay poise of the head, as of one that should say, ‘Look, good people all, look! I like it, I am well worth it’—who swept up the steps and into the lighted hall! Why this sudden descent of her Magnificence, and whence?
I made my way round to the side-door and let myself in, unperceived as I hoped.
But in the corridor William met me with a somewhat distracted countenance.
‘My lord is asking for you, sir,’ he said. ‘He arrived back about half an hour ago. I persuaded him to dine at once. His lordship seems quite upset, sir—not at all well. But he was very urgent to see you directly, whenever you came in.’
I own my pulse quickened as I went along the corridor and into the dining-room, where I found Hartover at table. He turned round, but without rising, and held out both hands to me.
‘Oh! there you are, thank goodness,’ he said. ‘I have been haunted by a childish fear you would have vanished—been spirited back to Cambridge.’
I forced a laugh and inquired after Lord Longmoor.
‘It is genuine this time. My father is really ill—so ill that I felt obliged to take the disagreeable things he said to me in good part. Oh! you were right to make me go to him, Brownlow. And I must go again. It is scandalous the way he is left to the mercy of doctors, and parsons, and servants—such a crew, upon my word. My stepmother away somewhere—of course amusing herself—I suppose up in the North with—oh! we’ll name no names. Safer not’—he added with a sneer.
I enlightened him as to her ladyship’s present whereabouts.
‘So much the better,’ he returned. ‘Only she will be disappointed if she imagines I intend to clear out. She must put up with my neighbourhood, and hear what I have to say, too, whether she likes it or not. By the way, though, Brownlow, have you dined?’
I felt incapable of eating a mouthful of food just then, so lied, heaven forgive me, telling him I had; and, drawing up a chair, sat down beside the table at right angles to him.
‘Yes, I must certainly go to my father again,’ Hartover repeated. ‘Disagreeable as he invariably manages to be to me, I believe he would have been glad if I had stayed on now. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t. The suspense was too great. Have you seen her, Brownlow?’
‘Yes,’ I said. This was no time for elaborate explanations or fine phrases. The simple truth simply told would be best. ‘And your suspicions were not unfounded.’
The boy pushed away his plate, set his elbow on the table, rested his cheek in his hand, turning his face towards me. It had gone thin and very white; but he was perfectly composed, bracing himself to bear what might be coming with the pride of his high-breeding.
‘Very well. Go on,’ he said.
‘She was Marsigli’s accomplice. She instigated the theft because she wanted him removed and silenced. He stood between her and the fulfilment of her ambition—of her design to marry you.’
‘Go on,’ said Hartover, as I paused.
‘But we can afford to judge her duplicity less harshly, because she has paid the extreme penalty of it—the heaviest penalty which can be exacted.’
‘What?’
Hartover’s lips formed the words, although no sound issued from them.
‘She and Marsigli had a violent altercation, with accusations and abuse on both sides. In a fit of ungovernable fury he stabbed her.’
Again the boy’s lips formed a soundless question, while from white his face went grey. Sweat broke out on his forehead; but he still remained composed, still looked at me steadily.
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Fédore is dead.’
Then his eyes closed, and I myself turned queerly cold and faint. He looked so young, so almost fragile, that it seemed an intolerable cruelty thus to deal him blow on blow. I could have cried aloud to him to forgive me; yet to hesitate, still more to plead for myself, would be a greater cruelty still.
‘You are quite sure of—of your facts, Brownlow?’ he said, at last.
‘Quite sure,’ I answered. ‘The police had traced Marsigli to the house on a former occasion. They were watching for his coming, and called on me to identify him. I was present. I saw what took place.’
Here William came in bringing another course. Hartover motioned him peremptorily to the door—through which, with a backward look of astonishment, inquiry, alarm, the poor fellow, tray and all, fled.
‘I do not understand.’ Hartover spoke slowly and carefully, each word standing oddly apart. ‘Perhaps I am stupid—but why he—Marsigli—should’⸺
And there he stopped.
