Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  She stopped in the hall, and said:

  “I must say good-bye to Mr. Margrave, and explain this change in our plans.”

  “My letter has done that, Ellinor. You will not speak one word to Horace Margrave while I am beneath this roof.”

  “As you will,” she answered submissively.

  She had suddenly learned to submit to, if not to respect, her husband.

  Henry Dalton was very silent during the short drive to the railway-station; and when they alighted, he said:

  “You would like to have Ellis with you, would you not?” Ellinor assented, and her maid followed her into the carriage. It seemed as if her husband had been anxious to avoid a tête-à-tête.

  Throughout the four hours’ journey Ellinor found herself involuntarily watching the calm, grave face of her husband under the dim carriage-lamp. It was impossible to read any emotion on that smooth brow, or in those thoughtful eyes; but she remembered the agitation in his voice as he spoke to her in her dressing-room.

  “He is capable of some emotion,” she thought. “What if after all I should really have wronged him? if there should be some other key to this strange mystery than meanness and avarice? If he really love me, and I have misconstrued him, what a wretch he must think me!”

  The next evening, after dark, they arrived in Paris; and Ellinor found herself, after an interval of nearly four years, once more in her aunt’s little drawing-room in the Rue Saint Dominique. She was received with open arms. Henry Dalton smoothed over the singularity of her arrival, by saying that it was a visit of his own suggestion.

  “Everything will explain itself at a future time, Ellinor; for the present, let ours be thought a temporary separation. I do not wish to alarm your poor aunt.”

  “You shall have your own old bedroom, Ellinor,” said her aunt. “Nothing has been disturbed since you left us — look;” and she opened the door of a little apartment leading out of the drawing-room, in which ormolu clocks, looking-glasses, and pink curtains very much preponderated over more substantial furniture.

  “But you are looking very ill, my dear child,” she said anxiously as Ellinor pushed away the untasted refreshment which her aunt had ordered for her,—” you are really looking very ill!”

  “My journey has fatigued me a little. I think I’ll go to my room at once, if you will excuse me, aunt; it is nearly eleven o’clock—”

  “Yes; and rest will do you more good than anything. Good-night, my darling child. Lisette is getting your room ready.”

  Wearied out with a night and day of incessant travelling, Ellinor slept soundly, and, waking the next morning, found her aunt seated by her bedside.

  “My dear girl, you look a great deal better after your night’s rest. Your husband would not disturb you to say good-bye, but has left this letter for you.”

  “Is Mr. Dalton gone?”

  “Yes; he said he had most important business — something about his circuit,” said her aunt vaguely; “but his letter will no doubt explain all. He has made every arrangement for your comfort during your stay with me, dear. He seems a most devoted husband.”

  “He is very good,” said Ellinor with a sigh. Her aunt left her, and she opened the letter — opened it with an anxiety she could not repress. She hoped this letter might contain some explanation, some offer of reconciliation.

  “MY DEAR ELLINOR, — When you receive these few lines of farewell, I shall be on my way to London. In complying with your wish, and restoring you to the home of your youth, I hope and believe that I have acted for the best. How completely you have misunderstood me, how entirely you have mistaken my motives, you may never know. How much I have suffered from this wretched misunderstanding it would be impossible for me to tell you. But let this bitter past be forgotten; our roads in life henceforth lie separate. Yet if at any future hour you should need an adviser or an earnest and disinterested friend, I entreat you to appeal to no one but “HENRY DALTON.”

  The letter fell from her hand. “Now, now I am indeed alone,” she thought.

  CHAPTER VI. HORACE MARGRAVE’S CONFESSION.

