The few friends who visited at the Abbey were compelled to acknowledge this.
‘Mr, Dane is undoubtedly a gentleman,’ they said; ‘a man of no family, but one of Nature’s gentlemen, and he is thoroughly devoted to his wife.’
‘He ought to be!’ growled a bachelor, who would have liked to win such a woman.’ Mrs. Trevannion — I can’t school my tongue to give her the fellow’s name — is one of the handsomest women in Devonshire, and the Abbey estate is one of the best in the county.’
The outer world might believe him mercenary, but those who knew him intimately could see that the desire of worldly gain had little influenced Jasper Dane in his wooing. His habits were as simple as when he had been only Geoffrey’s steward. He made little use of his wife’s wealth, except to dispense it largely in charity. It was he who, in her name, established and endowed the hospital just outside Boscobel. Wherever there was sickness or want, help came from the Abbey. Mrs. Trevannion had always been liberal to those who appealed to her, but not actively and inquiringly beneficent, like her second husband. She co-operated gladly in all his good works. Schools, cottages, church, all profited by her liberality.
‘Why should we hoard our money?’ said Jasper. ‘We have no one to inherit it after us.’
This speech was spoken within two years of their marriage; but before the third year was out a child was born at the Abbey, and Isabel Trevannion, transfigured by the bliss of maternity, sat on the sunlit terrace with her infant son in her arms; but even in her delight in this new tie, her thoughts went back to her first husband.
‘It seems hard that he never had a son!’ she said to herself; and looking up at Jasper’s grave face, she felt chilled by an image that kindled no warmth of womanly affection in her heart. He was her friend and companion; she respected and trusted him; but she had never loved him.
Jasper’s delight in the birth of the boy was as intense as the mother’s. He worshipped the child; and, as years went on, Trevannion — for the good old name was revived again in the boy, who was christened Trevannion, and was to take the name of Trevannion after Dane, when he came of age, thus becoming Trevannion Dane Trevannion — became the ruler of the Abbey. Father and mother concurred in spoiling him; old servants bowed down to him; his will was law. He was not a bad fellow, but impetuous and self-willed, sorely needing a control which was never exercised. Neither his father nor his mother could bear to deny him anything — to oppose any whim of his, however foolish. As he grew from childhood to boyhood he had all a country-bred boy’s tastes, fishing, shooting, riding, birds’-nesting, otter-hunting; no inclination towards study, which was a disappointment to the father; no love of art, which was a source of regret for the mother. He was beautiful, exceedingly; but as the young of the animal creation are beautiful, by reason of his activity and vigour, his lissome limbs, his sleekness and brilliant colour.
He was ten years old when his father fell ill of a lingering, wasting malady, which made him forsake his study — the familiar desk at which he had carried on all his steward’s business — and confined him to his room. He had never slept in King Solomon’s room — the tapestried bedchamber, where his friend’s murdered corpse had been laid. He occupied a panelled bedroom looking into the garden and adjoining his study. King Solomon’s room had been shut up ever since the murder. The housekeeper went in from time to time, the room was aired and cleaned, but the door was kept locked.
Lying on that which he felt to be his death-bed, Jasper Dane’s sole delight was in the company of his wife and boy. She was with him almost always; waiting upon him, reading to him, comforting him; but the boy came fluttering in and out, like a bird or a butterfly — a bright, restless creature, fickle and untameable.
‘It is so dull here,’ he complained once, when his father coaxed him to remain. ‘You look so grave, and mamma too. There is no fun; nothing for me to do. I want to ride my pony over the hills.’
‘True, my boy, it is very dull for you, dull for mamma too. Go and. have your scamper over the hills, but come and see me afterwards. It does me good to see you.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ll come, and tell you all about Robin Good-fellow,’ answered the boy, kissing his hand as he ran off. The Robin in question was his pony.
