There is a boundary even to human patience; and now, after many days,
Max Bray began to find his position very irksome. There was every
probability of Ella's being a long and tedious illness, succeeded by a
very slow return to convalescence; and he sat, at length, one day
thinking matters over, for he was thoroughly tired out. There were no
amusements in the place, and not wishing to attract curiosity, he had
kept himself closely within doors. It was tiresome to a degree, and,
besides, his stock of money would not last for ever. Come what might,
he felt that he could put up with his position no longer. To a great
extent his stratagem had been successful; but this unforeseen illness
had made it now a failure, and he might as well give up and go to
London. It had been expensive certainly; but though he was a loser,
some one else would gain enormously; and he grinned again and again as
he softly rubbed his white hands together, and thought of what a banker
that some one would in the future prove. She would never be able to
refuse him money, however extravagant he might be, and fortunately the
Vinings were enormously wealthy. "But, bai Jove!" said Max Bray half
aloud, "what a sweet thing is love between brother and sister!"
Then Mr Maximilian Bray began to make his plans for the future. He
told himself that time enough had elapsed; that he need not certainly
give up Ella, but arrange with the landlord that he should be informed
directly she was getting better, and then he could come down again--that
could be easily managed--and he really was tired out of this. He also
made a few other plans; building, too, a few more castles in the air,
ending with the determination of going up to town by the first train in
the morning, and getting to know how Laura's affair was progressing.
"At all events, her way's clear," said Max, "and, bai Jove, she shall
pay me for it by and by."
"_L'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose_." Max Bray arranged all future
matters to his entire satisfaction, but again there were contingencies
that he could not foresee. Sitting there, rolling his cigar in his
mouth and reckoning how long it would be to lunch, he had made up his
mind to dine the next day at his club; but he did not; neither did other
matters turn out quite so satisfactorily as he wished.
The sojourn was at a quiet little hotel in a Gloucestershire town that
it is unnecessary to name; suffice it if we say that, save on the weekly
market-day, the streets, with two exceptions, were silent and deserted;
the two exceptions being the time when the children were set free from
the National Schools. Hence, then, any little noise or excitement was
unusual, and it was no wonder that Max Bray was startled by a scream
above stairs, a cry for help, and the trampling of feet; sounds which
his coward heart soon interpreted for him to mean an awful termination
to his "stratagem," when, rising hurriedly to his feet, he stood there
resting one hand upon the table, and the cold perspiration standing in
great drops upon his pallid face.
There were people coming towards his room--they were coming to tell him.
"What of it, then?" he cried savagely. "Could he help it? Had no
doctor been obtained? It was her own mad excitement led to this
termination."
"O, sir! O, sir!" exclaimed the landlady, bursting tearful-eyed into
the room, "your poor, dear, sweet lady!"
"Dead?" asked Max in a harsh whisper, his knees shaking beneath him as
he spoke.
"No, sir, not dead. I only left her for a few minutes, and when I came
back--"
"Well, what? Speak, woman!" cried Max fiercely.
"She was gone, sir."
Max Bray stood for a minute as if stunned, and then leaping at the woman
he shook her savagely, before he started off to make inquiries.
"Had anyone seen her?"
"No, not a soul." But her clothes that she had worn the day she was
borne insensible to the hotel were gone, as was also her little leather
reticule-bag.
"Where could she have gone?"
Only one place could strike Max Bray, as he thought of what she would do
if sense had returned, and she had mastered her weakness sufficiently to
enable her to steal from the house unobserved. There was only one place
that she could seek with the intention of fleeing from him, and that was
the railway station.
"Was their life to be bound up somehow with railways?" he asked himself
as he started off in the direction of the station. "Bai Jove!" he
seemed to have been always either meeting or inquiring about her at
booking-offices; but why had she not been better watched?
Why indeed, unless it was that a chance might be given her for seeking
freedom. But the landlady's few minutes had been a full hour, and, as
if in her sleep, Ella had slowly risen, dressed for a journey, taken her
reticule in her hand, her shawl over her arm, and then, drawing down her
veil, walked--unseen, unchallenged--from the house, and, as if guided by
instinct, gone straight to the station.
A train was nearly due--a fast train--and still in the same quiet way
she applied for a through ticket to London, took her change and walked
out on to the platform, to stand there perfectly motionless and fixed of
eye.
No one heeded her of the few who were waiting, no one spoke; and at last
came the faint and distant sound of the panting train, nearer, nearer,
nearer.
Would she escape, or would she be stayed before she could take her
place?
It might have been thought that she would feel, if not betray, some
excitement; but no; she stood motionless, not even seeming to hear the
coming train: it was as though she were moved by some power independent
of her own will.
There was the ringing of the bell, the altering of a distance signal,
and the train gliding up to the platform, as a farming-looking man drew
the attention of another to a gentleman running swiftly a quarter of a
mile down the road.
"He'll be too late, safe."
"Ah!" said the other. "And they won't wait for him; for they're very
particular here since the row was made about the accident being through
the bad time-keeping of the trains."
"Look at him, how he's waving his hat!" said the first speaker. "He's
running too, and no mistake. Why, it's that dandy swell fellow that's
staying at Linton's, where his wife's ill."
"Serve him right too," said the other. "Why wasn't he in better time?
Those swells are always behindhand."
"Now then, all going on!" cried a voice; and the two men stepped into a
second-class carriage, against the door of which, and looking towards
the booking-office, Ella was already seated, cold, fixed, and apparently
perfectly insensible to what was going on.
"Cold day, miss," said the man who took his seat opposite to her; but
there was no reply, and the next moment the man's attention was caught
by what took place at the booking-office door.
Max Bray dashed panting up as the guard sounded his whistle, but only to
find the glass door fastened, when, evidently half wild with excitement,
he beat at the panels, gesticulating furiously as he saw the train begin
slowly to move, and Ella seated at one window.
She could have seen him too, for her face was turned towards him; she
must have heard his cries for the door to be opened; but she did not
start, she did not shrink back; and now, mad almost with rage and
disappointment, Max Bray forgot all about telegraphs surpassing trains,
everything, in the sight of his prize escaping from within his fingers;
and for what? To expose his cruel duplicity.
It would be ruin, he felt, and he must reach her at all hazards.
Turning, then, from the door, he ran along by the station to where a
wooden palisade bounded the platform, and as the train was slowly
gliding by him, he climbed over to reach the ground before the carriage
containing Ella had passed.
"Stop him!" shouted the station-master; and the guard, who had run and
leaped into his van, stood pointing out the breaker of rules as he
paused for a few moments upon his step.
"Here, hi! You're too late, sir!" roared a couple of porters running in
pursuit; and as Max Bray leaped on to the door-step, and clung to the
handle of the compartment with his face within a few inches of Ella's, a
porter's hand was upon his arm; there was a shout, a curse, the words
"Bai Jove!" half uttered, and then the speaker felt his hands snatched
from their hold; the next moment it was as though a fearful blow was
struck him, and he and the porter were rolling upon the platform. But
again there was a jerk, a wild shriek that froze the bystanders' blood,
and the form of one of the wrestlers was seen to be drawn down between
the last carriage and the platform; the guard's break passed on, and Max
Bray lay motionless upon the line.
Volume 3, Chapter XX.