Mohun and Livingstone soon fell back into the groove of their old habits; if any thing, the former was more forbidding and morose, the latter more reckless than ever.
Just at this time Mrs. Bellasys and her daughter arrived in Paris. It was Flora's débût there, and she had an immense success. The jeunesse dorée of the Chaussée d'Antin and the cavaliers of the Faubourg thronged about her, emulously enthusiastic. Her repartees and sarcasms were quoted like Talleyrand's. They never wearied in raving over her perfections, taking them in a regular catalogue—from her magnificent eyes and hair, that flashed back the light from its smooth bands like clouded steel, down to the small brodequins of white satin, which it was her fancy to wear instead of the ball-room chaussure of ordinary mortals. The intrigues to secure her for a waltz or a mazurka displayed diplomatic talent enough to have set half a dozen German principalities and powers by the ears. The succession of admirers was never broken; as fast as one dropped off, killed by her coldness or caprice, another stepped into his place. It reminded one of the old "Die-hards" at Waterloo, filling up their squares torn and ravaged by the pelting grape-shot.
Here, as elsewhere, she pursued her favorite amusement remorselessly. Fallowfield called it "her cutting-out expeditions." She used to watch till a mother and daughter had, between them, secured a good matrimonial prize, and then employ her fascinations on the captured one—seldom without effect—so as to steal him out of their hands.
Do you remember Waterton's story of the osprey? The hard-working bird, by dint of perseverance, has brought up a good fish. Just as it emerges from the water, there is heard a flap and a whistle of mighty pinions, and from his watch-tower on the cliff far above swoops down the great sea-eagle. The poor osprey a beau crier, it must drop its booty, and the strong marauder sails off with a slow and dignified flight, to discuss it in the wood at his leisure. The only fault in the parallel was that Flora always dropped the prey with the coolest disdain when it was once fairly within her clutches. How the match-makers did hate her! What vows for her discomfiture must have been breathed into bouquets held up to conceal the angry flush of disappointment or the paleness of despair!
I own this practice of hers did not raise her in my opinion. I can not think so hardly as it is the fashion to do of the junior and working members, at least, of the manœuvring guild. It is not an elevating or very creditable profession, certainly, but it seems such a disagreeable one that none would take it up from choice. The chief fault, at all events, lies with the trainers; the jockeys (poor little things!) only ride to orders; and, by the way, I think they generally err in not knowing how to wait, and in making the running too strong at first.
As I meet, year after year, one of these—to whom the seed sown in London ball-rooms and German watering-places had produced nothing yet but those tiresome garlands of the vestal—I look curiously to see how she wears, thinking of the courtier's answer to Louis XIV. when the latter asked if he was looking older: "Sire, I see some more victories written on your forehead." It is more defeats that one can read so plainly on poor Fanny Singleton's.
How many shipwrecks close to port; how many races lost by a head, how many games by a point, she must have known before her silver laugh became so hollow, and her pleasant smile so evidently theatrical and lip-deep; before what once was chanceful became desperate, and she fell back into the ranks of the forlorn hope—of the "Lost Children!"
On one of these occasions I met her. She was just beginning her condottiére life then, and was very attractive even to those on whom she had no designs—believed in balls, and had an ingenious talent for original composition. I don't think those entertainments are dangerously exciting to her now; and Heaven forefend that she should write poetry! One shudders to think of what it would he. Well, she was returning to the house after a moonlight flirtation (if you can call it so when it was all on one side). She had been trying to fascinate a stupid, sullen, commercial Orson—a boy not clever, but cunning, who calculated on his share in the bank as a means of procuring him these amusements, as other men might reckon on their good looks or soft tongue. He had just left her, and I was wishing her good-night under the porch. She forgot her cue for a moment, and became natural. "I feel so very, very tired," she said. I remember how drearily she said it, and how the tears glittered in her weary eyes. I remember, too, how, ten minutes later, I heard that amiable youth boasting of what had happened, and giving a hideous travestie of her attempts to captivate him, till at last my wrath was kindled, and, to his great confusion (for he was of a timid disposition), I spoke, and sharply, with my tongue.
Ah me! I mind the time when men used to waylay Fanny Singleton in the cloak-room, and shoot her flying as she went up the staircase, in their anxiety to secure her for a partner; and now she is a refuge for the destitute, except when some one, for old acquaintance' sake, takes a turn with one of the best waltzers in Europe.
I like her for one thing—she has never tried the girlish dodge on yet. She has never been heard to say, "Mamma always calls me a wild thing." It is better that she should be bitter and sardonic, as she is sometimes, than that. Mars herself could hardly play the ingénues when in mature age. Grisi's best part now is not Amina.
The last thing I heard of Fanny was that she was about to unite herself (the active voice is the proper one) to a very Low-Church clergyman, a distinguished member of the Evangelical Alliance, pregnant with the odor of sanctity—bouquet de Baptiste treble distilled. I dare say they will get on well enough. If the holy man wants to collect "experiences," his wife will be able to furnish them, that's certain. It will be very "sweet."
I pity, but I condemn. In the name of Matuta and of common sense, is there an imperative necessity that all our maids should become matrons?
