THE STRANGER.
Lord Hartledon was leading his bride through the chapel at the conclusion
of the ceremony, when his attention was caught by something outside one
of the windows. At first he thought it was a black cat curled up in some
impossible fashion, but soon saw it was a dark human face. And that face
he discovered to be Mr. Pike's, peering earnestly in.
"Hedges, send that man away. How dare he intrude himself in this manner?
How has he got up to the window?"
For these windows were high beyond the ordinary height of man. Hedges
went out, a sharp reprimand on his tongue, and found that Mr. Pike had
been at the trouble of carrying a heap of stones from a distance and
piling them up to stand upon.
"Well, you must have a curiosity!" he exclaimed, in his surprise. "Just
put those stones back in their places, and take yourself away."
"You are right," said the man. "I have a curiosity in all that concerns
the new lord. But I am going away now."
He leaped down as he spoke, and began to replace the stones. Hedges went
in again.
The carriage, waiting to convey them away, was already at the door, the
impatient horses pawing the ground. Maude changed her dress with all
speed; and in driving down the road by starlight they overtook Thomas
Carr, carrying his own portmanteau. Lord Hartledon let down the window
impulsively, as if he would have spoken, but seemed to recollect himself,
and drew it up again.
"What is it?" asked Maude.
"Mr. Carr."
It was the first word he had spoken to her since the ceremony. His
silence had frightened her: what if he should resent on _her_ the cruel
words spoken by Dr. Ashton? Sick, trembling, her beautiful face humble
and tearful enough now, she bent it on his shoulder in a shower of bitter
tears.
"Oh, Percival, Percival! surely you are not going to punish me for what
has passed?"
A moment's struggle with himself, and he turned and took both her hands
in his.
"It may be that neither of us is free from blame, Maude, in regard to the
past. All we can now do, as it seems to me, is to forget it together, and
make the best of the future."
"And you will forget Anne Ashton?" she whispered.
"Of course I shall forget her. I ask nothing better than to forget her
from this moment. I have made _you_ my wife; and I will try to make your
happiness."
He bent and kissed her face. Maude, in some restlessness, as it seemed,
withdrew to her own corner of the carriage and cried softly; and Lord
Hartledon let down the glass again to look back after Thomas Carr and his
portmanteau in the starlight.
The only perfectly satisfied person was the countess-dowager. All the
little annoying hindrances went for nothing now that the desired end
was accomplished, and she was in high feather when she bade adieu to the
amiable young clergyman, who had to depart that night for his curacy,
ten miles away, to be in readiness for the morrow's services.
"If you please, my lady, Captain Kirton has been asking for you once or
twice," said Hedges, entering the dowager's private sitting-room.
"Then Captain Kirton must ask," retorted the dowager, who was sitting
down to her letters, which she had left unopened since their arrival in
the morning, in her anxiety for other interests. "Hedges, I should like
some supper: I had only a scrambling sort of dinner. You can bring it up
here. Something nice; and a bottle of champagne."
Hedges withdrew with the order, and Lady Kirton applied herself to her
letters. The first she opened was from the daughter who had married the
French count. It told a pitiful tale of distress, and humbly craved to be
permitted to come over on a fortnight's visit, she and her two sickly
children, "for a little change."
"I dare say!" emphatically cried the dowager. "What next? No, thank you,
my lady; now that I have at least a firm footing in this house--as that
blessed parson said--I am not going to risk it by filling it with every
bothering child I possess. Bob departs as soon as his leg's well. Why
what's this?"
She had come upon a concluding line as she was returning the letter to
the envelope. "P.S. If I don't hear from you _very_ decisively to the
contrary, I shall come, and trust to your good nature to forgive it. I
want to see Bob."
"Oh, that's it, is it!" said the dowager. "She means to come, whether I
will or no. That girl always had enough impudence for a dozen."
Drawing a sheet of paper out of her desk, she wrote a few rapid lines.
"Dear Jane,
"For _mercy's_ sake keep those _poor_ children and yourself _away_! We
have had an _aweful infectious fever_ rageing in the place, which it
was thought to be _cured_, but it's on the break _out_ again-several
_deaths_, Hartledon and Maude (_married_ of course) have gone out of
its reach and I'm thinking of it if _Bob's_ leg which is _better_
permits. You'd not like I dare say to see the children in a _coffin
apiece_ and yourself in a _third_, as might be the end. _Small-pox_ is
raging at _Garchester_ a neighbouring town, that _will_ be awful if it
gets to _us_ and I _hear_ it's on the _road_ and with kind love
_believe_ me your affectionate_
"MOTHER.
"P.S. I am sorry for _what_ you tell me about _Ugo_ and the _state_
of affairs chey vous. But you know you _would marry_ him so there's
_nobody_ to blame. Ah! _Maude_ has gone by _my_ advice and done as _I_
said and the consequence is _she's_ a peeress for life and got a
handsome young husband _without_ a _will_ of his own."
