The Lady Evelyn: A Story of To-day
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Title: The Lady Evelyn: A Story of To-day
Author: Max Pemberton
Illustrator: Arthur William Brown
Release date: July 23, 2011 [eBook #35336]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35336
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY EVELYN: A STORY OF TO-DAY ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: "She was aware instantly that the strangers were
speaking of her"]
THE LADY EVELYN
_A Story of To-day_
By
MAX PEMBERTON
_Author of "The Hundred Days," "Doctor Xavier," "A Gentleman's
Gentleman," "A Puritan's Wife," Etc._
New York
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
Publishers
_Copyright 1906 by Max Pemberton_
_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
BOOK I.--THE ESCAPADE.
CHAPTER
Prologue. The Face in the River
I. A Telegram to Bukharest
II. Etta Romney is Presented
III. Success and Afterwards
IV. Two Personalities
V. The Letter
VI. Strangers in the House
VII. The Nonagenarian
VIII. Lady Evelyn Returns
IX. The Third Earl of Melbourne
X. The Accident Upon the Road
XI. A Race for Life
XII. The Unspoken Accusation
XIII. The Interview
XIV. Inheritance
XV. The Price of Salvation
XVI. A Game of Golf
BOOK II.--THE ENGLISHMAN.
XVII. Gavin Ord Begins His Work
XVIII. A Duel over the Teacups
XIX. From the Belfry Tower
XX. Lovers
XXI. Zallony's Son
XXII. A Spy from Bukharest
BOOK III.--THE LIGHT.
XXIII. Bukharest
XXIV. The Price Of Wisdom
XXV. The House Above the Torrent
XXVI. Through a Woman's Heart
XXVII. Etta Romney's Return
XXVIII. The Impresario's Prayer
XXIX. The Prisoners at Setchevo
XXX. There is no News of Gavin Ord
XXXI. The House at Hampstead
XXXII. A Shot in the Hills
XXXIII. Djala
XXXIV. The Shadow of the River
Epilogue. The Doctor Drinks a Toast
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"She was aware instantly that the strangers were
speaking of her" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _Frontispiece_
"Oh, please let me go; your hands hurt me"
"As you came in folly, so shall you go----"
"Evelyn, beloved, I am here as you wish"
[Illustration: (Facsimile Page of Manuscript from THE LADY EVELYN)]
THE LADY EVELYN
PROLOGUE
THE FACE IN THE RIVER
The porter did not know; the station-master was not sure; but both were
agreed that it was a "good step to the 'all"--by which they signified
the Derbyshire mansion of the third Earl of Melbourne.
"Might be you'd get a cab, might be you wouldn't," said the porter
somewhat loftily--for here was a passenger who had spoken of walking
over: "that'll depend on Jacob Price and the beer he's drunk this
night. Some nights he can drive a man and some nights he can't. I'm
not here to speak for him more than any other."
The station-master, who had been giving the whole weight of his
intelligence to a brown paper parcel with no address upon it, here
chimed in to ask a question in that patronizing manner peculiar to
station-masters.
"Did his lordship expect you, sir?" he asked with some emphasis; as
though, had it been the case, he certainly should have been informed of
it. The reply found him all civility.
"I should have been here by the train arriving at half-past six," said
Gavin Ord, the passenger in question--"it is my fault, certainly. No
doubt, they sent to meet me----"
"The brown shay and a pair of 'osses stood in the yard more'n an hour,"
exclaimed the porter with just reproach. "I'll tell Mr. Jacob. He
knows his betters when he sees him, drunk or sober----"
"Thank you," said Gavin quietly, "but I will not put his knowledge to
the proof. After all, it's only five miles, you say----"
"And a public-house at Moretown if the dust sticks in your throat.
You'll do better walking than up alongside old Jacob at this time of
night, sir----"
"Had we known that his lordship expected a guest, we'd have answered
for a carriage," added the station-master, still apologetically.
The tall, fair-haired Englishman perplexed him. He hardly knew whether
he addressed a Duke or a commoner. The voice and manner suggested the
former; the intention to walk spoke of a vulgar habit rather befitting
his lordship's curate than the honored guest of Melbourne Hall. Gavin
Ord, upon his part, perhaps, delighted in perplexing people. He quite
understood the kind of curiosity he had aroused; and, refusing to
gratify it, he snatched up a light dressing bag; and leaving directions
for his heavier luggage to be forwarded in the morning, he set off
briskly upon the high road to Moretown, beyond which, as all the world
knows, lies the Manor of Melbourne.
"Going to make a long stay, sir?" had been the amiable station-master's
last shot.
"Oh, I may settle down there for a long time," said Ord in reply; and
this news was all over the village in an hour.
Strangers upon the road to Melbourne Hall were not so many that one
should escape remark.
"If he's for the Lady Evelyn," the blithe porter confessed over his
cups at a later hour, "she might go farther and get a worse-looking
man. Gave me a shillin', he did, and carried his bag hisself. That's
what I call a gentleman, now."
Unconscious of this tribute to his qualities, Gavin Ord was then more
than three miles upon his road to Melbourne Hall. A hot day of August
had given place to a delicious night, fresh and cool and redolent of
sweet perfumes. The moon stood high above the horizon, shining with
glorious mellow light upon the gathered sheaves and the grattan where
the wheat was garnered. So plain were the hill-tops to be seen that
the very flocks could almost be numbered upon them; while the bare
walls of limestone, the tors of spar, and the higher mounts were veined
as by rifts of jewels, giving back in glittering flashes the moonbeams
they had husbanded. The roads themselves were eloquent by night. When
a farmer's cart went rumbling by, Gavin could hear the echo of the
horse's hoofs and the rolling sound of wheels for quite a long time.
He was a man of redoubtable physique, trained by laborious days at home
and abroad to the finer qualities of his endurance; and nothing was
more to his liking than this lonely pilgrimage to a splendid house
wherein he believed that an advantageous welcome awaited him. A
stranger to Lord Melbourne, he never allowed himself to forget that his
own talents and achievements had made this visit possible and opened to
him the doors of a house which few even of the aristocracy now entered.
For Gavin Ord was callen in London the first among the younger school
of architects--an artist of prodigious originality and daring, and one
with as many sides to his talent as a diamond has facets. Already had
Burlington House heaped her honors upon him. The great Church at
Kensington would, he believed, stand as his memorial to all time. But
for a prodigality and a refusal to consider a mere matter of money, his
plans for a new cathedral in the North would certainly have been
accepted by the committee. As it was, critics said, "There is the man
of to-morrow." He liked to hear them say it, for he had a great
conceit in his art if none for himself. Something of the spirit of the
old-time builders moved within him. His imagination dwelt in lofty
temples, roamed in vast aisles--looked down upon men from a masterpiece
of spires. He was but a servant, if only the stone which dominated
men's hearts.
And now this famous old recluse, this eccentric unknown Earl of
Melbourne, had summoned him to save the stately Melbourne Hall from its
only enemy--time. He could not have found a more congenial task upon
all the continents.
There can be no journey more pleasant than that which carries us a
stage upon the road to our ambitions. Every event of the wayside is
then an adventure to us; every inn at which we rest seems to offer us
ambrosia. Here was Gavin Ord, at ten o'clock of the night, as good a
walker upon the road to Melbourne Hall as any trained athlete out with
the lark for a morning breather. Five or ten miles to go, it mattered
nothing to him. He had forgotten already the five hours in a stuffy
train; his mind was set upon the beauties of the moonlit landscape, the
fine wooded slopes of the hills, the twinkling lights in the hollows,
the dark towers of the scattered churches--more than all, upon the
distant goal and the reception which would await him there.
How earnestly had the old Earl implored him to go to the Manor!
"Here is the finest Tudor house in England," he had written; "you can
save it. Make it your home and learn to love it as I do. They tell me
that in your leisure you ride and shoot. I will introduce you to the
finest fencer in Derbyshire, and you shall tell me what you think of
the pheasants. Don't expect to find a house-party. I see few people.
I desire to see fewer. My daughter will play tennis with you, and, if
you are a golfer, there are lean long women on the hills who talk of
nothing else but hazards and whins. These preach sermons in stones.
Come and hear them, and my motor shall show you Derbyshire. But, above
all, become the servant of the Manor, as every true artist must be."
The letter of a man, Gavin said to himself when he read it. He liked
it best because there was no gilt-edge of money upon it. The Earl's
prodigious wealth had been the one blot hitherto upon the fair panorama
of his desires. "There will be a host of flunkies in red breeches," he
had thought, "and every one of them will look the question, 'How much
is he good for?'" He knew that the present Master of Melbourne Hall
had come to the estate and the title almost by accident late in life,
and after an adventurous career which men spoke of openly in clubs, but
rarely in private life. A wild man who had been everything from a
discredited attache at Bukharest to an equally unsuccessful miner in
Australia--this was the third Earl of Melbourne.
* * * * *
And what of his daughter, the Lady Evelyn?
There were but wild fables spoken about this unknown girl and the
secluded life her father compelled her to live at the Manor House.
Some said she was the daughter of a Roumanian gypsy whom the Earl had
married after his disgrace at Bukharest. Others declared that her dead
mother had been an actress who had enjoyed a brief spell of notoriety
in Vienna and thence had been driven out by the infatuation of an
archduke. None knew the truth, but there were many to suggest what the
truth might be. Openly and scandalously, as the world will, idle
tongues hinted that the Earl must have some good reason for his
eccentric conduct. There were even stories that the Lady Evelyn was
unmistakably a gypsy girl herself. "As brown as a walnut chiffonier,"
said little Backbiter at the Club. The fellow had never been within
fifty miles of Melbourne Hall; and if he had met the Earl, he would
have gone down on his marrow bones to him.
Gavin Ord recalled some of these stories as he followed the tortuous
road and left the solitary village still farther behind him. They did
not interest him. He had gone into Derbyshire to see not a woman but a
house. Delight that he should be chosen for guardian of such a
national treasure as Melbourne Hall went with him upon his way. He
must be now, he thought, but a mile from the Manor gates. The road had
become narrow and closely bordered by leafy elms. No longer could he
see the moonlit heights or the twinkling lights in the valleys. There
were no kindly beams to guide his steps. In weird darkness he followed
the dusty track and pressed on toward the Manor. The rustling of
leaves sounded almost like a human voice in his ears. He liked to
think that Nature was still awake and speaking to him.
So it is evident that he possessed that quasi-divine attribute,
imagination. His mood of thought responded instantly to any change,
atmospheric, or of the light of the heavens. The sunshine could ever
build temples of success for him; the twilight rarely failed to bring
the question, what is the good of it all, of ambition and the stress
and strife of arenas. In the night he would awake to remember that all
men must die. In the daytime he would laugh at death and all the vain
problems of the hereafter. That Melbourne Hall, approached in this
gloom of a summer's night, should provoke no evil thoughts but only
those of good omen, seemed a new witness to the pleasure with which he
contemplated his stay there. He would accomplish something amid those
ancient stones by which men should remember him. The aspiration
quickened his step. A turn of the road revealed the lodge-gates, with
a lighted window and a pleasant cottage. He entered Lord Melbourne's
park and discerned the Hall, dim and stately and starred with lights,
across the little river which stood for a moat before its walls.
This, then, was his goal, this superb fabric which the genius of the
mediaeval age had bequeathed to England and to posterity. No words
could rightly have described the emotions which stirred his imagination
as he stood to contemplate the jagged line of building and battlement,
chapel, tower and stable, which his hand should snatch from the greedy
hand of time. The very park, with its soft grasses, and deer in shadow
pictures beneath the trees, could conjure up a vision of knights and
pages and stately dames and all the witching pageantry of
half-forgotten centuries. The great house itself might have been the
house of a thousand mysteries, locked in banded coffers, enshrined in
ghostly walls--crying aloud none the less to him who would listen to
the tongue of their romance. Gavin Ord stood in an ecstasy of homage
to worship at the gates of such a temple as this. And, standing so, he
heard a woman's cry.
He had walked across the park with slow steps and come to the narrow
bridge of five Roman arches which spanned the shallow river--shallow,
save for one deep pool over which many a fisherman must have thrown a
skilful fly. Standing by the balustrade to contemplate the picture,
his delighted eyes traced every tower and pinnacle of Melbourne Hall
with an artist's ecstasy--thence looked out over the moonlit park to
glades of surpassing beauty and scenes which the centuries had
hallowed. How inimitable it all was--the mighty yews about which
Elizabeth's courtiers had grouped; the groves which had listened to
many a child of Pampinea--the fearsome walls, what tragedies, what
comedies, had been played within them! Even a dullard might
contemplate the scene with awe. Gavin Ord was no dullard, and the
spell it cast upon him was such as he had never known in all his life.
So entirely did it claim his mind and will that when he heard a woman's
low cry beneath the very bridge he stood upon, he scarcely turned his
head or gave the matter a thought.
What had happened; whence came the sound? Being repeated, he could no
longer ignore it. In truth, it awed him not a little; for it was not
the voice of a woman in danger but of one asking his pity, his help, as
it seemed, in a low whispering voice which he now heard more clearly
than if a strong man had shouted at him. Taking one quick glance at
the river, Gavin declared that the cry could not have come from there.
Splashing and leaping over mossy boulders, a child might have waded
across the stream, he thought. Then whence did the cry come? Turning
about, to the right, to the left, he discovered himself to be still
alone. It was the voice of imagination he began to say; and was about
to quit the place when he heard it for the third time, and so
unmistakably, that he no longer doubted it to be human.
Some one called to him from the river below the bridge.
He climbed upon the old stone parapet and looked down straight to the
black silent pool about the arches. So dark was it in the shadows that
the keenest eyes might not have perceived a human thing there. Gavin
Ord, however, saw the thing as clearly as in daylight--a woman's fair
head with great sodden leaves about it and streaming black hair caught
up upon the ripples. A shudder of awe indescribable came upon him as
he looked. For the woman was dead, he said--had been long dead, and
yet her voice spoke to him.
He knew that she was dead, for the water lapped upon her half-closed
eyes and the fair head turned slowly as the eddies swirled slowly about
it. Every right instinct told him that this was a vision and not a
truth of the night. He listened for the voice again; but it was silent
now. As it ceased to speak to him, the spell vanished. He ran round
quickly to the river bank and clambered over the slippery stones to the
pool's edge.
It was black as night and void as the ether.
* * * * *
Gavin Ord was not a nervous man and very far from a superstitious one.
When he had quite assured himself that he had been dreaming, his first
act was to return to the path and laugh aloud at the whole venture.
"Melbourne Hall is generous to me," he said; "here are the very ghosts
coming out to welcome me."
None the less he tried to remember what he had eaten in the train for
dinner and whether his recent nights had been late or early.
"I shall get to bed at ten here," he said to himself, "and put in a
good walk before breakfast. I have been doing a good deal and I never
was great at night work. Of course, if I told anyone, I should be
written down a liar. It's always the case when you hear or see
anything the other man has not seen or heard."
He caught up his bag and marched on resolutely up the wide gravelled
drive by which you reach the great gate of the Manor. A loud bell
answering to his touch awakened splendid echoes in the courtyard of the
house and set the dogs barking within. When a footman opened to him,
he discovered that Melbourne Hall was a building about a quadrangle and
that its main door admitted him no farther than to the great square
court of which the chapel and the banqueting hall were the chief
ornaments. Above the latter, lights shone brightly in many windows.
But the courtyard itself lay in darkness.
"Say that Mr. Ord is here," Gavin instructed the footman, and added: "I
am very late, I fear; I was stupid enough to miss the afternoon train."
The footman, shutting the door with a solemn formality, called another
to his aid that the dressing case might be safely conveyed to the
guest's bedroom.
"'Is lordship was sayin' you wouldn't come, sir. Longish walk by
Moretown too. We'd have sent the motor but the 'shuffer' don't like
late hours. 'Is lordship is now in the boodore along of the Lady
Evelyn. This is Mr. Griggs, the butler, sir----"
Gavin was not particularly interested in the fact; but the butler in
question had no intention of being ignored. A fat and pompous man of
flat and florid visage, he stood, in majestic pose, at the head of the
short flight of stone stairs leading to the boudoir, and his attitude
no archbishop could have bettered.
"Mr. Gavin Ord, is it not?" he asked.
Gavin said that it was so.
"We kept dinner back ten minutes, sir--I trust there has not been an
accident."
"No accident at all--go and tell the Earl that I am here."
Mr. Griggs looked as though he had been shot.
"James will do that," he retorted loftily--waving his hand as a
conductor waves a baton.
The obsequious footman strolled off to do the majestic man's bidding
and Gavin meanwhile found himself in the banqueting hall, an old Tudor
apartment he had admired in many pictures but now entered for the first
time. The banners of three centuries hung in tatters from its oaken
ceiling; the musicians' gallery stood as it was when fiddle and harp
made music there for the seventh Henry, but Gavin resented the fashion
of electric lamps none the less and instantly resolved to change
them--in which intention the fat butler interrupted him with the news
that the Earl awaited Mr. Ord in the long gallery.
"Her ladyship is there too, sir. Perhaps you will be taking supper
afterwards."
"Nothing to-night," replied Ord quickly; "I shall dream enough in the
old house without that."
"And I dare say you will, sir. Many's the night I've seen a something,
though I couldn't rightly say what it were."
Gavin judged that it might have been a flask of spirits which thus
troubled the good man's dreams; but he made no comment as they mounted
a broad staircase, and passing through a dainty little room in one of
the turrets of the house, entered the superb long gallery which is the
very masterpiece of Melbourne Hall. The vast length of this, its
glorious ceiling, the carvings in geometric tracery, the embrasured
windows, the bays, the ingles--how familiar they seemed to Gavin, and
yet how far from the truth of them had the drawings been! Just as a
man may enter joyously the house of his dream as a very home of love
and welcome, so did Gavin pass into the gallery and feast his eyes upon
its treasures. Here, he said, a life's work might be done, indeed;
here the ripest genius might fall and be gathered by the lap of time.
There were brass candelabra at intervals upon the walls of the gallery
and little electric lamps aglow in the sham candles above them. Far
down the immense apartment, Gavin perceived the stalwart figure of a
bronze-faced man and by his side a young girl, whose pose was so
natural, whose manner was so clearly that of an aristocratic, that he
did not hesitate to name her instantly for Lord Melbourne's daughter.
Unable at the distance to see much of her face, it took shape for him
as he drew nearer; and so he found himself against his will staring at
her intently as one who would satisfy himself as to where and when he
had seen her before. This interest he could not immediately explain;
nor did her father's cordial if somewhat loud-toned greeting recall him
from his vain pursuit of identity. He felt instinctively that the Lady
Evelyn was no stranger to him, and yet for the life of him he could
give no good account of any previous meeting.
"Welcome to Melbourne Hall, Mr. Ord--I had begun to say that you had
deserted us."
Gavin stammered some vain tale of lost train and business calls; but he
did not tear his eyes away from the Lady Evelyn's face.
"Great God," he said to himself at last, "that was the face I saw in
the river!"
BOOK I
THE ESCAPADE
CHAPTER I
A TELEGRAM TO BUKHAREST
Upon a night of May, some twelve months before Gavin Ord had gone down
into Derbyshire at the Earl of Melbourne's invitation, Count Odin, a
Roumanian celebrity of evil reputation in his own country and none in
others, quitted the Savoy Hotel by the Strand entrance and had just
called a hansom when a well-dressed girl, whom he was surprised to see
afoot, stumbled by accident against him, and nervously, yet very
prettily, offered him her apologies.
Gifted with a prodigious amount of quite unmeaning gallantry, the Count
bowed low and said in passable English that no harm had been done and
that it should be his part to apologize.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "it is all the fault of your narrow pavements.
Here is a cab. Since we are no longer strangers permit me to drive you
to your destination. The night is too hot for you to walk."
The girl drew back instantly as though covered with confusion, and
without vouchsafing a single word of reply to the civil invitation,
went on westward as fast as the busy street would permit her to walk.
Her only desire appeared to be to escape recognition by those who
passed her by. She might have been any age between twenty and
twenty-five years; her hair was coal black, and her eyes were of the
deepest blue. So much the Count had not failed to observe; but his
curiosity was not by any means at an end. Dismissing the cab with a
haste so pronounced that a fortune might have hung upon his quest, he
set off down the Strand after the unknown; and was soon so near to her
that his outstretched hand could have touched her as she walked.
Who was she? Whither was she going; whence she had come. The meeting
had been so unlooked for, it appeared to be such a very story of
marvels that the man would not, dare not even now, believe in his good
fortune. For three years, often by day and night, he had been dreaming
of an hour when he would find the daughter of the man who had consigned
a father to a living grave and compelled the son to a vagrant life.
