“All the spring-time of his love
Is already gone and past.”
Theodore went back to wintry London before the year was a week old.
He settled himself by his lonely fireside, in the silence of his
old-fashioned rooms. All he had of the beauty of this world was
a glimpse of the river athwart the heavy grey mists of a London
morning, or the lamps on the Embankment shining like a string of
jewels in the evening dusk. There were days of sullen, hopeless fog,
when even these things were hidden from him, and when it was hard
work to keep that stealthy, penetrating greyness and damp cold out of
his rooms.
He had brought a fox-terrier from Dorchester on his return from
his holiday, an old favourite that had seen the best days of her
youth, and was better able to put up with a sedentary life, varied
only by an occasional run, than a younger animal would have been.
This faithful friend, an animated little beast even at this mature
stage of her existence, lightened the burden of his loneliness, were
it only by leaping on to his knees twenty times in five minutes,
and only desisting therefrom upon most serious remonstrance. It
was pleasant to him to have something that loved him, even this
irrepressible Miss Nipper, with her sidelong grin of affectionate
greeting, and her unconquerable suspicion of rats behind the
wainscot. He felt less like Dr. Faustus on that famous Easter
morning, when the emptiness of life and learning came home to the
lonely student with such desolating intensity, when even a devil was
welcome who could offer escape from that dull burden of existence.
He had come back from his brief holiday dejected and disheartened.
It seemed to him that she who was his lode-star was more remote from
him than she had ever been—more and more remote—vanishing into a
distant world where it was vain for him to follow. He had failed in
the task that she had imposed upon him. He was no nearer the solution
of that dark mystery which troubled her life than he had been when
he first promised to help her. How poor and impotent a creature he
must appear in her eyes. His only discoveries had been negative.
All that his keen, trained intellect, sharpened by seven years of
legal experience, had been able to do was to prove the unsoundness
of her own theory. He had started no theory upon his part. No flash
of genius had illumined the obscurity which surrounded Godfrey
Carmichael’s death.
He went on with his plodding work, resolutely bent upon doing the
utmost that patient labour can do to insure success. Even if it were
all vain and futile—that hope of winning favour in her eyes—the mere
possibility of standing better with her, of showing her that he was
of the stuff which goes to the making of distinguished men—even this
was worth working for.
“She may have great offers by-and-by,” he told himself, recalling
what Lord Cheriton had said about his daughter’s chances. “With her
beauty and her expectations, to say nothing of her present means,
she is sure of distinguished admirers; but at the worst she cannot
look down upon a man who is on the road to success in her father’s
profession.”
This ever-present consideration, joined to his love of his calling,
sweetened all that was dry and dull in the initial stages of a
barrister’s career. While other men of his age were spending their
evenings at the Gaiety Theatre, seeing the same burlesque and
laughing at the same jokes night after night, as appetite grew with
what it fed on, Theodore was content to sit in chambers and read law.
It was not that he was wanting in appreciation of the drama. There
was no man in London better able to enjoy the dignity of Hamlet at
the Lyceum, or the rollicking fun of the Gaiety Bluebeard. He was
no pedantic piece of clay, proud of the dulness that calls itself
virtue. He was only an earnest worker, bent upon a given result,
and able to put aside every hindrance upon the road that he was
travelling.
“They that run in a race run all, but one obtaineth the prize,” he
said to himself, recalling a sentence in an epistle that he had
learned years ago at his mother’s knee, words that always brought
back the cold brightness of early spring, and a period of extra
church services, long sermons in the lamp-lit church, and the voices
of strange preachers, a time of daffodils and fish dinners, and much
talk of High and Low Church. He had never faltered in his religious
convictions; yet in the days of his youth that Lenten season in a
country town, that recurrent sound of church bells in the chilly
March twilight, had weighed heavy upon his soul.
Almost the only recreation which he allowed himself in this winter
season was an occasional attendance at Miss Newton’s tea-parties.
