“LOVE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTE LOVE.”
Sefton lifted his hat and passed quickly. Vansittart stood mutely
watching his retreating figure, till it was lost among other figures
moving to and fro along the Embankment. An empty hansom came creeping
by the curb while he stood watching.
“Here is a cab which will just do for me, Signorina,” he said.
“Good-bye. I’ll see you on one of your maestro’s days, so that I may
hear his opinion of your chances.”
“He comes on Tuesdays and Saturdays, from three to four. Who is that
gentleman who bowed to you? A friend?”
“No; only an acquaintance. Good-bye.”
“How vexed you look! Are you ashamed of being seen with me?”
“No, child, no; only that man happens to be one of my particular
aversions. A rivederci. Stay! I will take you to your door. The cab can
follow.”
It had occurred to him in a moment that Sefton was capable of turning
and pursuing Lisa if he left her unprotected. He was just the kind
of man, Vansittart thought, who, out of sheer devilry, would try to
discover the name and antecedents of this lovely stranger. He had a
deep-rooted distrust of Wilfred Sefton, which led him to anticipate
evil.
He walked with Lisa to Saltero’s Mansion, and saw her vanish under the
lofty Queen Anne portico, and then he turned and walked slowly back as
far as Tite Street, with the cab following him. So far there was no
sign of Sefton, who might, therefore, be supposed to have continued his
way Londonwards; but the rencontre had been a shock to Vansittart’s
nerves, and had set him thinking seriously upon the danger of his
relations with Fiordelisa and her aunt, and more especially of the
peril which must always attach to the use of an alias.
Was it well, or wise, or safe that he, Eve Marchant’s promised husband,
should be the guardian angel of this wild, impulsive peasant girl--a
guardian angel under the borrowed name of Smith, liable at any hour
to be confronted with people who knew his real name and surroundings?
He considered his position very seriously during the drive to Bruton
Street, and he resolved to do all in his power to narrow his relations
with the Venetians, while fulfilling every promise and every obligation
to the uttermost.
* * * * *
Colonel Marchant was at the family dinner in Charles Street. It had
been agreed between Mrs. Vansittart and her son that he should be
invited to this one gathering, so that he should not have any ground
for considering himself left out in the cold, albeit his future
son-in-law’s intention was to hold as little communion with him as
possible. Eve’s neglected girlhood had not fostered filial affection.
The parental name had been a name of fear in the Marchant household,
and the sisters had been happiest when their father was amusing himself
in London, careless of whether the angry baker had stopped the daily
supply, or the long-suffering butcher had refused to deliver another
joint. Such a man had but little claim upon a daughter’s love, and Eve
had confessed to Vansittart that her father was not beloved by his
children, and that it would not grieve her if in her future life she
and that father met but rarely.
“You are going to be so generous to me,” she said, “that I shall be
able to help my sisters--in ever so many ways--with their clothes, and
with their housekeeping; for I can never spend a third part of the
income you are settling upon me.”
“My frugal Eve! Why, there are women with half your charms who would
not be able to dress themselves upon such a pittance.”
“I have no patience with such women. They should be condemned to three
gowns a year of their own making, as my sisters and I have been ever
since we were old enough to handle needles and scissors. I am horrified
at the extravagance I have seen at the dressmaker’s--the reckless way
some of your sister’s friends spend money.”
“And my sister herself, no doubt. She has a rich husband, and I dare
say is one of the worst offenders in this line?”
“Not she! Lady Hartley dresses exquisitely, but she is not extravagant
like the others. She is too generous to other people to be lavish upon
herself. She is always thinking of doing a kindness to somebody.”
“Poor little Maud! I remember when she was in the schoolroom all her
pocket-money used to be spent upon dolls for the hospital children. She
used to come and beg of me when she was insolvent.”