It was the end of November, that dismal month in which Geoffrey Trevannion had met his fate. Jasper had been an invalid since the early summer. The doctors gave little hope of his recovery. It was a kind of atrophy. The mind was bright and clear enough, except in the night sometimes, when his wits wandered a little with low fever — but the body was slowly withering.
‘That fever in America,’ said the doctor, shaking his head, ‘the hardships he suffered during the war.’
Those were painful nights of watching for Isabel, when her husband’s mind was far astray, and he rambled horribly in his talk, now fancying himself in Bengal, now at Lexington, at Bunker’s Hill, at Charleston, now muttering to himself vaguely, in a disconnected way, strange fragments of speech, accusing himself of monstrous wickedness,’ steeped to the lips in guilt, — a soul drowned in the blackest depths of sin.’ It was all mere fever, the natural consequence of extreme debility and light-headedness. He was dear and calm enough in the day, when he was able to sit up in his bed, supported by a pile of pillows, and to take the stimulants that sustained the feeble flame of life.
Christmas was drawing near. The boys and girls at the Vicarage were preparing some kind of mediæval mummery, some dressing up and fooling, and Trevannion was to have his share in it. He was full of delight in the sport, delicious to him in its novelty.
‘I am to be St. George and the dragon — no, Arthur is to be the dragon, with a red coat all over scales — gilt paper scales, mamma — Rhoda is making them. And I am to have a helmet and feathers. Please find me some feathers. And we want a lot of grand clothes, for Justice, and Britannia, and Queen Elizabeth, and Old Father Christmas. Rhoda says you must have all kinds of grand tilings put away in chests and wardrobes, and that you can lend them to us.’
Mrs. Dane was not unwilling to be useful in the matter, but she was very anxious about her husband, whose faint hold upon life seemed growing weaker daily, and she put off compliance with her boy’s reiterated request. Now to be put off about anything which he has set his heart upon is just what a spoilt child cannot endure. Trevannion made up his mind to hunt the chests and closets on his own account. The things would all be his own property by and-by, the servants had told him so. He set out upon a voyage of discovery, ransacked closets, turned over the contents of coffers, dragged into the light of day a good many fine gowns and mantuas of a long-forgotten fashion. There was one closet which he explored last of all, the roomy receptacle in his father’s study. It was locked, but there is no creature so determined as a child who has always had his own way. Among the numerous gifts which his parents had lavished upon him was a super-excellent box of carpenter’s tools. With the help of these instruments Master Trevannion Dane contrived to shoot back the lock of the door, a clumsy old lock at best, ponderous but futile.
The investigation of that one closet occupied an afternoon. There were stacks of old books and papers in the foreground, so piled as to wall in the back of the closet. All these had to be taken down before Trevannion came to anything interesting. Behind the books, however, he found an old trunk, a capacious old trunk, that was damp to the touch and smelt of sea-water. This box, like the closet, was locked, but Trevannion and his chisel prevailed, and after tremendous efforts he raised the lid; on the top of the trunk there were old clothes, coats, and overcoats neatly folded; and under these the boy found a dozen or more tarnished silver cups and tankards, some of them gilded inside, three or four jewelled swords, and a silver hilt, broken short off.
The brief winter day was fading by the time he made this discovery. Here was treasure-trove. He felt himself a benefactor to his family, and rushed off to his mother, panting and triumphant.
She was just lighting a candle at a table by the fire-place
in her husband’s bedchamber, while Jasper lay dozing behind the heavy damask curtains, when her son ran in and took hold of her gown.
‘Come, mamma, come!’ he said: ‘I have found such lovely things in papa’s closet. Silver jugs, so big’ — opening his arms to express grandeur of size—’ and swords. I may have one for St. George, may I not? St. George must have a sword. Rhoda made me a card-board one — but I’d rather have one of these.’
‘Silver cups?’ she repeated curiously. ‘You are dreaming.’
‘Come and see — come and see,’ he cried; ‘ aren’t you glad I found them? I may have one for my very own, mayn’t I?’