If such exists, think, I beseech you, O virgins—pretty, but penniless—apt for the yoke, how many chances of subjection may turn up without rushing to put your necks under it. Is the aspiring race of H.E.I.C.S. cadets extinct? Are Erin's sons so good or so cold as not to be tempted by woman, even without the gold? Are there not soldiers still to the fore too inflammable to be trusted near an ammunition wagon? Are there not—the bonne bouche comes at last—priests and deacons? The instant a man takes orders, celibacy becomes intolerable to him. I firmly believe that half the offers made in the year throughout broad England emanate from those energetic ecclesiastics.
After all, what specimens you do pick up sometimes in your haste! If you are to lead apes, is it not better to defer the evil day as long as possible, instead of parading the animals about by your sides here on this upper earth?
My sermon is too long for the occasion—too short for the text. I close a discourse not much wiser, perhaps, than poor Wamba's, with his "Pax vobiscum!"
Flora and Guy met with perfect composure on both sides. She did not appear to think that she had any claim upon him arising from what had passed, but it was evident that he was still the favorite, and that all others were complete "outsiders." No betting man would have backed the field for a shilling. She waltzed with him whenever he asked her, to the utter oblivion and annihilation of previous engagements, whereat the Frenchmen chafed inexpressibly, cursing and gnashing their teeth when, after the ball was over, they went forth into the outer darkness. Nothing but Livingstone's extraordinary reputation in the shooting-galleries, added to a certain ferocity of demeanor which had become habitual to him of late, saved him from more than one serious quarrel.
He took it all as a matter of course. Flora amused him certainly; she sympathized with his tastes, and perhaps flattered his vanity. For instance, she always took an interest in his fortunes at play, watching and sometimes backing him at ecarté, and often inquiring the next morning how the battle had gone in her absence at the Board of Green Cloth.
Once when an unfortunate adorer—in bitterness of spirit at being thrown over twice in one evening—hinted at some of the intrigues which had made Guy's name unenviably notorious (play was not the guiltiest of his distractions to thoughts that would come back), Miss Bellasys only smiled haughtily, and did not even deign to betray any curiosity on the subject. Those ephemeral passions were not the rivals she feared.
Her mother all this time was very uncomfortable. Though herself perfectly innocent of any connivance in Flora's schemes, she was afflicted with a perpetual indistinct sort of remorse. Once or twice, I believe, she did venture on a remonstrance, but she was put down decisively, and did not try it again.
One evening Guy had been lingering for some time in the Bellasys' box at the Opera. As he went out into the foyer he saw an old acquaintance coming toward him.
Lord Killowen was past sixty: the world had used him roughly, and he had been ruined very early in life, but he bore both years and troubles lightly. Looking at his smooth forehead, and square, erect figure, and listening to his ready, cheery laugh, you would never have guessed how long he had led that guerrilla existence—for forty years keeping the bailiffs at bay. His nerve and his seat in the saddle were as firm as they were on the first night of his joining the —— Hussars, when he rode Kicking Kate over the iron pales round Hounslow Barrack-yard, and hit the layers of the long odds for a cool thousand.
He had been intimate with Colonel Livingstone, and had known his son from childhood; but he was a still closer friend of the Brandon family, with whom, indeed, he was distantly connected. He had never seen Guy since the breaking off of the latter's engagement till this night, when he caught a glimpse of his lofty head bending over Flora Bellasys' chair.
Lord Killowen's blood was as hot and his impulses as quick as if he had not yet seen his twentieth winter, and the chivalry within him was stirred at what he considered an insolent parade of treachery; for he had guessed much of what had happened, though he did not know all the truth; so he passed Guy's extended hand, turning his head studiously aside.
The latter was startled for a moment, but he could not believe in an intentional "cut," and he knew his friend to be rather short-sighted; so with one stride he overtook him, and, touching him on the shoulder, said, "I must be very much changed if you do not know me, Lord Killowen."
The brave old Irishman turned short upon his heel and confronted the speaker, bending on him all the light of his clear blue eyes: he drew himself up to the full height of a stature that nearly equaled Livingstone's, and said, coolly and slowly, "Pardon me, you are not changed in the least; I know you very well."
The insult was palpable. Guy fairly staggered as if he had received a sword-thrust; then the angry blood rushed up to his temples, making the veins start out like muscles, and he spoke in a voice hoarse and indistinct with passion, "You will answer this."
True, his antagonist was more than old enough to have been his father, but in feast, field, and fray, Lord Killowen remembered his own age so seldom that other men might be excused for forgetting it sometimes.
The old man was going to answer eagerly, but he checked himself with an effort, as if repressing a strong temptation; when, after some seconds, he spoke, there was more of sadness and warning than of anger in his tone.
"No, I will not fight, even in this quarrel, with your father's son; besides, I might be anticipating one who has a better right. Four days ago Cyril Brandon landed from India."
It would have been difficult, I think, to have found another, among living men, both by constitution and temperament, so inaccessible to material terrors as Livingstone, yet when that name came upon him thus suddenly he felt a thrill and a start through his nerves, so unpleasantly like commonplace physical fear that ever, when he thought of it, it made his cheek burn with shame. He could not, after that, controvert gallant Lannes' maxim: "It is only a coward who says that he never was afraid."
