"ALL WITHIN IS DARK AS NIGHT."
Paul Marchmont did not leave Stony-Stringford Farmhouse till dusk upon
that bright summer's day; and the friendly twilight is slow to come in
the early days of July, however a man may loathe the sunshine. Paul
Marchmont stopped at the deserted farmhouse, wandering in and out of
the empty rooms, strolling listlessly about the neglected garden, or
coming to a dead stop sometimes, and standing stock-still for ten
minutes at a time, staring at the wall before him, and counting the
slimy traces of the snails upon the branches of a plum-tree, or the
flies in a spider's web. Paul Marchmont was afraid to leave that lonely
farmhouse. He was afraid as yet. He scarcely knew what he feared, for a
kind of stupor had succeeded the violent emotions of the past few
hours; and the time slipped by him, and his brain grew bewildered when
he tried to realise his position.
It was very difficult for him to do this. The calamity that had come
upon him was a calamity that he had never anticipated. He was a clever
man, and he had put his trust in his own cleverness. He had never
expected to be _found out_.
Until this hour everything had been in his favour. His dupes and
victims had played into his hands. Mary's grief, which had rendered her
a passive creature, utterly indifferent to her own fate,--her peculiar
education, which had taught her everything except knowledge of the
world in which she was to live,--had enabled Paul Marchmont to carry
out a scheme so infamous and daring that it was beyond the suspicion of
honest men, almost too base for the comprehension of ordinary villains.
He had never expected to be found out. All his plans had been
deliberately and carefully prepared. Immediately after Edward's
marriage and safe departure for the Continent, Paul had intended to
convey Mary and the child, with the grim attendant whom he had engaged
for them, far away, to one of the remotest villages in Wales.
Alone he would have done this; travelling by night, and trusting no
one; for the hired attendant knew nothing of Mary's real position. She
had been told that the girl was a poor relation of Paul's, and that her
story was a very sorrowful one. If the poor creature had strange
fancies and delusions, it was no more than might be expected; for she
had suffered enough to turn a stronger brain than her own. Everything
had been arranged, and so cleverly arranged, that Mary and the child
would disappear after dusk one summer's evening, and not even Lavinia
Weston would be told whither they had gone.
Paul had never expected to be found out. But he had least of all
expected betrayal from the quarter whence it had come. He had made
Olivia his tool; but he had acted cautiously even with her. He had
confided nothing to her; and although she had suspected some foul play
in the matter of Mary's disappearance, she had been certain of nothing.
She had uttered no falsehood when she swore to Edward Arundel that she
did not know where his wife was. But for her accidental discovery of
the secret of the pavilion, she would never have known of Mary's
existence after that October afternoon on which the girl left Marchmont
Towers.
But here Paul had been betrayed by the carelessness of the hired girl
who acted as Mary Arundel's gaoler and attendant. It was Olivia's habit
to wander often in that dreary wood by the water during the winter in
which Mary was kept prisoner in the pavilion over the boat-house.
Lavinia Weston and Paul Marchmont spent each of them a great deal of
their time in the pavilion; but they could not be always on guard
there. There was the world to be hoodwinked; and the surgeon's wife had
to perform all her duties as a matron before the face of Kemberling,
and had to give some plausible account of her frequent visits to the
boat-house. Paul liked the place for his painting, Mrs. Weston informed
her friends; and he was _so_ enthusiastic in his love of art, that it
was really a pleasure to participate in his enthusiasm; so she liked to
sit with him, and talk to him or read to him while he painted. This
explanation was quite enough for Kemberling; and Mrs. Weston went to
the pavilion at Marchmont Towers three or four times a week without
causing any scandal thereby.