* * * * *
Vansittart met Wilfred Sefton at an evening party within a few days
of that rencontre at Chelsea; and at the same party Vansittart was
disturbed by seeing Sefton and his mother in close confabulation in one
of those remote and luxurious corners where people are not obliged to
listen to the music that is being performed in the principal room.
He questioned his mother about Sefton at breakfast next morning. “You
and he seemed uncommonly thick,” he said. “What were you talking
about?”
“About you, and your approaching marriage.”
“I am sure you said nothing that was not kind, but I wish to Heaven you
would not discuss my affairs with a stranger,” said Vansittart, with
some warmth.
“Mr. Sefton is not a stranger. Your father and his father were very
good friends. He is your sister’s most influential neighbour, and they
are on the friendliest terms. Why should you call him a stranger?”
“Because I don’t like him, mother; and because I wish never to feel
myself on any other footing with him.”
“And yet he likes you.”
“Does he? I am a very bad judge of humanity if my dislike of Sefton is
not heartily reciprocated by Sefton’s dislike of me. And no doubt the
more he dislikes me the more he will assure other people--my kindred
especially--that he likes me. You are too straight yourself, mother,
in every thought and purpose, to understand the Seftonian mind. It is
the kind of intellect which always works crookedly. He admired Eve
Marchant, allowed his admiration to be patent to everybody, and yet was
not man enough to try to win her for his wife.”
“He had not your courage, Jack, in facing unpleasant surroundings and
disagreeable antecedents.”
“He had not manhood enough to marry for love. That is what you mean,
mother. He was quite willing to compromise an innocent and pure-minded
girl, by attentions which he would not have dared to offer to a girl
with a watchful father or mother.”
“My dear Jack, you exaggerate Mr. Sefton’s attentions. He assured me
that his chief interest in Eve arose from his old companionship with
her brother, with whom he was on very intimate terms until the unhappy
young man turned out an irretrievable scamp.”
Vansittart winced at the phrase. It is not an agreeable thing for a man
to be told that his future brother-in-law, the brother whom his future
wife adores, is irretrievable.
“Mr. Sefton has taken a great deal of trouble to trace Harold
Marchant’s career since he was last heard of,” continued Mrs.
Vansittart, “and would hold out a friendly hand to him if there were
anything to be done.”
“He has no need to hold out a friendly hand. If there is anything to be
done for my brother-in-law I can do it.”
“How ready you are to take new burdens!”
“I think nothing a burden which comes to me with the woman I love.”
Mrs. Vansittart sighed, and was silent. The idea of these disreputable
connections which her son was to take to himself in marrying Eve
was full of pain for the well-born matron, whose people on every
side were of unblemished respectability. Never had there been any
doubtful characters in her father’s family, or among that branch of the
Vansittarts to which her husband belonged. She had been born in just
that upper middle class which feels disgrace most keenly. There is no
section of society so self-conscious as your county gentry, so fixed
in the idea that the eyes of Europe are upon them. The duke or the
millionaire can live down anything--sons convicted of felony, daughters
divorced--but the country gentleman who has lived all his life in one
place, and knows every face within a radius of twenty miles from the
family seat, to him, or still more to his wife or widow, the slightest
smirch upon a relative’s character means agony.
Mrs. Vansittart liked and admired Eve Marchant; but she did not let
her heart go out to her as it ought to have gone to the girl who was
so soon to be to her as a daughter. Colonel Marchant’s existence was a
rock of offence which even maternal love could not surmount. She had
talked to her family lawyer, an old and trusted ally, and from him
she had heard all that was to be said for and against Eve’s father.
He was not quite so black, perhaps, as his neighbours in the country
had painted him; but his career had been altogether disreputable,
and his present associations were among the most disreputable men,
calling themselves gentlemen, about town. He was a familiar figure in
the card-room at clubs where play was high, and was looked upon with
unmitigated terror by the parents and guardians of young men of fortune
or expectations. A youth who affected Colonel Marchant’s society was
known to be in a bad way.
