A SNARE.
She rushed to the window and drew back the heavy damask curtains.
Snow--snow and hail on the bitter blustering wind of March had
whitened all the moorland waste, and was deepening fast there.
She permitted the curtain to drop from her tremulous hand, and
returned in a kind of despair to her seat; for although the distance
between her and home was short, the night was too wild for her to
venture forth alone.
"It will serve no purpose your taking this little delay so much to
heart," said Chesters. "You must have patience. Pray compose
yourself, and do lay aside your wraps."
"Excuse me, I cannot," replied Mary, in a choking voice.
"And so you came to ask about young Wedderburn?"
"Yes," faltered Mary; "but only of the gatekeeper as I was passing."
"That young muff, the Master of Ernescleugh, is making himself
excessively busy in the affair."
"But they are--alas! must we say were--neighbours--friends," urged
Mary, with surprise at his tone.
"That is no reason why he should have come to me thrice with the
people of the Procurator Fiscal in the prosecution of inquiries. He
should join his regiment in London, or his papa, my Lord Ernescleugh,
at his government in the Ionian Isles, and leave Cyril Wedderburn and
his fate to the family and the local authorities; but he'll linger on
here no doubt, and enter stakes for the heiress."
"What heiress?"
"Haven't you heard about her?" asked Chesters, with a languid but
malevolent smile.
"No."
"Sir John Wedderburn's brother William has died lately at Madras, and
left his whole fortune, some three hundred thousand pounds at least,
with a palace in the Choultry, to his only daughter--a girl, who is
coming to Willowdean as her new home. She is a great beauty, they
say; and Mamma Wedderburn," he added, a little spitefully, "had an
eye on her as a wife for Cyril."
"I know nothing of it," sighed Mary.
"Ah, but I do. I was at breakfast with the family on the morning the
news came, and I read the whole intention in Lady Wedderburn's face
and manner; but now, as Cyril has gone, that legal prig Bob will very
likely have a chance of making her a prize."
Mary only answered these surmises so slangily expressed by her silent
tears; but while he spoke she remembered, as one in a dream--for she
had not slept since she heard them--the words of the Doctor about a
rich bride in prospect for her lost Cyril.
But the rumour excited neither jealousy nor fear. Oh, what did it
matter now!
She looked so exquisitely lady-like as she sat with her little hands
folded in her tiny muff which rested on her knees, and her veiled
face upturned to Chesters, that he--no bad judge of breeding in women
or horses--thought what a creditable-looking wife she would make for
him or any man; but she was poor, and he was up to the ears in debt;
thus neither her poverty nor her beauty excited his pity, though they
gave quick suggestion to his worst passions. He loved Mary in a
fashion of his own: but he knew that the wife for him must have
money, and poor Mary had none.
Full of grief as he saw she was for the terrible and mysterious
disappearance of Cyril Wedderburn, Captain Rooke Chesters was far too
judicious, or far too cunning, to press any suit of his own just
then. He could wait his opportunity; but he thought that if by
luring or detaining her under any pretence in his own house for a few
hours, he could compromise, or place her in a false position, it
would achieve all he wanted at the time.
All that day, we have said, she had not taken food, yet he pressed
her in vain to join him at dinner. She felt weak, ill, and giddy.
The room seemed to become larger and larger still; its further end
appeared to recede as if to a vast distance; all around her became
like a species of phantasmagoria, and only by a violent effort of her
own will did she resist the faintness that was stealing over her.
She was in an agony of mind as the hours of the stormy night wore on.
She pictured to herself her ailing and querulous father asking for
her, in an alarm that might prove detrimental to his shaken
system--missing the poor wan girl, who, in her faded dressing-gown,
was at all hours of the weary night ever at hand to give him the
medicines or soothing draughts prescribed for him by Doctor Squills;
ever ready to arrange the pillows; to caress him and bathe his hot
and tremulous hands or aching head with cold water, with Rimmel or
other aromatic vinegar; and she was here--_here_ at Chesterhaugh,
imprisoned by the darkness, the hail, and the snow!
Chesters had his own dark purpose to achieve, and as he forsook
champagne for claret, and idled over his walnuts, he viewed her
impatience and her mental agony with perfect composure, though
treating her with well-bred sympathy the while.
