What's Bred in the Bone
by Grant Allen · English · Gutenberg #6010 · 573,912 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: What's Bred in the Bone
Author: Grant Allen
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6010]
Most recently updated: May 24, 2013
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE.
L1000 PRIZE NOVEL.
By GRANT ALLEN
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. ELMA'S STRANGER
II. TWO'S COMPANY
III. CYRIL WARING'S BROTHER
IV. INSIDE THE TUNNEL
V. GRATITUDE
VI. TWO STRANGE MEETINGS
VII. KELMSCOTT OF TILGATE
VIII. ELMA BREAKS OUT
IX. AND AFTER?
X. COLONEL KELMSCOTT'S REPENTANCE
XI. A FAMILY JAR
XII. IN SILENCE AND TEARS
XIII. BUSINESS FIRST
XIV. MUSIC HATH POWER
XV. THE PATH OF DUTY
XVI. STRUGGLE AND VICTORY
XVII. VISIONS OF WEALTH
XVIII. GENTLE WOOER
XIX. SELF OR BEARER
XX. MONTAGUE NEVITT FINESSES
XXI. COLONEL KELMSCOTT'S PUNISHMENT
XXII. CROSS PURPOSES
XXIII. GUY IN LUCK
XXIV. A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING
XXV. LEAD TRUMPS
XXVI. A CHANCE MEETING
XXVII. SOMETHING TO THEIR ADVANTAGE
XXVIII. MISTAKEN IDENTITY
XXIX. WOMAN'S INTUITION
XXX. FRESH DISCOVERIES
XXXI. "GOLDEN JOYS"
XXXII. A NEW DEPARTURE
XXXIII. TIME FLIES
XXXIV. A STROKE FOR FREEDOM
XXXV. PERILS BY THE WAY
XXXVI. DESERTED
XXXVII. AUX ARMES!
XXXVIII. NEWS FROM THE CAPE
XXXIX. A GLEAM OF LIGHT
XL. THE BOLT FALLS
XLI. WHAT JUDGE?
XLII. UNEXPECTED EVIDENCE
XLIII. SIR GILBERT'S TEMPTATION
XLIV. AT BAY
XLV. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
CHAPTER I.
ELMA'S STRANGER.
It was late when Elma reached the station. Her pony had jibbed on
the way downhill, and the train was just on the point of moving
off as she hurried upon the platform. Old Matthews, the stout and
chubby-cheeked station-master, seized her most unceremoniously by
the left arm, and bundled her into a carriage. He had known her
from a child, so he could venture upon such liberties.
"Second class, miss? Yes, miss. Here y'are. Look sharp, please.
Any more goin' on? All right, Tom! Go ahead there!" And lifting his
left hand, he whistled a shrill signal to the guard to start her.
As for Elma, somewhat hot in the face with the wild rush for her
ticket, and grasping her uncounted change, pence and all, in her
little gloved hand, she found herself thrust, hap-hazard, at the
very last moment, into the last compartment of the last
carriage--alone--with an artist.
Now, you and I, to be sure, most proverbially courteous and
intelligent reader, might never have guessed at first sight, from
the young man's outer aspect, the nature of his occupation. The
gross and clumsy male intellect, which works in accordance with
the stupid laws of inductive logic, has a queer habit of requiring
something or other, in the way of definite evidence, before it
commits itself offhand to the distinct conclusion. But Elma Clifford
was a woman; and therefore she knew a more excellent way. HER habit
was, rather to look things once fairly and squarely in the face,
and then, with the unerring intuition of her sex, to make up her
mind about them firmly, at once and for ever. That's one of the
many glorious advantages of being born a woman. You don't need to
learn in order to know. You know instinctively. And yet our girls
want to go to Girton, and train themselves up to be senior wranglers!
Elma Clifford, however, had NOT been to Girton, so, as she stumbled
into her place, she snatched one hurried look at Cyril Wiring's
face, and knew at a glance he was a landscape painter.
Now, this was clever of her, even in a woman, for Cyril Waring,
as he fondly imagined, was travelling that line that day disguised
as a stock-broker. In other words, there was none of the brown
velveteen affectation about his easy get-up. He was an artist,
to be sure, but he hadn't assiduously and obtrusively dressed his
character. Instead of cutting his beard to a Vandyke point, or
enduing his body in a Titianesque coat, or wearing on his head
a slouched Rembrandt hat, stuck carelessly just a trifle on one
side in artistic disorder, he was habited, for all the world like
anybody else, in the grey tweed suit of the common British tourist,
surmounted by the light felt hat (or bowler), to match, of the
modern English country gentleman. Even the soft silk necktie of a
delicate aesthetic hue that adorned his open throat didn't proclaim
him at once a painter by trade. It showed him merely as a man of
taste, with a decided eye for harmonies of colour.
So when Elma pronounced her fellow-traveller immediately, in
her own mind, a landscape artist, she was exercising the familiar
feminine prerogative of jumping, as if by magic, to a correct
conclusion. It's a provoking way they have, those inscrutable women,
which no mere male human being can ever conceivably fathom.
She was just about to drop down, as propriety demands, into the corner
seat diagonally opposite to--and therefore as far as possible away
from--her handsome companion, when the stranger rose, and, with
a very flushed face, said, in a hasty, though markedly deferential
and apologetic tone--
"I beg your pardon, but--excuse me for mentioning it--I think you're
going to sit down upon--ur--pray don't be frightened--a rather
large snake of mine."
There was something so comically alarmed in the ring of his tone--as
of a naughty schoolboy detected in a piece of mischief--that,
propriety to the contrary notwithstanding, Elma couldn't for the
life of her repress a smile. She looked down at the seat where the
stranger pointed, and there, sure enough, coiled up in huge folds,
with his glossy head in attitude to spring at her, a great banded
snake lay alert and open-eyed.
"Dear me," Elma cried, drawing back a little in surprise, but not
at all in horror, as she felt she ought to do. "A snake! How curious!
I hope he's not dangerous."
"Not at all," the young man answered, still in the same half-guilty
tone of voice as before. "He's of a poisonous kind, you know; but
his fangs have been extracted. He won't do you any injury. He's
perfectly harmless. Aren't you, Sardanapalus? Eh, eh, my beauty?
But I oughtn't to have let him loose in the carriage, of course,"
he added, after a short pause. "It's calculated to alarm a nervous
passenger. Only I thought I was alone, and nobody would come in;
so I let him out for a bit of a run between the stations. It's so
dull for him, poor fellow, being shut up in his box all the time
when he's travelling."
Elma looked down at the beautiful glossy creature with genuine
admiration. His skin was like enamel; his banded scales shone bright
and silvery. She didn't know why, but somehow she felt she wasn't
in the least afraid of him. "I suppose one ought to be repelled at
once by a snake," she said, taking the opposite seat, and keeping
her glance fixed firmly upon the reptile's eye; "but then, this is
such a handsome one! I can't say why, but I don't feel afraid of
him at all as I ought, to do. Every right-minded person detests
snakes, don't they? And yet, how exquisitely flexible and beautiful
he is! Oh, pray don't put him back in his box for me. He's basking
in the sun here. I should be sorry to disturb him."
Cyril Waring looked at her in considerable surprise. He caught
the creature in his hands as he spoke, and transferred it at once
to a tin box, with a perforated lid, that lay beside him. "Go
back, Sardanapalus," he said, in a very musical and pleasant voice,
forcing the huge beast into the lair with gentle but masterful
hands. "Go back, and go to sleep, sir. It's time for your nap. ...
Oh no, I couldn't think of letting him out any more in the carriage
to the annoyance of others. I'm ashamed enough as it is of having
unintentionally alarmed you. But you came in so unexpectedly, you
see, I hadn't time to put my queer pet away; and, when the door
opened, I was afraid he might slip out, or get under the seats, so
all I could do was just to soothe him with my hand, and keep him
quiet till the door was shut to again."
"Indeed, I wasn't at all afraid of him," Elma answered, slipping
her change into her pocket, and looking prettier through her blush
than even her usual self. "On the contrary, I really liked to see
him. He's such a glorious snake! The lights and shades on his back
are so glancing and so wonderful! He's a perfect model. Of course,
you're painting him."
The stranger started. "I'm painting him--yes, that's true,"
he replied, with a look of sudden surprise; "but why 'of course,'
please? How on earth could you tell I was an artist even?"
Elma glanced back in his face, and wondered to herself, too.
Now she came to think of it, HOW did she know that handsome young
man, with the charming features, and the expressive eyes, and the
neatly-cut brown beard, and the attractive manner, was an artist
at all, or anything like it? And how did she know the snake was
his model? For the life of her, she couldn't have answered those
questions herself.
"I suppose I just guessed it," she answered, after a short pause,
blushing still more deeply at the sudden way she had thus been
dragged into conversation with the good-looking stranger. Elma's
skin was dark--a clear and creamy olive-brown complexion, such as
one sometimes sees in southern Europe, though rarely in England; and
the effect of the blush through it didn't pass unnoticed by Cyril
Waring's artistic eye. He would have given something for the chance
of transferring that delicious effect to canvas. The delicate
transparency of the blush threw up those piercing dark eyes, and
reflected lustre even on the glossy black hair that fringed her
forehead. Not an English type of beauty at all, Elma Clifford's,
he thought to himself as he eyed her closely: rather Spanish or
Italian, or say even Hungarian.
"Well, you guessed right, at any rate," he went on, settling down
in his seat once more, after boxing his snake, but this time face
to face with her. "I'm working at a beautiful bit of fern and
foliage--quite tropical in its way--in a wood hereabout; and I've
introduced Sardanapalus, coiled up in the foreground, just to
give life to the scene, don't you know, and an excuse for a title.
I mean to call it 'The Rajah's Rest.' Behind, great ferns and a
mossy bank; in front, Sardanapalus, after tiffin, rolled spirally
round, and taking his siesta."
This meeting was a long-wished-for occasion. Elma had never before
met a real live painter. Now, it was the cherished idea of her youth
to see something some day of that wonderful non-existent fantastic
world which we still hope for and dream about and call Bohemia. She
longed to move in literary and artistic circles. She had fashioned
to herself, like many other romantic girls, a rose-coloured picture
of Bohemian existence; not knowing indeed that Bohemia is now, alas!
an extinct province, since Belgravia and Kensington swallowed it
bodily down, digested, and assimilated it. So this casual talk
with the handsome young artist in the second-class carriage, on
the Great Southern line, was to Elma as a charming and delightful
glimpse of an enchanted region she could never enter. It was Paradise
to the Peri. She turned the conversation at once, therefore, with
resolute intent upon art and artists, determined to make the most
while it lasted of this unique opportunity. And since the subject
of self, with an attentive listener, is always an attractive
one, even to modest young men like Cyril Waring--especially when
it's a pretty girl who encourages you to dilate upon it--why, the
consequence was, that before many minutes were over, the handsome
young man was discoursing from his full heart to a sympathetic soul
about his chosen art, its hopes and its ideals, accompanied, by a
running fire of thumb-nail illustrations. He had even got so far in
the course of their intimacy as to take out the portfolio, which
lay hidden under the seat--out of deference to his disguise as
a stock-broker, no doubt--and to display before Elma's delighted
eyes, with many explanatory comments as to light and shade, or
perspective and foreshortening, the studies for the picture he had
just then engaged upon.
By-and-by, as his enthusiasm warmed under Elma's encouragement,
the young artist produced Sardanapalus himself once more from his
box, and with deftly persuasive fingers coiled him gracefully round
on the opposite seat into the precise attitude he was expected to
take up when he sat for his portrait in the mossy foreground.
Elma couldn't say why, but that creature fascinated her. The longer
she looked at him the more intensely he interested her. Not that
she was one bit afraid of him, as she might reasonably have expected
to be, according to all womanly precedent. On the contrary, she
felt an overwhelming desire to take him up in her own hands and
stroke and fondle him. He was so lithe and beautiful; his scales
so glistened! At last she stretched out one dainty gloved hand to
pet the spotted neck.
"Take care," the painter cried, in a warning voice; "don't be
frightened if he springs at you. He's vicious at times. But his
fangs are drawn; he can't possibly hurt you."
The warning, however, was quite unnecessary. Sardanapalus, instead
of springing, seemed to recognise a friend. He darted out his
forked tongue in rapid vibration, and licked her neat grey glove
respectfully. Then, lifting his flattened head with serpentine
deliberation, he coiled his great folds slowly, slowly, with sinuous
curves, round the girl's soft arm till he reached her neck in
long, winding convolutions. There he held up his face, and trilled
his swift, sibilant tongue once more with evident pleasure. He
knew his place. He was perfectly at home at once with the pretty,
olive-skinned lady. His master looked on in profound surprise.
"Why, you're a perfect snake-charmer," he cried at last, regarding
her with open eyes of wonder. "I never saw Sardanapalus behave
like that with a stranger before. He's generally by no means fond
of new acquaintances. You must be used to snakes. Perhaps you've
kept one? You're accustomed of old to their ways and manners?"
"No, indeed," Elma cried, laughing in spite of herself, a clear
little laugh of feminine triumph; for she had made a conquest, she
saw, of Sardanapalus; "I never so much as touched one in all my
life before. And I thought I should hate them. But this one seems
quite tame and tractable. I'm not in the least afraid of him. He is
so soft and smooth, and his movements are all so perfectly gentle."
"Ah, that's the way with snakes, always," Cyril Waring put in,
with an admiring glance at the pretty, fearless brunette and her
strange companion. "They know at once whether people like them or
not, and they govern themselves accordingly. I suppose it's instinct.
When they see you're afraid of them, they spring and hiss; but when
they see you take to them by nature, they make themselves perfectly
at home in a moment. They don't wait to be asked. They've no false
modesty. Well, then, you see," he went on, drawing imaginary lines
with his ticket on the sketch he was holding up, "I shall work in
Sardanapalus just there, like that, coiled round in a spire. You
catch the idea, don't you?"
As he spoke, Elma's eye, following his hand while it moved, chanced
to fall suddenly on the name of the station printed on the ticket
with which he was pointing. She gave a sharp little start.
"Warnworth!" she cried, flushing up, with some slight embarrassment
in her voice; "why, that's ever so far back. We're long past
Warnworth. We ran by it three or four stations behind; in fact,
it's the next place to Chetwood, where I got in at."
Cyril Waring looked up with a half-guilty smile as embarrassed as
her own.
"Oh yes," he said quietly. "I knew that quite well. I'm down here
often. It's half-way between Chetwood and Warnworth I'm painting.
But I thought--well, if you'll excuse me saying it, I thought
I was so comfortable and so happy where I was, that I might just
as well go on a station or two more, and then pay the difference,
and take the next train back to Warnworth. You see," he added,
after a pause, with a still more apologetic and penitent air, "I saw
you were so interested in--well, in snakes, you know, and pictures."
Gentle as he was, and courteous, and perfectly frank with her,
Elma, nevertheless, felt really half inclined to be angry at this
queer avowal. That is to say, at least, she knew it was her bounden
duty, as an English lady, to seem so; and she seemed so accordingly
with most Britannic severity. She drew herself up in a very stiff
style, and stared fixedly at him, while she began slowly and steadily
to uncoil Sardanapalus from her imprisoned arm with profound dignity.
"I'm sorry I should have brought you so far out of your way," she
said, in a studied cold voice--though that was quite untrue, for,
as a matter of fact, she had enjoyed their talk together immensely.
"And besides, you've been wasting your valuable time when you ought
to have been painting. You'll hardly get any work done now at all
this morning. I must ask you to get out at the very next station."
The young man bowed with a crestfallen air. "No time could possibly
be wasted," he began, with native politeness, "that was spent--" Then
he broke off quite suddenly. "I shall certainly get out wherever
you wish," he went on, more slowly, in an altered voice; "and I
sincerely regret if I've unwittingly done anything to annoy you
in any way. The fact is, the talk carried me away. It was art that
misled me. I didn't mean, I'm sure, to obtrude myself upon you."
And even as he spoke they whisked, unawares, into the darkness of
a tunnel.
CHAPTER II.
TWO'S COMPANY.
Elma was just engaged in debating with herself internally how a
young lady of perfect manners and impeccable breeding, travelling
without a chaperon, ought to behave under such trying circumstances,
after having allowed herself to be drawn unawares into familiar
conversation with a most attractive young artist, when all of a
sudden a rapid jerk of the carriage succeeded in extricating her
perforce, and against her will, from this awkward dilemma. Something
sharp pulled up their train unexpectedly. She was aware of a loud
noise and a crash in front, almost instantaneously followed by a
thrilling jar--a low dull thud--a sound of broken glass--a quick
blank stoppage. Next instant she found herself flung wildly forward
into her neighbour's arms, while the artist, for his part, with
outstretched hands, was vainly endeavouring to break the force of
the fall for her.
All she knew for the first few minutes was merely that there had
been an accident to the train, and they were standing still now in
the darkness of the tunnel.
For some seconds she paused, and gasped hard for breath, and tried
in vain to recall her scattered senses. Then slowly she sank back
on the seat once more, vaguely conscious that something terrible
had happened to the train, but that neither she nor her companion
were seriously injured.
As she sank back in her place, Cyril Waring bent forward towards
her with sympathetic kindliness.
"You're not hurt, I hope," he said, holding out one hand to help
her rise. "Stand up for a minute, and see if you're anything worse
than severely shaken. No? That's right, then! That's well, as far
as it goes. But I'm afraid the nervous shock must have been very
rough on you."
Elma stood tip, with tears gathering fast in her eyes. She'd have
given the world to be able to cry now, for the jar had half stunned
her and shaken her brain; but before the artist's face she was
ashamed to give free play to her feelings. So she only answered,
in a careless sort of tone--
"Oh, it's nothing much, I think. My head feels rather queer; but
I've no bones broken. A collision, I suppose. Oughtn't we to get
out at once and see what's happened to the other people?"
Cyril Waring moved hastily to the door, and, letting down the window,
tried with a violent effort to turn the handle from the outside.
But the door wouldn't open. As often happens in such accidents, the
jar had jammed it. He tried the other side, and with some difficulty
at last succeeded in forcing it open. Then he descended cautiously
on to the six-foot-way, and held out his hand to help Elma from
the carriage.
It was no collision, he saw at once, but a far more curious and
unusual accident.
Looking ahead through the tunnel, all was black as night. A dense
wall of earth seemed to block and fill in the whole space in front
of them. Part of one broken and shattered carriage lay tossed about
in wild confusion on the ground close by. Their own had escaped.
All the rest was darkness.
In a moment, Cyril rightly divined what must have happened to the
train. The roof of the tunnel had caved in on top of it. At least
one carriage--the one immediately in front of them--had been
crushed and shattered by the force of its fall. Their own was the
last, and it had been saved as if by a miracle. It lay just outside
the scene of the subsidence.
One thought rose instinctively at once in the young man's mind. They
must first see if any one was injured in the other compartments, or
among the debris of the broken carriage; and then they must make
for the open mouth of the tunnel, through which the light of day
still gleamed bright behind them.
He peered in hastily at the other three windows. Not a soul in any
one of the remaining compartments! It was a very empty train, he
had noticed himself, when he had got in at Tilgate; the one solitary
occupant of the front compartment of their carriage, a fat old
lady with a big black bag, had bundled out at Chetwood. They were
alone in the tunnel--at this end of the train at least; their sole
duty now was to make haste and save themselves.
He gazed overhead. The tunnel was bricked in with an arch on top.
The way through in front was blocked, of course, by the fallen mass
of water-logged sandstone. He glanced back towards the open mouth.
A curious circumstance, half-way down to the opening, attracted at
once his keen and practised eye.
Strange to say, the roof at one spot was not a true arc of a
circle. It bulged slightly downwards, in a flattened arch, as if
some superincumbent weight were pressing hard upon it. Great heavens,
what was this? Another trouble in store! He looked again, still
more earnestly, and started with horror.
In the twinkling of an eye, his reason told him, beyond the shadow
of a doubt, what was happening at the bulge. A second fall was
just about to take place close by them. Clearly there were TWO
weak points m the roof of the tunnel. One had already given way in
front; the other was on the very eve of giving way behind them. If
it fell, they were imprisoned between two impassable walls of sand
and earth. Without one instant's delay, he turned and seized his
companion's hand hastily.
"Quick! quick!" he cried, in a voice of eager warning. "Run, run
for your life to the mouth of the tunnel! Here, come! You've only
just time! It's going, it's going!"
But Elma's feminine instinct worked quicker and truer than even
Cyril Waring's manly reason. She didn't know why; she couldn't say
how; but in that one indivisible moment of time she had taken in
and grasped to the full all the varying terrors of the situation.
Instead of running, however, she held back her companion with a
nervous force she could never before have imagined herself capable
of exerting.
"Stop here," she cried authoritatively, wrenching his arm in her
haste. "If you go you'll be killed. There's no time to run past.
It'll be down before you're there. See, see, it's falling."
Even before the words were well out of her mouth, another great
crash shook the ground behind them. With a deafening roar, the
tunnel gave way in a second place beyond. Dust and sand filled the
air confusedly. For a minute or two all was noise and smoke and
darkness. What exactly had happened neither of them could see.
But now the mouth of the tunnel was blocked at either end alike,
and no daylight was visible. So far as Cyril could judge, they
two stood alone, in the dark and gloom, as in a narrow cell, shut
in with their carriage between two solid walls of fallen earth and
crumbling sandstone.