And now the question was not only of Colonel Marchant, but of his son,
who was even a darker character than the father, and whose darkness
might at any time overshadow his sister’s name. It was easy enough
to say that the sister was blameless, that it was no fault of hers
that her father was a Bohemian, and her brother a swindler and a
forger. Society does not easily forgive sisters or daughters for such
relationships, and now that the pseudo-scientific craze of heredity
has taken hold of the English mind, society is less inclined even than
of yore to ignore the black sheep in the fold. Every one who heard of
Eve Marchant’s antecedents would anticipate evil for her husband. The
bad strain would show itself somehow before long. The duskiness in the
parental wool would crop up in the fleece of the lamb.
It was hard for the mother who doated on her only son to feel ashamed
of his wife’s relations and up-bringing; and Mrs. Vansittart feared
that to the end of her life she must needs feel this shame. Already
her neighbours at Merewood had tortured her by their keen interest
in her son’s betrothed, their eagerness to know every detail,
their searching questions about her people, all veiled under that
affectionate friendliness which excuses the most tormenting curiosity.
Mrs. Vansittart was a good woman and a devoted mother, but she had the
temperament which easily yields to worrying ideas, to apprehensions
of potential evils, and her love of her son had just that alloy of
jealousy which is apt to cause trouble. While Vansittart was going
about with his betrothed from one scene of amusement to another,
utterly happy in her company, enchanted to show her places and people
which were as new to her as if they had been in fairyland, his
mother was brooding over her fears and fostering her forebodings,
and affording Wilfred Sefton every opportunity of improving his
acquaintance with her. It was a shock to Vansittart to find that Sefton
had established himself on the most familiar footing in Charles Street,
a privileged dropper-in, who might call six days out of the seven if he
chose, since Mrs. Vansittart had no allotted day for receiving, but was
always at home to her friends between four and five during the summer
season, when the pleasantest hour for driving was after five.
Sefton was clever, lived entirely in society and for society, during
the brief London season, frequented the studios of artists and the
tea-parties of litterateurs, knew, or pretended to know, everything
that was going to happen in the world of art and letters, and would
have been welcome on his own merits in the circles of the frivolous.
He contrived to amuse Mrs. Vansittart, and to impress her with an
exaggerated idea of his talent and versatility.
“He can talk well upon every subject,” she told her son.
“My dear mother, you mean that he is an adept in the season’s jargon,
and can talk of those subjects which came into fashion last month; like
the new cut of our coat collars, and the new colour of our neckties. A
man of that kind always impresses people with his cleverness in May and
the first half of June. Talk with him later, and you’ll find him flat,
stale, and unprofitable. By July he will have emptied his bag.”
* * * * *
It was scarcely a surprise to Vansittart, knowing his mother’s liking
for Mr. Sefton, to find that gentleman seated in her drawing-room one
Saturday evening when he returned rather late from a polo match at
Hurlingham. It was to be Eve’s last Saturday in London. June was at
hand, and she was to go back to Fernhurst on the first of the month, to
spend the small remnant of her single life with her sisters. She was to
be married on St. John’s Day.
They had lingered at the tea-table on the lawn, sighing sentimentally
over the idea that this was positively the last Saturday: that not
again for nearly a year could they sit together drinking tea out of the
homely little brown teapot, and watching the careless crowd come and go
in the sunshine and the summery air.
In Charles Street, the cups and saucers had not been cleared away,
although it was past seven. A side window in the front drawing-room
looked westward, up the old-fashioned street, towards the Park, and the
low sunlight was pouring in through the Madras-muslin curtain, shining
on the jardinière of golden lilies and over the glittering toys on the
silver table.
Vansittart opened the drawing-room door, but changed his mind about
going in when he saw Sefton established on the sofa, half hidden in a
sea of pillows.
“I’m very late,” he said. “How do you do, Sefton?” with a curt nod.
“I’m to dine in Bruton Street, mother. Good night, if I don’t see you
again.”
