THE LAST OF SIR PAGET.
And now to glance homeward at more civilised scenes--to the
catastrophe at Hurdell Hall.
The terrible tidings were soon made known to Eveline that Sir Paget,
on the homeward ride from Furzydown, had been suddenly seized by an
unaccountable fit of irritation, and, in defiance of all advice and
entreaty, though a bad horseman, had lashed and spurred the bay
hunter--a vicious brute--while needlessly rushing it at a high fence,
and been thrown with terrible violence.
In short, his neck was broken, and he had died on the spot without
pain. A door had been procured from an adjoining barnyard, and on
this humble bier the body had been brought to the Hall.
As one in a dreadful dream Eveline listened to all this, and the
awful shadow of something--_something_, as yet unthought of and
unconceived, fell blackly and bleakly across the dark horizon of her
life, as she saw the body borne past her--the body she shrank from
touching--borne past her indoors; and a darker shadow would yet fall,
when she learned the news from Egypt.
Weakened by all she had undergone hitherto, and overcome by the
sudden horror of the present event, Eveline could scarcely stand.
'You cannot go up the staircase to bed,' said Lucretia Hurdell,
kindly.
'Oh--yes; yes, I can,' replied Eveline, with dry lips.
But she sank in a heap on the Persian carpet.
'Lift her up, Harry,' said his sister.
Harry was only too ready, and raised her at once in his strong arms.
'Oh, please to put me down,' said Eveline, imploringly; 'don't touch
me--I can walk.'
'Nonsense, dear Lady Puddicombe--you must permit me,' he urged.
And holding the helpless girl close to him--so close as to preclude
all attempted resistance on her part--he bore her steadily upstairs,
and past the room where _it_ lay, covered with a sheet, and straight
to a new apartment prepared for her, followed by his sister and
Clairette.
The fast, horsey baronet's breath mingled with hers, but
unconsciously for her, poor girl! Her soft face reclined on his
shoulder, and he saw just then, more than ever, how fair and
delicate--how very lovely she was; and he began to develop--or scheme
out--some very ambitious plans of his own.
Hurdell Hall and the Hurdell estates were rather deeply dipped, and
thus 'Old Pudd's money, even if encumbered by such a lovely bride,
would be very acceptable when the time came.'
So thought Sir Harry, with the man--but a few hours dead--lying stark
and stiff within a few yards of him.
Fortunately for Eveline, 'Nature's innocent opium, fatigue'--with her
it was fatigue of mind--procured her some sleep; thus she was
supposed to be the better able for what she would be compelled to
hear on the morrow, as a telegram had arrived from Lady
Aberfeldie--addressed to her--a document that, as Sir Harry said,
'proved a regular floorer, by Jove!'
In the morning, he said,
'She must not be told, as yet, of what yesterday's paper
contained--the mysterious disappearance of her brother, to whom she
seems most tenderly attached.'
'But how about the telegram from Southsea?' asked Lucretia. 'No
doubt it refers to that event. Indeed, we do not know what it
contains, good or bad news. It must be given to her; we have no
right to conceal or keep it back, and may commit mischief by doing
so.'
Sir Harry tugged his straw-coloured moustache with an air of
perplexity, and said, while busy with coffee and game-pie,
'By all means, then; if Lady Puddicombe is to know about her
brother--which, I fear, will cut her up more than poor old
Puddicombe's catastrophe--there is no one who can break the news to
her better than you, Lucretia.'
'How?'
'You are such a precious cool hand, don't you know.'
Miss Hurdell looked as if this was not very flattering, but quitted
the luxurious breakfast-table, saying,
'Poor thing, she is not fit to hear any more bad news; she has such a
worn-out look already.'
The telegram _did_ refer to Allan--a most unwise mode of breaking
such terrible intelligence--but Lady Aberfeldie never doubted that
her daughter must have seen the public prints.
Eveline uttered a low wail, and fainted. A cry of terror escaped
Clairette, who drew away the pillows from under her mistress's head,
opened the collar of her laced night-dress, to let the air play
freely about her delicate neck and white bosom, while she bathed her
temples freely with Rimmel and Eau-de-Cologne; and Miss Hurdell,
whose nature was somewhat hard, and who had never seen anyone faint
before, looked on with some fear and suspicion, as animation slowly
came back to the lovely face, with gasping sobs on the lips and heavy
respirations, which made her bosom heave and fall.