  LIFE in the Faubourg St. Germain seemed very dreary to Ellinor after the pleasant London society to which she had been accustomed since her marriage. Her aunt’s visiting-list was very limited. Four or five ancient dowagers, who thought that the glory of the world had departed with the Bourbons, and that France, in the van of the great march of civilisation, was foremost in a demoniac species of dance, leading only to destruction and the erection of a new guillotine upon the Place de la Révolution; two or three elderly but creditably-preserved aristocrats of the ancient régime, whose political principles had stood still ever since the Restoration, and who resembled ormolu clocks of that period, very much ornamented and embellished, but useless as indicators of the flight of time; three or four very young ladies educated in convents, and uninterested in anything except their pet priests and the manufacture of point-lace; and one terrifically bearded and moustachioed gentleman, who had written a volume of poems entitled Clouds and Mists, but who had not yet been so fortunate as to meet with a publisher, — this was about the extent of the visiting circle in the Rue St. Dominique; and for this circle Ellinor’s aunt set apart a particular day, on which she was visible in conjunction with eau sucrée, rather weak coffee, and wafer-biscuits.

  The first day of Ellinor’s visit happened to be the day of her aunt’s reception, and it seemed to her as if the tiresome hours would never wear themselves out, or the equally tiresome guests take their departure. She could not help remembering how different everything would have been had Horace Margrave been present. How he would have fought the battle of the tiers état with the white-headed old partisans of the departed noblesse; how he would have discussed and critically analysed Lamartine’s odes with the young ladies from the convent; how he would have flattered the vanity of the bearded poet, and regretted the Bourbons with the faded old dowagers. But he was away — gone out of her life, perhaps, entirely. “I shall never see him again,” she said; “that kind guardian in whose care my father left me.”

  The next day she went with her aunt to the Louvre to see the improvements that had been made beneath the sway of that new ruler who had already begun to change brick into marble, or at least into stucco. The pictures only wearied her; the very colouring of the Rubenses seemed to have lost half its glowing beauty since she had last seen them; and Marie de’ Medici, florid and resplendent, bored her terribly. Many of the recent acquisitions she thought overrated, and she hurried her aunt away from the splendid exhibition before they had been there an hour. She made a few purchases in the Rue de la Paix; and loitered for a little time at a milliner’s in the Rue de l’Echelle, choosing a bonnet, and then declared herself thoroughly tired out with the morning’s exertions.

  She threw herself back in the carriage, and was very silent as they drove home; but suddenly, as they turned from the Rue de Rivoli into the quadrangle of the Louvre, they passed close to a hackney-coach in which a gentleman was seated, and Ellinor, starting up, cried out, “It was Mr. Margrave! Did you not see him, aunt? He has just this moment passed us in a hackney-coach.” She pulled the check-string violently as she spoke, and her aunt’s coachman stopped; but Horace Margrave was out of sight, and the vehicle in which he was seated lost among the crowd of carriages of the same description rattling up and down the bustling street.

  “Never mind, dear,” said Miss Beauchamp, as Ellinor let down the carriage-window, and looked eagerly out; “if you are not mistaken in the face of the person who passed us, and it really is Horace Margrave, he is sure to call upon us immediately.”

  “Mistaken in my guardian’s face! No, indeed. But of course he will call, as you say, aunt.”

  “Yes; he will call this evening, most likely. He knows how seldom I go out.”

  All that evening and all the next morning Mrs. Dalton constantly expected to hear the lawyer’s name announced; but he did not come. “He had important business to transact yesterday,
perhaps,” she thought; “and he may be employed this morning; but in the evening he is sure to call.”

  After dinner she sat by the low wood fire in Miss Beauchamp’s drawing-room, turning over the leaves of a book which she had vainly endeavoured to read, and looking every moment at the old buhl clock over the chimney; but the evening slowly dragged itself through, and still no Horace Margrave. She expected him on the following day, but again only to be disappointed; and in this manner the week passed, without bringing any tidings of him.

  “He must have left Paris!” she thought; “left Paris, without once calling here to see me. Nothing could better testify his indifference,” she added bitterly. “It was no doubt only for my father’s sake that he ever pretended any interest in the friendless orphan girl.”

  The following week, Ellinor went with her aunt once or twice to the Opera, and to two or three reunions in the Faubourg, at which her handsome face and elegant manners made some sensation; but still there were no tidings of Horace Margrave. “If he had been in Paris, we should most likely have seen him at the Opera,” thought Ellinor.

