Elster's Folly

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE STRANGER

Lord Hartledon was leading his bride through the chapel at the conclusion of the ceremony, when his attention was caught by something outside one of the windows. At first he thought it was a black cat curled up in some impossible fashion, but soon saw it was a dark human face. And that face he discovered to be Mr. Pike's, peering earnestly in.

"Hedges, send that man away. How dare he intrude himself in this manner? How has he got up to the window?"

For these windows were high beyond the ordinary height of man. Hedges went out, a sharp reprimand on his tongue, and found that Mr. Pike had been at the trouble of carrying a heap of stones from a distance and piling them up to stand upon.

"Well, you must have a curiosity!" he exclaimed, in his surprise. "Just put those stones back in their places, and take yourself away."

"You are right," said the man. "I have a curiosity in all that concerns the new lord. But I am going away now."

He leaped down as he spoke, and began to replace the stones. Hedges went in again.

The carriage, waiting to convey them away, was already at the door, the impatient horses pawing the ground. Maude changed her dress with all speed; and in driving down the road by starlight they overtook Thomas Carr, carrying his own portmanteau. Lord Hartledon let down the window impulsively, as if he would have spoken, but seemed to recollect himself, and drew it up again.

"What is it?" asked Maude.

"Mr. Carr."

It was the first word he had spoken to her since the ceremony. His silence had frightened her: what if he should resent on her the cruel words spoken by Dr. Ashton? Sick, trembling, her beautiful face humble and tearful enough now, she bent it on his shoulder in a shower of bitter tears.

"Oh, Percival, Percival! surely you are not going to punish me for what has passed?"

A moment's struggle with himself, and he turned and took both her hands in his.

"It may be that neither of us is free from blame, Maude, in regard to the past. All we can now do, as it seems to me, is to forget it together, and make the best of the future."

"And you will forget Anne Ashton?" she whispered.

"Of course I shall forget her. I ask nothing better than to forget her from this moment. I have made you my wife; and I will try to make your happiness."

He bent and kissed her face. Maude, in some restlessness, as it seemed, withdrew to her own corner of the carriage and cried softly; and Lord Hartledon let down the glass again to look back after Thomas Carr and his portmanteau in the starlight.

The only perfectly satisfied person was the countess-dowager. All the little annoying hindrances went for nothing now that the desired end was accomplished, and she was in high feather when she bade adieu to the amiable young clergyman, who had to depart that night for his curacy, ten miles away, to be in readiness for the morrow's services.

"If you please, my lady, Captain Kirton has been asking for you once or twice," said Hedges, entering the dowager's private sitting-room.

"Then Captain Kirton must ask," retorted the dowager, who was sitting down to her letters, which she had left unopened since their arrival in the morning, in her anxiety for other interests. "Hedges, I should like some supper: I had only a scrambling sort of dinner. You can bring it up here. Something nice; and a bottle of champagne."

Hedges withdrew with the order, and Lady Kirton applied herself to her letters. The first she opened was from the daughter who had married the French count. It told a pitiful tale of distress, and humbly craved to be permitted to come over on a fortnight's visit, she and her two sickly children, "for a little change."

"I dare say!" emphatically cried the dowager. "What next? No, thank you, my lady; now that I have at least a firm footing in this house—as that blessed parson said—I am not going to risk it by filling it with every bothering child I possess. Bob departs as soon as his leg's well. Why what's this?"

She had come upon a concluding line as she was returning the letter to the envelope. "P.S. If I don't hear from you very decisively to the contrary, I shall come, and trust to your good nature to forgive it. I want to see Bob."

"Oh, that's it, is it!" said the dowager. "She means to come, whether I will or no. That girl always had enough impudence for a dozen."

Drawing a sheet of paper out of her desk, she wrote a few rapid lines.

"Dear Jane,

"For mercy's sake keep those poor children and yourself away! We have had an aweful infectious fever rageing in the place, which it was thought to be cured, but it's on the break out again—several deaths, Hartledon and Maude (married of course) have gone out of its reach and I'm thinking of it if Bob's leg which is better permits. You'd not like I dare say to see the children in a coffin apiece and yourself in a third, as might be the end. Small-pox is raging at Garchester a neighbouring town, that will be awful if it gets to us and I hear it's on the road and with kind love believe me your affectionate

"MOTHER.

