"I will see whose child is hidden in that place," he said. "Scandalous things have been said of you, Olivia. I will know the reason of your visits to this place."
She clung about his knees, and hindered him from moving; half kneeling, half crouching on the lowest of the stone steps, she blocked his pathway, and prevented him from reaching the door of the pavilion. It had been ajar a few minutes ago; it was shut now. But Edward had not noticed this.
"No, no, no!" shrieked Olivia; "you shall trample me to death before you enter that place. You shall walk over my corpse before you cross that threshold."
The young man struggled with her for a few moments; then he suddenly flung her from him; not violently, but with a contemptuous gesture.
"You are a wicked woman, Olivia Marchmont," he said; "and it matters very little to me what you do, or what becomes of you. I know now the secret of the mystery between you and Paul Marchmont. I can guess your motive for perpetually haunting this place."
He left the solitary building by the river, and walked slowly back through the wood.
His mind--predisposed to think ill of Olivia by the dark rumours he had heard through his servant, and which had had a certain amount of influence upon him, as all scandals have, however baseless--could imagine only one solution to the mystery of a child"s presence in the lonely building by the river. Outraged and indignant at the discovery he had made, he turned his back upon Marchmont Towers.
"I will stay in this hateful place no longer," he thought, as he went back to his solitary home; "but before I leave Lincolnshire the whole county shall know what I think of Paul Marchmont."
VOLUME III.
CHAPTER I.
CAPTAIN ARUNDEL"S REVENGE.
Edward Arundel went back to his lonely home with a settled purpose in his mind. He would leave Lincolnshire,--and immediately. He had no motive for remaining. It may be, indeed, that he had a strong motive for going away from the neighbourhood of Lawford Grange. There was a lurking danger in the close vicinage of that pleasant, old-fashioned country mansion, and the bright band of blue-eyed damsels who inhabited there.
"I will turn my back upon Lincolnshire for ever," Edward Arundel said to himself once more, upon his way homeward through the October twilight; "but before I go, the whole country shall know what I think of Paul Marchmont."
He clenched his fists and ground his teeth involuntarily as he thought this.
It was quite dark when he let himself in at the old-fashioned half-gla.s.s door that led into his humble sitting-room at Kemberling Retreat. He looked round the little chamber, which had been furnished forty years before by the proprietor of the cottage, and had served for one tenant after another, until it seemed as if the spindle-legged chairs and tables had grown attenuated and shadowy by much service. He looked at the simple room, lighted by a bright fire and a pair of wax-candles in antique silver candlesticks. The red firelight flickered and trembled upon the painted roses on the walls, on the obsolete engravings in clumsy frames of imitation-ebony and tarnished gilt. A silver tea-service and a Sevres china cup and saucer, which Mrs.
Arundel had sent to the cottage for her son"s use, stood upon the small oval table: and a brown setter, a favourite of the young man"s, lay upon the hearth-rug, with his chin upon his outstretched paws, blinking at the blaze.
As Mr. Arundel lingered in the doorway, looking at these things, an image rose before him, as vivid and distinct as any apparition of Professor Pepper"s manufacture; and he thought of what that commonplace cottage-chamber might have been if his young wife had lived. He could fancy her bending over the low silver teapot,--the sprawling inartistic teapot, that stood upon quaint k.n.o.bs like gouty feet, and had been long ago banished from the Dangerfield breakfast-table as utterly rococo and ridiculous. He conjured up the dear dead face, with faint blushes flickering amidst its lily pallor, and soft hazel eyes looking up at him through the misty steam of the tea-table, innocent and virginal as the eyes of that mythic nymph who was wont to appear to the old Roman king. How happy she would have been! How willing to give up fortune and station, and to have lived for ever and ever in that queer old cottage, ministering to him and loving him!
Presently the face changed. The hazel-brown hair was suddenly lit up with a glitter of barbaric gold; the hazel eyes grew blue and bright; and the cheeks blushed rosy red. The young man frowned at this new and brighter vision; but he contemplated it gravely for some moments, and then breathed a long sigh, which was somehow or other expressive of relief.
"No," he said to himself, "I am _not_ false to my poor lost girl; I do _not_ forget her. Her image is dearer to me than any living creature.
The mournful shadow of her face is more precious to me than the brightest reality."
He sat down in one of the spindle-legged arm-chairs, and poured out a cup of tea. He drank it slowly, brooding over the fire as he sipped the innocuous beverage, and did not deign to notice the caresses of the brown setter, who laid his cold wet nose in his master"s hand, and performed a species of spirit-rapping upon the carpet with his tail.
After tea the young man rang the bell, which was answered by Mr.
Morrison.
"Have I any clothes that I can hunt in, Morrison?" Mr. Arundel asked.
His factotum stared aghast at this question.
"You ain"t a-goin" to "unt, are you, Mr. Edward?" he inquired, anxiously.
"Never mind that. I asked you a question about my clothes, and I want a straightforward answer."
