Presentiments are no doubt foolish things, and yet, at the time that
Angela was speaking of hers to Mr. Fraser, a consultation was going on
in a back study at Isleworth that might almost have justified it. The
fire was the only light in the room, and gathered round it, talking
very low, their features thrown alternately into strong light and dark
shadow, were George Caresfoot and Sir John and Lady Bellamy. It was
evident from the strong expression of interest, almost of excitement,
on their faces that they were talking of some matter of great
importance.
Sir John was, as usual, perched on the edge of his chair, rubbing his
dry hands and eliciting occasional sparks in the shape of remarks, but
he was no longer merry; indeed, he looked ill at ease. George, his red
hair all rumpled up, and his long limbs thrust out towards the fire,
spoke scarcely at all, but glued his little bloodshot eyes alternately
on the faces of his companions, and only contributed an occasional
chuckle. But the soul of this witches’ gathering was evidently Lady
Bellamy. She was standing up, and energetically detailing some scheme,
the great pupils of her eyes expanding and contracting as the unholy
flame within them rose and fell.
“Then that is settled,” she said, at last.
George nodded, Bellamy said nothing.
“I suppose that silence gives consent. Very well, I will take the first
step to-morrow. I do not like Angela Caresfoot, but, upon my word, I
shall be sorry for her before she is twenty-four hours older. She is
made of too fine a material to be sold into such hands as yours, George
Caresfoot.”
George looked up menacingly, but said nothing.
“I have often urged you to give this up; now I urge no more—the thing
is done in spirit, it may as well be done in reality. I told you long
ago that it was a most dreadfully wicked thing, and that nothing but
evil can come of it. Do not say that I have not warned you.”
“Come, stop that devil’s talk,” growled George.
“Devil’s talk!—that is a good word, George, for it is of the devil’s
wages that I am telling you. Now listen, I am going to prophesy. A
curse will fall upon this house and all within it. Would you like to
have a sign that I speak the truth? Then wait.” She was standing up,
her hand stretched out, and in the dim light she looked like some
heathen princess urging a bloody sacrifice to her gods. Her forebodings
terrified her hearers, and, by a common impulse, they rose and moved
away from her.
At that moment a strange thing happened. A gust of wind, making its way
from some entrance in the back of the house, burst open the door of the
room in which they were, and entered with a cold flap as of wings. Next
second a terrible crash resounded from the other end of the room.
George turned white as a sheet, and sank into a chair, cursing feebly.
Bellamy gave a sort of howl of terror, and shrank up to his wife,
almost falling into the fire in his efforts to get behind her. Lady
Bellamy alone, remaining erect and undaunted, laughed aloud.
“Come, one of you brave conspirators against a defenceless girl, strike
a light, for the place is as dark as a vault, and let us see what has
happened. I told you that you should have a sign.”
After several efforts, George succeeded in doing as she bade him, and
held a candle forward in his trembling hand.
“Come, don’t be foolish,” she said; “a picture has fallen, that is
all.”
He advanced to look at it, and then benefited his companions with a
further assortment of curses. The picture, on examination, proved to be
a large one that he had, some years previously, had painted of
Isleworth, with the Bellamys and himself in the foreground. The frame
was shattered, and all the centre of the canvass torn out by the weight
of its fall on to a life-sized and beautiful statue of Andromeda
chained to a rock, awaiting her fate with a staring look of agonized
terror in her eyes.
“An omen, a very palpable omen,” said Lady Bellamy, with one of her
dark smiles. “Isleworth and ourselves destroyed by being smashed
against a marble girl, who rises uninjured from the wreck. Eh, John?”
“Don’t touch me, you sorceress,” replied Sir John, who was shaking with
fear. “I believe that you are Satan in person.”
“You are strangely complimentary, even for a husband.”
“Perhaps I am, but I know your dark ways, and your dealings with your
master, and I tell you both what it is; I have done with the job. I
will have nothing more to do with it. I will know nothing more about
it.”
“You hear what he says,” said Lady Bellamy to George. “John does not
like omens. For the last time, will you give it up, or will you go on?”
“I can’t give her up—I can’t indeed; it would kill me,” answered
George, wringing his hands. “There is a fiend driving me along this
path.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Sir John, who was staring at the broken
picture with chattering teeth, and his eyes almost starting out of his
head; “but if I were you, I should get him to drive me a little
straighter, that’s all.”