He stood silently, and allowed Lord Killowen to pass him, bowing courteously, though coldly, to him. The latter never knew what mischief he had done. After that momentary sensation had passed off, all the worst elements of Guy's stubborn, haughty nature rose in rebellion at what he deemed a despicable weakness. As if in defiance of the consequences, all that evening and on the succeeding days he devoted himself to Flora Bellasys with such unusual ardor that it made her nervous: she thought it was too good to last.
When Mohun heard what had happened, he would not admit that there was the slightest chance of a meeting with Cyril Brandon, though he knew the character of the latter—fierce and intractable to a degree.
"Don't flatter yourself you will wipe off the score in that way," he said to Guy, with his sardonic laugh. "Men will quarrel over cards and about lorettes easily enough, but who fights for a 'broken covenant' now? We live two hundred years too late."
Ralph remembered how long he had lingered on the French seaboard waiting for a challenge from beyond the Channel which never came, though there was deeper provocation to justify it.
A few mornings after this had occurred Livingstone found himself without a servant. His demeanor toward this estimable class had always been imperious and stern to a fault, but latterly they, as well as others, had felt the effects of his exasperated temper, and he was sometimes brutally overbearing in his reprimands. On this particular occasion he must have been unusually oppressive, for it exhausted the patience of the much-enduring Willis, so that the worm turned again—insolently.
Before he had said ten words his master interrupted him, his eye turning toward a heavy horsewhip that lay near with an expression that made Willis retreat toward the door.
"So you have robbed me of enough to make you independent? Very well; make your book up; the maître d'hôtel will settle with you. You will carry away some of my property, of course? I shall not trouble myself to have your trunks searched, but if you take any thing that I happen to want afterward, I'll have you arrested, wherever you are. Now go."
The man left the room sulkily: an hour later he returned. "I am going this instant, Mr. Livingstone; but I could tell you something first that you ought to know, if you would promise not to be violent. I am very sorry now I did it." There was a curious expression—half spiteful, half frightened—on his cunning face as he spoke.
Guy looked at him carelessly. "Thank you; I am in no humor to listen to your confessions. You may be quite easy; I give you credit for all imaginable rascality. Remember what I said: if I miss any thing, the police will be after you the same day. Now, once more, go. If I see your face about here again, it will be the worse for you."
There was a good deal of meaning in Willis's smile, though, his lips were white with fear. "You will never miss what I was going to tell you about, sir," he said; and then faded away out of the room with his usual noiseless step, closing the door softly behind him.
If his master could have guessed what was the secret he had refused to hear, haughty as he was, I do believe there is no earthly degradation to which he would not have abased himself to gain its knowledge.
But the hour for the humbling of the strong, self-reliant nature had not come yet, though it was very near. The wild bull never saw the net till its meshes had trapped him fast.
The same morning Guy, who was lounging an hour away at the Bellasys', mentioned to them what had occurred. If he had glanced at Flora's face just then, he would have been puzzled to guess what there was in the intelligence to turn her so deadly pale. It was only for an instant that the accomplished actress forgot her part, and when he looked at her next there was not a trace of emotion in her face.
"Have you filled up his place?" she asked, carelessly.
"I have ordered my landlord to provide me," replied Guy. "I shall find some well-trained scoundrel on my return, I hope. I shall never get another like Willis, though. It's just my luck. The great principle of the gazelle runs through life: When they come to know you well, &c. What made you ask? Surely you have no protégé to recommend?"
Flora laughed gayly as she answered in the negative, and so the subject dropped; but all the afternoon she was pensive and absent, and flashes of vexation gleamed every now and then fitfully in her stormy eyes.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Christmas-tide had come round again, and hall, manor-house, and castle were filling fast. But the pheasants had a jubilee at Kerton, to the great discouragement of Mallett, who "could not mind such another breeding season." Foxes were strong and plentiful with the Belvoir and the Pytchley; and, during two months of open weather, many a straight-goer had died gallantly in the midst of the wide pasture-grounds, testifying with his last breath to the generalship of Goodall and Payne. But the best shot and the hardest rider in Northamptonshire lingered on still in Paris, wasting his patrimony in most riotous living, and trying his iron constitution presumptuously.
Lady Catharine sat alone in the gray old house, paler and more care-worn than ever. I think she would have preferred the noisiest revel that ever broke her slumbers in the old times to the dead silence that brooded like a mist in the deserted rooms.
Guy had always been a bad correspondent, and now he hardly ever wrote to her; but rumors of his wild life reached his mother often, though dimly and vaguely. It was best so; what would that poor lady have felt if she could have guessed at the scene in which her son was the principal figure as the Christmas morning was breaking?
