Of course I had a right to an explanation, and equally, of course, I was
determined to have it. But the question was how to get it, and I confess
that for a long time I did not see my way. If one had been dealing with
a man it would have been very different. But when a lady with whom
you have been on terms of intimacy and friendship turns round upon you
without any cause you can assign, and tells you she desires to have no
more to do with you, it is not easy to see by what means you can force
her to a recognition of your side of the business. What made the thing
the more astonishing and bewildering was that Lady Rollinson had always
been so warm in her friendship for me. Over and over again she had
alluded to my services to her son, and she had introduced me to scores
of people as the savior of his life, magnifying a very simple incident
to such heroic proportions that she often put me to the blush about it,
and almost tempted me to wish that I had let poor Jack take his chance
without any interference of mine. To have seen a lady the day before
yesterday, to have been hailed by her for the hundredth time as her
son's preserver, to get a solemn “Not at home” thrown at you when
next you called--it was an experience entirely new, and anything but
agreeable.
If I may say so without bragging, I have been judged a fairly good
officer in my time. I can give an order, I can obey an order, I can see
that an order is obeyed; but outside the realms of discipline, and in
the common complications of life, I have never felt myself to be very
much at ease! The whole of this present business was so bewildering that
if only Lady Rollinson herself had been concerned I should have retired
from the consideration of the problem instantly. But then she stopped
my access to. Violet, and that, for a young fellow who was ardently in
love, put altogether another complexion on the affair. When I had got
over my first amazement, I sat down and wrote a note, which, in the
fervor of my feeling, bade fair to develop into a document which would
have filled, say, a column of the _Times_. But when I had written,
perhaps, a hundredth part of what I felt it in me to say, I tore up
the paper and threw its fragments into the fire. Then I started afresh,
determined to be extremely brief and business-like. Once more my
feelings got the upper hand of me, and again I covered half a dozen
closely-written pages before I discovered my mistake anew. Finally I
sat down to a pipe and thought the matter over, until I decided on a
definite line of action. The upshot of it all was that I wrote this
note, and with my own hands bore it to her ladyship's house:
“Dear Lady Rollinson,--I am utterly at a loss to understand the
occurrences of yesterday and to-day. A moment's reflection will show you
that an explanation is absolutely due to me. It is my right to demand
it, and it is at once your duty and your right to give it.”
Armed with this document I set out. The same perturbed domestic greeted
me with the formula to which I was by this time growing accustomed, and
when I instructed him to carry the note within doors and deliver it
to his mistress, he closed the door in my face and left me to await an
answer on the steps. The position was anything but comfortable. It was
a bright day, and a good many people were abroad, considering how
quiet the street generally was. I felt as if everybody who passed was
completely aware of my discomfiture. Not a nurse-maid went by with her
charge who did not, to my distempered fancy, know my business, and
look meaningly at me in appreciation of my position. By-and-by the door
opened, and the servant asked me to step inside. I had been cooling my
heels on the steps for full five minutes, and was by this time as
little self-possessed as I have ever been in my life. I followed the
man blindly into the familiar morning-room, and was there left alone for
another ten minutes. Anger was taking the place of bewilderment, and I
was striding rapidly up and down the room when Lady Rollinson entered.
The weather was still cold, but she carried a fan in her hand, and moved
it rapidly as she walked into the room and sank into a chair. I bowed
with a stiff inclination of the head, but she made no return to my
salute.
“I hope, Captain Fyffe,” she said, “that you will make this interview
as brief as possible. It is likely to be painful to both of us, but you
have insisted on it. I do not see what purpose it can serve, but it is
just as well that you should understand that I am finally determined.”
It was plainly to be seen that she was painfully agitated; and though
she had done her best to abolish the traces of the fact, I could see
that she had been crying.
“You are finally determined!” I echoed, and I dare say my manner was
foolish enough. “But what are you finally determined about?”
