"No, my good creature. I haven"t time. The old gentleman--what"s his name?"
"I don"t know, Sir, please. He calls the young gentleman Guy, and the young gentleman calls him _sir_."
"And both the same name?"
"We calls "em both Strangers, please, sir."
"I know. Servants, had they?"
"Yes, sir, please. But they sent "em on."
"Rich--don"t want for money, I suppose. Eh?"
"Oh! plenty money, sir."
"And the servants called the men Strangways, I suppose, eh?"
"Yes, Sir Jekyl, please; and so the letters came."
"You never happened to hear any other name?"
"No, Sir Jekyl."
"_Think._"
Mrs. Jones did think, but could recall nothing.
"Nothing with a D?"
"D, sir! What, sir?"
"No matter what," said the Baronet. "No name beginning with D--eh?"
"No, sir. You don"t think they"re going by a false name?" inquired the lady, curiously.
"What the devil puts that in your head? Take care of the law; you must not talk that way, you foolish little rogue."
"I did not know, sir," timidly answered Mrs. Jones, who saw in Sir Jekyl, the Parliament-man, Deputy-Lieutenant, and Grand Juror, a great oracle of the law.
"I only wanted to know whether you had happened to hear the name of the elder of the two gentlemen, and could recollect what letter it begins with."
"No, sir, please."
"So you"ve no more to tell me?"
"Nothing, sir."
"If they come back tell them I rode over to offer them some shooting, and to beg they"d remember to come to Marlowe. You won"t forget?"
"No sir."
"Do they return here?"
"I think not, sir."
"Well, I believe there"s nothing else," and the Baronet looked up reflectively, as if he expected to find a memorandum scribbled on the blue sky, leaning with his hand on the back of his horse. "No, nothing.
You won"t forget my message, that"s all. Good-bye, my dear."
And touching the tips of his gloves to his lips, with a smile and a nod he cantered down the Sterndale Road.
He pulled up at the "Bell and Horns," in the little town of Slowton, but was disappointed. The entire party, servants and all, had taken the train two hours before, at the station three miles away.
Now Sir Jekyl was blooded, and the spirit of the chase stirred within him. So he rode down in his jack-boots, and pulled up his steaming horse by the station, and he went in and made inquiry.
A man like him is received even at one of these cosmopolitan rallying-points within his own county with becoming awe. The station-master was awfully courteous, and the subaltern officials awfully active and obliging, and the resources of the establishment were at once placed at his sublime disposal. Unhappily, two branch lines converge at this point, causing the usual bustle, and there was consequently a conflict and confusion in the evidence; so that Sir Jekyl, who laughed and chatted agreeably amidst all the reverential zeal that surrounded him, could arrive at nothing conclusive, but leaned to the view that the party had actually gone to Awkworth, only by rail, instead of by road.
Sir Jekyl got on his horse and walked him through the town, uncertain what to do next. This check had cooled him; his horse had his long trot home still. It would not do to follow to Awkworth; to come in, after a four-and-twenty miles" ride, bespattered like a courier, merely to invite these gentlemen, _viva voce_, who had hardly had his note of invitation a score hours. It would be making too much of them with a vengeance.
As he found himself once more riding under the boughs of Marlowe, the early autumnal evening already closing in, Sir Jekyl experienced one of those qualms and sinkings of the heart, which overcome us with a vague antic.i.p.ation of evil.
The point of the road which he had now gained, commands a view of the old hall of Marlowe, with that projecting addition, and its wide bow-window, every pane of which was now flaming in the sunset light, which indicated the green chamber.
The green chamber! Just at that moment the glare of its broad window flashed with a melancholy and vengeful light upon his brain, busied with painful retrospects and hara.s.sing conjecture.
Old Gwynn going away! It was an omen. Marlowe without old Gwynn. Troy without its palladium. Old Gwynn going with something like a denunciation on her lips! That stupid old woman at Wardlock, too, who really knew nothing about it, undertaking also to prophesy! Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! There was no sense in it--scarcely articulation. Still it was the croak of the raven--the screech of the owl.
He looked across the gentle slope at the angle of the inauspicious room.
Why should old General Lennox be placed within the unhallowed precincts of that chamber? The image of old Gwynn as she gabbled her grim protest on the preceding night, rose before him like a ghost. What business was it of hers, and how could she divine his motives? Still, if there was anything wrong, did not this vehement warning make the matter worse.
An old man he felt himself on a sudden that evening, and for the first time. There was some failure of the electric fire, and a subsidence of the system. His enterprise was gone. Why should he take guilt, if such it were, on his soul for vanity and vexation of spirit? If guilt it were, was it not of a kind inexcusably cold-blooded and long-headed. Old Gwynn, he did not like to lose you on those terms--just, too, as those unknown actors were hovering at the wing, and about to step upon the stage, this old man and young, who, instinctively he felt, were meditating mischief against him. Mischief--_what_? Such, perhaps, as might shatter the structure of his greatness, and strew its pinnacles in the dust. Perhaps all this gloom was but the depression of a long ride, and still longer fast. But he was accustomed to such occasional strains upon his strength without any such results. Ah, no! He had come within the edge of the shadow of judgment, and its darkness was stealing over him, and its chill touched his heart.
These were the dreamy surmisings with which he rode slowly toward the house, and a few good resolutions in a nebulous state hovered uncomfortably about him.
No letter of any interest had come by the early post, and Sir Jekyl sat down _tete-a-tete_ with his pretty daughter, in very dismal spirits, to dinner.
CHAPTER VIII.
The House begins to Fill.
Beatrix was fond of her father, who was really a good-natured man, in the common acceptance of the term, that is to say, he had high animal spirits, and liked to see people pleasant about him, and was probably as kind as a tolerably selfish and vicious man can be, and had a liking, moreover, for old faces, which was one reason why he hated the idea of his housekeeper"s leaving him. But Beatrix was also a little in awe of him, as girls often are of men of whom they see but little, especially if they have something of the masculine decision of temper.
"You may all go away now," said the Baronet suddenly to the servants, who had waited at dinner; and when the liveried phantoms had withdrawn, and the door had closed on the handsome calves of tall and solemn Jenkins, he said--
"Nothing all day--no adventure, or visitor, Trixie--not a word of news or fun, I dare say?"