When Mohun heard what had happened, he would not admit that there was the slightest chance of a meeting with Cyril Brandon, though he knew the character of the latter--fierce and intractable to a degree.
"Don"t flatter yourself you will wipe off the score in that way," he said to Guy, with his sardonic laugh. "Men will quarrel over cards and about _lorettes_ easily enough, but who fights for a "broken covenant"
now? We live two hundred years too late."
Ralph remembered how long he had lingered on the French seaboard waiting for a challenge from beyond the Channel which never came, though there was deeper provocation to justify it.
A few mornings after this had occurred Livingstone found himself without a servant. His demeanor toward this estimable cla.s.s had always been imperious and stern to a fault, but latterly they, as well as others, had felt the effects of his exasperated temper, and he was sometimes brutally overbearing in his reprimands. On this particular occasion he must have been unusually oppressive, for it exhausted the patience of the much-enduring Willis, so that the worm turned again--insolently.
Before he had said ten words his master interrupted him, his eye turning toward a heavy horsewhip that lay near with an expression that made Willis retreat toward the door.
"So you have robbed me of enough to make you independent? Very well; make your book up; the _maitre d"hotel_ will settle with you. You will carry away some of my property, of course? I shall not trouble myself to have your trunks searched, but if you take any thing that I happen to want afterward, I"ll have you arrested, wherever you are. Now go."
The man left the room sulkily: an hour later he returned. "I am going this instant, Mr. Livingstone; but I could tell you something first that you ought to know, if you would promise not to be violent. I am very sorry now I did it." There was a curious expression--half spiteful, half frightened--on his cunning face as he spoke.
Guy looked at him carelessly. "Thank you; I am in no humor to listen to your confessions. You may be quite easy; I give you credit for all imaginable rascality. Remember what I said: if I miss any thing, the police will be after you the same day. Now, once more, go. If I see your face about here again, it will be the worse for you."
There was a good deal of meaning in Willis"s smile, though, his lips were white with fear. "You will never miss what I was going to tell you about, sir," he said; and then faded away out of the room with his usual noiseless step, closing the door softly behind him.
If his master could have guessed what was the secret he had refused to hear, haughty as he was, I do believe there is no earthly degradation to which he would not have abased himself to gain its knowledge.
But the hour for the humbling of the strong, self-reliant nature had not come yet, though it was very near. The wild bull never saw the net till its meshes had trapped him fast.
The same morning Guy, who was lounging an hour away at the Bellasys", mentioned to them what had occurred. If he had glanced at Flora"s face just then, he would have been puzzled to guess what there was in the intelligence to turn her so deadly pale. It was only for an instant that the accomplished actress forgot her part, and when he looked at her next there was not a trace of emotion in her face.
"Have you filled up his place?" she asked, carelessly.
"I have ordered my landlord to provide me," replied Guy. "I shall find some well-trained scoundrel on my return, I hope. I shall never get another like Willis, though. It"s just my luck. The great principle of the gazelle runs through life: When they come to know you well, &c. What made you ask? Surely you have no _protege_ to recommend?"
Flora laughed gayly as she answered in the negative, and so the subject dropped; but all the afternoon she was pensive and absent, and flashes of vexation gleamed every now and then fitfully in her stormy eyes.
CHAPTER XXVI.
"Let none think to fly the danger, For, soon or late, Love is his own avenger."
Christmas-tide had come round again, and hall, manor-house, and castle were filling fast. But the pheasants had a jubilee at Kerton, to the great discouragement of Mallett, who "could not mind such another breeding season." Foxes were strong and plentiful with the Belvoir and the Pytchley; and, during two months of open weather, many a straight-goer had died gallantly in the midst of the wide pasture-grounds, testifying with his last breath to the generalship of Goodall and Payne. But the best shot and the hardest rider in Northamptonshire lingered on still in Paris, wasting his patrimony in most riotous living, and trying his iron const.i.tution presumptuously.
Lady Catharine sat alone in the gray old house, paler and more care-worn than ever. I think she would have preferred the noisiest revel that ever broke her slumbers in the old times to the dead silence that brooded like a mist in the deserted rooms.
Guy had always been a bad correspondent, and now he hardly ever wrote to her; but rumors of his wild life reached his mother often, though dimly and vaguely. It was best so; what would that poor lady have felt if she could have guessed at the scene in which her son was the princ.i.p.al figure as the Christmas morning was breaking?
It is the close of a furious orgie; the Babel of cries, of fragments of songs, of insane, meaningless laughter, is dying away, through the pure exhaustion of the revelers; on the gay carpet and the rich damask are pools of spilled liquors, heaps of shivered gla.s.s, and bouquets and garlands that have ceased to be fragrant hours ago. All around, in different att.i.tudes--ign.o.ble and helpless--are strewn the bodies of those who have gone down early in the battle of the Baccha.n.a.ls: they lie in their ranks as they fell. One figure towers above the rest--pre-eminent as Satan in the conclave of the ruined angels--the guiltiest, because the most conscious of his own utter degradation. The frequent draughts that have prostrated his companions have only brought out two round scarlet spots in the pale bronze of his cheeks; his voice retains still its deep, calm, almost solemn tone. Listen to it as he raises to his lips an immense gla.s.s br.i.m.m.i.n.g-full of Burgundy: "One toast more, and with funeral honors--"To the memory of those who have fallen gloriously on the 24th of December.""
