Elster's Folly

The exclamation was caused by the unexpected vision of Lord Hartledon.

"How are you, Lady Kirton?"

"Where on earth did you spring from?"

"From my room."

"What's the good of your appearing before people like a ghost, Hartledon? When did you arrive?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"And time you did, I think, with your poor wife fretting herself to death about you. How is she this morning?"

"Very well."

"Ugh!" You must imagine this sound as something between a grunt and a groan, that the estimable lady gave vent to whenever put out. It is not capable of being written. "You might have sent word you were coming. I should think you frightened your wife to death."

"Not quite."

He walked across the room and rang the bell. Hedges appeared. It had been the dowager's pleasure that no one else should serve her at that meal—perhaps on account of her peculiarities of costume.

"Will you be good enough to pour out the coffee in Maude's place to-day, Lady Kirton? She has promised to be down another morning."

It was making her so entirely and intentionally a guest, as she thought, that Lady Kirton did not like it. Not only did she fully intend Hartledon House to be her home, but she meant to be its one ruling power. Keep Maude just now to her invalid fancies, and later to her gay life, and there would be little fear of her asserting very much authority.

"Are you in the habit of serving this sort of breakfast, Hedges?" asked Lord Hartledon; for the board looked almost like an elaborate dinner.

"We have made some difference, my lord, this morning."

"For me, I suppose. You need not do so in future. I have got out of the habit of taking breakfast; and in any case I don't want this unnecessary display. Captain Kirton gets up later, I presume."

"He's hardly ever up before eleven," said Hedges. "But he makes a good breakfast, my lord."

"That's right. Tempt him with any delicacy you can devise. He wants strength."

The dowager was fuming. "Don't you think I'm capable of regulating these things, Hartledon, I'd beg leave to ask?"

"No doubt. I beg you will make yourself at home whilst you stay with us. Some tea, Hedges."

She could have thrown the coffee-pot at him. There was incipient defiance in his every movement; latent war in his tones. He was no longer the puppet he had been; that day had gone by for ever.

Perhaps Val could not himself have explained the feeling that was this morning at work within him. It was the first time he and the dowager had met since the marriage, and she brought before him all too prominently the ill-omened past: her unjustifiable scheming—his own miserable weakness. If ever Lord Hartledon felt shame and repentance for his weak yielding, he felt it now—felt it in all its bitterness; and something very like rage against the dowager was bubbling up in his spirit, which he had some trouble to suppress.

He did suppress it, however, though it rendered him less courteous than usual; and the meal proceeded partly in silence; an interchanged word, civil on the surface, passing now and then. The dowager thoroughly entered into her breakfast, and had little leisure for anything else.

"What makes you take nothing?" she asked, perceiving at length that he had only a piece of toast on his plate, and was playing with that.

"I have no appetite."

"Have you left off taking breakfast?"

"To a great extent."

"What's the matter with you?"

Lord Hartledon slightly raised his eyebrows. "One can't eat much in the heat of summer."

"Heat of summer! it's nothing more than autumn now. And you are as thin as a weasel. Try some of that excellent raised pie."

"Pray let my appetite alone, Lady Kirton. If I wanted anything I should take it."

"Let you alone! yes, of course! You don't want it noticed that you are out of sorts," snapped the dowager. "Oh, I know the signs. You've been raking about London—that's what you've been at."

The "raking about London" presented so complete a contrast to the lonely life he had really passed, that Hartledon smiled in very bitterness. And the smile incensed the dowager, for she misunderstood it.

"It's early days to begin! I don't think you ought to have married Maude."

"I don't think I ought."

She did not expect the rejoinder, and dropped her knife and fork. "Why did you marry her?"

"Perhaps you can tell that better than I."

The countess-dowager pushed up her hair.

"Are you going to throw off the mask outright, and become a bad husband as well as a neglectful one?"

Val rose from his seat and went to the window, which opened to the ground. He did not wish to quarrel with her if he could help it. Lady Kirton raised her voice.

"Staying away, as you have, in London, and leaving Maude here to pine alone."

"Business kept me in London."

"I dare say it did!" cried the wrathful dowager. "If Maude died of ennui, you wouldn't care. She can't go about much herself just now, poor thing! I do wish Edward had lived."