But however well you may manage things yourself, it is not always easy
to secure the careful co-operation of the people you employ. Betsy
Murrel was a stupid, narrow-minded young person, who was very safe so
far as regarded the possibility of any sympathy with, or compassion
for, Mary Arundel arising in her stolid nature; but the stupid
stolidity which made her safe in one way rendered her dangerous in
another. One day, while Mrs. Weston was with the hapless young
prisoner, Miss Murrel went out upon the water-side to converse with a
good-looking young bargeman, who was a connexion of her family, and
perhaps an admirer of the young lady herself; and the door of the
painting-room being left wide open, Olivia Marchmont wandered
listlessly into the pavilion--there was a dismal fascination for her in
that spot, on which she had heard Edward Arundel declare his love for
John Marchmont's daughter--and heard Mary's voice in the chamber at the
top of the stone steps.
This was how Olivia had surprised Paul's secret; and from that hour it
had been the artist's business to rule this woman by the only weapon
which he possessed against her,--her own secret, her own weak folly,
her mad love of Edward Arundel and jealous hatred of the woman whom he
had loved. This weapon was a very powerful one, and Paul used it
unsparingly.
When the woman who, for seven-and-twenty years of her life, had lived
without sin; who from the hour in which she had been old enough to know
right from wrong, until Edward Arundel's second return from India, had
sternly done her duty,--when this woman, who little by little had
slipped away from her high standing-point and sunk down into a morass
of sin; when this woman remonstrated with Mr. Marchmont, he turned upon
her and lashed her with the scourge of her own folly.
"You come and upbraid me," he said, "and you call me villain and
arch-traitor, and say that you cannot abide this, your sin; and that
your guilt, in keeping our secret, cries to you in the dead hours of
the night; and you call upon me to undo what I have done, and to
restore Mary Marchmont to her rights. Do you remember what her highest
right is? Do you remember that which I must restore to her when I give
her back this house and the income that goes along with it? If I
restore Marchmont Towers, I must restore to her _Edward Arundel's
love!_ You have forgotten that, perhaps. If she ever re-enters this
house, she will come back to it leaning on his arm. You will see them
together--you will hear of their happiness; and do you think that _he_
will ever forgive you for your part of the conspiracy? Yes, it is a
conspiracy, if you like; if you are not afraid to call it by a hard
name, why should I fear to do so? Will he ever forgive you, do you
think, when he knows that his young wife has been the victim of a
senseless, vicious love? Yes, Olivia Marchmont; any love is vicious
which is given unsought, and is so strong a passion, so blind and
unreasoning a folly, that honour, mercy, truth, and Christianity are
trampled down before it. How will you endure Edward Arundel's contempt
for you? How will you tolerate his love for Mary, multiplied twentyfold
by all this romantic business of separation and persecution?
"You talk to me of my sin. Who was it who first sinned? Who was it who
drove Mary Marchmont from this house,--not once only, but twice, by her
cruelty? Who was it who persecuted her and tortured her day by day and
hour by hour, not openly, not with an uplifted hand or blows that could
be warded off, but by cruel hints and inuendoes, by unwomanly sneers
and hellish taunts? Look into your heart, Olivia Marchmont; and when
you make atonement for your sin, I will make restitution for mine. In
the meantime, if this business is painful to you, the way lies open
before you: go and take Edward Arundel to the pavilion yonder, and give
him back his wife; give the lie to all your past life, and restore
these devoted young lovers to each other's arms."
This weapon never failed in its effect. Olivia Marchmont might loathe
herself, and her sin, and her life, which was made hideous to her
because of her sin; but she _could_ not bring herself to restore Mary
to her lover-husband; she could not tolerate the idea of their
happiness. Every night she grovelled on her knees, and swore to her
offended God that she would do this thing, she would render this
sacrifice of atonement; but every morning, when her weary eyes opened
on the hateful sunlight, she cried, "Not to-day--not to-day."
Again and again, during Edward Arundel's residence at Kemberling
Retreat, she had set out from Marchmont Towers with the intention of
revealing to him the place where his young wife was hidden; but, again
and again, she had turned back and left her work undone. She _could_
not--she could not. In the dead of the night, under pouring rain, with
the bleak winds of winter blowing in her face, she had set out upon
that unfinished journey, only to stop midway, and cry out, "No, no,
no--not to-night; I cannot endure it yet!"