“Pray come in, Jack. I have something very serious to tell you--or
at least Mr. Sefton has. He has been waiting for you ever since five
o’clock. I wanted him to tell you at once. It is too serious for delay.”
“If I hadn’t left Miss Marchant and my sister five minutes ago I should
think, by your solemnity, that one of them had been killed,” exclaimed
Vansittart, scornfully, crossing the room with leisurely step, and
seating himself with his back to the yellow brightness of that western
window. “And now, my dear mother, may I inquire the nature of the
mountain which you and Mr. Sefton have conjured out of some innocent
molehill? Please don’t be very slow and solemn, as I have only half an
hour to dress and get to Bruton Street. Boïto’s _Mephistopheles_ will
begin at half-past eight.”
“This is no trivial matter, Jack. Perhaps when you have heard what Mr.
Sefton has to tell you may hardly care about the opera--or about seeing
Miss Marchant, before you have had time for serious thought.”
“There is nothing that Mr. Sefton--or the four Evangelists--could tell
me that would alter my feelings about Miss Marchant by one jot or one
tittle,” cried Vansittart, furiously, his angry feeling about this man
leaping out of him like a sudden flame.
“Wait,” said the mother, gravely--“wait till you have heard.”
“Begin, Mr. Sefton. My mother’s preamble is eminently calculated to
give importance to your communication.”
“I am hardly surprised that you should take the matter somewhat
angrily, Vansittart,” said Sefton, in his smooth, persuasive voice. “I
dare say I shall appear an officious beast in this business--and, had
it not been for Mrs. Vansittart’s express desire, I should not be here
to tell you the facts which have come to my knowledge within the last
two days. I considered it my duty to tell your mother, because in our
previous conversations she has been good enough to allude to old ties
of friendship between your father and my father--and this made a claim
upon me.”
“Proem the second,” cried Vansittart, impatiently. “When are we coming
to facts?”
“The facts are so uncommonly disagreeable that I may be pardoned for
approaching them diffidently. You know, I believe, that Miss Marchant
has a brother----”
“Who disappeared some years ago, and about whose fate you have busied
yourself,” interrupted Vansittart, with ever-growing impatience.
“All my efforts to trace Harold Marchant’s movements after his
departure from Mashonaland resulted in failure, until the day before
yesterday, when one of the two men whom I employed to make inquiries
turned up at my house in Tite Street as suddenly as if he had dropped
from the moon. This man is a courier and jack-of-all-trades, as
clever and handy a dog as ever lived, a man who has travelled in all
the quarters of the globe, a Venetian. When I began the search for
Miss Marchant’s brother, I put the business in the first place into
the hands of a highly respectable private detective; but as a second
string to my bow it occurred to me to send a full statement of the
circumstances, and a careful description of the missing man, to my old
acquaintance, Ferrari, the courier, who travelled with my poor father
on the sea-board of Italy for several months, and who helped to nurse
him on his sick-bed.”
Vansittart bridled his tongue, but could not keep himself from drumming
with his fingers on the dainty silver table and setting all the toy
harpsichords, and sofas, and bird-cages, and watering-pots, and tiny
tables rattling.
“I had half forgotten that I had employed this man in Harold Marchant’s
business when the fellow turned up in Tite Street, irrepressibly
cheerful, with the most unpleasant information.”
“What information? For God’s sake, come to the point!”
“He had traced Marchant’s career--from Mashonaland to the diamond
fields, where he picked up a good bit of money; from the diamond fields
to New York, from New York to Venice. For God’s sake, leave those
bibelots alone,” as the silver toys leapt and rattled on the fragile
table. “Do you think no one has nerves except yourself?”
“Your man traced Marchant to Venice,” said Vansittart, the restless
hand suddenly motionless; “and what of him at Venice?”
