For a moment Randolph gazed at the dispatch with a half-hysterical
laugh, and then became as suddenly sane and cool. One thought alone was
uppermost in his mind: the captain could not have heard this news yet,
and if he was still within reach, or accessible by any means whatever,
however determined his purpose, he must know it at once. The only clue
to his whereabouts was the Victoria Docks. But that was something. In
another moment Randolph was in the lower hall, had learned the quickest
way of reaching the docks, and plunged into the street.
The fog here swooped down, and to the embarrassment of his mind was
added the obscurity of light and distance, which halted him after a few
hurried steps, in utter perplexity. Indistinct figures were here and
there approaching him out of nothingness and melting away again into the
greenish gray chaos. He was in a busy thoroughfare; he could hear the
slow trample of hoofs, the dull crawling of vehicles, and the warning
outcries of a traffic he could not see. Trusting rather to his own speed
than that of a halting conveyance, he blundered on until he reached
the railway station. A short but exasperating journey of impulses and
hesitations, of detonating signals and warning whistles, and he at last
stood on the docks, beyond him a vague bulk or two, and a soft, opaque
flowing wall--the river!
But one steamer had left that day--the Dom Pedro, for the River
Plate--two hours before, but until the fog thickened, a quarter of an
hour ago, she could be seen, so his informant said, still lying, with
steam up, in midstream. Yes, it was still possible to board her. But
even as the boatman spoke, and was leading the way toward the landing
steps, the fog suddenly lightened; a soft salt breath stole in from the
distant sea, and a veil seemed to be lifted from the face of the gray
waters. The outlines of the two shores came back; the spars of nearer
vessels showed distinctly, but the space where the huge hulk had rested
was empty and void. There was a trail of something darker and more
opaque than fog itself lying near the surface of the water, but the Dom
Pedro was a mere speck in the broadening distance.
A bright sun and a keen easterly wind were revealing the curling ridges
of the sea beyond the headland when Randolph again passed the gates of
Dornton Hall on his way to the rectory. Now, for the first time, he was
able to see clearly the outlines of that spot which had seemed to him
only a misty dream, and even in his preoccupation he was struck by its
grave beauty. The leafless limes and elms in the park grouped themselves
as part of the picturesque details of the Hall they encompassed, and
the evergreen slope of firs and larches rose as a background to the
gray battlements, covered with dark green ivy, whose rich shadows were
brought out by the unwonted sunshine. With a half-repugnant curiosity he
had tried to identify the garden entrance and the fateful yew hedge the
captain had spoken of as he passed. But as quickly he fell back upon the
resolution he had taken in coming there--to dissociate his secret, his
experience, and his responsibility to his patron from his relations
to Sibyl Eversleigh; to enjoy her companionship without an obtruding
thought of the strange circumstances that had brought them together
at first, or the stranger fortune that had later renewed their
acquaintance. He had resolved to think of her as if she had merely
passed into his life in the casual ways of society, with only her
personal charms to set her apart from others. Why should his exclusive
possession of a secret--which, even if confided to her, would only give
her needless and hopeless anxiety--debar them from an exchange of those
other confidences of youth and sympathy? Why could he not love her and
yet withhold from her the knowledge of her cousin's existence? So he had
determined to make the most of his opportunity during his brief holiday;
to avail himself of her naive invitation, and even of what he dared
sometimes to think was her predilection for his companionship. And if,
before he left, he had acquired a right to look forward to a time
when her future and his should be one--but here his glowing fancy was
abruptly checked by his arrival at the rectory door.
Mr. Brunton received him cordially, yet with a slight business
preoccupation and a certain air of importance that struck him as
peculiar. Sibyl, he informed him, was engaged at that moment with some
friends who had come over from the Hall. Mr. Trent would understand that
there was a great deal for her to do--in her present position.