"I wish he had, with all my heart!" came the answer; and the tone struck surprise on the dowager's ear—it was so full of pain. "Maude's coming to Hartledon without me was her own doing," he remarked. "I wished her not to come."

"I dare say you did, as her heart was set upon it. The fact of her wishing to do a thing would be the signal for your opposing it; I've gathered that much. My advice to Maude is, to assert her own will, irrespective of yours."

"Don't you think, Lady Kirton, that it may be as well if you let me and my wife alone? We shall get along, no doubt, without interference; with interference we might not do so."

What with one thing and another, the dowager's temper was inflammable that morning; and when it reached that undesirable state she was apt to say pretty free things, even for her.

"Edward would have made her the better husband."

"But she didn't like him, you know!" he returned, his eyes flashing with the remembrance of an old thought; and the countess-dowager took the sentence literally, and not ironically.

"Not like him. If you had had any eyes as Val Elster, you'd have seen whether she liked him or not. She was dying for him—not for you."

He made no reply. It was only what he had suspected, in a half-doubting sort of way, at the time. A little spaniel, belonging to one of the gardeners, ran up and licked his hand.

"The time that I had of it!" continued the dowager. "But for me, Maude never would have been forced into having you. And she shouldn't have had you if I'd thought you were going to turn out like this."

He wheeled round and faced her; his pale face working with emotion, but his voice subdued to calmness. Lady Kirton's last words halted, for his look startled even her in its resolute sternness.

"To what end are you saying this, madam? You know perfectly well that you almost moved heaven and earth to get me: you, I say; I prefer to leave my wife's name out of this: and I fell into the snare. I have not complained of my bargain; so far as I know, Maude has not done so: but if it be otherwise—if she and you repent of the union, I am willing to dissolve it, as far as it can be dissolved, and to institute measures for living apart."

Never, never had she suspected it would come to this. She sat staring at him, her eyes round, her mouth open: scarcely believing the calm resolute man before her could be the once vacillating Val Elster.

"Listen whilst I speak a word of truth," he said, his eyes bent on her with a strange fire that, if it told of undisguised earnestness, told also of inward fever. "I married your daughter, and I am ready and willing to do my duty by her in all honour, as I have done it since the day of the marriage. Whatever my follies may have been as a young man, I am at least incapable of wronging my wife as a married one. She has had no cause to complain of want of affection, but—"

"Oh, what a hypocrite!" interrupted the dowager, with a shriek. "And all the time you've left her here neglected, while you were taking your amusement in London! You've been dinner-giving and Richmond-going, and theatre-frequenting, and card-playing, and race-horsing—and I shouldn't wonder but you've been cock-fighting, and a hundred other things as disreputable, and have come down here worn to a skeleton!"

"But if she is discontented, if she does not care for me, as you would seem to intimate," he resumed, passing over the attack without notice; "in short, if Maude would be happier without me, I am quite willing, as I have just said, to relieve her of her distasteful husband."

"Of all the wicked plotters, you must be the worst! My darling unoffending Maude! A divorce for her!"

"We are neither of us eligible for a divorce," he coolly rejoined. "A separation alone is open to us, and that an amicable one. Should it come to it, every possible provision can be made for your daughter's comfort; she shall retain this home; she shall have, if she wishes, a town-house; I will deny her nothing."

Lady Kirton rubbed her face carefully with her handkerchief. Not until this moment had she believed him to be in earnest, and the conviction frightened her.

"Why do you wish to separate from her?" she asked, in a subdued tone.

"I do not wish it. I said I was willing to do so if she wished it. You have been taking pains to convince me that Maude's love was not mine, that she was only forced into the marriage with me. Should this have been the case, I must be distasteful to her still; an encumbrance she may wish to get rid of."

The countess-dowager had overshot her mark, and saw it.

"Oh well! Perhaps I was mistaken about the past," she said, staring at him very hard, and in a sort of defiance. "Maude was always very close. If you said anything about separation now, I dare say it would kill her. My belief is, she does care for you, and a great deal more than you deserve."

"It may be better to ascertain the truth from Maude—"

"You won't say a syllable to her!" cried the dowager, starting up in terror. "She'd never forgive me; she'd turn me out of the house. Hartledon, promise you won't say a word to her."