It was only when another and a fiercer jealousy was awakened in this
woman's breast, that she arose all at once, strong, resolute, and
undaunted, to do the work she had so miserably deferred. As one poison
is said to neutralise the evil power of another, so Olivia Marchmont's
jealousy of Belinda seemed to blot out and extinguish her hatred of
Mary. Better anything than that Edward Arundel should have a new, and
perhaps a fairer, bride. The jealous woman had always looked upon Mary
Marchmont as a despicable rival. Better that Edward should be tied to
this girl, than that he should rejoice in the smiles of a lovelier
woman, worthier of his affection. _This_ was the feeling paramount in
Olivia's breast, although she was herself half unconscious how entirely
this was the motive power which had given her new strength and
resolution. She tried to think that it was the awakening of her
conscience that had made her strong enough to do this one good work;
but in the semi-darkness of her own mind there was still a feeble
glimmer of the light of truth, and it was this that had prompted her to
cry out on her knees before the altar in Hillingsworth church, and
declare the sinfulness of her nature.
* * * * *
Paul Marchmont stopped several times before the ragged, untrimmed
fruit-trees in his purposeless wanderings in the neglected garden at
Stony Stringford, before the vaporous confusion cleared away from his
brain, and he was able to understand what had happened to him.
His first reasonable action was to take out his watch; but even then he
stood for some moments staring at the dial before he remembered why he
had taken the watch from his pocket, or what it was that he wanted to
know. By Mr. Marchmont's chronometer it was ten minutes past seven
o'clock; but the watch had been unwound upon the previous night, and
had run down. Paul put it back in his waistcoat-pocket, and then walked
slowly along the weedy pathway to that low latticed window in which he
had often seen Mary Arundel standing with her child in her arms. He
went to this window and looked in, with his face against the glass. The
room was neat and orderly now; for the woman whom Mr. Marchmont had
hired had gone about her work as usual, and was in the act of filling a
little brown earthenware teapot from a kettle on the hob when Paul
stared in at her.
She looked up as Mr. Marchmont's figure came between her and the light,
and nearly dropped the little brown teapot in her terror of her
offended employer.
But Paul pulled open the window, and spoke to her very quietly. "Stop
where you are," he said; "I want to speak to you. I'll come in."
He went into the house by a door, that had once been the front and
principal entrance, which opened into a low wainscoted hall. From this
room he went into the parlour, which had been Mary Arundel's apartment,
and in which the hired nurse was now preparing her breakfast. "I
thought I might as well get a cup of tea, sir, whiles I waited for your
orders," the woman murmured, apologetically; "for bein' knocked up so
early this morning, you see, sir, has made my head _that_ bad, I could
scarcely bear myself; and----"
Paul lifted his hand to stop the woman's talk, as he had done before.
He had no consciousness of what she was saying, but the sound of her
voice pained him. His eyebrows contracted with a spasmodic action, as
if something had hurt his head.
There was a Dutch clock in the corner of the room, with a long pendulum
swinging against the wall. By this clock it was half-past eight.
"Is your clock right?" Paul asked.
"Yes, sir. Leastways, it may be five minutes too slow, but not more."
Mr. Marchmont took out his watch, wound it up, and regulated it by the
Dutch clock.
"Now," he said, "perhaps you can tell me clearly what happened. I want
no excuses, remember; I only want to know what occurred, and what was
said--word for word, remember."
He sat down but got up again directly, and walked to the window; then
he paced up and down the room two or three times, and then went back to
the fireplace and sat down again. He was like a man who, in the racking
torture of some physical pain, finds a miserable relief in his own
restlessness.
"Come," he said; "I am waiting."
"Yes, sir; which, begging your parding, if you wouldn't mind sitting
still like, while I'm a-telling of you, which it do remind me of the
wild beastes in the Zoological, sir, to that degree, that the boil, to
which I am subjeck, sir, and have been from a child, might prevent me
bein' as truthful as I should wish. Mrs. Marchmont, sir, she come
before it was light, _in_ a cart, sir, which it was a shaycart, and
made comfortable with cushions and straw, and suchlike, or I should not
have let the young lady go away in it; and she bring with her a
respectable, homely-looking young person, which she call Hester Jobling
or Gobson, or somethink of that sound like, which my memory is
treechrous, and I don't wish to tell a story on no account; and Mrs.
