Lady Fitz Rewes glanced piteously at the three men and wrung her hands.
"Don"t you see," she exclaimed, "don"t you see that if there is the least doubt of Mr. Parflete"s death, we ought to go to them. Some one must follow them."
"There is that touch of the absurd about it," said Reckage, "which makes it difficult for a friend to come forward. To pursue a man on his wedding journey----"
"It is no laughing matter," put in Lord Garrow; "and if the woman has deceived the poor fellow, it"s a monstrous crime."
"Oh, she hasn"t; she couldn"t deceive him," said Pensee. "I know her intimately."
"She was considered very clever--at Madrid," said Sir Piers, finely. "To you she may appear more to be pitied than she really is."
"Don"t say such things! I won"t hear them. I love her very much."
"Perhaps she is clever enough to appear stupid in public."
"No, no!" Her voice trembled and tears gushed from her eyes. "You will regret these words. This news will kill her."
"Something must be done," said Sara. "Beauclerk, you ought to follow them and tell them. Pensee is right."
"This will make a horrid scandal," said Lord Garrow, who was appalled at the prospect of being mixed up in so disagreeable an affair. "Why not leave it alone? It is not our business."
"But it is Beauclerk"s business, papa. Just put yourself in his place.
Surely that is not asking too much."
"We must avoid everything precipitate," said Reckage; "we mustn"t be over-hasty."
Lady Fitz Rewes wiped her eyes, rose from the table, and began to draw on her gloves.
"But we must be friends," she said; "if you cannot go to them, I will.
Do you realise the poor child"s position? An illegal marriage! She is the most gentle, beautiful person I ever saw, with the best head, the purest heart. She professes _nothing_. I judge her by her actions."
"But you must see," said Reckage, "that I can"t give Orange all this pain unless I have something more definite to go on. Sir Piers tells us that he played cards with Wrexham Parflete last week." He paused.
"Wait a moment," said Harding; "wait a moment. Does any one present know Parflete"s handwriting?"
"I do," said Pensee. "I saw his last letter to his wife. He wrote it before he committed suicide."
Sir Piers took out his pocket-book, and, from the several papers it contained, selected a three-cornered note.
"By the merest chance," said he, "I have this with me."
The others unconsciously left their seats and looked over his shoulder while he smoothed out the sheet. It was dated plainly, "October 7, 1869," and contained the acknowledgment of two 10 notes won at ecarte.
"That is the hand," said Pensee. "One could not mistake it."
"Then this is really very serious," said Lord Reckage, with twitching lips. "The whole story has had all along something of unreality about it. Robert seems fated to a renunciant career--colourless, self-annihilating."
"What will you do?" murmured Pensee, with an imploring gesture. "What will you do?"
"They leave Southampton at three o"clock," said Reckage; "it is now half-past two. The steamer goes twice a week only. I can send him a telegram and follow them overland--by way of Calais."
"Then I must go also," said Pensee firmly. "She will need me. I have had a presentiment of trouble so long that now I feel "Here it is come at last." I cannot be too thankful to G.o.d that it isn"t worse."
Nothing showed under the innavigable depths of Sara"s eyes. She had moved to the fireplace and stood there holding one small foot to the blaze.
"Are you cold?" asked her father anxiously.
"I am ice," she said, "ice!"
Reckage joined her and said, under his voice, "You think I ought to go, don"t you?"
This question--given in a half-whisper--seemed to establish a fresh intimacy between them. It was the renewal of their old friendship on deeper terms.
"Yes, you must go," she answered; "and, Beauclerk, write to me and tell me how he bears it."
"He is accustomed to a repressive discipline on these matters. The philosophic mind, you know, is never quite in health. Probably, he won"t show much feeling."
His gaze seemed to burn into her face. It was as though she had been walking in an arbour and suddenly, through some rift in the boughs, found herself exposed to the scorching sun. She felt dominated by a force stronger than her own nature. A little afraid, she shrank instinctively away from him, and as she dared not look up, she did not see the expression of triumph, mingled with other things, which, for a moment, lit up Lord Reckage"s ordinarily inscrutable countenance.
Lately, he had been somewhat depressed by his encounter with refractory wills. His horse, his colleagues on the Bond of a.s.sociation, his future bride, had showed themselves fatiguing, perhaps worthless, certainly disheartening and independent accessories to his life. Here, at last, was some one brilliant, stimulating, by no means self-seeking, Quixotic in enthusiasms.
"Sara," he said, obeying an impulse which surprised himself, "do you believe in me?"
This time she gave him a straight glance.
"Yes," she answered. "You might do a great deal if you could forget yourself for a few months."
Pensee, much troubled and full of thoughts, walked over to them.
"Oh, Sara!" she said, "isn"t it terrible? If you could have seen them both this morning--she looked so beautiful, perfectly lovely--a sight I never can forget. And now this blow! What man can teach men to understand the will of G.o.d?"
