I found myself hurrying along the wild path, towards the house, with hardly a clear recollection, without one clear thought. I don’t know whether he tried to detain me, or began to follow me. I remember, at the hall-door, from habit, going up a step or two, in great excitement — we act so nearly mechanically! A kind of horror seized me at sight of the halfopen door. I turned and hurried down the avenue.
It was not until I had reached the “George and Dragon” — at the sleepiest hour, luckily, of the tranquil little town of Golden Friars — that I made a first effectual effort to collect my thoughts.
I was simply a fugitive. To return to Dorracleugh, where Richard Marston was now master, was out of the question. I was in a mood to accept all ill news as certain. It never entered my mind that he had intended to deceive me with respect to Sir Harry’s will. Neither had he as to my actually unprovided state. Here then I stood a fugitive.
I walked up to Mr. Turnbull, the host of the “George and Dragon,” whom I saw at the inn-door, and having heard his brief but genuine condolences, without half knowing what he was saying, I ordered a carriage to bring me to the railway station; and while I was waiting I wrote a note in the quiet little room, with a window looking across the lake, to the good vicar.
Mr. Turnbull was one of those heavy, comfortable persons who are willing to take everybody’s business and reasons for granted. He therefore bored me with no surmises as to the reasons of my solitary excursion at so oddly chosen a time.
I think, now, that my wiser course would have been to go to the vicar, and explaining generally my objections to remaining at Dorracleugh, to have asked frankly for permission to place myself under his care until the arrival of Mr. Blount.
There were fifty other things I ought to have thought of, though I only wonder, considering the state in which my mind was at the moment, that I was able to write so coherently as I did to the vicar. I had my purse with me, containing fifty pounds, which poor Sir Harry had given me just before he left Dorracleugh. With no more than this, which I had fortunately brought down with me to the drawingroom, for the purpose of giving my maid a banknote to take to the town to pay for my intended purchases, I was starting on my journey to London! Without luggage, or servant, or companion, or plan of any kind — inspired by the one instinct, to get as rapidly as possible out of sight and reach of Dorracleugh, and to earn my bread by my own exertions.
CHAPTER LXVI.
LAURA GREY.
You are to suppose my journey safely ended in London. The first thing I did after securing lodgings, and making some few purchases, was to go to the house where my great friend Sir Harry Rokestone, had died. But Mr. Blount, I found, had left London for Golden Friars, only a few hours before my arrival.
Another disappointment awaited me at Mr. Forrester’s chambers — he was out of town, taking his holiday.
I began now to experience the consequences of my precipitation. It was too late, however, to reflect; and if the plunge was to be made, perhaps the sooner the better. I wrote to the vicar, to give him my address, also to Mr. Blount, telling him the course on which I had decided. I at once resolved to look for a situation, as governess to very young children. I framed an advertisement with a great deal of care, which I published in the Times; but no satisfactory result followed, and two or three days passed in like manner.
After paying for my journey, and my London purchases, there remained to me, of my fifty pounds, about thirty-two. My situation was not so frightful as it might have been. But with the strictest economy a limited time must see my store exhausted; and no one who has not been in such a situation can fancy the ever-recurring panic of counting, day after day, the diminishing chances between you and the chasm to whose edge you are slowly sliding.
A few days brought me a letter from the good vicar. There occurred in it a passage which finally quieted the faint struggle of hope now and then reviving. He said, “I observe by your letter that you are already apprised of the disappointing result of my search for the will of the late Sir Harry Rokestone. He had informed several persons of the spot where, in the event of his executing one, which he always, I am told, treated as very doubtful, it would be found. He had placed the key of the safe along with some other things at his departure, but without alluding to his will. At the request of Mr. Marston I opened the safe, and the result was, I regret to say, that no will was found.” I was now, then, in dread earnest to lay my account for a life of agitation and struggle.
At last a promising answer to my advertisement reached me. It said, “The Countess of Rillingdon will be in town till this day week, and will be happy to see L.Y.L.X., whose advertisement appeared in the Times of this morning, if possible to-day before two.” The house was in Belgrave Square. It was now near twelve. I called immediately with a note, to say I would call at a quarter to two, and at that hour precisely I returned.
It was plain that this was but a flying visit of the patrician owners of the house. Some luggage, still in its shiny black casings, was in the hall; the lamps hung in bags; carpets had disappeared; curtains were pinned up; and servants seemed scanty, and more fussy than in the organized discipline of a household. I told the servant that I had called in consequence of a note from Lady Rillingdon, and he conducted me forthwith up the stairs. We passed on the way a young lady coming down, whom I conjectured to be on the same errand as myself. We exchanged stolen looks as we passed, each, I daresay, conjecturing the other’s chances.
“Her ladyship will see you presently,” he said, opening a door.
I entered, and whom should I see waiting in the room, in a chair, in her hat, with her parasol in her hand, but Laura Grey.
“Ethel!”
“Laura!”
“Darling!”
And each in a moment was locked in the other’s embrace. With tears, with trembling laughter, and more kisses than I can remember, we signalized our meeting.