“You are poor creatures, both of you,” said Lady Bellamy; “but we will,
then, decide to go on.”
“Fiat ‘injuria’ ruat coelum,” said Sir John, who knew a little Latin;
and, frightened as he was, could not resist the temptation to air it.
And then they went and left George still contemplating the horror-
stricken face of the nude marble virgin whose eyes appeared to gaze
upon the ruins of his picture.
Next morning, being Christmas Day, Lady Bellamy went to church, as
behoves a good Christian, and listened to the Divine message of peace
on earth and good-will towards men. So, for the matter of that, did
George, and so did Angela. After church, Lady Bellamy went home to
lunch, but she was in no mood for eating, so she left the table, and
ordered the victoria to be round in half an hour.
After church, too, Angela and Mr. Fraser ate their Christmas dinner.
Angela’s melancholy had to some extent melted beneath the genial
influence of the Christmas-tide, and her mind had taken comfort from
the words of peace and everlasting love that she had heard that
morning, and for awhile, at any rate, she had forgotten her
forebodings. The unaccustomed splendour of the dinner, too, had
diverted her attention, for she was easily pleased with such things,
and altogether she was in a more comfortable frame of mind than she had
been on the previous evening, and was inclined to indulge in a pleasant
talk with Mr. Fraser upon various subjects, mostly classical and
Arthurian. She had already cracked some filberts for him, plucked by
herself in the autumn, and specially saved in a damp jar, and was about
to settle herself in a chair by the fire, when suddenly she turned
white and stood quite still.
“Hark!” she said, “do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Lady Bellamy’s horse—the big black horse that trots so fast.”
“I can hear nothing, Angela.”
“But I can. She is on the high-road yet; she will be here very soon;
that horse trots fast.”
“Nonsense, Angela; it is some other horse.”
But, as he spoke, the sound of a powerful animal trotting very rapidly
became distinctly audible.
“It has come—the evil news—and she has brought it.”
“Rubbish, dear; somebody to see your father, no doubt.”
A minute elapsed, and then Mrs. Jakes, now the only servant in the
house, was heard shuffling along the passage, followed by a firm, light
step.
“Don’t leave me,” said Angela to Mr. Fraser. “God give me strength to
bear it,” she went on, beneath her breath. She was still standing
staring vacantly towards the door, pale, and her bosom heaving. The
intensity of her anxiety had to some extent communicated itself to Mr.
Fraser, for there are few things so catching as anxiety, except
enthusiasm; he, too, had risen, and was standing in an attitude of
expectancy.
“Lady Bellamy to see yer,” said Mrs. Jakes, pushing her head through
the half-opened door.
Next second she had entered.
“I must apologise for disturbing you at dinner, Angela,” she began
hurriedly, and then stopped and also stood still. There was something
very curious about her reception, she thought; both Mr. Fraser and
Angela might have been cut out of stone, for neither moved.
Standing thus in the silence of expectancy, the three made a strange
picture. On Lady Bellamy’s face there was a look of stern determination
and suppressed excitement such as became one about to commit a crime.
At last she broke the silence.
“I come to bring you bad news, Angela,” she said.
“What have you to say? tell me, quick! No, stop, hear me before you
speak. If you have come here with any evil in your heart, or with the
intention to deceive or betray, pause before you answer. I am a lonely
and almost friendless woman, and have no claim except upon your
compassion; but it is not always well to deal ill with such as I, since
we have at last a friend whose vengeance you too must fear. So, by the
love of Christ and by the presence of the God who made you, speak to me
only such truth as you will utter at his judgment. Now, answer, I am
ready.”
At her words, spoken with an earnestness and in a voice which made them
almost awful, a momentary expression of fear swept across Lady
Bellamy’s face, but it went as quickly as it came, and the hard,
determined look returned. The mysterious eyes grew cold and glittered,
the head erected itself. At that moment Lady Bellamy distinctly
reminded Mr. Fraser of a hooded cobra about to strike.
“Am I to speak before Mr. Fraser?”
“Speak!”
“What is the good of this high-flown talk, Angela? You seem to know my
news before I give it, and believe me it pains me very much to have to
give it. _He is dead, Angela._”
The cobra had struck, but as yet the poison had scarcely begun to work.
