There was quite a meeting at little Miss Clode's the next morning, after
a heavy storm that had set in during the night; but, though the ordinary
atmosphere was fresh, clear, cool and bright after the heavy rain, the
social atmosphere grew more dense and lurid, hour by hour, as the
callers rolled the news snow-ball on till Annie Clode's eyes looked as
if they would never close again, and her mouth formed a veritable round
O.
Miss Clode herself was in a state of nervous prostration, but she forced
herself to be in the shop and listen, gathering scraps of information
which she sifted, casting aside the rubbish and retaining only what was
good, so as to piece together afterwards, and lay before herself what
was the whole truth.
The accounts were sufficiently alarming; and among others it was current
that Sir Harry Payne was eloping with Claire Denville, when Mrs Burnett
followed to stop them, and Frank Burnett in a fit of rage and jealousy,
stabbed her and Sir Harry.
Another account stated that it was Sir Matthew Bray who had stabbed Mrs
Burnett, and that he had been seized and put in prison for the deed,
while Lady Drelincourt had gone mad from love and misery, and had been
found by Fisherman Dick and a couple of friends six miles inland, lost
on the Downs, drenched with rain, and raving so that she had had to be
held down in the cart that the fishermen had been using to carry
mackerel.
Everybody smiled at the word mackerel, and thought of French brandy for
some reason or another.
This last business was as much canvassed as May Burnett's injury, for
subsequent inquiry proved that Lady Drelincourt really had been brought
home by Fisherman Dick, and that she was delirious and attended by two
doctors.
Sir Matthew Bray, too, was certainly in prison, and nobody troubled him
or herself to discriminate between an arrest for debt set about next day
by Josiah Barclay, and one for some criminal offence.
The whole affair was like a godsend, just when scandal was starving for
want of sustenance, and Saltinville at its lowest ebb.
Some one had seen the postboys, and knew that Lord Carboro' was up at
the cross-roads, where he had gone to fight a duel with Colonel Mellersh
over a card-table quarrel, and they happened to be just in time to help
May Burnett when her sister stabbed Sir Harry Payne.
Some one else quarrelled indignantly with this version, for she knew
from Lady Drelincourt's maid that it was her ladyship herself, who in a
fit of indignant jealousy had stabbed Claire Denville and Sir Matthew
Bray, whom everyone knew she loved desperately, and that she had
afterwards gone distracted because she had nearly killed Sir Matthew.
This narrator went off in high dudgeon on being openly contradicted, and
told that she was entirely wrong, for the fact was that young Cornet
Morton Denville, who saved Lady Drelincourt's pet dog, and for whom her
ladyship had bought a commission, had challenged Sir Matthew Bray to
fight with swords at the cross-roads. They had met, but Lady
Drelincourt, in alarm, had gone and told Morton Denville's sisters, and
they had all three gone up together in a post-chaise with Sir Harry
Payne on horseback. They had come up just in the heat of the fight, and
Sir Harry and Mrs Burnett had rushed between them, and both been
wounded; and in her horror at being the cause of such bloodshed, Lady
Drelincourt had exclaimed, "I would give my diamonds and everything I
possess to be able to undo this terrible night's work."
Such minute knowledge carried all before it, and for quite an hour this
was the accepted version.
Somehow, Louis Gravani, save with three or four of the witnesses of the
tragedy, dropped entirely out of the affair, going as suddenly as he had
come, though he seemed always present in the little bedchamber on the
Parade, where May lay almost at the point of death, muttering feebly,
and appealing to him not to be so cruel as to kill her, because she
always thought that he was dead.
The surgeon had done all that was possible, and he had consulted with
the principal physician as to the course to be pursued; and then, in the
face of two grave wounds in the neck and breast of the frail, childish
little creature, they had left her to the wild delirium that had set
in--one whose fever was burning away rapidly the flickering life that
was left.
The window was wide open, and the soft, low rush of the water upon the
shingle floated in like soft, murmurous music through the flowers that
it had always been Claire's pleasure to tend. Then a faint, querulous
cry, oft repeated, came from seaward, where the soft grey-plumaged gulls
swept here and there, and dipped down at the shelly shoals laid bare as
the tide ebbed and flowed. It was a weird, uneasy sound, that accorded
well with the painful scene in the chamber given up to the sick girl, by
whose side stood Claire, pale and anxious, ready to fan the burning
face, or rearrange the bedclothes tossed uneasily away.
