"A letter from Derval at last! His first letter too—yet it would explain!" were her first ideas. "Be seated, Sir, and for a moment or two, pray do excuse me."
She retired back beyond the silk hangings, and rapidly made herself, more than once, mistress of the contents of that letter, one of coldness, brevity, and farewell—farewell without further explanation—a letter the strange tenor of which startled and bewildered her.
Clara's agitation and confusion were excessive; but sorrow succeeded to surprise in her heart, and indignation to sorrow.
"All is over and ended between your brother and myself, Mr. Rookleigh," said she, with a painful swelling in her slender white throat.
"His letter displeases you?" asked Rookleigh, scarcely knowing what to say, and feeling his heart for a moment fail him.
"Read it," said she, haughtily.
He scarcely required to do so, yet he affected to peruse it, and then knit his narrow brows.
"How cold this letter is! but in it there lurks some mystery," said he.
"What mystery, Sir?"
"I know not—I only know that above all things the human heart is deceitful!"
After a pause, during which both remained silent, and Clara had nervously, half unconsciously, crushed and crumpled up the odious and disappointing note—for it was scarcely even a letter—in her small and tremulous hand, Rookleigh proceeded to make apologies for the strange conduct of his unworthy brother, and to express his own pain, shame, sorrow, and so forth, in terms well chosen and uttered.
"He is peculiar," he added, "always was so; thus his oddity of disposition caused him to be sent to sea. I can assure you, my dear Miss Hampton, that he never got on well with the mother or me, or with anyone else, in fact. Then, sailors will be sailors, Miss Hampton, and are said to have loves in every port."
He continued to linger and utter his regrets, till the silence of Clara indicated that she was weary of his presence and desired to be left alone—alone to her own reflections and misery—and the young squire of Finglecombe bowed himself out, well pleased with his morning's work, and resolved that this should not be his last visit to Bayview Villa.
He was well aware that Clara Hampton, though just turned eighteen, had been the queen of the last season in London, and that though other queens were there as proud and pure and marvellously fair, yet there was none who apparently had remained so unspoiled by the homage offered. Flattery left her untouched; and beautiful and nobly born though she was, no weekly journal yet dared to make her portrait an inducement to purchasers, and no photo of her appeared in any London shop-window to court the comments, admiration, or ribaldry of every passing "cad" or ruffian.
It has been said—with what truth we know not—that no idle man can resist the temptation of seeking to fascinate a handsome girl, while at the same time eclipsing another man. Thus, could Rookleigh have any compunction about eclipsing that half-brother of whose proper position in the family he was so jealous, and whom he had been so studiously reared by his mother to view with a rancorous and most unholy hate?
Certainly not, and to this amiable end, Rookleigh resolved to leave no means untried to introduce himself to Lord Oakhampton.
Chance meetings—chance apparently—in the railway train, and elaborate civilities proffered by Rookleigh, the offers of cigars, periodicals, and so forth, led to an exchange of words; and though the peer was unpleasantly struck by the young man's name, and then knew precisely who he was, for certain cogent legal reasons he deemed it wise and well to be civil to him, and an invitation to Bayview followed—an invitation which Rookleigh was not slow to accept; and soon, by making himself useful in fifty different ways, he became then a regular sea-side visitor; though, as the brother of Derval, his welcome was of a somewhat mingled kind by both father and daughter.
Mrs. Hampton was intensely gratified by this unexpected intimacy, of which, however, by failing health, she was, perhaps luckily, unable to avail herself.
To Rookleigh the idea did occur at times, as to how he was to account to Derval for the non-transmission of Clara's letters for him to the ship, the owners, or their agents abroad?
Well—that was a matter for future consideration; meantime he had the signed bond, and that laid Derval at his mercy!
The lovers were meanwhile beginning to think—nay, to be assured—that their worst fears were becoming realised; Clara deeming that Derval, as his brother had alleged, was "a very sailor"; and he, that Clara was only true to the instincts of her cold-blooded class, and had already forgotten him, or cast him off, for some new, richer, and titled object; and Rookleigh rubbed his long lean hands, and puckered up his green eyes with quaint delight, as the plot seemed to thicken.
Clara had never striven even to like him, though the brother of that Derval she had loved so well—nay, loved in secret still. She saw the base metal in his composition, and always detected a something in the tone of his voice, and in the expression of his face, that roused an undefinable emotion of distrust, as belying in some way the ease and nonchalance of manner he affected.
"We are a kind of cousins, you know, Miss Hampton," said he one day, as he hung over her at the piano.
"I do not know that we are," she replied coldly.
"Permit me to explain to you the degree," and he proceeded to do so with extreme accuracy, as he had just been studying the matter with Mr. De Murrer, affecting to act in the interest of his absent brother, but in reality for his own selfish purposes. But she only laughed aloud, and said:
"It is rather remote."
"It would not be thought so, in Scotland."
She remembered her father's reply on a similar occasion, and merely shrugged her shoulders. Had Derval claimed the kindred blood, her view of it might have been different.
The poor girl's heart was ever beating with "a vague unrest" she could well understand, but had a difficulty in concealing and acting a part to those around her, to the watchful eyes of her father especially, and he began to wonder whether he had acted wisely in opening his house to Rookleigh Hampton.