There was only numbness. Mr. Fraser gave a gasp and half dropped, half
fell, into his chair. The noise attracted Angela’s attention, and
pressing her hand to her forehead she turned towards him with a ghost
of a laugh.
“Did I not tell you that this evil woman would bring evil news.” Then
addressing Lady Bellamy, “But stop, you forget what I said to you, you
do not speak the truth. Arthur dead! How can Arthur be dead and I
alive? How is it that I do not know he is dead? Oh, for shame, it is
not true, he is not dead.”
“This seems to me to be a thankless as well as a painful task,” said
Lady Bellamy, hoarsely, “but, if you will not believe me, look here,
you know this, I suppose? I took it, as he asked me to do, from his
dead hand that it might be given back to you.”
“If Mr. Heigham is dead,” said Mr. Fraser, “how do you know it, where
did he die, and what of?”
“I know it, Mr. Fraser, because it was my sad duty to nurse him through
his last illness at Madeira. He died of enteric fever. I have got a
copy of his burial certificate here which I had taken from the
Portuguese books. He seems to have had no relations living, poor young
man, but Sir John communicated with the family lawyer. Here is the
certificate,” and she handed Mr. Fraser a paper written in Portuguese
and officially stamped.
“You say,” broke in Angela, “that you took this ring from his dead
hand, the hand on which I placed it. I do not believe you. You beguiled
it from his living hand. It cannot be that he is dead; for, if he were,
I should have felt it. Oh, Arthur!” and in her misery she stretched out
her arms and turned her agonized eyes upwards, “if you are dead, come
to me, and let me see your spirit face, and hear the whisper of your
wings. Have you no voice in the silence? You see he does not come, he
is not dead; if he were dead, Heaven could not hold him from my side,
or, if it could, it would have drawn me up to his.”
“My love, my love,” said Mr. Fraser, in a scared voice, “it is not
God’s will that the dead should come back to us thus——”
“My poor Angela, why will you not believe me? This is so very painful,
do you suppose that I want to torture you by saying what is not true
about your love? The idea is absurd. I had meant to keep it till you
were calmer; but I have a letter for you. Read it and convince
yourself.”
Angela almost snatched the paper from her outstretched hand. It ran
thus, in characters almost illegible from weakness:—
“Dearest,—Good-bye. I am dying of fever. Lady Bellamy will take back
your ring when it is over. Try to forget me, and be happy. Too weak to
write more. Good-bye. God——”
At the foot of this broken and almost illegible letter was scrawled the
word, “ARTHUR.”
Angela read it slowly, and then at length the poison did its work. She
did not speak wildly any more, or call upon Arthur; she was stung back
to sense, but all the light went out of her eyes.
“It is his writing,” she said, slowly. “I beg your pardon. It was good
of you to nurse him.”
Then, pressing the paper to her bosom with one hand, with the other she
groped her way towards the door.
“It is very dark,” she said.
Lady Bellamy’s eyes gave a flash of triumph, and then she stood
watching the pitiable exhibition of human misery as curiously as ever a
Roman matron did an expiring gladiator. When Angela was near the door,
the letter still pressed against her heart, she spoke again.
“The blow comes from God, Angela, and the religion and spiritual
theories which you believe in will bring you consolation. Most likely
it is a blessing in disguise—a thing that you will in time even learn
to be thankful for.”
Lady Bellamy had overacted her part. The words did not ring true, they
jarred upon Mr. Fraser; much more did they jar upon Angela’s torn
nerves. Her pale cheek flushed, and she turned and spoke, but there was
no anger in her face, nothing but sorrow that dignified, and
unfathomable love lost in its own depths. Only the eyes seemed as
sightless as those of one walking in her sleep.
“When your hour of dreadful trouble comes, as it will come, pray God
that there may be none to mock you as you mock me.” And she turned like
a stricken thing, and went slowly out, blindly groping her way along.
Her last words had hit the victor hard. Who can say what hidden string
they touched, or what prescience of evil they awakened? But they went
nigh to felling her. Clutching the mantel-piece, Lady Bellamy gasped
for air; then, recovering a little, she said:
“Thank God, that is over.”
Mr. Fraser scarcely saw this last incident. So overwhelmed was he at
the sight of Angela’s agony that he had covered his face with his hand.
When he lifted it again, Lady Bellamy was gone, and he was alone.