At this fresh misfortune, Elma sat down on the footboard with her
face in her hands, and began to sob bitterly. The artist leaned over
her and let her cry for a while in quiet despair. The poor girl's
nerves, it was clear, were now wholly unstrung. She was brave, as
women go, undoubtedly brave; but the shock and the terror of such
a position as this were more than enough to terrify the bravest.
At last Cyril ventured on a single remark.
"How lucky," he said, in an undertone, "I didn't get out at Warnworth
after all. It would have been dreadful if you'd been left all alone
in this position."
Elma glanced up at him with a sudden rush of gratitude. By the dim
light of the oil lamp that still flickered feebly in the carriage
overhead, she could see his face; and she knew by the look in
those truthful eyes that he really meant it. He really meant he
was glad he'd come on and exposed himself to this risk, which he
might otherwise have avoided, because he would be sorry to think a
helpless woman should be left alone by herself in the dark to face
it. And, frightened as she was, she was glad of it too. To be alone
would be awful. This was pre-eminently one of those many positions
in life in which a woman prefers to have a man beside her.
And yet most men, she knew, would have thought to themselves at
once, "What a fool I was to come on beyond my proper station, and
let myself in for this beastly scrape, just because I'd go a few
miles further with a pretty girl I never saw in my life before,
and will probably never see in my life again, if I once get well
out of this precious predicament."
But that they would ever get out of it at all seemed to both of them
now in the highest degree improbable. Cyril, by reason, Elma, by
instinct, argued out the whole situation at once, and correctly.
There had been much rain lately. The sandstone was water-logged. It
had caved in bodily, before them and behind them. A little isthmus
of archway still held out in isolation just above their heads. At
any moment that isthmus might give way too, and, falling on their
carriage, might crush them beneath its weight. Their lives depended
upon the continued resisting power of some fifteen yards or so of
dislocated masonry.
Appalled at the thought, Cyril moved from his place for a minute,
and went forward to examine the fallen block in front. Then he
paced his way back with groping steps to the equally ruinous mass
behind them. Elma's eyes, growing gradually accustomed to the
darkness and the faint glimmer of the oil lamps, followed his
action with vague and tearful interest.
"If the roof doesn't give way," he said calmly at last, when he
returned once more to her, "and if we can only let them know we're
alive in the tunnel, they may possibly dig us out before we choke.
There's air enough here for eighteen hours for us."
He spoke very quietly and reassuringly, as if being shut up in a
fallen tunnel between two masses of earth were a matter that needn't
cause one the slightest uneasiness; but his words suggested to
Elma's mind a fresh and hitherto unthought-of danger.
"Eighteen hours," she cried, horror-struck. "Do you mean to say
we may have to stop here, all alone, for eighteen hours together?
Oh, how very dreadful! How long! How frightening! And if they don't
dig us out before eighteen hours are over, do you mean to say we
shall die of choking?"
Cyril gazed down at her with a very regretful and sympathetic face.
"I didn't mean to frighten you," he said; "at least, not more than
you're frightened already; but, of course, there's only a certain
amount of oxygen in the space that's left us; and as we're using
it up at every breath, it'll naturally hold out for a limited time
only. It can't be much more than eighteen hours. Still, I don't
doubt they'll begin digging us out at once; and if they dig through
fast, they may yet be in time, even so, to save us."
Elma bent forward with her face in her hands again, and, rocking
herself to and fro in an agony of despair, gave herself vip to a
paroxysm of utter misery. This was too, too terrible. To think of
eighteen hours in that gloom and suspense; and then to die at last,
gasping hard for breath, in the poisonous air of that pestilential
tunnel.
For nearly an hour she sat there, broken down and speechless; while
Cyril Waring, taking a seat in silence by her side, tried at first
with mute sympathy to comfort and console her. Then he turned to
examine the roof, and the block at either end, to see if perchance
any hope remained of opening by main force an exit anywhere. He
even began by removing a little of the sand at the side of the line
with a piece of shattered board from the broken carriage in front;
but that was clearly no use. More sand tumbled in as fast as
he removed it. He saw there was nothing left for it but patience
or despair. And of the two, his own temperament dictated rather
patience.
He returned at last, wearied out, to Elma's side. Elma, still
sitting disconsolate on the footboard, rocking herself up and down,
and moaning low and piteously, looked up as he came with a mute
glance of inquiry. She was very pretty. That struck him even now.
It made his heart bleed to think she should be so cowed and terrified.
"I'm sorry to bother you," he said, after a pause, half afraid to
speak, "but there are four lamps all burning hard in these four
compartments, and using up the air we may need by-and-by for our
own breathing. If I were to climb to the top of the carriage--which
I can easily do--I could put them all out, and economize our oxygen.
It would leave us in the dark, but it'd give us one more chance
of life. Don't you think I'd better get up and turn them off, or
squash them?"
Elma clasped her hands in horror at the bare suggestion.
"Oh dear, no!" she cried hastily. "Please, PLEASE don't do that.
It's bad enough to choke slowly, like this, in the gloom. But to
die in the dark--that would be ten times more terrible. Why, it's
a perfect Black Hole of Calcutta, even now. If you were to turn
out the lights I could never stand it."
Cyril gave a respectful little nod of assent.
"Very well," he answered, as calm as ever. "That's just as you will.
I only meant to suggest it to you. My one wish is to do the best
I can for you. Perhaps"--and he hesitated--"perhaps I'd better
let it go on for an hour or two more, and then, whenever the air
begins to get very oppressive--I mean when one begins to feel it's
really failing us--one person, you know, could live on so much
longer than two... it would be a pity not to let you stand every
chance. Perhaps I might---"
Elma gazed at him aghast in the utmost horror. She knew what he meant
at once. She didn't even need that he should finish his sentence.
"Never!" she said, firmly clenching her small hand hard. "It's so
wrong of you to think of it, even. I could never permit it. It's
your duty to keep yourself alive at all hazards as long as ever
you can. You should remember your mother, your sisters, your family."
"Why, that's just it," Cyril answered, a little crestfallen, and
feeling he had done quite a wicked thing in venturing to suggest
that his companion should have every chance for her own life. "I've
got no mother, you see, no sisters, no family. Nobody on earth
would ever be one penny the worse if _I_ were to die, except my
twin brother; he's the only relation I ever had in my life; and
even HE, I dare say, would very soon get over it. Whereas YOU"--he
paused and glanced at her compassionately--"there are probably
many to whom the loss would be a very serious one. If I could do
anything to save you---" He broke off suddenly, for Elma looked
up at him once more with a little burst of despair.
"If you talk like that," she cried, with a familiarity that comes
of association in a very great danger, "I don't know what I shall
do; I don't know what I shall say to you. Why, I couldn't bear to
be left alone here to die by myself. If only for MY sake, now we're
boxed up here together, I think you ought to wait and do the best
you can for yourself."
"Very well," Cyril answered once more, in a most obedient tone. "If
you wish me to live to keep you company in the tunnel, I'll live
while I may. You have only to say what you wish. I'm here to wait
upon you."
In any other circumstances, such a phrase would have been a mere
piece of conversational politeness. At that critical moment, Elma
knew it for just what it was--a simple expression of his real
feeling.
CHAPTER III.
CYRIL WARING'S BROTHER.
It was nine o'clock that self-same night, and two men sat together
in a comfortable sitting-room under the gabled roofs of Staple
Inn, Holborn. It was as cosy a nook as any to be found within the
four-mile radius, and artistic withal in its furniture and decorations.
In the biggest arm-chair by the empty grate, a young man with a
flute paused for a moment, irresolute. He was a handsome young man,
expressive eyes, and a neatly-cut brown beard--for all the world
like Cyril Waring's. Indeed, if Elma Clifford could that moment have
been transported from her gloomy prison in the Lavington tunnel to
that cosy room at Staple Inn, Holborn, she would have started with
surprise to find the young man who sat in the arm-chair was to all
outer appearance the self-same person as the painter she had just
left at the scene of the accident. For the two Warings were truly
"as like as two peas"; a photograph of one might almost have done
duty for the photograph of the other.
The other occupant of the room, who leaned carelessly against the
mantelshelf, was taller and older; though he, too, was handsome,
but with the somewhat cynical and unprepossessing handsomeness of
a man of the world. His forehead was high; his lips were thin; his
nose inclined toward the Roman pattern; his black moustache was
carefully curled and twisted at the extremities. Moreover, he was
musical; for he held in one hand the bow of a violin, having just
laid down the instrument itself on the sofa after a plaintive duet
with Guy Waring.
"Seen this evening's paper, by the way, Guy?" he asked, after
a pause, in a voice that was all honeyed charm and seductiveness.
"I brought the St. James's Gazette for you, but forgot to give you
it; I was so full of this new piece of mine. Been an accident this
morning, I see, on the Great Southern line. Somewhere down Cyril's
way, too; he's painting near Chetwood; wonder whether he could
possibly, by any chance, have been in it?"
He drew the paper carelessly from his pocket as he spoke, and handed
it with a graceful air of inborn courtesy to his younger companion.
Everything that Montague Nevitt did, indeed, was naturally graceful
and courteous.
Guy Waring took the printed sheet from his hands without attaching
much importance to his words, and glanced over it lightly.
"At ten o'clock this morning," the telegram said, "a singular
catastrophe occurred in a portion of the Lavington tunnel on the
Great Southern Railway. As the 9.15 way-train from Tilgate Junction
to Guildford was passing through, a segment of the roof of the
tunnel collapsed, under pressure of the dislocated rock on top,
and bore down with enormous weight upon the carriages beneath it.
The engine, tender, and four front waggons escaped unhurt; but the
two hindmost, it is feared, were crushed by the falling mass of
earth. It is not yet known how many passengers, if any, may have
been occupying the wrecked compartments; but every effort is now
being made to dig out the debris."
Guy read the paragraph through unmoved, to the outer eye, though
with a whitening face, and then took up the dog-eared "Bradshaw"
that lay close by upon the little oak writing-table. His hand
trembled. One glance at the map, however, set his mind at rest.
"I thought so," he said quietly. "Cyril wouldn't be there. It's
beyond his beat. Lavington's the fourth station this way on the
up-line from Chetwood. Cyril's stopping at Tilgate town, you know--I
heard from him on Saturday--and the bit he's now working at's in
Chetwood Forest. He couldn't get lodgings at Chetwood itself, so
he's put up for the present at the White Lion, at Tilgate, and runs
over by train every day to Warnworth. It's three stations away--four
off Lavington. He'd have been daubing for an hour in the wood by
that time."
"Well, I didn't attach any great importance to it myself," Nevitt
went on, unconcerned. "I thought most likely Cyril wouldn't be
there. But still I felt you'd like, at any rate, to know about it."
"Oh, of course," Guy answered, still scanning the map in "Bradshaw"
close. "He couldn't have been there; but one likes to know. I think,
indeed, to make sure, I'll telegraph to Tilgate. Naturally, when a
man's got only one relation in the whole wide world--without being
a sentimentalist--that one relation means a good deal in life to
him. And Cyril and I are more to one another, of course, than most
ordinary brothers." He bit his thumb. "Still, I can't imagine how
he could possibly be there," he went on, glancing at "Bradshaw" once
more. "You see, if he went to work, he'd have got out at Warnworth;
and if he meant to come to town to consult his dentist, he'd have
taken the 9.30 express straight through from Tilgate, which gets
up to London twenty-five minutes earlier."
"Well, but why to consult his dentist in particular?" Nevitt asked
with a smile. He had very white teeth, and he smiled accordingly
perhaps a little oftener than was quite inevitable. "You Warings
are so absolute. I never knew any such fellows in my life as you
are. You decide things so beforehand. Why mightn't he have been
coming up to town, for example, to see a friend, or get himself
fresh colours?"
"Oh, I said 'to consult his dentist,'" Guy answered, in the most
matter-of-fact voice on earth, suppressing a tremor, "because you
know I've had toothache off and on myself, one day with another,
for the whole last fortnight. And it's a tooth that never ached
with either of us before-this one, you see"--he lifted his lip with
his forefinger--"the second on the left after the one we've lost.
If Cyril was coming up to town at all, I'm pretty sure it'd be his
tooth he was coming up to see about. I went to Eskell about mine
myself last Wednesday."
The elder man seated himself and leaned back in his chair, with
his violin in his lap; then he surveyed his friend long and curiously.
"It must be awfully odd, Guy," he said at last, after a good hard
stare, "to lead such a queer sort of duplicate life as Cyril and
you do! Just fancy being the counterfoil to some other man's cheque!
Just fancy being bound to do, and think, and speak, and wish as he
does! Just fancy having to get a toothache, in the very same tooth
and on the very same day! Just fancy having to consult the identical
dentist that he consults simultaneously! It'd drive ME mad. Why,
it's clean rideeklous!"
Guy Waring looked up hastily from the telegraph form he was already
filling in, and answered, with some warmth--
"No, no; not quite so. It isn't like that. You mistake the situation.
We're both cheques equally, and neither is a counterfoil. Cyril
and I depend for our characters, as everybody else does, upon our
father and mother and our remoter progenitors. Only being twins,
and twins cast in very much the same sort of mould, we're naturally
the product of the same two parents, at the same precise point in
their joint life history; and therefore we're practically all but
identical."
As he rose from his desk, with the telegram in his hand, the porter
appeared at the door with letters. Guy seized them at once, with
some little impatience. The first was from Cyril. He tore it open
in haste, and skimmed it through rapidly. Montague Nevitt meanwhile
sat languid in his chair, striking a pensive note now and again
on his violin, with his eyes half closed and his lips parted. Guy
drew a sigh of relief as he skimmed his note.
"Just what I expected," he said slowly. "Cyril couldn't have
been there. He writes last night--the letter's marked 'Delayed in
transmission'; no doubt by the accident--'I shall come up to town
on Friday or Saturday morning to see the dentist. One of my teeth
is troublesome; I suppose you've had the same; the second on the
left from the one we've lost; been aching a fortnight. I want it
stopped. But to-morrow I really CAN'T leave work. I've got well
into the swing of such a lovely bit of fern, with Sardanapalus
just gleaming like gold in the foreground.' So that settles matters
somewhat. He can't have been there. Though, I think, even so, I'll
just telegraph for safety's sake and make things certain."
Nevitt struck a chord twice with a sweep of his hand, listened to
it dreamily for a minute with far-away eyes, and then remarked once
more, without even looking up, "The same tooth lost, he says? You
both had it drawn! And now another one aches in both of you alike!
How very remarkable! How very, very curious!"
"Well, that WAS queer," Guy replied, relaxing into a smile, "queer
even for us; I won't deny it; for it happened this way. I was over
in Brussels at the time, as correspondent for the Sphere at the
International Workmen's Congress, and Cyril was away by himself
just then on his holiday in the Orkneys. We both got toothache in
the self-same tooth on the self-same night; and we both lay awake
for hours in misery. Early in the morning we each of us got up--five
hundred miles away from one another, remember--and as soon as we
were dressed _I_ went into a dentist's in the Montagne de la Cour,
and Cyril to a local doctor's at Larwick; and we each of us had
it out, instanter. The dentists both declared they could save them
if we wished; but we each preferred the loss of a tooth to another
such night of abject misery."
Nevitt stroked his moustache with a reflective air. This was
almost miraculous. "Well, I should think," he said at last, after
close reflection, "where such sympathy as that exists between two
brothers, if Cyril had really been hurt in this accident, you must
surely in some way have been dimly conscious of it."
Guy Waring, standing there, telegram in hand, looked down at his
companion with a somewhat contemptuous smile.
"Oh dear, no," he answered, with common-sense confidence; for he
loved not mysteries. "You don't believe any nonsense of that sort,
do you? There's nothing in the least mystical in the kind of sympathy
that exists between Cyril and myself. It's all purely physical.
We're very like one another. But that's all. There's none of the
Corsican Brothers sort of hocus-pocus about us in any way. The
whole thing is a simple caste of natural causation."
"Then you don't believe in brain-waves?" Nevitt suggested, with a
gracefully appropriate undulation of his small white hand.
Guy laughed incredulously. "All rubbish, my dear fellow," he answered,
"all utter rubbish. If any man knows, it's myself and Cyril. We're
as near one another as any two men on earth could possibly be;
but when we want to communicate our ideas, each to each, we have
to speak or write, just like the rest of you. Every man is like a
clock wound up to strike certain hours. Accidents may happen, events
may intervene, the clock may get smashed, and all may be prevented.
But, bar accidents, it'll strike all right, under ordinary circumstances,
when the hour arrives for it. Well, Cyril and I, as I always say,
are like two clocks wound up at the same time to strike together,
and we strike with very unusual regularity. But that's the whole
mystery. If _I_ get smashed by accident, there's no reason on earth
why Cyril shouldn't run on for years yet as usual; and if Cyril got
smashed, there's no reason on earth why I should ever know anything
about it except from the newspapers."
CHAPTER IV.
INSIDE THE TUNNEL.
And, indeed, if brain-waves had been in question at all, they
ought, without a doubt, to have informed Guy Waring that at the
very moment when he was going out to send off his telegram, his
brother Cyril was sitting disconsolate, with dark blue lips and
swollen eyelids, on the footboard of the railway carriage in the
Lavington tunnel. Cyril was worn out with digging by this time,
for he had done his best once more to clear away the sand towards
the front of the train in the vague hope that he might succeed in
letting in a little more air to their narrow prison through the
chinks and interstices of the fallen sandstone. Besides, a man in
an emergency must do something, if only to justify his claim to
manliness--especially when a lady is looking on at his efforts.
So Cyril Waring had toiled and moiled in that deadly atmosphere for
some hours in vain, and now sat, wearied out and faint from foul
vapours, by Elma's side on the damp, cold footboard. By this time
the air had almost failed them. They gasped for breath, their heads
swam vaguely. A terrible weight seemed to oppress their bosoms.
Even the lamps in the carriages flickered low and burned blue.
The atmosphere of the tunnel, loaded from the very beginning with
sulphurous smoke, was now all but exhausted. Death stared them in
the face without hope of respite--a ghastly, slow death by gradual
stifling.
"You MUST take a little water," Elma murmured, pouring out the
last few drops for him into the tin cup--for Cyril had brought a
small bottleful that morning for his painting, as well as a packet
of sandwiches for lunch. "You're dreadfully tired. I can see your
lips are parched and dry with digging."
She was deathly pale herself, and her own eyes were livid, for by
this time she had fairly given up all hope of rescue; and, besides,
the air in the tunnel was so foul and stupefying, she could hardly
speak; indeed, her tongue clung to her palate. But she poured out
the last few drops into the cup for Cyril and held them up imploringly,
with a gesture of supplication. These two were no strangers to one
another now. They had begun to know each other well in those twelve
long hours of deadly peril shared in common.
Cyril waved the cup aside with a firm air of dissent.
"No, no," he said, faintly, "you must drink it yourself. Your need
is greater far than mine."
Elma tried to put it away in turn, but Cyril would not allow her.
So she moistened her mouth with those scanty last drops, and turned
towards him gratefully.
"There's no hope left now," she said, in a very resigned voice.
"We must make up our minds to die where we stand. But I thank you,
oh, I thank you so much, so earnestly."
Cyril, for his part, could hardly find breath to speak.
"Thank you," he gasped out, in one last despairing effort. "Things
look very black; but while there's life there's hope. They may even
still, perhaps, come up with us."
As he spoke, a sound broke unexpectedly on the silence of their
prison. A dull thud seemed to make itself faintly heard from beyond
the thick wall of sand that cut them off from the daylight. Cyril
stared with surprise. It was a noise like a pick-axe. Stooping
hastily down, he laid his ear against the rail beside the shattered
carriage.
"They're digging!" he cried earnestly, finding words in his joy.
"They're digging to reach us! I can hear them! I can hear them!"
Elma glanced up at him with a certain tinge of half-incredulous
surprise.
"Yes, they're digging, of course," she said quickly. "I knew they'd
dig for us, naturally, as soon as they missed us. But how far off
are they yet? That's the real question. Will they reach us in time?
Are they near or distant?"
Cyril knelt down on the ground as before, in an agony of suspense,
and struck the rail three times distinctly with his walking-stick.
Then he put his ear to it and listened, and waited. In less than
half a minute three answering knocks rang, dim but unmistakable,
along the buried rail. He could even feel the vibration on the iron
with his face.
"They hear us! They hear us!" he cried once more, in a tremor of
excitement. "I don't think they're far off. They're coming rapidly
towards us."
At the words Elma rose from her seat, still paler than ever, but
strangely resolute, and took the stick from his hand with a gesture
of despair. She was almost stifled. But she raised it with method.
Knocking the rail twice, she bent down her head and listened in
turn. Once more two answering knocks rang sharp along the connecting
line of metal. Elma shook her head ominously.
"No, no, they're a very long way off still," she murmured, in
a faltering tone. "I can hear it quite well. They can never reach
us!"
She seated herself on a fragment of the broken carriage, and buried
her face in her hands once more in silence. Her heart was full.
Her head was very heavy. She gasped and struggled. Then a sudden
intuition seized her, after her kind. If the rail could carry the
sound of a tap, surely it might carry the human voice as well.
Inspired with the idea, she rose again and leant forward.
A second time she knocked two quick little taps, ringing sharp on
the rail, as if to bespeak attention; then, putting her mouth close
to the metals, she shouted aloud along them with all the voice that
was left her--
"Hallo, there, do you hear? Come soon, come fast. We're alive,
but choking!"
Quick as lightning an answer rang back as if by magic, along the
conducting line of the rail--a strange unexpected answer.
"Break the pipe of the wires," it said, and then subsided instantly.