The latter now learned that the Amethyst had sailed for Batavia, which would ensure, even if she returned direct to England, an absence of at least eight months on the part of Derval—eight months, of which Rookleigh made, as we shall show, a terrible use.
"Sailed for Batavia—sailed for Batavia!" he repeated. Fate was playing into his hands indeed, for long ere Derval could return, the game would be his own!
So "deeper than ever plummet sounded," was the deep villany of Rookleigh Hampton.
CHAPTER VI.
A CRUSHED HEART.
In detailing plot and counterplot, cunning and selfishness, doubt, despair, and no small agony of spirit, we have much to compress in the latter pages of this our history.
As the squire of Finglecombe, Rookleigh was, in every way, a more eligible parti than his sailor brother; thus, confident in having eventually the countenance of Lord Oakhampton, the former cared very little about the opposition of Clara, his whole anxiety being to play his cards well, and have her completely in his power, ere the return of Derval upset his plans, and this unexpected voyage to Batavia gave him far more time to do so than he could at first have hoped for.
Into his nefarious schemes his mother entered con amore. Derval removed or circumvented in any way, her son would marry the heiress of Lord Oakhampton, and eventually might succeed to the title. Every scruple died in her heart!
"Do you make any progress with her, Rookleigh?" that amiable lady asked one day.
"None—as yet," he answered sulkily.
"Why, dear?"
"She is always brooding over Derval."
"Though all letters have been intercepted?"
"Yes; but I have plenty of time, however, before he returns—if he returns at all."
"At all! Why not get up a rumour that he is drowned—or married?"
"Not a bad idea, Mother; anyway I shall be sure to succeed," replied Rookleigh, laughing, with something of the contemptuous confidence of youth, and ignorance of the world.
Unaware of the secret impulses that were working, Clara disliked the apparent intimacy between her father and young Rookleigh Hampton. She disliked his constant visits and something in the bearing he was assuming towards herself. The little toleration she had for him at first, as Derval's brother, passed away with the hope of ever hearing of Derval more, and she had—she knew not why—a secret antipathy to Rookleigh.
The latter felt this, and all his attempts to gain her confidence, even to engage her in a pleasant conversation came to nothing.
Coming upon her one day as she sat on the beach, she seemed so unconscious of his approach, that he came close to her side quite unnoticed.
Then she looked up at him and bowed, but her face scarcely wore the semblance of a smile as she did so.
"Of what were you thinking?" he asked, as he lay down on the pebbles by her feet.
"Nothing," she replied curtly.
"How smooth and pleasant the water looks—will you let me row you out a little way?"
"No, thanks," she replied almost with asperity.
"You always seem to—to doubt me, Miss Hampton."
"You think so?" said she, with her lip curling slightly.
"I am sorry to say that I feel it instinctively."
"I do not doubt your honour, at all events."
"My truth, then?" said he, colouring.
"Are they not the same thing?"
"Not always—unless I deceive myself.
"You may—but not me," replied the girl, almost sharply, for his manner worried her, and she rose up.
He grew pale with anger, love, and even hate, curiously mingled, and thought, as he started to his feet, and walked on by her side, "I'll crush you yet, my proud damsel!"
After a little pause, he said:
"Whatever you think of me, Miss Hampton, I trust you do not deem me a worshipper of Mammon?"
Now, as this was precisely what she did think of him, young though he was, she laughed and replied:
"The conversation is becoming, to say the least of it, peculiar and personal. What can it possibly matter to you, how or what I think of you?"
Dissembling his rage at this contemptuous question, he said:
"It matters much, indeed; all would wish to stand well in your estimation—and I more than all, Miss Hampton."
"Well—are not most people worshippers of Mammon?"
"More, I hope, worshippers of beauty."
His smile became a leer, and while irritation gathered in her heart, she said:
"I know nothing of either—I have lived only some eighteen years in the world, Mr. Hampton. But why do you cross-question me?" she added impetuously.
"Pardon me; because to me all your thoughts are of the deepest interest, and I——"
"I do not understand all this," interrupted Clara, with increasing annoyance; "but here is our gate, and I must wish you good morning, Mr. Hampton."
"Good morning." He lifted his hat and turned away, with a baffled and angry emotion in his mind, and an expression in his eyes, that, had Clara seen it, would certainly have startled her; but so far as she was concerned, sorrow, annoyance, and evil were fated to come thick and fast now.
Rookleigh's law agents were meanwhile perfecting the evidences of his own and his brother's claims successively to the title held then by Lord Oakhampton. We have already detailed the angry interview between his lordship and Mr. De Murrer, and the alarm with which it inspired him; and this emotion was renewed when, from that gentleman, acting ostensibly in the interest of the absent Derval, but in reality under the secret pressure of Rookleigh, came a terrifying legal missive, to the effect that the whole chain of evidence was now complete and would shortly be laid before the world!
"There is but one way of compromising with the absent heir," wrote Mr. De Murrer, good-naturedly: "your lordship has no direct heir; Mr. Derval Hampton, and then his brother, are the next in succession; thus, if you do not marry again, the claim may take its course after your demise, if the heirs assent thereto."
