Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “What,” cried Stella Mayne, with almost a shriek, “you will give him up — for me!”

  “Yes. He has never belonged to me as he has belonged to you — it is no shame for me to renounce him — grief and pain — yes, grief and pain unspeakable — but no disgrace. He has sinned, and he must atone for his sin. I will not be the impediment to your marriage.”

  “But if you were to give him up he might not marry me: men are so difficult to manage,” faltered the actress, aghast at the idea of such a sacrifice, seeing the whole business in the light of circumstances unknown to Miss Courtenay.

  “Not men with conscience and honour,” answered Christabel, with unshaken firmness. “I feel very sure that if Mr. Hamleigh were free he would do what is right. It is only his engagement to me that hinders his making atonement to you. He has lived among worldly people who have never reminded him of his duty — who have blunted his finer feelings with their hideous wordliness — oh, I know how worldly women talk — as if there were neither hell nor heaven, only Belgravia and Mayfair — and no doubt worldly men are still worse. But he — he whom I have so loved and honoured — cannot be without honour and conscience. He shall do what is just and right.”

  She looked almost inspired as she stood there with pale cheeks and kindling eyes, thinking far more of that broad principle of justice than of the fragile emotional creature trembling before her. This comes of feeding a girl’s mind with Shakespeare and Bacon, Carlyle and Plato, to say nothing of that still broader and safer guide, the Gospel.

  Just then there was the sound of footsteps approaching the door — a measured masculine footfall. The emotional creature flew to the door, opened it, murmured a few words to some person without, and closed it, but not before a whiff of Latakia had been wafted into the flower-scented room. The footsteps moved away in another direction, and Christabel was much too absorbed to notice that faint breath of tobacco.

  “There’s not the least use in your giving him up,” said Stella, resolutely: “he would never marry me. You don’t know him as well as I do.”

  “Do I not? I have lived only to study his character for the best part of a year. I know he will do what is just.”

  Stella Mayne suddenly clasped her hands before her face and sobbed aloud.

  “Oh, if I were only good and innocent like you!” she cried, piteously; “how I detest myself as I stand here before you! — how loathsome — how hateful I am!”

  “No, no,” murmured Christabel, soothingly, “you are not hateful: it is only impenitent sin that is hateful. You were led into wrong-doing because you were ignorant of right — there was no one to teach you — no one to uphold you. And he who tempted you is in duty bound to make amends. Trust me — trust me — it is better for my peace as well as for yours that he should do his duty. And now good-by — I have stayed too long already.”

  Again Stella Mayne fell on her knees and clasped this divine visitant’s hand. It seemed to this weak yet fervid soul almost as if some angel guest had crossed her threshold. Christabel stooped and would have kissed the actress’s forehead.

  “No,” she cried, hysterically, “don’t kiss me — don’t — you don’t know. I should feel like Judas.”

  “Good-by, then. Trust me.” And so they parted.

  A tall man, with an iron-grey moustache and a soldier-like bearing, came out of a little study, cigarette in hand, as the outer door closed on Christabel. “Who the deuce is that thoroughbred-looking girl?” asked this gentleman. “Have you got some of the neighbouring swells to call upon you, at last? Why, what’s the row, Fishky, you’ve been crying?”

  Fishky was the stage-carpenters’, dressers’ and supernumeraries’ pronunciation of the character which Miss Mayne acted nightly, and had been sportively adopted by her intimates as a pet name for herself.

  “That lady is Miss Courtenay.”

  “The lady Hamleigh is going to marry? What the devil is she doing in this galère? I hope she hasn’t been making herself unpleasant?”

  “She is an angel.”

  “With all my heart. Hamleigh is very welcome to her, so long as he leaves me my dear little demon,” answered the soldier, smiling down from his altitude of six feet two at the sylph-like form in the Watteau gown.

  “Oh, how I wish I had never seen your face,” said Stella: “I should be almost a good woman, if there were no such person as you in the world.”

  VOLUME II.

  CHAPTER I.

