The Rock Ahead: A Novel. (Vol. 2)

by Edmund Yates

"You may look upon it as good as done, sir," said Mr. Gammidge, commencing to make a memorandum of the number and date of the bank-note in his pocket-book, "and to let you know at the old address?"

"No; when he has anything to tell, drop me a line, and I'll meet him here. Good-day."

The white-faced young man, entering fully into his new occupation, speedily deserved the encomiastic remarks which had been lavished upon him by his principal, and in a short time Mr. Lloyd was furnished with full information as to the personal appearance of the various visitors at the Bayswater villa, and of the friends whom Miss Lambert was in the habit of meeting away from her home. In both these categories Gilbert Lloyd found, as he had expected to find, a very accurate representation of Miles Challoner. The information, all expected as it was, irritated and chafed him; and he gave up a whole day to considering how he could best put a stop to the ripening intimacy between Miles and Gertrude, or, at all events, weaken it. Finally, he decided on paying a visit to Mrs. Bloxam, and seeing whether she could not be frightened with a suspicion, perfectly undefined, of something horrible and mysterious which would take place if the intimacy were permitted to go on unchecked. Accordingly, upon a day when the white-faced young man had ascertained that Miss Lambert would be for some time absent from home, Mr. Lloyd presented himself at the Bayswater villa, and, without sending in his name, followed the servant into the room, where Mrs. Bloxam was seated. At first sight of the man who had dared in former days to invade the sanctity of her sheepfold and carry off one of her pet lambs, the old lady was exceedingly indignant, and her first impulse was to order the intruder to leave the house; but a moment's reflection convinced her that as he yet had the power of being exceedingly dangerous to Gertrude, or, at all events, of causing her the greatest annoyance, it would be better to temporise. She therefore listened to all Gilbert Lloyd's bland assurances that, although there was an unfortunate estrangement between his wife and himself, he took the greatest interest in her career, and it was purely as a matter of friendship that he had come to warn her, through her ablest and best friend, of the danger she incurred in forming a certain acquaintance. So well did Mrs. Bloxam play her listening part, and so earnest was she in her thanks to her informant, that even the rouséturfite was taken in, and went away convinced that he had made his coup..

A few days afterwards he called again, and this time asked for Miss Lambert. The servant said that Miss Lambert was out. For Mrs. Bloxam: Mrs. Bloxam was out. Gilbert Lloyd then took out a card and handed it to the servant, begging her to give it to her mistress; but the servant, just glancing at it, handed it back, saying she had strict orders, in case the gentleman bearing that name ever called again, to refuse him admittance, and to return his card.

[CHAPTER V.]

Rebuffed.

The cool determination of Gertrude's conduct, the resolution which did not shrink from a proceeding calculated to excite at least observation by her servants, took Gilbert Lloyd completely by surprise. Concealing, by a desperate effort, the passion of anger which flamed up in him, he turned away from the door, and got into the hansom awaiting him; but when quite out of sight of the gilded-bronze gates, and the miniature plantation of the Bayswater villa, he stopped the cab, got out, and pulling his hat down over his brow, walked on rapidly, in a mood strange indeed to his calculating and self-contained nature.