Wondering why SHE should be selected to do it instead of older and more
experienced persons, Randolph, however, contented himself with inquiries
regarding the details of Sir William's seizure and death. He learned, as
he expected, that nothing whatever was known of the captain's visit, nor
was there the least suspicion that the baronet's attack was the result
of any predisposing emotion. Indeed, it seemed more possible that his
medical attendants, knowing something of his late excesses and their
effect upon his constitution, preferred, for the sake of avoiding
scandal, to attribute the attack to long-standing organic disease.
Randolph, who had already determined, as a forlorn hope, to write
a cautious letter to the captain (informing him briefly of the news
without betraying his secret, and directed to the care of the consignees
of the Dom Pedro in Brazil, by the next post), was glad to be able to
add this medical opinion to relieve his patron's mind of any fear of
having hastened his brother's death by his innocent appearance. But here
the entrance of Sibyl Eversleigh with her friends drove all else from
his mind.
She looked so tall and graceful in her black dress, which set off her
dazzling skin, and, with her youthful gravity, gave to her figure the
charming maturity of a young widow, that he was for a moment awed and
embarrassed. But he experienced a relief when she came eagerly toward
him in all her old girlish frankness, and with even something of
yearning expectation in her gray eyes.
“It was so good of you to come,” she said. “I thought you would imagine
how I was feeling”--She stopped, as if she were conscious, as Randolph
was, of a certain chill of unresponsiveness in the company, and said
in an undertone, “Wait until we are alone.” Then, turning with a slight
color and a pretty dignity toward her friends, she continued: “Lady
Ashbrook, this is Mr. Trent, an old friend of both my cousins when they
were in America.”
In spite of the gracious response of the ladies, Randolph was aware
of their critical scrutiny of both himself and Miss Eversleigh, of
the exchange of significant glances, and a certain stiffness in
her guardian's manner. It was quite enough to affect Randolph's
sensitiveness and bring out his own reserve.
Fancying, however, that his reticence disturbed Miss Eversleigh, he
forced himself to converse with Lady Ashbrook--avoiding many of her
pointed queries as to himself, his acquaintance with Sibyl, and the
length of time he expected to stay in England--and even accompanied her
to her carriage. And here he was rewarded by Sibyl running out with a
crape veil twisted round her throat and head, and the usual femininely
forgotten final message to her visitor. As the carriage drove away, she
turned to Randolph, and said quickly,--
“Let us go in by way of the garden.”
It was a slight detour, but it gave them a few moments alone.
“It was so awful and sudden,” she said, looking gravely at Randolph,
“and to think that only an hour before I had been saying unkind things
of him! Of course,” she added naively, “they were true, and the groom
admitted to me that the mare was overdriven and Sir William could
hardly stand. And only to think of it! he never recovered complete
consciousness, but muttered incoherently all the time. I was with him to
the last, and he never said a word I could understand--only once.”
“What did he say?” asked Randolph uneasily.
“I don't like to say--it was TOO dreadful!”
Randolph did not press her. Yet, after a pause, she said in a low voice,
with a naivete impossible to describe, “It was, 'Jack, damn you!'”
He did not dare to look at her, even with this grim mingling of farce
and tragedy which seemed to invest every scene of that sordid drama.
Miss Eversleigh continued gravely: “The groom's name was Robert, but
Jack might have been the name of one of his boon companions.”
Convinced that she suspected nothing, yet in the hope of changing the
subject, Randolph said quietly: “I thought your guardian perhaps a
little less frank and communicative to-day.”
“Yes,” said the young girl suddenly, with a certain impatience, and
yet in half apology to her companion, “of course. He--THEY--all and
everybody--are much more concerned and anxious about my new position
than I am. It's perfectly dreadful--this thinking of it all the time,
arranging everything, criticising everything in reference to it, and the
poor man who is the cause of it all not yet at rest in his grave! The
whole thing is inhuman and unchristian!”
“I don't understand,” stammered Randolph vaguely. “What IS your new
position? What do you mean?”
