"Madam, we"ve separated. It"s worse, ma"am--all over. I thought, Lady--Lady--I thought, madam, I might ask you, as the only early friend--a friend, ma"am, and a kinswoman--to take her with you for a little while, till some home is settled for her; _here_ she can"t stay, of course, an hour. That villain! May ---- d.a.m.n him."
"Who?" asked Lady Alice, with a kind of scowl, quite forgetting to rebuke him this time, her face darkening and turning very pale, for she saw it was another great family disgrace.
"Sir Jekyl Marlowe, ma"am, of Marlowe, Baronet, Member of Parliament, Deputy Lieutenant," bawled the old General, with shrill and trembling voice. "I"ll drag him through the law courts, and the divorce court, and the House of Lords." He held his right fist up with its trembling knuckles working, as if he had them in Sir Jekyl"s cravat, "drag him through them all, ma"am, till the dogs would not pick his bones; and I"ll shoot him through the head, by ----, I"ll shoot him through the head, and his family ashamed to put his name on his tombstone."
Lady Alice stood up, with a face so dismal it almost looked wicked.
"I see, sir; I see there"s something very bad; I"m sorry, sir; I"m very sorry; I"m _very_ sorry."
She had a hand of the old General"s in each of hers, and was shaking them with a tremulous clasp.
Such as it was, it was the first touch of sympathy he had felt. The old General"s grim face quivered and trembled, and he grasped _her_ hands too, and then there came those convulsive croupy sobs, so dreadful to hear, and at last tears, and this dried and bleached old soldier wept loud and piteously. Outside the door you would not have known what to make of these cracked, convulsive sounds. You would have stopped in horror, and fancied some one dying. After a while he said--
"Oh! ma"am, I was very fond of her--I _was_, desperately. If I could know it was all a dream, I"d be content to die. I wish, ma"am, you"d advise me. I"ll go back to India, I think; I could not stay here. You"ll know best, madam, what she ought to do. I wish everything the best for her--you"ll see, ma"am--you"ll know best."
"Quite--quite; yes, these things are best settled by men of business.
There are papers, I believe, drawn up, arranged by lawyers, and things, and I"m sorry, sir--"
And old Lady Alice suddenly began to sob.
"I"ll--I"ll do what I can for the poor thing," she said. "I"ll take her to Wardlock--it"s quite solitary--no prying people--and then to--perhaps it"s better to go abroad; and you"ll not make it public sooner than it must be; and it"s a great blow to me, sir, a terrible blow. I wish she had placed herself more under direction; but it"s vain looking back--she always refused advice, poor, poor wretched thing! Poor Jennie! We must be resigned, sir; and--and, sir, for G.o.d"s sake, no fighting--no pistoling. That sort of thing is never heard of now; and if you do, the whole world will be ringing with it, and the unfortunate creature the gaze of the public before she need be, and perhaps some great crime added--some one killed. Do you promise?"
"Ma"am, it"s hard to promise."
"But you _must_, General Lennox, or I"ll take measures to stop it this moment," cried Lady Alice, drying her eyes and glaring at him fiercely.
"Stop it! _who"ll_ stop it?" holloed the General with a stamp.
"_You"ll_ stop it, General," exclaimed the old lady; "your own common sense; your own compa.s.sion; your own self-respect; and not the less that a poor old woman that sympathises with you implores it."
There was here an interval.
"Ma"am, ma"am, it"s not easy; but I will--I _will_, ma"am. I"ll go this moment; I will, ma"am; I can"t trust myself here. If I met him, ma"am, by Heaven I _couldn"t_."
"Well, thank you, _thank_ you, General Lennox--_do_ go; there"s not much chance of meeting, for he"s ill; but go, don"t stay a moment, and write to me to Wardlock, and you shall hear everything. There--go. Good-bye."
So the General was gone, and Lady Alice stood for a while bewildered, looking at the door through which he had vanished.
