The duke was dead--long live the duke!
All was confusion at Belfayre, and it was not only Trafford who was
stunned by the sudden shock. All men must die, and the duke was an
old man; but he had seemed so well and strong that those who had
seen and talked with him on the night of the party were startled
by the news of his death, which was soon flashing over the world.
The telegraph-girl at Belfayre was overwhelmed by the number of
messages going and coming.
Under ordinary circumstances, Lady Ada must have left Belfayre
at once; but Lilias was, for the time, at any rate, completely
prostrated by the suddenness of the blow. Like Esmeralda, she had
loved the old man dearly, and Lady Ada could do no other than offer
to remain with her.
Trafford moved about among the frightened and excited household
like a man dazed. He almost forgot that his wife had left him--had
flown with his closest and dearest friend--until Lilias came to
him, with white face and quivering lips, to tell him that neither
she nor Barker could find Esmeralda.
“Esmeralda!” he repeated, vaguely. Then a shudder ran through him;
but he controlled his voice, and answered, almost carelessly--too
carelessly--if Lilias had been in a condition to notice: “She
has gone off to London,” he said in a dry voice--“to--to Lady
Wyndover’s. She went up unexpectedly, and--and left word with me to
tell you.”
Lilias repeated:
“To London?”
“Yes,” he said, almost impatiently. “Why should she not? She wanted
to see Lady Wyndover about--about something, I forget what. Why do
you stare at me, Lilias?” Then, as he saw the tears start afresh
from her eyes, he went on, remorsefully: “Forgive me; I scarcely
know what I am saying. It is so sudden--so sudden! Yes, I am glad
that she has gone.” The words stuck in his throat, but he managed
to get them out. He must lie for the present, at any rate. Soon the
hideous fact must be known, and all the lying in the world would be
of no use; but he would screen her, hide the shameful thing as long
as he could. “It is a good thing; she would have been terribly
frightened and--and cut up. I will go to London directly--as soon
as I can--and break the news to her.”
“She will hear it before you can get there,” said Lilias. “It--it
will be in the evening papers.”
“Yes,” he said, passing his hand over his brow with a sigh.
How would Esmeralda receive it? It would seem like a stroke from
Heaven to punish her.
He went upstairs and entered her room, and absently walked to the
dressing-table. There still lay upon it the envelope addressed
to him; for Barker had not noticed it, in the confusion of her
discovery of Esmeralda’s absence, and the greater confusion of the
duke’s death. He took it up, and with shaking hands opened it. The
ring fell to the floor, and for a moment or two he seemed incapable
of searching for it. When he had found it, he held it in the palm
of his hand and gazed at it dully, as if it were something curious
and unique; then its meaning bore down upon him, and with a groan
he left the room, the ring clinched in his hand.
Telegrams of condolence commenced to pour in at once; friends
and neighbors drove up to express their sympathy and to offer
assistance, and Trafford opened the telegrams and saw the visitors.
They went away impressed by the expression on his face and in his
voice.
“The poor fellow seems quite knocked over!” remarked Lord
Chesterleigh. “I never saw a man so stunned.”
“There was a very strong affection between him and his father,”
said the man to whom he spoke.
“Yes, I know, very strong; but--well, Trafford looks as if he
himself were smitten with death. It will be a dreadful blow to the
marchioness and Lady Lilias. The marchioness is the duchess now. It
sounds strange. We have not had a Duchess of Belfayre among us for
so long.”
Nearly all the visitors talked of Esmeralda as they drove away from
the hushed house, and some glanced up at the shrouded windows of
her apartments, little guessing that she had flown as the angel of
death had entered.
Before the day was over something like order was restored, and
the vast place settled down into that solemn hush which follows a
death. The servants stole about on tiptoe in the darkened house;
the tread, that peculiar tread--who does not know and shudder at
it?--of the undertaker’s men seemed to pervade the whole place.
Lilias, shut up in her room with Lady Ada, heard it, and wept
afresh.
“Yes, I am glad--glad that Esmeralda was not here,” she said. “She
loved him so; and now she will have heard of it before she comes
back, and--and the first bitterness and sorrow will have passed.
She _must_ hear of it to-day, of course; and she will be back
to-morrow. I dread her coming, and yet I long for her.”
“She will come to-morrow--yes,” said Ada, faintly, as she sat
beside the bed on which Lilias lay.
Would Esmeralda stop in her flight and--and come back? Death unites
as well as divides. Under the shock of this sudden bereavement her
heart might turn to Trafford, and he might melt toward her. It was
not of the old man who lay in his death-sleep that Lady Ada was
thinking as she sat in the darkened room. Her own fate hung in the
balance.
Trafford moved about the house with the restlessness of a lost
spirit, yet issuing the necessary orders and answering the
inevitable questions with a grim calm. He could not leave Belfayre
that day; but the next morning, when Lilias came down and asked,
with tremulous eagerness, “Have you heard from Esmeralda?” he
answered:
“No; she can not have heard of it. I will go up to town.”
