Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Do you think him so very ugly?” asked Lilian, with a distressed look.

  “I didn’t say very ugly; but I certainly don’t think him handsome. That knotted and bulging brow means brains, I suppose.”

  “He was fifth wrangler, and he is a splendid musician,” said his sister. “I wish you would stop till Sunday to hear what he has made of the choir.”

  “If he has made them sing in tune he must be a wonderful man. And so he is the person whose merits and fortunes are to colour your future, Lilian. I had no idea of it when I saw him hanging over your piano last night. I thought he was only a pis-aller. I suppose he is just the type of man girls in country parsonages admire — tall, athletic, with fine eyes, and dark overhanging brows, large strong hands, thick wavy hair, and a powerful baritone voice. I can quite understand your liking Mr. Cumberland; but what does the governor think of it all?”

  “Father does not mind,” Lilian answered naively. “Jack is of very good family, but he will have to get a living before we are married.”

  “He shall have a living — if he is worthy of my sister,” said Gerard. “Money will buy livings — he shall be a pluralist if he likes.”

  “Oh, Gerard, he is the last man to like that. He has such a strong idea of duty. He would like a big parish in a sea-port, I think, with plenty of work. His best gifts are wasted in such a place as this, but all our people adore him. Father owns that he never had such a helper.”

  “My sweet enthusiast, we will look out for a big sea-port. You shall be a ministering angel to sailors and sailors’ wives — you shall temper the cruelties of life in a crowded city — and, perhaps, by way of reward I shall hear some day that my sister’s husband has been struck down by a malignant fever and that she has done herself to death while nursing him.”

  CHAPTER VII. “IT IS AN OATH,” SHE SAID.

  Gerard went back to London, but eager as he was to return he felt a pang of regret as he bade his mother good-bye in the fresh early morning, and turned his face towards the great city. His brief visit to the old home had been an interval of rest in a life that lately had been all unrest. He fancied that peau de chagrin could hardly have shrunk by a hair’s breadth during those hours of calm affection, of interchange of thought and feeling, without vehemence or excitement. To go back to Mrs. Champion and her set was like going back to the crust of a volcano. The rage of spending was upon him. He wanted to do something with the money which he had scarcely dared to calculate. He drove straight from Waterloo Station to Lincoln’s Inn, and went through the schedule of his possessions with Mr. Cranberry, who was a little, dry old man, like the Princess Ida’s father, and had none of the prestige and unctuousness of his junior partner Mr. Crafton. One could divine easily that while Mr. Crafton lived in a handsome “place” at Surbiton, grew pines and peaches, and prided himself upon his stable and garden, Mr. Cranberry was content with a dingy house in one of the Bloomsbury Squares, and restricted his pride of life to a few Dutch pictures, a good plain cook, and a cellar of comet port and old East Indian sherry.

  From this gentleman Gerard Hillersdon elicited — together with much detail — the main fact that his capital, in and out of the banking-house of Milford and Co., summed up to a little over two millions, and might be taken to yield an average four and a half per cent., whereby his annual income amounted to ninety thousand pounds.

  His cheek paled at the mere mention of the sum. It was too much undoubtedly, almost an evil thing to acquire such riches with a suddenness as of an earthquake or an apoplectic stroke. The magnitude of his wealth overawed him; and yet he had no desire to lessen it by any large act of benevolence or philanthropy. He had no inclination to give the London slums another breathing ground, or to sink a hundred thousand pounds upon a block of dwellings for the abjects of the great city. He was at once scared and elated.

  “Let me have a few thousands immediately,” he said; “open an account for me at Milford’s bank. Let me feel that I am rich!”

  “It shall be done,” said Mr. Cranberry; and then he explained that there were certain formalities to be gone through, which could be completed without delay, if his client would give his mind to the business.

