EDWARD ARUNDEL'S DESPAIR.
Yes; Edward Arundel could believe the worst now. He could believe now
that his young wife, on hearing tidings of his death, had rushed madly
to her own destruction; too desolate, too utterly unfriended and
miserable, to live under the burden of her sorrows.
Mary had talked to her husband in the happy, loving confidence of her
bright honeymoon; she had talked to him of her father's death, and the
horrible grief she had felt; the heart-sickness, the eager yearning to
be carried to the same grave, to rest in the same silent sleep.
"I think I tried to throw myself from the window upon the night before
papa's funeral," she had said; "but I fainted away. I know it was very
wicked of me. But I was mad. My wretchedness had driven me mad."
He remembered this. Might not this girl, this helpless child, in the
first desperation of her grief, have hurried down to that dismal river,
to hide her sorrows for ever under its slow and murky tide?
Henceforward it was with a new feeling that Edward Arundel looked for
his missing wife. The young and hopeful spirit which had wrestled
against conviction, which had stubbornly preserved its own sanguine
fancies against the gloomy forebodings of others, had broken down
before the evidence of that false paragraph in the country newspaper.
That paragraph was the key to the sad mystery of Mary Arundel's
disappearance. Her husband could understand now why she ran away, why
she despaired; and how, in that desperation and despair, she might have
hastily ended her short life.
It was with altered feelings, therefore, that he went forth to look for
her. He was no longer passionate and impatient, for he no longer
believed that his young wife lived to yearn for his coming, and to
suffer for the want of his protection; he no longer thought of her as a
lonely and helpless wanderer driven from her rightful home, and in her
childish ignorance straying farther and farther away from him who had
the right to succour and to comfort her. No; he thought of her now with
sullen despair at his heart; he thought of her now in utter
hopelessness; he thought of her with a bitter and agonising regret,
which we only feel for the dead.
But this grief was not the only feeling that held possession of the
young soldier's breast. Stronger even than his sorrow was his eager
yearning for vengeance, his savage desire for retaliation.
"I look upon Paul Marchmont as the murderer of my wife," he said to
Olivia, on that November evening on which he saw the paragraph in the
newspaper; "I look upon that man as the deliberate destroyer of a
helpless girl; and he shall answer to me for her life. He shall answer
to me for every pang she suffered, for every tear she shed. God have
mercy upon her poor erring soul, and help me to my vengeance upon her
destroyer."
He lifted his eyes to heaven as he spoke, and a solemn shadow
overspread his pale face, like a dark cloud upon a winter landscape.
I have said that Edward Arundel no longer felt a frantic impatience to
discover his wife's fate. The sorrowful conviction which at last had
forced itself upon him left no room for impatience. The pale face he
had loved was lying hidden somewhere beneath those dismal waters. He
had no doubt of that. There was no need of any other solution to the
mystery of his wife's disappearance. That which he had to seek for was
the evidence of Paul Marchmont's guilt.
The outspoken young soldier, whose nature was as transparent as the
stainless soul of a child, had to enter into the lists with a man who
was so different from himself, that it was almost difficult to believe
the two individuals belonged to the same species.
Captain Arundel went back to London, and betook himself forthwith to
the office of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson. He had the
idea, common to many of his class, that all lawyers, whatever claims
they might have to respectability, are in a manner past-masters in
every villanous art; and, as such, the proper people to deal with a
villain.
"Richard Paulette will be able to help me," thought the young man;
"Richard Paulette saw through Paul Marchmont, I dare say."
But Richard Paulette had very little to say about the matter. He had
known Edward Arundel's father, and he had known the young soldier from
his early boyhood, and he seemed deeply grieved to witness his client's
distress; but he had nothing to say against Paul Marchmont.
"I cannot see what right you have to suspect Mr. Marchmont of any
guilty share in your wife's disappearance," he said. "Do not think I
defend him because he is our client. You know that we are rich enough,
and honourable enough, to refuse the business of any man whom we
thought a villain. When I was in Lincolnshire, Mr. Marchmont did
everything that a man could do to testify his anxiety to find his
cousin."