“I am finally determined,” she responded, “that everything is over
between us; and until the count returns and learns the dreadful truth,
everything, so far as my influence can go, is over between you and
Violet.”
“What is the dreadful truth?” I asked. “I give you my word that I am
utterly in the dark.”
Now Lady Rollinson was a dear old woman, and I had had a warm affection
for her. On her side she had treated me from the beginning of our
acquaintance almost as if I had been her son; and hitherto there had
been nothing but the most friendly and affectionate sentiment between
us. But I began to get angry, and I dare say I spoke in a tone to which
she had been little accustomed. She cast an indignant glance at me, and
fanned herself at a great rate for a full minute before she answered.
“Come,” I repeated more than once; “what is this dreadful truth? Surely
I have a right to know it.”
“You _shall_ know it, Captain Fyffe,” she answered, in a voice of
weeping menace such as women use when they are both wounded and angry;
“you shall have it in a word.” She dropped her fan upon her knees, and
asked me, with a lugubrious air of triumph and reproach, “Did you ever
hear of Constance Pleyel?”
I was standing before her, and as she leaned forward suddenly to offer
this surprising question I stepped back a little. A chair caught me at
the back of the knees, and I dropped into it as if I had been shot. I
have laughed in memory many a time over that ludicrous accident, but it
was no laughing matter at the moment, for it sent a conviction to the
old lady's mind which I do not think was altogether banished from it to
her dying day. Of course the question in such a connection came upon
me as a surprise. In all my searchings for the cause of her ladyship's
distemper I had not lighted on the thought of Constance Pleyel. I was
not so much amazed at it that the name alone could have bowled me
over in that way; but Lady Rollinson's idea was that it had gone home
instantly to a guilty conscience.
“That is enough,” she said, “and more than enough.” With these words she
arose and walked towards the door, but I intercepted her.
“I beg your pardon, it is not enough, or nearly enough.”
“You know the name,” she answered. “You have shown me enough to tell me
that.”
“I know the name, certainly,” I replied. “I have known the name and the
person that owns the name for many years. But that fact affords a very
partial explanation of your conduct. I must trouble you to sit down,
Lady Rollinson, and listen to what I have to say.”
The stupid, good old woman had taken her side already, and if anything
had been needed to confirm her own mistaken judgment of the case that
ludicrous accident would have supplied it. She fanned herself in an
emotion made up of wrath and grief and dignity, glancing at me from time
to time, and looking away again with an expression of disdain, which was
hard for an innocent man to bear.
“I suppose,” I said, as coolly as I could, “that whatever information
you have upon this matter comes from the Baroness Bonnar?” I waited for
an answer, but she gave no sign. “I must trouble you to tell me if that
is so.”
“You know that well enough,” she answered. “The Baroness Bonnar is the
only friend the poor creature has in London.”
“Do you know much of the Baroness Bonnar?” I asked. “Would it ever have
occurred to you to guess that the Baroness Bonnar is neither more nor
less than a paid Austrian spy, and that Miss Constance Pleyel is, in all
probability, her confederate?”
She looked at me with an incredulity so open that I felt it to be an
insult, and she preserved the same disdainful silence.
“I came here yesterday,” I continued, “to consult Violet--”
She interrupted me almost with a shriek.
“Don't mention that poor girl's name!” she cried. “I won't have it
mentioned! I won't listen to it in this connection!”
“Pardon me,” I said, “it has to be mentioned, and unless you are in the
humor to permit yourself to be made the dupe and tool of as wicked a
little adventuress as ever lived, you must listen to what I have to tell
you. I came here yesterday to consult Violet as to what I should do with
respect to a plot in which I have found the baroness to be engaged. You
have often heard the count and myself speak of poor old Ruffiano. You
know him as one of Violet's pensioners, and, indeed, I remember that
twice or thrice I have met him in your house. He has been betrayed to
the Austrians, and is at this minute in their hands. The prime mover
in that matter is the Baroness Bonnar, and her tool was the Honorable
George Brunow.”