He had secured acceptance for himself at these entertainments
on the strength of his reading, and he was now established as a
Shakespearian reader; Miss Newton having taken it into her head that
Shakespeare is of all great poets the easiest understood by the
people, and having ordered him to read Shakespeare until she should
tell him to desist.
“I know what they like and what they dislike,” she said. “They’ll
not conceal their feelings from me when we talk you over after you’ve
gone. As soon as ever I find them getting tired I’ll let you know.”
He began with Macbeth, a story which caught them at the very first
page. The witches took their breath away; and when he came to
the murder scene they were all sitting round him with their hair
seemingly on end. He closed his first reading with that awful
knocking at the gate; that one supreme stage effect which has never
yet been paralleled by mortal dramatist. There were some of the girls
who tumbled off their chairs and grovelled on the floor in their
excitement. There were others who wanted to know the fate of Macbeth
and his wife on the instant.
“I do hope they were both hung, like the Mannings,” said a meek widow.
“Oh, but _he_ wasn’t so much to blame, Mrs. Kirby. That wicked woman
drove him to it.”
“So did Mrs. Manning,” argued a Bermondsey lady, “but they hung
Manning all the same when they caught him. I was a child when it
happened, but I remember hearing about them. He was took in Jersey,
and she wore a black satin gown.”
“Oh, don’t talk about your Mannings, Mrs. Hodge,” cried one of the
girls, indignantly. “They were low, vulgar people. These were a King
and Queen in a palace. It’s all different. It lifts one up out of
one’s own life only to hear about them. You may read about murders in
the newspapers till your eyes begin to swim, but you won’t feel like
_that_. I don’t know when I’ve felt so sorry for anybody as I feel
for King Macbeth.”
Marian sat silent, and refrained from all part in the chorus of
criticism, but she moved to the piano presently and began to play a
Scotch air—a grand old march—slow, solemn music that was almost too
much for the nerves of the more excitable among Miss Newton’s party.
She glided from one melody to another, and she played those wild
Scottish airs with such thrilling power that they seemed to sustain
and intensify the uncanny effect of the tragic reading.
Theodore went over to the piano and stood beside her as she played.
“I knew you were a musician,” he said, “though I never heard you
touch the keys till to-night.”
“How did you know?”
“My cousin Juanita told me. She remembered your playing in her
mother’s room when she was a child.”
The woman called Marian lifted her eyes to him with a look of patient
reproach, as if she said, “You are cruel to hit any one so helpless
as I am,” and then, playing all the time, she answered coldly,—
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
“Don’t you! Oh, but indeed I think you do, and I should be very glad
to be of use to you if you would let me, for the sake of those old
days. I don’t think it is possible I can be mistaken, though you may
have your own reason for refusing to confide in me.”
He was certain now in his own mind that this was Mercy Porter and no
other. That fine touch upon the piano implied sustained and careful
cultivation. She did not play like a girl who had learnt music as an
afterthought.
He left the house when she did, and walked part of the way to
Hercules Buildings with her, but did not offer to go out of his way
to see her home, being very sure she would refuse.
“I wish you would trust me,” he said gently, as they walked side
by side, without looking at each other. “Believe me that every
one at Cheriton is sorry for you. If you were to go back to the
neighbourhood you would have everybody’s sympathy. There would be no
one to cast a stone.”
“I am very sorry I ever mentioned Cheriton to you, Mr. Dalbrook,” she
said impatiently. “It was a foolish impulse that made me talk. You
insist upon making guesses. You try to force a confession from me. It
is hardly generous.”
“My interest in you must be my excuse.”
“You can do me no good by that kind of interest. I shall never see
Dorsetshire again—so what can it matter who I was when I lived in
that part of the world. There are hundreds of women in London as
lonely as I am—hundreds—perhaps thousands—who have broken every link
with their past. My life suits me well enough, and I am contented. I
shall never try to change it.”