By what fatality had this woman once more turned up in his life--this woman of whom he was well rid, his marriage with whom had been a mistake--a failure--and his parting with whom had been the commencement of a new and decidedly fortunate era in his life? His thoughts were in a whirl, and for a time resisted his attempts to reduce them to order and sequence. The physical convulsion of rage claimed to have its way first, and had it. He had known that feeling many times in his life--the maddening anger which turns the face white and the lips livid, which makes the heart beat with suffocating throbs, and dims the sight. He knew all about that, and he had to bear it now, and to bear it in silence, without the relief of speech, with only the aid of solitude. He could not swear at Gertrude now, as he had done many a time when annoyance had come to him through her; he could not insult, threaten, strike her now; and much of the fury he felt was due to the powerlessness which drove him nearly mad, and which was his own doing. Ay, that was the worst of it, the least endurable part of the wrath which raged within him. This woman, who had been in his power, and had been made to experience the full significance of her position; who had loved him once, and of whom he had wearied, as it was in his nature to weary of any desired object when attained,--this woman held him in supreme indifference and contempt, and set him at naught without fear or hesitation. In the force and irrationality of his anger, he forgot that she was acting quite within the letter and the spirit of the convention made between them; that he it was who had abandoned its spirit at almost the first sight of her, and had now received a humiliating check in endeavouring to violate its letter. For a long time his anger was blind, fierce, and unreasoning--directed almost as much against himself as against Gertrude--his wife! his wife! as he called her a hundred times over, in the vain assertion of a position which he had voluntarily abdicated, and which he knew, in the bottom of his angry heart--even while the anger seethed within it--he would not be prepared to resume, were the opportunity afforded him. But as he walked on and on, getting by degrees into outlying regions of the far west--almost as little known to him as California--the habit of calculation, of arranging his thoughts, of (metaphorically) laying his head on the exact process or combination which he required--a faculty and habit of which he felt the value every day--resumed its sway over him, and he no longer raged blindly about what had happened, but set himself to think it out. This, then, was a parti prison the part of Gertrude; this, then, was a game in which he was her adversary--with a purpose to gain; she--his, with nothing in view but his defeat. Her cards were resolute ignoring of his existence; the absolute and inexorable adherence to the agreement made between them at Brighton. His cards were persistent following and watching of her, which the coincidences of his position and the facility with which he could make her circle of acquaintance his, added to the exigencies of her professional career, which she could not control, however unwelcome they might be, rendered easy of playing. The next question was, what end did he propose to himself in this sudden revulsion of feeling, this sudden irruption into his prosperous and pleasant life of an element which he had hoped, intended, and believed to be banished from it for ever? This question he could not answer clearly. The mists of anger and jealousy arose between him and the outline of his purpose. Was it to undo the past? Was it to woo and win once more this woman, whom he had driven away from him, and who had just made evident to him the weakness of his determination and the strength of her own? Was it to put himself entirely and unreservedly under the yoke of her power, from whose possible imposition he had been glad to escape by the final expedient to which he had resorted? Had he any such rash, insane notion as this in his thoughts? He did not know, he was not certain; he was not sure of anything but this--that Gertrude had refused to see him, and that he was resolved she should, come what might; she should not carry that point, she should not have the triumph at once of fidelity to their strange unnatural compact on her own part, and of having forced him to break it on his. He had dismissed her easily enough from his thoughts, but he could not dismiss her from them now; she kept possession of them now, in the pride of her beauty--how handsome she was! he had never supposed she would have grown into such commanding, self-possessed beauty as hers was now--and in the triumph of her talent--as she had never done since the brief earliest days of their disastrous marriage. Gilbert Lloyd was a man on whom success of any kind produced a strong impression. It counted for much in the rekindling of his former passion for Gertrude that she was now a successful artist, her supposed name in everyone's mouth, holding her own before the world, a woman with a position, an entourage, and an independent career. His thoughts wandered away among scenes which he had long forgotten, in which she was the central figure, and into imaginary pictures of her present life; and he repeated over and over again, with rage--waxing dull by this time--"But she is my wife! she is my wife! no matter what she chooses to do, no matter how she chooses to act towards me, she is my wife! I have only to declare it if I choose." And the consequences to which she, judging by her present conduct, would probably be entirely indifferent--was he prepared to face them? He could not answer this question either; he was not yet cool-headed enough to estimate them aright.

A devouring curiosity concerning Gertrude took possession of him--a craving eagerness to know what were her movements, who were her associates, how she lived; even the disposition of the rooms in her house, and her domestic relations. The absolute ignorance of all these things in which he remained, though his imperious will demanded to be informed of them, exasperated him; and with his fruitless anger there was mingled a grim humour, as he thought of the scenes through which they had passed together, as he recalled Gertrude in the intimacy of their domestic life. And now he was the one person in the world from whom she concealed herself, the one person shut out from her by a barrier erected by her inflexible will. Was he? Time would tell. He had not been ignorant daring the sometimes stormy, sometimes gay and careless, but always unsatisfactory, period which preceeded their separation, that he was by no means so indifferent to Gertrude as she was to him. On the contrary, he had realised that clearly and plainly, and it had sharpened his anger towards her and hardened his heart in the hour of their parting; and he had hated her then, and chafed under the knowledge that she did not hate him, that she was only glad to be rid of him, had only ceased utterly to love him, and learned utterly to despise him. Justly esteeming himself to be a good hater, Gilbert Lloyd found it difficult to understand how it was that he had so soon ceased to hate Gertrude, had so easily yielded to the sense of relief in having done with all that portion of his life in which she had a share, and had never had any serious thought of her, or speculation about her future; for to such an extent had his cynicism gone now that this period of oblivion and ease had in its turn expired, and she had again crossed his path to trouble him. He could only account for this curious phase through which he had passed by what seemed to him an insufficient reason--the new interests in his life, the success which attended his speculation in that "rich brute Ticehurst's" affairs--for thus did the more fastidious and not less vicious man of the two characterise, in his meditations, the coarse animal he was devoting himself so successfully to exploiter.. Such a chance, after so long a run of ill-luck, varied only by a coupon which he preferred not to dwell in remembrance--a chance, as he thought, with an ominous darkening of his evil face, which, if it had only been afforded him a little sooner, might have averted the necessity for such a coup, was calculated to occupy him entirely, and banish from his mind, anything which might divert him from the pursuit of his object.

And now it seemed wonderful to him that he could have thus forgotten her--now, when he was under the renewed spell of her beauty and her scorn.