“It is true,” he said. “I have not sufficiently considered how those inclinations will have been swayed against me in a household so permeated by a spirit hostile to myself — in a household where, despite all that I can protest and all that I can do, I am looked upon as a man who has not kept faith. It is monstrously unjust; but it seems there is naught I can do to combat it.”
Suspicious of this half-resignation, Sir John eyed his visitor shrewdly.
“You betrayed yourself to her, my lord, in this very room,” he answered slowly. “You betrayed the true fortune-hunting motives by which you were animated. Can you wonder that she looks upon you now with — with the contempt you merit?”
His lordship sighed. He dabbed his red lips with a flimsy kerchief ere he answered. Then he shrugged despondently.
“I was mad that day,” he said. “That infamous money-lender, Israel Suarez, had been almost violent, and I was driven to the verge of despair. But, Sir John, if I showed myself eager for control of your ward’s fortune, it was not thence to be construed that I was not eager for herself, that I did not love her for herself.” He turned his large, handsome eyes upon the baronet. They were heavy with sorrow. “I would give my life to efface that hour,” he said.
“Do so, then,” said Sir John, “and perhaps you will efface it. If not, being dead, it will signify less to you. You will cease to suffer.”
“You rally me, sir!” was the indignant cry.
“Neither yourself nor the Government,” said Sir John, “can deprive me of the right to laugh. Soon it may be the only right remaining me.”
His lordship took up his hat from the table, tucked it under his arm, and drew on his heavy riding-gloves. His face was set, his lips tight-pressed. But all this was purest comedy. He realised that he had said all that need be said. He had sowed his seeds, and it were well now to depart without further disturbing the soil, leaving those same seeds to sink in. He was fairly sanguine that they would put forth roots ere long. And, meanwhile, as some recompense for his services and some compensation for the injustice done him in the case of Harry Gaynor, Lord Carteret was willing to delay Sir John’s arrest until Pauncefort should give the word. So that there was no desperate haste.
“In spite of all, Sir John,” he said, “I cannot forget that for a season we were good friends.”
“My memory is not so good as yours,” quoth the downright, uncompromising baronet.
“So I perceive,” said the viscount, smiling bitterly. “Mine is not only long, but grateful. And so, despite the unworthy manner in which you have used me today, I shall continue to strain every effort with my Lord Carteret to procure your immunity from the consequences of your meddling with treason.”
Sir John strode to the bell-rope, and tugged it with a violent hand.
“I should loathe to be beholden to you,” he said. “Pray leave my affairs to care for themselves.”
“I understand, Sir John,” replied the other, with a resumption of his air of resignation. “Oh, I understand.” Then he bowed stiffly. “I have the honour to give you good day.”
Sir John waved a hand in almost contemptuous dismissal. A footman, summoned by the bell, stood in the doorway. “Reconduct his lordship,” said the baronet shortly.
But once alone, his manner changed as abruptly as if he had thrown off a cloak in which he had been wrapped. He walked heavily to the writing-table, sank into the chair, leaned his head upon his hand and stared dully into vacancy Then something that was almost a sob shook his massive, vigorous frame.
“My poor Maria!” he groaned aloud. “My poor Evelyn! God help you both!”
But he had been wiser if, instead of groaning impotently there, he had retained awhile his cloak of defiant self-possession, and himself escorted my Lord Pauncefort to the chaise which awaited him in the avenue. Thus might he have averted the ill-chance which came to serve his lordship. For as Pauncefort was descending the steps, he encountered Miss Kynaston herself.
He paused a moment to give her greeting. His air was gloomy and preoccupied. But what engaged him now was a new thought that had flashed into his opportunist mind. True, he had accounted ample the seed he had sown; and yet he knew that Sir John could be very obstinate, that he might immolate himself out of that obstinacy upon the altar of what he accounted a sacred trust from the dead. There could be no harm his lordship opined, in sowing a little more seed in this very pretty and fertile soil so opportunely thrust before him.
“Alas, Miss Kynaston, I fear that I have been the bearer of but indifferent tidings to your father,” he said, and the gloom of his face was most tragically deepened.
It alarmed her, as that subtle gentleman intended that it should. He noted the flutter of colour in her cheeks, the startled look in her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked him a little breathlessly
He glanced aside at the footman who stood by the door. She read the look, and understood his meaning when he invited her to walk the length of the avenue with him.
“Drive on,” he bade his coachman. “Stay for me at the gates.”
Down the avenue of elms, in the dappled shade, stepped dainty Evelyn beside his handsome lordship.
“It is well, perhaps, that I should tell you,” he was saying musingly, “most opportune, indeed, that I should have met you. You may be able to accomplish something in which I greatly fear me that I have failed, and in which my failure involved your father in grave peril.”
Piqued, alarmed, flattered by the suggestion that she might achieve something in which he had failed, Evelyn’s sweetly timid eyes fluttered him an upward glance of inquiry.
“Your father, madam, has involved himself very seriously by having harboured here one who has been convicted and hanged as a traitor and spy: Such an action subjects a man to penalties scarcely less grave than those imposed upon the actual traitor, because in itself such an action implies an almost equal degree of guilt.”