It is the close of a furious orgie; the Babel of cries, of fragments of songs, of insane, meaningless laughter, is dying away, through the pure exhaustion of the revelers; on the gay carpet and the rich damask are pools of spilled liquors, heaps of shivered glass, and bouquets and garlands that have ceased to be fragrant hours ago. All around, in different attitudes—ignoble and helpless—are strewn the bodies of those who have gone down early in the battle of the Bacchanals: they lie in their ranks as they fell. One figure towers above the rest—pre-eminent as Satan in the conclave of the ruined angels—the guiltiest, because the most conscious of his own utter degradation. The frequent draughts that have prostrated his companions have only brought out two round scarlet spots in the pale bronze of his cheeks; his voice retains still its deep, calm, almost solemn tone. Listen to it as he raises to his lips an immense glass brimming-full of Burgundy: "One toast more, and with funeral honors—'To the memory of those who have fallen gloriously on the 24th of December.'"
Is it true that, six months ago, the soft, pure cheek of Constance Brandon rested often on the broad breast that pillows now the disheveled head of that wild-eyed, shrill-voiced Mænad? Draw the curtains closer yet; shut out the dawn of the Nativity for very shame.
Mohun was breakfasting with Livingstone on a cold, gusty January morning, that succeeded a night of heavy drinking and heavier play. The colonel would see him through one of these readily enough, but if there was even a single female face present he would retreat in disgust and contempt unutterable. Guy had been hit so hard that it made him graver than usual as he thought of it, though he was tolerably inured and indifferent to evil fortune; so the conversation languished during the meal. After it was over, Mohun rose to light a cigar, while his companion took up a pile of letters and began to glance at them listlessly. Suddenly the former dropped the match from his hand, starting in irrepressible astonishment.
He had seen strong men die hard, mangled and shattered by sabre or bullet, but he had never heard a sound so terribly significant of agony as the dull, heavy groan that just then burst from Livingstone's lips.
In those few seconds his face had grown perfectly livid; his eyes were riveted upon a small note that he held in his shaking fingers; they glittered strangely, but there was no meaning or expression in their fixed stare.
"In the name of God, what has happened?" Ralph asked.
Guy's lips worked and moved, but no sound came from them, except an irregular catching of the breath and a gasping rattle in the throat.
Mohun took the note from his hand without his seeming to be aware of it, and read it through. These were the words:
"I have tried very hard to persuade myself that you never received the letter I wrote to you two months ago. I think you would have answered it, for you would know how much I must have suffered before my pride broke down so utterly. Yet I could not have risked being scorned a second time if I had not learned yesterday that my life must now be reckoned by weeks, if not by days. I do not know if I shall be allowed to see you if you come. But you will come; will you not? Dear, dear Guy, I can not die as I ought to do, contentedly, unless I speak to you once again. In spite of all, I will sign my last letter
"Your own Constance Brandon."
It was dated Ventnor.
Hard and cynical as he was, Mohun was thoroughly shocked and grieved; but the urgency of the crisis brought back the prompt decision of thought and purpose that were habitual to the trained soldier. He sprang to his feet, alert and ready for action, as he would have done in the old times, from his bivouac, to meet a night-surprise of the wild Hungarians.
"Get every thing ready," he said to the servant, who entered at that moment; "your master is going to England immediately. The train starts for Havre at two o'clock. You will catch the night-boat for Southampton."
When the man had left the room he turned to Guy: "Rouse yourself, man! There is all a lifetime for remorse, but only a few hours for the little amends you can make. You will be at Ventnor to-morrow; and mind—you must see her, whatever difficulties may be thrown in your way. You won't lose your temper if you meet her brother? Ah! I see you are not listening."
Then Livingstone spoke for the first time, in a hoarse, grating whisper, articulating the words one by one with difficulty.
"I never dreamed of this. I did not mean to kill her."
Mohun knew his friend too well to attempt consolation or sympathy, even if these had not been foreign to his own nature; so he answered deliberately and coldly,
"Of having brought bitter sorrow on Constance Brandon I do hold you guilty; of having caused her death, not, and so you will find when you know all. But her note of two months ago—of course you never saw it? You must have overlooked it; you are so careless with your papers."
"It never reached me," Livingstone replied. "I have always looked at the outside of my letters, and I should have known that handwriting among ten thousand. Some one must have intercepted it. I wish I knew who." He was recovering from the first stunning effects of the shock, and the old angry light came back into his eyes.
"I will find out when you are gone," said Mohun. "You have not a moment to spare. I won't ask you to write; I will join you in England in three days. Only remember one thing—keep cool. Yes, I know what you mean; but your patience may be tried more than you have any idea of." He was thinking of Cyril Brandon.
The hurry of departure prevented any further conversation. At the station, just before the train started, Ralph said, grasping his comrade's hand as he spoke, "I did not think you loved her so dearly."
It was very long before he forgot the dreary look which accompanied the answer, "I did not know it myself till now."
"I must trace the note," the colonel muttered, as he strode away from the station. "That handsome tiger-cat has laid her claw on it, I am certain. But she won't confess; red-hot pincers would not drag a secret from her, if she meant to keep it. I doubt if she will even betray herself by a blush. Poor Constance! What chance had she against such a Machiavel in petticoats? I am bad at diplomacy, too. If I only had the slightest proof, or if she had any weak point—unless she loses her head when she hears where Guy is gone, I have no chance of finding out much in that quarter. There's Willis, to be sure—she bribed him, no doubt. D—n them both!" In this complimentary and charitable mood, he went straight to Flora Bellasys.