Now surely one would have thought that a charge so plain and dreadful
was at least worth investigation, and it had not entered my mind to
conceive that even an angry woman could fail to take some sort of
account of it. Lady Rollinson took it merely as a tissue of absurdities.
“It only shows,” she said, “how desperate your own case must be when you
need to bolster it by a story like that--a story which could be proved
to be false in half a minute.”
“Why should you suppose me,” I retorted, “to be so foolish as to bring
you such a story if it could not be proved to be true? I ask nothing
more or less than that you should inquire into the matter.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort,” she answered. “I know too much
already.”
“I am sorry,” I answered, “to be so seriously at issue with you on such
a theme, but I am compelled to insist upon my right.”
“I shall have nothing to say on the matter,” she answered, “until the
count returns. He will be the final judge of what is to be done; but
until he comes I shall do my duty, and it is no part of my duty to allow
my niece to listen to the persuasions of a man who has only too clearly
proved his powers in that way already.”
“Only a few weeks ago,” I said, desperately, “I had an interview with
the Baroness Bonnar, in which I warned her not to intrude upon your
society again.”
“I know all about it!” cried Lady Rollinson, with an indignant movement
of her fan. “You tried to bully the poor thing into silence. You may
save yourself any further trouble, Captain Fyffe. My mind is made
up, and I shall do what I have decided to do. In my days,” she added,
beginning to cry, which made the situation more intolerable than
ever--“in my days, when a gentleman was told by a lady that his presence
was unwelcome in her house he would never have intruded.”
“My dear Lady Rollinson,” I responded, controlling myself with a very
considerable effort, “you must listen to reason. You have been made the
dupe of a thoroughly heartless and unprincipled woman.”
“That appears to be your method!” She flashed back at me. “You can say
what you please about my character, now that I know yours. Thank God I
am too well known to fear your rancorous tongue!”
The position was actually maddening, and I had never dreamed until then
that even a woman who was bent on revenging what she conceived to be a
gross injury to one of her own sex could be so utterly unreasonable and
deaf to argument.
“I repeat, madame,” I declared, “that the Count Ruffiano has been
betrayed to the enemy by this woman whose lies you accept as if they
were gospel. Brunow confessed to me barely six-and-thirty hours ago that
he acted as her agent in that villainous transaction. Is that a woman
whose bare word is to be taken against the overwhelming proof an honest
man can bring?”
I know I was excited, and it is very likely that I was speaking in a
louder voice than I was altogether aware of, but her answer gave me a
new surprise.
“I am not in the least afraid of you, Captain Fyffe; my servants are in
the house, and I can ring for them at any minute.”
This cooled me, even in the middle of my exasperation and the galling
sense of impotence I felt.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Rollinson. I am bewildered by your manner. I am
laboring under an accusation of a very dreadful sort, and you refuse to
listen to me, though I can prove my innocence quite easily.”
“Why,” she exclaimed, “I haven't even told the man what the accusation
is! But in spite of his innocence he knows all about it.”
“I know all about it,” I retorted, “because it has been brought against
me before, and withdrawn by the very woman who brings it now. Will you
listen to me, Lady Rollinson?”
“I will not willingly listen to another word.”
“Where is Violet?” I asked.
“That I shall not tell you,” she answered. “I have made up my mind I
shall do nothing until the arrival of the count. When he comes back,
if ever he does, poor man, the responsibility will be off my shoulders.
Until then, I shall take very good care that you have nothing to do with
Violet.”
This seemed to me to be carrying things with far too high a hand, and
there, at least, I thought I had a right to speak with some show of
authority.
“Violet,” I said, “is my promised wife, and I am not going to allow any
folly of this kind to come between her and me. I shall insist upon my
right to see her, and to clear myself of any accusation which may have
been brought against me in my absence.”
“You may insist as much as you please, Captain Fyffe,” Lady Rollinson
answered. “I have made up my mind as to what is my duty, and I shall do
it, even at the risk of your most serious displeasure.”
