His wife looked at him with eyes in which dark fires of scorn and hate were strangely blended.She herself hardly knew in that moment, whether she most despised or most haled him. Yet she had loved him once, or believed she loved him, when, of all the brutes among whom she herded, this brute alone had shown a touch of kindness and pity for her, and had cherished her, after his rough fashion, with a feeling which was not altogether brutal.
But now — now that her ears had grown used to another language, that her eyes had looked upon another race — the face and the voice, the tones, the movements of this man, who was by law her master, inspired such aversion, such an infinite, unspeakable loathing as she had never felt in her life before — no, not for the vilest of that vile herd in which she had been born and reared. She was a creature of strong feelings; one of those fierce tropical natures which crop up now and then among the sober northern races. Her love and her hatred had ever been more intense than other people’s; and now she shrank shuddering and abhorrent from the man whose caress had once seemed a friendly shelter.
‘You left me of your own accord,’ she said, in low resolute tones. He could hear the change in her accentuation, just as he could see the refinement of her appearance — every line softened, every hue more delicate than in the old days. ‘You lied to me of your own accord. I followed you — as far as I could go — on the road to Dover, dying of hunger all the while; followed you till I fell down in this wood, and never thought to get up again. You left me in the workhouse infirmary, dying, as you were told. You sent me a scrap of a letter to say you had enlisted, and were going to Dover with a regiment that was under orders for India in two month’s time. When I got round again, you told me, I must get on as best I might, till better times — when you should have served your time, and could come back to London and make a home for me. That letter of yours was all falsehood from beginning to end. You only wanted to get rid of me — civilly. And now I want to get rid of you — civilly. I will live the rest of my life alone, remembering that I am a married woman, for the sake of my promise in the church; but I will never acknowledge you as my husband, or live with you as your wife.’
She confronted him steadily as she spoke, looked him through and through, and defied him, every feature in her grandly beautiful face rigid with the intensity of her feeling. No man, looking at her, could doubt that she meant what she said, and would carry out her resolve to the bitter end.
‘Won’t you, my lady!’ exclaimed Mr. Brook, scowling at her savagely, but with a half-timorous irresolution in his looks, as of one not quite prepared to cope with this fiery spirit. ‘We’ll see if we can’t compel yer. The law’s uncommon rough upon husbands and wives when they go for to shirk their ‘sponsabilities, especially wives. You’ll find the law come down upon you heavy, if I once say the word.’
‘But you won’t say the word. You daren’t go to Lord Ingleshaw, and say, “I’m an honest man, and that woman is my wife.” You daren’t face him. He’s a county magistrate, and the kind of man to read you like an open book.’
‘Who said I was going to Lord Ingleshaw?’ exclaimed the man with a sudden change of tone; ‘ not that I’m afeared o’ yer Lord Ingleshaws, or any other blessed old blokes of the same stamp. I’ve held their ‘osses afore now, when I’ve been down on my luck, outside o’ the Hadmirality or the ‘Orse Guards, and I know what shaky old coves they is — gone at the knees and weak in the pastern-jints. Didn’t I say as I wasn’t goin’ to spile yer game? I only wants a bit o’ civility and friendly feelin’, for the sake o’ old long Sims, as we say in the classics. Come, old gal, be civil to a feller, and tell us what you’ve been a doin’ of all this time.’
So addressed, Bess relented a little. The hard lines about her mouth relaxed, the darkly brooding eyes shed a gentler light. She told her husband briefly how she had been saved, from death by Lady Lucille’s Christian charity, and made a new creature by her generous affection.
‘Well, she must be uncommon green,’ remarked Mr. Brook at the close of this narration, ‘to pick up a young woman as might have been a regular old hand — an out-and-out gaolbird — and to take her into sech a house as Ingleshaw Castle, and give her the run of the place! And I suppose there’s as much silver there — in the way of forks and spoons, and tea-urns and dish-kivers, and sechlike — as would stock a silversmith’s shop.’
‘There is everything beautiful in the house; but Lady Lucille cares more for flowers and china, and books and music, than for all the silver in the world; and so do I.’
