He had not the courage to do this. He set out for Hyford Hall one day, with the intention of revealing that dismal secret; but half-way upon the road he turned his hone’s head, and went home again. He could not tell the woman he loved that he was a liar and a traitor. He could not steel himself to behold the white change that would creep over that lovely face, the wild look of anguish in the deep-blue eyes. No; he had sinned, and he was determined to hold to his sin.
“Let the consequence of my wrong-doing fall upon me, and not upon her,” he said.
Upon the last day of February the lovers rode out together side by side, with a couple of grooms behind them. They had often ridden gaily thus in the bitter wintry weather. The winter had been severe and long, and the fields were still covered with snow; the icicles glittered upon the leafless hedges; the frosty ground rang under the hoofs of the horses. Ethel was in very high spirits, for to-day Gervoise was gayer than he had ever been yet.
He had gone too far to recede. The wedding was irrevocable now, and he was glad that it was so. There was no longer time for hesitation or uncertainty; there was no longer chance of escape. The die was cast. In less than four-and-twenty hours Ethel Hurst would be his wife.
They cantered along the high road, laughing and talking. Ethel’s cheeks glowed with rosy brightness through her veil. The lovers rode under the low stone archway leading into Avondale. The High-street of the quaint old town was gayer than usual this afternoon, for it was market-day, and the business of the market was scarcely over. The inns near the market-place were crowded with customers, the ostlers were busy running from one horse to another with handfuls of hay and pails of water. At one corner of the narrow street the way was blocked by a couple of smart farmers’ chaise-carts, and a ponderous covered vehicle belonging to the Avondale carrier; and at this spot Lord Haughton and Ethel were compelled to pause for a few minutes, waiting until the carrier’s cart should move on.
In these few minutes the two equestrians became the object of the universal gaze. The Prince and Princess of Wales driving through a country town could not have attracted more attention than Lord Haughton and his plighted wife attracted in the High-street of Avondale.
Burly farmers doffed their hats to the young earl; applecheeked matrons dropped curtseys; the younger portion of the community stared in open-mouthed admiration. But they could only enjoy this pleasure for about three minutes. The carrier’s cart moved off, and the way was cleared. Lord Haughton shook the reins on his horse’s neck, and the animal was cantering off, when a woman broke through a crowd that tad gathered in the doorway of an inn, rushed forward into the centre of the road, and caught at Gervoise Palgrave’s bridle.
She was a disreputable-looking woman, clad in rusty garments, that were little better than rags, with dishevelled hair hanging loosely about her face, and a battered bonnet that had fallen half off her head.
“You villain!” she cried, clinging desperately to the bridle; “you false, heartless scoundrel! how dared you desert your—”
She could say no more. The earl’s horse reared and struck out with his fore-legs in the air. The woman fell upon the frosty roadway. Gervoise reined-in his horse; the woman was picked up senseless; but the crowd hastened to assure Lord Haughton that no harm had been done.
“I don’t think the horse kicked her, my lord,” one of the lookers-on said; “she was frightened, and fell. She was only stunned. It’s her own fault, for flying at your lordship like that. She must be mad, or drunk, I should think.”
“Yes, I should fancy so,” the earl answered coolly. “See that the poor creature wants for nothing,” he said to the landlord of the little inn, who was standing on the kerb-stone; “I will pay all expenses. — Come, Ethel.”
The riders cantered away as the woman was being carried in at the low doorway of the inn. Ethel Hurst was very pale, and she did not speak till she and her lover had left the town of Avondale behind them, and had slackened their pace upon the road beyond the castle.
“O Gervoise,” she said at last, “how frightened I was when that woman stopped you! Why did she attack you like that?”
Lord Haughton laughed as he answered this question.
“My darling Ethel,” he said, “I might just as well make the same inquiry of you. The woman is mad, or drunk, I suppose, as that man said just now. She could have no other reason for acting as she did.”
CHAPTER XII. GERVOISE PALGRAVE’S CURSE.