And here, in a London street, he met her face to face--not by his own
desire or cleverness, but by one of those accidents which are the true
tragedies of life. Never for a single moment did he doubt that she was
the woman he sought. He had come to England, guarding as a precious
possession a miniature painting which had been found among his father's
effects. The face which he had so often looked upon in that little
picture was most certainly the face he had seen for one brief instant
in the Strand this night. Eyes, expression, the shape of the
characteristic mouth, the tiny ears, the coal-black hair, how familiar
they seemed to him. "She is Forrester's daughter," he said, and walked
the faster for the thought.
It was an easy task, for the girl had no idea that anyone followed her.
Crossing the street by St. Martin's Church, she passed the National
Gallery at the same swift walk; and neither looking to the right nor to
the left, she made straight for Pall Mall and the Carlton Hotel there.
At the first hazard, Count Odin believed that this was her destination,
a fact which puzzled him not a little; but she passed the hotel without
a glance at its doors and going on up the Haymarket, turned suddenly
into one of the little courts there and was instantly lost to his view.
In his turn, he recognized the place at a glance, and as though both
relieved and enlightened stood a moment upon the pavement to debate the
situation.
"So," he said to himself, "my lady is an actress--or would it be a
chorus girl? Well, we shall soon find that out."
He strolled up the narrow alley, and coming to a broad double door of
wood, saw written above it in big red letters, "STAGE DOOR," and, on a
bell below, the words "Carlton Theatre." The comparative quiet of the
scene, the few people about, and the darkness of the passage beyond the
door told him that a rehearsal was in progress and not an actual
performance. When he read the bill of the play, affixed to a dirty
board, he learned that on the following Wednesday evening, at
eight-thirty precisely, Mr. Charles Izard would present Etta Romney in
the new play "Haddon Hall," by Constant Hayter. Not much of a
play-goer, though a recognized frequenter of those houses devoted to
musical comedy, the Count asked himself if he had ever heard the name
of Etta Romney before. He could not remember to have done so--but,
while he stood there, the stage door-keeper came out to smoke a pipe in
the alley, and to him the Count addressed himself with that disregard
of diplomatic approach which is a habit of the dubious adventurer.
"The young lady who just went in--I think she is a friend of mine."
"Ah," said the stage door-keeper, without taking his pipe from his lips.
"If you could tell me her name, I would send in my card."
"No doubt you would," said the stage door-keeper.
Nonplussed, the Count stroked his mustache a little viciously and began
to fumble in his trousers' pocket.
"No good," said the stage door-keeper, anticipating the offer, and then
bridling up as he recognized the kind of man he had to do with, he
exclaimed peremptorily:
"Come, it's time you went home to dinner, ain't it; you look hungry
enough."
"I was going to give you five shillings," said the Count.
"You keep 'em for your poor old mother in the workhouse," said the
stage door-keeper, and he went within and slammed the doors--a hint
that even Count Odin could not mistake.
Far from being disturbed at this honest rebuff, the Count, with an
adventurer's ready resource, strolled round to the front of the theatre
and consulted the play-bills there on the off-chance that one of them
would enlighten him. The box-office was closed at this hour, but
framed photographs of the company engaged for the new play, "Haddon
Hall," decorated the pillars of the vestibule; while a large picture,
full-length and conspicuously displayed, "presented" the heroine, Miss
Etta Romney, to such of the curious as should care to take their stand
before it. Hardly had the Count glanced at the photograph when he
recognized the original of it to be the young girl whom he had just
left at the stage-door.
"Forrester's daughter, beyond a doubt," said he.
He waited for no more but called a cab and drove to the telegraph
office in Waterloo Place. Thence he sent a long telegram to Bukharest.
It was vague in its terms and would have been understood by none but
the person who read it.
"Tracked down," it said; "am remaining here."
CHAPTER II
ETTA ROMNEY IS PRESENTED
The new play, "Haddon Hall," had been announced for half-past eight
precisely on the evening of Wednesday, the twentieth day of May. It
still wanted a few minutes to the hour of eight when that famous
American impressario, Mr. Charles Izard, permitted a waiter in the
Carlton Hotel to serve him with a coffee and liqueur; while he confided
to his invaluable confederate and stage-manager, Mr. Walter Lacombe,
the assuring intelligence that he had no doubt either about the play or
the company.
"They're ho-mo-gen-e-us," he said, lighting a cigar with comfortable
deliberation; "the first act's bully and any play with that Third Act I
produce. We must get something written for her to follow in. My side
will take "Haddon Hall" and it will take Etta Romney. If it doesn't, I
close up."
Mr. Lacombe, the stage-manager, had his own doubts, but he was far too
diplomatic to express them.
"When you close up, I sell bananas," said he; "that will be in the Ides
of March."
Mr. Charles Izard, who had not enjoyed the distinction of three years'
idleness at Cambridge (and so had made a vast fortune), produced those
strange concatenations of sounds which served him for laughter before
uttering a pious wish.
"It's the 'ides of the critics' I'd like to touch," he exclaimed with
real feeling; "you know what they're going to say about this as well as
I do----"
"Oh, of course," said Lacombe frankly, "they'll baste it, sure enough.
No historical play is likely to please Watley. He'll say that hot
blankets are the proper treatment."
"I'd like to wrap him up in 'em and smother him," interjected Mr.
Charles Izard, still piously.
"That's so--he's capable _de tout_. But I fancy he will take her none
the less."
"Etta Romney, why yes! I'd like to see the man who wouldn't take her.
It's a woman that makes a play nowadays. If you'd more of 'em this
side, you wouldn't have so many failures. In America we star the woman
first and the play afterwards. Here you star the man and when all the
schoolgirls have seen him, your theatre's empty."
"Exactly--this play is the exception. You've certainly cut the writing
on the wall. There's no room for whiskers on your ideas."
Mr. Izard drained his coffee cup and admitted loftily that there was
not.
"I'd have been a fool not to. Here's a girl comes to me out of the
_ewigkeit_. No name, no story, nothing. Won't tell me who she is or
where she has played before. Just says, 'I've read about Constant
Hayter's play--I know Derbyshire; I have loved the tradition of that
story all my life. Money is nothing to me. Let me play the part Miss
Fay Warner has given up. Let me play it at rehearsal, and then say
whether you wish me to go on.' You couldn't better it in a fairy book.
I see her act a scene, hear her speak twenty lines, and say, 'That's
bully.' She doesn't ask a salary--why, sir, the girl's a genius born
and bred--and what's more she's a lady from the top of her hat to the
soles of her boots. I couldn't wish my own daughter to behave better."
"Something odd about her all the same," Lacombe reflected; "dreadfully
afraid of being known. She goes in and out of the theatre like a
ghost."
Mr. Charles Izard laughed again.
"Well, don't she play the part of one?" he asked affably. "How would
you have her come in and out? Whistling like the overhead? The part's
herself--the Lady of Haddon. She was born to it. If that girl hasn't
walked as a ghost sometime or other, put me down for twenty pounds to
an hospital. And no salary, sir, not a single penny."
"Immense," said Lacombe, but immediately paused as a well-known critic
passed through the hall and went out to the theatre almost adjoining
the hotel.
"There's Clayaton," he went on quickly, "it's not often he sits out a
sword-and-cape drama."
"Then he'll sit out one to-night and be ashamed of himself in the
morning. Let's get, my boy, it's just on the half-hour. We must be
there."
What precisely would have happened had so great a man not been there,
the merely humble individual might hardly dare to say. As events went,
Mr. Charles Izard put on a light great-coat with a great deal of
splendid ceremony, and giving the many-colored lackey a shilling,
strolled pompously into the street with his cigar still alight.
Passing His Majesty's, before whose doors the boards "House Full" were
conspicuously displayed, the pair walked leisurely on to the front
entrance of the Carlton Theatre, and were there gratified by one of
those spectacles which London alone can display upon the first night of
a new production.
Cabs, carriages, electric broughams, even the motor-cars, arrived in
quick succession before the brightly lighted vestibule of one of the
prettiest theatres in London. From these emerged women in blazing
evening dress, men who had dined, and men capricious and irritable
because they had not dined--young girls to whom all plays were a dream
of delight, mere boys who already had voted the whole thing "rot." As
for the critics, they were chiefly patrons of hansoms; though a few
arrived on foot, two and two, each trying to learn what the other would
say about a performance which many had witnessed at a dress rehearsal.
Short men and tall men, bearded men and bald men, they cared nothing
for the success of the play, but everything for the glory of the
notices they must write. An historical drama could not fail to give
them a fine opening. They lolled back easily in their stalls as men
whose literary knives were for the moment sheathed, but would be busy
anon.
The theatre was packed to the very ceiling when the curtain rose, and
few of the amiable first-nighters were missing from the audience.
Famous lawyers, doctors of letters, and doctors of medicine, editors of
illustrated papers and editors of papers that were not illustrated,
literary ladies and ladies who were not literary, novelists, essayists,
poets, that curious quasi-Bohemian crowd which constitutes a London
first-night house, stood for most of the arts and many of the sciences
of our day; and yet in the main brought a child's heart to the play as
Bohemian crowds will. The cynics of eighteen, mostly representing
halfpenny evening papers, were among the few who denounced the drama
before they had seen it. "'Haddon Hall' on the stage again--why," said
they, "there have been twenty Di Vernons in our time and why should
this Di Vernon find mercy?" She was already in the coach of failure so
far as they were concerned. The curtain rose upon their mutterings and
did not still them.
It was a pretty scene, the park of famous Haddon Hall and the meeting
between pretty Dorothy Vernon and her young lover beneath the
sheltering yews. The unknown _debutante_, Etta Romney, received a
lukewarm welcome from the audience; but all admitted the grace of her
attitudes, the charm of her voice, and the earnestness she brought to
her assistance. A little amateurish in the earlier moments of the play
she warmed to her work anon; and a love scene which would have been
ridiculous had it been ill-played, she lifted by natural talent to a
pinnacle at least of toleration. So the curtain fell to some applause;
and the great impressario, Mr. Charles Izard, again ventured the
opinion that she was "bully," though his voice had not that confident
ring it possessed at the dinner-table. Could the girl make a failure
of it, after all? It was just possible. And undoubtedly the play was
not a masterpiece.
So the Second Act passed and found him not a little anxious, and he sat
far back in his box when the curtain rose upon the Third and
concentrated his whole attention upon the performance. The scene was
that of the Long Gallery at Haddon; the episode, a midnight meeting
between Dorothy and her lover. Dressed in spotless white with the
softest black hair tumbling about her almost to her knees, young and
supple limbs moving elegantly, a face that Reynolds might have loved to
paint, a voice that was music to hear--nevertheless all these physical
attributes were speedily forgotten in the sincerity of Etta Romney's
acting and the human feeling which animated it. Here was one who loved
every stone of this ancient house which the quivering canvas attempted
to portray; who had wandered abroad often in its stately park, who
spoke the tongue of three centuries ago more naturally than her own,
who had been so moved by this story of Di Vernon's life that she gave
her very soul to its re-telling. From amazement the audiences passed
quickly to a kind of entrancement which only genius can command. It
did not applaud; its silence was astounding--not a whisper, scarce the
rustle of a dress could be heard. The spell growing, it followed the
white figure from scene to scene; was unconscious, perhaps, that any
other than she trod the stage; devoured her with amazed eyes; heard,
for the first time, each a tale of mediaeval England as neither
historian nor romancer had ever told. When the curtain fell, the
people still sat in silence a little while; but the applause came at
length, upon a tempest of wild excitement rarely known in a modern
theatre.
Who was she? Whence had she come?
A hundred ready tongues asked the question which none appeared able to
answer.
There was but one man in the house who made sure of Etta Romney's
identity, and he was a Roumanian.
Count Odin had witnessed the girl's _debut_ from a box on the second
tier.
"She is a great actress," he said to his companion, Felix Horowitz, a
young attache from the Hungarian Embassy; "I am going to make love to
her."
The young man looked up quickly.
"I promise you failure," he said--"a woman who can speak of England
like that will marry none but an Englishman."
CHAPTER III
SUCCESS AND AFTERWARDS
Etta Romney sat in her little dressing-room when the play was over, so
very tired after all she had done that even the congratulations of Mr.
Charles Izard failed to give her pleasure.
Unlike the successful actress of our time, she had not yet attracted
the attention of the "flower" brigade, as little Dulcie Holmes, one of
her friends in the theatre, would call them; and despite her success
and the astonishment it had provoked, no baskets of roses decorated her
dressing-table, nor were expensive bouquets thrown "negligently" to the
various corners of the room. Two red roses in a cheap vase; a bunch of
narcissi, which had obviously come from the flower-girls of the
Criterion, witnessed her triumph in lonely majesty. Even the
redoubtable Mr. Izard, not anticipating the splendor of the evening,
had forgotten to "command" a basket for his star. He, good man, had
but one word for his surprising fortune. "It's bully," he said--and
repeated the conviction _usque ad nauseam_.
Etta sat alone, but it was not for many minutes after the curtain fell.
Little Dulcie Holmes, the artist's daughter, who had a "walking part"
at twenty-four shillings a week, came leaping into the room presently
and catching her friend in both arms kissed her rapturously.
"Oh, Etta," she cried ardently, "oh, my dear--they won't go away even
now. Can't you hear them calling for you?"
"They are too kind to me," was the quiet response, "and all because I
love Derbyshire. Isn't it absurd?--but, of course, I'm very pleased,
Dulcie."
"Think of it, dear Etta. Your very first night and Mr. Izard in such a
state that he'd give you a hundred a week if you asked him. Of course,
you won't play for nothing now, Etta."
"I've never thought of it," said Etta still without apparent emotion
... and then with a very sweet smile, she asked, "What would you say if
I told you that I was about to give up the theatre altogether, Dulcie?"
Dulcie opened her eyes so wide (and they were pretty blue eyes too)
that the rest of her piquant face was quite dwarfed by them.
"Give up the theatre. You're joking. Here Lucy--here's Etta talking
of giving up the theatre. Now, what do you say to that?"
Lucy Grey, a pretty brunette, whose share in the triumph was the saucy
delivery of the momentous line, "Oh, Captain, how could you?" (she
playing a maid's part for thirty shillings a week), would not believe
that Dulcie could possibly be serious.
"Whatever will the papers say to-morrow?" she exclaimed. "Did you ever
think she could do it? I didn't, and I'm not going to say that I did.
Why, here's Mr. Izard quite beside himself."
"And he'll be beside Etta just now wanting her to sign a three years'
engagement as principal. Now, you take my advice and don't you do it,
dear--not unless he'll pay you a hundred a week. That's where girls
ruin their prospects, taking on things just when they're excited. If
it were me, wouldn't I ask him something! Perhaps he'll play hot and
cold--they sometimes do; but your fortune's made, Etta, and I can't
think why you take it so quietly. How I should dance and sing if I
were you----"
Etta had begun to gather up the heavy tresses of her long black hair by
this time; but she did so slowly and deliberately as one whom success
had neither surprised nor agitated. Could the two young girls about
her have read her thoughts they would have been astonished indeed. Not
idly had she asked Dulcie Holmes what people would say if she gave up
the theatre entirely. For give it up she must. In one short month her
father would return from the Continent. She must be at home by that
time, and none must ever know that she had left her home.
"We'll talk it all over in the morning," she said, still smiling--"I
want both of you to come and see me to-morrow. We shall have read the
papers by that time. Whatever will they say about me?"
"It doesn't matter what they say. Everyone in London will be talking
about you before the week's out. All the same, the papers are going to
be nice. Lucy's cousin was in the vestibule between the acts and he
heard the critics talking. They called you 'immense,' dear. That
means bad luck for the play, but everything for you. You just wait
until the morning comes."
"I fear I'll have to," said Etta, with a sly look toward them; but just
then there came a tap on the door and who should it be but a messenger
with the intimation that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Izard expected Miss Etta
Romney to supper at the Carlton Hotel as soon as she could conveniently
join their party. To the extreme astonishment both of Dulcie Holmes
and Lucy Grey, Etta appeared to be distressed beyond words by this
customary invitation.
"Oh, I never can go; I dare not go--whatever shall I do?" she asked.
"Not go!" cried Dulcie, almost too amazed to speak; "why, of course you
must go. Charles would send soldiers to fetch you if you refused. The
star always sups with him on a first night. I never heard of such a
thing. She talks of not going, Lucy!"
"That's the excitement," said Lucy wisely. "I should be just the same
in her place. She wants a glass of wine. She'll break out crying just
now if she doesn't get one."
Their solicitude for Etta was very pretty and really honest. They were
too fond of her to be jealous. Women who love loyally welcome their
friends successes; men rarely do. Dulcie and Lucy might say "what a
lucky girl she is;" but they would not have wished her to be less so.
As for Etta herself, the invitation perplexed her to distraction. How
if she met some one who knew her at the Carlton. It was very unlikely
she thought. Fifteen years passed in a French convent with few English
pupils do not admit of many embarrassing acquaintances. The subsequent
years, lived chiefly in the park of a mediaeval country house rarely
open to strangers, were not likely to be more dangerous. Etta knew
that discovery might be disastrous to her beyond the ordinary meaning
of the term; but her cleverness told her that the risk of it was very
small. It was then after eleven o'clock. She remembered that they
turned the people out of the Carlton Hotel at half-past twelve.
"Tell Mr. Izard that I will come," she said to the messenger, and then
to the girls, "You won't forget to-morrow. Run round early and we'll
read the newspapers together. And, dear girls, we'll spend Sunday at
Henley, as I promised you."
They kissed her affectionately, promising not to forget. There was not
so much pleasure in their lives that they should pass it by when a good
fairy approached them. Sharing rooms together, they had as yet
discovered upon some fifty-odd shillings a week little of the glamour
and none of the rewards of theatrical life. For them the theatre was
the house of darkening hope, wherein success passed by them every hour
crying, "Look at me--how beautiful I am; but not for you." They had
believed that the pilgrim's way would be strewn with gold--they
discovered it to be paved with promises.
"Of course, we shall come," said Lucy in her matter of fact way;
"whatever should we be thinking of if we didn't."
But Dulcie said:
"I'm going to wear my pink blouse on Sunday and the hat you gave
me--didn't I tell you that Harry Lauder would be at Henley? Well,
then, he will ... and, Etta, could you, would you, mind if I----"
Etta laughingly told her that she could not, would not positively mind
at all; and then remembering how late it was, she hurried from the
theatre and found herself, just as the clocks were striking the
quarter-past eleven, in the hall of the Carlton, standing before Mr.
Charles Izard and listening but scarcely hearing the shrewd compliments
which that astute gentleman deigned to shower upon them.
"You've struck it thick, my dear," he was saying. "Get twelve months'
experience in my company and you'll make a great actress. I say what I
mean. All you want is just what my theatre will teach you--the little
tricks of our trade which go right there, though the public doesn't
know much of them. Come and have supper now, and we'll talk business
in the morning. I shouldn't wonder if the critics spread themselves
over this. Don't pay too much attention to them--they dare not quarrel
with me."
Mrs. Charles Izard, a frank florid woman, was much less discreet and
much more honest.
"Perfectly adorable, my child," she said; "it was joy all the time to
me. You couldn't have played it better if you'd have been born in a
Duke's house. Wherever you got your manners from, I don't know. Now,
really, Charles, don't say it wasn't; don't contradict me, Charles.
You know that Miss Romney is going to make a fortune for you; and
you're rich enough as it is. Why, child, the man's worth five million
dollars if he's worth a penny. And it isn't five years since I was
making my own clothes."
The supper room unfortunately put an end to these interesting
revelations. Etta followed the loquacious Mrs. Izard as closely as she
could, being sure that such a gorgeous apparition (for the lady was
dressed from head to foot in scarlet)! would divert attention from
herself; and, in truth, it did so. A few turned their heads to say,
"That's Izard and there's the only woman of his company who fixes her
own salary;" but the supper was already in full swing and the people
for the most part silent upon their own entertainment or that of their
guests. Of the six or seven women who remarked the stately girl in
Izard's company, the majority first said, "What a charming gown!" The
men rarely noticed her. They had taken their second glasses of
champagne by this time and were genially flirting with the women at
their own tables. If they said anything, it was just, "What a pretty
girl!"