"But, Mr. Edward," remonstrated the old servant, "I don"t mean no offence; and the "orses is very tidy animals in their way; but if you"re thinkin" of goin" across country,--and a pretty stiffish country too, as I"ve heard, in the way of bulfinches and timber,--neither of them "orses has any more of a "unter in him than I have."
"I know that as well as you do," Edward Arundel answered coolly; "but I am going to the meet at Marchmont Towers to-morrow morning, and I want you to look me out a decent suit of clothes--that"s all. You can have Desperado saddled ready for me a little after eleven o"clock."
Mr. Morrison looked even more astonished than before. He knew his master"s savage enmity towards Paul Marchmont; and yet that very master now deliberately talked of joining in an a.s.sembly which was to gather together for the special purpose of doing the same Paul Marchmont honour. However, as he afterwards remarked to the two fellow-servants with whom he sometimes condescended to be familiar, it wasn"t his place to interfere or to ask any questions, and he had held his tongue accordingly.
Perhaps this respectful reticence was rather the result of prudence than of inclination; for there was a dangerous light in Edward Arundel"s eyes upon this particular evening which Mr. Morrison never had observed before.
The factotum said something about this later in the evening.
"I do really think," he remarked, "that, what with that young "ooman"s death, and the solitood of this most dismal place, and the rainy weather,--which those as says it always rains in Lincolnshire ain"t far out,--my poor young master is not the man he were."
He tapped his forehead ominously to give significance to his words, and sighed heavily over his supper-beer.
The sun shone upon Paul Marchmont on the morning of the 18th of October. The autumn sunshine streamed into his bedchamber, and awoke the new master of Marchmont Towers. He opened his eyes and looked about him. He raised himself amongst the down pillows, and contemplated the figures upon the tapestry in a drowsy reverie. He had been dreaming of his poverty, and had been disputing a poor-rate summons with an impertinent tax-collector in the dingy pa.s.sage of the house in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Ah! that horrible house had so long been the only scene of his life, that it had grown almost a part of his mind, and haunted him perpetually in his sleep, like a nightmare of brick and mortar, now that he was rich, and had done with it for ever.
Mr. Marchmont gave a faint shudder, and shook off the influence of the bad dream. Then, propped up by the pillows, he amused himself by admiring his new bedchamber.
It was a handsome room, certainly--the very room for an artist and a sybarite. Mr. Marchmont had not chosen it without due consideration. It was situated in an angle of the house; and though its chief windows looked westward, being immediately above those of the western drawing-room, there was another cas.e.m.e.nt, a great oriel window, facing the east, and admitting all the grandeur of the morning sun through painted gla.s.s, on which the Marchmont escutcheon was represented in gorgeous hues of sapphire and ruby, emerald and topaz, amethyst and aqua-marine. Bright splashes of these colours flashed and sparkled on the polished oaken floor, and mixed themselves with the Oriental gaudiness of a Persian carpet, stretched beneath the low Arabian bed, which was hung with ruby-coloured draperies that trailed upon the ground. Paul Marchmont was fond of splendour, and meant to have as much of it as money could buy. There was a voluptuous pleasure in all this finery, which only a parvenu could feel; it was the sharpness of the contrast between the magnificence of the present and the shabby miseries of the past that gave a piquancy to the artist"s enjoyment of his new habitation.
All the furniture and draperies of the chamber had been made by Paul Marchmont"s direction; but its chief beauty was the tapestry that covered the walls, which had been worked, two hundred and fifty years before, by a patient chatelaine of the House of Marchmont. This tapestry lined the room on every side. The low door had been cut in it; so that a stranger going into that apartment at night, a little under the influence of the Marchmont cellars, and unable to register the topography of the chamber upon the tablet of his memory, might have been sorely puzzled to find an exit the next morning. Most tapestried chambers have a certain dismal grimness about them, which is more pleasant to the sightseer than to the constant inhabitant; but in this tapestry the colours were almost as bright and glowing to-day as when the fingers that had handled the variegated worsteds were still warm and flexible. The subjects, too, were of a more pleasant order than usual. No mailed ruffians or drapery-clad barbarians menaced the unoffending sleeper with uplifted clubs, or horrible bolts, in the very act of being launched from ponderous crossbows; no wicked-looking Saracens, with ferocious eyes and copper-coloured visages, brandished murderous scimitars above their turbaned heads. No; here all was pastoral gaiety and peaceful delight. Maidens, with flowing kirtles and crisped yellow hair, danced before great wagons loaded with golden wheat. Youths, in red and purple jerkins, frisked as they played the pipe and tabor. The Flemish horses dragging the heavy wain were hung with bells and garlands as for a rustic festival, and tossed their untrimmed manes into the air, and frisked and gamboled with their awkward legs, in ponderous imitation of the youths and maidens. Afar off, in the distance, wonderful villages, very queer as to perspective, but all a-bloom with gaudy flowers and quaint roofs of bright-red tiles, stood boldly out against a bluer sky than the most enthusiastic pre-Raphaelite of to-day would care to send to the Academy in Trafalgar Square.
