“Help me, then, Olivia,” said Edward, imploringly; “help me to find my wife; and atone for all that you have ever done amiss in the past. It is not too late.”
His voice softened as he spoke. He turned to her, with his hands clasped, waiting anxiously for her answer. Perhaps this appeal was the last cry of her good angel, pleading against the devils for her redemption. But the devils had too long held possession of this woman’s breast. They arose, arrogant and unpitying, and hardened her heart against that pleading voice.
“How much he loves her!” thought Olivia Marchmont; “how dearly he loves her! For her sake he humiliates himself to me.”
Then, with no show of relenting in her voice or manner, she said deliberately:
“I can only tell you again what I told you before. The placard you saw at the park–gates can tell you as much as I can. Mary Marchmont ran away. She was sought for in every direction, but without success. Mr. Marchmont, who is a man of the world, and better able to suggest what is right in such a case as this, advised that Mr. Paulette should be sent for. He was accordingly communicated with. He came, and instituted a fresh search. He also caused a bill to be printed and distributed through the country. Advertisements were inserted in the ‘Times’ and other papers. For some reason––I forget what reason––Mary Marchmont’s name did not appear in these advertisements. They were so worded as to render the publication of the name unnecessary.”
Edward Arundel pushed his hand across his forehead.
“Richard Paulette has been here?” he murmured, in a low voice.
He had every confidence in the lawyer; and a deadly chill came over him at the thought that the cool, hard–headed solicitor had failed to find the missing girl.
“Yes; he was here two or three days.”
“And he could do nothing?”
“Nothing, except what I have told you.”
The young man thrust his hand into his breast to still the cruel beating of his heart. A sudden terror had taken possession of him,––a horrible dread that he should never look upon his young wife’s face again. For some minutes there was a dead silence in the room, only broken once or twice by the falling of some ashes on the hearth. Captain Arundel sat with his face hidden behind his hand. Olivia still stood as she had stood when her cousin entered the room, erect and gloomy, by the old–fashioned chimney–piece.
“There was something in that placard,” the soldier said at last, in a hoarse, altered voice,––”there was something about my wife having been seen last by the water–side. Who saw her there?”
“Mr. Weston, a surgeon of Kemberling,––Paul Marchmont’s brother–in–law.”
“Was she seen by no one else?”
“Yes; she was seen at about the same time––a little sooner or later, we don’t know which––by one of Farmer Pollard’s men.”
“And she has never been seen since?”
“Never; that is to say, we can hear of no one who has seen her.”
“At what time in the day was she seen by this Mr. Weston?”
“At dusk; between five and six o’clock.”
Edward Arundel put his hand suddenly to his throat, as if to check some choking sensation that prevented his speaking.
“Olivia,” he said, “my wife was last seen by the river–side. Does any one think that, by any unhappy accident, by any terrible fatality, she lost her way after dark, and fell into the water? or that––O God, that would be too horrible!––does any one suspect that she drowned herself?”
“Many things have been said since her disappearance,” Olivia Marchmont answered. “Some people say one thing, some another.”
“And it has been said that she––that she was drowned?”
“Yes; many people have said so. The river was dragged while Mr. Paulette was here, and after he went away. The men were at work with the drags for more than a week.”
“And they found nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Was there any other reason for supposing that––that my wife fell into the river?”
“Only one reason.”
“What was that?”
“I will show you,” Olivia Marchmont answered.
She took a bunch of keys from her pocket, and went to an old–fashioned bureau or cabinet upon the other side of the room. She unlocked the upper part of this bureau, opened one of the drawers, and took from it something which she brought to Edward Arundel.
This something was a little shoe; a little shoe of soft bronzed leather, stained and discoloured with damp and moss, and trodden down upon one side, as if the wearer had walked a weary way in it, and had been unaccustomed to so much walking.
Edward Arundel remembered, in that brief, childishly–happy honeymoon at the little village near Winchester, how often he had laughed at his young wife’s propensity for walking about damp meadows in such delicate little slippers as were better adapted to the requirements of a ballroom. He remembered the slender foot, so small that he could take it in his hand; the feeble little foot that had grown tired in long wanderings by the Hampshire trout–streams, but which had toiled on in heroic self–abnegation so long as it was the will of the sultan to pedestrianise.
“Was this found by the river–side?” he asked, looking piteously at the slipper which Mrs. Marchmont had put into his hand.
“Yes; it was found amongst the rushes on the shore, a mile below the spot at which Mr. Weston saw my step–daughter.”
Edward Arundel put the little shoe into his bosom.
“I’ll not believe it,” he cried suddenly; “I’ll not believe that my darling is lost to me. She was too good, far too good, to think of suicide; and Providence would never suffer my poor lonely child to be led away to a dreary death upon that dismal river–shore. No, no; she fled away from this place because she was too wretched here. She went away to hide herself amongst those whom she could trust, until her husband came to claim her. I will believe anything in the world except that she is lost to me. And I will not believe that, I will never believe that, until I look down at her corpse; until I lay my hand on her cold breast, and feel that her true heart has ceased beating. As I went out of this place four months ago to look for her, I will go again now. My darling, my darling, my innocent pet, my childish bride; I will go to the very end of the world in search of you.”