LORD HAUGHTON was to have dined at Hyford Hall upon the eve of his wedding-day; but after his ride with Ethel he excused himself upon the ground of unexpected and important business, which would keep him a prisoner for that evening. The settlements had been duly arranged already, all necessary deeds executed, and his engagement for that evening had been an informal one.
He rode home to Palgrave Chase after leaving Ethel at the hall; he rode slowly homeward through the chill winter twilight, thinking of what he was to do.
He was to become the husband of Ethel Hurst at eleven o’clock upon the following morning; and the woman who had snatched at his horse’s bridle in the Avondale High-street was his wife.
This was the problem that Lord Haughton set himself to solve; and he did not find it by any means an easy one. It was more especially difficult, inasmuch as he had not more than eighteen hours in which to accomplish its solution.
“She shall not balk me,” he thought to himself; “come what may, I will stand at the altar to-morrow with Ethel Hurst.”
He pondered over the circumstances of that fatal marriage in the city church. What evidence was there to prove it? The testimony of the clergyman who performed the ceremony, the witnesses who were present during that performance, the record in the parish register, and the certificate.
Lord Haughton knew that his wife had taken possession of the certificate shortly after the marriage. Agatha’s father had been a witness of the ceremony. And there had been other witnesses — the clerk and the registrar. Above all, there was that indestructible testimony in the parish register.
How, then, was this hateful secret to be stifled? It could only be stifled by the consent of Agatha herself. There was no other way.
“She shall go to Australia,” thought he; “I will load her with benefits if she will go away and release me from the ties of the past.”
Lord Haughton dined alone in the room overlooking the waterfall. After dinner he sent for Humphrey Melwood.
Margery and her son had been considerably benefited by the new master of Palgrave Chase. They lived a very easy life in the comfortably-furnished lodge, and Humphrey had plenty of money, with full license to work or to be idle, just as it pleased his humour. He was a great deal with his foster-brother; hunting and shooting with him; attending upon him, whenever it pleased the earl to allow such attendance.
Humphrey went into the pretty lighted chamber to-night while Gervoise was lounging over his wine.
“Come in, Humphrey, and shut the door behind you,” said the earl, looking up. “You may as well sit down and help yourself to a glass of that Burgundy, for I want to have a good long talk with you. You’ve often talked of serving me, Humphrey; and I know you’ve always meant what you’ve said. I think the time has come in which I want your service, as sorely as ever an unlucky wretch needed the help of a faithful friend.”
“Then you shall have it, Master Gervoise; you shall have it, my lord,” cried the gamekeeper. “If it’s my heart’s blood you’re going to ask of me, you shall have it as freely as if it was so much water.”
“I don’t want quite as much as that,” answered Gervoise; “I only want your help in a matter that must be kept a secret. I know you’ve plenty of the dare-devil in you, but that isn’t exactly what’s wanted in this case. I want prudence and secrecy. Can I depend upon you?”
“You can.”
Lord Haughton was silent for some minutes. He sat with his chin resting upon his hand, thinking. There are some things that are very bitter to recall — very humiliating to th
e man who has to confess them.
“I suppose it’s almost every man’s lot to be a fool at some time or other in his life,” Gervoise said at last. “I had my fling of folly about five years ago, and I paid dearly enough for it. When my father died he left me without a sixpence that I could call my own, and with an education that adapted me for everything except a hand-to-hand struggle with the world. I had a taste for art. I could paint; and my father’s fashionable friends, lounging in his drawing-room after one of his snug little bachelor dinners, had criticised my boyish sketches, and prophesied great things about me. When I found myself quite alone in the world, I went to those amiable friends of my dead father’s and solicited their helping hands. I didn’t ask for money, Humphrey; I only asked for introductions — patronage. I might as well have asked such help of the dreary stone pavement over which I tramped backwards and forwards, seeking for employment. But I was very young, very ignorant; and the world had not conquered me yet. I took a lodging in a respectable tradesman’s house, and set to work painting for bread. For a time I contrived to live. My ambition was not blighted — I hoped in a fair future, and worked conscientiously, happily. But work as I would, I could not keep myself out of debt. I owed money to my landlord. His daughter was a pretty, innocent, baby-faced girl. She fell in love with me, or fancied that she had fallen in love with me. Her father hinted as much to me: I must either pay the money I owed him and go; or I must marry the girl whose peace of mind was endangered by my presence in that house. This, or something to this effect, was what the father said. You will despise me, I daresay, Humphrey; but you have never fallen so low as I have. You have never known the fear of starvation. I married my landlord’s daughter — and I was miserable with her.”
