RETRIBUTION.
While the events recorded in the last chapter had been taking place,
Robert Streightley had been down to Middlemeads to give the necessary
orders for the immediate reduction of the establishment there. It was
an act over which a great many people would have been sillily
sentimental, but one which affected Robert Streightley very little
indeed. The stately old mansion had never been his home, though it had
contained his wife and his household gods; he had never had the same
regard for it as for the dingy Brixton villa, where every thing was so
old and mean and common. Even when he first bought the place, and
inhabited it in the early days of his wedded life, long before the
falseness of his position and the chance of some day being compelled
to return to his old and quiet mode of life had dawned on him, he had
felt uncomfortable and out of place at Middlemeads. But latterly, as
speculation after speculation "went wrong" in the City, and as
scarcely a week passed without the addition of some new improvement,
the importation of some fresh luxury by Katharine's orders, the
negative feelings with which he had regarded that estate, for the
possession of which he was so much envied and hated, grew into
positive dislike; he remembered that the first time he had seen the
place was the day before he had had that fatal conference with Mr.
Guyon, and he began to associate most of his troubles with the name of
Middlemeads.
He would have sold the place at once but for two reasons; the first
and chiefest of which was, that Katharine took great pleasure and
interest in it--more pleasure and interest than she had taken in any
thing else during her married life; the other, that the sale of his
country estate, which, with the county people who visited there and
the swells whom he entertained, had been so much talked of among his
friends in the City, would be a confession of weakness which Robert
Streightley shrunk from meeting. Besides, all would probably come
right very soon; the house of Streightley and Son was too firmly
established not to be able to stand a shock or two; and by reducing
the establishment at Middlemeads he should effect a considerable
saving, while the sale of a portion of the valuable timber on the
estate would bring in a sum of ready money, of which he was greatly in
need. This done, he drove off to the railway, caught the up-train, and
was on his way to London.
He was alone in the railway carriage; there was no old gentleman
rustling a newspaper, no young gentleman playing with his watch-chain,
no humorous children to trample on his feet,--nothing to disturb the
train of thought into which he fell. By no means a pleasant train of
thought, for a dead weight was at his heart, and he felt a horrible
sense of something--he knew not what--but some calamity hanging over
him. Something, some trifle had reminded him of the day on which Mr.
Guyon had told him of Frere's proposal for Katharine's hand, and now
he could not get the subject out of his head: the words seemed to ring
in his ears; and when he closed his eyes, that peculiar look with
which Mr. Guyon had suggested the suppression of Frere's letter seemed
to rise before him. What had his life been since then? He had married
Katharine! O yes, she was his wife; but had he ever obtained from her
one grain of confidence, one look of love? Had not his business
transactions gone wrong ever since? Had he not suffered under
perpetual qualms of conscience ever since he became a silent
confederate in that monstrous fraud of which Katharine, his wife, was
one of the victims? In his case, at least, retribution had not been
long delayed; the first mutterings of the avenging storm had been long
since heard, and now something told him that the storm itself was
close at hand. He would welcome it in all its fury, though it stripped
him of all his wealth and left him to begin life anew, if it only
could bear away on its wings the barrier existing between Katharine
and himself; if it only enabled him to prove to her his worship of
her; if it only raised in her for him one tithe of the love with which
he regarded her.
It was a dark, dull, damp evening when Robert Streightley alighted
from the cab in which he had driven from the railway, and knocked at
his own door in Portland Place. The enormously stout middle-aged man,
who for a by no means poor wage consented to pass his life in
alternately sitting in and getting out of a porter's chair, like a
leathern bee-hive, was usually sufficiently on the alert to recognise
his master's rap, and give him speedy admission; but on this occasion
Mr. Streightley had to knock three times, and when the porter opened
the door there was a strange odd look on his face, which made his
master think he had been drinking. Robert passed by him quickly and
went into the library, where he rang the bell. It was answered by
William, the footman who had opened the door for Katharine when she
left the house.
"Is your mistress in the Cedar-room? is there any one with her?"
"Missus is not in the Cedar-room, sir, and there is no pusson with
her, as I knows of. Missus ain't at home, sir."
"O, very well. What time did she order the carriage to fetch her?"