"Marry again—and at my years!" thought Lord Oakhampton, bitterly; "of that there is no danger"; but as he thought of his daughter, the beads of perspiration started on his brow. He thought of the mutual regard his daughter and Derval had for each other; he saw a means of compromise the lawyer did not think of, and wrote him to that effect, begging him not to move in the matter until the return of Derval; but kept his own counsel, and said nothing to Clara on what he deemed their impending ruin; and his natural hauteur made him shrink from speaking on the matter, as yet, to Rookleigh Hampton.
The latter continued his visits as usual—the whole impending suit being supposed to be Derval's; but Clara kept so sedulously out of his way, that he could not use the opportunities he had, of urging his regard for her; thus, he left no means untried to win over Lord Oakhampton to his side.
Old, far beyond his years, in calculating villany, Rookleigh knew well, that though he might persuade Clara, by a false newspaper notice, that Derval was dead, the truth or falsity thereof would soon be proved; he thought it would be better to assure her in some manner of his supposed perfidy, and hence make her more open to the proposals of a new suitor, and the dedication of that time to revenge, which otherwise might be naturally dedicated to grief; and at Bideford he was not long in discovering one to be his accomplice in this deceit—a broken-down actress, or rather a dancing-girl belonging to a travelling troupe, whose acquaintance he had made with considerable facility about this time.
The girl was pretty, clever, and attractive in appearance, while destitute of nearly every scruple—so far as conscience was concerned.
"You will do this for me, my dear Sally?" said Rookleigh, as he sat toying with her over some wine, in one of the inn windows that overlooked the river and beautiful valley at Bideford.
"Of course I will—like a bird, old fellow, if you pay me," was the confident reply.
"Pay you—that I will, my pet—and well, too! You will have to act the dear, dear little devoted but deserted wife."
"To the life, Rook—to the life."
"Then a hundred pounds shall be yours," said Rookleigh, with something like a groan, as he deeply loved his money, and the girl had flatly refused to be his accomplice for less, and received half the sum in the first instance.
"Then give me a kiss, you dear old fellow, and I will soon earn the other instalment," said the young lady airily, as she got a vehicle and drove off at once to Finglecombe, kissing her hand to Rookleigh as long as he was in view.
We shall soon see the result of their compact.
It was autumn now, the fields were no longer yellow with billows of golden grain, as the breeze swept over the uplands; the white cups of the water-lilies had disappeared from pool and pond; the beeches changed their hue from green to russet, and the oak leaves were turning red; the evening sun had sunk beyond the waters of the bay, and Clara, seated alone, in the recess of a window, with an unread book in her lap, and her eyes fixed dreamily on the deepening shadows of the land and sea, felt more than usually depressed, when she was startled by a servant announcing "Mrs. Hampton," and a girl of somewhat attractive appearance, though rather flippant and nervous in manner, and somewhat shabbily clad, was ushered in.
Clara's first thought was of Rookleigh's mother, but the years of the visitor showed she was mistaken.
"You gave the name of Hampton?" said Clara, inquiringly, as her visitor remained silent.
"Yes, Ma'am—yes, Miss—Mrs. Derval Hampton, I am."
"You—you?" exclaimed Clara, startled and bewildered; "I do not understand."
"But you soon will," replied the girl, affecting to sob; "if I might take a seat, Miss—I am weary and faint and ill, and very sick at heart, too."
Clara trembled very much, though unaware of what all this was to lead to, but pointed to a chair, on the extreme edge of which the visitor seated herself, and seemed very far from being at ease. She was a little awed by her surroundings; then came an emotion of envy and anger at Clara for her perfect costume and beauty, her superior position and supreme purity of aspect, manner, and character; but no emotion of compunction for the pain she was about to inflict, or of shame for the deliberate falsehood she was about to tell, came to the soul of Miss Sally Trix.
"And what may your business be with me?" asked Clara.
"Only to know, Miss, if you have heard of late from my husband, as he has ceased to write to me?"
Clara felt herself grow sick and pale at this degrading question; but she asked with much apparent calmness:
"And, pray, who may your husband be, girl, that I should know aught of him?"
"Mr. Derval Hampton of the ship Amethyst, who, I understand, engaged himself to you, while knowing well that I—his lawful wife, whom he left to starve—was living! I don't blame you, Miss," she continued, weeping to all appearance, for she could act her part well and professionally, "for you knew no better; but, thank heaven, I come in time to save you and unmask him!"
There ensued a pause now—but a pause in which Clara could hear the beating of her heart, and then she asked:
"When, and where, were you married?"
"In London, Miss, and just after his last voyage; Captain Talbot knows me well, and so does his brother Mr. Rookleigh."
"And why did he leave you?" asked Clara, with a strange and husky voice.
"Because I am poor; he despised me as soon as he knew you, and used to go off with you in a boat on the bay, and leave me to break my heart weeping on the shore; for many a time I saw you both. For what was I but a toy to be played with, and cast aside when he was tired of me; but I am his wedded wife, as this ring and the register can testify!"
The stroller played her part to perfection, with every word planting a knife in the heart of the shrinking listener; and deeming that now she had said and done enough by the few details she threw in to convince the latter that she had been cruelly deceived, Miss Trix sobbed heavily, bowed herself out, and quitted Bayview Villa with all speed, considering that the character she had taken in this "cast" was—in a monetary sense—the best engagement she had ever made.
