FACE TO FACE.
It is not easy to imagine a lion-hearted young cavalry officer, whose
soldiership in the Punjaub had won the praises of a Napier and an
Outram, fainting away like a heroine of romance at the coming of evil
tidings; but Edward Arundel, who had risen from a sick-bed to take a
long and fatiguing journey in utter defiance of the doctors, was not
strong enough to bear the dreadful welcome that greeted him upon the
gate-post at Marchmont Towers.
He staggered, and would have fallen, had not the extended arms of his
father's confidential servant been luckily opened to receive and
support him. But he did not lose his senses.
"Get me into the carriage, Morrison," he cried. "Get me up to that
house. They've tortured and tormented my wife while I've been lying
like a log on my bed at Dangerfield. For God's sake, get me up there as
quick as you can!"
Mr. Morrison had read the placard on the gate across his young master's
shoulder. He lifted the Captain into the carriage, shouted to the
postillion to drive on, and took his seat by the young man's side.
"Begging you pardon, Mr. Edward," he said, gently; "but the young lady
may be found by this time. That bill's been sticking there for upwards
of a month, you see, sir, and it isn't likely but what Miss Marchmont
has been found between that time and this."
The invalid passed his hand across his forehead, down which the cold
sweat rolled in great beads.
"Give me some brandy," he whispered; "pour some brandy down my throat,
Morrison, if you've any compassion upon me; I must get strength somehow
for the struggle that lies before me."
The valet took a wicker-covered flask from his pocket, and put the neck
of it to Edward Arundel's lips.
"She may be found, Morrison," muttered the young man, after drinking a
long draught of the fiery spirit; he would willingly have drunk living
fire itself, in his desire to obtain unnatural strength in this crisis.
"Yes; you're right there. She may be found. But to think that she
should have been driven away! To think that my poor, helpless, tender
girl should have been driven a second time from the home that is her
own! Yes; her own by every law and every right. Oh, the relentless
devil, the pitiless devil!--what can be the motive of her conduct? Is
it madness, or the infernal cruelty of a fiend incarnate?"
Mr. Morrison thought that his young master's brain had been disordered
by the shock he had just undergone, and that this wild talk was mere
delirium.
"Keep your heart up, Mr. Edward," he murmured, soothingly; "you may
rely upon it, the young lady has been found."
But Edward was in no mind to listen to any mild consolatory remarks
from his valet. He had thrust his head out of the carriage-window, and
his eyes were fixed upon the dimly-lighted casements of the western
drawing-room.
"The room in which John and Polly and I used to sit together when first
I came from India," he murmured. "How happy we were!--how happy we
were!"
The carriage stopped before the stone portico, and the young man got
out once more, assisted by his servant. His breath came short and quick
now that he stood upon the threshold. He pushed aside the servant who
opened the familiar door at the summons of the clanging bell, and
strode into the hall. A fire burned on the wide hearth; but the
atmosphere of the great stone-paved chamber was damp and chilly.
Captain Arundel walked straight to the door of the western
drawing-room. It was there that he had seen lights in the windows; it
was there that he expected to find Olivia Marchmont.
He was not mistaken. A shaded lamp burnt dimly on a table near the
fire. There was a low invalid-chair beside this table, an open book
upon the floor, and an Indian shawl, one he had sent to his cousin,
flung carelessly upon the pillows. The neglected fire burned low in the
old-fashioned grate, and above the dull-red blaze stood the figure of a
woman, tall, dark, and gloomy of aspect.
It was Olivia Marchmont, in the mourning-robes that she had worn, with
but one brief intermission, ever since her husband's death. Her profile
was turned towards the door by which Edward Arundel entered the room;
her eyes were bent steadily upon the low heap of burning ashes in the
grate. Even in that doubtful light the young man could see that her
features were sharpened, and that a settled frown had contracted her
straight black brows.
In her fixed attitude, in her air of deathlike tranquillity, this woman
resembled some sinful vestal sister, set, against her will, to watch a
sacred fire, and brooding moodily over her crimes.
She did not hear the opening of the door; she had not even heard the
trampling of the horses' hoofs, or the crashing of the wheels upon the
gravel before the house. There were times when her sense of external
things was, as it were, suspended and absorbed in the intensity of her
obstinate despair.
"Olivia!" said the soldier.
Mrs. Marchmont looked up at the sound of that accusing voice, for there
was something in Edward Arundel's simple enunciation of her name which
seemed like an accusation or a menace. She looked up, with a great
terror in her face, and stared aghast at her unexpected visitor. Her
white cheeks, her trembling lips, and dilated eyes could not have more
palpably expressed a great and absorbing horror, had the young man
standing quietly before her been a corpse newly risen from its grave.