Marchmont she go straight up to my young lady, and she shakes her by
the shoulder; and then the young woman called Hester, she wakes up my
young lady quite gentle like, and kisses her and cries over her; and a
man as drove the cart, which looked a small tradesman well-to-do,
brings his trap round to the front-door,--you may see the trax of the
wheels upon the gravel now, sir, if you disbelieve me. And Mrs.
Marchmont and the young woman called Hester, between 'em they gets my
young lady up, and dresses her, and dresses the child; and does it all
so quick, and overrides me to such a degree, that I hadn't no power to
prevent 'em; but I say to Mrs. Marchmont, I say: 'Is it Mr. Marchmont's
orders as his cousin should be took away this morning?' and she stare
at me hard, and say, 'Yes;' and she have allus an abrumpt way, but was
abrumpter than ordinary this morning. And, oh sir, bein' a poor lone
woman, what was I to do?"
"Have you nothing more to tell me?"
"Nothing, sir; leastways, except as they lifted my young lady into the
cart, and the man got in after 'em, and drove away as fast as his horse
would go; and they had been gone two minutes when I began to feel all
in a tremble like, for fear as I might have done wrong in lettin' of
'em go."
"You have done wrong," Paul answered, sternly; "but no matter. If these
officious friends of my poor weak-witted cousin choose to take her
away, so much the better for me, who have been burdened with her long
enough. Since your charge has gone, your services are no longer wanted.
I shan't act illiberally to you, though I am very much annoyed by your
folly and stupidity. Is there anything due to you?"
Mrs. Brown hesitated for a moment, and then replied, in a very
insinuating tone,--
"Not _wages_, sir; there ain't no _wages_ doo to me,--which you paid me
a quarter in advance last Saturday was a week, and took a receipt, sir,
for the amount. But I have done my dooty, sir, and had but little sleep
and rest, which my 'ealth ain't what it was when I answered your
advertisement, requirin' a respectable motherly person, to take charge
of a invalid lady, not objectin' to the country--which I freely tell
you, sir, if I'd known that the country was a rheumatic old place like
this, with rats enough to scare away a regyment of soldiers, I would
not have undertook the situation; so any present as you might think
sootable, considerin' all things, and----"
"That will do," said Paul Marchmont, taking a handful of loose money
from his waistcoat pocket; "I suppose a ten-pound note would satisfy
you?"
"Indeed it would, sir, and very liberal of you too----"
"Very well. I've got a five-pound note here, and five sovereigns. The
best thing you can do is to get back to London at once; there's a train
leaves Milsome Station at eleven o'clock--Milsome's not more than a
mile and a half from here. You can get your things together; there's a
boy about the place who will carry them for you, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir; there's a boy by the name of William."
"He can go with you, then; and if you look sharp, you can catch the
eleven-o'clock train."
"Yes, sir; and thank you kindly, sir."
"I don't want any thanks. See that you don't miss the train; that's all
you have to take care of."
Mr. Marchmont went out into the garden again. He had done something, at
any rate; he had arranged for getting this woman out of the way.
If--if by any remote chance there might be yet a possibility of keeping
the secret of Mary's existence, here was one witness already got rid
of.
But was there any chance? Mr. Marchmont sat down on a rickety old
garden-seat, and tried to think--tried to take a deliberate survey of
his position.
No; there was no hope for him. Look which way he could, there was not
one ray of light. With George Weston and Olivia, Betsy Murrel the
servant-girl, and Hester Jobson to bear witness against him, what could
he hope?
The surgeon would be able to declare that the child was Mary's son, her
legitimate son, sole heir to that estate of which Paul had taken
possession.
There was no hope. There was no possibility that Olivia should waver in
her purpose; for had she not brought with her two witnesses--Hester
Jobson and her husband?
