He pa.s.sed them and ran across the ploughed field, while the others went down the hill, talking and laughing. He heard the sound of their voices and that light laughter dying away on the still air as the distance widened between him and them; and he wondered if they were talking of his wife, and of his seeming indifference to her folly. The crisis had come. He had watched her in blank amazement, hardly able to believe his own senses, to realize the possibility of guilt on the part of one whose very perfection had galled him; and now he told himself there was no doubt of her folly, no doubt that this tinselly pretender had fascinated her, and that she was on the verge of destruction. No woman could outrage propriety as she had been doing of late, and yet escape danger.
The business must be stopped somehow, even if he were forced to kick the Baron out of doors, in order to make an end of the entanglement. And then, what if she were to lift up her voice, and accuse him--if she were to turn that knowledge which he suspected her of possessing, against him? What then? He must face the situation, and pay the penalty of what he had done. That was all.
"It can"t much matter what becomes of me," he said to himself. "I have never had an hour"s real happiness since I married her. She warned me that it would be so--warned me against my own jealous temper--but I wouldn"t listen to her. I had my own way."
Could she care for that man? Could she? In spite of the coa.r.s.eness of his own nature, there was in Leonard"s mind a deep-rooted conviction of his wife"s purity, which was stronger even than the evidence of actual facts. Even now, although the time had come when he must act, he had a strange confused feeling, like a man whose brain is under the influence of some narcotic, which makes him see things that are not. He felt as in some hideous dream--long-involved--a maze of delusion and bedevilment, from which there was no escape.
He went down into the hollow. The high wooden gate stood wide open--evidence that there was some one lingering below. The leaves were still on the trees, the broad feathery ferns were still green. There was a low yellow light gleaming behind the ridge of rock and the steep earthy slope above. The rush of the water sounded loud and clear in the silence.
Leonard crept cautiously down the winding moss-grown track, holding his dogs behind him in a leash, and constraining those well-mannered brutes to perfect quiet. He looked down into the deep hollow, through which the water runs, and over which there is that narrow foot bridge, whence the waterfall is seen in all its beauty--an arc of silvery light cleaving the dark rock above, and flashing down to the dark rock below.
Christabel was standing on the bridge, with de Cazalet at her side. They were not looking up at the waterfall. Their faces were turned the other way, to the rocky river bed, fringed with fern and wild rank growth of briar and weed. The Baron was talking earnestly, his head bent over Christabel, till it seemed to those furious eyes staring between the leaf.a.ge, as if his lips must be touching her face. His hand clasped hers. That was plain enough.
Just then the spaniel stirred, and rustled the dank dead leaves--Christabel started, and looked up towards the trees that screened her husband"s figure. A guilty start, a guilty look, Leonard thought. But those eyes of hers could not pierce the leafy screen, and they drooped again, looking downward at the water beneath her feet. She stood in a listening att.i.tude, as if her whole being hung upon de Cazalet"s words.
What was he pleading so intensely? What was that honeyed speech, to which the false wife listened, unresistingly, motionless as the bird spell-bound by the snake. So might Eve have listened to the first tempter. In just such an att.i.tude, with just such an expression, every muscle relaxed, the head gently drooping, the eyelids lowered, a tender smile curving the lips--the first tempted wife might have hearkened to the silver-sweet tones of her seducer.
"Devil!" muttered Leonard between his clenched teeth.
Even in the agony of his rage--rage at finding that this open folly, which he had pretended not to see, had been but the light and airy prelude to the dark theme of secret guilt--that wrong which he felt most deeply was his wife"s falsehood to herself--her wilful debas.e.m.e.nt of her own n.o.ble character. He had known her, and believed in her as perfect and pure among women, and now he saw her deliberately renouncing all claim to man"s respect, lowering herself to the level of the women who can be tempted. He had believed her invulnerable. It was as if Diana herself had gone astray--as if the very ideal and archetype of purity among women had become perverted.
