"VENGEANCE IS MINE."
The weeks rolled on, and the wedding morn of Yorke and Eleanor Dallas
stood but three days off. It was to be a quiet wedding, in consequence
of the death of Lord Eustace and his two sons; but the heir to the
great dukedom of Rothbury could not be married without some slight
fuss, and the society papers contained interesting little paragraphs
concerning the event. The happy young people were to be married at
a little church in Newfold, a picturesque village near Lady Eleanor
Dallas's seat, White Place. There were to be only two bridesmaids,
cousins of the bride, and the great Duke of Rothbury himself was to
be the bridegroom's best man, provided that the duke should be well
enough, the paragraphist went on to say, adding that, as was well
known, the duke had been in bad health of late. After the ceremony
the young couple were to start for the South of France, and on their
return it had been arranged that they should go to Rothbury Castle, the
seat of the duke, who intended handing over the management of the vast
estate to his heir.
Lady Eleanor read these and similar paragraphs until she had got them
by heart. To her the days seemed to drag along with forty-eight hours
to each, and they had appeared all the longer in consequence of Yorke's
absence, for on the plea of having to make his preparations, and
business for the duke, he had not paid many visits to White Place since
his return from Italy. But though Eleanor felt his absence acutely she
was too wise to complain.
"I shall have him altogether presently," was the thought that consoled
her. "All my own, my own with no fear of anything or anybody coming
between us."
But she was terribly restless, and wandered about the grounds, and from
room to room, 'where bridal array was littered all around,' as if she
were possessed of some uneasy spirit.
"If one could only send you into a mesmeric sleep and wake you just
before the ceremony, my dear Nell, it would be a delightful arrangement
for all concerned," said Lady Denby. "It is the man who is generally
supposed to be the nervous party in the business, but I'll be bound
Yorke is as cool as a cucumber."
If not exactly as cool as that much abused vegetable, Yorke certainly
showed very little excitement, and as he walked into the duke's study
on the evening of the third day before that appointed for the wedding,
the duke, glancing at him keenly, remarked on his placidity.
"You take things easily, Yorke," he said.
"As how?" said Yorke, dropping into a chair, and poking the fire.
"Well, you don't look as flurried as a nearly married man is supposed
to look."
"I am not flurried," he said. "Why should I be?" and he looked round
with the poker in his hand. "Fleming has seen about the clothes, the
banns have been put up, and the tickets taken. There is nothing more to
be done on my side, I imagine. No, I am not at all flurried."
"But you look tired," said the duke. "Is everything all right at
Rothbury?" Yorke had just come from there.
"Yes," he replied listlessly. "I saw Lang about those leases and
arranged about the timber, and I told them to have everything ready
for you. I am glad you are going to winter there, Dolph. You will be
as comfortable, now that the whole place is warmed by that hot water
arrangement, as if you were at Nice, and will have the satisfaction, in
addition, of knowing that you are benefitting the people around. They
complained sadly of the place being shut up so much."
"Well, you can alter that," said the duke. "You like the place and can
live there five or six months out of the year. I believe it is supposed
to be one of the nicest places in the kingdom."
Yorke nodded and leant back, his eyes fixed on the fire.
"You dine here to-night?" asked the duke after a pause.
Yorke nodded again.
"Thanks, yes. I'll take my dinner in here with you, if you don't mind."
"No, I don't mind," said the duke with a smile of gratitude and
affection lighting up his wan face. "I wish you were going to dine in
here with me for the rest of my life; but that's rather selfish, isn't
it? Don't be longer away than you can help, Yorke. It may happen that
Eleanor will get tired of the Continent; if she should, come home at
once."
"Very well," said Yorke. "I am in her hands, of course."
"Of course, and you couldn't be in better or sweeter."
"No," assented Yorke absently. "Did you send back that draft of the
leases I posted to you?"
"Eh?" The duke thought a moment. "No, I didn't. I forgot all about
them."
Yorke smiled.
"You see that it is time I handed in my checks and allowed a better
man to take the berth," said the duke cheerfully. "I'm very sorry,
especially as you have taken so much trouble about the business. Let me
see, where did I put them? I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten. Look in
that bureau drawer, will you?"
