THERE IS CONFUSION WORSE THAN DEATH.
The brother and sister exchanged very few words during the drive
between Stony Stringford and Marchmont Towers. It was arranged between
them that Mrs. Weston should drive by a back-way leading to a lane that
skirted the edge of the river, and that Paul should get out at a gate
opening into the wood, and by that means make his way, unobserved, to
the house which had so lately been to all intents and purposes his own.
He dared not attempt to enter the Towers by any other way; for the
indignant populace might still be lurking about the front of the house,
eager to inflict summary vengeance upon the persecutor of a helpless
girl.
It was between nine and ten o'clock when Mr. Marchmont got out at the
little gate. All here was very still; and Paul heard the croaking of
the frogs upon the margin of a little pool in the wood, and the sound
of horses' hoofs a mile away upon the loose gravel by the water-side.
"Good night, Lavinia," he said. "Send for the things as soon as you go
back; and be sure you send a safe person for them."
"O yes, dear; but hadn't you better take any thing of value yourself?"
Mrs. Weston asked anxiously. "You say you have no money. Perhaps it
would be best for you to send me the jewellery, though, and I can send
you what money you want by my messenger."
"I shan't want any money--at least I have enough for what I want. What
have you done with your savings?"
"They are in a London bank. But I have plenty of ready money in the
house. You must want money, Paul?"
"I tell you, no; I have as much as I want."
"But tell me your plans, Paul; I must know your plans before I leave
Lincolnshire myself. Are _you_ going away?"
"Yes."
"Immediately?"
"Immediately."
"Shall you go to London?"
"Perhaps. I don't know yet."
"But when shall we see you again, Paul? or how shall we hear of you?"
"I'll write to you."
"Where?"
"At the Post-office in Rathbone Place. Don't bother me with a lot of
questions to-night Lavinia; I'm not in the humour to answer them."
Paul Marchmont turned away from his sister impatiently, and opened the
gate; but before she had driven off, he went back to her.
"Shake hands, Lavinia," he said; "shake hands, my dear; it may be a
long time before you and I meet again."
He bent down and kissed his sister.
"Drive home as fast as you can, and send the messenger directly. He had
better come to the door of the lobby, near Olivia's room. Where is
Olivia, by-the-bye? Is she still with the stepdaughter she loves so
dearly?"
"No; she went to Swampington early in the afternoon. A fly was ordered
from the Black Bull, and she went away in it."
"So much the better," answered Mr. Marchmont. "Good night, Lavinia.
Don't let my mother think ill of me. I tried to do the best I could to
make her happy. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, dear Paul; God bless you!"
The blessing was invoked with as much sincerity as if Lavinia Weston
had been a good woman, and her brother a good man. Perhaps neither of
those two was able to realise the extent of the crime which they had
assisted each other to commit.
Mrs. Weston drove away; and Paul went up to the back of the Towers, and
under an archway leading into the quadrangle. All about the house was
as quiet as if the Sleeping Beauty and her court had been its only
occupants.
The inhabitants of Kemberling and the neighbourhood were an orderly
people, who burnt few candles between May and September; and however
much they might have desired to avenge Mary Arundel's wrongs by tearing
Paul Marchmont to pieces, their patience had been exhausted by
nightfall, and they had been glad to return to their respective abodes,
to discuss Paul's iniquities comfortably over the nine-o'clock beer.
Paul stood still in the quadrangle for a few moments, and listened. He
could hear no human breath or whisper; he only heard the sound of the
corn-crake in the fields to the right of the Towers, and the distant
rumbling of wagon-wheels on the high-road. There was a glimmer of light
in one of the windows belonging to the servants' offices,--only one dim
glimmer, where there had usually been a row of brilliantly-lighted
casements. Lavinia was right, then; almost all the servants had left
the Towers. Paul tried to open the half-glass door leading into the
lobby; but it was locked. He rang a bell; and after about three
minutes' delay, a buxom country-girl appeared in the lobby carrying a
candle. She was some kitchenmaid or dairymaid or scullerymaid, whom
Paul could not remember to have ever seen until now. She opened the
door, and admitted him, dropping a curtsey as he passed her. There was
some relief even in this. Mr. Marchmont had scarcely expected to get
into the house at all; still less to be received with common civility
by any of the servants, who had so lately obeyed him and fawned upon
him.
"Where are all the rest of the servants?" he asked.
"They're all gone, sir; except him as you brought down from
London,--Mr. Peterson,--and me and mother. Mother's in the laundry,
sir; and I'm scullerymaid."
"Why did the other servants leave the place?"
"Mostly because they was afraid of the mob upon the terrace, I think,
sir; for there's been people all the afternoon throwin' stones, and
breakin' the windows; and I don't think as there's a whole pane of
glass in the front of the house, sir; and Mr. Gormby, sir, he come
about four o'clock, and he got the people to go away, sir, by tellin'
'em as it wern't your property, sir, but the young lady's, Miss Mary
Marchmont,--leastways, Mrs. Airendale,--as they was destroyin' of; but
most of the servants had gone before that, sir, except Mr. Peterson;
and Mr. Gormby gave orders as me and mother was to lock all the doors,
and let no one in upon no account whatever; and he's coming to-morrow
mornin' to take possession, he says; and please, sir, you can't come
in; for his special orders to me and mother was, no one, and you in
particklar."
"Nonsense, girl!" exclaimed Mr. Marchmont, decisively; "who is Mr.
Gormby, that he should give orders as to who comes in or stops out? I'm
only coming in for half an hour, to pack my portmanteau. Where's
Peterson?"
"In the dinin'-room, sir; but please, sir, you mustn't----"
The girl made a feeble effort to intercept Mr. Marchmont, in accordance
with the steward's special orders; which were, that Paul should, upon
no pretence whatever, be suffered to enter the house. But the artist
snatched the candlestick from her hand, and went towards the
dining-room, leaving her to stare after him in amazement.