He stood, breathless almost, holding back his dogs, gazing, listening with as much intensity as if only the senses of hearing and sight lived in him--and all the rest were extinct. He saw the Baron draw nearer and nearer as he urged his prayer--who could doubt the nature of that prayer--until the two figures were posed in one perfect harmonious whole, and then his arm stole gently round the slender waist.
Christabel sprang away from him with a coy laugh.
"Not now," she said, in a clear voice, so distinct as to reach that listener"s ears. "I can answer nothing now. To-morrow."
"But, my soul, why delay?"
"To-morrow," she repeated; and then she cried suddenly, "hark! there is some one close by. Did you not hear?"
There had been no sound but the waterfall--not even the faintest rustle of a leaf. The two dogs crouched submissively at their master"s feet, while that master himself stood motionless as a stone figure.
"I must go," cried Christabel. "Think how long we have stayed behind the others. We shall set people wondering."
She sprang lightly from the bridge to the bank, and came quickly up the rocky path, a narrow winding track, which closely skirted the spot where Leonard stood concealed by the broad leaves of a chestnut. She might almost have heard his hurried breathing, she might almost have seen the lurid eyes of his dogs, gleaming athwart the rank undergrowth; but she stepped lightly past, and vanished from the watcher"s sight.
De Cazalet followed.
"Christabel, stop," he exclaimed; "I must have your answer now. My fate hangs upon your words. You cannot mean to throw me over. I have planned everything. In three days we shall be at Pesth--secure from all pursuit."
He was following in Christabel"s track, but he was not swift enough to overtake her, being at some disadvantage upon that slippery way, where the moss-grown slabs of rock offered a very insecure footing. As he spoke the last words, Christabel"s figure disappeared among the trees upon the higher ground above him, and a broad herculean hand shot out of the leafy background, and pinioned him.
"Scoundrel--profligate--impostor!" hissed a voice in his ear, and Leonard Tregonell stood before him--white, panting, with flecks of foam upon his livid lips. "Devil! you have corrupted and seduced the purest woman that ever lived. You shall answer to me--her husband--for your infamy."
"Oh! is that your tune?" exclaimed the Baron, wrenching his arm from that iron grip. They were both powerful men--fairly matched in physical force, cool, hardened by rough living. "Is that your game? I thought you didn"t mind."
"You dastardly villain, what did you take me for?"
"A common product of nineteenth-century civilization," answered the other, coolly. "One of those liberal-minded husbands who allow their wives as wide a license as they claim for themselves."
"Liar," cried Leonard, rushing at him with his clenched fist raised to strike.
The Baron caught him by the wrist--held him with fingers of iron.
"Take care," he said. "Two can play at that game. If it comes to knocking a man"s front teeth down his throat I may as well tell you that I have given the "Frisco dentists a good bit of work in my time. You forget that there"s no experience of a rough-and-ready life that you have had which I have not gone through twice over. If I had you in Colorado we"d soon wipe off this little score with a brace of revolvers."
"Let Cornwall be Colorado for the nonce. We could meet here as easily as we could meet in any quiet nook across the Channel, or in the wilds of America. No time like the present--no spot better than this."
"If we had only the barkers," said de Cazalet, "but unluckily we haven"t."
"I"ll meet you here to-morrow at daybreak--say, sharp seven. We can arrange about the pistols to-night. Vandeleur will come with me--he"d run any risk to serve me--and I daresay you could get little Monty to do as much for you. He"s a good plucked one."
"Do you mean it?"
"Unquestionably."
"Very well. Tell Vaudeleur what you mean, and let him settle the details. In the meantime we can take things quietly before the ladies.
There is no need to scare any of them."
"I am not going to scare them. Down, Termagant," said Leonard to the Irish setter, as the low light branches of a neighbouring tree were suddenly stirred, and a few withered leaves drifted down from the rugged bank above the spot where the two men were standing.
"Well, I suppose you"re a pretty good shot," said the Baron coolly, taking out his cigar-case, "so there"ll be no disparity. By-the-by there was a man killed here last year, I heard--a former rival of yours."
