Charles watched the detective and the policeman hoist Raymond into the
dog-cart and drive away, supporting him between them. No doubt it had
been the wheels of that dog-cart which they had heard in the distance.
Then he turned to Brooks.
"How is it you remained behind?" he asked, sharply.
Brooks's face fell, and he explained that just as he was starting in the
pursuit he had caught his legs on "Sir Chawles sir's" stick, and "barked
hisself."
"I remember," said Charles. "You got in my way. You should look out
where you are going. You may as well go and find my stick."
The poor victim of duplicity departed rather crestfallen, and at this
moment Dare came up.
"We have lost him," he said, wiping his forehead. "I don't know what has
become of him."
"He doubled back here," said Charles. "I followed, but you all went on.
The police have got him. He was not a poacher after all, so they said."
"Ah!" said Dare. "They have him? I regret it. He ran well. I could wish
he had escaped. I was in the door-way of a stable watching a long time,
and all in a moment he rushed past me out of the door. The policeman was
seeking within when he came out, but though he touched me I could not
stop him. And now," with sudden weariness as his excitement evaporated,
"all is, then, over for the night? And the others? Where are they? Do we
wait for them here?"
"We should wait some time if we did," replied Charles. "Ralph is certain
to go on to the other coverts. He has poachers on the brain. Probably
the rumor that they were coming here was only a blind, and they are
doing a good business somewhere else. I am going home. I have had enough
enjoyment for one evening. I should advise you to do the same."
Dare winced, and did not answer, and Charles suddenly remembered that
there were circumstances which might make it difficult for him to go
back to Vandon.
They walked away together in silence. Dare, who had been wildly excited,
was beginning to feel the reaction. He was becoming giddy and faint with
exhaustion and want of food. He had eaten nothing all day. They had not
gone far when Charles saw that he stumbled at every other step.
"Look out," he said once, as Dare stumbled more heavily than usual,
"you'll twist your ankle on these loose stones if you're not more
careful."
"It is so dark," said Dare, faintly.
The moon was shining brightly at the moment, and as Charles turned to
look at him in surprise, Dare staggered forward, and would have
collapsed altogether if he had not caught him by the arm.
"Sit down," he said, authoritatively. "Here, not on me, man, on the
bank. Always sit down when you can't stand. You have had too much
excitement. I felt the same after my first Christmas-tree. You will be
better directly."
Charles spoke lightly, but he knew from what he had seen that Dare must
have passed a miserable day. He had never liked him. It was impossible
that he should have done so. But even his more active dislike of the
last few months gave way to pity for him now, and he felt almost ashamed
at the thought that his own happiness was only to be built on the ruin
of poor Dare's.
He made him swallow the contents of his flask, and as Dare choked and
gasped himself back into the fuller possession of his faculties, and
experienced the benign influences of whiskey, entertained at first
unawares, his heart, always easily touched, warmed to the owner of the
silver flask, and of the strong arm that was supporting him with an
unwillingness he little dreamed of. His momentary jealousy of Charles in
the summer had long since been forgotten. He felt towards him now, as
Charles helped him up, and he proceeded slowly on his arm, as a friend
and a brother.
Charles, entirely unconscious of the noble sentiments which he and his
flask had inspired, looked narrowly at his companion, as they neared the
turn for Atherstone, and said with some anxiety:
"Where are you going to-night?"
Dare made no answer. He had no idea where he was going.
Charles hesitated. He could not let him walk back alone to Vandon--over
the bridge. It was long past midnight. Dare's evident inability to think
where to turn touched him.
"Can I be of any use to you?" he said, earnestly. "Is there anything I
can do? Perhaps, at present, you would rather not go to Vandon."
"No, no," said Dare, shuddering; "I will not go there."
Charles felt more certain than ever that it would not be safe to leave
him to his own devices, and his anxiety not to lose sight of him in his
present state gave a kindness to his manner of which he was hardly
aware.
