IN THE DUTCH ROOM.
His heart misgave him. He felt that a crisis was coming; and he read--
'I cannot tell you, my poor brother, how miserable I am. I have just
learned that a very dangerous person has discovered more about that
dreadful evening than we believed known to anybody in Gylingden. I am
subjected to the most agonising suspicions and _insults_. Would to Heaven
I were dead! But living, I cannot endure my present state of mind longer.
To-morrow morning I will see Dorcas--poor Dorcas!--and tell her all. I am
weary of urging you, _in vain_, to do so. It would have been much better.
But although, after that interview, I shall, perhaps, never see her more,
I shall yet be happier, and, I think, relieved from suspense, and the
torments of mystery. So will she. At all events, it is her _right_ to
know all--and she shall.
'YOUR OUTCAST AND MISERABLE SISTER.'
On Stanley's lips his serene, unpleasant smile was gleaming, as he closed
the note carelessly. He intended to speak, but his voice caught. He
cleared it, and sipped a little claret.
'For a clever girl she certainly does write the most wonderful rubbish.
Such an effusion! And she sends it tossing about, from hand to hand,
among the servants. I've anticipated her, however, Dorkie.' And he took
her hand and kissed it. 'She does not know I've told you _all_ myself.'
Stanley went to the library, and Dorcas to the conservatory, neither very
happy, each haunted by an evil augury, and a sense of coming danger. The
deepening shadow warned Dorcas that it was time to repair to the Dutch
room, where she found lights and tea prepared.
In a few minutes more the library door opened and Stanley Lake peeped in.
'Radie not come yet?' said he entering. 'We certainly are much pleasanter
in this room, Dorkie, more, in proportion, than we two should have been
in the drawing-room.'
He seated himself beside her, drawing his chair very close to hers, and
taking her hand in his. He was more affectionate this evening than usual.
What did it portend? she thought. She had already begun to acquiesce in
Rachel's estimate of Stanley, and to fancy that whatever he did it was
with an unacknowledged purpose.
'Does little Dorkie love me?' said Lake, in a sweet undertone.
There was reproach, but love too, in the deep soft glance she threw upon
him.
'You must promise me not to be frightened at what I am going to tell
you,' said Lake.
She heard him with sudden panic, and a sense of cold stole over her. He
looked like a ghost--quite white--smiling. She knew something was
coming--the secret she had invoked so long--and she was appalled.
'Don't be frightened, darling. It is necessary to tell you; but it is
really not much when you hear me out. You'll say so when you have quite
heard me. So you won't be frightened?'
She was gazing straight into his wild yellow eyes, fascinated, with a
look of expecting terror.
'You are nervous, darling,' he continued, laying his hand on hers. 'Shall
we put it off for a little? You are frightened.'
'Not much frightened, Stanley,' she whispered.
'Well, we had better wait. I see, Dorcas, you _are_ frightened and
nervous. Don't keep looking at me; look at something else, can't you? You
make yourself nervous that way. I promise, upon my honour, I'll not say a
word about it till you bid me.'
'I know, Stanley--I know.'
'Then, why won't you look down, or look up, or look any way you please,
only don't stare at me so.'
'Yes--oh, yes,' and she shut her eyes.
'I'm sorry I began,' he said, pettishly. 'You'll make a fuss. You've made
yourself quite nervous; and I'll wait a little.'
'Oh! no, Stanley, _now_--for Heaven's sake, _now_. I was only a little
startled; but I am quite well again. Is it anything about marriage? Oh,
Stanley, in mercy, tell me was there any other engagement?'
'Nothing, darling--nothing on earth of the sort;' and he spoke with an
icy little laugh. 'Your poor soldier is altogether yours, Dorkie,' and he
kissed her cheek.
'Thank God for that!' said Dorcas, hardly above her breath.
'What I have to say is quite different, and really nothing that need
affect you; but Rachel has made such a row about it. Fifty fellows, I
know, are in much worse fixes; and though it is not of so much
consequence, still I think I should not have told you; only, without
knowing it, you were thwarting me, and helping to get me into a serious
difficulty by your obstinacy--or what you will--about Five Oaks.'
Somehow trifling as the matter was, Stanley seemed to grow more and more
unwilling to disclose it, and rather shrank from it now.