‘Ah, that’s the way with young women. They’re jest like children, caught by pretty colours what strikes the But ii’ I was a nobleman. I’d have my dinin’-table a mask of solid silver jugs and tankards, and dish-kivers and butter-boats and sechlike. I’d never eat oil’ anything but silver; and I make no doubt Lord Ingleshaw eats his victuals oil’ solid silver every ‘lay of his blessed old life.’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Bess indifferently; ‘but I shouldn’t think it likely. He’s a very simple-minded gentleman, plain in all his ways: but he is a gentleman. I never knew what, the word meant till I saw him — and one other.’
‘Ah, I knows the kind o’ bloke,’ said Mr. Brook, with an astute air—’ fine.spread o’ shirt-front and shepherd’s plaid kickseys, a gold-’eaded cane and a double-barrelled eyeglass. And now tell us all about the ‘ouse; a reg’lar harmy o’ servants, I’ll be bound; all eatin’ their ‘eads off, like pampered ‘osses.’
Bess did not tell him the number of the servants; nor did she gratify him with any details as to the interior arrangements of the Castle. Her suspicions had been aroused by his eagerness upon the subject of the Ingleshaw plate. She had never known him concerned in actual crime; but she knew that his interpretation of the law of property was easy, not to say loose; and she was determined to give him as little information as possible — only so much, in fact, as he could wring from her by persistent questioning. Nor, when he persisted in a course of inquiry which seemed suspicious, did she hesitate to give him misleading answers.
He was too acute, too thoroughly steeped in cunning, not to see that she was deceiving him; but he did not broadly accuse her of falsehood. He heard her with a mocking twinkle in. his rat-like eyes, whistled a snatch of the last popular melody which had thrilled the music-halls of Bermondsey, cocked his hat over his brow? and pocketed his empty pipe, as he rose from the bank where he had been reposing.
‘That’ll do,’ he said. ‘Ta-ta, my lass. When I want to look you up, I shall know where to find you.’
He walked slowly away without another word, vanishing among the dark straight fir-trunks into dim leafy distance, leaving Elizabeth May still seated, drawn close up against the tree, as she had drawn herself when first he approached, instinctively shrinking from him.
She sat pale, motionless, with fixed eyes, while the light faded, and purple and umber shadows thickened in the dimness under the trees. She sat there till she looked only a dark blotch upon the dusk of the landscape. Yet, thus seated, thus faintly distinguishable, she was seen by a man who came sauntering along the narrow woodland path smoking a cigarette. He came close to her, bent over her, looked her full in the face; she looking up at him with agonized eyes, but never stirring.
‘Elizabeth, what is the matter? why are you sitting here alone in the dark?’
He had questioned her once before about herself and her own feelings — that night on board the yacht — and had got nothing for his pains but tears and a passionate protest against Fate — broken burning words that had stirred some strange half-dormant passion within him, which thrilled responsive to that subtle unexpressed passion in her. On that fatal night he had known that she loved him; and he had known as certainly that he loved her. From that hour to this they had never spoken to each other, had avoided each other’s path as much as possible, or had met and passed with averted looks, or that blank icy stare which sees nothing.
‘Elizabeth, what has happened?’ he asked; and the
unconscious tenderness of his tone moved her like sweetest music.
‘ Not very much. I have been brought face to face with my old life, that is all.’
The tears welled into her eyes and poured down her ashen cheeks; her breast heaved with passionate sobs. That sympathetic voice of Bruno’s had loosened the fountain. Till now she had hardened her heart to bear her burden; but his sympathy was more than she could bear.
‘You have heard something, or seen some one,’ he speculated. ‘How white you are, and your hands are icy cold!’ touching them as they lay loosely clasped in her lap. ‘Elizabeth, you are crying!’
The sight of her tears made him forget everything.
Another moment — a moment in which his heart beat like a.sledge-hammer — he was sitting by her side upon the bank, his arm round her waist, her head resting on his shoulder.