Cyril, who was leaning down at her side at the moment with his ear
to the rail, couldn't make out one word of it. But Elma's sharp
senses, now quickened by the crisis, were acute as an Oriental's
and keen as a beagle's.
"Break the pipe of the wires," they say, she exclaimed, starting
back and pondering. "What on earth can they mean by that? What
on earth can they be driving at? 'Break the pipe of the wires.' I
don't understand them."
Hardly had she spoken, when another sharp tap resounded still more
clearly along the rail at her feet. She bent down her head once
more, and laid her eager ear beside it in terrible suspense. A rough
man's voice--a navvy's, no doubt, or a fireman's--came speeding
along the metal; and it said in thick accents--
"Do you hear what I say? If you want to breathe freer, break the
pipe of the wires, and you'll get fresh air from outside right
through it."
Cyril this time had caught the words, and jumped up with a sudden
air of profound conviction. It was very dark, and the lamps were
going out, but he took his fusee-box from his pocket and struck a
light hastily. Sure enough, on the left-hand side of the tunnel,
half buried in rubbish, an earthenware pipe ran along by the edge
near the wall of the archway. Cyril raised his foot and brought
his heel down upon it sharply with all the strength and force he
had still left in him. The pipe broke short, and Cyril saw within
it a number of telegraph wires for the railway service. The tube
communicated directly with the air outside. They were saved! They
were saved! Air would come through the pipe! He saw it all now! He
dimly understood it!
At the self-same moment, another sound of breaking was heard more
distinctly at the opposite end, some thirty or forty feet off through
the tunnel. Then a voice rang far clearer, as if issuing from the
tube, in short, sharp sentences--
"We'll pump you in air. How many of you are there? Are you all
alive? Is any one injured?"
Cyril leant down and shouted back in reply--
"We're two. Both alive. Not hurt. But sick and half dead with
stifling. Send us air as soon as ever you can. And if possible pass
us a bottle of water."
Some minutes elapsed--three long, slow minutes of it--intense
anxiety. Elma, now broken down with terror and want of oxygen,
fell half fainting forward towards the shattered tube. Cyril held
her up in his supporting arms, and watched the pipe eagerly. It
seemed an age; but, after a time, he became conscious of a gust of
air blowing cold on his face. The keen freshness revived him.
He looked about him and drew a deep breath. Cool air was streaming
in through the broken place. Quick as thought, he laid Elma's mouth
as close as he could lay it to the reviving current. Her eyes were
closed. After a painful interval, she opened them languidly. Cyril
chafed her hands with his, but his chafing seemed to produce very
little effect. She lay motionless now with her eyelids half shut,
and the whites of her eyes alone showing through them. The close,
foul air of that damp and confined spot had worked its worst, and
had almost asphyxiated her. Cyril began to fear the slight relief
had arrived five minutes too late. And it must still in all
probability be some hours at least before they could be actually
disentombed from that living vault or restored to the open air of
heaven.
As he bent over her and held his breath in speechless suspense,
the voice called out again more loudly than ever--
"Look out for the ball in the tube. We're sending you water!"
Cyril watched the pipe closely and struck another light. In a minute,
a big glass marble came rattling through, with a string attached
to it.
"Pull the string!" the voice cried; and Cyril pulled with a will.
Now and again, the object attached to it struck against some
projecting ledge or angle where the pipes overlapped. But at last,
with a little humouring, it came through in safety. At the end was
a large india-rubber bottle, full of fresh water, and a flask of
brandy. The young man seized them both with delight and avidity,
and bathed Elma's temples over and over again with the refreshing
spirit. Then he poured a little into the cup, and filling it up
with water, held it to her lips with all a woman's tenderness. Elma
gulped the draught down unconsciously, and opened her eyes at once.
For a moment she stared about her with a wild stare of surprise.
Then, of a sudden, she recollected where she was, and why, and
seizing Cyril's hand, pressed it long and eagerly.
"If only we can hold out for three hours more," she cried, with
fresh hope returning, "I'm sure they'll reach us; I'm sure they'll
reach us!"
CHAPTER V.
GRATITUDE.
"There were only two of you, then, in the last carriage?" Guy asked
with deep interest, the very next morning, as Cyril, none the worse
for his long imprisonment, sat quietly in their joint chambers at
Staple Inn, recounting the previous day's adventures.
"Yes. Only two of us. It was awfully fortunate. And the carriage
that was smashed had nobody at all, except in the first compartment,
which escaped being buried. So there were no lives lost, by a
miracle, you may say. But several of the people in the front part
of the train got terribly shaken."
"And you and the other man were shut up in the tunnel there for
fifteen hours at a stretch?" Guy went on reflectively.
"At least fifteen hours," Cyril echoed, without attempting to
correct the slight error of sex, for no man, he thought, is bound
to criminate himself, even in a flirtation. "It was two in the
morning before they dug us quite out. And my companion by that time
was more dead than alive, I can tell you, with watching and terror."
"Was he, poor fellow?" Guy murmured, with a sympathetic face; for
Cyril had always alluded casually to his fellow-traveller in such
general terms that Guy was as yet unaware there was a lady in the
case. "And is he all right again now, do you know? Have you heard
anything more about him?"
But before Cyril could answer there came a knock at the door, and
the next moment Mr. Montague Nevitt, without his violin, entered
the room in some haste, all agog with excitement. His face was eager
and his manner cordial. It was clear he was full of some important
tidings.
"Why, Cyril, my dear fellow," he cried, grasping the painter's hand
with much demonstration of friendly warmth, and wringing it hard
two or three times over, "how delighted I am to see you restored
to us alive and well once more. This is really too happy. What
a marvellous escape! And what a romantic story! All the clubs are
buzzing with it. A charming girl! You'll have to marry her, of
course, that's the necessary climax. You and the young lady are the
staple of news, I see, in very big print, in all the evening papers!"
Guy drew back at the words with a little start of surprise. "Young
lady!" he cried aghast. "A charming girl, Nevitt! Then the person
who was shut up with you for fifteen hours in the tunnel was a
girl, Cyril!"
Cyril's handsome face flushed slightly before his brother's scrutinizing
gaze; but he answered with a certain little ill-concealed embarrassment:
"Oh, I didn't say so, didn't I? Well, she WAS a girl then, of course;
a certain Miss Clifford. She got in at Chetwood. Her people live
somewhere down there near Tilgate. At least, so I gathered from
what she told me."
Nevitt stared hard at the painter's eyes, which tried, without
success, to look unconscious.
"A romance!" he said, slowly, scanning his man with deep interest.
"A romance, I can see. Young, rich, and beautiful. My dear Cyril,
I only wish I'd had half your luck. What a splendid chance, and what
a magnificent introduction! Beauty in distress! A lady in trouble!
You console her alone in a tunnel for fifteen hours by yourself
at a stretch. Heavens, what a tete-a-tete! Did British propriety
ever before allow a man such a glorious opportunity for chivalrous
devotion to a lady of family, face, and fortune?"
"Was she pretty?" Guy asked, coming down at once to a more realistic
platform.
Cyril hesitated a moment. "Well, yes," he answered, somewhat curtly,
after a short pause. "She's distinctly good-looking." And he shut
his mouth sharp. But he had said quite enough.
When a man says that of a girl, and nothing more, in an unconcerned
voice, as if it didn't matter twopence to him, you may be perfectly
sure in your own mind he's very deeply and seriously smitten.
"And young?" Guy continued.
"I should say about twenty."
"And rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice?" Montague Nevitt
put in, with a faintly cynical smile.
"Well, I don't know about that," Cyril answered truthfully. "I
haven't the least idea who she is, even. She and I had other things
to think about, you may be sure, boxed up there so long in that
narrow space, and choking for want of air, than minute investigations
into one another's pedigrees."
"WE'VE got no pedigree," Guy interposed, with a bitter smile. "So
the less she investigates about that the better."
"But SHE has, I expect," Nevitt put in hastily; "and if I were you,
Cyril, I'd hunt her up forthwith, while the iron's hot, and find
out all there is to find out about her. Clifford-Clifford? I wonder
whether by any chance she's one of the Devonshire Cliffords, now?
For if so, she might really be worth a man's serious attention.
They're very good business. They bank at our place; and they're by
no means paupers." For Nevitt was a clerk in the well-known banking
firm of Drummond, Coutts, and Barclay, Limited; and being a man
who didn't mean, as he himself said, "to throw himself away on any
girl for nothing," he kept a sharp look-out on the current account
of every wealthy client with an only daughter.
Ten minutes later, as the talk ran on, some further light was
unexpectedly thrown upon this interesting topic by the entrance
of the porter with a letter for Cyril. The painter tore it open,
and glanced over it, as Nevitt observed, with evident eagerness.
It was short and curt, but in its own way courteous.
"'Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., desires to thank Mr. Cyril
Waring for his kindness and consideration to Miss Clifford during
her temporary incarceration---'
"Incarceration's good, isn't it? How much does he charge a thousand
for that sort, I wonder?--
"'during her temporary incarceration in the Lavington tunnel
yesterday. Mrs. and Miss Clifford wish also to express at the same
time their deep gratitude to Mr. Waring for his friendly efforts,
and trust he has experienced no further ill effects from the
unfortunate accident to which he was subjected.
"'Craighton, Tilgate, Thursday morning.'"
"She MIGHT have written herself," Cyril murmured half aloud. He was
evidently disappointed at this very short measure of correspondence
on the subject.
But Montague Nevitt took a more cheerful view. "Oh, Reginald
Clifford, of Craighton!" he cried with a smile, his invariable smile.
"I know all about HIM. He's a friend of Colonel Kelmscott's down
at Tilgate Park. C.M.G., indeed! What a ridiculous old peacock.
He was administrator of St. Kitts once upon a time, I believe, or
was it Nevis or Antigua? I don't quite recollect, I'm afraid; but
anyhow, some comical little speck of a sugary, niggery, West Indian
Island; and he was made a Companion of St. Michael and St. George
when his term was up, just to keep him quiet, don't you know, for
he wanted a knighthood, and to shelve him from being appointed to
a first-class post like Barbados or Trinidad. If it's Elma Clifford
you were shut up with in the tunnel, Cyril, you might do worse,
there's no doubt, and you might do better. She's an only daughter,
and there's a little money at the back of the family, I expect;
but I fancy the Companion of the Fighting Saints lives mainly on
his pension, which, of course, is purely personal, and so dies with
him."
Cyril folded up the note without noticing Nevitt's words and put it
in his pocket, somewhat carefully and obtrusively. "Thank you," he
said, in a very quiet tone, "I didn't ask you about Miss Clifford's
fortune. When I want information on that point I'll apply for
it plainly. But meanwhile I don't think any lady's name should be
dragged into conversation and bandied about like that, by an absolute
stranger."
"Oh, now you needn't be huffy," Nevitt answered, with a
still sweeter smile, showing all those pearly teeth of his to the
greatest advantage. "I didn't mean to put your back up, and I'll
tell you what I'll do for you. I'll heap coals of fire on your
head, you ungrateful man. I'll return good for evil. You shall
have an invitation to Mrs. Holker's garden party on Saturday week
at Chetwood Court, and there you'll be almost sure to meet the
beautiful stranger."
But at that very moment, at Craighton, Tilgate, Mr. Reginald
Clifford, C.M.G., a stiff little withered-up official Briton, half
mummified by long exposure to tropical suns, was sitting in his
drawing-room with Mrs. Clifford, his wife, and discussing--what
subject of all others on earth but the personality of Cyril Waring?
"Well, it was an awkward situation for Elma, of course, I admit,"
he was chirping out cheerfully, with his back turned by pure force
of habit to the empty grate, and his hands crossed behind him.
"I don't deny it was an awkward situation. Still, there's no harm
done, I hope and trust. Elma's happily not a fanciful or foolishly
susceptible sort of girl. She sees it's a case for mere ordinary
gratitude. And gratitude, in my opinion, towards a person in his
position, is sufficiently expressed once for all by letter. There's
no reason on earth she should ever again see or hear any more of
him."
"But girls are so romantic," Mrs. Clifford put in doubtfully, with
an anxious air. She herself was by no means romantic to look at,
being, indeed, a person of a certain age, with a plump, matronly
figure, and very staid of countenance; yet there was something in
her eye, for all that, that recalled at times the vivid keenness of
Elma's, and her cheek had once been as delicate and creamy a brown
as her pretty daughter's. "Girls are so romantic," Mrs. Clifford
repeated once more, in a dreamy way, "and she was evidently impressed
by him."
"Well, I'm glad I made inquiries at once about these two young
men, anyhow," the Companion of St. Michael and St. George responded
with fervour, clasping his wizened little hands contentedly over
his narrow waistcoat. "It's a precious odd story, and a doubtful
story, and not at all the sort of story one likes one's girl to be
any way mixed up with. For my part, I shall give them a very wide
berth indeed in future; and there's no reason why Elma should ever
knock up against them."
"Who told you they were nobodies?" Mrs. Clifford inquired, drawing
a wistful sigh.
"Oh, Tom Clark was at school with them," the ex-administrator continued,
with a very cunning air, "and he knows all about them--has heard
the whole circumstances. Very odd, very odd; never met anything
so queer in all my life; most mysterious and uncanny. They never
had a father; they never had a mother; they never had anybody on
earth they could call their own; they dropped from the clouds, as
it were, one rainy day, without a friend in the world, plump down
into the Charterhouse. There they were well supplied with money,
and spent their holidays with a person at Brighton, who wasn't
even supposed to be their lawful guardian. Looks fishy, doesn't
it? Their names are Cyril and Guy Waring--and that's all they know
of themselves. They were educated like gentlemen till they were
twenty-one years old; and then they were turned loose upon the
world, like a pair of young bears, with a couple of hundred pounds
of capital apiece to shift for themselves with. Uncanny, very;
I don't like the look of it. Not at all the sort of people an
impressionable girl like our Elma should ever be allowed to see
too much of."
"I don't think she was very much impressed by him," Mrs. Clifford
said with confidence. "I've watched her to see, and I don't think
she's in love with him. But by to-morrow, Reginald, I shall be
able, I'm sure, to tell you for certain."
The Companion of the Militant Saints glanced rather uneasily across
the hearth-rug at his wife. "It's a marvellous gift, to be sure,
this intuition of yours, Louisa," he said, shaking his head sagely,
and swaying himself gently to and fro on the stone kerb of the
fender. "I frankly confess, my dear, I don't quite understand it.
And Elma's got it too, every bit as bad as you have. Runs in the
family, I suppose--runs somehow in the family. After living with
you now for twenty-two years--yes, twenty-two last April--in every
part of the world and every grade of the service, I'm compelled to
admit that your intuition in these matters is really remarkable--simply
remarkable."
Mrs. Clifford coloured through her olive-brown skin, exactly like
Elma, and rose with a somewhat embarrassed and half-guilty air,
avoiding her husband's eyes as if afraid to meet them.
Elma had gone to bed early, wearied out as she was with her long
agony in the tunnel. Mrs. Clifford crept up to her daughter's room
with a silent tread, like some noiseless Oriental, and, putting her
ear to the keyhole, listened outside the door in profound suspense
for several minutes.
Not a sound from within; not a gentle footfall on the carpeted floor.
For a moment she hesitated; then she turned the handle slowly, and,
peering before her, peeped into the room. Thank Heaven! no snake
signs. Elma lay asleep, with one arm above her head, as peacefully
as a child, after her terrible adventure. Her bosom heaved, but
slowly and regularly. The mother drew a deep breath, and crept down
the stairs with a palpitating heart to the drawing-room again.
"Reginald," she said, with perfect confidence, relapsing once more
at a bound into the ordinary every-day British matron, "there's no
harm done, I'm sure. She doesn't think of this young man at all.
You may dismiss him from your mind at once and for ever. She's
sleeping like a baby."
CHAPTER VI.
TWO STRANGE MEETINGS.
"Mrs. Hugh Holker, at home, Saturday, May 29th, 3 to 6.30. Chetwood
Court; tennis."
Cyril Waring read it out with a little thrill of triumph. To
be sure, it was by no means certain that Elma would be there; but
still, Chetwood Court was well within range of Tilgate town, and
Montague Nevitt felt convinced, he said, the Holkers were friends
of the Cliffords and the Kelmscotts.
"For my part," Guy remarked, balancing a fragment of fried sole on
his fork as he spoke, "I'm not going all that way down to Chetwood
merely to swell Mrs. Holker's triumph."
"I wouldn't if I were you," Cyril answered, with quiet incisiveness.
He hadn't exactly fallen in love with Elma at first sight, but he
was very much interested in her, and it struck him at once that
what interested him was likely also to interest his twin brother.
And this is just one of those rare cases in life where a man prefers
that his interest in a subject should not be shared by any other
person.
Before Saturday, the 29th, arrived, however, Guy had so far changed
his mind in the matter, that he presented himself duly with Nevitt
at Waterloo to catch the same train to Chetwood station that Cyril
went down by.
"After all," he said to Nevitt, as they walked together from the
club in Piccadilly, "I may as well see what the girl's like, anyhow.
If she's got to be my sister-in-law--which seems not unlikely now--I'd
better have a look at her beforehand, so to speak, on approbation."
The Holkers' grounds were large and well planted, with velvety lawns
on the slope of a well-wooded hill overlooking the boundless blue
weald of Surrey. Nevitt and the Warings were late to arrive, and
found most of the guests already assembled before them.
After a time Guy found himself, to his intense chagrin, told off by
his hostess to do the honours to an amiable old lady of high tonnage
and great conversational powers, who rattled on uninterruptedly in
one silvery stream about everybody on the ground, their histories
and their pedigrees. She took the talking so completely off his
hands, however, that, after a very few minutes, Guy, who was by
nature of a lazy and contemplative disposition, had almost ceased
to trouble himself about what she said, interposing "indeeds" and
"reallys" with automatic politeness at measured intervals; when
suddenly the old lady, coming upon a bench where a mother and
daughter were seated in the shade, settled down by their sides in
a fervour of welcome, and shook hands with them both effusively in
a most demonstrative fashion.
The daughter was pretty--yes, distinctly pretty. She attracted Guy's
attention at once by the piercing keenness of her lustrous dark
eyes, and the delicate olive-brown of her transparent complexion.
Her expression was merry, but with a strange and attractive undertone,
he thought, of some mysterious charm. A more taking girl, indeed,
now he came to look close, he hadn't seen for months. He congratulated
himself on his garrulous old lady's choice of a bench to sit upon,
if it helped him to an introduction to the beautiful stranger.
But before he could even be introduced, the pretty girl with the
olive-brown complexion had held out her hand to him frankly, and
exclaimed in a voice as sunny as her face--
"I don't need to be told your friend's name, I'm sure, Mrs. Godfrey.
He's so awfully like him. I should have known him anywhere. Of
course, you're Mr. Waring's brother, aren't you?"
Guy smiled, and bowed gracefully; he was always graceful.
"I refuse to be merely MR. WARING'S BROTHER," he answered, with
some amusement, as he took the proffered hand in his own warmly.
"If it comes to that, I'm Mr. Waring myself; and Cyril, whom you
seem to know already, is only my brother."
"Ah, but MY Mr. Waring isn't here to-day, is he?" the olive-brown
girl put in, looking around with quite an eager interest at the
crowd in the distance. "Naturally, to me, he's THE Mr. Waring, of
course, and you are only MY Mr. Waring's brother."
"Elma, my dear, what on earth will Mr. Waring think of you?"
her mother put in, with the conventional shocked face of British
propriety. "You know," she went on, turning round quickly to Guy,
"we're all so grateful to your brother for his kindness to our girl
in that dreadful accident the other day at Lavington, that we can't
help thinking and talking of him all the time as our Mr. Waring. I'm
sorry he isn't here himself this afternoon to receive our thanks.
It would be such a pleasure to all of us to give them to him in
person."
"Oh, he is about, somewhere," Guy answered carelessly, still
keeping his eye fixed hard on the pretty girl. "I'll fetch him
round by-and-by to pay his respects in due form. He'll be only too
glad. And this, I suppose, must be Miss Clifford that I've heard
so much about."
As he said those words, a little gleam of pleasure shot through
Elma's eyes. Her painter hadn't forgotten her, then. He had talked
much about her.
"Yes, I knew who you must be the very first moment I saw you," she
answered, blushing; "you're so much like him in some ways, though
not in all.... And he told me that day he had a twin brother."
"So much like him in some ways," Guy repeated, much amused. "Why,
I wonder you don't take me for Cyril himself at once. You're the
very first person I ever knew in my life, except a few old and very
intimate friends, who could tell at all the difference between us."
Elma drew back, almost as if shocked and hurt at the bare suggestion.
"Oh, dear no," she cried quickly, scanning him over at once with
those piercing keen eyes of hers; "you're like him, of course--I
don't deny the likeness--as brothers may be like one another. Your
features are the same, and the colour of your hair and eyes, and
all that sort of thing; but still, I knew at a glance you weren't
my Mr. Waring. I could never mistake you for him. The expression
and the look are so utterly different."
"You must be a very subtle judge of faces," the young man answered,
still smiling, "if you knew us apart at first sight; for I never
before in my life met anybody who'd seen my brother once or twice,
and who didn't take me for him, or him for me, the very first time
he saw us apart. But then," he added, after a short pause, with
a quick dart of his eyes, "you were with him in the tunnel for a
whole long day; and in that time, of course, you saw a good deal
of him."
Elma blushed again, and Guy noticed in passing that she blushed
very prettily.