“That is a pity. You are young enough to make a good wife to an
honest man, to help in creating a happy home.”
“Am I? I feel a century old; and I have done with every thought of
love or marriage. When I woke to consciousness after that dreadful
fever, awoke from darkness and oblivion like that of the grave, I
entered upon a new life. I came out of that sickness like one who had
passed through hell. Passion and hope, and youth and good looks, had
been burnt out of me in a fiery furnace. It was a wonder to myself
that my body was alive. It was no wonder to me that my heart was
dead. From that time I have lived very much as I am living now—after
a brief time of struggle and starvation—and the life suits me fairly
well. I shall never seek to better it.”
“That is hard, Marian.”
He called her by her Christian name, frankly, in almost paternal
friendliness, not knowing any other name by which to call her.
He was with Miss Newton earlier than usual on the occasion of her
next tea-drinking, so early as to be before anybody else, and he
talked to his hostess about Marian—Marian Gray, Miss Newton called
her,—confiding to her his conviction that this young woman was
no other than Mrs. Porter’s missing daughter. He told her of his
interview with Mrs. Porter, and of the mother’s angry repudiation of
her child.
“I can but think that her hardness was assumed,” he said, “and that
the ice would melt at a touch if the mother and daughter could be
brought together. I should like to try the experiment.”
“It is hardly wise to try experiments with human hearts,” said Miss
Newton. “Marian is contented and at peace, if not happy. To force her
back upon a mother who might be hard and bitter to her—do you think
that would be true kindness?”
“What if the mother’s heart has been yearning for her lost lamb in
all these years, and by bringing her back I might make two lives
happy?”
“Let the mother come to the child. Let her who has something to
forgive be the one to make the advance. It is so hard for the sinner
to go back. She must be helped back. If the mother were a woman with
a motherly heart, she would have been searching for her lost child
in all those years, instead of wrapping herself up in her sorrow at
home.”
“I own I have thought that.”
“Of course you have. You can’t think otherwise as a sensible man. I
have no patience with such a mother. As for Marian, I think she may
get on very well as she is. I am fond of her, and I believe she is
fond of me. She earns from twelve to fourteen shillings a week. She
pays five shillings for her room, and she lives upon eightpence a
day. I needn’t tell you that the teapot is her _pièce de résistance_.
Her most substantial meal on some days consists of a couple of scones
from the Scotch baker’s, or a penny loaf and a hard-boiled egg;
but when I go to see her she gives me an admirable cup of tea, and
positively delicious bread and butter. Her room is the very pink and
pattern of neatness. All the instincts of a lady show themselves in
that poor little two-pair back. She has curtained the iron bedstead
and the window with white dimity, which is always clean and fresh,
for she washes and irons it with her own hands. She generally
contrives to have a bunch of flowers upon her work-table, and, hard
as she works, her room is always free from litter. She has about half
a dozen books of her own upon the mantelshelf, her Bible, Milton,
Shakespeare, Charles Lamb’s Essays, Goldsmith’s Poems, and the ‘Idyls
of the King’—well-worn volumes, which have been her companions for
years. She borrows other books from the Free Library, and her mind is
always being cultivated. I really believe she is happy. She is one of
those rare individuals who can afford to live alone. Do not disturb
her lightly.”
“You are right perhaps. The mother struck me as by no means a
pleasant character, always supposing that Mrs. Porter is her mother,
of which I myself have very little doubt.”
Theodore made no further effort to bring mother and daughter
together, but he met Marian from time to time at Miss Newton’s
tea-parties, and acquaintance ripened into friendship. Her refinement
and her musical talent sustained his interest in her. He talked to
her of books sometimes when they happened to be sitting side by side
at the tea-table, and he was surprised at the extent of her reading.
She confessed, when he questioned her, that she was in the habit of
stealing two or three hours from the night for her books.