"Come back to Atherstone with me," he said, "I will explain it to Ralph
when he comes in. It will be all right."
Dare accepted the proposition with gratitude. It relieved him for the
moment from coming to any decision. He thanked Charles with effusion,
and then--his natural impulsiveness quickened by the quantity of raw
spirits he had swallowed, by this mark of sympathy, by the moonlight, by
Heaven knows what that loosens the facile tongue of unreticence--then
suddenly, without a moment's preparation, he began to pour forth his
troubles into Charles's astonished and reluctant ears. It was vain to
try to stop him, and, after the first moment of instinctive recoil,
Charles was seized by a burning curiosity to know all where he already
knew so much, to put an end to this racking suspense.
"And that is not the worst," said Dare, when he had recounted how the
woman he had seen on the church steps was in very deed the wife she
claimed to be. "That is not the worst. I love another. We are affianced.
We are as one. I bring sorrow upon her I love."
"She knows, then?" asked Charles, hoarsely, hating himself for being
such a hypocrite, but unable to refrain from putting a leading question.
"She knows that some one--a person--is at Vandon," replied Dare, "who
calls herself my wife, but I tell her it is not true and she, all
goodness, all heavenly calm, she trusts me, and once again she promises
to marry me if I am free, as I tell her, as I swear to her."
Charles listened in astonishment. He saw Dare was speaking the truth,
but that Ruth could have given such a promise was difficult to believe.
He did not know, what Dare even had not at all realized, that she had
given it in the belief that Dare, from his answers to her questions, had
never been married to the woman at all, in the belief that she was a
mere adventuress seeking to make money out of him by threatening a
scandalous libel, and without the faintest suspicion that she was his
divorced wife, whether legally or illegally divorced.
Dare had understood the promise to depend on the legality or illegality
of that divorce, and told Charles so in all good faith. With an
extraordinary effort of reticence he withheld the name of his affianced,
and pressing Charles's arm, begged him to ask no more. And Charles,
half-sorry, half-contemptuous, wholly ashamed of having allowed such a
confidence to be forced upon him, marched on in silence, now divided
between mortal anxiety for Raymond and pity for Dare, now striving to
keep down a certain climbing rapturous emotion which would not be
suppressed.
One of the servants had waited up for their return, and, after getting
Dare something to eat, Charles took him up to the room which had been
prepared for himself, and then, feeling he had done his duty by him, and
that he was safe for the present, went back to smoke by the smoking-room
fire till Ralph came in, which was not till several hours later. When he
did at last return it was in triumph. He was dead-beat, voiceless, and
foot-sore; but a sense of glory sustained him. Four poachers had been
taken red-handed in the coverts farthest from Arleigh. The rumor about
Arleigh had, of course, been a blind; but he, Ralph, thank Heaven, was
not to be taken in in such a hurry as all that! He could look after his
interests as well as most men. In short, he was full of glorification to
the brim, and it was only after hearing a hoarse and full account of the
whole transaction several times over that Charles was able in a pause
for breath to tell him that he had offered Dare a bed, as he was quite
tired out, and was some distance from Vandon.
"All right. Quite right," said Ralph, unheeding; "but you and he missed
the best part of the whole thing. Great Scot! when I saw them come
dodging round under the Black Rock and--" He was off again; and Charles
doubted afterwards, as he fell asleep in his arm-chair by the fire,
whether Ralph, already slumbering peacefully opposite him, had paid the
least attention to what he had told him, and would not have entirely
forgotten it in the morning. And, in fact, he did, and it was not until
Evelyn desired, with dignity, on the morrow, that another time
unsuitable persons should not be brought at midnight to _her_ house,
that he remembered what had happened.
