JACK DE BARON'S VIRTUE.
We must now go back to Jack De Baron, who left Rudham Park the same day
as the Marquis,--having started before the news of Lord Popenjoy's
death had been brought down stairs by Mr. De Baron. Being only Jack De
Baron he had sent to Brotherton for a fly, and in that conveyance had
had himself taken to the "Lion," arriving there three or four hours
before the time at which he purposed to leave the town. Indeed his
arrangements had intentionally been left so open that he might if he
liked remain the night,--or if he pleased, remain a week at the "Lion."
He thought it not improbable that the Dean might ask him to dinner,
and, if so, he certainly would dine with the Dean.
He was very serious,--considering who he was, we may almost say solemn,
as he sat in the fly. It was the rule of his life to cast all cares
from him, and his grand principle to live from hand to mouth. He was
almost a philosopher in his epicureanism, striving always that nothing
should trouble him. But now he had two great troubles, which he could
not throw off from him. In the first place, after having striven
against it for the last four or five years with singular success, he
had in a moment of weakness allowed himself to become engaged to Guss
Mildmay. She had gone about it so subtlely that he had found himself
manacled almost before he knew that the manacles were there. He had
fallen into the trap of an hypothesis, and now felt that the
preliminary conditions on which he had seemed to depend could never
avail him. He did not mean to marry Guss Mildmay. He did not suppose
that she thought he meant to marry her. He did not love her, and he did
not believe very much in her love for him. But Guss Mildmay, having
fought her battle in the world for many years with but indifferent
success, now felt that her best chance lay in having a bond upon her
old lover. He ought not to have gone to Rudham when he knew that she
was to be there. He had told himself that before, but he had not liked
to give up the only chance which had come in his way of being near Lady
George since she had left London. And now he was an engaged man,--a
position which had always been to him full of horrors. He had run his
bark on to the rock, which it had been the whole study of his
navigation to avoid. He had committed the one sin which he had always
declared to himself that he never would commit. This made him unhappy.
And he was uneasy also,--almost unhappy,--respecting Lady George.
People whom he knew to be bad had told him things respecting her which
he certainly did not believe, but which he did not find it compatible
with his usual condition of life altogether to disbelieve. If he had
ever loved any woman he loved her. He certainly respected her as he had
never respected any other young woman. He had found the pleasure to be
derived from her society to be very different from that which had come
from his friendship with others. With her he could be perfectly
innocent, and at the same time completely happy. To dance with her, to
ride with her, to walk with her, to sit with the privilege of looking
at her, was joy of itself, and required nothing beyond. It was a
delight to him to have any little thing to do for her. When his daily
life was in any way joined with hers there was a brightness in it which
he thoroughly enjoyed though he did not quite understand. When that
affair of the dance came, in which Lord George had declared his
jealousy, he had been in truth very unhappy because she was unhappy,
and he had been thoroughly angry with the man, not because the man had
interfered with his own pleasures, but because of the injury and the
injustice done to the wife. He found himself wounded, really hurt,
because she had been made subject to calumny. When he tried to analyse
the feeling he could not understand it. It was so different from
anything that had gone before! He was sure that she liked him, and yet
there was a moment in which he thought that he would purposely keep out
of her way for the future, lest he might be a trouble to her. He loved
her so well that his love for a while almost made him unselfish.
And yet,--yet he might be mistaken about her. It had been the theory of
his life that young married women become tired of their husbands, and
one of his chief doctrines that no man should ever love in such a way
as to believe in the woman he loves. After so many years, was he to
give up his philosophy? Was he to allow the ground to be cut from under
his feet by a young creature of twenty-one who had been brought up in a
county town? Was he to run away because a husband had taken it into his
head to be jealous? All the world had given him credit for his
behaviour at the Kappa-kappa. He had gathered laurels,--very much
because he was supposed to be the lady's lover. He had never boasted to
others of the lady's favour; but he knew that she liked him, and he had
told himself that he would be poor-spirited if he abandoned her.