"Yes, there was a man killed here," answered Leonard, walking slowly on.
"Perhaps you killed him?"
"I did," answered Leonard, turning upon him suddenly. "I killed him: as I hope to kill you: as I would kill any man who tried to come between me and the woman I loved. He was a gentleman, and I am sorry for him. He fired in the air, and made me feel like a murderer. He knew how to make that last score. I have never had a peaceful moment since I saw him fall, face downward, on that broad slab of rock on the other side of the bridge. You see I am not afraid of you, or I shouldn"t tell you this."
"I suspected as much from the time I heard the story," said de Cazalet.
"I rarely believe in those convenient accidents which so often dispose of inconvenient people. But don"t you think it might be better for you if we were to choose a different spot for to-morrow"s meeting? Two of your rivals settled in the same gully might look suspicious--for I dare say you intend to kill me."
"I shall try," answered Leonard.
"Then suppose we were to meet on those sands--Trebarwith Sands, I think you call the place. Not much fear of interruption there, I should think, at seven o"clock in the morning."
"You can settle that and everything else with Vandeleur," said Leonard, striding off with his dogs, and leaving the Baron to follow at his leisure.
De Cazalet walked slowly back to the farm, meditating deeply.
"It"s devilish unlucky that this should have happened," he said to himself. "An hour ago everything was going on velvet. We might have got quietly away to-morrow--for I know she meant to go, cleverly as she fenced with me just now--and left my gentleman to his legal remedy, which would have secured the lady and her fortune to me, as soon as the Divorce Court business was over. He would have followed us with the idea of fighting, no doubt, but I should have known how to give him the slip.
And then we should have started in life with a clean slate. Now there must be no end of a row. If I kill him it will be difficult to get away--and if I bolt, how am I to be sure of the lady? Will she come to my lure when I call her? Will she go away with me, to-morrow? Yes, that will be my only chance. I must get her to promise to meet me at Bodmin Road Station in time for the Plymouth train--there"s one starts at eleven. I can drive from Trebarwith to Bodmin with a good horse, take her straight through to London, and from London by the first available express to Edinburgh. She shall know nothing of what has happened till we are in Scotland, and then I can tell her that she is a free woman, and my wife by the Scottish law,--a bond which she can make as secure as she likes by legal and religious ceremonies."
The Baron had enough insight into the feminine character to know that a woman who has leisure for deliberation upon the verge of ruin is not very likely to make the fatal plunge. The boldly, deliberately bad are the rare exceptions among womankind. The women who err are for the most part hustled and hurried into wrong-doing--hemmed round and beset by conflicting interests--bewildered and confused by false reasoning--whirled in the Maelstrom of pa.s.sion, helpless as the hunted hare.
The Baron had pleaded his cause eloquently, as he thought--had won Christabel almost to consent to elope with him--but not quite. She had seemed so near yielding, yet had not yielded. She had asked for time--time to reflect upon the fatal step--and reflection was just that one privilege which must not be allowed to her. Strange, he thought, that not once had she spoken of her son, the wrong she must inflict upon him, her agony at having to part with him. Beautiful, fascinating although he deemed her--proud as he felt at having subjugated so lovely a victim, it seemed to de Cazalet that there was something hard and desperate about her--as of a woman who went wrong deliberately and of set purpose. Yet on the brink of ruin she drew back, and was not to be moved by any special pleading of his to consent to an immediate elopement. Vainly had he argued that the time had come--that people were beginning to look askance--that her husband"s suspicions might be aroused at any moment. She had been rock in her resistance of these arguments. But her consent to an early flight must now be extorted from her. Delay or hesitation now might be fatal. If he killed his man--and he had little doubt in his own mind that he should kill him--it was essential that his flight should be instant. The days were past when juries were disposed to look leniently upon gentlemanly homicide. If he were caught red-handed, the penalty of his crime would be no light one.
"I was a fool to consent to such a wild plan," he told himself. "I ought to have insisted upon meeting him on the other side of the Channel. But to draw back now might look bad, and would lessen my chance with her.