And what were Etta's thoughts as she sat for the first time amid that
garish company, typical of one of London's sets, and in some sense of
society? Possibly she would have had some difficulty in expressing
them. The music excited her, the ceaseless chatter hurt ears long
accustomed to silence. In truth, she had tried to depict this scene in
her Derbyshire home many times since her father had shut his gates upon
the world. But the reality seemed so very different from her dreams;
so very artificial, so shallow, so far from splendid. And beneath her
disappointment lay the fear that some accident might disclose her
identity. How, she asked, if she stood up there and told them all, "My
name is not Etta but Evelyn. To-night I am an actress at the Carlton
Theatre, but you will know me by and by as an Earl's daughter." Would
they not have said that she was a mad woman? Such a confession would
have been nothing but the truth, none the less.
She had planned and carried out, most daringly, as wild an escapade as
ever had been recorded in the story of that romantic home of hers, to
which she must soon return as secretly as she had come. Until this
moment her success had been complete. Not a man or woman in all London
had turned upon her to say, "You are not Etta Romney but another, the
daughter of the one-time Robert Forrester, of whom your cousin's death
has made an earl." Living a secluded life in a quiet lodging in
Bedford Square, none remarked her presence; none had the curiosity to
ask who she was or whence she came. The very daring of her adventure
thrilled and delighted her. She would remember it to the end of her
life; and when she returned to Derbyshire the stimulus of it would go
with her, and permit her to say, "I, too, have known the hour of
success, the meaning of applause, the glamour of the world."
These thoughts followed her to the supper room at the Carlton and were
accountable for the indifference with which she listened to the praises
and the prophecies of that truly great man, Mr. Charles Izard. He,
wonderful being, confessed to himself that he could make nothing of the
girl and that she was altogether beyond his experience. Her stately
manners frightened him. When he called her, "my dear," as all women
are called in the theatre, the words would sometimes halt upon his lips
and he would hurriedly correct them and say, "Miss," instead. The
first guess that he had made at her identity would have it that she was
a country parson's daughter, or perhaps a relative of the agent or the
steward of a Derbyshire estate. Now, however, he found himself of
another opinion altogether, and there came to him the uneasy conviction
that some great mystery lay behind his good fortune and would stand
eventually between him and his hopes.
Now many of Mr. Charles Izard's friends visited his supper-table from
time to time, and of these one or two were languid young men in quest
of introductions. These stared at Etta, open-mouthed and rudely; but
her host made short work of them and they ambled away, seeking whom
they might devour elsewhere, but never with any ardor. Supper was
almost done, indeed before anyone of sufficient importance to engage
the great Charles Izard's attention made his appearance. At last,
however, he hailed a stranger with some enthusiasm, and this at a
moment when Etta was actually listening to a piteous narrative of Mrs.
Charles' domestic achievements.
"Why, Count, what good fortune tossed you out of the blanket? Come and
sit right here. You know my wife, of course?"
Mrs. Izard and Etta turned their heads together to see a somewhat pale
youth with dark chestnut hair and wonderfully plaintive eyes--a youth
whose dark skin and slightly eccentric dress proclaimed him
unmistakably to be a foreigner; but one who was quite at home in any
society in which he might find himself. The face was pleasing; the
manners those of a man who has travelled far and has yet to learn the
meaning of the word embarrassment. To Mr. Izard he extended a
well-shaped hand upon which a ruby ring shone a little vulgarly, but to
Etta he spoke with something of real cordiality in his tone.
"Why, Miss Romney," he exclaimed, his accent betraying a considerable
acquaintance with Western America, "why, Miss Romney, we are no
strangers surely?"
Etta colored visibly; but fearing a misconception of her momentary
confusion, she said to Mrs. Izard:
"The Count and I ran into each other in the Strand the other day. I
fear I was very clumsy."
"So little," said the Count, "that never shall I call a cab in London
again without remembering my good fortune."
He drew a chair to Etta's side and sat so near to her that even the
great man remarked the circumstance.
"That's how I'd like to see 'em sit down in my comedies," he remarked
with real feeling. "The young men I meet can't take a chair, let alone
fix themselves straight on it. You come along to me, Count, and I'll
pay you a hundred dollars a week to be master of the ceremonies. Our
stage manager used to do stunts on a bicycle. He thinks people should
do the same on chairs."
Count Odin looked at the speaker a little contemptuously with the look
of a man who never forgets his birthright or jests about it. To Etta
he said with an evident intention of explaining his position:
"Mr. Izard crossed over with me the last time I have come from America.
I remember that he had the difficulty with his chair on that occasion."
And then he asked her--"Of course you have been across, Miss Romney;
you know America, I will be sure?"
Etta answered him with simple candor, that she had travelled but little.
"I was educated in a convent. You may imagine what our travels were.
Once every year we had a picnic on the Seine at Les Andlays. That's
where I got my knowledge of the world," she said with a laugh.
"Then your ideas are of the French?" He put it to her with an object
she could not divine, though she answered as quickly.
"They are entirely English both in my preferences and my friendships,"
was her reply, nor could she have told anyone why she put this affront
upon him.
"She's going to make friends enough out yonder in the Fall," said
Izard, whose quick ear caught the tone of their conversation. "I shall
take this company over in September if we play to any money this side.
Miss Romney goes with me, and I promise her a good time any way.
America's the country for her talent. You've too many played-out
actors over here. Most of them think themselves beautiful, and that's
why their theatres close up."
He laughed a flattering tribute to his own cleverness, as much as to
say--"My theatres never close up." Count Odin on his part smiled a
little dryly as though he might yet have something to say to the
proposed arrangement.
"Are you looking forward to the journey, Miss Romney?" he asked Etta in
a low voice.
"I am not thinking at all about it," she said very truthfully.
"Then perhaps you are looking backward," he suggested, but in such a
low tone that even Izard did not hear him.
When Etta turned her startled eyes upon him, he was already addressing
some commonplace remark to his hostess, while Mr. Charles Izard amused
himself by diligently checking the total of the bill.
"I could keep a steam yacht on what I pay for wine in this hotel," he
remarked jovially, addressing himself so directly to the ladies that
even his good dame protested.
"My dear Charles," she exclaimed, "you are not suggesting that I have
drunk it?"
"Well, I hope some one has," was the affable retort. "Let's go and
smoke. It's suffocating in here."
Etta had been greatly alarmed by the Count's remark, though she was
very far from believing that it could bear the sinister interpretation
which her first alarm had put upon it. This fear of discovery had
dogged her steps since she quitted her home to embark upon as wild an
adventure as a young girl ever set her hand to; but if discovery came,
she reflected, it would not be at the bidding of a foreigner whom she
had seen for the first time in her life but a few days ago. Such
wisdom permitted her quickly to recover her composure, and she pleaded
the lateness of the hour and her own fatigue as the best of reasons for
leaving the hotel.
"I am glad you were pleased," she said to Izard, holding out her hand
directly they entered the hall. "Of course it has all been very
dreadful to me and I'm still in a dream about it. The newspapers will
tell me the truth to-morrow, I feel sure of it."
He shook her hand and held it while he answered her.
"Don't you go thinking too much about the newspapers," he said, with a
splendid sense of his own importance. "When Charles Izard says that a
play's got to go, it's going, my dear, though the great William
Shakespeare himself got out of his grave to write it down. You've done
very well to-night and you'll do better when you know your way about
the stage. Go home and sleep on that, and let the critics spread
themselves as much as they please."
As before, when she had first come to the hotel, Mrs. Izard defied the
warning glances thrown toward her by the man of business and repeated
her honest praise of Etta's performance.
"It's years since I heard such enthusiasm in a theatre," she admitted;
"why, Charles was quite beside himself. I do believe you made him cry,
my dear."
The mere suggestion that the great man could shed tears under any
circumstances whatever appealed irresistibly to Count Odin's sense of
humor.
"Put that in the advertisement and you shall have all the town at your
theatre. An impressario's tears! They should be gathered in cups of
jasper and of gold. But I imagine that they will be," he added gayly
before wishing Etta a last good-night.
"We shall meet again," he said to her a little way apart. "I am the
true believer in the accident of destiny. Let us say _au revoir_
rather than good-night."
* * * * *
Etta looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Good-night."
CHAPTER IV
TWO PERSONALITIES
Etta Romney was very early awake upon the following morning; and not
for the first time since she had come to London did her environment so
perplex her that some minutes passed before she could recall the
circumstances which had brought her to that square room and made her a
stranger in a house of strangers.
Leaping up with a young girl's agility, she drew the blind aside and
looked out upon deserted Bedford Square, as beautiful in that early
light of morning as Bedford Square could ever be.
How still it all was! Not a footfall anywhere. No milk carts yet to
rattle by and suggest the busy day. Nothing but a soft sunshine upon
the drawn blinds, a lonely patch of grass beneath lonely trees, and
great gaunt houses side by side and so close together that each
appeared to be elbowing its neighbor for room in which to stand upright.
Etta returned to her bed and crouched upon it like a pretty wild
animal, half afraid of the day. A whole troop of fears and hopes
rushed upon her excited brain. What had she done? Of what madness had
she not been guilty? To-day the newspapers would tell her. If they
told her father also--her father whom she believed to be snug in
distant Tuscany--what then, and with what consequences to herself! A
fearful dread of this came upon her when she thought of it. She hid
her eyes from the light and could hear her own heart beating beneath
the bed-clothes.
She was not Etta now, but knew herself by another name, the name of
Evelyn, which in this mood of repentance became her better, she
thought. True, she had been Etta when she appeared before the people
last night, the wild mad Etta, given to feverish dreams in her old
Derbyshire home and trying to realize them here amid the garish scenes
of London's dramatic life. But arrayed in the white garb of momentary
penitence, she was Evelyn, the good nun's pupil; the docile gentle
Evelyn awaiting the redemption of her father's promise that the gates
of the world should not be shut forever upon her youth, but should open
some day to the galleries of a young girl's pleasure. It was the Etta
in her which made her impatient and unable to await the appointed time;
the Etta which broke out in this mad escapade, ever trembling upon the
brink of discovery and fearful in its possibilities of reproach and
remorse. But the Evelyn reckoned up the consequences and was afraid of
them.
She could not sleep again although it was then but six o'clock of the
morning, and she lay for more than an hour listening to those growing
sounds which are the overture of a London day. Workmen discussing
politics, amiably, if in strident tones, went by with heavy tread upon
their way to shop or factory. Milk carts appeared with their far from
musical accompaniment of doleful cries and rattling cans. An amorous
policeman conducted flirtations dexterously with various cooks, and
passed thence with sad step. Then came the postman with his cheery
rat-tat at nearly every house; the newsboy with the welcome cry of
"piper"; the first of the cabs, the market carts, the railway vans,
each contributing something to that voice of tumult without which the
metropolis would seem to be a dead city.
Etta sat up in her bed once more when she heard the newsboy in the
square. The papers! Was it possible that they would tell the public
all about last night's performance; that her name would figure in them;
that she would be praised or blamed according to the critics' judgment?
The thought made her heart beat. She had been warned by that great
man, Mr. Charles Izard, not to pay too much attention to what the
papers said; but how could she help doing so? A woman is rarely as
vain as a man, but in curiosity she far surpasses him. Etta was just
dying of curiosity to read what the critics said about her when old
Mrs. Wegg, her landlady, appeared with her morning tea; and this good
dame she implored to bring up the newspapers at once.
"I can't wait a minute, Mrs. Wegg," she said, for, of course, the old
lady knew that she was a "theatrical." "Do please send Emma up at
once--it's absolute torture."
The excellent Mrs. Wegg, who had her own ideas of newspaper reading,
expressed her sympathy in motherly language:
"Ah, I feel that way myself about the stories in 'Snippets,'" she said.
"I assure you, my dear, that when the Duke of Rochester ran away with
the hospital nurse, I couldn't sleep in my bed at night for wanting to
know what had become of her. I'll send Emma up this minute--the lazy,
good-for-nothin', gossipin' girl she is, to be sure. Now, you drink up
your tea and don't worrit about it. I've known them that can't act a
bit praised up to the sky by the crickets. I'm sure they'll say
something nice about you."
She waddled from the room leaving Etta to intolerable moments of
suspense. When the newspapers came, a very bundle which she had
ordered yesterday, she grabbed them at hazard, and catching up one of
the morning halfpenny papers immediately read the disastrous headline,
"Poor Play at the Carlton." So it was failure after all, then! Her
heart beat wildly; she hardly had the courage to proceed.
POOR PLAY AT THE CARLTON
BUT
A PERSONAL TRIUMPH FOR MISS ROMNEY
------
The Old Story of Haddon Hall Again
------
The Star Which Did Not Fail To Shine
Etta read now without taking her eyes from the paper. The notice would
be described by Mr. Izard later in the day as a "streaky one"--layers
of praise and layers of blame following one another as a rare tribute
to the discretion of the writer, who had been far from sure if the play
would be a success or a failure. In sporting language, the gentleman
had "hedged" at every line, but his praise of Etta Romney was unstinted.
"Here," he said, "is one of the most natural actresses recently
discovered upon the English stage. Miss Romney has sincerity, a
charming presence, a feeling for this old world comedy which it is
impossible to overpraise. We undertake to say that experience will
make of her a great actress. She has flashed upon our horizon as one
or two others have done to instantly win the favor of the public and
the praise of the critic."
Etta put the paper aside and took up a notice in a very different
strain. This was from the stately pages of "The Thunderer." Herein
you had a dissertation upon Haddon Hall, the Elizabethan Drama, the
Comedie Francaise, the weather, and the tragedies of AEschylus. The
writer thought the play a good specimen of its kind. He, too, admitted
that in Miss Etta Romney there was the making of a great actress:
"But she is not English," he protested, "we refuse to believe it. An
_artiste_ who can recreate the atmosphere of a mediaeval age and win a
verdict of conviction has not learnt her art in Jermyn Street. We look
for the biographer to help us. Has the Porte St. Martin nothing to say
to this story? Has Paris no share in it? We await the answer with
some expectation. Here is a comedy of which the Third Act should be
memorable. But whoever designed the scene in the chapel is _capable de
tout_...."
So to the end did this amiable appreciation applaud the player and
tolerate the play for her sake. Etta understood that it must mean much
to her; but she was too feverishly impatient to dwell upon it, and she
turned to the "Daily Shuffler" wishing that she had eyes to read all
the papers at once. The "Daily Shuffler" was very cruel:
"Miss Etta Romney," it said, "is worthy of better things. As a whole,
the performance was beneath contempt. At the same time, we are not
unprepared to hear that an ignorant public is ready to patronize it."
Had Etta known that the author of this screed was a youth of eighteen,
who had asked for two stalls and been allotted but one, she might have
been less crestfallen than she was when her fingers discovered this
considerable thorn upon her rose-bush. But she knew little of the
drama and less than nothing of its criticism; and there were tears in
her eyes when she put the papers down.
"How cruel," she said, "how could people write of others like that!"
She did not believe that she could have the heart to read more, and
might not have done so had not little Dulcie Holmes flung herself into
the room at that very moment and positively screamed an expression of
her rapture.
"Oh, you dear," she cried, "oh, you splendid Etta! Have you read them!
Have you seen them? Now isn't it lovely? Aren't you proud of them,
Etta? Aren't you just crying for joy?"
Lucy Grey, who had climbed the stairs in a more stately fashion and was
very much out of breath at the top of them, came in upon the climax to
tell Dulcie not to carry on so dreadfully and to assure Etta that the
notices were very nice. She, however, soon joined a shrill voice to
her friend's, and the two, sitting upon the bed, began to read the
papers together with such a running babble of comment, interjections,
cries, and good-natured expressions of envy, that the neighbors might
well have believed the house to be on fire.
"The curtain fell to rapturous--oh, Etta--now, Lucy, do keep quiet--her
acting in the Gallery Scene--I say that I began it first--her acting in
the Gallery Scene--she has a grace so subtle, a manner so
winning--isn't that lovely!--now, Lucy, be quiet--we began to think
after the Second Act--oh, bother the Second Act--now, there you go
again--she is indeed the embodiment of that picture romance has painted
for us and history destroyed--oh, Etta--!" and so on, and so on.
Etta admitted upon this that they had some good excuse for
congratulating her. In the theatre she found it quite natural to
listen to the girls' pleasant chatter and to put herself upon their
level both as to Bohemian habits of life and odd views of the world.
Away from the theatre, however, the Evelyn in her would assert itself.
Despite her affectionate nature, she found herself not a little
repelled by that very freedom of speech and act which seemed to her so
delightful a thing upon the stage. She was too kind-hearted to show
it, but her distaste would break out at intervals, especially in those
quiet morning hours when the freshness of the day reproached the
memories of the night with its garish scenes and its jingling melodies.
To-day, especially, she would have given much to be alone to think upon
it all and try to understand both what she had done and what the
consequences might be. But the girls gave her no opportunity even for
a moment's leisure.
"You said we'd lunch at the Savoy, Etta----"
"And you'd drive us in the Park afterwards----"
"Aren't you really very rich, Etta? You must be, I'm sure. Do you
know I have only got three shillings in the world and that must last me
until salaries are paid."
"I've worn this dress seven months," said Lucy, "and look at it.
Who'll write nice things about me with my petticoat in rags? Well, I
suppose what is to be is to be. I'm going to the Vaudeville in the
Autumn and perhaps my ship will come in."
"My dear children," said Etta kindly, "you know that I will always help
you when I can, and you must let me help you to-day when I am happy--so
happy," she added almost to herself, "that I do not believe it is real
even now."
They laughed at her quaint ideas and would have read the notices over
again to her but for her emphatic protest.
"No," she said, "we have so much to do; so much to think of. After
all, what does it matter while the sun is shining?"
CHAPTER V
THE LETTER
The sunny day, indeed, passed all too quickly. A splendid telegram,
fifty words long, from the splendid Mr. Charles Izard set the seal of
that great man's approval upon the verdict of the newspapers.
"You have got right there," he wired, "the business follows. See me at
four o'clock without fail...."
"That means a long engagement," said the shrewd Dulcie, when she read
the telegram.
Lucy, prudent always, thought that Etta should have a gentleman to
advise her.
"Don't go to the theatre-lawyers," she said; "they always make love to
you. If you had a gentleman friend, it would be nice to speak to him
about it. Mr. Izard knows what he's got in his lucky bag. Now, don't
you go to signing anything just because he asks you, dear. Many's the
poor girl who's engaged herself when half the managers in London wanted
her. I should hold my head very high if it were me. That's the only
way with such people."
Etta promised to do so, and having taken them to lunch, as she
promised, she found herself, at four o'clock of the afternoon, in the
elegant office wherein the great Charles Izard did his business. Then
she remembered with what awe and trepidation she had entered that
sanctum upon her first business visit to London. How different it was
to-day, and yet how unreal still! The little man had the morning and
evening papers properly displayed upon his immense writing table; and,
when Etta came in, he wheeled up a chair for her with all the ceremony
with which he was capable.
"Why, now," he said, "what did I tell you? Afraid of the newspapers,
eh? Well, there they are, my dear. Don't tell me you haven't read
'em, for I shouldn't believe you."
Etta admitted that she might have glanced at them.
"Every one seems very kind to me," she said. "I wish they had spoken
as well of the play; but I suppose they must find fault with something.
I know so little about these things, Mr. Izard."
"Then you'll soon learn, my dear. As for what they say about the play,
that don't matter two cents while the business keeps up. We'll take
$9,000 this week or I know nothing about it. Let the newspapers enjoy
themselves while they can. They've been kind enough to you; but you're
clever enough to understand the advantages my name gives you. Produce
that play at any other house and let any other man bill it and they'd
have the notices up in a fortnight. But they'll take just what I give
'em, because I know just what they want and how they want it. That's
how we're going to do business together. You can earn good money with
me and I can find you the plays. My cards are all on the table; I'll
sign a three years' engagement here and now and pay you a hundred
dollars a week--that's L20 sterling, English money. If you want to
think it over, take your own time. You've a good deal of talent for
the stage, and my theatre is going to make you--that's what you've to
say to yourself, 'Charles Izard will produce me and his name spells
money.' As I say, take your own time to think it over. And don't
forget you are the first woman in all my life to whom I have offered a
hundred dollars a week on a first engagement."
Etta listened a little timidly to these frank and business-like
proposals. Such a situation as this had never occurred to her when she
left her home in Derbyshire and set out upon this mad escapade. She
had asked for a hearing from a man who made it his boast that he saw
and heard every one who cared to approach him. The tone of her letter,
the restraint of it, the fact that she had known Haddon Hall all her
life, that every bit of that splendid ruin, every tree in the old park,
every glade in the gardens were familiar to her, struck a note of
assent in the great American's imagination and compelled him to send
for her. He believed that at the outset she would serve for a "walking
on" part. When he saw her, he asked her to read a scene from "Haddon
Hall" and heard her on the stage. Then he said, "Here is a born
actress, and not only that but an aristocrat besides." The secrecy
which had attended her application whetted his desire to engage her.