Near the foot of the bed sat the Master of the Ceremonies, grey,
hollow-cheeked, and with a wild look of despairing horror in his eyes,
as he gazed at his little fallen idol, for whom he had fought and
schemed, and whom he had so obstinately held aloft in his own heart, to
the disparagement of her patient, forbearing sister.
"Is it true, Claire?" he murmured at last; "is it true, or some dreadful
dream? My child! My child!"
Then his face grew convulsed with horror, as May turned her face towards
him, and began speaking rapidly:
"Don't, Louis--pray: don't.--No: I am afraid.--Take me away quickly,
dear.--No one will know, and I hate him so.--Little mean wretch!--They
made me marry him, and I hate him more and more.--Hush!"
Denville groaned, and, as his head drooped upon his breast, Claire heard
him murmur:
"Is it a judgment--is it a judgment for the past?"
She shivered as she listened to his words, but a quick movement and a
low cry of pain made her bend over her sister again.
"Take me away," she said, after a few moments; and her pinched face bore
a look of terror that stabbed those who watched with an agonising pain.
"I tell you I hate Frank, and I dare not meet poor Louis now. It is not
he, but something from the dead. Claire--Claire--hold me. Sister,
help! Don't let me go. Am I going to die?"
"May, May!" whispered Claire soothingly, as she laid her cheek against
the burning face; and the sick girl sighed, and made an effort to cling
to her, but her feeble arm dropped heavily upon the coverlid.
"Don't let Louis come now. Is that Frank? Is that--"
She wandered off, muttering quickly and incoherently as she threw her
head from side to side for a time; and then, utterly exhausted, seemed
to sleep.
"Has--has Frank Burnett been?" whispered her father, looking timidly at
Claire.
She shook her head sadly.
"No," said Denville; "he will not come. He would not even if she were
to die. She must get better; and we will do as you have often said: go
right away, where we are not known, and where we shall be safe."
In spite of herself, Claire darted at him a horrified look, which he saw
and winced at, as he rose feebly, and began to pace the room, stopping
at length before the window to gaze out at the sunlit sea.
"Strange!" he murmured; "the world so beautiful, and my life one dreary
course of agony and pain. Claire, what do the doctors really think--
that she will live?"
"I pray God they do!" said Claire solemnly.
"Yes; she must live and repent. There is pardon for those who suffer
and repent, my child. Don't look at me like that; you do not know.
Claire, is this my punishment? Surely no worse suffering can befall me
now."
"Dear father," whispered Claire; "let the past be dead."
"Hush!" he cried, grasping her hand; "Don't talk of death, girl--here.
She must live, and we will go away before--before it is too late. Has
Morton been?"
Claire shook her head mournfully.
"No; he would not come. He must not come," said the old man quickly.
"He is well placed, and he must not come near such pariahs as we are.
No, no; don't look like that," he whispered passionately. "Why should
he drag himself down? It is too much to ask of the boy."
He went on tip-toe to the bed, and took the little feverish hand that
lay outside the coverlid, and kissed and stroked it as he muttered to
himself:
"Poor little wandering lamb! So weak and timid, and ready to go astray;
but you are safe here with me. Oh, how wrong everything is!"
Claire glanced at him, half stunned by this new trouble; and, as her
father talked of punishment, and the impossibility of a greater trouble
than this befalling them, a cold hand seemed to clutch her heart, and a
vague, black shadow of another horror came back with double force, she
shuddered, and devoted herself more and more to her task of attending
the sister sick apparently unto death.
As she sat there, with the shadow of death impending, after the first
shock, it seemed to lose its terrors, and she found herself looking upon
it as less dreadful than she had been wont to do. There was rest in it,
and a cessation from the pain and suffering that had so long been her
portion; and, as the hours rolled on, her throbbing brain grew dull and
heavy, her own suffering lighter, and she seemed better able to attend
to the sufferer at her side.
Towards noon there was a soft knock at the front door, and Isaac--who
had been planning with Eliza an immediate flight from the grief-stricken
house, on the ground that, even if they lost their wages, it was no
longer a place for them to stay at--opened it, and told the visitor that
Miss Denville could see no one.
