Lord Rotherby, descending from that interview with his mother, espied
Hortensia crossing the hall below. Forgetting his dignity, he quickened
his movements, and took the remainder of the stairs two at a stride.
But, then, his lordship was excited and angry, and considerations of
dignity did not obtain with him at the time. For that matter, they
seldom did.
“Hortensia! Hortensia!” he called to her, and at his call she paused.
Not once during the month that was past--and during which he had,
for the most part, kept his room, to all intents a prisoner--had she
exchanged so much as a word with him. Thus, not seeing him, she had been
able, to an extent, to exclude him from her thoughts, which, naturally
enough, were reluctant to entertain him for their guest.
Her calm, as she paused now in acquiescence to his bidding, was such
that it almost surprised herself. She had loved him once--or thought
so, a little month ago--and at a single blow he had slain that love. Now
love so slain has a trick of resurrecting in the guise of hate; and so,
she had thought at first had been the case with her. But this moment
proved to her now that her love was dead, indeed, since of her erstwhile
affection not even a recoil to hate remained. Dislike she may have felt;
but it was that cold dislike that breeds a deadly indifference, and
seeks no active expression, asking no more than the avoidance of its
object.
Her calm, reflected in her face of a beauty almost spiritual, in every
steady line of her slight, graceful figure, gave him pause a moment, and
his hot glance fell abashed before the chill indifference that met him
from those brown eyes.
A man of deeper sensibilities, of keener perceptions, would have bowed
and gone his way. But then a man of deeper sensibilities would never
have sought this interview that the viscount was now seeking. Therefore,
it was but natural that he should recover swiftly from his momentary
halt, and step aside to throw open the door of a little room on the
right of the hall. Bowing slightly, he invited her to enter.
“Grant me a moment ere I go, Hortensia,” he said, between command and
exhortation.
She stood cogitating him an instant, with no outward sign of what might
be passing in her mind; then she slightly inclined her head, and went
forward as he bade her.
It was a sunny room, gay with light color and dainty furnishings, having
long window-doors that opened to the garden. An Aubusson carpet of
palest green, with a festoon pattern of pink roses, covered two-thirds
of the blocked, polished floor. The empanelled walls were white, with
here a gilt mirror, flanked on either side by a girandole in ormolu. A
spinet stood open in mid-chamber, and upon it were sheets of music,
a few books and a bowl of emerald-green ware, charged now with roses,
whose fragrance lay heavy on the air. There were two or three
small tables of very dainty, fragile make, and the chairs were in
delicately-tinted tapestry illustrating the fables of La Fontaine.
It was an apartment looked upon by Hortensia as her own
withdrawing-room, set apart for her own use, and as that the
household--her very ladyship included--had ever recognized it.
His lordship closed the door with care. Hortensia took her seat upon
the long stool that stood at the spinet, her back to the instrument,
and with hands idle in her lap--the same cold reserve upon her
countenance-she awaited his communication.
He advanced until he was close beside her, and stood leaning an elbow
on the corner of the spinet, a long and not ungraceful figure, with
the black curls of his full-bottomed wig falling about his swarthy,
big-featured face.
“I have but my farewells to make, Hortensia,” said he. “I am leaving
Stretton House, to-day, at last.”
“I am glad,” said she, in a formal, level voice, “that things should
have fallen out so as to leave you free to go your ways.”
“You are glad,” he answered, frowning slightly, and leaning farther
towards her. “Ay, and why are you glad? Why? You are glad for Mr.
Caryll's sake. Do you deny it?”
She looked up at him quite calm and fearlessly. “I am glad for your own
sake, too.”
His dark brooding eyes looked deep into hers, which did not falter under
his insistent gaze. “Am I to believe you?” he inquired.
“Why not? I do not wish your death.”
“Not my death--but my absence?” he sneered. “You wish for that, do you
not? You would prefer me gone? My room is better than my company just
now? 'Tis what you think, eh?”
“I have not thought of it at all,” she answered him with a pitiless
frankness.
He laughed, soft and wickedly. “Is it so very hopeless, then? You have
not thought of it at all by which you mean that you have not thought of
me at all.”
“Is't not best so? You have given me no cause to think of you to your
advantage. I am therefore kind to exclude you from my thoughts.”
“Kind?” he mocked her. “You think it kind to put me from your mind--I
who love you, Hortensia!”
She rose upon the instant, her cheeks warming faintly. “My lord,” said
she, “I think there is no more to be said between us.”
“Ah, but there is,” he cried. “A deal more yet.” And he left his place
by the spinet to come and stand immediately before her, barring her
passage to the door. “Not only to say farewell was it that I desired to
speak with you alone here.” His voice softened amazingly. “I want your
pardon ere I go. I want you to say that you forgive me the vile thing I
would have done, Hortensia.” Contrition quivered in his lowered voice.
He bent a knee to her, and held out his hand. “I will not rise until you
speak my pardon, child.”
