Perplexed, anxious, excited, Beatrix looked down on the collapsed and haggard face of the old lady, and listened to the moaned pet.i.tion, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" which trembled from her lips as it might from those of a fainting sinner on a death-bed.
Guy Deverell, as I shall henceforward call him, thinking of nothing but escape into solitude, was soon a good way from the house. He was too much agitated, and his thoughts too confused at first, to estimate all the possible consequences of the sudden disclosure he had just made.
What would Varbarriere, who could be stern and violent, say or do, when he learned it? Here was the one injunction on which he had been ever harping violated. He felt how much he owed to the unceasing care of that able and disinterested friend through all his life, and how had he repaid it all!
"Anything but deception--anything but that. I could not endure the agony of my position longer--yes, agony."
He was now wandering by the bank of the solitary river, and looked back at the picturesque gables of Marlowe Manor through the trees; and he felt that he was leaving all that could possibly interest him in existence in leaving Marlowe. Always was rising in his mind the one thought, "What does she think of my deception and my agitation--what can she think of _me_?"
It is not easy, even in silence and alone, when the feelings are at all ruffled, to follow out a train of thought. Guy thought of his approaching farewell to his uncle: he sometimes heard his great voice thundering in despair and fury over his ruined schemes--schemes, be they what they might, at least unselfish. Then he thought of the effect of the discovery on Sir Jekyl, who, no doubt, had special reasons for alarm connected with this name--a secret so jealously guarded by Varbarriere.
Then he thought of his future. His commission in the French army awaited him. A life of drudgery or listlessness? No such thing! a career of adventure and glory--ending in a baton or death! Death is so romantic in the field! There are always some beautiful eyes to drop in secret those tears which are worth dying for. It is not a crowded trench, where fifty corpses pig together in the last noisome sleep--but an apotheosis!
He was sure he had done well in yielding to the impulse that put an end to the tedious treachery he had been doomed to practise; and if well, then _wisely_--so, no more retrospection.
All this rose and appeared in fragments like a wreck in the eddies of his mind.
One thing was clear--he must leave Marlowe forthwith. He could not meet his host again. He stood up. It is well to have hit upon anything to be done--anything quite certain.
With rapid steps he now returned to Marlowe, wondering how far he had walked, as it seemed to him, in so mere a moment of time.
The house was deserted; so fine a day had tempted all its inmates but old Lady Alice abroad. He sent to the village of Marlowe for a chaise, while Jacques, who was to await where he was the return of his master, Monsieur Varbarriere, got his luggage into readiness, and he himself wrote, having tried and torn up half a dozen, a note to Sir Jekyl, thanking him for his hospitality, and regretting that an unexpected occurrence made his departure on so short notice unavoidable. He did not sign it. He would not write his a.s.sumed name. Sir Jekyl could have no difficulty in knowing from which of his guests it came, perhaps would not even miss the signature.
The chaise stood at the door-steps, his luggage stowed away, his dark short travelling cloak about his shoulders, and his note to Sir Jekyl in his fingers.
He entered the great hall, meaning to place it on the marble table where Sir Jekyl"s notes and newspapers usually awaited him, and there he encountered Beatrix.
There was no one else. She was crossing to the outer door, and they almost met before they came to a stop.
"Oh! Mr. Strangways."
"Pray call me by my real name, Deverell. Strangways was my mother"s; and in obedience to those who are wiser than I, during my journey I adopted it, although the reasons were not told me."
There was a little pause here.
"I am very glad I was so fortunate as to meet you, Miss Marlowe, before I left. I"m just going, and it would be such a privilege to know that you had not judged me very hardly."
"I"m sure papa will be very sorry you are going--a break-up is always a sad event--we miss our guests so much," she said, smiling, but a little pale.