“And bring her back with you? Yes, that will be best,” she said.
“Yes, that will be best,” he repeated, dully, and looking beyond
her.
She put her hand on his arm with that touch which is so eloquent of
sympathy and consolation.
“You will bear up--for her sake, Trafford?” she said in a low
voice. “You look so ill--so worn. Dear, it had to come some day;
and--and he must have died so happily! Tell Esmeralda that; it will
comfort her.”
“I will tell her,” he said, hoarsely.
He could scarcely restrain himself from crying aloud as he played
his part.
All the way up to town he had to keep repeating to himself,
“Esmeralda has gone--gone forever,” for his father’s sudden death
had, for a time, obscured his other and greater sorrow.
As the cab drove to the house in Grosvenor Square, he looked up and
saw that the blinds were down; they had heard the news. The footman
who opened the door to him met him with a solemn face.
“Her ladyship is in, your grace,” he said.
Trafford started at the too ready “your grace,” and followed
the man up to the _boudoir_ in which he had so often sat with
Esmeralda.
Lady Wyndover rose from the couch and came to meet him with both
hands extended. She looked pale and shocked, and he saw that she
had been crying.
“Oh, Trafford!” she said, with a catch in her voice. “How--how ill
you look! Why have you come? Is--is Esmeralda ill? Do you want me?
She has sent for me?”
He stood looking at her, yet scarcely seeing her. He did not know
how to break the other--and far worse--news to her.
“Sit down,” he said, almost curtly. “Is--is Esmeralda not here?”
He asked the question with that futile hoping against hope which we
are all so apt to indulge in.
Lady Wyndover stared at him.
“Esmeralda here!” she said. “No! How--how could she be here? She is
at Belfayre; you left her there, did you not?”
“No!” he said in a low voice. “She is not there. I thought she
might be here with you.”
He sighed at the destruction of his unreasonable hope.
“She is not here. You thought-- Do you mean to say that you don’t
know where she is?”
He shook his head.
“That you haven’t heard from her? But I don’t understand! Why do
you not answer, Trafford? You--you frighten me!”
“Do not be frightened!” he said, though he knew the injunction was
useless; she would be overwhelmed with terror, horror, presently.
“She--she left Belfayre the night before last, or--or early
yesterday morning.”
“Left Belfayre? Well, where has she gone?”
“I do not know.”
She uttered a cry--a low, inarticulate cry.
“Trafford, something has happened! Where--where is Esmeralda?” she
exclaimed; and there was a note of demand in her voice as if he
were responsible for Esmeralda, as if he were answerable for her
absence.
“I do not know,” he said again, huskily. “She left the house
without my knowledge--without leaving a message for me”--he
remembered the ring: it seemed to burn his flesh as it lay in his
waistcoat pocket--“no letter, no word.”
Lady Wyndover rose, then sunk down again.
“My God, you have quarreled!”
“Yes, we have quarreled.”
“Then--then it was your fault!” she said; and her color glowed
crimson through the powder on her face. “It _must_ have been your
fault. Oh, Trafford, and so soon!” she wailed.
“It was my fault,” he said. “In the beginning--yes; it was my
fault--and yours.”
“Mine!”
He inclined his head with a terrible calmness.
“Yes; she discovered that I married her for her money.”
Lady Wyndover trembled.
“When?” she demanded in a whisper.
“The day of the wedding,” he said. He turned his head away from
her gaze. “She--charged me with it on our wedding-night, and--and
separated herself from me.”
Lady Wyndover covered her face with her hands, and groaned.
“And--and you? What--what did you say? Surely you, a _man_--could
influence her, could--”
He shook his head dully.
“No. You know her as well as I do. All I could say was of no avail.
The poison had entered her mind, her heart: it was hardened against
me!”
“And she loved you so--before!”
His face flushed, then went white.
“You are mistaken,” he said, grimly. “She never loved me.”
“Never? You are mad!”
“No! I have been, but I am sane now. She never loved me. She loved
the man she has gone off with.”
Lady Wyndover sprung to her feet.
“Oh, you are mad!” she cried, with a kind of helpless scorn.
“Esmeralda loved the ground on which you trod! I know it--I _know
it_! Do you hear?”
“I hear,” he said, bitterly. “But you are wrong. She deceived
you--all--as she deceived me. She loved Norman Druce--she left
Belfayre with him.”
“It is a lie!” sprung from Lady Wyndover’s lips; and she went white
with passionate indignation. “It is a foolish lie! She loved you,
and only you, I tell you! I have heard her-- Oh, what is the use!
Do you think a woman does not know whom another woman loves? The
girl was like my own--had no secrets from me.”