  “LET ME AND MY PASSIONATE LOVE GO BY.”

  That second week of July was not altogether peerless weather. It contained within the brief span of its seven days one of those sudden and withering changes which try humanity more than the hardest winter, with which ever Transatlantic weather-prophet threatened our island. The sultry heat of a tropical Tuesday was followed by the blighting east wind of a chilly Wednesday; and in the teeth of that keen east wind, blowing across the German Ocean, and gathering force among the Pentlands, Angus Hamleigh set forth from the cosy shelter of Hillside, upon a long day’s salmon fishing.

  His old kinswoman’s health had considerably improved since his arrival; but she was not yet so entirely restored to her normal condition as to be willing that he should go back to London. She pleaded with him for a few days more, and in order that the days should not hang heavily on his hands, she urged him to make the most of his Scottish holiday by enjoying a day or two’s salmon fishing. The first floods, which did not usually begin till August, had already swollen the river, and the grilse and early autumn salmon were running up; according to Donald, the handy man who helped in the gardens, and who was a first-rate fisherman.

  “There’s all your ain tackle upstairs in one o’ the presses,” said the old lady; “ye’ll just find it ready to your hand.”

  The offer was tempting — Angus had found the long summer days pass but slowly in house and garden — albeit there was a library of good old classics. He so longed to be hastening back to Christabel — found the hours so empty and joyless without her. He was an ardent fisherman — loving that leisurely face-to-face contemplation of Nature which goes with rod and line. The huntsman sees the landscape flash past him like a dream of grey wintry beauty — it is no more to him than a picture in a gallery — he has rarely time to feel Nature’s tranquil charms. Even when he must needs stand still for a while, he is devoured by impatience to be scampering off again, and to see the world in motion. But the angler has leisure to steep himself in the atmosphere of hill and streamlet — to take Nature’s colours into his soul. Every angler ought to blossom into a landscape painter. But this salmon fishing was not altogether a dreamy and contemplative business. Quickness, presence of mind, and energetic action were needed at some stages of the sport. The moment came when Angus found his rod bending under the weight of a magnificent salmon, and when it seemed a toss up between landing his fish and being dragged under water by him.

  “Jump in,” cried Donald, excitedly, when the angler’s line was nearly expended, “it’s only up to your neck.” So Angus jumped in, and followed the lightning-swift rush of the salmon down stream, and then, turning him after some difficulty, had to follow his prey up stream again, back to the original pool, where he captured him, and broke the top of his eighteen-foot rod.

  Angus clad himself thinly, because the almanack told him it was summer — he walked far and fast — overheated himself — waded for hours knee-deep in the river — his fishing-boots of three seasons ago far from watertight — ate nothing all day — and went back to Hillside at dusk, carrying the seeds of pneumonia under his oilskin jacket. Next day he contrived to crawl about the gardens, reading “Burton” in an idle desultory way that suited so desultory a book, longing for a letter from Christabel, and sorely tired of his Scottish seclusion. On the day after he was laid up with a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs, attended by his aunt’s experienced old doctor — a shrewd hard-headed Scotchman, contemporary with Simpson, Sibson, Fergusson — all the brightest lights in the Caledonia
n galaxy — and nursed by one of his aunt’s old servants.

  While he was in this condition there came a letter from Christabel, a long letter which he unfolded with eager trembling hands, looking for joy and comfort in its pages. But, as he read, his pallid cheek flushed with angry feverish carmine, and his short hard breathing grew shorter and harder.