"Olivia Marchmont," said Captain Arundel, after a brief pause, "I have
come here to look for my wife."
The woman pushed her trembling hands across her forehead, brushing the
dead black hair from her temples, and still staring with the same
unutterable horror at the face of her cousin. Several times she tried
to speak; but the broken syllables died away in her throat in hoarse,
inarticulate mutterings. At last, with a great effort, the words came.
"I--I--never expected to see you," she said; "I heard that you were
very ill; I heard that you----"
"You heard that I was dying," interrupted Edward Arundel; "or that, if
I lived, I should drag out the rest of my existence in hopeless idiocy.
The doctors thought as much a week ago, when one of them, cleverer than
the rest I suppose, had the courage to perform an operation that
restored me to consciousness. Sense and memory came back to me by
degrees. The thick veil that had shrouded the past was rent asunder;
and the first image that came to me was the image of my young wife, as
I had seen her upon the night of our parting. For more than three
months I had been dead. I was suddenly restored to life. I asked those
about me to give me tidings of my wife. Had she sought me out?--had she
followed me to Dangerfield? No! They could tell me nothing. They
thought that I was delirious, and tried to soothe me with compassionate
speeches, merciful falsehoods, promising me that I should see my
darling. But I soon read the secret of their scared looks. I saw pity
and wonder mingled in my mother's face, and I entreated her to be
merciful to me, and to tell me the truth. She had compassion upon me,
and told me all she knew, which was very little. She had never heard
from my wife. She had never heard of any marriage between Mary
Marchmont and me. The only communication which she had received from
any of her Lincolnshire relations had been a letter from my uncle
Hubert, in reply to one of hers telling him of my hopeless state.
"This was the shock that fell upon me when life and memory came back. I
could not bear the imprisonment of a sick-bed. I felt that for the
second time I must go out into the world to look for my darling; and in
defiance of the doctors, in defiance of my poor mother, who thought
that my departure from Dangerfield was a suicide, I am here. It is here
that I come first to seek for my wife. I might have stopped in London
to see Richard Paulette; I might sooner have gained tidings of my
darling. But I came here; I came here without stopping by the way,
because an uncontrollable instinct and an unreasoning impulse tells me
that it is here I ought to seek her. I am here, her husband, her only
true and legitimate defender; and woe be to those who stand between me
and my wife!"
He had spoken rapidly in his passion; and he stopped, exhausted by his
own vehemence, and sank heavily into a chair near the lamplit table.
Then for the first time that night Olivia Marchmont plainly saw her
cousin's face, and saw the terrible change that had transformed the
handsome young soldier, since the bright August morning on which he had
gone forth from Marchmont Towers. She saw the traces of a long and
wearisome illness sadly visible in his waxen-hued complexion, his
hollow cheeks, the faded lustre of his eyes, his dry and pallid lips.
She saw all this, the woman whose one great sin had been to love this
man wickedly and madly, in spite of her better self, in spite of her
womanly pride; she saw the change in him that had altered him from a
young Apollo to a shattered and broken invalid. And did any revulsion
of feeling arise in her breast? Did any corresponding transformation in
her own heart bear witness to the baseness of her love?
No; a thousand times, no! There was no thrill of disgust, how transient
soever; not so much as one passing shudder of painful surprise, one
pang of womanly regret. No! In place of these, a passionate yearning
arose in this woman's haughty soul; a flood of sudden tenderness rushed
across the black darkness of her mind. She fain would have flung
herself upon her knees, in loving self-abasement, at the sick man's
feet. She fain would have cried aloud, amid a tempest of passionate
sobs,--
"O my love, my love! you are dearer to me a hundred times by this cruel
change. It was _not_ your bright-blue eyes and waving chestnut
hair,--it was not your handsome face, your brave, soldier-like bearing
that I loved. My love was not so base as that. I inflicted a cruel
outrage upon myself when I thought that I was the weak fool of a
handsome face. Whatever _I_ have been, my love, at least, has been
pure. My love is pure, though I am base. I will never slander that
again, for I know now that it is immortal."
In the sudden rush of that flood-tide of love and tenderness, all these
thoughts welled into Olivia Marchmont's mind. In all her sin and
desperation she had never been so true a woman as now; she had never,
perhaps, been so near being a good woman. But the tender emotion was
swept out of her breast the next moment by the first words of Edward
Arundel.
"Why do you not answer my question?" he said.
She drew herself up in the erect and rigid attitude that had become
almost habitual to her. Every trace of womanly feeling faded out of her
face, as the sunlight disappears behind the sudden darkness of a
thundercloud.
"What question?" she asked, with icy indifference.