“Save this one,” he said. “Be calm, and listen to me; you will need
all your calmness. Esmeralda and--and Norman”--his teeth clinched
after he had spoken the name--“had met at the place she came
from--Three Star. He had proposed to her there, and--why, I know
not--she had refused him; but she must have loved him, for she has
gone away with him. They have been together at Belfayre. Oh, do you
not see how the devilish thing has been brought about? Separated
from me--a wife in name only--the presence of the man who had loved
her in the past, still loved her. Yes, it must be plain enough even
to you!”
Lady Wyndover was walking up and down the room like a caged tiger.
“I do not, I will not believe it!” she panted. “She is incapable of
it--incapable!”
He sighed almost patiently.
“Then--where is she?” he demanded, grimly.
Lady Wyndover stopped as if she had been shot, and stared at him
aghast.
“I--I--do not know!”
“Wherever she is, she must have heard of my father’s death.
If she had not gone off with Norman she would have written,
telegraphed--come back as fast as horses, trains, could bring her.”
Lady Wyndover sunk on the couch and clasped her head.
“I am bewildered, dazed!” she wailed. “Give me time to think! It is
so--so sudden!”
“I have had time,” he said, bitterly, “and I can come to no
other conclusion. And you have not heard all. I charged her
with--her treachery; I had seen them together in the conservatory
at Belfayre, had”--his voice grew hoarse--“seen him kiss her. I
charged her with it, and--oh, my God! she confessed it, defied me!
The next morning she was gone! _They_ were gone! He went without a
word!”
He dropped his head in his hands, and hid his face.
Lady Wyndover sat and gazed beyond him, breathing hard.
“I hear all you say,” she said, at last, huskily, “and still I
repeat: it is not true. Esmeralda is incapable of it--and Norman!
Yes, he, too, is incapable of it!”
He groaned in his anguish.
“He is only a man--and he loved her--loved her before I saw her,
and she--have you forgotten already how beautiful she is? He is
only a man, not an angel from heaven to withstand a temptation
which only an angel could resist. Why”--he laughed bitterly--“_had
I been in his place I should have done the same_.”
Lady Wyndover broke into a storm of tears.
“If I were only dead!”
“Wish _her_ dead!” he said, grimly. “She has chosen a life worse
than death!”
“I don’t believe it!” she reiterated, firmly. “No, if--if she were
to confess it to me here at my knees, I could not believe it. I
should think her mad, as I think you. She may have gone; _that_ I
can understand, but she has not betrayed you. Esmeralda! She is the
soul of truth and honor.”
“Then where is she?” he demanded again; but Lady Wyndover was not
crushed by the terrible question.
“I do not know. It is your place to find out. Have you searched for
her?”
He shook his head wearily.
“No. Wait. You forget--my father--”
“A man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.”
He made a movement of his hand.
“Yes, while she remains with him. God knows that she was all the
world to me.”
“Then find her!”
He repeated the movement again.
“No, I shall find him. She will be with him,” he said, almost
inaudibly.
“Go at once!” she cried. “Oh, if I only knew where to go--what to
do. And all this time people are asking for her--wondering where
she is.” She almost screamed as she realized the hideous wreck of
Esmeralda’s life.
“Be calm!” he said. “I--I have thought of that. I came to ask you
to help me. We must keep the fact of her flight secret--for a time,
as long as we can. I have told them--Lilias--that she is with you--”
“Yes--yes,” she panted, eagerly. “I see. But--but the servants
here, they know that she is not?”
“Go down to Deepdale,” he said, slowly, as if he were imparting
something he had learned by heart. “Tell them that she went there
thinking that you were there, that she is ill--the sudden shock of
my father’s death. You understand?”
“Yes--yes,” she repeated, getting up and stretching out her hands
nervously as if for her out-door things. “I understand. But--but
how long can we keep it up?”
He shook his head.
“I know not. But it will give us time. It will be something to have
hidden the truth until--until after the funeral.” His head drooped.
Lady Wyndover went over to him and laid her trembling hand upon his
arm.
“Forgive me, Trafford. I have been--been hard with you. I had
forgotten that he was dead. But I”--her voice broke--“I love her
so! I’ve never had a child of my own, and Esmeralda--” Her sobs
choked back the words.
“I, too, loved her,” he said, simply.
There was a pause, then he rose in a dazed kind of way.
“You will do as I ask? Go down to Deepdale at once. She may come
to you-- No, she will not leave him. Why should she? He loves her
and she thinks I do not. Wait there till you hear from me, and--and
send me word to come to you if you hear anything.”
He moved toward the door, looking so wan and aged that Lady
Wyndover, even in the midst of her grief for Esmeralda, could have
cried aloud for pity of him.
“Oh, believe in her still, Trafford!” she sobbed.
“If I only could!” he said, with a groan, and went out. He went
to his rooms, and sat there brooding--playing the solitary game
called, “Looking Back At the Past.” It is a poor game, and one
seldom wins at it. He was so lost in his thoughts that he managed
to lose the train, and had to remain in town; and so he gave Lady
Ada another opportunity.