  Yet the letter expressed only tenderness. In tenderest words his betrothed reminded him of past wrong-doing and urged upon him the duty of atonement. If this girl whom he had so passionately loved a little while ago was from society’s standpoint unworthy to be his wife — it was he who had made her unworthiness — he who alone could redeem her from absolute shame and disgrace. “All the world knows that you wronged her, let all the world know that you are glad to make such poor amends as may be made for that wrong,” wrote Christabel. “I forgive you all the sorrow you have brought upon me: it was in a great measure my own fault. I was too eager to link my life with yours. I almost thrust myself upon you. I will revere and honour you all the days of my life, if you will do right in this hard crisis of our fate. Knowing what I know I could never be happy as your wife: my soul would be wrung with jealous fears; I should never feel secure of your love; my life would be one long self-torment. It is with this conviction that I tell you our engagement is ended, Angus, loving you with all my heart. I have not come hurriedly to this resolution. It is not of anybody’s prompting. I have prayed to my God for guidance. I have questioned my own heart, and I believe that I have decided wisely and well. And so farewell, dear love. May God and your conscience inspire you to do right.

  “Your ever constant friend,

  “Christabel Courtenay.”

  Angus Hamleigh’s first impulse was anger. Then came a softer feeling, and he saw all the nobleness of the womanly instinct that had prompted this letter: a good woman’s profound pity for a fallen sister; an innocent woman’s readiness to see only the poetical aspect of a guilty love; an unselfish woman’s desire that right should be done, at any cost to herself.

  “God bless her!” he murmured, and kissed the letter before he laid it under his pillow.

  His next thought was to telegraph immediately to Christabel. He asked his nurse to bring him a telegraph form and a pencil, and with a shaking hand began to write: —

  “No! a thousand times no. I owe no allegiance to any one but to you. There can be no question of broken faith with the person of whom you write. I hold you to your promise.”

  Scarcely had his feeble fingers scrawled the lines than he tore up the paper.

  “I will see the doctor first,” he thought. “Am I a man to claim the fulfilment of a bright girl’s promise of marriage? No, I’ll get the doctor’s verdict before I send her a word.”

  When the old family practitioner had finished his soundings and questionings, Angus asked him to stop for a few minutes longer.

  “You say I’m better this afternoon, and that you’ll get me over this bout,” he said, “and I believe you. But I want you to go a little further and tell me what you think of my case from a general point of view.”

  “Humph,” muttered the doctor, “it isn’t easy to say what proportion of your scemptoms may be temporary, and what pairmenent; but ye’ve a vairy shabby pair of lungs at this praisent writing. What’s your family heestory?”

  “My father died of consumption at thirty.”

  “Humph! ainy other relative?”

  “My aunt, a girl of nineteen; my father’s mother, at seven-and-twenty.”

  “Dear, dear, that’s no vairy lively retrospaict. Is this your fairst attack of heemorrage?”

  “Not by three or four.”

  The good old doctor shook his head.

  “Ye’ll need to take extreme care of yourself,” he said: “and ye’ll no be for spending much of your life in thees country. Ye might do vairy weel in September and October at Rothsay or in the Isle of Arran, but I’d recommaind ye to winter in the South.”

  “Do you think I shall be a long-lived man?”

  “My dear sir, that’ll depend on care and circumstances beyond human foresight. I couldn’t conscientiously recommaind your life to an Insurance Office.”

  “Do you think that a man in my condition is justified in marrying?”

  “Do ye want a plain answer?”

  “The plainest that you can give me.”

  “Then I tell you frankly that I think the marriage of a man with a marked consumptive tendency, like yours, is a crime — a crying sin, which is inexcusable in the face of modern science and modern enlightenment, and our advanced knowledge of the mainsprings of life and death. What, sir, can it be less than a crime to bring into this world children burdened with an hereditary curse, destined to a heritage of weakness and pain — bright young minds fettered by diseased bodies — born to perish untimely? Mr. Hamleigh, did ye ever read a book called ‘Ecce Homo?’”

  “Yes, it is a book of books. I know it by heart.”

  “Then ye’ll may be remaimber the writer’s summing up of practical Chreestianity as a seestem of ethics which in its ultimate perfection will result in the happiness of the human race — even that last enemy, Death, if not subdued, may be made to keep his distance, seemply by a due observance of natural laws — by an unselfish forethought and regard in each member of the human species for the welfare of the multitude. The man who becomes the father of a race of puny children, can be no friend to humanity. He predooms future suffering to the innocent by a reckless indulgence of his own inclination in the present.”