The girl looked up in his face with surprise. “Why, didn't you know? I'm
the next of kin--I'm the heiress--and will succeed to the property in
six months, when I am of age.”
In a flash of recollection Randolph suddenly recalled the captain's
words, “There are only three lives between her and the property.”
Their meaning had barely touched his comprehension before. She was the
heiress. Yes, save for the captain!
She saw the change, the wonder, even the dismay, in his face, and her
own brightened frankly. “It's so good to find one who never thought of
it, who hadn't it before him as the chief end for which I was born! Yes,
I was the next of kin after dear Jack died and Bill succeeded, but
there was every chance that he would marry and have an heir. And yet the
moment he was taken ill that idea was uppermost in my guardian's mind,
good man as he is, and even forced upon me. If this--this property
had come from poor Cousin Jack, whom I loved, there would have been
something dear in it as a memory or a gift, but from HIM, whom I
couldn't bear--I know it's wicked to talk that way, but it's simply
dreadful!”
“And yet,” said Randolph, with a sudden seriousness he could not
control, “I honestly believe that Captain Dornton would be perfectly
happy--yes, rejoiced!--if he knew the property had come to YOU.”
There was such an air of conviction, and, it seemed to the simple girl,
even of spiritual insight, in his manner that her clear, handsome eyes
rested wonderingly on his.
“Do you really think so?” she said thoughtfully. “And yet HE knows
that I am like him. Yes,” she continued, answering Randolph's look of
surprise, “I am just like HIM in that. I loathe and despise the life
that this thing would condemn me to; I hate all that it means, and all
that it binds me to, as he used to; and if I could, I would cut and run
from it as HE did.”
She spoke with a determined earnestness and warmth, so unlike her usual
grave naivete that he was astonished. There was a flush on her cheek and
a frank fire in her eye that reminded him strangely of the captain; and
yet she had emphasized her words with a little stamp of her narrow foot
and a gesture of her hand that was so untrained and girlish that he
smiled, and said, with perhaps the least touch of bitterness in his
tone, “But you will get over that when you come into the property.”
“I suppose I shall,” she returned, with an odd lapse to her former
gravity and submissiveness. “That's what they all tell me.”
“You will be independent and your own mistress,” he added.
“Independent,” she repeated impatiently, “with Dornton Hall and twenty
thousand a year! Independent, with every duty marked out for me!
Independent, with every one to criticise my smallest actions--every one
who would never have given a thought to the orphan who was contented
and made her own friends on a hundred a year! Of course you, who are
a stranger, don't understand; yet I thought that you”--she
hesitated,--“would have thought differently.”
“Why?”
“Why, with your belief that one should make one's own fortune,” she
said.
“That would do for a man, and in that I respected Captain Dornton's
convictions, as you told them to me. But for a girl, how could she be
independent, except with money?”
She shook her head as if unconvinced, but did not reply. They were
nearing the garden porch, when she looked up, and said: “And as YOU'RE
a man, you will be making your way in the world. Mr. Dingwall said you
would.”
There was something so childishly trustful and confident in her
assurance that he smiled. “Mr. Dingwall is too sanguine, but it gives me
hope to hear YOU say so.”
She colored slightly, and said gravely: “We must go in now.” Yet she
lingered for a moment before the door. For a long time afterward he had
a very vivid recollection of her charming face, in its childlike
gravity and its quaint frame of black crape, standing out against the
sunset-warmed wall of the rectory. “Promise me you will not mind what
these people say or do,” she said suddenly.
“I promise,” he returned, with a smile, “to mind only what YOU say or
do.”
“But I might not be always quite right, you know,” she said naively.
“I'll risk that.”
“Then, when we go in now, don't talk much to me, but make yourself
agreeable to all the others, and then go straight home to the inn, and
don't come here until after the funeral.”
The faintest evasive glint of mischievousness in her withdrawn eyes at
this moment mitigated the austerity of her command as they both passed
in.