“I find that I can do with a few hours’ sleep,” she said, “if I lie
down happy in my mind after being absorbed in a delightful book. My
books are my life. They give me the whole universe for my world,
though I have to live in one room, and to follow a very monotonous
calling.”
He admired the refinement of that purely intellectual nature, but
he admired still more that admirable tact which regulated her
intercourse with Miss Newton’s homelier friends. Never by word or
tone or half-involuntary glance did Marian betray any consciousness
of superiority to the uncultivated herd. She shared their interests,
she sympathized with their vexations, she neither smiled nor
shuddered at Cockney twang or missing aspirate.
Winter brightened into spring, with all its varieties of good and
evil; east winds rushing round street-corners, and cutting into
the pedestrian like a knife; west winds enfolding him like a balmy
caress, and bringing the perfume of violets, the vivid yellow of
daffodils into the wilderness of brick and stone; rainy days, grey,
monotonous, dismal, hanging on the soul like a curtain of gloom
and hopelessness. These made up the sum of Theodore’s outer life.
Within he had his books, his ambition, and his faithful love. He told
himself that it was a hopeless love; but there are many things which
a man tells himself, and tries to believe, and yet does not believe.
The very human longing for blessedness is too strong for human
wisdom. Where there is love, there is always hope.
He had grown accustomed to his life in chambers; and albeit he was
much attached to his father, and was amiably tolerant of his brother
and sisters, he could but feel that this solitary existence better
suited his temper than residence in a family circle. At Dorchester it
had been very difficult for him to be alone. Out of business hours
his sisters considered that they had a claim upon him, a right to
waste his life in the most trivial amusements and engagements. If
he withdrew himself from their society, and that of their numerous
dearest friends, they accused him of grumpiness, and thought
themselves ill-treated. He had chafed against the waste of life, the
utter futility of those engagements which prevented his keeping level
with the intellectual growth of the age. He felt that his youth was
slipping from under him, leaving him stationary, when every pulse
of his being beat impatiently for progress. And now it was pleasant
to him to be his own master, free to make the best possible use of
his days. He found a few friends in London whose society suited
him, and only a few. Among these the man of whom he saw most was
Cuthbert Ramsay, a young Scotchman, who had been his chief companion
at Cambridge, who had studied medicine for three years in Leipsic
and Paris with Ludwig and Pasteur, and who was now at St. Thomas’s.
The two young men ran up against each other in that main artery of
London life, the Strand, in the January twilight, and renewed the
friendly intimacy of that bygone time when Ramsay had been at Trinity
and Dalbrook at Trinity Hall. They dined together at a restaurant on
the evening of that first meeting, and after dinner Theodore took his
friend to his chambers, where the two sat late into the night talking
over college reminiscences of hall and river.
Cuthbert Ramsay had been one of the most remarkable undergraduates
of those days, notable alike for mental and physical gifts which
lifted him out of the ruck. He was six feet two—with the form of an
athlete and as handsome a face as was ever seen within the gates
of Trinity,—and these advantages of person, which would have been
noteworthy in any man, were the more remarkable in him, because of
his utter indifference to them, or, perhaps, it may be said, complete
unconsciousness of them. He knew that he was a big man, because his
tailor told him as much; but he had never taken into consideration
the question as to whether he was or was not a handsome man; indeed,
except when he had his hair cut, an operation which he always
submitted to unwillingly and of dire necessity, it is doubtful if he
ever looked into a glass long enough to know what manner of man he
was—certainly not at his morning toilet, when he moved restlessly
about the room, hairbrushes in hand, belabouring his handsome head,
and exercising his extraordinary memory by the repetition of some
scientific formula acquired during the previous night’s reading.
His own estimate of his appearance was comprised in the idea that he
was “very Scotch.” That milky whiteness of complexion, touched with
just enough ruddy colour to give life to the face, those brilliant
blue eyes, the straight nose, clear-cut nostrils, firm lips and
firmer chin, the high broad brow, and crisp auburn hair, constituted
to his mind nothing more than his brevet of nationality.