  “Yes, I believe you are right,” said Angus, with a despairing sigh. “It seems a hard thing for a man who loves, and is beloved by, the sweetest among women, to forego even a few brief years of perfect bliss, and go down lonely to the grave — to accept this doctrine of renunciation, and count himself as one dead in life. Yet a year ago I told myself pretty much what you have told me to-day. I was tempted from my resolve by a woman’s loving devotion — and now — a crucial point has come — and I must decide whether to marry or not.”

  “If you love humanity better than you love yourself, ye’ll die a bachelor,” said the Scotchman, gravely, but with infinite pity in his shrewd old face; “ye’ve asked me for the truth, and I’ve geeven it ye. Truth is often hard.”

  Angus gave his thin hot hand to the doctor in token of friendly feeling, and then silently turned his face to the wall, whereupon the doctor gently patted him upon the shoulder and left him.

  Yes, it was hard. In the bright spring time, his health wondrously restored by that quiet restful winter on the shores of the Mediterranean, Angus had almost believed that he had given his enemy the slip — that Death’s dominion over him was henceforth to be no more than over the common ruck of humanity, who, knowing not when or how the fatal lot may fall from the urn, drop into a habit of considering themselves immortal, and death a calamity of which one reads in the newspapers with only a kindly interest in other people’s mortality. All through the gay London season he had been so utterly happy, so wonderfully well, that the insidious disease, which had declared itself in the past by so many unmistakable symptoms, seemed to have relaxed its grip upon him. He began to have faith in an advanced medical science — the power to cure maladies hitherto considered incurable. That long interval of languid empty days and nights of placid sleep — the heavy sweetness of southern air breathing over fields of orange flowers and violets, February roses and carnations, had brought strength and healing. The foe had been baffled by the new care which his victim had taken of an existence that had suddenly become precious.

  This was the hope that had buoyed up Angus Hamleigh’s spirits all through the happy springtime and summer which he had spent in the company of his betrothed. He had seen the physician who less than a year before had pronounced his sentence of doom, and the famous physician, taking the thing in the light-hearted way of a man for whom humanity is a collection of “cases,” was jocose and congratulatory, full of wonder at his patient’s restoration, and taking c
redit to himself for having recommended Hyères. And now the enemy had him by the throat. The foe, no longer insidiously hinting at his deadly meaning, held him in the fierce grip of pain and fever. Such an attack as this, following upon one summer day’s imprudence, showed but too plainly by how frail a tie he clung to life — how brief and how prone to malady must be the remnant of his days.

  Before the post went out he re-read Christabel’s letter, smiling mournfully as he read.

  “Poor child!” he murmured to himself, “God bless her for her innocence — God bless her for her unselfish desire to do right. If she only knew the truth — but, better that she should be spared the knowledge of evil. What good end would it serve if I were to enter upon painful explanations?”

  He had himself propped up with pillows, and wrote, in a hand which he strove to keep from shaking, the following lines: —

  “Dearest! I accept your decree: not for the reasons which you allege, which are no reasons; but for other motives which it would pain me too much to explain. I have loved you, I do love you, better than my own joy or comfort, better than my own life: and it is simply and wholly on that account I can resign myself to say, let us in the future be friends — and friends only.

  “Your ever affectionate

  “Angus Hamleigh.”

  He was so much better next day as to be able to sit up for an hour or two in the afternoon; and during that time he wrote at length to Mrs. Tregonell, telling her of his illness, and of his conversation with the Scotch doctor, and the decision at which he had arrived on the strength of that medical opinion, and leaving her at liberty to tell Christabel as much, or as little of this, as she thought fit.

  “I know you will do what is best for my darling’s happiness,” he said. “If I did not believe this renunciation a sacred duty, and the only means of saving her from infinite pain in the future, nothing that she or even you could say about my past follies would induce me to renounce her. I would fight that question to the uttermost. But the other fatal fact is not to be faced, except by a blind and cowardly selfishness which I dare not practise.”