Clara sat long in the dusk as if turned to stone, but not a tear escaped her. This sudden revelation of Derval's supposed perfidy could not give her now the pain it might have done in time past; his conduct had partly prepared her for some such catastrophe as this; and yet how antagonistic—how unlike his open, gentle, candid, and earnest outward character, did this accumulation of secret perfidy seem!
And that tawdrily dressed damsel had declared herself his wife! His wife!
She recalled the time when that word, as a term of endearment to herself, had fallen so sweetly on her startled ear; then a bitter, bitter sense of having been insulted and degraded, was added to her still more keen sense of utter disappointment in Derval; and to her guileless and innocent mind, no doubt, no thought of suspicion that she might be deluded, ever occurred.
"You have had an unexpected visitor, Miss Hampton?" said Rookleigh, eyeing her pale face keenly next day.
"Yes."
"Ah—so have I, one who has explained all."
"All?"
"My brother's peculiar perfidy, I mean."
"Yes."
"A perfidy for which I blush! You see that it has been as I suggested, sailors have entanglements everywhere; but this is rather more than that—a legal marriage."
"Oh, how dared he—how dared he!" she exclaimed, as she clenched her little white hands, and the look of firm resolve she would assume at times stole swiftly into her sweet face.
Some weeks passed on; Rookleigh became impatient for action, and during these weeks a thoughtful and shadowy expression deepened in the once bright face of Clara, till it became one of such woeful fear, that the heart of the father alternately bled with sorrow for her, and swelled with indignation against Derval.
Every way Clara was a desirable wife, one of whose beauty, at least, any man might well be proud. She had inflamed the senses and fired the vanity of Rookleigh Hampton—not touched his heart, for he had none, in the way of a lover, to touch; thus, in the pursuit of his scheme he could think, speak, and act, with consummate coolness of head and demeanour.
He was well-pleased to find that—thanks to the hints of his mother—the gossips of Finglecombe, to whom all his actions and motives were objects of interest, already coupled his name seriously with that of Clara Hampton.
"Self-contained and well-balanced as she deems herself, this appearance of Derval's wife has knocked her off her perch!" thought Rookleigh, with a chuckle, when one day his eye fell on her white hand, as it rested on the arm of a sofa, and he remarked that the ring, which he knew Derval had given to her, was no longer on her engaged finger. She had removed it—relinquished it—and Rookleigh took this as an infallible sign that she now concluded all was over between the absent one and herself.
"Good!" thought he, "good; I'll make my innings now!"
And with a coolness and confidence far beyond his years, he, with the greatest deliberation, took the earliest opportunity of obtaining Lord Oakhampton's permission to address his daughter.
"I should like to repair, if I possibly can do so, the evil my brother has done her, my lord. I do not understand how it is," said he, "that I have gone on so far with her without the least encouragement; but a love for her has grown rapidly upon me, and this love has become a part of my life—my very existence."
"You are very young to talk in this fashion," said Lord Oakhampton, uneasily.
"If she would but care for me!" sighed Rookleigh, assuming humility and timidity.
"It is not my Clara's way to care for any man as he may probably care for her."
"Have I, then, your lordship's permission to propose?"
"Yes," said Lord Oakhampton, huskily, as he thought of his last communication from Mr. De Murrer of Gray's Inn, and felt himself, for the first time, the slave of circumstances, and between the horns of a dilemma. Indeed, life—save for the few monetary troubles that sent him to Bermuda—had gone so smoothly with his lordship that, until now, when the claim to his coronet began to take a tangible and legal form, he had no reason to suspect Fate of having the least intention of treating him scurvily.
And with that invincible effrontery and coolness which were a part of his nature, Rookleigh, feeling that to a certain extent both father and daughter were in his power, went at once to the latter, whom he found in the drawing-room alone; and, no longer abashed as he had been at first by her rare beauty and stately presence—for stately and patrician was the presence of Clara, even in her girlhood—he seated himself by her side, and endeavouring to take and retain her hand, said, with a nervousness which we thoroughly believe was assumed:
"Miss Hampton, I have your father's permission to drop the mask I have worn so long.
"What do you mean?" she asked, with unfeigned surprise.
"To learn, if I can, from your own lips, my fate."
"Your fate, Sir!"
"The fate of the love I bear you. Miss Hampton—Clara, I love you, as you must have known ere now—I love you; and in return for mine will you give me back truth for truth, love for love, trust for trust, your heart, your life, as fully and freely as I give you mine?"
How glibly he rattled it all out! He had, probably, learned it out of some novel, for one might have thought he was in the habit of proposing every day.
Clara was, at first, astonished and startled, and a thousand things that she had taken no heed of, or entirely misunderstood, rushed clearly on her memory now. Already insulted, mocked, and deluded by one brother, was she to endure the deliberate and insolent lovemaking of another?
She rose and looked at him in silence, and with an expression of eye not favourable to his suit, at all events; but Rookleigh was by no means abashed, for he was one of those men to whom the apparently unattainable has a peculiar fascination. Clara, with difficulty, restrained her tears.
"Will you pardon me, if I have been presumptuous?" said he.
"On one condition."
"Oh, name it!"