"I will play for a month for nothing," she had said. Even Charles
Izard did not feel disposed to offer her a smaller sum.
And here he was talking of agreements for a term of three years and of
L20 a week!
How to answer him Etta did not know.
She was perfectly well aware that her weeks in London must be few. Any
day might bring a letter from her father in which he would speak of a
return to Derbyshire. The mythical visit to Aunt Anne, which had been
her excuse to the servants at home, would be exploded in a moment
should her father return. None the less, the situation had its humors.
"If only I dare tell Mr. Izard," she had said to herself, knowing well
that, she would not tell him unless it were as a last resource.
"You are as kind to me as the critics," she exclaimed upon a pause,
which greatly alarmed that shrewd man of business--he had expected her
to jump down his throat at the offer. "You are very kind to me, Mr.
Izard, and you will not misunderstand me when I hesitate. I have
already told you that money is nothing to me. Perhaps I am tired of
the stage already; I do not know. I feel quite unable to say anything
about it to-day. It is all so new to me. I want to be quite sure that
I am a success before I accept any one's money."
Her reply astonished Izard very much, though he tried to conceal his
annoyance. Shuffling his papers with a fat hand, upon which a great
diamond ring sparkled, he breathed a little heavily and then asked
almost under his breath:
"Any one else been round?"
"Do you mean to ask me have I any other offers?"
"That's so."
"As frankly, none--at present."
He looked at her shrewdly.
"Expecting them, I suppose?"
"I have never thought of it," she said, greatly amused at the turn
affairs were taking. "Of course, I know that successful people do get
offers----"
"But not twice from Charles Izard," he exclaimed very meaningly--then
turning round in his chair he looked her straight in the face and said,
"Suppose I make it one hundred and fifty dollars?"
"Oh," she rejoined, "it really is not a question of money, Mr.
Izard----"
"No," he said savagely, "it's that--Belinger. Been seeing you, hasn't
he--talking of what he could do? Well, you know your own business
best. That man will be waiting on my doorstep by and by, and he'll
have to wait patiently. Think it over when you're tossing us both in
the blanket. He's a back number; I'm a dozen editions."
Etta was seriously tempted to smile at this frightened earnestness and
at the great man's idea of her shrewdness. She could not forget,
however, that he had given her the opportunity she had so greatly
longed for to put the dreams of her girlhood to the proof. And for
that she would remain lastingly grateful.
"My dear Mr. Izard," she said, "I fear you don't understand me at all.
Who Mr. Belinger may be I don't know; but he certainly has not made me
any offers. And just as certainly should I refuse them if he did so.
You have been generous enough to give me my chance. If I remain on the
stage, it will be with you."
Izard opened his dull eyes very wide.
"If you remain upon the stage! Good God, you don't mean to say that
you have any doubt of it?"
"I have every doubt."
"Have you read the papers?"
"Oh, but you told me not to pay any attention to them----"
"That's from the front of the house point of view. Don't you know that
they say you are as great as Rejane?"
"I cannot possibly believe that."
"It won't be so difficult when you try. Go home and read them again
and come to me to-morrow morning to sign agreements."
He was pleased at her promise to continue at his theatre and clever
enough to understand her reticence.
"She's a genius," he said to himself, "and she's more than that, she's
a woman of business. Well, I like her sort. When Belinger goes round,
he'll get some dry bread. As for her leaving the stage--pooh! she
couldn't do it."
Had he known what Etta was saying at that very moment, his
self-satisfaction assuredly had been less. For when she returned to
her rooms in Bedford Square she found the expected letter from her
father awaiting her there and in it she read these words: "I shall be
returning to England on the 29th of June."
She had a short month, then, to live this Bohemian life which so
fascinated her! And when that month was over Etta Romney would cease
to be, and the stately Lady Evelyn must return.
CHAPTER VI
STRANGERS IN THE HOUSE
The news in the letter alarmed Etta not a little; but when she
reflected upon it, she remembered that it was just such news as she had
been expecting all along. Her adventure had been for a day. She had
never hoped that it would be more. The desire to appear upon the stage
of a theatre had haunted her since her childhood. Now she had
gratified it. Why, then, should she complain?
True, the glamour of the stage no longer deceived her. All the gilt
edge of her dreams had vanished at rehearsal. She no longer believed
the theatre to be a paradise on earth. It was a somewhat gloomy,
business-like, and sordid arena of which the excitements were purely
personal, and concerned chiefly with individual success and
achievement. These she had now experienced and found them
unsatisfying. A morbid craving for something she could not express or
define remained her legacy. The "Etta" in her had not been blotted out
by triumph. Had she known it, she would have understood that nothing
but tragedy would efface it.
This, naturally, she did not know. Believing her time to be brief, she
desired to see as much of Bohemia as the numbered weeks would permit;
and she refused no invitation, however imprudent it seemed, nor denied
herself any experience by which her knowledge might profit. A perfect
mistress of herself, she did not fear whatever adventure might bring
her. Her desire had been to do exactly what the ordinary stage girl
did--to live in lodgings, to tramp about the London streets, to spend
little sums of money as though they had been riches, to give a girlish
vanity free rein. Sometimes she almost wished that a man would make
love to her. The homage of men, she had read, always attended success
upon the stage. Etta would have been delighted to evade her pursuers,
to see their flowers upon her table, to read their ridiculous letters.
For the moment, however, her dramatic experiences appeared likely to be
somewhat prosaic. She had answered Mr. Charles Izard with the
intimation that she would give him a definite reply within a week, and
with that, perforce, he had to be content. The early promise of
success for "Haddon Hall" was amply justified. The business done at
the Carlton Theatre proved beyond experience. There were two matinees
a week, and splendid houses to boot. Etta delighted in the triumphs of
these more than words could tell. The thunderous applause, the ringing
cheers, the frequent calls, animated her whole being and awoke in her
the finest instincts of her inheritance. She knew that she had been
born an actress, and that nothing would change her destiny. All the
frivolous life of the theatre could show her made their instant appeal
to her senses and were enjoyed with a child's zest. Her gestures were
quick and excited, and, as little Dulcie Holmes would say, "so French."
She could behave like a schoolgirl sometimes--a schoolgirl freed from
bondage and ready for any tomboy's play.
This was her mood on the afternoon of the seventh day after the first
production of "Haddon Hall" at the Carlton Theatre. The exceedingly
"genteel" Lucy Grey had invited a few friends to tea upon that
occasion; and an artist, known to all the halfpenny comic papers as
"Billy," a lodger in the same house as Lucy, kindly put his studio at
the disposal of the company. Here for a time gentility reigned supreme
over the tea-cups. The theatrical ladies found themselves awe-struck
in the presence of Etta Romney, and remained so until the amiable
painter volunteered to do a cake-walk if Dulcie Holmes would accompany
him. This set the ball rolling; and although gentility suffered a snub
when a lady from the Vaudeville remarked that she always "gorged"
currant loaves, nevertheless merriment prevailed and some striking
performances were achieved. Etta had not laughed so much since she
left the convent school--and she could not help reflecting, as she
returned to Bedford Square, upon the vast capacity for innocent
enjoyment these merry girls possessed and the compensations it afforded
them in lives which were by no means without their troubles.
It was a quarter to six when she reached her lodgings. She had time
upon her hands, for seven o'clock would be quite early enough to set
out for the theatre. The weather promised to become a little overcast
as she stood upon her doorstep; and she was conscious of that sudden
depression with which an approaching storm will often afflict nervous
and highly sensitive people. Opening the front door slowly, with her
eyes still watching the creeping clouds above, she became aware that
there were strangers in the hall beyond, and she stood for an instant
to hear rapid words in the German tongue--a language her father had
always advised her to study and had insisted upon the good nuns
teaching her. To-night it served her well, for by it she became aware
instantly that the strangers were speaking of her--indeed, that they
awaited her coming.
"Go into the room," said a voice. "I must be alone here."
Another said, "Hush, that's her step!"
Etta turned as pale as the marguerites in the flower boxes when she
heard these words; though, for the life of her, she could not say why
she was alarmed. Perhaps the constant fear of discovery which had
attended her escapade from the beginning asserted itself at the moment
to say that these strangers knew the truth and had come to profit by
it. If this were so, the idea passed instantly to give place to that
more sober voice of reason which asked, "How should a stranger know of
it, and what is my secret to him?" Such an argument immediately
reassured her; and, entering the hall boldly, she found herself face to
face with no other than the Roumanian, Count Odin, who had been
presented to her eight days ago at the Carlton Hotel.
Now, here was the last man in all London whom Etta had expected to see
in Bedford Square, and her astonishment and distaste were so plainly
visible in her wide-open eyes that the victim of them could not
possibly remain under any delusion whatever. Plainly, however, he was
quite ready for such a welcome as she intended to give him, for he
barred her passage up the hall and, holding out his hand, greeted her
with that accepted familiarity so characteristic of the idlers who
lounge about stage-doors.
"My dear lady," he said, "do not put the displeasure upon me. I come
here because my friend, Mr. Izard, recommend me when I ask him where I
shall find a lodging. 'Miss Romney is at Bedford Square,' that's what
he says; 'go right there and you will find an apartment in the same
street.' Now, isn't it wonderful! I arrive at your house by accident
and here is your landlady who has the dining-room to let. You shall
forgive me for that when I say that my friend, Horowitz, is with me and
his sister. Why, Miss Romney, we'll be just a happy family together;
and that's what Charles Izard was thinking of when he sent me here.
'Tell her I wish it,' he said; 'she's too much alone in London, and it
doesn't do----'"
Etta interrupted him with a dignity he had not looked for.
"Mr. Izard would not be so impertinent," she exclaimed hotly. "Your
coming or going really does not interest me, Count. I have to be at
the theatre immediately. Please let me pass!"
She tried to go by, but he still forbade her, smiling the while and
seemingly quite sure of himself.
"My dear lady," he said, "you do not go to the theatre until half-past
seven. This amiable person of the house has told me as much. If I am
rude, forgive me. I wish to ask you to see my pictures of Roumania, a
country your father once knew very well, Miss Romney, though he has not
been there for many years. Say that you will come and see them
to-morrow and I will ask Mademoiselle Carlotta to help me to show them
to you. Now, dear lady, will you not name the hour? I shall have much
to show you, much for you to tell your amiable father about when you
see him again."
Etta shivered as though with cold. Never before had she known such a
curious spell of helplessness as this man seemed able to cast upon her.
The words which he spoke amazed her beyond all experience. Roumania!
She understood vaguely that her father had lived dreadful years there
so long ago that even he almost had forgotten them. And this stranger
could speak of them, youth that he was, as though he held their secret.
Had she wished to terminate her acquaintance with him then and there,
her woman's curiosity would have forbidden her. But, more than this,
the man himself attracted her in a way she could not define--attracted
her, despite her early aversion from him and her sure knowledge that
there must be danger in the acquaintance.
"Do you know my father, Count?" she asked presently--in a voice which
could not conceal her apprehension.
"To my family he is well known, to me not at all," was the frank reply.
"I came to England to make my misfortune good; but now that I come your
father is not here, Miss Romney."
"Then he was not aware of your intended visit?"
"Quite unaware of it."
"You did not write to him?"
"How should I write when I do not know the house in which he live?"
"Then why do you say that he is not in London?"
He looked at her with the triumphant eyes of a man who puts a master
card upon the table.
"I say that he is not in England because you are alone, Miss Romney."
Etta bit her lips, but gave no other expression to her emotion.
"A compliment to my discretion," she exclaimed with a little laugh; and
then, as though serious, she said, "You will make me late for the
theatre after all. Do please talk of all this to-morrow."
He drew aside instantly.
"Izard would never forgive me," he said; "let it be to-morrow as you
wish--shall we say at twelve o'clock?"
"Oh, by all means, at twelve o'clock to-morrow," she rejoined and upon
that she ran up the stairs, and, entering her own room, locked the door
behind her.
Who was the man? How had he come thus into her life? She was utterly
unnerved, amazed, and without idea. But she knew that she would go to
the theatre no more.
"And what will Mr. Izard say?" she asked herself blankly; "what will
they all say?"
Etta was ready both to laugh and to cry at that moment. Conflicting
sentiments found her sitting upon her bed, a very picture of
irresolution and dismay. The deeper truths of the night were not as
yet understood by her, although the day for understanding could not be
far distant.
CHAPTER VII
THE NONAGENARIAN
She sat upon her bed for a little while, seemingly without purpose or
resolution. The black muslin dress with the exquisite lace and
suspicion of Cambridge blue about the neck, a dress in which she always
went to the theatre, lay ready for her spread out upon the back of a
chair. She used to say that it was the only good dress she had brought
to London with her. Her desire had been to deceive herself with the
pretty supposition that her own talent must earn luxuries or that they
must not be earned at all.
So her riches were few. She could almost number them as she sat upon
her bed, reflecting upon this astounding encounter, the threat of it,
and its just consequences. When she left Derbyshire she had no thought
of discovery, nor imagined it to be possible. Not a soul knew her by
sight, she said. She had spent her days in a convent in France, and
after that as a very prisoner in her father's house. Why, then, should
she fear recognition? None the less did recognition stand upon the
threshold. This foreigner she believed to be already in possession of
her story. How he had gained knowledge of it, and what use he would
make of it, she felt absolutely unable to say. Sufficient that a
malign destiny had brought her face to face and called her to decide
instantly as difficult an issue as escapade ever put before a woman.
"He knows my name; he knows my father," she argued; "if he does not
come to our house, he has some good reason for not doing so. In any
case, I must not stop here. Oh, my dear Mr. Izard, what will you say
to-night? And poor dear Di Vernon, poor dear Di Vernon, whoever will
take care of her?"
She laughed aloud at her own thoughts, and, jumping up impulsively, she
gathered her things together as though for a journey, though she had
not the remotest idea whither she would go or how she would act. A
church clock striking the hour of seven reminded her that the hours
were brief and that she must make the best use of them. Had she been a
man she might have remembered that if this intruder knew her father's
name, he would very quickly discover her father's house, his rank, and
the story of his life. But she was not even a woman, scarcely more
than a school-girl, in fact, and terror of the present became an
immediate impulse without regard to the future. She must flee the
house and the mystery without an instant's loss of time. Nothing else
must count against the prudence of this course. All the little things
she had collected in London, the clothes she had bought there, these
must be abandoned. Etta indeed, carried nothing but her light
dust-cloak and her purse when she left the house at half-past seven.
"I must write to dear old Mrs. Wegg and make her a present," she said;
"she can send my things to St. Pancras Station to be called for. If I
don't go to the theatre, Mary Jay will play my part. Perhaps the poor
girl will make her fortune. It's an ill wind ... no, a horrid wind,
and, oh, I do wish it would blow me home again!"
From which it will be seen that the idea of "home" crept already into
her dizzy head and attracted her strangely. There is always an
aftermath of jest, however bold that jest may be. Etta realized this
dimly, though all the impressions of the theatre, its glamour and its
triumphs, were too new to her to permit of any serious rival. She
feared discovery simply for her father's sake. To him the theatre
stood for a very pit of all that was most evil. He had, from the days
of her childhood, dreaded a day which would awaken a mother's instincts
in Etta and tell him that she had inherited her mother's genius as an
actress. For such a reason, above others, he made a recluse of her.
For such a reason, loving her passionately, he sent her to the convent
school and guarded her almost as a prisoner of his house. Etta knew
that he disliked the theatre greatly; but she never had his reasons,
and was unaware of her dead mother's story. Had she known it, this mad
escapade would never have taken place.
She left the house in Bedford Square at half-past seven furtively and
not a little afraid. She had already determined to keep her own
secret, and to that intention she adhered resolutely. Crossing the
Square with quick steps, she stood an instant at the corner to make
sure that no one followed her. When her suspicions upon this point
were at rest, she called the first hansom cab she could see and told
the man to drive her to St. Pancras Station.
"And please to stop at a telegraph office on the way," she said.
The journey had been fully determined upon by this time, and she no
longer found herself irresolute. It cost her much to send Charles
Izard her farewell message; but she did it courageously, as one who
knew that it must be done. How or why Count Odin had crossed her path
she could not say; but her clever little head grappled instantly with
that turn of destiny and determined to defeat it. None could harm her
in her home in Derbyshire, she said ... and to Derbyshire she
determined to go.
When she entered the post-office and had dispatched her telegrams, she
felt as one from whose weak shoulders a great weight had been lifted.
What a dream it had all been! The hopes, the fears, the success of it.
Her heart was a little heavy when she wrote down the words: "I am
leaving London and shall not return--pray, forgive me and forget--Etta
Romney." There would be a sensation at the theatre to-night, but what
of it if the walls of her home were about her and the gates of it had
closed upon her secret. She knew too little of Count Odin's story that
her fears of him should be enduring.
"He has learnt something about me somewhere and wanted to satisfy his
curiosity," she thought; "perhaps he was going to make love to me," an
idea which amused her, but did not appear in quite as repugnant a light
as it might have done. Some whisper of personal vanity said that Count
Odin was a man of the world and an exceedingly good-looking one at
that. She began to see that all her fears might be mere shadows of
misunderstanding--none the less, she persisted in her intention to
return to Derbyshire. A sense of personal danger had been awakened;
she fled from discovery before discovery could do her mischief.
There was a train to Derby at half-past eight. Etta took a seat in the
corner of a first-class compartment, which an obliging guard, bidding a
porter keep watch upon it, insisted upon reserving for her. The
porter, good fellow, drove off the besiegers, among whom were a parson
with brown paper parcels and a fussy little man who always travelled in
ladies' carriages because he could have the windows up, to say nothing
of old maids and their dogs and younger maids without dogs. To these
the man of corduroys politely pointed out the red bill upon the window;
but when a cloaked foreigner, with a hawk's beak and watery eyes, a man
who must have numbered at least ninety years, persisted in an attempt
to enter, then was the ancient dragged back by the flap of his coat
while the magic words "reserved" were shouted in his ears.
"What you say--what--what--" the old fellow cried, exerting a
surprising amount of strength for a nonagenarian, "not go in here,
_accidente_!"
"Higher up, grandfather," said the merry porter. "Saffron Hill goes
forward--no parley Inglesh, eh--well, that's not my fault, is it?"
He took the old fellow by the arm in a kindly way (for of the poor the
poor are ever the best friends) and led him to a third-class carriage
at the forward end of the train.
"And a wonnerful strong old chap for his years, too, miss," he said to
Etta when he returned for his shilling; "give me a shove like a young
'un he did. I shouldn't wonder if he ain't agoing to play in a cricket
match by the looks of him. Did you want to send a telegram, perhaps?
A surprisin' lot of telegrams I do send from the station. Mostly from
gents wot has a fency for a 'oss. They takes a number horf of their
tickets and backs the first 'un they sees with the same number in the
noospipers. Not as I suppose you've any fency like that, miss--though
young ladies nowadays do send telegrams almost as frequent as other
people."
Etta laughed at this idea, but, a sudden remembrance coming to her, she
asked:
"What time do we arrive at Derby, porter?"
"You should arrive at a quarter to twelve, miss."
"A quarter to twelve--oh, my poor little me, whatever will you do?"
"Not meaning to say that you've forgotten to ask them to meet you,
miss?"
"Meaning the very thing--please get me a form, oh, lots of them. I
must wire to Griggs. Don't let the train go until I've done it.
Whatever should I do if no one met me?"
"I'll stop it if I have to hold the engine myself. Now, miss, you take
these 'ere. That's the name of a Spring 'andicap winner on one of
them--you scrat it out and write your own telegram. We ain't agoin' to
have you out in the cornfields at that time of night, I know. Just
write away and don't you flurry yourself."
Etta needed no pressing invitation. She wrote two telegrams as fast as
her eager fingers could set down the messages--one to Fletcher, the
coachman at the Hall, one to Griggs, the butler, who would be the most
astonished man in all Derbyshire that night when he read it. These the
porter gathered up together with a liberal monetary provision to frank
them, and the train was just about to start when who should appear
again but the white-haired nonagenarian, grumbling and shuffling and
plainly seeking a carriage, despite the fact that he had been lately
seated in it.
"Why, here's old nannygoat broke out again," cried the astonished
porter, and running after him he exclaimed: "Here, grandfather, train
goin', comprenny, inside oh, chucky walkey--now then, smart, or I'm
blowed if I don't put you in the lorst luggage horfiss."