But, as the night wore on, Mary felt more and more the awkwardness,
the ultimate doubt and danger of her position, in being thus alone,
without a lady friend or chaperon, in the house of a bachelor; and
more than all, one who bore such a local reputation as Ralph Rooke
Chesters! She was conscious that the very servant--he of the
inevitable calves and plush--who removed the dinner and brought in
maraschino and coffee, inspired by some of Mr. Bill Trayner's knowing
remarks and cruel inferences in the servants' hall below, regarded
her with curious eyes.
It has been said that "even bad men have some good traits in them,
and that selfish men are capable of _feeling_."
Perhaps it may be so; but Chesters was incapable of sensibility or
caring for any one but himself, and was destitute of a single good
trait or generous emotion; so even while watching Mary's
restlessness, agitation, and her evident dread of the detention she
was undergoing, he muttered, inwardly--
"Pshaw! women can't help loving those who love them; so I'll make a
bold attempt to cozen, if I cannot crush or win her!"
It was perhaps a little dangerous for Mary that, though she often
expressed and displayed a great aversion of Chesters, there were
_times_ when she did not altogether feel it; for few women can _hate_
a man who professes to love and consequently admire them: yet, seeing
the full sense of her false position, she began to hate and fear him
now.
Should the story get abroad that she had spent some hours in his
house, under any circumstances, it was a _contretemps_ that might
cost her dear; for how would the censorious world interpret her
conduct or acknowledge her reason? That she had come to inquire
about the fate of Cyril Wedderburn, and been storm stayed, few would
believe, for what vital interest was she supposed to have in the lost
heir of Willowdean?
Alas, alas! for secret loves.
Secluded though her life had been at Lonewoodlee, she knew quite
enough of the world to be aware that a young lady could not, with
propriety, visit a gay young bachelor as she appeared to have
done--one to whom she was neither related nor engaged--and it was
this consciousness, together with the craving desire to be again by
her father's side, that made her so steadily resist taking any
refreshment, even coffee, or doffing any part of her costume, and
which made her writhe under the well-bred commonplaces uttered by
Chesters, such as that he "hoped she wouldn't fret. What the deuce
was the good of it! The storm must soon abate; indeed, it was
abating now. It is very unfortunate, no doubt," and all that sort of
thing; adding, "but it is very stupid work this, and we should do
something to amuse each other."
Yet he could neither soothe nor amuse her; he could not leave her for
the smoking-room; neither could he smoke in her presence, and so
betook him to champagne dashed with brandy, a perilous mixture,
through the influence of which some very daring ideas began to form
in his cunning brain.
Bad, bold, and daring as he was, Rooke Chesters would scarcely have
ventured to trepan a girl of Mary Lennox's undoubted rank in the
county into a false position, but for his perfect knowledge of her
father's helplessness, his poverty, and the bill he possessed.
Moreover, the only man who would have protected her--the lover whose
arms he had seen around her in the thicket--was gone, no one knew
where or how.
"There is a climax in this life," says a writer, with stern truth, "a
climax in mental and bodily pain, after which we can feel no more,
and after it all other sources of emotion appear tame by comparison."
And this climax had poor Mary passed already.
Cyril was gone; her father she knew was dying; and when he went, who
would she have to care for, to study, or to love? Hence for a time,
perhaps, she cared less what happened to herself, till the massive
black marble clock on the mantelpiece struck the alarming hour of
eleven.
"Eleven! I have been here five whole hours! Oh, I shall go afoot,
if I die on the moor! I cannot and must not stay here another
moment!" she exclaimed, starting from her chair and moving towards
the door. "Oh, papa--my own papa--how much you may have missed me!"
"Be not in such a hurry, pray. I had a pleasant surprise for you,"
said he, laughing.
"How, Captain Chesters?"
"Trayner must have patched up the springs of the waggonette by this
time. He is a clever fellow, Trayner, and if the horses are put to,
I shall take you over in a few minutes."
"Oh, thanks--a thousand times thanks!"
"No thanks are necessary."
Again he rang the bell, and said, with perfect calmness, to the
servant who answered the summons--
"Trayner to get out the waggonette, if it is ready; trace the horses,
and bring it round to the front door."