"Oh, yes," Edward Arundel answered bitterly; "that is only consistent
with the man's diabolical artifice; _that_ was a part of his scheme. He
wished to testify that anxiety, and he wanted you as a witness to his
conscientious search after my--poor--lost girl." His voice and manner
changed for a moment as he spoke of Mary.
Richard Paulette shook his head.
"Prejudice, prejudice, my dear Arundel," he said; "this is all
prejudice upon your part, I assure you. Mr. Marchmont behaved with
perfect honesty and candour. 'I won't tell you that I'm sorry to
inherit this fortune,' he said, 'because if I did you wouldn't believe
me--what man in his senses _could_ believe that a poor devil of a
landscape painter would regret coming into eleven thousand a year?--but
I am very sorry for this poor little girl's unhappy fate.' And I
believe," added Mr. Paulette, decisively, "that the man was heartily
sorry."
Edward Arundel groaned aloud.
"O God! this is too terrible," he muttered. "Everybody will believe in
this man rather than in me. How am I to be avenged upon the wretch who
caused my darling's death?"
He talked for a long time to the lawyer, but with no result. Richard
Paulette considered the young man's hatred of Paul Marchmont only a
natural consequence of his grief for Mary's death.
"I can't wonder that you are prejudiced against Mr. Marchmont," he
said; "it's natural; it's only natural; but, believe me, you are wrong.
Nothing could be more straightforward, and even delicate, than his
conduct. He refuses to take possession of the estate, or to touch a
farthing of the rents. 'No,' he said, when I suggested to him that he
had a right to enter in possession,--'no; we will not shut the door
against hope. My cousin may be hiding herself somewhere; she may return
by-and-by. Let us wait a twelvemonth. If at the end of that time, she
does not return, and if in the interim we receive no tidings from her,
no evidence of her existence, we may reasonably conclude that she is
dead; and I may fairly consider myself the rightful owner of Marchmont
Towers. In the mean time, you will act as if you were still Mary
Marchmont's agent, holding all moneys as in trust for her, but to be
delivered up to me at the expiration of a year from the day on which
she disappeared.' I do not think anything could be more straightforward
than that," added Richard Paulette, in conclusion.
"No," Edward answered, with a sigh; "it _seems_ very straightforward.
But the man who could strike at a helpless girl by means of a lying
paragraph in a newspaper--"
"Mr. Marchmont may have believed in that paragraph."
Edward Arundel rose, with a gesture of impatience.
"I came to you for help, Mr. Paulette," he said; "but I see you don't
mean to help me. Good day."
He left the office before the lawyer could remonstrate with him. He
walked away, with passionate anger against all the world raging in his
breast.
"Why, what a smooth-spoken, false-tongued world it is!" he thought.
"Let a man succeed in the vilest scheme, and no living creature will
care to ask by what foul means he may have won his success. What
weapons can I use against this Paul Marchmont, who twists truth and
honesty to his own ends, and masks his basest treachery under an
appearance of candour?"
From Lincoln's Inn Fields Captain Arundel drove over Waterloo Bridge to
Oakley Street. He went to Mrs. Pimpernel's establishment, without any
hope of the glad surprise that had met him there a few months before.
He believed implicitly that his wife was dead, and wherever he went in
search of her he went in utter hopelessness, only prompted by the
desire to leave no part of his duty undone.
The honest-hearted dealer in cast-off apparel wept bitterly when she
heard how sadly the Captain's honeymoon had ended. She would have been
content to detain the young soldier all day, while she bemoaned the
misfortunes that had come upon him; and now, for the first time, Edward
heard of dismal forebodings, and horrible dreams, and unaccountable
presentiments of evil, with which this honest woman had been afflicted
on and before his wedding-day, and of which she had made special
mention at the time to divers friends and acquaintances.
"I never shall forget how shivery-like I felt as the cab drove off,
with that pore dear a-lookin' and smilin' at me out of the winder. I
says to Mrs. Polson, as her husband is in the shoemakin' line, two
doors further down,--I says, 'I do hope Capting Harungdell's lady will
get safe to the end of her journey.' I felt the cold shivers a-creepin'
up my back just azackly like I did a fortnight before my pore Jane
died, and I couldn't get it off my mind as somethink was goin' to
happen."