“At Venice Marchant lived with a girl whom he had taken out of a
factory. Pardon me, Mrs. Vansittart, for repeating these unpleasant
facts--lived, gambled, drank, and enjoyed life after his own
inclination, which always leaned to low company even when he was an
undergraduate. From Venice he vanished suddenly, more than three years
ago.”
Vansittart fancied they must needs hear that heavily beating heart of
his thumping against his ribs. He fancied that, even in that dimly
lighted room, they must needs see the ashen hue of his face, the beads
of sweat upon his forehead. All he could do was to hold his tongue, and
wait for that which was to come.
“Do you happen to remember a murder, or, I will rather say, a
scuffle ending in homicide, which occurred at Venice three years ago
in Carnival time--an English tourist stabbed to death by another
Englishman, who got away so cleverly that he was never brought to book
for what he had done? The row was about a woman, and the woman was
Harold Marchant’s mistress. Marchant was jealous of the stranger’s
attentions to the lady--he had lived long enough in Italy to have
learnt the use of the knife--and after a free fight of a few moments he
stabbed his man to the heart. Ferrari heard the story from a Venetian,
who was present in the Caffè Florian when the thing happened.”
“Did the Venetian know Marchant?”
The words came slowly from dry lips, the voice was husky; but neither
Mrs. Vansittart nor Mr. Sefton wondered that Eve Marchant’s lover
should be deeply moved.
“I don’t know; but there were people in Venice who knew him, and from
whom Ferrari heard his mode of life.”
“But you said that Marchant was living under an assumed name.”
“Did I?” asked Sefton, surprised. “I don’t remember saying it, but it
is the fact all the same. At Venice Harold Marchant called himself
Smith; and Smith was the name he gave on board the P. and O. steamer
which took him to Alexandria.”
“Why did he go to Alexandria?”
“Why? To get away from Venice in the quickest and completest manner
he could. When he saw that the knife had been fatal, he grasped the
situation in an instant, made a dash for the door, ran through the
crowd along the Piazzetta, jumped into the water, and swam to the
steamer, which was getting up steam for departure. No one guessed
that he would make for the steamer. It was a longish swim; and while
his pursuers were groping about among the gondolas the steamer was
moving off with Harold on board her. Just like him--always quick at
expedients; ready at every point where his own interests were at stake;
tricky, shifty, dishonest to the core; but a devil for pluck, and as
strong as a young lion.”
“I begin to remember the story, now you recall the details,” said
Vansittart, who had by this time mastered every sign of agitation, and
was firm as iron. “But in all that you have said I see nothing to fix
Harold Marchant as the homicide. He might as easily have been the man
who was killed.”
“No, no; the man who was killed was a stranger--a Cook’s tourist, a
nobody, about whose fate there were no inquiries. It was Marchant who
was the Venetian girl’s protector. It was Marchant who was jealous. The
whole story is in perfect accord with Marchant’s character. I have seen
his temper in a row--seen him when, if he had had a knife handy, by
Heaven! he would have used it.”
“But where is the link between Marchant--Marchant at the diamond
fields, Marchant at New York--and the man at Venice calling himself
Smith? You don’t even pretend to show me that.”
“Ferrari shall show you that. The story is a long one, but there is no
solution of continuity. Ferrari shall take you over the ground, step
by step, till he brings you from Marchant in Mashonaland to Marchant
landing at Alexandria.”
“And after the landing at Alexandria? What then? The thing happened
more than three years ago, you say. Did the earth open and swallow
Harold Marchant after he landed at Alexandria? Or, if not, what has he
been doing since? Why has not your Ferrari--this courier-guide who is
so clever at tracing people--traced him a little further? Why should
the last link of the chain be the landing at Alexandria?”
“Because, as I have been telling you, Harold Marchant is an uncommonly
clever fellow; and having got off with a whole skin--escaping the
penalty of a crime which at the least was manslaughter--he would
take very good care to sink his identity ever afterwards, and in all
probability would bid a long farewell to the old world.”