"P.S. I am sorry for what you tell me about Ugo and the state of affairs chey vous. But you know you would marry him so there's nobody to blame. Ah! Maude has gone by my advice and done as I said and the consequence is she's a peeress for life and got a handsome young husband without a will of his own."

The countess-dowager was not very adroit at spelling and composition, whether French or English, as you observe. She made an end of her correspondence, and sat down to a delicious little supper alone; as she best liked to enjoy these treats. The champagne was excellent, and she poured out a full tumbler of it at once, by way of wishing good luck to Maude's triumphant wedding.

"And it is a triumph!" she said, as she put down the empty glass. "I hope it will bring Jane and the rest to a sense of their folly."

A triumph? If you could only have looked into the future, Lady Kirton! A triumph!

The above was not the only letter written that evening. At the hotel where Lord and Lady Hartledon halted for the night, when she had retired under convoy of her maid, then Val's restrained remorse broke out. He paced the room in a sort of mad restlessness; in the midst of which he suddenly sat down to a table on which lay pens, ink, and paper, and poured forth hasty sentences in his mind's wretched tumult.

"My Dear Mrs. Ashton,

"I cannot address you in any more formal words, although you will have reason to fling down the letter at my presuming to use these now—for dear, most dear, you will ever be to me.

"What can I say? Why do I write to you? Indeed to the latter question I can only answer I do not know, save that some instinct of good feeling, not utterly dead within me, is urging me to it.

"Will you let me for a moment throw conventionality aside; will you for that brief space of time let me speak truly and freely to you, as one might speak who has passed the confines of this world?

"When a man behaves to a woman as I, to my eternal shame, have this day behaved to Anne, it is, I think, a common custom to regard the false man as having achieved a sort of triumph; to attribute somewhat of humiliation to the other.

"Dear Mrs. Ashton, I cannot sleep until I have said to you that in my case the very contrary is the fact. A more abject, humiliated man than I stand at this hour in my own eyes never yet took his sins upon his soul. Even you might be appeased if you could look into mine and see its sense of degradation.

"That my punishment has already come home to me is only just; that I shall have to conceal it from all the world, including my wife, will not lessen its sting.

"I have this evening married Maude Kirton. I might tell you of unfair play brought to bear upon me, of a positive assurance, apparently well grounded, that Anne had entered into an engagement to wed another, could I admit that these facts were any excuse for me. They are no excuse; not the slightest palliation. My own yielding folly alone is to blame, and I shall take shame to myself for ever.

"I write this to you as I might have written it to my own mother, were she living; not as an expiation; only to tell of my pain; that I am not utterly hardened; that I would sue on my knees for pardon, were it not shut out from me by my own act. There is no pardon for such as I. When you have torn it in pieces, you will, I trust, forget the writer.

"God bless you, dear Mrs. Ashton! God bless and comfort another who is dear to you!—and believe me with true undying remorse your once attached friend,

"Hartledon."

It was a curious letter to write; but men of Lord Hartledon's sensitive temperament in regard to others' feelings often do strange things; things the world at large would stare at in their inability to understand them. The remorse might not have come home to him quite so soon as this, his wedding-day, but for the inopportune appearance of Dr. Ashton in the chapel, speaking those words that told home so forcibly. Such reproach on these vacillating men inflicts a torture that burns into the heart like living fire.

He sealed the letter, addressing it to Cannes; called a waiter, late as it was, and desired him to post it. And then he walked about the room, reflecting on the curse of his life—his besetting sin—irresolution. It seemed almost an anomaly for him to make resolves; but he did make one then; that he would, with the help of Heaven, be a MAN from henceforth, however it might crucify his sensitive feelings. And for the future, the obligation he had that day taken upon himself he determined to fulfil to his uttermost in all honour and love; to cherish his wife as he would have cherished Anne Ashton. For the past—but Lord Hartledon rose up now with a start. There was one item of that past he dared not glance at, which did not, however, relate to Miss Ashton: and it appeared inclined to thrust itself prominently forward to-night.

Could Lord Hartledon have borrowed somewhat of the easy indifference of the countess-dowager, he had been a happier man. That lady would have made a female Nero, enjoying herself while Rome was burning. She remained on in her snug quarters at Hartledon, and lived in clover.