From that moment the case was taken out of her hands. The honest
carpenter and his wife would see that Mary had her rights.
"It will be a glorious speculation for them," thought Paul Marchmont,
who naturally measured other people's characters by a standard derived
from an accurate knowledge of his own.
Yes, his ruin was complete. Destruction had come upon him, swift and
sudden as the caprice of a madwoman--or--the thunderbolt of an offended
Providence. What should he do? Run away, sneak away by back-lanes and
narrow footpaths to the nearest railway-station, hide himself in a
third-class carriage going Londonwards, and from London get away to
Liverpool, to creep on board some emigrant vessel bound for New York?
He could not even do this, for he was without the means of getting so
much as the railway-ticket that should carry him on the first stage of
his flight. After having given ten pounds to Mrs. Brown, he had only a
few shillings in his waistcoat-pocket. He had only one article of any
great value about him, and that was his watch, which had cost fifty
pounds. But the Marchmont arms were emblazoned on the outside of the
case; and Paul's name in full, and the address of Marchmont Towers,
were ostentatiously engraved inside, so that any attempt to dispose of
the watch must inevitably lead to the identification of the owner.
Paul Marchmont had made no provision for this evil day. Supreme in the
consciousness of his own talents, he had never imagined discovery and
destruction. His plans had been so well arranged. On the very day after
Edward's second marriage, Mary and her child would have been conveyed
away to the remotest district in Wales; and the artist would have
laughed at the idea of danger. The shallowest schemer might have been
able to manage this poor broken-hearted girl, whose many sorrows had
brought her to look upon life as a thing which was never meant to be
joyful, and which was only to be endured patiently, like some slow
disease that would be surely cured in the grave. It had been so easy to
deal with this ignorant and gentle victim that Paul had grown bold and
confident, and had ignored the possibility of such ruin as had now come
down upon him.
What was he to do? What was the nature of his crime, and what penalty
had he incurred? He tried to answer these questions; but as his offence
was of no common kind, he knew of no common law which could apply to
it. Was it a felony, this appropriation of another person's property,
this concealment of another person's existence; or was it only a
conspiracy, amenable to no criminal law; and would he be called upon
merely to make restitution of that which he had spent and wasted? What
did it matter? Either way, there was nothing for him but
ruin--irretrievable ruin.
There are some men who can survive discovery and defeat, and begin a
new life in a new world, and succeed in a new career. But Paul
Marchmont was not one of these. He could not stick a hunting-knife and
a brace of revolvers in his leathern belt, sling a game-bag across his
shoulders, take up his breech-loading rifle, and go out into the
backwoods of an uncivilised country, to turn sheep-breeder, and hold
his own against a race of agricultural savages. He was a Cockney, and
for him there was only one world--a world in which men wore varnished
boots and enamelled shirt-studs with portraits of La Montespan or La
Dubarry, and lived in chambers in the Albany, and treated each other to
little dinners at Greenwich and Richmond, or cut a grand figure at a
country-house, and collected a gallery of art and a museum of _bric a
brac_. This was the world upon the outer edge of which Paul Marchmont
had lived so long, looking in at the brilliant inhabitants with hungry,
yearning eyes through all the days of his poverty and obscurity. This
was the world into which he had pushed himself at last by means of a
crime.
He was forty years of age; and in all his life he had never had but one
ambition,--and that was to be master of Marchmont Towers. The remote
chance of that inheritance had hung before him ever since his boyhood,
a glittering prize, far away in the distance, but so brilliant as to
blind him to the brightness of all nearer chances. Why should he slave
at his easel, and toil to become a great painter? When would art earn
him eleven thousand a year? The greatest painter of Mr. Marchmont's
time lived in a miserable lodging at Chelsea. It was before the days of
the "Railway Station" and the "Derby Day;" or perhaps Paul might have
made an effort to become that which Heaven never meant him to be--a
great painter. No; art was only a means of living with this man. He
painted, and sold his pictures to his few patrons, who beat him down
unmercifully, giving him a small profit upon his canvas and colours,
for the encouragement of native art; but he only painted to live.