“But your genius--your heaven-born detective--would track him down
in the new world. My dear Sefton, the whole story is a farrago of
nonsense; and I wonder that you, as a man of the world, can be taken in
by so vulgar a trickster as your incomparable Ferrari.”
“He is not a trickster. I have the strongest reasons, from past
experience, for believing in his honesty. Will you see him, Vansittart?
Will you hear his story, calmly and dispassionately?”
“I will not see him. I will not hear his story. I will see no man who
trumps up a sensational charge against my future wife’s brother. I can
quite understand that you believe in this man--that you have brought
this absurd story to my mother and me in all good faith.”
“Why absurd? You admit that there was such a catastrophe--an English
traveller killed by an English resident in a Venetian caffè in Carnival
time.”
“Yes; but plain fact degenerates into nonsense when your courier tries
to fasten the crime upon Eve Marchant’s brother.”
“Hear his statement before you pronounce judgment. He had his facts
from people who knew this young man in New York as Harold Marchant,
who met him afterwards in Venice, and visited him at his Venetian
lodgings, and played cards with him, when he was calling himself
Smith--respectable American citizens, whose names and addresses are set
down in Ferrari’s note-book. I am not utterly wanting in logic, Mr.
Vansittart, and if the circumstantial evidence in this matter had been
obviously weak I should never have troubled Mrs. Vansittart or you with
the story.”
The mother spoke now for the first time since Sefton had begun his
revelation. Her voice was low and sympathetic. Her son might doubt her
wisdom, but he could not doubt her love.
“I am deeply sorry for you, Jack,” she said, “deeply sorry for poor
Eve, who is a blameless victim of evil surroundings, but I cannot
think that you will obstinately adhere to your engagement in the face
of these dreadful facts. It would have been bad enough to be Colonel
Marchant’s son-in-law; but you cannot seriously mean to marry a girl
whose brother has committed murder.”
“It was not murder,” cried Vansittart, furiously. “Even Mr. Sefton
acknowledges that the crime at worst was manslaughter--a fatal blow,
struck in a moment of blind passion.”
“With a dagger against an unarmed man,” interjected Sefton. “You are
inclined to minimize the crime when you call it manslaughter at the
worst. I said that at the least--taking the most indulgent view of the
case--the crime was manslaughter; and I doubt if an Italian tribunal
would have dealt very leniently with that kind of manslaughter. I take
it that rapid run and long swim of his saved Harold Marchant some years
of captivity in an Italian prison.”
“It is too horrible,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “My dear, dear son, for
God’s sake don’t underrate the horror of it all because of your love
for this poor girl. You cannot marry a girl whose brother is an
unconvicted murderer.”
How she harped upon the word murder! Vansittart ground his nails into
the palms of his clasped hands, as he stood up, frowning darkly, in an
agony of indignant feeling. His mother to be so womanish, so illogical,
so foolish in her exaggeration of evil.
“I say again, the man who struck that unlucky blow was no murderer.
The word is a lying word applied to him,” he protested. “The story
you have told me--the crime you try to fix upon Harold Marchant--can
make no shadow of difference in my love for Harold Marchant’s sister.
Had she ten brothers, and every one of the ten were a felon, I would
marry her. It is she whom I love, mother--not her surroundings. And as
for your modern fad of heredity, I believe in it no more than I do in
table-turning. God made my Eve--as pure, and single, and primitive a
being as that other Eve in His Garden of Eden; and over the morning of
her fair life no act of her kindred can cast a shadow.”
There was a silence. Sefton had risen when Vansittart rose. He took up
his hat, and came through the flickering lights and shadows towards
Mrs. Vansittart, who sat with drooping head and clasped hands, betwixt
sorrow and anger--sorrow for her son’s suffering, anger at his
obstinate adherence to the girl he loved. She gave Sefton her hand
mechanically, without looking up.