He found her alone. She was sitting in her riding-dress, and the broad Spanish hat, with its curling plumes, lay close beside her, with the gauntlets and whip across it.
She did not much like Mohun, for she had an idea that his sarcasms, with her for their object, had made Guy smile more than once approvingly. She knew, too, that all her fascinations recoiled harmlessly from that rugged block of ironstone. Whatever he might have been in early years, he was harder of heart than stout Sir Artegall now. Radigund, unhelming her lovely face, would never have tempted him to forego his advantage and throw his weapons down.
However, she greeted him with perfect composure and satisfaction.
"Do you join our party this afternoon, Colonel Mohun? I expect them to call for me every moment. We are going to the Croix de Berny, to see the ground for the race next week. Mr. Livingstone was to have lunched here; but I never reckon on his keeping an engagement."
There was something in Ralph's manner which made her uncomfortable. She took up her whip, and began twisting its slender stock rather nervously; you would not have thought there was so much strength in the delicate fingers.
"You are right," he replied, coolly, "not to count too much on Guy's punctuality. He is very uncertain in his movements. I fear he can not accompany you this afternoon. He would have charged me with his excuses, I am sure, if he had not been so hurried."
Flora looked up quickly.
"It must have been something very sudden, then. Have you any idea where he is now?"
Ralph consulted his watch. "About Mantes, I should imagine. He started for Havre by the last train. He will be at Southampton, to-morrow, and the same day he can reach—"
He stopped, gazing at his companion with a cold, cruel satisfaction. The blood was sinking in her cheeks, not with a sudden impulse, but gradually—as the sunset rose-tints fade from the brow of the Jungfrau, leaving a ghastly opaque whiteness behind them. During the silence that ensued, a sharp tinkle might be heard as the jeweled head of the riding-whip, snapped by a convulsive movement, fell at Flora's feet.
It was weak in her to betray such loss of self-command, but, remember, the blow came unexpectedly. She saw the edifice she had plotted, and toiled, and risked so much to build, ruined and shattered to its foundation-stone. How many whispers, and smiles, and eloquent glances had been lavished, only to end in this Pavia, where not even honor was saved from the utter wreck!
Was not the perfect waxen mask of the first Napoleon shivered in that terrible abdication-night at Fontainebleau? Where was Cleopatra's queenly dignity when she heard that Antony had rejoined Octavia?
"Why has he gone? What called him back?"
Her voice had lost the clear ring of silver, and sounded dull and flat, like base metal.
"Constance Brandon wrote to tell him she was dying. Do you wonder that he went to her?"
A passing cloud of horror swept across Flora's pale face; but after it broke forth a gleam of strange, ferocious exultation, which stifled the rising pity in her hearer's breast, and changed it into contempt.
"I don't believe it," she cried, passionately. "It is a trick. She was quite well two months ago. At least, she said nothing—"
She checked herself, but too late. The practiced duelist laughed grimly in his mustache, as he might have done on discovering the weak point in his enemy's ward which laid him open to his rapier.
"You make my task easier," he said; "I came to inquire about a note which miscarried about the time you speak of. I will know what became of it, Miss Bellasys, though I wish to spare you unnecessary exposure and shame."
He had gained a momentary advantage, but it did not profit him much. There are swordsmen who will not own that they are touched, though their life-blood is ebbing fast. Flora rose without a sign of yielding or weakness in her dry eyes, drawing up her magnificent figure proudly. Ralph could not help thinking how like her father she was just then.
"I will answer, though I deny your right to question me. I have not the faintest idea of what you refer to. I have seen no note, except such as were addressed to myself; and you will hardly think that Miss Brandon would choose me as a confidante or correspondent."
Mohun saw that she would persist to the last, undaunted as Sapphira. So he rose to leave her, without another word.
"You do not doubt me?" Flora asked, as he turned away after saluting her. It was a rash question, all things considered, and scarcely worthy of the accomplished speaker. There is no more useful maxim in diplomacy than this: Quieta non movere.
Ralph faced her directly. "Miss Bellasys, when a lady tells me what I can not believe, I question—not her word, but—her agent." He was half way down stairs before she could answer or detain him.
He found out Willis's direction at Guy's hotel, but he had to wait some time before obtaining it; and other things delayed him en route, so that it was nearly two hours before he reached the modest lodgings, au quatrième, where the discharged valet was hiding his greatness.
Willis had an extensive connection; this, and his well-known talents, made him tolerably sure of a situation whenever he chose to seek one. He had luxurious tastes, and thoroughly appreciated self-indulgence; so he determined to devote some time and a portion of his perquisites to relaxation before going into harness again.
