by Ellen Wood
Maude was turning sick with apprehension. She had begun to like her husband during the latter part of their sojourn in London; had missed him terribly during this long period of lonely ennui at Hartledon; and his tender kindness to her for the past few fleeting hours of this their meeting had seemed like heaven as compared with the solitary past. Her whole heart was in her words as she answered:
“When we first married I did not care for you; I almost think I did not like you. Everything was new to me, and I felt as one in an unknown sea. But it wore off; and if you only knew how I have thought of you, and wished for you here, you would never have said anything so cruel. You are my husband, and you cannot put me from you. Percival, promise me that you will never hint at this again!”
He bent and kissed her. His course lay plain before him; and if an ugly mountain rose up before his mind’s eye, shadowing forth not voluntary but forced separation, he would not look at it in that moment.
“What could mamma mean?” she asked. “I shall ask her.”
“Maude, oblige me by saying nothing about it. I have already warned Lady Kirton that it must not be repeated; and I am sure it will not be. I wish you would also oblige me in another matter.”
“In anything,” she eagerly said, raising her tearful eyes to his. “Ask me anything.”
“I intend to take your brother to the warmest seaside place England can boast of, at once; to-day or to-morrow. The sea-air may do me good also. I want that, or something else,” he added; his tone assuming a sad weariness as he remembered how futile any “sea-air” would be for a mind diseased. “Won’t you go with us, Maude?”
“Oh yes, gladly! I will go with you anywhere.”
He left her to proceed to Captain Kirton’s room, thinking that he and his wife might have been happy together yet, but for that one awful shadow of the past, which she did not know anything about; and he prayed she never might know.
But after all, it would have been a very moonlight sort of happiness.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
ONCE MORE.
The months rolled on, and Lord and Lady Hartledon did not separate. They remained together, and were, so far, happy enough — the moonlight happiness hinted at; and it is as I believe, the best and calmest sort of happiness for married life. Maude’s temper was unequal, and he was subject to prolonged hours of sadness. But the time went lightly enough over their heads, for all the world saw, as it goes over the heads of most people.
And Lord Hartledon was a free man still, and stood well with the world. Whatever the mysterious accusation brought against him had been, it produced no noisy effects as yet; in popular phrase, it had come to nothing. As yet; always as yet. Whether he had shot a man, or robbed a bank, or fired a church, the incipient accusation died away. But the fear, let it be of what nature it would, never died away in his mind; and he lived as a man with a sword suspended over his head. Moreover, the sword, in his own imagination, was slipping gradually from its fastenings; his days were restless, his nights sleepless, an inward fever for ever consumed him.
As none knew better than Thomas Carr. There were two witnesses who could bring the facts home to Lord Hartledon; and, so far as was known, only two: the stranger, who had paid him a visit, and the man Gordon, or Gorton. The latter was the more dangerous; and they had not yet been able to trace him. Mr. Carr’s friend, Detective Green, had furnished that gentleman with a descriptive bill of Gordon of the mutiny: “a young, slight man, with light eyes and fair hair.” This did not answer exactly to the Gorton who had played his part at Calne; but then, in regard to the latter, there remained the suspicion that the red hair was false. Whether it was the same man or whether it was two men — if the phrase may be allowed — neither of them, to use Detective Green’s expressive words, turned up. And thus the months had passed on, with nothing special to mark them. Captain Kirton had been conveyed abroad for the winter, and they had good news of him; and the countess-dowager was inflicting a visit upon one of her married daughters in Germany, the baroness with the unpronounceable name.
And the matter had nearly faded from the mind of Lady Hartledon. It would quite have faded, but for certain interviews with Thomas Carr at his chambers, when Hartledon’s look of care precluded the idea that they could be visits of mere idleness or pleasure; and for the secret trouble that unmistakably sat on her husband like an incubus. At times he would moan in his sleep as one in pain; but if told of this, had always some laughing answer ready for her — he had dreamed he was fighting a lion or being tossed by a bull.