"The question I have come to Lincolnshire to ask--the question I have
perilled my life, perhaps, to ask," cried the young man. "Where is my
wife?"
The widow turned upon him with a horrible smile.
"I never heard that you were married," she said. "Who is your wife?"
"Mary Marchmont, the mistress of this house."
Olivia opened her eyes, and looked at him in half-sardonic surprise.
"Then it was not a fable?" she said.
"What was not a fable?"
"The unhappy girl spoke the truth when she said that you had married
her at some out-of-the-way church in Lambeth."
"The truth! Yes!" cried Edward Arundel. "Who should dare to say that
she spoke other than the truth? Who should dare to disbelieve her?"
Olivia Marchmont smiled again,--that same strange smile which was
almost too horrible for humanity, and yet had a certain dark and gloomy
grandeur of its own. Satan, the star of the morning, may have so smiled
despairing defiance upon the Archangel Michael.
"Unfortunately," she said, "no one believed the poor child. Her story
was such a very absurd one, and she could bring forward no shred of
evidence in support of it."
"O my God!" ejaculated Edward Arundel, clasping his hands above his
head in a paroxysm of rage and despair. "I see it all--I see it all! My
darling has been tortured to death. Woman!" he cried, "are you
possessed by a thousand fiends? Is there no one sentiment of womanly
compassion left in your breast? If there is one spark of womanhood in
your nature, I appeal to that; I ask you what has happened to my wife?"
"My wife! my wife!" The reiteration of that familiar phrase was to
Olivia Marchmont like the perpetual thrust of a dagger aimed at an open
wound. It struck every time upon the same tortured spot, and inflicted
the same agony.
"The placard upon the gates of this place can tell you as much as I
can," she said.
The ghastly whiteness of the soldier's face told her that he had seen
the placard of which she spoke.
"She has not been found, then?" he said, hoarsely.
"No."
"How did she disappear?"
"As she disappeared upon the morning on which you followed her. She
wandered out of the house, this time leaving no letter, nor message,
nor explanation of any kind whatever. It was in the middle of the day
that she went out; and for some time her absence caused no alarm. But,
after some hours, she was waited for and watched for very anxiously.
Then a search was made."
"Where?"
"Wherever she had at any time been in the habit of walking,--in the
park; in the wood; along the narrow path by the water; at Pollard's
farm; at Hester's house at Kemberling,--in every place where it might
be reasonably imagined there was the slightest chance of finding her."
"And all this was without result?"
"It was."
"_Why_ did she leave this place? God help you, Olivia Marchmont, if it
was your cruelty that drove her away!"
The widow took no notice of the threat implied in these words. Was
there anything upon earth that she feared now? No--nothing. Had she not
endured the worst long ago, in Edward Arundel's contempt? She had no
fear of a battle with this man; or with any other creature in the
world; or with the whole world arrayed and banded together against her,
if need were. Amongst all the torments of those black depths to which
her soul had gone down, there was no such thing as fear. That cowardly
baseness is for the happy and prosperous, who have something to lose.
This woman was by nature dauntless and resolute as the hero of some
classic story; but in her despair she had the desperate and reckless
courage of a starving wolf. The hand of death was upon her; what could
it matter how she died?
"I am very grateful to you, Edward Arundel," she said, bitterly, "for
the good opinion you have always had of me. The blood of the
Dangerfield Arundels must have had some drop of poison intermingled
with it, I should think, before it could produce so vile a creature as
myself; and yet I have heard people say that my mother was a good
woman."
The young man writhed impatiently beneath the torture of his cousin's
deliberate speech. Was there to be no end to this unendurable delay?
Even now,--now that he was in this house, face to face with the woman
he had come to question--it seemed as if he _could_ not get tidings of
his wife.
So, often in his dreams, he had headed a besieging-party against the
Affghans, with the scaling-ladders reared against the wall; he had seen
the dark faces grinning down upon him--all savage glaring eyes and
fierce glistening teeth--and had heard the voices of his men urging him
on to the encounter, but had felt himself paralysed and helpless, with
his sabre weak as a withered reed in his nerveless hand.
"For God's sake, let there be no quarrelling with phrases between you
and me, Olivia!" he cried. "If you or any other living being have
injured my wife, the reckoning between us shall be no light one. But
there will be time enough to talk of that by-and-by. I stand before
you, newly risen from a grave in which I have lain for more than three
months, as dead to the world, and to every creature I have ever loved
or hated, as if the Funeral Service had been read over my coffin. I
come to demand from you an account of what has happened during that
interval. If you palter or prevaricate with me, I shall know that it is
because you fear to tell me the truth."
"Fear!"