Without perceiving in the least the intelligent glance that passed
between Chesters and his domestic, Mary could know that she had been
deluded and drawn into a species of snare, the object of which she
did not then quite clearly comprehend.
In a few minutes more the tramp of horses' hoofs and the muffled
sound of wheels amid the snow without were heard, and Mary rose, her
face almost beaming with delight through her veil, as she took his
proffered arm to be led forth on her way home at last.
The waggonette, a very handsome "bang-up affair," as Chesters deemed
it, was drawn up close to the flight of steps which led to the
entrance door; and the long lines of radiance from its two silver
lamps shone far amid the white waste of snow in the now treeless
park. The storm had ceased, the wind had passed away, and the clouds
were divided in Heaven overhead; the stars shone out with frosty
brilliance, and the night was calm and clear. The steam from the
quivering nostrils of the impatient horses curled up in white wreaths
above their heads.
Chesters lifted Mary--somewhat lingeringly, even caressingly perhaps,
as he did so--upon the front seat, and carefully folded a warm
railway-rug over her shoulders; then buttoning the leather apron
across her knees as he took his seat beside her. Mr. Bill Trayner
vaulted up behind, and away they went, yet it was close on the hour
of twelve (midnight) ere they were clear of the lodge-gates, the
drowsy keeper of which observed with surprise the lady who was still
his master's companion--Miss Lennox of Lonewoodlee!
As Chesters bent his face close to hers, he thought the time had come
when he might venture to say something tender, and the champagne he
had imbibed caused him to do it bluntly.
"Women, like men, may love many times in life; but none, Miss Lennox,
as I now love you--believe me, I speak from my heart."
"At this time I entreat you not to torment me in that way," said
Mary; "in Heaven's name, I implore you!" she continued.
"Ah, you think only of Cyril Wedderburn!" was the spiteful rejoinder.
"I do," said Mary, a dash of anger mingling with her grief, as her
tears fell fast again.
"I am a lover as well as he was."
"Of mine, do you mean?"
"Yes."
"No, sir--no," replied Mary, firmly. "I cannot permit you to talk
thus, and take advantage of my situation."
"What the deuce do you mean?" he asked, bluntly.
"That you are no lover, though a love-maker."
"Are they not the same?" asked Chesters, with unaffected surprise.
"Nay, Captain Chesters, the difference between them is great."
"As you please," said he, biting his nether lip, while he lightly
touched the horses with the lash about the ears.
The lodge-gate had scarcely closed behind them when a mounted
gentleman, wearing an Inverness cape of rough material (which, like
his half-bullet hat, was well coated with snow), and long black
overalls, came up at a hard trot, accompanied by a diminutive groom.
On passing the waggonette, he curbed his horse abruptly back upon his
haunches, and half looking round, cried, cheerily--
"Hallo, Chesters, old fellow, where are you going? A bitter night
for March!"
"Very. Good night," replied Chesters, without stopping; for the
speaker was young Everard Home, the Master of Ernescleugh, who was
very much surprised to see a young lady leaving the gate of
Chesterhaugh at that time of night, and alone with Rooke Chesters!
But in a few minutes he was perfectly enlightened on the subject by
his groom, who rang the lodge-bell on pretence of wanting a light for
his cigar.
A terror seized Mary lest she might have been recognised by these
men. She said nothing of it to Chesters, for the deduction was
humiliating; but her tears fell again, and she whispered in her
heart--
"Oh, what matter is it. I have no Cyril now!"
She was soon deposited, with great politeness on the part of
Chesters, at her own door, and in her anxiety and irritation she
darted in and closed it, forgetting even to thank him for his escort.
Her father had slept soundly for hours; but now he was awake, and
calling alternately for her and his dead son Harry, upbraiding them
both for neglect, and threatening that he would break his own neck
when next he rode to the hounds, "even as he once hoped that fellow
Wedderburn had done;" and Mary's heart died within her, when she
found his intellect thus wandering. But the brave girl cast aside
her wrappings, took his old head carefully in her tender arms, and
strove to forget, what might be nervous fancy only, that her two
drowsy domestics who had seen her arrive in Chesters' equipage,
looked somewhat oddly on her, and at each other.