This was the pleasantest phase of Lady Hartledon’s married life. Her health did not allow of her entering into gaiety; and she and her husband passed their time happily together. All her worst qualities seemed to have left her, or to be dormant; she was yielding and gentle; her beauty had never been so great as now that it was subdued; her languor was an attraction, her care to please being genuine; and they were sufficiently happy. They were in their town-house now, not having gone back to Hartledon. A large, handsome house, very different from the hired one they had first occupied.
In January the baby was born; and Maude’s eyes glistened with tears of delight because it was a boy: a little heir to the broad lands of Hartledon. She was very well, and it seemed that she could never tire of fondling her child.
But in the first few days succeeding that of the birth a strange fancy took possession of her: she observed, or thought she observed, that her husband did not seem to care for the child. He did not caress it; she once heard him sighing over it; and he never announced it in the newspapers. Other infants, heirs especially, could be made known to the world, but not hers. The omission might never have come to her knowledge, since at first she was not allowed to see newspapers, but for a letter from the countess-dowager. The lady wrote in a high state of wrath from Germany; she had looked every day for ten days in the Times, and saw no chronicle of the happy event; and she demanded the reason. It afforded a valve for her temper, which had been in an explosive state for some time against Lord Hartledon, that ungracious son-in-law having actually forbidden her his house until Maude’s illness should be over; telling her plainly that he would not have his wife worried. Lady Hartledon said nothing for a day or two; she was watching her husband; watching for signs of the fancy which had taken possession of her.
He was in her room one dark afternoon, standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece whilst he talked to her: a room of luxury and comfort it must have been almost a pleasure to be ill in. Lady Hartledon had been allowed to get up, and sit in an easy-chair: she seemed to be growing strong rapidly; and the little red gentleman in the cradle, sleeping quietly, was fifteen days old.
“About his name, Percival; what is it to be?” she asked. “Your own?”
“No, no, not mine,” said he, quickly; “I never liked mine. Choose some other, Maude.”
“What do you wish it to be?”
“Anything.”
The short answer did not please the young mother; neither did the dreamy tone in which it was spoken. “Don’t you care what it is?” she asked rather plaintively.
“Not much, for myself. I wish it to be anything you shall choose.”
“I thought perhaps you would have liked it named after your brother,” she said, very much offended on the baby’s account.
“George?”
“George, no. I never knew George; I should not be likely to think of him. Edward.”
Lord Hartledon looked at the fire, absently pushing back his hair. “Yes, let it be Edward. It will do as well as anything else.”
“Good gracious, Percival, one would think you had been having babies all your life!” she exclaimed resentfully. “‘Do as well as anything else!’ If he were our tenth son, instead of our first, you could not treat it with more indifference. I have done nothing but deliberate on the name since he was born; and I don’t believe you have once given it a thought.”
Lord Hartledon turned his face upon her; and when illumined with a smile
, as now, it could be as bright as before care came to it. “I don’t think we men attach the importance to names in a general way that you do, Maude. I shall like to have it Edward.”
“Edward William Algernon—”
“No, no, no,” as if the number alarmed him. “Pray don’t have a string of names: one’s quite enough.”
“Oh, very well,” she returned, biting her lips. “William was your father’s name. Algernon is my eldest brother’s: I supposed you might like them. I thought,” she added, after a pause, “we might ask Lord Kirton to be its godfather.”
“I have decided on the godfathers already. Thomas Carr will be one, and I intend to be the other.”
“Thomas Carr! A poor hard-working barrister, that not a soul knows, and of no family or influence whatever, godfather to the future Lord Hartledon!” uttered the offended mother.
“I wish it, Maude. Carr is the most valued friend I have in the world, or ever can have. Oblige me in this.”
“Then my brother can be the other.”
“No; I myself; and I wish you would be its godmother.”
“Well, it’s quite reversing the order of things!” she said, tacitly conceding the point.