Paul found his valet Peterson, taking what he called a snack, in the
dining-room. A cloth was spread upon the corner of the table; and there
was a fore-quarter of cold roast-lamb, a bottle of French brandy, and a
decanter half-full of Madeira before the valet.
He started as his master entered the room, and looked up, not very
respectfully, but with no unfriendly glance.
"Give me half a tumbler of that brandy, Peterson," said Mr. Marchmont.
The man obeyed; and Paul drained the fiery spirit as if it had been so
much water. It was four-and-twenty hours since meat or drink had
crossed his dry white lips.
"Why didn't you go away with the rest?" he asked, as he set down the
empty glass.
"It's only rats, sir, that run away from a falling house. I stopped,
thinkin' you'd be goin' away somewhere, and that you'd want me."
The solid and unvarnished truth of the matter was, that Peterson had
taken it for granted that his master had made an excellent purse
against this evil day, and would be ready to start for the Continent or
America, there to lead a pleasant life upon the proceeds of his
iniquity. The valet never imagined his master guilty of such besotted
folly as to be _un_prepared for this catastrophe.
"I thought you might still want me, sir," he said; "and wherever you're
going, I'm quite ready to go too. You've been a good master to me, sir;
and I don't want to leave a good master because things go against him."
Paul Marchmont shook his head, and held out the empty tumbler for his
servant to pour more brandy into it.
"I am going away," he said; "but I want no servant where I'm going; but
I'm grateful to you for your offer, Peterson. Will you come upstairs
with me? I want to pack a few things."
"They're all packed, sir. I knew you'd be leaving, and I've packed
everything."
"My dressing-case?"
"Yes, sir. You've got the key of that."
"Yes; I know, I know."
Paul Marchmont was silent for a few minutes, thinking. Everything that
he had in the way of personal property of any value was in the
dressing-case of which he had spoken. There was five or six hundred
pounds' worth of jewellery in Mr. Marchmont's dressing-case; for the
first instinct of the _nouveau riche_ exhibits itself in diamond
shirt-studs, cameo rings, malachite death's-heads with emerald eyes;
grotesque and pleasing charms in the form of coffins, coal-scuttles,
and hobnailed boots; fantastical lockets of ruby and enamel; wonderful
bands of massive yellow gold, studded with diamonds, wherein to insert
the two ends of flimsy lace cravats. Mr. Marchmont reflected upon the
amount of his possessions, and their security in the jewel-drawer of
his dressing-case. The dressing-case was furnished with a Chubb's lock,
the key of which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket. Yes, it was all
safe.
"Look here, Peterson," said Paul Marchmont; "I think I shall sleep at
Mrs. Weston's to-night. I should like you to take my dressing-case down
there at once."
"And how about the other luggage, sir,--the portmanteaus and
hat-boxes?"
"Never mind those. I want you to put the dressing-case safe in my
sister's hands. I can send here for the rest to-morrow morning. You
needn't wait for me now. I'll follow you in half an hour."
"Yes, sir. You want the dressing-case carried to Mrs. Weston's house,
and I'm to wait for you there?"
"Yes; you can wait for me."
"But is there nothing else I can do, sir?"
"Nothing whatever. I've only got to collect a few papers, and then I
shall follow you."
"Yes, sir."
The discreet Peterson bowed, and retired to fetch the dressing-case. He
put his own construction upon Mr. Marchmont's evident desire to get rid
of him, and to be left alone at the Towers. Paul had, of course, made a
purse, and had doubtless put his money away in some very artful
hiding-place, whence he now wanted to take it at his leisure. He had
stuffed one of his pillows with bank-notes, perhaps; or had hidden a
cash-box behind the tapestry in his bedchamber; or had buried a bag of
gold in the flower-garden below the terrace. Mr. Peterson went upstairs
to Paul's dressing-room, put his hand through the strap of the
dressing-case, which was very heavy, went downstairs again, met his
master in the hall, and went out at the lobby-door.
Paul locked the door upon his valet, and then went back into the lonely
house, where the ticking of the clocks in the tenantless rooms sounded
unnaturally loud in the stillness. All the windows had been broken; and
though the shutters were shut, the cold night-air blew in at many a
crack and cranny, and well-nigh extinguished Mr. Marchmont's candle as
he went from room to room looking about him.
He went into the western drawing-room, and lighted some of the lamps in
the principal chandelier. The shutters were shut, for the windows here,
as well as elsewhere, had been broken; fragments of shivered glass,
great jagged stones, and handfuls of gravel, lay about upon the rich
carpet,--the velvet-pile which he had chosen with such artistic taste,
such careful deliberation. He lit the lamps and walked about the room,
looking for the last time at his treasures. Yes, _his_ treasures. It
was he who had transformed this chamber from a prim, old-fashioned
sitting-room--with quaint japanned cabinets, shabby chintz-cushioned
cane-chairs, cracked Indian vases, and a faded carpet--into a saloon
that would have been no discredit to Buckingham Palace or Alton Towers.
It was he who had made the place what it was. He had squandered the
savings of Mary's minority upon pictures that the richest collector in
England might have been proud to own; upon porcelain that would have
been worthy of a place in the Vienna Museum or the Bernal Collection.
He had done this, and these things were to pass into the possession of
the man he hated,--the fiery young soldier who had horsewhipped him
before the face of wondering Lincolnshire. He walked about the room,
thinking of his life since he had come into possession of this place,
and of what it had been before that time, and what it must be again,
unless he summoned up a desperate courage--and killed himself.
His heart beat fast and loud, and he felt an icy chill creeping slowly
through his every vein as he thought of this. How was he to kill
himself? He had no poison in his possession,--no deadly drug that would
reduce the agony of death to the space of a lightning-flash. There were
pistols, rare gems of choicest workmanship, in one of the buhl-cabinets
in that very room; there were both fowling-piece and ammunition in Mr.