He was waiting. From the time when he could scarcely speak plain,
Marchmont Towers had been a familiar word in his ears and on his lips.
He knew the number of lives that stood between his father and the
estate, and had learned to say, naively enough then,--
"O pa, don't you wish that Uncle Philip and Uncle Marmaduke and Cousin
John would die soon?"
He was two-and-twenty years of age when his father died; and he felt a
faint thrill of satisfaction, even in the midst of his sorrow, at the
thought that there was one life the less between him and the end of his
hopes. But other lives had sprung up in the interim. There was young
Arthur, and little Mary; and Marchmont Towers was like a caravanserai
in the desert, which seems to be farther and farther away as the weary
traveller strives to reach it.
Still Paul hoped, and watched, and waited. He had all the instincts of
a sybarite, and he fancied, therefore, that he was destined to be a
rich man. He watched, and waited, and hoped, and cheered his mother and
sister when they were downcast with the hope of better days. When the
chance came, he seized upon it, and plotted, and succeeded, and
revelled in his brief success.
But now ruin had come to him, what was he to do? He tried to make some
plan for his own conduct; but he could not. His brain reeled with the
effort which he made to realise his own position.
He walked up and down one of the pathways in the garden until a quarter
to ten o'clock; then he went into the house, and waited till Mrs. Brown
had departed from Stony-Stringford Farm, attended by the boy, who
carried two bundles, a bandbox, and a carpet-bag.
"Come back here when you have taken those things to the station," Paul
said; "I shall want you."
He watched the dilapidated five-barred gate swing to after the
departure of Mrs. Brown and her attendant, and then went to look at his
horse. The patient animal had been standing in a shed all this time,
and had had neither food nor water. Paul searched amongst the empty
barns and outhouses, and found a few handfuls of fodder. He took this
to the animal, and then went back again to the garden,--to that quiet
garden, where the bees were buzzing about in the sunshine with a
drowsy, booming sound, and where a great tabby-cat was sleeping
stretched flat upon its side, on one of the flower-beds.
Paul Marchmont waited here very impatiently till the boy came back.
"I must see Lavinia," he thought. "I dare not leave this place till I
have seen Lavinia. I don't know what may be happening at Hillingsworth
or Kemberling. These things are taken up sometimes by the populace.
They may make a party against me; they may--"
He stood still, gnawing the edges of his nails, and staring down at the
gravel-walk.
He was thinking of things that he had read in the newspapers,--cases in
which some cruel mother who had illused her child, or some suspected
assassin who, in all human probability, had poisoned his wife, had been
well-nigh torn piecemeal by an infuriated mob, and had been glad to
cling for protection to the officers of justice, or to beg leave to
stay in prison after acquittal, for safe shelter from honest men and
women's indignation.
He remembered one special case in which the populace, unable to get at
a man's person, tore down his house, and vented their fury upon
unsentient bricks and mortar.
Mr. Marchmont took out a little memorandum book, and scrawled a few
lines in pencil:
"I am here, at Stony-Stringford Farmhouse," he wrote. "For God's sake,
come to me, Lavinia, and at once; you can drive here yourself. I want
to know what has happened at Kemberling and at Hillingsworth. Find out
everything for me, and come. P. M."
It was nearly twelve o'clock when the boy returned. Paul gave him this
letter, and told the lad to get on his own horse, and ride to
Kemberling as fast as he could go. He was to leave the horse at
Kemberling, in Mr. Weston's stable, and was to come back to
Stony-Stringford with Mrs. Weston. This order Paul particularly
impressed upon the boy, lest he should stop in Kemberling, and reveal
the secret of Paul's hiding-place.
Mr. Paul Marchmont was afraid. A terrible sickening dread had taken
possession of him, and what little manliness there had ever been in his
nature seemed to have deserted him to-day.