She took up the candle and went with him — feeling as if she were moving in some horrible dream.
He led her to the closet, and showed her the open trunk — an old sea-chest that had been to India and back — she remembered its being brought to the Abbey for Jasper Dane, after he had established himself there.
She stood with the candle in her hand looking down at her dead husband’s racing-cups — the old tankards — the jewelled swords — all the contents of the glass cupboard in the hall. And there amongst them lay the rapier hilt, in chased silver — splashed with blood — a stain which time had blackened.
‘Trevannion,’ she said solemnly, with her hand on the boy’s shoulder, ‘you must never speak of these things. No one must know.’
‘But why not?’
‘Never mind why,’ she answered, almost fiercely. ‘You must obey me.’
‘But mayn’t I have one of those silver things?’
‘Not till I am dead and gone. You may have them all then.’
‘I don’t want them then. I don’t want you to be dead. I want one of the swords, and one of the silver mugs, now.’
‘Trevannion, you must obey me. You must not say a word about these things. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, mamma,’ he faltered, awed by the authority of her tone, which was new to him.
‘And now go to Sarah, and do not come to me any more to-night. Your father is very ill.’
She dismissed him with a hurried kiss, and went back to the sick-room, where she sat looking into the file.
She understood it all now. The supposed burglary was a sham — an artfully contrived pretence. He had done it — he who was lying there — who had been her husband for thirteen years — to whom she had given duty and respect, whom her acts had honoured and her lips had praised. He, the father of her boy.
He was dying. She knew that the sands were running out in the glass of life. There could be no redress.
‘I never loved him,’ she said to herself; ‘thank God, I never loved him.’
She softly drew back the heavy curtain and looked down at the sick man meditatively — white to the lips, but with a fierce light in her dark-blue eyes. He was sleeping, but only by fits and snatches, and she wanted him to slumber soundly. She had a plan to carry out.
She looked among the bottles on a table by the bed, and selected one which contained a sedative; a dose of which was to be given him at night, if he were too restless.
‘This will do it, perhaps, she thought, and she poured out a double dose.
When next he stirred and turned upon his pillow, she put the glass to his lips, and, accustomed to be given medicine and restoratives, he swallowed the mixture submissively, she looking down at him with those terrible eyes.
An hour later, when he was sleeping profoundly, she had him carried to the tapestried room, where her first husband’s corpse had been laid. He was lifted from his own bed on a mattress, and laid on that fatal couch, she telling the servants who did it that the change to the larger room was necessary to give him more air.
A fire had been lighted at her bidding, and the room had been always kept aired. There was no absolute cruelty in the change; but the servants wondered a good deal at the proceeding. It seemed hazardous, to say the least of it.
‘You may depend the doctor ordered it, or my lady wouldn’t have had it done,’ said Sarah, who would have thrust her right arm into a furnace at her lady’s bidding.
Mrs. Trevannion sat by the fire in King Solomon’s chamber all night, hardly withdrawing her eyes from the sleeper on the old four-post bed, with its twisted and elaborately carved pillars and cornice, its gloomy draperies and faded crimson plumes. Jasper slept till close upon day-break — the cold, cheerless winter dawn, the uncanny light in which Geoffrey Trevannion’s murder had been discovered. It was at this very hour the sick man’s mind was always clearest. He woke and saw his wife standing at the bottom of the bed, leaning against one of the carved pillars, looking down at him.
‘What a terrible long night it has been,’ he said. ‘I have had dreadful dreams.’
‘Jasper Dane,’ she said, ‘I have some news for you. The murderer has been found!’
‘What?’
‘Do you remember when you came back from America — do you remember that summer evening on the terrace — when his dog shrunk away from you? I told you that Geoffrey’s murderer would be discovered. I was sure of it. Providence would not have it otherwise. I was right, you see.’
He lay looking at her, feebly wiping the dampness from his brow, waiting to know the worst.
‘The murderer is found, and you are he,’ she said; ‘the falsest friend — the vilest hypocrite, the cruellest villain who ever crawled this earth.’