"Yes; you have good reason to fear, if you have wronged Mary Arundel.
Why did she leave this house?"
"Because she was not happy in it, I suppose. She chose to shut herself
up in her own room, and to refuse to be governed, or advised, or
consoled. I tried to do my duty to her; yes," cried Olivia Marchmont,
suddenly raising her voice, as if she had been vehemently
contradicted;--"yes, I did try to do my duty to her. I urged her to
listen to reason; I begged her to abandon her foolish falsehood about a
marriage with you in London."
"You disbelieved in that marriage?"
"I did," answered Olivia.
"You lie!" cried Edward Arundel. "You knew the poor child had spoken
the truth. You knew her--you knew me--well enough to know that I should
not have detained her away from her home an hour, except to make her my
wife--except to give myself the strongest right to love and defend
her."
"I knew nothing of the kind, Captain Arundel; you and Mary Marchmont
had taken good care to keep your secrets from me. I knew nothing of
your plots, your intentions. _I_ should have considered that one of the
Dangerfield Arundels would have thought his honour sullied by such an
act as a stolen marriage with an heiress, considerably under age, and
nominally in the guardianship of her stepmother. I did, therefore,
disbelieve the story Mary Marchmont told me. Another person, much more
experienced than I, also disbelieved the unhappy girl's account of her
absence."
"Another person! What other person?"
"Mr. Marchmont."
"Mr. Marchmont!"
"Yes; Paul Marchmont,--my husband's first-cousin."
A sudden cry of rage and grief broke from Edward Arundel's lips.
"O my God!" he exclaimed, "there was some foundation for the warning in
John Marchmont's letter, after all. And I laughed at him; I laughed at
my poor friend's fears."
The widow looked at her kinsman in mute wonder.
"Has Paul Marchmont been in this house?" he asked.
"Yes."
"When was he here?"
"He has been here often; he comes here constantly. He has been living
at Kemberling for the last three months."
"Why?"
"For his own pleasure, I suppose," Olivia answered haughtily. "It is no
business of mine to pry into Mr. Marchmont's motives."
Edward Arundel ground his teeth in an access of ungovernable passion.
It was not against Olivia, but against himself this time that he was
enraged. He hated himself for the arrogant folly, the obstinate
presumption, with which he had ridiculed and slighted John Marchmont's
vague fears of his kinsman Paul.
"So this man has been here,--is here constantly," he muttered. "Of
course, it is only natural that he should hang about the place. And you
and he are stanch allies, I suppose?" he added, turning upon Olivia.
"Stanch allies! Why?"
"Because you both hate my wife."
"What do you mean?"
"You both hate her. You, out of a base envy of her wealth; because of
her superior rights, which made you a secondary person in this house,
perhaps,--there is nothing else for which you _could_ hate her. Paul
Marchmont, because she stands between him and a fortune. Heaven help
her! Heaven help my poor, gentle, guileless darling! Surely Heaven must
have had some pity upon her when her husband was not by!"
The young man dashed the blinding tears from his eyes. They were the
first that he had shed since he had risen from that which many people
had thought his dying-bed, to search for his wife.
But this was no time for tears or lamentations. Stern determination
took the place of tender pity and sorrowful love. It was a time for
resolution and promptitude.
"Olivia Marchmont," he said, "there has been some foul play in this
business. My wife has been missing a month; yet when I asked my mother
what had happened at this house during my illness, she could tell me
nothing. Why did you not write to tell her of Mary's flight?"
"Because Mrs. Arundel has never done me the honour to cultivate any
intimacy between us. My father writes to his sister-in-law sometimes; I
scarcely ever write to my aunt. On the other hand, your mother had
never seen Mary Marchmont, and could not be expected to take any great
interest in her proceedings. There was, therefore, no reason for my
writing a special letter to announce the trouble that had befallen me."
"You might have written to my mother about my marriage. You might have
applied to her for confirmation of the story which you disbelieved."
Olivia Marchmont smiled.
"Should I have received that confirmation?" she said. "No. I saw your
mother's letters to my father. There was no mention in those letters of
any marriage; no mention whatever of Mary Marchmont. This in itself was
enough to confirm my disbelief. Was it reasonable to imagine that you
would have married, and yet have left your mother in total ignorance of
the fact?"
"O God, help me!" cried Edward Arundel, wringing his hands. "It seems
as if my own folly, my own vile procrastination, have brought this
trouble upon my wife. Olivia Marchmont, have pity upon me. If you hate
this girl, your malice must surely have been satisfied by this time.
She has suffered enough. Pity me, and help me; if you have any human
feeling in your breast. She left this house because her life here had
grown unendurable; because she saw herself doubted, disbelieved,
widowed in the first month of her marriage, utterly desolate and
friendless. Another woman might have borne up against all this misery.