"And how's Sardanapalus?" she asked, in a somewhat hurried voice,
making an inartistic attempt to change the subject.
"Oh, Sardanapalus is all right," Guy answered, laughing. "Cyril
told me you had made friends with him, and weren't one bit afraid
of him. Most people are so dreadfully frightened of the poor old
creature."
"But he isn't old," Elma exclaimed, interrupting him with some
warmth. "He's in the prime of life. He's so glossy and beautiful.
I quite fell in love with him."
"And who is Sardanapalus?" Mrs. Clifford asked, with a vague maternal
sense of discomfort and doubt. "A dog or a monkey?"
"Oh, Sardanapalus, mother--didn't I tell you about him?" Elma cried
enthusiastically. "Why, he's just lovely and beautiful. He's such
a glorious green and yellow-banded snake; and he coiled around my
arm as if he'd always known me."
Mrs. Clifford drew back with a horror-stricken face, darting across
at her daughter the same stealthy sort of look she had given her
husband the night after Elma's adventure.
"A snake!" she repeated, aghast, "a snake! Oh, Elma! Why, you never
told me that. And he coiled round your arm. How horrible!"
But Elma wasn't to be put down by exclamations of horror.
"Why, you're not afraid of snakes yourself, you know, mother," she
went on, undismayed. "I remember papa saying that when you were at
St. Kitts with him you never minded them a bit, but caught them in
your hands like an Indian juggler, and treated them as playthings,
so I wasn't afraid either. I suppose it's hereditary."
Mrs. Clifford gazed at her fixedly for a few seconds with a very
pale face.
"I suppose it is," she said slowly and stiffly, with an evident
effort. "Most things are, in fact, in this world we live in. But
I didn't know YOU at least had inherited it, Elma."
Just at that moment they were relieved from the temporary embarrassment
which the mention of Sardanapalus seemed to have caused the party,
by the approach of a tall and very handsome man, who came forward
with a smile towards where their group was standing. He was military
in bearing, and had dark brown hair, with a white moustache; but he
hardly looked more than fifty for all that, as Guy judged at once
from his erect carriage and the singular youthfulness of both face
and figure. That he was a born aristocrat one could see in every
motion of his well-built limbs. His mien had that ineffable air
of grace and breeding which sometimes marks the members of our old
English families. Very much like Cyril, too, Guy thought to himself,
in a flash of intuition; very much like Cyril, the way he raised
his hat and then smiled urbanely on Mrs. Clifford and Elma. But
it was Cyril grown old and prematurely white, and filled full with
the grave haughtiness of an honoured aristocrat.
"Why, here's Colonel Kelmscott!" Mrs. Clifford exclaimed, with a
sigh of relief, not a little set at ease by the timely diversion.
"We're so glad you've come, Colonel. And Lady Emily too; she's over
yonder, is she? Ah, well, I'll look out for her. We heard you were
to be here. Oh, how kind of you; thank you. No, Elma's none the
worse for her adventure, thank Heaven! just a little shaken, that's
all, but not otherwise injured. And this gentleman's the brother
of the kind friend who was so good to her in the tunnel. I'm not
quite sure of the name. I think it's---"
"Guy Waring," the young man interposed blandly. Hardly any one
who looked at Colonel Kelmscott's eyes could even have perceived
the profound surprise this announcement caused him. He bowed without
moving a muscle of that military face. Guy himself never noticed
the intense emotion the introduction aroused in the distinguished
stranger. But Mrs. Clifford and Elma, each scanning him closely
with those keen grey eyes of theirs, observed at once that, unmoved
as he appeared, a thunderbolt falling at Colonel Kelmscott's feet
could not more thoroughly or completely have stunned him. For a second
or two he gazed in the young man's face uneasily, his colour came
and went, his bosom heaved in silence; then he roped his moustache
with his trembling fingers, and tried in vain to pump up some
harmless remark appropriate to the occasion. But no remark came to
him. Mrs. Clifford darted a furtive glance at Elma, and Elma darted
back a furtive glance at Mrs. Clifford. Neither said a word, and each
let her eyes drop to the ground at once as they met the other's.
But each knew in her heart that something passing strange had
astonished Colonel Kelmscott; and each knew, too, that the other
had observed it.
Mother and daughter, indeed, needed no spoken words to tell these
things plainly to one another. The deep intuition that descended
to both was enough to put them in sympathy at once without the need
of articulate language.
"Yes, Mr. Guy Waring," Mrs. Clifford repeated at last, breaking
the awkward silence that supervened upon the group. "The brother
of Mr. Cyril Waring, who was so kind the other day to my daughter
in the tunnel."
The Colonel started imperceptibly to the naked eye again.
"Oh, indeed," he said, forcing himself with an effort to speak at
last. "I've read about it, of course; it was in all the papers....
And--eh--is your brother here, too, this afternoon, Mr. Waring?"
CHAPTER VII.
KELMSCOTT OF TILGATE.
To both Elma and her mother this meeting between Colonel Kelmscott
and Guy Waring was full of mystery. For the Kelmscotts, of Tilgate
Park, were the oldest county family in all that part of Surrey;
and Colonel Kelmscott himself passed as the proudest man of that
haughtiest house in Southern England. What, therefore, could have
made him give so curious and almost imperceptible a start the
moment Guy Waring's name was mentioned in conversation? Not a word
that he said, to be sure, implied to Guy himself the depth of his
surprise; but Elma, with her marvellous insight, could see at once,
for all that, by the very haze in his eyes, that he was fascinated
by Guy's personality, somewhat as she herself had been fascinated
the other day in the train by Sardanapalus. Nay, more; he seemed
to wish, with all his heart, to leave the young man's presence, and
yet to be glued to the spot, in spite of himself, by some strange
compulsion.
It was with a dreamy, far-away tone in his voice that the Colonel
uttered those seemingly simple words, "And is your brother here,
too, this afternoon, Mr. Waring?"
"Yes, he's somewhere about," Guy answered carelessly. "He'll turn
up by-and-by, no doubt. He's pretty sure to find out, sooner or
later, Miss Clifford's here, and then he'll come round this way to
speak to her."
For some time they stood talking in a little group by the bench,
Colonel Kelmscott meanwhile thawing by degrees and growing gradually
interested in what Guy had to say, while Elma looked on with a
devouring curiosity.
"Your brother's a painter, you say," the Colonel murmured once
under that heavy white moustache of his; "yes, I think I remember.
A rising painter. Had a capital landscape in the Grosvenor last
year, I recollect, and another in the Academy this spring, if
I don't mistake--skied--skied, unfairly; yet a very pretty thing,
too; 'At the Home of the Curlews.'"
"He's painting a sweet one now," Elma put in quickly, "down here,
close by, in Chetwood Forest. He told me about it; it must be
simply lovely--all fern and mosses, with, oh! such a beautiful big
snake in the foreground."
"I should like to see it," Colonel Kelmscott said slowly, not without
a pang. "If it's painted in the forest--and by your brother, Mr.
Waring--that would give it, to me, a certain personal value." He
paused a moment; then he added, in a little explanatory undertone,
"I'm lord of the manor, you know, at Chetwood; and I shoot the
forest."
"Cyril would be delighted to let you see the piece when it's finished,"
Guy answered lightly. "If you're ever up in town our way--we've rooms
in Staple Inn. I dare say you know it--that quaint, old-fashioned
looking place, with big lattice windows, that overhangs Holborn."
Colonel Kelmscott started, and drew himself up still taller and
stiffer than before.
"I may have some opportunity of seeing it some day in one of the
galleries," he answered coldly, as if not to commit himself. "To
tell you the truth, I seldom have time to lounge about in studios.
It was merely the coincidence of the picture being painted in
Chetwood Forest that made me fancy for a moment I might like to
see it. But I'm no connoisseur. Mrs. Clifford, may I take you to
get a cup of tea? Tea, I think, is laid out in the tent behind the
shrubbery."
It was said in a tone to dismiss Guy politely; and Guy, taking
the hint, accepted it as such, and fell back a pace or two to his
garrulous old lady. But before Colonel Kelmscott could walk off
Mrs. Clifford and her daughter to the marquee for refreshments,
Elma gave a sudden start, and blushed faintly pink through that
olive-brown skin of hers.
"Why, there's MY Mr. Waring!" she exclaimed, in a very pleased tone,
holding out her hand, with a delicious smile; and as she said it,
Cyril and Montague Nevitt strolled up from behind a great clump of
lilacs beside them.
Two pairs of eyes watched those young folks closely as they shook
hands once more--Guy's and Mrs. Clifford's. Guy observed that
a little red spot rose on Cyril's cheek he had rarely seen there,
and that his voice trembled slightly as he said, "How do you do?"
to his pretty fellow-traveller of the famous adventure. Mrs.
Clifford observed that the faint pink faded out of the olive-brown
skin as Elma took Cyril Waring's hand in hers, and that her face
grew pale for three minutes afterwards. And Colonel Kelmscott,
looking on with a quietly observant eye, remarked to himself that
Cyril Waring was a very creditable young man indeed, as handsome
as Guy, and as like as two peas, but if anything perhaps even a
trifle more pleasing.
For the rest of that afternoon, they six kept constantly together.
Elma noted that Colonel Kelmscott was evidently ill at ease; a
thing most unusual with that proud, self-reliant aristocrat. He
held himself, to be sure, as straight and erect as ever, and moved
about the grounds with that same haughty air of perfect supremacy,
as of one who was monarch of all he surveyed in the county of Surrey.
But Elma could see, for all that, that he was absent-minded and
self-contained; he answered all questions in a distant, unthinking
way; some inner trouble was undoubtedly consuming him. His eyes
were all for the two Warings. They glanced nervously right and left
every minute in haste, but returned after each excursion straight
to Guy and Cyril. The Colonel noted narrowly all they said and
did; and Elma was sure he was very much pleased at least with her
painter. How could he fail to be, indeed?--for Mr. Waring was
charming. Elma wished she could have strolled off with him about
the lawn alone, were it only ten paces in front of her mother.
But somehow the fates that day were unpropitious. The party held
together as by some magnetic bond, and Mrs. Clifford's eye never
for one moment deserted her.
The Colonel glowered. The Colonel was moody. His speech was curt.
He occupied himself mainly in listening to Guy and Cyril. A sort
of mesmeric influence seemed to draw him towards the two young men.
He drew them out deliberately. Yet the start he had given as either
young man came up towards his side was a start, not of mere neutral
surprise, but of positive disinclination and regret at the meeting.
Nay, even now he was angling hard, with all the skill of a strategist,
to keep the Warings out of Lady Emily's way. But the more he talked
to them, the more interested he seemed. It was clear he meant to
make the most of this passing chance--and never again, if he could
help it, Elma felt certain, to see them.
Once, and once only, Granville Kelmscott, his son, strolled casually
up and joined the group by pure chance for a few short minutes.
The heir of Tilgate Park was tall and handsome, though less so than
his father; and Mrs. Clifford was not wholly indisposed to throw
him and Elma together as much as possible. Younger by a full year
than the two Warings, Granville Kelmscott was not wholly unlike
them in face and manner. As a rule, his father was proud of him,
with a passing great pride, as he was proud of every other Kelmscott
possession. But to-day, Elma's keen eye observed that the Colonel's
glance moved quickly in a rapid dart from Cyril and Guy to his son
Granville, and back again from his son Granville to Guy and Cyril.
What was odder still, the hasty comparison seemed to redound not
altogether to Granville's credit. The Colonel paused, and stifled
a sigh as he looked; then, in spite of Mrs. Clifford's profound
attempts to retain the heir by her side, he sent the young man off
at a moment's notice to hunt up Lady Emily. Now why on earth did
he want to keep Granville and the Warings apart? Mrs. Clifford and
Elina racked their brains in vain; they could make nothing of the
mystery.
It was a long afternoon, and Elma enjoyed it, though she never got
her tete-a-tete after all with Cyril Waring. Just a rapid look, a
dart from the eyes, a faint pressure of her hand at parting--that
was all the romance she was able to extract from it, so closely
did Mrs. Clifford play her part as chaperon. But as the two young
men and Montague Nevitt hurried off at last to catch their train
back to town, the Colonel turned to Mrs. Clifford with a sigh of
relief.
"Splendid young fellows, those," he exclaimed, looking after them.
"I'm not sorry I met them. Ought to have gone into a cavalry regiment
early in life; what fine leaders they'd have made, to be sure, in
a dash for the guns or a charge against a battery! But they seem
to have done well for themselves in their own way: carved out their
own fortunes, each after his fashion. Very plucky young fellows.
One of them's a painter, and one's a journalist; and both of them
are making their mark in their own world. I really admire them."
And on the way to the station, that moment, Mr. Montague Nevitt,
as he lit his cigarette, was saying to Cyril, with an approving
smile, "Your Miss Clifford's pretty."
"Yes," Cyril answered drily, "she's not bad looking. She looked
her best to-day. And she's capital company."
But Guy broke out unabashed into a sudden burst of speech.
"Not bad looking!" he cried contemptuously. "Is that all you have
to say of her? And you a painter, too! Why, she's beautiful! She's
charming! If Cyril was shut up in a tunnel with HER---"
He broke off suddenly.
And for the rest of the way home he spoke but seldom. It was all
too true. The two Warings were cast in the self-same mould. What
attracted one, it was clear, no less surely and certainly attracted
the other.
As they went to their separate rooms in Staple Inn that night,
Guy paused for a moment, candle in hand, by his door, and looked
straight at Cyril.
"You needn't fear ME," he said, in a very low tone. "She's yours.
You found her. I wouldn't be mean enough for a minute to interfere
with your find. But I'm not surprised at you. I would do the same
myself, if I could have seen her first. I won't see her again. I
couldn't stand it. She's too beautiful to see and not to fall in
love with."
CHAPTER VIII.
ELMA BREAKS OUT.
Mrs. Clifford returned from Chetwood Court that clay in by no means
such high spirits as when she went there. In the first place, she
hadn't succeeded in throwing Elma and Granville Kelmscott into one
another's company at all, and in the second place Elma had talked
much under her very nose, for half-an-hour at a stretch, with the
unknown young painter fellow. When Elma was asked out anywhere
else in the country for the next six weeks or so, Mrs. Clifford
made up her mind strictly to inquire in private, before committing
herself to an acceptance, whether that dangerous young man was
likely or not to be included in the party.
For Mrs. Clifford admitted frankly to herself that Cyril was
dangerous; as dangerous as they make them. He was just the right
age; he was handsome, he was clever, his tawny brown beard had the
faintest little touch of artistic redness, and was trimmed and
dressed with provoking nicety. He was an artist too; and girls
nowadays, you know, have such an unaccountable way of falling in
love with men who can paint, or write verses, or play the violin,
or do something foolish of that sort, instead of sticking fast to
the solid attractions of the London Stock Exchange or of ancestral
acres.
Mrs. Clifford confided her fears that very night to the sympathetic
ear of the Companion of the Militant and Guardian Saints of the
British Empire.
"Reginald," she said solemnly, "I told you the other day, when you
asked about it, Elma wasn't in love. And at the time I was right,
or very near it. But this afternoon I've had an opportunity of
watching them both together, and I've half changed my mind. Elma
thinks a great deal too much altogether, I'm afraid, about this
young Mr. Waring."
"How do you know?" Mr. Clifford asked, staring her hard in the
face, and nodding solemnly.
The British matron hesitated. "How do I know anything?" she answered
at last, driven to bay by the question. "I never know how. I only
know I know it. But whatever we do we must be careful not to let
Elma and the young man get thrown together again. I should say myself
it wouldn't be a bad plan if we were to send her away somewhere for
the rest of the summer, but I can tell you better about all this
to-morrow."
Elma, for her part, had come home from Chetwood Court more full
than ever of Cyril Waring. He looked so handsome and so manly that
afternoon at the Holkers'. Elma hoped she'd be asked out where he
was going to be again.
She sat long in her own bedroom, thinking it over with herself,
while the candle burnt down in its socket very low, and the house
was still, and the rain pattered hard on the roof overhead, and her
father and mother were discussing her by themselves downstairs in
the drawing-room.
She sat long on her chair without caring to begin undressing. She
sat and mused with her hands crossed on her lap. She sat and thought,
and her thoughts were all about Cyril Waring.
For more than an hour she sat there dreamily, and told herself over,
one by one, in long order, the afternoon's events from beginning
to the end of them. She repeated every word Cyril had spoken
in her ear. She remembered every glance, every look he had darted
at her. She thought of that faint pressure of his hand as he said
farewell. The tender blush came back to her brown cheek once more
with maidenly shame as she told it all over. He was so handsome
and so nice, and so very, very kind, and, perhaps, after this, she
might never again meet him. Her bosom heaved. She was conscious
of a new sense just aroused within her.
Presently her heart began to beat more violently. She didn't know
why. It had never beaten in her life like that before--not even in
the tunnel, nor yet when Cyril came up to-day and spoke first to
her. Slowly, slowly, she rose from her seat. The fit was upon her.
Could this be a dream? Some strange impulse made her glide forward
and stand for a minute or two irresolute, in the middle of the room.
Then she turned round, once, twice, thrice, half unconsciously. She
turned round, wondering to herself all the while what this strange
thing could mean; faster, faster, faster, her heart within her
beating at each turn with more frantic haste and speed than ever.
For some minutes she turned, glowing with red shame, yet unable to
stop, and still more unable to say to herself why or wherefore.
At first that was all. She merely turned and panted. But as she
whirled and whirled, new moods and figures seemed to force themselves
upon her. She lifted her hands and swayed them about above her head
gracefully. She was posturing she knew, but why she had no idea.
It all came upon her as suddenly and as uncontrollably as a blush.
She was whirling around the room, now slow, now fast, but always
with her arms held out lissom, like a dancing-girl's. Sometimes
her body bent this way, and sometimes that, her hands keeping time
to her movements meanwhile in long graceful curves, but all as if
compelled by some extrinsic necessity.
It was an instinct within her over which she had no control. Surely,
surely, she must be possessed. A spirit that was not her seemed to
be catching her round the waist, and twisting her about, and making
her spin headlong over the floor through this wild fierce dance.
It was terrible, terrible. Yet she could not prevent it. A force
not her own seemed to sustain and impel her.
And all the time, as she whirled, she was conscious also of some
strange dim need. A sense of discomfort oppressed her arms. She
hadn't everything she required for this solitary orgy. Something
more was lacking her. Something essential, vital. But what on earth
it could be she knew not; she knew not.
By-and-by she paused, and, as she glanced right and left, the sense
of discomfort grew clearer and more vivid. It was her hands that
were wrong. Her hands were empty. She must have something to fill
them. Something alive, lithe, curling, sinuous. These wavings
and swayings, to this side and to that, seemed so meaningless and
void--without some life to guide them. There was nothing for her
to hold; nothing to tame and subdue; nothing to cling and writhe
and give point to her movements. Oh! heavens, how horrible!
She drew herself up suddenly, and by dint of a fierce brief effort
of will repressed for awhile the mad dance that overmastered her.
The spirit within her, if spirit it were, kept quiet for a moment,
awed and subdued by her proud determination. Then it began once
more and led her resistlessly forward. She moved over to the chest
of drawers still rhythmically and with set steps, but to the phantom
strain of some unheard low music. The music was running vaguely
through her head all the time--wild Aeolian music--it sounded like
a rude tune on a harp or zither. And surely the cymbals clashed now
and again overhead; and the timbrel rang clear; and the castanets
tinkled, keeping time with the measure. She stood still and listened.
No, no, not a sound save the rain on the roof. It was the music of
her own heart, beating irregularly and fiercely to an intermittent
lilt, like a Hungarian waltz or a Roumanian tarantella.
By this time, Elina was thoroughly frightened. Was she going mad?
she asked herself, or had some evil spirit taken up his abode within
her? What made her spin and twirl about like this--irresponsibly,
unintentionally, irrepressibly, meaninglessly? Oh, what would her
mother say, if only she knew all? And what on earth would Cyril
Waring think of her?
Cyril Waring! Cyril Waring! It was all Cyril Waring. And yet, if
he knew--oh, mercy, mercy!
Still, in spite of these doubts, misgivings, fears, she walked over
towards the chest of drawers with a firm and rhythmical tread, to
the bars of the internal music that rang loud through her brain,
and began opening one drawer after another in an aimless fashion.
She was looking for something--she didn't know what; and she never
could rest now until she'd found it.
Drawer upon drawer she opened and shut wearily, but nothing that
her eyes fell upon seemed to suit her mood. Dresses and jackets and
underlinen were there; she glanced at them all with a deep sense
of profound contempt; none of these gewgaws of civilized life could
be of any use to supply the vague want her soul felt so dimly and
yet so acutely. They were dead, dead, dead, so close and clinging!
Go further! Go further! At last she opened the bottom drawer of
all, and her eye fell askance upon a feather boa, curled up at the
bottom--soft, smooth, and long; a winding, coiling, serpentine
boa. In a second, she had fallen upon it bodily with greedy hands,
and was twisting it round her waist, and holding it high and low,
and fighting fiercely at times, and figuring with it like a posturant.
Some dormant impulse of her race seemed to stir in her blood, with
frantic leaps and bounds, at its first conscious awakening. She
gave herself up to it wildly now. She was mad. She was mad. She
was glad. She was happy.
Then she began to turn round again, slowly, slowly, slowly. As she
turned, she raised the boa now high above her head; now held it
low on one side, now stooped down and caressed it. At times, as she
played with it, the lifeless thing seemed to glide from her grasp
in curling folds and elude her; at others, she caught it round the
neck like a snake, and twisted it about her arm, or let it twine
and encircle her writhing body. Like a snake! like a snake! That
idea ran like wildfire through her burning veins. It was a snake,
indeed, she wanted; a real live snake; what would she not have
given, if it were only Sardanapalus!