  The two men drove round to the hank together. Cranberry opened his client’s account with his own cheque for five thousand pounds, and a clerk handed Mr. Hillersdon a cheque-book. His first act on returning to his lodgings was to -write a cheque for a thousand pounds, payable to the Rev. Edward Hillersdon, and this he enclosed in a brief scrawl to his mother:

  “Ask the Rector to buy Lilian a new pony to replace poor Tiny Tim, who has taken to stumbling rather badly,” he wrote, “and beg him to do just what he likes with the rest of -the money. I shall send you my little gift upon your birthday next week. Alas! I let the date slip by last year, unmarked by so much as a card.”

  It was too late to begin his search for a new domicile that afternoon, so he called on Mrs. Champion, who had gone to Charing Cross Station to meet her husband on his return from the Continent, and then he went on to the pretty little Sensorium, with its old-fashioned low-ceiled rooms, and bow windows looking into Birdcage Walk, and there he took tea with Roger Larose, who was generally to be found there at tea-time.

  “I hear you have come into a fortune,” said Larose, with his easy languor. “You have been trying to keep the fact dark, I know, but these things always ooze out.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Nobody. It is in the air. I think I read a paragraph in the Hesperus. There are always paragraphs. I congratulate you upon your wealth. Is it much?”

  “Yes; it is a good deal. My old friends needn’t be afraid of borrowing a few pounds of me when they are hard up.”

  “Thanks, my dear Gerard. I will bear it in mind. And what are you going to do? Shall you really be content to live among us, and know us still?”

  “The world and the people I know are quite the best world and people I have ever imagined; only I mean to have pleasant surroundings. Give me your counsel, Larose, as an architect and a man of taste. Shall I have chambers in the Albany, or a house and garden of my own?”

  “A house, by all means! The Albany is old-fashioned; it savours of Pelham and Coningsby. You must have a house near the south side of Hyde Park, — a house in a walled garden. There are few such houses left now, and yours will be fabulously dear. That, of course, is a necessity. You must get an R. A. to decorate your walls. The President won’t do it, but you must have an R.A.”

  “Thanks, I have my own ideas about decoration and furniture.”

  “And you don’t want an R.A.? Extraordinary young man! However, your garden will be the grand point, — a garden in which you can entertain, a garden in which you can breakfast or dine tête-à-tête with your chosen friend, or with the select few. In London there is nothing like a garden for distinction. The costliness of it always tells. Sit down and write to a house-agent at once: some one near the Park. Messrs. Barley and Mennet? Yes, they will do. Tell them exactly what you want.”

  The letter was written at Larose’s dictation — a house of such and such elevation; between Knightsbridge and the Albert Hall; stabling ample, but not too near the house; garden of at least an acre indispensable.

  Messrs. Barley and Mennet’s answer came by the eleven o’clock post on the following morning. They were pleased to state that by a happy conjunction of events — namely, the sudden death of a client, and his widow’s withdrawal to the Continent — they had now at their disposal just such a house and grounds as Mr. Hillersdon required. Such houses, Messrs. B. and M. begged to remind Mr. H., were seldom in the market; they were as precious and as rare in their line as the Koh-i-noor or the Pitt diamond. The price asked for the beneficial lease of seventy-three and a quarter years was thirty thousand pounds, a very reasonable amount under the circumstances. The annual ground rent was two hundred and fifty pounds. The auctioneers enclosed a card to view, and Hillersdon set off at once, eager to see if the house realised their description. When
he found himself in Piccadilly he thought he would ask Edith Champion to go and look at the house with him. The attention would please her, no doubt; and he had a vague feeling of remorse on her account, as if — although he had called on her yesterday — he had neglected her. Certainly under the old conditions he would have gone back to Hertford Street in the evening, instead of wandering from theatre to music-hall, and from music-hall to post-midnight club, with Roger Larose.

  There were two carriages, a victoria and a pair-horse brougham, standing before Mr. Champion’s house: a curious circumstance at that early hour. It occurred to Gerard that they looked like doctors’ carriages, and the idea struck him with a sudden dread. Could anything evil have happened? Could she, whom he last saw splendid in health and beauty, have been stricken with sudden illness?

  He asked the servant who answered his ring if Mrs. Champiou was ill.