Paul Marchmont smiled at the youths and maidens, the laden wagons, the revellers, and the impossible village. He was in a humour to be pleased with everything to-day. He looked at his dressing-table, which stood opposite to him, in the deep oriel window. His valet--he had a valet now--had opened the great inlaid dressing-case, and the silver-gilt fittings reflected the crimson hues of the velvet lining, as if the gold had been flecked with blood. Glittering bottles of diamond-cut gla.s.s, that presented a thousand facets to the morning light, stood like crystal obelisks amid the litter of carved-ivory brushes and Sevres boxes of pomatum; and one rare hothouse flower, white and fragile, peeped out of a slender crystal vase, against a background of dark shining leaves.
"It"s better than Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square," said Mr.
Marchmont, throwing himself back amongst the pillows until such time as his valet should bring him a cup of strong tea to refresh and invigorate his nerves withal. "I remember the paper in my room: drab hexagons and yellow spots upon a brown ground. _So_ pretty! And then the dressing-table: deal, gracefully designed; with a shallow drawer, in which my razors used to rattle like castanets when I tried to pull it open; a most delicious table, exquisitely painted in stripes, olive-green upon stone colour, picked out with the favourite brown. Oh, it was a most delightful life; but it"s over, thank Providence; it"s over!"
Mr. Paul Marchmont thanked Providence as devoutly as if he had been the most patient attendant upon the Divine pleasure, and had never for one moment dreamed of intruding his own impious handiwork amid the mysterious designs of Omnipotence.
The sun shone upon the new master of Marchmont Towers. This bright October morning was not the very best for hunting purposes; for there was a fresh breeze blowing from the north, and a blue unclouded sky.
But it was most delightful weather for the breakfast, and the a.s.sembling on the lawn, and all the pleasant preliminaries of the day"s sport. Mr. Paul Marchmont, who was a thorough-bred c.o.c.kney, troubled himself very little about the hunt as he basked in that morning light.
He only thought that the sun was shining upon him, and that he had come at last--no matter by what crooked ways--to the realisation of his great day-dream, and that he was to be happy and prosperous for the rest of his life.
He drank his tea, and then got up and dressed himself. He wore the conventional "pink," the whitest buckskins, the most approved boots and tops; and he admired himself very much in the cheval gla.s.s when this toilet was complete. He had put on the dress for the gratification of his vanity, rather than from any serious intention of doing what he was about as incapable of doing, as he was of becoming a modern Rubens or a new Raphael. He would receive his friends in this costume, and ride to cover, and follow the hounds, perhaps,--a little way. At any rate, it was very delightful to him to play the country gentleman; and he had never felt so much a country gentleman as at this moment, when he contemplated himself from head to heel in his hunting costume.
At ten o"clock the guests began to a.s.semble; the meet was not to take place until twelve, so that there might be plenty of time for the breakfast.
I don"t think Paul Marchmont ever really knew what took place at that long table, at which he sat for the first time in the place of host and master. He was intoxicated from the first with the sense of triumph and delight in his new position; and he drank a great deal, for he drank unconsciously, emptying his gla.s.s every time it was filled, and never knowing who filled it, or what was put into it. By this means he took a very considerable quant.i.ty of various sparkling and effervescing wines; sometimes hock, sometimes Moselle, very often champagne, to say nothing of a steady undercurrent of unp.r.o.nounceable German hocks and crusted Burgundies. But he was not drunk after the common fashion of mortals; he could not be upon this particular day. He was not stupid, or drowsy, or unsteady upon his legs; he was only preternaturally excited, looking at everything through a haze of dazzling light, as if all the gold of his newly-acquired fortune had been melted into the atmosphere.
He knew that the breakfast was a great success; that the long table was spread with every delicious comestible that the science of a first-rate cook, to say nothing of Fortnum and Mason, could devise; that the profusion of splendid silver, the costly china, the hothouse flowers, and the sunshine, made a confused ma.s.s of restless glitter and glowing colour that dazzled his eyes as he looked at it. He knew that everybody courted and flattered him, and that he was almost stifled by the overpowering sense of his own grandeur. Perhaps he felt this most when a certain county magnate, a baronet, member of Parliament, and great landowner, rose,--primed with champagne, and rather thicker of utterance than a man should be who means to be in at the death, by-and-by,--and took the opportunity of--hum--expressing, in a few words,--haw--the very great pleasure which he--aw, yes--and he thought he might venture to remark,--aw--everybody about him--ha--felt on this most--arrah, arrah--interesting--er--occasion; and said a great deal more, which took a very long time to say, but the gist of which was, that all these country gentlemen were so enraptured by the new addition to their circle, and so altogether delighted with Mr. Paul Marchmont, that they really were at a loss to understand how it was they had ever managed to endure existence without him.
And then there was a good deal of rather unnecessary but very enthusiastic thumping of the table, whereat the costly gla.s.s shivered, and the hothouse blossoms trembled, amidst the musical c.h.i.n.king of silver forks; while the foxhunters declared in chorus that the new owner of Marchmont Towers was a jolly good fellow, which--_i.e._, the fact of his jollity--n.o.body could deny.