Marchmont's dressing-room: but the artist was not expert with the use
of firearms, and he might fail in the attempt to blow out his brains,
and only maim or disfigure himself hideously. There was the river,--the
black, sluggish river: but then, drowning is a slow death, and Heaven
only knows how long the agony may seem to the wretch who endures it!
Alas! the ghastly truth of the matter is that Mr. Marchmont was afraid
of death. Look at the King of Terrors how he would, he could not
discover any pleasing aspect under which he could meet the grim monarch
without flinching.
He looked at life; but if life was less terrible than death, it was not
less dreary. He looked forward with a shudder to see--what?
Humiliation, disgrace, perhaps punishment,--life-long transportation,
it may be; for this base conspiracy might be a criminal offence,
amenable to criminal law. Or, escaping all this, what was there for
him? What was there for this man even then? For forty years he had been
steeped to the lips in poverty, and had endured his life. He looked
back now, and wondered how it was that he had been patient; he wondered
why he had not made an end of himself and his obscure troubles twenty
years before this night. But after looking back a little longer, he saw
the star which had illumined the darkness of that miserable and sordid
existence, and he understood the reason of his endurance. He had hoped.
Day after day he had got up to go through the same troubles, to endure
the same humiliations: but every day, when his life had been hardest to
him, he had said, "To-morrow I may be master of Marchmont Towers." But
he could never hope this any more; he could not go back to watch and
wait again, beguiled by the faint hope that Mary Arundel's son might
die, and to hear by-and-by that other children were born to her to
widen the great gulf betwixt him and fortune.
He looked back, and he saw that he had lived from day to day, from year
to year, lured on by this one hope. He looked forward, and he saw that
he could not live without it.
There had never been but this one road to good fortune open to him. He
was a clever man, but his was not the cleverness which can transmute
itself into solid cash. He could only paint indifferent pictures; and
he had existed long enough by picture-painting to realise the utter
hopelessness of success in that career.
He had borne his life while he was in it, but he could not bear to go
back to it. He had been out of it, and had tasted another phase of
existence; and he could see it all now plainly, as if he had been a
spectator sitting in the boxes and watching a dreary play performed
upon a stage before him. The performers in the remotest provincial
theatre believe in the play they are acting. The omnipotence of passion
creates dewy groves and moonlit atmospheres, ducal robes and beautiful
women. But the metropolitan spectator, in whose mind the memory of
better things is still fresh, sees that the moonlit trees are poor
distemper daubs, pushed on by dirty carpenters, and the moon a green
bottle borrowed from a druggist's shop, the ducal robes threadbare
cotton velvet and tarnished tinsel, and the heroine of the drama old
and ugly.
So Paul looked at the life he had endured, and wondered as he saw how
horrible it was.
He could see the shabby lodging, the faded furniture, the miserable
handful of fire struggling with the smoke in a shallow grate, that had
been half-blocked up with bricks by some former tenant as badly off as
himself. He could look back at that dismal room, with the ugly paper on
the walls, the scanty curtains flapping in the wind which they
pretended to shut out; the figure of his mother sitting near the
fireplace, with that pale, anxious face, which was a perpetual
complaint against hardship and discomfort. He could see his sister
standing at the window in the dusky twilight, patching up some worn-out
garment, and straining her eyes for the sake of economising in the
matter of half an inch of candle. And the street below the window,--the
shabby-genteel street, with a dingy shop breaking out here and there,
and children playing on the doorsteps, and a muffin-bell jingling
through the evening fog, and a melancholy Italian grinding "Home, sweet
Home!" in the patch of lighted road opposite the pawnbroker's. He saw
it all; and it was all alike--sordid, miserable, hopeless.
Paul Marchmont had never sunk so low as his cousin John. He had never
descended so far in the social scale as to carry a banner at Drury
Lane, or to live in one room in Oakley Street, Lambeth. But there had
been times when to pay the rent of three rooms had been next kin to an
impossibility to the artist, and when the honorarium of a shilling a
night would have been very acceptable to him. He had drained the cup of
poverty to the dregs; and now the cup was filled again, and the bitter
draught was pushed once more into his unwilling hand.
He must drink that, or another potion,--a sleeping-draught, which is
commonly called Death. He must die! But how? His coward heart sank as
the awful alternative pressed closer upon him. He must
die!--to-night,--at once,--in that house; so that when they came in the
morning to eject him, they would have little trouble; they would only
have to carry out a corpse.
He walked up and down the room, biting his finger-nails to the quick,
but coming to no resolution, until he was interrupted by the ringing of
the bell at the lobby-door. It was the messenger from his sister, no
doubt. Paul drew his watch from his waistcoat-pocket, unfastened his
chain, took a set of gold-studs from the breast of his shirt, and a
signet-ring from his finger; then he sat down at a writing-table, and
packed the watch and chain, the studs and signet-ring, and a bunch of
keys, in a large envelope. He sealed this packet, and addressed it to
his sister; then he took a candle, and went to the lobby. Mrs. Weston
had sent a young man who was an assistant and pupil of her husband's--a
good-tempered young fellow, who willingly served her in her hour of
trouble. Paul gave this messenger the key of his dressing-case and
packet.
"You will be sure and put that in my sister's hands," he said.
"O yes, sir. Mrs. Weston gave me this letter for you, sir. Am I to wait
for an answer?"
"No; there will be no answer. Good night."
"Good night, sir."
The young man went away; and Paul Marchmont heard him whistle a popular
melody as he walked along the cloistered way and out of the quadrangle
by a low archway commonly used by the tradespeople who came to the
Towers.
The artist stood and listened to the young man's departing footsteps.
Then, with a horrible thrill of anguish, he remembered that he had seen
his last of humankind--he had heard his last of human voices: for he
was to kill himself that night. He stood in the dark lobby, looking out
into the quadrangle. He was quite alone in the house; for the girl who
had let him in was in the laundry with her mother. He could see the
figures of the two women moving about in a great gaslit chamber upon
the other side of the quadrangle--a building which had no communication
with the rest of the house. He was to die that night; and he had not
yet even determined how he was to die.