George Eliot says, with truth, 'It is a wonderful moment the first
time we stand by one who has fainted, and witness the fresh birth of
consciousness spreading itself over the blank features like the
rising sunlight on the Alpine summits that lay ghastly and dead under
the leaden twilight. A slight shudder, and the frost-bound eyes
recover their liquid light, for an instant they show the inward
semi-consciousness of an infant, then with a little start they open
wider, and begin to look, the present is visible, but only as a
strange writing, and the interpreter memory is not yet there.'
The dull mental agony that comes after acute anguish or a great
shock, proved too much for Eveline now, and she became prostrate,
seriously ill in the hands of her new friends, and Clairette wrote
instantly to Olive Raymond.
Eveline at times burst into passionate sobs, then she would lie very
still with her long lashes closed and the tears oozing from under
them, slowly down her pale cheeks, though her slender throat would be
agitated by those after-sobs that seem so uncontrollable. Other
times she would lie perfectly still, lost in deep thought, as she
pictured all the past and tender love her manly brother had ever
borne her, and how gently he pitied her, when he discovered her love
for the lost Evan Cameron.
'The devil!' said Sir Harry to himself, as he smoked a cigar on the
terrace under her windows, and looked up there from time to time and
twirled his long fair moustache; 'who could have imagined all this!
She must have loved that old fellow after all.'
'In the light of a father, perhaps,' suggested Mr. Pyke Poole.
'Of course--you are right; how else could she have looked upon him.
Her sorrow must be for her brother.'
'Perhaps both.'
'Who the devil are all those cads crossing the park?' exclaimed Sir
Harry, with sudden anger, perhaps at his friend's mild suggestion.
'The coroner's inquest.'
The latter was 'a thundering bore' to Sir Harry, who was provoked to
see 'a parcel of louts in half bullet hats' gaping about the Hall.
However, the matter was soon over, permission was given for the
interment, and, after unlimited brandies-and-sodas in the butler's
premises, they all departed in high good-humour with themselves.
Lord Aberfeldie came to attend the funeral, and brought with him
Olive to remain with Eveline. Lady Aberfeldie did not think the
Hurdells 'good form,' so she remained, as yet, at Southsea.
Eveline's father and cousin were shocked by the expression of her
face. Intense mental pain seemed written on her brow; and her eyes,
if sunk and inflamed, seemed to have gathered much of intensity.
The stipulated number of days allowed by custom to elapse between the
day of death and that of interment were over, and the funeral too;
Lord Aberfeldie, Sir Harry, Mr. Pyke Poole, and many others in scarfs
and hatbands of wonderful length had departed with the remains for
Slough-cum-Sloggit by train, and some of their carriages were now
returning through the sunshiny park, where the soft rain was falling,
and, as the clouds were breaking up, bright gleams of radiance danced
along the sward.
Unused to death and unsympathetic, Lucretia Hurdell felt intense
relief.
The great Tudor hall, with all its window blinds down and shrouded in
silence and gloom, had seemed to her for all these days like one
large sepulchre, though an odour of hothouse flowers was everywhere
as the gardener brought all his treasures--hyacinths, waxen camelias,
gardenia, faint Dijon roses, and so forth--to decorate the corridor,
the death-chamber, and the coffin, while, unconscious of all the
mischief he had wrought, the bay hunter enjoyed his corn and beans as
usual.
So the coffin was laid in 'the family vault,' where lay the first
baronet of the House of Puddicombe and the first wife of Sir Paget.
'I shall never lie there,' thought Eveline, with a shudder, when her
father, before returning to Southsea, gave her the final details.
Poor Sir Paget was gone, but no one seemed sad about it, and everyone
seemed to grow bright now that he was gone finally. Sunshine and air
came freely into the house through the open windows now, and the
nameless hush that for days had pervaded the vicinity of the dead was
no longer necessary. The decorous sadness that was acted, even in
the servants' hall, imposed by the presence of death--especially the
death of a very rich man--was no longer required. The butler might
whistle as he cleaned the plate, the housemaids might laugh freely
now, and Mademoiselle Clairette indulge in a merry little French
chauson unchecked by that rigid matron in black moire, the
housekeeper.