Gervoise Palgrave stopped, and covered his face with his hands. Humphrey looked at him wonderingly.
“But you’re free of all that now, Master Gervoise,” said the gamekeeper; “your wife’s dead, and—”
“No,” answered Gervoise, without removing his hands from before his face, “she is not dead.”
“Not dead!”
Humphrey Melwood sat motionless, with an empty glass in his hand, staring at his foster-brother.
“Not dead, Master Geryoise! And you a-goin’ to — marry — Miss Ethel Hurst?”
“Yes, Humphrey,” returned Lord Haughton fiercely; “and I will marry Ethel Hurst, come what may!”
“But, Master Gervoise, how can you marry her if — the other one, you know? It’s against the law, isn’t it?”
“What’s against the law?”
“Two of ‘em.”
“Now listen to me, Humphrey,” said Lord Haughton. “I told you just now that I wanted your help. I want you to help me to — get rid of this woman.”
The red colour died out of Humphrey Melwood’s sunburnt face.
“Master Geryoise — you don’t — mean—”
“I mean no possible injury against this wretched creature. Any reunion between us is impossible. All I want is freedom — freedom to marry the girl I love. This woman must be got out of the way. I want you to take her to Birmingham by the first train to-morrow morning — from Birmingham you can get off to Liverpool. There you can put your charge on board the first vessel that sails for Australia. I have been looking at the papers; the Cydnus leaves Liverpool upon the 10th of next month. Will you do this business for me, Humphrey? You have talked a good deal of sentimental nonsense about giving me your life, and so forth: will you take my wife to Liverpool, and keep close guard over her till the Australian-bound vessel sails out of the Mersey?”
“I’ll do it, Master Gervoise,” answered Humphrey; “there’s little I’d refuse to do for you. And it isn’t much to get this woman out of the way. But suppose she refuses to consent to this plan?”
“She must consent to it,” replied Gervoise. “I may be compelled to deceive her, perhaps; and may have to promise to join her by and by in Australia. She is a desperate woman when her blood is up. But I used to have a good deal of influence over her. I may be able to manage her now.”
“But where is she, Master Gervoise?”
“At Avondale, at the King’s Head. I want you to go off at once, Humphrey; see her, tell her that Gervoise Gilbert wants to see her, and bring her back here with you. Don’t tell her anything but that. She knows nothing of my present rank; and she must remain ignorant. You can go and return by the little door in the passage at the end of these rooms. I’ll let you in when you come back. I don’t want anybody to see this woman, or to know that she has been here.”
There was some further conversation between the two men; and then Lord Haughton led his foster-brother along a narrow passage to a half-glass door, opening into a flower-garden, where shrubs and evergreens grew upon the margin of the broad stream. The roar of the waterfall was loud in the stillness of the winter night. Neither moon nor stars were visible in the black sky.
“What a dark night!” said the earl, in a whisper. “You’ll go to Avondale by the high-road, Humphrey; you won’t attempt to go by the side of the river?”
“Why not, my lord?”
“Because of the danger. You might miss your footing in the dark.”
“Not I. The footpath by the river’s half a mile nearer than the high-road. There’s no fear of my missing my way. I’ll be back in an hour.”