“How wonderful that I should have met you here, Laura!” said I; though what was the special wonder in meeting her there more than anywhere else, I could not easily have defined. “You must tell me, darling, if you are looking to come to Lady Rillingdon, for, if you are, I would not for the world think of it.”
Laura laughed very merrily at this.
“Why, Ethel, what are you dreaming of? I’m Lady Rillingdon!”
Sometimes a mistake seizes upon us with an unaccountable obstinacy. Laura’s claiming to be Lady Rillingdon seemed to me simply a jest of that poor kind which relies entirely on incongruity, without so much colour of possibility as to make it humorous.
I laughed, faintly enough, with Laura, from mere politeness, wondering when this poor joke would cease to amuse her; and the more she looked in my face, the more heartily she laughed, and the more melancholy became my endeavour to accompany her.
“What can I do to convince you, darling?” she exclaimed at length, half distracted.
She got up and touched the bell. I began to be a little puzzled. The servant appeared, and she asked:
“Is his lordship at home?”
“I’ll inquire, my lady,” he answered, and retired.
This indeed was demonstration; I could be incredulous no longer. We kissed again and again, and were once more laughing and gabbling together, when the servant returned with:
“Please, my lady, his lordship went out about half an hour ago.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, turning to me, “but he’ll be back very soon, I’m sure. I want so much to introduce him; I think you’ll like him.”
Luncheon soon interrupted us; and when that little interval was over, she took me to the same quiet room, and we talked and mutually questioned, and got out of each the whole history of the other.
There was only one little child of this marriage, which seemed, in every way but that, so happy — a daughter. Their second, a son, had died. This pretty little creature we had with us for a time, and then it went out with its nurse for a drive, and we, over our afternoon tea, resumed our confess
ions and inquiries. Laura had nearly as much to tell as I. In the midst of our talk Lord Rillingdon came in. I knew whom I was to meet. I was therefore not surprised when the very man whom I had seen faint and bleeding in the wood of Plas Ylwd, whom Richard Marston had shot, and whom I had seen but once since at Lady Mardykse’ ball, stood before me. In a moment we were old friends.
He remained with us for about ten minutes, talked kindly and pleasantly, and drank his cup of tea.
These recollections, in my present situation, were agitating. The image of Richard Marston had reappeared in the sinister shadow in which it had been early presented to me by the friends who had warned me so kindly, but in vain.
In a little time we talked on as before, and everything she told me added to the gloom and horror in which Marston was now shrouded in my sorrowful imagination.
As soon as the first delighted surprise of meeting Laura had a little subsided, my fears returned, and all I had to dread from the active malice of Richard Marston vaguely gathered on my stormy horizon again.
CHAPTER LXVII.
ACHAPTER OF EXPLANATIONS.
Laura’s long talk with me resulted in these facts. They cleared up her story.
She was the only daughter of Mr. Grey, of Halston Manor, of whom I had often heard. He had died in possession of a great estate, and of shares in the Great Central Bank worth two hundred thousand pounds. Within a few weeks after his death the bank failed, and the estate was drawn into the ruin. Of her brother there is no need to speak, for he died only a year after, and has no connection with my story.
Laura Grey would have been a suitable, and even a princely match for a man of rank and fortune, had it not been for this sudden and total reverse. Old Lord Rillingdon — Viscount Rillingdon, his son, had won his own position in the peerage by brilliant service — had wished to marry his son to the young lady. No formal overtures had been made; but Lord Rillingdon’s house, Northcot Hall, was near, and the young people were permitted to improve their acquaintance into intimacy, and so an unavowed attachment was formed. The crash came, and Lord Rillingdon withdrew his son, Mr. Jennings, from the perilous neighbourhood.
A year elapsed before the exact state of Mr. Grey’s affairs was ascertained. During that time Richard Marston, who had seen and admired Laura Grey, whose brother was an intimate friend of his, came to the neighbourhood and endeavoured to insinuate himself into her good graces. He had soon learned her ruined circumstances, and founded the cruellest hopes upon this melancholy knowledge.
To forward his plans he had conveyed scandalous falsehoods to Mr. Jennings, with the object of putting an end to his rivalry. These Mr. Jennings had refused to believe; but there were others no less calculated to excite his jealousy, and to alienate his affection. He had shown the effect of this latter influence by a momentary coldness, which roused Laura Grey’s fiery spirit; for gentle as she was, she was proud.
She had written to tell Mr. Jennings that all was over between them, and that she would never see him more. He had replied in a letter which did not reach her till long after, in terms the most passionate and agonising, vowing that he held himself affianced to her while he lived, and would never marry any one but her.
In this state of things Miss Grey had come to us, resolved to support herself by her own exertions.
Lord Rillingdon, having reason to suspect his son’s continued attachment to Laura Grey, and having learned accidentally that there was a lady of that name residing at Malory, made a visit to Cardyllion. He was the old gentleman in the chocolate-coloured coat, who had met us as we returned from church, and held a conversation with her, under the trees, on the mill-road.
His object was to exact a promise that she would hold no communication with his son for the future. His tone was insolent, dictatorial, and in the highest degree irritating. She repelled his insinuations with spirit, and peremptorily refused to make any reply whatever to demands urged in a temper so arrogant and insulting.
