But the Grahams, relieved on the point that mainly concerned them, could not see much gravity in the rest of the concoction, and Walcott had scant pity from them. He went home disconsolate, little dreaming of the reception which awaited him there.
He occupied a floor in Montagu Place, Bloomsbury, consisting of three rooms: a drawing-room, a bed-room, and a small study; and, latterly, Mrs. Bundlecombe, whose acquaintance the reader has already made, had used a bed-room at the top of the house.
Alan"s mother and Mrs. Bundlecombe had been sisters. They were the daughters of a well-to-do farmer in Ess.e.x, and, as will often happen with sisters of the same family, brought up and cared for in a precisely similar way, they had exhibited a marked contrast in intellect, habits of thought, and outward bearing. The one had absorbed the natural refinement of her mother, who had come of an old Huguenot family long ago settled on English soil; the other was moulded in the robust and coa.r.s.e type of her father. Bessy was by preference the household factotum not to say the drudge of the family, with a turn for puddings, poultry, and the management of servants. Lucy clung to her mother, and books (though both were constant students of _The Family Herald_), and was nothing if not romantic. Both found some one to love them, and both, as it happened, were married on the same day. Their parents had died within a year of each other, and then the orphaned girls had come to terms with their lovers, and accepted a yoke of which they had previously fought shy. Bessy"s husband was a middle-aged bookseller in the neighboring town of Thorley, who had admired her thrifty and homely ways, and had not been deterred by her want of intelligence. Lucy, though her dreams had soared higher, was fairly happy with a schoolmaster from Southampton, whose acquaintance she had made on a holiday at the seaside.
Alan, who was the only offspring of this latter union, had been well brought up, for his father"s careful teaching and his mother"s gentleness and imagination supplied the complementary touches which are necessary to form the basis of culture. The sisters had not drifted apart after their marriage so much as might have been expected. They had visited each other, and Alan, as he grew up, conceived a strong affection for his uncle at Thorley, who--a childless man himself--gave him delightful books, and showed him others still more delightful, who talked to him on the subjects which chiefly attracted him, and was the first to fire his brain with an ambition to write and be famous. Aunt Bessy was tolerated for her husband"s sake, but it was Uncle Samuel who drew the lad to Thorley. In due time Alan began to teach in his father"s school, and before he was twenty-one had taken his degree at London University. Then his mother died, and shortly afterwards he was left comparatively alone in the world.
Now, school-keeping had never been a congenial occupation to Alan, whose poetic temperament was chafed by the strict and ungrateful routine of the business. His father had been to the manner born, and things had prospered with him, but Alan by himself would not have been able to achieve a like success. He knew this, and was proud of his incapacity; and he took the first opportunity of handing over the establishment to a successor. The money which he received for the transfer, added to that which his father had left, secured him an income on which it was possible to live, and to travel, and to print a volume of poems. For a short time, at least, he lived as seemed best in his own eyes, and was happy.
When he was in England he still occasionally visited Thorley; and it was thus that Milly Harrington came to know him by sight. Her grandmother did not know the Bundlecombes, but Milly came to the conclusion that Alan was their son, and this was the tale which she had told to Sydney Campion, and which Sydney had repeated to his sister.
The last visit paid by Alan to Thorley was some time after his uncle"s death, and he had then confided to his aunt the story of his marriage, and of its unfortunate sequel. He happened to have learned that the man with whom he had fought at Aix-les-Bains was back in London, and it seemed not improbable at that moment that he would soon hear news of his fugitive wife. When he mentioned this to the widow--who was already taking steps to sell her stock-in-trade--she immediately conceived the idea that her boy, as she called Alan, was in imminent danger, that the wife would undoubtedly turn up again, and that it was absolutely necessary for his personal safety that he should have an intrepid and watchful woman living in the same house with him. So she proposed the arrangement which now existed, and Alan had equably fallen in with her plan. He did not see much of her when she came to London, and there was very little in their tastes which was congenial or compatible; but she kept him straight in the matter of his weekly bills and his laundress, and he had no desire to quarrel with the way in which she managed these affairs for him.
When Alan came home after his call at the Grahams", weary and disconsolate, with a weight on his mind of which he could not rid himself, the door was opened by his aunt. Her white face startled him, and still more the gesture with which she pointed upstairs, in the direction of their rooms. His heart sank at once, for he knew that the worst had befallen him.
"Hush!" said his aunt in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "do not go up. She is there.
She came in the morning and would not go away."
"How is she? I mean what does she look like?"
He was very quiet; but he had leaned both hands upon the hall table, and was gazing at his aunt with despairing eyes.
"Bad, my boy, bad! The worst that a woman can look, Oh, Alan, go away, and do not come near her. Fly, immediately, anywhere out of her reach!
Let me tell her that you have gone to the other end of the world rather than touch her again. Oh, Alan, my sister"s child!--go, go, and grace abounding be with you."