One evening, rather more than a week after the marriage, Hedges had been on an errand to Calne, and was hastening home. In the lonely part of the road near Hartledon, upon turning a sharp corner, he came upon Mirrable, who was standing talking to Pike, very much to the butler's surprise. Pike walked away at once; and the butler spoke.

"He is not an acquaintance of yours, that man, Mrs. Mirrable?"

"Indeed no," she answered, tossing her head. "It was like his impudence to stop me. Rather flurried me too," she continued: and indeed Hedges noticed that she seemed flurried.

"What did he stop you for? To beg?"

"Not that. I've never heard that he does beg. He accosted me with a cool question as to when his lordship was coming back to Hartledon. I answered that it could not be any business of his. And then you came up."

"He is uncommon curious as to my lord. I can't make it out. I've seen him prowling about the grounds: and the night of the marriage he was mounted up at the chapel window. Lord Hartledon saw him, too. I should like to know what he wants."

"By a half-word he let drop, I fancy he has a crotchet in his head that his lordship will find him some work when he comes home. But I must go on my way," added Mirrable. "Mrs. Gum's not well, and I sent word I'd look in for half-an-hour this evening."

Hedges had to go on his way also, for it was close upon the countess-dowager's dinner-hour, at which ceremony he must attend. Putting his best foot forward, he walked at more than an ordinary pace, and overtook a gentleman almost at the very door of Hartledon. The stranger was approaching the front entrance, Hedges was wheeling off to the back; but the former turned and spoke. A tall, broad-shouldered, grey-haired man, with high cheek-bones. Hedges took him for a clergyman from his attire; black, with a white neckcloth.

"This is Hartledon House, I believe," he said, speaking with a Scotch accent.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you belong to it?"

"I am Lord Hartledon's butler."

"Is Lord Hartledon at home?"

"No, sir. He is in France."

"I read a notice of his marriage in the public papers," continued the stranger, whose eyes were fixed on Hedges. "It was, I suppose, a correct one?"

"My lord was married the week before last: about ten or eleven days ago."

"Ay; April the fourteenth, the paper said. She is one of the Kirton family. When do you expect him home?"

"I don't know at all, sir. I've not heard anything about it."

"He is in France, you say, Paris, I suppose. Can you furnish me with his address?"

Up to this point the colloquy had proceeded smoothly on both sides: but it suddenly flashed into the mind of Hedges that the stranger's manner was somewhat mysterious, though in what the mystery lay he could not have defined. The communicative man, true to the interests of his master, became cautious at once: he supposed some of Lord Hartledon's worries, contracted when he was Mr. Elster, were returning upon him.

"I cannot give his address, sir. And for the matter of that, it might not be of use if I could. Lord and Lady Hartledon did not intend remaining any length of time in one place."

The stranger had dug the point of his umbrella into the level greensward that bounded the gravel, and swayed the handle about with his hand, pausing in thought.

"I have come a long way to see Lord Hartledon," he observed. "It might be less trouble and cost for me to go on to Paris and see him there, than to start back for home, and come here again when he returns to England. Are you sure you can't give me his address?"

"I'm very sorry I can't, sir. There was a talk of their going on to Switzerland," continued Hedges, improvising the journey, "and so coming back through Germany; and there was a talk of their making Italy before the heat came on, and stopping there. Any way, sir, I dare say they are already away from Paris."

The stranger regarded Hedges attentively, rather to the discomfiture of that functionary, who thought he was doubted. He then asked a great many questions, some about Lord Hartledon's personal habits, some about Lady Maude: the butler answered them freely or cautiously, as he thought he might, feeling inclined all the while to chase the intruder off the premises. Presently he turned his attention on the house.

"A fine old place, this, Mr. Butler."

"Yes, sir."

"I suppose I could look over it, if I wished?"

Hedges hesitated. He was privately asking himself whether the law would allow the stranger, if he had come after any debt of Lord Hartledon's, to refuse to leave the house, once he got into it.

"I could ask Lady Kirton, sir, if you particularly wished it."

"Lady Kirton? You have some one in the house, then!"

"The Dowager Lady Kirton's here, sir. One of her sons also—Captain Kirton; but he is confined to his room."

"Then I would rather not go in," said the stranger quickly. "I'm very disappointed to have come all this way and not find Lord Hartledon."

"Can I forward any letter for you, sir? If you'd like to intrust one to me, I'll send it as soon as we know of any certain address."