  That week elapsed, and on the Sunday evening Mrs. Dalton sat alone in her own room, writing letters to friends in England, when she was interrupted by a summons from her aunt. Someone wanted her in the drawing-room immediately.

  Someone in the drawing-room who wanted to see her! Could it be her guardian at last?

  “A lady or a gentleman?” she asked of the servant who brought her aunt’s message.

  “A lady — a sister of charity.”

  She hurried into the drawing-room, and found a sister of charity in conversation with Miss Beauchamp.

  “My dear Ellinor, this lady wishes you to accompany her on a visit to a sick person; a person whom you know, but whose name she is forbidden to reveal. What can this mystery mean?”

  “A sick person who wishes to see me?” said Ellinor. “But I know so few people in Paris; no one likely to send for me.”

  “If you can trust me, madame,” said the nun, “and if you will accompany me on my visit to this person, I believe your presence will be of great service. The mind of the invalid is, I regret to say, in a very disturbed state, and you only, I imagine, will be able, under Heaven and the Church, to give relief to that.”

  “I will come,” said Mrs. Dalton.

  “But, Ellinor—” exclaimed her aunt anxiously.

  “If I can be of any service, my dear aunt, it would be most cruel, most cowardly, to refuse to go.”

  “But, my dear child, when you do not know the person to whom you are going.”

  “I will trust this lady,” answered Ellinor, “and I will go. — I will put on my bonnet and shawl, and join you, madame,” she added to the nun, as she hurried from the apartment.

  “When these girls once get married, there’s no managing them,” murmured Miss Beauchamp, as she folded her thin white hands, bedecked with old-fashioned rings, resignedly. “Pray do not let them detain her long,” she continued aloud, to the sister of charity, who sat looking gravely into the few embers in the little English grate. “I shall suffer the most excruciating anxiety till I see her safe home again.”

  “She will be perfectly safe with me, madame.”

  “Now, madame, I am quite at your service,” said Ellinor, reëntering the room.

  In a few minutes they were seated in a hackney-coach, and rattling through the quiet faubourg.

  “Are we going far?” asked Ellinor of her companion.

  “To Meurice’s Hotel.”

  “To Meurice’s? Then the person I am going to see is not a resident in Paris?”

  “No, madame.”

  Who could it be? Not a resident in Paris. Someone from England, no doubt. Her husband, or Horace Margrave?

  These were the only two persons who presented themselves to her mind; but in either case, why this mystery?

  They reached the hotel, and the sister of charity herself led the way upstairs into an enclosed hall on the third story, where she stopped suddenly at the door of a small sitting-room, which she entered, followed by Ellinor.

  Two gentlemen, evidently medical men, stood talking in whispers, in the embrasure of the window. One of them looked up as the two women entered, and to him the nun said, “Your patient, Monsieur Delville?”

  “He is quieter, Sister Louise. The delirium has subsided; he is now quite himself; but very much exhausted,” replied the physician. “Is this the lady?” he asked, looking at Ellinor.

  “Yes, monsieur.”

  “Madame,” said the doctor, “will you favour me with a few moments’ conversation?”

  “With pleasure, monsieur. But first, let me implore you, one word. This sick person, for mercy’s sake, tell me his name!”

  “That I cannot do, madame; his name is unknown to me.”

  “But the people in the hotel?”

  “Are also ignorant of it. His portmanteau has no address. He came most probably on a flying visit; but he has been detained here by a very alarming illness.”

  “Then let me see him, monsieur. I cannot endure this suspense. I have reason to suppose that this gentleman is a friend who is very dear to me. Let me see him, and then I shall know the worst.”

  “You shall see him, madame, in ten minutes. — Monsieur Vernot, will you prepare the patient for an interview with this lady?”

  The second doctor bowed gravely, and withdrew into an inner apartment, closing the door carefully behind him.