From London Captain Arundel went to Winchester, much to the disgust of
his valet, who was accustomed to a luxuriously idle life at Dangerfield
Park, and who did not by any means relish this desultory wandering from
place to place. Perhaps there was some faint ray of hope in the young
man's mind, as he drew near to that little village-inn beneath whose
shelter he had been so happy with his childish bride. If she had _not_
committed suicide; if she had indeed wandered away, to try and bear her
sorrows in gentle Christian resignation; if she had sought some retreat
where she might be safe from her tormentors,--would not every instinct
of her loving heart have led her here?--here, amid these low meadows
and winding streams, guarded and surrounded by the pleasant shelter of
grassy hill-tops, crowned by waving trees?--here, where she had been so
happy with the husband of her choice?
But, alas! that newly-born hope, which had made the soldier's heart
beat and his cheek flush, was as delusive as many other hopes that lure
men and women onward in their weary wanderings upon this earth. The
landlord of the White Hart Inn answered Edward Arundel's question with
stolid indifference.
No; the young lady had gone away with her ma, and a gentleman who came
with her ma. She had cried a deal, poor thing, and had seemed very much
cut up. (It was from the chamber-maid Edward heard this.) But her ma
and the gentleman had seemed in a great hurry to take her away. The
gentleman said that a village inn wasn't the place for her, and he said
he was very much shocked to find her there; and he had a fly got ready,
and took the two ladies away in it to the George, at Winchester, and
they were to go from there to London; and the young lady was crying
when she went away, and was as pale as death, poor dear.
This was all that Captain Arundel gained by his journey to Milldale. He
went across country to the farming people near Reading, his wife's poor
relations. But they had heard nothing of her. They had wondered,
indeed, at having no letters from her, for she had been very kind to
them. They were terribly distressed when they were told of her
disappearance.
This was the forlorn hope. It was all over now. Edward Arundel could no
longer struggle against the cruel truth. He could do nothing now but
avenge his wife's sorrows. He went down to Devonshire, saw his mother,
and told her the sad story of Mary's flight. But he could not rest at
Dangerfield, though Mrs. Arundel implored him to stay long enough to
recruit his shattered health. He hurried back to London, made
arrangements with his agent for being bought out of his regiment by his
brother officers, and then, turning his back upon the career that had
been far dearer to him than his life, he went down to Lincolnshire once
more, in the dreary winter weather, to watch and wait patiently, if
need were, for the day of retribution.
There was a detached cottage, a lonely place enough, between Kemberling
and Marchmont Towers, that had been to let for a long time, being very
much out of repair, and by no means inviting in appearance. Edward
Arundel took this cottage. All necessary repairs and alterations were
executed under the direction of Mr. Morrison, who was to remain
permanently in the young man's service. Captain Arundel had a couple of
horses brought down to his new stable, and hired a country lad, who was
to act as groom under the eye of the factotum. Mr. Morrison and this
lad, with one female servant, formed Edward's establishment.
Paul Marchmont lifted his auburn eyebrows when he heard of the new
tenant of Kemberling Retreat. The lonely cottage had been christened
Kemberling Retreat by a sentimental tenant; who had ultimately
levanted, leaving his rent three quarters in arrear. The artist
exhibited a gentlemanly surprise at this new vagary of Edward
Arundel's, and publicly expressed his pity for the foolish young man.
"I am so sorry that the poor fellow should sacrifice himself to a
romantic grief for my unfortunate cousin," Mr. Marchmont said, in the
parlour of the Black Bull, where he condescended to drop in now and
then with his brother-in-law, and to make himself popular amongst the
magnates of Kemberling, and the tenant-farmers, who looked to him as
their future, if not their actual, landlord. "I am really sorry for the
poor lad. He's a handsome, high-spirited fellow, and I'm sorry he's
been so weak as to ruin his prospects in the Company's service. Yes; I
am heartily sorry for him."
Mr. Marchmont discussed the matter very lightly in the parlour of the
Black Bull, but he kept silence as he walked home with the surgeon; and
Mr. George Weston, looking askance at his brother-in-law's face, saw
that something was wrong, and thought it advisable to hold his peace.
Paul Marchmont sat up late that night talking to Lavinia after the
surgeon had gone to bed. The brother and sister conversed in subdued
murmurs as they stood close together before the expiring fire, and the
faces of both were very grave, indeed, almost apprehensive.