The young man walked lightly across the little grassy lawn. There were some steps cut in the perpendicular bank of the river — a rustic staircase, guarded by a light iron balustrade. The steps were very steep, and led down to the margin of the waterfall. Humphrey Melwood descended the rustic staircase, and groped his way along the narrow pathway. Lord Haughton went slowly back to his own rooms. A study, lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, opened out of the room in which he had dined. He took the lamp in his hand and went into this room, which was his chosen retreat. He sat down by the fireplace, and took a book from the shelf nearest his hand; but although he opened the volume and turned over the leaves, he made no attempt to read. He could only sit there, waiting, and listening to the roar of the waterfall below the deep bank, and the moaning of the wind in the wide chimney.
It was a little after ten o’clock. At eleven he might expect Humphrey and — the woman. What if, when she came, she should be violent and desperate! What if she should refuse to assent to his smooth proposals! What if she should hold him to his marriage vow, and come between him and Ethel Hurst!
He walked up and down the room, thinking of what he should do if his wife refused to go to Australia. What other expedient was there — what other?
Gervoise Palgrave paced backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, only stopping now and then to look at the clock upon the chimneypiece, until it was ten minutes past eleven, and he heard a light tap upon the glass-door in the passage outside his room. Then he went to the door, opened it, and admitted two people — Humphrey Melwood and Agatha Palgrave.
The unhappy creature’s head had been hurt by her fall under the horse’s hoofs, and her forehead was bound by a linen rag, that was flecked with blood. This, and the pallor of her haggard face, gave an awful ghastliness to her appearance. She looked about her with a wondering stare as she came into the room, and then turned fiercely upon Lord Haughton.
“So this has been your home while I have been begging in the streets of London,” she said, with an angry sneer. “I wish you joy of your fine house, Gervoise, and of the kind heart that could make you turn your back upon a miserable woman.”
“Your own friends would have sheltered you, Agatha; you might have gone back to them.”
“What! to tell them that my husband had deserted me?” cried the woman. “No, Gervoise, I had too much pride for that.”
Gervoise Palgrave’s wife was not quite sober yet. She had been half mad with drink when she had rushed out of the doorway of the inn to throw herself in her husband’s pathway; but her fall had sobered her a little. She was unnaturally calm, and there was an angry light in her dark eyes
.
Humphrey Melwood, standing upon the threshold of the door, watched his foster-brother’s wife with an anxious face. He began to think that it would be no very easy matter to get this pale, resolute-looking woman on board an Australia-bound vessel, unless she should consent willingly to such an arrangement.
“And that she’ll never do,” Humphrey Melwood thought to himself. “She’s one of those women that’ll hold on like death to anything they’ve set their hearts on. Master Gervoise will have to give up his new wife, for he won’t get rid of this one in a hurry.”
As for the right or wrong of the business, the gamekeeper did not give himself any trouble about that. He was a kind of rustic savage, and had all the untutored notions of a savage. To be faithful to those he loved, and to revenge himself upon those he hated, comprised his entire creed of morality. He could neither read nor write, and had never been to church since his early boyhood, when he had been conducted thither by a village schoolmaster, who rapped the heads of his pupils with a cane at intervals throughout the service, to keep their minds from wandering.
“You can stop in the next room for a short time, Humphrey,” Gervoise said presently; “I must speak to my wife alone.”
CHAPTER XIII. THE SOUND OF THE WATERFALL.
THE gamekeeper closed the door between the two rooms, leaving Gervoise and Agatha alone in the little study. Humphrey sat down near the fireplace. There was no light except the red glimmer of the low fire. The table was still littered with the débris of the dessert. He drew one of the decanters towards him, and filled his glass. He was restrained by no code of honour or politeness; and he listened to the voices in the next room, wondering whether his foster-brother would be able to conquer the pale-faced, obstinate-looking woman who claimed him for her husband.
At first the voices were very low; then they ceased altogether, and the gamekeeper only heard the woman’s faint, moaning sobs, and Gervoise Palgrave’s footsteps as he paced up and down the room. But after this the voices grew louder. Humphrey heard his foster-brother’s tones raised in passionate denunciation; the woman’s voice rose almost to a shriek; and then again there was a sadden lull.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1076