The widow ground her teeth as she listened to her kinsman’s passionate words. Why did he for ever goad her to blacker wickedness by this parade of his love for Mary? Why did he force her to remember every moment how much cause she had to hate this pale–faced girl?
Captain Arundel rose, and walked a few paces, leaning on his stick as he went.
“You will sleep here to–night, of course?” Olivia Marchmont said.
“Sleep here!”
His tone expressed plainly enough that the place was abhorrent to him.
“Yes; where else should you stay?”
“I meant to have stopped at the nearest inn.”
“The nearest inn is at Kemberling.”
“That would suit me well enough,” the young man answered indifferently; “I must be in Kemberling early to–morrow, for I must see Paul Marchmont. I am no nearer the comprehension of my wife’s flight by anything that you have told me. It is to Paul Marchmont that I must look next. Heaven help him if he tries to keep the truth from me.”
“You will see Mr. Marchmont here as easily as at Kemberling,” Olivia answered; “he comes here every day.”
“What for?”
“He has built a sort of painting–room down by the river–side, and he paints there whenever there is light.”
“Indeed!” cried Edward Arundel; “he makes himself at home at Marchmont Towers, then?”
“He has a right to do so, I suppose,” answered the widow indifferently. “If Mary Marchmont is dead, this place and all belonging to it is his. As it is, I am only here on sufferance.”
“He has taken possession, then?”
“O
n the contrary, he shrinks from doing so.”
“And, by the Heaven above us, he does wisely,” cried Edward Arundel. “No man shall seize upon that which belongs to my darling. No foul plot of this artist–traitor shall rob her of her own. God knows how little value I set upon her wealth; but I will stand between her and those who try to rob her, until my last gasp. No, Olivia; I’ll not stay here; I’ll accept no hospitality from Mr. Marchmont. I suspect him too much.”
He walked to the door; but before he reached it the widow went to one of the windows, and pushed aside the blind.
“Look at the rain,” she said; “hark at it; don’t you hear it, drip, drip, drip upon the stone? I wouldn’t turn a dog out of doors upon such a night as this; and you––you are so ill––so weak. Edward Arundel, do you hate me so much that you refuse to share the same shelter with me, even for a night?”
There is nothing so difficult of belief to a man, who is not a coxcomb, as the simple fact that he is beloved by a woman whom he does not love, and has never wooed by word or deed. But for this, surely Edward Arundel must, in that sudden burst of tenderness, that one piteous appeal, have discovered a clue to his cousin’s secret.
He discovered nothing; he guessed nothing. But he was touched by her tone, even in spite of his utter ignorance of its meaning, and he replied, in an altered manner,
“Certainly, Olivia, if you really wish it, I will stay. Heaven knows I have no desire that you and I should be ill friends. I want your help; your pity, perhaps. I am quite willing to believe that any cruel things you said to Mary arose from an outbreak of temper. I cannot think that you could be base at heart. I will even attribute your disbelief of the statement made by my poor girl as to our marriage to the narrow prejudices learnt in a small country town. Let us be friends, Olivia.”
He held out his hand. His cousin laid her cold fingers in his open palm, and he shuddered as if he had come in contact with a corpse. There was nothing very cordial in the salutation. The two hands seemed to drop asunder, lifeless and inert; as if to bear mute witness that between these two people there was no possibility of sympathy or union.
But Captain Arundel accepted his cousin’s hospitality. Indeed he had need to do so; for he found that his valet had relied upon his master’s stopping at the Towers, and had sent the carriage back to Swampington. A tray with cold meat and wine was brought into the drawing–room for the young soldier’s refreshment. He drank a glass of Madeira, and made some pretence of eating a few mouthfuls, out of courtesy to Olivia; but he did this almost mechanically. He sat silent and gloomy, brooding over the terrible shock that he had so newly received; brooding over the hidden things that had happened in that dreary interval, during which he had been as powerless to defend his wife from trouble as a dead man.
Again and again the cruel thought returned to him, each time with a fresh agony,––that if he had written to his mother, if he had told her the story of his marriage, the things which had happened could never have come to pass. Mary would have been sheltered and protected by a good and loving woman. This thought, this horrible self–reproach, was the bitterest thing the young man had to bear.
“It is too great a punishment,” he thought; “I am too cruelly punished for having forgotten everything in my happiness with my darling.”
The widow sat in her low easy–chair near the fire, with her eyes fixed upon the burning coals; the grate had been replenished, and the light of the red blaze shone full upon Olivia Marchmont’s haggard face. Edward Arundel, aroused for a few moments out of his gloomy abstraction, was surprised at the change which an interval of a few months had made in his cousin. The gloomy shadow which he had often seen on her face had become a fixed expression; every line had deepened, as if by the wear and tear of ten years, rather than by the progress of a few months. Olivia Marchmont had grown old before her time. Nor was this the only change. There was a look, undefined and undefinable, in the large luminous grey eyes, unnaturally luminous now, which filled Edward Arundel with a vague sense of terror; a terror which he would not––which he dared not––attempt to analyse. He remembered Mary’s unreasoning fear of her stepmother, and he now scarcely wondered at that fear. There was something almost weird and unearthly in the aspect of the woman sitting opposite to him by the broad hearth: no vestige of colour in her gloomy face, a strange light burning in her eyes, and her black draperies falling round her in straight, lustreless folds.