Sardanapalus, so glossy, so beautiful, so supple, that glorious green
serpent, with his large smooth coils, and his silvery scales, and
his darting red tongue, and his long lithe movements. Sardanapalus,
Sardanapalus, Sardanapalus! The very name seemed to link itself
with the music in her head. It coursed with her blood. It rang
through her brain. And another as well. Cyril Waring, Cyril Waring,
Cyril Waring, Cyril Waring! Oh! great heavens, what would Cyril
Waring say now, if only he could see her in her mad mood that
moment!
And yet it was not she, not she, not she, but some spirit, some
weird, some unseen power within her. It was no more she than that
boa there was a snake. A real live snake. Oh, for a real live snake!
And then she could dance--tarantel, tarantella--as the spirit within
her prompted her to dance it.
"Faster, faster," said the spirit; and she answered him back,
"Faster!"
Faster, faster, faster, faster she whirled round the room; the
boa grew alive; it coiled about her; it strangled her. Her candle
failed; the wick in the socket flickered and died; but Elma danced
on, unheeding, in the darkness. Dance, dance, dance, dance; never
mind for the light! Oh! what madness was this? What insanity had
come over her? Would her feet never stop? Must she go on till she
dropped? Must she go on for ever?
Ashamed and terrified with her maidenly sense, overawed and
obscured by this hateful charm, yet unable to stay herself, unable
to resist it, in a transport of fear and remorse, she danced on
irresponsibly. Check herself she couldn't, let her do what she
would. Her whole being seemed to go forth into that weird, wild
dance. She trembled and shook. She stood aghast at her own shame.
She had hard work to restrain herself from crying aloud in her
horror.
At last, a lull, a stillness, a recess. Her limbs seemed to yield
and give way beneath her. She half fainted with fatigue. She
staggered and fell. Too weary to undress, she flung herself upon
the bed, just as she was, clothes and all. Her overwrought nerves
lost consciousness at once. In three minutes she was asleep,
breathing fast but peacefully.
CHAPTER IX.
AND AFTER?
When Elma woke up next morning, it was broad daylight. She woke
with a start, to find herself lying upon the bed where she had flung
herself. For a minute or two she couldn't recollect or recall to
herself how it had all come about. It was too remote from anything
in her previous waking thought, too dream-like, too impossible. Then
an unspeakable horror flashed over her unawares. Her face flushed
hot. Shame and terror overcame her. She buried her head in her hands
in an agony of awe. Her own self-respect was literally outraged.
It wasn't exactly remorse; it wasn't exactly fear; it was a strange
creeping feeling of ineffable disgust and incredulous astonishment.
There could be but one explanation of this impossible episode. She
must have gone mad all at once! She must be a frantic lunatic!
A single thought usurped her whole soul. If she was going mad--if
this was really mania--she could never, never, never--marry Cyril
Waring.
For in a flash of intuition she knew that now. She knew she was in
love. She knew he loved her.
In that wild moment of awakening all the rest mattered nothing.
The solitary idea that ran now through her head, as the impulse to
dance had run through it last night, was the idea that she could
never marry Cyril Waring. And if Cyril Waring could have seen her
just then! her cheeks burned yet a brighter scarlet at that thought
than even before. One virginal blush suffused her face from chin
to forehead. The maidenly sense of shame consumed and devoured her.
Was she mad? Was she mad? And was this a lucid interval?
Presently, as she lay still on her bed all dressed, and with her
face in her hands, trembling for very shame, a little knock sounded
tentatively at the door of her bedroom. It was a timid, small knock,
very low and soft, and, as it were, inquiring. It seemed to say
in an apologetic sort of undertone, "I don't know whether you're
awake or not just yet; and if you're still asleep, pray don't let
me for a moment disturb or arouse you."
"Who's there?" Elma mustered up courage to ask, in a hushed voice
of terror, hiding her head under the bed-clothes.
"It's me, darling," Mrs. Clifford answered, very softly and sweetly.
Elma had never heard her mother speak in so tender and gentle a
tone before, though they loved one another well, and were far more
sympathetic than most mothers and daughters. And besides, that
knock was so unlike mamma's. Why so soft and low?
Had mamma discovered her? With a despairing sense of being caught
she looked down at her tell-tale clothes and the unslept-in bed.
"Oh, what shall I ever do?" she thought to herself, confusedly. "I
can't let mamma come in and catch me like this. She'll ask why on
earth I didn't undress last night. And then what could I ever say?
How could I ever explain to her?"
The awful sense of shame-facedness grew upon her still more deeply
than ever. She jumped up and whispered through the door, in a
very penitent voice, "Oh, mother, I can't let you in just yet. Do
you mind waiting five minutes? Come again by-and-by. I--I--I'm so
awfully tired and queer this morning somehow."
Mrs. Clifford's voice had an answering little ring of terror in
it, as she replied at once, in the same soft tone--
"Very well, darling. That's all right. Stay as long as you like.
Don't trouble to get up if you'd rather have your breakfast in bed.
And don't hurry yourself at all. I'll come back by-and-by and see
what's the matter."
Elma didn't know why, but by the very tone of her mother's voice she
felt dimly conscious something strange had happened. Mrs. Clifford
spoke with unusual gentleness, yet with an unwonted tremor.
"Thank you, dear," Elma answered through the door, going back to
the bedside and beginning to undress in a tumult of shame. "Come
again by-and-by. In just five minutes." It would do her good, she
knew, in spite of her shyness, to talk with her mother. Then she
folded her clothes neatly, one by one, on a chair; hid the peccant
boa away in its own lower drawer; buttoned her neat little embroidered
nightdress tightly round her throat; arranged her front hair into
a careless disorder; and tried to cool down her fiery red cheeks
with copious bathing in cold water. When Mrs. Clifford came back
five minutes later, everything looked to the outer eye of a mere
casual observer exactly as if Elma had laid in bed all night, curled
up between the sheets, in the most orthodox fashion.
But all these elaborate preparations didn't for one moment deceive
the mother's watchful glance, or the keen intuition shared by all
the women of the Clifford family. She looked tenderly at Elma--Elma
with her face half buried in the pillows, and the tell-tale flush
still crimsoning her cheek in a single round spot; then she turned
for a second to the clothes, too neatly folded on the chair by the
bedside, as she murmured low--
"You're not well this morning, my child. You'd better not get up.
I'll bring you a cup of tea and some toast myself. You don't feel
hungry, of course. Ah, no, I thought not. Just a slice of dry
toast--yes, yes. I have been there. Some eau de Cologne on your
forehead, dear? There, there, don't cry, Elma. You'll be better
by-and-by. Stop in bed till lunch-time. I won't let Lucy come up
with the tea, of course. You'd rather be alone. You were tired last
night. Don't be afraid, my darling. It'll soon pass off. There's
nothing on earth, nothing at all to be alarmed at."
She laid her hand nervously on Elma's arm. Half dead with shame as
she was, Elma noticed it trembled. She noticed, too, that mamma
seemed almost afraid to catch her eye. When their glance met for
an instant the mother's eyelids fell, and her cheek, too, burned
bright red, almost as red, Elma felt, as her own that nestled hot
so deep in the pillow. Neither said a word to the other of what
she thought or felt. But their mute sympathy itself made them
more shame-faced than ever. In some dim, indefinite, instinctive
fashion, Elma knew her mother was vaguely aware what she had done
last night. Her gaze fell half unconsciously on the bottom drawer.
With quick insight, Mrs. Clifford's eye followed her daughter's.
Then it fell as before. Elma looked up at her terrified, and burst
into a sudden flood of tears. Her mother stooped down and caught her
wildly in her arms. "Cry, cry, my darling," ahe murmured, clasping
her hard to her breast. "Cry, cry; it'll do you good; there's safety
in crying. Nobody but I shall come near you to-day. Nobody else
shall know! Don't be afraid of me! Have not I been there, too? It's
nothing, nothing."
With a burst of despair, Elma laid her face in her mother's bosom.
Some minutes later, Mrs. Clifford went down to meet her husband in
the breakfast-room.
"Well?" the father asked, shortly, looking hard at his wife's face,
which told its own tale at once, for it was white and pallid.
"Well!" Mrs. Clifford answered, with a pre-occupied air. "Elma's
not herself this morning at all. Had a nervous turn after she went
to her room last night. I know what it is. I suffered from them
myself when I was about her age." Her eyes fell quickly and she
shrank from her husband's searching glance. She was a plump-faced
and well-favoured British matron now, but once, many years before,
as a slim young girl, she had been in love with somebody--somebody
whom by superior parental wisdom she was never allowed to marry,
being put off instead with a well-connected match, young Mr. Clifford
of the Colonial Office. That was all. No more romance than that.
The common romance of every woman's heart. A forgotten love. Yet
she tingled to remember it.
"And you think?" Mr. Clifford asked, laying down his newspaper and
looking very grave.
"I don't think. I know," his wife answered hastily. "I was wrong
the other day, and Elma's in love with that young man, Cyril Waring.
I know more than that, Reginald; I know you may crush her; I know
you may kill her; but if you don't want to do that, I know she
must marry him. Whether we wish it, or whether we don't, there's
nothing else to be done. As things stand now, it's inevitable,
unavoidable. She'll never be happy with anybody else--she must have
HIM--and I, for one, won't try to prevent her."
Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., sometime Administrator of the
island of St. Kitts, gazed at his wife in blank astonishment. She
spoke decidedly; he had never heard her speak with such firmness
in his life before. It fairly took his breath away. He gazed at
his wife blankly as he repeated to himself in very slow and solemn
tones, each word distinct, "You, for one, won't try to prevent
her!"
"No, I won't," Mrs. Clifford retorted defiantly, assured in her
own mind she was acting right. "Elma's really in love with him;
and I won't let Elma's life be wrecked--as some lives have been
wrecked, and as some mothers would wreck it."
Mr. Clifford leaned back in his chair, one mass of astonishment,
and let the Japanese paper-knife he was holding in his right hand
drop clattering from his fingers. "If I hadn't heard you say it
yourself, Louisa," he answered, with a gasp, "I could never have
believed it. I could--never--have--believed it. I don't believe
it even now. It's impossible, incredible."
"But it's true," Mrs. Clifford repeated. "Elma must marry the man
she's in love with."
Meanwhile poor Elma lay alone in her bedroom upstairs, that awful
sense of remorse and shame still making her cheeks tingle with
unspeakable horror. Mrs. Clifford brought up her cup of tea herself.
Elma took it with gratitude, but still never dared to look her
mother in the face. Mrs. Clifford, too, kept her own eyes averted.
It made Elma's self-abasement even profounder than before to feel
that her mother instinctively knew everything.
The poor child lay there long, with a burning face and tingling
ears, too ashamed to get up and dress herself and face the outer
world, too ashamed to go down before her father's eyes, till long
after lunchtime. Then there came a noise at the door once more;
the rustling of a dress; a retreating footstep. Somebody pushed an
envelope stealthily under the door. Elma picked it up and examined
it curiously. It bore a penny stamp, and the local postmark. It
must have come then by the two o'clock delivery, without a doubt;
but the address, why, the address was written in some unknown hand,
and in printing capitals. Elma tore it open with a beating heart,
and read the one line of manuscript it contained, which was also
written in the same print-like letters.
"Don't be afraid," the letter said, "It will do you no harm. Resist
it when it comes. If you do, you will get the better of it."
Elma looked at the letter over and over again in a fever of dismay.
She was certain it was her mother had written that note. But she
read it with tears, only half-reassured--and then burnt it to ashes,
and proceeded to dress herself.
When she went down to the drawing-room, Mrs. Clifford rose from
her seat, and took her hand in her own, and kissed her on one cheek
as if nothing out of the common had happened in any way. The talk
between them was obtrusively commonplace. But all that day long,
Elma noticed her mother was far tenderer to her than usual; and
when she went up to bed Mrs. Clifford held her fingers for a moment
with a gentle pressure, and kissed her twice upon her eyes, and
stifled a sigh, and then broke from the room as if afraid to speak
to her.
CHAPTER X.
COLONEL KELMSCOTT'S REPENTANCE.
Elma Clifford wasn't the only person who passed a terrible night
and suffered a painful awakening on the morning after the Holkers'
garden-party. Colonel Kelmscott, too, had his bad half-hour or so
before he finally fell asleep; and he woke up next day to a sense
of shame and remorse far more definite, and, therefore, more poignant
and more real than Elma's.
Hour after hour, indeed, he lay there on his bed, afraid to toss or
turn lest he should wake Lady Emily, but with his limbs all fevered
and his throat all parched, thinking over the strange chance that
had thus brought him face to face, on the threshold of his honoured
age, with the two lads he had wronged so long and so cruelly.
The shock of meeting them had been a sudden and a painful one. To
be sure, the Colonel had always felt the time might come when his
two eldest sons would cross his path in the intricate maze of London
society. He had steeled himself, as he thought, to meet them there
with dignity and with stoical reserve. He had made up his mind
that if ever the names he had imposed upon them were to fall upon
his startled ears, no human being that stood by and looked on should
note for one second a single tremor of his lips, a faint shudder of
surprise, an almost imperceptible flush or pallor on his impassive
countenance. And when the shock came, indeed, he had borne it, as
he meant to bear it, with military calmness. Not even Mrs. Clifford,
he thought, could have discovered from any undertone of his
voice or manner that the two lads he received with such well-bred
unconcern were his own twin sons, the true heirs and inheritors of
the Tilgate Park property.
And yet, the actual crisis had taken him quite by surprise, and
shaken him far more than he could ever have conceived possible. For
one thing, though he quite expected that some day he would run up
unawares against Guy and Cyril, he did NOT expect it would be down
in the country, and still less within a few miles' drive of Tilgate.
In London, of course, all things are possible. Sooner or later,
there, everybody hustles and clashes against everybody. For that
reason, he had tried to suggest, by indirect means, when he launched
them on the world, that the twins should tempt their fortune in India
or the colonies. He would have liked to think they were well out
of his way, and out of Granville's, too. But, against his advice,
they had stayed on in England. So he expected to meet them some
day, at the Academy private view, perhaps, or in Mrs. Bouverie
Barton's literary saloon, but certainly NOT on the close sward
of the Holkers' lawn, within a few short miles of his own home at
Tilgate.
And now he had met them, his conscience, that had lain asleep so
long, woke up of a sudden with a terrible start, and began to prick
him fiercely.
If only they had been ugly, misshapen, vulgar; if only they
had spoken with coarse, rough voices, or irritated him by their
inferior social tone, or shown themselves unworthy to be the heirs
of Tilgate--why then, the Colonel might possibly have forgiven
himself! But to see his own two sons, the sons he had never set
eyes on for twenty-five years or more, grown up into such handsome,
well-set, noble-looking fellows--so clever, so bright, so able, so
charming--to feel they were in every way as much gentlemen born as
Granville himself, and to know he had done all three an irreparable
wrong, oh, THAT was too much for him. For he had kept two of his
sons out of their own all these years, only in order to make the
position and prospects of the third, at last, certainly doubtful,
and perhaps wretched.
There was much to excuse him to himself, no doubt, he cried to his
own soul piteously in the night watches. Proud man as he was, he
could not so wholly abase himself even to his inmost self as to admit
he had sinned without deep provocation. He thought it all over in
his heart, just there, exactly as it all happened, that simple and
natural tale of a common wrong, that terrible secret of a lifetime
that he was still to repent in sackcloth and ashes.
It was so long before--all those twenty-six years, or was it
twenty-eight?--since his regiment had been quartered away down in
Devonshire. He was a handsome subaltern then, with a frank open
face--Harry Kelmscott, of the Greys--just such another man, he said
to himself in his remorse, as his son Granville now--or rather,
perhaps, as Guy and Cyril Waring. For he couldn't conceal from
himself any longer the patent fact that Lucy Waring's sons were
like his own old self, and sturdier, handsomer young fellows into
the bargain than Lady Emily Kelmscott's boy Granville, whom he
had made into the heir of the Tilgate manors. The moor, where the
Greys were quartered that summer, was as dull as ditch-water. No
society, no dances, no hunting, no sport; what wonder a man of his
tastes, spoiling for want of a drawing-room to conquer, should have
kept his hand in with pretty Lucy Waring?
But he married her--he married her. He did her no wrong in the end.
He hadn't that sin at least to lay to his conscience.
Ah, well, poor Lucy! he had really been fond of her; as fond as
a Kelmscott of Tilgate could reasonably be expected ever to prove
towards the daughter of a simple Dartmoor farmer. It began in
flirtation, of course, as such things will begin; and it ended, as
they will end, too, in love, at least on poor Lucy's side, for what
can you expect from a Kelmscott of Tilgate? And, indeed, indeed, he
said to himself earnestly, he meant her no harm, though he seemed
at times to be cruel to her. As soon as he gathered how deeply she
was entangled--how seriously she took it all--how much she was in
love with him--he tried hard to break it off, he tried hard to put
matters to her in their proper light; he tried to show her that
an officer and a gentleman, a Kelmscott of Tilgate, could never
really have dreamed of marrying the half-educated, half-peasant
daughter of a Devonshire farmer. Though, to be sure, she was a
lady in her way, too, poor Lucy; as much of a lady in manner and in
heart as Emily herself, whose father was an earl, and whose mother
was a marquis's eldest daughter.
So much a lady in her way, in deed, in thought, and all that--one
of nature's gentlewomen--that when Lucy cried and broke her heart
at his halting explanations, he was unmanned by her sobs, and did
a thing no Kelmscott of Tilgate should ever have stooped to do--yes,
promised to marry her. Of course, he didn't attempt in his own heart
to justify that initial folly, as lie thought it, to himself. He
didn't pretend to condone it. He only allowed he had acted like a
fool. A Kelmscott of Tilgate should have drawn back long before,
or else, having gone so far, should have told the girl plainly--at
whatever cost, to her--he could go no further and have no more to
say to her.
To be sure, that would have killed the poor thing outright. But a
Kelmscott, you know, should respect his order, and shouldn't shrink
for a moment from these trifling sacrifices!
However, his own heart was better, in those days, than his class
philosophy. He couldn't trample on poor Lucy Waring. So he made a
fool of himself in the end--and married Lucy. Ah, well! ah, well!
every man makes a fool of himself once or twice in his life; and
though the Colonel was ashamed now of having so far bemeaned his
order as to marry the girl, why, if the truth must out, he would
have been more ashamed still, in his heart of hearts, even then,
if he hadn't married her. He was better than his creed. He could
never have crushed her.
Married her, yes; but not publicly, of course. At least, he respected
public decency. He married her under his own name, to be sure, but
by special licence, and at a remote little village on the far side
of the moor, where nobody knew either himself or Lucy. In those
days, he hadn't yet come into possession of the Tilgate estates;
and if his father had known of it--well, the Admiral was such
a despotic old man that he'd have insisted on his son's selling
out at once, and going off to Australia or heaven knows where, on
a journey round the world, and breaking poor Lucy's heart by his
absence. Partly for her sake, the Colonel said to himself now
in the silent night, and partly for his own, he had concealed the
marriage--for the time being--from the Admiral.
And then came that horrible embroilment--oh, how well he remembered
it. Ah me, ah me, it seemed but yesterday--when his father insisted
he was to marry Lady Emily Croke, Lord Aldeburgh's daughter; and
he dared not marry her, of course, having a wife already, and he
dared not tell his father, on the other hand, why he couldn't marry
her. It was a hateful time. He shrank from recalling it. He was
keeping Lucy, then his own wedded wife, as Mrs. Waring, in small
rooms in Plymouth; and yet he was running up to town now and again,
on leave, as the gay young bachelor, the heir of Tilgate Park--and
meeting Emily Croke at every party he went to in London--and braving
the Admiral's wrath by refusing to propose to her. What he would
ever have done if Lucy had lived, he couldn't imagine. But,
there! Lucy DIDN'T live; so he was saved that bother. Poor child,
it brought tears to his eyes even now to think of her. He brushed
them furtively away, lest he should waken Lady Emily.
And yet it was a shock to him, the night Lucy died. Just then, he
could hardly realize how lucky was the accident. He sat there by
her side, the day the twins were born, to see her safely through
her trouble; for he had always done his duty, after a fashion, by
Lucy. When a girl of that class marries a gentleman, don't you
see, and consents, too, mind you, to marry him privately, she can't
expect to share much of her husband's company. She can't expect
he should stultify himself by acknowledging her publicly before
his own class. And, indeed, he always meant to acknowledge her in
the end--after his father's death, when there was no fear of the
Admiral's cutting off his allowance.
But how curiously events often turn out of themselves. The twins
were born on a Friday morning, and by the Saturday night, poor Lucy
was lying dead, a pale, sweet corpse, in her own little room, near
the Hoe, at Plymouth. It was a happy release for him though he
really loved her. But still, when a man's fool enough to love a
girl below his own station in life--the Colonel paused and broke
off. It was twenty-seven years ago now, yet he really loved her.
He couldn't find it in his heart even then to indorse to the full
the common philosophy of his own order.