“Good night, Vansittart,” said Sefton, as he moved towards the door. “I
can only admire your loyalty to Miss Marchant, though I may question
your wisdom. She is a very charming person, I grant you; but, after
all”--with a little laugh--“she is not the only woman in the world.”
“She is the only woman in my world.”
“Really?”
The intonation of this one word, the slight shrug of the shoulders,
were full of meaning. Vansittart perceived the covert sneer in that
parting speech, and saw in it an allusion to that lovely foreigner whom
Sefton had seen hanging affectionately upon his arm a few days ago on
the Chelsea Embankment.
“One word, Mr. Sefton,” said Vansittart, in a peremptory tone. “I
take it that your employment of detectives and couriers--that all you
have done in this business--has been done out of regard for a college
chum, who was once your friend, and from a kindly desire to relieve
Miss Marchant’s anxiety about a brother whom--whom she appears to have
dearly loved. I think, under these circumstances, I need not suggest
the wisdom of keeping this unhappy business to yourself--so far as she
is concerned.”
“You are right. I shall say nothing to Miss Marchant.”
“Remember that, clever as your courier may be, he is not infallible.
The case is only a case of suspicion. The Smith, of Venice, may
be anybody. One missing link in your amateur detective’s chain of
evidence, and the whole fabrication would drop to pieces. Don’t let
Miss Marchant be tortured needlessly. Promise me that you will never
tell her this story.”
“On my honour, I will not.”
“I thank you for that promise, and I beg you to forgive any undue
vehemence upon my part just now.”
“There is nothing to forgive--I can sympathize with your feelings. Good
night.”
“Good night.”
Vansittart dined in Bruton Street, as he had promised, sat by his
betrothed, and listened to her happy talk of the things they had seen
and the people they had met, sat behind her chair all through Boïto’s
opera, unhearing, unseeing, his mind for ever and for ever travelling
over the same ground, acting over and over again the same scene--the
row at Florian’s, the scuffle, the fall--his own fall--the knife; and
then that fatal fall of his adversary, that one gasping, surprised cry
of the unarmed man, slain unawares.
Her brother! His victim, and her brother. The nearest, dearest kin of
this girl on whose milk-white shoulder his breath came and went, as he
sat with bent head in the shadow of the velvet curtain, and heard the
strange harmonies of Pandemonium, almost as if voices and orchestra had
been interpreting his own dark thoughts.
Charmed as she was with the music, Eve Marchant was far too sensitive
to be unconscious of her lover’s altered spirits. Once during the
applause that followed that lovely duet at the beginning of the last
act, and while Lady Hartley’s attention was fixed upon the stage, Eve’s
hand crept stealthily into the hand of her lover, while she whispered,
“What has happened, Jack? I know there is something wrong. Why won’t
you trust me?”
Trust her? Trust her with a secret that must part them for ever--let
her suffer the agony of knowing that this strong right hand which her
slim fingers were caressing had stabbed her brother to the heart?
“There can be nothing wrong, dearest, while I have you,” he answered,
grasping her hand as if he would never let it go.
“But outside me, you have been worried about something. You have quite
changed from your gay spirits at Hurlingham.”
“My love, I exhausted myself at Hurlingham. You and I were laughing
like children. That can’t last. But for me there is no outside world.
Be sure of that. My world begins and ends where you are.”
“My own dear love,” she whispered softly.
And so hand in hand they listened to the last act, while Lady Hartley
amused herself now with the stage, and now with the audience, and left
these plighted lovers alone in their fool’s paradise.
Sunday was given up to church and church parade, looking at people
and gowns and bonnets in Hyde Park. Vansittart had to be observant
and ready, amusing and amused, as he walked beside his sister and his
betrothed. He had to say smart things about the people and the bonnets,
to give brief biographies of the men whom he saluted, or with whom he
spoke. He had to do this, and to be gay and light-hearted in the drive
to Richmond, and at the late luncheon in the pretty upstairs room at
the Star and Garter, where the balcony hung high over the smiling
valley, over the river that meanders in gracious curves through wooded
meadows and past the townlet of “Twicks.” Happiness is the dominant in
the scale of prosperous love. Why or how should he fail to be happy,
adored by this sweet girl, who in less than six weeks was to be his, to
have and to hold till death?
