"Why not make full confession to her?" she suggested, after a short pause.
Surely it was very strange, he thought, that she, who was little more than a mere girl, should venture to debate with him his private affairs.
To him it appeared suspiciously as though she had already discussed the situation with the woman who had introduced her beneath his roof. Had they arranged all this between them? But if his madness had not blinded him, he would have detected the contemptuous curl of the lip when she uttered Claudia"s name.
"I have neither the wish nor the intention to confess anything," he answered. "You alone know my secret, Miss Mortimer, and I rely upon your honesty as a woman to divulge nothing."
For answer she walked quickly to the table, took up the gla.s.s, and flung its contents upon the broad, old-fashioned hearthstone.
"I solemnly promise you," she said, as she replaced the empty tumbler and confronted him again. "I promise you that as long as you hold back from this suicidal madness the world shall know nothing. Live, be brave, grapple with those who seek your downfall, and reciprocate the love of the woman who is both eager and ready to a.s.sist and defend you."
It struck him that in the last words of this sentence she referred to herself. If so, hers was, indeed, a strange lovemaking.
"No," replied the despondent man. "My position is hopeless--utterly hopeless."
As his head was turned away, he did not notice the strange glint in her eyes. For a single instant the fierce fire of hatred burned there, but in a moment it had vanished, and she was once more the same calm, persuasive woman as throughout the conversation she had been.
"But your position is really not so serious as you imagine," she declared. "If you will only place confidence in me I can help you ever so much. Indeed, I antic.i.p.ate that, if I so wish, I can rescue you from the exposure and ruin that threatens you."
"You?" he cried incredulously. "How can you hope to rescue me?" he demanded sharply, taking a step toward her in his eagerness to know what the answer to his question would be.
"By means known only to myself," she said, watching him with panther-like intensity. She had changed her tactics.
"From your words it would appear that my future is to be controlled in most respects by you, Miss Mortimer," he observed with a slight touch of sarcasm in his hard voice.
"You have spoken correctly. It is."
"And for what reason, pray?" he inquired, frowning in his perplexity.
"Because I alone know the truth, Mr. Chisholm," she said distinctly. "I am aware of the secret of your sin. All of these hideous facts are in my possession."
He started violently, glaring at her open-mouthed, as though she were some superhuman monstrosity.
"You believe that I am lying to you, but I declare that I am not. I am in full possession of the secret of your sin, even to its smallest detail. If you wish, I will defend you, and show you a means by which you can defy those who are seeking to expose you. Shall I give you proof that I am cognisant of the truth?"
He nodded in the affirmative, still too dumbfounded to articulate.
Moving suddenly she stepped forward to the table, took up a pen, and wrote two words upon a piece of paper, which she handed to him in silence.
He grasped it with trembling fingers. No sooner had his eyes fallen upon it than a horrible change swept over his countenance.
"My G.o.d! Yes!" he gasped, his face blanched to the lips. "It was that name. Then you really know my terrible guilt. You--a comparative stranger!"
"Yes," she answered. "I know everything, and can yet save you, if you will place your trust in me--even though I am little more than a stranger."
"And if I did--if I allowed you to strive on my behalf? What then?"
She looked straight at him. The deep silence of the night was again broken by the musical chimes high up in the ancient turret.
"Shall I continue to speak frankly?" she asked at last.
"Most certainly. In this affair there can be no concealment between us, Miss Mortimer, for it seems that my future is entirely in your hands."
"It is," she answered, in a deep, intense voice. "And in return for my silence and defence of yourself I make one condition."
"And that is?"
She again placed her soft hand tenderly upon the arm of the nervous, haggard-faced man whom she had just rescued from self-destruction, and looked earnestly into his pallid face.
"My sole condition is that you shall give me yourself," she answered in a wild, hoa.r.s.e voice; "that you shall cast aside this other woman and give me your love."
"Then you actually love me!" he exclaimed in his astonishment.
"Yes," she cried fiercely, her clear eyes looking anxiously up into his face. "Yes, I frankly confess that I love you."
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
RECORDS SOME MATTERS OF FACT.
The house-party at Wroxeter Castle had broken up, and Dudley Chisholm, having returned to town, had once more taken up his official duties.