So there he was left with the two boys on his hands, but free, if
he liked, to marry Lady Emily. No reason on earth, of course, why
he shouldn't marry her now. So, naturally, he married her--after
a fortnight's interval. The Admiral was all smiles and paternal
blessings at this sudden change of front on his son's part. Why the
dickens Harry hadn't wanted to marry the girl before, to be sure
he couldn't conceive; hankering after some missy in the country,
he supposed, that silly rot about what they call love, no doubt; but
now that Harry had come to his senses at last, and taken the Earl's
lass, why, the Admiral was indulgence and munificence itself; the
young people should have an ample allowance, and my daughter-in-law,
Lady Emily, should live on the best that Tilgate and Chetwood could
possibly afford her.
What would you have? the Colonel asked piteously, in the dead of
night, of his own conscience. How else could he have acted? He said
nothing. That was all, mind you, he declared to himself more than
once in his own soul. He told no lies. He made no complications.
While the Admiral lived, he brought up Lucy's sons, quite privately,
at Plymouth. And as soon as ever the Admiral died, he really and
truly meant to acknowledge them.
But fathers never die--in entailed estates. The Admiral lived so
long--quite, quite too long for Guy and Cyril. Granville was born,
and grew to be a big boy, and was treated by everybody as the heir
to Tilgate. And now the Colonel's difficulties gathered thicker
around him. At last, in the fulness of time, the Admiral died, and
slept with his fathers, whose Elizabethan ruff's were the honour
and glory of the chancel at Tilgate; and then the day of reckoning
was fairly upon him. How well he remembered that awful hour. He
couldn't, he couldn't. He knew it was his duty to acknowledge his
rightful sons and heirs, but he hadn't the courage. Things had all
altered so much.
Meanwhile, Guy and Cyril had gone to Charterhouse as nobody's
wards, and been brought up in the expectation of earning their
own livelihood, so no wrong, he said casuistically, had been done
to THEM, at any rate. And Granville had been brought up as the
heir of Tilgate. Lady Emily naturally expected her son to succeed
his father. He had gone too far to turn back at last. And yet--
And yet, in his own heart, disguise it as he might, he knew he was
keeping his lawful sons out of their own in the end, and it was
his duty to acknowledge them as the heirs of Tilgate.
CHAPTER XI.
A FAMILY JAR.
Hour after hour the unhappy man lay still as death on his bed and
reasoned in vain with his accusing conscience. To be sure, he said
to himself, no man was bound by the law of England to name his
heir. It is for the eldest son himself to come forward and make
his claim. If Guy and Cyril could prove their title to the Tilgate
estates when he himself was dead, that was their private business.
He wasn't bound to do anything special to make the way easy for
them beforehand.
But still, when he saw them, his heart arose and smote him. His
very class prejudices fought hard on their behalf. These men were
gentlemen, the eldest sons of a Kelmscott of Tilgate--true Kelmscotts
to the core--handsome, courtly, erect of bearing. Guy was the very
image of the Kelmscott of Tilgate Park who bled for King Charles
at Marston Moor; Cyril had the exact mien of Sir Rupert Kelmscott,
Knight of Chetwood, the ablest of their race, whose portrait, by
Kneller, hung in the great hall between his father; the Admiral,
and his uncle, Sir Frederick. They had all the qualities the Colonel
himself associated with the Kelmscott name. They were strong, brave,
vigorous, able to hold their own against all comers. To leave them
out in the cold was not only wrong--it was also, he felt in his
heart of hearts, a treason to his order.
At last, after long watching, he fell asleep. But he slept uneasily.
When he woke, it was with a start. He found himself murmuring to
himself in his troubled sleep, "Break the entail, and settle a sum
on the two that will quiet them."
It was the only way left to prevent public scandal, and to save
Lady Emily and his son Granville from a painful disclosure: while,
at the same time, it would to some extent satisfy the claims of
his conscience.
Compromise, compromise; there's nothing like compromise. Colonel
Kelmscott had always had by temperament a truly British love of
compromise.
To carry out his plan, indeed, it would be necessary to break the
entail twice; once formally, and once again really. He must begin
by getting Granville's consent to the proposed arrangement, so as
to raise ready money with which to bribe the young men; and as soon
as Granville's consent was obtained, he must put it plainly to Guy
and Cyril, as an anonymous benefactor, that if they would consent
to accept a fixed sum in lieu of all contingencies, then the secret
of their birth would be revealed to them at last, and they would
be asked to break the entail on the estates as eldest sons of a
gentleman of property.
It was a hard bargain; a very hard bargain; but then these boys
would jump at it, no doubt; expecting nothing as they did, they'd
certainly jump at it. It's a great point, you see, to come in
suddenly, when you expect nothing, to a nice lump sum of five or
six thousand!
So much so, indeed, that the real difficulty, he thought, would
rather lie in approaching Granville.
After breakfast that morning, however, he tapped his son on
the shoulder as he was leaving the table, and said to him, in his
distinctly business tone, "Granville, will you step with me into
the library for ten minutes' talk? There's a small matter of the
estate I desire to discuss with you."
Granville looked back at him with a curiously amused air.
"Why, yes," he said shortly. "It's a very odd coincidence. But do
you know, I was going this morning myself to ask for a chance of
ten minutes' talk with you."
He rose, and followed his father into the oak-panelled library.
The Colonel sat down on one of the uncomfortable library chairs,
especially designed, with their knobs and excrescences, to prevent
the bare possibility of serious study. Granville took a seat opposite
him, across the formal oak table. Colonel Kelmscott paused; and
cleared his throat nervously. Then, with military promptitude, he
darted straight into the very thick of the fray.
"Granville," he said abruptly, "I want to speak with you about a
rather big affair. The fact of it is, I'm going to break the entail.
I want to raise some money."
The son gave a little start of surprise and amusement. "Why,
this is very odd," he exclaimed once more, in an astonished tone.
"That's just the precise thing I wanted to talk about with you."
Colonel Kelmscott eyed him with an answering start.
"Not debts!" he said slowly. "My boy, my boy, this is bad. Not
debts surely, Granville; I never suspected it."
"Oh, dear no," Granville answered frankly. "No debts, you may be
sure. But I wanted to feel myself on a satisfactory basis--as to
income and so forth: and I was prepared to pay for my freedom well.
To tell you the truth outright, I want to marry."
Colonel Kelmscott eyed him close with a very puzzled look. "Not
Elma Clifford, my boy," he said again quickly. "For of course, if
it is her, Granville, I need hardly say--"
The young man cut him short with a hasty little laugh. "Elma
Clifford," he repeated, with some scorn in his musical voice, "Oh,
dear no, not HER. If it had been her you may be sure there'd be no
reason of any sort for breaking the entail. But the fact is this:
I dislike allowances one way or the other. I want to feel once for
all I'm my own master. I want to marry--not this girl or that,
but whom ever I will. I don't care to come to you with my hat in
my hand, asking how much you'll be kind enough to allow me if I
venture to take Miss So-and-so or Miss What-you-may-call-it. And
as I know you want money yourself for this new wing you're thinking
of, why, I'm prepared to break the entail at once, and sell whatever
building land you think right and proper."
The father held his breath. What on earth could this mean? "And
who is the girl, Granville?" he asked, with unconcealed interest.
"You won't care to hear," his son answered carelessly.
Colonel Kelmscott looked across at him with a very red face. "Not
some girl who'll bring disgrace upon your mother, I hope?" he said,
with a half-pang of remorse, remembering Lucy. "Not some young
woman beneath your own station in life. For to that, you may be
sure, I'll never consent under any circumstances."
Granville drew himself up proudly, with a haughty smile. He was a
Kelmscott, too, as arrogant as the best of them.
"No, that's not the difficulty," he answered, looking rather
amused than annoyed or frightened. "My tastes are NOT low. I hope
I know better than to disgrace my family. The lady I want to marry,
and for whose sake I wish you to make some arrangement beforehand
is--don't be surprised--well, Gwendoline Gildersleeve."
"Gwendoline Gildersleeve," his father echoed, astonished; for
there was feud between the families, "That rascally, land-grabbing
barrister's daughter! Why, how on earth do you come to know anything
of her, Granville? Nobody in Surrey ever had the impertinence yet
to ask me or mine to meet the Gildersleeves anywhere, since that
disgraceful behaviour of his about the boundary fences. And I didn't
suppose you'd ever even seen her."
"Nobody in Surrey ever did ask me to meet her," Granville answered
somewhat curtly. "But you can't expect every one in London society
to keep watch over the quarrels of every country parish in provincial
England! It wouldn't be reasonable. I met Gwendoline, if you want
to know, at the Bertrams', in Berkeley Square, and she and I got
on so well together that we've--well, we've met from time to time
in the Park, since our return from town, and we think by this time
we may consider ourselves informally engaged to one another."
Colonel Kelmscott gazed at his son in a perfect access of indignant
amazement. Gilbert Gildersleeve's daughter! That rascally Q.C.'s!
At any other moment such a proposal would have driven him forthwith
into open hostilities. If Granville chose to marry a girl like that,
why, Granville might have lived on what his father would allow him.
Just now, however, with this keen fit of remorse quite fresh upon
his soul about poor Lucy's sons, Colonel Kelmscott was almost
disposed to accept the opening thus laid before him by Granville's
proposal.
So he temporized for awhile, nursing his chin with his hand,
and then, after much discussion, yielded at last a conditional
consent--conditional upon their mutual agreement as to the terms
on which the entail was to be finally broken.
"And what sort of arrangement do you propose I should make for your
personal maintenance, and this Gildersleeve girl's household?" the
Colonel asked at length, with a very red face, descending to details.
His son, without appearing to notice the implied slight to Gwendoline,
named the terms that he thought would satisfy him.
"That's a very stiff sum," the master of Tilgate retorted; "but
perhaps I could manage it; per--haps I could manage it. We must
sell the Dowlands farm at once, that's certain, and I must take the
twelve thousand or so the land will fetch for my own use, absolutely
and without restriction."
"To build the new wing with?" the son put in, with a gesture of
assent.
"To build the new wing with? Why, certainly not," his father answered
angrily. "Am I to bargain with my son what use I'm to make of my
own property? Mark my words, I won't submit to interference. To
do precisely as I choose with, sir. To roll in if I like! To fling
into the sea, if the fancy takes me!"
Granville Kelmscott stared hard at him. Twelve thousand pounds! What
on earth could his father mean by this whim? he wondered. "Twelve
thousand pounds is a very big sum to fling away from the estate
without a question asked," he retorted, growing hot "It seems to me,
you too closely resemble our ancestors who came over from Holland.
In matters of business, you know, the fault of the Dutch is giving
too little and asking too much."
His father glared at him. That's the worst of this huckstering and
higgling with your own flesh and blood. You have to put up with
such intolerable insults. But he controlled himself, and continued.
The longer he talked, however, the hotter and angrier he became by
degrees. And what made him the hottest and angriest of all was the
knowledge meanwhile that he was doing it every bit for Granville's
own sake; nay, more, that consideration for Granville alone had
brought him originally into this peck of trouble.
At last he could contain himself with indignation no longer. His
temper broke down. He flared up and out with it. "Take care what
you do!" he cried. "Take care what you say, Granville! I'm not
going to be bearded with impunity in my den. If you press me too
hard, remember, I'll ruin all. I can cut you off with a shilling,
sir, if I choose--cut you off with a shilling. Yes, and do justice
to others I've wronged for your sake. Don't provoke me too far, I
say, If you do, you'll repent it."
"Cut me off with a shilling, sir!" his son answered angrily, rising
and staring hard at him. "Why, what do you mean by that? You know
you can't do it, My interest in the estate's as good as your own.
I'm the eldest son--"
He broke off suddenly; for at those fatal words, Colonel Kelmscott's
face, fiery red till then, grew instantly blanched and white with
terror. "Oh, what have I done?" the unhappy man cried, seeing his
son's eyes read some glimpse of the truth too clearly in his look.
"Oh, what have I said? Forget it, Granny, forget it! I didn't mean
to go so far as I did in my anger. I was a fool--a fool! I gave
way too much. For Heaven's sake, my boy, forget it, forget it!"
The young man looked across at him with a dazed and puzzled look,
yet very full of meaning. "I shall never forget it," he said slowly.
"I shall learn what it means. I don't know how things stand; but I
see you meant it. Do as you like about the entail. It's no business
of mine. Take your pound of flesh, your twelve thousand down,
and pay your hush-money! I don't know whom you bribe, and I have
nothing to say to it. I never dragged the honour of the Kelmscotts
in the dust. I won't drag it now. I wash my hands clean from it. I
ask no questions. I demand no explanations. I only say this. Until
I know what you mean--know whether I'm lawful heir to Tilgate Park
or not, I won't marry the girl I meant to marry. I have too much
regard for her, and for the honour of our house, to take her on
what may prove to be false expectations. Break the entail, I say!
Raise your twelve thousand. Pay off your bloodhounds. But never
expect me to touch a penny of your money, henceforth and for ever,
till I know whether it was yours and mine at all to deal with."
Colonel Kelmscott bent down his proud head meekly. "As you will,
Granville," he answered, quite broken with remorse, and silenced
by shame. "My boy, my boy, I only wanted to save you!"
CHAPTER XII.
IN SILENCE AND TEARS.
When he had time to think, Colonel Kelmscott determined in his
own mind that he would still do his best to save Granville, whether
Granville himself wished it or otherwise. So he proceeded to take
all the necessary steps for breaking the entail and raising the
money he needed for Guy and Cyril.
In all this, Granville neither acquiesced nor dissented. He
signed mechanically whatever documents his father presented to him,
and he stood by his bargain with a certain sullen, undeviating,
hard-featured loyalty; but he never forgot those few angry words
in which his father had half let out his long-guarded life secret.
Thinking the matter over continually with himself, however, he came
in the end to the natural conclusion that one explanation alone
would fit all the facts. He was not his father's eldest son at all.
Colonel Kelmscott must have been married to some one else before
his marriage with Lady Emily. That some one else's son was the
real heir of Tilgate. And it was to him that his father, in his
passionate penitence, proposed, after many years, to do one-sided
justice. Now Granville Kelmscott, though a haughty and somewhat
head-strong fellow, after the fashion of his race, was a young man
of principle and of honour. The moment this hideous doubt occurred
to his mind, he couldn't rest in his bed till he had cleared it
all up and settled it for ever, one way or the other. If Tilgate
wasn't his, by law and right, he wanted none of it. If his father
was trying to buy off the real heir to the estate with a pitiful
pittance, in order to preserve the ill-gotten remainder for Lady
Emily's son, why, Granville for his part would be no active party
to such a miserable compromise. If some other man was the Colonel's
lawful heir, let that other man take the property and enjoy it; but
he, Granville Kelmscott, would go forth upon the world, an honest
adventurer, to seek his fortune with his own right hand wherever
he might find it.
Still, he could take no active step, on the other hand, to hunt
up the truth about the Colonel's real or supposed first marriage.
For here an awful dilemma blocked the way before him. If the Colonel
had married before, and if by that former marriage he had a son or
sons--how could Granville be sure the supposed first wife was dead
before the second was married? And supposing, for a moment, she
was not dead--supposing his father had been even more criminal and
more unjust than he at first imagined--how could he take the initiative
himself in showing that his own mother, Lady Emily Kelmscott, was
no wife at all in the sight of the law? that some other woman was
his father's lawful consort? The bare possibility of such an issue
was too horrible for any son on earth to face undismayed. So,
tortured and distracted by his divided duty, Granville Kelmscott
shrank alike from action or inaction.
In the midst of such doubts and difficulties, however, one duty
shone out clear as day before him. Till the mystery was cleared
up, till the problem was solved, he must see no more of Gwendoline
Gildersleeve. He had engaged himself to her as the heir of Tilgate.
She had accepted him under that guise, and looked forward to an
early and happy marriage. Now, all was changed. He was, or might
be, a beggar and an outcast. To be sure, he knew Gwendoline loved
him for himself; but how could he marry her if he didn't even know
he had anything of his own in the world to marry upon? The park
and fallow deer had been a part of himself; without them, he felt
he was hardly even a Kelmscott. It was his plain duty, now, for
Gwendoline's sake, to release her from her promise to a man who
might perhaps be penniless, and who couldn't even feel sure he was
the lawful son of his own father. And yet--for Lady Emily's sake--he
mustn't hint, even to Gwendoline, the real reason which moved him
to offer her this release. He must throw himself upon her mercy,
without cause assigned, and ask her for the time being to have
faith in him and to believe him.
So, a day or two after the interview with his father in the library,
the self-disinherited heir of Tilgate took the path through the
glade that led into the dell beyond the boundary fence--that dell
which had once been accounted a component part of Tilgate Park,
but which Gilbert Gildersleeve had proved, in his cold-blooded
documentary legal way, to belong in reality to the grounds
of Woodlands. It was in the dell that Granville sometimes ran up
against Gwendoline. He sat down on the broken ledge of ironstone
that overhung the little brook. It was eleven o'clock gone. By
eleven o'clock, three mornings in the week, chance--pure chance--the
patron god of lovers, brought Gwendoline into the dell to meet him.
Presently, a light footfall rang soft upon the path, and next
moment a tall and beautiful girl, with a wealth of auburn hair, and
a bright colour in her cheeks, tripped lightly down the slope, as
if strolling through the wood in maiden meditation, fancy free,
unexpecting any one.
"What, you here, Mr. Kelmscott?" she exclaimed, as she saw him,
her pink cheek deepening as she spoke to a still profounder crimson.
"Yes, I'm here, Gwendoline," Granville Kelmscott answered, with
a smile of recognition at her maidenly pretence of an undesigned
coincidence. "And I'm here, to say the truth, because I quite
expected this morning to meet you."
He took her hand gravely. Gwendoline let her eyes fall modestly
on the ground, as if some warmer greeting were more often bestowed
between them. The young man blushed with a certain manly shame.
"No, not to-day, dear," he said, with an effort, as she held her
cheek aside, half courting and half deprecating the expected kiss.
"Oh, Gwendoline, I don't know how to begin. I don't know how to say
it. But I've got very sad news for you--news that I can't bear to
break--that I can't venture to explain--that I don't even properly
understand myself. I must throw myself upon your faith. I must just
ask you to trust me."
Gwendoline let him seat her, unresisting, upon the ledge by his
side, and her cheek grew suddenly ashy pale, as she answered with
a gasp, forgetting the "Mr. Kelmscott" at this sudden leap into
the stern realities of life, "Why, Granville, what do you mean?
You know I can trust you. You know, whatever it may be, I believe
you implicitly."
The young man took her hand in his with a tender pressure. It was
a terrible message to have to deliver. He bungled and blundered
on, with many twists and turns, through some inarticulate attempt at
an indefinite explanation. It wasn't that he didn't love her--oh,
devotedly, eternally, she must know that well; she never could doubt
it. It wasn't that any shadow had arisen between him and her, it
wasn't anything he could speak about, or anything she must say to
any soul on earth--oh, for his mother's sake, he hoped and trusted
she would religiously keep his secret inviolate! But something had
happened to him within the last few days--something unspeakable,
indefinite, uncertain, vague, yet very full of the most dreadful
possibilities; something that might make him unable to support a
wife; something that at least must delay or postpone for an unknown
time the long-hoped-for prospect of his claiming her and marrying
her. Some day, perhaps--he broke off suddenly, and looked with a
wistful look into her deep grey eyes. His resolution failed him.
"One kiss," he said, "Gwendoline!" His voice was choking. The
beautiful girl, turning towards him with a wild sob, fell, yielding
herself on his breast, and cried hot tears of joy at that evident
sign that, in spite of all he said, he still really loved her.
They sat there long, hand in hand, and eye on eye, talking it all
over, as lovers will, with infinite delays, yet getting no nearer
towards a solution either way. Gwendoline, for her part, didn't
care, of course--what true woman does?--whether Granville was the
heir of Tilgate or not; she would marry him all the more, she said,
if he were a penniless nobody. All she wanted was to love him and
be near him. Let him marry her now, marry her to-day, and then go
where he would in the world to seek his livelihood. But Granville,
poor fellow, alarmed at the bare suggestion--for his mother's
sake--that Tilgate might really not be his, checked her at once
in her outburst with a grave, silent look; he was still, he said
calmly, the inheritor of Tilgate. It wasn't that. At least, not
as she took it. He didn't know precisely what it was himself. She
must have faith in him and trust him. She must wait and see. In
the end, he hoped, he would come back and marry her.
And Gwendoline made answer, with many tears, that she knew it was
so, and that she loved him and trusted him. So, after sitting there
long, hand locked in hand, and heart intent on heart, the two young
people rose at last to go, protesting and vowing their mutual love
on either side, as happy and as miserable in their divided lives
as two young people in all England that moment. Over and over again
they kissed and said good-bye; then they stood with one another's
fingers clasped hard in their own, unwilling to part, and unable to
loose them. After that, they kissed again, and declared once more
they were broken-hearted, and could never leave one another. But
still, Granville added, half aside, he must make up his mind not to
see Gwendoline again--honour demanded that sacrifice--till he could
come at last a rich man to claim her. Meanwhile, she was free; and
he--he was ever hers, devotedly, whole-souledly. But they were no
longer engaged. He was hers in heart only. Let her try to forget
him. He could never forget her.
And Gwendoline, sobbing and tearful, but believing him implicitly,
retreated with slow steps, looking back at each turn of the zigzag
path, and sending the ghosts of dead kisses from her finger-tips
to greet him.
Below in the dell Granville stood still, and watched her depart in
breathless silence. Then, in an agony of despair, he flung himself
down on the ground and burst into tears, and sobbed like a child
over his broken daydream.