"He must be terribly in earnest," Paul Marchmont said, "or he would
never have sacrificed his position. He has planted himself here, close
upon us, with a determination of watching us. We shall have to be very
careful."
* * * * *
It was early in the new year that Edward Arundel completed all his
arrangements, and took possession of Kemberling Retreat. He knew that,
in retiring from the East India Company's service, he had sacrificed
the prospect of a brilliant and glorious career, under some of the
finest soldiers who ever fought for their country. But he had made this
sacrifice willingly--as an offering to the memory of his lost love; as
an atonement for his broken trust. For it was one of his most bitter
miseries to remember that his own want of prudence had been the first
cause of all Mary's sorrows. Had he confided in his mother,--had he
induced her to return from Germany to be present at his marriage, and
to accept the orphan girl as a daughter,--Mary need never again have
fallen into the power of Olivia Marchmont. His own imprudence, his own
rashness, had flung this poor child, helpless and friendless, into the
hands of the very man against whom John Marchmont had written a solemn
warning,--a warning that it should have been Edward's duty to remember.
But who could have calculated upon the railway accident; and who could
have foreseen a separation in the first blush of the honeymoon? Edward
Arundel had trusted in his own power to protect his bride from every
ill that might assail her. In the pride of his youth and strength he
had forgotten that he was not immortal, and the last idea that could
have entered his mind was the thought that he should be stricken down
by a sudden calamity, and rendered even more helpless than the girl he
had sworn to shield and succour.
The bleak winter crept slowly past, and the shrill March winds were
loud amidst the leafless trees in the wood behind Marchmont Towers.
This wood was open to any foot-passenger who might choose to wander
that way; and Edward Arundel often walked upon the bank of the slow
river, and past the boat-house, beneath whose shadow he had wooed his
young wife in the bright summer that was gone. The place had a mournful
attraction for the young man, by reason of the memory of the past, and
a different and far keener fascination in the fact of Paul Marchmont's
frequent occupation of his roughly-built painting-room.
In a purposeless and unsettled frame of mind, Edward Arundel kept watch
upon the man he hated, scarcely knowing why he watched, or for what he
hoped, but with a vague belief that something would be discovered; that
some accident might come to pass which would enable him to say to Paul
Marchmont,
"It was by your treachery my wife perished; and it is you who must
answer to me for her death."
Edward Arundel had seen nothing of his cousin Olivia during that dismal
winter. He had held himself aloof from the Towers,--that is to say, he
had never presented himself there as a guest, though he had been often
on horseback and on foot in the wood by the river. He had not seen
Olivia, but he had heard of her through his valet, Mr. Morrison, who
insisted on repeating the gossip of Kemberling for the benefit of his
listless and indifferent master.
"They do say as Mr. Paul Marchmont is going to marry Mrs. John
Marchmont, sir," Mr. Morrison said, delighted at the importance of his
information. "They say as Mr. Paul is always up at the Towers visitin'
Mrs. John, and that she takes his advice about everything as she does,
and that she's quite wrapped up in him like."
Edward Arundel looked at his attendant with unmitigated surprise.
"My cousin Olivia marry Paul Marchmont!" he exclaimed. "You should be
wiser than to listen to such foolish gossip, Morrison. You know what
country people are, and you know they can't keep their tongues quiet."
Mr. Morrison took this reproach as a compliment to his superior
intelligence.
"It ain't oftentimes as I listens to their talk, sir," he said; "but if
I've heard this said once, I've heard it twenty times; and I've heard
it at the Black Bull, too, Mr. Edward, where Mr. Marchmont fre_quents_
sometimes with his sister's husband; and the landlord told me as it had
been spoken of once before his face, and he didn't deny it."
Edward Arundel pondered gravely over this gossip of the Kemberling
people. It was not so very improbable, perhaps, after all. Olivia only
held Marchmont Towers on sufferance. It might be that, rather than be
turned out of her stately home, she would accept the hand of its
rightful owner. She would marry Paul Marchmont, perhaps, as she had
married his brother,--for the sake of a fortune and a position. She had
grudged Mary her wealth, and now she sought to become a sharer in that
wealth.