Randolph had intended not to return to London until after the funeral,
two days later, and spent the interesting day at the neighboring town,
whence he dispatched his exploring and perhaps hopeless letter to
the captain. The funeral was a large and imposing one, and impressed
Randolph for the first time with the local importance and solid
standing of the Dorntons. All the magnates and old county families were
represented. The inn yard and the streets of the little village were
filled with their quaint liveries, crested paneled carriages, and
silver-cipher caparisoned horses, with a sprinkling of fashion from
London. He could not close his ears to the gossip of the villagers
regarding the suddenness of the late baronet's death, the extinction of
the title, the accession of the orphaned girl to the property, and even,
to his greater exasperation, speculations upon her future and probable
marriage. “Some o' they gay chaps from Lunnon will be lordin' it over
the Hall afore long,” was the comment of the hostler.
It was with some little bitterness that Randolph took his seat in the
crowded church. But this feeling, and even his attempts to discover Miss
Eversleigh's face in the stately family pew fenced off from the chancel,
presently passed away. And then his mind began to be filled with strange
and weird fancies. What grim and ghostly revelations might pass between
this dead scion of the Dorntons lying on the trestles before them and
the obscure, nameless ticket of leave man awaiting his entrance in the
vault below! The incongruity of this thought, with the smug complacency
of the worldly minded congregation sitting around him, and the probable
smiling carelessness of the reckless rover--the cause of all--even now
idly pacing the deck on the distant sea, touched him with horror. And
when added to this was the consciousness that Sibyl Eversleigh was
forced to become an innocent actor in this hideous comedy, it seemed
as much as he could bear. Again he questioned himself, Was he right to
withhold his secret from her? In vain he tried to satisfy his conscience
that she was happier in her ignorance. The resolve he had made to
keep his relations with her apart from his secret, he knew now, was
impossible. But one thing was left to him. Until he could disclose his
whole story--until his lips were unsealed by Captain Dornton--he must
never see her again. And the grim sanctity of the edifice seemed to make
that resolution a vow.
He did not dare to raise his eyes again toward her pew, lest a sight of
her sweet, grave face might shake his resolution, and he slipped away
first among the departing congregation. He sent her a brief note from
the inn saying that he was recalled to London by an earlier train, and
that he would be obliged to return to California at once, but hoping
that if he could be of any further assistance to her she would write
to him to the care of the bank. It was a formal letter, and yet he had
never written otherwise than formally to her. That night he reached
London. On the following night he sailed from Liverpool for America.
Six months had passed. It was difficult, at first, for Randolph to pick
up his old life again; but his habitual earnestness and singleness of
purpose stood him in good stead, and a vague rumor that he had made some
powerful friends abroad, with the nearer fact that he had a letter of
credit for a thousand pounds, did not lessen his reputation. He was
reinstalled and advanced at the bank. Mr. Dingwall was exceptionally
gracious, and minute in his inquiries regarding Miss Eversleigh's
succession to the Dornton property, with an occasional shrewdness of eye
in his interrogations which recalled to Randolph the questioning of Miss
Eversleigh's friends, and which he responded to as cautiously. For the
young fellow remained faithful to his vow even in thinking of her, and
seemed to be absorbed entirely in his business. Yet there was a vague
ambition of purpose in this absorption that would probably have startled
the more conservative Englishman had he known it.
He had not heard from Miss Eversleigh since he left, nor had he received
any response from the captain. Indeed, he had indulged in little hopes
of either. But he kept stolidly at work, perhaps with a larger trust
than he knew. And then, one day, he received a letter addressed in a
handwriting that made his heart leap, though he had seen it but once,
when it conveyed the news of Sir William Dornton's sudden illness. It
was from Miss Eversleigh, but the postmark was Callao! He tore open the
envelope, and for the next few moments forgot everything--his business
devotion, his lofty purpose, even his solemn vow.