CHAPTER IV.
TRAVELLERS BY LAND AND SEA.
In the morning after Mr. Williamson’s discovery of his daughter, Lieutenant Somerton sought the woman whom he had loved so wildly—he sought her with a troubled heart, and a half resolve to see her no more, if she had deceived him so grossly as the barrister had intimated. He had thought long and seriously over all the circumstances which his friend had laid before him, and he resolved to search out the truth.
When he reached the house, however, he was spared the scene of anger, mutual explanation, and final triumph of love and frenzy which he had imagined. The bird had flown; there was no Chrissy in the little house with the trees at the back. The rooms were deserted, and Mrs. Dibble sat weeping over the débris of a hasty packing-up.
“She’th gone, thir: gone for ever,” said Mrs. Dibble.
“Yes,” said Thomas, who stood by, looking more frightened than sympathetic.
“Gone—what do you mean?” asked the Lieutenant.
“She wath a wicked creature, thir, and she hath fled,” said Mrs. Dibble; “if my poor dear papa could only rise from his grave and see the path to which hith daughter Maria hath come.”
“Hang your papa!” exclaimed Paul; “tell me what all this means.”
“How dare you, thir,” said Mrs. Dibble, starting up; “how dare you hang my papa! Ah, I forgot, of courthe poverty mutht be insulted, and I am a wretched dependent, though I have had a boarding-school education, and been brought up to——”
“Confound it, Mrs. Dibble: will you talk common sense for a moment. I don’t wish to insult you, nor to be unkind in any way. Will you tell me how it is that this lady has left your house?”
“Here is a note,” said Mr. Dibble, timidly taking a small billet from the mantel-piece.
Mrs. Dibble scowled at her husband, and began to weep afresh over her fallen fortunes.
Paul hastily opened the note, which Dibble gave to him, and read as follows:—
“My dear Paul,—I have saved you from a great sin and from terrible misery. This wretched girl is my daughter. I have taken her away; do not seek to follow us. You shall know all in the course of a day or two. ‘He visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him, and shows mercy unto thousands in them that love Him and keep His commandments.’
“Believe me to be ever yours in truth and affection,
“A. Williamson.”
Paul read the note twice and in the greatest astonishment. His mind was in a chaos of wonder and amazement. He sat down upon a chair, and read the strange words over and over again, until Dibble interrupted him.
“It was all true, sir,” said Dibble, “what I said yesterday; she was the show-girl, Chrissy, who conjured, you know, sir, at Severntown.”
Paul made no reply.
Mrs. Dibble only nodded her head to signify that she had had a boarding-school education, and had been brought to this wretched plight, nevertheless.
“She be main clever, surely,” said Dibble, “and improved wonderful.”
“When did she leave here?” asked Paul, looking to Mrs. Dibble for a reply.
“Before daylight, by the mail,” she said; “and what with packing and Mr. Williamson’s fidgeting and going on, and his wild ways, I hope I shall never see such a night again.”
“They left together,” said Paul, staring vacantly at the barrister’s note.
“Yeth, and Dibble fetched the cab.”
“Did she seem willing to go; did she leave any message for me?”
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Dibble. “She wath willing enough to go; but anybody would have been willing to do whatever he thaid, he theemed to order about so.”
“Order! in what way?” asked the Lieutenant.
“Why, ath if he were her father, which he thaid he wath, though that wath never to be repeated to anybody but you, and he went home and brought some money, and wath motht liberal for all we had done, though I thertainly would have returned it if Mithter Dibble had not lotht money in the panic, and that bank had not broke, which left uth almost in poverty.”
The Lieutenant took little or no notice of Mrs. Dibble’s long speeches, but they were full of daggers to Thomas Dibble, who would have laid down his life if he could have obtained money enough to put an end to his wife’s taunts about their losses.
Paul was altogether at a loss to know how to act. His first impulse was to make an effort to follow the fugitives; his first impression was that his friend had behaved treacherously; but when Dibble told him all he knew about “Chrissy,” and her belief that her father was a gentleman, and when he thought again of all that Williamson had said, and of the dark shadows upon his early life, he resolved that he would try to be patient, and wait for the next chapter in this extraordinary story of his first love.