Oh, the long dreary hours of that miserable day! the hideous sunshine,
that scorched Mr. Marchmont's bare head, as he loitered about the
garden!--he had left his hat in the house; but he did not even know
that he was bareheaded. Oh, the misery of that long day of suspense and
anguish! The sick consciousness of utter defeat, the thought of the
things that he might have done, the purse that he might have made with
the money that he had lavished on pictures, and decorations, and
improvements, and the profligate extravagance of splendid
entertainments. This is what he thought of, and these were the thoughts
that tortured him. But in all that miserable day he never felt one pang
of remorse for the agonies that he had inflicted upon his innocent
victim; on the contrary, he hated her because of this discovery, and
gnashed his teeth as he thought how she and her young husband would
enjoy all the grandeur of Marchmont Towers,--all that noble revenue
which he had hoped to hold till his dying day.
It was growing dusk when Mr. Marchmont heard the sound of wheels in the
dusty lane outside the garden-wall. He went through the house, and into
the farmyard, in time to receive his sister Lavinia at the gate. It was
the wheels of her pony-carriage he had heard. She drove a pair of
ponies, which Paul had given her. He was angry with himself as he
remembered that this was another piece of extravagance,--another sum of
money recklessly squandered, when it might have gone towards the making
of a rich provision for this evil day.
Mrs. Weston was very pale; and her brother could see by her face that
she brought him no good news. She left her ponies to the care of the
boy, and went into the garden with her brother.
"Well, Lavinia?"
"Well, Paul, it is a dreadful business," Mrs. Weston said, in a low
voice.
"It's all George's doing! It's all the work of that infernal
scoundrel!" cried Paul, passionately. "But he shall pay bitterly
for----"
"Don't let us talk of him, Paul; no good can come of that. What are you
going to do?"
"I don't know. I sent for you because I wanted your help and advice.
What's the good of your coming if you bring me no help?"
"Don't be cruel, Paul. Heaven knows, I'll do my best. But I can't see
what's to be done--except for you to get away, Paul. Everything's
known. Olivia stopped the marriage publicly in Hillingsworth Church;
and all the Hillingsworth people followed Edward Arundel's carriage to
Kemberling. The report spread like wildfire; and, oh Paul, the
Kemberling people have taken it up, and our windows have been broken,
and there's been a crowd all day upon the terrace before the Towers,
and they've tried to get into the house, declaring that they know
you're hiding somewhere. Paul, Paul, what are we to do? The people
hooted after me as I drove away from the High Street, and the boys
threw stones at the ponies. Almost all the servants have left the
Towers. The constables have been up there trying to get the crowd off
the terrace. But what are we to do, Paul? what are we to do?"
"Kill ourselves," answered the artist savagely. "What else should we
do? What have we to live for? You have a little money, I suppose; I
have none. Do you think I can go back to the old life? Do you think I
can go back, and live in that shabby house in Charlotte Street, and
paint the same rocks and boulders, the same long stretch of sea, the
same low lurid streaks of light,--all the old subjects over again,--for
the same starvation prices? Do you think I can ever tolerate shabby
clothes again, or miserable make-shift dinners,--hashed mutton, with
ill-cut hunks of lukewarm meat floating about in greasy slop called
gravy, and washed down with flat porter fetched half an hour too soon
from a public-house,--do you think I can go back to _that_? No; I have
tasted the wine of life: I have lived; and I'll never go back to the
living death called poverty. Do you think I can stand in that passage
in Charlotte Street again, Lavinia, to be bullied by an illiterate
tax-gatherer, or insulted by an infuriated baker? No, Lavinia; I have
made my venture, and I have failed."
"But what will you do, Paul?"
"I don't know," he answered, moodily.
This was a lie. He knew well enough what he meant to do: he would kill
himself.
That resolution inspired him with a desperate kind of courage. He would
escape from the mob; he would get away somewhere or other quietly and
there kill himself. He didn't know how, as yet; but he would deliberate
upon that point at his leisure, and choose the death that was supposed
to be least painful.
"Where are my mother and Clarissa?" he asked presently.