The countess-dowager was not very adroit at spelling and composition,
whether French or English, as you observe. She made an end of her
correspondence, and sat down to a delicious little supper alone; as she
best liked to enjoy these treats. The champagne was excellent, and she
poured out a full tumbler of it at once, by way of wishing good luck to
Maude's triumphant wedding.
"And it _is_ a triumph!" she said, as she put down the empty glass. "I
hope it will bring Jane and the rest to a sense of _their_ folly."
A triumph? If you could only have looked into the future, Lady Kirton!
A triumph!
The above was not the only letter written that evening. At the hotel
where Lord and Lady Hartledon halted for the night, when she had retired
under convoy of her maid, then Val's restrained remorse broke out. He
paced the room in a sort of mad restlessness; in the midst of which he
suddenly sat down to a table on which lay pens, ink, and paper, and
poured forth hasty sentences in his mind's wretched tumult.
"My Dear Mrs. Ashton,
"I cannot address you in any more formal words, although you will have
reason to fling down the letter at my presuming to use these now--for
dear, most dear, you will ever be to me.
"What can I say? Why do I write to you? Indeed to the latter question I
can only answer I do not know, save that some instinct of good feeling,
not utterly dead within me, is urging me to it.
"Will you let me for a moment throw conventionality aside; will you for
that brief space of time let me speak truly and freely to you, as one
might speak who has passed the confines of this world?
"When a man behaves to a woman as I, to my eternal shame, have this day
behaved to Anne, it is, I think, a common custom to regard the false
man as having achieved a sort of triumph; to attribute somewhat of
humiliation to the other.
"Dear Mrs. Ashton, I cannot sleep until I have said to you that in my
case the very contrary is the fact. A more abject, humiliated man than
I stand at this hour in my own eyes never yet took his sins upon his
soul. Even you might be appeased if you could look into mine and see
its sense of degradation.
"That my punishment has already come home to me is only just; that I
shall have to conceal it from all the world, including my wife, will
not lessen its sting.
"I have this evening married Maude Kirton. I might tell you of unfair
play brought to bear upon me, of a positive assurance, apparently well
grounded, that Anne had entered into an engagement to wed another,
could I admit that these facts were any excuse for me. They are no
excuse; not the slightest palliation. My own yielding folly alone is
to blame, and I shall take shame to myself for ever.
"I write this to you as I might have written it to my own mother, were
she living; not as an expiation; only to tell of my pain; that I am not
utterly hardened; that I would sue on my knees for pardon, were it not
shut out from me by my own act. There is no pardon for such as I. When
you have torn it in pieces, you will, I trust, forget the writer.
"God bless you, dear Mrs. Ashton! God bless and comfort another who is
dear to you!--and believe me with true undying remorse your once
attached friend,
"Hartledon."
It was a curious letter to write; but men of Lord Hartledon's sensitive
temperament in regard to others' feelings often do strange things; things
the world at large would stare at in their inability to understand them.
The remorse might not have come home to him quite so soon as this, his
wedding-day, but for the inopportune appearance of Dr. Ashton in the
chapel, speaking those words that told home so forcibly. Such reproach
on these vacillating men inflicts a torture that burns into the heart
like living fire.
He sealed the letter, addressing it to Cannes; called a waiter, late as
it was, and desired him to post it. And then he walked about the room,
reflecting on the curse of his life--his besetting sin--irresolution. It
seemed almost an anomaly for _him_ to make resolves; but he did make one
then; that he would, with the help of Heaven, be a MAN from henceforth,
however it might crucify his sensitive feelings. And for the future, the
obligation he had that day taken upon himself he determined to fulfil to
his uttermost in all honour and love; to cherish his wife as he would
have cherished Anne Ashton. For the past--but Lord Hartledon rose up now
with a start. There was one item of that past he dared not glance at,
which did not, however, relate to Miss Ashton: and it appeared inclined
to thrust itself prominently forward to-night.
Could Lord Hartledon have borrowed somewhat of the easy indifference of
the countess-dowager, he had been a happier man. That lady would have
made a female Nero, enjoying herself while Rome was burning. She remained
on in her snug quarters at Hartledon, and lived in clover.
One evening, rather more than a week after the marriage, Hedges had been
on an errand to Calne, and was hastening home. In the lonely part of the
road near Hartledon, upon turning a sharp corner, he came upon Mirrable,
who was standing talking to Pike, very much to the butler's surprise.
Pike walked away at once; and the butler spoke.
"He is not an acquaintance of yours, that man, Mrs. Mirrable?"
"Indeed no," she answered, tossing her head. "It was like his impudence
to stop me. Rather flurried me too," she continued: and indeed Hedges
noticed that she seemed flurried.
"What did he stop you for? To beg?"