He mechanically opened Mrs. Weston's letter: it was only a few lines,
telling him that Peterson had arrived with the portmanteau and
dressing-case, and that there would be a comfortable room prepared for
him. "I am so glad you have changed your mind, and are coming to me,
Paul," Mrs. Weston concluded. "Your manner, when we parted to-night,
almost alarmed me."
Paul groaned aloud as he crushed the letter in his hand. Then he went
back to the western drawing-room. He heard strange noises in the empty
rooms as he passed by their open doors, weird creaking sounds and
melancholy moanings in the wide chimneys. It seemed as if all the
ghosts of Marchmont Towers were astir to-night, moved by an awful
prescience of some coming horror.
Paul Marchmont was an atheist; but atheism, although a very pleasant
theme for a critical and argumentative discussion after a
lobster-supper and unlimited champagne, is but a poor staff to lean
upon when the worn-out traveller approaches the mysterious portals of
the unknown land.
The artist had boasted of his belief in annihilation; and had declared
himself perfectly satisfied with a materialistic or pantheistic
arrangement of the universe, and very indifferent as to whether he
cropped up in future years as a summer-cabbage, or a new Raphael; so
long as the ten stone or so of matter of which he was composed was made
use of somehow or other, and did its duty in the great scheme of a
scientific universe. But, oh! how that empty, soulless creed slipped
away from him now, when he stood alone in this tenantless house,
shuddering at strange spirit-noises, and horrified by a host of mystic
fears--gigantic, shapeless terrors--that crowded in his empty, godless
mind, and filled it with their hideous presence!
He had refused to believe in a personal God. He had laughed at the idea
that there was any Deity to whom the individual can appeal, in his hour
of grief or trouble, with the hope of any separate mercy, any special
grace. He had rejected the Christian's simple creed, and now--now that
he had floated away from the shores of life, and felt himself borne
upon an irresistible current to that mysterious other side, what did he
_not_ believe in?
Every superstition that has ever disturbed the soul of ignorant man
lent some one awful feature to the crowd of hideous images uprising in
this man's mind:--awful Chaldean gods and Carthaginian goddesses,
thirsting for the hot blood of human sacrifices, greedy for hecatombs
of children flung shrieking into fiery furnaces, or torn limb from limb
by savage beasts; Babylonian abominations; Egyptian Isis and Osiris;
classical divinities, with flaming swords and pale impassible faces,
rigid as the Destiny whose type they were; ghastly Germanic demons and
witches.--All the dread avengers that man, in the knowledge of his own
wickedness, has ever shadowed for himself out of the darkness of his
ignorant mind, swelled that ghastly crowd, until the artist's brain
reeled, and he was fain to sit with his head in his hands, trying, by a
great effort of the will, to exorcise these loathsome phantoms.
"I must be going mad," he muttered to himself. "I am going mad."
But still the great question was unanswered--How was he to kill
himself?
"I must settle that," he thought. "I dare not think of anything that
may come afterwards. Besides, what _should_ come? I _know_ that there
is nothing. Haven't I heard it demonstrated by cleverer men than I am?
Haven't I looked at it in every light, and weighed it in every
scale--always with the same result? Yes; I know that there is nothing
_after_ the one short pang, any more than there is pain in the nerve of
a tooth when the tooth is gone. The nerve was the soul of the tooth, I
suppose; but wrench away the body, and the soul is dead. Why should I
be afraid? One short pain--it will seem long, I dare say--and then I
shall lie still for ever and ever, and melt slowly back into the
elements out of which I was created. Yes; I shall lie still--and be
_nothing_."
Paul Marchmont sat thinking of this for a long time. Was it such a
great advantage, after all, this annihilation, the sovereign good of
the atheist's barren creed? It seemed to-night to this man as if it
would be better to be anything--to suffer any anguish, any penalty for
his sins, than to be blotted out for ever and ever from any conscious
part in the grand harmony of the universe. If he could have believed in
that Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and that after cycles of
years of suffering he might rise at last, purified from his sins,
worthy to dwell among the angels, how differently would death have
appeared to him! He might have gone away to hide himself in some
foreign city, to perform patient daily sacrifices, humble acts of
self-abnegation, every one of which should be a new figure, however
small a one, to be set against the great sum of his sin.
But he could not believe. There is a vulgar proverb which says, "You
cannot have your loaf and eat it;" or if proverbs would only be
grammatical, it might be better worded, "You cannot eat your loaf, and
have it to eat on some future occasion." Neither can you indulge in
rationalistic discussions or epigrammatic pleasantry about the Great
Creator who made you, and then turn and cry aloud to Him in the
dreadful hour of your despair: "O my God, whom I have insulted and
offended, help the miserable wretch who for twenty years has
obstinately shut his heart against Thee!" It may be that God would
forgive and hear even at that last supreme moment, as He heard the
penitent thief upon the cross; but the penitent thief had been a
sinner, not an unbeliever, and he _could_ pray. The hard heart of the
atheist freezes in his breast when he would repent and put away his
iniquities. When he would fain turn to his offended Maker, the words
that he tries to speak die away upon his lips; for the habit of
blasphemy is too strong upon him; he can _blague_ upon all the mighty
mysteries of heaven and hell, but he _cannot_ pray.
Paul Marchmont could not fashion a prayer. Horrible witticisms arose up
between him and the words he would have spoken--ghastly _bon mots_,
that had seemed so brilliant at a lamp-lit dinner-table, spoken to a
joyous accompaniment of champagne-corks and laughter. Ah, me! the world
was behind this man now, with all its pleasures; and he looked back
upon it, and thought that, even when it seemed gayest and brightest, it
was only like a great roaring fair, with flaring lights, and noisy
showmen clamoring for ever to a struggling crowd.
How should he die? Should he go upstairs and cut his throat?