“Why, if that be all, I pardon you very readily,” she answered, still
betraying no emotion.
He frowned. “Too readily!” he cried. “Too readily for sincerity. I will
not take it so.”
“Indeed, my lord, for a penitent, you are very difficult to please. I
pardon you with all my heart.”
“You are sincere?” he cried, and sought to take her hands; but she
whipped them away and behind her. “You bear me no ill-will?”
She considered him now with a calm, critical gaze, before which he was
forced to lower his bold eyes. “Why should I bear you an ill-will?” she
asked him.
“For the thing I did--the thing I sought to do.”
“I wonder do you know all that you did?” she asked him, musingly. “Shall
I tell you, my lord? You cured me of a folly. I had been blind, and you
made me see. I had foolishly thought to escape one evil, and you made me
realize that I was rushing into a worse. You saved me from myself. You
may have made me suffer then; but it was a healing hurt you dealt me.
And should I bear you an ill-will for that?”
He had risen from his knee. He stood apart, pondering her from under
bent brows with eyes that were full of angry fire.
“I do not think,” she ended, “that there needs more between us. I
have understood you, sir, since that day at Maidstone--I think we were
strangers until then; and perhaps now you may begin to understand me.
Fare you well, my lord.”
She made shift to go, but he barred her passage now in earnest, his
hands clenched beside him in witness of the violence he did himself to
keep them there. “Not yet,” he said, in a deep, concentrated voice. “Not
yet. I did you a wrong, I know. And what you say--cruel as it is--is no
more than I deserve. But I desire to make amends. I love you, Hortensia,
and desire to make amends.”
She smiled wistfully. “'Tis overlate to talk of that.”
“Why?” he demanded fiercely, and caught her arms, holding her there
before him. “Why is it overlate?”
“Suffer me to go,” she commanded, rather than begged, and made to free
herself of his grasp.
“I want you to be my wife, Hortensia--my wedded wife.”
She looked at him, and laughed; a cold laugh, disdainful, yet not
bitter. “You wanted that before, my lord; yet you neglected the
opportunity my folly gave you. I thank you--you, after God--for that
same neglect.”
“Ah, do not say that!” he begged, a very suppliant again. “Do not say
that! Child, I love you. Do you understand?”
“Who could fail to understand, after the abundant proof you have
afforded me of your sincerity and your devotion?”
“Do you rally me?” he demanded, letting through a flash of the anger
that was mounting in him. “Am I so poor a thing that you whet your
little wit upon me?”
“My lord, you are paining me. What can you look to gain by this? Suffer
me to go.”
A moment yet he stood, holding her wrists and looking down into her eyes
with a mixture of pleading and ferocity in his. Then he made a sound
in his throat, and caught her bodily to him; his arms, laced about her,
held her bound and crushed against him. His dark, flushed face hovered
above her own.
Fear took her at last. It mounted and grew to horror. “Let me go, my
lord,” she besought him, her voice trembling. “Oh, let me go!”
“I love you, Hortensia! I need you!” he cried, as if wrung by pain, and
then hot upon her brow and cheeks and lips his kisses fell, and shame
turned her to fire from head to foot as she fought helplessly within his
crushing grasp.
“You dog!” she panted, and writhing harder, wrenched free a hand and
arm. Blindly she beat upwards into that evil satyr's face. “You beast!
You toad! You coward!”
They fell apart, each panting; she leaning faint against the spinet, her
bosom galloping; he muttering oaths decent and other--for in the upward
thrusting of her little hand one of its fingers had prodded at an
eye, and the pain of it--which had caused him to relax his hold of
her--stripped what little veneer remained upon the man's true nature.
“Will you go?” she asked him furiously, outraged by the vileness of his
ravings. “Will you go, or must I summon help?”
He stood looking at her, straightening his wig, which had become
disarranged in the struggle, and forcing himself to an outward calm.
“So,” he said. “You scorn me? You will not marry me? You realise the
chance, eh? And why? Why?”
“I suppose it is because I am blind to the honor of the alliance,” she
controlled herself to answer him. “Will you go?”
He did not move. “Yet you loved me once--”
“'Tis a lie!” she blazed. “I thought I did--to my undying shame. No more
than that, my lord--as I've a soul to be saved.”
“You loved Me,” he insisted. “And you would love me still but for this
damned Caryll--this French coxcomb, who has crawled into your regard
like the slimy, creeping thing he is.”
“It sorts well with your ways, my lord, that you could say these things
behind his back. You are practiced at stabbing men behind.”
The gibe, with all the hurtful, stinging quality that only truth
possesses, struck his anger from him, leaving him limp and pale. Then he
recovered.
“Do you know who he is--what he is?” he asked. “I will tell you. He's a
spy--a damned Jacobite spy, whom a word from me will hang.”
Her eyes lashed him with her scorn. “I were a fool did I believe you,”
was her contemptuous answer.
“Ask him,” he said, and laughed. He turned and strode to the door.