'Now, Dorcas, mind, there must be no trifling. You must not treat me as
Rachel has. If you can't keep a secret--for it _is_ a secret--say so.
Shall I tell you?'
'Yes, Stanley--yes. I'm your wife.'
'Well, Dorcas, I told you something of it; but only a part, and some
circumstances I _did_ intentionally colour a little; but I could not help
it, unless I had told everything; and no matter what you or Rachel may
say, it was kinder to withhold it as long as I could.'
He glanced at the door, and spoke in a lower tone.
And so, with his eyes lowered to the table at which he sat, glancing ever
and anon sideways at the door, and tracing little figures with the tip of
his finger upon the shining rosewood, he went on murmuring his strange
and hateful story in the ear of his wife.
It was not until he had spoken some three or four minutes that Dorcas
suddenly uttered a wild scream, and started to her feet. And Stanley also
rose precipitately, and caught her in his arms, for she was falling.
As he supported her in her chair, the library door opened, and the
sinister face of Uncle Lorne looked in, and returned the captain's stare
with one just as fixed and horrified.
'Hush!' whispered Uncle Lorne, and he limped softly into the room, and
stopped about three yards away, 'she is not dead, but sleepeth.'
'Hallo! Larcom,' shouted Lake.
'I tell you she's dreaming the same dream that I dreamt in the middle of
the night.'
'Hallo! Larcom.'
'Mark's on leave to-night, in uniform; his face is flattened against the
window. This is his lady, you know.'
'Hallo! D-- you--are you there?' shouted the captain, very angry.
'I saw Mark following you like an ape, on all-fours; such nice white
teeth! grinning at your heels. But he can't bite yet--ha, ha, ha! Poor
Mark!'
'Will you be so good, Sir, as to touch the bell?' said Lake, changing his
tone.
He was afraid to remove his arm from Dorcas, and he was splashing water
from a glass upon her face and forehead.
'No--no. No bell yet--time enough--ding, dong. You say, dead and gone.'
Captain Lake cursed him and his absent keeper between his teeth; still in
a rather flurried way, prosecuting his conjugal attentions.
'There was no bell for poor Mark; and he's always listening, and stares
so. A cat may look, you know.'
'Can't you touch the bell, Sir? What are you standing there for?' snarled
Lake, with a glare at the old man. He looked as if he could have murdered
him.
'Standing between the living and the dead!'
'Here, Reuben, here; where the devil have you been--take him away. He has
terrified her. By ---- he ought to be shot.'
The keeper silently slid his arm into Uncle Lorne's, and, unresisting,
the old man talking to himself the while, drew him from the room.
Larcom, about to announce Miss Lake, and closely followed by that young
lady, passed the grim old phantom on the lobby.
'Be quick, you are wanted there,' said the attendant as he passed.
Dorcas, pale as marble, sighing deeply again and again, her rich black
hair drenched in water, which trickled over her cheeks, like the tears
and moisture of agony, was recovering. There was water spilt on the
table, and the fragments of a broken glass upon the floor.
The moment Rachel saw her, she divined what had happened, and, gliding
over, she placed her arm round her.
'You're better, darling. Open the window, Stanley. Send her maid.'
'Aye, send her maid,' cried Captain Lake to Larcom. 'This is your d--d
work. A nice mess you have made of it among you.'
'Are you better, Dorcas?' said Rachel.
'Yes--much better. I'm glad, darling, I understand you now. Radie, kiss
me.'
Next morning, before early family prayers, while Mr. Jos. Larkin was
locking the despatch box which was to accompany him to London Mr. Larcom
arrived at the Lodge.
He had a note for Mr. Larkin's hand, which he must himself deliver; and
so he was shown into that gentleman's official cabinet, and received with
the usual lofty kindness.
'Well, Mr. Larcom, pray sit down. And can I do anything for you, Mr.
Larcom?' said the good attorney, waving his long hand toward a vacant
chair.
'A note, Sir.'
'Oh, yes; very well.' And the tall attorney rose, and, facing the rural
prospect at his window, with his back to Mr. Larcom, he read, with a
faint smile, the few lines, in a delicate hand, consenting to the sale of
Five Oaks.