‘No,’ he answered faintly; ‘I was neither false friend, nor hypocrite. My one sin was loving you. I fought against my passion — yes, I fought a good fight. I made up my mind to go — anywhere out of reach of you — to fling away my life for your sake. When I told Geoffrey that I must go he suspected me — that day we took the long ride together — I knew it more by his manner than by what he said. He was too willing that I should leave the Abbey. My face or my speech had betrayed me. No wonder, when my very soul was steeped in love for you. To the last I meant to deal honourably with my friend — yes, to the very last — till that last night, when sleepless in my misery, I crept downstairs, and walked about the hall, and opened the window to let in the cold morning air — and, pacing up and down in this distracted state, took a rapier from the wall, and had half a mind to kill myself, when I turned and saw Geoffrey at the foot of the stairs, and the devil took possession of me that instant and prompted me to stab him. One swift, unerring thrust plunged my soul for ever in the pit of hell. My next thought was how to profit by my crime — to keep my name clear and to win you. For this I planned things so that it should seem that the house had been robbed. I had just time enough to do what was needful before your bell rang and alarmed the house — just time enough to get back to my room after the ringing of your bell. I wish to Heaven I had been killed in America. And yet — I have been your husband — life has had its sweetness.’
‘I wish I had found you out soon enough to have you hanged,’ she said mercilessly. ‘You are dying. You will cheat the gallows and me. Do you see where you are?’ she asked, plucking back the nearest window-curtain, and letting in a flood of morning light. ‘You are in his room. This is the bed on which your victim lay. Die upon it, and hope for God’s mercy if you can.’
These were the last words she spoke to him. She left him to her servants, who watched him and ministered to him faithfully to the end.
He died that night, and his wife followed him to the grave within a few weeks. She hardly spoke or looked up after his death. It was a touching instance of death from a broken heart.
‘You see she cared for her second husband ever so much better than she did for her first,’ said every one in Boscobel.
Trevannion Dane Trevannion grew up a fine specimen of dauntless, muscular humanity, won for himself considerable renown as a dashing soldier in the Peninsular war, and lived to be the father of many Trevannions.
THOU ART THE MAN
CHAPTER I. ON THE BOARDS.
SIXTY years ago, two years after the battle of Waterloo had wound up the fortunes of the long war, and sent Napoleon to
his rocky cage amidst the tropical seas, London was a different London from the metropolis of to-day, a city of narrower streets and more perilous alleys and by-ways, and yet a city with a certain homely comfort and snugness about it that seems to have been left behind in the march of improvement. When the century was young, London was something more than the brilliant focus of commercial enterprize. It was a city in which people lived and died. Wealthy traders were not ashamed to make their homes over their shops or their offices. Brides went forth from the narrow streets to be married in the gray old churches; children were carried to the old stone fonts; men and women worshipped in the tall pews, Sunday after Sunday. Now the stern hand of improvement is sweeping away the good old churches. Nobody wants them. Nobody lives in London.
In the London of sixty years ago, Charles Lamb’s London, the Drama was a grand institution. Theatres were fewer, and ranked higher in men’s minds. Every dramatic event was a great public question. An O.P. riot would be impossible now-a-days. Managers may raise or lower their prices as the humour moves them. Nobody cares. There are so many theatres that every man can find a place to suit his inclination and his pocket. People are as fond of the drama as ever, perhaps; but it is no longer a religion, a national pride. When this century was young, the play was almost as much to the Londoner as the old riotous worship of Bacchus was to the Greek when the drama was new born.
Behold the wide circle of eager faces in great Drury Lane, every eye fixed on one man, who holds the audience spellbound, watchful of his every look and every movement, breathless almost, lest a whisper of his should escape them. There is a silence as in the house of death, an oppressive dumbness, as he glides stealthily across the wide empty stage and plucks aside a curtain that veils the arched entrance to an inner chamber.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1138