  “No, sir, not Mrs. Champion,” the man answered promptly; “Mr. Champion came ‘ome out of ‘ealth, and there’s been two doctors with ‘im for the last ‘arf-hour. Will you step up to the drawing-room, sir? My mistress is in the libery with the doctors, but I dare say she’ll see you presently.”

  “Yes, I’ll wait. I hope Mr. Champion is not seriously ill?”

  “No, sir. Only a general derangement, I believe. He has been complaining for some time. Master is getting on in years, you see, sir,” added the butler, with the privilege of an upper servant.

  Getting on in years? Yes, James Champion was no doubt upon the downward slope of the hill, but until this moment Gerard had never thought of him as mortal, as a factor that might some day vanish out of the sum of Edith’s life. The man seemed fenced round and protected by his wealth, and no more subject to sickness or death than a money-bag.

  He was shown into the drawing-room, where the palms and flowers and innumerable prettinesses scattered about the tables were dimly seen in the tempered light. No broad sunshine ever glared into Mrs. Champion’s rooms. Only under the lower edge of the festooned silken blinds was the brightness of the summer day allowed to filter through a screen of yellow marguerites that quivered and glanced in the noon-day fight.

  Gerard had the room to himself for nearly twenty minutes by the clock, and was beginning to lose patience, and to contemplate departure, when the portière was pushed aside and Edith Champion came into the room, dressed in a white muslin breakfast-gown, and with a face that matched her gown.

  She came slowly towards him, as he advanced to meet her, looking at him with a curious earnestness.

  “How pale you are!” he said. “I was shocked to hear that Mr. Champion was ill. I hope it is nothing serious?”

  “It is serious; very serious!” she said, and then she put up her hands before her face, and tears streamed from between her jewelled fingers. “I am thinking how good he has been to me — how liberal, how indulgent, and how little I have ever done for him in return,” she said, with unaffected emotion. “I am full of remorse when I think of my married life.”

  “My dear Edith,” he said, taking her hand; “indeed you wrong yourself. You have done nothing of which you need be ashamed.”

  “I have always tried to think that, on my knees in church,” she said. “I have taught myself to believe that there was no guilt in my life. Indeed, it seemed blameless compared with the lives of women I know; women with whom the world finds no fault. But I know now that I have been a wicked wife.”

  “But, Edith,” returning naturally to the habit of a former time in his compassion for her grief, “you have never failed in your duty. There has been no shame in our friendship. It was natural that you and I, who are young, and who were once lovers, should take pleasure in each other’s society. Mr. Champion has seen us together; he has never suspected evil.”

  No; he is utterly without jealousy or suspicion. Perhaps that is because he has never really cared for me;” she said, as if reasoning with herself. “But he has been always kind and indulgent, ready to gratify my lightest whim. And now I feel that I have been cold and ungrateful, indifferent to his feelings and inclinations, going my own way in blind self-indulgence.”

  “My dear Edith, be assured this remorse is uncalled-for. You have been an excellent wife for Mr. Champion, who — who is not an emotional person, and would be only bored by a romantic affection. But is the case really so bad? Is your husband dangerously ill?”

  “The case is hopeless. He cannot live long — perhaps a year, at most two years. He has known for some time that he was out of health. He consulted a doctor in Brussels, who rather scared him by his hints of evil. He came home out of spirits, very desponding about himself, and last night he sent for his doctor, and arranged a consultation with a specialist for this morning. Both doctors have been with me, telling me much more than they dared tell my husband. They have spoken fair words to him, poor dear man, but they have told me the truth. He cannot last more than two years. All that their science can do, all that healing springs and mountain air, and severe regimen, and careful nursing can do, is to spin out the weak thread of life for a year or two at most. He is only fifty-nine. Gerard, and he has toiled hard for his wealth. It seems cruel for him to be taken away so soon.”

  “Death is always cruel,” Gerard answered vaguely. “I never thought of Mr. Champion as a man likely to die before the Scriptural three-score and ten.”