On this particular evening he had in prospect a little dinner at Philippe's—not uncheered by the smiles of venal beauty—and had just completed a careful toilette. He was above the small peculations of his order; indeed, had he been inclined to plunder his late masters wardrobe, the absurd disproportion in their size would have saved him from that vulgar temptation. He was somewhat choice in his tailors, and his clothes fitted him and suited him well. He was reviewing the general effect in the glass with a complacent and rather égrillarde expression in his little eyes, when between him and his partie fine rose the apparition of the colonel, like that of the commander before a bolder profligate. He knew that the interview must come, and did not wish to avoid it, but just at this moment it was singularly ill timed. What a contrast between the stern, fixed gaze that seemed to nail him to the spot where he stood and the well-tutored glances of fair, frail Héloise! He felt as if he had been put into the ice-pail by mistake for the Champagne. However, he met his ill luck placidly, and, handing his visitor a chair, begged to know "what he could do to serve him."
"You can tell me what became of a letter from Miss Brandon, which ought to have reached yow master two months ago, and miscarried."
Willis was forewarned and armed for the question; but, even with this advantage given in, his blank, unconscious look and start of astonishment did him infinite credit.
"A letter, sir?" he said, vaguely, as if consulting his recollections. "From Miss Brandon? I have never seen or heard of such a thing. If I had, of course I should have given it to Mr. Livingstone. What else could I have done with it?"
"I will give a thousand francs for it," Mohun went on, without noticing the denial, "or for a written acknowledgment of how you disposed of it, and at whose orders." He laid the bank-note on the table.
The flats changed; the look of bewilderment gave place to one of injured innocence—an appeal against manifest injustice. It was really artistically done.
"I am sorry, sir, that you should think I want a bribe to serve you or Mr. Livingstone. It is quite out of my power now. I don't know what you refer to."
"I have no time to bargain," Ralph growled, and his eyes began to glisten ominously. "Name your price, and have done with it."
Finale and Grand Tableau—virtuous indignation—the faithful servant asserting his dignity as a man. There was a hitch here somewhere; the scene-shifter was hardly up to his work, so that it was rather a failure.
"I have told you twice, sir, that I do not know any thing about it. I beg you will not insult me with more questions. You have no right to do so; I am neither in your service nor Mr. Livingstone's now."
Mohun bent his bushy brows in some perplexity. After all, he had not a shadow of proof, though he felt a moral certainty. His sheet-anchor was the avarice of the scoundrel he was dealing with, and this seemed to fail. Evidently a strong counter-influence had been at work.
"Curse her!" he muttered between his clenched teeth, "she has been here before me."
Then he looked up suddenly, and what he saw caused the shallow cup of his patience at once to overflow.
In Willis's eyes was an ill-repressed twinkle of exultation and amusement, and on his thin lips the dawning of an actual sneer. It was but seldom the trained satellite allowed himself the luxury of betraying any natural feeling. In truth, he chose his time badly for its exhibition now. Before he could collect himself so as to utter a cry, he lay upon his back on the carpet, a heavy foot on his chest; and the colonel was gazing down on him with a fell murderous expression, that made the victim's blood run cold.
"By G—d!" Mohun said, in the smothered tones of concentrated passion, "if you trifle with me ten seconds longer—if you open your lips except to answer my question, I'll crush your breast-bone in."
Willis knew the desperate character of the man who held him in his power; it was no vain threat he had just heard; the pressure on his chest was agonizing already.
"For God's sake don't murder me!" he gasped out; "I—I gave it to Miss Bellasys."
"Of course you did," Mohun said, coolly; "I knew it all along. Now get up, and write that down."
He spurned away the fallen man as he spoke till he rolled over and over on the floor.
There is nothing which disconcerts a nature long used to obey like a sudden brutal coup de main. Remember the Scythians and their slaves. The rebels met their masters boldly enough on a fair field with sword and spear, but they cowered before the crack of the horsewhips.
All the spider-webs of the unfortunate Willis's diplomacy were utterly swept away; his powers of thought and volition were concentrated now on one point—to get rid of his visitor as soon as possible.
He rose slowly and painfully (for the mere physical shock had been heavy), and, placing himself at a table, tried to write the few words of acknowledgment that Mohun dictated; but his hand trembled so excessively that he could hardly form the letters. As he looked up in piteous deprecation, evidently fearing lest his inability to comply should be construed into unwillingness or rebellion, he presented a spectacle of degraded humanity so revolting in its abasement that even the cynic turned away in painful disgust.
It was done at last. As Willis saw his confession consigned to Mohun's pocket-book, his avarice gave him courage to try one last effort to gain something by the transaction—a salve to his bruises—a set-off against the relicta non bene parmula.
"I hope you will consider I have done all I can, sir," he said, looking wistfully at the bank-note, which still lay on the table. "I shall be ruined if this becomes known."
The cast-steel smile which was peculiar to him hardened the colonel's face.
"You must come down on Miss Bellasys for compensation. She pays well, I have no doubt. You never get another sou from our side, if it were to keep you from starving. My second thought was the best, after all; it saved time and—money. (He put the note back into his purse.) I'll give you one caution, though. Keep out of Mr. Livingstone's way. If he meets you, after hearing all this, he'll break your neck, I believe in my conscience." So he left him.
For the second time that evening Willis looked in the glass—the reflection was not so satisfactory. Was that unseemly crumpled ruin the white tie, sublime in its scientific wrinkles, on which its author had gazed with a pardonable paternal pride? No wonder that he stamped in wrath, not the less bitter because impotent, while he shook off the dust from his garments as a testimony against Ralph Mohun.