He had to look for a time at the distant prospect to allow his smile to
subside, and to permit the conscious triumph which he knew beamed through
his features to discharge itself and evaporate in the light and air
before turning to Mr. Larcom, which he did with an air of sudden
recollection.
'Ah--all right, I was forgetting; I must give you a line.'
So he did, and hid away the note in his despatch-box, and said--
'The family all quite well, I hope?' whereat Larcom shook his head.
'My mistress'--he always called her so, and Lake the capting--'has been
takin' on hoffle, last night, whatever come betwixt 'em. She was fainted
outright in her chair in the Dutch room; and he said it was the old
gentleman--Old Flannels, we calls him, for shortness--but lor' bless you,
she's too used to him to be frightened, and that's only a make-belief;
and Miss Dipples, her maid, she says as how she was worse up stairs, and
she's made up again with Miss Lake, which _she_ was very glad, no doubt,
of the making friends, I do suppose; but it's a bin a bad row, and I
suspeck amost he's used vilins.'
'Compulsion, I suppose; you mean constraint?' suggested Larkin, very
curious.
'Well, that may be, Sir, but I amost suspeck she's been hurted somehow.
She got them crying fits up stairs, you know; and the capting, he's
hoffle bad-tempered this morning, and he never looked near her once,
after his sister came; and he left them together, talking and crying, and
he locked hisself into the library, like one as knowed he'd done
something to be ashamed on, half the night.'
'It's not happy, Larcom, I'm much afraid; it's _not_ happy,' and the
attorney rose, shaking his tall bald head, and his hands in his pockets,
and looked down in meditation.
'In the Dutch room, after tea, I suppose?' said the attorney.
'Before tea, Sir, just as Miss Lake harrived in the brougham.'
And so on. But there was no more to be learned, and Mr. Larcom returned
and attended the captain very reverentially at his solitary breakfast.
Mr. Jos. Larkin was away for London. And a very serene companion he was,
if not very brilliant. Everything was going perfectly smoothly with him.
A celestial gratitude glowed and expanded within his breast. His angling
had been prosperous hitherto, but just now he had made a miraculous
draught, and his nets and his heart were bursting. Delightful sentiment,
the gratitude of a righteous man; a man who knows that his heart is not
set upon the things of the world; who has, like King Solomon, made wisdom
his first object, and who finds riches added thereto!
There was no shadow of self-reproach to slur the sunny landscape. He had
made a splendid purchase from Captain Lake it was true. He drew his
despatch-box nearer to him affectionately, as he thought on the precious
records it contained. But who in this wide-awake world was better able to
take care of himself than the gallant captain? If it were not the best
thing for the captain, surely it would not have been done. Whom have I
defrauded? My hands are clean! He had made a still better purchase from
the vicar; but what would have become of the vicar if he had not been
raised up to purchase? And was it not speculative, and was it not
possible that he should lose all that money, and was it not, on the
whole, the wisest thing that the vicar, under his difficulties, could
have been advised to do?
So reasoned the good attorney, as with a languid smile and a sigh of
content, his long hand laid across the cover of the despatch-box by his
side, he looked forth through the plate-glass window upon the sunny
fields and hedgerows that glided by him, and felt the blessed assurance,
'look, whatsoever he doeth it shall prosper,' mingling in the hum of
surrounding nature. And as his eyes rested on the flying diorama of
trees, and farmsteads, and standing crops, and he felt already the pride
of a great landed proprietor, his long fingers fiddled pleasantly with
the rough tooling of his morocco leather box; and thinking of the signed
articles within, it seemed as though an angelic hand had placed them
there while he slept, so wondrous was it all; and he fancied under the
red tape a label traced in the neatest scrivenery, with a pencil of
light, containing such gratifying testimonials to his deserts, 'as well
done good and faithful servant,' 'the saints shall inherit the earth,'
and so following; and he sighed again in the delicious luxury of having
secured both heaven and mammon. And in this happy state, and volunteering
all manner of courtesies, opening and shutting windows, lending his
railway guide and his newspapers whenever he had an opportunity, he at
length reached the great London terminus, and was rattling over the
metropolitan pavement, with his hand on his despatch-box, to his cheap
hotel near the Strand.