Gwendoline, coming back to make sure, saw him lying and sobbing
so; and, woman-like, felt compelled to step down just one minute
to comfort him. Granville in turn refused her proffered comfort--it
was better so--he mustn't listen to her any more; he must steel
himself to say No; he must remember it was dishonourable of him
to drag a delicately nurtured girl into a penniless marriage. Then
they kissed once more and made it all up again; and they sobbed and
wept as before, and broke it off for ever; and they said good-bye
for the very last time; and they decided they must never meet till
Granville came back; and they hoped they would sometimes catch
just a glimpse of one another in the outer world, and whatever the
other one said or did, they would each in their hearts be always
true to their first great love; and they were more miserable still,
and they were happier than they had ever been in their lives before;
and they parted at last, with a desperate effort, each perfectly
sure of the other's love, and each vowing in soul they would never,
never see one another again, but each, for all that, perfectly
certain that some day or other they would be husband and wife,
though Tilgate and the wretched little fallow deer should sink,
unwept, to the bottom of the ocean.
CHAPTER XIII.
BUSINESS FIRST.
The manager at Messrs. Drummond, Coutts and Barclay's, Limited,
received Colonel Kelmscott with distinguished consideration.
A courteous, conciliatory sort of man, that manager, with his
close-shaven face and his spotless shirt-front.
"Five minutes, my dear sir?" he exclaimed, with warmth, motioning
his visitor blandly into the leather-covered chair. "Half an hour,
if you wish it. We always have leisure to receive our clients. Any
service we can render them, we're only too happy."
"But this is a very peculiar bit of business," Colonel Kelmscott
answered, humming and hawing with obvious hesitation. "It isn't
quite in the regular way of banking, I believe. Perhaps, indeed,
I ought rather to have put it into the hands of my solicitor. But,
even if you can't manage the thing yourself, you may be able to put
me in the way of finding out how best I can get it managed elsewhere."
The manager bowed. His smile was a smile of genuine satisfaction.
Colonel Kelmscott of Tilgate was in a most gracious humour.
The manager, with deference, held himself wholly at his client's
disposition.
So the Colonel proceeded to unfold his business. There were two
young men, now knocking about town, of the names of Guy and Cyril
Waring--the one a journalist, the other a painter--and they had rooms
in Staple Inn, Holborn, which would doubtless form a sufficient clue
by which to identify them. Colonel Kelmscott desired unobtrusively
to know where these young men banked--if indeed they were in a position
to keep an account; and when that was found out, he wished Messrs.
Drummond, Coutts and Barclay, Limited, to place a sum of money
at their bankers to their credit, without mentioning the name of
the person so placing it, as well as to transmit to them a sealed
envelope, containing instructions as to the use to be made of the
money in question.
The manager nodded a cautious acquiescence. To place the money to
the credit of the two young men, indeed, would be quite in their
way. But to send the sealed envelope, without being aware of its
contents, or the nature of the business on which it was despatched,
would be much less regular. Perhaps the Colonel might find some other
means of managing without their aid that portion of the business
arrangement.
The Colonel, for his part, fell in readily enough with this modest
point of view. It amply sufficed for him if the money were paid
to the young men's credit, and a receipt, forwarded to him in due
course, under cover of a number, to the care of the bankers.
"Very well," the manager answered, rubbing his hands contentedly.
"Our confidential clerk will settle all that for you. A most sagacious
person, our confidential clerk. No eyes, no ears, no tongue for
anything but our clients' interests."
The Colonel smiled, and sat a little longer, giving further details
as the precise amount he wished sent, and the particular way he
wished to send it--the whole sum to be, in fact, twelve thousand
pounds, amount of the purchase money of the Dowlands farms, whereof
only six thousand had as yet been paid down; and that six thousand
he wished to place forthwith to the credit of Cyril Waring, the
painter. The remaining six thousand, to be settled, as agreed,
in five weeks' time, he would then make over under the self-same
conditions to the other brother, Guy Waring, the journalist. It
had gone a trifle too cheap, that land at Dowlands, the Colonel
opined; but still, in days like these he was very glad, indeed, to
find a purchaser for the place at anything like its value.
"I think a Miss Ewes was the fortunate bidder, wasn't she?" the
manager asked, just to make a certain decent show of interest in
his client's estate.
"Yes, Miss Elma Ewes of Kenilworth," the Colonel answered, letting
loose for a moment his tongue, that unruly member. "She's the
composer, you know--writes songs and dances; remotely connected with
Reginald Clifford, the man who was Governor of some West Indian
Dutch-oven--St. Kitts, I think, or Antigua--he lives down our way,
and he's a neighbour of mine at Tilgate. Or rather she's connected
with Mrs. Clifford, the Governor's wife, who was one of the younger
branch, a Miss Ewes of Worthing, daughter of the Ewes who was Dean
of Dorchester. Elma's been a family name for years with all the
lot of Eweses, good, bad, or indifferent. Came down to them, don't
you know, from that Roumanian ancestress."
"Indeed," the manager answered, now beginning to be really
interested--for the Cliffords were clients too, and it behoves
a banker to know everything about everybody's business. "So Mrs.
Clifford had an ancestress who was a Roumanian, had she? Well,
I've noticed at times her complexion looked very southern and
gipsy-like--distinctly un-English."
"Oh, they call it Roumanian," Colonel Kelmscott went on in a
confidential tone, roping his white moustache, and growing more
and more conversational; "they call it Roumanian, because it sounds
more respectable; but I believe, if you go right down to the very
bottom of the thing, it was much more like some kind of Oriental
gipsy. Sir Michael Ewes, the founder of the house, in George the
Second's time, was ambassador for awhile at Constantinople. He
began life, indeed, I believe, as a Turkey merchant. Well, at Pera
one day, so the story goes--you'll find it all in Horace Walpole's
diary--he picked up with this dark-skinned gipsy-woman, who was a
wonderful creature in her way, a sort of mesmeric sorceress, who
belonged to some tribe of far eastern serpent charmers. It seems
that women of this particular tribe were regularly trained by the
men to be capering priestesses--or fortune-tellers, if you like--who
performed some extraordinary sacred antics of a mystical kind,
much after the fashion of the howling dervishes. However that may
be, Sir Michael, at any rate, pacing the streets of Pera, saw the
woman that she was passing fair, and fell in love with her outright
at some dervish entertainment. But being a very well-behaved old
man, combining a liking for Orientals with a British taste for the
highest respectability, he had the girl baptized and made into a
proper Christian first; and then he married her off-hand and brought
her home with him as my Lady Ewes to England. She was presented at
Court, to George the Second; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu stood
her sponsor on the occasion."
"But how did it all turn out?" the manager asked, with an air of
intelligent historical interest.
"Turn out? Well, it turned out in a thumping big family of thirteen
children," the Colonel answered; "most of whom, happily for the
father, died young, But the five who survived, and who married at
last into very good connections, all had one peculiarity, which
they transmitted to all their female descendants. Very odd these
hereditary traits, to be sure. Very singular! Very singular!"
"Ah, to be sure," the manager answered, turning over a pile of
letters. "And what was the hereditary trait handed down, as you
say, in the family of the Roumanian lady?"
"Why, in the first place," the Colonel continued, leaning back in
his chair, and making himself perfectly comfortable, "all the girls
of the Ewes connection, to the third and fourth generation, have
olive-brown complexions, creamy and soft, but clear as crystal.
Then again, they've all got most extraordinary intuition--a perfectly
marvellous gift of reading faces. By George, sir," the Colonel
exclaimed, growing hot and red at the memory of that afternoon on
the Holkers' lawn, "I don't like to see those women's eyes fixed
upon my cheek when there's anything going on I don't want them to
know. A man's transparent like glass before them. They see into
his very soul. They look right through him."
"If the lady who founded the family habits was a fortune-teller,"
the manager interposed, with a scientific air, "that's not so
remarkable; for fortune-tellers must always be quick-witted people,
keen to perceive the changes of countenance in the dupes who employ
them, and prompt at humouring all the fads and fancies of their
customers, mustn't they?"
"Quite so," the Colonel echoed. "You've hit it on the nail. And
this particular lady--Esmeralda they call her, so that Elma, which
is short for Esmeralda, understand, has come to be the regular
Christian name among all her women descendants--this particular
lady belonged to what you might call a caste or priestly family,
as it were, of hereditary fortune-tellers, every one of whose
ancestors had been specially selected for generations for the work,
till a kind of transmissible mesmeric habit got developed among
them. And they do say," the Colonel went on, lowering his voice a
little more to a confidential whisper, "that all the girls descended
from Madame Esmeralda--Lady Ewes of Charlwood, as she was in
England--retain to this day another still odder and uncannier mark
of their peculiar origin; but, of course, it's a story that would
be hard to substantiate, though I've heard it discussed more than
once among the friends of the family."
"Dear me! What's that?" the manager asked, in a tone of marked
curiosity.
"Why, they do say," the Colonel went on, now fairly launched upon
a piece of after-dinner gossip, "that the eastern snake-dance of
Madame Esmeralda's people is hereditary even still among the women
of the family, and that, sooner or later, it breaks out unexpectedly
in every one of them. When the fit comes on, they shut themselves
up in their own rooms, I've been told, and twirl round and round
for hours like dancing dervishes, with anything they can get in
their hands to represent a serpent, till they fall exhausted with
the hysterical effort. Even if a woman of Esmeralda's blood escapes
it at all other times, it's sure to break out when she first sees
a real live snake, or falls in love for the first time. Then the
dormant instincts of the race come over her with a rush, at the
very dawn of womanhood, all quickened and aroused, as it were, in
the general awakening."
"That's very curious!" the manager said, leaning back in his chair
in turn, and twirling his thumbs, "very curious indeed; and yet, in
its way, very probable, very probable. For habits like those must
set themselves deep in the very core of the system, don't you think,
Colonel? If this woman, now, was descended from a whole line of
ancestresses, who had all been trained for their work into a sort
of ecstatic fervour, the ecstasy and all that went with it must
have got so deeply ingrained--"
"I beg your pardon," the Colonel interrupted, consulting his
watch and seizing his hat hastily--for as a Kelmscott, he refused
point-blank to be lectured--"I've an appointment at my club at
half-past three, and I must not wait any longer. Well, you'll get
these young men's address for me, then, at the very earliest possible
opportunity?"
The manager pocketed the snub, and bowed his farewell. "Oh,
certainly," he answered, trying to look as pleased and gracious as
his features would permit. "Our confidential clerk will hunt them
up immediately. We're delighted to be of use to you. Good morning.
Good morning."
And as soon as the Colonel's back was turned, the manager rang twice
on his sharp little bell for the confidential clerk to receive
his orders.
Mr. Montague Nevitt immediately presented himself in answer to the
summons.
"Mr. Nevitt," the manager said, with a dry, small cough, "here's a
bit of business of the most domestic kind--strict seal of secrecy,
not a word on any account. Colonel Kelmscott of Tilgate wants to
know where two young men, named Guy and Cyril Waring, keep their
banking account, if any; and, as soon as he knows, he wishes to
pay in a substantial sum, quite privately, to their credit."
Mr. Montague Nevitt bowed a bow of assent; without the faintest
sign of passing recognition. "Guy and Cyril Waring," he repeated to
himself, looking close at the scrap of paper his chief had handed
him; "Guy and Cyril Waring, Staple Inn, Holborn. I can find out
to-day, sir, if you attach any special and pressing importance to
promptitude in the matter."
CHAPTER XIV.
MUSIC HATH POWER.
For Mr. Montague Nevitt was a cautious, cool, and calculating person.
He knew, better than most of us that knowledge is power. So when
the manager mentioned to him casually in the way of business the
names of Guy and Cyril Waring, Mr. Montague Nevitt didn't respond
at once, "Oh, dear yes; one of them's my most intimate personal
friend, and the other's his brother," as a man of less discretion
might have been tempted to do. For, in the first place, by finding
out, or seeming to find out, the facts about the Warings that very
afternoon, he could increase his character with his employers for
zeal and ability. And, in the second place, if he had let out too
soon that he knew the Warings personally, he might most likely on
that very account have been no further employed in carrying into
execution this delicate little piece of family business.
So Nevitt held his peace discreetly, like a wise man that he was,
and answered merely, in a most submissive voice, "I'll do my best
to ascertain where they bank, at once," as if he had never before
in his life heard the name of Waring.
For the self-same reason, Mr. Montague Nevitt didn't hint that
evening to Guy that he had become possessed during the course of
the day of a secret of the first importance to Guy's fortune and
future. Of course, a man so astute as Montague Nevitt jumped at once
at the correct conclusion, that Colonel Kelmscott must be the two
Warings' father. But he wasn't going to be fool enough to chuck his
chance away by sharing that information with any second person. A
secret is far too valuable a lever in life to be carelessly flung
aside by a man of ambition. And Montague Nevitt saw this secret in
particular was doubly valuable to him. He could use it, wedge-wise,
with both the Warings in all his future dealings, by promising to
reveal to one or other of them a matter of importance and probable
money-value, and he could use it also as a perpetual threat to
hold over Colonel Kelmscott, if ever it should be needful to extort
blackmail from the possessor of Tilgate, or to thwart his schemes
by some active interference.
So when Nevitt strolled round about nine o'clock that night to
Staple Inn, violin-case in hand, and cigarette in mouth, he gave
not a sign of the curious information he had that day acquired, to
the person most interested in learning the truth as to the precise
genealogy of the Waring family.
There was no great underlying community of interests between the
clever young journalist and his banking companion. A common love for
music was the main bond of union between the two men. Yet Montague
Nevitt exercised over Guy a strange and fatal fascination which
Cyril always found positively unaccountable. And on this particular
evening, as Nevitt stood swaying himself to and fro upon the hearth-rug
before the empty grate, with his eyes half closed, drawing low,
weird music with his enchanted bow from those submissive strings, Guy
leaned back on the sofa and listened, entranced, with a hopeless
feeling of utter inability ever to approach the wizard-like
and supreme execution of that masterly hand and those superhuman
fingers. How he twisted and turned them as though his bones were
india-rubber. His palms were all joints, and his eyes all ecstasy.
He seemed able to do what he liked with his violin. He played on
his instrument, indeed, as he played on Guy--with the consummate
art of a skilful executant.
"That's marvellous, Nevitt," Guy broke out at last; "never heard
even Sarasate himself do anything quite so wild and weird as that.
What's the piece called? It seems to have something almost impish
or sprite-like in its wailing music. It's Hungarian, of course, or
Polish or Greek; I detect at once the Oriental tinge in it."
"Wrong for once, my dear boy," Nevitt answered, smiling, "it's
English, pure English, and by a lady what's more--one of the Eweses
of Kenilworth. She's a distant relation of Cyril's Miss Clifford,
I believe. An Elma, too; name runs in the family. But she composes
wonderfully. Everything she writes is in that mystic key. It sounds
like a reminiscence of some dim and lamp-lit eastern temple. The
sort of thing a nautch-girl might be supposed to compose, to sing
to the clash and clang of cymbals, while she was performing the
snake-dance before some Juggernaut idol!"
"Exactly," Guy answered, shutting his eyes dreamily. "That's just
the very picture it brings up before my mind's eye--as you render
it, Nevitt. I seem to see vague visions of some vast and dimly-lighted
rock-hewn cavern, with long vistas of pillars cut from the solid
stone, while dark-limbed priestesses, clad in white muslin robes,
swing censers in the foreground to solemn music. Upon my word,
the power of sound is something simply wonderful. There's almost
nothing, I believe, good music wouldn't drive me to--or rather lead
me to; for it sways one and guides even more than it impels one."
"And yet," Nevitt mused, in slow tones to himself, taking up his
violin again, and drawing his bow over the chords, with half-closed
eyes, in a seemingly listless, aimless manner, "I don't believe
music's your real first love, Guy. You took it up only to be different
from Cyril. The artistic impulse in both of you is the same at
bottom. If you'd let it have it's own way, you'd have taken, not
to this, I'm sure, but to painting. But Cyril painted, so, to make
yourself different, you went in for music. That's you all over!
You always have such a hankering after being what you are not!"
"Well, hang it all, a man wants to have SOME individuality," Guy
answered apologetically. "He doesn't like to be a mere copy or
repetition of his brother."
Nevitt reflected quietly to himself that Cyril never wanted to be
different from Guy, his was by far the stronger nature of the two:
he was content to be himself without regard to his brother. But
Nevitt didn't say so. Indeed, why should he? He merely went on
playing a few disconnected bars of a very lively, hopeful utopian
sort of a tune--a tune all youth and health, and go and gaiety--as
he interjected from time to time some brief financial remarks on the
numerous good strokes he'd pulled off of late in his transactions
in the City.
"Can't do them in my own name, you know," he observed lightly, at
last laying down his bow, and replacing the dainty white rose in his
left top buttonhole. "Not official for a bank EMPLOYE to operate
on the Stock Exchange. The chiefs object to it. So I do my little
ventures in Tom's name instead, my brother-in-law, Tom Whitley's.
Those Cedulas went up another eighth yesterday. Well hit again: I'm
always lucky. And that was a good thing I put you on last week,
too, wasn't it? Did you sell out to-day? They're up at 96, and you
bought in at 80."
"No, I didn't sell to-day," Guy answered, with a yawn. "I'm holding
on still for a further rise. I thought I'd sell out when they
reached the even hundred."
"My dear fellow, you're wrong," Nevitt put in eagerly. "You ought
to have sold to-day. It's the top of the market. They'll begin to
decline soon, and when once they begin they'll come down with a
crash, as P.L.'s did on Saturday. You take my advice and sell out
first thing to-morrow morning. You'll clear sixteen pounds on each
of your shares. That's enough for any man. You bought ten shares,
I think, didn't you? Well, there you are, you see; a hundred and
sixty off-hand for you on your bargain."
Guy paused and reflected a doubtful moment. "Yes, I'll sell out
to-morrow, Nevitt," he said, after a struggle, "or what comes to
the same thing, you can sell out for me. But, do you know, my dear
fellow, I sometimes fancy I'm a fool for my pains, going in for
all this silly speculation. Better stick to my guinea a column in
the Morning Mail. The risks are so great, and the gains so small.
I don't believe outsiders ought to back their luck at all like this
on the Stock Exchange."
Montague Nevitt acquiesced with cheerful promptitude. "I agree
with you down to the ground," he said, lighting a cigarette, and
puffing away at it vigorously. "Outsiders ought not to back their
luck on the Stock Exchange. That, I take it, is a self-evident
proposition. But the point is, here, that you're not an outsider;
and you don't back your luck, which alters the case, you'll admit,
somewhat. You embark on speculations on my advice only, and I'm in
a position to judge, as well as any other expert in the City of
London, what things are genuine and what things are not worth a
wise man's attention."
He stretched himself on the sofa with a lazy, luxurious air, and
continued to puff away in silence at his cigarette for another ten
minutes. Then he drew unostentatiously from his pocket a folded
sheet of foolscap paper, printed after the fashion of the common
company prospectus. For a second or two he read it over to himself
in silence, till Guy's curiosity was sufficiently roused by his
mute proceeding.
"What have you got there?" the journalist asked at last, eyeing it
inquiringly, as the fly eyes the cobweb.
"Oh, nothing," Nevitt answered, folding the paper up neatly and
returning it to his pocket. "You've sworn off now, so it does not
concern you. Just the prospectus of a little fresh thing coming
out next week--a very exceptional chance--but you don't want to
go in for it. I mean to apply for three hundred shares myself, I'm
so certain of its success; and I had thought of advising you to
take a hundred and fifty on your own account as well, with that
hundred and fifty you cleared over the Cordova Cattle bonds. They're
ten-pound shares, at a merely nominal price--ten bob on application
and ten on allotment--you could take a hundred and fifty as easy
as look at it. No further calls will ever be made. It's really a
most remarkable investment."
"Let me see the prospectus," Guy murmured, faltering, the fever
of speculation once more getting the better of him.
Nevitt pretended to hang back like a man with fine scruples. "It's
the Rio Negro Diamond and Sapphire Mine, Limited," he said, with
a deprecatory air. "But you'd better not go in for it. I expect to
make a pot out of the thing myself. It's a unique occasion. Still,
no doubt you're right, and I don't like the responsibility of
advising any other fellow. Though you can see for yourself what
the promoters say. Very first-class names. And Klink thinks most
highly of it."
He handed Guy the paper, and took up his violin as if by pure
accident, while Guy scanned it closely.
The journalist bent over the prospectus with eager eyes, and Nevitt
poured forth strange music as he read, music like the murmur of the
stream of Pactolus. It was an inspiring strain; the violin seemed
to possess the true Midas touch; gold flowed like water in liquid
rills from its catgut. Guy finished, and rose, and dipped a pen
in the ink-pot. "All right," he said low, half hesitating still.
"I'll give you an order to sell out at once, and I'll fill up this
application for three hundred shares--why not three hundred? I may
as well go as many as you do. If it's really such a good thing as
you say, why shouldn't I profit by it? Send this to Klink to-morrow
early; strike while the iron's hot, and get the thing finished."
Nevitt looked at the paper with an attentive eye. "How curious
it is," he said, regarding the signature narrowly, "that you
and Cyril, who are so much alike in everything else, should write
so differently. I should have expected your hands to be almost
identical."
"Oh, don't you know why that is?" Guy answered, with an innocent
smile. "I do it on purpose. Cyril writes sloping forward, the
ordinary way, so I slope backward just to prevent confusion. And I
form all my letters as unlike his as I can, though if I follow my
own bent they turn out the same; his way is more natural to me,
in fact, than the way I write myself. But I must do something to
keep our letters apart. That's why we always bank at a different
banker's. If I liked I could write exactly like Cyril. See, here's
his own signature to his letter this morning, and here's my imitation
of it, written off-hand, in my own natural manner. No forger on
earth could ever need anything more absolutely identical."