‘My dear one. I would give my life to comfort you!’ he cried passionately.
Only for a moment did she rest in that embrace, and. yet it seemed to her as if she had been lifted into the empyrean as if she were in a diviner, purer world, where nothing less than perfect joy could live. She felt as Helen may feel, resting in the arms of Achilles, in that sacred isle where death dwells not — perfect beauty, perfect manhood, courage, honour inviolate, linked for ever in immortal union. Only for a moment did Bess abandon herself to that entrancing dream of loving and being beloved by him who was to her as godlike as that son of Thetis; and then she remembered who he was, and who she was, and that this earth around and about them was no fair shadowland, in which the miracles of love may triumph over the hard facts of destiny.
‘You forget yourself, Mr. Challoner,’ she said quietly, slipping from his encircling arm, which loosened and released her readily enough.
Yes, for an instant he had forgotten himself, and Fate, and that dear girl who three months ago had filled his life with gladness by the frank avowal of her love. And now, sitting here in the gloaming, looking into those dark eyes, hearing that low thrilling voice, the love of his boyhood and his youth seemed to him as a bondage and a slavery, from which death would be a cheap deliverance.
‘Yes, I have been brought back to the thought of my old life,’ pursued Elizabeth, with quiet gravity, ‘and of what I was before Lady Lucille saved me — of how I spoke, and looked, and thought even; for I don’t suppose I was any better than other people among whom I lived.’
‘You were better: you could never have been like them. You were among them, but not of them,’ protested Bruno.
‘Well, perhaps, I may have been a little less vulgar than the man I saw to-day.’
‘What man?’’
‘My husband.’
‘Your husband!’
‘Yes; I am a double-dyed impostor, am I not?’ said the girl, with a bitter laugh. ‘When Lord Ingleshaw questioned me about my past life, I was afraid to tell him I was a married woman, for fear he should refuse to let me stay at the Castle, and should want to send me on my way, with a few pounds in my pocket perhaps, to look for my husband; so I told him Tom Brook was sweetheart.’
‘And Tom Brook is your husband?’ asked Bruno slowly, as if every syllable cost him an effort.
‘Yes.’
‘Would it be too much to ask who he is — what manner of man?’
‘A scamp — a vagabond — a man who works in stables and cab-yards, but who lives by his wits mostly. He was kind to me once, when everybody else in the world was rough and cruel. When I was lying ill in a garret, alone all day long — for the girls who shared my room were out at the factories where they worked — Tom Brook came to look after me; brought me a couple of oranges, or a bunch of grapes, when my lips were parched with fever; sat beside me and talked to me; and I was grateful to him. He was the first man who ever treated me kindly. Even such rough kindness as his was sweet — it was so new. When I got better he followed me about, and wanted to be my sweetheart. Once, when a man was rude to me in the street — one Saturday night — the kind of man we used to call a swell, Tom Brook knocked him down. On Sundays he used to come to tea with the other girls and me, and used to take us for walks, and give us coffee or ices at the little Italian shops round about. Sometimes he took me to the play; and then one morning he told me that he’d got the City missionary to speak to the parson, and that the banns had been given out for the last three Sundays, and he and I were to be married. We went straight to the church with the missionary, who gave me away, and signed the book in the vestry. He was a good old man, and I should have been a better woman if I had listened better to his teaching, and tried to read my Bible; but perhaps, if you knew what life is like in the alley where I lived, you wouldn’t wonder that I didn’t do it.’
‘And so you became Mrs. Thomas Brook,’ said Bruno, in biting tones. His whole nature seemed hardened by the idea of this marriage. ‘I hope you were happy in your domestic relations’
‘Happy! Well, I had some one who belonged to me — a strong arm to knock down anybody who tried to insult me. I wasn’t quite such a forlorn creature as I had been; but I was a slave, and I had a hard master. When he was sober he made me wait upon him hand and foot; when he was drunk he beat me. When he got tired of his work, and the kind of life he was leading, he left me — left me at the very time when I had most need of his kindness, for I was lying at death’s door in the infirmary at the Union. You know what happened to me when I came out of the Union.’