"Oh, the villany, the villany!" cried the soldier. "It is all one base
fabric of treachery and wrong. A marriage between these two will be
only a part of the scheme. Between them they have driven my darling to
her death, and they will now divide the profits of their guilty work."
The young man determined to discover whether there had been any
foundation for the Kemberling gossip. He had not seen his cousin since
the day of his discovery of the paragraph in the newspaper, and he went
forthwith to the Towers, bent on asking Olivia the straight question as
to the truth of the reports that had reached his ears.
He walked over to the dreary mansion. He had regained his strength by
this time, and he had recovered his good looks; but something of the
brightness of his youth was gone; something of the golden glory of his
beauty had faded. He was no longer the young Apollo, fresh and radiant
with the divinity of the skies. He had suffered; and suffering had left
its traces on his countenance. That smiling hopefulness, that supreme
confidence in a bright future, which is the virginity of beauty, had
perished beneath the withering influence of affliction.
Mrs. Marchmont was not to be seen at the Towers. She had gone down to
the boat-house with Mr. Paul Marchmont and Mrs. Weston, the servant
said.
"I will see them together," Edward Arundel thought. "I will see if my
cousin dares to tell me that she means to marry this man."
He walked through the wood to the lonely building by the river. The
March winds were blowing among the leafless trees, ruffling the black
pools of water that the rain had left in every hollow; the smoke from
the chimney of Paul Marchmont's painting-room struggled hopelessly
against the wind, and was beaten back upon the roof from which it tried
to rise. Everything succumbed before that pitiless north-easter.
Edward Arundel knocked at the door of the wooden edifice erected by his
foe. He scarcely waited for the answer to his summons, but lifted the
latch, and walked across the threshold, uninvited, unwelcome.
There were four people in the painting-room. Two or three seemed to
have been talking together when Edward knocked at the door; but the
speakers had stopped simultaneously and abruptly, and there was a dead
silence when he entered.
Olivia Marchmont was standing under the broad northern window; the
artist was sitting upon one of the steps leading up to the pavilion;
and a few paces from him, in an old cane-chair near the easel, sat
George Weston, the surgeon, with his wife leaning over the back of his
chair. It was at this man that Edward Arundel looked longest, riveted
by the strange expression of his face. The traces of intense agitation
have a peculiar force when seen in a usually stolid countenance. Your
mobile faces are apt to give an exaggerated record of emotion. We grow
accustomed to their changeful expression, their vivid betrayal of every
passing sensation. But this man's was one of those faces which are only
changed from their apathetic stillness by some moral earthquake, whose
shock arouses the most impenetrable dullard from his stupid
imperturbability. Such a shock had lately affected George Weston, the
quiet surgeon of Kemberling, the submissive husband of Paul Marchmont's
sister. His face was as white as death; a slow trembling shook his
ponderous frame; with one of his big fat hands he pulled a cotton
handkerchief from his pocket, and tremulously wiped the perspiration
from his bald forehead. His wife bent over him, and whispered a few
words in his ear; but he shook his head with a piteous gesture, as if
to testify his inability to comprehend her. It was impossible for a man
to betray more obvious signs of violent agitation than this man
betrayed.
"It's no use, Lavinia," he murmured hopelessly, as his wife whispered
to him for the second time; "it's no use, my dear; I can't get over
it."
Mrs. Weston cast one rapid, half-despairing, half-appealing glance at
her brother, and in the next moment recovered herself, by an effort
only such as great women, or wicked women, are capable of.
"Oh, you men!" she cried, in her liveliest voice; "oh, you men! What
big silly babies, what nervous creatures you are! Come, George, I won't
have you giving way to this foolish nonsense, just because an extra
glass or so of Mrs. Marchmont's very fine old port has happened to
disagree with you. You must not think we are a drunkard, Mr. Arundel,"
added the lady, turning playfully to Edward, and patting her husband's
clumsy shoulder as she spoke; "we are only a poor village surgeon, with
a limited income, and a very weak head, and quite unaccustomed to old
light port. Come, Mr. George Weston, walk out into the open air, sir,
and let us see if the March wind will bring you back your senses."
And without another word Lavinia Weston hustled her husband, who walked
like a man in a dream, out of the painting-room, and closed the door
behind her.