Charles, who was present, immediately took the blame upon himself, but
Evelyn was not to be appeased. By this time the whole neighborhood was
ringing with the news of the arrival of a foreign wife at Vandon, and
Evelyn felt that Dare's presence in her blue bedroom, with crockery and
crewel-work curtains to match, compromised that apartment and herself,
and that he must incontinently depart out of it. It was in vain that
Ralph and even Charles expostulated. She remained unmoved. It was not,
she said, as if she had been unwilling to receive him, in the first
instance, as a possible Roman Catholic, though many might have blamed
her for that, and perhaps she _had_ been to blame; but she had never,
no, never, had any one to stay that anybody could say anything about.
(This was a solemn fact which it was impossible to deny.) Ralph might
remember her own cousin, Willie Best, and she had always liked Willie,
had never been asked again after that time--Ralph chuckled--that time he
knew of. She was very sorry, and she quite understood all Charles meant,
and she quite saw the force of what he said; but she could not allow
people to stay in the house who had foreign wives that had been kept
secret. What was poor Willie, who had only--Ralph need not laugh; there
was nothing to laugh at--what was Willie to this? She must be
consistent. She could see Charles was very angry with her, but she could
not encourage what was wrong, even if he was angry. In short, Dare must
go.
But, when it came to the point, it was found that Dare could not go.
Nothing short of force would have turned the unwelcome guest out of the
bed in the blue bedroom, from which he made no attempt to rise, and on
which he lay worn-out and feverish, in a stupor of sheer mental and
physical exhaustion.
Charles and Ralph went and looked at him rather ruefully, with masculine
helplessness, and the end of it was that Evelyn, in nowise softened, for
she was a good woman, had to give way, and a doctor was sent for.
"Send for the man in D----. Don't have the Slumberleigh man," said
Charles; "it will only make more talk;" and the doctor from D---- was
accordingly sent for.
He did not arrive till the afternoon, and after he had seen Dare, and
given him a sleeping draught, and had talked reassuringly of a mental
shock and a feverish temperament he apologized for his delay in coming.
He had been kept, he said, drawing on his gloves as he spoke, by a very
serious case in the police-station at D----. A man had been arrested on
suspicion the previous night, and he seemed to have sustained some fatal
internal injury. He ought to have been taken to the infirmary at once;
but it had been thought he was only shamming when first arrested, and
once in the police-station he could not be moved, and--the doctor took
up his hat--he would probably hardly outlive the day.
"By-the-way," he added, turning at the door, "he asked over and over
again, while I was with him, to see you or Mr. Danvers. I'm sure I
forget which, but I promised him I would mention it. Nearly slipped my
memory, all the same. He said one of you had known him in his better
days, at--Oxford, was it?"
"What name?" asked Charles.
"Stephens," replied the doctor. "He seemed to think you would remember
him."
"Stephens," said Charles, reflectively. "Stephens! I once had a valet of
that name, and a very good one he was, who left my service rather
abruptly, taking with him numerous portable memorials of myself,
including a set of diamond studs. I endeavored at the time to keep up my
acquaintance with him; but he took measures effectually to close it. In
fact, I have never heard of him from that day to this."
"That's the man, no doubt," replied the doctor. "He has--er--a sort of
look about him as if he might have been in a gentleman's service once;
seen-better-days-sort of look, you know."
Charles said he should be at D---- in the course of the afternoon, and
would make a point of looking in at the police-station; and a quarter of
an hour later he was driving as hard as he could tear in Ralph's high
dog-cart along the road to D----. It was a six-mile drive, and he
slackened as he reached the straggling suburbs of the little town, lying
before him in a dim mist of fine rain and smoke.
Arrived at the dismal building which he knew to be the police-station,
he was shown into a small room hung round with papers, where the warden
was writing, and desired, with an authority so evidently accustomed to
obedience that it invariably insured it, to see the prisoner. The
prisoner, he said, at whose arrest he had been present, had expressed a
wish to see him through the doctor; and as the warden demurred for the
space of one second, Charles mentioned that he was a magistrate and
justice of the peace, and sternly desired the confused official to show
him the way at once. That functionary, awed by the stately manner which
none knew better than Charles when to assume, led the way down a narrow
stone passage, past numerous doors behind one of which a banging sound,
accompanied by alcoholic oaths, suggested the presence of a freeborn
Briton chafing under restraint.