  “Nor I,” said Edith. “God knows, I have never calculated upon his death.”

  There was a silence, as they sat side by side, her pale cheeks wet with tears, her hands clasped upon her knee, he sorely embarrassed, feeling all that was painful in their position.

  “Is it true about this fortune of yours?” she asked, after a long pause.

  “Yes, the thing is a reality. I am beginning to believe in it myself. I came to you this morning to ask you to help me choose a house.”

  “You are going to take a house!” she exclaimed. “That means you are going to be married.”

  “Nothing of the kind. Why should not a bachelor, who can afford it, amuse himself by creating a home and a fireside?”

  “Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid,” she murmured. “I know all the women will run after you. I know how desperate they are when a rich marriage is the prize for which they are competing. Gerard, I think you have cared for me always — a little — in all these years.”

  “You know that I have been your slave,” he answered. “Without any pretensions that could wrong Mr. Champion, I have gone on blindly adoring you — as much your lover as I was before you jilted me.”

  “Oh, Gerard, I was not a jilt. I was made to marry Mr. Champion. You can’t imagine what influences are brought to bear upon a girl who is the youngest member of a large family — the preaching of mother and father, and aunts and uncles, and worldly-wise cousins, and elder sisters. It is the constant dropping that wears out a stone, the everlasting iteration. They told me I should spoil your life as well as my own. They painted such awful pictures of our future — cheap lodgings — exile — and then perhaps the workhouse — or worse, even — suicide. I thought of that picture in Frith’s ‘Road to Ruin’ — the wretched husband alone in a garret, preparing to shoot himself. Gerard, I thought of you ruined and penniless like that man, contemplating suicide.”

  Gerard smiled curiously, remembering how only a few days ago he had contemplated, and even resolved, upon that last act in the tragedy of failure.

  Edith Champion had risen in her agitation, and was moving restlessly about the room. She turned suddenly in her pacing to and fro, and came towards Gerard, who had taken up his hat and stick preparatory to departure.

  “Tell me once more that you do not mean to marry — yet awhile,” she said, with feverish intensity.

  “Believe me, there is nothing further from my thoughts.”

  “And you are not weary of me? I am still as much to you as I was years ago when we were engaged?”

  “You are and have been all the world to me since first we met,” he answered tenderly.

 
“Then you can promise me something, Gerard. If that is true — if I am indeed your only love — it cannot hurt you to promise,” she faltered, drawing nearer to him, laying a tremulous hand upon his shoulder, and looking at him with tearful eyes.

  “To promise what, dearest?”

  “That you will not marry any one else — that you will wait till — till I am free. Oh, Gerard, don’t think me cruel because I count upon that which must be. I mean to do my duty to my husband; I — mean to be a better wife to him than I have ever been; less selfish, less given over to worldly pleasures, luxury, and show — more thoughtful of him and his comfort. But the end must come before very long. The doctors told me to be prepared. It may come soon and suddenly — it must come before I am two years older. I shall not be an old woman even then, Gerard,” she said, smiling through her tears, knowing herself his junior by a year or so, “and I hope I shall not be an ugly woman. “Will you promise to wait?”

  “Willingly, Edith, were the years ten instead of two.”

  “Will you promise?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “It is an oath,” she said. “Say that you will be true to me by all you hold most sacred in this world and the next, as you are a man of honour.”

  “As I am a man of honour, I will marry you, and none other. Will that satisfy you?”

  “Yes, yes!” she cried hysterically; “I am content. Nothing else would have given me peace. I have been tormenting myself ever since I heard of your fortune. I hated the poor old man whose gratitude enriched you. But now I can be at rest; I can trust implicitly in your honour. I can trust you now, Gerard, and I can do my duty to my husband, undisturbed by cares and anxieties about the future. We shall not meet so often as we have done, perhaps. I shall go less into society; my life will be less frivolous, but you will still be l’ami de la maison, won’t you? I shall see you oftener than any one else?”

  “You shall see me as often as you and Mr. Champion choose to invite me. But tell me more about him. Is it the heart that is wrong?”