“What do you tell me?” she cried, now all alarm.
“The brutal truth, ma’am. But there is not yet the need for alarm. What friend can do I am doing to obtain the suppression of the warrant which the Secretary of State has already signed for your father’s arrest.”
“For his arrest!” She stood still, one hand clutching his lordship’s sleeve, and her lovely empty face was blenched.
“Nay, now, nay!” he soothed her. “I entreat ye, ma’am, do not give way: I am hopeful that I may prevail. I have much influence with my Lord Carteret; he listens to me, and you may be sure that all such influence shall be employed to serve you.”
“What — what could they do to him if he were arrested?” she asked.
“Ah!” he said, and rubbed his chin. “They would hardly hang him, I think. No, no, there is no danger of that. But they will mulct him very heavily — so heavily that it may almost amount to a complete confiscation of his estates and possessions.”
A vista of poverty, of destitution, was instantly opened out before the eyes of her imagination. It terrified her, for all that the picture was far from lifelike. She had looked upon so few of the realities of life that she was incapable of adequately conceiving this one. But she conceived enough of it to undergo almost an increase of terror.
“Oh!” she moaned, and again: “Oh!”
“But you are not to be alarmed,” he repeated. “Oddslife, now, did I not say that I would exert my influence, and that my influence is great? Bear that in mind to set against your fears.” He spoke cheerfully and confidently, and, reflective as she always was, she felt herself cheered and her confidence returning. Then his face clouded. “If,” he ran on, “your father had but chosen the way I showed him, I could make his immunity a certainty. Unfortunately—”
“What way was that?” she questioned eagerly.
He looked down at this frail slip of womanhood, observed the elegantly coiffed golden head that scarce reached the level of his shoulder, and he sighed.
“As you know,” he said, “I am betrothed to
Damaris.”
“Yes, yes,” said she, for even now she had not learnt of the grounds upon which that betrothal had been dissolved. The readiness of the “yes, yes” informed him of this fact, and made things easier for him. His eyes glowed a moment with satisfaction.
“You may not know that your father is opposed to the marriage; that he will not allow it to take place until Damaris is of full age.”
“But why?” she cried.
“Some trifling scruple of adherence to her father’s wishes,” he answered lightly. “This scruple I have begged him to put aside. I have assured him that were I his relative, instead of his friend, it would strengthen my hands to serve him, it would render Lord Carteret’s suppression of the warrant certain. For, you see, madam, he loves me too well to wish to hurt any who might stand in a degree of relationship, however slender, towards myself.”
“Then — then it is easy. He is safe, and there is not any cause for fear,” she exclaimed, and her face was upturned to his.
He gloomed down at her sorrowfully, and shook his head.
“Unfortunately, your father will not waive his idle scruples,” he said. Then he brightened again. “But do not let it concern you. After all, I do not doubt but that I shall be able to prevail even as it is. Still, the other way would be safer. But I dare not press your father on the point; nor yet dare I press Damaris, because — This is a confidence that you’ll respect, Miss Kynaston?”
“Yes, yes,” she assured him eagerly.
“Because,” he resumed, “Damaris once did me the injustice to think that I wooed her out of mercenary motives, and I could not for all the world give her cause to think so again.”
“How could she in this?” cried simple Evelyn.
He smiled the bitter, knowing smile of the man of the world, of the man who has looked into the human heart and studied its proneness to unworthy suspicions.
“It might be construed that I sought to make a bargain, and I could not suffer that. Therefore, I may not insist. Perhaps, indeed, I have failed to represent to your father the full extent of your peril. If I tell it you, it is because, thinking highly as I do of — of your wit, you may perhaps consider well to give a hint in the proper quarter. But do not on any account say that I urged it, and — and perhaps you had best say naught to your father.”
It was as plain an invitation to tell Damaris as he could well have uttered; yet she did not perceive his subtleties.
“I understand,” she cried. “Oh yes, I will do what I can.”
“I am sure of it, and thus you will bring me the happiness of having served not only your father, but yourself — for it involves your own future as well!” Doffing his three-cornered hat, he bowed low over her hand. He kissed it in farewell, and also, as it were, to seal a bond between them.
They had reached the chaise by now. He entered it, whilst she stood by the gate-post watching him, somewhat bemused by all that he had said. The coachman gathered up his reins, when suddenly his lordship checked him. He thrust his head from the carriage window.
“Upon second thoughts, Miss Kynaston, perhaps it were best if you said naught to anyone. Leave the matter in my hands to deal with as best I can. I—” he faltered, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I so dread the danger of unworthy motives being imputed to me. So best forget what I have said.”
Again he gravely saluted her, and without waiting for an answer he sank back into his chaise. But as the carriage rolled away he smiled, well satisfied to reflect that his meeting her had been a most fortunate chance, and that he had sowed more than he had looked to do when he came, and some of it on very fertile soil.
Chapter 18. IN CHECK
As my Lord Pauncefort calculated so did things fall out. No sooner had she seen his carriage roll away in a cloud of dust towards London than Evelyn went in quest of Damaris.