A silence ensued. The firelight played on the lace curtains of the baby’s bed, as it did on Lady Hartledon’s face; a thoughtful face just now. Twilight was drawing on, and the fire lighted the room.
“Percival, do you care for the child?”
The tone had a sound of passion in it, breaking upon the silence. Lord Hartledon lifted his bent face and glanced at his wife.
“Do I care for the child, Maude? What a question! I do care for him: more than I allow to appear.”
And if her voice had passion in it, his had pain. He crossed the room, and stood looking down on the sleeping baby, touching at length its cheek with his finger. He could have knelt, there and then, and wept over the child, and prayed, oh, how earnestly, that God would take it to Himself, not suffer it to live. Many and many a prayer had ascended from his heart in their earlier married days, that his wife might not bear him children; for he could only entail upon them an inheritance of shame.
“I don’t think you have once taken him in your arms, Percival; you never kiss him. It’s quite unnatural.”
“I give my kisses in the dark,” he laughed, as he returned to where she was sitting. And this was in a sense true; for once when he happened to be alone for an instant with the baby, he had clasped it and kissed it in a sort of delirious agony.
“You never had it in the Times, you know!”
“Never what?”
“Never announced its birth in the Times. Did you forget it?”
“It must have been very stupid of me,” he remarked. “Never mind, Maude; he won’t grow the less for the omission. When are you coming downstairs?”
“Mamma is in a rage about it; she says such neglect ought to be punished; and she knows you have done it on purpose.”
“She is always in a rage with me, no matter what I do,” returned Val, good-humouredly. “She hoped to be here at this time, and sway us all — you and me and the baby; and I stopped it. Ho, ho! young sir!”
The baby had wakened with a cry, and a watchful attendant came gliding in at the sound. Lord Hartledon left the room and went straight down to the Temple to Mr. Carr’s chambers. He found him in all the bustle of departure from town. A cab stood at the foot of the stairs, and Mr. Carr’s laundress, a queer old body with an inverted black bonnet, was handing the cabman a parcel of books.
“A minute more and you’d have been too late,” observed Mr. Carr, as Lord Hartledon met him on the stairs, a coat on his arm.
“I thought you did not start till to-morrow.”
“But I found I must go to-day. I can give you three minutes. Is it anything particular?”
Lord Hartledon drew him into his room. “I have come to crave a favour, Carr. It has been on my lips to ask you before, but they would not frame the words. This child of mine: will you be its godfather with myself?”
One moment’s hesitation, quite perceptible to the sensitive mind of Lord Hartledon, and then Mr. Carr spoke out bravely and cheerily.
“Of course I will.”
“I see you hesitate: but I do not like to ask any one else.”
“If I hesitated, it was at the thought of the grave responsibility attaching to the office. I believe I look upon it in a more serious light than most people do, and have never accepted the charge yet. I will be sponsor to this one with all my heart.”
Lord Hartledon clasped his hand in reply, and they began to descend the stairs. “Poor Maude was dreaming of making a grand thing of the christening,” he said; “she wanted to ask Lord Kirton to come to it. It will take place in about a fortnight.”
“Very well; I must run up for it, unless you let me stand by proxy. I wish, Hartledon, you would hear me on another point,” added the barrister, halting on the stairs, and dropping his voice to a whisper.
“Well?”
“If you are to go away at all, now’s the time. Can’t you be seized with an exploring fit, and sail to Africa, or some other place, where your travels would occupy years?”
Lord Hartledon shook his head. “How can I leave Maude to battle alone with the exposure, should it come?”
“It is a great deal less likely to come if you are a few thousand miles away.”
“I question it. Should Gorton turn up he is just the one to frighten a defenceless woman, and purchase his own silence. No; my place is beside Maude.”
“As you please. I have spoken for the last time. By the way, any letters bearing a certain postmark, that come addressed to me during my absence, Taylor has orders to send to you. Fare you well, Hartledon; I wish I could help you to peace.”
