Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  When a man beguiles his reason with such sophistries as these, it is a pretty sure sign that he is already gone past redemption on the broad high-road which leads to the Temple of Folly. Gervoise Palgrave deceived himself wilfully, obstinately, madly shutting his eyes to the truth. He told himself that if he liked to come to Hyford Hall, it was for Sir Langley’s genial society, for the captain’s billiard-playing, for Stephen’s intellectual conversation, for the pleasant county folks he met there, for the exciting sport of archery, in which the Misses Adelina, Sophia, Bessie, and Gertrude Hurst excelled; for anything and everything except the real magnetic influence which drew him to the place.

  “Why should I shut myself up in those dreary rooms at the Chase when the Hursts are always glad to have me with them?” he said to himself, quite ignoring the fact that his predilection for the society of the Hursts was giving much offence to his other friends amongst the county gentry. By and by this fact was made known to him, and at Christmas he gave a ball, a very grand affair, at which all the best people in the county were present, and at which her most splendid majesty the Marchioness of Stepletour kindly presided as hostess. Ethel was the acknowledged belle, though perhaps the fact would scarcely have been so readily admitted if the young lady had not been an heiress, and a landowner of some importance. On the night of this festival, did Gervoise for the first time discover the construction which had been put upon his devotion to the Hurst household.

  “He is going to marry one of those bold Hurst girls,” said a young lady of the genus fast, close to his elbow, as he was struggling for an ice in the crowded refreshment-room. “I only hope it is not the one with the big hook-nose, Adelina; she’s the most stuck up, purse-proud creature. That rich cousin of theirs, Ethel, is engaged to Stephen Hurst, the rector of Pendon; awfully High Church, you know, he is, and goodness knows what lengths he’ll go when he gets Ethel’s money. I know he wants to introduce choral services at Pendon; bat the Pendon people are disgustingly Low, and I don’t believe they’d ever stand it.”

  Engaged to Stephen Hurst! The quick, angry throbbing of his heart told Gervoise Palgrave in this moment, if he had never known as much before, that Ethel was something more to him than a picture or a statue. In this one moment he knew that he loved her, and loved her passionately.

  “I will know the truth at once,” he muttered, half beside himself with jealous rage; “she can never be anything to me, no, God help me! I know that. But I will not be duped and fooled by her sweet looks, her downcast eyes; I will ascertain from her own lips whether she loves this man.”

  Yes, he loved her, and had allowed himself to think his affection was returned. The remembrance of the looks and tones that had nourished this sweet delusion came back to him sharply. Could that innocent-seeming girl be a consummate coquette after all?

  He remembered words and looks of Stephen’s that had been something more than cousinly — anxious, watchful looks that followed Ethel’s light steps; earnest tones, expressive of more than kindred’s common affection.

  The next dance was a waltz, which the master of Palgrave Chase and Ethel Hurst were to dance together. After the dance he led her into a picture-gallery under the pretext of showing her the old family portraits, and there, with a strange abruptness, asked her the portentous question, whether she was or was not the promised wife of her cousin Stephen.

  The heiress blushed crimson, paused for a moment, utterly embarrassed by the sudden question, and then replied in the negative.

  “Thank God!” exclaimed Lord Haughton with intense feeling; and then they both stood silent, motionless, the girl’s changing colour, downcast eyelids, and tremulous lips betraying but too plainly her cherished secret.

  The temptation of that moment was too much for Gervoise Palgrave’s fortitude. He bent over the sweet face he loved, clasped the shrinking form in his arms with a sudden, passionate embrace, and imprinted one despairing kiss upon the pure brow. Thus far, passion had its way with him; then cold, stem, cruel reason came to the rescue.

  “My own one, my darling, forgive me!” he said, releasing the offended girl. “I was mad. For pity’s sake forgive me. I have no right to speak of my love to you; no right — I—”

  A sudden influx of waltzers in the gallery, as the last chords of the waltz sounded from the orchestra, interrupted him, and he was not unthankful for the interruption. He paced the deserted ballroom that night when the last of the long line of carriages had driven away, and pondered on his folly, his madness.