She found her seated by the window of her room — she would sit there by the hour now in apparent idleness — and in her hand Damaris held Captain Gaynor’s letter, which already she had read so often that its every character was seared indelibly upon her memory. She thrust the epistle into the bosom of her corsage when Evelyn entered, still pale and breathless now from the haste she had made, and she listened quite calmly to the tale that Evelyn brought.
At the mention of Sir John’s danger her gentle face had hardened and she had frowned. Her quick mind perceived it instantly. Whatever else might be false in the message of which her cousin was the bearer, there could be no question as to the truth of that part of it. Yet she remained singularly quiet.
“I see,” she said, when Evelyn had done. “And of course Lord Pauncefort bade you tell me this.” The faint sneer gave the words their intended meaning, and Evelyn grasped it instantly.
“Not so,” she cried, her cheeks flushing with indignation for one whom she felt it her duty — since he had so openly and honestly confided in her — to champion. “Not so — though he feared that you would think so.”
“Then, of course, he did intend that you should tell me.”
“He did not!” Evelyn stamped her foot. She was angry now.
“Why all this heat, my dear?”
“Because you are so unjust, so meanly suspicious. And you go too fast in your suspicions. It was just because he feared that you might impute unworthy motives to him that he begged me as he was setting out to forget all that he had said and to mention it to no one.”
“Being quite confident, of course, that you could not keep it to yourself,” said Damaris. “Nay, Evelyn, be not angry with me. My scorn is not for you, child.”
“I am as old as you are,” flashed Evelyn back, with something of her mothers irrelevance.
“But you have been saved some of the bitter experience which has been mine,” added Damaris, with a pale smile, “else my Lord Pauncefort would not so easily have made a tool of you.”
“A tool of me? Lord Pauncefort?” Her indignation was out of all proportion to the charge. For she magnified it into an insult — a slight upon her shrewdness.
“Do you not see, Evelyn dear, that if he had no ends to serve by telling you this, he would not needlessly have harassed you by showing you your father’s peril? It is precisely because he sought to strike a bargain with Sir John, and because Sir John failed him entirely, that he sent me this message by you.”
“He sent no message,” Evelyn insisted. “’Tis hateful to be so suspicious. He told me not to mention what he had said, just because he feared you would so construe his ends.”
“That fear, at least, was shrewd in him.”
“I see that it is idle to make you understand.” And on that, with flaming cheeks, Eveyln swung on her heel and left her cousin.
To have been told that Lord Pauncefort had made a tool of her, as though she had no wit of her own! It was monstrous, and it sent her very angry to her chamber. Had she known in what frame of mind she left poor Damaris, perhaps her own had been less bitter.
To the burden, already almost overwhelming, of her grief was added this fresh horror — the knowledge that over her only remaining friend hung this terrible peril in which his very life might be involved, and the further torturing, agonising knowledge that it lay within her power, by self-immolation, to rescue him.
She rose, and remained standing for some time by the window, her hands pressed against her brow, as if seeking to stimulate the numbed brain within. Did it greatly matter what befell her now? Did it greatly matter that she should deliver herself to Pauncefort as a ransom for Sir John? Was it not, perhaps, the best use to which she could now devote her otherwise wasted and useless life?
Heavy-footed she went below in quest of her guardian. She found him still seated at the table in the library, bowed down in expectation of the descent of that impending sword. He looked up as she entered, and the sight of that grey face, and the dumb pain investing those eyes that were wont to gleam so clear and jovially, strengthened her in her purpose by showing her the great good to be achieved.
She came to him, and set an arm about his shoulder, her smooth warm cheek against his own.
“Father dear,” she murmured — and since it was not her custom to address him by that name, her present use of it lent her a greater tenderness. “Father dear, you are troubled, and I have come to help you if you will let me.”
“Trou — troubled!” he faltered, with a poor attempt to bluster. “Nay, now, what should be troubling me?”
“This thing that my Lord Pauncefort came to tell you. You see that I know all.”
He attempted to swing round in her embrace that he might face her.
“Who told you?” he growled. “Did you see Pauncefort? Did he make you this infamous proposal?”
“No,” she answered. “He saw Evelyn.”
“And he told her to the end that she might tell you!” His voice was shaking now with indignation.
“Be not angry with her, father dear.” Her cheek pressed his own yet more closely. “Evelyn is but a child. She never realised that my Lord Pauncefort used her to this end. I do not think that she fully realises your danger even now.”
“Indeed,” he answered bitterly, “it is well written that the father of a fool hath no joy.” For in his mind at that moment was the fact that his child, informed of this horror that menaced him, had never given a thought to the condition in which it must have left him, had never attempted to seek him out, to bring him at least the comfort of her affection and sympathy. It had been left for Damaris to discharge a consoler’s duty, and more, to seek him with the offer to immolate herself that she might rescue him — for already he guessed, with heavy foreboding, the nature of the help which she announced.
It must be as Damaris said. It must be that this frivolous, irresponsible child he had brought into the world had not the wit to understand his position. He sighed heavily as he reflected that she was, after all, his offspring — his and his foolish wife’s — and that he had not the right to complain.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 268