  “Madame,” said Monsieur Delville, “I was called in, only three days ago, to see the person lying in the next room. My colleague had been for some time attending him through a very difficult case of typhus fever. A few days ago the case became still more complicated and difficult by an affection of the brain which supervened, and Monsieur Vernot considered it his duty to call in another physician. I was therefore summoned. I found the case, as my colleague had found it, an exceptional one. There was not only physical weakness to combat, but mental depression — mental depression of so marked a character that both Monsieur Vernot and myself feared that, should we even succeed in preserving the life of the patient, we might fail in saving his reason.”

  “How dreadful, how dreadful!” murmured Ellinor.

  “During the three days and nights in which I have attended him,” continued the doctor, “we have not succeeded until this evening in obtaining an interval of consciousness; but throughout the delirium our patient has perpetually dwelt upon two or three subjects, which, though of a different character, may be by some chain of circumstances connected into the one source of his great mental wretchedness. Throughout his wanderings one name has been incessantly upon his lips.”

  “And that name is—”

  “Ellinor Dalton.”

  “My own name.”

  “Yes, madame, your name, coupled with perpetual entreaties for pardon; for forgiveness of a great wrong — a wrong done long since, and artfully concealed—”

  “A wrong done! If this gentleman is the person I suspect him to be, he never was anything but the truest friend to me. But, for pity’s sake, let me see him. This suspense is unbearable.”

  “One moment, madame. I had some difficulty in finding you; but mentioning everywhere the name of the lady of whom I was in search, I fortunately happened to make the inquiry of a friend of Miss Beauchamp. This good, devoted Sister Louise, here, was ready to set out immediately on her errand of mercy, and I thought that you might feel, perhaps, more confidence in her than in me.”

  At this moment the door of communication between the two apartments was softly opened, and Monsieur Vernot returned.

  “I have prepared the patient for your visit, madame,” he said; “but you must guard against a shock to your own feelings in seeing him. He is very ill.”

  “In danger?” asked Ellinor.

  “Unhappily, yes — in imminent danger!”

  Throughout the brief interview with the physician Ellinor Dalton had said to herself,—”Whatever it is that must be
endured by me, I will bear it bravely; for his sake I will bear it bravely.” Her face was white as death — the firm, thin lips rigidly locked over the closely-shut teeth — the mournful gray eyes tearless and serene; but her heart beat so loudly, that she seemed to hear its every pulsation in the stillness of the room.

  Her worst presentiments were realised.

  Horace Margrave lay with his head thrown back upon the piled-up pillows, and his attenuated hand stretched listlessly upon the dark silk counterpane. His head was bound with wet linen, over which his nurse had tied a handkerchief of scarlet, whose vivid hue made his ashen face still more ghastly. His dark eyes had lost the dreamy expression usual to them, and had the feverish lustre of disease. They were fixed, with a wild haggard gaze, upon the door through which Ellinor entered.

  “At last!” he said, with an hysterical cry; “at last!” Ellinor sank on her knees by his bedside, and said to him, very quietly, “Horace, what is this? Why do I find you thus?”

  He fixed his haggard eyes upon her, as he answered, “What is it, Ellinor! Shall I tell you?”

  “Yes, yes; if you can tell me without unnerving yourself.”

  “Unnerving myself!” he cried, with a bitter laugh. “Unnerve myself — look at that!” He stretched out one thin, semitransparent hand, which trembled like an aspen-leaf, until he let it fall lifelessly upon the quilt. “For four years, Ellinor, I have been slowly burning out my life in one long nervous fever. And you tell me not to unnerve myself!”

  He gave a restless, impatient sigh, tossed his weary head back upon the pillow, and turned his face to the wall.

  Ellinor Dalton looked round the room in which this all accomplished, admired, and prosperous Horace Margrave had lain for eleven dreary days, eleven painful nights.

  It was a small apartment, comfortably furnished, and heated by a stove. On the table by the bedside a Book of Hours lay open, with a rosary thrown across the page where the reader had left off. Near this was an English Testament, also lying open. The nun who had been nursing Horace Margrave had procured this English Gospel, in hopes that he would be induced to read it. But the sick man, when sensible, spoke to her in French; and when she implored him to see a priest, refused, with an impatient gesture, which he repeated when she spoke to him of a Protestant clergyman, whom she knew, and could summon to him.