"No—no, I think not," said the stranger, musingly. "There might be danger," he muttered to himself, but Hedges caught the words.

He stood swaying the umbrella-handle about, looking down at it, as if that would assist his decision. Then he looked at Hedges.

"My business with Lord Hartledon is quite private, and I would rather not write. I'll wait until he is back in England: and see him then."

"What name, sir?" asked Hedges, as the stranger turned away.

"I would prefer not to leave my name," was the candid answer. "Good evening."

He walked briskly down the avenue, and Hedges stood looking after him, slightly puzzled in his mind.

"I don't believe it's a creditor; that I don't. He looks like a parson to me. But it's some trouble though, if it's not debt. 'Danger' was the word: 'there might be danger.' Danger in writing, he meant. Any way, I'm glad he didn't go in to that ferreting old dowager. And whatever it may be, his lordship's able to pay it now."

CHAPTER XIX.

A CHANCE MEETING

Some few weeks went by. On a fine June morning Lord and Lady Hartledon were breakfasting at their hotel in the Rue Rivoli. She was listlessly playing with her cup; he was glancing over Galignani's.

"Maude," he suddenly exclaimed, "the fountains are to play on Sunday at Versailles. Will you go to see them?"

"I am tired of sight-seeing, and tired of Paris too," was Lady Hartledon's answer, spoken with apathy.

"Are you?" he returned, with animation, as though not sorry to hear the avowal. "Then we won't stay in Paris any longer. When shall we leave?"

"Are the letters not late this morning?" she asked, allowing the question to pass.

Lord Hartledon glanced at the clock. "Very late: and we are late also. Are you expecting any in particular?"

"I don't know. This chocolate is cold."

"That is easily remedied," said he, rising to ring the bell. "They can bring in some fresh."

"And keep us waiting half-an-hour!" she grumbled.

"The hotel is crammed up to the mansarde," said good-natured Lord Hartledon, who was easily pleased, and rather tolerant of neglect in French hotels. "Is not that the right word, Maude? You took me to task yesterday for saying garret. The servants are run off their legs."

"Then the hotel should keep more servants. I am quite sick of having to ring twice. A week ago I wished I was out of the place."

"My dear Maude, why did you not say so? If you'd like to go on at once to Germany—"

"Lettres et journal pour monsieur," interrupted a waiter, entering with two letters and the Times.

"One for you, Maude," handing a letter to his wife. "Don't go," he continued to the waiter; "we want some more chocolate; this is cold. Tell him in French, Maude."

But Lady Hartledon did not hear; or if she heard, did not heed; she was already absorbed in the contents of her letter.

"Ici," said Hartledon, pushing the chocolate-pot towards the man, and rallying the best French he could command, "encore du chocolat. Toute froide, this. Et puis dépêchez vous; il est tarde, et nous avons besoin de sortir."

The man was accustomed to the French of Englishmen, and withdrew without moving a muscle of his face. But Lady Hartledon's ears had been set on edge.

"Don't attempt French again, Val. They'll understand you if you speak in English."

"Did I make any mistake?" he asked good-humouredly. "I could speak French once; but am out of practice. It's the genders bother one."

"Fine French it must have been!" thought her ladyship. "Who is your letter from?"

"My bankers, I think. About Germany, Maude—would you like to go there?"

"Yes. Later. After we have been to London."

"To London!"

"We will go to London at once, Percival; stay there for the rest of the season, and then—"

"My dear," he interrupted, his face overcast, "the season is nearly over. It will be of no use going there now."

"Plenty of use. We shall have quite six weeks of it. Don't look cross, Val; I have set my heart upon it."

"But have you considered the difficulties? In the first place, we have no house in town; in the second—"

"Oh yes we have: a very good house."

Lord Hartledon paused, and looked at her; he thought she was joking. "Where is it?" he asked in merry tones; "at the top of the Monument?"

"It is in Piccadilly," she coolly replied. "Do you remember, some days ago, I read out an advertisement of a house that was to be let there for the remainder of the season, and remarked that it would suit us?"

"That it might suit us, had we wanted one," put in Val.

"I wrote off at once to mamma, and begged her to see after it and engage it for us," she continued, disregarding her husband's amendment. "She now tells me she has done so, and ordered servants up from Hartledon. By the time this letter reaches me she says it will be in readiness."