"No, Aunt Bessy, that will never do. I cannot run away. Why, don"t you see for one thing that this will prove what lies they have been telling about me? They said I was a murderer--" he laughed somewhat wildly as he spoke--"and here is the murdered woman. And they said there was evidence coming to prove it. Perhaps she will tell them how it happened, and how she came to life again. There, you see, there is good in everything--even in ghosts that come to life again!"
Then his voice dropped, and the color went out of his face.
"What is she doing?" he asked, in a sombre tone.
"She went to sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room. She made me send out for brandy, and began to rave at me in such a way that I was bound to do it, just to keep her quiet. And now she is in her drunken sleep!"
Alan shuddered. He knew what that meant.
"Come," he said: "let us go up. We cannot stand here any longer."
They went into his study, which was on the same floor as the drawing-room, and here Alan sank upon a chair, looking doggedly at the closed door which separated him from the curse of his existence. After a while he got up, walked across the landing, and quietly opened the door.
There she lay, a repulsive looking woman, with the beauty of her youth corrupted into a hateful mask of vice. She had thrown her arms above her head and seemed to be fast asleep.
He returned to the study, shut the door again, and sat down at the table, leaning his head upon his hands. Aunt Bessy came and sat beside him--not to speak, but only that he might know he was not alone.
"That," he muttered to himself at last, "is my wife!"
The old woman at his side trembled, and laid her hand upon his arm.
"I am beginning to know her," he said, after another long pause. "Some men discover the charms of their wives before marriage; others--the fools--find them out after. In the first year she was unfaithful to me.
Then she shot me like a dog. What will the end be?"
"It can be nothing worse, my boy. She has ruined you already; she cannot do it twice. Oh, why did you ever meet her! Why did not Heaven grant that a good woman, like Lettice Campion----"
"Do not name her here!" he cried sharply. "Let there be something sacred in the world!"
He looked at his aunt as he spoke; but she did not return his gaze. She was sitting rigid in her chair, staring over his shoulder with affrighted eyes. Alan turned round quickly, and started to his feet.
The woman in the other room had stealthily opened the door, and stood there, disheveled and half-dressed, with a cunning smile on her face.
"Alan, my husband!" she said, in French, holding out both hands to him, and reeling a step nearer, "here we are at last. I have longed for this day, my friend--let us be happy. After so many misfortunes, to be reunited once again! Is it not charming?"
She spoke incoherently, running her words into one another, and yet doing her best to be understood.
Alan looked at her steadily. "What do you want?" he asked. "Why have you sought me out?"
"My faith, what should I want? Money, to begin with."
"And then?"
"And then--justice! Bah! Am I not the daughter of Testard, who dispensed with his own hand the justice of Heaven against his persecutors?"
"I have heard that before," Alan said. "It was at Aix-les-Bains. And you _still_ want justice!"
"Justice, my child. Was it not at Aix-les-Bains that you tried to kill Henri de Hauteville? Was it not in the park hard by that you shot at me, and almost a.s.sa.s.sinated me? But, have no fear! All I ask is money--the half of your income will satisfy me. Pay me that, and you are safe--unless my rage should transport me one of these fine days! Refuse, and I denounce you through the town, and play the game of scandal--as I know how to play it! Which shall it be?"
"You are my wife. Perhaps there is a remedy for that--now that you are here, we shall see! But, meanwhile, you have a claim. To-morrow morning I Will settle it as you wish. You shall not be left to want."
"It is reasonable. Good-night, my friend! I am going to sleep again."
She went back into the drawing-room, laughing aloud, whilst Alan, after doing his best to console Mrs. Bundlecombe, departed in search of a night"s lodging under another roof.
CHAPTER XIII.
SIR JOHN PYNSENT PROPHESIES.
On a sultry evening in the middle of August, a few choice spirits were gathered together in one of the smoking-rooms of the Oligarchy.
All but one were members of the Upper or Lower House, and they were lazily enjoying the unusual chance (for such busy men, and at such a critical period of the session) which enabled them to smoke their cigars in Pall Mall before midnight on a Tuesday. Either there had been a count-out, or there was obstruction in the House, which was no immediate concern of theirs, or they had made an arrangement with their Whip, and were awaiting a telegram which did not come; but, whatever the reason, here they were, lazy and contented.
There was our old friend, Sir John Pynsent; and Charles Milton, Q.C., certain to be a law officer or a judge, as soon as the Conservatives had their chance; and Lord Ambermere; and the Honorable Tom Willoughby, who had been trained at Harrow, Oxford, and Lord"s Cricket Ground, and who was once a.s.sured by his Balliol tutor that his wit would never make him a friend, nor his face an enemy. The last of the circle was Brooke Dalton, of whom this narrative has already had something to record.
"So Tourmaline has thrown up the sponge, Pynsent?" Charles Milton began, after a short pause in the conversation. "Had enough of the Radical crew by this time!"
"Yes. Of course, he has been out of sympathy with them for a long while.
So have twenty or thirty more, if the truth were known."