They bundled the old man into a carriage; the engine whistled, the
train steamed majestically from the station.
"Good-by, London!" said Etta, sinking back upon the cushions with tears
in her eyes.
But the far from docile old gentleman, who had been treated so
unceremoniously, did not weep at all.
"She's going to Melbourne Hall," he kept repeating with a chuckle; "if
the telegrams mean anything, they mean that."
By which it is clear that the old scoundrel had read Etta's messages
which the ever-obliging porter carried to the telegraph office for her.
CHAPTER VIII
LADY EVELYN RETURNS
Mr. Griggs, the butler at Melbourne Hall, had just fallen asleep after
a second glass of his master's unimpeachable port, when a footman
knocked softly upon the door of his pantry and informed him that he was
the proud owner of a telegram.
"For you, sir, and the boy's a-waitin' for a hanswer."
Mr. Griggs, who had been dreaming of a rich uncle in Australia, and of
the fortune this worthy had bequeathed to him (by which he would set up
a public-house in Moretown and acquire a masterly reputation), murmured
softly, "No jugs in the private bar," and awoke immediately in that
state of irritable stupor which even a moderate allowance (and Mr.
Griggs' glasses were true bumpers) of ancient port may provoke.
"Whatever do you want, comin' creeping in here like a fox with the
gout?" he asked angrily; "is the 'ouse on fire or is Partigan took with
the hysterics? Whatever is it, James?"
"It's a telegrarf," replied James loftily; "perhaps you're a little
'ard of 'earing after port wine, Mr. Griggs. The boy's a-settin' on
the step whistlin' airs. I'll tell him to come in if you like----"
Griggs looked a little sheepishly at the bottle before him, and
prudently offered James a glass.
"Them boys is born in a hurry and that's how they'll die, James. Just
take a mouthful of that wine. I'm sampling it for the guvner. This'll
be from him, no doubt."
To do the excellent man justice, it must be admitted that he had been
sampling that particular wine during the last twenty years, and still
found it necessary to continue his task before he could give a definite
opinion. The telegram was another matter. Mr. Griggs read it by the
aid of an immense pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, and, having read it,
he uttered that exclamation he was wont to employ only upon the very
greatest occasions.
"God bless my poor old gray hairs if her ladyship ain't returning this
very evening. Whatever can have put it into her wicked little head to
do that? Derby station at eleven-forty, and Fletcher gone haymaking to
Matlock. I shouldn't wonder if the beast had been drinking," he added
pompously.
James, the footman, admitted that it was very embarrassing.
"I've lived in many families, Mr. Griggs," he said, "and a deal of
human nater I've learned. But this 'ere family is wholly a
masterpiece. Your good health, sir, and I'm sure I wish you blessings."
"It's easier to wish 'em than to bring 'em," replied the philosopher
Griggs. "Where's Partigan now and what's she doing?"
"She's a-participatin' in the Floral fete at the Bath-Dianner in a
motor-car or something of that sort."
"She went over with Fletcher, no doubt. That's how his lordship's
interests are served in his absence. Is Molly in the 'ouse, James?"
"She was takin' her singin' lesson from the horganist of Moretown half
an hour ago."
"Let her sing upstairs with the warmin' pan, and quick about it too. I
suppose the shuffer's not in?"
"Gone to Derby to see Mr. Wilson Barrett eat up by lions----"
"Then we'll have to send Williams, the groom, and make a tale. Lord,
what a 'ouse to look after. I feel sometimes as such responsibulness
will break me up into small coal, James. Just ring that bell and send
Molly here. I'll give her a singin' lesson as she won't soon forget."
There never was such a ringing of bells, certainly never such a
scampering of overfed menials as the next hour witnessed at the Manor.
Hither and thither they went: Molly up the stairs to look out the
sheets, Williams, the groom, to get the single brougham ready, James to
set the boudoir straight ("with me own 'ands I done it," he said to
Partigan, the lady's maid, afterwards, as though ordinary he did it
with other people's hands, which was a true word), Griggs to put away
his decanter and enter the kitchen in mighty splendor. Not only this,
but stable-boys upon bicycles went flying off to Matlock and Derby to
bear the tidings to the absentees.
"Her ladyship a-comin' home," said Partigan when she heard it; "well,
that do beat the best!"
"I've always said," Griggs remarked to James, when the first moments of
agitation had passed, "I've always said the Lady Evelyn isn't ordinary.
Just look at the antics she'd be a-doin' by herself when she thought no
one was lookin' at her in the park. Carrying on like a play actress,
she was, and me hidin' behind a tree, mortal feared of her throwin' of
herself into my arms by mistake. What his lordship would say if I told
him of this 'ere, the cherubims above us only knows, James."
"You surely ain't goin' to tell him, Mr. Griggs?"
Griggs tapped his breast with a heavy fist that seemed to make a drum
of it.
"A lady's secret--they'd have to cut it out of my bussum, James."
"Then you don't think, perhaps, as she's been staying with Miss
Forrester at all?"
This, however, was the beginning of a suggestion which the worthy
Griggs would not tolerate at all from one he styled a menial.
"What I think is my own affair. Take my advice and hold your tongue,
James. When you get to my time of life you'll know that the less you
say about the ladies the better for your good health. Go and get the
dining-room ready. She'll be in a rare tantrum when she comes back.
They always are when they've been up in London enjoyin' of theirselves.
His lordship himself is good cayenne after a week on the Continent.
It's enough to make a man take to drink almost."
The reservation was wise, for certainly Mr. Griggs had "almost" taken
to drink on many occasions, stopping at the second bottle on a
benevolent plea of moderation. This particular occasion, however, was
not to prove one for extreme remedies as subsequent events quickly
demonstrated. Having seen that all had been prepared, both within and
without the house, he composed himself to a comfortable nap in his
arm-chair and again had begun to dream of a rich uncle in Australia
(whose continued good health he found most provoking), when a loud
ringing of bells and a sound of voices in the quadrangle instantly
brought him to a state of recollection, and he sat bolt upright and
stared wildly at the grandfather's clock in the corner of his pantry as
though its fingers reproached his tardiness.
"A quarter to two o'clock. God bless my poor old head. It must be her
ladyship. A quarter to two o'clock. What would her father say to it?"
It was her ladyship, as he said--very tired, very pale, strangely
quiet, and with frightened eyes, such as neither Griggs nor anyone in
that house had looked upon before. Amazed to see her, dressed in no
way for travelling, carrying no other luggage than the purse in her
hand, the old butler simply stared as he would have stared at any bogey
of Melbourne come suddenly upon him in the witching hours.
"I welcome your ladyship home," he stammered, looking anything but a
welcome from his inquiring eyes, and then, most inaptly, he continued:
"The trains is very late for the time of year, I must say, my lady."
Lady Evelyn merely said:
"Yes, I am dreadfully late, Griggs. Don't let anyone be disturbed. I
could not touch anything to-night. My luggage is to be forwarded from
London. Please see that everything is locked up. I am going straight
to my room, and shall not want anything at all."
Griggs did not really know what to make of it.
"She was as white as a sheet," he told the kitchen afterwards, "and she
asked me to lock up the 'ouse. Now, am I in the 'abit of leavin' the
doors open or do I see 'em shut regular? Mark my words, Partigan,
there's something more than her luggage she's left in London, and the
sooner his lordship takes it out of the cloakroom the better."
Here was something to set the servants' hall by the ears beyond
possibility of discretion. Williams, the groom, who had driven her
ladyship home, added an ingredient to the sauce of their curiosity
which proved appetizing beyond measure.
"There was a young man at the station wot kept hopping about us just
like a 'oss about a hayrick," said he. "I could see she didn't want to
take much notice on him, but what was I to do? If he'd have opened his
lips, I could have given him something for hisself. But he didn't say
nothing to nobody and all she says was, 'Drive on at once, Williams,
and don't stop for anyone.' Be sure I made the old 'oss slip it. He
come along for all the world as though he were riding to 'ounds and me
in the first flight."
Williams, be it observed, had not exaggerated at all. There had been a
young man at the station and Lady Evelyn had been very frightened by
him. What is more remarkable is the fact that she was perfectly well
aware of his identity and knew him beyond a shadow of doubt for the
apparent nonagenarian who had been so persistent at St. Pancras. That
white-haired old man and the youth who appeared before her suddenly at
her journey's end were certainly one and the same person. The only
conclusion possible was this, that she had been watched closely in
London and followed thence.
"It must be Count Odin," she said to herself, and upon this she tried
to reason out a secret of which the key lay far from her possession.
Why should the man have been at such pains to follow her if he knew her
father's name, as he pretended he did? It never occurred to her
untrained mind that a foreigner recently arrived from Bukharest might
be quite unaware of the identity of Robert Forrester and altogether
ignorant of the fact that he was Robert Forrester no longer, but had
become, by a strange accident of fortune, the third Earl of Melbourne,
Baron Norton, and heaven and Burke know what besides. Here had been
the Count's difficulty. He had searched every directory in vain for
the whereabouts of a man he had now made it his life's purpose to
discover. Knowing scarcely anyone in London, and having no particular
desire to declare his presence to the Roumanian _charge d'affaires_,
his quest had been profitless until chance brought him face to face
with the Lady Evelyn in the Strand. Instantly he had resolved never to
lose sight of her until he had discovered Robert Forrester's house, and
had asked of him that question the answer to which should tell him if
his own father were alive or dead.
The Lady Evelyn, upon her part, had no share of the story, save that
which her own eyes and the Count's brief words had told her. He had
spoken in London of her father, it is true; but there had been no
betrayal of a warm anxiety to meet him, nor had he mentioned the name
except as a passport to Evelyn's confidence. The fact that she had
been followed from town to Derbyshire disquieted her exceedingly by the
very pains which had been taken to conceal it. No longer could she
believe that Count Odin had been fascinated by her acting and had
foolishly fallen in love with her. Something lay beyond, and her
clever brain divined it to be a thing dangerous both to her father and
to herself.
So it was not Etta Romney but my Lady Evelyn, grave and stately, and
dreadfully afraid of her own secret and of another's, who returned to
Melbourne Hall, and, declining the attentions of her servants, went
straight up to her bedroom, but not to sleep. Whatever danger
threatened her must speedily declare itself, she thought. It was even
possible that the morrow would bring it to her doors.
And if it came, her father would know that Etta Romney had been
"presented" by Mr. Charles Izard at a London theatre and that she was
his daughter.
He would never forgive her, she thought. It might even be that he
would call her his daughter no more.
CHAPTER IX
THE THIRD EARL OF MELBOURNE
There is hardly a pleasanter room in all England than the old Chamber
of the Tapestries they use as a breakfast room at Melbourne Hall.
Situated in the west wing of the great quadrangle, and giving off
immediately from the famous long gallery, its tiny latticed casements
permit a view which reveals at once all the cultivated beauty of the
gardens and the wild woodland scenery of the park beyond, in a vista
which never fails to win the admiration of the stranger, as it has won
the love of many generations who have inhabited that historic mansion.
It is not a large room, but it tells much of the story of the house,
its triumphs, its misfortunes, and its glories. Here you have the
time-stained arms of John, the first baron, whose cinquefoil azure upon
a crimson banner had been carried high at Agincourt; here were the
crosslets fitchee of the House of Mar, whose feminine representative
had come south to wed the third baron in the days of good King Hal.
Fair fingers had worked these tapestries long ago, waiting, perchance,
for news of husband or lover whom the wars had claimed, or fighting for
a King whose son would laugh at their story of fidelity. It had been
my lady's bower then, and knights and squires had doffed their caps as
they passed its doors. To-day they gave it no nobler name than
breakfast room, and therein, at half-past eight every morning, the Earl
of Melbourne, more punctual than the clock itself, sat down to
breakfast.
Now, here was a man who had been an adventurer all his life, a man of
the field, the forest, and the sea; a bluff bearded man, not unrefined
in face and feature, but utterly unsuited by the disposition of his
will to the dignity which accident had thrust upon him, and resenting
it every hour that he lived.
"What are we but slaves of our birth?" he would ask his daughter
passionately. "Why am I cooped up in this old house when I might be on
the deck of a good ship or under canvas in the Alleghany Mountains?
You say that nothing forbids my doing it. You know it isn't true. The
world would cry out on me if I cut myself adrift. And you yourself
would be the first to complain of it. We owe it to society, Evelyn, to
make ourselves miserable for the rest of our lives. They call it
'station' in the prayer-book, but the man who wrote that had never shot
big game on the Zambesi or he'd have sung to a different tune."
Sometimes when Evelyn protested that society would really remain
indifferent whatever they did, he would reply, a little brutally, that
when she had found a husband it would be another matter.
"There will be two of you then to stand for the cinquefoil," he
observed cynically. "I shall shake the handcuffs off and get back to
the East. A man lives in the sunshine. Here he scarcely vegetates.
When they inquire, in ten years' time, where the Earl of Melbourne is,
you'll send them to the Himalayas to begin with, and there they can ask
again. Don't lose time about it, Evelyn. You know that young John
Hall is head over ears in love with you."
Evelyn's face would flush at this; and there had been an occasion when
she answered him with the amazing intimation that she would sooner
marry Williams, the groom, than the young baronet he spoke of. This
frightened the old Earl exceedingly.
"Her mother's blood runs in her veins," he said to himself. "By
heaven, she'd marry a stable-boy if I thwarted her."
Here was the spectre which haunted him continually. He feared to read
the story of his own youth and marriage in the youth and marriage of
his daughter. Notwithstanding his jests, his love for her was
passionate and dominated every other instinct of his life. "You are
all that I have in the world, my little Evelyn," he would confess in
gentler moods. He desired her affection in like measure, but had never
wholly won it. Perhaps instinctively she understood that some barrier
of the past interposed itself between them. Her father's defects of
character could not be absolutely hidden from her. She feared she knew
not what.
And if this were her normal mood, what of the Evelyn who had gone to
London at the bidding of a mad desire; who had become Etta Romney
there; who had returned at the dead of night and awaited her father's
home-coming with that tremulous expectation which at once could dread
exposure and yet delight in the peril of it? When her first alarm had
passed and quiet days had led her to believe that she dreamed the story
of espionage, Evelyn could await the issue with no little confidence.
After all, why should Count Odin betray her, even if he had her secret?
He was a man of the world and had nothing to gain by dealing
treacherously with a woman. Her father went to London so rarely that
she might well deride the danger of his visits. Nothing but a clumsy
accident could write that story so that the Earl might read it, she
thought. And so she welcomed him home with all her habitual composure,
and upon the morning of the second day of July she found herself seated
opposite to him in my lady's bower, listening to his stories of Italy
and his plans for the summer and the autumn months to come.
"We ought to give some parties, I suppose," he said; "the servants
expect it, and we must not disappoint them. Ask all the people who
don't want to come and get rid of them as quickly as you can. I have
written to Colchester about the yacht and we ought to get her in
commission in August. You always loved the sea, Evelyn, and this will
be a change for you. We can put into Trouville and Etretat and see
what the Frenchwomen are wearing. I shall steam down to the
Mediterranean later on; but that won't be until December. We have the
birds to kill first and plenty of them. Of course, I know you wanted
to be in London this Spring, and it is not my fault if you did not go.
This copper mine in Tuscany is going to make me as rich as Vanderbilt.
I could not neglect it just because a lot of fools were driving mail
phaetons in Bond Street."
Evelyn smiled a little coldly.
"Men do not drive mail phaetons nowadays," she said, "they drive
motor-cars. Of course, it is very necessary for us to keep the wolf
from the door--we are so poor, father."
The Earl had grown accustomed to remarks such as these, and had become
skilful in evading them. He understood perfectly well that Evelyn
expressed her own disappointment and that she meant to remind him of
his broken promises to take a house in Mayfair for the season and to
sacrifice his own pleasures at least for a few brief weeks.
"I am poor enough," he said, "to want all the money I can get. This
old place costs a fortune to keep up. I mean to do big things here by
and by, and twenty thousand won't be too much when they are done.
Besides, it is not money that we men run after, but the gratification
of our own vanity in getting it. The claims on this estate are heavy
and they have to be met quickly if it is to be cleared. I backed my
own opinion about this mine against the biggest house in Germany and I
am coming out top all the time. If it put fifty thousand a year into
my pocket, who'll benefit by it but you? Think of that when you talk
about the little crowd of paupers you want to see in London. Money's
money. And precious glad some of them would be to see the color of it."
Evelyn did not contradict him. She was too weary of the subject to
wish to revive it. Imitating others, whose youth had been one of far
from splendid poverty, the Earl permitted money to become the guiding
principle of his life in the exact ratio of its acquisition. An
exceedingly rich man when he inherited the bankrupt estates of the
Melbournes, each year found a waning of his natural generosity, a
growth of unaccustomed meanness, and a diligence in the quest of
fortune which the circumstances made almost pathetic. On her part,
Evelyn was perfectly well aware that he would give no parties at the
Hall this year, would not take her to Trouville, nor visit the
Mediterranean in the winter. Each season found its own excuses for
delay. The wretched mine in Tuscany was a very godsend when
postponements of any kind troubled the Earl for a good excuse.
"I am glad you are going to do something to the Hall," she said
evasively; "at least there will be the painters' society to enjoy.
After that I suppose I may go to Dieppe, as Aunt Anne wishes. It will
be quite a dissipation--under the circumstances."
He looked at her rather sharply.
"So you went to London after all?" he said. "I thought you meant to
put it off?"
"To put it off! That would have been a familiar task. I live to put
things off. There is no one in all Derbyshire who has so many excuses
to make as I have."
"My dear Evelyn, you know perfectly well why I dislike all this kind of
thing."
"Indeed, I know nothing, except that you dislike it. This is the third
year that you promised to take me to London and have disappointed me.
If there is any reason that keeps us prisoners when others are free,
would you not wish me to know of it? I am your daughter, and surely,
father, you can speak to me of this."
"My dear little Evelyn," he said, hiding his embarrassment as well as
might be, "you are talking the greatest nonsense in the world. If you
want to go to London, you shall go to-morrow. Take a house, a flat, an
hotel, anything you like--only don't ask me to go with you. I am past
all that sort of thing. A city stifles me; the fools I find in it make
me angry. If you like them, go and see them. I have been alone enough
in my life not to mind very much being alone again."
This quasi-appeal to her pity was his invariable argument. He would
have been embarrassed had she accepted his proposals; but he knew full
well that she would not accept them. And so he made them with a
generosity which cost him nothing but a momentary tremor of doubt lest
her answer should disappoint him.
"Oh," she said, rising from the table and going to the window to look
across the park, "I am satiated with gayety--and Aunt Anne is a very
paragon of giddiness. We went to bed every night at half-past nine and
got up at six; and, of course, Richmond is quite Mayfair when you learn
to know it."
The Earl, rising also, would have laughed it off, despite the
ridiculous nature of the effort.
"Poor old Anne is not as young as she was," he exclaimed lightly. "I
dare say you found her a little tiresome. Well, I suppose you came
home when you were tired of it?"
"Yes," said Evelyn, without turning round, "I came home when I was
tired of it."
He could not see the deep blush upon her cheeks, nor would he have
understood it had he done so. Indeed, she was truthful so far as the
letter of the truth went. A visit to Richmond had been the excuse
which carried her from Melbourne Hall. Three dreary days she had spent
in a prim house overlooking the Thames. The home of the skittish Aunt
Anne, whose sixty years did not forbid her still to look out, like
Sister Mary, for an heroic "Him" upon her horizon. From Richmond,
Evelyn had gone to the Carlton Theatre; and now, for an instant, even
here in her own home, the Etta Romney could return to delight in her
adventure.
What a sensation had attended her disappearance from London? Safely
guarded in her jewel-case upstairs were cuttings from the newspapers of
the days succeeding that mad flight. Be sure that the great Charles
Izard made the most of his misfortune. He had believed that Etta
Romney left him at the bidding of caprice and at the voice of caprice
would return to him again. His shrewd mind instantly perceived that
the truth would best serve him on this occasion; and though he was not
on very good terms with truth, the quarrel was soon patched up. To all
the reporters he told the full story of this captivating romance.
"The girl came to me from nowhere," he said frankly, "and where she has
gone God knows. I gave her a hearing because she wrote me the
cleverest letter I have read for many a long day. Her home was in
Derbyshire, and this was a Derbyshire play. I saw her act one scene in
my theatre and said that she was 'bully.' She had the best send off I
can remember. Then comes the night when I am strung up on my own hook.
She expresses her trunks and quits. About that I know as much as you
do. Her traps were left at St. Pancras station, and a letter says that
she has given up the theatre. Well, I don't believe it. A girl who
can act like that will never give up the theatre. In one month or six
she'll be starring in my plays. She cannot help herself; she's got to
do it."