“No one would ever take me for anything but a Scotchman,” he would
say lightly, if any acquaintance ventured to hint at his good looks.
“There’s no mistake about me. Albion is written on my brow.”
From his childhood upwards he had cared only for large things—intent
upon investigation and discovery from the time he could crawl—asking
the most searching questions of mother and of nurse—prying into
those abstract mysteries which perplex philosophers before he could
speak plain. The thirst for knowledge had grown with his growth and
strengthened with his strength. His hardy boyhood had been spent
for the most part in the windy streets of Aberdeen, marching with
swinging stride along that granite pavement, his shabby red gown
flapping in the north-easter; faring anyhow, as indifferent to what
he ate as he was to what he wore; ahead of his fellows in all things
intellectual, and abreast with the best athletes of his year in the
sports they valued,—a king among men; and of such a happy disposition
that nothing in life came amiss to him, and what would have been
hardship to another seemed sport to him.
Some one, a wealthy member of his extensive family, found out
that this Cuthbert was no common youth, and that with a little
encouragement he might do honour to the clan. This distant kinsman,
one of the heads of the great house of Ramsay, sent him to Cambridge;
where he entered as a scholar of his college, and at the end of a
year gained a University scholarship, which made him independent.
This hardy youth from the city of Bon Accord was able to live upon so
little—could not for the life of him have been extravagant, having
none of that _mollesse_, or soft self-indulgence, which is at the
root of most men’s squanderings. He was nine and twenty years of
age, and he had never worn a gardenia, and had only had one suit of
dress clothes since he grew to man’s estate. Needless to say that
albeit he went out very seldom that suit was now somewhat shabby;
but Cuthbert’s superb appearance neutralized the shabbiness, and he
looked the finest man in any assembly. His parents were in their
graves before he left the University. He had no ties. He was free as
Adam would have been if Eve had never been created. There was no one
near or dear to him to feel proud of his honours, though his name
was high in the list of Wranglers, and he had taken a first-class in
science. And now, after that interval of serious scientific work in
Leipsic and Paris, he was plodding at St. Thomas’s with a view to a
London degree, and thus the two hard-working young men—very intimate
in the old days when Cuthbert’s rooms in the Bishop’s Hostel were
conveniently adjacent to Theodore’s ground floor in Trinity Hall—were
thrown together again upon their life-journey, and were honestly glad
to renew the old friendship.
Ramsay was delighted with his friend’s chambers.
“I was afraid there was nothing so good as this left in the Temple,”
he said, rapturously contemplating the blackened old wainscot, and
the low ceiling with its heavy cross-beam. “I thought smartness
and brand-new stone had superseded all that was historical and
interesting within the precincts of the Lamb. But these rooms of
yours have the true smack. Why, I really believe now, Dalbrook, you
must have rats behind that wainscot?”
“Perhaps I had, till Miss Nipper came to keep me company,” answered
Theodore, patting the terrier, whose neat little head and intelligent
ears were lifted at the sound of her name.
“And Nipper has made them emigrate to the next house, no doubt?”
“I’m glad you like my rooms, Cuthbert.”
“Like them! I envy you the ownership more than I can say. If anything
can make me sorry that I am not a lawyer it would be the fact that
I can’t live in the Temple. We doctors have no distinctive abode,
nothing associated with the past.”
“Perhaps that is because medicine is essentially a progressive
science.”
“Is it? Sometimes I begin to doubt if it has made any progress since
Galen—or Albertus Magnus. I will admit that there was progress of
some kind up to _his_ time.”
“This house has an interest for me that it would have for no one
else,” said Theodore, presently, while his friend filled his
briar-wood. “My kinsman, Lord Cheriton, occupied the rooms underneath
these for about a dozen years; and it is a fancy of mine to keep his
image before me as I sit here alone with my books. It reminds me
of what a man can do in the profession which so many of my friends
declare to be hopeless.”