Yorke got up and sauntered across the room. He looked very tall and
thin in his dark mourning suit of black serge, and the duke noticed
that he was paler than when he had seen him last, paler and more tired
looking.
"Never mind," he said. "Let the lawyers make out fresh ones."
"Oh, I'll find 'em," said Yorke. "You have stuffed them in somewhere,"
and he opened drawer after drawer, in the free and easy manner in which
a favorite son opens the drawers and cupboards of a father. "I'll back
you for carefully mislaying things, especially papers, against any man
in England--excepting myself."
"Grey always sees to them. He has spoilt me," remarked the duke
apologetically.
"That's what I tell my man Fleming," said Yorke. "I should mislay my
head if he didn't put it on straight every morning when he brushed my
hair."
The duke laughed.
"They are a pattern pair," he said. "Don't trouble. Ring for Grey."
But Yorke in an absent mechanical fashion still sauntered round the
room searching for the missing drafts, and presently he opened the
drawer of the small cabinet which generally stood beside the duke's
couch, but which this evening was immediately behind him.
Yorke opened the drawer and turned over the things, and was closing it
again when his eyes caught the glitter of diamonds.
"You keep a choice collection of things in these drawers of yours,
Dolph," he said.
"What is it?" asked the duke.
Yorke pulled out the pendant.
"Only diamonds," he said, "and very handsome ones, too. Where on
earth did you get them, and who are they for? Perhaps I'd better not
go poking about any longer, or I shall come upon some secret----." He
stopped suddenly. He had been speaking in a tone of lazy badinage,
scarcely heeding what he was saying, until suddenly he recognized the
pendant.
"Oh, I've no secrets," said the duke. "What is it you have found! Ah!"
He had swung himself round by the lever and saw Yorke gazing at the
pendant lying in his hand.
"Where did you get this?" demanded Yorke. The duke looked at his face
as he asked the question. It was grave, with curiosity and surprise;
but the duke was glad to see that it showed no keener emotion, and told
himself that Yorke was forgetting Leslie.
"Do you recognize it?" he asked.
"Yes," said Yorke slowly. "It is a thing I gave----." He stopped. "How
did it come here? Where did you get it?"
"It was brought to me," said the duke in a low voice.
"Brought to you? Why to you?" Yorke demanded, looking up from the
pendant. What memories it awakened!
"I cannot tell you."
"Who brought it?"
"A man by the name of--I forget. His card is in the drawer."
Yorke looked.
"No, it is not here."
"Then it is lost. His name--his name--yes, I remember. It was Duncombe.
Ralph Duncombe."
"Ralph Duncombe?" Yorke spoke the name two or three times. He seemed to
think that he had heard it before, but he could not recall it. He put
the pendant in his pocket, and went and stood before the fire with his
back to the duke.
"Did he give no message--no explanation?" he asked.
"No," said the duke. "He acted as if he thought I had sent the thing to
her."
Yorke did not look round. Why had Finetta sent back the pendant, and
why had she sent it to the duke instead of to him, Yorke?
"You don't want to talk about it?" said the duke after a pause.
"No, I don't," assented Yorke grimly. "There are some things one would
prefer to forget."
"Ah, if one could, if one could!" muttered the duke.
The dinner came in soon afterwards; and the two men talked of the
approaching marriage, of the plans for the winter, of the game at
Rothbury, of everything but the diamond pendant. Then suddenly Yorke,
who had been answering in an absent-minded kind of way, uttered an
exclamation.
"What is the matter?" demanded the duke.
"Nothing," said Yorke sharply. Then he looked at his watch. "Do you
mind my leaving you before the coffee?"
"Not a bit. Where are you going?"
Yorke made no reply, perhaps he did not hear. He got up, and rang for
Grey to bring his hat.
"I shall not be back till late, Dolph," he said. "Don't sit up."