Paul Marchmont laughed as the door shut upon his brother-in-law.
"Poor George!" he said, carelessly; "I thought he helped himself to the
port a little too liberally. He never could stand a glass of wine; and
he's the most stupid creature when he is drunk."
Excellent as all this by-play was, Edward Arundel was not deceived by
it.
"The man was not drunk," he thought; "he was frightened. What could
have happened to throw him into that state? What mystery are these
people hiding amongst themselves; and what should _he_ have to do with
it?"
"Good evening, Captain Arundel," Paul Marchmont said. "I congratulate
you on the change in your appearance since you were last in this place.
You seem to have quite recovered the effects of that terrible railway
accident."
Edward Arundel drew himself up stiffly as the artist spoke to him.
"We cannot meet except as enemies, Mr. Marchmont," he said. "My cousin
has no doubt told you what I said of you when I discovered the lying
paragraph which you caused to be shown to my wife."
"I only did what any one else would have done under the circumstances,"
Paul Marchmont answered quietly. "I was deceived by a penny-a-liner's
false report. How should I know the effect that report would have upon
my unhappy cousin?"
"I cannot discuss this matter with you," cried Edward Arundel, his
voice tremulous with passion; "I am almost mad when I think of it. I am
not safe; I dare not trust myself. I look upon you as the deliberate
assassin of a helpless girl; but so skilful an assassin, that nothing
less than the vengeance of God can touch you. I cry aloud to Him night
and day, in the hope that He will hear me and avenge my wife's death. I
cannot look to any earthly law for help: but I trust in God; I put my
trust in God."
There are very few positive and consistent atheists in this world. Mr.
Paul Marchmont was a philosopher of the infidel school, a student of
Voltaire and the brotherhood of the Encyclopedia, and a believer in
those liberal days before the Reign of Terror, when Frenchmen, in
coffee-houses, discussed the Supreme under the soubriquet of Mons.
l'Etre; but he grew a little paler as Edward Arundel, with kindling
eyes and uplifted hand, declared his faith in a Divine Avenger.
The sceptical artist may have thought,
"What if there should be some reality in the creed so many weak fools
confide in? What if there _is_ a God who cannot abide iniquity?"
"I came here to look for you, Olivia," Edward Arundel said presently.
"I want to ask you a question. Will you come into the wood with me?"
"Yes, if you wish it," Mrs. Marchmont answered quietly.
The cousins went out of the painting-room together, leaving Paul
Marchmont alone. They walked on for a few yards in silence.
"What is the question you came here to ask me?" Olivia asked abruptly.
"The Kemberling people have raised a report about you which I should
fancy would be scarcely agreeable to yourself," answered Edward. "You
would hardly wish to benefit by Mary's death, would you, Olivia?"
He looked at her searchingly as he spoke. Her face was at all times so
expressive of hidden cares, of cruel mental tortures, that there was
little room in her countenance for any new emotion. Her cousin looked
in vain for any change in it now.
"Benefit by her death!" she exclaimed. "How should I benefit by her
death?"
"By marrying the man who inherits this estate. They say you are going
to marry Paul Marchmont."
Olivia looked at him with an expression of surprise.
"Do they say that of me?" she asked. "Do people say that?"
"They do. Is it true, Olivia?"
The widow turned upon him almost fiercely.
"What does it matter to you whether it is true or not? What do you care
whom I marry, or what becomes of me?"
"I care this much," Edward Arundel answered, "that I would not have
your reputation lied away by the gossips of Kemberling. I should
despise you if you married this man. But if you do not mean to marry
him, you have no right to encourage his visits; you are trifling with
your own good name. You should leave this place, and by that means give
the lie to any false reports that have arisen about you."
"Leave this place!" cried Olivia Marchmont, with a bitter laugh. "Leave
this place! O my God, if I could; if I could go away and bury myself
somewhere at the other end of the world, and forget,--and forget!" She
said this as if to herself; as if it had been a cry of despair wrung
from her in despite of herself; then, turning to Edward Arundel, she
added, in a quieter voice, "I can never leave this place till I leave
it in my coffin. I am a prisoner here for life."
She turned from him, and walked slowly away, with her face towards the
dying sunlight in the low western sky.