Another woman would have known how to assert herself, and to defend
herself, even in the midst of her sorrow and desolation. But my poor
darling is a child; a baby in ignorance of the world. How should _she_
protect herself against her enemies? Her only instinct was to run away
from her persecutors,--to hide herself from those whose pretended
doubts flung the horror of dishonour upon her. I can understand all
now; I can understand. Olivia Marchmont, this man Paul has a strong
reason for being a villain. The motives that have induced you to do
wrong must be very small in comparison to his. He plays an infamous
game, I believe; but he plays for a high stake."
A high stake! Had not _she_ perilled her soul upon the casting of this
die? Had _she_ not flung down her eternal happiness in that fatal game
of hazard?
"Help me, then, Olivia," said Edward, imploringly; "help me to find my
wife; and atone for all that you have ever done amiss in the past. It
is not too late."
His voice softened as he spoke. He turned to her, with his hands
clasped, waiting anxiously for her answer. Perhaps this appeal was the
last cry of her good angel, pleading against the devils for her
redemption. But the devils had too long held possession of this woman's
breast. They arose, arrogant and unpitying, and hardened her heart
against that pleading voice.
"How much he loves her!" thought Olivia Marchmont; "how dearly he loves
her! For her sake he humiliates himself to me."
Then, with no show of relenting in her voice or manner, she said
deliberately:
"I can only tell you again what I told you before. The placard you saw
at the park-gates can tell you as much as I can. Mary Marchmont ran
away. She was sought for in every direction, but without success. Mr.
Marchmont, who is a man of the world, and better able to suggest what
is right in such a case as this, advised that Mr. Paulette should be
sent for. He was accordingly communicated with. He came, and instituted
a fresh search. He also caused a bill to be printed and distributed
through the country. Advertisements were inserted in the 'Times' and
other papers. For some reason--I forget what reason--Mary Marchmont's
name did not appear in these advertisements. They were so worded as to
render the publication of the name unnecessary."
Edward Arundel pushed his hand across his forehead.
"Richard Paulette has been here?" he murmured, in a low voice.
He had every confidence in the lawyer; and a deadly chill came over him
at the thought that the cool, hard-headed solicitor had failed to find
the missing girl.
"Yes; he was here two or three days."
"And he could do nothing?"
"Nothing, except what I have told you."
The young man thrust his hand into his breast to still the cruel
beating of his heart. A sudden terror had taken possession of him,--a
horrible dread that he should never look upon his young wife's face
again. For some minutes there was a dead silence in the room, only
broken once or twice by the falling of some ashes on the hearth.
Captain Arundel sat with his face hidden behind his hand. Olivia still
stood as she had stood when her cousin entered the room, erect and
gloomy, by the old-fashioned chimney-piece.
"There was something in that placard," the soldier said at last, in a
hoarse, altered voice,--"there was something about my wife having been
seen last by the water-side. Who saw her there?"
"Mr. Weston, a surgeon of Kemberling,--Paul Marchmont's
brother-in-law."
"Was she seen by no one else?"
"Yes; she was seen at about the same time--a little sooner or later, we
don't know which--by one of Farmer Pollard's men."
"And she has never been seen since?"
"Never; that is to say, we can hear of no one who has seen her."
"At what time in the day was she seen by this Mr. Weston?"
"At dusk; between five and six o'clock."
Edward Arundel put his hand suddenly to his throat, as if to check some
choking sensation that prevented his speaking.
"Olivia," he said, "my wife was last seen by the river-side. Does any
one think that, by any unhappy accident, by any terrible fatality, she
lost her way after dark, and fell into the water? or that--O God, that
would be too horrible!--does any one suspect that she drowned herself?"
"Many things have been said since her disappearance," Olivia Marchmont
answered. "Some people say one thing, some another."
"And it has been said that she--that she was drowned?"
"Yes; many people have said so. The river was dragged while Mr.
Paulette was here, and after he went away. The men were at work with
the drags for more than a week."
"And they found nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Was there any other reason for supposing that--that my wife fell into
the river?"
"Only one reason."
"What was that?"
"I will show you," Olivia Marchmont answered.
She took a bunch of keys from her pocket, and went to an old-fashioned
bureau or cabinet upon the other side of the room. She unlocked the
upper part of this bureau, opened one of the drawers, and took from it
something which she brought to Edward Arundel.
This something was a little shoe; a little shoe of soft bronzed
leather, stained and discoloured with damp and moss, and trodden down
upon one side, as if the wearer had walked a weary way in it, and had
been unaccustomed to so much walking.