“No one knows anything about it, Theodore. If you went into
statistics you would find that the chances of success in the learned
professions are pretty nearly equal. So many men will get on, and
so many will fail, at every trade, in every calling. The faculty of
success lies in the man himself. I always thought you were the kind
of man to do well in whatever line you hit upon. A calm, clear brain
and a resolute will are the first factors in the sum of life. And so
Lord Cheriton lived in this house, did he? I have heard people talk
of him as a very distinguished man, as well as a very lucky one.
By-the-by, it was in his house that strange murder occurred last
year.”
“Yes, it was in his house, and it was his daughter’s husband who was
murdered.”
“Tell me the story, Theodore,” said Ramsay, leaning back his handsome
head, and half closing his eyes, with the air of a man who liked
hearing about murders. “I read the account in the papers at the time,
but I’ve very nearly forgotten all about it.”
Theodore complied, and gave his friend the history of the case, and
the failure of every attempt to find the murderer.
“And there has been nothing discovered since last summer?”
“Nothing!”
“That is rather hard upon Lord Cheriton—bearing in mind your
detective’s suggestion of a vendetta. The vendetta would not be
likely to close with the death of Sir Godfrey Carmichael. Hatred
would demand further victims—Lord Cheriton himself perhaps—or this
lovely young widow,—but there could hardly be such a vindictive
feeling without a strong cause. Enmity so deadly must have had a
beginning in a profound sense of wrong.”
“I have studied the case from that point of view, but can discover
no cause for such malignity. I have almost given up all hope of
unravelling the mystery.”
“And your kinsman is to live under the sword of Damocles for the
rest of his life? Upon my soul I pity him. I can imagine nothing in
Ireland worse than the murder of Sir Godfrey Carmichael—a man seated
peacefully in his own drawing-room; and a high-principled, amiable
young man, you tell me, who never was known to wrong his fellow-man.”
* * * * *
Theodore Dalbrook did not spend his Easter holidays in Dorsetshire.
He had heard from his sisters that Juanita was staying at Swanage
with Lady Jane Carmichael. He was unwilling to intrude upon her
there, and he had nothing to communicate upon the subject which
was at present his only claim upon her interest. Under these
circumstances he was easily persuaded to spend his vacation in a ten
days’ trip to Holland with Cuthbert Ramsay, who was keenly interested
in the result of some experiments which had lately been made at
Leyden; and thus it happened that Theodore let some time go by
without seeing any member of his family except his father, who came
to London occasionally upon business, and whom his son was delighted
to entertain and make much of in his chambers or at his club, the
serviceable Constitutional.
Towards the end of April he read an announcement in the papers which
had touched him almost to tears.
“On the 23rd inst., at Milbrook Priory, the widow of Sir Godfrey
Carmichael, of a posthumous son.”
He was thankful for her sake that this new interest had been given
to her days—that a new and fair horizon was open to her in this
young life, with all its possibilities of love and gladness. It
might be that the coming of this child would change the current of
her thoughts, that the stern desire for retribution would grow less
keen, that the agonizing sense of loss would be softened almost
to forgetfulness. He remembered those lovely lines of the poet
philosopher’s—
“A child, more than all other gifts,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
This child came, he hoped, freighted with healing and comfort, came
like the glad spring-time itself, like Adonis or Persephone, with his
arms full of flowers.
He wrote to his cousin, in tenderest congratulation, a letter
breathing a generous affection, without one selfish thought lurking
between the lines.
Her answer came after nearly a month’s delay, but, although tardy, it
was most delightful to him. Juanita asked him to be godfather to her
boy; and he could easily imagine that this was the highest honour she
could offer him.