Is it true that, six months ago, the soft, pure cheek of Constance Brandon rested often on the broad breast that pillows now the disheveled head of that wild-eyed, shrill-voiced Maenad? Draw the curtains closer yet; shut out the dawn of the Nativity for very shame.
Mohun was breakfasting with Livingstone on a cold, gusty January morning, that succeeded a night of heavy drinking and heavier play. The colonel would see him through one of these readily enough, but if there was even a single female face present he would retreat in disgust and contempt unutterable. Guy had been hit so hard that it made him graver than usual as he thought of it, though he was tolerably inured and indifferent to evil fortune; so the conversation languished during the meal. After it was over, Mohun rose to light a cigar, while his companion took up a pile of letters and began to glance at them listlessly. Suddenly the former dropped the match from his hand, starting in irrepressible astonishment.
He had seen strong men die hard, mangled and shattered by sabre or bullet, but he had never heard a sound so terribly significant of agony as the dull, heavy groan that just then burst from Livingstone"s lips.
In those few seconds his face had grown perfectly livid; his eyes were riveted upon a small note that he held in his shaking fingers; they glittered strangely, but there was no meaning or expression in their fixed stare.
"In the name of G.o.d, what has happened?" Ralph asked.
Guy"s lips worked and moved, but no sound came from them, except an irregular catching of the breath and a gasping rattle in the throat.
Mohun took the note from his hand without his seeming to be aware of it, and read it through. These were the words:
"I have tried very hard to persuade myself that you never received the letter I wrote to you two months ago. I think you would have answered it, for you would know how much I must have suffered before my pride broke down so utterly. Yet I could not have risked being scorned a second time if I had not learned yesterday that my life must now be reckoned by weeks, if not by days. I do not know if I shall be allowed to see you if you come. But you will come; will you not? Dear, dear Guy, I can not die as I ought to do, contentedly, unless I speak to you once again. In spite of all, I will sign my last letter
"Your own CONSTANCE BRANDON."
It was dated Ventnor.
Hard and cynical as he was, Mohun was thoroughly shocked and grieved; but the urgency of the crisis brought back the prompt decision of thought and purpose that were habitual to the trained soldier. He sprang to his feet, alert and ready for action, as he would have done in the old times, from his bivouac, to meet a night-surprise of the wild Hungarians.
"Get every thing ready," he said to the servant, who entered at that moment; "your master is going to England immediately. The train starts for Havre at two o"clock. You will catch the night-boat for Southampton."
When the man had left the room he turned to Guy: "Rouse yourself, man!
There is all a lifetime for remorse, but only a few hours for the little amends you can make. You will be at Ventnor to-morrow; and mind--you _must_ see her, whatever difficulties may be thrown in your way. You won"t lose your temper if you meet her brother? Ah! I see you are not listening."
Then Livingstone spoke for the first time, in a hoa.r.s.e, grating whisper, articulating the words one by one with difficulty.
"I never dreamed of this. I did not mean to kill her."
Mohun knew his friend too well to attempt consolation or sympathy, even if these had not been foreign to his own nature; so he answered deliberately and coldly,
"Of having brought bitter sorrow on Constance Brandon I do hold you guilty; of having caused her death, not, and so you will find when you know all. But her note of two months ago--of course you never saw it?
You must have overlooked it; you are so careless with your papers."
"It never reached me," Livingstone replied. "I have always looked at the outside of my letters, and I should have known that handwriting among ten thousand. Some one must have intercepted it. I wish I knew who." He was recovering from the first stunning effects of the shock, and the old angry light came back into his eyes.
"I will find out when you are gone," said Mohun. "You have not a moment to spare. I won"t ask you to write; I will join you in England in three days. Only remember one thing--keep cool. Yes, I know what you mean; but your patience may be tried more than you have any idea of." He was thinking of Cyril Brandon.
The hurry of departure prevented any further conversation. At the station, just before the train started, Ralph said, grasping his comrade"s hand as he spoke, "I did not think you loved her so dearly."
It was very long before he forgot the dreary look which accompanied the answer, "I did not know it myself till now."
"I must trace the note," the colonel muttered, as he strode away from the station. "That handsome tiger-cat has laid her claw on it, I am certain. But she won"t confess; red-hot pincers would not drag a secret from her, if she meant to keep it. I doubt if she will even betray herself by a blush. Poor Constance! What chance had she against such a Machiavel in petticoats? I am bad at diplomacy, too. If I only had the slightest proof, or if she had any weak point--unless she loses her head when she hears where Guy is gone, I have no chance of finding out much in that quarter. There"s Willis, to be sure--she bribed him, no doubt.
D--n them both!" In this complimentary and charitable mood, he went straight to Flora Bellasys.
He found her alone. She was sitting in her riding-dress, and the broad Spanish hat, with its curling plumes, lay close beside her, with the gauntlets and whip across it.
She did not much like Mohun, for she had an idea that his sarcasms, with her for their object, had made Guy smile more than once approvingly. She knew, too, that all her fascinations recoiled harmlessly from that rugged block of ironstone. Whatever he might have been in early years, he was harder of heart than stout Sir Artegall now. Radigund, unhelming her lovely face, would never have tempted him to forego his advantage and throw his weapons down.