"They are at our house; they came to me directly they heard the rumour
of what had happened. I don't know how they heard it; but every one
heard of it, simultaneously, as it seemed. My mother is in a dreadful
state. I dared not tell her that I had known it all along."
"Oh, of course not," answered Paul, with a sneer; "let me bear the
burden of my guilt alone. What did my mother say?"
"She kept saying again and again, 'I can't believe it. I can't believe
that he could do anything cruel; he has been such a good son.'"
"I was not cruel," Paul cried vehemently; "the girl had every comfort.
I never grudged money for her comfort. She was a miserable, apathetic
creature, to whom fortune was almost a burden rather than an advantage.
If I separated her from her husband--bah!--was that such a cruelty? She
was no worse off than if Edward Arundel had been killed in that railway
accident; and it might have been so."
He didn't waste much time by reasoning on this point. He thought of his
mother and sisters. From first to last he had been a good son and a
good brother.
"What money have you, Lavinia?"
"A good deal; you have been very generous to me, Paul; and you shall
have it all back again, if you want it. I have got upwards of two
thousand pounds altogether; for I have been very careful of the money
you have given me."
"You have been wise. Now listen to me, Lavinia. I _have_ been a good
son, and I have borne my burdens uncomplainingly. It is your turn now
to bear yours. I must get back to Marchmont Towers, if I can, and
gather together whatever personal property I have there. It isn't
much--only a few trinkets, and suchlike. You must send me some one you
can trust to fetch those to-night; for I shall not stay an hour in the
place. I may not even be admitted into it; for Edward Arundel may have
already taken possession in his wife's name. Then you will have to
decide where you are to go. You can't stay in this part of the country.
Weston must be liable to some penalty or other for his share in the
business, unless he's bought over as a witness to testify to the
identity of Mary's child. I haven't time to think of all this. I want
you to promise me that you will take care of your mother and your
invalid sister."
"I will, Paul; I will indeed. But tell me what you are going to do
yourself, and where you are going?"
"I don't know," Paul Marchmont answered, in the same tone as before;
"but whatever I do, I want you to give me your solemn promise that you
will be good to my mother and sister."
"I will, Paul; I promise you to do as you have done."
"You had better leave Kemberling by the first train to-morrow morning;
take my mother and Clarissa with you; take everything that is worth
taking, and leave Weston behind you to bear the brunt of this business.
You can get a lodging in the old neighbourhood, and no one will molest
you when you once get away from this place. But remember one thing,
Lavinia: if Mary Arundel's child should die, and Mary herself should
die childless, Clarissa will inherit Marchmont Towers. Don't forget
that. There's a chance yet for you: it's far away, and unlikely enough;
but it _is_ a chance."
"But you are more likely to outlive Mary and her child than Clarissa
is," Mrs. Weston answered, with a feeble attempt at hopefulness; "try
and think of that, Paul, and let the hope cheer you."
"Hope!" cried Mr. Marchmont, with a discordant laugh. "Yes; I'm forty
years old, and for five-and-thirty of those years I've hoped and waited
for Marchmont Towers. I can't hope any longer, or wait any longer. I
give it up; I've fought hard, but I'm beaten."
It was nearly dark by this time, the shadowy darkness of a midsummer's
evening; and there were stars shining faintly out of the sky.
"You can drive me back to the Towers," Paul Marchmont said. "I don't
want to lose any time in getting there; I may be locked out by Mr.
Edward Arundel if I don't take care."
Mrs. Weston and her brother went back to the farmyard. It was sixteen
miles from Kemberling to Stony Stringford; and the ponies were
steaming, for Lavinia had come at a good rate. But it was no time for
the consideration of horseflesh. Paul took a rug from the empty seat,
and wrapped himself in it. He would not be likely to be recognised in
the darkness, sitting back in the low seat, and made bulky by the
ponderous covering in which he had enveloped himself. Mrs. Weston took
the whip from the boy, gathered up the reins, and drove off. Paul had
left no orders about the custody of the old farmhouse. The boy went
home to his master, at the other end of the farm; and the night-winds
wandered wherever they listed through the deserted habitation.