"That you never dare address me in this manner again, and never intrude upon me more!"
She was sweeping away with a queenly grace, when his voice arrested her:
"Miss Hampton, you had better think twice over this," said he, coarsely; "you may not disdain the hand of a man of wealth and position some day."
Her only reply was to ring the bell,
"Show this gentleman out," said she to the servant who appeared; and Rookleigh, baffled for the time, retired, with his heart swollen by passion and resentment.
When next he appeared before Clara, his manner was changed, and her appearance too.
Her father had set before the astounded girl the claim these brothers, Derval and Rookleigh Hampton, could advance to his title, his estates, and all that he possessed. That with them lay the power, or alternative, of waiting till his death gave them the means of quiet accession, or now declaring open war, and sweeping away wealth, position, rank, influence in Church, in State, and in society, by degrading him in his old age to the state of the merest commoner, and having him laughed at as a sham and interloper; and the gentle heart of Clara died within her, as she beheld her father's agony, and read some of the communications that had lately come from Gray's Inn.
"To save me, darling—oh, my darling, you will consent to marry the young fellow," urged Lord Oakhampton, piteously.
"Yes, Papa," she replied in a whisper, as he withdrew, saying, "God bless you, darling!" and Rookleigh took his place.
"Your father has placed all this matter plainly before you," said he, and triumph and passion glittered together in his eyes, as he surveyed the beauty of the crushed girl, who stood before him now with downcast face; "there is but one way to escape the evils that may—nay, must—come upon you and him, and that is a refuge under the shelter of my name."
"I do not quite understand you, Sir," she replied, with a dazed look in her eyes.
"As my wife, Clara?"
The words fell distinctly enough upon her ear—distinctly and deliberately were they uttered. She did not stir, moan, or weep, but every drop of blood left her face and lips—even the delicate hands he grasped so daringly in his; and a strange hunted and desperate yet defiant expression stole into her beautiful face and remained there.
"Speak, Clara; is your answer that which I venture now to hope and have a right to expect?"
Endearment was unnatural to him, and his tone and manner were more those of authority.
Still more deathly pale she grew; but her voiceless lips moved, and she sunk on the sofa insensible; but from that moment the arrangements for the wedding were carried forward without delay.
Still more did Fate seem to be playing into the hands of Rookleigh, when in the shipping intelligence appeared a notice to the effect that the Amethyst had perished in a storm in the Indian Ocean, and that a vessel answering her description, with the flag of the Royal Naval Reserve flying at her gaff-peak, upside down in token of distress, had been seen to founder; and Rookleigh knew that in the fulness of time he would be Lord Oakhampton, if he had the grace to be patient and wait. Of this catastrophe Rookleigh made no mention to Clara, whose spirit seemed so low now that nothing could depress it further.
"Child, child," her father would often say, while caressing her fondly and with great commiseration, "by your marriage with one or other of these men I may die in possession of my title undegraded—undegraded, and at my death, it will go to one or the other."
"Oh that Derval had been worthy of me!" wailed the girl in her heart.
Old Patty Fripp was gone now to God's Acre, and with her ended another of "the innumerable simple and honest lives of pain and love, that are swept away like the dead leaves by the winds of autumn," and there was no one in Finglecombe now, save Mr. Asperges Laud, to lament for Derval Hampton, and, aware of Rookleigh's hatred of the latter, he bewailed his sorrowful destiny in strong language.
"Destiny brings stranger things to pass than ever you dream of," said Rookleigh, with a grimace of triumph.
"This bearing of yours is shameful!" exclaimed the old curate; "yea, it is indecent! What says the gospel of St. John?"
"Nothing that affects me."
"Listen, ingrate! 'He that loveth not, abideth in death. Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in himself.'"
But Rookleigh only laughed, and shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, at St. John and his gospel too.
CHAPTER VII.
NEMESIS.
During the long voyage of nearly three thousand miles to Batavia, Derval's health and strength came back, but not his old elasticity of spirit. He had ever one thought—Clara! and the disappointment and mortification he endured were keen and bitter.
Now the once happy time of love and lingering at Finglecombe seemed, indeed, as an unreal mirage, a vanished oasis in the dull grey desert of his existence. He ceased now to seek for such explanations of her silence as his imagination might suggest; though times there were, when a great terror came over him, that she was dead; yet it was passing strange, that it was amid the mighty waste of the Indian ocean he was fated to hear some tidings of her—tidings that were, certainly, somewhat bewildering.
In latitude 12° south and longitude 100° west, the Amethyst spoke with a large steamer, from the Red Sea, bound to Australia, and from which Captain Talbot obtained some London papers, which proved of keen interest, when so far from home, though they were a month or two old.
In one of these Derval saw, among fashionable gossip, a marriage as being on the tapis between "the only daughter of Lord Oakhampton and young Mr. Hampton of Finglecombe, Devonshire."
Derval could scarcely believe his eyes, as he read this strange notice again and again. What did the mystery mean—or to what or whom did it point? Could it be some mistake with regard to himself? Had Lord Oakhampton given to Clara his consent to their engagement. If so, whence her mysterious silence? That his half-brother, Rookleigh, was the person to whom the printed piece of gossip referred, never once occurred to honest Derval; but whatever it meant, the date of the paper, some six weeks old; assured him that she must have been at that period alive and well. This episode gave him much food for reflection, and his mind was full of it when the Amethyst encountered that terrible gale, in which she did not founder, though another vessel did so within sight of her.