"The carriage isn't ordered at all, sir. Missus said she wouldn't want
the carriage."
"Do you know where your mistress is?"
"She said she was goin' to Queen Anne Street, sir."
"Very good. I'll go across myself and bring her home."
"Begging your pardon, sir, I don't think you'll find missus at Queen
Anne Street, sir."
"No! what do you mean?"
"Why, sir, Mamzell Augustus went across about six o'clock, sir, to
know whether missus was comin' home to dress, sir, and they said at
Queen Anne Street that she'd never been there since she left in the
morning."
"Never been there? and--O, she's probably gone out with Mr. Guyon."
"Good Lord, sir!" said the footman, startled out of all propriety; "I
forgot, sir, you didn't know--the hold gent's dead!"
"Dead? Mr. Guyon dead?"
"Yes, sir; had a fit at Croydon races last evening, sir, and died
hearly this morning. Beg pardon, sir, shall I tell Anderson to bring
you a glass of brandy, sir?"
"Eh? No, thank you, William--yes--you may, if you please. I
feel--" and Robert Streightley clutched at a chair near him, and sunk
into it, with trembling limbs and beating heart.
Mr. Anderson, the staid butler, brought a small decanter of brandy,
filled a liqueur-glass, and handed it to his master, whose hand shook
so that the glass rattled against his teeth. After the discreet
domestic had withdrawn, Robert Streightley sat in his chair, glaring
straight before him, revolving in his mind a hundred subjects, all
equally dismal. Katharine's absence, first of all, what could that
mean? what could have induced it? was it in any way connected with Mr.
Guyon's death? Mr. Guyon's death, poor man! not one with whom he had
any thing in common except--that horrible conspiracy always cropping
up! Mr. Guyon dead? well, then, there was an end to the chance of any
betrayal of that mystery; he might rest secure that--Good God! where
could his wife have gone to? Could she have learned--no; that was
impossible. Still, why had she left his house, without leaving any
trace of her whereabouts? Lady Henmarsh was not in town; but she might
have gone to some other friend's house, where she could receive that
womanly kindness and consolation which, in the first shock of her
grief, her heart sought for. It was absurd in him to have imagined
that, under such circumstances, she would remain in her own house
alone, without a soul to speak to in confidence. She would return
soon; he would wait up to receive her.
So through the long hours of that night, having dismissed the
household to rest, Robert Streightley sat in his library, the door of
which opened on the hall, in eager anticipation of his wife's return.
The sharp ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed running a
race with the solemn ticking of the clock in the hall; the rumble of
the cabs outside, the footfalls of the passers-by, fell with
monotonous solemnity on his ear; the dead silence at the back of the
house, broken only by the wailing of dissipated cats, oppressed him;
and the keen anguish of his own thoughts made him occasionally clasp
his forehead and utter some ejaculation; but still he sat there,
looking out into the dimly-lighted hall, and waiting for his wife's
return. That Mr. Guyon was dead, had died suddenly and in a ghastly
manner, he yet scarcely realised: he had heard the fact, and that was
all; he had not thought over it; his thoughts were entirely occupied
with the fact of his wife's absence. To account for this he had now no
possible satisfactory theory. Had she been persuaded to remain at the
house of any friend to whom she might have gone, a message to that
effect would surely have been sent to Portland Place. The shock of her
father's death might have been too much for her; and in walking to the
house of some friend she might have been seized with illness; at that
moment she might be lying unknown in some hospital, or--and as the
thought came across him Robert Streightley started to his feet, his
mind half made up to sally forth at once, and set the detective force
at work to discover Katharine's whereabouts. But before he had
advanced a few steps his cautious common-sense came to his aid. He was
a weak, hot-headed fool, and his usual powers of reasoning had been,
he argued to himself, a little impaired by the mental strain to which
during the last few weeks he had been subjected. Nothing was known yet
of his wife's disappearance. Even to the household their mistress's
absence was a mere subject for discussion over the supper-beer, where
no one had a substantial theory to broach, but all arrived at a
general conclusion, originally propounded by the cook, that "master
not being at home, she'd gone away, poor soul, to some other friend's
nigh by; and not expectin' him, they'd kep her, as was only right and
jest when she was in trouble." If he were to raise a hue and cry, it
would become at once a public scandal; and from a public scandal, from
the mere thought of the knowledge that his friends were discussing his
domestic affairs, Robert Streightley shrunk in horror and dismay. No;
he would take no step, at least for the next few hours; morning must
bring the solution of the mystery, and for that solution he would
wait. Arrived at this determination, he turned out his lamp, and crept
up stairs to bed.