He repaired the damages, though, to the best of his power, and then went off to keep his appointment; but the pâtés à la bechamelle were as ashes, and the gelée au marisquin as gall to his parched, disordered palate. He made himself so intensely disagreeable that poor Héloise thenceforth swore an enmity against his compatriots, which endured to the end of her brief misspent existence. "Gredin d'Anglais, va!" she was wont to say, grinding her little white teeth melodramatically, whenever she recalled that dreary entertainment, and the failure of her simple stratagems to enliven her saturnine host.
CHAPTER XXVII.
For the first few minutes after the train had moved off Guy was unable to collect his thoughts. As the tall figure of Mohun passed from his view, it seemed as if a sustaining prop had been suddenly cut away from under him, and he felt more than ever helpless. The stubborn strength of his character asserted itself before long, and he faced his great sorrow as he would have done an enemy in bodily shape; but neither then, nor for many days after, could he pursue any one train of reflection long unbroken.
First he began to think how Constance would look when he saw her. Would she be much changed? How beautiful she was the night they parted, with the blue myosotis gleaming through her bright hair! Would her eyes be as cold as he remembered them then (he had not seen their last look), or would they forgive him at once, and tell him so? Not if she knew all. And then, in hideous contrast to her pure stately beauty, there rose before him faces and figures which had shared his orgies during the past months, gay with paint and jewels, and meretricious ornament. There was a deeper horror in those mocking shapes than in the most loathsome phantasms of corporeal corruption that feverish dreams ever called up from the grave-yard. If his lips were unworthy, months ago, to touch Constance's cheek or hand, what were they now? He ground his teeth in the bitterness of self-condemnation. It would be easier to bear, if she met him coldly and proudly, than if she yielded at once, as her letter seemed to promise. Her letter! What became of the first one? If that had reached him, how much had been saved! Perhaps Constance's life—certainly much of his own dishonor. The idea did cross him that Flora might have been concerned in intercepting it, but it seemed improbable, and he drove it away. With all his revived devotion to Constance, he did not like to think hardly of her rival; in a lesser degree he had wronged her too.
You will rarely find the sternest or wisest of men disposed to be harsh toward errors that spring from a devotion to themselves. It is only just, as well as natural, that it should be so. If the second cause of the crime did not find an excuse for the defendant, I don't know where he or she would look for an advocate. St. Kevin need not have troubled himself: there were plenty of people ready to push poor Kathleen down. I think it is a pity they canonized him.
Through all Guy's reflections there ran this under-current—"how easily all might have been avoided if the slightest things had turned out differently." Just so, after a heavy loss at play, a man will keep thinking how he might have won a large stake if he had played one card otherwise, or backed the In instead of the Out. I have heard good judges say that this pertinacious after-thought is the hardest part to bear of all the annoyance. Of course he worries himself about it, just as if "great results from small beginnings" were not the tritest of all truisms. I don't wish to be historical, or I would reflect how often the Continent has been convulsed by a dish that disagreed with some one, or by a ship that did not start to its time. The Jacobites were very wise in toasting "the little gentleman in black velvet" that raised the fatal mole-hill. Does not the old romance say that an adder starting from a bush brought on the terrible battle in which all the chivalry of England were strewn like leaves around Arthur on Barren Down?
Guy could still hardly realize to himself the certainty of Constance's approaching death. He tried to fix his thoughts on this till a heavy, listless torpor, like drowsiness, began to steal over him. He roused himself impatiently, and began to think how slow they were going. Nevertheless, the green coteaux that swell between Rouen and the sea were flying past rapidly, and they arrived at Havre, as Mohun had said, just in time to catch the Southampton packet.
There was threatening of foul weather to windward. The clouds, in masses of indigo just edged with copper, were banking up fast, and the "white horses," more and more frequent, were beginning to toss their manes against the dark sky-line.
To the few travelers whom the stern necessities of business drove forth, lingering and shivering, from their comfortable inns on to the deck, already wet and unsteady, Livingstone was an object of great interest and many theories. His impatience to be gone was so marked that the conscientious official looked more than once suspiciously at his passport.
Mr. Phineas Hackett, of Boston, U.S., Marchand (so self-described in the Livre des Voyageurs at Chamounix), made up his mind that he saw before him the hero of some gigantic forgery, or a fraudulent bankrupt on a large scale; but, just as he had fixed on the astute question which was to drive the first wedge into the mystery, Guy turned in his quick walk and met him full. I doubt if he even saw the smooth-shaven, eager face at his elbow; but he was thinking again of the lost letter, and the savage glare in his eyes made the heart of the "earnest inquirer" quiver under his black satin waistcoat. "D——d hard knot, that," he muttered, disconsolately, and retreated with great loss, to writhe during the rest of the passage in an orgasm of unsatisfied curiosity.
The weather looked worse every moment as the wild north wind came roaring from seaward with a challenge to the vessels that lay tossing within the jetty to come forth and meet him. The waste-pipe of the Sea-gull screamed out shrilly in answer; and the brave old ship, shaking the foam from her bows after every plunge, as her namesake might do from its breast-feathers, steamed out right in the teeth of the gale.