Nothing whets the public's appetite so surely as curiosity; and all
London had grown curious about Etta Romney. Discerning men, who had
but half-praised her when she first appeared, hastened to declare that
her loss was irreparable. Less responsible journals gave coherent
accounts of the whole business, written in the back office by gentlemen
who knew nothing whatever about it. The affair, at first but a nine
days' wonder, became a standing headline when the editor of a popular
newspaper boldly offered a hundred guineas for the discovery of Etta
Romney's whereabouts.
Etta read all about this in the brief days that intervened between her
own return and her father's. While the woman in her rejoiced at the
success they spoke of, the child failed to perceive the danger of this
undue publicity or to guard in any way against it. It is true that she
had been very much alarmed upon the night she fled from London; but as
the weeks went by and neither word nor message reached her from Count
Odin, or indeed from any of the friends she had made at the theatre, a
new sense of security came to her and compelled her to delight in what
appeared to be the final success of her escapade. Surely now her
father would remain in ignorance of it to the end, she argued. She
believed that it would be so, though whether the Etta Romney within her
were really dead, she did not dare to say.
The spirit of her mad desire; the passionate longing for liberty and
triumph before the world; the knowledge of the rare gifts she possessed
and of the future they might win for her, were these to be forever shut
behind the gates of her silent house, however beautiful that house
might be? She knew not. The future alone could tell her whither the
voice of her destiny would call her.
CHAPTER X
THE ACCIDENT UPON THE ROAD
Was Etta Romney dead or would the months recreate her?
Evelyn believed that they would. The intolerable _ennui_ of her life
at Melbourne festered the atmosphere in which such dreams as hers were
born and reared. She had that in her blood which no make-believe could
prison. Had the whole truth been told, it would have set her down for
a gypsy of gypsies--a true child of the roadside and the caves. But
the truth was just the one thing her father hid from her.
"I met your mother at Vienna," he had told her once when an illness had
moved him to that affectionate confidence which weakness is apt to
provoke. "She was Dora d'Istran, the most beautiful woman in the city
and one most run after. You are like her sometimes, Evelyn; you have
her eyes and hair, and just such a manner. She understood me as no one
else in the world has ever done, not even my little daughter. I
married her in the face of my family and never regretted the day. She
died when you were eleven months old. I live again through that hour
which took her from me every day of my life."
Here was no weak confession. Throughout his life this man had been
seeking a good woman's love. Knowing in his heart that he had done
things unworthy of it, he sought it yet more ardently for that very
reason. One woman, his wife, had understood him and given him of her
whole soul generously. Her death left him a vagrant once more. In
vain he, a miser to others, lavished generous gifts upon Evelyn, his
child. "She would love me if she could," he told himself, "but there
is a chord in her nature I cannot strike." A keen observer of
intuitive faculty would have said that the man's nature, not the
woman's, in Evelyn Forrester forbade her to respond to his affection.
Of this Evelyn herself remained quite unconscious. Fret as she might
against her father's unjust and inexplicable treatment of her, she
would have resented hotly the suggestion that she had not a daughter's
love for him. Her very obedience, she thought, must be sufficient
witness to that. Though he made a prisoner of her, she rarely uttered
a complaint. His varying moods, now of doting affection, now of
irritation and temper, found her patient and silent. When he did a
mean thing she shuddered, but rarely spoke of it, because she knew that
words would not help her. Her own life had been lived so far apart
from his. She wished with all her heart that it had not been so; but
she could not justly blame herself for circumstances she was in no way
able to control.
This had been her attitude before her great escapade in London; it
remained her attitude upon her return to Derbyshire. She met her
father each morning at the breakfast table; dined with him in solemn
state at night--occasionally received visits from their neighbors, and
was some times the guest of the vicar of the parish, a pleasant old
Cambridge Don, by name Harry Fillimore. But in the main Evelyn lived
alone, in the wild glades of the beautiful park, down by the silent
pool of the river--just as she had lived and dreamed in the old days of
the longing for the world, its glamour and its glories. And now she
had a great secret to take to the green woods with her. Day by day, as
some sylph of the thickets, the true Romany child reacted the thrilling
scenes of the brief weeks of triumph in London. Her hair wild about
her shoulders, her eyes reflecting the dreams, she would crouch by the
river's bank and play Narcissus to the reeds.
"It was I, Etta ... yes, yes ... just the little Etta looking up from
the waters--I went to London--I played at the theatre--they said I was
a success--they offered me money--to Etta Romney, just little Etta
Romney. And now it's all over. Etta is dead, and Evelyn has come
back. I shall never go to London again--I shall die, perhaps, down
there among the reeds in the river. Oh, if some one only would love
me, some one understand me. And it's for ever in this lonely
place--for ever--for ever."
Such regrets were neither hysterical nor unusual. She knew that there
was some great void in her life, some desire ungratified, which must
haunt her to the end; and this knowledge drove her day by day along
those paths of solitude which her father wished her to tread, though
never would he have confessed as much. His lavish gifts to her
scarcely won a word of thanks. When she rode a horse, it was madly,
defying convention, helter-skelter across the grass lands like a
Mexican flying over the prairie. She bathed in the deepest, most
dangerous pools; went shooting but shot little, because her will
revolted from the purposes of slaughter; would picnic in the darkest
thickets and had even set up a tent and slept in it, far from house or
cottage, at the height of the summer glory.
"A little madcap," the bland vicar said when he heard of it, "a regular
brick of a girl, though who'd believe it when he saw her at her
father's dinner table. Why, last night, sir, she sat in the
drawing-room just for all the world a paragon of propriety with ten
generations of grand dames to her name. I didn't dare to take a second
glass of port for fear I should be jocular. And to-day I saw her
flying toward Derby in the new car at thirty miles an hour. Away went
my straw hat just like a cricket ball. Now, what are you to make of a
young lady like that?"
Doctor Philips, the person addressed upon this occasion, confessed that
you might make many things of her.
"She could earn a good living at steeplechasing, and I would pay her
five pounds a week to be my _chauffeur_," he said quite seriously, "and
please don't forget the ball she drives at golf. Why, vicar, she'd
give the pair of us a half. It's no ordinary woman could do that."
They agreed that it could not be, and having discussed the Lady Evelyn
at great length were about to sit down to lunch together, individuals
aware of their own humility in the face of a superior intellect, when
Williams, the groom, came flying over from the Hall and demanded to see
the Doctor instantly.
"There's bin a haccident on the road, sir," he cried breathlessly,
"please come over at once--the gentleman's up at the house and the Earl
away."
The doctor, wasting no words, set out with a sigh and a backward glance
at the inviting table.
The Vicar said:
"Thank God--I thought that _she_ had come to grief."
CHAPTER XI
A RACE FOR LIFE
The Vicar declared that he met Evelyn upon the road to Derby, "going
like a volcano at thirty miles an hour;" but this was a mere figure of
speech, for her little car, being of no more than ten horse-power could
not possibly accomplish such speeds; nor would the winding roads about
the Hall have permitted them to a larger motor. A reckless driver, if
recklessness were love of the delight of fast travel, Evelyn loved
horses too well to frighten them; and rarely did a coachman complain or
such wayfarers as she met upon her journey do anything but applaud her.
Indeed, Derbyshire had no more enchanting picture than that of this
dark-haired girl, superbly gowned, as she sat at the wheel of her
crimson car; while Bates, the proud _chauffeur_, gazed disdainfully,
from the dicky behind, upon all the world, as though to say, "You can't
beat her." And this was the more noble on Bates' part because Evelyn
had twice deposited him in the ditch since the car came home. "The
horrid thing will go round the corners so fast" had been her lament
after these mishaps. Bates added the pious prayer that he might go
round with the car on the next occasion.
Sometimes, of course, it would be Etta Romney who drove and not my Lady
Evelyn at all. These were mad, wild moods and came mostly at twilight
when the gloom of day crept upon the fields and the sun went down in
crimson splendor. Then the wild, mad dash down tempting hills would
scare the loiterers and send the jogging laborer to the shelter of the
hedges. Then a cloud of dust enveloped the flying car, and the figure
at the wheel might have stood for Melpomene with vine leaves in her
hair. "A rare 'un she be," the countrymen would say; "went by me like
a railway engine, dang 'un, her did."
Evelyn had been into Derby on the day the Vicar narrated the
misfortunes of his straw hat. Having done a little shopping, she set
out for the Hall a few minutes after the hour of twelve, by which time
the day had turned gloriously fine with a light wind from the east and
a bank of white clouds high beneath the azure, which promised welcome
interludes of shade. She had a journey of twenty-three miles before
her (for Melbourne Hall lies far from the little town of that name and
knows it not), and leisure enough in which to do it. Business, she
knew not of what nature, had carried her father to London nearly a week
ago. She would be alone until to-morrow, her own jailer, she said with
a pout, the mistress of hours by which she could profit so little. Her
mood, indeed, had become one of cynical indifference, tempered by the
reflection that this was the first visit the Earl had paid to London
since her escapade. What, she asked, if a word of that story came to
his ears even now? The weeks of safety inspired a sense of security
which circumstance hardly justified. She paled and trembled when she
asked herself what such a passionate man as her father would do if the
truth were discovered by him.
Here, truly, was no impulse to the delights of speed or to that
recklessness which the Vicar chided. Evelyn drove slowly, her thoughts
vagrant and wayward, her attitude that of one who has not pleasure
awaiting her at her journey's end. She had traversed over twenty miles
of the distance and was just looking out for that well-known landmark,
the spire of the village church, when a startled cry from the usually
phlegmatic Bates aroused her attention and called upon a
self-possession which rarely failed her.
"A horse and carriage--bolting behind us, your ladyship--put her on the
fourth--my God, he's coming right on top of us--quick, your ladyship--a
horse bolting----"
He stood up in the dicky and waved his arms and continued to cry, "A
horse bolting!" as though by repetition alone he would bring her to a
sense of danger. Evelyn, upon her part, cast one startled glance
behind her and instantly became aware of the situation. For down the
road, which sloped slightly toward them, a horse bolted madly in their
direction, swinging a light brougham from footpath to footpath and
leaving a dense cloud of dust to bear witness to the speed. So mad was
the gallop that the frightened beast, seen first at a distance perhaps
of six hundred yards, was no more than three hundred yards from them
when Evelyn opened the throttle of her car to the full and sent it
racing down the incline as it had never raced before. Fifteen, twenty,
twenty-five miles an hour the speed indicator registered, and still the
car appeared to be gaining speed. Behind, as though in vain pursuit,
the thundering sound of hoofs waxed louder; and once or twice in the
interludes of sounds, a man's voice could be heard crying to the horse
and to those in the car incoherent words in an unknown tongue.
"Let her go for God's sake, your ladyship--let her go--he's coming
up--keep to the right--don't mind the corner--we'll do it yet--" These
and many another exclamation fell from Bates' volcanic lips as he clung
to the dicky for dear life and tried to drive the mad horse into the
hedge by the wild waving of a spasmodic arm. His appeal to her to keep
to the right showed that he, at any rate, had not lost his head.
Instinctive habit sent the animal flying to the left-hand side of the
road as he would naturally be sent by any coachman. Though the
brougham lurched wildly, the terrified horse returned to his accustomed
place again and again, taking the corners in wide sweeps and increasing
his speed with his terror. A great raw bony brute that had been ridden
to hounds the previous winter, his gallop was that of a thoroughbred
over good grass lands. Even the ten horse-power car could not keep its
lead. Evelyn knew that he was overtaking her. The shadow of
catastrophe seemed to creep over her very shoulders. "Is he far off
now?" she would ask Bates despairingly.
The answer, many times repeated, began to be monotonous.
"Keep to the right, milady--don't mind the corner--I'll blow the horn
for you--now you're gaining a bit--oh, that's fine--let her go--we'll
do it yet, milady."
Evelyn, it may be, realized her own peril less than that of those in
the brougham. A man's cry, whatever reading of character might be
placed upon it, seemed to her an evidence of grave danger and piteous
fear. But for this, her own courage would have almost delighted in the
rare sensations of speed and flight and all the doubt of the ultimate
issue. Guiding her car with a brave hand, she was conscious of a
rushing wind upon her face; of hedges, fields, trees approaching,
disappearing, during that ominous race; of a voice speaking to her; of
a question many times repeated--"How will it end? Will they be
killed?" And yet the speed of it both excited and sustained her. She
swung round the corners as an arm upon a pivot; hugged a difficult path
with the skill of an old _mecanicien_, nursed her engine perfectly, was
never flurried, never hesitating, never fearful. That which she
dreaded was the long incline leading up to the gates of Melbourne Hall.
The mad horse would beat the car upon that, she thought. The
threatened thunder of his hoofs seemed so near to her now. She could
hear the man's voice plainly, and the tongue he spoke had a more
familiar sound.
The moment was critical enough. A gentle hill lay before her. She
knew that a horse galloping blindly would make nothing of it, but that
the little car must be slowed down sufficiently to render escape out of
the question. Had there been a footpath, she would have mounted it and
dared the consequences; but of path there was none. A man in her place
might have bethought him of slacking speed gradually and blocking the
road to the flying carriage. But Bates, her _chauffeur_, had never
been upon a horse in his life. He thought only of himself and the car.
"I could feel his nose down my back," he told the Servants' Hall
afterwards--to which the cook replied "Lor', Mr. Bates, how you must
have suffered!" He admitted that he had done so.
"She turned into the field better than Thery himself could have done,"
he declared, speaking of the driver of the Gordon Bennet car. "Just
when I was asking myself who'd come in for my Sunday clothes, round she
goes like a top and the carriage went flying by us at a jiffy."
The kitchen listened in awe.
"I always said as she was a thoroughbred," Williams, the groom,
remarked; and this opinion appeared to be general.
Evelyn had saved her car just as the excellent Bates described it.
Losing ground steadily upon the hill, the end of it all seemed at hand,
when she espied the open gate of a hay-field upon her right hand; and
taking her courage and the wheel in both her hands, she just touched
the car with the foot-brake and then swung it boldly through the
opening. A terrible lurch, a great bump over wagon-ruts and they were
at a standstill in grass growing to the height of their axles. The
bolting horse meanwhile went by like a shot from a bow, straight up the
hill which leads to the Hall. A turn of the road hid him from their
sight. They heard a loud crash and then all was still.
Evelyn sat, very pale and frightened, and trembling visibly at the
thought of that which must have happened on the hillside above them.
The engine of her car had stopped as they ran into the field and the
imperturbable Bates immediately leaped down from the dicky and made a
wild attempt to restart it.
"There wasn't a driver on the box, milady," he said, as though it were
the most natural remark in the world to make.
Evelyn answered by ordering him, almost angrily, to start the engine.
"We must go to them," she said, her heart beating fast as she spoke.
"I am sure there has been a dreadful accident. Be quick, Bates! Why
are you so foolish? Please start the engine at once."
"I was thinking of you, milady," the man said a little sullenly.
"There was two gents in the carriage. You mightn't like to see what
somebody will see when they go up there."
"Don't talk nonsense," she said firmly. "I am not a child, Bates. You
would make a coward of me. Let us go at once!"
Bates said no more but started the engine at once. Evelyn backed the
car from the field and drove slowly up the hill. She was greatly
excited and afraid, but her resolution to proceed remained unshaken.
Who had been in the carriage? What harm had befallen him or them? The
turn of the road answered her immediately. For there, white and
insensible by the side of the shattered brougham, lay Count Odin, the
Roumanian, and by him there knelt young Felix Horowitz, his friend,
ready to tell everyone that the Count was dead. Evelyn, however, knew
that he was not dead.
And tragedy, she said, had followed her even to the gates of Melbourne
Hall.
CHAPTER XII
THE UNSPOKEN ACCUSATION
Count Odin had been three days at Melbourne Hall when the Earl
returned. For thirty hours he did not recover consciousness; the
second day found him restless and but dimly aware of the circumstances
of his accident; the third day, however, recorded such an improvement
that, as the evening drew on, he sent the maid, Partigan, to my Lady
Evelyn begging that she would come to him.
There had been wild excitement in the house, to be sure. Tragedy is
ever the delight of the servants' hall; nor was it less delightful
because memorable days were few at the Manor. History has recorded
that Partigan, the maid, shed tears when she heard that the young man
upstairs was a foreigner and exceedingly handsome. Mr. Griggs, the
butler, felt it necessary to sample divers vintages of wine and to ask
repeatedly what the Earl would think of it. The maids whispered
together in corners; the grooms discussed the erring horse with straws
protruding from the corners of their mouths. To these worthies and to
others the daily bulletin, which the shrewd, side-whiskered Dr. Philips
delivered each morning as he climbed into his motor-car, became as the
tidings of a horse-race or of a royal wedding. Rumor had said that the
young Count was dead when they carried him to the house. Dr. Philips
declared that he would have him dancing before the month was done.
"Fracture, pshaw!" exclaimed that knowing practitioner; "they might
tell you that in Harley Street, but in Derbyshire we know better. He
has a skull as thick as a water-butt. Con-cuss-ion, sir, that is the
matter. You may tell her ladyship so with my compliments.
Con-cuss-ion is what Dr. Philips says, and if there is anyone who
disputes his word, he'd like to see the man."
They carried the news to Evelyn, who had scarcely left her room since
this amazing adventure befell her. A brief account of the accident
obtained from the lips of young Felix Horowitz, Count Odin's friend,
narrated the simple circumstance that they had been driving from
Moretown to Melbourne Hall and had collided upon the way with a
hay-cart, whose driver, as the drivers of hay-carts so frequently will,
had been taking his siesta during the heat of the day. Thrown from the
box into the gutter, the coachman dislocated his shoulder and had many
bruises to show; while his horse, terrified at the absence of control,
instantly bolted in one of those blind panics which may overtake even
the most docile of animals.
Such a story Felix Horowitz had told, but more he could not tell.
Evelyn's anxious question as to the purport of Count Odin's visit
remained unanswered. It was possible, the youth said, that the Count
drove out to see Lord Melbourne. "But I should not be surprised," he
added naively, "if there were a better reason which you must not expect
me to confess."
She was afraid to press the point, nor dare she, at present, invite the
confidence of one who was so great a stranger to her. Sooner or later
it would be necessary to abase herself before this man who had thrust
himself unluckily into her life and made such quick use of his
advantages. Evelyn perceived immediately that she must go to Count
Odin and say, "My father does not know that I am Etta Romney. Please
do not tell him." And this was far from being the whole penalty of the
accident. A glimmer of the truth could come to her already as a
spectre which henceforth must haunt her life. She knew that her father
had spent some years in Roumania, and that nothing would induce him to
revisit that country wherein he had married Dora d'Istran. In the same
breath, she told herself that this man was a Roumanian and acquainted
with her father's story.
Had she been entirely honest with herself she would have gone on to
admit a certain fascination in the mystery which she could neither
account for nor take arms against. Count Odin was like no other man
she had known. She had tried to deceive herself in London with the
imagined belief that she never wished to see him again. Many times,
however, since she had returned to Derbyshire this very desire would
assert itself. She found herself, against her will and reason,
covertly hoping that she might hear his story from his own lips. A
psychologist would have held that there was a certain affinity between
the two, and that she had become the victim of it unconsciously. Her
fear was of a splendid fascination she had become aware of and could
not resist. She imagined that she would obey this man if he commanded
her, despite her resolute will and almost eccentric originality. And
this she feared even more than her own secret.
It is to be imagined how the suspense of Count Odin's illness tried
nerves as high strung as those of Evelyn, and with what expectation she
awaited the hour when he would recover consciousness. Her desire had
become that of knowing the worst as speedily as might be; and the worst
she certainly would not know until consciousness returned and some good
excuse might admit her to the sick man's room. Hourly, almost, she
asked the news of Dr. Philips and received the strictly professional
answer:
"An ordinary case--no cause for worry at all--don't think about it."
To the Doctor's inquiry what she knew of Count Odin she merely said
that she had heard of him in London and believed that his father had
been the Earl's friend many years ago. This did not in any way
disguise her unrest, and the Doctor would have been more than human had
he not put his own construction upon it.
"Head over ears in love with him," he told the Vicar that night; "why,
sir, she would not deceive a blind man. She's met this fellow in
London and bagged him like a wounded pheasant. I shouldn't wonder if
it hadn't been all arranged between them--bolting horse and all. There
he is, in the chaplain's room, rambling away in a tongue a Hottentot
would be ashamed of, and she's waiting for me always on the stairs just
ready to hug me for a good word. What do you make of it? You've
married a few and ought to be an expert."