Every hour of his day, however, was haunted by the memory of that strange encounter in the library, and its astonishing sequel. That fair-haired girl, whose parentage was so mysterious, and against whom he had been so distinctly warned, was aware of his secret, and, moreover, had openly declared her love for him. a.s.suredly his was a most complicated and perilous position.
Muriel Mortimer had at every point displayed marvellous tact and ingenuity. She was undoubtedly clever, for at breakfast on the morning following their interview, Lady Meldrum had announced the receipt of a letter which compelled them to leave by the midday train for Carlisle.
All sorts of regrets were expressed in the usual conventional manner, but Muriel exchanged a glance with her host, and he understood. No word regarding the midnight interview pa.s.sed between them; but when she entered the carriage to be driven into Shrewsbury with Sir Henry and his wife, and grasped his hands in farewell, he felt a slight pressure upon his fingers as their eyes met, and knew that it was intended as a mute repet.i.tion of her promise to rescue him.
She alone knew the truth. If she so desired she herself could expose him and lay bare his secret. He was utterly helpless in her hands, and in order to save himself had been compelled to accept the strange condition she had so clearly and inexorably laid down. This fair-faced woman, about whom he knew next to nothing, had declared that she could save him by means known only to herself; and this she was now setting forth to do.
Archibald Cator, the resourceful man whose success in learning the diplomatic secrets of foreign states was unequalled, was working towards his exposure, while she, an apparently simple woman, with a countenance full of child-like innocence, had pitted herself against his long experience and cunning mind. The match was unequal, he thought. Surely she must be vanquished. Yet she had saved him from suicide, and somehow, he knew not exactly how, her declarations and her sudden outburst of devotion had renewed the hope of happiness within him.
Public life had never offered more brilliant prizes to a Canning, a Disraeli, or a Randolph Churchill than it did to Dudley Chisholm. To him, it seemed, the future belonged. England was in the mood to surrender herself, not necessarily to a prodigy of genius, a Napoleon of politics, but to a man of marked independence, faith, and capacity. And all these qualities were possessed by the present Parliamentary Under-Secretary--the unhappy man who so short a time before had sat with the fatal gla.s.s in front of him.
He was in the hall when Muriel took leave of Claudia. The latter was inclined to be affectionate and bent to kiss her on the cheek, but Muriel pretended not to notice her intention, merely shaking her hand and expressing regret at being compelled to leave so suddenly. Their parting was most decidedly a strained one, and he fell to wondering whether, on his account, any high words had pa.s.sed between them.
But a fortnight had gone by, the House had rea.s.sembled, and he had resumed his duties.
Has it ever occurred to you, my reader, what a terrible sameness marks the careers of front-bench men?
Ancestors who toiled and spun, as some writer in a daily journal has it; Eton and Oxford; the charmed Commons at twenty-eight or thirty, an Under-Secretaryship of State two years later; high Government office three years after that, then a seat in the Cabinet, then the invariable Chief Secretaryship of Ireland, birthplace of reputations, where they take the place of colleagues physically prostrated by Irish _persiflage_.
As Chief Secretary the typical front-bench man, of course, surprises friends and foes by his unshakable coolness. If he still has any hair, he never turns a particle of it while the Irish members are shrieking their loudest, and branding him with nicknames; which we are instructed to accept as examples of epoch-making humour. Well, we are bound to believe what we are told, but we cannot be described as cordial believers.
Last scene of all, the ign.o.ble, protesting tumble upstairs into the House of Lords; a coronet on the door panels of his brougham; his ident.i.ty hidden under the name of a London suburb or an obscure village; while his eldest son who is now an "Honourable," and has always been a zany, remains down below to fritter away ill.u.s.trious traditions.
Once Dudley Waldegrave Chisholm had marked out for himself a similar career, but the events of the past few months had changed it all.
Public life no longer attracted him. He hated the wearying monotony of the House, and each time he rose from the Treasury bench to speak, he trembled lest there should arise a figure from the Opposition to denounce him in scathing terms. The nervous tension of those days was awful. His friends of his own party, noticing his nervousness, put it down to the strain of office, and more than one idling politician of the dining-room had suggested that he should pair and leave town for a bit of a change.
Would, he thought within himself, that he could leave the town for ever!