The tornado, for such it was, struck her suddenly, at a time when, luckily for the ship and all on board, she was running about ten knots an hour, with all her sails close-reefed, through haze that thickened fast to warm rain. The rise of the whirlwind was instantaneous, and the fore and main topsails were blown clean out of the bolt-ropes, while a sea was shipped that rolled aft leaving all on deck knee-deep in water.
The wind was not blowing steadily, but, strange to say, came in a series of rapid and dreadful gusts, tearing up the sea in such a fashion that the whole air was a mass of foam as high as the mainyard. The Amethyst careened heavily over to her port side, with her gunnel in the water, and her whole deck afloat with fragments of sail, ropes, spars, and blocks flying about. The masts bent like willow wands, and overhead all the loose rigging flew wildly about in loops and bights.
In addition to the thunder of the sea, and the deep hoarse bellowing of the gusty wind, was the crackling and crashing of blocks and ropes, of sails and of all loose objects, dashed hither and thither, as wave after wave deluged the deck.
Amid this hurly-burly of the elements, the mysterious paragraph was ever in Derval's mind, and he thought how hard it would be to perish now, and never know the meaning of it, or learn whether happiness or misery were awaiting him at home.
Home! how mighty was the waste of waters he had to traverse ere he could see its white cliffs again.
So violent was the fury of the storm, that to see the hands aloft endeavouring to furl or secure the fragments of the topsails, was calculated to strike terror, as momentarily they seemed in danger of being whirled off into the air.
Half a mile distant a partly dismasted ship, with the flag of the Royal Naval Reserve flying reversed at her gaff-peak, could be seen rising and falling beautifully on the long waves, at one time showing all her bows and nearly all her side, anon the whole line of her deck swept of everything from stem to stern, with her drenched crew clinging to the lower rigging or belaying pins. One moment she seemed lifted as if on the summit of a green hill, and the next seemed sunk in the deep dark valley; but it soon became evident to the eyes of Captain Talbot, and of all on board the Amethyst, that the buoyancy of the stranger was gone—that she must have sprung a leak and was settling down in the water with terrible rapidity.
Even if boats could have been hoisted out, it would have been impossible to have succoured her in such a sea, and ere long, while a cry came across from her crew, to be echoed by another from that of the Amethyst, she went down by the stern and vanished from sight with every man on board of her.
"And this might have been our fate!" was the thought of Derval.
The tempest passed away to tear up other oceans, but so agitated was the water, that the Amethyst pitched and lurched heavily, while a new set of topsails were bent upon her; all damages made so far good, and with a steady breeze she began to enter the straits of Sunda. By noon next day the south-east point of the Isle of Lombock, with its great conical peak, eight thousand feet in height, bore S.S.W. on the starboard bow, and Captain Talbot steered for the strait of Allas, passed the isle to the westward and that of Sumbawa to the westward, which is reckoned the best and safest way to the eastward of Java; and at the beginning of the end of his pilgrimage, after running along the shore of Madura—the land of cotton, rice, and edible nests—Derval heard, with a sigh of satisfaction, the anchor let go in the roads of Batavia, as the ship swung at her moorings, with thirty-five fathoms and the small bower out, and the hands went aloft to furl the sails.
In his anxiety to return, to be off again as soon as possible, no man in the ship equalled Derval in his activity, with regard to getting the cargo out and another in, and daily he counted the hours while watching from the deck the lovely low green isles that stud the beautiful bay, the white-walled city, with its two-and-twenty bastions—"the Queen of the East," with all her palaces, villas, and trees, for there the Dutch, true to their national taste, have covered every available spot with verdure, flowers, and the brightest foliage.
Finally, the ballast and the last casks of sugar and turmeric were on board, the hatches battened down, and the boats hoisted in, and after a month's sojourn, in which he did not spend an idle hour, with a glow of joy he heard the orders given that were to take the ship out of the roadstead of Batavia.
"Mr. Grummet," cried the captain, "weather bit the chain forward, man the windlass, heave and haul! Mr. Hampton, get the topsails loose—I see they are furled with reefs."
"Away aloft, my lads," said Derval, "make sail on her with a will."
"Sheet home and hoist away—up with the yards to the caps; let fall the courses."
Some of the head sails were now roused out of their nettings, the foretopmast, staysail, and spanker were set, and then she was fully under weigh. She went through the water "like a thing of life," and the flat Batavian shore began to sink.
"Home to England at last—home!" thought Derval as he looked over the side and saw the waves running under the counter, while he began to reckon for the thousandth time the probable period the homeward voyage might consume.
And now to take another homeward glance while that long voyage is in progress.
It was quite natural now, seeing so much as he did of a girl so beautiful as Clara, that in Rookleigh, though as yet he had never dared to attempt to caress her, or do more than take her passive or unwilling hand in his, the admiration of her person and inclination for her should increase, as a sense of propriety in her grew upon him; and also, that the opposition and indifference, with which he knew her heart was filled, should invite him to stronger efforts to reach, to win, and control it.
