Yes!—yes!—yes!—the low, distant rumble that she knows too well,—it comes from behind, from the London down-train; the horror of death is to Clemence concentrated in each terrible moment, as, almost petrified with fear, she turns round to gaze! A fiery red eye gleams through the darkness; the light from the entrance is almost blocked out; the rumble becomes a hollow roar, ever growing louder and louder; and, with a wild shriek of terror, Clemence falls senseless to the earth!
CHAPTER XXV
THE SEARCH.
Three gentlemen are travelling from London on that dreary wintry day. They occupy the same carriage in the train, but are personally unknown to each other. Two of them, a lawyer and a railway director, soon break through the cold reserve which marks an English traveller. A proffered newspaper, a remark on the weather, and they have launched into the full tide of conversation on railway speculations, foreign politics, and the future prospects of the nation.
The third passenger, a grave and silent man, sits in a corner of the carriage with his hat drawn low over his brow, keeping company only with his own thoughts, which seem to be of no agreeable nature. The mind of Effingham—for it is he—is in harmony with the gloomy, wintry scenes through which he is passing. He has but yesterday arrived from France, his case having been carried through the bankruptcy court during his absence. He has this morning had an interview in London with his daughters and Lady Selina.
Clemence’s decision in regard to the fortune so carefully secured to her by her husband at the expense of honour and conscience, had wakened a wild tumult of feeling in the breast of the unhappy bankrupt. Anger, shame, surprise, not unmingled with secret approbation, had struggled together in Effingham’s soul. Early impressions had been revived there—impressions made when his young heart had been guileless as his son’s was now, when he would have shrunk from dishonour as from a viper, and have as lief touched glowing metal as a coin not lawfully his own! It had needed a long apprenticeship to the world to efface these early impressions, or rather, to render them illegible, by writing above them the maxims of that wisdom which is foolishness with God. Effingham was perhaps the more irritated against his wife, because he had sufficient conscience left to have a secret persuasion that she had only done what was right—returned that to its lawful possessors which never ought to have been hers. The difficulty, rather the shame, which he felt in expressing his feelings on the subject, had prevented him from writing at all.
It was while still enduring this mental conflict—now accusing Clemence of romantic folly, now condemning himself on more serious grounds—that Effingham, on his return from France, had a meeting with Lady Selina. A visit to Beaumont Street, under existing circumstances, was little likely to soothe the proud man’s irritated feelings. Lady Selina neglected nothing that could make him more painfully aware of the change in the circumstances of his family. She artfully sought to revenge herself upon Clemence, by bringing that change before the eyes of her husband, not as the result of his own wild speculations, but as caused by the obstinate folly of one who presumed to be more scrupulous than her lord, and who followed her own romantic fancies rather than the advice of experienced friends. Arabella followed in the track of her aunt; while Louisa’s drooping looks and tearful eyes did more, perhaps, than the words of either, to increase Effingham’s displeasure towards his wife. He set out on his long journey to Cornwall full of bitterness of spirit, attempting to turn the turbid tide of emotion into any channel rather than that of self-condemnation.
Effingham remained, therefore, moody and abstracted, while his companions chatted freely together on subjects of common interest, till the entrance of the train into a tunnel caused that pause in conversation which a change from light to sudden darkness usually produces.
“What was that sound!” exclaimed Effingham.