The Vicar shook his head at the compliment and declared that it would
never suit the Earl.
"He hopes that she will never marry," he said; "he has told me so
himself more than once. If she does marry, he has great ambitions.
After all, she may only be naturally anxious. I dare say she's asking
herself whether her own car did not do some of the mischief."
The Vicar's wife, on her part, declared the situation to be exceedingly
distressing.
"There's no other lady in the house," she said aghast. "I think the
Earl should be advised to return. It is so very unusual."
As a matter of fact, the Earl came home on the evening of the third
day, exactly one hour after Evelyn had been sent for to see Count Odin
for the first time since the tragedy. The meeting took place at the
Count's request, as it has been said. Returning consciousness brought
with it a full remembrance of the circumstances of the accident and a
desire to thank his hostess for that which had been done. So Evelyn
went to him, determined to throw herself upon his pity. No other
possible course lay before her.
Dr. Philips was in the room when she entered it; but his belief that
this was an _affaire de coeur_ remained obdurate, and he withdrew into
an alcove, when the first introductions were over, and made a great
business there of discussing the patient's condition with the nurse who
had come over from Derby. Thus Evelyn found her opportunity to speak
freely to the young Count. Each felt, however, that the need of words
between them was small.
"My dear lady," he began, "how shall I apologize for what has happened
to me? Three days in your house and not a word of regret that I
intrude upon you. Ah, that clownish fellow of a coachman and the other
who was asleep upon the imperial. Well, I shall long remember your
English horses, and, dear lady, I am not ungrateful to them."
He held out his hand and Evelyn could not withhold her own, which he
clasped with warm fingers as though to draw her nearer still toward him.
"It is impossible to speak of gratitude under such circumstances," she
said in a low voice. "My father will approve of all that has been
done, Count. He is returning to-night from London."
She paused and looked round the room, anxious that Dr. Philips should
not hear her. The Count, in his turn, smiled a little maliciously as
though fully aware of her thoughts.
"Forgive me," he said again. "I came to see your father, but I did not
know that he was the Earl of Melbourne. Will you not sit down, dear
lady? You make me unhappy while you stand."
He touched her hand again and indicated a low chair facing his bed.
Evelyn, whose heart beat quickly, sat without protest. The minutes
were brief; she had so much to tell him.
"You knew my father in Roumania, did you not?" she asked in a tone that
could not hide her curiosity. The Count answered her with a kindly
smile.
"He was my father's friend," he exclaimed, raising himself a little
upon the pillow; "that would be more than twenty years ago. So much
has happened since then, Lady Evelyn. Twenty years in a man's life and
a woman's--ah, if we could recall even a few of them----"
"Even the weeks," she said meaningly, "when we were not ourselves, but
another whom we wish to forget. Our friends can help us to recall
those weeks, Count."
Evelyn had not understood the difficulty of confession until this
moment. Her visit to London had been so entirely of her own planning,
she had locked the dreams of her life so surely in the secret chambers
of her heart, that this man was the first human being with whom she had
shared so much as a single word of them. Secret actions and secret
thoughts alike shame us when we speak of them aloud. Nothing but a
dire dread of discovery would have induced her to face the humiliations
of this avowal had it not been that silence must have meant discovery
and discovery might mean disaster beyond any she could imagine. Count
Odin, a trained man of the world, had perception sufficient to read her
story instantly and to understand its full significance. Here was a
woman who put herself into his power without a single thought of the
consequences. He rejoiced beyond words at the circumstance, but had
the wit to conceal his pleasure when he replied with an apparent
generosity which earned her gratitude:
"Those are the weeks when our friends should be blind, Lady Evelyn. I
am glad that you tell me this. Frankly, I, too, am an artist, and can
understand your father's objection to the theatre. Let us forget that
the most charming Etta Romney has existed. She came from nowhere and
has gone away as she came. We shall be so ungallant that we go to
forget her name and the theatre and all her cleverness. Please to
speak no more of it. I am your servant, and my memory is at your
command. If we have met in London, so shall it be. If we are
strangers when your father is come back, that also I will be ready to
remember. Command my silence or my words as you think for the best."
He accompanied the words with a gesture which would have made light of
the whole affair--as though to say, "This is a little thing, let us
speak of something more important. The act, however, did not deceive
Evelyn. Her former distrust of this man returned with new force. She
felt instinctively that she must pay a price for his silence; though
she knew not, nor could she imagine, what that price must be. And,
more than this, she rebelled already against the penalties of
deception. The net in whose meshes her daring had caught her was a net
of equivocation which must degrade while it endured.
"It is for my father's sake," she said quietly, believing it at the
moment really to be so. "He knows little of the theatre and dislikes
it in consequence. Of course, Count, I had no intention of remaining
in London. If you have any love for the stage yourself, you will
understand why I went."
"No one so sympathetically, dear lady. You were born an artiste; you
will die one, though you never again shall go upon the stage. Here is
our friend, Dr. Philips, coming with the medicine to make us happy. Is
it that we have met in London or are we to be strangers? Speak and I
obey you, now and always."
"There is no necessity to say anything about it," she exclaimed,
flushing as she stood up. "I do not suppose my father will ask the
question. Your visit to Derbyshire was in his interests, I understand,
Count."
He turned a swift keen glance upon her--far from a pleasant glance.
"I came to ask a question of him, lady. I came that he shall tell me
whether my own father is a free man or a prisoner. He will not answer
that question willingly. But until it is answered, I remain the guest
of your house. Silence, if you please. This also is my secret and
to-day is not the time to speak of it."
He raised a hand warningly and Evelyn turned about to find Dr. Philips
at her side. The little man seemed more amused than ever. His idea
that this was a lover's meeting, brought about by the laborious device
of a bolting horse and a smashed carriage, could not be put aside.
"Doing capitally, I perceive," he remarked in that professional tone of
voice which no human ill, whatever it may be, appears able to modulate
or alter. "Out in a bath-chair to-morrow and steeplechasing the next
day. Well, well, if we could only put youth into our bottles, what
magicians we should be! Now, sir, if I had been in the carriage, the
Lady Evelyn, here, would have been asking herself what she would wear
at the funeral to-morrow. But I am an old man and you are a young one,
and there is nothing like youth in all the world."
"A most excellent sentiment," said the Count, "and one I take to mean
that I may return to London before the end of the week if the Lady
Evelyn will graciously permit me to go."
Dr. Philips looked at both of them and smiled.
"You must speak to the Earl about that," he exclaimed. "Why, there is
his carriage. I must go and break the news to him."
CHAPTER XIII
THE INTERVIEW
Premonition is an odd thing enough and no distant relative of that
sister art of prophecy which the ancients so justly esteemed. Evelyn
knew no reason whatever why her father should be offended by the
presence of Count Odin at the Manor, but none the less premonition
warned her that the meeting would not be unattended by consequences of
some import. In this fear she had quitted the Count's room directly
Dr. Philips warned her that the Earl's carriage was in the courtyard;
and going out to the head of that short flight of stairs by which you
reach the banqueting hall, she waited there in no little expectation,
afraid she knew not of what, and yet quite sure that she had good
reason to be afraid. Down below, in the great hall itself, she heard a
sound of voices--for the Doctor had already begun his tale--and she
tried to catch the sense of it, listening particularly for any mention
of Count Odin's name, which must, she believed, be the key to this
strange riddle of her adventure. When her father approached her,
smiling and not ill-pleased, she was quite sure that the Count's name
had not been mentioned; nor was her surmise in any way incorrect.
The Earl came up the stairs with the air of a man who is glad to get
home again and has heard a good jest upon the very threshold of his
house. He wore a dark tweed suit and his bronzed face, if slightly
drawn by the fatigues of travel, wore, none the less, that benevolent
air of content which invariably attended the assurance that all was
well at Melbourne Hall. Stooping to kiss Evelyn, he told her in a word
that he was aware of the adventure and found it amusing enough.
"Yes, the Doctor has told me," he began; "a man and a horse and a
flying machine! My dear girl, you must be careful. What will the
county say if we go on like this--the second spill in a couple of
months. Why, I'll have to endow an hospital for your victims! Evelyn,
my dear----"
She interrupted him almost hotly.
"Doctor Philips should write books," she said quickly. "We had nothing
whatever to do with it. The horse bolted from Moretown and raced up
behind us. I turned into a field and saved the car. What nonsense to
say that it was our fault! Ask the Count's friend how it happened. He
has been to London, but he will return to-morrow. He can tell you all
about it, father. I was too frightened at the time to know exactly
what did happen."
The Earl, still believing that the Doctor's incoherent jargon must have
some truth in it, paused, nevertheless, at the word "Count."
"Is the man a foreigner?" he asked quickly.
"He will tell you for himself," she replied evasively. "We have given
him the Chaplain's Room. Please go there and ask him how it was. Dr.
Philips has been romancing as usual."
The Doctor came up to them while they spoke and looked foolish enough
at overhearing her words. He certainly was a poor hand at a narrative,
and his incoherent account of the tragedy had left the Earl with no
other idea than that of Evelyn's recklessness and the consequences
which had attended it.
"It's just like me," he exclaimed meekly, "always putting my foot in it
somewhere. And a great big flat foot too, my dear. What did I tell
him now? I said you were returning from Derby and the horse bolted and
your car ran into a field. That's it, wasn't it now? Dear me, how
very foolish!"
Evelyn did not hear him. They had strolled together down the corridor
and witnessed the Earl enter the sick man's room, and now a sharp sound
of voices almost in anger came up to them. On his part, Dr. Philips
remained convinced that the Count had come into Derbyshire to see
Evelyn and that the Earl had some knowledge of the circumstances.
Evelyn's abstracted manner seemed to bear him out in this ridiculous
idea. Pale and silent and agitated, she waited for the result of that
momentous interview. What had the two men to say to each other? How
much she would have given to be able to answer that question!
"Your father knows something of the Count, I think?" the Doctor
ventured at a hazard while they waited.
She answered that she was unaware of the circumstance.
"I have only seen this man twice in my life," she exclaimed with
growing impatience. "If you are writing his biography, Doctor, I
really am worse than useless."
He looked at her amazed. "This man." Surely there was nothing
romantic about that.
"Writing his biography. My dear Lady Evelyn, what an idea! I quite
thought he was an old friend of yours. But everyone we know is an old
friend of ours nowadays," he said somewhat solemnly, as though grieved
that his anticipations should thus be disappointed. "I know absolutely
nothing of the Count," he went on, "except that he is a Roumanian, a
country, I believe, in the south-east of Europe, with Bukharest for its
capital. I remember that from my schooldays. The Roumanians shoot the
Bulgarians on half-holidays, and the Bulgarians burn the Roumanians
alive after they have been to church on Sundays. Evidently a country
to which one should send their relatives--the elderly ones who have
made their wills satisfactorily."
Evelyn was too kind to embarrass him by the declaration that her mother
had been a daughter of the country he esteemed so lightly. His
readiness to apologize upon every occasion was typical of a kindly man
who believed that all the world was ready to find fault with him. His
livelihood depended upon his recognition of the fact that illness
itself is sometimes little better than a vanity--and that when an
obstinate man tells you that he is an invalid, his pride is hurt if you
tell him that he is not.
"My father spent many years in Roumania when he was a young man,"
Evelyn said, in answer to the Doctor's tirade. "Those are years he
does not often speak of. I can't tell you why, Doctor, but he dislikes
anyone even to remind him that he was once an _attache_ at Bukharest.
Perhaps he will not welcome Count Odin here. I imagine it may be so."
"I'm quite certain of it," said the Doctor with a dry smile. "People
who are glad to see each other do not talk like that--of course we must
not listen," he added, drawing her away toward the Long Gallery; "we
are not supposed to be present at all."
A sound of voices raised almost as though in anger warned him that this
was no common affair. Every doctor is curious, and Dr. Philips had no
merits above the common in this respect. He knew that he would narrate
the whole circumstance to the Vicar later on in the evening, and that
two wise heads would be shaken together over this amazing discovery.
For the moment he watched Evelyn narrowly and, perceiving her
agitation, found himself asking how much of her story was true. Had
she, indeed, met this intruder but once in London; and was she in
ignorance of the Earl's past, so far as Roumania had written it? He
doubted the possibility--it seemed to him prudent, however, not to
remain longer at the Hall.
"I shall run over in the morning," he said blandly; "you can tell me
anything I ought to know then. There is nothing much the matter with
the man, and a bump may have knocked some good sense into his head.
Don't allow him to worry the Earl--I don't want another patient in the
house, and your father has not looked very well lately. Send for me
again if you have any trouble, and I'll be back as soon as the
messenger."
He would much have liked to stop, but that, he realized, was out of the
question. Here was some private page from the life-story of a man
whose actions had ever mystified both his friends and neighbors. An
old woman in his love of a scandal, Dr. Philips had the Earl's
displeasure to set in the other pan of the social balance; and that was
something not to be lightly weighed. Taking leave of Evelyn at the
western door of the Long Gallery, he left her with many protestations
of his interest, and the repeated assurance that his morning visit
should be an early one.
"I'll look in first thing," he exclaimed; "don't let that man worry the
Earl, my dear. There's a hang-dog look about him I never liked. Keep
your eyes on him--and take my advice, the advice of an old friend--get
rid of him."
Anxious as she was, she could not but smile at this _volteface_. An
hour ago, believing that Count Odin had come to Melbourne because he
was her lover, the Doctor was ready to declare him a very Adonis, a
prodigy of charm and valor and all the graces. Now he had become "that
man," a term human nature is ready enough to apply to strangers.
Evelyn, left alone in the gallery, fell to wondering which was the
truer estimate. Why, she asked, had she any interest in this stranger
at all? Did the appeal he made to her speak to Etta Romney or to
Evelyn, my lord of Melbourne's daughter? Was there not a subtle idea
that this man could speak for the glamour and the stir of that world
she craved for and was denied. Even at this early stage, she did not
believe that the influence was for good, though she forbore to name it
as utterly evil. Agitation, indeed, and a curiosity more potent than
any she had ever submitted to, now dominated her to the exclusion of
all other thoughts. Why did her father delay? Of what sometime
forgotten day of the dead years were the two men now speaking in a tone
which declared their anger? She could not even hazard an answer. The
gong for dressing sounded and still the Earl did not leave the Count's
room. Dinner was served--he did not appear at the table. Greatly
distressed and afraid, Evelyn waited until nine o'clock, when a message
came down to tell her that he had gone to his room and would dine alone.
"I must go up, Griggs," she said firmly; "my father cannot be well."
"My lady," he said, "the Earl was firm on that. He will see no one,
not even you to-night."
The intimation astounded her, and yet had been expected. Destiny spoke
to her plainly since the day the Count had come to Melbourne Hall. For
what else had it been but Destiny which brought her face to face with
this man in London, sent her almost into his arms and revealed her name
to him! But for that chance encounter, her secret might have remained
her own to the end. She did not fear her secret now, but a great
mystery, the story of her father's life (she knew not what it might
be), told abroad to the world, to his shame and her own. Not in vain
had she lived these years of a close intimacy with one who could not so
much as bear the word "youth" mentioned in his presence. There had
been a past in the Earl's life, of that she was convinced--and this
man, she said, had come to the Manor to accuse him. It remained for
her to take up arms against him--she, my Lady Evelyn, the recluse, the
captive of a selfish idea.
And that was in her mind already--the personal issue between herself
and the Count. She would not shrink from it, although she realized its
perils.
"Not Evelyn, but Etta," she said, "yes, yes, and that is Destiny also.
And now the world is all before me and I am alone."
Alone! Truly so, for my Lady Evelyn knew not one in all the world to
whom she might speak in that hour of awakening.
CHAPTER XIV
INHERITANCE
Alone in his own room, high up in the northern tower of Melbourne Hall,
the Earl locked the door and turned up the lights with the air of a man
who has a considerable task before him and must make the most of the
hours of grace remaining.
He was very pale and greatly changed since he had returned from London
three hours ago. Some would have perceived in his manner, not the
evidences of fear but of displeasure, and such displeasure as events
bordering upon tragedy alone could provoke. Uttering but one harsh
instruction to the servant who answered his bell, he sat at his writing
table and for a full hour turned over the pages of a diary which had
not seen the light for twenty years or more.
Georges Odin! How the very name could seize upon his mind to the
exclusion of all other thoughts. Sitting there with the time-stained
papers before him, the Earl was no longer in Derbyshire but out upon
the Carpathians, a youth of the West craving for the excitements of the
East; a hunter upon a brave horse, the friend of brigands and of
outlaws--drinking deep of the intoxicating draughts of freedom and
debauch. Well and truly had this young Count, whom Fate had sent to
his door, reminded him of these scenes he had made it his life's
purpose to forget.
"Zallony, my lord," he had said, "Zallony still lives and you were one
of Zallony's band. They tell of your crimes to this day. The mad
Englishman who carried the village girls to the hills--the mad
Englishman who drank when no other could lift the cup--the mad
Englishman who rode out of Bukharest in a bandit's cloak and lived the
Bohemian days of which the very gypsies were ashamed. Shall I tell you
his name? It would be that of my father's murderer."
And the answer had been a cringing evasion.
"I met Georges Odin in fair fight. He was the better man. I could
show the scars his sword left to this day. Of what do you accuse me?
They sent him to prison--well, I did not make their laws. He died
there, a convict laborer in the salt mines. Was it my doing? Ask
those at the Ministry. We moved heaven and earth to save him. The
Government's reason was a political one. They sent your father to the
mines because the Russian Government--then all powerful at
Bukharest--believed him to be its most dangerous enemy. His affair
with me was the excuse. What had I to do with it?"
But the Count persisted.
"Your influence would have saved him. You preferred to keep silent, my
lord. And I will tell you more. It was at your instigation that the
Roumanian Government arrested my father in the first place. You wished
for revenge--I think it was more than that. You were afraid that the
woman you married would find you out if Georges Odin regained his
liberty. You were not sure that Dora d'Istran did not love him. And
so--you left Roumania and took her with you--luckily for you both--to
die before she had read her own heart truly. That's what I have come
this long way to tell you. To Robert Forrester--I said. How should I
know that in England they would make a lord of such a man! I did not
know it; but that to me is the same. You shall answer my question or
pay the price. My lord, I have brains of my own and I can use them.
You shall pay me what you owe--you will be wise to do so."
The Earl did not wince at the threat, nor did his habitual self-control
desert him. His insight would have been shallow indeed if he had not
perceived that he was face to face with a dangerous enemy, and one with
whom he might not trifle.
"Put your question to me and I will answer it," he said doggedly.
"Remember that we are not in Roumania, Count. A word from me and my
men would set you where questions would help you little. Speak freely
while I have the patience to hear you."
"As freely as you could desire, my lord. A wise man would not utter a
threat at such a time. Do you think that I, Georges Odin's son, do you
think that I come to England alone? Ah, my lord, how little you know
me! Open one of your windows and listen for the message my friends
will deliver to you. I come to you with white gloves upon my hands.
It is to ask you, my lord, in what prison my poor father is lying at
this moment. Tell me that, help me to open the gates for him, and we
are friends. It will be time to utter threats when you refuse."
The Earl's face blanched at the words, but he did not immediately reply
to them. The story which the young man told was too astonishing that
he should easily understand it.
"You father died in the fortress of Krajova," he said at length. "I
remember that it was in the month of November in the year 1874. Why do
you speak of the gates of his prison! It is incredible that you should
bring such a story to me."
"As little incredible as your own ignorance, my lord. I thought as you
did until the day, five years ago, which released Zallony's brother
from Krajova. He brought the news to us. My father lives. But he is
at Krajova no longer. The Russian Government never forgets, my lord.
It remembers the day when Georges Odin was its enemy. My own people
fear that my father's liberty would awaken old affairs that had better
sleep. He is the victim of them. Yours is the one hand in all Europe
that could set him free. My lord, the world must know his story and
you shall write it. And if not you--then my Lady Evelyn, your
daughter. Do you think I am so blind that I do not read the truth?
The blood that ran in the mother's veins runs in the daughter's. Open
the doors of this house to her and she will go to the hills as her
mother went. The desire of life throbs in her veins. When I speak to
her, I witness the struggle between the old and the new; faith and joy;
the convent and the theatre; love and the prison. Your pride, your
fear, have made a captive of her--but I, my lord, may yet cut her
pretty bonds. As God is in heaven, I will not spare her one hour of
shame if you do not give my father back to me. Think of that before
you answer me. The girl or the man. Your shame or her freedom. My
lord, you have not many hours in which to choose."