Meanwhile the fugitives were speeding on their way to Dover, their destination being Paris. Whilst they were leaving England, a traveller was journeying to London in whom the reader has a still greater interest. Lionel Hammerton was coming home. He had only been a few months at his post ere he left it. Nobody knew why he did so, or upon what plea he had obtained permission. He had not been well, his comrades knew; but a general depression of spirits rather than any physical complaint seemed to be the secret of his reticence and retirement. On board the vessel in which he went out his conduct was set down to the motion of the vessel, and a few harmless jests were made at his expense. He was advised to drink plenty of brandy and water, which would soon bring his sea legs all right; but Lionel Hammerton did not recover, except when he drank more brandy than was good for him. Now and then this occurred, and at such times he was pronounced to be a splendid fellow, a dashing, daring, high-souled fellow.
Lionel himself hardly knew why he wished to return home. He felt impelled by an unseen influence. Like the hero of some ghost story who at Christmas had seen by his bedside the face of a loved one at home, and a beckoning finger which haunted him day and night until he set foot on board a home-bound ship, Lionel Hammerton could think of nothing but returning home. There was something wrong, he could not rest, he must go home and see the old country once more ere he settled down in India. For days and weeks he struggled against this instinctive longing to re-cross the ocean. That vignette which Arthur Phillips had painted hung by his bed, inside those mosquito curtains! Had this aught to do with his desire to return home? Did he repent of his neglect towards Amy? Did he love her after all? Did the memory of those happy days at Barton torture him with remorse? Or had that idea of Amy’s mercenary motives evaporated in presence of that honest and noble face, about which he had talked so rapturously in the artist’s studio? If so, why did he not write to her and say so, or send some message to her by Arthur Phillips? This would have been easy enough, and sufficient too for Amy, who would have caught at the merest straw that offered a prospect of regaining his love.
They passed each other on the sea, the two Indian ships—one homeward-bound with Hammerton on board, the other on its way to Calcutta with letters for him, and full particulars of his brother’s marriage. What a world of trouble might have been spared to him and others, had he yielded at once to those home-promptings, or waited until those letters and papers had reached their destination!
As the vessel bounded along through the waters, Lionel shaped his course. He was fain to confess that he wanted to see Amy, to see her once more, and judge for himself by her own words and conduct whether she truly loved him, or whether it was a mere mercenary passion. It was a long time before he confessed even to himself that it was she who drew him back to England—he could not rest without her. If she were really true, true as the artist had painted her, true as he once believed her, he would confess all to his brother, and ask Amy to return with him to India as his wife. What a fool he had been, he thought, to doubt her, and to come away without seeing her. What a miserable lonely life it was out there in India without a soul you cared for. How happy to have a wife there! No fellow ought to go out to India without one. And what did it matter about a woman’s origin in India, so that she was a lady in manners, and the wife of an officer of rank in his own right? Why had he not thought of all this before? It was only by degrees that he had permitted his thoughts to run wild like this. The sea seemed to help him out of his troubles; it was so boundless, so full of life and beauty. His thoughts appeared to mount the white-crested waves and travel away upon them to some quiet sandy beach where Amy was walking. Now that he had confessed to himself why he was returning to England, he gave his imagination the freest rein, and pictured the future as something almost preternaturally happy. He never doubted for a moment that when he came back to Barton Hall and threw his handkerchief at the feet of Amy she would pick it up and be his slave. That pride which had had so large a share in his leaving England and neglecting the woman whose love he had taken the trouble to win, did not desert him on his return.
When he set foot in London he hesitated whether he should go straight to Montem, run down to Arthur Phillips’ at Severntown, or take the train to Avonworth. It had occurred to him more than once to visit Amy secretly; but his better sense prompted him to write a note to his brother telling him that he should visit him the next day, hoping to return again to India by an early mail.
“He will be surprised,” Lionel thought, “to receive this; but he is a dear old boy after all, and I will soon put him all right. I wish I had had nothing to do with that infernal Stock Exchange business. I should then have had no qualms at all about meeting him again so suddenly.”
The Hon. officer of her Majesty spent the evening of his return to England at Drury Lane, and his magnanimous intentions with regard to Amy were stimulated by the action of a drama, the chief lesson of which was the levelling power of love, and the exaltation of beauty and virtue above rank and fortune. Lionel went home to his hotel in quite a sentimental mood, longing to confess his unchanging love and receive Amy’s grateful acknowledgments of the sacrifice which he was willing to make for her, raising the bailiff’s daughter to his own rank and making her his wife and companion.