‘It was an act of vengeance, of revenge. She had deserted him; and now, as he believed, betrayed him to the police in the hope of being finally rid of him.’
‘Deserted—how deserted?’ Hartover demanded, with sudden arrogance.
‘Fédore was his wife. He and she were married here in London three years ago. A copy of the marriage certificate, taken from the register of the church where the ceremony was performed, was shown me this morning. It is perfectly in order and establishes the legality of the marriage absolutely.’
‘The—then’—he asked—‘am I to understand that my marriage’⸺
‘Is void. A fraud—legally Fédore was nothing to you.’
The boy’s hand sank on to the table, with a jangle of glasses overset among the silver. He turned away his head.
The moment was critical. I awaited the outcome of it in rather sickening dread. Hartover’s physical courage I knew to be above reproach—of the stuff which charges gaily up to the mouths of the enemy’s guns, or leads a forlorn hope. But, here, moral not physical courage was on trial. Had he sufficient moral stamina to stand the test? And, as the seconds passed, thankful conviction grew on me that he had. There would be no storm now, either of anger or of tears. Hysterics and blind rage alike are the sign of weakness, superficial, and, as often as not, a mere matter of nerves. But here we had got down to the solid rock of character, of inbred tradition and instinctive pride of race. By the greatness of the deception practised on him, of the discovery that he had been the prey and plaything of a designing woman whose care and love masked intensity of worldly greed, and of the humiliation consequent on this, the boy’s self-respect was too deeply involved. Whatever he suffered he would keep to himself.
Still, I own his next move, when it came, surprised me by what I can only call its virility of conception.
He threw back his head, got up, walked across to the fireplace and, with his hand on the bell-rope, the ghost of a smile—the bravest, most piteous smile I have ever seen—upon his lips, said:
‘I’m right in thinking, am I not, Brownlow, you told me my stepmother arrived just as you came in?’
I answered in the affirmative, not a little perplexed as to what was to follow.
He rang, and when William appeared gave orders her ladyship be informed that Lord Hartover requested to see her.
‘Let Lady Longmoor be told I will be in the white drawing-room, and that I beg she will join me there with as little delay as possible.’
Then to me:
‘You will come too, Brownlow, please. I prefer to have a witness to our conversation.’
So to the white drawing-room we went—a small but lovely room, on the walls of which hung a couple of superb Vandykes, portraits of a former Lord Hartover and his brother, Stephen Esdaile, exquisite if slightly effeminate-looking young gallants of unhappy Charles the First’s court. I had noticed these pictures, with admiration, yesterday when making my round of the house. In Stephen Esdaile I discovered, as I thought, a distinct resemblance to his descendant my ex-pupil, granting the latter long curled love-locks and a yellow silk brocade coat.
Her Magnificence kept us waiting some ten minutes, to arrive at last with a charming effect of haste, still wearing a brown travelling dress, a white lace scarf thrown negligently over her fair head. She was all smiles, all pretty excitement.
‘Dearest George—what a charming surprise!’
And she advanced, preparing to bestow on him a chastely maternal kiss. But the boy avoided it dexterously, and bent low over her hand, just not touching it with his lips instead. Her ladyship, as I judged by her rising colour, was not insensible to the slight though she rattled on gaily enough.
‘And our good Mr. Brownlow too! How really delightful! Surprise on surprise. But, George’⸺
Her tone changed, a note of anxiety, real or assumed, piercing the playfulness, not to say levity, of it.
‘Is anything wrong? You look positively ghastly, my poor child—as white as a sheet. Tell me—nothing is the matter—nothing serious?’
‘Oh dear, no,’ Hartover answered. ‘Nothing serious is ever the matter in our family, is it? We bask in perpetual sunshine, are clothed in scarlet with other delights, fare sumptuously every day and all the rest of it. Serious? Of course not. What could touch us?’
Lady Longmoor smiled, raising her eyebrows and throwing me a meaning glance. She believed, or pretended to believe, the boy was not sober, and wished me to know as much.