"I had him put up-stairs, sir," said the warden, humbly. "We didn't know
when he came in as it was a case for the infirmary; but seeing he was
wanted for a big thing, and poorly in his 'ealth, I giv' him one of the
superior cells, with a mattress and piller complete."
The man was evidently afraid that Charles had come as a magistrate to
give him a reprimand of some kind, for, as he led the way up a narrow
stone staircase, he continued to expatiate on the luxury of the
"mattress and piller," on the superiority of the cell, and how a nurse
had been sent for at once from the infirmary, when, owing to his own
shrewdness, the prisoner was found to be "a hospital case."
"The doctor wouldn't have him moved," he said, opening a closed door in
a long passage full of doors, the rest of which stood open. "It's not
reg'lar to have him in here, sir, I know; but the doctor wouldn't have
him moved."
Charles passed through the door, and found himself in a narrow
whitewashed cell, with a bed at one side, over which an old woman in the
dress of a hospital nurse was bending.
"You can come out, Martha," said the warden. "The gentleman's come to
see 'im."
As the old woman disappeared, courtesying, he lingered to say, in a
whisper, "Do you know him, sir?"
"Yes," said Charles, looking fixedly at the figure on the bed. "I
remember him. I knew him years ago, in his better days. I dare say he
will have something to tell me."
"If it should be anything as requires a witness," continued the
man--"he's said a deal already, and it's all down in proper form--but if
there's anything more----"
"I will let you know," said Charles, looking towards the door, and the
warden took the hint and went out of it, closing it quietly.
Charles crossed the little room, and, sitting down in the crazy chair
beside the bed, laid his hand gently on the listless hand lying palm
upward on the rough gray counterpane.
"Raymond," he said; "it is I, Danvers."
The hand trembled a little, and made a faint attempt to clasp his.
Charles took the cold, lifeless hand, and held it in his strong gentle
grasp.
"It is Danvers," he said again.
The sick man turned his head slowly on the pillow, and looked fixedly at
him. Death's own color, which imitation can never imitate, nor ignorance
mistake, was stamped upon that rigid face.
"I'm done for," he said with a faint smile, which touched the lips but
did not reach the solemn far-reaching eyes.
Charles could not speak.
"You said I should turn up tails once too often," continued Raymond,
with slow halting utterance, "and I've done it. I knew it was all up
when I pitched over that d----d wall onto the stones. I felt I'd killed
myself."
"How did they get you?" said Charles.
"I don't know," replied Raymond, closing his eyes wearily, as if the
subject had ceased to interest him. "I think I tried to creep along
under the wall towards the place where it is broken down, when I fancy
some one came over long after the others and knocked me on the head."
Charles reflected with sudden wrath that Brooks, no doubt, had been the
man, and how much worse than useless his manoeuvre with the stick had
been.
"I did my best," he said, humbly.
"Yes," replied the other; "and I would not have forgotten it, either,
if--if there had been any time to remember it in; but there won't be.
I've owned up," he continued, in a labored whisper. "Stephens has made a
full confession. You'll have it in all the papers to-morrow. And while I
was at it I piled on some more I never did, which will get friends over
the water out of trouble. Tom Flavell did me a good turn once, and he's
been in hiding these two years for--well, it don't much matter what, but
I've shoved that in with the rest, though it was never in my
line--never. He'll be able to go home now."
"Have not you confessed under your own name?"
"No," replied Raymond, with a curious remnant of that pride of race at
which it is the undisputed privilege of low birth and a plebeian
temperament to sneer. "I won't have my own name dragged in. I dropped it
years ago. I've confessed as Stephens, and I'll die and be buried as
Stephens. I'm not going to disgrace the family."
There was a constrained silence of some minutes.
"Would you like to see your sister?" asked Charles; but Raymond shook
his head with feeble decision.