“In London half the young men I used to meet took a pride in avowing
their unbelief,” she wrote, “but I know that you are not ashamed
to acknowledge your faith in Christ and His Church. I shall feel
secure that what you promise for my child will be fulfilled, so far
as it is in your power to bring about its fulfilment. I know that if
you stand beside the font and take those vows in His name you will
not remember that ceremony as an empty form, a mere concession to
usage and respectability. Those promises will appeal to you for my
fatherless child in the days to come. They will make you his friend
and protector.”
He accepted the trust with greater gladness than he had felt about
anything that had happened to him for a long time; and on a balmy
morning in the last week of May he found himself standing by the font
of the old Saxon church at Milbrook where he had heard the solemn
words of the Burial Service read above Sir Godfrey Carmichael’s
coffin less than a year before. He took upon himself the custody of
the infant’s conscience in all good faith, and he felt that this
trust which his cousin had given to him made a new link between them.
The Grenvilles had come down from town to be present at the ceremony,
though neither husband nor wife was officially concerned in it. Mrs.
Grenville had seized the opportunity to bring Johnnie and Godolphin
to Dorsetshire for change of air. She had an idea that the Purbeck
air had a particularly revivifying effect upon them—like unto no
other air.
“I suppose that is because it is my native air,” she explained.
Mr. Grenville submitted to his nephew’s existence as a mysterious
dispensation of Providence, which it became him to endure with
gentleman-like fortitude, but he did not cease to regard a posthumous
infant as a solecism in nature and society.
“Your sister-in-law actually seems pleased with her baby,” he told
his wife, grumblingly, as he put on a frock coat in honour of the
approaching ceremony; “but it appears to me that a woman of refined
feeling would be impressed with a sense of incongruity—of indelicacy
even—in the idea of a child born such ages after the father’s death—a
sort of no-man’s-baby. And upon my word it is uncommonly hard upon
Thomas. With such a family as ours—five and the possibilities of the
future—it would have been a grand thing to have one well provided
for. As things stand now they must _all_ be paupers.”
* * * * *
Lord Cheriton was Theodore’s fellow-sponsor, and Lady Jane was
godmother, an office which filled the dear soul with rapture. She
held her grandchild throughout the service, except when she delivered
him gingerly to the priest, who, at one stage of the ceremony,
carried the new-made Christian half-way up the aisle, and, as it
were, flaunted him in the face of the scanty congregation.
Juanita stood like a statue while these rites were being celebrated,
and in her pale set face there was none of the tender interest which
a mother might be expected to show upon such an occasion. There was
a deep pathos in that marble face and those black garments in an
hour which has generally something of a festal aspect. Strangers
thought her cold, a proud, hard young woman, thinking more of her
own importance, perhaps, than of her baby; yet could they have read
beneath the surface they would have pitied the girl-widow in her
desolation on this day which should have been blessed to her. She
could but think of him who was not there; of the father who had been
fated never to look upon his son’s face; of the son who was to grow
from infancy to manhood without the knowledge of a father’s love.
Theodore watched that pale and lovely face, full of sympathy, but not
without wonder. How would this new tie affect her? Would it soften
all that was hard and vindictive in her mind—would it be strong
enough to bring about resignation to the will of Heaven—a patient
waiting upon Providence, instead of that feverish eagerness to exact
a life for a life?
They two were alone together for only a few minutes after luncheon,
strolling along the broad gravel walk in front of the dining-room
windows, in the afternoon sunshine, while Lord Cheriton and Mr.
Grenville lingered over coffee and cigars, and Lady Jane and her
daughter made a domestic group with children and nurses under a
gigantic Japanese umbrella. Short as that _tête-à-tête_ was it
convinced Theodore that the child had not brought oblivion of the
father’s fate.
“You have heard nothing more—made no new discovery, I suppose?”
Juanita said, nervously.