He drove up to the "Lion" and ordered a room. He did not know whether
he should want it, but he would at any rate bespeak it. And he ordered
his dinner. Come what come might, he thought that he would dine and
sleep at Brotherton that day. Finding himself so near to Lady George,
he would not leave her quite at once. He asked at the inn whether the
Dean was in Brotherton. Yes; the Dean was certainly at the deanery. He
had been seen about in the city that morning. The inhabitants, when
they talked about Brotherton, always called it the city. And were Lord
George and Lady George at the deanery? In answer to this question, the
landlady with something of a lengthened face declared that Lady George
was with her papa, but that Lord George was at Manor Cross. Then Jack
De Baron strolled out towards the Close.
It was a little after one when he found himself at the cathedral door,
and thinking that the Dean and his daughter might be at lunch, he went
into the building, so that he might get rid of half an hour. He had not
often been in cathedrals of late years, and now looked about him with
something of awe. He could remember that when he was a child he had
been brought here to church, and as he stood in the choir with the
obsequient verger at his elbow he recollected how he had got through
the minutes of a long sermon,--a sermon that had seemed to be very
long,--in planning the way in which, if left to himself, he would climb
to the pinnacle which culminated over the bishop's seat, and thence
make his way along the capitals and vantages of stonework, till he
would ascend into the triforium and thus become lord and master of the
old building. How much smaller his ambitions had become since then, and
how much less manly. "Yes, sir; his Lordship is here every Sunday when
he is at the palace," said the verger. "But his Lordship is ailing
now."
"And the Dean?"
"The Dean always comes once a day to service when he is here; but the
Dean has been much away of late. Since Miss Mary's marriage the Dean
isn't in Brotherton as much as formerly."
"I know the Dean. I'm going to his house just now. They like him in
Brotherton, I suppose?"
"That's according to their way of thinking, sir. We like him. I suppose
you heard, sir, there was something of a row between him and Miss
Mary's brother-in-law!" Jack said that he had heard of it. "There's
them as say he was wrong."
"I say he was quite right."
"That's what we think, sir. It's got about that his Lordship said some
bad word of Miss Mary. A father wasn't to stand that because he's a
clergyman, was he, sir?"
"The Dean did just what you or I would do."
"That's just it, sir. That's what we all say. Thank you, sir. You won't
see Prince Edward's monument, sir? Gentlemen always do go down to the
crypt." Jack wouldn't see the monument to-day, and having paid his
half-crown, was left to wander about alone through the aisles.
How would it have been with him if his life had been different; if he
had become, perhaps, a clergyman and had married Mary Lovelace?--or if
he had become anything but what he was with her for his wife? He knew
that his life had been a failure, that the best of it was gone, and
that even the best of it had been unsatisfactory. Many people liked
him, but was there any one who loved him? In all the world there was
but one person that he loved, and she was the wife of another man. Of
one thing at this moment he was quite sure,--that he would never wound
her ears by speaking of his love. Would it not be better that he should
go away and see her no more? The very tone in which the verger had
spoken of Miss Mary had thrown to the winds those doubts which had come
from the teaching of Adelaide Houghton and Guss Mildmay. If she had
been as they said, would even her father have felt for her as he did
feel, and been carried away by his indignation at the sound of an evil
word?
But he had asked after the Dean at the hotel, and had told the verger
of his acquaintance, and had been seen by many in the town. He could
not now leave the place without calling. So resolving he knocked at
last at the deanery door, and was told that the Dean was at home. He
asked for the Dean, and not for Lady George, and was shown into the
library. In a minute the Dean was with him. "Come in and have some
lunch," said the Dean. "We have this moment sat down. Mary will be
delighted to see you,--and so am I." Of course he went in to lunch, and
in a moment was shaking hands with Mary, who in truth was delighted to
see him.
"You've come from Rudham?" asked the Dean.
"This moment."
"Have they heard the news there?"
"What news?"