  What could he do? Fly from this splendid home, go abroad, to Central Africa, to the farthest mountain-range of India, anywhere to escape his hopeless love, to hide his dishonour.

  “If I were free!” he said to himself again and again; “O God, of what use to me are lands and wealth without my liberty? The poorest hedger and ditcher upon my estate is free to claim the girl who loves him, but not I. I must stand aloof, and let her think me the basest of men. I have said too much — and too little.”

  CHAPTER IX. A PRECAUTIONARY STEP.

  THERE was one who had discovered Gervoise Palgrave’s secret before the young man had owned it to himself, and that one close observer was Stephen Hurst, rector of Pendon, and devoted worshipper of his lovely cousin. He had pleaded his cause, and received his answer, a sad sentence of condemnation; but he was too generous to resent the offence against his self-esteem, too pure of mind and noble of heart to be angry with the girl who had refused to make his life happy.

  He stood aloof, earnestly anxious for her welfare. All that a brother could do to demonstrate affection for a beloved sister he did still. He was still her friend, her counsellor, her spiritual adviser and faithful ally in all good works. He saw that the earl loved her, and he resigned himself, after a sharp mental contest, to the thought that he beheld his successful rival in this patrician suitor — young, handsome, wealthy — in every attribute and in all surroundings a brilliant alliance for the orphan heiress.

  “Lord Haughton is just the sort of man whom women admire,” he said to himself, “and every woman is at heart a Tory. Rank and ancient name always have the charm of romance in the eyes of an inexperienced girl.”

  After a long period of patient watchfulness, the day came in which Stephen saw but too clearly that his cousin Ethel loved Gervoise Palgrave, Lord Haughton. Until that decisive hour hope had lurked in the young man’s breast, unsuspected by himself. That hope had made life very sweet to him; now existence must become most bitter.

  But why did not the Earl of Haughton declare his love? Stephen Hurst was utterly perplexed by a reticence that seemed unaccountable. That Gervoise loved Ethel was obvious to every eye that beheld them together. After the ball at the Chase, where the earl and Ethel Hurst had appeared for the first time in public together, there was no one in the county so blind as to attribute his visits to Hyford to any attachment for the hook-nosed Adelina. Sir Langley would have preferred to see one of his daughters elevated to the peerage; but as Providence had denied him this rapture, he was contented, and indeed grateful, for the assurance that his niece would wear a countess’s coronet, and be in a position to launch her cousins in the first circle of London society.

  But, in the mean time, why this delay? The earl was in love, the earl was beloved. Why did he not pronounce the portentous words that would ally him for ever to the house of Hurst? His delay puzzled everyone; but most of all did it disturb Stephen Hurst, whose clear logical mind, ever anxious where Ethel was concerned, began to be filled with suspicion of Gervoise Palgrave.

  There must be a mystery somewhere, a secret reason for the earl’s reserve. There was something to find out. Stephen had sworn to serve his cousin with more than a brother’s devotion. It was his duty, therefore, to watch this man whom she loved — this man who loved her, and who yet hesitated to claim her for his wife.

  While his conduct was exciting this wonder, Gervoise Palgrave suddenly left Warwickshire, and went up to London, where he took up his abode at a second-class hotel ne
ar Blackfriars-bridge. He chose the house because it was a busy place in all seasons, frequented by commercial men — a place where his coming and going would excite no attention, where no one would take the trouble to inquire who or what he was.

  He spent two hours on the first day of his stay in town at the office of a pettifogging solicitor in Clement’s Inn. From Clement’s Inn he went to Printing-house-square.

  He put an advertisement in the Times newspaper. He availed himself of the universal mediator, the only go-between that never betrays, the only fetcher and carrier that can safely be trusted. In the next morning’s paper the following advertisement appeared at the top of the second column in the first page:

  “Agatha G., go to Mr. Bagswell, solicitor, Clements Inn, and you will hear of your husband, whose circumstances have? undergone considerable improvement — G. G.”