Such an alternative the Earl carried with him to his own room; such an
alternative spoke to him from every page of the diaries his hand turned
so painfully. It was as though the dead had risen to accuse him.
Yonder, in a great clamped drawer of the bureau, were the letters he
had received from his dead wife in the days when he contended with
Georges Odin for the love of that mad, wild girl of the Carpathians.
How ardently he had loved her! What mad hours they had lived amid the
gypsy children of Roumania! And yet in heart and will she was
another's. He had long known she loved the prisoner at Krajova. And
the one supremely cowardly thing he had done in the course of his life
had been done at the dictation of an uncontrollable passion which would
sacrifice even honor for her sake. Georges Odin, the Count's father,
had met him in fair fight--the better swordsman had won. Never would
he forget the day--the snow-capped hills, the white glen in which they
fought; the keen sword lightly engaging his own; then the swift attack,
the masterly _reposte_ and that sensation as of red-hot iron passing to
his very heart. No shame here, it is true; but there were days of
shame afterward when the story came out and King Charles himself asked
the question, was it so? A word from Robert Forrester would have saved
his enemy from the mines. He never spoke it. The man disappeared from
his ken, and he believed that he was dead. He could scarcely deny the
justice of the retribution which now overtook him.
Georges Odin alive and a prisoner still in some unknown fortress
citadel. How the very name could awaken forgotten sensations! It
seemed to the Earl as though the madness of his youth struggled once
more for mastery with the finer impulses and desires which a later day
had inspired. Yesterday he had been a country gentleman, seeking to
cast behind finally that cloak of unconventionally he had worn with
such pleasure in his youth. He had meant to whitewash the sepulchre;
to take his seat in the Lords; to equip himself for the great honors
thrust upon him; to marry Evelyn sedately to a son of a noble house and
then, as it were, to convince himself that the abnormal had been purged
out of him and would afflict him no more. These ambitions, however,
were powerless now to combat the more natural instincts which the story
of his youth could recreate for him. Once more in imagination he rode
the hills of Roumania as a free adventurer, submitting to the laws
neither of God nor of man. Once more the sensuous voluptuousness of
the Earl dominated him, and the spirit within him rebelled at its
captivity. He must escape convention, he thought, become a wanderer
once more. And Evelyn! Had he not feared to read in her acts this
very inheritance his own nature cried out for. He shuddered when he
thought of Evelyn. Who would save her in the hour of cataclysm?
Such were the thoughts of that night long drawn and terrible. In
moments of revulsion against those who had thus brought him to bay,
there were mad whisperings which reminded him that Georges Odin's son
was the prisoner of his house and that, as he would, he might readily
be detained there until some understanding had been come to. This was
a thought the Earl could recall again and again. The man was alone and
helpless in his hands. It would be folly to open the doors and to say,
"Go out and tell the story to the world." Melbourne Hall had harbored
greater secrets before that day, and might witness them again. Why
should he stand irresolute; what forbade him to save Evelyn from all
that revelation must mean to her? He knew not--it remained for the
house to answer him, silently and finally, with the answer of one who
has set out upon no idle mission but is well aware of the danger he
must face.
This was at the hour of dawn. Unable to sleep, the Earl sat by his
open window watching the chill gray light creeping over the dew-laden
grass and disclosing the trees one by one as though an unseen hand drew
back the curtain of the night from the stately branches. A thrush with
a sweet note heralded the day--the deer began to browse beneath the
great avenue of yews. Anon, a sweet fresh air, invigorating as a very
draught of life itself, came down from the hills and sent the ripples
leaping and splashing beneath the arches of the old bridge, as though
the river also had awakened from a lover's dreams. And now all stood
revealed as in a picture of a forest land; the vast spaces of ripe
green grass, delicious vistas of wood and thicket; home scenes, and
scenes of Nature untrammelled. Upon other days, often at such an hour
as this, the Earl had looked down upon them and said, "Mine--mine ...
all these are mine." To-day he viewed them with heavy eyes. Something
unfamiliar in the landscape attracted his attention and roused him from
his musings.
A loom of heavy white smoke floating upward from the glen! Nothing but
that. A drift of smoke and anon the figure of a man seen between the
trees! Another would hardly have remarked the circumstances, but
Robert Forrester became awake in an instant and as vigilant as one who
dreads that which his eyes discover.
"They are gypsies, by----" he said, "and they have come at this man's
bidding."
He knew the meaning of their presence without words to tell him. They
had come to demand the freedom of their old master, Georges Odin, whose
son had carried them across the seas with him.
"I must answer them," the Earl said, "and if I answer them, what then!
Will the other be silent?"
He turned away and shut the window violently, as though to shut the
spectre out.
"He would kill me," he said; "the world is not big enough to hide me
from Georges Odin."
CHAPTER XV
THE PRICE OF SALVATION
Evelyn met her father at the breakfast table on the following morning;
but their brief conversation in no way enlightened her. The Earl,
indeed, appeared to be entirely wrapped up in his own thoughts, and the
few questions he put to her were far from being helpful.
"You have seen my friend, Count Odin," he remarked abruptly, "what is
your opinion of him?"
"He interests me, but I do not like him," she replied as frankly.
"A first impression," the Earl continued with a note of annoyance but
ill-concealed. "You will get to know him better. His father was my
oldest friend."
"In which case the son is sometimes an embarrassment," she said
naturally, and with no idea of the meaning of her words.
The Earl looked up quickly.
"Has he told you anything," he asked with little cleverness, "spoken of
Bukharest, perhaps? You must have been a good deal together while I
was away. What did he say to you? A man like that is never one to
hold his tongue."
She smiled at the suggestion.
"He was unconscious for thirty hours. My store of small talk did not
come up to that. Why do you ask me, father? Don't you wish me to talk
to him?"
"My dear child, I wish you to like him if you can. His father was my
friend. We must show him hospitality just for his father's sake."
"Oh, I'll take him in the park and flirt with him if you wish it. The
nuns did not teach me how--I suppose flirtation was an extra."
Again he looked at her closely. This flippancy veiled some humor he
could not fathom. Was it possible that the girl had been fascinated
already by a man well schooled in the arts of pleasing women. And what
solution of his trouble would that be? If he gave Evelyn to the son of
Georges Odin--a coward's temptation from which he shrank immediately,
but not so far away that he put the thought entirely from him.
"I mean nothing so foolish," he exclaimed sharply; "the Count is our
guest and must be treated as such. I understand that he is allowed to
go out to-day. If you have any wish to accompany him in the car, he
will consider it a courtesy."
"Thank you," she said in a hard voice, "I should really be frightened
of the Vicar's wife."
Her raillery closed the conversation. The Earl went upstairs to his
guest. Evelyn, at a later hour, caught up a straw hat and ran off by
herself to the little boat-house by the river. She was a skilful
canoeist and there was just water enough for the dainty canoe her
father had bought in Canada for her. Never was she so much alone as
when lying, book in hand, beneath the shelter of some umbrageous
willow; and to-day she welcomed solitude as she had never welcomed it
since first they came to Melbourne Hall. One refuge there was above
others--Di Vernon's Arbor, they called it, where the willows spread
their trailing branches upon the very waters; where the banks were so
many couches of verdant grass, the iris generous in its abundant
beauty, the river but a pool of the deepest, most entrancing blue
water--this refuge she had named the Lake of Dreams, and to this to-day
she steered her frail craft, and there found that solitude she prized
so greatly.
What did her father mean by wishing her to be gracious to Count Odin?
Had he so changed in a night that he would sacrifice his only daughter
to atone for some wrong committed in his own boyhood? Her passionate
nature could resent the mere idea as one too shameful to contemplate.
But what did it mean then, and how would she stand if the Count
presumed upon her father's acquiescence? The fascination which this
stranger exercised did not deceive her; she knew it for the spell of
evil, to be resisted with all her heart and soul. Was she strong
enough, had she character enough to resist it? She would be alone
against them both if the worst befell, she remembered, and would fight
her battle unaided. Others might have been dismayed, but not Evelyn,
the daughter of Dora d'Istran. She was grateful perhaps that her
father had declared his preference so openly. A veiled hostility
toward their guest might have provoked her to show him civilities which
were asked of her no longer. As it was, she understood her position
and could prepare for it.
To this point her reverie had carried her when she became aware that
she was no longer alone. A rustling of leaves, a twig snapping upon
the bank, brought her instantly to a recognition of the fact that some
one watched her hiding-place behind the willows of the pool. Whoever
the intruder might be, he withdrew when she looked up, and his face
remained undiscovered. Evelyn resented this intrusion greatly, and was
about to move away when some one, hidden by the trees, began to play a
zither very sweetly, and to this the music of a guitar and a fiddle
were added presently, and then the pleasing notes of a human voice.
Pushing her canoe out into the stream, Evelyn could just espy a red
scarf flashing between the trees and, from time to time, the dark face
of a true son of Egypt. Who these men were or why they thus defied her
privacy, she could not so much as hazard; nor did she any longer resent
their temerity. The weird, wild music made a strange appeal to her.
It awakened impulses and ideas she had striven to subdue; inspired her
imagination to old ideals--excited and troubled her as no music she had
heard before. The same mad courage which sent her to London to play
upon the stage of a theatre returned to her and filled her with an
inexplicable ecstasy. She had all the desire to trample down the
conventions which stifled her liberty and to let the world think as it
would. Etta Romney came back to life and being in that moment--Etta
speaking to Evelyn and saying, "This is a message of the joy of life,
listen, for it is the voice of Destiny."
The music ceased upon a weird chord in a minor key; and, when it had
died away, Evelyn became aware that the men were talking in a strange
tongue and secretly, and that they still had no intention of declaring
their presence. With the passing of the spell of sweet sounds, she
found herself not without a little alarmed curiosity to learn who they
were and by whom they had been permitted to wander abroad in the park,
apparently unquestioned and unknown. Disquiet, indeed, would have sent
her to the house again, but for the appearance of no other than Count
Odin himself, who came without warning to the water's edge and laughed
at her evident perplexity.
"My fellows annoy you, dear lady," he said. "Pray let me make the
excuses for them. You do not like their music--is it not so?"
"Not at all, I like it very much," she said, not weighing her words.
"It is the maddest music I ever heard in all my life."
"Then come and tell young Zallony so. I brought him to England, Lady
Evelyn. I mean to make his fortune. Come and see him and tell him if
London will not like him when he scrapes the fiddle in a lady's ear.
It would be gracious of you to do that--these poor fellows would die if
you English ladies did not clap the hands for them. Come and be good
to young Zallony and he will never forget."
He helped her ashore with his left hand, for his right he carried in a
silken scarf, the last remaining witness to his accident. His dress
was a well-fitting suit of gray flannels, with a faint blue stripe upon
them. He had the air and manner of a man who denied himself no luxury
and was perfectly well aware of the fascination he exercised upon the
majority of women he met, whatever their nationality. Had Evelyn been
questioned she would have said that his eyes were the best gift with
which Nature had dowered him. Of the darkest gray, soft and
languishing in a common way, they could, when passion dominated them,
look into the very soul of the chosen victim and leave it almost
helpless before their steadfast gaze. To this a soldier's carriage was
to be added; the grand air of a man born in the East and accustomed to
be obeyed.
"This is Zallony," he said with a tinge of pride in his voice, "also
the son of a man with whom your father was very well acquainted in his
younger days. Command him and he will fiddle for you. There are a
hundred ladies in Bukharest who are, at all times, ready to die for
him. He comes to England and spares their lives. Admit his
generosity, dear lady. He will be very kind to you for my sake."
Zallony was a Romany of Romanies: a tall, dark-eyed gypsy, slim and
graceful, and a musician in every thought and act of his life. He wore
a dark suit of serge, a broad-brimmed hat, and a bright blue scarf
about his waist. With him were three others; one a very old man
dressed in a bizarre fashion of the East, and at no pains to adapt it
to the conventions of the West; the rest, dark-visaged, far from
amiable-looking fellows, who might never have smiled in all their
lives. Zallony remained a prince among them. He bowed low to Evelyn
and instantly struck up a lively air, which the others took up with
that verve and spirit so characteristic of Eastern musicians. When
they had finished, Evelyn found herself thanking them warmly. They had
no English, and could only answer her with repeated smiles.
"How did these people come here?" she asked the Count, as they began to
walk slowly toward the woods.
His reply found him once more telling the truth and astounded, perhaps,
at the ease of a strange employment.
"By the railway and the sea, Lady Evelyn. They are my watch-dogs--you
would call them that in England. Oh, yes, I am a timid traveller. I
like to hear these fellows barking in the woods. So much they love me
that if I were in prison they would pull down the walls to get me out.
Your father, my lord, does not forbid them to pitch their tents in his
park. Why should he? I am his guest and shall be a long time in this
country, perhaps. These fellows are not accustomed to live in houses.
Dig them a cave and they will make themselves happy--they are sons of
tents and the hills; men who know how to live and how to die. The
story of Roumania has written the name of Zallony's father in golden
letters. He fought for our country against the Russians who would have
stolen our liberty from us. To this day the Ministry at Petersburg
would hang his son if he was so very foolish as to visit that
unfortunate country. Truly, Zallony has many who love him not--he is
fortunate, Lady Evelyn, that your father is not among the number."
He meant her to ask him a question and she did not flinch from it.
"Why should my father have any opinions upon the matter? Are these
people known to him also?"
"My dear lady, in Roumania, twenty years ago, the bravest men, the
biggest hearts, were at Zallony's command. His regiment of hussars was
the finest that the world has ever seen. Bukharest made it a fashion
to send young men secretly to its ranks. The name of Zallony stood for
a brotherhood of men, not soldiers only, but those sworn to fidelity
upon the Cross; to serve each other faithfully, to hold all things in
common--the poor devils, how little they had to hold!--such were
Zallony's hussars. Lady, your father and my father served together in
the ranks; they took a common oath--they rode the hills, lived wild
nights on desolate mountains, shared good fortune and ill, until an
unlucky day when a woman came between them and brotherhood was no more.
I was such a little fellow then that I could not lift the sword they
put into my hands; but they filled my body up with wine and I rode my
pony after them, many a day that shall never be forgotten. This is to
tell you that my mother, a little wild girl of the Carpathians, died
the year I was born. Her I do not remember--a thing to be regretted,
for who may say what a mother's memory may not do for that man who will
let it be his guiding star. I did not know her, Lady Evelyn. When
they carried my father to prison, the priests took charge of me and
filled my head with their stories of peace and good-will--the head of
one who had ridden with Zallony on the hills and heard the call to arms
as soon as he could hear anything at all. They told me that my father
was dead--five years ago I learned that he lived. Lady Evelyn, he is a
prisoner, and I have come to England to give him liberty."
He looked at her, waiting for a second question, nor did she disappoint
him.
"Can my father help you to do that, Count?"
"My dear lady, consider his position. An English noble, bearing his
honored name; the master of great riches--what cannot he do if he will?
Let him say but one word to my Government and the affair is done. I
shall see my dear father again--the world will be a new world for me.
My lord has but to speak."
"Is it possible that he could hesitate?"
"All things are possible where human folly is concerned."
"Then there would be a reason, Count?"
"And a consequence, Lady Evelyn."
"Oh," she said quickly, "you are not frank with me even now."
"So frank that I speak to you as I never spoke to another in all my
life. You are the only person in England who can help me and help your
father to do well. I have asked him for the liberty of a man who never
did him a wrong. He has refused to answer me, yes or no. Why should I
tell you that delay is dangerous? If I am silent a little while, do
you not guess that it is for your sake that I am silent? These things
are rarely hidden from clever women. Say that Count Odin has learned
to be a lover and you will question me no more."
They were in a lonely glade, dark with the shade of beeches, when he
made this apparently honest declaration; and he stood before her
forbidding her to advance further or to avoid his entreaty. Her
confusion, natural to her womanhood, he interpreted in its true light.
"She does not love me, but there is that in her blood which will give
me command over her," he said. And this was the precise truth. Evelyn
had, from the first, been fully aware of the strange spell this man
could put upon her. His presence seemed to her as that of the figure
of evil beckoning her to wild pleasures and forbidden gardens of
delight. Strong as her will was, this she could not combat. And she
shrank from him, helpless, and yet aware of his power.
"You are speaking to me of grave things," she said quietly. "My own
feelings must not enter into them. If my father owes this debt to you,
he shall pay it. I will be no part of the price, Count Odin."
"_Cara mia_," he said, taking both her hands and trying to draw her
close to him, "I care not how it is if you shall say you love me. Do
not hide the truth from yourself. Your father is in great danger. You
can save him from the penalties of wrong. Will you refuse to do so
because I love you--love you as I have never believed a man could love;
love you as my father loved your mother so many years ago--with the
love of a race that has fought for women and died for them; a race
which is deaf when a women says no, which follows her, _cara mia_, to
the end of the earth and has eyes for nothing else but the house which
shelters her? Will you do this when your heart can command me as you
will--saying, speak or be silent, forget or remember? I know you
better; you love me, Evelyn; you are afraid to tell me, but you love
me. That is why I remain a prisoner of this house--because you love
me, and I shall make you my wife. Ah, _cara mia_, say it but once--I
love you, Georges, the son of my father's friend--I love you and will
not forbid your words."
A strange thrill ran through Evelyn's veins as she listened to this
passionate declaration. The frenzied words of love did not deceive
her. This man, she thought, would so speak to many a woman in the
years to come. A better wit would have concealed his purpose and
rendered him less frank. "He would sell his father's liberty at my
bidding," she said, and the thought set her struggling in his arms,
flushed with anger and with shame.
"I will not hear you, Count," she cried again and again. "I cannot
love you--you are not of my people. If my father has done wrong, he
shall repay. He is not so helpless that he cannot save me from this.
Oh, please let me go; your hands hurt me. I can never be your wife,
never, never!"
[Illustration: "Oh please let me go; your hands hurt me. I can never
be your wife, never, never!"]
He released her reluctantly, for his quick ear had caught the sound of
a horse galloping upon the open grass beyond the thicket.
"You will answer me differently another day," he said smilingly;
"meanwhile, _cara mia_, there are two secrets to keep--yours and mine.
If the charming Lady Evelyn will not hear me, I must remember Etta
Romney, a young lady of my acquaintance--ah, you know her too; and that
is well for her. Let us return to the house. My lord will have much
to say to me and I to him."
They went up to the Hall together in silence. Evelyn knew how much she
was in his power and how idle her veiled threats had been.
She could save her father from this man--truly. But at what a price!
"Etta Romney would marry him," she said bitterly; "but I--Evelyn--God
help me to be true to myself!"
CHAPTER XVI
A GAME OF GOLF
Golf at Moretown is "by favor of the Lord of the Manor" played across a
corner of the home park, so remote from Melbourne Hall that you have a
vista of that fine old house but rarely from the trees, and nowhere at
all if you be an ardent player.
Such a description could in all sincerity have been applied to either
of our old friends Dr. Philips and the Rev. Harry Fillimore, the vicar
of the parish. They played the game as though all their worldly hope
depended upon it. The best of friends at common times, difficulty
could provoke them to such violent hostilities that they did not speak
a word to each other until the after-luncheon glass of port had been
slowly sipped. Intimate in their knowledge each of the other, the
Vicar knew exactly when to cough that the Doctor's forcible
exclamations might not be overheard by the caddies. The Doctor, upon
his part, sympathized very cordially with the Vicar when that worthy
found himself in a bunker. "Harry, my dear boy, pray remember where
you are," he would say, and to give him his due, the Vicar rarely
forgot the number of strokes necessary to extract himself from one of
these many vales of tears which abounded at Moretown.
Other moments, it should be observed, were those of mutual admiration.
"If you could only putt as well as you can drive, you might play
Vardon," the Vicar would tell the Doctor.
To which the reply would be:
"My dear Harry, Taylor could not play a better approach than that.
You'll be down to scratch if you go on improving in this way."
Needless to say, such enthusiasm demanded complete absorption in the
game and tolerated no liberties. If anyone had told the Doctor of the
fall of Port Arthur at the moment of his playing an approach, that man
assuredly would have deserved any fate that overtook him. When the
stove in the vestry set fire to the chancel roof and did five hundred
pounds worth of damage to Moretown Church, no one had the courage to
tell the Vicar until he had holed out on the eighteenth, green. "Words
won't put the roof on again," the sexton wisely said, "and a precious
lot of words you'll get from 'ee while 'ee's playin' with his ball."
So the doleful news was reserved for the Club House. "I really fear I
ought not to play a second round," the Vicar exclaimed when he heard
it; "most vexing, I must say."
These
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