A regular "Channel night"—a night which Mr. Augustus Winder, Paris traveler to H—— and Co., the mighty mercers of Regent Street, spoke of in after days with a shudder of reminiscence mingling with the pride of one who has endured and survived great peril; who has gone down to the sea in ships, and seen the wonders of the deep. His associates—the élite of the silk-and-ribbon department—youths of polished manners and fascinating address, than whom non alii leviore saltu took the counter in their stride—would gather round the narrator in respectful admiration, just as the young sea-dogs of Nantucket might listen to a veteran hunter of the sperm whale as he tells of a hurricane that caught him in the strait between the Land of Fire and terrible Cape Horn.
Mr. Winder represented himself as having assisted all on board, from the captain down to the cabin-boy, with his counsel and encouragement, and as having been materially useful to the man at the wheel. The fact was, that he cried a good deal during the night, and was incessant in his appeals to the steward and Heaven for help. In his appeals to the latter power he employed often a strangely modified form of the Apostles' Creed; for his religious education had been neglected, and this was his solitary and simple idea of an orison. However, no one was present to detract from his triumph or to controvert his concluding words:
"An awful night, gents; but duty's duty, and the firm behaved handsome. Mr. Sassnett, I'll trouble you for a light, sir." And so he ignited a fuller-flavored Cuba, and drank, in a sweeter grog, "Our noble selves"—olim hæc meminisse juvabit.
There was one striking contrast on board to the gallant Winder. Livingstone did not go below, but walked the deck all night long, straining his eyes eagerly forward through the thick darkness and the driving rain.
Captain Weatherby regarded him approvingly, as, halting in his walk, Guy stood near him, upright and steady as a mainmast of Memel pine. "That's the sort I like to carry," the old sailor remarked confidentially to his second in command as they shared an amicable grog under the shelter of the companion.
The wind abated toward morning; and, as the dawn broke, they were under the lee of the Wight, and moving steadily into the quiet Solent.
Guy made his way straight to Ventnor. Twenty-four hours after her summons reached him, Constance knew that her lover had never received her first letter, and that now he was within five hundred yards of her, waiting to be called into her presence.
It was long before her answer came. It only contained a few hurried words, saying that it was impossible for her to see him that day, and begging him not to be angry, but to wait. The hand-writing was far more faltering and uncertain than that which had struck him so painfully with its weakness the day before. It spoke plainly of the effort which it had cost the invalid to trace even those brief lines. He did not try to delude himself any more, but all that day remained alone, face to face with his despair.
He went out after nightfall, and stole up cautiously to the house where Constance was staying.
It is not only ghosts that walk. Men, as powerless to retrieve the past as if they were already disembodied spirits, will haunt the scenes and sepulchres of their lost happiness even before they die. Though the world was all before them where to choose, I doubt not that the exiles from Paradise lingered long just without the sweep of the flaming sword.
Two rooms in the house were lighted, one with the faint glimmer peculiar to the shaded lamp of a sick-room. Guy's pulse bounded wildly at first, and then grew dull and still. In that room he knew Constance lay dying. The other window was brightly lighted, but half shaded by a curtain. While he gazed, this was torn suddenly aside, as if by an angry, impatient hand, and a man leaned out, throwing back the hair from his forehead, to catch the cold wind which was blowing sharply. Guy had never seen the dark, passionate face before, but he know whose it was very well, though there was little family likeness to guide him. Cyril Brandon's features were small and finely cut, like his sister's; but there the resemblance ended. His complexion, naturally sallow, had been burnt three shades deeper by the Indian sun. His fierce black eyes, and thin lips, that seemed always ready to curl or quiver, made the contrast with Constance very striking.
Livingstone drew back into the farthest shadow of the garden trees. He knew how much reason Cyril had for hating him above all living men, and he did not wish to risk a meeting. Mohun's warning shot across his mind, and he felt it was rightly founded.
Brandon looked out for some minutes without moving, then he dropped his head suddenly on his arms with a heavy groan. The bright light was behind him, and Guy could see his clasped fingers twisting and tearing at each other, as if he wished to distract mental agony by the sense of bodily pain. The gazer saw that another besides himself had given up all hope; and, with a heavier heart than over, he stole away home—not to sleep, but to think, and wait for the morning.
About noon next day the expected message came:
"Dear Guy,—I have got leave to see you at last, but it was very difficult to gain. It is only on these conditions: you are not to stay with me a moment beyond three hours, and you must leave Ventnor immediately afterward, and not return. I have promised all for you. It seems very hard; but we must not think of that now. Come directly. C.B."
Ten minutes later there was only a closed door between Livingstone, and the interview he longed for and dreaded so much. His steel nerves stood him in good stead then; it was not at the crisis that these were likely to fail. When Constance heard his step, it was measured and firmly planted as she always remembered it. So it would have been if he had been walking to meet the fire of a platoon. Her aunt, Mrs. Vavasour, was with her, but left the room, as Guy opened the door, and so they met again as they had parted—alone.