He stood before one of his pictures--a pet picture; a girl's face by
Millais, looking through the moonlight, fantastically beautiful. He
stood before this picture, and he felt one small separate pang amid all
his misery as he remembered that Edward and Mary Arundel were now
possessors of this particular gem.
"They sha'n't have it," he muttered to himself; "they sha'n't have
_this_, at any rate."
He took a penknife from his pocket, and hacked and ripped the canvas
savagely, till it hung in ribbons from the deep gilded frame.
Then he smiled to himself, for the first time since he had entered that
house, and his eyes flashed with a sudden light.
"I have lived like Sardanapalus for the last year," he cried aloud;
"and I will die like Sardanapalus!"
There was a fragile piece of furniture near him,--an _etagere_ of
marqueterie work, loaded with costly _bric a brac_, Oriental porcelain,
Sevres and Dresden, old Chelsea and crown Derby cups and saucers, and
quaint teapots, crawling vermin in Pallissy ware, Indian monstrosities,
and all manner of expensive absurdities, heaped together in artistic
confusion. Paul Marchmont struck the slim leg of the _etagere_ with his
foot, and laughed aloud as the fragile toys fell into a ruined heap
upon the carpet. He stamped upon the broken china; and the frail cups
and saucers crackled like eggshells under his savage feet.
"I will die like Sardanapalus!" he cried; "the King Arbaces shall never
rest in the palace I have beautified.
'Now order here
Fagots, pine-nuts, and wither'd leaves, and such
Things as catch fire with one sole spark;
Bring cedar, too, and precious drugs, and spices,
And mighty planks, to nourish a tall pile;
Bring frankincense and myrrh, too; for it is
For a great sacrifice I build the pyre.'
I don't think much of your blank verse, George Gordon Noel Byron. Your
lines end on lame syllables; your ten-syllable blank verse lacks the
fiery ring of your rhymes. I wonder whether Marchmont Towers is
insured? Yes, I remember paying a premium last Christmas. They may have
a sharp tussle with the insurance companies though. Yes, I will die
like Sardanapalus--no, not like him, for I have no Myrrha to mount the
pile and cling about me to the last. Pshaw! a modern Myrrha would leave
Sardanapalus to perish alone, and be off to make herself safe with the
new king."
Paul snatched up the candle, and went out into the hall. He laughed
discordantly, and spoke in loud ringing tones. His manner had that
feverish excitement which the French call exaltation. He ran up the
broad stairs leading to the long corridor, out of which his own rooms,
and his mother's and sister's rooms, opened.
Ah, how pretty they were! How elegant he had made them in his reckless
disregard of expense, his artistic delight in the task of
beautification! There were no shutters here, and the summer breeze blew
in through the broken windows, and stirred the gauzy muslin curtains,
the gay chintz draperies, the cloudlike festoons of silk and lace. Paul
Marchmont went from room to room with the flaring candle in his hand;
and wherever there were curtains or draperies about the windows, the
beds, the dressing-tables, the low lounging-chairs, and cosy little
sofas, he set alight to them. He did this with wonderful rapidity,
leaving flames behind him as he traversed the long corridor, and coming
back thus to the stairs. He went downstairs again, and returned to the
western drawing-room. Then he blew out his candle, turned out the gas,
and waited.
"How soon will it come?" he thought.
The shutters were shut, and the room was quite dark.
"Shall I ever have courage to stop till it comes?"
Paul Marchmont groped his way to the door, double-locked it, and then
took the key from the lock.
He went to one of the windows, clambered upon a chair, opened the top
shutter, and flung the key out through the broken window. He heard it
strike jingling upon the stone terrace and then bound away, Heaven
knows where.
"I shan't be able to go out by the door, at any rate," he thought.
It was quite dark in the room, but the reflection of the spreading
flames was growing crimson in the sky outside. Mr. Marchmont went away
from the window, feeling his way amongst the chairs and tables. He
could see the red light through the crevices of the shutters, and a
lurid patch of sky through that one window, the upper half of which he
had left open. He sat down, somewhere near the centre of the room, and
waited.
"The smoke will kill me," he thought. "I shall know nothing of the
fire."
He sat quite still. He had trembled violently while he had gone from
room to room doing his horrible work; but his nerves seemed steadier
now. Steadier! why, he was transformed to stone! His heart seemed to
have stopped beating; and he only knew by a sick anguish, a dull aching
pain, that it was still in his breast.
He sat waiting and thinking. In that time all the long story of the
past was acted before him, and he saw what a wretch he had been. I do
not know whether this was penitence; but looking at that enacted story,
Paul Marchmont thought that his own part in the play was a mistake, and
that it was a foolish thing to be a villain.
* * * * *
When a great flock of frightened people, with a fire-engine out of
order, and drawn by whooping men and boys, came hurrying up to the
Towers, they found a blazing edifice, which looked like an enchanted
castle--great stone-framed windows vomiting flame; tall chimneys
toppling down upon a fiery roof; molten lead, like water turned to
fire, streaming in flaming cataracts upon the terrace; and all the sky
lit up by that vast pile of blazing ruin. Only salamanders, or poor Mr.
Braidwood's own chosen band, could have approached Marchmont Towers
that night. The Kemberling firemen and the Swampington firemen, who
came by-and-by, were neither salamanders nor Braidwoods. They stood
aloof and squirted water at the flames, and recoiled aghast by-and-by
when the roof came down like an avalanche of blazing timber, leaving
only a gaunt gigantic skeleton of red-hot stone where Marchmont Towers
once had been.
When it was safe to venture in amongst the ruins--and this was not for
many hours after the fire had burnt itself out--people looked for Paul
Marchmont; but amidst all that vast chaos of smouldering ashes, there
was nothing found that could be identified as the remains of a human
being. No one knew where the artist had been at the time of the fire,
or indeed whether he had been in the house at all; and the popular
opinion was, that Paul had set fire to the mansion, and had fled away
before the flames began to spread.