Edward Arundel remembered, in that brief, childishly-happy honeymoon at
the little village near Winchester, how often he had laughed at his
young wife's propensity for walking about damp meadows in such delicate
little slippers as were better adapted to the requirements of a
ballroom. He remembered the slender foot, so small that he could take
it in his hand; the feeble little foot that had grown tired in long
wanderings by the Hampshire trout-streams, but which had toiled on in
heroic self-abnegation so long as it was the will of the sultan to
pedestrianise.
"Was this found by the river-side?" he asked, looking piteously at the
slipper which Mrs. Marchmont had put into his hand.
"Yes; it was found amongst the rushes on the shore, a mile below the
spot at which Mr. Weston saw my step-daughter."
Edward Arundel put the little shoe into his bosom.
"I'll not believe it," he cried suddenly; "I'll not believe that my
darling is lost to me. She was too good, far too good, to think of
suicide; and Providence would never suffer my poor lonely child to be
led away to a dreary death upon that dismal river-shore. No, no; she
fled away from this place because she was too wretched here. She went
away to hide herself amongst those whom she could trust, until her
husband came to claim her. I will believe anything in the world except
that she is lost to me. And I will not believe that, I will never
believe that, until I look down at her corpse; until I lay my hand on
her cold breast, and feel that her true heart has ceased beating. As I
went out of this place four months ago to look for her, I will go again
now. My darling, my darling, my innocent pet, my childish bride; I will
go to the very end of the world in search of you."
The widow ground her teeth as she listened to her kinsman's passionate
words. Why did he for ever goad her to blacker wickedness by this
parade of his love for Mary? Why did he force her to remember every
moment how much cause she had to hate this pale-faced girl?
Captain Arundel rose, and walked a few paces, leaning on his stick as
he went.
"You will sleep here to-night, of course?" Olivia Marchmont said.
"Sleep here!"
His tone expressed plainly enough that the place was abhorrent to him.
"Yes; where else should you stay?"
"I meant to have stopped at the nearest inn."
"The nearest inn is at Kemberling."
"That would suit me well enough," the young man answered indifferently;
"I must be in Kemberling early to-morrow, for I must see Paul
Marchmont. I am no nearer the comprehension of my wife's flight by
anything that you have told me. It is to Paul Marchmont that I must
look next. Heaven help him if he tries to keep the truth from me."
"You will see Mr. Marchmont here as easily as at Kemberling," Olivia
answered; "he comes here every day."
"What for?"
"He has built a sort of painting-room down by the river-side, and he
paints there whenever there is light."
"Indeed!" cried Edward Arundel; "he makes himself at home at Marchmont
Towers, then?"
"He has a right to do so, I suppose," answered the widow indifferently.
"If Mary Marchmont is dead, this place and all belonging to it is his.
As it is, I am only here on sufferance."
"He has taken possession, then?"
"On the contrary, he shrinks from doing so."
"And, by the Heaven above us, he does wisely," cried Edward Arundel.
"No man shall seize upon that which belongs to my darling. No foul plot
of this artist-traitor shall rob her of her own. God knows how little
value _I_ set upon her wealth; but I will stand between her and those
who try to rob her, until my last gasp. No, Olivia; I'll not stay here;
I'll accept no hospitality from Mr. Marchmont. I suspect him too much."
He walked to the door; but before he reached it the widow went to one
of the windows, and pushed aside the blind.
"Look at the rain," she said; "hark at it; don't you hear it, drip,
drip, drip upon the stone? I wouldn't turn a dog out of doors upon such
a night as this; and you--you are so ill--so weak. Edward Arundel, do
you hate me so much that you refuse to share the same shelter with me,
even for a night?"
There is nothing so difficult of belief to a man, who is not a coxcomb,
as the simple fact that he is beloved by a woman whom he does not love,
and has never wooed by word or deed. But for this, surely Edward
Arundel must, in that sudden burst of tenderness, that one piteous
appeal, have discovered a clue to his cousin's secret.
He discovered nothing; he guessed nothing. But he was touched by her
tone, even in spite of his utter ignorance of its meaning, and he
replied, in an altered manner,
"Certainly, Olivia, if you really wish it, I will stay. Heaven knows I
have no desire that you and I should be ill friends. I want your help;
your pity, perhaps. I am quite willing to believe that any cruel things
you said to Mary arose from an outbreak of temper. I cannot think that
you could be base at heart. I will even attribute your disbelief of the
statement made by my poor girl as to our marriage to the narrow
prejudices learnt in a small country town. Let us be friends, Olivia."
He held out his hand. His cousin laid her cold fingers in his open
palm, and he shuddered as if he had come in contact with a corpse.
