‘Ah! there you have me, Brownlow,’ he replied. ‘Lord Hartover is a point upon which my lady’s confidences proved peculiarly obscure. She spoke of her “dear George” with a great show of affection, deploring that the festivities in celebration of his coming of age next month must be postponed. She had so counted on seeing both you and me at Hover then, she declared. Deploring, also’—and he looked rather hard at me, I thought, across the corner of the dinner table over the row of decanters, as he spoke—‘deploring also an unfortunate disposition in her stepson to become enamoured of young women very much beneath him in the social scale. She gave me to understand both she and his father had been caused much annoyance and trouble by more than one affair of this sort. Yet I could not help fancying she sought information, just then, rather than offered it. I had a notion—I may have been mistaken—she was doing her best to pump me and find out whether I had heard anything from you upon the subject of these amatory escapades. Come, Brownlow—for my instruction, not for hers—can you fill in the gaps?’
I hesitated. Had the right moment come for explanation? I believed that it had. And so, as plainly and briefly as I could, I told him the whole story. I kept back nothing—why should I? There was nothing to be ashamed of, though somewhat to grieve over, and much to regret. I told him of Nellie, of Fédore; of Hartover’s love, Hartover’s marriage. I told him of my own love.
For a while he remained silent. Then, laying his hand on my shoulder, as I sat, my elbows upon the table, my face buried in my hands—
‘My poor fellow, my poor fellow—I had no notion of all this,’ he said. ‘So this is the upshot of your two years at Hover. I sent you out to make your fortune, and you found your fate. Well—well—things are as they are; but I do not deny that recently I had formed very different plans for you.’
‘Do not think me presumptuous, sir, if I answer I feared as much. And that is my reason for telling you what I have told no other human being—what, indeed, I had hoped to keep locked inviolably in my own breast as long as I live.’
Something in my tone or in my narrative must have stirred him deeply, for he rose and took a turn up and down the room, as though with difficulty retaining his composure. For my part, I own, I felt broken, carried out of myself. It had been searching work, dislocating work, to lay bare my innermost heart thus. But only so, as I judged, could the mention of Alice Dynevor’s name be avoided between us. It was better to sacrifice myself, if by so doing I could at once spare her and arrive at a clear understanding. Of this I was glad. I think the Master was glad too; for, his rather agitated walk ended, he stood beside me and spoke most kindly.
‘Your secret is perfectly safe with me, Brownlow, rest assured. I give you my word I will never reveal it. You have behaved honourably and high-mindedly throughout. Your conduct commands my respect and admiration,—though I could wish some matters had turned out otherwise. But now as to this marriage—real or supposed—of poor Hartover’s and all the ugly plotting of which, I fear with you, he is the victim. I do not think I can find it in my conscience to stand by, or encourage you to stand by, with folded hands.’
‘That is exactly what I was coming to, sir,’ I said, choking down alike my thanks and my emotion. ‘If, as you inform me, Lord Longmoor’s health is so precarious, the poor dear boy’s future must not be left to chance.’
‘No, no,’ he answered warmly. ‘His foes, I fear, are very literally of his own household. If this woman is legally his wife, we, as his friends, are called upon to stand by the marriage and, on grounds of public policy, make the best of what, I admit, strikes me as a very bad business. If she is not legally his wife, if there is any flaw in the marriage, we must take means to establish the fact of that flaw and set him free. Whether he is grateful to us for our self-imposed labours affects our duty neither one way nor the other at this stage of the proceedings. But, should she prove the unscrupulous person I take her to be, he will very certainly thank us in the end. And now, Brownlow, it occurs to me the sooner we move in all this the better. There is no time to be lost.’
He gave me reasons for his opinion, in which I fully agreed; and we sat talking far into the night, with the result that within a fortnight I travelled, first to Yorkshire, and then up to town.