But Lavinia Weston knew better than this. She knew now why her brother
had sent her every scrap of valuable property belonging to him. She
understood now why he had come back to her to bid her good-night for
the second time, and press his cold lips to hers.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
"DEAR IS THE MEMORY OF OUR WEDDED LIVES."
Mary and Edward Arundel saw the awful light in the sky, and heard the
voices of the people shouting in the street below, and calling to one
another that Marchmont Towers was on fire.
The young mistress of the burning pile had very little concern for her
property. She only kept saying, again and again, "O Edward! I hope
there is no one in the house. God grant there may be no one in the
house!"
And when the flames were highest, and it seemed by the light in the sky
as if all Lincolnshire had been blazing, Edward Arundel's wife flung
herself upon her knees, and prayed aloud for any unhappy creature that
might be in peril.
Oh, if we could dare to think that this innocent girl's prayer was
heard before the throne of an Awful Judge, pleading for the soul of a
wicked man!
Early the next morning Mrs. Arundel came from Lawford Grange with her
confidential maid, and carried off her daughter-in-law and the baby, on
the first stage of the journey into Devonshire. Before she left
Kemberling, Mary was told that no dead body had been found amongst the
ruins of the Towers; and this assertion deluded her into the belief
that no unhappy creature had perished. So she went to Dangerfield
happier than she had ever been since the sunny days of her honeymoon,
to wait there for the coming of Edward Arundel, who was to stay behind
to see Richard Paulette and Mr. Gormby, and to secure the testimony of
Mr. Weston and Betsy Murrel with a view to the identification of Mary's
little son, who had been neither registered nor christened.
I have no need to dwell upon this process of identification,
registration, and christening, through which Master Edward Arundel had
to pass in the course of the next month. I had rather skip this
dry-as-dust business, and go on to that happy time which Edward and his
young wife spent together under the oaks at Dangerfield--that bright
second honeymoon season, while they were as yet houseless; for a pretty
villa-like mansion was being built on the Marchmont property, far away
from the dank wood and the dismal river, in a pretty pastoral little
nook, which was a fair oasis amidst the general dreariness of
Lincolnshire.
I need scarcely say that the grand feature of this happy time was THE
BABY. It will be of course easily understood that this child stood
alone amongst babies. There never had been another such infant; it was
more than probable there would never again be such a one. In every
attribute of babyhood he was a twelvemonth in advance of the rest of
his race. Prospective greatness was stamped upon his brow. He would be
a Clive or a Wellington, unless indeed he should have a fancy for the
Bar and the Woolsack, in which case he would be a little more erudite
than Lyndhurst, a trifle more eloquent than Brougham. All this was
palpable to the meanest capacity in the very manner in which this child
crowed in his nurse's arms, or choked himself with farinaceous food, or
smiled recognition at his young father, or performed the simplest act
common to infancy.
I think Mr. Sant would have been pleased to paint one of those summer
scenes at Dangerfield--the proud soldier-father; the pale young wife;
the handsome, matronly grandmother; and, as the mystic centre of that
magic circle, the toddling flaxen-haired baby, held up by his father's
hands, and taking caricature strides in imitation of papa's big steps.
To my mind, it is a great pity that children are not children for
ever--that the pretty baby-boy by Sant, all rosy and flaxen and
blue-eyed, should ever grow into a great angular pre-Raphaelite
hobadahoy, horribly big and out of drawing. But neither Edward nor Mary
nor, above all, Mrs. Arundel were of this opinion. They were as eager
for the child to grow up and enter for the great races of this life, as
some speculative turf magnate who has given a fancy price for a
yearling, and is pining to see the animal a far-famed three-year-old,
and winner of the double event.
Before the child had cut a double-tooth Mrs. Arundel senior had decided
in favour of Eton as opposed to Harrow, and was balancing the
conflicting advantages of classical Oxford and mathematical Cambridge;
while Edward could not see the baby-boy rolling on the grass, with blue
ribbons and sashes fluttering in the breeze, without thinking of his
son's future appearance in the uniform of his own regiment, gorgeous in
the splendid crush of a levee at St. James's.
How many airy castles were erected in that happy time, with the baby
for the foundation-stone of all of them! _The_ BABY! Why, that definite
article alone expresses an infinity of foolish love and admiration.
Nobody says _the_ father, the husband, the mother; it is "my" father,
my husband, as the case may be. But every baby, from St. Giles's to
Belgravia, from Tyburnia to St. Luke's, is "the" baby. The infant's
reign is short, but his royalty is supreme, and no one presumes to
question his despotic rule.
Edward Arundel almost worshipped the little child whose feeble cry he
had heard in the October twilight, and had _not_ recognised. He was
never tired of reproaching himself for this omission. That baby-voice
_ought_ to have awakened a strange thrill in the young father's breast.
That time at Dangerfield was the happiest period of Mary's life. All
her sorrows had melted away. They did not tell her of Paul Marchmont's
suspected fate; they only told her that her enemy had disappeared, and
that no one knew whither he had gone. Mary asked once, and once only,
about her stepmother; and she was told that Olivia was at Swampington
Rectory, living with her father, and that people said she was mad.
George Weston had emigrated to Australia, with his wife, and his wife's
mother and sister. There had been no prosecution for conspiracy; the
disappearance of the principal criminal had rendered that unnecessary.
This was all that Mary ever heard of her persecutors. She did not wish
to hear of them; she had forgiven them long ago. I think that in the
inner depths of her innocent heart she had forgiven them from the
moment she had fallen on her husband's breast in Hester's parlour at
Kemberling, and had felt his strong arms clasped about her, sheltering
her from all harm for evermore.
She was very happy; and her nature, always gentle, seemed sublimated by
the sufferings she had endured, and already akin to that of the angels.
Alas, this was Edward Arundel's chief sorrow! This young wife, so
precious to him in her fading loveliness, was slipping away from him,
even in the hour when they were happiest together--was separated from
him even when they were most united. She was separated from him by that
unconquerable sadness in his heart, which was prophetic of a great
sorrow to come.