He stood back against the window, never speaking.

"She does love you; but I thought I'd frighten you, for you had no right to send Maude home alone; and it made me very cross, because I saw how she felt it. Separation indeed! What can you be thinking of?"

He was thinking of a great deal, no doubt; and his thoughts were as bitter as they could well be. He did not wish to separate; come what might, he felt his place should be by his wife's side as long as circumstances permitted it.

"Let me give you a word of warning, Lady Kirton. I and my wife will be happy enough together, I daresay, if we are allowed to be; but the style of conversation you have just adopted to me will not conduce to it; it might retaliate on Maude, you see. Do not again attempt it."

"How you have changed!" was her involuntary remark.

"Yes; I am not the yielding boy I was. And now I wish to speak of your son. He seems very ill."

"A troublesome intruding fellow, why can't he keep his ailments to his own barracks?" was the wrathful rejoinder. "I told Maude I wouldn't have him here, and what does she do but write off and tell him to come! I don't like sick folk about me, and never did. What do you want?"

The last question was addressed to Hedges, who had come in unsummoned. It was only a letter for his master. Lord Hartledon took it as a welcome interruption, went outside, and sat down on a garden-seat at a distance. How he hated the style of attack just made on him; the style of the dowager altogether! He asked himself in what manner he could avoid this for the future. It was a debasing, lowering occurrence, and he felt sure that it could hardly have taken place in his servants' hall. But he was glad he had said what he did about the separation. It might grieve him to part from his wife, but Mr. Carr had warned him that he ought to do it. Certainly, if she disliked him so very much—if she forced it upon him—why, then, it would be an easier task; but he felt sure she did not dislike him. If she had done so before marriage, she had learnt to like him now; and he believed that the bare mention of parting would shock her; and so—his duty seemed to lie in remaining by her side.

He held the letter in his hand for some minutes before he opened it. The handwriting warned him that it was from Mr. Carr, and he knew that no pleasant news could be in it. In fact, he had placed himself in so unsatisfactory a position as to render anything but bad news next door to an impossibility.

It contained only a few lines—a word of caution Mr. Carr had forgotten to speak when he took leave of Lord Hartledon the previous morning. "Let me advise you not to say anything to those people—Gum, I think the name is—about G.G. It might not be altogether prudent for you to do so. Should you remain any time at Hartledon, I will come down for a few days and question for myself."

"I've done it already," thought Val, as he folded the letter and returned it to his pocket. "As to my staying any time at Hartledon—not if I know it."

Looking up at the sound of footsteps, he saw Hedges approaching. Never free from a certain apprehension when any unexpected interruption occurred—an apprehension that turned his heart sick, and set his pulses beating—he waited, outwardly very calm.

"Floyd has called, my lord, and is asking to see you. He seems rather—rather concerned and put out. I think it's something about—about the death last summer."

Hedges hardly knew how to frame his words, and Lord Hartledon stared at him.

"Floyd can come to me here," he said.

The miller soon made his appearance, carrying a small case half purse, half pocket-book, in his hand, made of Russian leather, with rims of gold. Val knew it in a moment, in spite of its marks of defacement.

"Do you recognize it, my lord?" asked the miller.

"Yes, I do," replied Lord Hartledon. "It belonged to my brother."

"I thought so," returned the miller. "On the very day before that unfortunate race last year, his lordship was talking to me, and had this in his hand. I felt sure it was the same the moment I saw it."

"He had it with him the day of the race," observed Lord Hartledon. "Mr. Carteret said he saw it lying in the boat when they started. We always thought it had been lost in the river. Where did you find it?"

"Well, it's very odd, my lord, but I found it buried."

"Buried!"

"Buried in the ground, not far from the river, alongside the path that leads from where his lordship was found to Hartledon. I was getting up some dandelion roots for my wife this morning early, and dug up this close to one. There's where the knife touched it. My lord," added the miller, "I beg to say that I have not opened it. I wiped it, wrapped it in paper, and said nothing to anybody, but came here with it as soon as I thought you'd be up. That lad of mine, Ripper, said last night you were at Hartledon."

The miller was quite honest; and Lord Hartledon knew that when he said he had not opened it, he had not done so. It still contained some small memoranda in his brother's writing, but no money; and this was noticeable, since it was quite certain to have had money in it on that day.