CHAPTER IX
Robert and Brigit were silent with happiness on their way to Southampton. Side by side they watched the country through the carriage windows. There had been a fog in London when they left, and the sun, at intervals, shone out like a live coal among dying embers. All was obscured; the foot-pa.s.sengers and pa.s.sing vehicles seemed black straying shadows in the atmosphere. But the express emerged at last from the clinging darkness into autumnal fields, some brown after the harvest, others studded with hay-ricks. At one point in the landscape they noticed a flock of sheep drinking at a stream. The boy who guarded them waved his cap at the train, and this little signal, coming, as it were, from human nature, gave them a rea.s.surance of the day"s reality. Near Bishopstoke the clouds were white and dense, but, rippling in places, they disclosed blue stretches of the heaven which, in their ma.s.ses, they concealed. Southampton began with small houses. One had a tattered garden, where a stone copy of the Medicean Venus stood on a patch of squalid turf near a clothes" line and against an ivy-grown wall. Then the green sands were reached. The sea, like liquid granite, sparkled in the distance. Rows of dull dwellings, shops, public-houses, and hotels came next. The train, with a shriek, rushed into the station. It was still too early for lunch, so they walked down to the pier, where they saw several yachts and pleasure-boats at anchor in the harbour, and the New Forest greenly outlined in the distance. These were the things which engraved themselves on Brigit"s mind. The impressibility of youth is retentive for outward objects, but the inner mood--the sensation and idea which make the mental state--lives unconsciously, and is recognised only in the long process of time. Brigit could have described the scene, but her emotions did not seem to her, emotions. Absorbed by them, and in them, she neither abandoned herself to the hour nor asked herself what the hour held. She and the hour were one--a single note; and the joy she felt at being with Robert, leaning on his arm and hearing his voice, was so simple that, even if a psychologist of the deepest experience had been able to probe into the workings of her mind, he would have found nothing there to a.n.a.lyse. Hers was a child"s affection--the first love of a heart still immature, and not yet made suspicious of itself by contact with others less innocent. Parflete had been too worldly-wise not to guard and value--at its true price--a disposition so graceful in its very essence. She had a knowledge of affairs beyond her years, yet her own instincts, her education, her few friendships, had kept her curiously ignorant of evil, of much also that is neither good nor evil, but merely human. The sombre sentimentality which lurks in most young girls of seventeen was not in her character at all, and in its stead she possessed the gaiety and carelessness of feeling which belongs to imaginative rather than to sensuous natures. A boy-like spirit showed itself in all her words, movements, moods; her womanhood still slept, and thus, while her intelligence made her an unusual companion and her beauty presented a constant appeal to all that is romantic, it was inevitable that melancholy and reserve should enter largely into the pa.s.sionate love which Robert felt for her. He told himself that he would not have her different. The glance of her eyes, which stirred him strangely to the very depths of his being, never varied in its sweetness nor its calm. When her lightest touch could sway his body and spirit, she, unconscious of her power, would press his hand against her cheek and talk about the geraniums in the convent garden or the chances of the Carlist war. It was all wonderful. It had seemed perfect. And yet--and yet. She was not cold, but was she unearthly? Was she, perhaps, some straying angel--some fervid, bright spirit, flame-coloured and intangible, a being of the elfin race? As they stood together looking at the distant coastline a depression which he could neither fathom nor control came over him. His bride seemed so much younger than he had ever realised. She cared for him--how could he doubt it? But was the indefinable, indispensable feeling absent?
"Do you remember our journey from Catesby?" she asked suddenly. "I slept. Wasn"t I dull? Did you mind?"
No one could see them. He stooped and kissed her fragrant, animated face. "I wish," said he, "I wish that you were not quite such a child."
The feeling of solitariness weighed upon his soul with a crushing weight unknown until that day--the day of days, his wedding day. Heretofore he had craved for solitude because it had been full of her imagined companionship. Now that she actually lived and talked by his side, the fancied image of her paled, vanished. The real creature was adorable, but, for some reason, maddening, and not, at all events, the being of his fancy. Their old relations--ethereal and exquisite, no doubt--now seemed an empty mockery, self-deluding foolishness. He coloured at the remembrance of all that Disraeli had hinted, and Reckage had brutally declared, on the large topic of idealism in pa.s.sion. A man, in spite of all determinations to be uncomplaining, knows the How much and How little that he may demand, merely as a man, from any given advantage or disadvantage in existence. Robert, hating himself, condemning himself, was conscious, in spite of himself, that Brigit"s affection for him was not love in the full human sense of the word. He had exchanged an ordinary self-restraint for an impossibly false position. She could inspire his life, but could she enter into it, be it, live it with him daily? Would there not have to be great reservations, half statements, and, worst of all, a subtle kind of hypocrisy? He reproached himself for selfishness, yet the fear came and it remained. He had captured the rainbow and married the G.o.ddess. Were there not many legends ill.u.s.trating this folly?--stories of men who had married divinities and perished, not because the divinities were at fault, but because mortals must wed with mortals. The sight of his wife"s beauty caused a sudden, violent irritation. He wished she had none, for then, perhaps, he thought he would have been satisfied, more than content, in the placid consideration of her charms of character. He found himself reduced to the absurd predicament of deciding to banish her from his thoughts--a last sophism which showed him, all too clearly, how wretched he was.
Their silence, which had been due in the first instance to the sufficient delight of being in each other"s company, became that long pause which arises from an unutterable embarra.s.sment. Brigit felt by instinct some change in Robert"s mood, but as she could not account for it then, her sympathy failed. The keen salt air filled her with its own free buoyancy; her delicate skin flushed in the wind; she forgot the nervous strain of the morning, the awfulness of the grey chapel, the new state of things, griefs that were past, responsibilities that were to come. She turned to Orange as a child would turn to its inseparable comrade, and clapped her hands with amus.e.m.e.nt at an organ-grinder with a monkey and a dog whom she noticed sitting at the end of the pier, waiting, apparently, for one of the excursion steamers bound for the Isle of Wight.
"Pennies for the monkey, Robert," she cried; "a lot of pennies! And then we must have our lunch. May I have some chicken and one of those very droll, very stupid, English rice puddings? Please let me have one....
And may I kiss the dog? It is a nice little dog--quite as nice as Pensee"s Fidelio. Now I am going to talk to the monkey."