“I fear you have been ill, Olivia,” the young man said, presently.
Another sentiment had arisen in his breast side by side with that vague terror,––a fancy that perhaps there was some reason why his cousin should be pitied.
“Yes,” she answered indifferently; as if no subject of which Captain Arundel could have spoken would have been of less concern to her,––”yes, I have been very ill.”
“I am sorry to hear it.”
Olivia looked up at him and smiled. Her smile was the strangest he had ever seen upon a woman’s face.
“I am very sorry to hear it. What has been the matter with you?”
“Slow fever, Mr. Weston said.”
“Mr. Weston?”
“Yes; Mr. Marchmont’s brother–in–law. He has succeeded to Mr. Dawnfield’s practice at Kemberling. He attended me, and he attended my step–daughter.”
“My wife was ill, then?”
“Yes; she had brain–fever: she recovered from that, but she did not recover strength. Her low spirits alarmed me, and I considered it only right––Mr. Marchmont suggested also––that a medical man should be consulted.”
“And what did this man, this Mr. Weston, say?”
“Very little; there was nothing the matter with Mary, he said. He gave her a little medicine, but only in the desire of strengthening her nervous system. He could give her no medicine that would have any very good effect upon her spirits, while she chose to keep herself obstinately apart from every one.”
The young man’s head sank upon his breast. The image of his desolate young wife arose before him; the image of a pale, sorrowful girl, holding herself apart from her persecutors, abandoned, lonely, despairing. Why had she remained at Marchmont Towers? Why had she ever consented to go there, when she had again and again expressed such terror of her stepmother? Why had she not rather followed her husband down to Devonshire, and thrown herself upon his relatives for protection? Was it like this girl to remain quietly here in Lincolnshire, when the man she loved with such innocent devotion was lying between life and death in the west?
“She is such a child,” he thought,––”such a child in her ignorance of the world. I must not reason about her as I would about another woman.”
And then a sudden flush of passionate emotion rose to his face, as a new thought flashed into his mind. What if this helpless girl had been detained by force at Marchmont Towers?
“Olivia,” he cried, “whatever baseness this man, Paul Marchmont, may be capable of, you at least must be superior to any deliberate sin. I have all my life believed in you, and respected you, as a good woman. Tell me the truth, then, for pity’s sake. Nothing that you can tell me will fill up the dead blank that the horrible interval since my accident has made in my life. But you can give me some help. A few words from you may clear away much of this darkness. How did you find my wife? How did you induce her to come back to this place? I know that she had an unreasonable dread of returning here.”
“I found her through the agency of Mr. Marchmont,” Olivia answered, quietly. “I had some difficulty in inducing her to return here; but after hearing of your accident––”
“How was the news of that broken to her?”
“Unfortunately she saw a paper that had happened to be left in her way.”
“By whom?”
“By Mr. Marchmont.”
“Where was this?”
“In Hampshire.”
“Indeed! Then Paul Marchmont went with you to Hampshire?”
“He did. He was of great service to me i
n this crisis. After seeing the paper, my stepdaughter was seized with brain–fever. She was unconscious when we brought her back to the Towers. She was nursed by my old servant Barbara, and had the highest medical care. I do not think that anything more could have been done for her.”
“No,” answered Edward Arundel, bitterly; “unless you could have loved her.”
“We cannot force our affections,” the widow said, in a hard voice.
Another voice in her breast seemed to whisper, “Why do you reproach me for not having loved this girl? If you had loved me, the whole world would have been different.”
“Olivia Marchmont,” said Captain Arundel, “by your own avowal there has never been any affection for this orphan girl in your heart. It is not my business to dwell upon the fact, as something almost unnatural under the peculiar circumstances through which that helpless child was cast upon your protection. It is needless to try to understand why you have hardened your heart against my poor wife. Enough that it is so. But I may still believe that, whatever your feelings may be towards your dead husband’s daughter, you would not be guilty of any deliberate act of treachery against her. I can afford to believe this of you; but I cannot believe it of Paul Marchmont. That man is my wife’s natural enemy. If he has been here during my illness, he has been here to plot against her. When he came here, he came to attempt her destruction. She stands between him and this estate. Long ago, when I was a careless schoolboy, my poor friend, John Marchmont, told me that, if ever the day came upon which Mary’s interests should be opposed to the interests of her cousin, that man would be a dire and bitter enemy; so much the more terrible because in all appearance her friend. The day came; and I, to whom the orphan girl had been left as a sacred legacy, was not by to defend her. But I have risen from a bed that many have thought a bed of death; and I come to this place with one indomitable resolution paramount in my breast,––the determination to find my wife, and to bring condign punishment upon the man who has done her wrong.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 201