  This advertisement appeared in the Times, not one morning only, but for twenty consecutive mornings. Throughout the twenty days during which the advertisement appeared, Gervoise remained in London.

  There was no answer to the advertisement. The Earl of Haughton called two or three times in Clement’s Inn. Mr. Bagswell, the lawyer, only knew his client by the name of Gilbert. Gervoise had employed him in some money-lending transaction two years before, and that was all the intercourse there had ever existed between the two men. Mr. Bagswell was a safe person, therefore, to employ upon this occasion.

  “My wife must be dead,” Gervoise said to the solicitor, after the advertisement had appeared for the twentieth time. “If she were living, you would have seen her here before this.” Mr. Bagswell shook his head.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Mrs. Gilbert mayn’t have seen the Times.”

  “Everybody sees the Times.”

  “Yes, every man of business, not every woman. What do women care about the news of the day? If an earthquake was to swallow up the whole of America, the news of it wouldn’t interest a woman half as much as the price of her next-door neighbour’s last new bonnet.”

  Gervoise Palgrave sighed. He had begun to hope that his wife was dead; that he was a free man, free to marry Ethel Hurst; and here was this disagreeable solicitor trying to convince him that he had no foundation for such a hope. But the Palgraves were an obstinate race — impetuous, determined not to be moved aside from any pathway that promised to lead to glory or happiness.

  “If my wife were alive, she would have seen that advertisement,” said Gervoise; “or she would have heard of it Somebody or other would have pointed it out to her.”

  Mr. Bagswell shrugged his shoulders.

  “Who should guess that the advertisement related to Mrs. Gilbert?” he asked. “Agatha G.; mightn’t it be Agatha Green, Agatha Gregory, Agatha Grigson? People have enough to do to mind their own business, without running about telling each other of advertisements in the Times. If you want to find your wife, Mr. Gilbert,” added the lawyer rather significantly, “you needn’t despair just yet.”

  “Then I’ll have the advertisement repeated for a fortnight longer. But I sha’n’t stop in London all that time. If Mrs. Gilbert comes here, you can let me know of her coming.”

  “To be sure, if you give me your address.”

  “I can’t do that,” answered Gervoise, “for I don’t exactly know where I may be during the next fortnight. If you hear anything of my wife, you can put an advertisement in the Times: ‘Agatha has been heard of.’ That will be enough. I’ll come up to town directly and see her. I am no hypocrite, Mr. Bagswell. I don’t want to find my wife because I love her, but because I left her in poverty; and as I am better off now than I ever hoped to be, I wish to come to an amicable arrangement with her. She shall have plenty of money, if that can make her happy. I only want a friendly understanding, and — a separation.”

  CHAPTER X. THE DIE IS CAST.

  LORD HAUGHTON went back to Warwickshire, and shut himself up in his favourite rooms at Palgrave Chase. The oriel window of his sitting-room overhung the steep crag beneath which the stream rushed noisily downwards over smooth boulders and sharp craggy masses of granite, half hidden by wet moss and lichens.

  In the deep oaken window-seat Gervoise sat for hours together, listening lazily to the rushing of the water, and waiting for news from Mr. Bagswell, the attorney. But the fortnight expired without tidings of the lost. The advertisement appealing to Agatha was inserted for the last time, and there was no sign from the attorney.

  Upon the day after that on which the last advertisement appeared, Lord Haughton rode to Hyford Hall. He had made up his mind; whatever risk there might be, he had now resolved to incur the danger. He told himself that his wife was dead. His wicked hope that this might be so had grown day by day into a firm conviction that it was so. His advertisement, published so many times, had told of his improved fortunes. Would she, who had clung to him persistently in his poverty, be likely to hold herself aloof from his prosperity? This was the result of all his cogitations. But if he were deceived, and the risk were ever so great, he was resolved to incur it. At any hazard, he was determined to become the husband of Ethel Hurst. He never for a moment contemplated the possibility of a refusal. He knew that Ethel loved him; he had known it long ago, though no such confession had ever escaped from the girl’s innocent lips.