"But me, young man," said the caller, quietly entering. "You need not
say I'm here. I shall go up soon, and you have got to go on to my house
for another basket like this, only bigger."
She patted the one she carried--one which she had crammed with such
things as she thought would be useful at such a time.
Isaac gave way, allowed Mrs Barclay to go up to the drawing-room, and
directly after called Eliza into his pantry to tell her that his mind
was made up, and that they must go at once.
Mrs Barclay did not hesitate for a moment, but went softly up to the
bedroom, tapped gently, and turned the handle to enter on tip-toe.
"I've only come to help, my dear," she said softly, as she clasped
Claire in her arms. "We weren't quick enough, my dear," she whispered,
"or we might have saved all this."
There was no reply, and after a time, in respect to Claire's wishes,
Mrs Barclay went downstairs.
"I shall be there if you want me, my dear. Don't you go and think that
you are left alone."
Mrs Barclay had hardly seated herself in the dining-room, and taken
some rather grubby work from her pocket, when she heard a peculiar
noise, and the bump of something being placed heavily upon the floor.
She listened, and heard some one ascend the stairs again, and there was
a whispering, which ceased as the whisperers ascended, and then there
was silence, and Mrs Barclay took a stitch, and thought and wondered
whether Cora Dean would come, or whether the Denvilles would be cut by
everyone now.
Then she took another stitch, and nibbed her nose, which itched.
"Poor little soul!" she said to herself, "it's come home to her at last.
I never thought any good of her, but I'm not one to go on punishing
those who've done wrong."
Mrs Barclay took another stitch and began to think again.
"Jo-si-ah says if they catch the little Italian fellow, he'll be
transported for life, and if poor little Mrs Burnett dies, they'll hang
him. Well, I don't hold with hanging people, so I hope she won't die."
She took another stitch and drew the thread through very slowly.
"Jo-si-ah says Sir Harry isn't very bad, and the constable and a
magistrate have been to see him, but he says he knows nothing hardly
about it. Poor Claire! What a house this is! What trouble!"
She took another stitch.
"I wonder whether Richard Linnell will come. I shall begin to hate him
if he doesn't stand by the poor girl in her distress. He's a poor
shilly-shally sort of a fellow, or he'd believe in her as I do."
There was quite a vicious stitch here.
"Perhaps, it isn't his fault. She kept him at a distance terribly, and
no wonder with the troubles she's had; but of course he can't understand
all that, being impetuous, like my Jo-si-ah was, and I dessay it will
all come right at last. Now, what are they lumping down the stairs,
making a noise, and that poor child so ill?"
She threw her work on the table, got up softly, and, just as there was a
fresh bump and a whispering, she opened the door to find Isaac and Eliza
standing over a box which they had just set down in the passage beside
another, while Isaac in plain clothes and Eliza with her bonnet in her
hand started at seeing the visitor.
"Why, highty-tighty, who's going away?" cried Mrs Barclay wonderingly.
Eliza glanced at Isaac, who cleared his throat.
"The fact is, ma'am, this young person and I have come to the conclusion
that seeing how we suffered from arrears, and what goings on there are
here, Mr Denville's isn't the service in which we care to stop any
longer."
"Oh," said Mrs Barclay; "and have you told Mr Denville you are going?"
"Well, ma'am; no, ma'am. We have thought it is not necessary under the
circumstances, and--"
"Nor yet, Miss Claire?"
"No, ma'am; she is too busy."
"Then just you take those boxes up again, young man, and take off that
finery, and put on your livery," said Mrs Barclay in a low angry voice.
"Now, no words. You do as I say--there take those boxes up."
The tone of voice, manner, and a hint about the wages had their effect.
Isaac and Eliza glanced at each other, and took the boxes away without a
word, Isaac coming back in livery a quarter of an hour later to tell
Mrs Barclay that "that soldier" was at the back door.
Mrs Barclay started and followed Isaac, to stare in wonder at the fine
soldierly young fellow, who eagerly asked her a score of questions about
Claire and May, and, declining to be questioned in turn, hurried away
with troubled mien.
Volume Three, Chapter IX.