"That man!" he said, suddenly, after a long pause. "That man in the
door-way! How did he come there?"
"There is no man in the door-way," said Charles, reassuringly. "There is
no one here but me."
"Last night," continued Raymond, "last night in the stables. I watched
him stand in the door-way."
Charles remembered how Dare had said Raymond had bolted out past him.
"That was Dare," he said; "the man who was to have been your
brother-in-law."
"Ah!" said Raymond with evident unconcern. "I thought I'd seen him
before. But he's altered. He's grown into a man. So he is to marry Ruth,
is he?"
"Not now. He was to have done, but a divorced wife from America has
turned up. She arrived at Vandon the day before yesterday. It seems the
divorce in America does not hold in England."
Raymond started.
"The old fox," he said, with feeble energy. "Tracked him out, has she?
We used to call them fox and goose when she married him. By ----, she
squeezed every dollar out of him before she let him go, and now she's
got him again, has she? She always was a cool hand. The old fox," he
continued, with contempt and admiration in his voice. "She's playing a
bold game, and the luck is on her side, but she's no more his wife than
I am, and she knows that perfectly well."
"Do you mean that the divorce was----"
"Divorce, bosh!" said Raymond, working himself up into a state of feeble
excitement frightful to see. "I tell you she was never married to him
legally. She called herself a widow when she married Dare, but she had a
husband living, Jasper Carroll, serving his time at Baton Rouge Jail,
down South, all the time. He died there a year afterwards, but hardly a
soul knows it to this day; and those that do don't care about bringing
themselves into public notice. They'll prefer hush-money, if they find
out what she's up to now. The prison register would prove it directly.
But Dare will never find it out. How should he?"
Raymond sank back speechless and panting. A strong shudder passed over
him, and his breath seemed to fail.
"It's coming," he whispered, hoarsely. "That lying doctor said I had
several hours, and I feel it coming already."
"Danvers," he continued, hurriedly, "are you still there?" Then, as
Charles bent over him, "Closer; bend down. I want to see your face. Keep
your own counsel about Dare. There's no one to tell if you don't. He's
not fit for Ruth. You can marry her now. I saw what I saw. She'll take
you. And some day--some day, when you have been married a long time,
tell her I'm dead; and tell her--about Flavell, and how I owned to
it--but that I did not do it. I never sank so low as that." His voice
had dropped to a whisper which died imperceptibly away.
"I will tell her," said Charles; and Raymond turned his face to the
wall, and spoke no more.
The struggle had passed, and for the moment death held aloof; but his
shadow was there, lying heavy on the deepening twilight, and darkening
all the little room. Raymond seemed to have sunk into a stupor, and at
last Charles rose silently and went out.
He was dimly conscious of meeting some one in the passage, of answering
some question in the negative, and then he found himself gathering up
the reins, and driving through the narrow lighted streets of D---- in
the dusk, and so away down the long flat high-road to Atherstone.
A white mist had risen up to meet the darkness, and had shrouded all the
land. In sweeps and curves along the fields a gleaming pallor lay of
heavy dew upon the grass, and on the road the long lines of dim water in
the ruts reflected the dim sky.
Carts lumbered past him in the darkness once or twice, the men in them
peering back at his reckless driving; and once a carriage with lamps
came swiftly up the road towards him, and passed him with a flash,
grazing his wheel. But he took no heed. Drive as quickly as he would
through mist and darkness, a voice followed him, the voice of a pursuing
devil close at his ear, whispering in the halting, feeble utterance of a
dying man:
"Keep your own counsel about Dare. There is no one to tell if you
don't."
Charles shivered and set his teeth. High on the hill among the trees the
distant lights of Slumberleigh shone like glowworms through the mist. He
looked at them with wild eyes. She was there, the woman who loved him,
and whom he passionately loved. He could stretch forth his hand to take
her if he would. His breath came hard and thick. A hand seemed clutching
and tearing at his heart. And close at his ear the whisper came:
_"There is no one to tell if you don't."_