An illness that fell upon her delayed the marriage, which Rookleigh had duly paragraphed in the papers as forthcoming. He knew now, that the ship which had perished near the Straits of Sunda was not the Amethyst; and he knew, moreover, from a visit he paid to her owners, that she was now on her homeward way, and that there was no time to be lost!
Yet the season of spring was nearly over before Clara, who had recovered slowly, at her father's pleasant house in the western suburbs of London, could face in any way the fate before her,—a fate that seemed terribly close now, and from which there was no escape but her own death, or the degradation of her father.
She saw, as part of a terrible phantasmagoria, her wedding dress, and other dresses, her nuptial trousseau, strewed all over her room, on her bed, on the chairs, reflected over and over again in the pier-glasses; her toilet-table littered with ornaments which, though rare and beautiful, she loathed to wear.
Guests were, of course, invited—a few only, however, as her father wished the sacrifice (for such he deemed it too) completed very quietly; the bridesmaids were selected—only four, all in the same costume, with ornaments the gift of the bridegroom; and to Clara, their flippant gossip, their conversation for ever on one topic—the marriage—girls whom she only knew as having met them "in society," or little more,—were a source of perpetual worry and irritation to her.
Rookleigh's mother, now in all her glory, came and went at will, quite en famille at Lord Oakhampton's house; and she too, with her pale hazel eyes (the golden tint had faded out of them now), was another source of irritation to Clara, who looked so white, so wild-eyed and nervous, that her father, poor man, was crushed in heart and soul at the sight of her.
She felt like a poor little fly in the toils of some enormous spider. Never before did she think it was in her gentle nature to loathe any human being as she loathed this young man, whom she was so shortly to promise to love, honour, and obey, and with whom she was to go through the long weary years of the life that lay between to-morrow and the grave.
And in these years that would inexorably come, what might not his conduct become, and his treatment of her be, if, in the first flush of his own youth and of her beauty, he would be thus so unyieldingly cruel as to make her hand, freedom, and happiness the price of her father's title and honour, for the little that remained to him of a long, blameless, and honourable life—for Rookleigh still had the trump card of playing to win the coronet for his absent brother.
Then a wild gust of horror and dismay would come over her, ever and anon, when she thought of the coming hour when she must inevitably and irrevocably become the wife of Rookleigh, and there could be no escape from him but by death—and she felt that she dared and could not die—or by flight—a flight that "society" would speedily twist into a terrible scandal!
The afternoon was drawing into evening—one Clara would never forget, for Mr. De Murrer was to arrive with the marriage settlements and contract for signature, and Clara, who had begged to be left for a little time to herself—her miserable self—was seated in a bay window lost in bitter thought, looking at the flowers of spring, and wondering how all would be with her when the time came that they had faded away and been replaced by those of summer.
Already soft showers had expanded the buds that but a week ago were closed, the foliage of the brightest green was hiding the dark branches of the trees. On all hands she heard the notes of the birds, and with that tendency which we have to note trifles when in great tribulation, she found herself watching with curious interest the bees and the butterflies among the bright parterres of flowers where the geranium, the heliotrope, the light green leaves of the echevaria and the cups of the tulips mingled.
All nature looked sweet; but the spring suggested nothing of hope to Clara, and she was past weeping now, in the bitter conviction that it availed her nothing; but a shiver passed over her, when she found that Rookleigh, claiming a bridegroom's privilege, had come upon her unannounced, and was bending smilingly over her—could he do otherwise, for the girl was adorably beautiful, and was so nearly now his own!
"To-morrow, Clara, my darling," said he in a voice of more tenderness than it was quite his nature or his habit to assume, for true tenderness was not in him, "think of to-morrow, for long ere this hour we shall be united for life, and far away together!"
What she replied she never precisely knew, or cared perhaps to remember, so quickly did certain events come to pass just then.
The stoppage of a vehicle at the front porch, an important ring at the door bell, was followed by steps in the entrance-hall, and then a servant announced that "Mr. De Murrer was in the library, where Lord Oakhampton awaited Miss Hampton and Mr. Rookleigh."
"We are to sign the contract, and so forth, so take courage, Clara," said Rookleigh, taking her by the hand, but she shrank on hearing voices below.
"A stranger is there!" said she timidly.
"Oh, only some fellow he has brought, no doubt, to witness our signatures; he has delayed unaccountably long, so come, darling."
Clara entered the half-darkened library, pale as snow, and trembling very much, and saw her father and Mr. De Murrer mutually shaking hands, and then with—Derval Hampton!
On reaching London, the latter was doubtful at first what to do to obtain information of Lord Oakhampton's movements, of Clara, of his brother, and how to gain a clue to all that must have transpired during his protracted absence. As money was necessary for him, in the first place, he drove from the docks to Gray's Inn in quest of Mr. De Murrer, and at his chambers found that dapper little gentleman leisurely tying up with red tape a bundle of very legal-looking documents, which proved to be the contract and marriage settlements of "Rookleigh Hampton, Esquire, of Finglecombe, and the Honourable Clara Hampton," and thereby hung a wondrous tale!