“You tell me,” I said, “that she is not here?”
“I have told you already,” she replied, “that she is not here. I have
made arrangements for her until the count returns.”
“And am I to understand,” I asked, “that you refuse to allow me to know
her address?”
“You may understand that definitely,” said her ladyship.
It was all very disagreeable, but at least there was one ray of comfort
in the middle of it.
“Violet knows my address,” I said, “and she is certain to write to me.”
“I might have something to thank you for there, Captain Fyffe,” said
the old lady, with an almost comical increase of dignity, “if I had not
already taken my precautions. I may tell you, however, that Violet is
accompanied by a discreet person, who has my instructions as to the
disposal of any letters she may write.”
This amounted to an open declaration of war, and I felt myself on the
point of answering so hotly that I was wise in binding myself, for the
moment at least, to silence.
“Pray let us thoroughly understand each other,” I said at length. “You,
on your side, have resolved to place complete reliance on the statement
of an exposed adventuress, without one word of corroboration, and to
refuse the clear proof of my innocence, which I undertake to give
you.” I waited for a moment, but she maintained an altogether obstinate
silence. “Very well,” I resumed, “that is understood so far. You
conceive it your duty to separate Violet and myself, and to attempt to
widen any possible separation between us by suppressing my letters to
her and hers to me. You must permit me to point out to you that you are
adopting a very dangerous course, and I must warn you that I shall do my
best to frustrate a design which seems to me so ureasonable and so cruel
that I should never have thought you capable of forming it.”
“You will do your best, of course,” she answered, “and I shall do mine.
I wish you good-morning, Captain Fyffe.”
What with perplexity, and what with grief and anger, I scarce knew what
to do, but I turned to her with a final appeal.
“I am sure,” I said, “that you have your niece's interests at heart. It
is not so very long since you professed to be my friend. Ever since I
have known you I have had to tell you that you very much overestimated a
chance service I have rendered to your son.”
“I have been waiting for that,” she answered. “That is just the sort of
appeal I was expecting you to make. It is of no use for us to discuss
this question any longer, for let me tell you I have seen your letters.”
“The letters!” I cried.
“The letters,” she repeated--“the letters to Miss Constance Pleyel.”
“Great Heaven, madam!” I cried, exasperated beyond patience, “I have
never denied that I wrote to Miss Constance Pleyel, but the letters
were written when I was a boy, and they are as absolutely harmless and
blameless as any love-sick nonsense ever written in the world!”
“I have seen the letters,” she repeated, “and I have seen Miss Pleyel,
and, once more, Captain Fyffe, and for the last time, I have made up my
mind.”
With that she laid her hand upon the bell-pull, and sounded a peal at
the bell which was so rapidly answered that I more than half suspected,
and, indeed, do now more than half suspect, that the man who responded
to it had been listening.
“Show Captain Fyffe out,” said her ladyship. And so, a definite
end being put to the interview, I left the house as wrathful and as
humiliated a man as any to be found that hour in London. So long as I
live I shall not forget the smug alacrity with which the servant obeyed
the behest of his mistress. I was in a state to wreak my own ill-humor
upon anybody, and it was in my mind, and more than half in my heart, to
kick that smug man in livery down the steps. I have suffered all my life
from a certain Scotch vivacity of temperament which it has cost me
many and many a hard struggle to control. It has not often been more
unreasonable or more vigorous in its internal demonstrations than it
was then, but I managed to reach the street and to walk away without
exposing myself. As to where I went for the next few hours I never had
the remotest idea. I must have walked a good many miles, for at last,
when I pulled up, I found myself, at five o'clock in the evening, in
a part of the town to which I was a complete stranger, and I had
a confused remembrance of Oxford Street and the parks, and then of
Highgate Archway. I made out, after a while, that I was at the East End,
and, turning westward, I tramped back to my own lodgings with a return
to self-possession which was partly due to the fact that bodily fatigue
had dulled the sting of resentment.