Sometimes, when Mary saw her husband looking at her with a mournful
tenderness, an almost despairing love in his eyes, she would throw
herself into his arms, and say to him:
"You must remember how happy I have been, Edward. O my darling! promise
me always to remember how happy I have been."
When the first chill breezes of autumn blew among the Dangerfield oaks,
Edward Arundel took his wife southwards, with his mother and the
inevitable baby in her train. They went to Nice, and they were very
quiet, very happy, in the pretty southern town, with snow-clad
mountains behind them, and the purple Mediterranean before.
The villa was building all this time in Lincolnshire. Edward's agent
sent him plans and sketches for Mrs. Arundel's approval; and every
evening there was some fresh talk about the arrangement of the rooms,
and the laying-out of gardens. Mary was always pleased to see the plans
and drawings, and to discuss the progress of the work with her husband.
She would talk of the billiard-room, and the cosy little smoking-room,
and the nurseries for the baby, which were to have a southern aspect,
and every advantage calculated to assist the development of that rare
and marvellous blossom; and she would plan the comfortable apartments
that were to be specially kept for dear grandmamma, who would of course
spend a great deal of her time at the Sycamores--the new place was to
be called the Sycamores. But Edward could never get his wife to talk of
a certain boudoir opening into a tiny conservatory, which he himself
had added on to the original architect's plan. He could never get Mary
to speak of this particular chamber; and once, when he asked her some
question about the colour of the draperies, she said to him, very
gently,--
"I would rather you would not think of that room, darling."
"Why, my pet?"
"Because it will make you sorry afterwards."
"Mary, my darling----"
"O Edward! you know,--you must know, dearest,--that I shall never see
that place?"
But her husband took her in his arms, and declared that this was only a
morbid fancy, and that she was getting better and stronger every day,
and would live to see her grandchildren playing under the maples that
sheltered the northern side of the new villa. Edward told his wife
this, and he believed in the truth of what he said. He could not
believe that he was to lose this young wife, restored to him after so
many trials. Mary did not contradict him just then; but that night,
when he was sitting in her room reading by the light of a shaded lamp
after she had gone to bed,--Mary went to bed very early, by order of
the doctors, and indeed lived altogether according to medical
_regime_,--she called her husband to her.
"I want to speak to you, dear," she said; "there is something that I
must say to you."
The young man knelt down by his wife's bed.
"What is it, darling?" he asked.
"You know what we said to-day, Edward?"
"What, darling? We say so many things every day--we are so happy
together, and have so much to talk about."
"But you remember, Edward,--you remember what I said about never seeing
the Sycamores? Ah! don't stop me, dear love," Mary said reproachfully,
for Edward put his lips to hers to stay the current of mournful
words,--"don't stop me, dear, for I must speak to you. I want you to
know that _it must be_, Edward darling. I want you to remember how
happy I have been, and how willing I am to part with you, dear, since
it is God's will that we should be parted. And there is something else
that I want to say, Edward. Grandmamma told me something--all about
Belinda. I want you to promise me that Belinda shall be happy
by-and-by; for she has suffered so much, poor girl! And you will love
her, and she will love the baby. But you won't love her quite the same
way that you loved me, will you, dear? because you never knew her when
she was a little child, and very poor. She has never been an orphan,
and quite lonely, as I have been. You have never been _all the world_
to her."
* * * * *
The Sycamores was finished by the following midsummer, but no one took
possession of the newly-built house; no brisk upholsterer's men came,
with three-foot rules and pencils and memorandum-books, to take
measurements of windows and floors; no wagons of splendid furniture
made havoc of the gravel-drive before the principal entrance. The only
person who came to the new house was a snuff-taking crone from
Stanfield, who brought a turn-up bedstead, a Dutch clock, and a few
minor articles of furniture, and encamped in a corner of the best
bedroom.
Edward Arundel, senior, was away in India, fighting under Napier and
Outram; and Edward Arundel, junior, was at Dangerfield, under the
charge of his grandmother.
Perhaps the most beautiful monument in one of the English cemeteries at
Nice is that tall white marble cross and kneeling figure, before which
strangers pause to read an inscription to the memory of Mary, the
beloved wife of Edward Dangerfield Arundel.
THE EPILOGUE.
Four years after the completion of that pretty stuccoed villa, which
seemed destined never to be inhabited, Belinda Lawford walked alone up
and down the sheltered shrubbery-walk in the Grange garden in the
fading September daylight.
Miss Lawford was taller and more womanly-looking than she had been on
the day of her interrupted wedding. The vivid bloom had left her
cheeks; but I think she was all the prettier because of that delicate
pallor, which gave a pensive cast to her countenance. She was very
grave and gentle and good; but she had never forgotten the shock of
that broken bridal ceremonial in Hillingsworth Church.
The Major had taken his eldest daughter abroad almost immediately after
that July day; and Belinda and her father had travelled together very
peacefully, exploring quiet Belgian cities, looking at celebrated
altar-pieces in dusky cathedrals, and wandering round battle-fields,
which the intermingled blood of rival nations had once made one crimson
swamp. They had been nearly a twelvemonth absent, and then Belinda
returned to assist at the marriage of a younger sister, and to hear
that Edward Arundel's wife had died of a lingering pulmonary complaint
at Nice.
She was told this: and she was told how Olivia Marchmont still lived
with her father at Swampington, and how day by day she went the same
round from cottage to cottage, visiting the sick; teaching little
children, or sometimes rough-bearded men, to read and write and cipher;
reading to old decrepid pensioners; listening to long histories of
sickness and trial, and exhibiting an unwearying patience that was akin
to sublimity. Passion had burnt itself out in this woman's breast, and
there was nothing in her mind now but remorse, and the desire to
perform a long penance, by reason of which she might in the end be
forgiven.