There was nothing very cordial in the salutation. The two hands seemed
to drop asunder, lifeless and inert; as if to bear mute witness that
between these two people there was no possibility of sympathy or union.
But Captain Arundel accepted his cousin's hospitality. Indeed he had
need to do so; for he found that his valet had relied upon his master's
stopping at the Towers, and had sent the carriage back to Swampington.
A tray with cold meat and wine was brought into the drawing-room for
the young soldier's refreshment. He drank a glass of Madeira, and made
some pretence of eating a few mouthfuls, out of courtesy to Olivia; but
he did this almost mechanically. He sat silent and gloomy, brooding
over the terrible shock that he had so newly received; brooding over
the hidden things that had happened in that dreary interval, during
which he had been as powerless to defend his wife from trouble as a
dead man.
Again and again the cruel thought returned to him, each time with a
fresh agony,--that if he had written to his mother, if he had told her
the story of his marriage, the things which had happened could never
have come to pass. Mary would have been sheltered and protected by a
good and loving woman. This thought, this horrible self-reproach, was
the bitterest thing the young man had to bear.
"It is too great a punishment," he thought; "I am too cruelly punished
for having forgotten everything in my happiness with my darling."
The widow sat in her low easy-chair near the fire, with her eyes fixed
upon the burning coals; the grate had been replenished, and the light
of the red blaze shone full upon Olivia Marchmont's haggard face.
Edward Arundel, aroused for a few moments out of his gloomy
abstraction, was surprised at the change which an interval of a few
months had made in his cousin. The gloomy shadow which he had often
seen on her face had become a fixed expression; every line had
deepened, as if by the wear and tear of ten years, rather than by the
progress of a few months. Olivia Marchmont had grown old before her
time. Nor was this the only change. There was a look, undefined and
undefinable, in the large luminous grey eyes, unnaturally luminous now,
which filled Edward Arundel with a vague sense of terror; a terror
which he would not--which he dared not--attempt to analyse. He
remembered Mary's unreasoning fear of her stepmother, and he now
scarcely wondered at that fear. There was something almost weird and
unearthly in the aspect of the woman sitting opposite to him by the
broad hearth: no vestige of colour in her gloomy face, a strange light
burning in her eyes, and her black draperies falling round her in
straight, lustreless folds.
"I fear you have been ill, Olivia," the young man said, presently.
Another sentiment had arisen in his breast side by side with that vague
terror,--a fancy that perhaps there was some reason why his cousin
should be pitied.
"Yes," she answered indifferently; as if no subject of which Captain
Arundel could have spoken would have been of less concern to
her,--"yes, I have been very ill."
"I am sorry to hear it."
Olivia looked up at him and smiled. Her smile was the strangest he had
ever seen upon a woman's face.
"I am very sorry to hear it. What has been the matter with you?"
"Slow fever, Mr. Weston said."
"Mr. Weston?"
"Yes; Mr. Marchmont's brother-in-law. He has succeeded to Mr.
Dawnfield's practice at Kemberling. He attended me, and he attended my
step-daughter."
"My wife was ill, then?"
"Yes; she had brain-fever: she recovered from that, but she did not
recover strength. Her low spirits alarmed me, and I considered it only
right--Mr. Marchmont suggested also--that a medical man should be
consulted."
"And what did this man, this Mr. Weston, say?"
"Very little; there was nothing the matter with Mary, he said. He gave
her a little medicine, but only in the desire of strengthening her
nervous system. He could give her no medicine that would have any very
good effect upon her spirits, while she chose to keep herself
obstinately apart from every one."
The young man's head sank upon his breast. The image of his desolate
young wife arose before him; the image of a pale, sorrowful girl,
holding herself apart from her persecutors, abandoned, lonely,
despairing. Why had she remained at Marchmont Towers? Why had she ever
consented to go there, when she had again and again expressed such
terror of her stepmother? Why had she not rather followed her husband
down to Devonshire, and thrown herself upon his relatives for
protection? Was it like this girl to remain quietly here in
Lincolnshire, when the man she loved with such innocent devotion was
lying between life and death in the west?
"She is such a child," he thought,--"such a child in her ignorance of
the world. I must not reason about her as I would about another woman."
And then a sudden flush of passionate emotion rose to his face, as a
new thought flashed into his mind. What if this helpless girl had been
detained by force at Marchmont Towers?
"Olivia," he cried, "whatever baseness this man, Paul Marchmont, may be
capable of, you at least must be superior to any deliberate sin. I have
all my life believed in you, and respected you, as a good woman. Tell
me the truth, then, for pity's sake. Nothing that you can tell me will
fill up the dead blank that the horrible interval since my accident has
made in my life. But you can give me some help. A few words from you
may clear away much of this darkness. How did you find my wife? How did
you induce her to come back to this place? I know that she had an
unreasonable dread of returning here."