Hartledon watched the cab rattle away, and then turned homewards. Peace! There was no peace for him.
Lady Hartledon was not to be thwarted on all points, and she insisted on a ceremonious christening. The countess-dowager would come over for it, and did so; Lord Hartledon could not be discourteous enough to deny this; Lord and Lady Kirton came from Ireland; and for the first time since their marriage they found themselves entertaining guests. Lord Hartledon had made a faint opposition, but Maude had her own way. The countess-dowager was furiously indignant when she heard of the intended sponsors — its father and mother, and that cynical wretch, Thomas Carr! Val played the hospitable host; but there was a shadow on his face that his wife did not fail to see.
It was the evening before the christening, and a very snowy evening too. Val was dressing for dinner, and Maude, herself ready, sat by him, her baby on her knee. The child was attired for the first time in a splendidly-worked robe with looped-up sleeves; and she had brought it in to challenge admiration for its pretty arms, with all the pardonable pride of a young mother.
“Won’t you kiss it for once, Val?”
He took the child in his arms; it had its mother’s fine dark eyes, and looked straight up from them into his. Lord Hartledon suddenly bent his own face down upon that little one with what seemed like a gesture of agony; and when he raised it his own eyes were wet with tears. Maude felt startled with a sort of terror: love was love; but she did not understand love so painful as this.
She sat down with the baby on her knee, saying nothing; he did not intend her to see the signs of emotion. And this brings us to where we were. Lord Hartledon went on with his toilette, and presently someone knocked at the door.
Two letters: they had come by the afternoon post, very much delayed on account of the snow. He came back to the gaslight, opening one. A full letter, written closely; but he had barely glanced at it when he hastily folded it again, and crammed it into his pocket. If ever a movement expressed something to be concealed, that did. And Lady Hartledon was gazing at him with her questioning eyes.
“Wasn’t that letter from Thomas Carr?”
“Yes.”
“Is he coming up? Or is Kirton to be proxy?”
�
��He is — coming, I think,” said Val, evidently knowing nothing one way or the other. “He’ll be here, I daresay, to-morrow morning.”
Opening the other letter as he spoke — a foreign-looking letter this one — he put it up in the same hasty manner, with barely a glance; and then went on slowly with his dressing.
“Why don’t you read your letters, Percival?”
“I haven’t time. Dinner will be waiting.”
She knew that he had plenty of time, and that dinner would not be waiting; she knew quite certainly that there was something in both letters she must not see. Rising from her seat in silence, she went out of the room with her baby; resentment and an unhealthy curiosity doing battle in her heart.
Lord Hartledon slipped the bolt of the door and read the letters at once; the foreign one first, over which he seemed to take an instant’s counsel with himself. Before going down he locked them up in a small ebony cabinet which stood against the wall. The room was his own exclusively; his wife had nothing to do with it.
Had they been alone he might have observed her coolness to him; but, with guests to entertain, he neither saw nor suspected it. She sat opposite him at dinner richly dressed, her jewels and smiles alike dazzling: but the smiles were not turned on him.
“Is that chosen sponsor of yours coming up for the christening; lawyer Carr?” tartly inquired the dowager from her seat, bringing her face and her turban, all scarlet together, to bear on Hartledon.
“He comes up by this evening’s train; will be in London late to-night, if the snow allows him, and stay with us until Sunday night,” replied Val.
“Oh! That’s no doubt the reason why you settled the christening for Saturday: that your friend might have the benefit of Sunday?”
“Just so, madam.”
And Lady Hartledon knew, by this, that her husband must have read the letters. “I wonder what he has done with them?” came the mental thought, shadowing forth a dim wish that she could read them too.
In the drawing-room, after dinner, someone proposed a carpet quadrille, but Lord Hartledon seemed averse to it. In his wife’s present mood, his opposition was, of course, the signal for her approval, and she began pushing the chairs aside with her own hands. He approached her quietly.