Montague Nevitt took it up, and examined it with interest. "Well,
this is wonderful," he said, comparing the two, stroke for stroke,
with the practised eye of an expert. "The signatures are as if
written by the self-same hand. Any cashier in England would accept
your cheque at sight for Cyril's."
He didn't add aloud that such similarity was very convenient. But,
none the less, in his own mind he thought so.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PATH OF DUTY.
Down at Tilgate, meanwhile, Elma Clifford had met more than once
with Cyril Waring at friends' houses around, for ever since the
accident, Society had made up its mind that Elma ought to marry her
companion in the tunnel; and, when Society once makes up its mind
on a question of this sort, why, it does its level best in the long
run to insure the fulfilment of its own prediction.
Wherever Elma had met her painter, however, during those few short
weeks, she had seen him only before the quizzing eyes of all the
world; and though she admitted to herself that she liked him very
much, she was nevertheless so thoroughly frightened by her own
performance after the Holkers' party that she almost avoided him,
in spite of officious friends--partly, it is true, from a pure
feeling of maidenly shame, but partly also from a deeper-seated
and profoundly moral belief that with this fierce mad taint upon
her as she naturally thought, it would be nothing short of wrong
in her even to marry. She couldn't meet Cyril now without thinking
at once of that irresistible impulse which had seized her by the
throat, as it were, and bent her to its wild will in her own room
after their interview at the Holkers'; and the thought did far
more than bring a deep blush into her rich brown cheek--it made her
feel most acutely she must never dream of burdening him with that
terrible uncertainty and all it might enclose in it of sinister
import.
For Elma felt sure she was mad that night. And, if so, oh, how could
she poison Cyril Waring's life with so unspeakable an inheritance
for himself and his children?
She didn't know, what any psychologist might at once have told
her, that no one with the fatal taint of madness in her blood could
ever even have thought of that righteous self-denial. Such scruples
have no place in the selfish insane temperament; they belong only
to the highest and purest types of moral nature.
One morning, however, a few weeks later, Elma had strolled off
by herself into Chetwood Forest, without any intention of going
anywhere in particular, save for a solitary walk, when suddenly,
a turn round the corner of a devious path brought her face to face
all at once with a piece of white canvas, stretched opposite her
on an easel; at the other side of which, to her profound dismay,
an artist in a grey tweed suit was busily working.
The artist, as it happened, didn't see her at once, for the canvas
stretched between them, shutting her out from his eyes, and Elma's
light footstep on the mossy ground hadn't aroused his attention.
So the girl's first impulse was to retrace her way unobtrusively
without exchanging a word, and retire round the corner again, before
Cyril could recognise her. But somehow, when she came to try, she
couldn't. Her feet refused point blank to obey her will. And this
time, in her own heart, she knew very well why. For there in the
background, coiled up against the dense wall of rock and fern,
Sardanapalus lay knotted in sleepy folds, with his great ringed
back shining blue in the sunlight that struggled in round patches
through the shimmering foliage. More consciously now than even in
the train, the beautiful deadly creature seemed to fascinate Elma
and bind her to the spot. For a moment she hesitated, unable to
resist the strange, inexplicable attraction that ran in her blood.
That brief interval settled it. Even as she paused, Cyril glanced
round at the snake to note the passing effect of a gleam of light
that fell slantwise through the leaves to dapple his spotty back--and
caught sight of Elma. The poor girl gave a start. It was too late
now to retreat. She stood there rooted.
Cyril moved forward to meet her with a frankly outstretched hand.
"Good morning, Miss Clifford," he said, in his cheery manly voice.
"So you've dropped down by accident upon my lair here, have you?
Well, I'm glad you've happened to pass by to-day, for this, do you
know, is my very last morning. I'm putting the finishing touches upon
my picture now before I take it back to town. I go away to-morrow,
perhaps to North Wales, perhaps to Scotland."
Elma trembled a little at those words, in spite of resolution;
for though she could never, never, never marry him, it was nice,
of course, to feel he was near at hand, and to have the chance of
seeing him, and avoiding him as far as possible, on other people's
lawns at garden parties. She trembled and turned pale. She could
never MARRY him, to be sure; but then she could never marry any
one else either; and that being so, she liked to SEE him now and
again, on neutral ground, as it were, and to know he was somewhere
that she could meet him occasionally. Wales and Scotland are
so distant from Surrey. Elma showed in her face at once that she
thought them both unpleasantly remote from Craighton, Tilgate.
With timid and shrinking steps, she came in front of the picture,
and gazed at it in detail long and attentively. Never before did
she know how fond she was of art.
"It's beautiful," she said, after a pause; "I like it immensely.
That moss is so soft, and the ferns are so delicate. And how lovely
that patch of rich golden light is on Sardanapalus's shoulder."
The painter stepped back a pace or two and examined his own handicraft,
with his head on one side, in a very critical attitude. "I don't
know that I'm quite satisfied after all with the colour-scheme,"
he said, glancing askance at Elma. "I fancy it's, perhaps, just a
trifle too green. It looks all right, of course, out here in the
open; but the question is, when it's hung in the Academy, surrounded
by warm reds, and purples, and blues, won't it look by comparison
much too cabbagey and too grassy?"
Elma drew a deep breath.
"Oh, Mr. Waring," she cried, in a deprecating tone, holding her
breath for awe.
It pained her that anybody--even Cyril himself--should speak so
lightly about so beautiful a picture.
"Then you like it?" Cyril asked, turning round to her full face
and fronting her as she stood there, all beautiful blushes through
her creamy white skin.
"Like it? I love it," Elma answered enthusiastically. "Apart from
its being yours, I think it simply beautiful."
"And you like ME, too, then?" the painter asked, once more, making
a sudden dash at the question that was nearest to both their hearts,
after all, that moment. He was going away to-morrow, and this was
a last opportunity. Who could tell how soon somebody might come up
through the woods and interrupt their interview? He must make the
best use of his time. He must make haste to ask her.
Elma let her eyes drop, and her heart beat hard. She laid her hand
upon the easel to steady herself as she answered slowly, "You know
I like you, Mr. Waring; I like you very, very much indeed. You
were so kind to me in the tunnel. And I felt your kindness. You
could see that day I was--very, very grateful to you."
"When I asked you if you liked my picture, Elma," the young man said
reproachfully, taking her other hand in his, and looking straight
into her eyes, "you said, 'Like it? I love it.' But when I ask you
if you like me--ask you if you will take me--you only say you're
very, very grateful."
Elma let him take her hand, all trembling, in his. She let him
call her by her name. She let him lean forward and gaze at her,
lover-like. Her heart throbbed high. She couldn't refuse him.
She knew she loved him. But to marry him--oh no. That was quite
another thing. There duty interposed. It would be cruel, unworthy,
disgraceful, wicked.
She drew herself back a little with maidenly dignity, as she answered
low, "Mr. Waring, we two saw into one another's hearts so deep in
the tunnel that day we spent together, that it would be foolish for
us now to make false barriers between us. I'll tell you the plain
truth." She trembled like an aspen-leaf. "I love you, I think; but
I can never marry you."
She said it so simply, yet with such an earnestness of despair,
that Cyril knew with a pang she really meant it.
"Why not?" he cried eagerly, raising her hand to his lips, and
kissing it with fervour. "If you tell me you love me, Elma, all the
rest must come. Say that, and you say all. So long as I've gained
your heart, I don't care for anything."
Elma drew her hand away with stately reserve. "I mean it, Mr.
Waring," she said slowly, sitting down on the bank, and gasping a
little for air, just as she had done in the tunnel. "I really mean
it. I LIKED you in the train that day; I was GRATEFUL to you in the
accident; I knew I LOVED you the afternoon we met at the Holkers'.
There, I've told you that plainly--more plainly than I thought I ever
could tell it to any man on earth--because we knew one another so
well when we thought we were dying side by side, and because--because
I can see you really love me.... Well, it can never be. I can never
marry you."
She gazed at him wistfully. Cyril sat down by her side, and talked
it all over with her from a hundred points of view. He pressed his
suit hard, till Elma felt, if words could win, her painter would have
won her. But she couldn't yield, she said for HIS sake a thousand
times more than for her own, she must never marry. As the man grew
more earnest the girl in turn grew more frank and confiding. She
could never marry HIM, to be sure, she said fervently, but then
she could never, never, never marry any one else. If she married
at all she would marry Cyril. He took her hand again. Without one
shadow of resistance she let him take it and hold it. Yes, yes, he
might love her, if he liked, no harm at all in that; and SHE, she
would always, always love him. All her life through, she cried,
letting her passionate southern nature get the better of her at
last, she would love him every hour of every day in the year, and
love him only. But she could never marry him. Why, she must never
say. It was no use his trying to read her secret. He must never
find it out; never, never, never. But she, for her part, could
never forget it.
So Cyril, eagerly pressing his suit with every art he knew, was
forced in the end to content himself with that scanty measure. She
would love him, she would write to him, even; but she would never
marry him.
At last the time came when they must really part, or she would be
late for lunch, and mamma would know all; mamma would read everything.
He looked her wistfully in the face. Elma held out her lips, obedient
to that mute demand, with remorseful blush of maidenly shame on
her cheek. "Only once," she murmured. "Just to seal our compact.
For the first and last time. You go away to-morrow."
"That was BEFORE you said you loved me," Cyril cried with delight,
emboldened by success. "Mayn't I stay on now, just one little week
longer?"
At the proposal, Elma drew back her face in haste before he had
time to kiss it, and answered, in a very serious voice--
"Oh no, don't ask me. After this, I daren't stand the strain of
seeing you again--at least not just now--not so very, very soon.
Please, please, don't ask me. Go to-morrow, as you said. If you
don't, I can't let you," she blushed, and held out her blushing
face once more. "Only if you promise me to go to-morrow, mind,"
she said, with a half-coquettish, half-tearful smile at him.
Cyril hesitated for a second. He was inclined to temporize. "Those
are very hard terms," he said. Then impulse proved too much for him.
He bent forward, and pressed his lips just once on that olive-brown
cheek. "But I may come back again very soon," he murmured, pushing
home his advantage.
Elma seized his hand in hers, wrung it hard and tremulously, and
then turned and ran like a frightened fawn, without pausing to look
back, down the path homeward. Yet she whispered one broken sentence
through her tears, for all that, before she went.
"I shall love you always; but spare me, spare me."
And Cyril was left behind by himself in the wood, completely
mystified.
CHAPTER XVI.
STRUGGLE AND VICTORY.
Elma hurried home full of intense misgivings. She dreaded having
to meet her mother's eye. How on earth could she hide from that
searching glance the whole truth as to what had happened in the
wood that morning? When she reached home, however, she learned to
her relief, from the maid who opened the door to her, that their
neighbour, Mr. Gilbert Gildersleeve, the distinguished Q.C., had
dropped in for lunch, and this chance diversion supplied Elma with
a little fresh courage to face the inevitable. She went straight
up to her own room the moment she entered the house, without seeing
her mother, and there she waited, bathing her face copiously till
some minutes after the lunch bell had rung. For she felt sure she
would blush crimson when she met her mother; but as she blushed
habitually when strangers came in, the cause of it might thus,
perhaps, she vainly flattered herself, escape even those lynx-like
eyes of Mrs. Clifford's.
The great Q.C., a big, overbearing man, with a pair of huge burly
hands that somehow seemed to form his chief feature, was a little
bit blustering in his talk, as usual; the more so because he had
just learned incidentally that something had gone wrong between
his daughter Gwendoline and Granville Kelmscott. For though that
little episode of private wooing had run its course nominally
without the knowledge or consent of either family, Mr. Gilbert
Gildersleeve, at least, had none the less been aware for many weeks
past of the frequent meetings between Gwendoline and Granville
in the dell just beyond the disputed boundary line. And as Mr.
Gildersleeve disliked Colonel Kelmscott of Tilgate Park, for a
pig-headed esquire, almost as cordially as Colonel Kelmscott disliked
Mr. Gildersleeve in return for a rascally lawyer, it had given the
great Q.C. no little secret satisfaction in his own soul to learn
that his daughter Gwendoline was likely to marry the Colonel's son
and heir, directly against the wishes and consent of his father.
Only that very morning, however, poor Mrs. Gildersleeve, that
tired, crushed wife, had imparted to her lord and master, in fear
and trembling, the unpleasant intelligence that, so far as she
could make out, there was something wrong between Granville and
Gwendoline. And this something wrong she ventured to suggest was
no mere lover's tiff of the ordinary kiss-and-make-it-up description,
but a really serious difficulty in the way of their marriage. So
Mr. Gildersleeve, thus suddenly deprived of his expected triumph,
took it out another way by more than even his wonted boisterousness
of manner in talking about the fortunes of the Kelmscott family.
"I fancy, myself, you know, Mrs. Clifford," he was saying, very loud,
as Elma entered, "there's a screw loose just now in the Kelmscott
affairs--something rotten somewhere in the state of Denmark. That
young fellow, Granville, who's by no means such a bad lot as his
father all round--too good for the family, in fact; too good for
the family--Granville's been accustomed of late to come over into
my grounds, beyond the boundary wall, and being anxious above all
things to cultivate friendly relations with all my neighbours in
the county, I've allowed him to come--I've allowed him, and I may
even say to a certain extent I've encouraged him. There at times
he's met by accident my daughter Gwendoline. Oh, dear no"--with
uplifted hand, and deprecating lips--"I assure you, nothing of
THAT sort, my dear Mrs. Clifford. Gwendoline's far too young, and
I couldn't dream of allowing her to marry into Colonel Kelmscott's
family. But, however, be that as it may, he's been in the habit
of coming there, till very recently, when all of a sudden, only a
week or ten days back, to my immense surprise he ceased at once,
and ever since has dropped into the defensive, exactly as he used
to do. And I interpret it to mean--"
Elma heard no more of that pompous speech. Her knees shook under
her. For she was aware only of Mrs. Clifford's eyes, fixed mildly
and calmly upon her face, not in anger, as she feared, or reproach,
but rather in infinite pity. For a second their glances met in mute
intercourse of soul, then each dropped their eyelashes as suddenly
as before. Through the rest of that lunch Elma sat as in a maze,
hearing and seeing nothing. What she ate, or drank, or talked
about, she knew not. Mr. Gildersleeve's pungent and embellished
anecdotes of the Kelmscott family and their unneighbourly pride
went in at one ear and out at the other. All she was conscious of
was her mother's sympathetic yet unerring eye; she felt sure that
at one glance that wonderful thought-reader had divined everything,
and seen through and through their interview that morning.
After lunch, the two men strolled upon the lawn to enjoy their
cigars, and Elma and her mother were left alone in the drawing-room.
For some minutes neither could make up her mind to break the ice
and speak. They sat shame-faced beside one another on the sofa,
like a pair of shy and frightened maidens. At last Mrs. Clifford
braced herself up to interrupt the awkward silence. "You've been
in Chetwood Forest, Elma," she murmured low, looking down and
averting her eyes carefully from her trembling daughter.
"Yes, mother," Elma answered, all aglow with conscious blushes.
"In Chetwood Forest."
"And you met him, dear?" The mother spoke tenderly and sympathetically.
Elma's heart stood still. "Yes, mother, I met him."
"And he had the snake there?"
Elma started in surprise. Why dwell upon that seemingly unimportant
detail? "Oh yes," she answered, still redder and hotter than ever.
"He had it there. He was painting it."
Mrs. Clifford paused a minute. Then she went on, with pain. "And
he asked you, Elma?"
Elma bowed her head. "Yes, he asked me--and I refused him," she
answered, with a terrible wrench.
"Oh, darling; I know it," Mrs. Clifford cried, seizing both cold
hands in hers. "And I know why, too. But, Elma, believe me, you
needn't have done it. My daughter, my daughter, you might just as
well have taken him."
"No, never," Elma cried, rising from her seat and moving towards
the door in an agony of shame. "I couldn't. I daren't. It would
be wrong. It would be cruel. But, mother, don't speak to me of it.
Don't mention it again. Even before you it makes me more wretched
and ashamed than I can say to allude to it."
She rushed from the room, with cheeks burning like fire. Come what
might, she never could talk to any living soul again about that
awful episode.
But Mrs. Clifford sat on, on the sofa where Elma left her, and cried
to herself silently, silently, silently. What a mother should do
in these hateful circumstances she could hardly even guess. She
only knew she could never speak it out, and even if she did, Elma
would never have the courage or the heart to listen to her.
That same evening, when Elma went up to bed, a strange longing
came across her to sit up late, and think over to herself again all
the painful details of the morning's interview. She seated herself
by her bedside in her evening dress, and began to think it all
out again, exactly as it happened. As she did so, the picture of
Sardanapalus, on his bed of fern, came up clear in her mind, just
as he lay coiled round in Cyril Waring's landscape. Beautiful
Sardanapalus, so sleek and smooth and glossy, if only she had him
here now--she paused and hesitated. In a moment, the wild impulse
rushed upon her once more. It clutched her by the throat; it held
her fast as in a vice. She must get up and dance; she must obey
the mandate; she must whirl till she fell in that mystical ecstasy.
She rose, and seemed for a moment as though she must yield to the
temptation. The boa--the boa was in the lower drawer. Reluctantly,
remorsefully, she opened the drawer and took it out in her hands.
Fluff and feathers, fluff and feathers--nothing more than that!
But oh, how soft, how smooth, how yielding, how serpentine! With
a violent effort she steadied herself, and looked round for her
scissors. They lay on the dressing-table. She took them up with a
fixed and determined air. "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it
off," she thought to herself. Then she began ruthlessly hacking
the boa into short little lengths of a few inches each, which she
gathered up in her hands as soon as she had finished, and replaced
with care in the drawer where she had originally found them.
After that her mind felt somewhat more at ease and a trifle less
turbulent. She loved Cyril Waring--oh yes, she loved him with all
her heart; it was hard to give him up; hard not to yield to that
pressing impulse in such a moment of doubt and despondency. The
boa had said to her, as it were, "Come, dance, go mad, and forget
your trouble!" But she had resisted the temptation. And now--
Why, now, she would undress, and creep into bed, like any other good
English girl under similar circumstances, and cry herself asleep
with thoughts of Cyril.
And so she did in truth. She let her emotion take its natural outlet.
She lay awake for an hour or two, till her eyes were red and sore
and swollen. Then at last she dropped off, for very weariness, and
slept soundly an unbroken sleep till morning.
At eight o'clock, Mrs. Clifford knocked her tentative little knock
at the door. "Come in, mother," Elma cried, starting up in her
surprise; and her mother, much wondering, turned the handle and
entered.
When she reached the bed, she gave a little cry of amazement. "Why,
Elma," she exclaimed, staring her hard and long in the face; "my
darling, what's this? Your eyes are red! How strange! You've been
crying!"
"Yes, mother," Elma answered, turning her face to the wall, but a
thousand times less ashamed than she had been the day before when
her mother spoke to her. "I couldn't help it, dearest." She took
that soft white hand in hers and pressed it hard in silence. "It's
no wonder, you know," she said at last, after a long deep pause.
"He's going away from Chetwood to-day--and it was so very, very
hard to say good-bye to him for ever."
"Oh yes, I know, darling," Mrs. Clifford answered, eyeing her
harder than ever now with a half-incredulous look. "I know all
that. But--you've had a good night in spite of everything, Elma."
Elma guessed what she meant. They two could converse together quite
plainly without words. "Well, yes, a better night," she answered,
hesitating, and shutting her eyes under the bed-clothes for very
shame. "A little disturbed--don't you know--just at first; but I
had a good cry very soon, and then that mended everything."
Her mother still looked at her, half doubting and half delighted.
"A good cry's the right thing," she said slowly, in a very low
voice. "The exact right thing, perfectly proper and normal. A good
cry never did any girl on this earth one atom of harm. It's the
best safety-valve. You're lucky, Elma, my child, in being able to
get one."
"Yes, dear," Elma answered, with her head still buried. "Very lucky
indeed. So I think, too, mother."
Mrs. Clifford's eye fell aimlessly upon certain tiny bits of
feathery fluff that flecked the floor here and there like floating
fragments of thistledown. In a second, her keen instinct divined
what they meant. Without one word she rose silently and noiselessly,
and opened the lower drawer, where the boa usually reposed among
the furs and feathers. One glimpse of those mangled morsels showed
her the truth at a glance. She shut the drawer again noiselessly
and silently as she had opened it. But Elma, lying still with her
eyes closed tight, yet knew perfectly well how her mother had been
occupied.
Mrs. Clifford came back, and, stooping over her daughter's bed,
kissed her forehead tenderly. "Elma, darling," she said, while a hot
tear or two fell silently upon the girl's burning cheek, "you're
very, very brave. I'm so pleased with you, so proud of you! I
couldn't have done it myself. You're stronger-minded than I am. My
child, he kissed you for good-bye yesterday. You needn't say yes,
you needn't say no. I read it in your face. No need for you to
tell me of it. Well, darling, it wasn't good-bye after all, I'm
certain of that. Believe me, my child, he'll come back some day,
and you'll know you can marry him."
"Never!" Elma cried, hiding her face still more passionately and
wildly than before beneath great folds of the bed-clothes. "Don't
speak to me of him any more, mother! Never! Never! Never!"
CHAPTER XVII.
VISIONS OF WEAL
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