"I found her through the agency of Mr. Marchmont," Olivia answered,
quietly. "I had some difficulty in inducing her to return here; but
after hearing of your accident--"
"How was the news of that broken to her?"
"Unfortunately she saw a paper that had happened to be left in her
way."
"By whom?"
"By Mr. Marchmont."
"Where was this?"
"In Hampshire."
"Indeed! Then Paul Marchmont went with you to Hampshire?"
"He did. He was of great service to me in this crisis. After seeing the
paper, my stepdaughter was seized with brain-fever. She was unconscious
when we brought her back to the Towers. She was nursed by my old
servant Barbara, and had the highest medical care. I do not think that
anything more could have been done for her."
"No," answered Edward Arundel, bitterly; "unless you could have loved
her."
"We cannot force our affections," the widow said, in a hard voice.
Another voice in her breast seemed to whisper, "Why do you reproach me
for not having loved this girl? If you had loved _me_, the whole world
would have been different."
"Olivia Marchmont," said Captain Arundel, "by your own avowal there has
never been any affection for this orphan girl in your heart. It is not
my business to dwell upon the fact, as something almost unnatural under
the peculiar circumstances through which that helpless child was cast
upon your protection. It is needless to try to understand why you have
hardened your heart against my poor wife. Enough that it is so. But I
may still believe that, whatever your feelings may be towards your dead
husband's daughter, you would not be guilty of any deliberate act of
treachery against her. I can afford to believe this of you; but I
cannot believe it of Paul Marchmont. That man is my wife's natural
enemy. If he has been here during my illness, he has been here to plot
against her. When he came here, he came to attempt her destruction. She
stands between him and this estate. Long ago, when I was a careless
schoolboy, my poor friend, John Marchmont, told me that, if ever the
day came upon which Mary's interests should be opposed to the interests
of her cousin, that man would be a dire and bitter enemy; so much the
more terrible because in all appearance her friend. The day came; and
I, to whom the orphan girl had been left as a sacred legacy, was not by
to defend her. But I have risen from a bed that many have thought a bed
of death; and I come to this place with one indomitable resolution
paramount in my breast,--the determination to find my wife, and to
bring condign punishment upon the man who has done her wrong."
Captain Arundel spoke in a low voice; but his passion was all the more
terrible because of the suppression of those common outward evidences
by which anger ordinarily betrays itself. He relapsed into thoughtful
silence.
Olivia made no answer to anything that he had said. She sat looking at
him steadily, with an admiring awe in her face. How splendid he
was--this young hero--even in his sickness and feebleness! How
splendid, by reason of the grand courage, the chivalrous devotion, that
shone out of his blue eyes!
The clock struck eleven while the cousins sat opposite to each
other,--only divided, physically, by the width of the tapestried
hearth-rug; but, oh, how many weary miles asunder in spirit!--and
Edward Arundel rose, startled from his sorrowful reverie.
"If I were a strong man," he said, "I would see Paul Marchmont
to-night. But I must wait till to-morrow morning. At what time does he
come to his painting-room?"'
"At eight o'clock, when the mornings are bright; but later when the
weather is dull."
"At eight o'clock! I pray Heaven the sun may shine early to-morrow! I
pray Heaven I may not have to wait long before I find myself face to
face with that man! Good-night, Olivia."
He took a candle from a table near the door, and lit it almost
mechanically. He found Mr. Morrison waiting for him, very sleepy and
despondent, in a large bedchamber in which Captain Arundel had never
slept before,--a dreary apartment, decked out with the faded splendours
of the past; a chamber in which the restless sleeper might expect to
see a phantom lady in a ghostly sacque, cowering over the embers, and
spreading her transparent hands above the red light.
"It isn't particular comfortable, after Dangerfield," the valet
muttered in a melancholy voice; "and all I 'ope, Mr. Edward, is, that
the sheets are not damp. I've been a stirrin' of the fire and puttin'
on fresh coals for the last hour. There's a bed for me in the dressin'
room, within call."
Captain Arundel scarcely heard what his servant said to him. He was
standing at the door of the spacious chamber, looking out into a long
low-roofed corridor, in which he had just encountered Barbara, Mrs.
Marchmont's confidential attendant,--the wooden-faced,
inscrutable-looking woman, who, according to Olivia, had watched and
ministered to his wife.
"Was that the tenderest face that looked down upon my darling as she
lay on her sick-bed?" he thought. "I had almost as soon have had a
ghoul to watch by my poor dear's pillow."