  Lord Haughton went to the abbey. The servant who admitted him conducted him at once to the drawing-room. It was a dark misty day, early in February, and Ethel was sitting near the fire, with a favourite dog at her feet. The girl sat in a thoughtful attitude, with her elbow buried in the cushioned arm of her low chair. The firelight gleamed redly upon her bright hair, and lit up the folds of her violet-silk dress. An open book had fallen to her feet, and her sketching apparatus lay in disorder upon a little table near her.

  “Miss Hurst! Ethel!” said Gervoise, advancing through the dusky room.

  He had waited for the London papers of the day to reach him at the Chase before starting for the abbey. It was four o’clock in the afternoon now, and it was already nearly dark. But it was not too dark for the young Earl of Haughton to see the sudden radiance of joy that lit up Ethel’s face as she recognised him. The lover thought that one look more precious than Palgrave Chase and the earldom of Haughton — that one glorious smile, which melted away in a moment, and gave place to maidenly blushes.

  That one smile was enough. Gervoise forgot all the story of the past. He forgot the bleak winter morning, the shivering parson in a dirty surplice, the low-born father-in-law with dingy hands and doubtful grammar, and the baby-faced girl so soon to be transformed into a tipsy virago. The Earl of Haughton forgot everything except Ethel Hurst and his love for her; and he asked her to be his wife.

  Why should she say him nay? She loved him, and she knew that he loved her, for the vital spirit of truth breathed in every word he uttered. There could be no possible impediment to their union. Gervoise was her superior in rank — she was at least his equal in fortune. It is doubtful, though, whether Ethel Hurst thought of these things; whether she thought of anything, except that the man who was dearer to her than any other creature upon this earth had asked her to be his wife.

  So Gervoise Palgrave was accepted. Early the next morning he called upon Sir Langley, and received a prompt acceptance of his proposal for Ethel’s hand. Lord Haughton begged that an early date might be chosen for the wedding, and the baronet assented willingly enough to the proposition.

  CHAPTER XI. BEFORE THE WEDDING.

  THE 1st of March was appointed for the wedding. The bridal tour was arranged. The young couple were to make a brief progress through Switzerland and Italy, and were to return to Palgrave Chase in June. The marriage was to take place in the church nearest to Palgrave Chase, a pretty village church, with a dear old churchyard through which the Avon flowed, for ever murmuring softly past the resting-places of the quiet dead.

  Everybody had expected that the wedding would have been a very grand ceremonial, and that half the country would have been invited to
be present. But to the general surprise it was not so. Lord Haughton requested that the wedding should be strictly private. There was to be no grandeur, no train of carriages, no footmen in silk stockings, carrying gigantic bouquets, no fashionable bridesmaids, no glorification or extravagance whatever.

  The twelvemonth of mourning for the late earl and countess had not yet expired. This was the reason which Gervoise alleged for preferring a quiet celebration of his marriage; but in very truth he was tormented by a vague dread of some catastrophe which might hinder the peaceful performance of that sacred service. The recollection of that other wedding weighed upon him like a dismal burden. It haunted him waking and sleeping. He was always dreaming of the wedding that had been, and the wedding that was to be, and confounding the two ceremonials one with the other in his dreams. Sometimes he was standing at the chilly altar in the city church, with Sir Langley Hurst giving him Agatha for his wife; sometimes he stood in the chancel of the church near the Chase, with the dirty landlord acting as father to Ethel Hurst.

  He generally awoke from such dreams as these with his heart beating violently, and his face bathed in a cold sweat.

  But the wedding-day drew near, nevertheless, and as that day came nearer and nearer, the burden grew heavier, until the Earl of Haughton’s resolution began to fail him, and he was almost ready to confess the truth.