The servants wondered whether their master had been sent for; had James been sent to the telegraph office, did coachman know? Coachman knew nothing about it; but the lawyer was there,--perhaps he had sent for master. And then they discussed the death, and the dead man, with much freedom and candour.
At about two o'clock in the afternoon the footman, doing his turn of duty by looking out of window in the hall of Mr. Streightley's house, was surprised by seeing his mistress come downstairs in her bonnet and cloak, with her veil down, and carrying a square parcel in her hand, "which it looked like a box done up in paper," the man said afterwards, when questioned concerning the circumstance.
"Open the door, William, if you please," said Mrs. Streightley.
The man obeyed, wondering.
"I am going to Queen Anne Street. I don't require the carriage," said Katharine. And she passed out of the door, and out of the footman's sight.
[CHAPTER XII.]
RETRIBUTION.
While the events recorded in the last chapter had been taking place, Robert Streightley had been down to Middlemeads to give the necessary orders for the immediate reduction of the establishment there. It was an act over which a great many people would have been sillily sentimental, but one which affected Robert Streightley very little indeed. The stately old mansion had never been his home, though it had contained his wife and his household gods; he had never had the same regard for it as for the dingy Brixton villa, where every thing was so old and mean and common. Even when he first bought the place, and inhabited it in the early days of his wedded life, long before the falseness of his position and the chance of some day being compelled to return to his old and quiet mode of life had dawned on him, he had felt uncomfortable and out of place at Middlemeads. But latterly, as speculation after speculation "went wrong" in the City, and as scarcely a week passed without the addition of some new improvement, the importation of some fresh luxury by Katharine's orders, the negative feelings with which he had regarded that estate, for the possession of which he was so much envied and hated, grew into positive dislike; he remembered that the first time he had seen the place was the day before he had had that fatal conference with Mr. Guyon, and he began to associate most of his troubles with the name of Middlemeads.
He would have sold the place at once but for two reasons; the first and chiefest of which was, that Katharine took great pleasure and interest in it--more pleasure and interest than she had taken in any thing else during her married life; the other, that the sale of his country estate, which, with the county people who visited there and the swells whom he entertained, had been so much talked of among his friends in the City, would be a confession of weakness which Robert Streightley shrunk from meeting. Besides, all would probably come right very soon; the house of Streightley and Son was too firmly established not to be able to stand a shock or two; and by reducing the establishment at Middlemeads he should effect a considerable saving, while the sale of a portion of the valuable timber on the estate would bring in a sum of ready money, of which he was greatly in need. This done, he drove off to the railway, caught the up-train, and was on his way to London.
He was alone in the railway carriage; there was no old gentleman rustling a newspaper, no young gentleman playing with his watch-chain, no humorous children to trample on his feet,--nothing to disturb the train of thought into which he fell. By no means a pleasant train of thought, for a dead weight was at his heart, and he felt a horrible sense of something--he knew not what--but some calamity hanging over him. Something, some trifle had reminded him of the day on which Mr. Guyon had told him of Frere's proposal for Katharine's hand, and now he could not get the subject out of his head: the words seemed to ring in his ears; and when he closed his eyes, that peculiar look with which Mr. Guyon had suggested the suppression of Frere's letter seemed to rise before him. What had his life been since then? He had married Katharine! O yes, she was his wife; but had he ever obtained from her one grain of confidence, one look of love? Had not his business transactions gone wrong ever since? Had he not suffered under perpetual qualms of conscience ever since he became a silent confederate in that monstrous fraud of which Katharine, his wife, was one of the victims? In his case, at least, retribution had not been long delayed; the first mutterings of the avenging storm had been long since heard, and now something told him that the storm itself was close at hand. He would welcome it in all its fury, though it stripped him of all his wealth and left him to begin life anew, if it only could bear away on its wings the barrier existing between Katharine and himself; if it only enabled him to prove to her his worship of her; if it only raised in her for him one tithe of the love with which he regarded her.