"Lord Brotherton is there, is he not?"
"I think he left to-day. He was to do so. I heard no news." He looked
across to Mary, and saw that her face was sad and solemn.
"The child that they called Lord Popenjoy is dead," said the Dean. He
was neither sad nor solemn. He could not control the triumph of his
voice as he told the news.
"Poor little boy!" said Mary.
"Dead!" exclaimed Jack.
"I've just had a telegram from my lawyer in London. Yes; he's out of
the way. Poor little fellow! As sure as I sit here he was not Lord
Popenjoy."
"I never understood anything about it," said Jack.
"But I did. Of course the matter is at rest now. I'm not the man to
grudge any one what belongs to him; but I do not choose that any one
belonging to me should be swindled. If she were to have a son now, he
would be the heir."
"Oh, papa, do not talk in that way."
"Rights are rights, and the truth is the truth. Can any one wish that
such a property and such a title should go to the child of an Italian
woman whom no one has seen or knows?"
"Let it take its chance now, papa."
"Of course it must take its chance; but your chances must be
protected."
"Papa, he was at any rate my nephew."
"I don't know that. In law, I believe, he was no such thing. But he
has gone, and we need think of him no further." He was very triumphant.
There was an air about him as though he had already won the great stake
for which he had been playing. But in the midst of it all he was very
civil to Jack De Baron. "You will stay and dine with us to-day, Captain
De Baron?"
"Oh, do," said Mary.
"We can give you a bed if you will sleep here."
"Thanks. My things are at the hotel, and I will not move them. I will
come and dine if you'll have me."
"We shall be delighted. We can't make company of you, because no one is
coming. I shouldn't wonder if Lord George rode over. He will if he
hears of this. Of course he'll know to-morrow; but perhaps they will
not have telegraphed to him. I should go out to Manor Cross, only I
don't quite like to put my foot in that man's house." Jack could not
but feel that the Dean treated him almost as though he were one of the
family. "I rather think I shall ride out and risk it. You won't mind my
leaving you?" Of course Jack declared that he would not for worlds be
in the way. "Mary will play Badminton with you, if you like it. Perhaps
you can get hold of Miss Pountner and Grey; and make up a game." Mr.
Grey was one of the minor canons, and Miss Pountner was the canon's
daughter.
"We shall do very well, papa. I'm not mad after Badminton, and I dare
say we shall manage without Miss Pountner."
The Dean went off, and in spite of the feud did ride over to Manor
Cross. His mind was so full of the child's death and of the all but
certainty of coming glory which now awaited his daughter, that he could
not keep himself quiet. It seemed to him that a just Providence had
interfered to take that child away. And as the Marquis hated him, so
did he hate the Marquis. He had been willing at first to fight the
battle fairly without personal animosity. On the Marquis's first
arrival he had offered him the right hand of fellowship. He remembered
it all accurately,--how the Marquis had on that occasion ill-used and
insulted him. No man knew better than the Dean when he was well-treated
and when ill-treated. And then this lord had sent for him for the very
purpose of injuring and wounding him through his daughter's name. His
wrath on that occasion had not all expended itself in the blow. After
that word had been spoken he was the man's enemy for ever. There could
be no forgiveness. He could not find room in his heart for even a spark
of pity because the man had lost an only child. Had not the man tried
to do worse than kill his only child--his daughter? Now the
pseudo-Popenjoy was dead, and the Dean was in a turmoil of triumph. It
was essential to him that he should see his son-in-law. His son-in-law
must be made to understand what it would be to be the father of the
future Marquis of Brotherton.
"I think I'll just step across to the inn," said Jack, when the Dean
had left them.
"And we'll have a game of croquet when you come back. I do like
croquet, though papa laughs at me. I think I like all games. It is so
nice to be doing something."
Jack sauntered back to the inn, chiefly that he might have a further
opportunity of considering what he would say to her. And he did make up
his mind. He would play croquet with all his might, and behave to her
as though she were his dearest sister.