"Not that. I've never heard that he does beg. He accosted me with a cool
question as to when his lordship was coming back to Hartledon. I answered
that it could not be any business of his. And then you came up."
"He is uncommon curious as to my lord. I can't make it out. I've seen him
prowling about the grounds: and the night of the marriage he was mounted
up at the chapel window. Lord Hartledon saw him, too. I should like to
know what he wants."
"By a half-word he let drop, I fancy he has a crotchet in his head that
his lordship will find him some work when he comes home. But I must go on
my way," added Mirrable. "Mrs. Gum's not well, and I sent word I'd look
in for half-an-hour this evening."
Hedges had to go on his way also, for it was close upon the
countess-dowager's dinner-hour, at which ceremony he must attend. Putting
his best foot forward, he walked at more than an ordinary pace, and
overtook a gentleman almost at the very door of Hartledon. The stranger
was approaching the front entrance, Hedges was wheeling off to the back;
but the former turned and spoke. A tall, broad-shouldered, grey-haired
man, with high cheek-bones. Hedges took him for a clergyman from his
attire; black, with a white neckcloth.
"This is Hartledon House, I believe," he said, speaking with a Scotch
accent.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you belong to it?"
"I am Lord Hartledon's butler."
"Is Lord Hartledon at home?"
"No, sir. He is in France."
"I read a notice of his marriage in the public papers," continued the
stranger, whose eyes were fixed on Hedges. "It was, I suppose, a correct
one?"
"My lord was married the week before last: about ten or eleven days ago."
"Ay; April the fourteenth, the paper said. She is one of the Kirton
family. When do you expect him home?"
"I don't know at all, sir. I've not heard anything about it."
"He is in France, you say, Paris, I suppose. Can you furnish me with his
address?"
Up to this point the colloquy had proceeded smoothly on both sides: but
it suddenly flashed into the mind of Hedges that the stranger's manner
was somewhat mysterious, though in what the mystery lay he could not have
defined. The communicative man, true to the interests of his master,
became cautious at once: he supposed some of Lord Hartledon's worries,
contracted when he was Mr. Elster, were returning upon him.
"I cannot give his address, sir. And for the matter of that, it might not
be of use if I could. Lord and Lady Hartledon did not intend remaining
any length of time in one place."
The stranger had dug the point of his umbrella into the level greensward
that bounded the gravel, and swayed the handle about with his hand,
pausing in thought.
"I have come a long way to see Lord Hartledon," he observed. "It might be
less trouble and cost for me to go on to Paris and see him there, than to
start back for home, and come here again when he returns to England. Are
you sure you can't give me his address?"
"I'm very sorry I can't, sir. There was a talk of their going on to
Switzerland," continued Hedges, improvising the journey, "and so coming
back through Germany; and there _was_ a talk of their making Italy before
the heat came on, and stopping there. Any way, sir, I dare say they are
already away from Paris."
The stranger regarded Hedges attentively, rather to the discomfiture of
that functionary, who thought he was doubted. He then asked a great many
questions, some about Lord Hartledon's personal habits, some about Lady
Maude: the butler answered them freely or cautiously, as he thought he
might, feeling inclined all the while to chase the intruder off the
premises. Presently he turned his attention on the house.
"A fine old place, this, Mr. Butler."
"Yes, sir."
"I suppose I could look over it, if I wished?"
Hedges hesitated. He was privately asking himself whether the law would
allow the stranger, if he had come after any debt of Lord Hartledon's, to
refuse to leave the house, once he got into it.
"I could ask Lady Kirton, sir, if you particularly wished it."
"Lady Kirton? You have some one in the house, then!"
"The Dowager Lady Kirton's here, sir. One of her sons also--Captain
Kirton; but he is confined to his room."
"Then I would rather not go in," said the stranger quickly. "I'm very
disappointed to have come all this way and not find Lord Hartledon."
"Can I forward any letter for you, sir? If you'd like to intrust one to
me, I'll send it as soon as we know of any certain address."
"No--no, I think not," said the stranger, musingly. "There might be
danger," he muttered to himself, but Hedges caught the words.
He stood swaying the umbrella-handle about, looking down at it, as if
that would assist his decision. Then he looked at Hedges.
"My business with Lord Hartledon is quite private, and I would rather not
write. I'll wait until he is back in England: and see him then."
"What name, sir?" asked Hedges, as the stranger turned away.
"I would prefer not to leave my name," was the candid answer. "Good
evening."
He walked briskly down the avenue, and Hedges stood looking after him,
slightly puzzled in his mind.
"I don't believe it's a creditor; that I don't. He looks like a parson to
me. But it's some trouble though, if it's not debt. 'Danger' was the
word: 'there might be danger.' Danger in writing, he meant. Any way, I'm
glad he didn't go in to that ferreting old dowager. And whatever it may
be, his lordship's able to pay it now."