Hinge had dinner ready when I reached home, but I had no appetite for
it, and, to the good fellow's dismay, I sent it away untasted. I turned
over a thousand schemes that evening, and rejected each in turn. But I
decided, finally, to prepare an advertisement for the newspapers, Which
might perhaps prevent further mischief. I concocted so many subterfuges,
each of which in turn proved to reveal too much or to be too
enigmatical, that at ten o'clock I found myself with a dozen sheets of
closely-written paper before me. But at last I hit on this:
“Dear Violet,--Distrust altogether anything you may hear to
my disadvantage until I have found an opportunity to
explain. Do not wonder at not hearing from me. Both your
letters and mine are intercepted. When you next write, post
letter with your own hand.”
After much consideration, I hit upon “John of Itzia” as a signature,
and having made three clear copies, I drove round to the offices of
the three great daily newspapers of that date, and at each secured the
insertion of this advertisement for a week. A little comforted by that
achievement, I went to bed, and, being dog tired, got to sleep.
The days that followed were among the dreariest I can remember. I spent
them for the most part at home, sitting at the open window which looked
upon the street, and waiting for the advent of the postman.
I was there in the morning an hour before his arrival could reasonably
be expected, and I was there all day, and there still an hour after
his last round had been made. Every time he came in sight my heart beat
furiously; and as the short official note on the knocker came nearer and
nearer, I strove in vain to resist the temptation to run down-stairs and
await him at the front door. Every man on that beat got to know me, and
I grew to be utterly ashamed of myself at last, for day after day
went by, and there came no answer to my advertisement and no note from
anywhere of Violet's existence. At last the week for which I had prepaid
the advertisement expired. I had determined to renew my warning and
entreaty if no answer came, and I waited the last part of that day
with a throbbing heart. The minutes of the dull, rainy night--it was
mid-April by this time--crawled slowly on, and at last I heard the
belated knocker at the far end of the street, and hurried on my overcoat
and hat in case I should be disappointed once again. Then I slipped down
to the door, and waited in the portico. The postman knocked next door,
and I was ashamed to show myself; but only a second or two later he
appeared with a single letter in his hand.
“Captain Fyffe?” he asked, inquiringly, and I responding “Captain
Fyffe,” he handed me the letter.
The superscription was in Violet's hand. I tore it open and read,
in embossed letters at the top of the first page, “Scarfell House,
Richmond.” Then came this:
“My Dearest,--Is the strange advertisement addressed to
Violet and signed 'John of Itzia' yours? I almost think it
must be, and yet I am half afraid and half ashamed to say
so. But since I left town, nine days ago, I have written
to you every day, and have not received a line in answer. If
you will look in either the Times or the Advertiser, if the
advertisement should not have been put there by yourself,
you will see what I mean. I shall obey its instructions, and
shall post this letter with my own hands. So far I have
given my letters to my maid, and I cannot think of any
reason which could induce her to be wicked enough to destroy
or suppress them. This, at least, will be sure to reach you,
and if my fancy is absurd, I know you well enough to trust
to your forgiveness. If you are not 'John of Itzia,' I can
only fear that something dreadful has happened, for I do not
believe that you could be so unkind as to leave eight
consecutive letters of mine unanswered by a single word. I
have only just seen the advertisement by chance, and if you
are at home when this arrives it ought to reach you at about
nine o'clock. It is very little over an hour's drive to
Richmond, and I beg you to come down at once. If the whole
thing is a mistake, you have still something to explain, and
must have, I am sure a great deal to tell me.
“Yours always,
“Violet.”
I had no sooner read this than, with the letter crumpled in my hand, I
dashed into the street and made at full-speed for the nearest cab-stand.
Half a dozen whips were waved at me at once, but I walked up and down
the line inspecting the horses before I would choose a vehicle. A
sorrier lot of screws I never saw, but I chose the one that looked the
least unpromising, and gave the driver the word for Richmond.