To bed, but not to sleep. For hours he lay tossing on his hot pillow,
racked with dismal doubt. Where was his wife? To whom had she gone in
her time of trouble? That she had not remained to share her grief with
him would have been, under other circumstances, a sufficient cause of
dissatisfaction for her husband; but Robert, calmly reviewing--as
calmly as he could, poor fellow--his real position in the dull dead
watches of the night, was forced to acknowledge to himself that there
had never been any confidence between him and Katharine, which would
warrant him in looking for such a display of affection. On the other
hand, a doubt of her having infringed the strictest rules of propriety
never crossed his mind. Never, during the whole course of her married
life, had she given him occasion for the slightest suspicion of
jealousy. With all her undeniable beauty, with all the attention she
perforce commanded, she had not shown the smallest symptom of
coquetry. If she had not come heart-whole to him, if hers had not been
a love-match, if he had not been the _beau ideal_ of her girlish
fancy, by no act of hers could that have become patent to the
ever-watchful, always censorious world. Where, then, was she gone? Her
position was so peculiar, even to Robert's unworldly view; she had
lived so self-contained a life since her marriage, that she could
scarcely be said to have any special friends. Acquaintances she had by
the score; but one does not go to acquaintances in the time of
trouble; while her quondam chaperone, Lady Henmarsh, her only
intimate, was away, and Mrs. Stanbourne, from whom she might justly
have sought consolation, was far from England. Where could she have
gone? Still revolving this question in his mind, Robert, just as day
was dawning, fell into a fitful feverish sleep, haunted by horrible
dreams, in which he and Katharine, the dead man and Gordon Frere, all
played conspicuous parts, being mixed up in that dreadfully grotesque
manner only possible under dream-influence.
He seemed only to have closed his eyes--in reality he had been asleep
but a couple of hours--when he was aroused by a knocking at the door,
and the voice of his servant, who, according to usual custom, had
brought the post-letters to his bedroom door. In an instant
Streightley sprang up, all the events of the previous day--Guyon's
death, Katharine's absence, his own misery--all flashing upon him at
once, opened the door, and there, on the top of the little heap, saw a
letter in Katharine's well-known hand. He seized it instantly, was
about to tear it open, and stopped--stopped, for his heart was beating
loudly, and there was a choking sensation in his throat, and a film
over his eyes. He sat down on a chair, placed the letter on the table
beside him, and passed his hand over his brow. The whole room reeled
before him; he felt that he must, and yet that he dared not break that
seal. The answer to the question that had been tormenting him all
night, the key to the enigma of his wife's departure, lay before him,
and yet he hesitated to avail himself of it. He remained irresolute
for some minutes; then he took up the letter quietly, opened it, and
read as follows:
"This is the last time I shall ever hold communication with you, and
therefore it is well that I should be explicit. By the merest accident
I have become acquainted with the plot by which the whole of my life
was maimed and perverted, my happiness blighted, my feelings trampled
on, and my girlish pride mortified and humbled. In that plot were
two conspirators; one who basely sold an honest, trusting, loving
girl--his daughter; the other, who, by the mere accidental advantage
of his wealth, was enabled to buy that girl for his wife. By neither,
save as a mere matter of barter, something to be bought and sold, was
I, that girl, considered. One of the plotters has been removed beyond
the reach of my vengeance, and I shall take care to prevent the other
from any opportunity of further villainy, so far as I am concerned. I
have turned my back upon my father's corpse, and I turn my back on
your house. I leave behind me all the price at which you purchased me;
I take nothing with me but my mother's jewels, to which I suppose I
have a right, and the unalterable determination which I have formed;
and that is, in this world or the next, living or dying, never to
forgive you, Robert Streightley, for your share in my degradation, and
never to look upon your face again.--K.S."
END OF VOL. II.
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,
PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
End of Project Gutenberg's Kissing the Rod, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Edmund Yates