"Those who buried it might have taken it out," he observed, following the bent of his thoughts.

"But who did bury it; and where did they find it, to allow of their burying it?" questioned the miller. "How did they come by it?—that's the odd thing. I am certain it was not in the skiff, for I searched that over myself."

Lord Hartledon said little. He could not understand it; and the incident, with the slips of paper, was bringing his brother all too palpably before him. One of them had concerned himself, though in what manner he would never know now. It ran as follows: "Not to forget Val." Poor fellow! Poor Lord Hartledon!

"Would your lordship like to come and see the spot where I found it?" asked the miller.

Lord Hartledon said he should, and would go in the course of the day; and Floyd took his departure. Val sat on for a time where he was, and then went in, locked up the damp case with its tarnished rims, and went on to the presence of his wife.

She was dressed now, but had not left her bedroom. It was evident that she meant to be kind and pleasant with him; different from what she had been, for she smiled, and began a little apology for her tardiness, saying she would get up to breakfast in future.

He motioned her back to her seat on the sofa before the open window, and sat down near her. His face was grave; she thought she had never seen it so much so—grave and firm, and his voice was grave too, but had a kindly tone in it. He took both her hands between his as he spoke; not so much, it seemed in affection, as to impress solemnity upon her.

"Maude, I'm going to ask you a question, and I beg you to answer me as truthfully as you could answer Heaven. Have you any wish that we should live apart from each other?"

"I do not understand you," she answered, after a pause, during which a flush of surprise or emotion spread itself gradually over her face.

"Nay, the question is plain. Have you any wish to separate from me?"

"I never thought of such a thing. Separate from you! What can you mean?"

"Your mother has dropped a hint that you have not been happy with me. I could almost understand her to imply that you have a positive dislike to me. She sought to explain her words away, but certainly spoke them. Is it so, Maude? I fancied something of the sort myself in the earlier days of our marriage."

He turned his head sharply at a sudden sound, but it was only the French clock on the mantelpiece striking eleven.

"Because," he resumed, having waited in vain for an answer, "if such should really be your wish, I will accede to it. I desire your comfort, your happiness beyond any earthly thing; and if living apart from me would promote it, I will sacrifice my own feelings, and you shall not hear a murmur. I would sacrifice my life for you."

She burst into tears. "Are you speaking at all for yourself? Do you wish this?" she murmured.

"No."

"Then how can you be so cruel?"

"I should have thought it unjustifiably cruel, but that it has been suggested to me. Tell me the truth, Maude."

Maude was turning sick with apprehension. She had begun to like her husband during the latter part of their sojourn in London; had missed him terribly during this long period of lonely ennui at Hartledon; and his tender kindness to her for the past few fleeting hours of this their meeting had seemed like heaven as compared with the solitary past. Her whole heart was in her words as she answered:

"When we first married I did not care for you; I almost think I did not like you. Everything was new to me, and I felt as one in an unknown sea. But it wore off; and if you only knew how I have thought of you, and wished for you here, you would never have said anything so cruel. You are my husband, and you cannot put me from you. Percival, promise me that you will never hint at this again!"

He bent and kissed her. His course lay plain before him; and if an ugly mountain rose up before his mind's eye, shadowing forth not voluntary but forced separation, he would not look at it in that moment.

"What could mamma mean?" she asked. "I shall ask her."

"Maude, oblige me by saying nothing about it. I have already warned Lady Kirton that it must not be repeated; and I am sure it will not be. I wish you would also oblige me in another matter."

"In anything," she eagerly said, raising her tearful eyes to his. "Ask me anything."

"I intend to take your brother to the warmest seaside place England can boast of, at once; to-day or to-morrow. The sea-air may do me good also. I want that, or something else," he added; his tone assuming a sad weariness as he remembered how futile any "sea-air" would be for a mind diseased. "Won't you go with us, Maude?"

"Oh yes, gladly! I will go with you anywhere."

He left her to proceed to Captain Kirton's room, thinking that he and his wife might have been happy together yet, but for that one awful shadow of the past, which she did not know anything about; and he prayed she never might know.

But after all, it would have been a very moonlight sort of happiness.