“Nothing. Indeed, Juanita, I fear I have no talent as an amateur
detective. I am not likely to succeed where Mr. Churton failed. It
was easy enough for me to complete the record of the Strangways—to
set your suspicions at rest with regard to them. _That_ was plain
sailing. But it seems to me I shall never go any further.”
“I’m afraid you will not,” she said, wearily; “and yet I had such
hope in your cleverness—your determination to help me. As a lawyer
you would know how to set about it. The London detective has many
cases—his mind travels from one to another. He has no leisure to
think deeply about anything—but you who have had so much leisure of
late—you would, I know, be glad to help me.”
“Glad! Good God, Juanita, you must know that I would cut off my hand
to give you ease or comfort—respite even from a passing trouble.
And if you are really set upon this thing—if your peace is really
dependent upon the discovery of your husband’s murderer——”
“It is, it is, Theodore. I cannot know rest or comfort while his
death remains unpunished. I cannot lie down in peace at night while
I know that the wretch who killed him is walking about, rejoicing in
his wickedness, glad to have destroyed that blameless life, laughing
at our feeble love which can let our dead go unavenged.”
“If cudgelling these poor brains of mine could bring me any nearer to
the truth, Juanita,” Theodore said, with a troubled sigh, “I should
have helped you better; but so far I can see no ray of light in the
thick darkness. I do not think any efforts of ours will solve the
mystery. Only some accident, some inconceivable imprudence on the
part of the murderer can put us on his track.”
And then he thought with horror of Ramsay’s idea that a hatred so
malignant as that which had killed Godfrey Carmichael might reveal
itself in some new crime. He thought of the young mother bending
over her infant’s cradle in some unguarded room—calm in the fancied
safety of her English home. He thought of her wandering alone in park
or wood, while that rabid hatred lurked in the shadow, waiting and
watching for the moment of attack. The horror of the idea chilled
him to the heart, but he was careful not to hint at that horror
to Juanita. He seized the first opportunity of being alone with
Lady Jane, and imparted his fears, founded upon that suggestion of
Cuthbert Ramsay’s to her. The kind creature was quick to take alarm,
and promised to see that Juanita was guarded at all hours by all
precautions that could be taken without alarming her.
“She is surrounded with old and faithful servants,” said Lady Jane;
“a hint to them will put them on their guard; but if you thought
it wiser I would take her away from this place—take her away from
England, if necessary. It is horrible to think of living at the mercy
of an unknown foe.”
“My friend’s notion may be groundless. The crime of last year may
have been an isolated act—the inspiration of madness. In our efforts
to account for the unaccountable we may invent theories which
torture us, and which may yet have no ground in fact. Only it is as
well to think of possibilities, however hideous.”
He spent one night at the Priory, and before departure next morning
presented his offering of a fine George the Second mug to his godson,
Godfrey James Dalbrook—who in his present stage of existence seemed
to his godfather a scarcely distinguishable morsel of humanity
smothered in overmuch cambric and Valenciennes.
“I’m afraid if I were to meet my godson in the arms of a strange
nurse I should not know him,” he said, deprecatingly, after he had
kissed the rosebud mouth, “but, please God, the time will come when
he and I will be firm friends. As soon as he is old enough to decline
_mensa_ I shall feel that we can converse upon a common footing, and
when he goes to Eton I shall renew my youth every time I run down to
waste an hour in the playing fields watching him at cricket, or to
drive him to the ‘White Hart.’”
Although he put on an air of cheerfulness in his leave-taking, he
left the Priory with a sense of deepest anxiety; and it was almost
a relief to him when he received a letter from Lady Jane a week
afterwards.
“I could not get over the uneasy feeling which your suggestion
awakened,” she wrote, “so I am going to carry off mother and child
to Switzerland the day after to-morrow. Interlaken and Grindelwald
are delightful at this season. We shall return to Dorsetshire as soon
as the tourists begin to invade our retreat, and I trust in God that
some discovery may be made in the meantime, so that all our minds may
be more at ease.”