The result was that he parted from her highly incensed, and without having carried his point, leaving my dear sister and me in a fever of curiosity.
Richard Rokestone Marston was the only near relation of Sir Harry Rokestone. He had fallen under the baronet’s just and high displeasure. After a course of wild and wicked extravagance, he had finally ruined himself in the opinion of Sir Harry by committing a fraud, which, indeed, would never have come to light had it not been for a combination of unlucky chances.
In consequence of this his uncle refused to see him; but at Mr. Blount’s intercession agreed to allow him a small annual sum, on the strict condition that he was to leave England. It was when actually on his way to London, which, for reason that, except in its result, has no connection with my story, he chose to reach through Bristol, that he had so nearly lost his life in the disaster of the Conway Castle.
Here was the first contact of my story with his.
His short stay at Malory was signalised by his then unaccountable suit to me, and by his collision with Mr. Jennings, who had come down there on some very vague information that Laura Grey was in the neighbourhood. He had succeeded in meeting her, and in renewing their engagement, and at last had persuaded her to consent to a secret marriage, which at first involved the anguish of a long separation, during which a dangerous illness threatened the life of her husband.
I am hurrying through this explanation, but I must relate a few more events and circumstances which throw a light upon some of the passages in the history I have been giving you of my life.
Why did Richard Marston conceive, in perfect good faith, a fixed purpose to marry a girl of whom he knew enough to be aware that she was without that which prudence would have insisted on as a first necessity in his circumstances — money.
Well, it turned out to have been by no means so imprudent a plan. I learned from Mr. Blount the particulars that explained it.
Mr. Blount, who took an interest in him, and had always cherished a belief that he was reclaimable, told him repeatedly that Sir Harry had often said that he would take one of Mabel Ware’s daughters for his heiress. This threat he had secretly laughed at, knowing the hostility that subsisted between the families. He was, however, startled at last. Mr. Blount had shown him a letter in which Sir Harry distinctly stated that he had made up his mind to leave everything he possessed to me. This he showed him for the purpose of inducing a patient endeavour to regain his lost place in the old man’s regard. It effectually alarmed Richard Marston; and when a chance storm threw him at our door, the idea of averting that urgent danger, and restoring himself to his lost position, by an act of masterly strategy, occurred to him, and instantly bore fruit in action.
After his return, and his admission as an inmate at Dorracleugh, the danger appeared still more urgent, and his opportunities were endless.
He had succeeded, as I have told you, in binding me by an engagement. In that position he was safe, no matter what turned up. He had, however, now made his election; and how cruelly, you already know. Did he, according to his low standard, love me? I believe, so far as was consistent with his nature, he did. He was furious at my having escaped him, and would have pursued, and no doubt discovered me, had he been free at the moment to leave Dorracleugh.
His alleged marriage was, I believe, a fiction. But he could not bear, I think, to lose me; and had he obtained another interview, he would have held very different language. Mr. Blount thought that he had, perhaps, formed some scheme for a marriage of ambition, in favour of which I was to have been put aside. If so, however, I do not think that he would have purchased the enjoyment of such ambition at the price of losing me at once and for ever. I dare say you will laugh at the simplicity of this vanity in a woman who, in a case like this, could suppose such a thing. I do suppose it, notwithstanding. I am sure that, so far as his nature was capable of love, he did love me. With the sad evidences on which this faith was grounded, I will not weary you. Let those vain conclusions rest where they are, deep in my heart.
; The important post which Lord Rillingdon had filled, in one of our greatest dependencies, and the skill, courage, and wisdom with which he had directed affairs during a very critical period, had opened a way for him to still higher things. He and Laura were going out in about six months to India, and she and he insisted that I should accompany them as their guest. This would have been too delightful under happier circumstances; but the sense of dependence, however disguised, is dreadful. We are so constructed that for an average mind it is more painful to share in idle dependence the stalled ox of a friend than to work for one’s own dinner of herbs.
They were going to Brighton, and I consented to make them a visit there of three or four weeks; after which I was to resume my search for a “situation.” Laura entreated me at least to accept the care of her little child; but this, too, I resolutely declined. At first sight you will charge me with folly; but if you, being of my sex, will place yourself for a moment in my situation, you will understand why I refused. I felt that I should have been worse than useless. Laura would never have ordered me about as a good mother would like to order the person in charge of her only child. She would have been embarrassed and unhappy, and I conscious of being in the way.
Two other circumstances need explanation. Laura told me, long after, that she had received a farewell letter from Mr. Carmel, who told her that he had written to warn me, but with much precaution, as Sir Harry had a strong antipathy to persons of his profession, of a danger which he was not then permitted to define. Monsieur Droqville, whom Mr. Marston had courted, and sought to draw into relations with him, had received a letter from that young man, stating that he had made up his mind to leave America by the next ship, and establish himself once more at Dorracleugh. It was Mr. Carmel, then, who had written the note that puzzled me so much, and conveyed it, by another hand, to the postoffice of Cardyllion.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 654