But Mrs. Marchmont never visited anyone alone. Wherever she went,
Barbara Simmons accompanied her, constant as her shadow. The
Swampington people said this was because the Rector's daughter was not
quite right in her mind; and there were times when she forgot where she
was, and would have wandered away in a purposeless manner, Heaven knows
where, had she not been accompanied by her faithful servant. Clever as
the Swampington people and the Kemberling people might be in finding
out the business of their neighbours, they never knew that Olivia
Marchmont had been consentient to the hiding-away of her stepdaughter.
They looked upon her, indeed, with considerable respect, as a heroine
by whose exertions Paul Marchmont's villany had been discovered. In the
hurry and confusion of the scene at Hillingsworth Church, nobody had
taken heed of Olivia's incoherent self-accusations: Hubert Arundel was
therefore spared the misery of knowing the extent of his daughter's
sin.
Belinda Lawford came home in order to be present at her sister's
wedding; and the old life began again for her, with all the old duties
that had once been so pleasant. She went about them very cheerfully
now. She worked for her poor pensioners, and took the chief burden of
the housekeeping off her mother's hands. But though she jingled her
keys with a cheery music as she went about the house, and though she
often sang to herself over her work, the old happy smile rarely lit up
her face. She went about her duties rather like some widowed matron who
had lived her life, than a girl before whom the future lies, mysterious
and unknown.
It has been said that happiness comes to the sleeper--the meaning of
which proverb I take to be, that Joy generally comes to us when we
least look for her lovely face. And it was on this September afternoon,
when Belinda loitered in the garden after her round of small duties was
finished, and she was free to think or dream at her leisure, that
happiness came to her,--unexpected, unhoped-for, supreme; for, turning
at one end of the sheltered alley, she saw Edward Arundel standing at
the other end, with his hat in his hand, and the summer wind blowing
amongst his hair.
Miss Lawford stopped quite still. The old-fashioned garden reeled
before her eyes, and the hard-gravelled path seemed to become a quaking
bog. She could not move; she stood still, and waited while Edward came
towards her.
"Letitia has told me about you, Linda," he said; "she has told me how
true and noble you have been; and she sent me here to look for a wife,
to make new sunshine in my empty home,--a young mother to smile upon my
motherless boy."
Edward and Belinda walked up and down the sheltered alley for a long
time, talking a great deal of the sad past, a little of the
fair-seeming future. It was growing dusk before they went in at the
old-fashioned half-glass door leading into the drawing-room, where Mrs.
Lawford and her younger daughters were sitting, and where Lydia, who
was next to Belinda, and had been three years married to the Curate of
Hillingsworth, was nursing her second baby.
"Has she said 'yes'?" this young matron cried directly; for she had
been told of Edward's errand to the Grange. "But of course she has.
What else should she say, after refusing all manner of people, and
giving herself the airs of an old-maid? Yes, um pressus Pops, um Aunty
Lindy's going to be marriedy-pariedy," concluded the Curate's wife,
addressing her three-months-old baby in that peculiar patois which is
supposed to be intelligible to infants by reason of being
unintelligible to everybody else.
"I suppose you are not aware that my future brother-in-law is a major?"
said Belinda's third sister, who had been struggling with a variation
by Thalberg, all octaves and accidentals, and who twisted herself round
upon her music-stool to address her sister. "I suppose you are not
aware that you have been talking to Major Arundel, who has done all
manner of splendid things in the Punjaub? Papa told us all about it
five minutes ago."
It was as much as Belinda could do to support the clamorous
felicitations of her sisters, especially the unmarried damsels, who
were eager to exhibit themselves in the capacity of bridesmaids; but
by-and-by, after dinner, the Curate's wife drew her sisters away from
that shadowy window in which Edward Arundel and Belinda were sitting,
and the lovers were left to themselves.
That evening was very peaceful, very happy, and there were many other
evenings like it before Edward and Belinda completed that ceremonial
which they had left unfinished more than five years before.
The Sycamores was very prettily furnished, under Belinda's
superintendence; and as Reginald Arundel had lately married, Edward's
mother came to live with her younger son, and brought with her the
idolised grandchild, who was now a tall, yellow-haired boy of six years
old.
There was only one room in the Sycamores which was never tenanted by
any one of that little household except Edward himself, who kept the
key of the little chamber in his writing-desk, and only allowed the
servants to go in at stated intervals to keep everything bright and
orderly in the apartment.
The shut-up chamber was the boudoir which Edward Arundel had planned
for his first wife. He had ordered it to be furnished with the very
furniture which he had intended for Mary. The rosebuds and butterflies
on the walls, the guipure curtains lined with pale blush-rose silk, the
few chosen books in the little cabinet near the fireplace, the Dresden
breakfast-service, the statuettes and pictures, were things he had
fixed upon long ago in his own mind as the decorations for his wife's
apartment. He went into the room now and then, and looked at his first
wife's picture--a crayon sketch taken in London before Mary and her
husband started for the South of France. He looked a little wistfully
at this picture, even when he was happiest in the new ties that bound
him to life, and all that is brightest in life.
Major Arundel took his eldest son into this room one day, when young
Edward was eight or nine years old, and showed the boy his mother's
portrait.
"When you are a man, this place will be yours, Edward," the father
said. "_You_ can give your wife this room, although I have never given
it to mine. You will tell her that it was built for your mother, and
that it was built for her by a husband who, even when most grateful to
God for every new blessing he enjoyed, never ceased to be sorry for the
loss of his first love."
And so I leave my soldier-hero, to repose upon laurels that have been
hardly won, and secure in that modified happiness which is chastened by
the memory of sorrow. I leave him with bright children crowding round
his knees, a loving wife smiling at him across those fair childish
heads. I leave him happy and good and useful, filling his place in the
world, and bringing up his children to be wise and virtuous men and
women in the days that are to come. I leave him, above all, with the
serene lamp of faith for ever burning in his soul, lighting the image
of that other world in which there is neither marrying nor giving in
marriage, and where his dead wife will smile upon him from amidst the
vast throng of angel faces--a child for ever and ever before the throne
of God!
THE END.