"If you knew my story, Miss Marlowe, you would acquit me," he said, bursting forth all at once. "Misfortune overtook me in my early childhood, before I can remember. I have no right to trouble you with the recital; and in my folly I superadded this--the worst--that madly I gave my love to one who could not return it--who, perhaps, ought not to have returned it. Pardon me, Miss Marlowe, for talking of these things; but as I am going away, and wished you to understand me, I thought, perhaps, you would hear me. Seeing how hopeless was my love, I never told it, but resolved to see her no more, and so to the end of my days will keep my vow; but this is added, that for her sake my life becomes a sacrifice--a real one--to guard her from sorrows and dangers, which I believe _did_ threaten her, and to save her from which I devote myself, as perhaps she will one day understand. I thought I would just tell you so much before I went, and--and--that _you_ are that lady. Farewell, dear Miss Marlowe, most beautiful--beloved."
He pressed her hand, he kissed it pa.s.sionately, and was gone.
It was not until she had heard the vehicle drive rapidly away that she quite recovered herself. She went into the front hall, and, through the window, standing far back, watched the receding chaise. When it was out of sight, humming a gay air, she ran up-stairs, and into her bed-room, when, locking the door, she wept the bitterest tears, perhaps, she had ever shed, since the days of her childhood.
CHAPTER VI.
At the Bell and Horns.
With the reader"s permission, I must tell here how Monsieur Varbarriere proceeded on his route to Slowton.
As he mounted his vehicle from the steps of Wardlock, the flunky, who was tantalised by the very unsatisfactory result of his listening at the parlour-door, considered him curiously.
"Go on towards the village," said M. Varbarriere to the driver, in his deep foreign accents.
And so soon as they were quite out of sight of the Wardlock flunky, he opened the front window of his nondescript vehicle, and called--
"Drive to Slowton."
Which, accordingly, was done. M. Varbarriere, in profound good-humour, a flood of light and certainty having come upon him, sat back luxuriously in a halo of sardonic glory, and was smiling to himself, as men sometimes will over the chess-board when the rest of their game is secure.
At the Bell and Horns he was received with a reverential welcome.
"A gentleman been inquiring for Monsieur Varbarriere?" asked the foreign gentleman in black, descending.
"A gentleman, sir, as has took number seven, and expects a gentleman to call, but did not say who, which his name is Mr. Rumsey?"
"Very good," said Monsieur Varbarriere.
Suddenly he recollected that General Lennox"s letter might have reached the post-office, and, plucking a card from his case, wrote an order on it for his letters, which he handed to Boots, who trudged away to the post-office close by.
Varbarriere was half sorry now that he had opened his correspondence with old General Lennox so soon. He had no hope that Donica Gwynn"s reserves would have melted and given way so rapidly in the interview which had taken place. He was a man who cared nothing about penal justice, who had embraced the world"s ethics early, and looked indulgently on escapades of human nature, and had no natural turn for cruelty, although he could be cruel enough when an object was to be accomplished.
"I don"t think I"d have done it, though he deserves it richly, and has little right to look for quarter at my hands."
And whichever of the gentlemen interested he may have alluded to, he cursed him under his breath ardently.
In number seven there awaited him a tall and thin man of business, of a sad countenance and bilious, with a pale drab-coloured and barred muslin cravat, tied with as much precision as a curate"s; a little bald at the very top of his head; a little stooped at his shoulders. He did not smile as Monsieur Varbarriere entered the room. He bowed in a meek and suffering way, and looked as if he had spent the morning in reading Doctor Blewish"s pamphlet "On the Ubiquity of Disguised Cholera Morbus,"
or our good Bishop"s well-known tract on "Self-Mortification." There was a smell of cigars in the room, which should not have been had he known that Monsieur Varbarriere was to be here so early. His chest was weak, and the doctors ordered that sort of fumigation.
Monsieur Varbarriere set his mind at ease by preparing himself to smoke one of the notable large cigars, of which he carried always a dozen rounds or so in his case.
"You have brought the cases and opinions with you?" inquired Varbarriere.
The melancholy solicitor replied by opening a tin box, from which he drew several sheafs of neatly labelled papers tied up in red tape; the most methodical and quiet of attorneys, and one of the most efficient to be found.
"Smoke away; you like it, so do I; we can talk too, and look at these,"
said Varbarriere, lighting his cigar.
Mr. Rumsey bowed, and meekly lighted his also.
Then began the conference on business.
"Where are Gamford"s letters?--these?--ho!"