Paused there, sardonic, looking back. “I shall be quits with you, ma'am.
Quits! I'll hang this pretty turtle of yours at Tyburn. Tell him so from
me.”
He wrenched the door open, and went out on that, leaving her cold and
sick with dread.
Was it but an idle threat to terrorize her? Was it but that? Her impulse
was to seek Mr. Caryll upon the instant that she might ask him and allay
her fears. But what right had she? Upon what grounds could she set a
question upon so secret a matter? She conceived him raising his brows in
that supercilious way of his, and looking her over from head to toe as
though seeking a clue to the nature of this quaint thing that asked him
questions. She pictured his smile and the jest with which he would set
aside her inquiry. She imagined, indeed, just what she believed
would happen did she ask him; which was precisely what would not have
happened. Imagining thus, she held her peace, and nursed her secret
dread. And on the following day, his weakness so far overcome as to
leave him no excuse to linger at Stretton House, Mr. Caryll took his
departure and returned to his lodging in Old Palace Yard.
One more treasonable interview had he with Lord Ostermore in the library
ere he departed. His lordship it was who reopened again the question,
to repeat much of what he had said in the arbor on the previous day,
and Mr. Caryll replied with much the same arguments in favor of
procrastination that he had already employed.
“Wait, at least,” he begged, “until I have been abroad a day or two, and
felt for myself how the wind Is setting.”
“'Tis a prodigiously dangerous document,” he declared. “I scarce see the
need for so much detail.”
“How can it set but one way?”
“'Tis a question I shall be in better case to answer when I have had
an opportunity of judging. Meanwhile, be assured I shall not sail for
France without advising you. Time enough then to give me your letter
should you still be of the same mind.”
“Be it so,” said the earl. “When all is said, the letter will be safer
here, meantime, than in your pocket.” And he tapped the secretaire. “But
see what I have writ his majesty, and tell me should I alter aught.”
He took out a drawer on the right--took it out bodily--then introduced
his hand into the opening, running it along the inner side of the desk
until, no doubt, he touched a spring; for suddenly a small trap was
opened. From this cavity he fished out two documents--one the flimsy
tissue on which King James' later was penned; the other on heavier
material Lord Ostermore's reply. He spread the latter before him, and
handed it to Mr. Caryll, who ran an eye over it.
It was indited with stupid, characteristic incaution; concealment was
never once resorted to; everywhere expressions of the frankest were
employed, and every line breathed the full measure of his lordship's
treason and betrays the existence of a plot.
Mr. Caryll returned it. His countenance was grave.
“I desire his majesty to know how whole-heartedly I belong to him.”
“'Twere best destroyed, I think. You can write another when the time
comes to dispatch it.”
But Ostermore was never one to take sensible advice. “Pooh! 'Twill be
safe in here. 'Tis a secret known to none.” He dropped it, together with
King James' letter, back into the recess, snapped down the trap, and
replaced the drawer. Whereupon Mr. Caryll took his leave, promising to
advise his lordship of whatever he might glean, and so departed from
Stretton House.
My Lord Rotherby, meanwhile, was very diligent in the business upon
which he was intent. He had received in his interview with Hortensia
an added spur to such action as might be scatheful to Mr. Caryll. His
lordship was lodged in Portugal Row, within a stone's throw of his
father's house, and there, on that same evening of his moving thither,
he had Mr. Green to see him, desiring news.
Mr. Green had little to impart, but strong hope of much to be garnered
presently. His little eyes twinkling, his chubby face suffused in
smiles, as though it were an excellent jest to be hunting knowledge that
should hang a man, the spy assured Lord Rotherby that there was little
doubt Mr. Caryll could be implicated as soon as he was about again.
“And that's the reason--after your lordship's own express wishes--why
so far I have let Sir Richard Everard be. It may come to trouble for me
with my Lord Carteret should it be smoked that I have been silent on the
matters within my knowledge. But--”
“Oh, a plague on that!” said his lordship. “You'll be well paid for your
services when you've rendered them. And, meanwhile, I understand that
not another soul in London--that is, on the side of the government--is
aware of Sir Richard's presence in town. So where is your danger?”
“True,” said Mr. Green, plump hand caressing plumper chin. “Had it
not been so, I should have been forced to apply to the secretary for a
warrant before this.”
“Then you'll wait,” said his lordship, “and you'll act as I may direct
you. It will be to your credit in the end. Wait until Caryll has
enmeshed himself by frequent visits to Sir Richard's. Then get your
warrant--when I give the word--and execute it one fine night when Caryll
happens to be closeted with Everard. Whether we can get further evidence
against him or not, that circumstance of his being found with the
Pretender's agent should go some way towards hanging him. The rest we
must supply.”
Mr. Green smiled seraphically. “Ecod! I'd give my ears to have the
slippery fellow safe. Codso! I would. He bubbled me at Maidstone, and I
limped a fortnight from the kick he gave me.”
“He shall do a little more kicking--with both feet,” said his lordship
with unction.