It was with something of a sigh in his breast that the worthy little lawyer tied up these documents, for he disliked and mistrusted the bridegroom, and was astonished and grieved by the bearing of the luckless and too evidently repugnant bride. In all his legal experience he had met nothing like this.
Warmly indeed did he welcome Derval.
"Just in time, my dear young friend; just in time!" he exclaimed.
"Time for what?" asked the sunburned and weatherbeaten Derval.
"The wedding—of course, you know all about it."
"Wedding—whose?"
"Your brother."
"And—and—" stammered Derval, as the newspaper paragraph flashed upon his memory.
"Miss Clara Hampton—a good marriage indeed; a strange, but very good way of compromising the claim to the coronet—a consolidation of mutual interests, I take it to be; a family compact, quite."
With his eyes fixed alternately on the speaker's face, and then, as one in a dream, surveying the great square of the Inn, with its monotonous brick walls and uniform rows of windows, Derval heard all this with equal astonishment and dismay.
"I am just about to take these papers to Lord Oakhampton's; you will go with me, of course, and sign them as witness."
"Clara false—so fair, yet so false!" was Derval's bitter thought, as he threw himself into a chair.
A very few words served to enlighten him as to the conspiracy of which they had both been the victims—as to the pressure which must have been put upon the unhappy Clara to save her father's title, during his life at least, by the sacrifice of herself; and more exasperating to him was the knowledge that this pressure had been put upon her by Rookleigh, while acting nominally in the interests of an absent brother; and he knew in a moment that Rookleigh—the medium of their correspondence—must, for his own nefarious ends, have effectually suppressed it!
"And now, as we are on this unpleasant subject," said the lawyer, opening a drawer and taking therefrom a paper, "what was the meaning of this mysterious document that Rookleigh framed and you signed?"
"It referred, I understood, to a sum of money I lent him."
"Of what folly you were guilty! he should have signed an acknowledgment to you. Good heavens! you sailors are strange fellows."
"Then what are the contents of the paper?"
"Merely that you make over to your brother the whole of the £500 per annum left you by your father, with all your right, title, and interest therein."
Derval was astounded and bewildered not at his own folly and simplicity, but by the systematic baseness of his brother.
"Oh, wretch!" he exclaimed; "was it not enough to rob me of all, even my poor patrimony? but to seek to rob me too of Clara, my affianced wife!"
For a few moments his emotions were stifling, and he gasped rather than breathed.
"I must own," said Mr. De Murrer, "that when the post brought this singular document, signed by you, and witnessed by Rookleigh, the framer of it, illegally expressed and on unstamped paper, I was sorely puzzled; but, luckily, it is every way valueless."
"Save in so far as revealing the perfidy of which he is capable—the double villain!"
"While searching your father's papers for documents in connection with the peerage affair, I came upon one which completely alters all your affairs, and that I shall show you in time," said Mr. De Murrer.
"He need no longer now pretend to act in my interests in pressing on the peerage case, and not a moment must be lost in freeing my poor Clara from the trammels—the evil of mental misery—by which he has surrounded her."
"Good, good!" said the little lawyer, rubbing his hands. "The contract and the settlements won't be signed, after all, and may go with Rookleigh's document into the waste-paper basket. But I was due with them at Lord Oakhampton's an hour ago—a hansom will take us there in half that time; and now, my dear Derval, let us be off!"
To the confusion of Rookleigh, the mystery of the letters was all unfolded now, and when the cheques he had paid Miss Sally Trix came to be known, through Mr. De Murrer, a light was thrown upon his transactions with her, and the use to which he had put her with Clara; thus link after link was found, and the chain of his cruelty and duplicity was complete!
Rookleigh did not wait for the elucidation of all the reader knows. His brother's sudden appearance in the library was more than enough for him; he evacuated Lord Oakhampton's house with all speed, and even quitted London that night, a prey to baffled spite, ambition, and treachery.
"Oh, Derval, Derval," said Clara, as she reclined upon his breast, "may God forgive that man for all he has made me suffer!"
"And me too, darling!"
If Derval's blood boiled at his half-brother's perfidy, it boiled still more when he thought of how a head-wind in the channel or elsewhere might, by delay, have affected the fortune of all who figured in the tableau in Lord Oakhampton's library. But the good ship Amethyst had brought the wind with her, bravely and splendidly had she run, and scarcely sheet or tack were lifted, "for," as Joe Grummet said, "the girls at home were tallying on to the tow-rope."
The document which the lawyer had found among Greville Hampton's papers proved to be nothing less than a will, dated subsequent to one on which they had all acted, and which reversed its terms, for £500 yearly were all that accrued to Rookleigh, while all else he possessed was bequeathed to Derval; so the hand of Nemesis fell heavily on the former.
So the wedding dresses, the wedding cake and breakfast, and the bridesmaids too were all required eventually; but a different bridegroom knelt by Clara's side before the altar rails at St. George's, Hanover Square, while Rookleigh and his amiable mother were left at Finglecombe "to chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."
Captain Talbot was groomsman, and old Joe Grummet, who with difficulty was restrained from hoisting a flag of the Royal Naval Reserve out of the drawing-room window, as a prelude to the rice and slippers, got disreputably tipsy in the butler's pantry, and pulled all the housemaids about, in the exuberance of his joy, making quite a riot in the servants' hall.
LONDON
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