‘If it amuses you to talk nonsense, do so by all means,’ she said. ‘Only I am afraid you will have to forgive my not stopping here very long to listen to it, for I am simply expiring of fatigue’—she stifled a neat little yawn—‘and want to go quietly to bed.’
‘I am sorry,’ Hartover answered courteously, ‘if I have been inconsiderate. But I thought you might care to have some news of my father. I am just back from Bath.’
‘Indeed!’ Lady Longmoor exclaimed. ‘And pray who, or what, took you to poor dead-alive innocent Bath?’
‘My father sent for me, and, what’s more, saw me. He struck me as rather badly out of sorts and lonely.’
‘Ah! yes,’ she said, turning to me with the prettiest air of distress imaginable, ‘it is so terribly trying, Mr. Brownlow. I cannot bear leaving my dear lord in his wretched state of health. It makes me miserable. But what is to be done? Some one must look into things from time to time, you know. It is wrong to leave dear beautiful Hover entirely to the agent, the servants, and so on. Of course, they are as faithful and devoted as possible—but still it is only wise—don’t you think?—only right—I should go there occasionally. Though I hate business, I do what I can.’
‘I hope to relieve you of the bulk of those bothers in future,’ Hartover put in quietly.
‘You—you charming scatterbrain? What next? No, mon enfant, no—they are not de votre âge, responsibility and business worries. Continue to play at soldiers and amuse yourself while you can.’
‘I am tired of playing at soldiers: so confoundedly tired of it that, once I am my own master—I come of age next month, you remember,—I mean to send in my papers. There is nothing to keep me in London now’⸺
‘Nothing—nobody, to keep you in London now?’ she interrupted teasingly.
I listened in some trepidation. She trod on dangerous ground. Had the boy sufficient reserve force, after the ordeal he had so lately been through, to keep his temper?
‘No, nothing,’ he repeated. ‘I think there had better be no misunderstanding between us upon that point—and upon some others. They need clearing up—have needed it for a long time past. That is the reason of my asking to see you to-night. In the ordinary course of events we don’t, as you know, often meet. I have to seize my opportunity when I am fortunate enough to get it. Plainly, I do not believe my father can live very long’⸺
‘And plainly,’ she retorted, ‘I do not think his life is at all likely to be lengthened, dearest George, by your troubling him with absurd plans for throwing up your commission, leaving London, and taking over the management of things in general at Hover. For years Jack Esdaile has employed himself, in the sweetest way, just out of pure friendship and kindness of heart, in looking after the Yorkshire property, and your father has been more than satisfied. But it is too ridiculous for me to argue with you about it. Things will go on in the future precisely as they have gone on in the past. Only I really must protest against your father being disturbed and annoyed directly my back is turned. We all thought you had settled down more of late, George, and had grown a little more reasonable.’
‘Of late? Since when, pray?’ Hartover demanded.
‘Oh! why since’⸺
Lady Longmoor looked down as though embarrassed.
‘But after all, what is the use of mincing matters?’ she went on. ‘I cannot help knowing you young men have your affaires de cœur—your entanglements, shall we say?—and that these, although of course objectionable, things one doesn’t talk about, do sometimes have a steadying effect which conduces to the peace and comfort of your—the young men’s, I mean—near relations.’
‘You are speaking of an entanglement of mine?’ Hartover asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘An entanglement, an infatuation, which, as Mr. Brownlow knows, I have deplored for years and done my best to combat; but which—remember the person had already left my service—has, I understand, recently been legalised.’
‘Who told you this?’ Hartover said hoarsely.
Lady Longmoor raised her eyes and glanced at me, smiling.
‘That good, faithful creature, Halidane.—Wait a moment, George. Let me finish my sentence. He had the information, as I understand, direct from Mr. Brownlow, to whom you yourself wrote announcing the event.’
The boy gave me a look of sorrowful reproach, remembrance of which, even at this distance of time, blinds my eyes with tears as I write.
‘You too, old man,’ he said, very softly. ‘Gad, it needed but that.’
And he turned on his heel and moved towards the door.