‘How did he come here to-day?’
‘He heard of me at the village inn, and waited about here to see me.’
‘Did he want to take you away with him?’
‘No; but he says he shall claim me by-and-by, when he is better off. O, Mr. Challoner, can he claim me — has he the power to take me away with him?’
‘He is your husband. That is a position of some strength; and no doubt you are fond of him. You would not refuse to share his home and his fortunes.’
‘I would kill myself Sooner than acknowledge any right of his over me.’
The pale, steadfast face, the light in the fixed eyes, told that this was no empty threat.
Bruno sighed heavily, and sat staring at the ground.
‘Yet you liked him once,’ he said meditatively—’liked him well enough to marry him.’
‘That was when I was in utter darkness, God help me! — when I thought he was better than other men — just as a man set upon by wolves would hail a dog as his friend. Those other men I knew were like wolves.’
‘Poor soul, poor soul!’ sighed Bruno. ‘Well, I’ll tell Lord Ingleshaw your pitiful story, and he will help you to keep this husband of yours at a distance. You should have told his lordship the truth in the first instance. It would have been better.’
‘Yes, I know that now. I was too cowardly then to tell the truth: but now I would sooner cut my tongue out than tell Lord Ingleshaw a lie.’
‘That’s well, Elizabeth. God meant you to be noble and stanch and loyal — God made you brave as well as beautiful. And now you had best hurry home before it grows dark. Shake hands. Don’t be afraid. I was a madman just now; but all that is past and gone. We both mean to be true.’
He held out his hand — they two standing face to face in the autumn twilight — and she put her hand into his. Both hands were deadly cold, but they clasped each other with a clasp that meant self-respect, loyalty to Lucille, and that highest of all human virtues — a stern adherence to difficult duty. And thus they parted; Elizabeth walking quickly back to the Castle; Bruno lighting another cigarette, and sauntering further into the darkness of the wood.
CHAPTER VI. A LONELY LIFE.
‘Kisse me, quod she, we be no longer wrothe.’
IT was quite dark before Elizabeth arrived at the Castle, and the long range of windows on the first floor shone with the soft light of lamps and wax-candles, and here and there the ruddier glow of a fire. It looked like that fairy castle which Elizabeth had read of in those familiar tales of witch and goblin that had been her easy introduction to th
e realm of poetic literature. A pleasant place to live in — a happy and wonderful house, as compared with that dim dwelling in the gloom of a fetid alley to which Elizabeth had been wont to return at this season last year. Yet, such a strange in tangible thing is happiness that she went back to that old historic mansion with a heart as heavy as that she had carried to her lodging in the London slum. She had learnt the mystery of new pains and sorrows, new needs and longings, which reached beyond the region of every-day wants. She had known the pangs of Lazarus and in the days of her poverty had envied the rich, thinking it impossible for them to suffer; and now she knew that Dives has his gnawing canker, his troubled slumbers, his sorrowful dreams, as well as Lazarus.
Elizabeth went round by the stable-yard on her way to the Castle, not caring to enter by that imposing doorway which would bring her face to face with the porter and the groom of the chambers. She wanted to go in without being seen by any one, if it were possible. There was a small door in a turret, which opened on a winding stair that led up to the corridor close to Tompion’s rooms, and towards this door Elizabeth directed her steps. She passed two men standing near the yard-gates, in confidential conversation; and she hurried on with fluttering heart and quickened steps, for one of those men was Tom Brook. She scarcely drew breath till she was in her own little room, inside Tompion’s; and then she sat down with a beating heart, and began to wonder what Brook and the groom could have found to talk about, and whether she was the subject of their conversation. She felt that Brook’s presence in the stable-yard meant evil to her — that he was dogging her footsteps with some malicious intent, in spite of his promise not to interfere with her good fortune. She had defied him, when it would perhaps have been wiser to conciliate him; but for her very life she could not have cringed to him, or affected any regard for him. If he was to be her foe, she must bear his enmity. Better that than his friendship.
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