He played his part admirably, was really happy during some of those
frivolous hours, telling himself that the thing which had happened at
Venice was a casualty for which Fate would not too cruelly punish him.
“Even Œdipus Rex had a good time of it after he killed his father at
the cross roads,” he told himself mockingly. “It was not till his
daughters were grown up that troubles began. He had a long run of
prosperity. And so, Dame Fortune, give me my darling, and let her
not know for the next twenty years that this right hand is red with
her kindred’s blood. Let her not know! And after twenty years of
bliss--well, let the volcano explode, and bury me in the ashes. I shall
have lived my life.”
He parted with Eve in Bruton Street after tea. She was going to an
evening service with Lady Hartley. They were to hear a famous preacher,
while the mundane Sir Hubert dined at Greenwich with some men. Eve was
to leave Waterloo Station early next morning, and as Lady Hartley was
sending her maid to see the young lady and her luggage safely lodged at
the Homestead, Vansittart was told he would not be wanted.
“This is a free country,” he said. “You will find me at the station to
say good-bye.”
He went home to dine with his mother, a very melancholy dinner. Mrs.
Vansittart’s pale cheeks bore traces of tears, and she was obviously
unhappy, although she struggled to keep up appearances, talked about
the weather, the sermon she had heard in the morning, the dinner,
anything to make conversation while the servants were in the room.
Vansittart followed her to the drawing-room directly after dinner, and
seated himself by her side in the lamplight, and laid his hand on hers
as it turned the pages of the book upon her knee.
“Canon Liddon is a delightful writer, mother; logical, clear-headed,
and eloquent, and you could hardly have a better book than his Bampton
Lectures for Sunday evening; but you might spare a few minutes for your
son.”
“As many minutes or as many hours as you like, Jack,” answered his
mother, as she closed the book. “My thoughts are too full of you to
give themselves to any book that was ever written. My dear son, what
can I say to you? Do you really mean to persist in this miserable
alliance?”
“Oh, mother, how cruel you are even in your kindness! How cruel a
mother’s love can be! It is not a miserable alliance--it is the
marriage of true minds. Remember what your Shakespeare says, ‘Let me
not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’ Will you, mother,
admit impediments here, where practically there is none?”
“Jack, Jack, love has made you blind. Is the existence of that wicked
young man no impediment--a man who may at any day be tried for his life
as a murderer?”
“Again, mother, I say he was no murderer. The utmost that can be urged
against this wicked young man is that he was a hot-tempered athlete
who killed a man in a scuffle. Let us forget his existence, if we can.
There is nothing in this life more unlikely than that we shall ever
hear of him again. From that night in the Venetian caffè he ceased to
exist--at any rate for England and his kindred. Be sure, mother, that
Harold Marchant will never be heard of again.”
“You believe what you wish to believe, Jack, and you forget the French
proverb that nothing is so likely to happen as the unexpected.”
“No, I don’t, mother. That useful adage has been borne in upon me of
late. But now, dearest and best, let us be at peace for ever upon this
question. I mean to marry my beloved, and I mean you to love her,
second only to Maud and me. She is ready to love you with all her
heart--with all the stored-up feeling of those motherless years in
which she has grown from child to woman, without the help of a mother’s
love. You are not going to shut your heart against her, are you,
mother?”
“No, Jack, not if she is to be your wife. I love you too well to
withhold my love from your wife.”
“That’s my own true mother.”
On this mother and son, between whom there had hung a faint cloud of
displeasure, kissed, not without tears; and it was agreed that for
these two henceforward the name of Harold Marchant should be a dead
letter.