He had remembered suddenly where he had seen this Ralph Duncombe's
name. It was the man who had hunted him down to the ruin from which
Eleanor had saved him; and it was by this man Finetta had sent back the
diamond pendant. There was only one conclusion to be drawn from the
coincidence; it was Finetta, then, who had sought to revenge herself
for his desertion of her, by planning his ruin and disgrace. It was she
who had brought about this marriage of his, this marriage which would
enslave him for life.
Yorke was not a bad-tempered man, nor a malignant, but at that moment
he was possessed of a burning desire to confront Finetta, and charge
her with her perfidy.
He went down the Strand and entered the Diadem. The stall-keeper looked
at him with lively surprise and interest.
"Glad to see you back, my lord," he said, with profound respect.
Yorke took the programme and glanced at it.
"Miss Finetta appears to-night?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, my lord! She will be on in a few minutes."
Yorke sat bolt upright in his stall, glaring at the stage. There
were several persons in the front of the house who knew him, but he
looked neither to the left nor the right. His heart was on fire. The
false-hearted woman! She had pretended to bid him farewell in peace
and friendship, and had betrayed him! Yes, he would wait until the
performance was over, and would go round and confront her. There should
be no scene, but he would tell her that her baseness was known, and, if
possible, shame her.
It was a foolish resolve, but, alas! Yorke was never celebrated for
wisdom.
The orchestra played the opening to the second act, the usual chorus
sang, and the usual comic man cracked the time-honored wheezes, and
then the band played a few bars of an evidently well known melody, for
the gallery greeted the music with an anticipatory cheer, and a moment
afterwards Finetta bounded on the stage. There was a roar of delighted
welcome, and amidst it she came sailing and smiling gracefully down to
the footlights, her dark eyes flashing round with a half-languorous,
half-defiant gleam in them of which the public was so fond.
Then suddenly she saw the well known face there in the stalls. For a
second she paused in her slow, waltzing step, and looked at him with
a look that he might well take for fear. The conductor of the band
glanced up, surprised; it was the first time Finetta had ever missed a
step. But before he could pull the band together and catch up the lost
bar she had gone on dancing, and danced with her accustomed grace and
precision.
Yorke watched her with a grim fury. This smiling, dancing jade
had plotted to ruin him, had tried to drive him into a debtors'
court--worse, had forced him to marry Eleanor Dallas! He could have
sprung up there and then and accused her of her vileness; and the
desire to do so was so great that he was on the point of rising to
leave the theater and await her at the stage door, when suddenly he saw
her falter and stumble, and the next instant--the same instant--she had
disappeared, and in the spot where she had just stood was a gaping hole.
The house rose with a gasp, a sigh of horror that rose to a yell of
indignation and accusation.
It was the old story: 'Someone had blundered' and left the trap door
unbolted, and London's favorite dancer had danced upon it and gone down
to the depths beneath.
The audience rose, yelling, shouting, pushing this way and that; the
curtain was lowered, the lights turned up, and the manager, in the
inevitable evening dress, appeared, with his hand upon his heart. He
assured the audience that Miss Finetta was not hurt--not seriously
hurt--and that though it would not be wise for her to dance again that
evening, he trusted that she would appear again to-morrow night, etc.,
etc.
Yorke waited till the plausible excuse was concluded, then he
quietly--in a dream, as it were--went out and round to the stage door.
And one line of the Book he had, alas! read too seldom, rang in his
ears as he went: "Vengeance is Mine!"
The stage door keeper knew him in a moment, but in answer to Yorke's
inquiry if he could see Miss Finetta, shook his head.
"I don't know, sir! There's a rumor that she's kil----."
Yorke pushed by him and made his way to the dressing rooms. There was a
crowd of chorus girls and supers surging to and fro in the corridor and
clustered together in little knots; all talking in hurried whispers.
They made way for Yorke and he knocked at the door of Finetta's
dressing room. The manager opened it.
"Is it the doctor--oh, it's you, my lord!" he said in a whisper. "It's
an awful thing! In the middle of the season, too!"
"Is she----," began Yorke in a low voice, hoarse with agitation. But low
as it was it was heard by someone within the room, for Finetta's voice,
weak and hollow with pain, said:
"Is that you, Yorke? Let him come in!"