It is well when these sudden collapses of the overwrought nerves occur.
More dejected, more broken, perhaps, he looked, but much more like the General Lennox whom his friends remembered. Something of the panic and fury of his calamity had subsided, too; and though the grief must, perhaps, always remain pretty much unchanged, yet he could now estimate the situation more justly, and take his measures more like a sane man.
In this better, if not happier mood, Varbarriere encountered him in that overshadowed back avenue which leads more directly than the main one to the little town of Marlowe.
Varbarriere was approaching the house, and judged, by the General"s slower gait, that he was now more himself.
The large gentleman in the Germanesque felt hat raised that grotesque head-gear, French fashion, as Lennox drew nigh.
The General, with two fingers, made him a stern, military salute in reply, and came suddenly to a standstill.
"May I walk a little with you, General Lennox?" inquired Varbarriere.
"Certainly, sir. _Walk?_ By all means; I"m going to London," rejoined the General, without, however, moving from the spot where he had halted.
"Rather a long stretch for me," thought Varbarriere, with one of those inward thrills of laughter which sometimes surprise us in the gravest moods and in the most unsuitable places. He looked sober enough, however, and merely said--
"You, know, General, there"s some one ill up there," and he nodded mysteriously toward the house.
"Is there? Ay. Well, yes, I dare say," and he laughed with a sudden quaver. "I was not sure; the old woman said something. I"m glad, sir."
"I--I think I _know_ what it is, sir," said Varbarriere.
"So do I, sir," said the General, with another short laugh.
"You recollect, General Lennox, what you promised me?"
"Ay, sir; how can I help it?" answered he.
"How can you help it! I don"t quite see your meaning," replied Varbarriere, slowly. "I can only observe that it gives me new ideas of a soldier"s estimate of his promise."
"Don"t blame me, sir, if I lost my head a little, when I saw that villain there, in _my_ room, sir, by ----" and the General cursed him here parenthetically through his clenched teeth; "I felt, sir, as--as if the sight of him struck me in the face--mad, sir, for a minute--I suppose, _mad_, sir; and--it occurred. I say, sir, I can"t help it--and I couldn"t help it, by ---- I couldn"t."
Varbarriere looked down with a peevish sneer on the gra.s.s and innocent daisies at his feet, his heel firmly placed, and tapping the sole of his boot from that pivot on the sward, like a man beating time to a slow movement in an overture.
"Very good, sir! It"s your own affair. I suppose you"ve considered consequences, if anything should go wrong?"
And without awaiting an answer, he turned and slowly pursued his route toward the house. I don"t suppose, in his then frame of mind, the General saw consequences very clearly, or cared about them, or was capable, when the image of Sir Jekyl presented itself, of any emotions but those of hatred and rage. He had gone now, at all events; the future darkness; the past irrevocable.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Bishop sees the Patient.
In the hall Varbarriere met the Reverend Dives Marlowe.
"Well, sir, how is Sir Jekyl?" asked he.
The parson looked bilious and lowering.
"To say truth, Monsieur, I can"t very well make out what the Doctor thinks. I suspect he does not understand very well himself. _Gout_, he says, but in a very sinking state; and we"ve sent for the physician at Slowton; and altogether, sir, I"m very uneasy."
I suppose if the blow had fallen, the reverend gentleman would in a little while have become quite resigned, as became him. There were the baronetcy and some land; but on the whole, when Death drew near smirking, and offered on his tray, with a handsome black pall over it, these sparkling relics of the late Sir Jekyl Marlowe, Bart., the Rev.
Dives turned away; and though he liked these things well enough, put them aside honestly, and even with a sort of disgust. For Jekyl, as I have said, though the brothers could sometimes exchange a sharp sally, had always been essentially kind to him; and Dives was not married, and, in fact, was funding money, and in no hurry; and those things were sure to come to him if he lived, sooner or later.
"And what, may I ask, do you suppose it _is_?" inquired Varbarriere.